Useful websites

There are great websites which can be our daily utility tools while on work. But we are least informed about them.

What if you have a shortened URL and want to make sure about the URL befind it without actually opening it – unfurl.com

You are asked to create flowchart, wireframe, network diagram and your are all lost: lovelycharts.com

Take screenshot of an entire web page? Ctrlq.org/screenshots

A website you can dive into to get hundreds of such online tools: dailytekk.com

Here are a bunch of useful websites I found on Quora:
http://www.quora.com/Best-Of-X/What-is-the-best-web-site-very-few-people-know-about

Dan Brown - The Author of Symbols and Codes

Source: parade.com

The author of symbols and codes has come up with his new novel Inferno. All of us are well aware of the fact that he is the expert of symbols, codes, secrets and signs. Blending facts and fiction efficiently Dan brown has come up with books like - Digital Fortress, Deception Point, The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, The Lost Symbol and now Inferno, all of which are dedicated to code and symbols. And one more part which is common in the later 4 novels is Robert Langdon.

Robert Langdon

He is a professor with immense knowledge about symbols and has an excellent problem solving mind. A swimmer by interest, Robert Langdon is scared of elevators as he suffers from Claustrophobia and wears a Mickey Mouse watch gifted by his parents. Some of the books written by this fictional character as said by the author in his books are Religious Iconology, Symbols of Lost Sacred Feminine, The Symbology of Secret Sects etc.

Films out of Dan Brown Thoughts

2 of his books – The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons have been adapted into films in the year 2006 and 2009 respectively. Both of them starred Tom Hanks. Although both the movies gained poor reviews, it was liked by many (especially me :) ) The next adaption would be of The Lost Symbol (waiting for it eagerly).

In an attempt to take his novel Inferno a step further, Dan brown will be publicly talking about it at Lincoln Center, New York.

Source: lincolncenter.org

Chocolate Cake Recipe made of Bourbon Biscuits

“Baking a cake needs hell lot of work” – This would not be your opinion anymore. Here’s a simple chocolate cake recipe which can be created with the minimal efforts and a packet of bourbon biscuits. The biscuits contain maida, choco powder and sugar, hence your ingredients list for the chocolate cake recipe gets shortened and measurement cups need not be used.

Source: bbc.co.uk

Find below the Bourbon Biscuit Chocolate Cake Recipe. Do read the tips at the bottom before you start preparing your yummy cake:

Bourbon Biscuit Chocolate Cake Recipe Ingredients:

• 2 packets of bourbon biscuits
•  1 cup milk
•  1 spoon baking powder
•  1 egg
•  Half tea spoon Oil
• Chocolate sauce
•  Icing cream (cone)

Bourbon Biscuit Chocolate Cake Recipe:

• Crush the bourbon biscuits finely in Grinder and beat the egg
•  Pour the milk and beaten egg into the crushed biscuits
• Beat the mixture well for several minutes
•  Add the baking powder and mix again
•  Grease the cake vessel with oil
•  Pour the cake mix and bake in the oven
• To check whether the cake is baked properly, take a knife and insert into the cake. If the cake comes out clean, then it is done with baking
•  Allow the cake to cool down for 5-10 minutes
•  Remove the cake from the vessel by inverting the vessel
• Put chocolate sauce all over the cake. Spread with blunt knife or spoon if necessary
• Refrigerate it for 30-40 minutes
• Decorate it with the icing cream (if you wish)

Tips for Bourbon Biscuit Chocolate Cake Recipe:

•   After crushing the biscuits do not forget to double check if it is finely crushed
•  Keep your milk measurement based on how creamy the cake mix becomes. Do not restrict to 1 cup as mentioned in the recipe. The cake mix should be creamy enough to spill from the spoon easily.
•   Preferably beat the mixture with a blender. Mixing with your hand could be tiring.
•  Greasing the vessel with oil is necessary so that the cake comes out of the vessel easily after inverting it
•  If you are baking the cake in the microwave oven, then be sure to use Borossil glass bowl or any microwave safe bowl.
•  As the cake mixture will expand while getting baked, pour the cake mixture according to the size of the bowl so that it has space to expand and doesn’t spill out of the bowl.

