My World

Exciting times ahead

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 18:58:00 +0000

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Photo credit: Ochinko)

I have always dreamt of studying at the great institutions of the world like Stanford & MIT. Till now, it has just been a dream. But now the dream has come true atleast virtually.

Now great universities like MIT, Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley have their courses online. Yes we had open courseware from MIT before but we now have courses which are even more interesting and captivating.

Thanks Khan Academy for starting this revolution. Though just a humble beginning, you have inspired many others and showed the way.

The most exciting ones are Udacity, edX and coursera. Just browse through them and pick your courses. I have taken web application engineering course in Udacity and learnt many things which I could have learnt with great difficulty very easily. It was taught by Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman and was really useful. I learnt about MemCached, Replication & Sharding from there in context. I am very very excited to take the new courses and courses unrelated to our work but which we are interested in from the very best in the world. Exciting times ahead indeed.

If you are are student, then I don't think there are better times than this :) . If you have read till here, do yourself a favour and just check out the below sites.

Udacity
edX
coursera

My efforts to get a house in Hyderabad

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 04:53:00 +0000

So after 5 years of staying in rented places in Hyderabad, I decided I should have a place I can call my own. Keeping in mind all the good times I had at my grandparents place during my childhood, I longed to have a similar house. A house with lot of open space in the backyard and in front of the house.

So with that thought in mind, I began searching for plots around Hyderabad, mainly around Madhapur area, where my office is located. After a long search, where every place I saw was about 20km from my office, I thought that my dream will remain just that after all. Luckily, one of my friends recommended a place called Bandlaguda, which comes to 17 km from my office. I was exhilarated and paid a token amount for the land.

The cost per sq yard of the land was 10k. It is an open plot. Now the problem was that I didn't have enough money to pay for the plot completely. Not a problem, I thought. I will easily get loan for that. With this, I started going to banks for loan. First up, was LIC housing finance. And they gave me the first shock. They said they will give me loan on the SRO (Sub Registrar Office) rate which is another word for government rate. To know why I was shocked, just consider this point. The cost of the land per sq yard in the market is 10k, where as the SRO rate was just 3.5k. So considering this, I was getting far less loan than I expected to. So this kind of lessened my excitement for the plot. I told this to the agent who was kind of helping me buy the land. He said it should be possible for me to get the loan from other banks too. So I went to another bank, ICICI. They said they won't fund for areas outside the main city. But this area was outside.. so no loan. same with HDFC, Axis bank and so many others. One of my friends friend works in IDBI bank. So I went to that bank and enquired. They said I will get good amount of loan. That amount will be enough for me to purchase the land. Awesome I thought. But when I went with the documents to them, they said they will fund only if I have HMDA approval for the plot. To get approval for a plot, first the layout has to be regularized and approved. But my layout was not, so no question of getting approval. By this time, I was losing hope fast that I will be able to buy it. In a final effort, I contacted DHFL, who give loans exclusively in panchayat regions on market rates. They said they can process my loan, but the amount was less and I will have a shortfall during construction.

So I had to forget my dream home.....

Versatile Mr. Richard Feynmann

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 03:02:00 +0000

I am not sure how many of you know about him. He is a nobel prize winning physicist. He is not talked about in the same breadth as Einstein or Edison and so he is not so famous (atleast I didn't know about him previously). I came to know of him from reddit where a link to one of his lectures was posted. It was very interesting. In no time, I came to his online home, and started reading the anecdotes about him. Of particular interest was a speech given by him called - "What is Science" upon reading which I had a plenty of aha moments. Read the whole article. It is a gem. In that lecture Feynmann talks about how he learnt what science is. It is really amazing. Talking about how he got interested in science, he says

My father did it to me. When my mother was carrying me, it is reported--I am not directly aware of the conversation--my father said that "if it's a boy, he'll be a scientist." How did he do it? He never told me I should be a scientist. He was not a scientist; he was a businessman, a sales manager of a uniform company, but he read about science and loved it.When I was very young--the earliest story I know--when I still ate in a high chair, my father would play a game with me after dinner.He had brought a whole lot of old rectangular bathroom floor tiles from some place in Long Island City. We sat them up on end, one next to the other, and I was allowed to push the end one and watch the whole thing go down. So far, so good.Next, the game improved. The tiles were different colors. I must put one white, two blues, one white, two blues, and another white and then two blues--I may want to put another blue, but it must be a white. You recognize already the usual insidious cleverness; first delight him in play, and then slowly inject material of educational value.Well, my mother, who is a much more feeling woman, began to realize the insidiousness of his efforts and said, "Mel, please let the poor child put a blue tile if he wants to." My father said, "No, I want him to pay attention to patterns. It is the only thing I can do that is mathematics at this earliest level." If I were giving a talk on "what is mathematics," I would already have answered you. Mathematics is looking for patterns. (The fact is that this education had some effect. We had a direct experimental test, at the time I got to kindergarten. We had weaving in those days. They've taken it out; it's too difficult for children. We used to weave colored paper through vertical strips and make patterns. The kindergarten teacher was so amazed that she sent a special letter home to report that this child was very unusual, because he seemed to be able to figure out ahead of time what pattern he was going to get, and made amazingly intricate patterns. So the tile game did do something to me.)

Another interesting story hitting why just knowing the name of the effect or thing doesn't mean anything.

On the weekends, my father would take me for walks in the woods. He often took me for walks, and we learned all about nature, and so an, in the process. But the other children, friends of mine also wanted to go, and tried to get my father to take them. He didn't want to, because he said I was more advanced. I'm not trying to tell you how to teach, because what my father was doing was with a class of just one student; if he had a class of more than one, he was incapable of doing it.So we went alone for our walk in the woods. But mothers were very powerful in those day's as they are now, and they convinced the other fathers that they had to take their own sons out for walks in the woods. So all fathers took all sons out for walks in the woods one Sunday afternoon. The next day, Monday, we were playing in the fields and this boy said to me, "See that bird standing on the stump there? What's the name of it?"I said, "I haven't got the slightest idea."He said, 'It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn't teach you much about science."I smiled to myself, because my father had already taught me that [the name] doesn't tell me anything about the bird. He taught me "See that bird? It's a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it's called a halsenflugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird--you only know something about people; what they call that bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way," and so forth. There is a difference between the name of the thing and what goes on.The result of this is that I cannot remember anybody's name, and when people discuss physics with me they often are exasperated when they say "the Fitz-Cronin effect," and I ask "What is the effect?" and I can't remember the name.I would like to say a word or two--may I interrupt my little tale--about words and definitions, because it is necessary to learn the words.It is not science. That doesn't mean, just because it is not science, that we don't have to teach the words. We are not talking about what to teach; we are talking about what science is. It is not science to know how to change Centigrade to Fahrenheit. It's necessary, but it is not exactly science. In the same sense, if you were discussing what art is, you wouldn't say art is the knowledge of the fact that a 3-B pencil is softer than a 2-H pencil. It's a distinct difference. That doesn't mean an art teacher shouldn't teach that, or that an artist gets along very well if he doesn't know that. (Actually, you can find out in a minute by trying it; but that's a scientific way that art teachers may not think of explaining.)In order to talk to each other, we have to have words, and that's all right. It's a good idea to try to see the difference, and it's a good idea to know when we are teaching the tools of science, such as words, and when we are teaching science itself.

there are many such stories, about inertia, about law of conservation of energy etc.. and we can feel the wonder he felt when he learnt about that. It is such an interesting story. I was very much impressed by this talk. So I got hold of his book 'Surely you are joking Mr Feynmann' and started reading.

