Moving to own Domain..

Moving over to my new domain at

www.sundar72.com

Have set up RSS feed quick links on the sidebar for the Blog tab. Please redirect your RSS feeds using this link..

Have figured out the HTML editor on the site as well.

Will be playing with the site setup slowly over the next year..

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A new home?

After toying with the idea of getting my own site and free myself from editing constraints on blogger, have decided to check out Squarespace!

They came highly recommended and are also a notch above the rest of the web hosts when it comes to Customer service. In the last 24 hours they have responded to me within the hour every time a query was sent!

Please check out this site and give me your feedback!



It will be a long process to sort out blog posts, entries etc.. but this is one of my hobbies and it is more than a hobby. So who knows, we might put a portfolio of images on this site and start covering Birthday parties and weddings, when time permits.

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When work becomes the "other" woman...

A grueling week at work, not a new thing for this household by any stretch. The adults are both trying to sync every minor detail on their respective calendars which border on the ridiculous.

Who is going to "wipee" kid #2 tomorrow morning? you? okay then, put it on your calendar. Make a commitment and stick to it.. etc. etc.. You know what we mean..

Then Friday afternoon comes and dad is getting nauseous. Four hours of sleep on Thursday night may have had something to do with it, but sleep deprivation doesn't send one to the restroom repeatedly. That must have been the work of picking up germs from doorknobs.

Here is a tip for workaholic husbands who try to do their best at sharing the workload at home in a family where both adults work and take their work a little too seriously.

Never fall sick on Friday afternoon! Never ever!

The perception at home will start monologues from wife and kids like "you gave all your blood sweat and tears to her and you come home and want to lie down on a Friday evening? How dare you? Go ask her to take care of your sick little behind!"

After some time you scratch and wonder who else you are sleeping with and figure out they are talking about your workplace in (fem.)!

Fortunately in this case by Saturday morning after a heavy dose of sleep the body felt as normal as possible and then the wife shows "symptoms".

Note to wives of workaholic husbands who fall sick on Friday evenings?

Lock the dumb dude in the bedroom or garage and make sure the rest of you stay clear of him. If you fall sick, then he just won't be able to handle it. Just thinking about it will make him sick again. Management studies have repeatedly shown that managing 60+ adults at work is easier than managing two children under the age of 9!

Now that the weekend has come and gone without anything out of the ordinary for cold winter weeks in the last few years, we go into yet another week of busy work, sparse blogging, fights that fizzle out even before they start because of other distractions, etc. etc.!

On the bright side we had a great potluck dinner this weekend with a bunch of friends we meet rarely and checked out an iMac at the local Apple store. The videos and photos from a 21 MP camera are not handled by a Lenovo T60 with hardly any memory left. If there are any recommendations for a computer that can be bought on the cheap to handle large image and video files, please do leave it in the comment box.

Having been confined indoors the last few days, have been trying to take videos of the fish in the aquarium with the 50mm f2.5 macro lens mounted on the 5DMK2. You feel like Jack Costeau when you zoom into the aquarium like that and bring out the fins of those little things and project it on a 52 inch monitor! Will try to post a video of the "fishies" shot with real shallow focus range.

One good thing about being a nerd is that you can find ways to amuse yourself within the house. One bad thing is that this kind of amusement will always get you yelled at for being selfish. Your best bet is to make this type of thing an activity to do with the kids.

So starting this week, daddy Narayanan will teach Jr. and the little one a mandatory class on Photography. They are not thrilled with the idea, but hey, who is the boss here?


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2010

Every year this blog has a retrospect post looking back through the archives..

This year was not worth the blog archive search.

We got memories worth a lifetime during a two week stretch in our India trip, first when the little one agreed to do her mottai with Daddy and came back to the USA to brave abuses like "you are a boy girl"







and this was followed by a spiritual connection at Manikaran and Manali in the Himanchal, a one of a kind experience!

There were sicknesses in the family that pretty much want us to forget this year and they pretty much made us feel that there are things that are way out of our control and made us ponder spirituality to a higher level.

The blog and blogger have not strayed significantly from the usual routine, save for the MAJOR upgrade to the Photo/Video department. This blog has seen the photographer learn new tricks (and hopefully show others that anyone can take pictures by following instructions and practicing), show a few cooking tips that show that if I can do ladoos, mixture and mysorepak, you can too.. and chronicle the kid raising experience with day to day tidbits that make us reflect and go "what were we thinking". Sure those tidbits make you LOL!

On the camera front, just like how a bachelor got married and decided to have kids as he realized that there was a progression to things, the point and shoot was replaced by a DSLR over time and the DSLR changed to a full frame camera this year. The only thing that beats having kids is to get them married, but usually there is a long gap between having kids and getting them married!

