Deepanjan Nag's Magnum Opus

The one great joy that every summer vacation visit to Kolkata brought, when I was a kid, was TV. Granddad’s B&W TV was an engrossing device and I could spend hours glued to the screen without a care in the world. Though the visits to Kolkata were to ostensibly renew familial bonds, my agenda was shamelessly laid bare for all to see. Thankfully, no one seemed to mind. Doordarshan , the state-run national television channel, used to air wonderful late night flicks in those days. Now I don’t quiet remember if the credit goes to DD or leaked Bangladeshi state television airwaves, but one of the late night movies I got to see was The Time Machine , by H.G.Wells. The name sounded futuristic – just as I liked – and I was all agog to watch it. Watch I did, but the movie scared the hell out of me. So petrified was I that even after transmission ended I was too scared to get up from the couch and switch off the set. To make matters worse, I was all alone in the room as everyone else had...

I found headphones (this also implies earphones) very amusing. Why would man come up with yet another useless product that essentially miniaturized speakers far enough to make them as small as or smaller than the ear? Why would some selfish creature keep his music to himself and not share it with the world? Why would someone like wires to seemingly jut out of his head. Why would someone bother to carry the weight of a silly contraption over his head? Wanna look geeky perhaps, hmmm? I somewhat tested the waters when I chanced upon a cheap earphone costing just Rs.5. Though a 1-ear experience hardly suffices, it was more than enough for what my begged money could buy. I found it amazing that I could finally listen to music and float around in my imaginary world without bothering didi studying next to me. So headphones aren’t entirely useless, I thought. I was far from convinced though. How amazing a conventional pair of headphones could possibly sound was yet another serendipity. I ...

The newest member of our family. Best of all, it plays FLAC- the format of choice for classical music aficionados. The earphones disappoint- which expedited the order I placed yesterday: Creative Labs EP-630/A . With my iPod earphones already busted, the order had to happen anyway.

I’m just tinkering with the rudiments of JavaScript. So dear pictured lady, please don’t get carried away! ;) Inspired by The Boston Globe .

I blog straight from the heart, the direct dil se way – as Siddharth put it a few years ago. I didn’t realize it then but now I do. These are such tumultuous times that I’ve had to stop listening to my heart to keep from being adversely affected. An ill-consequence has been the abrupt silencing of my beloved blog. My thoughts are out of order and vastly incoherent - mark the semantic leap from the previous sentence and you’ll know! I hope I’m able to tide over these difficult times soon…’coz I sure miss my blog.

It’s absolutely colossal. The star attraction was the Michael Jackson remembrance show. The dancers were amazingly talented and looked stunningly beautiful. There’s so much zeal here.

Various Artists - 02 / Sheep May Graze Safely - Bach     Found at skreemr.com I had first heard this composition 13 years ago. Though the tune was hauntingly beautiful, I forgot the name of the track and was desperately looking for clues…the only thing to aid me was the composer's name which I still remembered- JS Bach, a Baroque great I’m not particularly fond of otherwise – his Brandenburg Concertos being one of the few exceptions. Listen to it and think of a pastoral landscape. The two get along very well – I give you my word.

Everything’s normal and my domain is working just fine.

Changed the MX (Mail Exchange) configuration for the mails to be unhindered. This should complete the domain name transfer.

Domain transfers are scary business! I went mad configuring and reconfiguring before pinning my suspicion on TTL (Time to Live). I accessed a proxy server to verify my doubts, and, as expected, a caching nameserver was the culprit. Peace is finally restored!

I felt a tad sad leaving India’s Garden City. (cont’d 2moro)

I’m dangerously putting off things till the very end. The only thing I don’t procrastinate is procrastination itself! Though I had promised to blog on the unlogged events that have occurred over the past few months, I failed to keep my word…but not anymore. Starting today, I’ll publish the missed posts that’ll hopefully fill the 3-month void and bring my blog up-to-date.

Installed ManicTime on my computer. It’s a great help.

Remember Ross from Friends who suddenly assumed an inexplicable British accent as a university professor? Remember further how Rachael made fun of him by placing a prank call from the fictitious Fake Accent University ? Ha! The fake accent seems to be an epidemic amongst South Asians in UK. No sooner do these guys hit the British shores and join biscuit packing factories or supermarkets in droves than they flaunt their superior air by junking their native accents at once and buying into the local one. This is not a generalization and there certainly are exceptions.

I’ve been pseudo-guilty of failing to blog regularly for over 2 months now. Next week, the abeyance meets its procrastinated death sentence. My Net access is still extremely limited, but I figured offline blogging isn’t as bad as it may seem prima facie . What’s lost in these 2 months of non-blogging is irreplaceable – not that I’m always to blame for it. I was travelling, meeting people, hitting a nostalgic high, putting up overnight next to the beach, pretending to meditate, learning to cook, getting acquainted with a new currency, acclimatizing to civilized traffic, reading maps, shopping, reading free offline tabloids in the absence of Internet access, negotiating with cunning people, reorienting towards my wife and listening to Classic FM on my radio. All this left little space for anything else…although, ironically, this was also the most fertile time to blog. My posts next week will chronicle some of the events that happened in these 2 months. The week after, normal blogging...

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It's been like this for over a week and I don't know when the connection will be restored. I'll blog as soon as possible.