In that book in one place, he talks about his experience teaching Brazilian students who would answer any question but still not understand anything. It was because of the people just learning by rote and not really understanding anything.

If you think that all he did was just study, do research and teach then you are terribly mistaken. He is a versatile genius. He, at various times, was a radio repairman, a samba player and dancer in Brazil, a tumba drum player, a very experienced professional lock-picker (his stories about how he used to pick locks in Los Alamos are very interesting), an accomplished painter (so much so that he painted commissioned pictures), a learner and speaker of other foreign languages(Spanish, Portugese, Japanese)
,a mayan hieroglyphics solver (he loved puzzles), a mind reader (literally) , a hallucination experiencer and many more. He really had a very very interesting life. Apart from the things mentioned above regarding what is science, I also learnt a very easy way of understanding physical theories. You just have to apply that theory on a valid physical object and see if the observations in the theories are right. that is a very very easy way to understand and remember the theories. I wonder why we don't do this more often. I read the whole book in one sitting. It is full of really witty, funny and interesting stories. You will come out with a whole different feeling after you read the book. You will really become a lot more interested in science. Even if you don't have any interest also, it is a very good read

Media Fast for twenty five days. - Updated

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 06:17:00 +0000

I waste a lot of time daily doing a lot of things but in reality, I don't do much. Today was a relatively free day at office and I have been meaning to complete a small project from the last week. But I am always putting it off for just a few minutes whenever I get a sense that I am free. It typically goes like this. If I feel I am free from 11:45 am, I decide that because anyway I will go to lunch at 12:30 pm, I will just check what is happening in hacker news. It will go till 12:30. I will go to lunch and I come back to my desk by 1 PM. Then again, I want to start working on the project but I remember that there are revolutions going on in Libya, Bahrain and else where in middle east. I open up nytimes and guardian to check the status on that. I know that I can in no way influence the outcome of that but still I can't keep myself from checking those sites. Then I check gmail. I will get a mail from facebook saying so and so person has left a comment on your post. I follow the link and see the comment and reply to that. Also, I see the links and statuses and photos that my friends have shared and in no time, I will be diving deep in the chain of links and by the time I come to my senses and start working, it will be 3:30 PM. I work for half an hour, go for a tea break and come to my place. Again I want to check twitter to see what my friends are saying. Again I drown in another sea of links. By the time, I am rescued, it will already be time for my leaving. I come home and hope that I can do something at home atleast. After coming home, I start checking sites of telugu movies like idlebrain, telugustudio.net etc and by the time I see the interviews, news and videos I am starved. So I just pull me up, cook something and eat and by that time, it will be time for calls to India. By the time I am done, I can only sleep.

This is kind of frustrating. I just tell myself tomorrow will be better daily. The days have become weeks and weeks have become months. With such an addicted situation, it is really a wonder that I have been able to complete an android app. So something has to change. As I have mentioned in my resolutions review conentrating on something is not a problem thanks to pomodoro once I have started, but starting itself is a big problem now. So I have decided to extend the pomodoro technique to get me started also. In the classic pomodoro technique, we start working on something for 25 minutes without any distractions -any distraction is attended to after this 25 mins-, now I want to start something and work on only that thing of 25 days and leave the other 5 days to attend to any distractions.

So I will not visit any news sites during these 25 days. I will check my email and facebook only once everyday and that too at the end of the day. Ideally this would be best if I start it at the beginning of the month, but then I don't want to lose the motivation now, so I am starting it now. If I am able to successfully complete this, then I will take an extended break at the end of march.

Update- 1: So It has been one and a half week since I started this fast. I would say I didn't succeed wildly in this becuase I am still seeing the websites and news sites I will visit. But still, there is a marked change in the way I see reading. Before I read anything, I am asking myself if it will help me take any action - If yes, then only I am reading big articles. Ofcourse I am just glancing over the news, which I would have previously read. But still I can be better. I followed the Ipad 2 announcement live on Endgadget. But over all, I am very happy with the decision. I have been very productive this two weeks. I will continue to observe the fast and tell you of all the updates.

Update - 2: It is going really good. To be frank, I am not really forcing myself to not go to websites and I am checking them intermittently, but the key word their is intermittently, I am not getting stuck there. I am visiting them only as break in my work. And it is working too. I completed my first Django web application and deployed it here.

Update -3: After the success above, I should say, i completed hit the wall. But the media fast ends. It is one thing which is very difficult for me. I am a sucker for news... The Japan earthquake and the surrounding media hype was too much to ignore. Now it is the cricket world cup. This will never end, but this week has be disastrous in the sense, I didn't even work for one pomodoro after I come home. Saving grace is that I am reading and summarizing Keith Ferrazi's book on relationships - 'Never Eat Alone'. Check out the posts here. Meanwhile, I have also have to do a lot to improve the app which has been languishing without any improvements. You can follow my progress and encourage me here.

The role of organized religion

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 07:31:00 +0000

In 2009 when I was thinking a lot about religion and our place in the world, I wrote these

Following a religion gives us hope, faith and confidence about problems which we cannot solve ourselves...and a sense of humility which is very necessary in this random world.It also is used to give some sort of stability, checks and balances in the society so that it will not degrade..

And

All these things (castes and rules) make me feel these things were only created for manipulation and power-grabbing.

After that I argued that I didn't need someone else to set the rules and that we ourselves can make our own rules for life.

I found a different perspective regarding organized religion in Sebastian's blog.

because people attribute things like discrimination or war to religion, but I think that’s mistaken. We naturally draw lines as humans, and support the people on our side of the line. Sure, religious groups often promote themselves at the expense of other groups. But so do trade organizations, national organizations, race-based organizations, and so on, and so on. Humans naturally divide themselves into groups, support people in their group, and oppose people outside of it.
So I’d say, even the worst implementations of religion tend to get 80% of things correct. They all pretty much say don’t steal, don’t kill, do charitable and good deeds, be hospitable, purify and master yourself, serve and do good works…
If you belong to an organized religion, you know how people are generally expected to act, you know it’s pretty good, and you know everyone’s consistent about it. You have some people that you know are going to back you up if times get tough, and you’ve got common ground to connect on and work together, socialize together, and build families together.
Y’know, a hardcore athiest that focuses on the mystical side of religion and says it’s ridiculous is kind of missing the point. Organized religion greatly simplifies people’s lives by giving them a reasonably good belief structure and standardizing a large group of people’s customs, culture, and expected conduct. It makes life easier and allows for strong connections and alliances and agreements.

So he says, religion has made life easier by giving us a culture and standard beliefs. This helps in creating and maintaining relations and being together amicably. Though I argue that if we are all intelligent, we can think about and form our own beliefs and understand that our well-being lies in live and let living, I will not. Because,

guy that can research, strive, examine, think, brainstorm, and scratch and claw your way towards having a uniquely developed, cohesive, powerful set of ethics.
Most people can’t, and don’t want to do that. It’s a lot of work, and it leads to a lot of doubt and confusion and then no one understands you. Having your own ethics is lonely. Very lonely.

