Perpetually Perplexed

My internet is still not fixed. The technicians came and went. OK. Let me come out of me-land and talk of essential apps and their usabilities. Since many years I have been using an app called podcastaddict. Good thing about this app is you download the podcasts and listen to them offline. Not for any knowledge or entertainment, but as a sleeping pill. Listen to some one talking monotonously on any topic and within 10 minutes, you are asleep. But how often do you listen to the same episodes? I do know a few limited number of podcasts which are worth listening to (worth falling asleep to).  After a while, you would have listened to all episodes of most of your podcasts. Listening to the same thing again and again? Don't we have TV channels for that? Youtube in that way is more versatile. It has so many different categories of videos - the ones which are extremely soporific philosophical . The one channel I found interesting is called "The school of life". It has ...

It has started again. Today for the first time my "high speed" Internet problem is not fixed by their technicians.  And the technicians had come before the incident. The fibre net people have some kind of box on our terrace from which 7/8 wires are coming out going to different houses. These technicians were tinkering with it. They came, they went back, then came again and were telling me that some center wire is cut and they are fixing it. And in the afternoon when I sat on my laptop, there was no internet. Were they fixing the error or were creating the error. Now their customer care is telling me stories like problem with server, technical issue and so on and the problem will be fixed within 48 hours.

Eating a mango or smelling of a jasmine flower are the two things which I feel are some what divine. Heavy words. Coming from a person who is part atheist and part non-devout hindu. When I am not sure of the existence of the one, sorry, the ONE, how do I call an experience as divine? And, more importantly, don't all religions tell us to stay away or at least not glorify the pleasures of senses? So eating some thing being divine is contradictory, do you say? But I tell it as I feel it. I feel the taste of a mango is not from this world. It is from "swarga". And I feel for a fraction of a nanosecond God must be really wonderful to have created such a fruit. And I also feel the reason for this divinity is that, these two belong to the "ma" family - maavu(mango in Kannada), mallige(jasmine) and amma. Of course you know amma - mother, maa, madre, mater, mathru. If at all there is a God, he/she will be like a mother. Always protecting you, being there w...

I don't realize that. I sound awesome. I don't know whether my neighbors agree.

This quote is for me. one hundred percent.

For a billion plus Indians, there might be a million gurus. Swamis, sadhus, call them by any name. OK, not a million, but quite close to it. These new age gurus teach you not just about God. They teach you everything, how to breathe, how to eat, how to think (or not). And they use science - vedic science mind you, as a basis for their lessons. I found this interesting video which uses satire on this topic in skeptics.com. Watch it. Happy praying.

I was unable to share the previous post to google+. SO mind is filled with that. Anyways, how many of you watch Scandal and how many watch "House of cards"? Two presidents, two stories, but how completely different. In scandal - the president looks tormented - always. He is caught between his duty as a "President", his beautiful wife Mellie and his mistress Olivia. He is no where near the ruthless, diplomatic and cunning politician. For those things, he has Olivia. But in House of cards, the president is an anti-hero. He is devious and knows how to get the power and how to retain it. And he uses anyone and anything for that goal. His wife is his partner in crime. They some how mislead the sitting president, and get the throne. But then even his wife will be against him. One should agree that house of cards is more realistic. Scandal is just melodramatic soap.

Apocalypse - complete destruction of the world. "pralaya" in our indian languages I feel that apocalypse will not happen in a second or in a day. It will be gradual. Few natural disasters here, Few wars there. Some civil wars elsewhere, Some violence some where else. And dumbing down of us, the humans so as to make us incapable of surviving these things. Do you see apocalypse being started?

Nowadays, I am being amused by bugs in my own programs. Infinity indeed!! That is why you should know the difference between int division and float division.

Last few days I have been feeling quite low. Lower than usual that is. Was finding it hard to do anything, no will to wake up in the morning etc. Then I joined a new course in udemy. Online of course. Completely new subject. Now my mood which was at almost 1 has sprung back to 8ish. So I don't know about you. I can survive, and maintain a little bit sanity, as long as I keep learning. Here gratitude should come. I am supposed to say - I am blessed with high speed internet connection, and ability to learn new concepts and time to do that. Glass is not entirely empty. :) Unity - what I am learning, is a basically a game engine, and has quite easy interface for game creation. For example, to rotate an object you just write,  this.transform.Rotate() First few lessons in Udemy were nice. Then I realized, I haven't been able to figure out how to move objects or scale them correctly. I branched out and starting viewing another video from Unity website itself. The video...

It was a very hot and sweaty and ugly afternoon. Then it started raining. Not quite cats and dogs. May be just cats? Did you know this phrase came into usage because some time in 17th century, it rained so heavily in England that some streets became rivers of garbage carrying many dead cats and dogs. So it means at no time in history did cats and dogs fall from the sky! Interesting!!! So a lone street dog was running frantically in search of shelter. And it did find a place below a parked jeep on the street. Do jeeps have more space underneath when compared to cars? Then rain gained momentum and along with the mud came some thing new on the road. Dog started wondering - is it a toy? Or is it some thing I can eat? He started chasing with hesitation and dual mind. Then he left that new thing join all the other garbage into the storm water drain. He might have some how realized that it was a medicine bottle - neither a toy, nor food. That was a story of a canine friend - who is v...

