This is a little technical post

I started reading slashdot when I was in my BTech itself. It was the times when we had 3kbps connections in real life. It was supposed to be 64kbps connection, but the average speed would have been well below 10kbps.

Well, that doesn't matter. I used to use "lynx" to browse through slashdot - without understanding much of it though. Anyway, I was never a regular reader. I used to visit it once in a while.

It was only one year back, I discovered "digg". Looked and sounded cool initially. The more regular I became in digg, I found the community is very partial. The majority of them (I mean, the majority of active diggers) are apple/mac maniacs.

Slowly, I started noticing that they were very partial.

1. They are apple maniacs
2. They are neutral to Linux/Open-software
3. They are anti M$.

The third one in the list makes them actually a little inclined towards the FSF/open-source community. Now I dont have any problem with that. But the quality of digg is degrading. I am more-or-less a regular reader and I guess my opinion counts.

All the anti-MS stuff get more digged, all the apple-praising stuff gets digged. Digg was slowly becoming partial. It is very much partial right now.

But the good old slashdot - of which also I am a regular reader, remains impartial and factual - THE STUFF THAT MATTERS. Anyway I have always valued slashdot above digg. I am seriously considering of boycotting digg.

This morning, I went to both the sites and the top news in both of them - depicted in the picture. Isn't this a good proof? (You might have to click on the image to see it clearly)




The bug-report was anyway there in digg too - with about 900 diggs!

Signing off .. from here and digg too,
Sands.

PS: Now please don't argue on this thing. It's not my M$ love makes me say all this. That's a different thing altogether.

http://www.digg.com/ - DIGG
http://slashdot.org/ - SLASHDOT

This is Race, the Rat Race....!

IT definitely is funny. The more you (try to) organize your life, more chaos are detected. I am gradually structuring many things which were left untouched for years, and I am discovering that I've to do much more than I had imagined. A smaller example would be reading - the more I read, I realize that I have to read much more than I had imagined.

Very frequently I come across quite interesting articles and books. I read them carefully and at times while reading I think. "Oh yes, I should read this again".

Sometimes it is some technical article which I am not able to grasp completely in the first go. Then I definitely have to come back and read once again. But I know, re-reading is a phenomenon which occurs very rare - whether it is a technical article or not. By the time I am ready to read something the second time, I would have added at least another 5 articles to the pile named "TO READ".

That basically boils downs to this - whenever I read something, make sure that I get everything out of it. And it is not very easy!

When you do not have enough time for vision, how to think about re-vision? Still I keep a set of stuff to re-read.

This is the problem of getting exposed to the world of knowledge. Look at many people out there who have never read even a single book, have never been to BBC website more than a few times, have never heard "slashdot" and many similar stuff - yes, those people who are not in pursuit of knowledge.

They are happy in fact. I do not think they ever feel that "Oh! I am missing out so much of stuff". Where as I have a constant feeling that I've to catch up a lot.

Daily visits to BBC, trying to read a book every week, trying to solve some problems which are by no means related to my discipline, learning about human anatomy, attending physics classes ... nothing is quenching my thirst!

(Sometimes these are done at the price of my real work... got to increase that part.. by reducing the rest)


Yes, I get it now. I am trapped in the rat-race. And there is no way to escape. Actually I do not want to escape. This is fun, pure fun.

I was not in the rat race a couple of years back. The transition was gradual and I did not know it happening. It just happened. Now, my sister is getting ready for her entry to it. I can see that coming. I should try my level best to NOT influence her. I should even restrain myself from correcting her when she makes mistakes... that would teach her more.

In another few months, she will start interacting with PCE, the one who gets you addicted to the CS world (lately electronics though). That interaction should take care of my sister's entry to the race. Life is peaceful outside the race, but once you are in.. it's fun!

If it took 5+ years for me, it would be less than 2 years for her. Thanks to computers and Internet.

I can keep writing about this for quite some time. Why to get my readers bored? Let me put an abrupt end here.

No, something more... :)

I went for a walk in the city this weekend. After taking a couple of pictures with my mobile, I went down to the subway station.


