Does Google control my life?

I couldn't resist the title.

A couple of minutes ago, I had a panic attack as I couldn't open Google mail on my browser. The reason is that it's nearly 2 am and I am going through a draft of a book chapter I am writing with my supervisor. I am really sleepy and I am meeting her at 11am tomorrow, and I really needed to go through the reviewer's feedback to see whether I have covered all the points.

I had a similar problem yesterday and even though the problem was solved after restarting my computer, which may indicate that the problem is with my computer rather than with Google. However, it made me wonder whether I am being too dependent on Google.

I use my Google mail account to read my university mail, moderate my comments and also to read Twitter updates and Tweet (using Twitter Gadget). It's also linked to my Paypal, Amazon and eBay accounts. I also use the Google calender to manage my appointments which is shared and syncronised with my wife's. There are a few documents shared with friends via Google documents.

Besides that, I have most of my blogs hosted with Blogger (which is also owned by Google). And I am guessing that I am not the only one.

I shudder to think what would happen if Google were to shut down even for a day - there might be utter chaos in the World.

Naomi Klein wins the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing

Attended the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing ceremony yesterday evening. It was a small affair compared to other award ceremonies I have attended but I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the panellists.

The setting for the ceremony was Mead hall in the Warwick Arts Centre surrounded by some wacky art.





Naomi Klien won the £50,000 award for her controversial book 'The Shock Doctrine'.


The Shock Doctrine


Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick's Professor Nigel Thrift addressing the audience

In this book, Naomi argues against the well accepted free market policies as given by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. She also talks about a group of people who profit when disasters occurs around the World, whom she refers to as "the shock doctors".


Naomi accepting the prize


Naomi posing for the cameras

I am really proud to have been involved in the initial judging panels. It was really a tough process considering the theme this year was "complexity" and the fact that it was cross-disciplinary open to substantial pieces of writing in the English language and in any genre or form. This includes translations from other languages.

Selecting the winner for this year went through several rounds and the longlist of 20 titles came out in December last year. The list was finally whittled down to a short-list of six international titles.

Was slightly surprised because both the cover design and the title on the Amazon.com site is slightly different from the one I have. It costs £9.99 at the University book store but I got it at a special price of only £7.99 and I had it autographed by the author as well.

You can now get this International bestseller from Amazon.com

Trip to London Zoo

This was my second trip to the London Zoo. The first time was in 1982 on a school trip, along with my parents and sisters. That was around 26 years ago.

This was my son's first trip to a zoo and for his cousin, Noah as well.





The zoo's just 1.8 miles away from my sister-in-laws house and driving there took only a couple of minutes. We made the mistake of not buying the tickets at the car park and had to stand in a massive queue. Fortunately they opened up few other counters and we were in soon.






High five

I realise the Zoo is run by the Zoological Society of London, a charitable organisation but the tickets were really costly (£ 15.50 for adults and £12.50 for children above 3). Most of the animals were inside because of the cold and We didn't get to see the lions or the tapirs amongst others. I felt like we didn't get our moneys worth.




The pink girl





Any way the kids enjoyed the trip. The highlight of the trip were the Gorillas who put on a show. However, my son liked the aquarium the most. He was fascinated with the colourful fishes.



Here's the address:
ZSL London Zoo
Regent's Park
London NW1 4RY
ENGLAND

Snowfall in Coventry 09 - more pics

Some more pics of snow in Coventry. This winter is said to be the worst in 18 years. Fortunately, it seems to be getting better as we had good sunshine the whole day.


Building a snowman. Now that we have enough snow, I finally mastered the art of rolling a big snow ball.


With my two darlings. The snow clothing we bought for a ski trip that didn't happen finally came in handy


Snow on my car


Our front door


The street in front of our house


Foot steps on the snow

Facebook for birds

I came across this really interesting article on the BBC website, whereby males of a bird species called long-tailed manakins collaborate to make a particular mating spot "hot" to the female birds. One bird graciously bows out to the alpha bird but with the condition that they "inherit the mating site and become the alpha himself".

The article mentions the "Granita pact" also known as the Blair-Brown deal. Apparently, the birds in Costa Rica also have similar agreements.

It was quite funny when the way Dr McDonald of Wyoming University, describes the way Alpha males are selected. He calls it "Facebook for birds".

Read the article "Dance duet helps male birds mate".

Top Entrecard droppers for Jan 09

Entrecards are a great way to drive traffic to your blog or site. I signed up with them sometime back and traffic to my blog has increased by several times.

Every month I will list down the top Entrecard users who dropped their card on my site the most.

Here is the top 10 list for this month:

1. Blogging resource and make money online
2. Life After Work
3. a malaysian abroad
4. Emila's Illustrated Blog
5. Art By Paul Baines
6. Doi Speaks
7. Nested Universe
8. Apple iPhone Blogger
9. Buy-Tees.net T-Shirts
10. josh q. public

Thanks a lot guys.

Narrow escape in Australia for my sister

Was watching with horror the deadly bush fires that swept over parts of southern Australia and praying because my sister who lives in Melbourne was on a weekend break with her family at Chateau Yering, a winery east of Melbourne in the Yarra Valley in Victoria.

They didn't even realise the danger they had been until they saw the devastation on the way back. My brother-in-law was telling me that they smelt the smoke and had heard the fire engines but didn't think much about it as bush fires are quite common during this time of the year.

I guess they are a bit shaken but they are glad that the staff didn't tell them or they might have panicked.

Just check out the picture below and you can see how close it had been for them.


That's the place they were staying.

Read the article in The Age

Thank God they are safe.

A boy, his parents and a dog

Just received this a while from a friend. Absolutely hilarious. Got to admit, this boy has some imagination.

Click on the picture to enlarge and read.

Snowfall in Coventry Feb 09

Went to London yesterday to see my nephew Noah who just arrived on Saturday. A really cute fellow and it was amazing he was willing to let me hold him. He got on fabulously with my daughter as well. However, he became cranky later in the after noon - jet lag I guess.



While we were there it started snowing - a bit at first and then later in the evening, became a blizzard. I was quite worried and decided to drive back before it got worse. I was so worried, I didn't even get chance to say bye to Noah. It was terrible in London but as soon as we hit the M40, the weather suddenly cleared and it was Ok the rest of the way home.



Woke up this morning to find everything white. It was not that bad and I sent the kids to school. I think I made a good decision to come back instead of staying back in London yesterday because we would have been stuck there today. Apparently they had nearly a feet of snow there yesterday.