Narrated by none other than David Attenborough – the series is spectacular in showing the goodness of nature as well as telling the story in a way that you will forget yourself and wont realise your mouth is open since a loong time.

Sir David Attenborough is Britain’s best-known natural history film-maker (and is known to all Discovery/NGC/BBC fans throughout the world). His career as a naturalist and broadcaster has spanned nearly five decades and there are very few places on the globe that he has not visited.

His Knowledge – unbeatable, His Narration – Outstanding! Always.
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Most of us live in cities away from wildlife making us forget/ignore about the world beyond humans. ‘Life’ takes us on a journey into nature we never get to see in our normal lives or the regular Tv shows, and for the most part, we never knew things existed. “Life” is one such series which will remind you that there is nothing more beautiful than nature and that its also full of mysteries.

“Life” is a must watch for all those Nature lovers and Discovery/NGC/AnimalPlanet fans. Watch only the HD/Bluray on a HDTV/Full-HD-LCD or DON’T watch at all.
I’ve watched it on my new Benq 24″ full HD LCD and the experience is awesome.
(Downloaded 65GB (6.5GBx10episodes) of Bluray(1080i) rip and I will buy the blurays for sure when I have a Bluray player, for now Sorry BBC, couldn’t help downloading when I watched a sample and being a fan of David)

Official Description of the series:
David Attenborough looks at the extraordinary ends to which animals and plants go in order to survive. Featuring epic spectacles, amazing TV firsts and examples of new wildlife behaviour.

Discover the glorious variety of life on Earth and the innovative, intelligent and sometimes bizarre tactics animals and plants employ in order to survive. More than four years in the making, taking full advantage of the latest advances in filming technology, this breathtaking ten-part blockbuster reveals the natural world’s most remarkable behavior in unprecedented depth and detail. Full of amazing filming ‘firsts’ on every continent and in every habitat – from 250 six foot Humboldt squid hunting as a pack to Komodo dragons (the world’s largest venomous animal) stalking buffalo and cheetahs (notorious lone hunters) working cooperatively to hunt prey twice their size – this is evolution in front of your eyes. Yet this astonishing series is not simply about revelation, it is also about entertainment. With sequences that inspire awe, wonder, sadness and humor, Life allows us to truly relate to the animals and their endeavors, and to understand and appreciate them as never before.

If you are interested to buy the Blu-ray copy,
Amazon has the full series on sale. (pre-order as of Feb-5-2010)
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For those who want to watch all the 10 episodes online, here you go:

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For Best Experience: Once you click play, switch to full screen by clicking on the full screen button . If you have a good broadband internet connection, watch in 720p mode – you can switch the modes while playing.
(But I strongly suggest buying the Blu-ray version, you wont regret!)

Note: Each episode has 6 parts (10 minutes each) and they will play continuously.

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Episode 1: Challenges of life
A look at how some animals and plants go to extremes to give themselves a chance to breed.

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Episode 2: Reptiles and amphibians
David Attenborough, Reptiles and amphibians look like hang-overs from the past. But they overcome their shortcomings through amazing innovation. The pebble toad turns into a rubber ball to roll and bounce from its enemies. Extreme slow-motion shows how a Jesus Christ lizard runs on water, and how a chameleon fires an extendible tongue at its prey with unfailing accuracy. The camera dives with a Niuean sea snake, which must breed on land but avoids predators by swimming to an air bubble at the end of an underwater tunnel. In a TV first, Komodo dragons hunt a huge water-buffalo, biting it to inject venom, then waiting for weeks until it dies. Ten dragons strip the carcass to the bone in four hours.

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Episode 3: Mammals
Mammals’ ability to learn new tricks is the key to survival in the knife-edge world of hunters and hunted. In a TV first, a killer whale off the Falklands does something unique: it sneaks into a pool where elephant seal pups learn to swim and snatches them, saving itself the trouble of hunting in the open sea. Slow-motion cameras reveal the star-nosed mole’s newly-discovered technique for smelling prey underwater: it exhales then inhales a bubble of air ten times per second. Young ibex soon learn the only way to escape a fox – run up an almost vertical cliff face – and young stoats fight mock battles, learning the skills that make them one of the world’s most efficient predators.

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Episode 4: Fish
Fish dominate the planet’s waters through their astonishing variety of shape and behavior. The beautiful weedy sea dragon looks like a creature from a fairytale, and the male protects their eggs by carrying them on his tail for months. The sarcastic fringehead, meanwhile, appears to turn its head inside out when it fights. Slow-motion cameras show the flying fish gliding through the air like a flock of birds and capture the world’s fastest swimmer, the sailfish, plucking sardines from a shoal at 70 mph. And the tiny Hawaiian goby undertakes one of nature’s most daunting journeys, climbing a massive waterfall to find safe pools for breeding.

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Episode 5: Birds
Birds owe their global success to feathers – something no other animal has. They allow birds to do extraordinary things. For the first time, a slow-motion camera captures the unique flight of the marvelous spatuletail hummingbird as he flashes long, iridescent tail feathers in the gloomy undergrowth. Aerial photography takes us into the sky with an Ethiopian lammergeier dropping bones to smash them into edible-sized bits. Thousands of pink flamingos promenade in one of nature’s greatest spectacles. The sage grouse rubs his feathers against his chest in a comic display to make popping noises that attract females. The Vogelkop bowerbird makes up for his dull colour by building an intricate structure and decorating it with colourful beetles and snails.

