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2012-01-08T10:45:00.001-08:00

What’s the worst thing that can happen? « Startup Marketing Lessons Learnt

Tribute to Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T12:03:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine wrote this.

Mr. Jobs,

It has been both my immense privilege and pleasure in finding inspiration in some ways of Your life. You do not know me personally, niether do You know the 99.99% of the people who felt bad when You turned in. Yet most of us had a silent and muted dirge for You in our hearts. My respect for You started after listening to Your 2005 stanford commencement speech. You urged all great souls present there not to waste life, but to tire one-self in doing something that is meaningful and matters to individuals. In essence You asked each and every individual to live their life. For mere lowly mortals like me, it lifted my soul from a level of uncertainity to an attitude to do something better each day. That 1 hour You spoke might have touched many across the world, my have ignited many across the globe....we are ever grateful for that. You are a true karma-yogi to describe You in Vedic slang because You never led a life without purpose, You chose engineering as means for achieving Your purpose, You created better things, You made electronics beautiful, Your company's innnovations have always seduced many if not all. You created businesses that nurtured creativity, liveliness and gave some of us challenges to solve there by making those some of us better at our work.

Image courtesy of Jonathan Mak

Not once did You twitch, not once did you let Your let Your disease affect Your emotion in public. In this world where we all keep complaning about a pinch, a bruise, a physical to a mental aberration You showed us again (as many great ones before You) how to live and how to die. No clamour when You came, no clamour when You left.....but everything in between has been symphony, crescendo. I have heard about Your eccentricity, micro-management, fuzziness from so many, but for me everything is pardoned in front of Your genius. You sir have become a God for the tech-world for last 3 decades.....and I am glad that I was witness to Your life's culmination.

Finally,

I am sorry I never bought any of Your ingenuis products partly because I dont encourage my mind to such perks and partly because they are costly, but I always envied everyone who had one. I am happy and content admiring it in someone else's clasp, in someone else's lap. I am certainly a teeny tiny toe-ish techie infront of You, but each day as I seek a great soul to inspire me You will always be remembered and Your accomplishments always celebrated. I guess Newton might be giving You a party now for making apple more famous than he ever envisioned.

Thank You very much for realizing Apple and Pixar.

So long Mr.Jobs!!!

Sincerely Yours.

RIP Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T20:49:00.001-07:00

What are some time-saving tips that every Linux user should know?

2011-04-14T16:50:00.001-07:00

Joshua Levy, Curmudgeon

289 votes by Kartik Ayyar, Robin Green, Prasad Chakka, (more)

Here is a selection of tips that I've found useful when working on Linux. The emphasis is on somewhat less-known command-line techniques that are still generally important or useful to technical users. It's a bit long, but I've done my best to review that each item is worth reading in terms of projected time savings, if you use Linux heavily from the command line.

To get more information on a command mentioned, first try "man <command name>". In some cases, you must install a package for this to work -- try aptitude or yum. If that fails, Google it.

Basics

Learn basic bash. Actually, read the whole bash man page; it's pretty easy to follow and not that long. Alternate shells can be nice, but bash is powerful and always available (learning mainly zsh or tcsh restricts you in many situations).
Learn vim. There's really no competition for random Linux editing (even if you use Emacs or Eclipse most of the time).
Know regular expressions well, and the various flags to grep/egrep. The -o, -A, and -B options are worth knowing.
Know ssh, and the basics of passwordless authentication, via ssh-agent, ssh-add, etc.
Of course, be familiar with common commands like chown, chmod, df, mount, ifconfig, dig, tail and tail -f, etc.
Also, bash job management: Ctrl-Z, jobs, fg, bg, etc.
Learn to use aptitude or yum (depending on distro) to find and install packages.

Everyday use

In bash, use Ctrl-R to search through command history.
In bash, use Ctrl-W to kill the last word, and Ctrl-U to kill the line. See man readline for default keybindings in bash. There are a lot. For example Alt-. cycles through prevous arguments, and Alt-* expands a glob.
To go back to the previous working directory: cd -
Use xargs. It's very powerful. Note you can control how many items execute per line (-L) as well as parallelism (-P). If you're not sure if it'll do the right thing, use xargs echo first. Also, -I{} is handy. Examples:

find . -name \*.py | xargs grep some_function

cat hosts | xargs -I{} ssh root@{} hostname

pstree -p is a helpful display of the process tree.
Use pgrep and pkill to find or signal processes by name (-f is helpful).
Know the various signals you can send processes. For example, to suspend a process, use kill -STOP [pid]. For the full list, see man 7 signal
Use nohup or disown if you want a background process to keep running forever.
Check what processes are listening via netstat -lntp. See also lsof.
In bash scripts, use set -x for debugging output. Use set -e to abort on errors. Consider using set -o pipefail as well, to be strict about errors (though this topic is a bit subtle). For more involved scripts, also use trap.
In bash scripts, subshells (written with parentheses) are convenient ways to group commands. A common example is to temporarily move to a different working directory, e.g.

# do something in current dir

(cd /some/other/dir; other-command)

# continue in original dir

In bash, note there are lots of handy variations on variable expansion. These include ${name:?error message}, which is useful checking args in bash scripts, and arithmetic expansion, such as i=$(( (i + 1) % 5 )). Also trimming of strings via ${var%suffix} and ${var#prefix}. For example if var=foo.pdf, then echo ${var%.pdf}.txt prints "foo.txt".
Know about "here documents" in bash, as in cat <<EOF ....
Use man ascii for a good ASCII table, with hex and decimal values.
On remote ssh sessions, use screen or dtach to save your session, in case it is interrupted.
For web debugging, curl and curl -I are handy, and/or their wget equivalents.
To convert HTML to text: lynx -dump -stdin
If you must handle XML, xmlstarlet is good.
For Amazon S3, s3cmd is convenient (albeit immature, with occasional misfeatures).
In ssh, knowing how to port tunnel with -L or -D (and occasionally -R) is useful, e.g. to access web sites from a remote server.
It can be useful to make a few optimizations to your ssh configuration; for example, this .ssh/config contains settings to avoid dropped connections in certain network environments, not require confirmation connecting to new hosts, forward authentication, and use compression (which is helpful with scp over low-bandwidth connections):

TCPKeepAlive=yes

ServerAliveInterval=15

ServerAliveCountMax=6

StrictHostKeyChecking=no

Compression=yes

ForwardAgent=yes

If you are halfway through typing a command but change your mind, hit Alt-# to add a # at the beginning and enter it as a comment (or use Ctrl-A, #, enter). You can then return to it later via command history.