Hence religions have spread and established with the help of the charisma of the people spreading them. But I think his perspective is very useful to understand religions influence in the world. His blog is very good and he writes really interesting stuff. You can read it here

Utopia is just a dream

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 04:22:00 +0000

Friends, I just watched the movie 'Inside Job' which clearly shows how the financial crisis of 2008 was an inside job by the big investment banking companies like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Meryll Lynch with the support of the credit rating agencies like Moody's , S&P and Finch. Apart from that it shows how the CEOs and directors of those investment banks become the economic adviser to the US government, the head of Federal Reserve ( the central bank of US like the Reserve Bank of India) and still maintain their loyalties to the banks. It also lays bare the lobbying the financial companies do to create laws to decrease their taxes, increase their leverage and no regulation for their activities. They sold things to the investors which they knew were junk. It increasingly proved that and the documentaty states - "It is a Wall Street government". Yes, money speaks. No, it was not only Bush.

Obama who came to power on the promises of financial overhaul, did nothing, virtually nothing to address the root cause of the problem. Now here is where I am convinced that Utopia is just a dream. I wonder if we always have to cheat a few poeple to live? You might be innocent, but your bosses might be lobbying for some tax cut for your industry. And then we ask the question - Why should we pay tax? What is the right amount of tax that we should pay? Who decides which industries should be exempt from taxes? I don't think anybody has answers to these. May be, it is the nature of humanity - survival of the fittest. The more I see and understand the world, I think dishonesty is the norm and honesty is the exception, not on an individual level but on a group level. What I mean here is you will not cheat your colleague, you might be cheating your client by not working for their interests. The Wall street wants its company to get profits so they didn't see any harm in cheating the investors. I really wish that is the not the case, but it seems to be.

Now what if we don't want to do such stuff and want to live honorably? Till recently I thought it was, but I think except if you escaped into a cave, it is virtually impossible. But may be at our individual level we can strive to do the best we can. Call attention to any cases of cheating and fraud. And somehow, the feeling of guilt in cheating the faceless government is decreasing day by day. I think humans have had such problems all over history and people with money have always brought laws to favor them and grew more rich until it became unsustainable and people revolted . Then some sort of level playing field is established during the revolutions like the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution. Then once everything settles down, new players comes, they get some money (honestly or dishonestly) and again with the money, they make favorable rules and the cycle continues. It looks like this has been the way of life. It looks its indeed the survival of the fittest.

I would love to hear a different perspective from you guys..!!!

Optimistic about the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 03:13:00 +0000

You might have heard about 'Jasmine Revolution' or 'Tunisian Revolution' where citizens fed up the rule of corrupt and uncaring dictators revolted against the dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, of Tunisia, and overthrew him. He was ruling them for the past 23 years. They changed the rules in their country such that they can continue ruling their country forever. But it was not to be, as the young people fed up of unemployment and no prospects of a better future took the matters in their hands. They had no leader. They organized among themselves with social media tools like Facebook and Twitter and the good old sms. With peaceful protests ( comparatively, though some people died), they were able to change the regime.

This news inspired me very much and I was not alone as the neighboring countries like Egypt and Yemen also drew inspiration and decided enough was enough and are protesting against their dictators. Especially in Egypt, the protests are still continuing. It has been six days and about a 100 people have become martyrs, but still the people are hopeful that Hosni Mubarak's 30 year regime is going to end. I really wish they are successful in bringing about change.

Both of these news have given me immense hope that the youth of India will revolt against the ever increasing corruption in India. I also wish that we all realize that it is not required that everyone has to go into dire conditions as people in Egypt are in now as we have the opportunity provided by democracy to vote a government out of power every 5 years. Its a pity that there are very few good candidates standing in the elections, but it is never too late to encourage good people into politics by voting and voting correctly, by demanding transparency and an end to corruption.

I hope the scent of Jasmine Revolution affect Indian citizens too. :)

Singapore gets it

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 02:30:00 +0000

Friedman writes in the NYT about Singapore.

"Top bureaucrats and cabinet ministers have their pay linked to top private sector wages, so most make well over $1 million a year, and their bonuses are tied to the country’s annual G.D.P. growth rate. It means the government can attract high-quality professionals and corruption is low."

How simple is it to add a little accountability into our political system in India ? It is in the hands of our generation. If the pay was comparable to private sector jobs and had good accountability, I am sure, more people will be interested in coming to politics than now. Now, politics is not a viable career opportunity, if you are not corrupt but this change would make it attractive overnight. No wonder, Singapore was able to eliminate corruption in a decade.

You just want a magic wand if ...

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:55:00 +0000

"I'll go further and say that the repeated compulsion to resolve and resolve and resolve is actually a terrific marker that you're not really ready to change anything in a grownup and sustainable way. You probably just want another magic wand."

How true. You can never make life changing changes at once. At best, you will struggle to keep them for a few days or worst not even one day. Better option would be to make simple changes and act on them. Excellent post by Marlin Mann here

Movies & More Movies

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 01:19:00 +0000

These days I am watching a lot of movies online. I have discovered couple of great resources to discover and watch movies online. I go to IMDBs top 250 list and just browse through the descriptions and decide on one movie. Then go to one site and search for it and watch it. As simple as that. So whenever I feel bored, I am watching a movie. In this way I discovered some very good movies and some movies have touched me a lot and some of them have inspired me and some have haunted me (not literally but because of the emotions which they evoke). Today I have watched a particularly haunting and a dark movie that I am sure, I will give a break to this movie watching spree.

Without further ado, I present some of the best movies I have watched. I will start with some haunting movies to the heart warming movies.

Haunting Movies:

Grave Of the Fireflies:This movie is a tragic tale of a young child Seita and his baby sister Setsuko during the time of second world war. Their father is in the navy and their mother is killed in a bomb raid on their place. It shows their struggles after losing their parents to live. The Setsuko is so sweet and you almost can't see her suffering and Seita's love for his sister is very touching. If you see this movie you will not want any other war for sure. The innocence and sweetness of the actors will haunt you always.

Revolutionary Road: This movie was recommended to me by my friend Gautam. It is the story of a young couple whose life seems fine from outside. They have a good house, the husband (DeCaprio) works in New York and the wife (Kate Winslet) stays at home with their two children. Winslet wanted to be an actor but gives it up. They feel something is missing in their life so they hatch up a plan to leave everything and snift to Paris. When everything seems ready for that, De Caprio takes a counter offer their manager makes when he informs him that he is leaving. When he tells this to Winslet, she is very unhappy and feels very bad. When De Caprio understands that Winslet is not happy, he rationalizes himself and says that Winslet doesn't love him or thier children. Out of guilt, Winslet tries to abort a child whom she is carrying, with crude instruments herself. That doesn't go well and she dies due to loss of blood. The mesmerizing action of De caprio and Kate Winslet will leave you spell bound. The skeleton of the man, De Caprio is left after Kate's death will haunt you and teach you not to take loved ones for granted. Thanks Gautam for a really must watch recommendation.

Heartwarming Movies

Its a Wonderful Life: This is the story of a man who dreams of travelling all over the world but has to settle in his town to serve the people in his town. The acting of James Stewart as the idealistic young man, Donna Reed as a supportive wife and a heartwarming story leave you asking for more and wishing that people were so good.

