எனது நண்பர் திரு. சிவாபிள்ளை சமீபத்தில் ”மொழிகளுக்கான ஐரோப்பிய விருதை” பெற்றுள்ளார். அவரை பாராட்ட லண்டனிலுள்ளத் தமிழமைப்புகள் ஒரு விழாவை போன வாரம் மிகச் சிறப்பாக கொண்டாடினர். அவர்களுக்கு என் மனமார்ந்த நன்றி!

On my way back from USA, I saw this movie "Juno". I suppose this to be a hit movie b'cos in every store I went to in last 1 week in Seattle, I kept seeing tons of DVDs of this movie. It is starred by Ellen Page as a 16 year old Teen, who gets pregnant and gives away the baby for adoption. The story is about what happens during her pregnancy - how supportive her parents were on this and how the couple who are adopting the baby gets divorced before the baby's arrival. I will not rate it as a great/must see types, but certainly worth to see if someone lends you the DVD. 

I saw this documentary (Original German dubbed to English) on my Lufthansa flight (Frankfurt to Seattle) last week - imagine they having only this worthwhile to watch. Overall Lufthansa hardly had a dozen movie and absolutely no comedy TV Shows in their in-flight entertainment - it is one of the things I don't like in Lufthansa. And they don't offer a hygiene kit (toothpaste, socks, perfume) either individually (or) even have it in the rest rooms. Lufthansa, please charge one or two dollars more and offer a decent hygiene kit - with airport security and restrictions on carrying liquids and paste it is difficult for us to bring it ourselves.

OK, enough of my airline ranting, coming back to the documentary. It is a retro comedy that talks about gender differences - a mixer of biology lessons and a love story line of two couples. Acted by Benno Furmann and Jessica Schwarz. Fun to watch especially how couples fall in love, fall out and then fall back in love. Nice to watch on an airplanes while killing the time.

Footnote: Native speakers of Non-English languages, pardon my ignorance and dumb description here. When I had to type Furmann's name with the non-English U character with a dash on top, I went to Windows Character Map application to copy it. That's when I saw there are 6 different variations of U, 5 of them having a symbol on top (Tilde, Dash, Half Moon, Circle, Double quotes) and sixth one having a hook on bottom. Interesting, isn't it.

I never thought I will buy an Apple Mac as my primary PC (laptop) but I did just that today. After nearly a month of thinking, I finally bought a Macbook Air to replace my aging Sony Vaio TX57GN laptop. The machine looks irresistibly beautiful.

I bought it from the Apple Store in Bellevue Square, the whole experience was smooth. A floor person did the entire transaction from his handheld (it looked like it ran Windows CE) including Credit Card charging, signature capture. Since I have been to Apple online before, he told they had my email Id and will send me an email receipt and not waste paper by printing it. WOW that was impressive.

Now look at the cool bag (below) they gave to carry all the stuffs that I bought including the Air and its accessories.

And look at the sleek boxes (below). Simple, clean and efficient - I could open all of them with my bare hands and never needed a scissor.

I then wanted to do the envelope test with both the Macbook Air and my Sony Vaio, both passed it well. Sony Vaio going in with room to spare on the width but less impressive than the Macbook when it comes to thickness.

I started used it for 5 minutes now - will keep you posted on how it goes. One thing is sure I will install Windows Vista in this in few days

Update: After I started using it I found that the "Delete" key was stuck and not functioning properly. I visited the Apple Store at Bellevue Square, WA again and I was scheduled a time slot in the evening 4PM to meet a "Genius". The sales person simply refused to even see the machine, their argument being once sold we got to contact Apple Service over phone (or) schedule an appointment with Genius. So going for the 3rd time to the Apple store I went to the "Genius" bar, where they identified the problem to be DOA (Defect on Assembly I suppose) and promptly replaced with a new one. They said since Macbook Air is a new machinery it takes some time for the assembling machines to settle and perfect the process. Anyways, I was glad they at least changed the unit before my return trip to India.

