And I intend to be back....

.....blogging after a brief hiatus. There were quite a few mentionable trips during this period but I shall start with the most recent in memory...Last In First Out :)

What kind of Intelligence?

I took a test that determines the dominant intelligence in you and this is what I get...:)

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Seems to be that I have chosen the wrong career..:)

Navaratri Kolu Celebrations

It's navaratri time and we started upon having our own kolu or golu or koluvu (Tamil, kannada & telugu respectively).

Traditionally, in South Indian families, Dussehra/Dasara is celebrated by having Kolu. A Kolu is an elaborate display of all the dolls, toys and anything & everything considered aesthtic at your home. The concept originally was to display mythological dolls. As people got more & more creative, the defintion of what constitutes kolu gradually changed. Of late, the toy sets range from representing a full fledged cricket set to Dr.Abdul kalam with his missiles. You read it right. It is Abdul Kalam the President of India himself am talking about. The most popular set for Kolu this time in Tamilnadu, happens to be the missile man amidst missiles :) The kolu starts with the begining of Navaratri and ends on the Vijayadasami the last day of Navaratri. Poojas are offered daily and offering to God made in the evening which is given to all visitors who come to see the Kolu.

Now coming to what we did...a snapshot of the arrangement is shown here.


We followed the traditions and arranged the standard Dasa avatarmas(10 incarnations of Lord Vishnu), Ashtalakshmi Idols(8 forms of goddess lakshmi), Deities as they appear in Aaru Padai Veedu( 6 famous temples of Lord karthikeyan or Murugan) and the various forms of Lord Krishna, Lord Ganesha, Shiva, Parvati.......and the list goes on & on. Zoom into the image if all this interests you...and try figure :). These dolls are indeed legacy. Most of these are what my mom-in-law has collected over years.
Now coming to the newer additions for this kolu, we converted one of the couches in our hall into a plain platform and displayed a train with a long track. Snapshot onto the right.

FYI, this train has got a steam engine and it does emit steam. There is a tree house therein. And there is a school set depicting a teacher teaching his students.

Next on display is the depiction of a traditional South Indian marriage. The famous "ammi" or the grinding stone is seen here too. The creativity of the doll makers is so visible here....

Well, there are obvious errors...the kids look like 10+years old and the teacher is teaching them alphabets. Maybe the one who made this dolls..just knew that much...so with due symapthies to them, we ignore the errors. Next to this on display is a traffic police managing traffic. The idea here is to depict the traffic using this car :D

More pics here. You can checkout a bunch of more obvious errors in those pics. There are few closeup shots out there. There is a picture of a simulated paddy field too. We simulated paddy field using ragi :) It would have been realistic if we added some more realism to the paddy field as otherwise it is looking pretty bland with no people inside and no domestic animals and such. Perhaps next time.

In all, kolu seems to be a way of expressing your creativity and ideas and have fun along. Maybe this is what religion truely is all about. Give a vent for your creativity and at the same time re-affirm your faith in God. Wow....that was a truely powerful statement coming from me, yet another brick in the wall :)

Signing off for now....

Pope & his unwarranted comments?

It was a simple reference of a discussion from history but it stirred the hornet's nest!!! Yep - Am talking of the recent controversy surrounding the pope's comments.

The version coming from the Vatican says that it was a plain reference to the Byzantine Emperor's discussion and that was not Pope's opinion in particular. Quite likely! Quite likely that he indeed referred and didnot mean any of it. In which case, a person as honourable as the pope - who represents a religion should be doubly careful regarding what he quotes. Obviously the world is watching him. He should be role modelling christianity in true terms - and hence preaching tolerance to other's beliefs & sentiments. However, the ones who look at the full text say that this piece of reference if looked out of context might seem misfit but in context it is indeed not out of place.

And regarding those who got hurt by these comments, I don't think they should be bothered about what one person says or feels about Islam. One follows Islam because he believes in the religion. If somebody else sees something wrong with it or says something wrong...that is not making the religion and the beliefs less powerful. It remains as powerful as it was before and will continue to be so. After all the Pope is another person and this is just his opinion..Err reference to be politically correct. Why can't it be ignored??It certainly doesnot warrant killing of an innocent, humanitarian nun. She was doing true service in Somalia and is that what she deserved? And why is she paying for someone else's mistake? I am not an authority to comment about Islam but I do respect the religion enough to believe that it certainly wouldnot warrant killing of an innocent lady who did nothing but service to the mankind!! Religion is a way of life and should not be a reason to end one's life. PERIOD.