Mr Smith Goes to Washington: This is another story of idealistic James Stewart as a senator from a southern state, trying to fight against graft and corruption in government projects. The stubbornness of James even after it seems everything is lost leaves you wishing the same kind of people in our politics. It just shows the contrast with our current political conditions.

Good Will Hunting: I watched this movie after I saw a post on Reddit in the best of posts for 2010. Will Hunting, a mathematical prodigy takes up a janitorial job at MIT. A professor discovers his prowess and wants him to help him in research. As Will is difficult to work with, he takes the help of a psychologist to help him who teaches Will the valuable lesson that you can always criticize from the sidelines but life is not meant to be lived that way. It is meant to be lived and experienced.

Yes Man: In this movie, Jim Carrey's wife leaves him and he becomes a 'No Man' literally which means he is closed to all opportunities. One day, when he doesn't get the promotion he deserves he goes to a seminar upon the force of his friend and is challenged to say yes to every opportunity he gets. His life soon changes and lot of good things like unexpected promotion, a new girlfriend comes into his life. But he gets into problems because of saying yes to everything which is soon resolved when he realizes that, the condition was just to get him opened up and as he is more open now, he can say yes to whatever he really wants. Really a good watch.

How to train your dragon: This story tells us about a village on a hill which has vikings and dragons and there is always a fight between them. Ages have gone by with the vikings fighting the dragons and dragons fighting them. A young guy who is sidelined as he is deemed too weak to fight by his father, secretly shoots a dragon and injures it. He goes after it and finds that it is scared. He helps heal its injury and becomes friends with it and names it Toothless. His father enrolls him in a dragon fighting camp. With the understanding he gets of dragons playing with Toothless, he wins the competition held after the training camp and is given the opportunity to kill a dragon. But he refuses to kill it, wanting to show to the people that dragons only attack for defense. But the villagers refuse to listen and attack the dragon which retaliates and tries to till the boy. Toothless comes to his defense but is captured by the villagers. The boy tries to explain to the villagers that there is a nest of the dragons and if they don't bring food the dragons themselves will be killed by a giant dragon. The villagers use Toothless to find the dragon nest and destroy it. But the giant dragon attacks them but the day is saved when toothless and the remaining dragons which the villagers have caught help them win over the giant dragon with the help of the boy. The story shows how difficult it is to convince others against their beliefs and how you should stick to your belief till others see the light.

2010 Resolutions Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 01:21:00 +0000

So another year comes to an end. It has been ten years since I left my childhood home in 2000 after my tenth standard.
I have come from Adilabad to America :) .. Its a cliche, but I want to look back. I want to thank my parents & brother for everything they have done for me. :). Thanks to dear wife for the wonderful moments we shared.Oh ya, I am sorry that we are not together as I write this,but most of the wait is over. Thanks to all my friends & colleagues who have helped me, supported me and encouraged me. Life wouldn't have been this great but for you. Thanks to my teachers & mentors for patiently guiding and growing me.

With that gratitude, let me review the goals for this year.
1. Health:

wake up at 6 am daily -

Not a success as being onsite, to talk with people in India, I had to sleep late which inevitably makes me wake up late.

Exercise and run daily

I think I exercised for about a month, and then I went to different place and ran out of habit. And winter came and I completely forgot about running

Run a half marathon

No progress but it is going straight into my next year resolutions.

Drink a smoothie daily (almost)

Did it for few days, then I didn't have car to buy fruits from costco and fell out of habit. Not sure it is going into next year goals though.

2. Career

Avoid multitasking as much as possible

Old habits die hard. This is one of them, I get distracted very easily and it has not been an easy task to become more focussed and having more attention to detail. It is a work in progress and I would rate this was a good success. I used software tools, pep-talk, hard rules and still found it difficult to do one thing at a time. Finally, one technique called Pomodoro has helped me habitualize this. This is a simple system and you should try this if you want to become more focused.

Do the best with what you have - ( Should have zero issues with my work )

Ok this is not a smart goal, because it is not really measurable. But even with this ambiguous condition, I have to say, my best is far above what I have done. Due to the lack of attention to detail, made some blunders but apart from that a good year with work.

Join another degree - either political science or Green energy

Hmm, didn't officially join due to disadvantages due to being on H1. But had a lot of education reading Hacker News. Hacker news is the single source after Kathy Sierra which made me get interested in UX & design.
Learnt a lot of interseting things like.

Everyone can be creative by shipping - Seth Godin

Real Artists Ship - Steve Jobs. If you like to receive links to interesting articles like this, follow me on twitter @thisisananth

So in this way, I am getting education without the degrees. Anyway, degrees are not required if you are consistently creating things.

3. Relations

Strengthen relations with existing friends with emphasis on giving

Develop relations with people in fields of interest ( alt energy, raw foods, music, pd)

Go to a trip with family once

I am in US now, so couldn't go to family vacations this year but apart from that I reconnected with lot of my school mates and new friends through facebook and my blog. This has been a very good year in this regard. Hopefully we will grow lifelong friendships. :)

4. Finances

Earn 30 lakhs :)

Hmm, wanted to test law of attaction with this but it fell flat :) Though, I saved more than all the other years in my life , fell far far short of that figure. I reached just 10% of the said figure.

5. Personal

Write 60 blog posts atleast

Ohh.ya done :)

Write a short story and publish it.

Done - here

Read atleast 10 books this year and write the reviews

Fell short of ten but read some books though

The Switch

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

The War of Art (not art of war)

and three other telugu novels.

Apply and use 'Ten faces of innovation' in work to have atleast one innovation.

None I can think of ..!!! Actually I didn't use them ;)

Apart from that I actually overcame the laziness to write an android application. :)

So thats my year.. Hope you all had a great year 2010. I wish you, my friend, a very happy new year 2011.

My top ten telugu songs for 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 20:17:00 +0000

In continuation with the tradition of listing the best telugu songs of every year, I have prepared the list of best telugu songs for 2010. For my non-telugu friends, music has no language bounds, so you can listen and enjoy them. Yesteryears links 2009, 2008

1. Aunana Kadana - Leader (Mickey J.Meyer)

2. Manasa - Ye Maya Chesave (A.R. Rehman)

3. Neeve Neeve - Darling (G.V Prakash Kumar)

4. Nenu Nuvvantu - Orange (Harris Jayraj)

5. Inumulo oka hrudayam - Robot (A.R Rahman)

6. Nee Yeda lo naaku chote vadde - Awara (Yuvan Shankar Raja)

7. Sreelu pongina - Leader (Mickey J Meyer)

8. Rooba Rooba - Orange (Harris Jayraj)

9. Hossana - Ye Maya Chesave (A.R Rahman)

10. Vintunnava - Ye Maya Chesave (A.R Rahman)

Songs which almost made it to the list

Ninnu Nannu - Maro Charitra

Telugammayi - Maryada Ramanna

Inka Edo - Darling

Hello Rammante - Orange

Chilipiga - Orange

Neelo Valapu - Robot

These songs are different lyrics wise and music wise

Chari - Adurs

Taxi - Khaleja

Cmon Cmon - Thakita thakita.

Nee Navvule - Emaindi Ee vela

Ammayi kitiki pakkana koorchundi - Maryada Ramanna

Listen to the songs and have happy holidays.. :)

Delicious shutting down - Is it the end of free in freemium ?