So someday this blogger might make a short film or documentary, but that will be a long long time from now!

Blogs have gone the same way as Temples. I know.. I know.. you are thinking "what the !!!" Let me explain. Today there was a conversation with my brother about going to temples. When we go to Kabali temple (in Mylapore) or Padmanabhaswamy temple (in Adyar) you find that 90% of the population in the temple is 50+ age group. Why?

A theory was that thirty years ago(when we were kids) there was not that much TV, internet, cell phones. The temples were not just a place to worship god, pray for your sins to be absolved, wishes to be granted, illnesses to be cured, feel closer to god, but also to meet your friends, find matrimonial matches for that nephew or niece of cousin, get up to date on neighborhood gossip, movies worth watching, etc. etc. or just plain get some exercise going around a large temple or walking to it.

Today the traffic and pollution have made that exercise an oxymoron. The cell and internet give you the gossip and info. Google, Youtube, Facebook, Bharat Matrimony and Shadi.com have made the rest of the temple visit unattractive. My parents listen to Velukudi Swamy on Jaya TV or Vijay TV. For all we know, even Velukudi Swamy is probably happy to spend more time explaining Bhagavatam in a studio than be stuck in Mount road traffic!

This blog is one such place. Facebook and Twitter have changed the way blogs are read. Ever since Blogrolling.com was hit as a virus site and blocked by browsers like IE and Firefox, the links to your favorite blogsites on the sidebar are all gone! It is like losing your phone book.

Still there are folks who visit the temple whatever be their reasons! Blogging has become like going to the temple. A place to revisit your thoughts, shout into the ocean, make new friends, have a conversation with everyone and no one in particular, just like talking to god!

So, on we go with more pictures, videos and words!


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A long break..

The blogging break was not intentional. AT&T cut our internet by mistake last Thursday.

We have had no phone or internet at home for the last 7 days. We finally got it back tonight.

San went insane as she dealt with AT&T customer service, that too on a no school for kids week. That ruled out any option for us working from home even for a few hours.

Incidentally our phone is a Vonage phone (VoIP phone) and no internet means, no phone.

My cell phone as 0 bars or keeps dropping calls (it is an iPhone with AT&T!!!).

The only working phone was San's cell which is fortunately not on AT&T.

San has spent 240+ minutes of her cell plan to be with AT&T customer service in the last 7 days, most of it listening to elevator music as she was handed over from one incompetent service rep to another.

They asked her to call back after 7PM on one day.. only for us to realize their office closes at 7PM. So much for customer service!

Lessons from this..

a. even though you do not need a land line, if you live in an area where cell signals are flaky, pay that 12 bucks a month and keep that land line alive or move to an area with a good cell signal

b. never take the internet for granted! it affects your life more than you know it....

There are smart folks who work at AT&T who know what is going on.. but getting to them is luck of the draw. 8/10 reps fail you miserably.

That is really sad.


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Buzz ain't bad for a bumblebee like me..

Ok, there is a lot of negativity these days around anything Google.

Since I am not employed by google, am a self proclaimed techno nerd (not the software type though), and have had an open love-hate relationship when it comes to the products they dish out, here is an open heartfelt feedback of why this is actually a good thing..

1. Now that they fixed this contact business, it is no different from facebook. You can share all info to all public or choose to share your info with select people. You do have to invest some time and effort to set up the group lists for friends, family, etc. etc.. then what you share gets viewed by different people. Have checked it out and it works nicely. (it also tells you which items you shared with the world and which ones with family).

see the example shot below..




2. if all your buddies put their accounts and share it in the buzz stream, you get to see their feeds, tweets etc. just like you see blogposts on reader. the look and feel of a reader is maintained.

3. You don't have spam on this yet with stuff like "so and so took the How much do you know Shah Rukh Khan quiz and scored 13%. would you like to take the quiz?", in a quiz where even Shah Rukh would score only 5%.

4. the picture viewing is great!

5. It is almost a blogger and reader combined into one.

Now, if google makes you selectively embed links and images into the text box.. in other words, integrate the blog editor into buzz status updater, and have the ability to selectively show only my posts in the buzz stream, then will I even use blogger? highly unlikely.

So when people say Buzz is trying to replace facebook, twitter etc.. it also seems to be trying to replace blogger and blogreader as well!

They should have done this two years ago!

Just look at who are on your facebook list. Friends from school, college, work, friends you make thanks to who your kids go to school with, friends you make because of your hobbies and that is pretty much it.

It is usually the same bunch of people you email the most. I fundamentally had an issue with Facebook calling everyone a "friend", be it an acquaintance or a thick pal and almost stopped using it because of how it had security issues. Facebook fixed those issues and have a way to send your status updates to select folks only and have a way for you to say "NO" when it comes to information on your profile going out.

