MM has a point. spaces.live.com is painful to use. Moving to http://vatsan.name soon!

I needed to send a filled form for review. Some fillable PDF's are stupid -they won't let you save the form data. So I printed it to a file - as an XPS. This is on Vista.

The reviewer didn't like XPS. Presumably, she is not very technically savvy. Now I needed to create a PDF. I figured it should be easy.

1. Open File
2. Print -> Print to OneNote
3. In OneNote, Save As PDF.
4. Voila!

Err.... Nope. It won't work on 64 bit OS. Because Microsoft Document Imaging that provides the OneNote print driver is not yet available on x64 :-(

I tried a few other things. Installed Aladin Ghostscipt to try using ps2pdf. The idea was to print using a regular postscript printer driver to a file. Network problems at work and other random occurances kept me from doing this cleanly, and it was all just a pain.

Then a colleague pointed me to PrimoPDF. It worked like a charm. Supports printing documents as PDF, and also supports x64 printer driver.

At a party last week, someone asked me where I was from (as if it was not clear from my skin/face/accent already!). We got talking about Madras and after some time, she asked, "Why do you keep changing back and forth between Chennai and Madras" ?

So I responded, "Err... Because that place is called Madras. And they changed it to Chennai. It used to be both before, and now it's all confusing. Old timers in the US remember it as Madras, and young folks only know Chennai. My own instinct is to call it Madras when speaking in English, but I keep referring to it as Chennai also because I want to make sure that you make the association. So in Tamil, I'd refer to the city as Chennai, and in English, the place is Madras. It used to be clean and simple - context based name.  Now it's so monotonous - always Chennai. Sigh! "

----------

On a related note, India is also known as Bhārat or Hindustan.

Letting my mind wander a tad bit, I realized that both India and Hindustan are the same names - both names of Pakistani origin! To stretch it a tad bit, even the word Hindu (referring to the Hindu religion)has the same origin.

The Indus Valley Civilization is at the root of these names. IVC eventually amalgamated into the Vedic culture and historical Hinduism. The Indus river is the longest and the most important river in Pakistan today. The river is called Sindhu in Sanskrit, and Hindu in Persian. In Greek, the river is called Indos. There - the name India is rooted in the Greek name of Indus river, and the name Hindustan is also based on the name of this river.

---------

Now a bit of gleaning from Wikipedia.

The term Sindhu is a generic word for river in Sanskrit ( I knew that!).

Rigveda makes references to Bhāratas, an Aryan tribe. Aryans are proto-Indo-Iranians (i.e., the common ancestors of Indo-Iranians, ethnically speaking - although Indo-Iranians are, AFAIK, simply Caucasians despite the melanin differences). Interestingly enough, I haven't seen any references to the modern day official Hindi language name for India (Bhārat) being rooted in this.

The name Bhārat comes from the name of a king Bharata who is (in Hindu mythology) said to have conquered all of the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan and Persia. The word 'Bhārat' literally means Bharatas' realm.

Now I'm guessing that the name of the mythical King is rooted in the old time reference to the Aryan tribe in Rigveda.

------

So really, Hinduism is a religion/culture rooted in a modern day Islamic country namely Pakistan. The various names by which India is known are all rooted in Greek and Persian (modern day Iran) words. This is an especially interesting observation in the light of the fact that there has been much strain between India and Pakistan over Hindu/Muslim differences etc. Turns out that despite the modern day bickering, India was born out of Pakistan and Pakistan out of India!!

All pizza experiences are weird, because I'm probably only buying a pizza to binge because I'm not in a healthy mood to begin with... and worse, it's almost always for inexplicable reasons. Yesterday was one of those nights when I wanted a pizza. I drove by Papa Johns on 10th in Bellevue and saw this sign, "only deliveries after 10pm". It was 10:30pm and I was there...

So I googled their phone number on my PPC phone and called the number. I was parked outside the store. So the store guy picks up and phone and takes my 'delivery order'. He was standing right in front of me talking - and it was like a real live conversation, except we had a glass door between us. And oh, he didn't know that I was the guy right in front of him outside the door. At the end of the conversation, I said, "Instead of delivering in 45 minutes, can you just give it to me when you're done baking? I'm right outside the door". He looked at me and went "Oh!". His face lighted up very very strangely and he looked at me in amusement and in a 'How weird is this' sort of way, and agreed. I got my pizza in about 15 minutes - a really cute gal bought it out and I tipped her for nothing. At least I got to eat a whole pizza all by myself. I hope I remember to visit the gym today...