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:22:00 +0000

Delicious shuts down: One free web service I use frequently is biting the dust. I joined quite late into the delicious party but after I got used to it, the delicious bookmarklet was the first bookmarklet on my browser. It was really very good and I used to refer back to those bookmarks to find - something which I remember having read but can't remember now - articles. I am really sad to see it go. If you have used delicious and want to atleast back up all the bookmarks you have saved, you can export all those bookmarks here.

Other shutdowns of popular products: I think lot of web services will start to feel the heat and web services which are not able to to monetize may shut down or start to charge for services. Google shut down its notebook service also which I was using. Now evernote has taken that place which has premium accounts and it is rumoured to be making good revenue.Evernote has raised a lot of money and after the growth of the company peaks, it also might want to terminate its non paying customers. Ning a company which provides custom social networks removed the option of free from its packages and all the existing customers were asked to pay up or leave.

Will everyone start charging for services now? There are two ways that a company can continue to provide its services for free, if it is either acquired by a big company - read google or microsoft or if it makes good money either by charging for services or by ads. Lets consider one by one

Selling to a big company : Picnik, Youtube, GrandCentral (google voice) & many other companies acquired by google are still providing services for free. That doesn't mean it will always be like that. The founders of those companies will become rich but there is no guarantee that the services will keep running. Delicious is best example of what will be wrong with this approach.If the new company thinks it is useless or does not fit in with its agenda, it will shutdown. So no company whose motto is selling to another company can be trusted to remain functional for ever.

Money from ads: Companies can make money by serving ads on the site. This is popularized by google. Blogger, Youtube, GMail and all big google properties are subsidized this way. Though there is no danger of these being discontinued in the short term there are some threats to this approach too. Adblocker extension on Firefox and Chrome will block all ads on a web page and you have to whitelist certain sites to enable ads like I enabled google.com to see ads from that site. And how many people will take that pain of enabling those ads? And Facebook is giving a good threat to google. Don't you think with all the facebook connect information can't facebook show ads on the pages which have activated Facebook Connect ? I think it is only a short time before facebook starts federating its ads. If google loses its relevance or lot of people switch to facebook ads, is it possible that Google can keep supporting bandwidth hogs like Youtube indefinitely. This raises a question which webservice can be trusted to run forever? Which brings us to the third way a company can make money

Charging for services: Companies can earn money the old fashioned way by charging for services. Lot of companies already charge for services but I think we will see more and more companies starting to charge for services.

Not everyone will start charging for services. Notably all those places which can attract lot of eyeballs like facebook, youtube or google might always be free because by their nature the more people they can bring they earn more. So they might make more than they use and hence they can be free but more services where it is not possible to be subsidized by ads, the companies will charge for sure.

How different it is from freemium ?
The difference is that you will not get free servies indefinitely. Today even if you will not pay you can use tumblr to host your blog indefinitely. Evernote allows you to save notes indefinitely even if you never pay anything to use it within a limit. But the difference which i see it the services will become time-limited. So you can only try but not really use a service. You have to pay to use it.

I am not saying this is true for news or other data where the cost of incremental stuff is zero but for web services where each new free customer has a cost associated with him/her however small the cost might be.

Update: A cool service call trunk.ly is poised to replace delicious not in the same way but now a days, if we like something we just share it on twitter or facebook, not to delicious right. Trunkly indexes the links we share on twitter or facebook and is searchable.. So grab a spot for this here

Thoughts on seeing a person getting fired..

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:06:00 +0000

Our QA person comes to office after a ten day vacation to a popular destination. He showed us the photos of his vacation. I and my colleague went through all the pics which were in hundreds. He was beaming showing us the pics saying that he was planning this vacation from a long time. I was very happy for him.

Little did we know that all that change on Monday. On monday he came to office as usual. Our CTO also came to office. He is a very busy person so he travels quite a lot. Generally our QA person comes to lunch with us. On Monday, we forget to call him when we went to lunch. When we were having lunch, my colleague Murali reminded me we forgot to invite him. I went inside after lunch and when i saw him I put a sorry face showing the expression that I forgot to call him for lunch. We opened our mailboxes and we were in for a shock. Our CTO sent a mail. "We thank XX for his services to the company. He will no longer be part of our team effective immediately" (Emphasis mine). Yes thats it, by the time we saw the mail, we couldn't see that person. I called him and he said he was down stairs smoking. He said that it happened very casually. They said that his job was being performed from some other location and he would not be needed. He will be given one more pay check for 15 days (because he has completed two years, otherwise he will be given just one week pay) and then from there he is all by himself. The company has filed his visa, green card, so I think the person was pretty much committed to this company.

I was shell shocked with this incident. I have heard numerous times that Americans have a hire and fire policy. But I have never seen it in action so closely. The fact that it is done without any prior intimation and they way they just said - effective immediately- and closing all access (Laptop was taken) made me feel very bad. I for once felt very lucky that we were just contractors from a different company and so even if we were fired, we will be sent back to India. I really applaud my company for retaining everyone during the downturn even when it was difficult. I don't say that they have to keep every employee even if they don't have any work or however bad they are but I feel they should be given proper intimation as soon as the manager knows and not being so surgical (effective immediately) would be lot better.

This also shows the perils of coming on a H1 visa to the land of opportunities. Luckily our QA person's wife also works. So he can get by with her salary atleast. Imagine a person coming on H1 and losing his job. Even if it take just one month to get a new job, just imagine the stress he would be in till he gets a job. If intimated before, it goes a long way in making the transition easier and the employee is more likely to have a favorable view of the comapny. It is in the best interest of the employee as well as the employer for the employer has to be more humane during this time.

Reminded of lot of things after this - Of the many things the famous quote of Narayana Murthy of Infosys - "Love your job but not your company" - well said by the man of experience. I am also reminded of what rude shocks you get when you are caught off guard by the company from the movie Up in the air. To know what I mean watch the video below

Car Stories - Part 2 (My Adventures on U.S Roads)

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 23:58:00 +0000

I have previously written about how car-addicted society U.S is here. Then I lamented about how I am not able to do anything because I don't have a car. So now I bought a car. I wrote about my first impressions about driving on U.S roads here. So these are some of my experiences driving the car in a utterly new country. I do know the rules - Stop at stop sign, maintain speed limit, yield and drive on right side of the road etc - or otherwise how could they have given me license. Somethings which we take from granted in India cannot be done here and therein lies the problem.

Two big things which you cannot do here are - 1. you cannot stop and ask anyone for directions (Actually nobody walks on the roads - so even if you tried to do this, you will find no one to ask. And if you really tried to go near someone - they might be afraid that you have guns and shoot you before you even speak a word) 2. You cannot stop on the road wherever you want or TURN BACK or other direction once you passed it. So even though I know these things, the effects of these are not so clear if you don't experience it. So without further ado, this is my story.

