Another addition

We have a new addition to the electronics in the house.

A mac mini.

The old Dell from 2002 died(?) finally after making a few croaking noises. The blue screen showed up many times. It is possible to revive it with a hard disk wipe and installing some later software and OS versions. Instead we chose the less time consuming path and upgraded to a Mac Mini.

Technology has sure come a long way in a decade, huh?

Have not had a chance to play with it since I set it up on sunday night.


The kids love it though! Every day they tell me something they figured out how to do on the Mac just to show me how retarded I am..

Have gotten used to it!

Today we had a short discussion on "Can we sell the Dell on craigslist? who will even buy it?"

San came up with a "Can we donate it to the temple?" and the answer from the rest of us was "don't insult the temple with this computer. they already have computers from two years ago that folks have donated. this goes in a museum"

Do not know if we will find someone who will use the old computer..

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Cupertino blues

Follow your heart!

Something that is a cliched phrase in this world of self help books and in your face advertising. "What does it even mean?" asked my 5 year old a few months ago. The example I gave her at the time was inspired by what she was holding in her hand at the time. My iPhone!

Told her that this guy who started the Apple company was told by many people that Apple is not a phone company and they should not be making phones. He went and did it anyway and it is now the most popular touch phone. That is what we mean by follow your heart.

She got it. She understood the concept of "believing in yourself", "doing what you think is right" and "pushing to be successful" after my elaborate story. It is true that over the years I have told stories from the Ramayana or Mahabharata or recently quotes from Bikram Choudhury to my kids that try to instill values of dogged determination, believing in your own strengths, admitting your flaws and valuing life in general, but when you hold a product in your hands that you will swear by as a five or eight year old, the point hits home faster!

It has been a rocky week in the household. The hand started swelling and hurting the last 48 hours and apparently the simple trick is to just lift it above the heart level, take Ibuprofen and rest. Something that I did not do for two days straight because of my love for work and hope of getting back to the Yoga room. I stayed off painkillers, spent 12+ hours working and let my hand hang from the side all day for two days straight. Sleepless nights followed and the family refused to help me at home because of my "stupidity".

There were also some tense moments with the kids getting introduced to violence that hit closer to home with a shooter taking out 3 people less than a mile from our house and injuring more. The roads were blocked off and schools were in lockdown mode for a day. There were cops with guns in plain sight at busy intersections. Things that we have not seen in Cupertino in our last 5+ years of living in this city. The kids were visibly upset and shaken.

The news of Steve's death made us all sad. Have never shed a tear in my life for someone I have not met personally. Yesterday I did. So did a lot of folks I know. When you are a techno geek who prides himself on thinking outside the norm and you came of age in the late eighties, chances are Steve Jobs was an indirect influence.

He made technology hot. The internet and the WWW have changed the world and I was probably one of the first folks to test out Netscape Chat beta where the allure was to talk so some college girl in Maryland who opens her chat with "F/S/20, beautiful night in Baltimore" and things have come a long way since then. The Apple Quadra on which I downloaded that Chat application is as big a part of that memory as I typed "M/S/21 It is raining cats and dogs here in Philadelphia".. Drexel was a Macintosh school and so was RPI!

Still remember going to a theater in 19th street to watch "Mission Impossible" the day it was released, to catch a glimpse of what a Macintosh laptop with AV capability could do (they had dropped flyers in the University to advertise this) and our group of grad school buddies could not stop talking about the Mac that night. Tom Cruise and the action were a distant second as we walked back to our apartments. All we wanted was to find ways to convince our professors that the laptop was somehow a project requirement!

Today the little one came to me and said "Daddy, does this mean there won't be an iPhone 5 which we want to buy?" my heart sank. Told her "No. There will be an iPhone 5 and we will buy it when it comes out!".

She also asked me "why are you all so sad. It is not like Steve Jobs is like Kollu thatha (great grandpa) and family. When Thatha died and everyone cried, I cried too because he was MY thatha too. But Steve Jobs is not family and you cannot do anything for his family because you don't know them!".

My daughters schools use iMacs in every class room. They are so used to Apple products. They cross 4 Apple buildings every day at a minimum which are at the edge of our street. They know Apple is synonymous with Cupertino.

Still that was a tough one to explain, but explain I did.

Finally she asked me "So you want me to come up with something like the iPhone when I grow older?" and my response was "Try your best to.."

We also had a followup conversation on what she wants to be when she grows older and she had a clear well thought out answer which was instantaneous..

"I want to be a doctor, a teacher and also have my own Target store which does not have the pizza place in the corner!"

You could teach at a medical college, but owning a target and running a department store at the same time? why? All because you dont like the Pizza store in the target?

Well, we have things to work on and she is not yet six, but following ones heart does lead to complications for other hearts!

All said and done, Steve Jobs will be missed.


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How Apple beat Lenovo and Samsung- at least in our house

The kids watch Berenstain Bears regularly. We let them watch it because it teaches them the importance of cleaning up, listening to their parents, behaving etc.

Now the fact that they don't listen to us when we say "stop watching" or "go cleanup and stop watching" or simply say things like "I am going to punch you in the head if you pause it" (that from a five year old girl to her daddy) suggest that the benefits of watching these episodes may be overrated. Nevertheless, there is silence in the house when we need it and so they are allowed to watch!

They used to record it on the DVR when we were with Direct TV and watch it on the big wall mounted TV..

Then we switched to Dish and that channel is no longer available to us on our NEW plan. So the kids started watching "youtube" indefinite reruns on the laptop.




