December 2005

Merry Christmas Folks

Santa ClausIt has been very windy and chilly in Mumbai these days. Very strange. But then after the July 26 aftermath, I am convinced that anything is possible here and we have to be prepared even for snowfall. As a precautionary measure I carry my favourite red pullover in my bag. It came handy today when I started feeling really cold sitting under the A/C vent. Today was also the day when the Maitree group sang christmas carols for us as we gathered at the 11th floor reception. I was never enthusiastic for such a thing because I was deliberately dragged out of a meeting to be present there. They sang Michael Jackson’s ‘Heal the World’ which lightened up my face. It’s my favourite all time song :-)

Tomorrow is the last day of a great week after which we take a 3 day long break for the christmas. Here’s wishing all the visitors of my website a very Merry Christmas.

World Press Photo 2005

 © Arko Dutta - Reuters for World Press Photo 2005I have been visiting the World Press Photo (WPP) Exhibition since last year. This is partly because I admire photography & also appreciate the great work that’s done by the photo journalists around the globe. It’s really amazing how these guys work under the most unfriendliest sometime hostile situation to bring to us these myriad talking images.

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Retro is Back

RetroGalI had always liked retro figures right from my earlier website and I had also got some good reviews regarding the same. I decided to move away from it because I wanted to try out something different. Now that the earlier design has outlived my expectations it was time for a new set of rules.

Firstly I had to re-install WordPress on my local machine which wasn’t as tedious as I initially thought it would be. Installing it offline meant that I can carry my design development on WordPress without disturbing the original website. For those of you who are interested in knowing more about it, click here. I had always had a colour scheme in my mind which was more youthful then it’s previous avatar and I just had to build a theme around it. The RetroGal – as I like to call all my retro figures, is also back on the header. The entire development took me just over a day & the end result was very satisfying. I hope this small change would enhance the user-experience to a great extent.

Leave Mumbai Alone For Us

Life in Mumbai SlumsMumbaikars (natives of Mumbai city) are well aware of the hardships which they face everyday. To name some of the few – train travels, bad roads, polluted water supplies, growing slums, etc. Just recently I had an argument with a friend who has come down from Delhi to work with us and he was unapologetically critical about this city. The fact of the matter is that I know what plagues us and I know that the solution lies entirely in the hands of the administration which is not focusing on the city right now. I lost my temper and hit back with strong words on this.

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Move Over Konfabulator

Here comes Kapsules, a freeware desktop widget engine built exclusively for the Windows system. It is built upon the Windows Scripting Technology and is reliant on the .NET framework for it’s working. While Konfabulator was earlier written for the Mac OS X System and later ported for Windows, Kapsules is exclusively designed to be used by Windows components. Check out the widgets available for Kapsules and also preview the Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets.