Deepanjan Nag's Magnum Opus

Hopped in and out of 9 trains today. A record!

Discovered today the house where Jane Austen spent the last few days of her life before dying. What a magnificent sight. Great minds need great places. I'll visit her grave soon. There is so much of history preserved in England. It’s a trait I deeply admire and envy.

I was stunned to learn today that Google will be shutting down its Google Reader. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read it. How could this be? Has Google gone insane? Why did Google have to abandon its loyal ‘reader’ users? Over the years, I’ve grown accustomed to using Reader for virtually everything technically possible – reading the news and blogs, keeping an eye on comments, house hunting, job hunting, video searching for Indian Railways…the list was limited only by my imagination. Unfortunately, RSS requires a populace that’s a little more tech savvy than the current load of iCrap fed retards. RSS fell victim to an entire generation too used to a brain-numbing social-networking and share-everything phenomenon. My heart is broken. Goodbye, Google Reader. You will be dearly missed.

Arihant slipped and fell from the bed today. What a scare it gave us. Fortunately, he wasn’t seriously hurt – thanks to the wooden and carpeted floor.

Manchester VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL       Manchester reminded me of Montreal. The tram, however, flashed images of Kolkata. Loved the ride.

Waking up to the ringing sound of an alarm is probably one of the most annoying ways to begin the day. But it really elevates to a human rights violation when you are robbed of an easy means to stop it. This morning, this was how I got violated. I’m reminded of the nostalgic days of DOS, when the GUI was only an approaching fad and computers weren’t all that graphic. Textual pleasure was reserved for the ones who actually learned the esoteric commands to get something useful done by the PC. But even the most die-hard fans of the operating system couldn’t always dodge the dreaded question at the command prompt: Abort, Retry or Ignore? I’m sure Microsoft earned a bad name from this infamous and blunt question. And since DOS was ubiquitous, tech journals sought to humor their bored readers by carrying jokes on the question. I remember one particular joke where an imagined futuristic car is just about to have an accident due of a brake failure. The dashboard pops the magic question just ...

The old lady has just won a new lease of life, thanks to an application that corrupted the .NET runtime on my Windows 7 system. I’m not fond of the new OS. Microsoft has tried too hard to merge disparate concepts into a single platform. As a first attempt, Windows 8 is commendable, but I suspect most Windows users won’t take too kindly to the forced hybridization. Windows 8 is ill suited for a desktop OS. Banishing the Start button didn’t help things either. The forceful fallback to the tablet interface is a serious annoyance. Yet, I’m happy Andromeda, seemingly on her deathbed, has sprung back into life.

Aaron Swartz was just 14 when he co-invented RSS.

This is huge. I remember his debut and a journalist asking him just before the tour if he was nervous. He answered, “Not at all!” There was something about him from the very beginning that said he was destined to be a legend. He truly was the greatest cricketer of our era. Sad to see him go. All the best, Sachin.

Pandit Ravi Shankar is no more.

The agony hasn’t receded a bit. Arihant would have loved playing with his granddad. Poor boy, he’ll never know what he has missed. Love you, Dad.

Dave Brubeck passed away today. Another legend disappears.

Had a minor scare last night. But everything’s fine now.