Sanity Insanity and Moi

Its a beautiful Monday morning … YAWN!!!!!!!!

I dont want to talk about Monday mornings. Like all other Monday mornings, today i was late to get up, slept through the ‘wake-up’ time.

Today i found something that was my time-pass to the way to office in the morning. With all the damned jams and slow moving traffic, these were real amusing…

• An auto that had no inch left to be decorated with multi-colored stickers, looked like a Pharaoh’s 21st century ride
• Every damn guys is late and its jammed
• The chick behind the bike always looks cute on a Monday morning and her beauty-quotient drops as we move to Friday
• This applies to all the days - 80% of chicks riding a 2-wheeler wear a jacket with either/both the shades of Blue / Red. Its like their universal code.
• On any given working day, the average body area of a lady covered with clothes, scarfs, helmet etc. etc. beats that of a lady from Taliban lead Afghanistan.
• The BMTC bus jams the road at exactly the same spot every Monday

and i’m always half crazy on Mondays…

(This post was done on August 19, 2008 at 1:35 am, which is a Tuesday…)

Bruce Almighty, the movie starts of with Bruce, a TV Reporter, asking an old woman, who owns a Patisserie -

“So tell us mama, why make Buffalo’s biggest cookie?”

“Well, man from the health department say he find rat pellet in store. I say no is big chocolate chip. So we close store down, clean up, and make big cookie for to bring back customers”

I see no difference in that and this -

Come June 17th and there is going to be this multitude of people from around the world, who are just going to download Mozilla Firefox v 3.0. Why? Just because they are attempting to set a world record on the maximum downloads of a single software in 24hrs. What a creative reason to set a record?

So what is so great about this download spree that the guys at Mozilla are hyping about? Does the people who download it get a free mug every day for the rest of their life? Or is it something like the spam mail, ‘If you dont download Fx in the next 24 hours, your system will be infected by a deadly strain of I love Fx virus!!!‘.Its all for the sake of a record and damn publicity!!!

I use Fx and its not that i wont be using 3.0. Its a great browser and i’m sure just like the way it has changed my browsing experience, it has done for millions. The plugin support is amazing. To download it on that particular day is a personal choice. I agree. But just because you like a piece of software doesnt mean that you need to join a drive just to download it.

The way i see it, is as a smart marketing strategy. If they are really as good at the cookie that they sold, then why do they need such a drive. If a product is good, people who use it becomes the biggest marketers for it. They spread the word and the number of people who are using it expands. Why does Fx3.0 need such a drive? Fx2.0 was brought in with a big bang. But it suffered as it began to eat up memory. A normal session of Fx2.0 with 3-4 tabs open is enough to consume 10s of MB of RAM.

Memory is cheap, i agree. But that doesn’t mean that an application can take up as much memory as it desires. I’m not too good at judging as to what is wrong. But can say that the memory management was poor in Fx2.0. At the time when Fx2.0 was released people with normal browsing habits found that the systems slogged badly, Windows and Linux alike. They opted to move out. Intermittent releases didn’t solve the version either. How annoying is it when you get a new version to download every couple of weeks?

Fx3.0 is hailed to be faster and secure. The Release Candidates a.k.a Beta are better than Fx2.0.

… As several of the linked posts below accurately reported, we’ve decided to add one more beta in order to make further improvements in the areas of polish, performance, memory, and overall quality … [from Mozilla: For the Record]

The question remains, are they still the same old Patisserie reopen by making a big cookie, after the Health Dpt. shut’em down?

I will try not to be too much biased against Windows. But will like to point out what is wrong.

Hearing the news of the Demo/Preview/Debut of Windows 7 at D6 conference by Microsoft VP Julie Larson-Green, my first reaction was, Oh NO not again!!!

I had my concerns. Microsoft has been stealing the show with its sleeky looks and publicity. If there is somebody at the market that can sell a rickety old-bus just by repainting it, its Microsoft.

Though all the other OS-es has evolved with age, windows simply refuses to budge more or less. The system requirements just to run a basic version of their latest OS takes more than twice the power that is required to run the latest Open Source OS. The fact remains that will less overhead the Open Source counterpart gives the looks and the WOW-ness.

How far can they drive along by just adding the new features without correcting the basic problems.

XP came and by the time people got adjusted to the response time, reaction time and usability, Vista was born. Now why the hell do i have to go for double the configuration for a new OS. Then again i will be doing the same things but that is going to add another transition phase in my life. From my own personal experience, the very simple task of setting an IP which took 4-5 clicks in XP, took me 5-10min in Vista just to figure out how to get the Properties window. Though basic functionality of an OS that the user looks for needs to be kept the same across versions, Microsoft fails to comply.