Here are some yummy chocolate cakes which you can make:

Source: cookisses.blogspot.in

Source: food.uk.msn.com

Source: berries.com

International World Water Day - How to Save Water?

The festival of Holi is coming up, so has International World Water Day arrived. How are these days related? We know well…

22 March of every year is celebrated as International World Water Day. This day focuses on the importance and management of freshwater resources.

Three fourth of the earth consists of water of which only 1% is available for use. It is this fresh water that is utilized to drink, wash, irrigate farms etc and hence it is very important for our survival. However, the fresh water level has begun to drop across various countries. While the global population increased by about four times between 1900 and 2000, the global water usage saw a six fold increase.  Thus water conservation is necessary to safeguard this fresh water from drying up completely. Less water will mean less food. This will lead not only to people dying of water-borne diseases, but also to people dying from starvation and malnutrition.

Source: http://energyprosandcons.org

So it is the responsibility of each one of us to start acting on water conservation. Below are some simple actions that you can take in your daily lives to save water :-

• Take necessary action to repair any water leakage in your facility.
• Close all water taps tightly
• Keep the water flow of taps to minimum
• Flush only as much as required and also avoid unnecessary flushing
• Take required amount of drinking water and avoid wasting the same
• At your workplace, don’t use Coffee/Tea vending machine to rinse your coffee/tea mugs. By rinsing the mugs you will waste precious drinking water and energy used to warm that water. Each rinse will consume 20 ml. of water and we are wasting about 30,000 liters of drinking water every month only for rinsing cups which is getting cleaned hygienically
• It's a good day to start spreading awareness about water conservation on International World Water Day.

Water is a shared resource and its management needs to take into account a wide variety of conflicting interests and all our support. How to save water has been well illustrated. Water is a basic requirement for all life forms and as a result water resources are facing an increase in demand and competition among users. The fulfillment of basic human and environmental needs along with socio-economic development are predominantly  dependent on water.

Effective management of water is challenging since it is unevenly distributed in time and space, the hydrological cycle is highly complex and perturbations have multiple effects. Rapid urbanization, pollution and climate change threaten the resource while simultaneously demand for water is increasing in order to satisfy the needs of a growing world population.


"Water, Water Everywhere, Only if We Save" !!!

Chinese Cheese Pizza Recipe

Pizza is something from which we can’t stay away for too long. Instead of waiting for 30 minutes and wishing for a free pizza, why not make one at home.Although that needs some hardwork, it’s really worth. Here’s the recipe for chinese cheese pizza. Below given image is not the one for Chinese Cheeze pizza. It's just an image to crave you for a pizza ;)

Source: Mainlinepizzaquest.blogspot.com

 
Ingredients for Chinese Cheese Pizza:

• 1 Pizza bread
• half teaspoon Butter

For Toppings:

• 1 small onion
• 1 small capsicum
• half tomato
• half cup Boneless Chicken pieces / Paneer cubes
• 1 tsp Vinegar
• 1 tsp Tomato Sauce
• 3/4th tsp Soya sauce
• 2 tsp Oil
• salt to taste
• half cup pizza cheese (mozarella)

How to make chinese cheese pizza:

For toppings:

• Heat oil in a pan
• Add onion and saute till half translucent
• Add tomato and capsicum and saute till half cooked
• Add chicken pieces (for non-veg pizza) / Paneer (for veg pizza)
• Saute till all ingredients are cooked
• Add vinegar, soya sauce, tomato sauce and salt and mix well
• And the topping for your chinese cheese pizza is ready.

