Days of the week and colors

Many months ago, may be even more than a year ago, the Yoga Farm had hosted Komilla Sutton for one of their astrology courses.  So that evening, following the meditation and daily chants, she had talked to us in the context of Vedic astrology about several things pertaining to the days of the week including the ruling planet, favorable colors, and auspicious activities for the day.  Somehow that lecture has surfaced in mind, so I thought I'd document the part about the ruling planet and the colors.  So here goes.

• Sunday - Sun - Pink/Maroon.
• Monday - Moon - White.
• Tuesday - Mars - Red.
• Wednesday - Mercury - Green.
• Thursday - Jupiter - Yellow/Beige.
• Friday - Venus - Light Blue/White.
• Saturday - Saturn - Black/Purple.

I wish I could say that I remembered all of this, but I didn't.  I had to google around and found this article which contains all of this and some more.

Planets and days of the week

The western calendar also follows the planets in a similar way.  I found this tidbit lying around in one of my folders from my days in graduate school, about 20 years ago.  I don't know who the author is.

It's Tuesday. But WHY is it Tuesday? Because many moons ago, there was a warlike Norse god called Tiw. His equivalent in Greek mythology was Ares who, in turn, was known as Mars by the Romans. Each of our days of the week have a strong link to the seven traditional "planets."  Monday is a corruption of "Moon-day". Wednesday is Odin's (or Wodin)'s-day.   Odin links up, symbolically with Mercury. Thursday is Thor's day - and Thor equates to Jupiter. Friday is Freia's day. Freia was, to the ancient Norse-folk what Venus is to us today. Saturday is Saturn's day and Sunday... is self-explanatory.

This matches up perfectly with the days of the week in Hindi (Sunday through Saturday) -- Ravivar (Sun), Somwar (Moon), Mangalwar (Mars), Budhwar (Mercury), Guruvar (Jupiter), Shukrawar (Venus), Shanivar (Saturn).

Wikipedia contains a lot of information on this.

Movie at the Yoga Farm: Dirt

Today at the Yoga Farm, following the meditation and daily chants, instead of the usual discourse, in honor of Earth Day there was a screening of the movie Dirt.  It was a documentary about soil and its place in the ecosystem, the ills of modern farming methods such as monoculture, and some inspiring stories of urban gardens and community supported agriculture.  Following the movie, there was a brief discussion led by Mike and Susan Kluk, the teachers of the Earth Day Celebration course.

iPhone stuff

Here's my list of iPhone apps that I think are very useful. I'll keep updating this list as I find new ones.

• Genius Scan

Streaming directions from Apple Maps to your car's speakers

This requires the car to have bluetooth and the phone to be paired with the car.  Then follow the directions in this article to enable HFP prompts.

Testing RF performance

From the iPhone keypad, dial *3001#12345#* and hit “Call”

This will bring up the true signal meter to replace the bars. You can use that to determine just how badly the signal is fluctuating. If you are standing outdoors with the phone on a level surface and not moving, the meter shouldn't change more than 10 db.

iPhone camera specs

This article provides a nice comparison of the cameras in iPhone 4 through iPhone 5s.

Manuals

• Manuals for various versions of iOS are available here.
• User guides for the iPhones currently on sale are available here.

The most versatile device?

Aside from being an extension to my computer for things like email and web browsing, my iPhone has essentially replaced the function of all of the following devices

• Watch
• Calendar/planner
• Music player
• GPS
• Compass
• Alarm clock
• Scanner
• Flashlight
• Calculator

I don't consider at the point yet where is can replace my computer, though, mainly because it's very hard to connect to certain websites and get them to deliver their native pages; many websites only offer a pared-down mobile version once they detect they are connecting to an iOS device.

iPhone camera controls

I took a free 1-hour class at the Apple store on 12/27/15.  I learned a few things about the camera.  Here's what they covered:

• Regular picture, square picture.
• Focus, focus/AE lock (tap and hold), exposure adjust (by sliding finger up and down).
• Changing perspective by rotating the camera because the lens sits differently in each of the 4 positions.
• Burst mode (vary the number of shots by holding the click button), timer mode (displays a count down and the number of shots), live photo mode (captures 1.3 seconds on either side of the shot within the jpg file, use a long touch to view the photo with motion).
• Panorama mode.  
• Can be set to create a panorama shot moving left-to-right or right-to-left.
• Phone must be upright for side-to-side shots.
• Phone must be tilted 90 degrees for top-to-bottom shots.
• Flash settings -- auto, on, off.
• HDR - high dynamic range.  This is useful when taking pictures with a combination of bright and shadows, e.g. during sunset.  HDR and flash are mutually exclusive.
• Video, slow-motion video (120 or 240 fps depending on size 1080 v 720), time-lapse video (compression of long duration events at 1 fps).
• Focus/AE lock works but you cannot change the exposure.
• Digital zoom for photo and video.
• Viewing, editing the album.

Many of these features are covered in this video.

Checking feature availability on carriers

Feature availability on various carriers (e.g. visual voicemail, WiFi calling) can be checked here.