Author: Tarique Sani

New Delhi girls are more pretty than those in Chennai, Bangalore or Mumbai (in that order)

Came back today morning 4 am with lots of pictures, memories, sweets, sore throat and a fever. Rushed right back to celebrate Bakr Id.

The fever is down but the body ache is killing. Hope to be better by tomorrow. Have optimized the wedding pictures for the web but they still amount to 16Mb (169 total) I don’t think all of them will be uploaded today.

Been wondering if to write a detailed account of the wedding or just let the 169000 words speak for themselves… …

We leave in an hour or so I think (basically will get up when Swati hollers) Will be back on Wednesday morning and hopefully I will have a lot of pictures of a typical north Indian wedding rigmarole.

Morning me and Swati were talking how nice it would be if we had jobs instead of our own business – right now instead of trying to tie a hundred dispartate things together I would be happily just waiting for the journey to begin and not have a care… …

I signed up for an RPG which begins this weekend – hope they don’t kill off my character before I return.

May be I shouldn’t have … …

Thankfully Swati’s asthma and allergies are all under control since we made qt the official *Office Cat* she stays in the office and is not allowed inside the house. qt doesn’t mind it because she gets to sleep undisturbed in the office.

Me: So how long will it take to finish
Geek: 6 weeks
Me: OK I will quote 8 weeks
Geek: Hmm… make it 9 weeks.

This is a real life conversation between me and my senior programmer. While at first glance it might seem funny BUT is in fact a reality of estimating release dates and scheduling software projects.

We learned it the hard way but those interested can read up this and this

Tomorrow we leave for Delhi to attend a marriage. Aasim is all excited that he will be traveling by train and also that his mama (thats mother’s brother in Hindi) is getting married. Aasim has a special status as he is the only child of this generation in her family

Swati tried out her payals and dresses today had taken some pictures but most of them did not turn out too well. She might post them if she has time… ….

Another review of my book, this time at Linux Journal (huh? it is there in the URL;)

I am pleased with this review because this is the first one which mentions specifically the topics I wrote on.

Hmmm… but the royalty checks tell some other story unless I am being short changed by WROX

Sam Verma, an NRI from nearby town of Betul, touched down in his 4 seater plane at Nagpur,Sonegoan, airport sometime yesterday morning.

There were two things which excite me about this seemingly routine travel of a rich bussiness man.

1) The plane he was flying was indegenously assembled
2) The plane used a bio-fuel derived from agricultural waste – basically ethanol

According to reports he wants to assemble and sell such planes in India. The planes would be priced as much as a small car.

Have managed to lay my hands on two more of the Star Wars novels and “The book of lost tales” by JRRT

But before reading those I plan to, like , re-read the four Robot novels by Issac Asimov. On a similar note I also saw a Foundation novel which has not been written by Asimov but approved by the Asimov foundation – did not pick it up as I was not sure.

Yesterday, or was it day before… anyway… Took some pictures in the garden to get the texture of leaves of various plants. Here are the results.

Another weekend – am not planning anything for tommorow – since past four week every time I did that something or the other turned up 🙁

Want to experiment with backlighting one of these days… …

I thought that the original did not do proper justice

Had a few minutes to spare this morning and made this, a 640×480 version is here

A lot of friends took the Which OS you are quiz. The most common result seems to be Palm OS 🙂

Hmm… … There are still some whose results I would like to see 😉

Java still sux – If I have to pass a series of commands to runtime I have to first get its outputStream and then write to it!!!

Continuing on the on everything is irrelevant theme – The price you pay to be “in style”

Thong underwear: Vaginal and urinary tract infections
Tight pants: Low sperm count, rash, infection
Body piercing, tattooing: Hepatitis C transmission and other infections, allergy trigger
High-heel shoes: Foot, knee and back problems
Big shoulder bags: Shoulder and back problems
Corsets: Fainting, shortness of breath, atrophy of the back muscles
Fashion magazines: Poor body image, eating disorders

From: https://www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs/amnews/pick_02/hlsc0805.htm

Things on Aasim’s front are clearing out and though the problem is wider in scope than we expected it is not too serious. The teachers have been very helpful and understanding. Aasim like so many other children in his class is getting affected by the behavior of a few in his class. Unfortunately the teachers could not see it because these few were girls!!!

Talk of being presumptuous. Also, teachers admit that the pressure on children has increased a wee bit lately.

Yeah! worries never stop the motor of this world, so I have been indeed been reading a few things. PHP has had an ncurses extension for some time now but I never really experimented with it as it was very rough round the edges but looks like it has matured now. Interested in making console bases ncurses application written in PHP? Take a look at this tutorial here

Also read up on some techniques to digitally colorize black and white pictures, GIMP, Paintshop, Photopaint will work in any decent image editing software.

Which OS are You?

Went out and got some clothes for Swati. Of course her money (I don’t have any personal wealth) BUT it makes me feel good to select clothes for her.

Aasim was fine throughout the day BUT then at the end of the day he wet his pants… … something he has not done in, can’t remember how long. This time we decided to just not react to it except saying “no probs, lets change your pants”

A talk with the teachers revealed that in general there has been a rash of similar episodes from other children lately. Makes me wonder if it is something pressurizing the kids in school… …

Also would like to figure out if this is a reaction to being denied certain things. Like in the evening it could have been that Dinesh (our office odd job) was not allowed to go to skating with him… …

In other news welcome nandinit Swati’s friend from Mumbai hostel days. I remember her as a feisty girl-woman. Looks like she still remains the same
Disclaimer: have not seen OR met her in 10 years or so….