I could use my HD camcorder to capture the green fields and share it in YouTube in no time.
But it really feels different seeing it with the fresh smell of the green fields.
How do I capture it?

To which I added the following comment.

That’s when you realize God has given a device(your own body) that can see, talk, smell, feel, memorize, repeat etc.
We seldom take care of it while we are busy looking at all these cool gadgets and keep wondering what magical device will Steve unveil next.

Your body is your device, that god gave it to you. Are you taking good care of it? Post your thoughts by commenting below.

on the Plus side

Photos
Looking through the Photos collection and using the iPad as a picture frame, while playing iPod in the background is one of the best things in iPad.
Watching Videos and YouTube:

click for larger size
It is amazing in this unit. My daughter can navigate with ease and enjoy her rhymes and I feel that YouTube on iPad is much better than a laptop browser [too many Ads nowadays on youtube.com] or the iPhone.
Using the iPad optimized Apps:
Apps from NYTimes, USAToday or BBC, which are specifically designed to use the larger screen of the iPad, are really nice to read and share.
Also I liked the Epicurious app for browsing through recipes.

On the Minus side

Weight:

click for larger size Weight is one of the main drawbacks; even Steve Jobs was sitting in a couch, keeping the iPad on his lap while showing the demo. This thing is not designed to be carried on one hand and typing using the other.
Shortage of iPad optimized Apps
Though it can run all the Apps designed for the iPhone, they do not look good when you expand them to occupy the full screen on the iPad. We do not have a large collection of free Apps that are designed for the bigger screen iPad at the moment.
Not for creating content
Even though there are productivity apps like Keynote, Pages etc, iPad is more of a device where you consume the content rather than a device for creating it. If you have to sit down and use a bluetooth keyboard to type large documents, you would rather type it on your laptop or desktop.

My Verdict

This version may be sufficient for most people, but I would like to wait for the next version.
I am sure it will be lighter in weight with a wider range of iPad optimized Apps.

Cars are not the only ones that are recalled by their makers!

A quote I read at the entrance to a Church, on my way to drop my daughter at school.
Interesting, isn’t it?

During a momentous battle, a Japanese general decided to attack even though his army was greatly outnumbered. He was confident they would win,but his men were filled with doubt.

On the way to the battle, they stopped at a religious shrine. After praying with the men, the general took out a coin and said, “I shall now toss this coin. If it is heads, we shall win. If tails, we shall lose. Destiny will now reveal itself.” He threw the coin into the air and all watched intently as it landed.
It was heads.
The soldiers were so overjoyed and filled with confidence that they vigorously attacked the enemy and were victorious. After the battle, a lieutenant remarked to the general, “No one can change destiny.”
“Quite right,” the general replied as he showed the lieutenant the coin, which had heads on both sides.

What is your reaction to this story? Pour in your thoughts!

Yesterday was one of those beautiful days with the temperature around 74^* F.
I was driving back to home from work and it was around 5 O clock in the evening.
The road was clear and there is no traffic at all. I kept changing the songs [my iPhone is connected to the car stereo] till it picked one of my favorite songs randomly. It was a smooth ride till I see some flashing lights in the back of my car.

In the USA, it means a police car is behind you and you need to stop and pull over. It means you did some traffic offense and the cop is going to issue a ticket to you.
I pulled over to the side and the cop came around to my side window.
I handed him over my license, registration and the insurance documents.
He : “Do you know why I pulled you over, sir ?”
Me : “I don’t know.”
He : “You were going at 75 miles speed”
Actually it might be true that I was going fast, but I do not know if it is that much.
I told him the truth.
Me : “I don’t know if I was speeding. I think I did not realize how fast I was going.”

He went back to his car with my documents and I was sitting there wondering what would happen.
If he gives me a speeding ticket, then it would cost me a couple of hundred dollars in fine. It will also add “points” to my driving history which would cause my car insurance to go higher too. That will cost me, close to a thousand dollars over the course of next three years. If I go to the court, the prosecutor might reduce the offense to something lower and leave me with just a fine but no “points”, but that means I have to lose some hours from work to go the court. So, what can I do now?

The cop came back after seeing all my driving history.
He : “I saw that you have no points in your license right now.”
I was wondering to myself “So, you are going to add some points now?”
He : “Since you did not lie to me, I am going to let you go this time without a speeding ticket. I will only give a ticket for ‘Obstruction of view in the windshield’. This one does not carry any points but you will have to pay the appropriate fine.”
and then he started talking about all the legal options I have and the court date if I want to challenge this etc and everything was going above my head.
Me : “Thank you, Officer”.

and oh man…did I tell you “Yesterday was a beautiful day” ?

As an iPhone owner, I already know that they will be dropping the price, but I never expected that it will happen so soon. I was having mixed feelings yesterday.

I saw mixed reactions from the people at websites like gizmodo.com or macrumors.com. Those who have bought the iPhones for $600 were crying for their apparent loss and those who never bought the thing were all happy about that.

Anyone who bought the iPhone within the last 14 days can get the $200 discount from Apple, but I was thinking about the frustration of people who bought the iPhone just 15 days ago.
They are not eligible for the $200 discount from apple, as they exceeded the 14 day return policy. They would be really disappointed, isn’t it ?

Also many of the people who bought the phone during the past 2 months are loyal fanboys to Apple and disappointing them would be bad as well.

As per the policy, Apple does not have to care. If the same thing happens to some other company, they would not care as well.
but Apple made a move yesterday, I would say it is very clever, to give $100 back to those early adopters as a store credit.
Now, with that, they have achieved a lot of things in one shot.
1. Apple got their reputation and they showed that they care.
2. They are now making those people to spend that extra $100 again at the Apple store.
3. Since most of the products are above $100, people would spend more money at Apple again and this way they get a bigger market share.

I would say it is a very clever move from Apple. Good Work Apple !

I noticed this at the Labor and Delivery room, in the hospital here in the US. The head-nurse, who was supposed to be helping my wife with the delivery, had to go to a computer terminal every 10 minutes to log the events happening at the delivery room.
I took a quick peek at the terminal and watched her writing comments like “mom is pushing hard, husband standing by the side and encouraging” and stuff similar to that.

Every time she comes around and shouts “1, 2, 3 PUSH”, spends a few minutes and goes back to the computer, feeding data.
She was doing this even after the delivery, inputting height / weight and other details of the new born.

and the other thing is, the hospital had introduced a new system in place, and this nurse took a long time to figure out how things work in this new system and believe it or not, she did all the typing with her index finger, looking at the keyboard and monitor making sure when she types “A”, the monitor displays “A”.

My questions is “WHY ???”

Whose fault is this ? is it the hospital that makes these old nurses [less comfortable with operating a computer] to do this whole data entry ? or is it the way we are all heading now, focussing more on technology and forgetting the real humane value.?

While doing all these new technology, we are totally lost on the basic duty of the nurse. isnt it?

Where are we heading ?

When it comes to naming the children, most of them choose the name that starts with an ‘A’.
I am seeing names like Anish, Ashley etc., being given to kids of tamil speaking parents.

The two names that led me to writing this post are, Archith and Ashwith (Pronounced as ‘Ash’with).
What is this? what is being achieved by giving this kind of names to the kids?

and that too why it has to start with A ? even then why not ‘Arivudai Nambi’ or ‘Arivazhagan’ ?

If you know any reasons behind this ‘A’ thing, let me know.

I was using this “Visual Studio Web 2005 Express” from Microsoft for doing my site development.
When I opened up the project in my server, it displayed all the folders within my wp-content/themes/ folder.

I worked on a few of the themes, but left other folders un-touched.

After a while, I wanted to archive all of the themes that I developed,into a different location in the server. So I went ahead and cut these theme folders and paste into the new location.

Bingo !

Everything seemed like an absolutely successful move.

now I went to this new location and opened one of the theme that I worked on recently. Yes it was there. but let me try to open something that I did not touch recently.

it just showed the folder, with no files inside.

Oh My God, I checked the other folders too, they were all just a folder copy, but no files within them were copied. How about in the original location ? Oh sure, it was deleted from that place.

Wow…what can I do now ? Is it there on the recycle bin of this machine ?

NOOOOOOOOO….Everything is gone. Period.

Oh my God !, what a wonderful system it is.?

Apparently, what happens is, when you copy and paste the folders, it only copies the files from your local machine.
If you have opened the files recently, it would have made a copy of it locally.
so when you say, cut and paste, it takes the local copy and paste it to the new location.
but for all folders which I did not touch, those were not there in my local machine and so were not pasted to the new location.

Who is to be blamed ? I dont know.

Who is the loser now ? Thats me.

Whatever that comes to our way, either good or bad,
we should be facing it as an opportunity to learn more about life and its purpose.

I am trying to recall the good and bad things from 2005.

Dreadful Tsunami

This year began with the effects of that dreadful Tsunami, that hit the South Asia on Dec 26 2004.
It caused a huge damage to many people who were living in the coasts of India, Srilanka, Thailand etc.
Many people lost their lives, their beloved family, their houses, and sometimes their inspirations.

There were so many kind hearted people, who stepped up at that time, as volunteers to help the victims.
These heroic people brought the food, the dresses, the money to rebuild the houses.

Living in America, How can we help ?
My brother Saravanan had an idea of collecting the donations from people here and sending it to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund.
I went with my brother and his wife, when they were collecting donations at a local train station here in New Jersey.
I posted about those Kind People…Kind Hearts at that time.

My Grandma’s Demise

One of the unforgettable thing that happened during this year, is the demise of my grandma.
She is the one who brought us all up.She has lost her sleep on many days to put me into sleep in my childhood days.
She had always been with us, praying for our well being and her blessings will be with us all the time.

There are brighter moments too from this year.

WordPress Themes

I started another website,WPThemes.Info for sharing the wordpress themes that we develop.
The themes that we (Myself and Patricia Muller) developed for WordPress, have won two prizes in the theme contest organized by AlexKing.
That is one joyous event to celebrate !.
Even now, thousands of people are using these themes and that makes me more happy.

My Wedding

An important Happy event occured on this 2005.
I married Geetha, the girl I love, on June 10th 2005 with the blessings from both the families and our friends.Its not quite easy to convince the parents, and my brother helped me a lot in convincing them.

so with all these in mind, let us look forward for a happy and prosperous new year 2006.
Definitely, if we have the right mindset, we shall definitely raise !

Wishing you a Great 2006 !
-Sadish