Story 1: Even before I bought my car, I wanted to visit the temple at Bridgewater once. I was just interested to see how different it is from our temples. So when I bought a car, I wanted to drive there. I didn't have a GPS set at that time, so I hesitated a bit. But the Google maps application on my phone came to my rescue. I put the address in the maps and followed the instructions and successfully reached the temple. I was happy that I was able to drive that far without any problems. So I was a little relaxed when I was going back. The temple is at Exit 17 (think mile marker 17, except that you can go out of the highway only at that place) and my home was at Exit 40 on I-287. It is a four lane highway on one side i.e 8 lane highway. We can enter and exit only from the rightmost lane i.e the exit lane. I was travelling on the lane to the left of the exit lane till exit 39. I was happy that I was about to reach my home. Suddenly I saw that I was not going towards exit 40 but I am on a different highway I-80. Thank Google, my phone gps safely brought me back to my home. Later I realized that highways merge into other highways and if you are not careful you might go into some other road and you might have trouble reaching your destination. So I came back after half an hour I was supposed to come home.

Story 2: My friend Murali is with me now and he started enjoying whenever I went on a wrong route and took a detour. Now my GPS has a penchant of choosing highways over local roads. I don't have a way of knowing the route beforehand in GPS and I will get the instruction only in time. Sometimes it can give you instructions too late and then.. read the story. There is a highway near to our road with number 46. We wanted to go to a grocery shop on the highway where I haven't gone before. So I put in the address in the GPS and started going. I expected it to take me to 46 directly but instead my GPS has a penchant for choosing highways even if the destination is a mile apart. So instead of taking me on the local highway 46, it gave me instructions to on I-80. As in previous story, I enter highway 280 which divides into highway I-80. My GPS asks to keep left so that I can merge into I-80. So i was in the left lane, I merged into I-80 in the second lane from left and I had to pass two more lanes to get into exit lane. Two seconds after I merged to I-80 my GPS asks me to go the rightmost lane and exit in about a 100ft. How the hell can I just pass two lanes to the right without knowing it before hand. So I did as you expected. I missed the exit. As I cannot go back, I had to look for the next exit. I had to take and missed exit 47. The next exit was exit 53, 6 miles ahead. So I had to go all the way to exit 53 and go in a roller coaster, yes three lanes going right, two lanes to the left, two lanes forward, get out of the highway, turn back and come on to the highway and travel all the way 6 miles back again and I reached my starting point again. For a half an fifteen minutes journey it was already one hour and I was again at my starting point. I started again to go to the shop as I was determined to see if I can follow the instruction of the GPS. This time as I knew that I had to take exit 47, I cleared the lanes fast and reached the exit lane just in time. This taught me another lesson - Never trust GPS blindly. Always review the route beforehand on google maps so that you will have an idea of where to take the next turn. Or be ready to travel 12 miles more for a grocery store nearby. To give you an idea of how superb the roller coaster ride was just see the image above.

Fall colors post..!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 04:10:00 +0000

In India, during winter all leaves fall, but they just turn brown and then fall. But in U.S as in spring, there is again a riot of colors, yellow, red and orange and start falling down. Actually, all those colors are already present in the leaf because the green pigment, chlorophyll which is used in photosynthesis dominates. But with the nights becoming longer than days, the leaves fail to get enough sunlight to perform photosynthesis. So the plants try to shed the extra leaves and stop creating the green pigment used in photosynthesis. That is when we get to see the hidden colors in the leaves. Though you have to see it to enjoy it fully, I have captured a few pics which let you imagine the vibrance.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisananth/tags/fall/show/

Wow.. development is very interesting again..

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 05:26:00 +0000

I joined in my first job in 2006 and the first year of work was very interesting in that I learnt new things and discovered the wonder of programming. Then it started wearing off as the more I learnt for what was required in my job and got better at that. The learning began to plateau and so did the excitement to work. But it all changed again and I find myself very excited to program and develop because of the development of smartphones. There are two factors for that.

Always on devices: Previously if we developed an software application, we have to have a system to use it. This would disqualify most of the people in our country because not everyone has a system. Even for those who have a system, they are not always in front of a computer. But the smartphone changes that. now we have a computer which is always on with lot of sensors in it which highly increases the number and variety of practical applications that could be built.

Accessible Development: Previously developing and releasing an application was a non-trivial thing. But now a days, development of a trivial application using android is a breeze and it is easy to release it and update it which makes it easy to develop an application and continously improve it. Though this may not be a big reason for people who are used to developing applications, I feel it has greatly lowered the barrier to entry for developing apps and it plays big role in making me jump into it.

So if you have any great ideas and want to implement it, then just dive in and start developing. If you are a good android developer and are interested in developing a cool app, get in touch with me at thisisananth@gmail.com

My Car & Road

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 03:44:00 +0000

I got my first car last week, an old Toyota Corolla car and I am just driving to and from office.This is not a new fact but the roads here are amazing. Once I get on the highway, there are very very few interruptions and I can drive straight without looking for anyone coming from other side and that is a far more pleasant experience.

Its so great that they were able to plan 50 yrs ahead in 1960 when these higways were built. They are still quite good. May be I seem too pessimistic, but roads are one area where we don't have much hope when the chairman of the NHAI says it is not completely clean. Ofcourse nobody expected it to be clean anyway but all this has to change. Ofcourse, logical arguments like these never convinced anyone and I will write another post on it soon.

Music Post - 'Orange' comes to end the drought for good telugu songs

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 01:05:00 +0000

Harris Jayaraj is back with a bang. Orange album is very good both musically and lyrically. Generally most of hits are dubbed Tamil songs and always the lyrics are made to fit with the music and hence the authentic feel is lost. But this time with the songs directly in Telugu, they are much better. Listen the songs here. My favorite music streaming site has enabled embedding again. So it is time for celebration.

<p><a href="http://musicmazaa.com/telugu/audiosongs/movie/Orange.html?e">Listen to Orange Audio Songs at MusicMazaa.com</a></p>

Surely, it will increase the craze for the movie. If you want the lyrics for these head over to Sandy's blog here.
I will also write the lyrics for songs which I like most but for that I have to do some good listening :)

Enjoy the songs ...!!!

Why I am hopeful of a better government ?

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 22:38:00 +0000

"Idealism is what precedes experience, cynicism is what follows"

I am going to tell a story about how I became a cynic from an idealist. Now, the fact that we have a bad government is nothing new. So, when I came to know that Dr Jayaprakash Narayan, an honest IAS officer is going to start a new party, I became overjoyed. I was so excited that finally, after years of waiting, a credible, honest and knowledgeable person was coming into politics. His policies seemed so sound, so coherent that I started rallying behind him with posts cheering him here. Little did I know that I was setting up myself for bitter disappointment. As the results of the general elections 2009 were declared, all my hopes of a good government crashed. I was down but not out. Why - Because in Lok Sabha elections, the number of educated people who vote is very less. So I thought if educated people really voted and more people are educated about the policies of Lok Satta, then surely we will have a good government. That is why I was even more excited when there was a call for Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections. The percentage of educated people will be more in Hyderabad city. Moreover, Lok Satta launched a unique campaign in the elections, saying that they will pay fine to the people if they didn't resolve people's complaints within a posted resolution time. With this I thought they will surely win in the elections. And when the results were announced how many Loksatta candidates do you think won? Zero, nil, zich, no one...!!!! And that is when I became a cynic... If people fail to know what is right and what is wrong and when there is a chance for change also they will not utilize, then I didn't know how change can come...

And for a long time, I remained a cynic, convinced that no good change will come. The IPL fiasco, the CWG corruption only confirmed and made me more of a cynic regarding politics. Do you think I am peddling cynicism? No - and even I don't want to remain a cynic, but I didn't find a single hopeful thing to cling to then... But some things were happening around that again sort of gave me hope that all is not lost. So I am here not to make all of you cynics, but to show you rays of hope and ask you to reflect that.

