Jorge Cham, author of Ph.D. Comics was at Tech for a talk, The Power of Procrastination, littered with utterly hilarious moments and clips from the comics. I’ve been following the strips for at least a couple of years now, and boy, do they capture the essence of grad life.

One of the few things Jorge said he learnt at grad school were to make PowerPoint presentations out of bullet points for any topic under the sun and be able to give a 1-hr talk on it. If he’s scheduled to make a stop at your school, sure do attend.

Meanwhile, here’s one of my favorite strips:

Imagine, three of your favorites coming together in one newsworthy item: Douglas Adams, his love for Macs, and Microsoft Word bashing. :)

On alt.fan.douglasadams, KÃ¥re today posted an article by Douglas (from MacUser) on his pet peeve about Microsoft Word (don’t we all have one … or perhaps, more?) The absence of smart quotes apparently annoyed DNA quite a bit, and it’s a humorous piece (if that wasn’t obvious from who the author was). Go read the full article.

Here’s a choice passage: it’s the bartender talking to Douglas.

"One of my regulars – chap called Fred, perhaps you know him, little wizened grey-haired fellow, about thirtyish – told me he’d been using Word 1.05 for two years before he discovered that you could search for carriage returns and tabs after all. He just thought they’d omitted it out of spite. But no, it was in there alright. It was even in the manual. Just not so as you could find it, that’s all. It was his brother Jim as discovered it. He was doing three month solitary at the time. ‘At least give me something to read,’ he pleaded with the warders."

"Heartless brutes, they gave him a Microsoft Word manual. He was a broken man at the end of it, but he did know which page the Special Characters search routines were on, as there’s not many as can say that. It’s an ill wind."

Can’t read this? Or seeing misspellings?, Photos: Sthapana, Visarjan

गणपती बाप्पा मोरया! पुढच्या वर्षी लवकर या!

आम्ही ह्या वेळी काळेवाडी मध्ये एकदम मोठ्या प्रमाणावर गणेशोत्सव साजरा केला। संपूर्ण दहा िदवस, दररोज रात्री आरत्या म्हणत, प्रसाद खात, धमाल केली। टिळकांनी महाराष्ट्रात सार्वजनिक गणेशोत्सव आणला; आम्ही तोच सण परदेशात नेला। फरक एवढाच, टिळकांनी राष्ट्रासाठी व आम्ही आपापल्या घरच्या आठवणींमुळे!

मुंबईत शोधून सापडणार नाहीत इतके हौशी लोकं इकडे असताना पूजेचं सामान, मोदक, प्रसाद, इ. इकडे सहसा मिळत नसल्याचा भास देखील झाला नाही। जे जे पाहिजे होतं ते ते कोणी ना कोणी मिळवलं। अगदी सुपारी पर्य॑त!

दररोज रात्री किमान २५ लोकं असतात आरतीला। मग प्रसाद आणि खूप गप्पा। वास्तविक सगळे जणं एकमेकाला दररोज िदवसा युनिव्हरसिटीत भेटतात, तरी आरतीनंतर कमीतकमी एक-दोन तास कोणीही निघायचं नाव घेत नाही। एकूण वातावरण पाहून वाटतच नाही की आपण महाराष्ट्रापासून सुमारे दहा हजार माईल दूर आलेलो आहोत।

लोकमान्य असते तर बघून खूष झाले असते।

It’s only occasionally that a website comes along and begs the question, “Wow, this idea is so obvious, why hadn’t someone done this already?” I stumbled across 43 Places the other day, and it’s an amazing idea, to say the least.

It’s the perfect hangout for postcard-tourists like me; there’s a million places I’d rather be at, instead of writing this blog from school on a Friday afternoon, but neither enough time nor money to permit my wanderlust. 43 Places brings together the been-there-done-thats and the wanna-go-there-and-do-thats. I already have my list made!

So, (to spin the slogan of an evil company) where do you want to go tomorrow?