Enlightened ... There are no special effects.

Like any other upper middle class 8-year old, my son is becoming a TV, Computer addict. I’m having a tough time making him pick up reading habits and I’m getting nowhere. He wanted a Harry Potter video game and not the more popular book. I checked the price and was about to buy it for him, but thought of setting him some goals in reading before he gets his hands on the CD. The conversation went as follows. Me: I’ll order the CD after you finish reading the comic book. Son : (No answer) Me: You got to read more that will help in your imagination. Son: (No answer) [I badly wanted him to accept a goal, any goal for reading.] Me: I don’t get time to read books now. You got plenty of time, don’t waste it in TV and computer games. This is the time to read books and learn more. Me: I tell you bed-time stories. From where do you think I got them all? I read books. Son: (No response) Me: Don’t you want to tell stories to your kid when you gro...

Recently I changed jobs. My 4 minute walk to office changed to at least half hour drive to office. In the 4 minute walk all I could see were, maniac students speeding on narrow streets in their CBZs and Pulsars. There were just a couple of non-fatal crashes, in all the 4 intersections in the last two years. The statistics isn't bad even for bullock carts infested village roads. Everything changed with my new commute. I got to see a new dimension of maniac driving in the rush hour traffic in Anna Salai. I can't believe so many people are so desparately suicidal in Chennai. I don't know how fast these people go as I watch them from a relatively slow moving auto-rickshaw that has a speedometer that I can't see and that stopped working long ago. I have to think up new idioms and parallals to describe how scared I'm to be in a small vehicle in Anna Salai. Have you seen scared dogs during Diwali? I'm close. Everyone seems to be happy driving in such unsafe condition j...

Mamallapuram - My best shot ever! 

Mamallapuram - The standard View 

Blogs have undoubtedly improved the communication skills of so-called geeks. It feels good to note a number of techie writers like Chris Sells, Joel Spolsky write interesting articles not just on technology. But for blogs, I guess their sense of humour would have been restricted to official emails.

I installed the Tamil Language Interface pack for Windows XP available as a download from Microsoft. One word describes the product - terrible. I would assume the intention of developing such an interface is to enable non-English speaking people to use the computer more easily. The effort seems to be aimed at something else that I can't comprehend. But for the text that appears in standard Windows interface in Tamil, there is nothing to call it as Tamil interface. The language (use of words), structure of sentences, icons and stupid literal translation make it absolutely painful to use it. There is total lack of imagination in translation. Looks like we need a book on user interface designs in Tamil and make the architects of this tool read it. It seem Malan was responsible for the effort. This is one tool that neither Microsoft nor Malan can be proud of. I uninstalled the application exactly 1 minute after I installed it.

NOVA | Magnetic Storm | Impact on Animals | PBS "There's no scientific evidence that humans have this "sixth sense," though curiously, our brains do contain magnetite, the mineral thought to aid other animals' brains in detecting the field." It is surprising to note that little interest is shown on impact of changes in magnetic fields on human mind. May be people find it amusing to watch confused birds and animals than confused human beings. Like ghosts in the movie Sixth Sense, people see only what they want to see. They obviously do not want to see their 'so-called' negative side.