No longer are the children with disabilities left on hillside to perish like the days of Sparta, nor do they spend their lives in beds, hospitals. A great deal has changed not only in rehabilitation science but also the social climate has improved. New frontiers in realizing optimal health, wellness, and fitness are being accomplished through research, public policy, advocacy, technological advances, and training and program development. There have been changes in attitude, system, facilities, educational programmes, and school curriculum for the disabled people. The Governments and Non-Government Organisation world over are making endless efforts in this direction. The so called “disabled people” are rather considered “differently abled persons” or also as “differently gifted”. In fact, it is the society, which handicap them by depriving them form the opportunities that they require to lead their lives actively. They do not want any pity but need encouragement in their efforts to overcome the handicaps. The society should see what these people are left with and not what they have lost.

To Bring the disabled persons into mainstream of life requires offering them all possible opportunities, especially physical therapy, to improve their motor capacities. In this regard exercising inside water permits them, irrespective of the handicap, to move quite freely without calipers, sticks, cruches, or wheelchairs. Such an independent exercise programme through unhurting active routines in water is called Aquatherapy. It leads to immeasurable benefits and aims for ABILITY IN WATER as opposed to DISABILITY ON LAND. Aquathreapy emphasizes the prevention and treatment of neuro-muscular complications. It is also useful for those with back problems, joint reconstructions, arthritis, stress related injuries and sports injuries.

The Swimmers club and Aquarius club of Belgaum in association with the Rotary Club of Belgaum jointly organize free training camps for such differently abled children like Blind, physically handicapped, mentally retarded etc with the tittle” YES WE CAN”.
Here the children are taught to swim under the guidance of Umesh Kalghatgi, Kusane, Tendolkar and others. These noble people are doing this for many a years now and until today they have trained over 1000 children to swim and have got them into the main stream life.

Once you see these children you think these are really special children but they cannot walk or talk or see as normal ones. But seeing the enthusiasm at the pool side was amazing. Imagine watching a 12 year old completely blind girl by birth jumping from a 10 feet platform with confidence, is amazing.

Furat & Zeba who hail from Kudachi, Raibag who are suffering from a rare disease and they need very special treatment due to their illness are now getting trained to swim and over come their physical disabilities.

Swayam Bandivadekar aged 5, who is mentally retarded has come here for training as the doctors said medicines wont cure him, so you should try out Aqua therapy.

There are many a success stories here, take Atesh Jadhav, who could not stand straight, after training here for three years he can now stand straight, see you straight in the eye and now he will be going to the aborad to participate in the swimming championship.

Sharad Kumbhar aged 8 years who is from Haveri is here with his parents to get trained and his parents told that they heard about this camp in a news channel and they have put themselves up here at a hotel so that they can get their son treated.

Moin Mustaque Junned, a native of Kudachi in Raibag taluk who has now settled in Belgaum, has been suffering with a rare disease of zero-bone calcium. Due to the delicate nature of his bones, he has hundreds of fractures all over his body. Moin neither could stand on his feet nor eat without someone’s help. Even a slight blow can result in another fracture. The doctors have suggested the family to take utmost care. He won gold medals in 50m freestyle and 50m backstroke. He has been trained here.

The training camp goes on for a period of 25 days and this time 150 children from the age group of 4 years to 14 years are participating. The organizers with the help of some good Samaritan make transport arrangements and also for the costumes of the children. A sum of Rs. One lakh is needed for a 25 days camp and all is arranged by the Aquaris club and Swimmers club with the help of some generous people.

The children are not only trained by the experts but the elder children who have been trained here earlier take active part in training the new children.

After the one hour training all the children are given snacks after which they proceed back to their places of stay.

You Too Can Help !

Knowing your sensitivity to the disabled people the organizers sincerely appeal to you to kindly come forward and extend your full support to such a noble cause :

By introducing the program to some other organizations with similar aims and objects.

By suggesting new means and methods for the treatment of disability through movement education.

