Foreign Languages are Funny

Newlyweds

Newlyweds
Originally uploaded by chintanamin.

Family weddings are so fun. This weekend, we had a great time at my cousin Shan's wedding in New Jersey. Here's a picture of the four of us, all newlyweds!

Louvre Revelations at the High Museum

The High Museum is exhibiting a bevy of works from its sister museum, the world-famous Louvre. And the show is apparently bringing new insight to works by some of the masters:

When workers at the High Museum of Art uncrated a famous painting by Rembrandt for the upcoming Louvre Atlanta exhibit, curator David Brenneman was astonished at what he saw. The High's new light-filled galleries illuminated something in "Saint Matthew and the Angel" he'd never noticed before, even when he'd carefully viewed the 1661 painting at its home in Paris' Louvre museum: The angel has a wing. It was a detail unseen even when the piece traveled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington last year, where the museum's online catalog read: "Rembrandt humanized the spiritual inspiration that guided Matthew by painting the angel as a young boy, without wings."

WaPo on Transnational Desis

The Post covers the phenomenon of (legal) border-hoppiing Indian immmigrants in today's edition. My parents may someday add themselves to this phenomenon, as they keep threatening to move to India for part of the year. I can understand why - living there is much cheaper than living here, and they already own a flat outright. On the other hand, when I have a couple of kids, their song may change.

The Post article describes the phenomenon, and speculates as to its causes and ramifications:

In an era of webcams and discount airfares that help expatriates keep close ties to their homelands, researchers say Indians retain some of the closest, thanks in part to Indian media, which are particularly pervasive around the globe.

But few other immigrants live such "transnational" lives -- yet, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute at the New York University School of Law.

"Living in two places is going to be more of a phenomenon than we've seen in the past," Chishti said. "It raises, obviously, the very difficult question, a social and psychological question: What becomes home?"

They Love Boys...

Who knew that the GOP had an active NAMBLA wing? To start, Dennis Hastert and John A. Boehner did.

Trader Joe's Midtown Atlanta

has finally made TJ's coming soon list. In fact, the facade is almost done at the Midtown Promanade shopping center, former home of the sketchtastic Save-Rite store. I'm as excited as a little girl. Really.

Colbert on Macaca

My Own iTV Experiment...

Yesterday, I hooked up our new MacBook to the second HDMI input on the plasma (I knew I needed a second digital input!) for the first time.

I just watched the Illinois-Louisville Final Four game, which I had downloaded from IlliniTorrent and transcoded to H.264 MPEG-4. The video was streamed from my G5 PowerMac to my MacBook in 480p over my Airport network. It was just a test, to see how well this all works.

Bottom Line: If the iTV is even close to my little experiment in quality and experience as the experiment, it's going to be a success.

There was more than enough bandwidth to FF/REW without buffer lag and I was able to watch the whole thing without any sort of clunkiness. This is over a 801.11g network. Imagine if Apple installs 801.11n hardware into the thing (which is probably why Apple is delaying the thing anyway). You're looking at 720p (or better) movies that you own, streamed over a home network to a STB attached to your projector or TV.

:drool

In Trial Prep Mode

so updates will be few and far between for the next ten days. But check this out.

Awwww....Snap!

PC Magazine's laptop and desktop reliability studies are in....

Desktop:

Look no further than Apple, the leader of the pack, whose overall score holds steady at 9.1. Last year, Apple's score on units needing repair was an impressive 11 percent—well below that of any other company in the survey. But according to readers, the company has managed to cut repair rates even further over the past 12 months. This year, Apple's score on units needing repair drops to 8 percent. Among first-year systems, it's only 5 percent. That's nothing less than astonishing.

As we've said in the past, Mac owners are unusually passionate about their machines, and this may have had an effect on the company's unusually high Service and Reliability scores. But the score for percentage needing repair is less subjective than others. Either Apple is doing something right when it comes to quality control, or its restrictive warranty makes people less likely to have their systems repaired.

Just how satisfied are Mac owners? That 9.1 overall score is significantly better than the average for Windows PCs. And the same can be said of the company's scores for reliability and the likelihood of recommending. It should be noted, however, that Apple's score on technical support is down this year (from 8.4 to 8.1).

Laptop:

Why do we separate notebooks from desktops? Well, in terms of service and reliability, the best desktop companies don't always manufacture the best notebook computers, and vice versa. Yes, Apple gets it right on both counts. This year, yet again, the Mac is a Readers' Choice for notebooks as well as desktops. But the other Readers' Choice for notebooks, Lenovo/IBM, receives some of the lowest desktop scores. And Sony, so ­impressive on the desktop side, is merely aver­age when it comes to notebooks.

...

Once again, Apple is at the top. Its overall score, 9.1, is significantly better than the average for Windows notebooks—and a full seven-tenths of a point better than Lenovo's overall score, 8.4. Its scores for reliability (9.2), tech support (8.5), and likelihood of recommending (9.4) are also significantly better than average. Yes, its score on percentage needing repair is merely average, but at 16 percent, it's the lowest of the survey (alongside Sony's 16 percent).

Is this a function of that unique passion Apple users have for the company's products? Perhaps. But, again, it's hard to question the number of units needing repair. Among first-year systems, only 7 percent needed repair—2 points better than Sony.