Punya Mishra’s Web whatnmnmn

I arrived at Bangalore (now known as Bangaluru) this afternoon. Bangaluru is known as India’s Silicon valley and this my first time here. I am here for a conference (as described here).

Incidentally, Bangalore is also on its way to becoming a word in the English language. Read the rest of this entry »

I had posted about this really cool video I recently found (see Life is about editing). Behold my surprise when one of the comments on the blog was from none other than Allee Willis (see her wikipedia page here, and personal website here). Read the rest of this entry »

A recent story in the NYTimes about Peter Gabriel (An Old Rocker Gets Digital) brought back memories of Peter Gabriel’s album covers. It tells you a lot about me that I know album covers better than I know his music!
Read the rest of this entry »

A fun and thought provoking, recursive music video by Allee Willis titled “Editing is Cool.” The video attempts to capture the process of creating this very video, from the lyrics, to the music to the special effects and so on. Denise Caruso (at Salon) quotes Allee Willis as saying, “… you can see every single stage of the song and video coming together, along with work logs and lyrics and lots more.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine you are standing in front of a bathroom mirror; how big do you think the image of your face is on the surface? And what would happen to the size of that image if you were to step steadily backward, away from the glass?

Read the rest of this entry »

An evocative image from today’s NYTimes about our improved understanding of the beautiful phenomena known as the northern lights. You can read the story here, but I would like to quote from the end of the article:
Read the rest of this entry »

I had posted earlier about a “virtual speed bump” a visual illusion that make drivers think that they were approaching a speed bump when in actuality it was just a design cleverly painted on the ground. Now here’s another one: Directions in a car park… Read the rest of this entry »

Just found out about this rather nifty tool that looks at your browser history and estimates your gender. My personal results were as follows:
Read the rest of this entry »

This is just too good to be true!

Also see here and here.

After the success of Stuff white people like, can Stuff Indians like be far behind. Check it out… it has the occasional nugget that nails Indians and their behavior.

While researching my previous post about véjà du and Abraham Wald I came across “The Back of the Napkin Blog” (a.k.a. Digital Roam). This blog is devoted to visual thinking and representation. Very cool and very interesting… well worth a visit. Turns out that there is a posting here about Abraham Wald and his WWII insight. You can read it here: The hole story, What you don’t see will kill you. You can see the author’s page here.

I learned a new term today, véjà du. As we all know (didn’t I write a posting about this earlier?) déjà vu (or paramnesia) from the French meaning “already seen” describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. It has also been called “a glitch in the matrix!

In contrast to this, a véjà du experience is about looking at a familiar situation but with fresh eyes, as if you’ve never seen it before. So if déjà vu is about making the strange look familiar, véjà du is all about making the familiar look strange! A wonderful phrase… one that makes perfect sense the moment you hear it.
Read the rest of this entry »

Mike DeSchryver sent me this video… very funny particularly if you are a typophile like me… Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know that any email sent to barackobama@Gmail.com goes to an Indian software developer! Strange but true!

I just created a personalDNA map for myself. Turns out I am a Benevolent Inventor… beats being a benevolent dictator I say! However, this posting is concerned not with what the survey found out about me but rather about what I learned about the survey. Read the rest of this entry »

I received an email out of the blue from Nikita Prokhorov, a freelance graphic designer and assistant professor of graphic design from Connecticut. Nikita runs a blog devoted ambigrams, but in a different kind of way. As the email said, the blog is “devoted to the art and process behind ambigrams. It’s not meant just to showcase ambigram work, but rather explore each artist’s individual process & approach to ambigrams.” What a great idea. Read the rest of this entry »

No explanation required …
Read the rest of this entry »

My 12 year old son, Soham, has never been into music. An MP3 player I bought for him languishes somewhere in his room. So you can imagine my surprise when, a few months ago, he indicated an interest in a song, Louis Armstrong’s What a wonderful world. So this posting is for him, two very beautiful, yet very different renditions/representations of the same song, brought to you, thanks to YouTube.
Read the rest of this entry »

A few months ago I wrote about Professor R. K. Joshi (here and here). He was, as I said in the piece, maybe the single greatest influence on my role as a teacher. I had mentioned that R.K. loved absurdity and play. I was reminded of this when I read about this group called Improv Everywhere. Check out their website and the kinds of crazy things they get into. Very cool.

R.K. often talked about similar things that he was involved in, mostly around poetry and typography. I know RK would have been pleased…

Learning through play has been an important part of my philosophy of teaching (and learning). In fact I have argued that play is far more important than games (though games have been receiving a great deal of educational interest lately). [You can read a previous posting about the relationship between play and games here.

Play in my mind (and in my teaching) if often connected with humor. As it turns out, recent research indicates that this connection has an evolutionary history. As this article argues, humor is a part of our “mammalian inheritance, and [is] closely related to rough-and-tumble social play.” Read the rest of this entry »