My cool Internet ready phone

  The view of the pizza guy through the glass door.

Interesting Story about the peace symbol at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_symbol.

The Peace Symbol

The Semaphore N

The Semaphore D

ND = Nuclear Disarmament

When the Hippies take over, ND becomes Peace! ;)

This post brought to you by a little gift from a little person.

I was at Barnes and Noble to pick up a book or two... At the checkout counter, the conversation with the Cashier goes thus -

Cashier - Do you have a Barnes and Noble card?

Me - No. And I don't want one either. I'll just pay for what I have.

Cashier - OK.

Cashier - Oh, if you had a card, you'd have saved 20% on the hardback.

Me - Umm.. oh well, I guess I'm in a hurry. I'll pass.

On the way back, I start thinking - Wouldn't it be cool to have a credit card that partners with the nations top 20 (or 50 or 100 or 250) discount sellers like Barnes and Noble, QFC, Fred Meyer, Costco, Safeway, Airlines rewards programs, gas stations, REI, JC Penney, Bed Bath and Beyond and whatnot - simply an exhaustive list of all major regional and national chains - and make the damn thing just work. I use my Uber Smart Reward Credit card in Barnes and Noble and it automatically works the magic - and lo! I got 20% off on my hardback. And if I go to Tom Nobody's shop, I still get my old fashioned 3% cashback rewards from the credit card, and when I hit up REI, I can accumulate my reward credits from REI (10% or whatever) and redeem it at the end of the year.

I think a multipurpose card would be really cool. I'd pay about a $100 annual fee to use it. I also think that it would take a lot of market research and hard work to create a plethora of partnerships and a magnetic card technology that works seamlessly with everybody's computer system and retrofits seamlessly. But whoever does this would become a market leader and it would all be really really cool.

An oh, they will also pay me some royalty because I just described the idea here first ;)

I'll try to share some do's and don'ts here.

Let's start with a don't. Don't take Fish Oil capsules to the desert. They can melt into a gooey stinky mass :-(

)'(

Last week, several interesting things happened that I missed.

1. Full lunar eclipse (I slept through it)

2.  The pre-burn of the Man during the eclipse.

3.  Meteor Showers

What I didn't miss was the amazing display of colors in the sky.

Supernumerary Rainbows

If you observe the first image very carefully, you'll notice that there are some visible bands of light below violet at the bottom of the rainbow. Technically, a rainbow is bounded by VIBGYOR, but this one has more colors (or more than one, err.. two, rainbows). This phenomenon is called supernumerary rainbows.

From Wikipedia -

Infrequently another rainbow phenomenon is observed, consisting of several faint rainbows on the inner side of the primary rainbow, and very rarely also outside the secondary rainbow. They are slightly detached and have pastel colour bands that do not fit the usual pattern. They are known as supernumerary rainbows, and it is not possible to explain their existence using classical geometric optics. The alternating faint rainbows are caused by interference between rays of light following slightly different paths with slightly varying lengths within the raindrops. Some rays are in phase, reinforcing each other through constructive interference, creating a bright band; others are out of phase by up to half a wavelength, cancelling each other out through destructive interference, and creating a gap. Given the different angles of refraction for rays of different colours, the patterns of interference are slightly different for rays of different colours, so each bright band is differentiated in colour, creating a miniature rainbow. Supernumerary rainbows are clearest when raindrops are small and of similar size. The very existence of supernumerary rainbows was historically a first indication of the wave nature of light, and the first explanation was provided by Thomas Young in 1804.

The email says it all.

From: Gayleen Hays
Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2007 8:27 PM
Subject: RE: [burningman-bcwa] The REAL problem

Drip by drip,

It's difficult,

To expand your view,

Perhaps, it stretches beyond

Children

Because some of us want to keep

That expression and

Protect that energy and so we come to

Play at Burning Man

With our secret child eyes' focus.

I come to pull and get pulled up into

The joy of connecting with kindred'childish

Souls and I think on some level many

Of us come with that hope of

Finding a deep mutual

Friend.

