Here and There

There are so many things that I feel I am interested in... or want to do. Increasingly I am having a feeling that I simply dabble in many things and give them up after a short while. Not that I lost interest in most of the things... over time I find myself dabbling in those same things over and over... but without any definite structure or organization to it. So I decided not to take up anything new unless I can make a project out of it. Further... not to take more that 3 projects at a time (and this is regarding things that I do apart from work... ;-))

So here are some projects I have defined for myself:

1. Binocular messier club: To build my interest in amatuer astronomy I bought a pair of 11x56mm binoculars last December. Have being using them pretty frequently now. So now the project is to observe all the Messier objects in the Astronomy League's binocular Messier Club program. That will give some structure to my observations. It will also need a fair bit of planning and regularity in my part... which is good... I guess :-) plus I will get a binocular messier club certificate too!
   
2. The tree thing: (for lack of a better name)... a few weeks ago I picked up a field guide to north American trees at the local B&N. (No! its not the leather bound Audubon Society one... its a simple laminated pamplet kind). So the project for me is to go on short hikes around State College and get familiar with the trees. I know so few of them around here... I feel bad sometimes. When I was in India, Sampada and I had to run into a bookstore when the heavens started pouring suddenly. There I saw a really nice field guide to trees and shrubs in the Western Ghats. I wanted to buy it but it was a bit expensive and I was not gonna roam in the Sahyadris any soon in the forseeable future (if there is such a thing!). So I decided not to buy it then... but that is going to be on my project list one day! Oh! and I want to not my observations in a notebook or a sketch book.
   
3. The website thing: I have tried once in a while to put up a small website but haven't gone anywhere with that. I was talking with my friend Manish with that yesterday. Only recently I figured out how to put devanagari text on the web using unicode compatible fonts. See the main reason why I wanted to put up my website was I wanted to have many of the Marathi and a few Hindi poems that I like to be online.... which leads me to a new project
4. The poems thing: Over a while I have managed to collect a lot of my favourite Marathi, Hindi and English poems. But they are in different formats and some are just prints. So I want to put them up on the web in an orderly way. So the project is to put all the Marathi and Hindi poems in a nice format and then put them up on my website.

Actually as I am writing this I realized that there are still many more things out of which I can make similar projects. So I decided to stop at this point and just finish the projects that I have already chalked out here...

Wish me well!