Data processing

Know about sort and uniq (including uniq's -u and -d options).
Know about cut, paste, and join to manipulate text files. Many people use cut but forget about join.
It is remarkably helpful sometimes that you can do set intersection, union, and difference of text files via sort/uniq. Suppose a and b are text files that are already uniqued. This is fast, and works on files of arbitrary size, up to many gigabytes. (Sort is not limited by memory, though you may need to use the -T option if /tmp is on a small root partition.)

cat a b | sort | uniq > c # c is a union b

cat a b | sort | uniq -d > c # c is a intersect b

cat a b b | sort | uniq -u > c # c is set difference a - b

Know that locale affects a lot of command line tools, including sorting order and performance. Most Linux installations will set LANG or other locale variables to a local setting like US English. This can make sort or other commands run many times slower. (Note that even if you use UTF-8 text, you can safely sort by ASCII order for many purposes.) To disable slow i18n routines and use traditional byte-based sort order, use export LC_ALL=C (in fact, consider putting this in your .bashrc).
Know basic awk for simple data munging. For example, summing all numbers in the third column of a text file: awk '{ x += $3 } END { print x }'. This is probably 3X faster and 3X shorter than equivalent Python.
Use shuf to shuffle or select random lines from a file.
Know sort's options. Know how keys work (-t and -k). In particular, watch out that you need to write -k1,1 to sort by only the first field; -k1 means sort according to the whole line.
Stable sort (sort -s) can be useful. For example, to sort first by field 2, then secondarily by field 1, you can use sort -k1,1 | sort -s -k2,2
If you ever need to write a tab literal in a command line in bash (e.g. for the -t argument to sort), press Ctrl-V <tab>.
For binary files, use hd for simple hex dumps and bvi for binary editing.
Also for binary files, strings (plus grep, etc.) lets you find bits of text.
To convert text encodings, try iconv. Or uconv for more advanced use (it supports some advanced Unicode things, such as transforms for normalization, accent removal, etc.).
To split files into pieces, see split (to split by size) and csplit (to split by a pattern).

System debugging

To know disk/cpu/network status, use iostat, netstat, top (or the better htop), and (especially) dstat. Good for getting a quick idea of what's happening on a system.
To know memory status, run and understand the output of free. In particular, be aware the "cached" value is memory held by the Linux kernel as file cache, so effectively counts toward the "free" value.
Use mtr as a better traceroute, to identify network issues.
To find which socket or process is using bandwidth, try iftop or nethogs.
The ab tool (comes with Apache) is helpful for quick-and-dirty checking of web server performance.
For more serious network debugging, wireshark or tshark.
Know strace, and that you can strace a running process (with -p). This can be helpful if a program is failing, hanging, or crashing, and you don't know why.
Know about ldd to check shared libraries etc.
Know how to connect to a running process with gdb and get its stack traces.
Use /proc. It's amazingly helpful sometimes when debugging live problems. Examples: /proc/cpuinfo, /proc/xxx/cwd, /proc/xxx/exe, /proc/xxx/fd/, /proc/xxx/smaps.
When debugging why something went wrong in the past, sar can be very helpful. It shows historic statistics on CPU, memory, network, etc.
Use dmesg whenever something's acting really funny (it could be hardware or driver issues).

Disclaimer: Just because you can do something in bash, doesn't necessarily mean you should. ;)

The Worst Interview Question (and How to Answer It)

2011-01-31T15:26:00.001-08:00

12:10 PM Monday January 31, 2011
by Priscilla Claman | Comments (19)
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conv-starter-claman.jpgThe following interview nightmare comes from when I was sitting on the board of directors of a small nonprofit: We were interviewing finalists for the executive director position, and one director asked the last candidate, "Larry, what do you consider your greatest weakness?" Larry thought a minute, flushed, and then answered, "Well, some people I've worked with would say that I have a tendency to just talk on and on without saying anything, but I couldn't agree. I know I like to talk, but I think that what I say has a lot of meaning. That is, while I am talking and talking, I am actually saying something..." He understood he was embarrassing himself, but he still droned on. We sat horrified. With his answer to this terrible (but oft-used) interview question, he proved his biggest weakness.

I know what you're thinking: How could the question be so terrible if it showed he wasn't right for the job? Well, in this situation, it didn't shed any new light on Larry. We already knew about his particularly verbose style of communicating from earlier in the interview. But this question always makes people feel uneasy. It originates from the old-fashioned aversive interview approach of the 1950s and 1960s, designed to make the candidate uncomfortable in order to gauge how he handles pressure.

The question still feels like a put down. When you purposefully make a candidate feel embarrassed, she won't forget it, and will most likely never recommend your organization to a friend.

For my part, I don't believe in the abstract idea of individual "weaknesses," only weaknesses in the context of particular corporate cultures. For example, someone who might seem weak or indecisive in an execution-oriented culture might fit right into a highly collaborative culture. What looks like weakness in one culture may be strength in another. It's much more useful for an interviewer to know what strengths are needed to do the job and to determine if the candidate has those strengths.

Some interviewers are still convinced in the value of the weakness question, so they continue to ask it. As a result, candidates have learned to fabricate answers, for example, "My biggest weakness is that I'm a workaholic." Overall, forcing a candidate into making up answers is a bad way to start a relationship. And can the interviewer really expect to be alerted to the candidate's limitations with this question — that they would say something like, "I'm lazy and terrible with numbers"?

A client of mine tried what I thought was a reasonable response: "I'm probably not the best judge of my weaknesses, but I'm sure that my previous bosses would be able to help you." And still, the hiring manager's response was not pretty.

Loathed as it is, you will have to be prepared for this question — because sooner or later some stickler will ask. Rather than hemming and hawing for an answer on the spot, follow these recommendations:

1. Prepare an answer that is true, trivial, brief, and not a fault. Some examples:
* My biggest weakness is that my professional network is in San Francisco, but I am looking for a job in Boston to be with my fiancé.
* My biggest weakness is that my undergraduate degree is from a college that has a good reputation in the East, but is not well-known in the Midwest.
* My biggest weakness is that while I'm great at advocating for something I believe in, I find it uncomfortable to talk about myself.
2. Run your answer by a couple of critical friends or colleagues to make sure it sounds reasonable.
3. When asked the question, end your answer by asking the interviewer a question, so that the attention is deflected away from your answer.

And if you prepare an answer and no one asks you, don't be disappointed. Thank your lucky stars, and hope that it's a sign that asking job candidates to openly describe their weaknesses has finally gone out of favor.

Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/01/the_worst_interview_question_a.html

Colorful India - Courtesy Boston.com

2010-02-23T10:00:00.001-08:00

Colorful India

January 26th, 2010 marked the 60th anniversary of India's adoption of the Constitution of India, and the 80th anniversary of its original 1930 Declaration of Independence from British rule. The annual holiday is celebrated as Republic Day, with a grand parade held in the capital, New Delhi, and many other celebrations across the diverse nation. Collected here are a number of photographs from the Republic Day celebrations and many more colorful glimpses of daily life from all around India. (40 photos total)

Indian soldiers march during the Indian Republic Day parade in New Delhi on January 26, 2010. Blanket fog obscured the start of India's 60th Republic Day celebrations, with the annual military parade in New Delhi held under heightened security due to fears of militant attacks. (PEDRO UGARTE/AFP/Getty Images)

A Kathakali dancer performs during a cultural program in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh February 1, 2010. Kathakali is an elaborate classical dance-drama from the southern Indian state of Kerala that combines literature, music, painting, acting and dance. The dance depicts stories from Hindu mythology and is usually religious in nature. (REUTERS/Ajay Verma) #

A Jammu and Kashmir state police daredevil performs stunts during the Republic Day celebrations in Jammu, India, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010. (AP Photo/Channi Anand) #

People look at illuminated buildings that house the country's main government offices, during Republic Day in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010. (AP Photo/Gurinder Osan) #

Members of the Indian Border Security Forces mounted on camel rehearse "Beating the Retreat" as part of preparations for Republic Day celebrations at Vijay Chowk in New Delhi, India, Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010. (AP Photo) #

Indian soldiers dressed in colorful clothing perform on motorcycles during the Republic Day parade in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer) #

Spectators look on as a model of an Indian Air Force fighter plane is paraded during the Republic Day parade in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer) #