But, then. a stranger

Hung himself early Thursday

Morning. He hung there about sixty

Minutes before we figured out he was there;

Star of his own art creation.

Why?

I began to question my own opinion.

I had arrived at Burning Man, being yelled at

By a power-hungry gate/guard befoe I even got

My ticket stamped. It was a bad start vibe.

Then, a stranger hung himself

And it changed my focus off myself and onto the

Culture I want to protect and wish we could all live

Under it's umbrella of freedom,

But, a man hung himself.

And, it's interesting.

I believe in abortion

I believe in taking mushrooms

I believe in not drinking water

I believe in drinking wine

I believe in expression

I believe in a person being free to kill himself

With he can't stand the pain.

My mother died in my arms as an animal

From pancreatic cancer.

I believe she had the right to kill herself .

But, I can't accept his freedom to

Hang himself, not here.

Why, Why do I feel he had no right.

And then, I start to understand,

This must be the start of rules

The start of constricting rules

And that sucks.

The Role of Failure in Success

Fear of Failure

Fear of the Unknown, and The worst case scenario

If you don't have to deal with the pressure of success, the chances are very good that you won't screw up your endeavour out of anxiety. 

A boring story

Nirvana is the answer!!

Seattle Tamil Sangam organized a Pongal cultural program at the Sammamish High School yesterday. I’m neither a theatre geek nor too partial to little kids putting on a nursery rhyme show to enthrall the nervously watching parents – so I stay away from these shindigs. Also, I had a lousy experience last year in Portland when I was forced to endure a very badly slapped together Tamil comedy followed by an even worse showing of vocal skills by a professional troupe/band/whatever… I don’t think I cared too much to even remember the troupe’s name, but they were much hyped about and even performed in Seattle. In Portalnd, I also had to spend a few hours feeling lost in a sea of couples and children with no recognizable face around me. Thank goodness I was there with a friend, but oh, he was busy catching up with thatta’s and patti’s who were, shudder, his friends!

So when Ramesh invited me to watch Aranmanai Siruvayalil, a debut play by Indus Creations[no link], I was, understandably, a bit nonchalant.  Though I was afraid that the play would suck, I was more afraid that I’d have to endure hours of badly done children’s programs. Also, given that S.Ve.Sekar and the Madhu-Cheenu menagerie happens to be the state-of-the-art in Tamil stage, I didn’t expect this one to be any better. So deep within, I was deeply frightened of leaving the auditorium with a completely redefined sense of aesthetics.

But he is an old friend and I can’t really say no to him, and he also mentioned that he was acting in the play,so I said yes. I was also a bit worried that he might actually need a cheering voice or two lest he feels too let down by the boos and eggs, and oh, he also bought my ticket, but that’s not why I went, really….J

The whole show actually turned out to be much better than I expected. The kid’s show wasn’t horrible at all. It was actually good! The inaugural song by two (I must add, cute) kids who were so un-self-conscious and displayed every sign of an impending cacophony transformed in a blink-of-an-eye into impressive sopranos enthralling the audience with almost eight minutes of complicated Tamil verse from Thiruvasagam. This awesome performance set the tone for the rest of the evening, and I found myself starting to relax…

Not every item was good. Some sucked and others I was a bit ambivalent about. Nothing out of the ordinary for any show like this one. And the less-than-brilliant ones were played out by children – so my two cents on the quality of the program is somewhat debatable. No specifics mentioned here because, hey, they are just kids! J

After some free food and some more not-so-free food, we got to the second half of the show, and the star attraction of the night – Indus creations first play titled Aranmani Siruvayalil.

Set in a lush little village (they showed a haystack ;) somewhere deep within Tamil Nadu, this was a murder mystery solved by pure accident. The story is somewhat reminiscent of grade school when girls and boys are constantly fighting and going at each others hair. When a team of scientists with absolutely no common sense decides to install a cable TV style dish antenna a tad bit too close to the Amman temple, the Goddess gets ticked off at them and breaks their toy. The scientists bring in a consultant, who is their favorite school bully, to steal the Amman’s sacred-stick. The Amman gets mad and pricks that prick with her spear - and thus starts the whodunit style murder mystery.

