Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

This Week I Learned -  * Articles on docs.microsoft.com now redirect to learn.microsoft.com  *  JSON Crack generates graph diagrams from JSON files and makes them easy to read. * Ujaval Gandhi has shared the full course material for " Mapping and Data Visualization with Python ", a comprehensive guide for creating static and dynamic visualizations with spatial data. *  AI4Bharat was set up as an initiative of IIT Madras to build open-source language AI for Indian languages. * There is a tradition in China of  zhuansong, or re-gifting . It may be regarded as vulgar in other cultures, but in China re-gifting is widely seen as a compliment, enhancing the status of both the giver and the recipient.  * Mango is the national fruit of the Philippines. * Nightingale is Iran's national bird * Barley's glycemic index score of 28 is the lowest of all grains. Millets have a low glycemic index, ranging from 54 to 68 in Foxtail Millet (Italian Millet, Kangni / Kakum i...

Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014) provides a 'big picture' approach to human history.  Sapiens has been reimagined in a graphic novel in collaboration with comics artists David Vandermeulen and Daniel Casanave. The comic format makes the content accessible to a wider audience. Yuval says historians don't usually talk about physics, chemistry and biology but human history is actually a direct continuation of physics, chemistry and biology.  The unique storytelling approach in the books blending different subject areas makes for a fascinating read. The graphic novel makes  you forget that you are consuming scientific facts . Sapiens: A Graphic History will be published in four volumes. The first two are currently available - Volume 1 – The Birth of Humankind   Volume 2: The Pillars of Civilization The information presented is equally distributed among the characters: Professor Saraswati speaks only on biology and zoology, Father Klüg dea...

The following Org Chart comic was drawn by Manu Cornet and appeared in The New York Times in 2011. Cornet is a French programmer, cartoonist, writer and musician. Cornet worked at Google from 2007 until 2021. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft acknowledged the drawing thus in his book 'Hit Refresh' -"A cartoonist drew the Microsoft organization chart as warring gangs, each pointing a gun at another. The humorist's message was impossible to ignore [...] I told employees that renewing our company’s culture would be my highest priority." Popular LinkedIn contributor Alex Xu asked after how relevant is the drawing after more than 10 years and current and past employees of those companies have responded with their experiences .