Buzz is doing the same thing.. It does surprise me that they didn't learn from the mistakes of Facebook before launching Buzz! The good thing with Google is that the react fast when you point out things to them.

Looks like someone heard my plea for a one stop shop with one login!

The second impression on this one is "I could get used to this!"




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A break

in my right arm forces a blogging break.

Will be back in six weeks.

Ps. Happy to be alive and recovering.

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Posting will resume

When you get a new gizmo that fascinates you, it might take a few days or even a few weeks to get the gadget and all its controls at your fingertips.

That is what is going on now..

Have spent 8+ hours in the last week to learn how to do things the i-way!

Still figuring out interesting things, when the kids will stop playing tic-tac-toe or memory games.

This small piece of electronics has shifted life and focus in the household significantly in the last week. The novelty will wear out in a few days and that is when blogposting will resume..

Till then...



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Adsense

Today we were having dinner with a relative who works at google.

He convinced me to use Adsense. He was asking me why I don't use Adsense. I did not understand. Told him that

1. somehow the ads would clutter up the template
2. don't care about the money
3. don't want to be indirectly responsible for suggesting products that I might not recommend

and he said "totally not true!"

You can completely select what kind of contextual ads to place and it might actually help you, if not the people who read your blog and point them to some interesting related links..

So tried it.. and it messed up my template for sure. So have signed up for an account and now I have to figure out how to get it into the sidebar instead of the top of the blog!

If google wants me to use Adsense, they should make it more idiot proof for simpletons like me (who are still on the same old template from four years ago!).

Maybe those who have this on their blog can give me some pointers?

Does this actually help point you to interesting links?


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Copy wopy, plagiarize vagiarize...blog shwog..

Have been watching how the mommy blogger circle is catching up on plagiarizing of posts. Kiran, who I read regularly (especially her self deprecating posts crack me up) was copied. So were other Mommy bloggers.

One possible theory based on a funny conversation I had at a party recently with a friends friend.

Me : So what are all those guys in that circle doing these days?
FF : Most of them have gone back to India over the last two years.
Me : what about that dude? and his roomate?
FF : "that dude" is still here. His roomate went back and is now settled in UP and he is doing great.
Me : what does he do?
FF : Oh, he is making a lot of money in advertising!
Me : Wow! that is nice. didn't know that he was into advertising..
FF : No NO.. not that type of advertising. He is making money by generating internet traffic!
Me : ????

FF goes on to explain

FF : He has hired a lot of women, mostly women with kids who want to work parttime from home. They all generate a network of websites using blogger and generate cross traffic. The people he hires read other blogs, pick up things of interest and create cross linked blogs. He promotes these and gets a cut on the ad. revenue!

Me : My god.. this puts Amway to shame by a wide margin! This is like the Borg that keeps assimilating things in star trek! Even people who are not part of the original clique will get sucked into this ring!

FF : exactly!

This conversation is now three months old. I guess the whole thing is so legit that it has blurred the difference between real traffic and fake traffic.

Imagine a thousand people clicking on each other's blog ad's a few hours a day..

now Imagine some dude laughing his ass off watching people who pour their heart out in blog posts realize

1. they have been plagiarized
2. they are fuming
3. the more they fume the more traffic comes to these sites
4. the copycats get to make money and blur the lines
5. they can calmly lose a few of the sites and start new ones and keep making money

It is a funny world, no?


ps. Not sure if that is what is happening here, but thought all bloggers should know that there is such an outfit out there with hundreds of "employees" working on a blog generating company!


pps. How do you find out if you have been plagiarized? Is there a utility? Or like the iphone ads say "is there an app for it?"




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Around the world in 80 clicks ...

After a long time, a tag, thanks to Gauri, originally started by HBM, whose blog I had never read till this tag started.

A tag that was ciculating amongst the mommy blogs over the last one week. Read at least 12 posts on this chain on my blog reader, enjoyed all of them and just when I was thinking, "hmm why won't they include a few daddy's in this loop?", Gauri sends me an email.

The people who get this tag are Terri, Anu, Animom,
Swatantra,
violet,
and Witchyangel.. if she chooses to accept this tag and come back to blogging! Hey, one can always try...I know you read this blog every once in a while.

The rest of you that were obvious choices have either completed an entry, don't want to blog and only comment or have not declared to the world that they are soon to be mommies. That said,


Here is the first five things that came to mind when bringing Jr. and the little one to the brains foreground:


1. The little one comes running to me when I pick her up from school. The smile on her face when she comes and gives me a hug, the pride in her eyes as she looks back at her friends at the sharing table that says "He is my daddy and he loves me, see..." that has got to be way up in the top. Almost always makes my day. (jr. doesn't want to leave the playground these days, but she used to do the exact same thing three years ago). There is unconditional love there and sometimes makes me wonder if I was like this at 3 or 6 years of age. My parents told me, yes. I definitely love my parents, but this glow is something very special.

