Intelligent but not smart

My mother always used to tell me "you are intelligent, but not smart!" and it would usually be in the context of how my people skills lacked a certain element of "guardedness" and a track record of my faith in the fellow human being placed on the wrong beings.

Recently the kids go on a spree, pointing out why Grandma is right!

We had to do passport pictures. San did the usual diaglogue of "you have thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment. take the photos yourself" and the photo session was done. 

When it came time to print the photos, yours truly said "Hey, I can get us all the photos in one print!" and put them as a 8x10 grid and sent it off to print.

It did come out nice and we were in and out of the local pharmacy photo printer area in 5 minutes. 

Then came the realization. Instead of printing it as a 8x10 and paying upwards of 5 bucks for it, we could have made it into four 4x6's and got it for under a dollar. 

The little one is smart enough to figure this out.  Going forward, will have to include her in any of my "projects" to put the smart factor in!

Technology in action

The old external hard drive which was purchased a few years ago to have all photos, videos, etc. backed up from 2002 became full last weekend. All 300 GB of it was filled up with mostly photos and videos starting from San's baby shower till now!

That meant a hunt for a brand new drive.

Thanks to a friend who works at WD, got a nice new "portable" drive with 500 Gb space on it. The difference is just amazing. Shows you how technology just makes you go "wow".

1. Do not need to power it up separately with a power cord

2. Can carry it in my pocket

3. reasonably fast for the size and storage

4. password protected and encrypted!

Nice huh?!

Next thing we know in two years we will have a 10 Terrabit memory in a box the size of a chewing gum stick. It can happen....

I used to think that the days of memory shrinking are over. Well, the concept of memory shrinking just got one more happy customer right about now!

Also saw this interesting technology design marvel. There are designers and ergonomics experts and overall box shrinkers who play as much a part in bringing us better goodies in smaller lighter packages as the technology guys who shrink more devices into smaller microchips or put denser features on disk drives.

Hats off to all of them!

On a side note, is there a simple small timer that can be put between the wall socket and plug for say night lamps, Holiday lighting etc. to enable turning on and off the devices on a set daily/weekly schedule?

That will come in real handy for things like night lamps which are always on in darker corners of the kids room in daylight, or Christmas lighting when we are not in the house, feeding the fishes when we are not around etc.

Considering this stuff is already there in our home heating system controller and in our water sprinklers, it should be easy to put it in a "compact universal timer box" and simply be able to turn any device on or off at a programmable schedule. Might save power on our entire entertainment system.

We have a TV, a DVD player, a Satellite box, a desktop, a bunch of chargers perpetually plugged to wall sockets, etc. all powered up all the time when we don't use them. A system like that would save lot of standby power.

If you know of something like that out there, do let me know.

Technology still holds that charm for me...

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Patience Little one

Grandma is back. Tamizh comes back with Grandma because she insists on talking with the kids in Tamizh. They usually reply to her in Tamizh.

The five month grandma absence has turned the Little one to almost 100% English.

A conversation between Grandma and the Little One earlier today:

LO : This is my bow bow doggie. (the toy pooping doggie)
GM : Tamizhla sollu! (say it in Tamizh)Say "idhu ennoda poo poo doggie"
LO : This is my poo poo doggie.
GM : say it "in Tamizh"!
LO : Gives her one frustated look and goes "This is my poo poo doggie in Tamizh!"

We pretty much saw Grandma's middle stick uproot. Clean bold!

The score : Grandma out for a duck and Little one has figures of 0.1-0-0-1

Let us see how Grandma does in her second innings!

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