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Episode 6: Insects
There are 200 million insects for each of us. They are the most successful animal group ever. Their key is an armored covering that takes on almost any shape. Darwin’s stag beetle fights in the tree tops with huge curved jaws. The camera flies with millions of monarch butterflies which migrate 2000 miles, navigating by the sun. Super-slow motion shows a bombardier beetle firing boiling liquid at enemies through a rotating nozzle. A honey bee army stings a raiding bear into submission. Grass cutter ants march like a Roman army, harvesting grass they cannot actually eat. They cultivate a fungus that breaks the grass down for them. Their giant colony is the closest thing in nature to the complexity of a human city.

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Episode 7: Hunters and Hunted
Mammals’ ability to learn new tricks is the key to survival in the knife-edge world of hunters and hunted. In a TV first, a killer whale off the Falklands does something unique: it sneaks into a pool where elephant seal pups learn to swim and snatches them, saving itself the trouble of hunting in the open sea. Slow-motion cameras reveal the star-nosed mole’s newly-discovered technique for smelling prey underwater: it exhales then inhales a bubble of air ten times per second. Young ibex soon learn the only way to escape a fox – run up an almost vertical cliff face – and young stoats fight mock battles, learning the skills that make them one of the world’s most efficient predators.

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Episode 8: Creatures of the deep
Marine invertebrates are some of the most bizarre and beautiful animals on the planet, and thrive in the toughest parts of the oceans. Divers swim into a shoal of predatory Humboldt squid as they emerge from the ocean depths to hunt in packs. When cuttlefish gather to mate, their bodies flash in stroboscopic colours. Time-lapse photography reveals thousands of starfish gathering under the Arctic ice to devour a seal carcass. A giant octopus commits suicide for her young. A camera follows her into a cave which she walls up, then she protects her eggs until she starves. The greatest living structures on earth, coral reefs, are created by tiny animals in some of the world’s most inhospitable waters.

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Episode 9: Plants
A look at plants and the ingenious and manipulative ways they counter life’s challenges.

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Episode 10: Primates
Primates are just like us – intelligent, quarrelsome, family-centred. Huge armies of Hamadryas baboons, 400 strong, battle on the plains of Ethiopia to steal females and settle old scores. Japanese macaques in Japan beat the cold by lounging in thermal springs – but only if they come from the right family. An orang-utan baby fails in its struggle to make an umbrella out of leaves to keep off the rain. Young capuchins can’t quite get the hang of smashing nuts with a large rock, a technique their parents have perfected. Chimpanzees, our closest relatives, have created an entire tool kit to get their food.

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What do you think? Leave your comments.
Have a Great Day!

Here is one of several clips of that day:

Times of India news Article about why this Full Moon is special:

Don’t forget to watch the Moon today — it will be the brightest and biggest full Moon of 2010.

Scientists said the Moon will be at its brightest and biggest because its orbit is an ellipse with one side being 50,000 km closer to the Earth than the other. Saturday’s full moon will be around 15% bigger and 30% brighter as compared to other full moons.

Science Popularization Association of Communicators and Educators (Space) director C B Devgun said the full moon will be at its best around 8 pm.

The two extremes are called apogee (far away) and perigee (nearby). On January 30, the Moon becomes full, three hours after reaching the perigee, making it bigger and brighter. The moon at its perigee will look bigger than it looks in all other positions, as the apparent size of closer objects is always more. At its closest, the Moon is about 3,56,630 km from the Earth, compared to the average distance of 3,84,800 km.

N.S. Raghunandan Kumar, general secretary of the Planetary Society of India added: “As this is the second full moon of the month, this will also be a blue moon.”

For more info on this Full Moon – read the National Geographic article.

So what do you think?

Well, It was an 1hr30min episode on NGC. Normally any episode lasts for only 30 or 60min right? Well, this was special, very special. We are talking about a holiday video which was set to be one of the best wildlife video ever shot. It is now the most watched wild life video on YouTube. The video tops all other wildlife videos posted by BBC, NGC, Animal Planet that were shot by full time professional wildlife photographers.

The NGC’s documentary mentioned the video on YouTube, no of views it got and highlighted at least 2 dozen good comments among some 30K comments at the time of creation of the NGC documentary, I’m guessing that was in 2008. The video was shot in September 2004 according to Wikipedia.

Battle at Kruger is an eight-minute amateur wildlife video that depicts an unfolding confrontation between a herd of Cape Buffalo, a small pride of lions, and one or two crocodiles. The video was shot in September 2004 at the Transport Dam watering hole in Kruger National Park, South Africa, during a Safari guided by Frank Watts. It was filmed by videographer David Budzinski and photographer Jason Schlosberg.

The Video on YouTube now has close to a 50 million views and 60K comments. The video was all over the press, both News Papers and News Channels. Check out the press section on this site.

In one line, this is one such footage, that professional wildlife photographers with all those top quality equipment and by spending all their life in the wild will die to capture at least 1/4th of it. And when some guy on a holiday gets it just like that, you can only imagine how it feels for a Pro.

Dereck Joubert, a photographer and writer for National Geographic says in the NGC documentary:     "There is no doubt at all that the tourist who shot that scene was unbelievably lucky. I mean, we would’ve considered ourselves lucky to have had that whole scene happen in front of us."

Watch it and I am sure you will learn something and will never forget it.

These wallpapers should change your boring desktop to an interesting one filled with life!

Checkout more April 2009 wallpapers here and here.

A little description:

More than 1 billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean drinking water. For $20 a person, non-profit charity: water funds clean water solutions like shallow wells, deep wells, rainwater harvesting systems, and spring protections to provide people in need with clean and safe drinking water. Find out how you can help give one person clean drinking water at charitywater.org

Flickr has released all new version of its Uploadr:

Flickr Uploadr 3.0 is compatible with both Windows and Mac. Following are the direct download links:

For Windows: FlickrUploadr-3.0b2.exe
For Mac: FlickrUploadr-3.0b2.dmg

Discussion on Flickr Forums