We (as in the Jain community in Bangalore) have recently constructed a new temple. Whenever a new temple is constructed, to ordain the “building” as a temple, a series of Poojas have to be performed. These take about 5-6 days and this will happen starting this weekend on the 3rd. In addition to this, there will also be some other religious preachings and cultural programs to further the knowledge of our religion.
Now, I am an atheist. I do not believe in God or the concept of God. But not having explicitly stated this to my parents who are quite religious and take active participation in the community events and occasions pulled me into the preparations for the ordaining ceremony. The entire ceremony is being managed by my uncle with a lot of other people along with my dad being delegated the smaller details. So yesterday, I was assigned something to do as well.
Though I have never told my parents outright that I am atheist, I have always shown a disinterest in it. But I have to force myself to do all this for their sake which I do not quite welcome! I plan to just grin and bear it for the next few days!
Sigh :(
I’ve been working on a redesign, a new theme for my blog for a couple of days now. It’s a nice dark and green theme based on the Foliage Mod by 5thirtyone designs. Though it’s mostly the same as the original, I’ve made a few changes and modifications, a few color changes etc.
The theme uses Ajax heavily with a shelf on top. While I’m enabling it, it is still a work in modification and changes.. So please bear with me and do tell me how it looks.
Any suggestions and critiques are always welcome :)
The Skeletor and Hordak community on Livejornal.com has to be one of the funniest nonprofessional (not to be confused with unprofessional)comics I’ve read in quite sometime. Since Skeletor is in the public domain, anyone can create a strip on him and post it there. From the past couple of weeks I’ve been reading it, there have been 3 main story-lines proceeding in parallel. And all of them are good.
The strips consist of Skeletor and his interactions with his mentor Hordak. Since it’s got multiple authors, the stories are different in humor, quality etc. But they are all fun! :D
Dani California is the latest single from Red Hot Chilli Peppers and is also a part of their latest album, Stadium Arcadium. The music is typical RHCP but it’s the video which is very different. In this, they have, in their way, paid homage (parodied ?) to the best rock bands from the sixties.
I watched the video yesterday and was left laughing at their idea and antics. I mean, some of the bands they have represented (which I could identify) were so real looking I was amazed. Watch the video and try to identify the bands on your own before reading further. It contains the bands I identified, and am quite certain about.
And how Kavya Viswanathan got busted and got dissed (lol could not resist that ;) )
Oh well, when I’d first seen the book, just as it was released, I thought it seemed like a pretty neat book. I mean a good idea, probably well written and a good storyline. But I did not purchase it at the time since I already had like 3 books in a queue to read and decided to maybe purchase it after I’d finished those. I guess it was a good decision in hindsight. But the decision to borrow it from a cousin to read it unfortunately wasn’t.
After the plagiarism scandal broke out, I thought I might as well take a look at the book. So borrowed it from a cousin since the book was not available in any book stands due to it being pulled off the shelf because of the scandal. I’ve heard that the book, after the pull out, was selling for about 2-3 times it’s original price on EBay
Anyway, back to the book, I’ll not disclose the story of the book. But I’ll rant about what I disliked in it. Firstly, it does not really portray Indians in a very favorable picture. Now I don’t know any NRIs so I don’t really know how they live and behave. And another thing I did not like is the portrayal of the main characters.. They were, for my taste, far too artificial. The way their behavior is described, I just could not picturise them. Again, maybe US teenagers are like that, maybe they are not. I have no way of knowing that but they just did not suit my taste.
The humor is good in some places, especially the way the parents go about planning the whole charade et all. But it is not enough in my view to justify the entire book sadly :(
Reparatios:
1. The act of putting something in working order again
2. Something done or paid in expiation of a wrong
I have about 2, maybe 3 Google Analytics invite code available. I had signed up with a couple of email id’s since I wanted to try it out desperately at the time. Having got one a few weeks back, I got a few more yesterday which I have no use for. So I can hand them out. If anyone wants, either email me or leave a comment within the next 10 days and I’ll send you the invite code. :)
For information, Google Analytics is the statistics application which has been partly developed by Google after it’s acquisition of Urchin, at one point, one of the most hyped and expected statistics service for websites and blogs alike. For more information, visit the Google Analytics site..
Update: Sent out all the invites! None left now! Hope those who got them have fun ;)
Can and is Microsoft planning purchase a part of Yahoo!? Cnn Money seems to think so.
Everyone knows that Microsoft is running scared of Google‘s advancement in search and online advertising marketshare and the way it has leaped clear over everyone else. Microsoft’s own search engine, MSN is lagging quite a bit behind Google in terms of users. Even Hotmail is under serious threat from Gmail.
But will Microsoft be willing to join nay marry it’s longtime former rival (before Google) to take on Google? Time will tell. But if it happens, it will be a partnership of the decade.
Original Article at Cnn Money.
Thus speaketh