Sometimes an infinite access to almost everything with infinitesimal delay all the time, is DETRIMENTAL.

I recently saw a video about a new invention out there at the Media Lab of MIT, where a wearable device becomes your sixth-sense piping the Internet right into your day-to-day sensations.


If that were to catch up, it wouldn't be long before our children come up with new versions of classic stories, like this.
Totally shorn of emotion, thoroughly laced with information, almost like the demon of distraction took over the mind!
Take a look!

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

And, draw your own conclusions!

Rajendran.

Hi there,

Just wanted to alert you about something interesting that's happening in Chennai next week.

I have attended this workshop myself, and would happily vouch for its usefulness and effectiveness. Yes, there is a slight hint of the religious, references to the Bible, and so on, but the lectures, videos, and the group discussions that we get a chance to participate in, are really worth the time and money.

The Good Parenting Workshop is designed for Parents with kids who are 12 years and under. The presentation involves the creative use of media and drama. They've conducted the workshop at Ashraya as well as in several schools in the city.

The key topics that the Good Parenting Workshop covers are:

-  The Parenting Process
-  How to Discipline Your Kids and Still Have them Love You
-  Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child
-  Knowing Your Child's Love Language
-  Five Guaranteed Ways to Create a Brat
-  Working as a Team with Your Spouse

Their next Good Parenting Workshop is scheduled for Saturday, August 23rd from 4:15 to 9:30pm at Ashraya's Aminjikarai centre.
This is their address.
     Good Parenting Workshop
     Ashraya
     37, Nelson Manickkam Road
     Aminjikarai
     Chennai - 600 029

Or, visit this website for more details.
Click here for more details

I am not gonna let you on to how I chanced upon this interesting presentation.
Was I searching for "sexy" or was I searching for "maths"....
No. The truth might lead to expulsion from this happy community of parent bloggers!

But, nevertheless, look at what I found.
A pretty interesting presentation on how to teach math facts..
Not just by rote memory, but by a demonstration of how numbers RELATE to one another, how they are VISUALLY arranged, and why such tricks actually WORK!



No, I AM NOT ENCOURAGING that you teach / learn bags of tricks like this, no my surname is NOT Trachtenberg, nor am I am descendent of a Vedic Math guru. All I am bringing to your attention is that we need to look into how things "fall in place" in the big picture.

Frankly, I learnt all my tables till 16x16 without realizing how each individual product RELATED to the one near it!

Was visiting my brother-in-law's home last week, and had the opportunity to laze around on the sofa.
My eyes fell on the small picture book titled Cinderella, lying on the floor.
I picked it up and with a blank mind guiding an unseeing eye, flipped the pages...

His second daughter, Sneha, sneaked on to my lap and wanted to hear the story.
That was when I really paid attention to the words.
I read the story aloud, and explained the scenes to her picture by picture.

That's where I learnt about the true story behind Cinderella's name!
And, learnt too, that there is no place or time you can't learn something new, if only you keep your eyes and ears alert!

So, Cinderella is actually a "derogatory" name, mind you. A concocted, given name, to the beautiful girl by name Ella, because she was loaded with all the house chores, and was always darkened and messy because she had to tend to the cinders in the fireplace. Cinder Ella became Cinderella!!

How interesting! How cruel! How ironic?!

Sometimes, cellphone companies just outdo themselves in an effort to be different, and to drive in the advertising message subtly, deeply, (an increasingly difficult thing to do in this message-bloated world).

Sprint has come up with a cool new concept called "Wait Less" and save more time!
To accompany that message, they have a website titled waitless.org.
You can even submit timesaving tips there!

Here is a unique timesaving(?) tip, which saves more than just time, in my view!

Imagine being able to soothe a inconsolably crying baby in just a few seconds!
See this picture below!

I didn't believe it when I saw this video! (Visit this link)
You mightn't either!
But, looks like it works! And, quite scientific a reason too! Seems the baby is reminded of memories of the first water it felt! The fluids that supported it in the womb itself, no less!

My son is too old for me to try this out. Will other parents give me their thoughts?

Rajendran.

My son studies at Navadisha, a Montessori-system based school in Velachery, south of Chennai.

Today, he had a day off, thanks to the Birth Anniversary of Dr. Maria Montessori!

With grandparents not at home (visiting relatives at Bangalore), and both of us (my wife and I) tending to insatiable software mills at work, we had a tough time managing Aditya today.

Just thought will make a 'rib-tickler' ToonDoo about the scene.

Here it is.



Rajendran.

