Mother Express

It was a very novel idea that rare photo exhibition on wheels came to our city. I appreciate the efforts of each and everyone involved in it. This photo appeared in The Times of India on 17^th JAN 2011 (Mon). I liked the idea.

REMEMBERING A SAINT: A man and her daughter look at a picture of Mother Teresa at the Mother Express Exhibition train in Secunderabad railway station on Sunday, 16th Jan '11

Sankranti in City

Its time that we once again go back to our cultural aspects. Festivals are the only occasions when we really get reminded of our culture. Decorated bull is a common sight in villages, but in cities, it is really a delight to see. So I have publish this photo in my Blog. . .

BULL BLESSING: Passersby stop to click the traditional Gangireddu (decorated bull), a quintessential part of Sankranti festival at Shilparamam, Madhapur, on Thursday 13 Jan ' 11. This phot appeared in The Times of India on 14^th JAN 2011 (Fri)

The 71st All-India Industrial Exhibition (Numaish)

The toy-train (running on road) in the AIIE, 2011

The 71st All-India Industrial Exhibition, popular in the Twin Cities as Numaish, was inaugurated by Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy on 01 January 2011 Saturday evening.

We (my wife, my two sons and myself) went to the exhibition yesterday 15 January 2011 Saturday. I recalled the fond memories of going round the exhibition in my childhood days. I visited every year the exhibition, right from my fourth class on wards or so, I don't remember earlier than that. Every year I eagerly await the event. It is a 46-day fair and the income generated is spent on the 18 educational institutions run by it. It is a wonderful spectacle.

The official websites of the exhibition are:

http://www.exhibitionsociety.com/aiie.html

http://www.exhibitionsociety.com/

http://www.exhibitionsociety.com/profile.html

You can get good information from the above sites. It is a must watch, if you like outing. The stuff was routine. I felt there wasn't much new, but still it has it own charm.

MONDNACHT

The following is a link of poem "Mondnacht"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFtOin38m5g

See and enjoy. Link found & sent by Frau Vasanta Krishna, II Diploma, Jan-Apr '11.

Today’s junk

This article appeared in The Times of India on 02nd Jan 2011 (Sun)

Yesterday’s gizmo is today’s junk

B Pradeep Nair | TNN

More things have changed in the last few decades than in any other period. Many commonplace utility gadgets have been dying off faster than one would have imagined. In fact, in the past few decades, a number of technologies have become so obsolete that it’s difficult to even imagine we were, once upon a time, so contended with them.
Here are five of those which have vanished without a trace:
Floppy disks | Computer CPUs had a slot where this could be inserted. Text and pictures could be copied on it and carried. It was notorious for its susceptibility to get infected by viruses that got passed on to PCs when it was inserted. The most common 3-1/2 disk had a storage capacity of 1.44MB. Now, these have been replaced by CDs, DVDs and pen-drives that have higher storage space and are easier to carry. Of course, with cloud computing catching on at a fast pace, even these face extinction.
Pager | The user had a number to which someone could send a short message via the paging company. It became very popular in the 1990s because it was the first portable communication device for the ordinary consumer. Typically the messages sent on pagers were like: “call me on (some landline number)” or “reached home” etc. Pagers soon lost out to mobile phones once they became affordable.
Valve radio | One ‘got stations’ on it by turning the tuning knobs. The concept of finetuning never existed. Like a refrigerator, a radio had its place in a house; it was too big to be portable. Often the radio used to be switched on right in the morning and switched of only when it was realized that no one was paying any attention to it. The radio also functioned as a clock — people timed their schedules with the beginning or end of popular programmes.
Gramophone plate | There was a stick-like lever that one kept over the disk so that the tiny needle at the end of that lever made contact with the invisible grooves on the disk. It then produced the favourite Mohd Rafi or Kishore Kumar numbers. There were different disks depending upon the speed of revolution (RPM for revolution per minute). The plates had their amusing offerings as well. One often heard singers mysteriously repeating the same line of a song many times, until someone realized that the needle had got stuck on the same track. So much for getting lost in a tune.
TV antennas | They were also status symbols so much so that it didn’t matter if you had a cheap black and white TV or an expensive colour one. You had graduated into the next rung of the social ladder if you had one of those antennae sticking out of your roof. It was important to get its position right. And there were no sophisticated ways to do that: there was one guy on the rooftop, and another monitoring the reception in the living room; and through a sequence of ‘yes-no’, the final position was arrived at.