The following is the text from the “Say No to UID” campaign, which seeks to oppose the Unique ID (UID) scheme of the Indian government. AN APPEAL TO CITIZENS: Eight reasons why you should oppose the UID(By Kalyani Menon Sen) The National Identification Authority of India Bill approved by the Union Cabinet on Friday has […]
Author: Payal
- Books
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The Timeless Land: The Page-99 Test
“Read page 99 of a new book,” advises the Guardian, “and you’ll know whether you want to read the whole thing.” So, of course, I had to try it out on my books. Here’s p.99 of The Timeless Land: “And you’re miserable here. Perhaps we should build a house on the Portal Road.” Jan smiled […]
- Scratchpad
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Microsoft embraces Word Press
Guess who’s going the Word Press way? No, your eyes don’t deceive — Microsoft has decided to abandon its homemade blogging platform for Windows Live Space and is going to use Word Press instead. To welcome Windows Live Space bloggers to WP, a simple migration service has been put together to allow bloggers to transfer […]
Some lame photography
Work and health (lack of it) has kept me indoors for a bit, but there was time for some experimentation with my D5000. Looks like it’s going to a long, long path to the City of Good Photos! These were taken from the rooftop of my building (click for bigger versions): And this was my […]
Some musical excitement
There was musical excitement outside my house tonight as part of the winding-down celebrations of Ganesha Chaturthi. This is a big festival in south India, and the past week or so was full of festivities, including decked-up idols carted here and there. Anyhow, I was not fast enough with my D5000, but sometimes the phone […]
DSLR joy
You are now reading the blog post of the proud owner of a Nikon D5000. Call me materialistic; remind me that possessions do not make life fulfilling; tell me that it’s what’s inside that counts… But the truth is, right now it feels pretty damn fulfilling ticking off yet another item on my Big To-Do […]
The crossover genre: Myth, reality, or does it matter?
“Crossover Fiction: Myth or Reality” was the subject of discussion at one of the panels at the Jumpstart conference organized by the German Book Office in Delhi on 20 and 21 August 2010. Moderated by Nilanjana Roy, the panelists were Dipa Chaudhuri, Samit Basu, Paro Anand and myself. A number of interesting questions arose about […]
- Scratchpad
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Burn for Mac
It’s been almost two years since MacBeth arrived, but every so often I still find myself rooting around on the Web for software. Today, I needed a decent disc burning utility. I find Mac OS X’s Disk Utility app woefully inadequate to create CDs and DVDs, and (gasp!) it was the first time I had […]
- Scratchpad
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Taking ScribeFire for a spin
I am always on the lookout for interesting blog editors, and stumbled upon ScribeFire while working on a project on Chrome extensions. This one is already quite popular in its Firefox avatar, and a Safari version exists as well. ScribeFire proved pretty simple to set up: just enter your blog’s URL and it fetches most […]
- Books
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Breaking rules
Earlier this year I wrote about my rules for writing fiction. Little did I know that a few months down the line I would be breaking Rule #4: Characters without the right name have no life. That’s right, I was convinced to change the names of major characters in The Secret of Fezar. Thus, “Kinnel” […]