The Superbowl Prince

The deal with San was that if I got to watch "Tamizh Padam" yesterday, she gets to watch it today. The hamster brain forgot to put Superbowl into the equation, what with the sinus headache and not being able to think through those devious details.

Was hoping to convince the girls that watching Superbowl would be a good idea, what with the great ads and all.. but they convinced me otherwise.

Big screen wall mounted 52 inch TV - 1600 bucks

Goody bag puzzles and Disney princess memory game - probably under 10 bucks

Your kids forcing you to switch Superbowl off and make you play princess games - priceless!!!!

Youtube has all the Ad's in a "rate the ads" contest. No marks for guessing what I will do after the kids go to bed..

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Responsible child

LO : Daddy, we should not waste money, right?

Me : Yes. I keep telling you two that. Why are you asking me now? (my spider sense was tingling after seeing that sincerely serious look on the little ones face!)

LO : Why don't I just stay home? You and Amma keep saying "we spend soooo much money to send you to school!". If I don't go to school you can save money, right?

Me : !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kids these days are plain dangerous. Endha puththula endha paambu irukkummnu yaarukkum theriyaadhu! (which snake lives in which hole, no one knows - is the literal translation.. but in this context it means, you cannot guess what a person is capable of by their size or looks.. ie., there is more to it than meets the eye!)

Note to self: Be very very careful with the little one, when she grows up!

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An interesting week

The temperatures dropped this week significantly. The hand which is still trying to close the gap in the bone, is feeling a lot of pain because somehow the metal pieces inside are stressing out the bone.

That has meant no sleep from 4AM to 6AM the first few days this week. Wrapping the entire arm in warm fleece blankets helped a lot.

Then the wife fell ill and between work, the kids calling me a "bad parent" and more pain in the wrist trying to exert myself, it has been a challenging week to say the least..

Going to do some camera accessory shopping tomorrow to cheer myself up.

This weeks photo homework assignment is "Bokeh" and it appears that I am way out of my league here.. Spent two hours to understand the concept (which is to highlight out of focus objects to create light patterns in the background)..

But here are some interesting results (going to work on this some more.. how they manage to get the object in the foreground in focus while still creating the shaped Bokeh is beyond me.. at least for now)

Cut out a star shaped hole on a cardboard and taped it to the focus ring..

Every point of light takes the star shape..

Notice Jr.'s eyes.. even her eyes show the star pattern (reflected from the flash).
Every light point on her necklace takes the shape of the star..

Cannot understand the physics behind it either. A flashback...

When we were going to IIT Physics coaching class, Balu Sir (god rest his soul) told us to go practice with MIR publishers book by Russian Authors "Tarasov and Tarasova" to master Geometrical Optics. There were no copies that we could get our hands on, but the platform book seller who used to have a shop at the bend near Nalli in Pondy Bazaar told me "Tarasov-aa thambi. Oru copy irukku pa.. aana Tamil copy, paravaa illiyaa?" (I have a copy kid, but it is in Tamil, you still want it?)

Two of my friends who saw me buy that book thought I was nuts. Understanding geometrical optics by reading a Russian book translated in Tamil?

Spent the next week understanding the terms for convex, concave, focus, object, image, radius of curvature etc. etc. in Tamil and figured it all out. It was actually very entertaining and rewarding.

But this Bokeh thing, beats Tarasov and Tarasova..

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The world we live in..

Remember, my old rant on Sun TV showing a violent movie to commemorate the birthday of the dude whose name was synonymous with Non-violence?

Things haven't gotten much better.

Saw this via boing-boing..

Luxury items to commemorate the life of an austere person..

Somehow, somewhere, the message is lost... way way lost!

Next thing we know, Tommy Hilfiger will come up with a leather jacket with Gandhi's spectacles as the logo and the NRA will support a new gun which will kill sooner and call it the Mahathmatic ..

It is not that far fetched.

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"Handy" helper

The little one is fantastic..

Small hands
Not turned off by flaking dry skin (which Jr. refers to as boogers!)
Willing to help daddy...

24 more hours to go.

I have never looked forward to anything like this before in a long time....

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