Coolest reception

 

Rental car chauffeurs waiting for some software company employees. No marks for guessing the name of the company :)

International Mother Language Day is back and being celebrated with a lunar eclipse

For starters it doesn't include C++ or C#, even though your mom codes in it :) ...

A lot of people speaking English natively forget the importance of mother language due to its predominance. They take their language for granted. However, each year a bunch of languages become extinct, the latest being Eyak, which got extinct exactly a month ago with the death of Marie Smith Jones the last native Eyak speaking person.

To me this day (21st Feb) is even more special because on this day in 1952 people in Bangladesh laid down their lives while demanding the right to use their own (and mine) mother language, Bangla.

I believe that if we don't actively try to preserve our mother language they will slowly become extinct. One of the most important things to preserve a language is to ensure that they are better covered by technology. Until XP complex script handling was not enabled by default. This resulted in Bangla and other Indic language to be rendered completely wrong on XP. This was a serious deterrent to use Bangla on Windows. I used to have Bangla signature in my email and got countless replies indicating the spelling is wrong. I always replied back to them about how to turn the complex script handling on. Things are changing rapidly, Vista has this on by default and with better keyboard and font support I'm sure using Bangla on Computers will become really easy.

Linked on the msdn forum for all the wrong reasons

Someone saw a message in their Team Foundation Server history which was "Edited by God" and asked how is this possible on the msdn forum. Someone actual read my blog (or some other's but I tend to believe mine 'cause I'm linked in that page)  which shows exactly how to do that. So now I have a poor-joke (PJ) of mine being featured in msdn :)

For the last couple of days a vast majority of the movie that I'm seeing is somehow landing in Africa. Since I didn't choose any of them (Amit did), it wasn't a conscious decision. Example include The Interpreter, Blood Diamond, Duma.

In all of these movies African music is used in the background, and I've began to like them a lot. I have no idea about the tribe/nationality of these but the sound is just enchanting. Any idea where I can get some good original African music on the web? Buying is also an option if Indian stores/sites have them (which I heavily doubt).

Update: A comprehensive list from someone who obviously knows a lot more about this, link