2. Watching the little darlings grow up and the challenges they throw me! Last night mom and grandma had gone to the airport to drop a cousin with clear instructions for me to put the kids to bed. That was when Jr. started wiggling her tooth. She spent the next forty five minutes in front of a mirror wiggling it and made me disappoint the ladies. It was so much fun watching her wallow in self toothery! (that is another thing I love about being a dad. get to coin terms like self-toothery)

The video taping finally distracted her and got her away from the mirror




3. The things they say and do that is just outright gorgeous, funny or ridiculous, but all of which end in a big hug or a kiss.




The on demand fake crying, the angry looks that melt into a smile, the tantrums that make mom's mood swings look like tyres on a rope from a banyan tree, the list just goes on..

4. The constant thought of these gorgeous creatures leaving us someday after they are all grown up. Dad's IQ in the eyes of his girls has fallen more steadily than the stock market over the last six years. The "Daddy you are sooo smart" has slowly given way to "You don't know anything daddy!" while his patent count has steadily increased and even online IQ scores seem to suggest otherwise.

Guess, IQ is in the I of the beholder.

5. The obsessiveness with which they support me. They are my biggest fans. They will defend me against anyone and everyone, including but not limited to mommy and grandma. If she feels that daddy is being cornered the little one goes to the extent of screaming "why don't you go cook or watch TV or something and leave my daddy alone!". Jr. will promptly redirect the ladies to their laptops and ask them to leave me alone. From reading this blog, to watching and appreciating the few things I cook, to admiring my music, they are really my biggest fans and somehow I never disappoint them.

What more could you ask for?


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Elementary, my dear reader

TV Reviews

No wonder, Jr. reads this blog every evening!


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Transliteration!

Have been using Baraha to transliterate all these years to do Tamizh posts...
Just found out that there is Blogger transliteration! This is great..

தமிழ் வாழ்க !!
(Viva Tamizh!!)

It has a built in spell checker too.. Oh, I love this!
अब में हिन्दी में भी लिक सकता हूँ !
Yippeeee...



Easy?!

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Nice to be Nice

An award from ~nm

"This award will be awarded to those that are just nice people , good blog friends and those that inspire good feelings and inspiration! Those that care about others that are there to lend support or those that are just a positive influence in our blogging world!"

Don't know if I am supposed to say something before passing it on. Me being me, will say something anyways!

The blog world is a strange one. You never know if that favorite blog of yours is actually your wifes, who is writing when you are not looking.

Call it the "you never know" factor, just your natural demeanor or the "why be nasty when you can be..." logic! I get a "nice" award. Seriously people, it is nice to be called nice by nice people. It is nice to be nice!

Now to pass this on to other bloggers

PK for always trying to do right
NV Sir for always being the devils advocate
UK Balaji for showing me what lies beyond nice
Mitr for always encouraging me to blog
Boo, UTBT for being great blogpals and most importantly to
Balaji, who got me started with this whole blog thing!

ps. I was going through my blogroll last night and realized something...

I left out Kavi! How could I? The man does exactly what this award states. Kavi, you are truly an inspiration. Hope you get to see this changed post!

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Clever Marketing..

Most of you have seen Jr.'s sweeping craze in my previous posts..

The broom we got from India has started shedding, because Jr. has the habit of sweeping rough concrete with that broom! So everytime she is done brooming, we have to follow up with come vacuum cleaning.

She kept insisting we buy her a toy vacuum !! I did not even know if one existed, but obviously she had prior information about the existance of such a toy..




Last week we actually found the toy! You have to hand it to these guys. The thing looks real, runs on a battery and has the light and sound effects of the real Dirt Devil. I am sure they are more than making their revenue projections on the toy vac than on the real one !!

ps. I would have posted a pic or video of Jr. doing the vacuum. But recently the baby's sickness, accidental injuries as well as Jr.'s tantrums have all been statistically correlated to their pictures and video's appearing in the blog with a Karl Pearsons coefficient of 9.99 x10^-7. Most statisticians would argue that it isn't much of a correlation and they are independent events, but then if you multiply this coefficient with the weight factor for the wife/MIL (which is around a million, compared to the weight factor for me, which hovers at <1.0), the picture changes quite dramatically. So dramatic, that it might shut down the blog, again. So, I will have to stay content with talking about Sun TV programming, Chennai news, etc. for the time being.

pps. Saw Vadivelu as spiderman in the "Vyapari" movie review on Sun TV. He is indeed funny!! Hats off to Vadivelu!


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