The first thing that caught my attention was the website done by an NGO called Janaagraha, called http://ipaidabribe.com. Being a cynic, I was not at all convinced what change could a site like that where people who gave bribes were sharing their plight could change. Though I supported it whole heartedly, I was not hopeful of it changing anything. But I was pleasantly surprised by the success of the campaign. People started taking it seriously. One woman threatened a doctor who asked for bribe saying she will post his name in ipaidabribe.com and he backed down. More heartful news is that a transport commissioner gave show cause notices to twenty of the traffic commissioners whose name had surfaced in compliants on IPAB.

The second thing which showed that people are thinking about the problems and people are thinking of doing something when I heard the speech of Siddharth at TIE Connect 2009.

Though the speech was given in 2009, I saw it recently and was really impressed by the solutions he proposes.He talked about lot of things like the smaller attention span of our generation, the lack of ability of any person to make a difference, the lack of records of facts but what really hit me was the fact that we need to glamorize good government. We are in a time when it is very difficult to concentrate on one thing. We hve constants interruptions with twitter, facebook etc. So we have an attention deficit. Thats why we tend to forget quickly.Hence we need to keep the discussion going and keep this always in front of the people. The fact that people are talking about it and thinking of solutions makes me hopeful. And as he said media is wasting a golden opportunity by not taking the chance to lead from front for this.

And this brings me to the next thing that makes me hopeful of that. I saw someone implementing a suggestions given by Siddharth, one person using his glamour and influence to talk about problems facing India and how government is responsible for that which automatically leads to selection of better politicians. SS Rajamouli is a movie director who hasn't given an flop in the industry. And thats why he is the director with the most craze in the industry. When he talks about something, people in AP listen. And he is utilizing his influence and craze to talk about problems facing India and discussing the solutions for them. It is a program called 'Come On India' in Telugu. The links are here if you would like to watch it. In this episode he talks about the healthcare system in India. It is a fact that if we get any health problems in India, government hospitals are hopeless and private hospitals attach unknown diseases to us to get as much money as possible. So it is a very important issue. He talks about the better systems all around the world and what changes are required for improving the situation in our country and responsibility of everyone involved, the government, the doctors and citizens. I am sure whoever has watched it has understood how better it could be and how can we get that.

With all these changes happening around us, it is not difficult to be hopeful of better days isn't it. So will it magically happen? No, there is more responsibility on us to spread the awareness, talk about issues and take a strong stand wherever required. So however you can, facebook, twitter, blogs, movies, videos, short films, tv programmers whatever you want to make, whatever discussions you want to have, keep the discussions going and spread the word, I am sure, we will live to see days with better governments and a happier and developed India. Jai Hind.

PS Thanks to friends Saandeep, Bikram and wisedonkey for keeping the discussions going.

Book Recommendation - The Switch

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:56:00 +0000

Cover via AmazonI completed reading a book called 'The Switch' written by Dan Heath and Chip Heath. It is a very well written book. It is a book about making change when it is difficult. If you want to quit smoking, but aren't unable to do it or if you are in a legacy industry whose competitiveness is threatened by internet and want to make difficult changes, this book lays out a very clear way for making the change.

When we know that we have to change, then we feel that we have enough reason to change and we can easily navigate the change. But if you have tried to change anytime, you would have observed that it is not that easier. To understand it, the authors have used a model. Assume a rider riding on top of an elephant. Your analytical mind is the rider. You know all the facts about why to change, what to change. The emotional or feelings part of mind is the elephant. So for your analytical mind to make the change, you have to ride the inertia and emotions. But imagine if you can have strong emotions for change, then riding the elephant would become a breeze in the right environment. Right environment is the third factor. Suppose you have to make an elephant go uphill. It is a difficult task but if you make a clear road in the way, it would be easier for the elephant to go.
Lets take an example here. Consider some person is trying to quit smoking. He knows why it is important to quit smoking but he doesn't have sufficient motivation to quit. Now assume, he imagines how happy his wife would be and how much good it is for his kids, then he gets motivated. He then decides he will quit smoking. He goes the whole morning without smoking but after lunch he couldn't control his feelings to smoke. Then he can make it easier for him to quit it by scheduling meetings right after lunch so that he needn't have any time to go and smoke.
So change consists of three parts, they are

1. Shape the path: They have to clear the path or environment for change - For eg, if you want to eat healthy food, other junk food should first be thrown off your shelves. You should fill it with fresh fruits and vegetables. etc.

2. Direct the rider: There are two parts in our brain. One that is emotional and doesn't do what it has to even though it knows. It is swayed by emotion. They call it the elephant. Other part is rational brain which analyses and comes at the right decision. This is called the rider. They say that due to many alternatives, the rider comes into analysis-paralysis mode and is confused. To overcome this problem, the rider should be directed correctly.

3. Motivate the elephant: As told above, even though when we rationally know what the right decision is, most of the time we fail to see through it if the emotional part of brain, the elephant is not motivated enough. So the elephant should be motivated.

Head over to my book reviews blog here to read a summary of various ways in which you can make harder change easily.

A Bed-'Buggy' Story

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 01:07:00 +0000

Image via WikipediaLot of apartments in US are infested with bed bugs. I didn't know this fact and hence I stayed in a room which had bed bugs for three months. I didn't realize it for first two months, but I felt that something was biting me and disturbing me in sleep. After a few days, I found some on my bed and thats how I discovered them. The apartment people came and treated it for bugs. Luckily I had to shift to another place after this. This place didn't have bed bugs or atleast I didn't see them initially. But after one month, I observed bed bugs on the bed of this room too. I thought even this apartment had bugs and was cursing about how bad it is that U.S people had to put up with bed bugs.
I wondered why we don't have bed bugs in India. I found out that because of the high temperatures in India, they don't survive and hence we didn't have this menace. See how lucky we are that sun shines all round saving us from these bugs. First some bed bug facts:

Bed bugs are small bloodsucking insects that feed on humans & other warm-blooded animals.

•Bed Bugs often hide in mattresses but they can also survive in furniture, behind wall coverings and pictures/paintings. They will crawl and nest inside tiny crevices anywhere indoors, as long as there is a source of food (blood).

•While bed bugs do not transmit any pathogens or diseases, their bites usually result in swollen red, itchy welts.

•Bed bugs are typically nocturnal insects (they creep about at nightime).

•There are other types of bed bugs including the bat bug, the chimney swift bug and the swallow bug. All of these relatives survive on blood feeding, however these secondary parasites thrive on either bats or birds as their primary victims.

•Small reddish or brownish spots on one’s linens are often the first sign of an infestation. These spots are the bed bug’s droppings. Another sign is swelling where you’ve been bitten.

•Bed bugs are not necessarily a sign of unkempt/dirty homes or buildings.

•A female bed bug can lay as many as 500 eggs during her lifetime.

•Bed bugs are less than 1/4″ in length, flat, and oval-shaped like; a bit like a sunflower seed.

•Bed bugs can go up to a year without a blood meal

•A bed bug’s saliva features an anesthetic to numb the pain as it’s biting. It also contains anti-coagulant to keep the blood of it’s meal host flowing.