Now that Pope is doing a massive damage control operation, maybe he will be forgiven for what he referred and things will be back to normal. Maybe not. In any case, a precious life is lost and for absolutely no reason.

Bangalore Metro rail - Well..?

For all those who have been waiting for this Metro rail...there seems to be no end for the wait & also the ways this money is being spent...

Latest, officials in the name of studying the Metro & Monorail in China, Malysia & Thailand are getting to go on exotic trips rather vacations at the taxpayers behest!!!! 10 days is the duration......More @ bangalorebuzz!

LonelyGirl15 & her claim to Fame

I have been reading so much about this LonelyGirl15's videos on youtube and her popularity that I decided to go have a peek at it. This to determine, what is making the world go gaga-googoo over this video series followed by much ado regarding the fakeness of it. There got to be something...or else why would so many people wait desperately for a next video in that...ain't it?

The intros before we get into the details. Well, on May 2006, there started a vid blog on youtube.com. Doesnot sound exciting enough...Nothing ground breaking..Isn't it? The vid was uploaded by a girl called Bree with userid lonelygirl15. Supposedly she is a 15 year old girl who is having tough time, dealing with her parents and her boyfriend Daniel with userid danielbeast. The girl shot the video with a webcam setup by her geeky boyfriend is what she claims. Now one video followed another...and soon people were waiting for the next vid post of lonelygirl15. Also, there were so many mysterious things portrayed in those vids that all kind of analysis started about what the real life of the girl would be like....what are the ceremonies the girl talks of....and so a whole bunch of people got tuned in to this.

Not to ignore the way the videos were taken. There obviously is a professionalism to those videos. It certainly does not seem like an amateur teenager's video. And there were people who believed it was fake and was setup and others who believed that all this was true!!!! Check out one of the videos yourself.....:) The vidblog got so popular that people started going into the roots of it.....A bunch of the fans set up a sting operation to find out who this girl really was....And Lo!!!It turned out to be indeed an organized show with some media persons involved in the show and not her geeky boyfriend!!!!This entire lonelygirl15 episode is fiction!!!!!! And this Bree aka lonelygirl15 is an actress from NewZealand who was aspiring to make it big. And she did make it big.....for now offers are going to flood her anyways..thanks to her popularity as lonelygirl15!!!!

But if we want to analyse what is it that made it so famous...is it the medium....as in this is the first time(I guess so?) that a real life kinda drama/episode uses blogging as the medium? Would it have been the same if it were in TV?In newspaper? In magazine?What I am trying to say is that perhaps, it is not the story that is important here....but the use of the medium itself!!!

With vid blogging picking up, this can be termed as an experiment. An experiment that ended up perhaps proving the point that the "Internet" is not yet fully tapped. There are still many more ways of using internet to have people hooked onto it. Perhaps the ones that are smart enough, realize this and make money and the rest just witness it happening!!!! More from the creators itself about this vidblog(or can we call it a show now?) here.

However, the thing that still baffles me is how could people believe that all of this could be true from the begining!!!! Or maybe the fact that I watched the videos after it's fakeness got proved is making me say that. There seems to be a big controversy of whether it is fake or not from the intial stages till its proved with evidence now. A more organized article about this here.

And now coming to the topic of how people receive this story of this whole episode being fiction. Obviosly nobody likes to be lied to...though they all would lie themselves...:p The commotion seems to be that how can they have a show run as a blog and fool people and later say it was all fiction......need to wait & watch for more updates......

Of Design patterns & Software Engineering

Well...perhaps am the wrong person to write about this. Or perhaps I am the right person to write about this....:D....so much for being a software engineer. How can I not write about Software (atleast once in a while)...?

Anytime, u read/refresh GoF(it's not Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire but the Gang of Four I am referring to) design patterns(that sort of shows I have been reading of late...no prizes for guessing this :D) you wonder if this is only a piece of common sense or something more great?

Common sense because most of it looks simple enough but great because of the comprehensiveness & completeness associated. Imagine yourself assigned the task of identifying the mosty commonly used software tasks so that those tasks can be built for reuse. Given that the design patterns has become pretty much popular, it sounds simpler...doesn't it? I am sure, I would have come up with a bunch of things......more than what GoF suggests or club many of them together, say get away with the Abstract Factory, so on & so forth. Not sure if mine would have been exhaustive. Well that's what distinguishes me from them..........:)

Perhaps what is great about design patterns is not just knowing them but using them as a matter of practice. Using them in the sense of building code/modules in real life based on those.
Most of the people I met used a couple , may be few but none till now who built all those. No brickbats blaming my circle for this......and once again Hail GoF!!