One thing that surprised me is that the Apple Store at Bellevue Square, WA being crowded all the time. During my three visits there every time I saw around 50 people in the store. This was the first time I am seeing a computer/electronics store in a mall crowded. I guess Apple has perfected the "Consumer" magic.

If you are from India (or Asia) and you happen to visit USA, in the first few days itself you are likely to notice the amount of food (and other stuffs) that is wasted here in this country. For example, today I was in a nearby Safeway (Grocery store) and I couldn't find a small (100 Grams) pack of Potato Chips. Most of the time, it is because it is cheaper to buy in bulk, much more than what you need and throw the rest. This is encouraged by sellers, you only get everything in really big packs - whether it is socks, handkerchiefs, envelopes, pens or Coffee or Popcorn. In my many visits over last one decade to this nice country this is one thing I wish they can do without. The good thing is that in recent years there is a very slow but sure awareness growing about this, especially due to environmental concerns.

Having said the above, it is also in this country that you see many grass root movements to encourage reuse, donations, etc. It does exist, but it has to expand to general population in large. I was impressed to see few years back Used Clothes Donation Bins (like the ones you see below) in many apartment complexes and malls. They normally place these strategically near to garbage dumps so that even at the last minute before throwing people are reminded to donate and make a difference to the life of a poor. If you are India - you can donate to a near by orphanage like Udhavum Karangal and the likes, all of them accept wholeheartedly any donations.

When posting this, I remembered my grandfather's saying "Don't buy anything just because it is being sold cheap" (or) in other words "buy only what you need when you need it"

I was telling someone yesterday on why I love the new messenger control. This is the control that you see on left hand side of this page titled "Chat with me" that allows any anonymous visitor to the page to chat with me in real time when I am logged in to Live Messenger.

I love the opportunity this simple control gives me to interact with visitors around the world. I am sure they are finding this easy to use this, rather than writing a comment and it also gives them instant gratification. Today I was having an interesting conversation with an Facility Manager from Saudi Arabia on how he came across my blog (actual chat snippet below)

What I like most is the convenience of using and the control I get with this service. I don't need to sign in to yet another site or install a client application for being available for chatting. The only thing I need to do is to be signed in to my regular Live Messenger. And including this in the blog page couldn't be more easier - other than the Microsoft style of plethora of different sites you need to go before you understand it.

To include this control in your page, there are three steps.

Step 1: Enable Permission in Messenger settings page to "Show your Messenger Status on the  Web"

Step 2: Click on the "Create HTML" on the left hand navigation on the same page. In the page select the style of the control you want to display in your page

Step 3: Copy the HTML at the bottom of the page and paste it in an appropriate area in your blog page.

For more details refer to dev.live.com/messenger. But please spare yourself by not starting with this page, it takes you to a complex looking MSDN page which finally redirects you to these 3 simple steps I have said above.

In the recent months there has been good improvements in Virtual Earth's Birds eye view. One of the reasons this was possible was due to new camera used for these excellent high resolution images - Ultracamx. UltracamX is from a company (Vexcel) Microsoft acquired some time back. It supports very large image format available (216 megapixels: 14,430 pixels across track; 9,420 pixels along track) which means they do fewer flights to capture images. It has something like 13 CCD Arrays, each of them controlled by a dedicated CPU and instance of Windows CE Embedded and a 14th CPU for overall control.

I just now saw this movie on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Seattle - where I am going for MVP/RD Summit. The movie is about August Rush (played by Freddie Highmore) an orphan who loves Music more than food and runs out in search of his parents. His parents (played by Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys) are a sheltered cellist and a charismatic guitarist who get separated by accident after a single night of love and living in search of each other for 11 years. The mother herself never knew she had a boy born alive. The story is about how this boy becomes a child music prodigy performing his own composition in New York Central Park music festival and gets united with his parents at the end. The movie has some Bollywood/Kollywood like elements like the boy running into bad guys (played by Robin Williams) and always falling back into good guys. A nice to see Movie with fine background music.