The Lotus Temple's silhouette is seen at sunset in New Delhi on February 3, 2010. The Bahai House of Worship, popularly known as the Lotus Temple due to its flower-like shape, was completed in 1986. (MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images) #

South Africa's Jean Paul Duminy bowls in the nets during a practice session ahead of the first cricket test match against India in Nagpur, India, Friday, Feb. 5, 2010. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi) #

A Hindu holy man ties a turban on the banks of "Sangam," the confluence of rivers Ganges and Yamuna during the annual month long fair "Magh Mela" in Allahabad, India, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010. Hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus take a bath at the confluence during the astronomically auspicious period of over 30 days celebrated as "Magh Mela" to rid themselves of their sins and attain prosperity. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh) #

An Indian mini-bus driver cleans his vehicle in thick fog in Allahabad, India, Monday, Jan. 25, 2010. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh) #

A labourer sorts onions at a wholesale vegetable market in the eastern Indian city of Siliguri February 2, 2010. (REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri) #

A Nanga Sadhu, or naked Hindu holy man with his face smeared with holy ash exhales smoke after puffing marijuana at a transit camp on the way to Gangasagar, in Calcutta, India, Saturday, Jan. 9, 2010. Pilgrims started pour into the city to take a holy dip at the confluence of River Ganges and Bay of Bengal at Sagar Island, about 140 kilometers (87 miles) south of Calcutta, on the auspicious day of Makarsankranti on Jan. 14. (AP Photo/Bikas Das) #

A man stands beside a pillar of an under-construction railway bridge as he catches fish in the waters of the Bay of Bengal, on the outskirts of the southern Indian town of Rameswaram, January 14, 2010. (REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri) #

A tiger with a tranquilizer dart stuck in its back walks inside the Assam State Zoological cum Botanical Garden in Guwahati January 30, 2010. Two adult tigers had escaped from an enclosure at the Assam Zoo triggering panic among nearly 10,000 visitors, zoo officials said. Both the tigers were later tranquilized and taken to their cages. (REUTERS/Utpal Baruah) #

Villagers cover themselves during a sandstorm near India-Nepal border in Pilibhit in the northern Indian state Uttar Pradesh January 30, 2010. (REUTERS/Pawan Kumar) #

The fingers of a woman in a state of trance are seen through a lattice wall at the shrine of Sufi Saint Nizamuddin Auliya in New Delhi February 4, 2010. (REUTERS/Adnan Abidi) #

Beneath a partial eclipse of the Sun, a Hindu devotee offers prayers at the "Sangam," the confluence of rivers Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati on Mauni Amavasya, an auspicious day for Hindus in Allahabad, India, Friday, Jan. 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh) #

A Rajasthani nomad girl reacts to the camera as others walk along with their donkeys on a street at Badshapur In the northern Indian state of Haryana January 31, 2010. (REUTERS/Adnan Abidi) #

A competitor flexes his muscles during the "Mr. Senior Gujarat 2010" bodybuilding contest in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad January 31, 2010. More than 200 body builders across the state on Sunday participated in a contest organized by the Gujarat state body building association in an aim to encourage youth in body building sports and to aware common people about their health, a media release said. (REUTERS/Amit Dave) #

An Indian woman works at a construction project in front of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on February 01, 2010 in New Delhi, India. The Commonwealth Games are due to be held in the Indian capital from October 3-14, 2010, but concerns remain over construction of its sporting and transport infrastructure. The sheer scale of the project has drawn an enormous population of migrant workers from all over India. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images) #

Indian children work nearby to their parents at a construction project in front of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on January 30, 2010 in New Delhi, India. The children accompany their parents to the work site, where if they are prepared to work, they will receive money for bread and milk and be provided with dinner by the contractor. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images) #

A folk dancer from Kerala state looks on near his state's tableau, at a preview ahead of the Republic Day, in New Delhi, India, Friday, Jan. 22, 2010. (AP Photo/Gurinder Osan) #

A man is seen silhouetted as he smokes on the banks of the River Yamuna in New Delhi, India, Friday, Feb. 5, 2010. Despite a 2001 Supreme Court ruling ordering the cleanup of the Yamuna, and despite billions in government spending to do just that, the waterway that supplies 70 percent of New Delhi's water remains a frothy, putrid sewer. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh) #

An army cadet looks through a barrel of a cannon during the reunion carnival of the Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (EME) corps in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad January 8, 2010. (REUTERS/Krishnendu Halder) #

An elderly woman begs for alms on a roadside in the old part of New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh) #

A Greenpeace activist dressed as a brinjal protests against Bt brinjal, a genetically modified eggplant crop, in Bangalore, India, Friday, Jan. 22, 2010. The Indian government is organizing a series of public consultations to decide on the approval of Bt brinjal, India's first GM crop. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi) #

A student spits fuel into a fireball as he performs Malkhamb, an ancient form of Indian gymnastics during the Indian Republic Day celebrations in Bangalore, India, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi) #

A man cries as he prays at the shrine of Sufi Saint Nizamuddin Auliya in New Delhi February 4, 2010. (REUTERS/Adnan Abidi) #

Hindu women leave the Rameswari temple after offering prayers during the Pongal festival in Rameswaram, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010. Pongal is a harvest festival celebrated by Tamils across the world. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) #

A villager tries to control a bull during a bull-taming festival on the outskirts of Madurai town, about 500 km (311 miles) from Chennai January 16, 2010. The annual bull-taming festival is celebrated as part of south India's harvest festival of Pongal. (REUTERS/Babu) #

A young Buddhist monk makes a face during the Dalai Lama's prayer session at the Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya, about 130 kilometers (81 miles) south of Patna, India, Saturday, Jan. 9, 2010. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh) #

An employee works inside a plant of Ford Motor Co. in Maraimalar Nagar, about 50 km (31 miles) from the southern Indian city of Chennai February 5, 2010. (REUTERS/Babu) #

A child is administered drops of polio vaccine at a health center at Saliasahi, Bhubaneswar, India, Sunday, Jan. 10, 2010. India is observing National Immunization Day Sunday in efforts to eradicate polio. Every year, the country mobilizes more than 2 million health workers for an immunization day, visiting more than 200 million homes. (AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout) #

Models get ready backstage during the third day of the Bangalore Fashion Week in Bangalore, India, Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi) #

An Indian Hindu devotee offers prayers while bathing during the annular solar eclipse in the Banganga Lake in Mumbai, India, Friday, Jan. 15, 2010. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade) #

An Indian Border Security Force soldier patrols near fencing at the India-Pakistan border at Suchetgarh, about 30 km (19 miles) south of Jammu January 9, 2010. (REUTERS/Mukesh Gupta) #

A sweeper cleans the side of a road near a replica of the Eiffel Tower amid heavy fog in the early morning in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh January 18, 2010. (REUTERS/Ajay Verma) #

A vendor counts money sitting on a heap of marigold flowers at a wholesale market in Calcutta, India, Friday, Feb. 5, 2010. Marigolds are widely used as strings of garland and for Hindu religious rituals. (AP Photo/Bikas Das) #

An Indian farmer woman walks through a mustard field at Bisothi village, about 53 kilometers (33 miles) east of Allahabad, India, Monday, Feb.1, 2010. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh) #

2010-01-19T14:09:00.001-08:00

50 Ideas for a Healthy Lifestyle that take 10 Minutes or Less

What is a Healthy Lifestyle?

According to a study by Michigan State University, a healthy lifestyle is defined by four basic criteria:

Not smoking

Holding weight down

Eating right

Exercising

Of the 153,000 respondents, only 3%participated in all four of what are termed healthy lifestyle characteristics.