Hi,

It's been quite some time that I wrote here.
In fact, it's been quite some time since I had a bloggable interaction with my son.
Reason: I was working a bit too hard with my team to launch a cool new tool from Jambav, called ToonDoo, the Cartoon Strip Creator from Jambav.

As the potential for 'vandalism' was a much bigger threat than the usual Jambav content, we decided to spin it out as a separate entity, but I must say, the usual Jambav coolness and Flash magic is all there, the team has really excelled itself bringing it out.

The way I see it, ToonDoo is a really wonderful tool to create and sustain interest among the kids for topics that are usually boring.
Already the world over, many educational bloggers are giving a lot of praise for ToonDoo's capabilities as a tool in the classroom.
And, I am sure users will find even more interesting ways to exploit ToonDoo with students than we can ever think of.
I plan to use ToonDoo with my son by asking him to complete a ToonDoo that I made.
Let me explain:- A ToonDoo is a strip of boxes (1, 2 or 3). I plan to choose a Three-Box ToonDoo, and do only Two of them, and challenge him to select the right characters and props and think up the continuity of the scenario and complete it.



That's just ONE way I plan to use ToonDoo with my son.
I have many more. Will share them here, over time.
Do you have any other ideas?
Do write in.

Thanks.

Rajendran.

Somebody once said, "There is always one most beautiful child in this world, and every mother has it!".

I guess, it can be modified a little bit without affecting its truthfulness, to say, "There is always one World's Best Dad and every son has it!".

My dad has been role-model, friend, guide, moral shadow, and everything else a boy would look up to in his old man, and I will consider myself successful if I can do half as much, for Aditya.

Some fourteen or so years ago, when my dad's sixtieth birthday came around, I wanted to give him a special present, a gift he would remember.

I took a passport size photo of his, used it as the basis, drew up a pen sketch of him, and made a custom greeting card anointing him the Best Dad of the Century.

And, just like I expected, he loved the card, and has treasured it with him all these years, as one of the best gifts he had ever got.

Until, that is, my son set eyes upon it by chance.

Yesterday, I got a call on my phone from Aditya, who was nearly in tears. He said, he had seen the card I had given my dad, he had wanted to do a similar one for me, but he was unable to draw the face like I had done, and he started crying full-blown.

I consoled him that I would help him once I reached home, and I also told him that I was probably 22 years old when I did that, while Aditya was just six years old now, and he was already doing a splendid job as an artist, for that age. He felt a little better, I thought, and he hung up.

Later that evening, when I reached home, he greeted me proudly with a "Best Dad in the World" (which I guess is better than Best Dad of the Century!) card, and I was really taken aback at his ability to draw from an original. So much so that I asked my dad "Hey, did you help him by any chance?".

Here is the original card I made for my Dad, and the one my son made for me. These are 'thumbnails'. Click on them to see the large-size original.

The Frontpage:- (Click to enlarge)

The Inside:- (Click to enlarge)
My son's response:- (Click to enlarge)

Sachin Tendulkar once said in an interview, that Fatherhood had taught him something that decades of competitive cricket hadn't. That it was good to lose, sometimes.
I couldn't agree more.
I am not ashamed that at this age, I couldn't have done as good a job. I am in fact, proud to lose to my son.

Rajendran.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and for me, it holds special meaning because I proposed to my future wife on that very day, ten years ago.
I don't have explicit permission for it, I would otherwise quote the exact Spike Milligan poetry I used to woo her.

Anyway, my wife 'commemorated' the event by gifting me a costly sleek PDA Phone from O2, called the Stealth.

See here below!



We needed a run up though, to the event. My son had to be 'prepared' about it, and I did that by telling him the one provided by the office had gone bad, and needed to be replaced. He sounded quite okay about it.... Until that is, the brick landed home. Last evening, when he saw it in my hand, there was an instant change in his mood, he refused to eat his dinner, he refused to come and even hold it in his hand.

I tried pacifying him by inviting him to switch it on first, place it on first-time-charge, pull out the stylus, etc, that he did half-heartedly.

Later in the night, and the next morning, (that is today), my wife told me a few interactions she had had with Aditya.

• She was all praise, how mature Aditya's behavior had become! - He was trying so hard to hide the fact that he was upset because of the new phone in my hand! And, was even explicitly stating that he wasn't upset because of that, but was having a pain in his stomach, that's all... (I wondered, wow, what a way to measure maturity!)
• Last night, just before going to sleep, he had asked her, "So, who has more THINGS Mom, is it me or is it Dad?", to which she had said, "It is you, my dear, who has more THINGS". But, he had shot back with a last word-clincher, "Yeah, but it is Dad's stuff that are costly!".
• Seems today morning, he asked her why I was given a phone when I already had one. And, once Radha explained that it was only because the other temporary phone would be taken back by the company once I get a new one, he kinda subsided.