Furniture that is inspected should be inspected thoroughly. Remove pull out drawers and inspect any and all small creases and openings.

Taking apart furniture is often advised you want to get at the source of the bed bugs infestation. Doing this in a garage or outdoors is preferred if possible.

The covering on the bottom a box spring bed should be taken off for inspection and treatment measures. If the infestation is severe, you may want to dispose of the mattress.

Bed bugs are many times also found underneath the edges carpets, where ceilings and walls meet, behind light switch covers and outlets, in clothes, inside appliances, and behind baseboards and carpet stays.

If possible, it is usually recommended that you hire a professional pest control company. They will know where and how to look for bed bug infestations and will have the equipment required to remove the critters. Homeowners should get rid of any clutter (boxes, clothing, papers and junk) in order to help the process.

It often takes a professional 4-6 hours to do a thorough inspection and initial treatment. Please be advised that additional inspections and treatments are usually necessary.

Bed bugs infested bedding materials and cloths will need to be thoroughly cleaned. Take them to a laundry mat if you don’t want to bed bugs in your washer and dryer. But never use insecticides on materials that would come in contact with your body. Also, if you have pets, be sure to understand the possible affects chemicals may have on them.

A thorough vacuuming effectively removes both bed bugs and their eggs from mattresses, walls, and carpeting. Special attention should be given to creases and crevices. Be sure to get rid of the vacuum bag/contents in a sealed garbage bag. A professional hot water carpet extraction is also recommended if possible. More information at http://www.bed-bug.org/

So what happened to me: Actually I should have reported that I found bed bugs, but as my previous apartment I thought they were common everywhere. But now I had to move to a different place again. I had paid a deposit of 500$ to my previous apartment which I should get back on moving. But what happened was that my apartment owner was slapped a $600 fine for having bed bugs in his house and because of that - he says I was responsible for bed bugs in his home - a claim which I cannot prove. But he has refused to give me back my deposit. Ohh..these bloody suckers, I mean the bed bugs, have not only sucked my blood, but also my hard earned money. So now I have to carefully observe if something happens in this new apartment too, lest I lose my deposit again. So all those people who dream of coming to US beware of bed bugs. Always make sure, where ever you stay doesn't have bed bugs and report bugs the first instance you see them. This will make your stay as well as everyone's stay pleasant.

If you are like me, go and install this to 'StayFocusd'

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 02:24:00 +0000

If you are like me, refreshing news.google.com or news.ycombinator.com or any of your favorite site atleast every five minutes to see what new has come there so much so that you don't even know where your time has gone, then I have found the ultimate solution.
If you are using Google Chrome (I don't think there is a better browser than that out there. If you haven't tried it yet, go download it here. And go to the extensions gallery. It is like addons for Firefox and install the StayFocusd extension here.

With this you can set the add the sites which you think you waste most of your time on or on which you can't close the browser on, add those to the blocked sites list in this. And it will do the rest. You can have a ten minutes of time or configurable amount of time where all the sites in the list will be available. After that they will be blocked. You may worry that even in the evening or during the time away from work also these sites will remain blocked. There is a solution for that also. Here are the options available

You can set various options like active days (to exclude weekends), active hours, daily reset time, allowed sites and even nuclear option - in which you can just specify which sites to allow. It will block everything else. Smart people might think that they can just increase the time when the feel that time is getting completed for the day. But they have factored such things also, the changes don't take effect till the next day. So you are completely blocked.

Ofcourse you can close the browser and open another browser like IE or firefox but after using chrome, I am not liking to use chrome.

Other cool extensions:

Other cool extensions which have made my life easier are Awesome Screenshot which helps you to capture screenshots and annotate them and IE Tab. IE Tab is very useful to open some sites which are still in the dark ages and open properly only in IE. Actually we could boycott them but not using outlook web access if you work in an IT company is not possible. So IE Tab has finally blocked the final reason which I used to open IE. If you use an android phone, and you thought typing something on the url bar of phone browser is a pain, we have LinkPush extension which just pushes the link from your chrome browser to your phone. Amazing I say.

Interview with a half-marathon runner

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 03:15:00 +0000

Image via WikipediaMy current cubicle lifestyle is not giving me enough exercise. So I tried joining a gym and even went to it a few times ;) But then my friend who used to take to the gym got transferred and I was unable to go the gym due to the car addicted society here. So when I saw that my cousin Shiva (@nitturis ) was running 15 Kms a day and even completed a half marathon, I was interested. I though this would be a perfect anti-dote to my exercise starved body. So I had an interview with him regarding how he got started up and when kept him going .

A: What was the motivation for getting started?

Shiva (S) : I was overweight, and even more by brother's son who was just 15 yrs old was even more overweight. So initially my aim was to make him lose some weight and I thought, even I am not fit. So it will help me too. So that was the motivation for it all

A: So how did you get started. What did you do before getting started?

S: The main thing is to run. Initially the idea should be to complete a particular distance, say 5 KM. And then start running. Don't worry if you are not able run continuously, just focus on completing the distance. Stop if you have to - for some time but still complete the distance. If you are tired, walk for sometime. Initially, on the first day you may feel very tired and you will feel a lot of pain. But next day, don't ignore, just run. And from the third day, surely you will feel better and it will not be that painful. Also a good advice for a starter is that you should not expect any results for 3 to 4 months

A: Is there anything which we have to do after a run?

S: Yes you can do a few things so that you will be fit for running the next day. Basically to prevent cramps, you can do some stretching exercises. You can do yogasanas for stretching yourself. Well, actually the surya namaskars fit the bill perfectly. It will stretch you and you will become fit also.

A: What are the dietary suggestions you have?

S: You have to drink more water as you will be dehydrated easily. You have to take more juices. Drink juice without ice and without sugar. If you need to sweeten it, try to use some honey. Also try to avoid rice at night and eat rotis. Also avoid coffee as it will decrease your stamina. Add more proteins into your food. If you are a vegetarian like me, dry fruits are good source of proteins in your diet.

A: Any other general advice for being to run successfully?

S: It all boils down to your motivation level. Aim for a 10K run. Join a running club. Get some company so that you can motivate each other. Buy an iPod, so that you will not feel bored to run. Always try to run. Also maintain good sleep habits. Actually the sleep will come by itself because you will have been tired.Also have the right attire. Sweat shirt and shorts would be ideal.

Thanks to Shiva for the interview. It has given me a good feel of what it takes to run.

So if any of my readers are also runners and have some tips for me or queries which I can ask my cousin are most welcome.

Updates & Touching Love Stories

noreply@blogger.com (Ananth Majumdar) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 23:45:00 +0000

Hi friends,
It is some time since I updated my blog. I was busy preparing for my driving test. If you have read my previous posts aka car stories here about US, you know that living without a car in the suburbs is very difficult. So I was eagerly awaiting my driving test after which I can buy a car. But unfortunately, I failed in the test. I practiced generally without markings and without seeing how a test track looks like for a parallel parking. So when I went in for the test the area was far smaller than what I have imagined, so I couldn't park in the cramped space to be declared 'Failed' . So I have to endure another month of waiting before I can buy my car.

Another interesting thing - We all love stories.. So my friend Sandy has written some beautiful love stories and he has published them. So go read them and have a good time. You can download the pdf here

I liked the geeks love story and the story of Akash and Akshaya.
So go ahead and download the story and let him know your feedback.