Prepare the Chinese Cheese Pizza:

• Spread the butter on pizza bread and grill in microwave oven till it turns golden brown
• Remove the pizza bread from oven and spread the cooked topping on the pizza
• Grate the pizza cheese over the pizza
• Grill the pizza in oven till the paneer melts and turn golden

Tips while preparing chinese cheese pizza:

• Do not fully cook the vegetables in the toppings. Let it be 99% cooked :P
• Do not add too much oil to the topping, it might spoil the pizza taste
• Let the chicken pieces/paneer pieces be very small

Sabudana Vada Recipe

Be it a fast or just a way to celebrate the weekend, sabudana vada is one of the tempting snack for all. Here goes the Sabudana vada recipe for the tasty snack made at my kitchen .. Archana' s Kitchen :)

source:slurrpy.com

Ingrediants:

1. 1 cup sabudana
2. 1 cup water
3. 1 big potato
4. 2-3 green chillies
5. 1/2 cup coriander leaves
6. salt to taste
7. 2 cups oil

Recipe of sabudana vada:

1. Wash Sabudana with water thoroughly 2-3 times.
2. Soak Sabudana for 3-4 hours in water.
3. Boil and smash the potato
4. Finely chop green chillies and coriander leaves
5. Mix smashed potato, chopped green chillies, chopped coriander leaves and sabudana
6. Add salt to taste
7. Add water to make it slightly thin
8. Make small cutlets from the mixture and deep fry in oil until it turns golden brown in color.

Tips while making Sabudana vada recipe:

1. Do not add too much water and make the mixture very thin, as you'll not be able to give shape to the thin matter.
2. Heat the sabudana vada in medium flame. On high flame, the outer part of the vada gets brown, although the inner matter remains raw.
3. As the sabudana vada will be very oily use tissue paper to remove some oil. But put the vada on the tissue paper only after the sabudana vada cools down slightly.
4. Serve the vadas with tomato sauce or coriander leaves chutney.

Photo Cakes

Photo cakes are becoming increasingly popular nowadays. While many of us never knew about this technology, it's provided by many cake shops from Monginis, Brownie Point to The Chocolate Room.

Source: yummycakesindia.com

How is photo cake made?

1 would wonder how is the edible photograph actually put on the cake. Well, this is actually because of 2 food materials – edible icing paper and food coloring products. The scanned image is printed on the icing paper which is made from rice/potato/cornstarch and the food coloring is used as ink to print the picture on the cake.

How to order a photo cake?

A picture cake has to be ordered at most 3 days prior to the day you want the cake to be ready. Some of them allow 2 days and some even 1 day. But cake shops do not usually agree for 1 day time. So if you are planning for a photo cake, well, plan in much advance.

The photograph to be printed on the cake has to be given as a soft copy - by email/pen drive etc. Better the quality of the picture, better would be the print on the cake. Hence make sure the photograph you are giving to the cake shop is of the best quality.

Different cake shops offer different flavors for photocakes. It could be blackforest, dutch chocolate cake, pineapple cake etc. Also some of the shops provide choice for the shape of the cake – rectangular, round, heart shape etc.

Cost for photocakes usually range between Rs. 700 and Rs. 1500 for 1 Kg. Photo cakes weight starts from 1Kg.

Some personal experience:

I had to order 2 photo cakes in the last month for celebrating 2 wedding occasions in the family.

1^st one was from The Chocolate Room, Kandivali, Mumbai. We needed the cake on the next day of ordering, so we were quite worried about which cake shop would do that customization for us within 1 day. After contacting multiple cake shops, The Chocolate Room agreed to deliver the cake in 1 day. We emailed them the picture and visited the store to choose the cake flavor and shape. The Chocolate Room offered heart shape and rectangular shaped photocakes in flavors of Blackforest and Chocolate. After discussions and suggestions from the seller, we settled on a 1.5Kg heart shaped blackforest cake. It costed us Rs. 1800 - much more than what other cake shops charged. We were advised that the picture be framed with white icing for greater impact of the photograph. With big holes in our pockets we walked out of the store. On the next day, we got the cake at the time decided.

On the 2^nd occasion, we ordered a photo cake from Monginis, Mulund, Mumbai. This time we called the cake shop 3 days prior to the occasion day. As it was not possible for us to visit the store, the flavor, shape, weight selection etc was done on the phone. Monginis offers photo cakes in only rectangular shape and flavors of dutch chocolate and Swiss chocolate. And charged Rs. 800 for 1 Kg cake. So we ordered a 1 Kg rectangular shaped Swiss Chocolate cake. Payment was done through online bank transfer. And I collected the cake from the shop on the day of the occasion.