Books

Professor O L Nagabushana Swamy had translated Rilke's "Letters To A Young Poet" to Kannada. This came as a book last week, titled "ಯುವಕವಿಗೆ ಬರೆದ ಪತ್ರಗಳು" at Gandhi Sahithya Sangha, Malleshwaram. I usually stay away from public events, but this one was an exception.

Rashtrakavi G S S was there, and so were several familiar faces. I also got a chance to meet several members from Sampada community. Savitha has logged the event on Sampada, and so has Avadhi, with pictures.

I finally got my copy of Pro Drupal Development yesterday. Drupal has changed lives of many in past several years, and mine isn't different. It was not just the curiosity about what's in the book that made me buy it, but also the opportunity the book provides in filling gaps of what you might have overlooked in hurry.

I've been reading through the book whenever I've had time for past one day. The book looks well structured and simple. More about the book once I'm done reading it completely.

The final book in the Harry Potter series was the best of all. Mystery, magic, twists and turns - they were all there but with much more intensity.

By the time I got my pre-ordered copy this morning at Strand Book stall, I had already finished reading the complete book. (There were people of all age buying their copies there, and some girls were sitting on the steps that greet you on entering the book house and were trying to start with the book there. I could chuckle and boast to the friend who accompanied me that I knew how it all ends). Saturday seemed far far away when copies were floating around on the Internet several days back and it seemed unfair to keep waiting until the pre-ordered book shipped, to find out what happened next!

The book took away an evening's work and a night's sleep as I had no time otherwise to read it. But this one was quite worth it as J K Rowling recreates in it the magical world that she's made us familiar, narrates it in a simple way, streams your imagination and keeps you guessing all the way through to the end of the book.

The story is well crafted and well thought of. The plot keeps thickening and it races your mind through right to the end of the story. A gripping read as ever.

As for the story, there were some surprises, there were some predictable twists. But on the whole the story (I must say yet again) seemed very well crafted.

Finally, something we had planned for a long time now has been getting its shape. [:http://sampada.net/docs/2898/the_best_of_sampada|Best of 'Sampada'] is a book that you can read on-line comprising of the very best Kannada articles posted during last two years on Sampada.

All articles have been classified under the taxonomies they were tagged in. Feedback, suggestions for improvement [:http://sampada.net/contact|are all welcome].

More books like this one on Sampada [:http://sampada.net/books|can be found here].

[:http://dli.iiit.ac.in/|Digital Library of India] has been unveiled, but with a shocker of an interface. But not much can be expected out of a "Government of India" project, as they always manage to find just the right technologies (or people?) for their job (Why, e-governance in India is all ready to go Microsoft's way. When M$ boasts riches, we can all show our kids its logo and say that our government of poor people is one of their key customers).

They use TIFF format for image scans of thousands of books probably from libraries all over India. There are two petty interfaces which need you to download a software to be able to view. The software, in turn, needs to be registered to be able to use.

Last month, it was the [:http://ildc.gov.in/Kannada/kdownload.htm|disappointing set of tools] released by TDIL, and this month, the DLI. Not to mention, the projects are obviously worth a lot, but shabbily done. Idea seems to be right, but implementation has been terribly bad.

A Quick Script

To overcome the toil between interest for books on DLI (which otherwise are not easily available) and the irritation of shabby interface, I wrote a (shabby) script that batch downloads the TIFFs.

Watch out! Another addition to the legendary Asterix series is coming up soon. In this month's 'The Asterix Missive N° 45', DoubleClix (the chief editor of the newsletter) wrote that Uderzo is all ready with this new album, scheduled to be released on the October 13th midnight.

Though the trademark Goscinny humor is missing from the latest editions, they still make me remember the Asterix adventures of the old times, the ones I used to read as a kid. Later editions have seen some significant changes (like the fashion show in the 'Asterix and the Secret weapon' and introduction of Asterix and Obelix's dad and mom in 'Asterix and the Actress') in the story lines which took some fun and the nostalgic touch away. The ardent fans of Asterix would surely get a feeling that the story lines in the recent albums have been pretty loosely woven and lack the original humor that was there in the old, classic ones. Let us hope the latest one would be much different than its recent predecessors.

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