Goodbye Mr. Gilchrist!!

The great Aussie wickekeeper batsman Adam Gilchrist, aka 'Gilly' announced his retirement from the Test Cricket. Adam Gilchrist will easily go down in history as one of the most destructive batsmen the sport has ever seen, while at the same time his skills behind the stumps saw him overtake Mark Boucher's world record for Test dismissals on Friday

He made his Test debut in 1999, and scored 5,556 runs, took 377 catches and made 37 stumpings in his 96 consecutive appearances.

Many cricket followers across the globe will certainly miss that favourite cut shot and of course lots of 'common'on warnie' stuff....

Aussie team mates didnt shy away from paying tribute to the popular left-hander.

Michael Slater.

"He was a superstar who changed the face of cricket. He has set a standard for keeper/batsmen that I don't think will ever be matched."

Justin Langer.

"He is one of the best players I have ever played with and the best wicket-keeper/batsman who has ever played the game,"

Adam Gilchrist fact file (courtesy BBC, uk)

1992 New South Wales debut
1996 Australia ODI debut
1998 Maiden ODI century
1999 Test debut for Australia
1999 Maiden ton in 2nd Test
2002 Test highest, 204no
2002 Cricketer of the Year
2003 ODI player of the Year
2004 ODI highest, 172
2004 ODI player of the Year
2006 Passes 5,000 Test runs
2007 Third World Cup title
2007 Aussie dismissals record
2008 World dismissals record

Holocaust Memorial Day, 27th January!

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha‑olam..
("Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the universe...")

Moment of silence and homage paid to all the poor souls who were killed!! This is just an attempt to show that "All the hideous crimes commited against humanity during the Holocaust are not forgotten!!"

One of the most authoritative German scholars of the Holocaust, Wolfgang Benz of the Technical University of Berlin, cites between 5.3 and 6.2 million Jews killed in Dimension des Völkermords (1991), while Yisrael Gutman and Robert Rozett estimate between 5.59 and 5.86 million Jewish victims!!

MacBook Air!

Keeping the tradition alive of pushing the technology boundries during his Macworld Expo keynote address, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air, a computer that the company billed as the world's thinnest notebook -- small enough to fit inside an interoffice mailing envelope. It's priced starting at $1,799 and will be available within two weeks.

he MacBook Air also features a built-in iSight webcam and a full sized MacBook-style black keyboard. The keyboard is backlit, similar to MacBook Pros, and has an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts brightness. The trackpad is also capable of recognizing multi-touch gestures, similar to using an iPhone or iPod touch. As a result, the MacBook Air's trackpad is disproportionately large, compared to the size of trackpads found on the MacBook or MacBook Pro.

The MacBook Air features a 1.8-inch hard disk drive with 80GB of storage capacity standard. A 64GB solid-state disk (SSD) drive is an option. The hard drive is a Parallel ATA (PATA) model that operates at 4200 RPM.

The laptop is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo chip running at 1.6GHz, with 1.8GHz available as an option. Jobs noted that Intel was willing to engineer a new version of the Core 2 Duo specifically to Apple's specifications -- it's 60 percent smaller than others. The chip operates with 4MB of on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor speed, and uses an 800MHz frontside bus. 2GB of 667MH DDR2 SDRAM is also included.

Like the MacBook and the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air features a slimmed down MagSafe connector for power. It comes with a 45 watt power adapter. A flip-down door on one side reveals USB 2.0, Micro-DVI (to connect an external display) and a headphone jack. The MacBook Air also includes 802.11n-based wireless networking support and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.