Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Realizing reality – Part II

(You will need to read the first part to follow the chain of thought)

The danger in all this of course is the way we react to such situations. We are trust into action… to “perform” to “achieve” to “do”… and we don’t know What needs to be done? Why it needs to be done? Or anything.

We stumble along, seeking “solutions”, grab the first thing that we come across and “implement” it.

We start to imitate rather than create, we seek to push down rather than surge ahead, we seek to be secure rather than going into the unknown.

Worst… We resort to believing numbers.

Numbers which we called on to support and justify our decisions now become the decision makers. The reason of reasoning so to speak... not a good idea methinks... to trust statistics with thought and reason.

Deadlines become walls which cage our very beings Performance parameters; hours put in, marketing targets, bank balances, documents written, lines of code coded become boundaries which suffocate our thoughts, our dreams.

Everything in life becomes measured; ambiguous measurements that no one really knows what to do with. People, feelings, emotions, relationships all become measured. Everything adding up to our “success”.

Floydishly, the walls that we built are those that are crushing us now…

Is this the new reality…? Is this what is in store for us?

Or is this distorted sense of reality going to clear up as we go along?

The room still remains silent.

Realizing Reality… Part I

I will become an astronomer and discover a new planet.

I will grow up to become a policeman and fight crime.

I will be the scientist who discovers the cure to cancer, the doctor who saves lives, the engineer who builds the greatest machines on the planet.

I will be the racer who cannot be defeated, the athlete who cannot be out run.

I want to be the software programmer who taps furiously on the keyboard and save the world (against alien attack..??!!??), while people await with bated breath.

These were the dreams we children had while we grew up.

Then… we grew up…

We became engineers, doctors, software programmers, scientists, and much more, but the glory… where was the glory?

Engineers spent all their time making micro parts for inane machines. Half the time they don’t even know what the final machine is going to be.

Doctors spend their time treating kids with fever and others with broken bones, exactly what every other doctor is doing.

IT professionals?!?… hehehe… the worst joke was played on us. Programmers write lines of code which somehow fail to work the first time… then they spend time trying to fix bugs… then one after another… again…

In the field of e-learning, working for a smaller company, I at least got to see a larger picture… But most off us don’t even see that….

Hell… half the time we don’t know what exactly it is that we are doing. What it is that we are creating? What problem we are solving? Who is gaining by all of this? They don’t know us… we don’t know them… are we really effective..?? Are we good at what we do…??? No answer… the room remains silent.

With every “task” being split among many many many people and many more vendors. With micro mini tasks being delegated lower and lower down the “chain of command”, what are we trying to do? to achieve?

Sure… we get a fat salary packet at the end of the day. But for WHAT? What exactly is it that we have achieved? Who have we affected? Where is the change?

Where is the glory…? The applause? The accolades? My 15 minutes of fame that was promised to me?

I am not bitter… No sir… I realize this is the way of life. But what I am not comfortable with is… In times where most of us don’t know what we are doing, and for SURE don’t know what others are doing. How are we sure we are “progressing” (indeed what is progress)? Who is looking at the bigger picture?

The uncomfortable silence frightens me.


I need to know...

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Ajax added to blog.

Allo…

As said in previous post, I have added Ajax functionality to my blog. It is a small change in the way this template works.

On your right you will find a section called “Labels”. Originally this would have popped up the relevant posts in a refreshed window. Now, when you click on any label, you will get a loading image and text from the relevant post will dynamically be displayed under the label area. Check it out.

You can then subscribe to the post as an RSS feed. Once you are done reading the entry you can close the preview window (all dynamically).

Google and the Art of User Interface.

Google is GOD… What a trip this has been till now!!! they have this uncanny ability to start off their users at the simplest of interfaces… which the users then “learn” to customize as they gain expertise in using the interface/tools.

This blog is a sexy example. I started day one with a regular off-the-site template. Into which I put my first blog. I then discovered the “edit page layout” section where I managed to put my photo and create lists.

I then managed to set the blog to my time, rearrange page elements and fine tune fonts.

As I gained confidence… I added ready off the shelf scripts for visitor counts and visitor locations… I was on a roll…

Recently a friend asked me to explore Ajax and web interfaces using Ajax… while doing some research I cam across a hack for Ajax Labels in blogger.

So I added downloaded the html for the template, added the required changes, set up my google pages to host a JS file. I then added some more HTML into my page. And Voila!!! Ajax Labels on my page.

This may not be shocking for a hard core techie… but remember I am not one. I cannot code to save anything…

As I said… ALL HAIL GOOGLE… WHATTA WAY TO DO THINGS!!!

Monday, January 22, 2007

The Quandary breaker:

A recent realization: Complex situations can have simple solutions. Well at least simple methods to solve complex problems.