"We have millions of people now going through adult life leading unhealthy lifestyles and a medical system that can treat illnesses and keep you alive longer than ever before," said Mathew Reeves, a Michigan State University epidemiologist. "If we don't turn this around, the costs to society are going to be crippling."

What can be done to help people change?

Everyone talks about achieving it, but most people have plenty of excuses as to why they can't, won't, or don't want to change their current status. The most common excuse people make for not trying to have a healthy lifestyle is "a lack of time." Have you ever said to yourself, "Oh, I'm tired, I don't have time to exercise?" or "I don't feel like cooking dinner tonight; let's just get some fast food."

Yes Dorothy, excuses are real and they are contagious.

Time and health always seem to be at odds with each other. We have time to work, time to commute, time for our business associates, but very little time to spend on ourselves, people we love, or even random people who deserve our attention.

What can you do in 10 minutes or less?

More than you think. In a brief 10 minute window you can release tension, prevent future frustrations, get your blood flowing, etc. In fact, here are 50 things you can do. With time out as an excuse, what are you going to begin doing differently tomorrow? I don't care what it is, the point is, just do something!

Here are some ideas. If you have other thoughts, leave them in the comments!

Brush your teeth

Do 15 sit-ups

Read the health news headlines of the day

Straighten your posture

Eat an apple

Stand up and stretch

Send a friendly email to a friend

Resist the impulse purchase of a candy bar

Post an inspirational quote on Twitter

Do 10 lunges

Drink a glass of water

Smile

Put a package of oatmeal in your pocket or purse for a healthy breakfast or snack

Throw a bottle of water in there as well

Plug your cell phone into the charger

Pay a bill online

Ask to have your salad dressing on the side

Start a dollar jar to be added to once per day

Open a window

Say thank you to someone who deserves it

Take a deep breath

Put on your seat belt

Wake up 10 minutes earlier

Post a comment on a blog

Turn off the lights when you're the last one out

Put on your make-up (this usually pertains to the ladies, but hey, whatever makes you happy)

Share a healthy recipe

Give your mother a call

Wash your hands

Put on hand lotion

Check your blood pressure

Jog in place for 9 minutes

Throw away that pen that doesn't work

Take a canvas tote bag to the grocery store

Ask a friend to join you for a healthy dinner

Put down the remote control and get up to change the TV channel

Hug your kids

Replace your next cup of coffee with a cup of tea

Lay out your clothes for the next day

Put your car keys in the same place everyday

Take a 10 minute break

Suck on a breath mint

Add a little pepper to your salad

Load the dishwasher

Play FreeRice for 5 minutes

Take a quick walk

Prepare your coffee maker the night before

Skip your late evening grocery store run

While watching TV, do 5 push-ups during the commercial

Read this list over again and count how many things pertain to you

These things take no time at all but they all could ensure a positive day and a healthier lifestyle. How many of these do you or can you do in a day? What other things can you add to the list?

Whatever you choose to do, make your day healthier and happier. If you can, do the same for someone else too, because, after all, it's about a healthy lifestyle!

Raj
408-702-2741

33 Ways to Start your Day

2010-01-04T15:23:00.000-08:00

33 Ways to Start your Day

Yosemite Fall Colors

2009-10-29T23:51:00.001-07:00

Aarya 2 trailer

2009-10-29T23:27:00.000-07:00

Mind of An Entrepreneur

2009-08-08T03:15:00.001-07:00

Posted: Fri, 07 Aug 2009 22:48:18 +0000

Do you want to become a better entrepreneur? Well who doesn’t, right?

Over the past 8 years I have started around 9 companies. Sadly most of them failed, but the good news is, I have learned a lot over the years. Some of these things maybe obvious to you, while others may not, but none-the-less there will be something that will be beneficial to you.

Here are 53 things to keep in mind if you want to be a better entrepreneur:

Don’t let emotions cloud your decisions.
Accept criticism, no matter who gives it to you.
Never stop networking.
Learn from your own mistakes.
Learn from other people’s mistakes.
Around every corner lies an opportunity for you to sell something.
Don’t get too greedy… pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.
Try not to mix your family life with your business life.
No matter how successful you are, you shouldn’t stop learning.
Spending money on good lawyers and accountants will save you more money in the long run.
Don’t pick a stupid company name… and if you do, don’t change it later on.
Hiring employees won’t solve most of your problems.
Be agile because slow and steady won’t win the race.
Being agile isn’t enough, you also have to be scrappy too.
Having a good business partner will be a key factor in your success.
Don’t be afraid of the unknown.
It is easier to save money than it is to make it.
You don’t always have to innovate; there is nothing wrong with copying.
Have a marketing plan.
Don’t under estimate your competition; you can’t always know what they are doing.
Watching movies like Broiler Room, will teach you how to sell.
If you don’t have a business mentor, you better get one.
Your income will be the average of your 5 closest friends, so pick them wisely.
Diversifying is a good way to play things safe.
It doesn’t matter what you want, it only matters what your customers want.
When others are fearful, you should be greedy. And when they are greedy you should be fearful.
You don’t always have to pay for advice. You’ll be amazed with the free advice you can get pick up from the web.
The best chances you have of becoming rich is through your willingness of working hard.
Even the most idiotic business idea can make money.
Sex sells and it always will.
An easy way to make more money is to up sell to your current customer base.
Base your business decisions around metrics.
There is no such thing as a safe bet.
You don’t have to start a business to be successful.
Raising venture capital is harder than being struck by lightening.
Staying under the radar isn’t always a bad thing. Being out in the open is a great way to attract more competitors.
Learn to be a team player.
If you ever get screwed over, think twice before you burn the bridge.
Learn to manage both your personal and business money.
Live in a location filled with entrepreneurs.
If you don’t take any risks, there will not be any rewards.
Don’t let anything stand in your way.
Sometimes you have to wait for good deals to come to you.
The smartest route isn’t always the easiest route.
Being too aggressive can backfire.
With networking, it isn’t about whom you know, it is about whom your network knows.
It’s never a bad thing to know too many rich people. Whether you like them or not, they can always come in handy. So make sure you always play nice with them.
Use your email signature to promote your business.
Don’t be afraid of social media. It is a great channel for customer acquisition.
You’ll learn more from starting your own business, than going to business school.
Having a personal blog doesn’t only help build your personal brand, but it helps your business as well.
Your competitors don’t have to be your enemies, you can learn a lot from them.
You can grow your business by working for free.

Hopefully these suggestions will help you improve your entrepreneurial skills. And if you have any other suggestions that will help other Quick Sprout readers, as well me become a better entrepreneur, feel free to leave a comment.

http://www.mint.com/blog/how-to/guy-kawasaki-startup-tips/

2009-08-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

Guy Kawasaki’s 10 Questions to Ask Before You Join a Startup

Guy Kawasaki

I realize that in this job market, maybe you can’t be choosy about a job offer, but you should still understand what you’re getting into. If you are considering working at a startup, you should ask these questions.

1. How much money do you have in the bank? This is a simple question. You just want a number. If you’re told that “investors are ready to put in more” or “we have a line of credit,” beware because a promise of money isn’t the same as money. Ask yourself this question: If I promised money to a company and it’s about to crash and burn, would I put the money in it anyway?

