Have you come across this contest?

‘है बातों में दम?’
Also see: http://www.google.com/transliterate/
Have you come across this contest?

Also see: http://www.google.com/transliterate/
Have a great year people! And do something good. Learn one new thing everyday.
I just realized I haven’t touched Internet Explorer for the last year or so. Living off Google Chrome and Firefox. Is anyone using IE?
And to illustrate my point, here goes stats from two blogs I own(/co-own). The stats are for the last 6 months. Pageviews for both of them are in the range of 15k and 55k pageviews.


I really need to get back to blogging. 2009 was bad for blogging. I blame it on the recession.
As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool,
Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can’t really function you’re so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free,
But you’re still fucking peasents as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
There’s room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me.
Brilliant right? Says so much in so little.

Shutter Island. Good book, fast read. Gripping storyline, overall good pace, and an interesting (read:crazy) end. I finished it in a couple of nights. Recommended to me by my good friend Anand (who reviews movies here).
The book is being turned into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and is being directed by Martin Scorsese. Scheduled for early 2010, the trailers are already out. Check it out.

Good book. Interesting overall, but Malcolm Gladwell keeps trying to make the same point again and again. It does get slightly boring towards the end of the book, but does have interesting anecdotes all over the place.
I remember listening to Malcolm Gladwell at one of our office conferences where he was the guest speaker. He’s completely zoned out most of the time, like a lost professor.
Have you seen his talk @ TED? It’s funny.
I noticed a weird thing today.
There’s a corelation between my internet wireless connection and the AC in my room.
This is at the guesthouse I’ve been staying for the last week or so, and will be staying for the next few months. One thing you should know about my wireless, is that I’m leeching internet off a router placed 2 floors above mine. Legally of course. And because the one on my floor has temporarily been down for the last week or so.
When the temperature in my room drops below 20 degrees celcius, my wireless stops working. And I’ve seen this happen more than a few times. Makes me wonder what it might be.
My wireless card doesn’t work well when it’s cold? The wireless signal drops when humidity in my room is controlled? The AC draws too much power off the source when I switch it on, and the router doesn’t get enough power to generate a stronger signal than it used to? Or maybe they’ve had some history (I’d like to think one dumped the other, and they aren’t on talking terms since), so they don’t like to function in sync.
Most likely I’m seeing too much into it, and I like to believe everything is connected. I’m sure a lot of things in this world are connected in very unobvious, un-scientifically provable ways right now, but maybe drawing a connection between my AC and the wireless router is pushing it too much.
Now let me switch off the AC, so I could post this on the Internet.
I can’t believe they allowed comics with jokes like this back then!

This is from The Deseret News. - Aug 11, 1945, a couple of days after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Japan (in Nagasaki).
Skip to page 8 for the comics.
The graphic novel that won the Pulitzer prize.

Artwork- Kickass!
Storyline - compelling, gripping, and generally brilliant.
The story is about the concentrations camps during WW II. Quoting from The Times review,
Spiegelman portrays the Nazis as cats, the Jews as mice, the Poles as pigs and the Americans as dogs. They’re all terrifyingly human.
Did I say the artwork is bloody good? I watched The Pianist for the second time just last week. Makes reading the book even more awesome.
Still reading:
On the road - Jack Kerouac.
It took me 2 hrs to prepare a to-do list of everything I need to get done.
And looks like the list is reproducing with itself and the content just keeps growing. On and on. Next few weeks are going to be busy. I hope I can find some time to breathe in the meanwhile.
Priorities, options, decisions seem to hang around me these days, like double edge swords. Gotta risk a few things though every once in a while. No excitement in life otherwise.
Yeah, it’s meant to be a random post.