It was clear that the cast of the play had put in many a long hours without which the copious dialogues all delivered in right dialect and accent would have been almost impossible. I liked the fact that the cast had an obvious chemistry going on – it made the play so much better. Whoever penned the dialogues must have been truly inspired for it was truly remarkable how well the rural dialects and the city-style speaking were all nicely meshed together. The background music score added to the dramatic effect and in my opinion was as crucial to the play as the Amman herself.

Given the quality of this show, I’m sure to jump at the next opportunity to watch an Indus Creations production. Any day, it is better than the obnoxious crap produced by the big-names in the Tamil theatre scene. But it is not simply that. The play went much beyond and set its own standard for good quality work. Now I’m not saying it was without flaws or anything. There were many jarring flaws – but those didn’t diminish the entertainment value of the play. Also, I was glad that the producers didn’t assume a dimwit idiot of an audience and try to show us a stupid comedy full of debatably-funny double entendres.

Okay, so it was a good show and was done well yada yada… So what were the failings? They kind of dropped the ball on make-up, props, scene-transitions, and oh, the story J

Painting black hair white with water-colors so obviously does not work. Enuf said.

If someone digs up an archeological artifact from under the ground, what are the chances that it’s going to be a shiny new piece of peacock statue that also happens to be the most popular piece of memorabilia in the gift shops in every international airport in India?

Next time, work harder on scene transitions. If you absolutely can not bring the screen down while you are doing some private things on the stage, then at least don’t use a flash light. Get some night vision goggles instead.

This play had a good whodunit story, but not a great one. Great whodunit stories always provide enough clues within the story itself so that a really smart reader can figure out puzzle for himself. Merely good ones take the easy way out and introduce an out-of-the-blue character who has special knowledge that leads to the catching of the culprit… My friend Ramesh was that plucked-from-thin-air character who proves Amman's innoncene and restores to her glory!

Other random thoughts  –

 Get a North Indian heroine who can’t speak Tamil. Then make her learn the words. Or just have her mouth the words and get someone else to lip-sync. Get some clue from the Tamil movie industry will ya? That's what sells. After the play, you can get this babe to talk in stupidly broken mazhalai tamizh to the audience and get all gaga’d over. Good publicity!

If you put up an Amman temple in the story, you’ve got to have an Amman song and dance sequence. I was disappointed that there was none. Remember Mariamma song from Karakattakkaran? Even better, get your N.Indian heroine to play the Amman in a dream song sequence… Now that would be a killer, don’t you think ;)

PR is part of showmanship. This team has no website, no blog – absolutely no web presence with the exception of personal blogs from two actors which provide almost no fodder for the interested. There is a video trailer floating around though, but that’s only a teaser – not an introduction to the cast, crew and the team. Considering the team was infested with software geeks, this is a big failing. Something tells me that when the name Indus Creations was picked, nobody bothered to run a whois search either…

Rating: 4/5.

I'm born with an ancient curse

racing the winds to quench her thirst

she waits for me with her patience versed

kisses ol' me and takes my breath!

A Case for the Bad Guy

Wombat & Midwest said...

Vatsan -

If you are referring to "The Wombat and Midwest Online Dating University for Men" I'm glad you reminded me.

We didn't unearth sufficient interest from either prospective students or faculty. However...

I guess we could provide tuition here at K&B, but only if you provide specific questions. On second thoughts, field trips to bars using your Amex would work fine too.

Interested?


Wombat

October 26, 2005 10:29 PM  

The headmistress figured she could draft a few idiots like me into the Institute. We were all entering the Computer Age and really needed to learn to type (Of course she was right. I'm blind-typing this blog right now. But I don't think she was truly after my betterment. It was the AMEX that mattered..  ). But no, we wouldn't take the bait. I knew one-finger-typing just fine, and most of my classmates were supremely indifferent to her pleas and all the inventive coaxing and cajoling. It was more important to us to keep our cash than learn a useful skill. We'd probably even have paid those Rupees happily to a different typewriting institute, but wisdom (read 'crystallized pain') had tought us that light never comes out of black holes... and we all knew we were already studying in one!

Vatsan - 

        History noted. Who needs dating? I'm proceeding immediately to set-up a free typing school!
Thanks.
Wombat 

 

Something tells me that I will never even be able to buy application forms from his University. Actually getting in, no chance! For all I know, he will be the instructor at one of my future trainings at work and he'd give me a rather hard time... See what I mean when I say I need to improve my 'conversation skills'