“Hey Siri”

I have an axe to grind with Siri. I use Siri every day to time my yoga routine. These are short reps of 30s poses. It takes about 30 mins to complete them. I searched for a good timer a couple of times in the past and then gave them up altogether once I figured I could use Siri to set up the timer for me. On a good day, it’s all good....

<span title='2021-08-07 09:33:06 +0000 UTC'>August 7, 2021</span>&nbsp;·&nbsp;5 min&nbsp;·&nbsp;abishek

Dirk Gently

I stumbled upon this pure genius on Netflix by serendipity. And I don’t think I have laughed as much on anything else. This is the kind of absurd humour that I enjoy the most – I wonder what that says about me, sometimes. This genre is somewhat hard to find, though. For a long time, it was only the Monty Pythons that worked on this genre. Then I stumbled upon Douglas Adams and haven’t looked back since....

<span title='2020-02-26 11:29:15 +0000 UTC'>February 26, 2020</span>&nbsp;·&nbsp;2 min&nbsp;·&nbsp;abishek

SCI-FI & Humor

We recently completed all 12 seasons of the big bang theory (BBT). I loved the piece so much that I miss having them over during our dinner time. And my 4 years old son (yeah, he definitely shouldn’t be watching this one), dresses up like Sheldon on most days. Now that its over, I am kinda rewatching Friends. My go-to sitcom is Seinfeld, but Netflix seems to have run out of that one....

<span title='2020-02-06 12:12:03 +0000 UTC'>February 6, 2020</span>&nbsp;·&nbsp;3 min&nbsp;·&nbsp;abishek

Poruthaar Boomialwaar

I think I came across this phrase in school. Since I chose to study “Hindi” as my second language, I probably didn’t get to study this phrase first hand. “Poruthaar Boomialwaar”. A very powerful phrase that every kid should learn, understand and imbibe in his/her life. I told Noni that the only thing I want to teach my kid would be “delayed gratification”. I cannot say it is an uninfluenced thought, we all have heard of and seen some version of the marshmallow experiment....

<span title='2015-11-01 06:51:49 +0000 UTC'>November 1, 2015</span>&nbsp;·&nbsp;2 min&nbsp;·&nbsp;abishek

For the love of pubsub

I have fancied publish-subscribe middleware(pubsub) architectures for quite sometime. When we were still very new in CTS, I came up with a wild suggestion to try this for getting a data dump from a legacy system into our moodle instance. I was quite clueless about what this would entail in terms of development effort, but I could create a PoC setup within a few days which made me quite confident of being able to pull this off....

<span title='2015-09-19 05:23:03 +0000 UTC'>September 19, 2015</span>&nbsp;·&nbsp;4 min&nbsp;·&nbsp;abishek

iPhone 6 among other things

After a lot of deliberation, discussions, depressions, planning and meticulous budgeting, Noni convinced me to just stfu and pick up that damn device. So we did just that. I am still a little unsure whether I like the feel of the device. I love my iPhone 5 because the form factor is just about perfect for me. This is my first 4.7″ device in the last 4-5 years that I have held a smartphone....

<span title='2015-07-08 07:40:07 +0000 UTC'>July 8, 2015</span>&nbsp;·&nbsp;3 min&nbsp;·&nbsp;abishek

Mujhe Hindi maaloom hain

As I was rolling in the bed y’day night trying to sleep, I weirdly started thinking how Hindi as a language fared in my life. When I entered middle school, I had to make a choice for the second language. And my parents rightly made my choice for studying Hindi. They felt, I would anyway pickup Tamil and knowing the national language is very important. Yes. I totally agree today – besides, I am sure Hindi was simpler than Tamil....

<span title='2015-06-18 03:44:41 +0000 UTC'>June 18, 2015</span>&nbsp;·&nbsp;3 min&nbsp;·&nbsp;abishek

Cabbie – Comedian

I was in Chennai last week. I had to go out someplace and I had hired a cab since I am not very keen in driving in Chennai any more. It was a 40 minute drive one way and it was a pretty hot day. The cabbie was the only relief all along the drive although both my wife and my mom found him a tad too annoying. The man was naturally gifted at talking....

<span title='2015-05-11 09:18:00 +0000 UTC'>May 11, 2015</span>&nbsp;·&nbsp;1 min&nbsp;·&nbsp;abishek

Moov

After a period of absence, I am back to the writing board. Lot of things happening and I hope I would take some time to pen them here for future laughs. I am sure most of us have used a pain killer spray. There are a quite a few good brands out there and we usually stock one called “Moov”. We don’t use it very often, but sprays are handier than the ointment tubes....

<span title='2015-04-20 03:14:47 +0000 UTC'>April 20, 2015</span>&nbsp;·&nbsp;3 min&nbsp;·&nbsp;abishek

A Bad Joke

We were walking down to Velocity@Novena y’day evening. The subway leading to the Novena MRT felt very slippery. And I was wearing a pair of slippers. That got me thinking – how can slippers be slippery? Apart from that the sole is really worn out, but mine are quite ok. Slippers seem like a bad name for footwear; it sounds as if slippers are meant to slip, right? They should have been called something else....

<span title='2015-01-10 23:47:28 +0000 UTC'>January 10, 2015</span>&nbsp;·&nbsp;1 min&nbsp;·&nbsp;abishek