We were talking about our "days". So this means we are certainly old. I told the story of how I had  taken 10 paise from my grand mother for a post card. Those days my parents were in Agra and me and my sister were staying with our grand mother. I had taken 10 paise for the post card and bought a candy and ate it. My friend told how their uncle would tell  all the children to remove weeds from the fields twice, if they want to go to movies - two of them on the same day. And the children would happily oblige. And we would go to the sports day with lot of eagerness because we get to eat 5 paise ice-candy. We will not buy milk ice-candy because that was 25 paise.  My another friend had given 10 paise to her aunt for safe guard.  And she would repeatedly ask her aunt "When will you buy me a frock with the money I gave you".  Of course, even in those days, one could not buy a frock for 10 paise. But thus was our innocence.

What happens when one gets accustomed to being helped at each and every step by well intentioned people. See this video.

2 step verification : When did I activate 2 step verification? May be 4 years ago. May be as soon as that feature was introduced. So I was happily using with the pseudo contentment that my google account is safe. But who knew that my phone or sim will be compromised? - I think. I was not getting sms from online sellers for arrival of products. So I thought my current phone with 1GB data plan ( per day !!!) might be the culprit. And moved my 2 step SIM to an older phone. This proved to be problem. I had to try 4-5 times including restarting the phone to get verification code. So next I did the next reasonable thing I changed to verification phone number. And there was a disaster. Morning at 4 am I tried and tried and tried 20 times to ask google to send me a verification code. To no avail. And I can not call customer care at 4 am. Morning happened finally. And I can not start the usual vitriolic tirade on - you know who. I am in my mothers. So patiently I called the customer ca...

3 years ago, I posted about a chair which is so cozy and aptly named cradle . But there are some chair designs which make me wonder - how does one sit on these. Or are these for show only. Hathi ke danth  dikhane ke aur khane ke aur. But then, it takes me a while to understand that images are not at an angle to visualize them in 3d for me. I was bad at engineering drawing any way - could not  combine plan, elevation and side view and get 3d. Here is one such design. Tell me that you don't wonder about how to sit on this chair like me. These anyway are not for me. Where do I rest my back? Then there are designs whose utility is highly questionable. Will there be any one who will spend preposterous amount to buy such novel items just for its design? I wonder. Like this chair.  And then there are designs exclusively for bookworms like me . Ahhh. You are literally surrounded by vast number of your friends. Beautiful!!!

ಸುತ್ತ ಮುಟ್ಟಲೂ ಕಪ್ಪು ಕತ್ತಲೆ ಕವಿದಿರಲು ಮುಂದೆ? ಮುಂದೇನು ಇಲ್ಲ ಬರೀ ಕತ್ತಲೆ ಕಪ್ಪು ಕತ್ತಲೆ ಆದಮೇಲೆ ನಸುಗತ್ತಲೆ ಆದ ಮೇಲೆ ಪೂರ್ತಿ ಕತ್ತಲೆ ಬೆಳಕೇ ಇಲ್ಲ ದಾರಿಯೇ ಇಲ್ಲ

So I was visiting a local mall near my house. I was tired, my legs were hurting and I was light headed. I had had my breakfast and I also had two idlis in the foodcourt of the said mall. Will any house wife have snacks in a mall - that too all alone? What will the neighbors people say? But on this one occasion, I did not care. As I mentioned I was feeling lightheaded. Once upon a time, when I was thin and very very young, I had fallen down losing my consciousness. Since then light headedness means I will have to eat some thing. I forget the fact that now I carry enough fat in my body  for 2 winters. And even if I starve for a week, the fat will not be burnt up. There was a large collection of items which were on half price. Among them were tea light candles which were slightly shapeless. I considered buying them. But Diwali is quite far ahead. By then I will keep these candles some where in the top shelf which I can reach only using a stool. So ultimately I will forget about t...

A large flock birds were flying towards east in the dusk. So what is special in that? Nothing. But, why? These clouds are ever present. From morning till evening. Everyday. But they do not bring any rain. But only some hope. Vain, futile hope. Like that Raabat joke from yesteryears - "Raabat, in kutton ko Liquid Oxygen me duba do. Liquid inhe jeene nahi dega. Oxygen inhe marne nahi dega" So the clouds are acting like that. Obviously the birds are concerned. What if Sun hides in these clouds. Or worse still, what if he is lost within them. If there is no sun, how can they find their path? So they have seen him coming from that direction everyday. He must be some where near by. Hence they go in large numbers to make a request to him to come and give them light. Jokes aside, I some times wonder was the situation similar when the ice age was in its inception? Dark days and not enough sun light for flora and fauna? Will we see another ice age?  Not literally, becau...

Artist Florentijn Hofman has created a public sculpture in Shenzen China which resembles a giant friendly octopus wearing a hat. This octopus acts as a playground for children. Children and adults can crawl in its tentacle and reach a secret play area.