Manmohan Singh loses his clean image with 2G scam

Here's a good article on ExpressIndia website about 2G scam: PM’s ultimate humiliation

A wasted weekend?

There were several important tasks to be done this weekend, and I didn't do any of those. I was so bored that I just whiled away the weekend doing nothing. By Sunday evening I was bored to death. Finally, in the evening Poornima and I went out to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part I. That proved to be a silver lining to the otherwise dark weekend.

Deathly Hallows - Part I was a very engrossing movie. I am a fan of Harry Potter books. I haven't enjoyed each of the Harry Potter movies equally. I liked this one was better than most others. I am glad I watched it. It would have been even better if I had watched it in IMAX.

Journalists as "Dalals"

Bad web design - 2

I am quite sensitive to user-friendliness (or unfriendliness) of software, and of web pages in particular. I am really annoyed, when I come across poorly designed web pages. I find it very surprising that even popular websites that receive crores of hits everyday make some poor design decisions. For instance, let's look at the Amazon home page. It looks clean and convenient. However there are some annoying flaws in its design.

Let's say I want to buy eBooks for my Kindle. I will have to navigate to Kindle on the LHS pane, which would open up new menu options, and the click on eBooks.



The red line shows the natural path for my cursor to navigate from Kindle to eBooks. Unfortunately, that won't work. Because the moment cursor my crosses the line into Computers & Office, Kindle menu options would close and options for Computers & Office would open up. Ugh! :-( I will have to go back, and try to follow the green path. Unfortunately for me, following the green trajectory is not as easy as designers of Amazon like to believe. I keep crossing the line into Computers & Office, or Digital Downloads, with obvious results.

I once told a friend of mine who works at Amazon (and is involved in the design of their homepage) how irritating this is. He told me many users have complained about this and other quirky features on Amazon homepage, but the company is adamant about its design, and refuses to make changes. He also narrated that many people find the absence of Sign Out link confusing. Instead they have a Not user name link. Many users (including me) find this annoying. But it seems that Amazon has some ideological belief in support of it, and refuses to listen to its customers.

When do you switch off your car stereo?

If you have traveled in private buses in India you might have noticed this - the driver switches off music or video several minutes before reaching the destination. With entertainment switched off, those last few minutes of a tiring journey become even more restless. I had always wondered why they switch off the music too soon.

Recently I have observed that the car radio becomes extremely distracting in the last few minutes of my drive. My concentration and alertness are considerably increased if the radio is switched off before I reach my destination. Even when I am driving a very familiar route, like commuting home from office, I find that it makes a big difference to my concentration if I switch off the radio a few minutes before reaching home. It seems as if I have to make greater mental effort when I am close to my destination, than in the middle of my journey. I don't know why it is so. I also don't understand why I had never realized this earlier.

Have you also observed this?

And we danced to the stars!

I had a wonderful evening yesterday. I came home after a long day at work, so hectic that I had to skip lunch. After I had my dinner, when I learnt that Vedika had been unusually peevish that day, I thought it was time for us to have some well-deserved fun.

I switched off the lights in the room and switched on the new lamp we have bought that projected stars and moon on the ceiling and walls of the room. On iPod docking station we had playing Celine Dion's "A new day has come", and then Chris de Burgh's "Lady in Red". Then I held her in my arms and we danced to the music. And all the while she stared wide-eyed at the spectacle of stars all around us!!

At 8 weeks, Vedika is the most interesting person I have ever met in my life!