Anyway, all's well that ends well.
Today, we reached an agreement, sort of!
Aditya was the first person to switch it on.
He made the first call into the phone.
He used the stylus first.
And, he has already booked the phone, to be inherited from me, when I grow old to become a grandpa, and he goes to college. (Wonder how I will be a grandpa when he is still at college! Interesting logic these kids have!!)

Rajendran.

Jim Allchin of Microsoft, co-president of the Platforms and Services Division, is now FORMER co-president of the platforms and services division.

Yes, he retired after working for seventeen long years with the company he loved a lot.

But then, he is now moving into company he loves a lot more, too!

In his blog (probably he will move to some other blogging platform soon), he writes tongue-in-cheek, about what he looks forward to, as a typical day at home, away from work.

For the complete post, see here.

Some excerpts:-

• 7:00 AM: Breakfast with my sons. Ended up doing a product comparison review of the various cereals we had in our pantry. Sugar does beat the natural stuff and my suspicions about the impact of packaging on the post purchase experience were spot on. It turns out the box does matter.
• 7:40 AM: Kids off to school.
• 7:45 AM: Went to check email. Only two pieces.
• 7:46 AM: Checked network connection to see why I am not getting any email. Everything working perfectly.
• 8:00 AM: Went to clean up the playroom so that it’s organized for when the kids get home. Ended up building an application to sort the Legos using a SQL Server backend and a Windows Presentation Foundation front-end on Windows Vista. Can’t decide whether the primary index of the database should be color or size of the piece. While searching the web discovered that Lego means “I put together” in Latin.
• 9:30 AM: Spent 45 minutes looking around the house for the big refrigerator with the free soda just like Microsoft – was unable to find it.
• 10:15 AM: Worked on my Windows logo latch hook rug – another couple days and I’ll finish the red.
• 11:00 AM: Watched Rachel Ray – god is she engaging. Maybe she should do the launch of the next version of Windows.
• 11:30 AM: Checked mail again. No messages.
• 11:31 AM: Turned off Spam filter.
• 12:00 PM: Went out to lunch with my wife. Was surprised to see so many other people out for lunch during the week. I wonder if they have been buzzing around for all of these years that I have been in building 26.
• 1:30 PM: Went to check out the Apple store at University Village to see what all of the hype was about. Ended up demoing Windows Vista for all of the employees (and a few customers). All they could say was “Wow.” Ended up leading a group of them over to BestBuy to help them pick out new PCs with Windows Vista pre-loaded. Need to go to the Bellevue store tomorrow.
• 3:00 PM: Checked email. 150 unread messages. Unfortunately, 149 of them were spam.
• 3:10 PM: Turned Spam filter back on.
• 3:15 PM: Went to drive the afternoon carpool run. Spent 20 minutes waiting in line behind other parents whose kids weren’t even outside yet. Need to write paper about Next Generation Carpool Queuing solution (NGCQ) that integrates Windows Live Presence with the driveway scheduler. Must get appointment with school principal when it’s done.
• 4:00 PM: Home with the boys. Went to the playroom to help them build a train layout. Ended up doing interoperability test to study compatibility issues related to using Thomas trains on Brio track. Turns out while they work, the trains perform better on their native platform. Need to try Brio trains on Thomas track tomorrow.
• 4:30 PM: After a phone call with my Mom, I decided I needed to configure her account as a standard user for Windows Vista. This gives new meaning to “parental controls”, but a son has to do what a son has to do.
• 5:00 PM: Dinner with the family. After they finished asking who was this strange man sitting at the dinner table, we had a great conversation about the kids’ day. May have spent too much time asking them “how they would have done things better” and “what do they see as their key areas for growth.”
• 6:45 PM: Read kids a bedtime story. They seem to be recently interested in “chapter books.” I was amazed by how quickly they fell asleep when I read them one of my favorite classics, “The Theory of Recursive Functions and Effective Computability” by Rogers.
• 7:30 PM: Checked email. Again. No new email.
• 7:31 PM: Turned Spam filter off again.
• 8:00 PM: Went down to my music room to play my guitar. Dozed off on the couch.

It is gonna be interesting watching Jim Allchin get into some real work. ;-) Probably, Jambav should invite him to join our parenting blog community.

Rajendran.