I was listening to some song from my portable media player. Suddenly I noticed a very beautiful young lady. It was involuntary; I exclaimed "Oh Boy!!". She was really hot, I was looking from behind her, enjoying the simple harmonic motion ;)

I realised that my exclamation was a little too loud. Since I was listening to the song, I did not know how loud I was shouting. The two macho-men who were with my sexy lady turned to me! My heartbeat stopped for a moment. Then suddenly I started singing with the lyrics and walked past them very fast. :)

Can you guess what is there in this picture? Do not think naughty! ;)



Signing off, Sands

PS : DidYouKnow.wmv - a good presentation (wmv file - mplayer should play)

Unable to resist the temptation

For the first time in my life, I am working on an oil-paint. It is not yet complete. Still I am not able to resist the temptation to put it online.

There are a couple of things you should take care if you are into oil-painting

1. The paint takes quite some time to dry up. If you are not careful enough, you’ll spread the colors all over the sheet and will use a couple of 4 or 8 letter words. I normally never ever use swear words. Still when I see that I did spread the paint carelessly, the very basic swear words pop out of my mouth – involuntarily! What a pity!



2. It is actually very easy to paint compared to the traditional water color methods. Since the oil takes time to dry and since it won’t spoil/wet the background as water does, we can take all our time to give the shades.



3. Don’t try with some complicated stuff for your first painting. I did this mistake and am struggling!



4. Make sure that you have ample time… I mean a minimum of 3-4 days. You cannot finish one picture in a single day. Paint some part 1-3 hours, let it dry for 1-3 days, then the next part. This is the way to go. At least I guess so.

Now, here is the first draft of it. I am really so excited. The finished picture will go as a gift for my beloved Deutsch teacher!

So far so good.

Let me go and have my rice-soup. (In malayalam "kanji")

Signing off, Sands.

_

The Motto is: DO IT NOW

We all have heard that "necessity is the mother of invention". Necessity seems to the mother of change too.

A couple of weeks back, I had written about "the mother of all decisions". To be honest, I was not really able to stick to the decision to its full extent. Anyway it doesn't matter. Now things are better.

After realizing that changing myself completely by a single decision is going to be very difficult, I decided to stick to very small small decisions. The only capital investment I had were my faith in myself, my willpower and the dire-strait situation.

So, the first decision was to get up early every day. For the past 32 days, I've implemented it pretty well. There was not even a single day on which I woke up after 6:00 AM.

Even on weekends and holidays. The average sleeping time has fallen down drastically. Earlier it would have been 6+ hours. I am sure, now it is well below 6 hours. This is just a byproduct of the new decision. Most of the days, I went to bed at 12:15, and woke up at 6:00. Those days I went to bed at 11:30, I woke up at 5:00.

After this successful implementation of my first decision, I am going to my second decision.

One major problem I am facing lately is lack of concentration. That is not true. When I am really near the deadline, I am able to concentrate well. I can finish even 50 pages of hard-core math in a single day, without burning the midnight lamps. I consider that to be really cool. (Of course, the exercises not included)

But on other normal days, the variety of umpteen tasks which I have to finish, seem to make me switch from one task to another very frequently, thereby reducing my productivity. This is the main problem which I am facing.

When I do a proper analysis of this problem, I come to a conclusion that, it roots from my habit of postponing things.

For eg.: I have to type in a single page of writing to my computer as a part of some official work. I have the page with me for the past 5 days, and it would take at the most 15 minutes for me to type it in to a latex file, and store it in the proper place. I myself find it hard to believe that I would have spent more than 15 minutes thinking about when to do it.

The solution is simple, the next time I think about it, simply go ahead and finish it off. Otherwise, it will continue to haunt me during everything I do – till I finish typing it off.

It is not laziness, it is simple procrastination of those things I don't like but are important. This is what makes things go wrong. This is what takes away my concentration by reminding me about the things to be done.

Next time I come upon something to be done, I am simply doing it. NO MORE POSTPONING of things.

Following "30 days to success" of early rising, I have learned and made a habit of getting up early and making use of the early hours of the day. Now it is the time for something new. The coming 30 days, I am practicing myself to "procrastinate procrastination". There by making myself able to stick to a single task for 3+ hours without switching to something else.

Yes, that's it. Let me finish typing it in now J

Signing off, Sands.

The picture was taken by me with the camera on my mobile phone. Cool.. isn't it?

_