By helping to make a sound financial footing and serve the needy better by executing it’s plans.

You can contact: Umesh Kalghatgi – 9448187333 or Prasad Tendolkar – 9845429093.

Belgaum based Shree Renuka Sugars is on a acquiring spree and today have finalized on a major second acquisition in Brazil of Eqiupav.

The deal is of the size of Rs.1500 crores and will be funded by internal accruals, warrants and debt.

It Outbid Hong Kong based Noble group in the deal.

Shree Renuka Sugars is a Belgaum based company with Murkumbi as its promoters with its registered office at Camp.
Source: Bloomberg

Halga Cross to Anmod Goa Border – 84 kms road

Part of connecting Goa with Hyderabad via Belgaum (Halga cross)

Halga cross to Peeranwadi bypass of 11 kms

The most awaited road project which will help Belgaum in a great manner will be the Belgaum Panjim NH4A expansion and widening it to 4 lanes.

The NHAI has issued advertisements ion local papers to all the land owners and farmers on the route and has issued notices to them to get their objections if any, and the objections have to be filed in 21 days.

In total 33lakhs 94 thousand 729 sq mtrs of land will be acquired for the 4 laning of the road.

Out of 547 survey numbers advertised for acquisition 49 as government and remainder belong to private.

Farmers and land owners of Halga, M Vadgaon, Machhe, Mazgaon, Zadshaour, Desur, Angol, Peeranwadi will get affected. The road will also be going through Khanapur and Supa Talukas.

The 4 laning of road from Goa to Karnataka border has already begun and once this other stretch is ready Goa can be reached in a short time may be under two and half hours.(151 kms)

Work to begin will require at least another 3-4 months as compensation will have to paid and all other formalities will have to be completed. But as the process has been started, it should be a sigh of relief.

Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) has introduced its ‘Shivneri’ Volvo AC bus service between Pune and Bengaluru from Thursday.

The bus will depart from MSRTC’s Swargate depot at 5.30 pm daily and will reach Bengaluru next day at 8.45 am.

Worst part you cannot book tickets on-line and the website mentions that one can alight at Belgaum but cannot board. This must be specific to on line booking only. Also I was unable to get the timings the bus would come arrive at Belgaum. One more fault I could not book a return ticket from Bangalore to Pune or Belgaum. Anyways people wishing can book it online here .

http://public.msrtcors.com/ticket_booking/index.php

The same bus will leave Bengaluru for Pune at 6.15 pm and reach here next morning at around 9.30 am.

The one-way journey from Pune to Bengaluru, which would cover Kolhapur-Kagal-Belgaum-Dharwad-Hubli-Haveri-Harihar-Davangiri-Chitradurg-Tumkur stations, would cost Rs 900 per passenger.

Blankets, mineral water and newspaper will be provided free of cost to the passengers to make their journey more comfortable.

Its just over 15 days in February and the heat is on in Belgaum.

The maximum temperatures have seen a sudden rise of 5 Deg.

See the graphs for details.

Max temperature is now 35 and minimum is above 20.
At this time of the year this is above normal by 4 degrees.

This is just the beginning and we have the summer to still set in.

The sales of Fans in the past few days have increased many folds. With HESCOM continuing its hide and seek game of power supply people will be put face the heat to a greater extent.

Here is the 7th Quiz.

Click here for Quiz Questions

tDash is a Browser-Based Dashboard for Twitter.

http://tdash.org/

Twitter is the most talked about site by even the media, and how can AAB get left behind. From Lalit Modi to Sashi Tharoor all make their comments on twitter. Day is not far when Pranab Babu will make his budget presentation on twitter. (eg. No tax hikes for this current fiscal other than a 20% increase in excise and direct taxes)

tDash has been developed by Belgaum based Harshad Joglekar who wanted to tweet but in a easy manner and not in the regular Twitter format. And the best thing this gentleman is part of the ITBelgaum initiative.