In journalism, the students are thought the 5 W’s and 1 H. They are asked to practice this so that they have a complete understanding of the story. I believe this is the perfect method to solve any problem.

What are these "5 W’s and a H"…??? What, When, Where, Why, Who and How?
Simply put:

  • What needs to be done?
  • Why it needs to be done?
  • How it should be done?
  • Who should do it?
  • When it needs to be done?
  • Where should it be done (implemented)?

Each question should be answered completely, truthfully and in isolation. The third condition is very critical here. When answering any question, do NOT consider the other questions. When seeking “Why” do not dwell on “When”.

I have found this method effective. If not an outright solution it will point you to a more precise definition of the problem, or it will at least create sub problems which can be solved using the method again.


Simple… Problem Solved!!!

Kaladiascope Snaps

Some time ago, I was playing with my mobile cam, and happened to see my neice's Kaladiascope lying around. Here are some snaps of what I saw:





Sunday, January 21, 2007

OneWord.com

What a brilliant concept. One word. One minute. Write all you want.

I have been trying it out over the past few days. It is amazing the kind of stuff that comes out. It really gives you an insight onto what your subconscious is thinking.

DO check out

http://www.oneword.com/

Theory of Relationships. Part 1

My take on a friend’s blog:

Each of us has different stimuli, different experiences and hence different lives. Each of these experiences, I believe, contributes to us having a unique “Frequency”. Not just people but EVERYthing here has it’s own Frequency.

When we interact with people who operate closer to our frequencies, we feel a sense of comfort, of bonding, of “oneness”. Science calls this resonance…

You must note here that since our frequencies are changing, our relationships with people are also bound to change. Frequencies that matched at some point of time in the past may not match now. People who you though were “so not my type” suddenly are.

Days when you feel blue or down, you feel "out of sync". all that has happened is that your frequiences have rapidly changed and are now clashing with people that you have sorrounded yourself with. What you need is some time... you should get back to normal. In case this is a continued reality maybe, just maybe you need to consider a diffrent reality.

You can call this growth, growing apart (or intimacy). I choose to call it change.

All of this gives us a couple of avenues to think about:

  1. Time (you have been in a relationship)really doesn’t matter. What matters is how close your frequencies are with each other at that particular point of time.
  2. YOU are responsible for a relationship. If someone is ‘just impossible to get along with’; you are also at fault.
  3. You are responsible for sustaining a relationship. Interacting with someone closely will allow you to modulate your frequencies within a “safe band”. A relationship survives. Work on this.
  4. What grew apart can ALWAYS be mended. Pick up the phone call that friend you knew from long ago.
  5. Give people a second chance: maybe it just wasn’t the right moment.

The human psyche craves for satisfaction, for pleasure. The high that we had from a resonating interaction is what makes us hold-on to people. Illogically we hang-on to relationships that we know are not working out. Doing so, we strain these relationships further, growing further apart. Maybe what we need is to go into a status quo mode and try interacting at a more profitable time. Think about it doesn’t that almost always work?

Rekhi (and other beliefs) calls these frequencies “Auras”. Auras are of different colors each indicating a different state of “being”. (Frequencies directly correlate to colors in science.) Rekhi in fact works to balance these disturbances in the auras so that we are “balanced”.

More on this later...

Friday, January 19, 2007

StumbleUpon

One off the many add-on’s to Mozilla’ Firefox ( A fine browser; I must say). THIS has been The Most Amazing thing I have experienced since Google search.

I mean... here is a scenario… lazy afternoon… you are bored… you want something to keep you awake till tea-break… Whadya do? Sure... you can get onto UTube or I-am-bored.com but that gets cheesy after a while. You really need something with more flesh sometimes.

Enter ‘StumbleUpon!’, savior of the bored. One-click and it lets u 'stumble upon' interesting sites. With each click more and more myriad sites of various topics crop up. You can even choose what topics it is that interests you!!!

Basically, what happens is… when ever a SU user comes across a site which they think is cool or worth a visit they Tag it…more users tagging a site gives it s higher ranking. So each time you click the SU Icon on your browser, you are taken to sites which have been certified interesting…

Sure… some of the sites are just about Ok… but on the whole the choice of sites is brilliant…

Check it out…

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/138/

Slow Down!!!

I recently moved from the superbly able Internet of my office network (it was good enough for most surfing at least), to the more ancient dial-up connection at home. Yes, I know!!! There are still places in this world where broadband is not an option. Apparently broadband is not an option to places with less than X number of telephones. Yea… crazy but true.


The thing is though, in the heat of a decent internet connection it becomes really hard to understand what it means to be speed deprived. How “content rich”, and…. hi-tech, “jazzy”, “Flash-y” go flying out of the freakin door when the very basic content become difficult to deliver.