If the new version is going to be more user friendly than its previous one, why do you still need to pack the age old Win-98 looks with XP? They need to realize what the other OS-es in the market are doing different to keep things abreast with feature improvements, usability and performance.

At this point they just need to stop stuffing in features into an OS. It more or less looks like a huge american burger. A bite at one end will have half of the things falling out of the other end. By the time you get used to the new tasty burger in comes a new version double the size.

The very first white-paper i wrote was christened - “How to extend your tea-breaks using Scripting“. Introduction started of like this -

The ‘real’ Reason…

Like every other employee, i’m at the liberty of two tea-breaks. But you just can’t spend more than 10min on a tea-break. The work was so much that squeezing even a minute, looked like a distant dream. I would have just given anything to get that break extended.

My savior was Scripting. It helped me automate the routine manual work that was involved, and i had an extra 30 min for tea-breaks.

The question is why did i resorted to write something that was meant to be formal in such a way. I had seen couple of white-papers well written and talking about some real good technologies. Many of them carried that heavy aura of being too technical and very formal, which i felt was deterring my interest in that paper. Unless and until you are someone who is really interested in reading about that particular field of technology you wont feel like reading what that guy has written. Why does it have to be always like that?

In fact technology should be fun in learning and in presentation. When the fun factor is thrown out of the window its becomes serious, boring and well at that point people starts calling its “geeky”. Throw in a few funny statements and make it more pleasing to read and i bet you will get a better audience for the things that you want to communicate.

It can turn sloppy if you are not careful enough to make the point. The message should be loud and clear. But shouldn’t be boring. Take Al Gore’s video on Global Warming - An Inconvenient Truth - for example. Though not technical or geeky, its the best testament to what i have said. The message reached everyone. You wont feel disinterested because, he puts on his witty-shoes in between and is careful enough to avoid them so that it doesn’t start sounding bland.

Still many are prejudiced against this form of presentation and communication. Why cant we use a bit of humor to build the interest in a topic. The first reaction i got for my paper was, ‘does it have to sound so funny?’. I stood by what i believed and submitted the white paper. Felt so good. But it never got selected. But hey! who ever read the title has read the whole paper. I can guarantee that.

Many a times i wondered why do people call things geeky? Its not because it was something that they couldn’t fathom. But it’s because some one made the technology formal and boring. This applies to the online tutorials as well. Why? Why? Why? Why does all theses neat technologies have such a very formal write-ups?

So come one guys we neednt be so formal with technology and ideas. Lets make learning FUN..

The day before the session, Christine calls me up and asks me, “So how do you intend to start the session?”. Then it hits me that, all this time i was preparing for each of the workshop, but didn’t even think of how to start of the whole discussion/workshop. Oops now i need to plan. gulp!

Ok, i felt i was going to crash and burn during the session - 1. I had no idea how i’m going to start off 2. The slides looked very very boring. The slides were a disaster, i was planning a workshop and they wanted slides if the whole thing was to be approved by the management. As a last minute step, turned to Calvin and Hobbes for help. Boy! they helped. Now my slides looked wacky and who ever saw it smiled. Let it be. So i spent the rest of yesterday’s evening taking screen shots of Twitter, Kwippy, Muziboo, Tempostand, Mutiny.in, All things Pakistan and individual blogs of 2s, Amit Agarwal, Adeeth’s and Mine. I would have loved to show all the blogs that i read, but the company firewall just blocked’em off.

On the D-Day, I was 30 min well before time and met up with Christine. The first of the participants turned up and didn’t even hope to have even 10 people. With all the work and things around, chances are that something like blogging could take a back seat for people. I was mistaken. There was close to 25 participants.

So here we go, as an intro got all the people who were there and had a blog to have their blog-ids written on the board. Only 8!!! Great!!! So more people wanted to get into blogging and as i learned they were confused at some point or the other with many things.

As we started off, i made the fact clear that it will be a discussion/workshop as opposed to a session. Pushed for some user interaction and it just took off from there, jokes, experiences and facts. A fun filled session where the beginners are now serious on starting a blog. To the question, Should Al Qaida blog? YES was the reply, as they all believed no one should be stopped from blogging.

Interestingly, every one converged on the point that, blogs provide a fact / news in its raw format rather than the media, which they though to be fabricated. We moved on to show the newbies how simple it was to set up a blog. Interestingly most of the people who blogged used Blogspot and haven’t even heard of LiveJournal or TypePad.

