Online Safety Measures for Children

This article has a bunch of steps that you can take to increase the safety of your children online. One of them was to be there when they are online and I think that this would be the best way - to be in the same room when they choose to go online. Schools have their own filters in place, you need to have some at home. Feeling technically challenged is not going to help :P Have a look and take some steps if you havent already.

Source: Cool Cat Teacher's site has this and many other interesting articles. Found the link on Lifehacker.


Technorati Tags: lmog, children, online, surfing, lifehacker, safety, steps
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Esther Roshni Chandy

Dont know how I missed posting this one. It got left as a draft in my attempts at spacing out the posts.

Esther as always spoiled me silly with dinner at her place after she'd had a hard day at work. I was keenest on meeting up with her as she'll soon be moving out of Bangalore. Here are a bunch of photos of Esther, Rebecca, Philip and Gertrude or was it Griselda?? Esther help me out here I've forgotten your doggie's name.

So much hasnt changed!

Got the link to this site from an old friend Subha. There are 60 odd photographs taken between 1946-47 by American Military Personnel based in Kolkata. These have been acquired recently by the University of Pennsylvania and uploaded to their library. Thought that you guys might also enjoy them too.

Looks like a lot hasn't changed - the photographer was complaining of traffic jams - people as well as buffaloes. :D Burrabazaar and the signages. Overloading of public transportation. Makes me want to rush back home to old familiar sights! There are others of the Hooghly without the bridge. A Chowringhee square that I did not recognize and other gems. Enjoy!


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Sell by, Use by, Best before

I have so far treated all 3 as expiration dates, this article explains why they're not. The other new thing that I learnt was that the temperature of the freezer within our refrigerators is not sufficient for long term storage of food. Read more in this Business Week article on The Truth About Food Expiration Dates.


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At the Baseball Game

At the baseball game, the Oakland Athletics beat the reigning champions, the Chicago White Sox. It was a great afternoon to be at the ballpark with the family. It reminds of the times I went with my father to watch a cricket match in Chepauk and Eden Gardens. I still remmeber, Eden gardenswith great fondness. One of the most awesome sights was when you came up the stairs and the whole stadium opened out in front of you! These are times when man made structures inspire great admiration.

Art, artists and inspiration

It is a known fact that artists are inspired by the work of others - past and present. "Good artists copy, great artists steal", a quote attributed to Picasso. And why am I talking about it? Because of the recent debate about the songs in Bob Dylan's new album Modern Times having words identical to another poet from the past, Henry Timrod. Two articles that I thought you might like to read regarding this subject

Translations - Creative Copying and Originality and
The Magpie Tendencies of Genius - read the comments that follow too.

Would love to hear how you feel about it?

Reading bit by bit

Technology and gadgets seem to be taking away our leisure time instead of giving us more. Catching up on reading for pleasure seems to have taken a back seat. Here's a novel way of getting some reading done. Reading Classics that you did not manage to do in college or since.

I recently read an article on LifeHacker where the blurb said " No time to read? Email service Daily Lit sends you a bite-sized chunk of a novel to your inbox every day". This site will email you a page or so of your favorite classic to you everyday, Monday to Friday. I signed up immediately :D

It's not as if I don't have the time to read. I have a lot of time but can't seem to get around to knocking off a few from my list that have been there for years. Ones that I keep there because I still want to read them. Instead I find that I read books that catch my eye in the shop or ones recommended to me recently or whose review I have liked. As you must've gathered from the header and the excerpt, Sons and Lovers is a book that I had wanted to read when I was in school (!) and I still have not got around to it.

This book will be sent to me in 218 installments. Each will take about 5 minutes to read. And if the experiment proves successful, I shall sign on for another. Today I got my first installment. Here is an excerpt from the book.
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Sons and Lovers (1 of 218)

By D. H. LAWRENCE

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

THE EARLY MARRIED LIFE OF THE MORELS

"THE BOTTOMS" succeeded to "Hell Row". Hell Row was a block of thatched, bulging cottages that stood by the brookside on Greenhill Lane. There lived the colliers who worked in the little gin-pits two fields away. The brook ran under the alder trees, scarcely soiled by these small mines, whose coal was drawn to the surface by donkeys that plodded wearily in a circle round a gin. And all over the countryside were these same pits, some of which had been worked in the time of Charles II, the few colliers and the donkeys burrowing down like ants into the earth, making queer mounds and little black places among the corn-fields and the meadows. And the cottages of these coal-miners, in blocks and pairs here and there, together with odd farms and homes of the stockingers, straying over the parish, formed the village of Bestwood.
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Daily Lit has a selection of 93 classics, from the public domain, available for you to choose from. So whether like me you have the time or like most others life's keeping you a bit too busy and you want to catch up on some reading here's a new way to have a go at it.

You'll find quite a range of reading material from Emma, Christmas Carol to Freud's Dream Psychology all sent to you in small installments. And if on a particular day you have the time to read more or you just have to know what comes next just ask for more and you'll get the next installment sent to you immediately. You wont have to wait! I'm sure you'll find something you'd like to try out. If it works for you do let me know.