Imagine… capable laptops… but a connection incapable of running ANY messenger. Yahoo! Beta takes a life time to load… Gmail takes over 5 minutes to load… and even then the Gtalk within Gmail is intermenent… I had to start every conversation with a disclaimer “I am a dial-up… If I log off without notice… don’t mind… send me a mail I will respond.”


In such a situation, where do flashy-jazzy interfaces stand…?? What happens to rich content?? CSS, Ajax, flash based sites!!!?? What happens to e-commerce? Would you dare use the internet to pay your phone bill if you are not sure if the connection will hold… or if the loading time-outs???


Forget web applications/interfaces… what happens to our precious e-learning…??? What happens to the designed for “Dial-up” that comes along with the project requirements???


In a society that thrives in splitting up the haves and the have-nots… maybe we need to pay some attention to designing for the Lowest Common Denominator of our user bases… And I think we need to start by really experiencing what that means.

Theory of Authoring.

First it was said and people listened.

Then you read of what peopled wrote.

People wrote for their own godame selves and people read whatever was written. Most of your classical authors are in this category. With each one having a distinct unique style of prose/poetry… this was a time when relatively few people wrote/read

As the numbers grew, people figured that if what they wrote had to be read by a respectable number of other people... they had to cater to the “needs/requirements” of the reader. People were searching for the “ideal-catered” style of writing. I believe that it was from this chaos of catering that evolved the different schools of writing... and the “perfect” style of writing. you studied, analysed and tried to recreate a sellable writing style.

But as the net came into the picture the Reach of the written word suddenly grew; you no longer are constrained to write for the X number of people in your immediate vicinity. In fact if you have any plans of selling, you need to find your “special ability”, your “X” factor.

The balance has shifted, the rules (of writing) are being broken.

What makes you unique?

Thursday, January 18, 2007

The Tenth Dimension.

I have always believed that complex things need not have complex explanations. I mean, sure… you might require some (ok loads of) energy to master the finer nitty gritty details of a subject. But to get an overall “big picture” of any subject (and I mean ANY subject), I don’t believe it should be too complex.

Here is a fine example of a really complex subject explained in the simplest of terms. Check out the animation on:

http://www.tenthdimension.com

Quantum physics postulates that there are more than the 4 dimensions that we perceive (the three dimensions of space and one of time). There are umpteen theories regarding the exact number of such dimensions. This book (and the animation on this site) pitch the ten dimension theory.

Pure Brilliance.

One more time...!!!

I have used the computer for longer than most people out there (18-19 years now), and still I have no mastery over any “computing” .
I can’t program to save my balls, I have dabbled with audio, video, and other media tools but can claim mastery over nothing, I am not a great gamer(in fact I pretty much suck at most of them). Hell I don’t even use all of MS Office…

In fact, the only thing that I can claim to have some hold over is the internet, I have surfed a LOT… I have always been fascinated with the latest on the internet. MSN, Yahoo, Rediff, Indya… I just HAD to have an account in nearly every email service launched
If there was something new somewhere… I had to see it, experience it and form my own view on it.
Chatting, community sites, Blogging, ftp transfers, drop sites…
I really wanted to be the “been there, done that” kind of Net traveler…

Over a period off time, I came to realize that though I had conquered everything, I owned nothing, much like Alexander (the Great) realizing that the lands he had conquered were not really under his “rule”.

So, here I am, ready to begin again…
I intend to blog regularly, learn to blog it right this time.
I intend to learn one tool at a time, and more importantly to USE it (a tool is meant to be used after all).

What, then, can you expect to see here…???
Ohh loads of crap I say!!!
I want to write about….
Automobiles (of which I have some understanding)
About Understanding… (and it’s underlying philosophy)
About Philosophy (of which I know jack shitt - BTB… did you hear the one about Jack Shitt and his Brother Deep Shitt..?? nahin..?? ohh… maybe some other time… :( )
About Jack Shit… (and cow dung - that’s the female form of bull shit :P )
Management theories (others and my own :))
Well you get the idea…

In fact, I will hold forth with my theories on nearly everything!!! And then some more…
For what it is worth, I will criticize and/or praise anything that catches my fancy.
I will blabber on… making you contemplate your deep love for me that is making you read this blog.

The name search...

I needed an Incredible Blog Name…!!!
Something funky, something that was unique,
Something… with a high degree of recall!!! Something so very me…

And so it started...
I searched high… I searched low… and came up with crap…
I asked friend… I asked foe… and still drew a blank…
Then it struck me… maybe this was it… this was what I was looking for…
An IncredibleBlogName!!!

Hallelujah!!! A blog name that is INCREDIBLE!!!

Welcome then, to http://incredibleblogname.blogspot.com