Now they have switched over to the iPad having figured out that youtube is available on the iPad!

We just got an iPad and lost it to the kids. All other options in front of them in bigger and better sizes are moot. I never get to use the iPad now when they are awake.

In other news blogging has taken a serious nose dive because of work, work, and more work. It feels like all the planets, sun and moon have aligned themselves into one straight line which points directly to my rear end.

Add to that, our old TV channels are all gone. Vijay TV apparently had a fall out with Direct TV and decided to pull out and that meant, we had to scram for an alternate Satellite provider with Tamil channels and ended up going through a roller coaster cable switch from Direct to ATT to Dish in a span of two weeks!

On the bright side, we have Netflix online now, thanks to the iPad and watch free movies in bed. We seem to be watching the first 15-20 minutes of many free movies and switch to another movie. What they need is a like a 30 minute fast edited version of most movies with only the highlights. Something like a "Thirai Malar" featuring Jackie Chan, Tom Cruise Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood. That, would truly make my day!

The kids are keeping us busy and though there isn't much time to go out anywhere and enjoy the sun, there is the odd photo session every time the kids take a shower or wear anything pretty..




The hope is that February will give us more personal time. This level of intensity with two people working 16-18 hour days and taking all weekend to just catch some sleep so we can go do this all over again for another five days is not going to work for the kids.

San wants to start buying lottery tickets soon and I am this close to seconding that thought. Have not been a lottery ticket kind of guy, but why not?

Next weekend no matter how good or bad the weather is, we have decided to go on a short drive to someplace, take some photos and just get back to having some fun.

If we don't the little one might just "punch me in the head"!


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How does one?

Go make an electronic story book in app form for a Tamizh story?

Would like to try my hand at making an animated story which my grandmother told us, which was told to her by her grandmother..

That means this story is at least a 100+ years old, probably older

The story is about an "eee" ஈ (housefly) who forgot its name and went asking different people/things if they knew its name.

Any suggestions for software, methods etc. greatly appreciated!

Would like to make this a weekend project of sorts.

While in grad school I helped create many educational self teach programs using a software called "Authorware Pro" on a Macintosh Quadra (yep, that was ages ago.. before internet days) and it was given good reviews by many students who used it.

It was difficult even to find these on google search and some of the pages open only on Internet Explorer and don't open on firefox. Was also sad to see my name not on the credits for some stuff I really put my heart and soul into, but I digress.. It does not matter now.

Things have come a long way since those days, what with Flash and Youtube and of course the internet!

Hopefully you will see an animated story titled:

"Kozhu Kozhu Kanne, en peyar enna?"

கொழு கொழு கன்னே, என் பெயர் என்ன?

(plump plump calf, what is my name?)

and the calf says "Theriyaadhe!" தெரியாதே ! (I don't know!)

and off he goes to the next person with the same answer till he finally gets his name!

Jr. and the little one absolutely love this story when my mom narrates it to them and my nephew thinks I am the greatest story teller in the world for my embellished version of this story!

This old dog is up for some new tricks!

So, please, point me toward the right tools..



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Dear Mr. Jobs,

If only you bring Vijay, Sun, Jaya TV etc. to the Apple TV box at a dollar a day or less..

you will have a million desi folks buying this gizmo..

So what if the Fox'es and NBC's do not want to go into negotiations with you for rights to play their serials episodes at 99 cents a pop?

When we asked an older relative how much TV serials they watched (on our recent India trip) the answer was..

"not much. Just 4 hours in the afternoon and 6 hours in the evening" and it was a straight faced answer.

That means, there are folks who watch a lot more desi serials.

Please go talk to Ekta Kapoor or Radhika Sarathkumar..

I see a bright future for Apple TV if you pick up that iPhone and make that call..


yours truly,

iPhone lover.

ps. I have only seen this Apple TV at a friends house. They told me that Tamizh serials are not on the list. So please forgive me if you are already ahead of the game.


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Waking up .. at the right moment

Today has been a great day.

No, the wife is in her usual weekend clean up mode and the kids are doing the same things they do..

But there has been a marked change in me. No grumpiness for not being able to catch up on lost sleep from the last week.

There has been a positive attitude to things.

The last week has been very tiring with 2 AM phone calls and lots of work.

Decided to download an iPhone App called "sleep cycle".

This app uses the accelerometer in the iPhone, figures out when you are in deep sleep and when you are rolling around in the bed and times it so that you wake up when you are in deep sleep. The alarm sounds are wonderful and they gradually fade in to high volume.

As an added bonus, it keeps all the statistics and allows you to send the graphs to your gmail account!




In all my life no one has ever done a wonderful job of waking me up like this!

Thank you Sleep Cycle!

Thank you iPhone 3GS !

Thank you Technology !


Now all those <6 hour sleep nights are not going to be that bad after all!


There are other reasons for the exuberance.. but that will be explained later..


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The apple doesn't ...

Get it?

The "apple" doesn't fall far from the tree!!!

See video..




Earlier today ..

LO: "Daddy, do you know? there are two ways to make iphone go to sleep..."

Me: How do you know all this?!

LO: (with a very serious look on her face) I am smart?

Me: !!!!!!!!!!



ps. The apples just didn't fall! We have a squirrel in our backyard (kids call him "Salim the squirrel" after reading Tinkle!) which keeps throwing fruit after fruit, just after one sniff or bite! If only we could teach it to finish one apple before moving on to the next....
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