2. What is your net outflow per month? What you’d like to do is take the answer to question 1 and divide it by the answer to question 2. This will tell you how long before your company runs out of money and dies. If the answer to the question centers around “We will achieve revenue soon so our net will improve and give us more runway,” it means the company is in trouble because no product ever ships on time n

Chetan Bhagats speech at Symboysis

2008-07-21T23:45:00.000-07:00

Always inspired by Steve Jobs, Bill gates...today I found a Indian who belong to that cadre...where inspiring speech on life...

Good Morning everyone and thank you for giving me this chance to speak to you. This day is about you. You, who have come to this college, leaving the comfort of your homes (or in some cases discomfort), to become something in your life. I am sure you are excited. There are few days in human life when one is truly elated. The first day in college is one of them. When you were getting ready today, you felt a tingling in your stomach. What would the auditorium be like, what would the teachers be like, who are my new classmates - there is so much to be curious about. I call this excitement, the spark within you that makes you feel truly alive today. Today I am going to talk about keeping the spark shining. Or to put it another way, how to be happy most, if not all the time.

Where do these sparks start? I think we are born with them. My 3-year old twin boys have a million sparks. A little Spiderman toy can make them jump on the bed. They get thrills from creaky swings in the park. A story from daddy gets them excited. They do a daily countdown for birthday party – several months in advance – just for the day they will cut their own birthday cake.

I see students like you, and I still see some sparks. But when I see older people, the spark is difficult to find. That means as we age, the spark fades. People whose spark has faded too much are dull, dejected, aimless and bitter. Remember Kareena in the first half of Jab We Met vs the second half? That is what happens when the spark is lost. So how to save the spark?

Imagine the spark to be a lamp's flame. The first aspect is nurturing - to give your spark the fuel, continuously. The second is to guard against storms.

To nurture, always have goals. It is human nature to strive, improve and achieve full potential. In fact, that is success. It is what is possible for you. It isn't any external measure - a certain cost to company pay package, a particular car or house.

Most of us are from middle class families. To us, having material landmarks is success and rightly so. When you have grown up where money constraints force everyday choices, financial freedom is a big achievement. But it isn't the purpose of life. If that was the case, Mr. Ambani would not show up for work. Shah Rukh Khan would stay at home and not dance anymore. Steve Jobs won't be working hard to make a better iPhone, as he sold Pixar for billions of dollars already. Why do they do it? What makes them come to work everyday? They do it because it makes them happy. They do it because it makes them feel alive. Just getting better from current levels feels good. If you study hard, you can improve your rank. If you make an effort to interact with people, you will do better in interviews. If you practice, your cricket will get better. You may also know that you cannot become Tendulkar, yet. But you can get to the next level. Striving for that next level is important.

Nature designed with a random set of genes and circumstances in which we were born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of nature's design. Are you? Goals will help you do that. I must add, don't just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order.

There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.

You must have read some quotes - Life is a tough race, it is a marathon or whatever. No, from what I have seen so far, life is one of those races in nursery school, where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same with life, where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die.

One last thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. One of my yoga teachers used to make students laugh during classes. One student asked him if these jokes would take away something from the yoga practice. The teacher said - don't be serious, be sincere. This quote has defined my work ever since. Whether its my writing, my job, my relationships or any of my goals. I get thousands of opinions on my writing everyday. There is heaps of praise, there is intense criticism. If I take it all seriously, how will I write? Or rather, how will I live? Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It's ok, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices.

I've told you three things - reasonable goals, balance and not taking it too seriously that will nurture the spark. However, there are four storms in life that will threaten to completely put out the flame. These must be guarded against. These are disappointment, frustration, unfairness and loneliness of purpose.

Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the expected return. If things don't go as planned or if you face failure. Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out stronger. What did this failure teach me? is the question you will need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I wanted to when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians kill themselves over low grades – how silly is that? But that is how much failure can hurt you. But it's life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to be a challenge. And remember - if you are failing at something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that's where you want to be.

Disappointment' s cousin is frustration, the second storm. Have you ever been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job you deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don't know if you chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for Bollywood, as I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely lucky, but it took me five years to get close to a release. Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into something negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with it? A realistic assessment of the time involved – movies take a long time to make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain enjoyment in the process rather than the end result – at least I was learning how to write scripts, having a side plan – I had my third book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions in your life - friends, food, travel can help you overcome it. Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign somewhere, you took it too seriously.

Unfairness - this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you. In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in English means you are pretty damm lucky by Indian standards. Let's be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we don't. I have so much love from my readers that other writers cannot even imagine it. However, I don't get literary praise. It's ok. I don't look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are more beautiful than her. It's ok. Don't let unfairness kill your spark.

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is isolation. As you grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can create conflict as your goals may not match with others. . And you may drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family. But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise. Love yourself first, and then others.

There you go. I've told you the four thunderstorms - disappointment, frustration, unfairness and isolation. You cannot avoid them, as like the monsoon they will come into your life at regular intervals. You just need to keep the raincoat handy to not let the spark die.

I welcome you again to the most wonderful years of your life. If someone gave me the choice to go back in time, I will surely choose college. But I also hope that ten years later as well, your eyes will shine the same way as they do today. That you will Keep the Spark alive, not only through college, but through the next 2,500 weekends. And I hope not just you, but my whole country will keep that spark alive, as we really need it now more than any moment in history. And there is something cool about saying - I come from the land of a billion sparks.

Thank You.

Chetan Bhagat

QOUTE

2008-07-01T19:21:00.000-07:00

A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day...

How do foreign companies invest in India?

2007-08-01T16:40:00.000-07:00

How do foreign companies invest in India?

The secret to becoming rich!

2007-08-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

An article from Rediff.com

Financial independence: what does this term mean? And how does one decide that one is financially independent?

To find the answer, I would refer you to the book -- Rich Dad Poor Dad, written by Robert T Kiyosaki. In the book, the authors mention that sources of money can be divided into four quadrants. One is employment, the second is entrepreneurial- or self-employment, the third is investments, and the fourth is business.

What one must know is that assets create income and liabilities deplete income. Hence, what is a liability for you such as a loan taken from a bank is income for the bank.

Paying interest through your nose is something that will bleed your finances. So no matter how attractive that home theatre bike or car, think less emotionally (right brain) and more rationally. Claim your own mind first and then venture out to purchase anything.

Remember that this world is full of people whose sole occupation is to make you open your purse or whip out that credit card. Okay, so all this makes the world go round, but let it be at someone else's cost!

You are financially independent when your lifestyle is sustained by passive income, that is income which comes to you automatically without you having to work in any way for earning it. How could this happen?

Let us take something like my pension from the State Bank of India [Get Quote]. It was given to me when I retired from SBI and it will come to me month after month as long as I live. Or dividend that comes to me because I invested in some company's shares. Or interest from fixed deposits that is mine because the bank does the work to allow me to earn from the money that I invested with them.

The objective of saving money or investing it must be to build up adequate quantity of such income to become independent of working, for yourself or for somebody else. At the end of it all, you have to choose how you want to live your life.

Would you like to live like the stereotypical pensioner who appears to be perennially cribbing about prices going up and incomes not going up as fast, about how wants have increased and how there is never enough money, et cetera? Or would you like to maintain your lifestyle even after retirement?

This is a no-brainer. I am sure you would all like to be in the second category.

Secret of creating wealth and financial independence

There is only one way to create wealth and be financially independent. And that is to choose an asset over a liability.

Does that mean that you scrimp and save and deny yourself a decent lifestyle? No! Just take a conscious decision to keep aside a certain part of your gross every month, for life. This itself will give you great financial power.