The discussions drifted from some serious discussions on What to be done on profanity?, What formed the basis of Moderating a Comment?, The Do’s and Dont’s of Blogging..etc to some fun stuffs that i shared with them. Interestingly people didnt know what RSS feeds are. So got someone to explain the whole RSS funda to them.

What is MicroBlogging and why do we do it?, was a tough one to make them understand. Finally i feel that when i showed them Twitter and the indian counterpart Kwippy. They then got the whole idea of micro-blogging.

Finally i had to tell them about Google Analytics and showed my own Analytics graph as an example of the worst thing that you can do - being lazy. The downward graph showed it all.
I was quite overwhelmed by the participation i had and people said it was wonderful. Felt good.

The presentation that i made can be found here - Blogging Workshop (PPT)

Scobleizer has done this video, a talk with the CTO of Xerox, Sophie Vandebroek at Palo Alto Research Center.

She has talked about some really interesting things.

Xerox as i knew was just about making ‘xerox’ copies. The term Xerox has now become synonymous to make a copy. But the real Xerox is into many more fields like Biomedical, clean water, etc.

She says, “Its fun to work in Xerox because we create the Future, Today!!!” and “We no longer makes copiers…”. WOW!!!

The monsoon breeze blew with a freshness that put everything in its path with renewed zest. It carried a very warm chillness. He felt it against his face and stood motionless. He had felt that before and rejoiced with child like innocence. But now it was different. He felt a cold lining on his cheeks. The path traced out by tears was more vivid now. A slight shiver.

Looking deep into the horizon he stood on the empty banks. His eyes fixed, some where far, searching for something lost, or, perhaps someone. He found no purpose in his existence. His ambitions, goals, dreams were now mere ashes. As i watched his head began to droop, he looked down, breathing gently. His breathing grew heavy, he looked up, left out a deep cry and dropped to his knees as i ran towards him.

I had never seen him like that. The friend i know was unfaltering and cheerful. He would grin ear-to-ear, make faces and just about do anything that would put a smile on your face.

Of lately i was seeing the change in him. That was a transition time for him. He became worse day by day. The guy looked like he could use some help. Many a time i asked him what bothered him. He would struggle and bring a smile on his face and say nothing. But you could read that in his eyes.

A week ago, when i was out with couple of my friends i spotted him along with a girl. The walked hand in hand. She leaning on his shoulders. There was an air of sadness around them. The next day at office i told of what i saw and felt the other day. I saw a tear run down his cheeks. He turned away and began typing furiously, pretending to be working.

I was loosing him. I pushed for an answer. He just replied,

“Even my folks don’t trust me. They where my greatest strength. I told them everything, hoping they would help me. But they are far from convinced. They want me to come back home and join a company there…”

With moist eyes he just walked out..

I contemplated that his relation with the girl was unapproved at home. There was nothing that i could do.

Things changed from bad to worse in the last two days. I saw him opening a letter and the disbelief an agony on his face upon reading that. He came to me and asked if i could just take him some where far from the hustles of the city. He mentioned, it was time for me to know.

Got into my car and we just drove away from the madness of the city. The first of the monsoon clouds where beginning to build up in the sky. I just pushed on. I was taking to the place where i always ran for a bit of peace.

The first of the drops were beginning to break away from the clouds and shatter against the windshield. They looked like suicide bombers. As i stopped. The rain was pouring down with all vigor. We sat in the car. With his head down and tears flowing down, he just sat there. We just sat there. Dont know for how long. The only sound was the heavy drops breaking on the roof. The rumbling was like a premonition for something bad to come. I wanted to belive otherwise, but i couldn’t cheat my heart.

The rain began to calm and that left an eerie silence between us. I don’t know how long we sat there. He broke the silence. His voice trembling

“She left me. I loved her with all my heart. Still she left me. I was helpless”

“There would be something, that we can do. Give me her number, i will talk to her.”, out of desperation and the scary thought of loosing a friend i mumbled.

“No! There is nothing left to do. She has gone far. Far from any of our reach. My parents if only they could believe me…”

He opened the door and ran towards the shore. I followed.

The rain was now gone. Sun was struggling to break out of the clouds. Nature looked so beautiful and gorgeous. The whole place was damped. Narrow streams of water still flowing towards the river. The first monsoon shower. It was beautiful…

His breathing grew heavy, he looked up, left out a deep cry and dropped to his knees as i ran towards him. I helped him on to his feet. He hugged me. I couldn’t fight my tears. He broke away, walked two steps and stopped.

