Deepanjan Nag's Magnum Opus

Submarine cables in the Mediterranean have been damaged and this has adversely affected India the most. Work in the office came to a standstill today and though I was busy venting my frustration, I was rejoicing within! Reminds me of my childhood when a power-cut at night would send ripples of ecstasy through me, though I wore a very contradictory visage! I haven't changed much in all these years.

Never have I been so saddened by a telephone call. I'm the culprit and nothing can attenuate my guilt. This must be an inflexion in my life. I'm being too incoherent and need a blog-break.

I apologise from the bottom of my heart.

This has me all agog! Dad keenly followed the developments and kept telling me about them.   I'm picking the following article from Labreporter .   Deep beneath the ground in Geneva, thousands of scientists from all over the world are working together to build the biggest, most complicated machine in the world. It's part of the most ambitious scientific experiment of all time: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. These films reveal the scientific questions at the heart of the experiment and what scientists hope to achieve once the machine is switched on later this year. Big Bang V2.0 Dr Brian Cox takes us on a tour of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva - the biggest, most complicated machine ever built. It’s costing millions of pounds and has thousands of scientists from around the world waiting to use it as part of the biggest scientific experiment ever attempted. Once switched on, it will allow scientists to recreate the conditions that e...

Liz Green show, BBC Radio Leeds Click here for more information.

I usually don't have the patience nor the time to go through entire Indian editorials. But this article was outstanding for the manner in which the writer elucidates his reconciliation of a godless existence with the demise of a doting grandparent.   I had been meaning to write something like this for a long time, ever since Dad's demise. Somehow, I could never marshal the congregated feelings efficaciously to warrant a textual transcription. I hope I'm worthy enough someday to write a eulogy befitting him.   Addendum: I dreamed of Dad last night. I hugged him tight.

Nothing 2 write This in spite Of an afternoon fright And mutton delight

U_no_hu forced me to meet the office doctor today. I protested but she struck back with such vengeance that I had to acquiesce.   The doctor very persuasively said something that effectively suggested digging into me from down under (not to be confused with Australia/New Zealand) and cobbling me up. Doctors are a breed just waiting to lunge at you and outrage your modesty at the slightest provocation simply to satiate some innate sadist desire. They're hell bent upon tampering with as many of your internal organs as possible, as if in covert competition with the rest of the medical fraternity.   It took me all of my worldly and wordly tactics (strengthened recently by WebMD) to ward off the evil spirit. I promised to take a laxative instead, a far less intrusive and more humane alternative.   Earlier during the day, I discovered a very cute and useful site . I set the alarm for 4pm, but was away at the time conferring with a colleague. Someone who sits next to...

& I'm not being metaphorical.

Believe it or not, it's been 2 years since he was home the last time!

I may be an information junkie but when it comes to news I can use, I'm no good. I wasn't aware of the strike being called off last night and instead of boarding the regular office shuttle this morning, rode pillion. Mani took his own sweet time (not that I'm complaining) and we reached office post 10am...the latest I've ever been.

Thanks to my unfamiliarity with the bus routes, my return-trip from office wasn't a very pleasant one. Being illiterate to the vernacular added to my woes as shuttles mentioning their destinations couldn't aid me either.   Mustering enough courage to force myself into a flooding bus after waiting at the stop for over 30 minutes, I asked for a ticket from the conductor...only to learn that I had guessed the wrong bus, and it would ply only up to Silk Board. Damn!   I decided not to try my luck again at SB and instead chose the pacific luxury of trudging all the way back home...a good 1-hr away. I looked battered by the time I reached my destination, the lower ends of my trousers were heavily soiled and my shoes looked like having survived multiple blasts in a minefield.   The strike continues and my despondency ascends.

| View | Upload your own

Tried a CNN Podcast today. Nice except for the long wait and US centric news.

I wish I had a pet...even a donkey would suffice. Animals are so much better than people.

