the mystery of leap year

This article has been copy pasted from yahoo answers:

Whether a year will be a leap year or not, is not just an answer but has a lot more story to tell

As the earth travels in its orbit completely around the sun once each year it is also revolving approximately 365 times. But, as we reach that spot in the universe where the clock strikes mid-night on December 31, we are not quite as far along in the orbit as we should be.Scientists have discovered that every four years or so we actually end up being about one day short of where we should be on our orbital path. Naturally, the best solution to get us caught up is to add an extra day to every fourth year. That's exactly what we do, and we add it to our shortest month, February. The years in which we add the extra day are known as Leap years. Normally February has 28 days, but on a leap year February has 29 days.If you wish to calculate when a leap year will occur you are fairly sure to get it right if the year is divisible by four. (1904, 1908, etc.)There's only one problem with this: We still don't end up exactly at the same spot in our orbit around the sun after a while because this method over-compensates for the error. To correct for this problem scientists have calculated that we need to "skip" a leap year every once-in-a-while. Every once-in-a-while is about every 100 years. So, at the turn of the century we normally skip a leap year to compensate. But, that tends to over-compensate, so, once every 400 years we DO NOT skip a leap year.If a centenial year is not divisible by four, there will be NO leap year that year. For instance, 1200 was a leap year, 1600 was a leap year, 1900 was NOT a leap year . . .The 400-year correction turns out to be another over-correction by just a few seconds. Therefore, whenever a millenium begins with an odd number (1000, 3000) scientists leave out an extra day and DO NOT make it a leap year.But don't worry about it, as neither you nor I will be around in a century, or 400 years, much less the year 3,000 !

Conclusion:

Rule 1 : Every year which is divisble by 4 and not by 100 is leap year.

Rule 2 : Everyyear which is divisble by 100 and by 400 is a leap year in other words years divisible by 100 would be leap years only if they were divisible by 400 as well.
and hence year 1700 ,1800 ,1900 were not leap years so will be with 3000, but year 2000 is leap year.

Happy leaping !!

p.s: now this a tr8 to all those young programmers who are writing the leap year program and are confused with why the algorithm is so. :)

Beauty is first how it is shown and then how it is seen!!

There was a time when I loved physics to an extent that I proudly claimed I would marry physics for the rest of my life. I am more of a philosophical individual than technical, and I love the way science connects to the world socially, spiritually and most importantly how it makes an honest attempt to understand it. But lately I have been loosing interest in science, not as a whole, but as a career. No matter how much you love something, staying happy is most important.. and if something you love isn't making you happy, its better to switch. I blame my perpetual loss of interest solely on the way it is being taught to us. Mugging up equations isn't life. Learning all register formats of a microprocessor doesn't motivate me to use it. Knowing how it can be used to create wonders does motivate me to mug up all register formats. Unfortunately the past three years of my so called engineering has only contributed to wastage of my capabilities.
But my heart says.. something which has made your life so beautiful and interesting cannot be boring.

I came across an article on 'how electronics should be taught and perceived' discussing major problems that lies in the teaching system:

http://www.soc.napier.ac.uk/~bill/essays/essay02.pdf

happy learning !!

scriptophobia ?? are you kidding??

So its 4th of June 2012, I am working on a post, exactly after 5 months 3days and 20 hours and 10 minutes  determined to publish it and not dump it again into the drafts like most of my other posts. I have done this very often out of the fear of writing (Scriptophobia, they call it, lol :D). It was back in class four when I first skipped by winter vacation work of writing an essay on "winter holidays". Gossh !! an essay? I just can't do that.. this is so boring..  and what will I write ?? all I love about winters is staying under the quilt and never coming out.. how can I fill pages on this? My teacher made me kneel down for two hours in the assembly hall after making several attempts of making me write that essay and trust me, this was easier than writing a whole essay :P Formal letters were just so easy to attempt in exams, you know? short and sweet! I dozed off in most of my exams after completing the whole paper but the essay :D resulting in a bad score in all my English exams :D Writing had always been headache and even an article seems to me like writing a whole library and that fear of not being good enough always lingers, even today, it sometimes does! Am I that bad at expression? certainly not! at least after the feedback I have received from my friends who loved reading a few of my articles :) . You know what? Writing is amazing. Its like an organised art.. it helps to organize your thoughts and eventually your actions. It helps you cultivate patience and develops you as a person. When you are over with one write up, it feels amazing, you know why? Because you feel like a CREATOR. :) :) To all those who are willing to write but feel something is holding them back  just "start writing and stop thinking." One myth about writing is that you need to have all thoughts and ideas in place before you start with it. It is just not so. You will be surprised to experience how ideas flow eventually to your fingertips once you start writing. A little bit of editing and then a little more and you will see how to come up with a so much better piece of it than you ever imagined.

Happy Writing !

p.s:first post from iitb, so unrelated to the place. :D

p.s: i have tons of stuffs to share, making it difficult to choose which one to share first :D

p.s: song i am listening to - lol i ain't listening to any now (pachhhkaaa !!!):P

p.s: thanks giving:

anurag for getting me started with this blog

and raumali, chandu, dilip, shanky bhaiya, pavan and all others for liking it and making me believe I can. :)