During your early employment years, this can be a larger percentage and in the years to follow after marriage and children, this could be a lesser percentage. However, please try your best to ensure that this does not dip below 10 per cent of your gross.

Young people are now paid better than when I started out, but then they also have more avenues for spending money. The desire to spend is fuelled by glossy advertisements and the availability of a plethora of consumer goods and durables. The second is a misnomer! That TV that you purchased yesterday has been replaced by a better one that came in today and is 15% cheaper, too.

Luckily, thus far, Indians in general are a little more level-headed than others and this sometimes has manufacturers tearing their hair in frustration. We tend to keep consumer durables for longer periods and repair those that go out of order till it is impossible to do so or the cost of repair is almost the same as buying a new one.

Hence, difficult as it is, pay yourself first or in other words invest in your security and that of your family first. Sorry to repeat this message, but this has to become a part of your nature. Short-term gain can create long-term pain! Make a habit of saving some part of your income and creating security for yourself and your family.

Let 15 to 20% of your savings and assets be in life insurance. Even if you feel that apne na koi aage na koi peechhe (even if you do not have any responsibilities), put some money in life insurance as this will take care of future obligations and in any case will provide some money for a rainy day.

Further, the younger you are the less premium you pay. You are therefore building up security at a cheaper cost. If you are employed there is some compulsory saving element in the form of superannuation fund or provident fund.

Apart from this, start on a simple recurring deposit plan. Go get the best return. The post offices in India offer good rates of return, as does Public Provident Fund (PPF). Some disadvantage in these plans is low liquidity. However, this is desirable for creating a long-term asset that will grow anyway.

The thumb rule is to put only as much money in these that you can salt away without feeling the pinch! PPF has several advantages such as tax benefit and a decent rate of return. Further, the interest is compounded which -- as you will see in my later articles -- allows faster accumulation of capital. Put aside 10% of your savings in these instruments.

Create liquidity in the form of bank deposits and recurring deposits: ideally 25% of your savings every month. This leaves around 45% to 50% of your savings to invest in other assets.

For the rest of your savings, you can buy mutual funds, shares or anything else of choice. Choose something that allows you some liquidity and yet appreciates quicker than the more conservative investments. Be warned, however, that risk and return are positively correlated. Higher the risk, the higher the return. If you have time to watch the stock markets and track your portfolio, invest directly in shares of your choice.

However, if you do not have this luxury, choose a mutual fund with a good record and put your money in a systematic investment plan. This allows you to put aside a small sum of money, say Rs 1,000 or more a month and invest in the stock market indirectly. You have to pay a price for this in terms of fund management fee and so on.

However, this is an option for those who do not wish to get into the markets on their own. With demat accounts available everywhere and online trading through your bank account, it is possible to buy even one share of say Infosys [Get Quote] or Reliance [Get Quote] or SBI and so on.

Build a diverse portfolio of blue chips and put money in hot tips only to the extent you can afford to lose it all! If there is a windfall gain good for you!

To sum up:

Financial independence means that your lifestyle is sustainable without any dependence on a job or any other work on your part.

Assets create income and liabilities deplete income. Choose assets over liabilities as far as possible

Invest 10% or more of your gross income to create financial independence for yourself. This has to be a triumph of mind over temptation!

Of your savings, put 15 to 20% in life insurance, 10% in post office instruments or PPF, 25% in creating liquidity such as Recurring Deposits or Fixed Deposits and the rest in either mutual funds or shares. Prefer blue chips over 'hot tips' and if you have to put money in a hot tip share, ensure that you put only what you can afford to lose!

Life lessons from Narayana Murthy

2007-06-05T07:51:00.000-07:00

Life lessons from Narayana Murthy

This was the article in the Rediff.com, in this article Narayan Murthy CEO Infosys speaks on the commencement day at New York. It is a scintillating speech, Murthy speaks about the lessons he learnt from his life and career.

Ravi Kiran urf Jerry Bday.

2006-11-25T23:56:00.000-08:00

ravi birtday

KY Kernel - My article in UK campus news

2006-10-27T23:17:00.000-07:00

Student group walks for global children's rights - Campus News

Student group walks for global children's rights
Kenny Colston
Issue date: 27/10/06 Section: Campus News

A UK student group will be walking tomorrow for children across the world.

Child Relief and You at UK are holding their 3rd annual CRY-UKY Lexington Walk for Child Rights 2006.

The 5K run/walk is at 9 a.m. tomorrow at Jacobsen Park.

The event will help raise funds for CRY America's mission: to ensure basic rights of education, health, a warm and loving family and fun for all children. The group is also strongly against child labor.

"All the money we raise goes to CRY America, who then sends the money out to help children in the U.S. and India," event coordinator Ravindraraj Mamadgi said.

The group's mission is fueled by a set of guidelines created by the United Nations in 1989. According to the CRY America website there are four basic child rights that the organization promotes: right to development, right to survival, right to protection and right to participation.

"We follow the U.N. convention on child rights that sets forth the rights of children across the world," CRY-UKY member Ramakanth Kavuluru said. "There are millions of kids in India and Africa and even the U.S. who don't get fed or don't receive an education.

"Children are the future, future presidents, future Mr. Bushes," Kavuluru said.

Mamadgi described the issue as one for which everyone is personally responsible.

"Children have the same equal rights as adults," he said. "Children are the most affected group in society with things like child abuse and neglect. Children are dying for lack of food. Children can't care for themselves, so we are responsible to help children with those needs."

Registration fees for the run/walk are $10 for UK students, $15 for nonstudents, $20 for couples, $40 for a family of four and free for children 12 and under. There is an extra charge of $5 to register the day of the event.

Mamadgi hopes that 100-150 people participate. Kavuluru hopes to raise over a thousand dollars from the event.

"If we could get $1,000 or $1,500, it would be great," Kavuluru said. "We love the support Student Government gives us in helping raise money, and UK has a good community for it."

The event is one of seven 5K run/walks that the national group CRY America is holding across the U.S. between August and October.

"It's a great event because everyone can come together for a cause, saving children's lives," Mamadgi said. "Even if you can't make it to the event, you can still pledge money or donate."

The top three males and females finishers will receive awards. The top finisher in each age group will also receive a prize. Free T-shirts and refreshments will also be provided. Registration is available online at http://www.uky.edu/StudentOrgs/CRY/, where donations can also be made. Registration at the event starts at 8 a.m. tomorrow.

The Nehru Family.

2006-09-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

I am not sure about the authenticity of this story but still like to blog it, Here there is a brief discription of the people in Nehru Family and there origins, it was quite amusing to me when I was reading. I am not a good critic enough to comment on this issue, but would defently appreciate if you do.

Here it goes....

At the very beginning of his book, 'The Nehru Dynasty', astrologer K. N.
Rao mentions the names of Jawahar Lal's father and grandfather.Jawahar
Lal's father was believed to be Moti Lal and Moti Lal's father was one
Gangadhar Nehru. And we all know that Jawahar Lal's only daughter was
Indira Priyadarshini Nehru; Kamala Nehru was her mother, who died in
Switzerland of tuberculosis. She was totally against Indira's proposed
marriage with Feroze. Why? No one tells us that !

