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Advice from Tal Ben-Shahar, who teaches a Harvard class “Positive Psychology”, or how to get happy. 1. Give yourself permission to be human. When we accept emotions – such as fear, sadness, or anxiety – as natural, we are more likely to overcome them. Rejecting our emotions, positive or negative, leads to frustration and unhappiness. 2. Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable. When this is not feasible, make sure you have happiness boosters, moments throughout the week that provide you with both pleasure and meaning. ...

Calvin and Hobbes in Chennai. The posts between 10-13 March 2006 have (pretty good) doodles of Calvin & Hobbes eating idli and visiting the Marina beach. Comments Doodler 1 Apr 2006 5:11 pm: :) hi anand..great blog with something new everyday!well am frm infy too..do u blog in the infy blog? S Anand 1 Apr 2006 7:20 pm: Wow, you’re from Infy? Amazing cartoons you had there. My Infy ID is subramanian_anand. Drop me a line, if you can?

My Calvin and Hobbes index is current up to June 1993. Two-and-a-half years left to complete.

Good guidelines on improving pagerank. via LazyGeek

New from Google: Google Finance, and Google Mars. Comments Sathya 22 Mar 2006 8:30 am: Welcome Back !

I am on vacation, and probably won’t update until 20th March 2006. Comments Madhu 20 Feb 2006 10:04 am: Happy Holidays:) Sai 22 Feb 2006 4:58 pm: The new colour looks better! Krishna Shirali 8 Mar 2006 10:10 am: Have a relaxed time PP 14 Mar 2006 10:48 am: Simpler; better. ravi 21 Mar 2006 2:30 pm: looking forward to hear ur holiday escapades

Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine implemented in Lego.

Americans have more leisure time than before. But why do Americans feel so harried? Weirdly, prosperity may be to blame in two ways. First, thanks to rising real incomes, an American’s time is worth more now. A walk in the park is more expensive than it used to be. (When people complain to him about being too busy, Mr Hamermesh tells them that their real problem is too much money.) ...

Hikaru Dodorango is a trend in Japan to polish balls of mud until they shine. More on Hikaru Dodorango.

I’ve changed the site layout and some code behind it. Weird bugs are likely – so do let me know of any that you find. Comments ritzkini 4 Feb 2006 12:07 pm: No…no..no..first up: look not great..too much light blue..i dunno..my 2 cents..:-) jake 5 Feb 2006 7:36 am: yup. looks more like ..candy. the thick blue bars.

My hard drive is experiencing some strange noises but I am unsure if the drive is failing. How can I determine if the noises are due to a failing hard drive? By listening to hard disk noises – available as mp3s.

Inspiration - not motivation - for writing. Comments Madhu 29 Jan 2006 12:26 pm: Forget writing, sometimes it even difficult to find inspiration for working(not motivation)! Chitra 3 Feb 2006 10:04 am: He he too good !!

O’Reilly hacks.

Web design patterns.

Cats are fooled by HDTV. Our cat tends to ignore normal TV completely. Guess HDTV looks real enough. Comments Dhar 19 Jan 2006 2:29 pm: I see you have given Ender’s Game 5 stars. Have you read Dune? You might like that too. S Anand 20 Jan 2006 11:59 am: I HAVE read Dune. Thought it was quite different, but I didn’t like it as much as Ender’s Game, though. I started off on Dragonlance, but gave up mid-way. Now I’m reading Terry Pratchett. SP 23 Jan 2006 4:13 pm: For more than one reason, i dont like Terry Pratchett, though I have read a lot of his books.. Always feel he’s ripped off Tolkien. Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, Dune are all pretty good. S Anand 23 Jan 2006 9:46 pm: Haven’t tried the Dark Tower series. Will give that a shot. Dhar 24 Jan 2006 3:12 am: Errr… Pratchett’s books are a work of parody. I wouldn’t be too surprised to find passages which seem to be “lifted” out of works of Tolkien and others… S Anand 24 Jan 2006 5:44 pm: Haven’t read enough to spot lifted passages… let me see I can spot them :-) Dhar 25 Jan 2006 8:45 am: Check the Annotated Terry Pratchett file.

Apparantly, it doesn’t matter where you put a dot in your gmail address.

Best of Google video.

Hacking wireless networks. How to get access to secure networks, and how to see what others are doing on their wireless networks. Comments Arun 18 Jan 2006 4:56 am: Anand, can you recommend a few good podcasts you listen to? S Anand 20 Jan 2006 12:01 pm: I don’t listen to podcasts, I’m afraid! Trains are too noisy, don’t like using headphones at office, and prefer watching movies at home. So effectively no place for podcasts :-) Arun 20 Jan 2006 3:09 pm: Oh..ok..Somehow I thought you had made some post about listening to podcasts on trains sometime ago. Guess it must have been some other blog. Or I must have been dreaming :-) S Anand 20 Jan 2006 6:32 pm: No, you’re right. That was in July, when I was commuting OVER the ground, where there’s less noise. Now I commute UNDERground, and can’t hear anything, so I’d given up soon after I started.

US Zip Codes Map. Type in the ZIP code, and interactively see which areas it maps to.

Boot up Windows before you log in.