A few days back came across a book reading session by an author at a nearby bookstore. The author turns out to be a Facebook friend and fellow blogger Amit Haralalka. Lately this is happening so often.

Another friend of mine Ankesh Kothari co-published Strategy Daddy sometime back. Its really surprising for me, cause for some reason I and probably others along with me tend to allot 'writing books' to other more older folk. Blogging is great... but actually writing a book.. naah!

Sahil Parikh, I have worked with at DeskAway recently published his book The Saas Edge and I have been seeing blogs and book reading sessions for the book all around the place! In fact I actually helped him with some data research for it!

So lately even I have been thinking of writing a book. For us bloggers its actually quite simple cause we can just blog it and then publish it. Saves all the tension of 'writing a book'!

Let me know if anyone can help me publish the book, I already have some ideas for it. ;)

Apart from that this is one more impact of social media where you start seeing so many other achievers that it inspires and actually makes you think 'hey maybe I can do that'! Its the same way I feel when I meet all those teen rockstars who have their companies going while they are yet in junior college!

After my last post on The 99 an Islamic comic book, I came across some really cool comic strips. They seem to be made by amateurs or hobbyists and hence range from whacky, weird, creepy to realistic, insightful and sometimes all mixed into one. :D

1. CAD Comic: (CAD stands for CTRL+ALT+DEL)
This is an amazing comic strip, the first time I landed here I spent 45 minutes straight, reading from the 1st strip onwards! Currently the story is where a wife gets angry with her husband cause he made a female android :D

2. Cyanide & Happiness: This is a comic strip with some weird humor. Its not funny more like gruesome which is kinda funny. Er, well... check it out. You MIGHT like it.


3. Fly you fools: This one is based in India, its really good spoof at social situations in India. I find it really captures the Indian scene well, like the one below which talks about biases against other city guys. I really agree with that Mumbai lady who goes to Delhi, I mean the reputation of Delhi local men is really bad!! Awesome comics!

4. Life's a comic strip: A blog by a fellow twitterer, has comic strips about recent political, local matters in India made on toondoo. Toondoo is where anyone can go and make a fairly good comic strip, try it out!


Also check out my comic strip I made for time pass on Toondoo

Let me know your favourite comics!
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Sometime back I came across an Islamic superhero comic story and was really piqued by it. It is called 'The 99', there are or there will be as the story proceeds 99 heroes 'to save the world'. :)
Save the world sounds cliche but come on what are superheroes supposed to do otherwise :D

Actually I really like the idea of an Islamic comic strip because I think that is a great way to allow kids to not get all confused about their culture. I know cause when I was a kid, I grew up reading Enid Blyton's, Nancy Drew's and Hardy Boys. I got more excited with Christmas than Diwali.
This excitement was increased because I was in a convent school, we were told stories about Jesus, carol singing etc umpteen number of times. So I actually identified more with Christmas than Diwali. (Lets not even talk about any Jain important days)

It was only later a few years back when I really started looking at Indian culture and appreciating Hinduism, our history of yoga and other stuff. Only now I am looking at Jainism with some depth.

So bringing in comics with the appropriate culture would really go a long way in avoiding lot of confusion that kids can go through due to the obvious western infiltration of media, entertainment in developing countries with often conflicting cultural and traditional values.

This post became deeper than planned.

Check out The 99 website, they have a comic to download freely, the rest have to be bought.

It was a good read, I found the English a little fumbly, but that might be because it was not western. Sentences like "Their plan was borne of desperation, but also of perspiration ... and ultimately of inspiration" :D
I can't imagine any western serial or comic having a line like this!

Spoiler:
Its a good read, the initial bit like the 'where it all begins' bit is too long, but then the story does become an interesting read. I wonder why they chose the first of the 99 to be a "hulk" called Jabbar? Isn't that done before already.
The story is good, about the 99 gem stones, but the story of how the 99 are found and who they are can be much more creative.

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Just had a really interesting lecture under "Intro to Journalism", one of the things in the journalism and mass communications course I am doing is that many of the lectures get really interesting and naturally digress from topic! :D

So this lecture I am going to talk about was one of them. One of the writers that came up was a Rudolf Flesch (wiki him) who wrote a book called The Art of Readable Writing. A few things he advocates is

• words with fewer syllables
• smaller sentences

I think this is very relevant for anyone who wants to be communications-friendly. I think this is a book worth checking out.
More Later...

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Just yesterday in our Mass Communication Lec we were discussing Ayn Rand and how her books brought almost a revolution into many people's lives. I read Atlas Shrugged and FountainHead when I was about eighteen and I remember how much impact it had.
I find those thoughts too extreme but there are many things that can be gleaned from it. From my perspective the world she envisioned was free of corruption and politics and more based on one's capabilities which I think is Utopian. However her work includes a lot of self glorification and in Atlas Shrugged especially the people with John Gault are shown to be natural geniuses in some field. I don't know how far that is true. Or maybe it was the other way around and only the geniuses thought about leaving.
Whichever way I feel that people have both sides to them. Everyone has a natural tendency towards corruption, favouritism and bias. It is an individuals call to grow and expand his/her horizon to be able to be fair in one's opinions and thoughts from which his action would bear just fruits.
This post has become kind of philosophical :)