After a deep sigh, he reached for his pocket and took our an envelope. I recognized it as the one that i saw with him days before. He opened it and handed me the letter.

With trembling hands i opened the folds…

“Appraisal Letter 2008″

Though this post comes a week late, but its stilll worth sharing those moments. Here is the link to the fotos…

Ujj Living out the real spirit of a BarCamp by helping out with things…

100rabh getting geared up for the day’s hungama…

Ashwin taking shots of the people at the Reg. Desk

The crowd deciding on the days topic…

The Spirit of Barcamp

Some girl loves Prashanth …

The Twitterers who turned up for the Tweet-up

Thej flaunting .. uhhh .. his EeePC..

Remnants of BCB5…

More at my album

Barcamp Bangalore 6

Larry and Sergey would have never thought this would happen.

Any one with the bare knowledge of the internet knows about Google. It has now more or less become a house hold name. Just like the Saans-Bahu soaps. May be i should never ever compare anything to the Saans-Bahu soaps. Its more of an insult than a credit. Now the fact is, you want some thing Google has it. It has grown over the years with innovative ideas and acquisitions. You need some thing, google it!!! It has in fact become the de facto solution to most of our searches. And searching IS googling.

The mail, integrated with a chat, integrated with a social-networking site, integrated with a photo album, integrated with a video sharing site, integrated with an online office apps…. phew! One can just be hooked on to Google for the whole day.

In fact everything that we use online, is in one way or the other “Powered by Google“.

Not to mention the kind of work environment that they have and the countless eyebrows that were raised all with the same question - “Is that an office?”. Employees in the technology sector dream to work at Google.

But what really made Google, Google. Looking from a surfer’s perspective its the experience. Its like the perfect blend of coffee to make the perfect espresso. A simple page with nothing more than to let you search. No unwanted fancy stuff. More than that its the integrated environment that hooks me up with Google. The usage of a single ID to do multiple stuffs. The hustle of remembering the user ids and passwords are gone. One login and mail, messenger, album etc. etc.

So which other site offers all these - NONE. Equally likable by both techies and normal people.

Just visit the Google Products page and there is something for everyone. We all have been pwn3d by g00g73;

“You have been GOOGLED…”

[This is my first post in the company blog]

Its a good thing that my company introduced blogging to its employees. It was high time that this passion of a ‘netizen‘ was recognized. I see a lot of posts coming up and the enthusiasm was just simply WOW!!!. The fact is, most of the people lose their steam after the initial boost on writing. They come over enthusiastic and over time, they just don’t find what to write, some times intimidated by the way top bloggers write and the responses that they get and simply give up on blogging. “I cant do that, look how many hits (number of visitors to a blog) that person is getting.”

“So you a first time blogger… uhh????”, whats the big deal, write dude write!!! Thats what blogging initially is about. You need to write, write and write. Let that be anything about the good looking girl you found in the bus and wondering if u had her name can check her details in TedWeb, or how you burnt your break fast any damn thing goes into that. Novice bloggers - Just keep writing. You may not find any theme to write about, just write the crap that you feel like. May be no one is going to read it. So what, write.

“So you are not new to blogging…!!!”, still keep writing. As you ‘mature’ (i hate to use this word), you will find out yourself that what you want to write about them most, what you like blogging about. May be its Mallaika Sherawat or Bipasha Basu , who cares write about them. Play with words. Frame some wacky phrases like - “Bipasha threw ambers of jealousy at young damsels”, just make sure that you girlfriend doesn’t read this and i’m not responsible at any cause.

The next thing that you should focus is - ‘Give and Take‘ principle. Go visit other’s blogs, read their articles, drop a comment or two at their blogs and posts. Trust me just by mere visiting no one is going to know that you visited their site. Build a community on the web. Join groups. There is a bangalorebloggers called as the Blog’a’loreans at Google.

Last, visit the top blogs around and read how they write and what draws the crowd to them. What is so special in their writing? Who are these people. I suggest - Digital Inspirations - Amit Agarwal, he is India’s first professional blogger, Kiruba Shankar, Silkboard, Seth Godin etc. These are some of my favorite. Silkboard esp. has an uncanny way to report on the bangalore traffic . There are some Community driven blogs too like - Mutiny.in(i write here ), Sepia Mutiny too.

“So you a pro blogger.. uhhh???”, great!!!. Keep writing and help others too. Its always fun to get people into blogging. The way i did it for my roommate.