May the 15th is supposed to be International Human Rights Day, and bloggers are being exhorted to blog on this topic. Too bad I only got to it at 4:10am the next day, but that’s life- work first, play later!

My take on Human Rights is that the more we have, the better. Sadly, nearly a third of the Earth’s population lives under despotic regimes, dictatorships and military juntas. Even democratic governments in several nations pay lip service to HR while mercilessly suppressing dissent and free expression thereof. As long as the masses in many of these Asian, African and Middle Eastern nations depend on their governments for handouts, poverty will render the cause of education a moot point. Poor families send their kids to work, either at home, the farm or outside. Doesn’t leave much scope for Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic, does it?

Even “advanced democracies” like the USA have their Guantanamo Bays and other Gulag-like gaols, where one is guilty unless proved innocent- a clear contravention of their own right to a fair trial and against self-incrimination. The planet has a long way to go before all its nearly 7 billion inhabitants get the full “Human Rights” repertoire.

Here’s kudos to Amnesty International and all the other organisations fighting for a change in the status quo!

Hell no, hell no, we won’t take it any more!

I’m posting this right from my browser and not WordPress to test Scribefire. It seems to be a great idea and should make it much easier to post content to blogs for most users. It got great reviews at various sites so I thought I’d try it! I’m still recovering from the massive dinner my Mom cooked up for the 8 visiting family members (mostly Mom’s cousin and her family) today! So just a short exploratory entry via Scribefire!

PS: My RD 350’s chrome parts have all come back nice and shiny from the plating shop. Next item: repainting everything that needs to be painted!

Nearly 3 years ago, I switched to a DVORAK keyboard from the lousy QWERTY system that comes standard with 99% of the world’s keyboards. I’m much faster and more accurate with this system, and have much less fatigue typing, compared to when I was using QWERTY. Try it out sometime! You may love it too! Windows, Mac and Linux systems all support this keyboard layout. Just change a few settings and swap your keyboard buttons (that was easier for me than finding an actual DVORAK keyboard out here!), and you’re on!

It’s scientifically designed to make typing easier and less of a strain, since it wasn’t designed to prevent frequently-used letter keys jamming up the old mechanical typewriters. It keeps all the frequently-used keys right in the middle row and gives equal weight to both hands while typing, unlike Qwerty keyboards.

It sucks when the de facto standard is based on a flawed design! Did you hear the one about Qwerty being so arranged so as to allow typewriter salesmen in the early 20th century type the word “typewriter” using keys arranged all on the same row on the keyboard, while demonstrating their product?

Here are a few links, including one to an excellent comic ( pdf)  that explains the difference between the keyboard systems:

http://dvzine.org/zine/pdf.html

http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/index.html

http://discovermagazine.com/1997/apr/thecurseofqwerty1099/

Yeah, at long last, and with the encouragement of my buddies, especially Roopin (the ultimate biker guy!), I got my growling old 1985 (or was it ‘86? Gotta check the docs…) Rajdoot Yamaha RD 350 2-stroke, twin-cylinder, 6-speed bike to my friend Harsha’s hardcore bike garage in Basavangudi, Bangalore. She’s been lying unused since I left her in perfect running condition back in November 1995…the year that I probably had the most fun- ever!

When I got back from the States in mid-2003, the rust spots all over her chrome were big splotches, and hearing that my old friend Satya (the “Doc” for bikers!) was no longer working on bikes but at a car/ SUV service center, I lost my enthusiasm to restore her to perfect running order. You see, no one else was allowed to touch her main mechanicals but Satya. So TMB, as she’s called due to her Madras (now Chennai) registration, sat in my back verandah at my farmhouse for another four and a half years, relatively sheltered from rain and shine…but not the insects, alas!

Hopefully this short video clip taken my my friend Shashi will upload all right. It’s my RD350 getting moved to my old buddy Sunil’s Maruti van, which Roopin and Shashi used to transport TMB to Top Gear, Harsha’s garage.

Update: somehow WordPress is saying my video is not a standard format so I can’t upload it! It’s a 3GPP video so I don’t see what the issue is…ah well, I’l try and convert the format and upload some other day!

So here we go! My first (or is it second) blog! I think I’d started one in Blogger (don’t even remember the name!) just to check it out, but reading blogs is way more fun than writing one,  I think! Heard about WordPress from some of the many tech/ geeky blogs I read daily, so thought I’d check it out! Nice work- way easier to use than Blogger and Blogspot, is my initial impression.

Some say it’s therapeutic. If so, I’m surely going to try blogging when I have something to say. Maybe I’ll link my FriendFeed or Google Reader or whatever to this blog, so that people can see what I’ve been reading or bookmarking! And hopefully some interesting (or at least readable) material will show up on this page someday!

Wait and watch, I say. Later…