The developers of tDash designed it to look similar to that of the Google Reader interface.

The key features of such an interface are:

The ability to mark tweets as read, and thus to narrow down the user’s attention to tweets that are as yet unread.

Sort incoming tweets into nice folders automatically

In-line expansion of conversations!

Support for Twitter lists

Automatic URL shortening via Bit.ly

Ability to upload images.

Plus it has Keyboard shortcuts to make it fun and easy to use and is safe because it allows you to sign in using the OAuth. No need to give out your password. It is great too that you will not be required to install any software it is web based.
So if you are looking for a new tool to use, try it out and let us know what you think.

It's an experiment, an attempt, to take Google Reader's organizational ability and apply it to Twitter.

It has been designed for Tweeple who continuously read Twitter. Developers have strove for a minimalistic design and for ease of use. There are keyboard shortcuts for just about everything; no more frequent lunges at the poor mouse.

It is entirely web-based. No need to install anything. For that matter, no need to uninstall anything if you get bored of it.

Apart from these there are many little gems hidden in tDash, such as,

• Mark a tweet as Read. As soon as you select a tweet it gets marked as read and then it magically gets out of your waythe next time you view that folder. (If you still want to read it again, there is an option for that).

• Support for Twitter Lists. It's a great way to organise them tweeple. Too big to explain here.

• Login via Oauth. Play safe. Enough said.

• URL shortening.

Keyboard shortcuts

Here is a quick reference to the keyboard shortcuts available to you. What squeak? Oh yes, that was your mouse sighing a relief.

A small Interview with the developer Harshad Joglekar:

What really inspired you to make this app?

Call me selfish, but I am most inspired by ideas that directly solve some problem affecting me. Of course, in the process, I also hope that the idea solves a similar problem that others might have and hence serve a wider audience. The idea for tDash followed the same pattern.

2009 was the year that Twitter became really popular outside its early-adopter circle. I was hooked immediately after trying it for few days. The best thing about Twitter is that it is quick and easy, and it forces you to write short, succinct messages (max 140 chars), unlike other social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook and the latest one on the radar, Google Buzz.
As I used Twitter more I realized that it would be more useful if messages (or Tweets as they are popularly called) would be organized in some way rather than as a long flat list.
tDash is a result of my experiment with that problem.

You have a out of the box thinking, what do you eat or drink for that?

Do I think out of the box? Now that you mention, perhaps I do have that tendency.. But hey, I can't reveal what I eat or drink for that. I will be lynched at home!
I do like to read a lot of books, both fiction and non-fiction, classics as well as page-turners, especially humor. Perhaps that provides some food for thought :)
Oh, and one more thing. I have a lot of interest in observational astronomy. Apart from the great time we have on field trips which we call star parties, I think it also shapes a person's perspective.

This app looks good but what about monetization?

I develop tDash as hobby project. Other than my time it doesn't cost much to keep the service running. So, I am not worried about monetization at this stage.
Ad based revenues is an obvious option to monetize but I think it is tricky to keep the user experience intact with Ads.

Who else has helped you develop this app?

Mayank S, has helped me with coding the client side of the app. His contributions are available as open-source here: http://github.com/mayanks/persist-js
Apart from that, I get a lot of ideas and feedback from users of tDash themselves.

What are your future plans?

Converting some ideas that I have into products (mainly software), and in the process, helping solve some problems that the common man encounters. And having a good time along the way.
There is one idea already in the pipeline, but I can't talk about it until it's completely ready.

Sahir Kittur has now become a historian for that matter as he is continuously on the search for old photos of Belgaum and here are some more from his search. (these photos were searched long back but due to Bandh stories this story got todays Mahurat)

Sharukh Khan & Kajol fans no more looking back, My name is khan has been released today at Big cinemas and Nartaki. An odd day indeed but what can be done.

BIG Cinemas – 12, 3.15,6.30 & 9.45pm.

Nartaki – 3, 6, 9 pm.