/. informs me of Bobby Fischer 's death. BF was very controversial and had gained a considerable amount of notoriety for being a maverick to-the-hilt and making anti-American and anti-Semitic statements. It's amazing how a brilliant mind that could analyse the 64 squares so well would be so bilious in his disposition towards an entire nation or community.   Consulting Wikipedia threw some familiar terms that I had almost begun to forget...terms like Ruy Lupez , King's Indian Defence and the Nimzo-Indian Defence . I could never understand what made them so special!   Goodbye, Fisher. If conscience indeed survives death (I don't believe it), I hope you're happy.

This sounds like a wish that I never even had the courage to imagine.   Yahoo! will soon be supporting OpenID , a distributed login system. Signing into different sites - each with a different username and password - will be a thing of the past when more players enter the fray. Already, industry bigwigs have begun inching towards it and it's only a matter of time before we'll be relieved of taxing our memory with redundant identities.

Telco colony in Jamshedpur was inaugurated in 1953. Pre 1954 - A view of the auto plant coming up at Jamshedpur. Tata Motors launches its first truck in collaboration with Mercedez Benz in 1954. Telco's First Bonus Click here for more information.

Pongal kept most office goers off the roads today and we reached our destination in the morning in a record 23 mins. The return trip was even sweeter and served to accentuate just how clogged Bangalore usually remains.   I managed to recognize, in the twilight, the giant idol being constructed for over 2 years off Sarjapura Rd as Hanuman. He was discovered blessing all the dwarfed concrete dwellings strewn around. I just wish he could afford some space in the vicinity to amble across.

Tasmin has made available some great solo violin classical recordings for all to freely download and enjoy.

Sreya tied the knot on 24th Nov, 2007. One of the sweetest persons I've ever met, I wish her A Happily Wedded Life .

Few would contest the view that India Today is India's most popular and best weekly newsmagazine. I've been a devotee since childhood but discontinued being its patron since long -when my interests swayed towards the more esoteric. I was pleasantly surprised today to discover its online avatar going free (it was a paid service formerly). What's more, they've even got an eMagazine - an online facsimile of its ubiquitous print magazine.   Yahoo! India News has recently had a much-needed facelift and is now in tune with its international counterpart, the most popular web-based news source in the world. I'm consequently switching to the desi version as my main news source - its blend of Indian and international coverage is just what the doctor ordered!   NewsGator has generated a lot of buzz recently since making all its RSS desktop and online clients free. The major problem, as I see it, is its lack of support for synchronization with Google Read...

Letter to Hitler A Passage to India with Amitav Ghosh Amartya Sen and Salman Rushdie in Conversation   (Please wait for some time before the arrows show up against the links.)

This has been a week full of tech activities. I became an OpenOffice user and tried some cranky tools to keep it in sync with Google Docs; my external hard disk (Seagate, 320GB) arrived via courier (courtesy eBay), following which I transferred my media files to it; SQL queries at work made me suffer from a bout of insanity; and I installed the Krugle plugin (I highly recommend it) for Eclipse.

Bill's Last Day: The CES Keynote video

I've a severe headache and a mounting temperature.

I've been missing Microsoft Office on Andromeda and decided to give in to the call of the Open Source camp. OpenOffice.org seems a viable alternative prima facie .

Dad bought our Agfa camera when I was born. It had an external flash that fascinated me. What I loved most was the standby indicator that continued to glow after the flash was charged for a 'flash' and disconnected from the power supply. How on earth could the indicator keep glowing for so long without any battery or external supply of electrons? It's another matter that the glow would gradually begin to dim after some time until it disappeared completely. Learning the concept of capacitors and how the flash actually worked demystified things somewhat. I guess there are some parallels between how the glow gradually fades and memory gradually fails. My memory is a mix of mute snapshots and short videos from the past...the sum of which tells me who I am. The memory footprints aren't necessarily spectacular, indeed most of them are mundane that the brain decided to archive for no apparent reason. Like when an aunt visiting us in Jamshedpur had to make do wi...

Katie Melua This is what she did to the hyperactive Sam!

Made my 1st eBay purchase.

Our first work-day of 2008 was a welcome respite from the routine.   The good thing about networks is that they sometimes don't work. I spent the day hoping the network wouldn't be up and running...& my prayers were largely answered. It was only towards the end of the day that the system was back to usual.   I excused myself to an early (read that 1800hrs) exit from office.