No wonder they are called fanbois

“No Phone is perfect but IPhone is more perfect seemed to be the premise of what Steve Jobs was said during his press conference last week.

While I was browsing the tech usual websites I came across the article “RIM, HTC say Steve Jobs is full of it”. There is not much fun in the article itself as it quotes the statements from HTC and RIM regarding Apple’s statements. The surprise was waiting for me in the comments section, where some person has collected all(most) possible videos on YouTube and  other websites that show the signal degradation for different phones and posted it.

I didn’t know if I should appreciate the persons work and dedication or to think some people are so jobless. But wait these are apple fanbois we are dealing with, we should expect this kind of stuff from them :).

I was concerned the link might go away so decided to put a picture of the links this person has posted.    

Responsibility brings joy

Last weekend we had a get together party. After the food was served and most people had left, some of us old timers decided to hang out for some more time and do what we do best, “HAVE FUN”. While some were enjoying singing and dancing and others were busy catching up with things, me and a few others were entertaining some of the kids who still hadn’t left the party.

We were using all kinds of props like white board markers, balls and pens to keep the kids occupied and entertained. During one of these activities with the pens we started demonstrating how to catapult a pen, one of the kids who I must say is really smart decided that it is more fun to catapult more pens at once. It was fun and the pens flew some distance and “only the flying pens” caught the attention of the Mom. In no time the disciplining session started and the kid was protesting against it, I watched for a few moments thinking I shouldn’t get in between mom and kid. But some how I couldn’t digest the fact that the kid was being punished for no fault of its own and I went up to mom and told her its not the kids fault but us(adults) and convinced her to let go. May be she walked away with some anger towards me and I was feeling bad for the whole situation. All of these vanished away the moment the kid smiled and hugged me when I told the kid that there won’t be any punishment and I have told mom that it was my fault.

Later in time, when I was reflecting on the events for the day, I realized the reason I rose up to mom and confessed my wrong doing instead of the kid facing the brunt is because I had been in the receiving end myself quite a few times. I now believe all those situations could have worked out better only if the responsible adults had done what I did.

It truly was nobody’s fault, the kid did not commit a crime as it thought it was having fun, we thought we were having fun and mom thought the kid was acting frenzy without knowing the complete situation. For me it was a situation of “responsibility brings joy”, (want to know more about this, do the August YES+).

I hope the kid got the balloon it was promised earlier in the evening.

Windows Live writer

For my fellow bloggers, specially who use blogspot. We know how painful it is to use the editor that is built in to blogspot.  From my personal experience I always had trouble with inserting images into the blog and adding text around the image without getting into the HTML or I want to insert 1 line between paragraphs and I have to take whatever blogger decides to give me, more I try to modify the worse blog looks (this doesn’t apply to people using Google reader though).  

While I was doing some research I came across this great editor just built for blogging, called Windows Live Writer. I think it is the second best tool developed by Microsoft (first of course is excel).

The editor is pretty light, loads fast and will directly link to the blog and can do a 1 step publishing. What you see is what you get. No 2nd   guessing on line spacing and paragraph spacing and all. 

The image controls are also way more than offered by blogger (I have inserted a test image and tilted it just to prove the same). I could link more than one blog to the editor and could switch back and forth.

Unlike Blogger, where you need click on “preview the post” to preview the blog, the Live writer has a preview tab right next to the “Edit” tab (sweet). Less than a day of using it and I am already a fan. Try it and I am sure you will love it too.

Just like any other Microsoft products it is compatible with windows only and hence will not help my buddies who use “Open Source”.     

Dog entertaining a kid

Another example of a domestic help, dog entertaining a kid. I wish I could get one of these. 

Parrot doing Laundry

Ever Wondered you had a domestic help like this?

Thing that caught me was the curiosity of the parrot. 

Shlokas

As most of us residing in Austin are aware, Austin Hindu temple conducts Sanskrit speaking classes on weekends. A few days ago a question arose in me, Sanskrit is such an ancient language, all the ancient texts we Indians can think of are in Sanskrit. The language is so powerful that a few lines of verses in Sanskrit demands pages of explanation in other languages like English, Hindi, Kannada and so on.

After bouncing this thought off of my wife, I realized that the reason ancients texts are in Sanskrit stems from the fact that it was the medium of mass communication in ancient India. Over time the language evolved and the poets used this language and wrote some awesome poetry (like Kalidasa, Valmiki among others). The enlightened souls used the language to spread their message on meaning of life and beyond life.

All was well and I could see how reviving a language meant starting to use in day to day communication and hope it will survive long enough to give rise to poets and writers. So, that takes care of the prose and the poetry. There is still one thing remaining and that is the Shlokas or vedic chants. Apart from the fact that they are used during worship and only certain people are trained to chant, I do not know much beyond that.  

The following posts from our own dear Bawa on facebook has shed more light on Shlokas.             

Khurshed Batliwala What's the meaning of Shloka? Apart from the obvious?
G: Let's ask Swami Pragyanandji about it...
SP: There is an ancient language, Sanskrit. There are 2 basic styles in it, prose and poetry. When you use Sanskrit as Poetry then you go towards the meaning of Shloka... But it's not just poetry

Khurshed Batliwala Poetry which is full of Knowledge, with excellent use of the language, which either brings some gain some profit or inspires one into action or brings about some light on a difficult subject is getting even closer to the meaning of Shloka...

Khurshed Batliwala When excellent language made into poetry brings about all of the above together, then this is the perfect Shloka!
Brings light, brings gain or profit for the listener (possibly even the speaker) AND inspires chivalrous, courageous, good action... This is Shloka

PS: Bawa posts lot of knowledge on his facebook page, you can link to it here or follow him on his webpage.