We had gotten this book almost two years ago when Anika was four. While hunting for a bedtime book recently, we came across this one and was surprised to see that we enjoyed it now as much as before. Lots of big words for a 6 year old to learn, subtle humor, wonderfully imaginative. This one is a classic, somewhat similar to (and better than) the Three Tales of My Father's Dragon

Great 'little' dictionary.

Got Anika a dictionary over the weekend and was pleasantly surprised with it. Glossy pages, great illustrations to captivate a 6 year old's imagination/interest. The plan is to help improve her vocabulary, and this is proving to be a good start.

Tamil Alphabet

I've made a couple of pdfs, that I find handy for my daughter to practice writing the தமிழ் alphabet. Maybe this will help other kids trying to learn writing this fairly complex language!

• Tamil Alphabet
• உயிர்மெய் writing practice

A quick googling reveals tons of resources on learning Tamil. One that stands out is http://tamilkutti.wordpress.com/ .

Replacing your Passat's stereo

If you ever have to replace the stereo in your VW, this is an excellent YouTube video on how to get it out of the console.

Both the keys and the unit itself is available from ebay and is extremely easy to pop the old Monsoon out and slide in the new one.

Finally I can get back to listening, instead of humming along to tunes in my head :)

Replacing a T-CON Board

If your TV starts displaying images like these, it might be time to replace your T-CON (Timing Control) board.

The board itself should be available from Sony, here. An excellent reference on T-CON replacement on Sony LCDs, with part numbers, can be found here.

It took me about an hour or so, to replace it on my old Sony XBR4. Figured, I'll do a small write

up for anyone who misses vegging out to Two and Half Men, after a long day at work :). The

steps should be similar for any of the usual LCD brands, not just Sonys.

After removing the stand and the back cover, you'll probably see something like this -

A closer look...

After removing the housing ...

The trickiest part was to figure out how to remove the ribbon cables. Pull up the white tabs to unlock the connector, before removing the ribbons.

The last step is to drop in the replacement board and hook it all back up!

SniqueAway

http://www.sniqueaway.com/invite/VB

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Right after seeing Life is Beautiful last week and with Valkyrie to watch this week, picked this one up at the library. Considering the topic, a very unlikely format yet not easy to put down...

Wolfram Alpha

Interesting take.