Hmm.. First thing first. Among all our blog entries this elicited most number of comments.. Interesting observations have come out labeling it from abstract art to doodle to kirukkal. I am sorry to disappoint. None of these fit the bill. This represents a very simple thing. It is the flow of mouse movement on my IMac screen when i played a game of free cell !!!!!!. Now you can decide whether it is art or information.

The software to capture this was developed by Anatoly Zenkov, a Russian graphic designer and programmer. The software runs on windows as well as Macintosh . Mr Zenkov is a Russian graphic designer and programmer. More images of these type can be seen in his flickr page

The picture below is the flow of mouse on my screen when i really “kirukked’ on the touch pad using the pen from our new acquisition Bamboo touch Pad and Pen.

Is this Modern art or Digital Kolam . Guess

The archaeological survey of India true to its name adopts only archaic methods. There is a rule of the department that states that if one wants to photograph even as hobbyist , any monument under its control using a tripod, then prior approval in writing must be obtained from its Regional office which has control over that particular monument. Recently when we decided to visit Belur and Halebid We decided to approach the Bangalore office of the archaeological survey of India and obtain permission for using tripod. We were scheduled to leave for Belur on 23rd January and knowing well the way in which indian government department works, we decided to approach them on 11th January and went to their office. A lady dealing with such issues in that office told us to write a letter addressed to the Superintending Archaeologist requesting for permission to photograph using tripod stating our camera details like make etc , the dates of visit to Belur and Halebid, and purpose (Hobby). We were told that since that week there is a intervening holiday for a day, we can get the permission letter only on 18th January. It is a different matter that the office had a lot of people doing nothing and that the work involved is sending our letter to the boss (who sits in a cabin down the corridor) and he has to approve it. In other words , there is no great work involved in the process of approval. Anyway, one does not argue with government department people if he or she wants the work done. As expected the approval letter was not ready on the promised date. A couple of phone calls later and after learning that the lady dealing with issue normally comes to office only at 11.30 AM every day though office starts at 9.30 AM, We approached the boss direct and after a couple of calls ,got the approval by speed post on 22nd January. The biggest joke is that the approval letter contained the following covenant :

“This permission issued only for hobby of taking photographs
The permission is valid for 23.1.10 & 26.1.10 only
“Three copies of Publication/ colour slides will be given to the ASI free of cost. ASI will be at liberty to use the same for its own publications only. The copyright of the photographer shall duly be acknowledged either in the preface or below the material reproduced by ASI in its own publications” .

They are really true to their name, archaic. In this age of Digital Photography, they want colour slides and that too three copies free !!!!

Anyway we did not use the tripod.But the highlight is that even if we had used the tripod at Belur nobody would have bothered us.

The next one is just still better. There is small museum at Halebid run by the same department. The entrance fee is Rs.5/. Here visitors are not allowed to photograph any exhibit (stone carvings) though they are lying in a open yard exposed to all elements of nature. Inscrutable are the ways of god and the archaeology department.

The icing on the cake is captions that have been put out about each exhibit. One brilliant caption was in front of a huge stone slab . The caption ”Inscriptions“ stated the obvious.Probably nobody in the department knows to read the Kannada inscription. So we do not know what the inscriptions are. They have a created a new god also. The caption in front of one female sculpture read as ”Diety “ Probably there was a god to whom those dieting used to pray to cure obesity during Hoysala rule. Unfortunately we could not photograph ”Diety” as we are not allowed to do so.

I overheard three children (big,medium small) reading a board in front of a sculpture in Halebid. (This board was in many places) The board reads as ” Do not Touch and Damage“ The small kid read aloud ”do not Touch“ and stopped. On prompting by the eldest the middle one read ”and Damage“. The eldest then asked the mother ” Ma can i then damage without touching“

I always thought that in India, unlike some western country, citizens do not get dole. I am wrong . We have employment in government !!.

An online Sanskrit tutor developed by IIT Madras. Acharya – Learn Sanskrit through self study.

David at “Pack a Camera” warned about Wordpress spammers. Other bloggers have also sounded the alert about these hackers/spammers.

The following subscribers showed up on this blog also:

Username: MikeWink
E-mail: bugbeemershonyhe@gmail.com

Username: Andrianq
E-mail: pulvillarrac@gmail.com

I also found another curious uninvited subscriber named Heribertolsom85. What was curious? The subscriber does not show up when I go to the “User” pane. When I click “User” I see this subscriber for a fraction of a second and then he disappears!! This hacker has managed to list himself as “Administrator”. The Administrator tab says there are 2 administrators (in fact this is what alerted me, before I noticed the disappearing act above).

I kept clicking on Administrator/User several times and then quickly tried to click on the name of the interloper before it disappeared. After several attempts I managed to click on “Heribertolsom85″ before he disappeared and that led me to the “Edit User” page for Heribertolsom85.

Heribertolsom85 entered some php code for the “First name” field.  I am not familiar with php but from cursory examination I suspect this code is what kept his name from appearing when I listed users.

Code

After I removed the php code above Heribertolsom85 appeared along with other users.

Drought conditions are looming large in India now. There is much more worrying news that is coming now which does not seem to have caught the attention of many. The Grace mission (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) has found out  that in India’s north-west – including Delhi, the water table is falling by about 4cm (1.6 inches) per year. It has also come to the conclusion that climate conditions like rainfall are not the reason for this. This is mainly because of usage of ground water resources for irrigation purposes.  The farmers to irrigate the field are mining more underground water resources. Also it is stated that  irrigation rather than rain fed fields increases the yield of crops like Paddy. This once again underlines the need for a systematic implementation of rain water harvesting.

BBC article

This tribe builds bridges by growing tree roots – Cool pics and video

Jump in Sanskrit is (no kidding) झंपः.

“The Student’s Sanskrit English Dictionary”, Vaman Shivram Apte
Page 225

झंपः, झंपा A spring, jump, leap;