Now, who is this Feroze? We are told by many that he was the son of the
family grocer. The grocer supplied wines, etc. to Anand Bhavan,previously
known as Ishrat Manzil, which once belonged to a Muslim lawyer named
Mobarak Ali. Moti Lal was earlier an employee of Mobarak Ali. What was
the family grocer's name? One frequently hears that Rajiv Gandhi's
grandfather was Pandit Nehru. But then we all know that everyone has two
grandfathers, the paternal and the maternal grandfathers. In fact, the paternal
grandfather is deemed to be the more important grandfather in most
societies. Why is it then no where we find Rajiv Gandhi's paternal
grandfather's name? It appears that the reason is simply this. Rajiv
Gandhi's paternal grandfather was a Muslim gentleman from the Junagadh
area of Gujarat.

This Muslim grocer by the name of Nawab Khan, had married a Parsi woman
after converting her to Islam. This is the source where from the myth of
Rajiv being a Parsi was derived. Rajiv's father Feroze was Feroze Khan
before he married Indira, against Kamala Nehru's wishes. Feroze's
mother's family name was Ghandy, often associated with Parsis and this was
changed to Gandhi, sometime before his wedding with Indira, by an affidavit.

The fact of the matter is that (and this fact can be found in many
writings) Indira was very lonely. Chased out of the Shantiniketan
University by Guru Dev Rabindranath himself for misdeveanor, the lonely
girl was all by herself, while father Jawahar was busy with politics,
pretty women and illicit sex; the mother was in hospital.

Feroze Khan, the grocer's son was then in England and he was quite
sympathetic to Indira and soon enough she changed her religion, became a
Muslim woman and married Feroze Khan in a London mosque. Nehru was not
happy; Kamala was dead already or dying. The news of this marriage
eventually reached Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi urgently called
Nehru and practically ordered him to ask the young man to change his name from
Khan to Gandhi. It had nothing to do with change of religion, from Islam
to!

Hinduism for instance. It was just a case of a change of name by an
affidavit. And so Feroze Khan became Feroze Gandhi.The surprising thing
is that the apostle of truth, the old man soon to be declared India's
Mahatma and the 'Father of the Nation' didn't mention this game of his in the
famous book, 'My Experiments with Truth'. Why? When they returned to
India, a mock 'Vedic marriage' was instituted for public consumption.On this
subject, writes M. O. Mathai (a longtime private secretary of Nehru) in
his renowned (but now suppressed by the GOI) 'Reminiscences of the Nehru
Age' on page 94, second paragraph: "For some inexplicable reason, Nehru
allowed the marriage to be performed according to Vedic rites in 1942. An
inter-religious and inter-caste marriage under Vedic rites at that time
was not valid in law. To be legal, it had to be a civil marriage.

It's a known fact that after Rajiv's birth Indira and Feroze lived
separately, but they were not divorced. Feroze used to harass Nehru
frequently for money and also interfere in Nehru's political activities.
Nehru got fed up and left instructions not to allow him into the Prime
Minister's residence Trimurthi Bhavan. Mathai writes that the death of
Feroze came as a relief to Nehru and Indira. The death of Feroze in 1960
before he could consolidate his own political forces, is itself a
mystery. Feroze had even planned to remarry. Those who try to keep tabs on our
leaders in spite of all the suppressions and deliberate misinformation,
are aware of the fact that the second son of Indira (Mrs. Feroze Khan) known
as Sanjay Gandhi was not the son of Feroze.

He was the son of another Moslem gentleman, Mohammad Yunus. Here, in
passing, we might mention that the second son was originally named
Sanjiv. It rhymed with Rajiv, the elder brother's name. It was changed to Sanjay
when he was arrested by the British police in England and his passport
impounded, for having stolen a car. Krishna Menon was then India's High
Commissioner in London. He offered to issue another passport to the
felon who changed his name to Sanjay. Incidentally, Sanjay's marriage with the
Sikh girl Menaka (for Indira Gandhi found the name of Lord Indra's court dancer rather offensive!) took place quite surprisingly in Mohammad Yunus' house in New Delhi. And the
marriage with Menaka who was a model (she had modelled for Bombay Dyeing wearing
just a towel) was not so ordinary either. Sanjay was notorious in getting unwed young women pregnant. Menaka too was! rendered pregnant by Sanjay. It was then that her father, Colonel Anand, threatened Sanjay with dire consequences if he did not marry her
daughter. And that did the trick. Sanjay married Menaka.

It was widely reported in Delhi at the time that Mohammad Yunus was
unhappy at the marriage of Sanjay with Menaka; apparently he had wanted to get
him married with a Muslim girl of his choice. It was Mohammad Yunus who
cried the most when Sanjay died in the plane accident. In Yunus' book,
'Persons, Passions & Politics' one discovers that baby Sanjay had been circumcised
following Islamic custom, although the reason stated was phimosis. It
was always believed that Sanjay used to blackmail Indira Gandhi and due to
this she used to turn a blind eye when Sanjay Gandhi started to run the country as though it
were his personal fiefdom. Was he black mailing her with the secret of who his real father was? When the news of Sanjay's death reached Indira Gandhi, the first thing she wanted to know was about the bunch of keys which Sanjay had with him. Nehru was no less a player in producing bastards. At least one case is very graphically described by M. O. Mathai in his "Reminiscences of the Nehru Age", page 206. Mathai writes: "In the autumn of 1948 (India became
free in 1947 and a great deal of work needed to be done) a young woman from
Benares arrived in New Delhi as a sanyasin named Shraddha Mata (an
assumed and not a real name). She was a Sanskrit scholar well versed in the ancient Indian scriptures and mythology. People, including MPs, thronged to her to hear her discourses. One day S. D. Upadhyaya, Nehru's old employee, brought a letter in Hindi from Shraddha
Mata. Nehru gave her an interview in the PM's house! .

As she departed, I noticed (Mathai is speaking here) that she was young,
shapely and beautiful. Meetings with her became rather frequent, mostly
after Nehru finished his work at night. During one of Nehru's visits to
Lucknow, Shraddha Mata turned up there, and Upadhyaya brought a letter
from her as usual. Nehru sent her the reply; and she visited Nehru at
midnight... "Suddenly Shraddha Mata disappeared. In November 1949 a convent in
Bangalore sent a decent looking person to Delhi with a bundle of
letters. He said that a young woman from northern India arrived at the convent a
few months ago and gave birth to a baby boy. She refused to divulge her name
or give any particulars about herself. She left the convent as soon as she
was well enough to move out but left the child behind. She however forgot to
take with her a small cloth bundle in which, among other things, several
letters in Hindi were found. The Mother Superior, who was a foreigner, had the letters examined and was told they were from the Prime Minister. The person who brought the letters
surrendered them... "I (Mathai) made discreet inquiries repeatedly about the boy but failed
to get a clue about his whereabouts. Convents in such matters are extremely
tightlipped and secretive. Had I succeeded in locating the boy, I would
have adopted him. He must have grown up as a Catholic Christian
blissfully ignorant of who his father was."

