Sorry, I’m a bit tied up at the moment…

Hands free sets (wired and wireless) for cell phones are really popular with the population in Bombay. Mostly because the Nokia phones which everyone (except me) owns allows you to listen to FM radio through them.

So there’s everyone walking around with wires dangling from their ears or with the Jabra-type headsets looking like agents from the Matrix (or the Secret Service?) And its very disconcerting to see a person in a car apparently talking to thin air animatedly or a person strolling down a street yelling at no one. But I don’t really have anything against it, since back in the US I made a lot of use of a hands-free headset too. (Although not because I was all busy and working, but because I was usually chatting on the ‘net simultaneously and so needed both my hands free to type!)

Among the funnier things I see with headsets is how they hold up the microphone (which is dangling from a wire) to their mouths to speak. Thus defeating the purpose of “hands free!” Today though, I saw something that really made me guffaw. There was this guy with his handsfree head set wrapped around his face (honest!) so that the microphone was held tightly against his upper lip and he was talking through it! What an idea! *snicker*

New Features!

For lack of anything else happening on this blog, I’ve spent most of last night plugging in some new (and mostly useless) features! 🙂

Well, basically, I’ve just tweaked the way commenting works and I’ve included Google/Blogger’s version of trackback which they call “Backlinks” (opens in a new window.)

Next, if you look to the right, you’ll see there’s a list of comments made on all the posts on the main page. If you click on the Date-Time stamp, it will take you to the item page for that blogpost and the relevant comment. Clicking on the usernames will take you to their Blogger profiles.

Also, the comments now appear on the main or archive pages too when you click on the comments link below a post. And (what I like the most) is that now I also list all the people who have commented on an entry!

Wheee!

Bah! Diwali!

Diwali, the festival of light in India is supposed to be a fun festival. It represents the triumph of good over evil. All in all, a good thing, no?

But no, Diwali means I get woken up at 6:30am everyday by the kid next door firing a cap gun incessantly. It also means I can’t sleep early at night because kids elsewhere are bursting firecrackers. Its a festival of light, where did the damned noise come in from? And, if the dust in Bombay was not enough to irritate your nose, lets add some acrid sulphur dioxide! Bah!

Writer’s Block

I meant to write a real post, but forgot completely what it was about when I sat in front of the computer. The other real post I had an idea for my mind has gone blank on and so it remains a draft.

*sigh*

Anyway, I’m off to my parents’ home for two weeks! Yay me! Time to spend lazing around the house and eating yummy food. Also a good time for me to catch up on reading. I’ve borrowed a couple of books from the British Library here and I have a pile of books that I bought the last time I was home sitting there waiting. I’m also looking foward to re-reading some of the comics that I had boxed away.

A few days early, but Happy Diwali, everyone! 🙂

Design Rocks!

Two friends go trekking in the mountains. Much of the area they were tramping through had not really been explored well before and they were quite excited about being pioneers.

After an hour or so of rigorous trekking they came across a rock formation that had a very strong resemblance to a human face. The first of the friends (let’s call him E) marvelled at how random natural processes had sculpted such a likeness.

The second friend (D, I guess?) rubbished that view and said that such a good likeness had to be the work of a master sculptor.

E examined the rock closely, and since he was something of an amateur geologist pronounced that it bore patterns of erosion that were characteristic of the rock being worn away by water and wind and not by a sculptor’s chisel. Besides which, he said, if you looked at the rock from a different view point, it didn’t look much like a face anymore, unless it was a deformed one!

Well then, said D, that’s precisely how brilliant the sculptor was! He had fooled E into thinking the amazing sculpture was just a natural formation. And as far as the viewpoint was considered, well, that was just a bit of avant garde he assumed, although he didn’t go in for all this modern art gimmickry.

What nonsense, said E, you’re just making this stuff up. Why do you have such trouble believing that this is a natural formation?

Right back at ya, said D, why do you have trouble believing this is sculpted? Could anything random have produced something with such order in its lines? I just can’t believe that!

Look mom, your first grandchild!

This Sunday, I went in to the lab to finish up some reports and things on the computer (my laptop is still not revived!) and I thought I would complete work quickly and have the afternoon off to faff around.

When I got there, two of the grad students who had also come to the lab to finish up some work, were panicking. Apparently, some of the eggs left in the incubator had hatched. One chick had died already and they had no idea what to do with the three others that had hatched. The chicks were crouched in a warm glass bowl waiting for their down to dry up and building up energy before they could stand (I guess.)

We fed them sugar water but not very successfully. Finally one of them began to move about a lot more and appeared to be a lot drier than the other two. I picked it out of the bowl and decided to keep it in a tray and see if it would stand up and walk about and whether we could feed it some more.

Cheep cheep!

But no, this chick decided it liked the warmth of my hand and nestled nicely in it and fell asleep. Any attempts to put it back in the tray resulted in it cheeping loudly and trying to hop out of the tray and walk towards me. Guess it thought I was its mom! 🙂

This meant I had to sit there the rest of the afternoon feeding it and keeping it warm (and taking turns with the other two who seemed weaker.) No more hopes of finishing work quickly, I sat in front of the computer typing with one hand and holding this little chick in the other.

A Sunday well spent. I suppose.

You didn’t need to know that…

…I’m writing this post ’cause I’m bored

…I’m also only writing it cause my friends, Ruchi and Vikram wrote something like this before.

…I’m going to be nasty and keep the “juicy” stuff for later in the list

…I’ve never wanted to be an “engine driver” that all boys seem to want to be at some point of time in their lives.

…I’m a bigger geek than you think I am. I’m quite likely more nerdy than you think I am!

…I’ve actually asked someone to marry me and then watched as she went off and married someone else!

…I’ve kissed another guy, albeit only on a dare. (And no we weren’t drunk. Or at least, not drunk enough!)

…When I was a kid, I’d lie in bed thinking of what it would be like to be dead and buried and have maggots crawling through my body.

…I’m mostly egotistical, but sometimes egoistical.

…I cannot play chess to save my life.

…My parents didn’t get cable TV until 2004 and I don’t live with them anyway. So I grew up with the only option being Doordarshan. I’ve never watched much TV in my life and I’m still not tempted to.

…I used to spend huge amounts of time online and the only reason I don’t anymore is that I can’t afford broadband in India!

…the longest conversation I’ve had with someone lasted almost 6 hours. (Yes, I’ve seen Before Sunrise and Before Sunset too)

…If it wasn’t apparently already, I like to talk, but I’m also a good listener.

…I’ve only ever tried marijuana. Three times. It didn’t work even once. Damn!

…I never had a nickname in school or college. I made one up for myself. It didn’t catch on. Don’t ask.

…I think Terry Pratchett is one of the coolest writers alive. No wait, Neil Gaiman is… um, maybe Iain M Banks, well Douglas Adams is certainly the coolest writer dead, but that sounds morbid. Oh well.

…I love my parents to bits, but most times I get bored talking to them, so I really envy the people who can.

…I can’t balance a two-wheeler.

…I fooled you about the “juicy” bits at the end. This is all there is. Until I can think of some more.

Honest injun

Most people do something dishonest and then their conscience nags them about it. Not me, no. I’m the exact opposite.

That is, I do something honest and then I think, damn, why didn’t I just be dishonest about it! 🙂

For instance, a couple of days ago I visited a library, bought one of their withdrawn books and also had to pay a fine on another book. In total Rs 178. I handed over a 500 rupee note and waited for my change. The woman at the register handed me back Rs 431 and said she was increasing it to Rs 179 since she didn’t have change(!)

I took the money. Looked terribly puzzled at her. And when she didn’t seem to get it I finally gave in and returned the extra Rs 110 and told her what she had just done. Of all things, she apologised to me and took the money back! Feeling very surreal, I just turned around and left.

All the way back to the railway station, I was thinking, heck, Rs 110 would have bought me something yummy to eat and I was terribly hungry! 🙂

Let there be light?

The August 30th, Edition of the Hindustan Times, Mumbai had a column titled “Higher Knowledge, Clearer Concepts” by Asish Arora. This was one of their regular columns called Inner Voice which I assume has to do with some airy, “spiritual” topics and so I happily skip over it everyday.

For some reason I did read it that day and was confronted with this opening passage:

When we were in the junior classes, we were taught that light travels in a straight line. In the higher classes, we learnt that a beam of light can disburse in seven rays. After that we learnt that there are two more rays besides the seven which are invisible. Later, we learnt that light does not travel straight, it is a wave. Again we learnt that it is not even a wave, it is a particle.

The column goes on to talk about how one progresses similarly in “devotional life” (whatever that is.)

I wanted to laugh at first. I don’t care what Mr. Arora opines on “devotional life” or spirituality and “paths to self-realisation.” They’re all pretty much a load of crock to me anyway, but his idea of light is wrong in so many ways! But I suddenly realised how this was not funny at all. If an analogy is all he wants to draw, there are plenty of them available, but making things up out of ignorance or malice is a no-no.

His blathering ideas on the nature of light annoy me more because if any of his readers are not aware of the reality, they would tend to assume that Mr. Arora being so well-versed in “self-realisation” knows what he’s talking about and so end up believing his account of light too!

All of this from a newspaper whose advertising tagline is “Let There Be Light!”

*sigh*