Coming back to Rajiv Gandhi, we all know now that he changed his so called
Parsi religion to become a Catholic to marry Sania Maino of Turin, Italy.
Rajiv became Roberto. His daughter's name is Bianca and son's name is
Raul. Quite cleverly the same names are presented to the people of India as
Priyanka and Rahul.! What is amazing is the extent of our people's
ignorance in such matters. The press conference that Rajiv Gandhi gave in London after taking over as prime minister of India was very informative. In this press conference,
Rajiv boasted that he was NOT a Hindu but a Parsi. Mind you, speaking of
the Parsi religion, he had no Parsi ancestor at all. His grandmother
(father's mother) had turned Muslim after having abandoned the Parsi
religion to marry Nawab Khan. It is the western press that waged a blitz
of misinformation on behalf of Rajiv. From the New York Times to the Los
Angeles Times and the Washington Post, the big guns raised Rajiv to
heaven. The children's encyclopedias recorded that Rajiv was a qualified
Mechanical Engineer from the revered University of Cambridge. No doubt US kids are among the most misinformed in the world today! The reality is that in all three years of his tenure at that University Rajiv had not passed a single examination. He had therefore
to leave Cambridge without a certificate. Sonia too had the same benevolent treatment. She was stated to be a student in Cambridge. Such a description is calculated to mislead Indians. She
was a student in Cambridge all right but not of the University of Cambridge but
of one of those fly by night language schools where foreign students come to learn English. Sonia was working as an 'au pair' girl in Cambridge and trying to learn English at the same time. And surprise of surprises, Rajiv was even cremated as per vedic rites in full view of India's public.

This is the Nehru dynasty that India worships and now an Italian leads a
prestigious national party because of just one qualification - being
married into the Nehru family. !

Good interview exp and questions,

2006-08-17T22:10:00.000-07:00

www.glaak.com

check out the interview section

David Ginats Implementaion for Queens problem.

2006-07-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

public class DavidGinatalg {
static int n;
static int c;

public static void main(String args[])
{
if(args.length == 1)
{
n = Integer.parseInt(args[0]);

}
else{
System.out.println("There is an error");
}

c= condition(n);

if(c == 1)
{
int p[] = new int[n];

p[0] = 0;
System.out.println(p[0]);
for(int i=1;i= n-1)
p[i] = 1;
else
p[i] = p[i-1] + 2;

System.out.println(p[i]);
}
}
if(c == 2)
{
n = n + 1;
int p[] = new int[n];
p[0] = 0;
for(int i=1;i= n-1)
p[i] = 1;
else
p[i] = p[i-1] + 2;

System.out.println(p[i]-1);
}
n = n - 1;
}
if(c == 3)
{
int p[] = new int[n];

p[0] = 0;
for(int i=1;i= n-2)
p[i] = 1;
else
p[i] = p[i-1] + 2;
}

int temp = p[0];
p[0] = p[(n/2)-2];
p[(n/2)-2] = temp;

int temp1 = p[n-1];
p[n-1] = p[(n/2)+1];
p[(n/2)+1] = temp1;

for(int i=0;i= n-2)
p[i] = 1;
else
p[i] = p[i-1] + 2;
}

int temp = p[0];
p[0] = p[(n/2)-2];
p[(n/2)-2] = temp;

int temp1 = p[n-1];
p[n-1] = p[(n/2)+1];
p[(n/2)+1] = temp1;

System.out.print("0");
for(int i=0;i

Special Keywords
==================
Microsoft windows 2000=ginta anta metha kitkeel rendvel

search = devulaadu

Save = bachainchu

Save as = gitla bachainchu

Save All = anni bachainch

Help=Nannu bachainchu

Find=ethku

Find Again=malla ethku

Move=sarkainch

Zoom=peddaga-chei

Zoom Out=shinnaga-chei

Open=tervu

Close=mooi

New=kothadi

Old=pathadi

Replace=maarcheyi

Insert= Nadimitla vettu

space=jaaga

Backspace=enka jaaga

Run=vurku

Print=acchu

Print Preview=choosi accheyi

Copy=gatlane

Cut=koi

Paste=atki

Paste Special=peshal atki

Delete=teesipadey

View=soodu

Tools=mutlu

Toolbar=mutla gottam

Exit=igavori

Compress=gunju

mouse=elka

Forward=idkelli aadki

Scrollbar=thippudu gottam

Errors=nee notla mannu v

Indians, world's biggest shopaholics

2006-07-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

Do you shop to keep boredom at bay? Well, don't worry you have company. A lot of it.

Results from an ACNielsen global survey on consumers' attitudes towards shopping have confirmed that the world's biggest shopaholics are to be found in Asia. The recent global online survey conducted among over 22,000 Internet users in 42 countries, one in four consumers shop 'as a form of entertainment' once a month, while in Asia, one in four consumers view shopping as 'something to do' once a week.

As many as 32 per cent Indians go shopping once a month where as 22 per cent of them indulge in it once a week.

According to the survey, seven of the top 10 nations who shop once a week simply to amuse themselves all hail from Asia.

The ACNielsen Online Consumer Confidence Survey is aimed at gauging consumers' current confidence levels, spending habits/intentions and current major concerns. The survey was conducted with a sample of 23,500 consumers -- regular Internet users -- in 42 markets: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, United Kingdom, and the United States.

"With increase in the sheer numbers of malls and modern format stores shopping has almost become a national pastime in our country especially in the cities. Strong economic growth along with booming young adult populations with unprecedented levels of disposable income has made people more conscious of the latest trends and fashions. No one wants to be left behind, Indian consumers are ever willing to upgrade their knowledge where latest trends are concerned and these definitely helped in increasing the footfalls in all these modern malls mushrooming across the city," says Sarang Panchal, Executive director customised research, ACNielsen South Asia, in a media statement.

"In India, modern shopping malls are entertainment destinations incorporating cinemas, restaurants, food courts and additional sports and entertainment facilities to suit all budgets. There are shopping malls with modern facilities catering to all income levels and social groups of all sections of society," said Panchal.

"In congested Indian cities where accommodation is cramped and people often live with extended families, the shopping mall has become a home away from home. People go there to escape the worries and stress of work and home life and meet their friends and 'hang out.' The upside of this lifestyle for retailers is that, with the money these consumers save on living at home, there's simply more to spend at the shopping mall," he adds.

Clothes versus grocery: People have heard of the term "retail therapy" but for some countries it has really become part of their whole shopping experience. Russians, Japanese, Hungarians and Swedes say they find clothes shopping 'therapeutic,' according the ACNielsen online survey.

However, once again, it's the booming economies of India and China that are embracing clothes shopping with unbridled enthusiasm.

A third of Chinese consumers and one fifth of Indians say clothes shopping is their favourite thing to do.

"The young adult populations of China and India are ambitious, hard working and have money to spend on their lifestyle -- they are also brand-conscious and internationally aware of what their counterparts in the West are wearing and buying," says Panchal.

"These millions of consumers represent the dream generation for international manufacturers and retailers," said Panchal. "No wonder that international brands -- from shampoo and household goods to luxury/ designer goods - are all clamoring to capture a share of the booming consumer markets in India and China and are investing aggressively to build their brand in the minds of today's and tomorrow's generation in these new markets," he adds.

Courtesy: rediff news.

Only one European country made it into the global top ten ranking for clothes shopping being the "favourite" thing to do - and no prizes for guessing -- it's the trend setting Italians who lead the fashion shopping pack in this region.

When it comes to grocery shopping however, it's another story. 71 per cent of Indian consumers describe grocery shopping as a necessary chore, compared to 46 per cent who said that clothes shopping were a necessary chore.

"There is a huge opportunity for grocery retailers to exploit the situation and change the mindset and ultimately, grocery shopping experience for consumers," says Panchal "Grocery shopping should be converted into an appealing experience. Retailers need to understand the changing needs and motivations of their customers as well as identify the store drivers of consumers to create a unique store experience for themselves."

This is the Algorithm course at MIT with audio visual.

2006-06-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

This is the Algorithm course at MIT with audio visual.

Click here to get the stuff.

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Indians, world's biggest shopaholics

This is the Algorithm course at MIT with audio visual.