Monday, November 21, 2005

Leaders Of A By Gone Era


CHE



JFK


I was just reading about two great leaders John Fitzgerald Kennedy & Che Guevera. It's truly facinating to read about the Cuban Missile Crisis & the roles played by these leaders. Che was responsible for starting the crisis by collaborating with the russians to protest against the americans while JFK was responsible for bringing the crisis to an end by restraint and tact. It's really scintillating to understand these characters & try to unravel the shades underneath. Their backgrounds, inspirations & aspirations are so discreet & distinct.

Che Guevara or el Che, was an Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary and Cuban guerrilla leader. Guevara was a member of Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement that seized power in Cuba in 1959. After serving in various important posts in the new government, Guevara left Cuba in 1965 with the hope of fomenting revolutions in other countries, first in the Congo-Kinshasa (currently the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and later in Bolivia, where he was captured in a CIA-organized military operation. It is believed by some that the CIA wished to keep Guevara alive for interrogation but, after his capture in the Yuro ravine, he died at the hands of the Bolivian Army in La Higuera near Vallegrande on October 9, 1967. Testimony by various individuals who were participants in, or witnesses to, events during his final hours indicates that the Bolivian government summarily executed him in order to avoid a public trial and the complications that might arise if he were incarcerated on Bolivian soil. After his death, Guevara became a hero of Third World socialist revolutionary movements, as a theorist and tactician of asymmetric warfare.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917–November 22, 1963), often referred to as Jack Kennedy or JFK, was the 35th President of the United States. He served from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Kennedy was a member of the prominent Kennedy political family. Considered the icon of American liberalism, Kennedy is the youngest person ever to be elected president, at the age of 43. Major events during his presidency included the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, early events of the Vietnam War, and the American Civil Rights Movement. In rankings of U.S. presidents historians usually grade Kennedy slightly above average, but among the general public he is often regarded as among the greatest presidents.

Kennedy died the youngest of any president, at 46 years and 177 days, when he was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The assassination is often considered a defining moment in American history both because of its traumatic impact on the entire nation, and because of Kennedy's elevation as an icon for a new generation of Americans and American aspirations. Kennedy was the last president to die in office.

Source - Wikipedia

Thursday, November 10, 2005

MS Buzz!

Well Microsoft seems to be again making a lot of buzz with the "Windows Live" a next-generation platform strategy that builds on and extends the vision offered by .NET

Windows Live is not an operating system, having mostly originated from the MSN group's work. Rather, Windows Live is a set of services, many of which will initially be targeted at consumers. These services will include calendar management, real-time communications, information management & loads of stuff.

Since 2000, Microsoft has been trying to provide online services to small businesses. The other part of the initiative, Office Live, is the company's latest attempt, involving services that are solutions implemented on Windows SharePoint Services.

Though Microsoft has offered mixed messages on this subject, its manner of addressing the issue of Ajax and its Windows (and future Windows Vista) client technologies may clarify its intentions. The next big thing in Vista is the Win FX file system which is more of a platform than a file system. It basically consists of the core NTFS on top of which we a SQL relational engine (Yukon) followed by the framework (which has the various services) & then the APIs.

Way to go Microsoft ....................

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

AOE III

I just can't wait to get my hands on AOE III. The reviews are pretty good & quite a few of my pals have already checked it out. One of the best RTS games ever made - the AOE trilogy will always rock.

I can inadvertently state the AOE I & II were the greatest RTS games ever made!!

Thursday, September 22, 2005

The Barber Shop

Don’t expect me to write a review about the Arthur Ripley’s flick “The Barber Shop”, but rather this is about my stupendous experience at a saloon. Well, I’ve always spiked going to a barber shop.

Day before I’d been to the barber shop, and the barber happened to have just arrived at the shop. I guess I was a bit too early. Anyway, he asked me to take a seat. Then he started with his morning chores which turned out to be quite a ritual. He turned on the lights and dusted the chairs, then he lit some incense sticks & started moving all over the place to spread the fragrance across, then he opened his cupboards and spread the smoke all over the place, including his scissors and combs. Phew…quite a religious guy I thought. Then he took some flowers which he had got from his place & spread it across a god’s photo that he had in the shop. And then he got a lemon out of his pocket, took it outside his shop and crushed it. Then came the arthi to the shop and finally he entered the shop feeling elated. And yeah he then turned on the TV and I got my hair cut.

All I could think at this moment was the Karl Marx saying “Religion is the opium of the masses”. I think that it’s an absolute impeccable saying, for instance this barber was losing the whole essence of praying to god by making it a bare ritual which obviously he’d be carrying out everyday.

You can judge most things in life by looking at it in a dichotomy. You could look at things in a romantic way (extrinsic) or in a rational (intrinsic) way. A mix of the two could be the most ideal thing but most ppl have a dominant side which is called as the groovy dimension. The problem with the groovy dimension is that you tend to miss out the things below the dimension or the things that fall beyond the dimension. It's better not to have a groovy dimension, and take things the way they come.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Guess Why They Call It The Blues?

I’ve been just listening to some good old country & retro music….and lazing around. And now I’m of to sleep ;).

Saturday, September 17, 2005

The Fountainhead

"The Fountainhead" is touted to be one of the best modern classics, and I personally think it's one of the greatest books ever written. It tells the story of Howard Roark, a young architect who lives life on his own terms and strictly in those terms. Roark's architectural design of buildings are considered extremely radical and are considered by many fellow professionals as offensive and obtrusive because he fails to pay homage to the artistry of the period. He is also criticized for his stubbornness to collaborate with others for any part of his designs. As Roark himself states that he believes that buildings, like people have one central theme or idea and that idea cannot be compromised.

Ayn Rand then formulated the common perception that altruism, the fundamental human value is seen as an evil because the part of society that seeks to achieve this can only do so at someone else expense.

This classical book is a novel about a hero, his individual crusade fighting a violent battle against convention and the threat of fascism. "The Fountainhead", I confess it brazenly that this book has changed my life.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Googol

Hey you got to read this article, the folks @ anandtech picked up a "Google Mini" for a price tag of $2,995 and have put a sneak preview about it.

http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2523&p=2

Monday, September 05, 2005

Of Net-iquette & Nomenclature

I don't have my net connection from the past 3 days, whilst I've been reading the book "The Odessey of the Gods". The book is pretty interesting with interpretations on the various Greek myths. The best part is where you get to read Greek names which i really seemed to like (and offcourse most of the techies seem to like & emulate) like oracle, posedion, polydeuces, heracles, athens, zeus, telechon etc (many more which i'm not able to reminisce right now).

Another book in which i really loved the names is "Lord of the Rings". The names range from hobbits, dwarfs, men, orcs, wizzards etc. I mostly liked the elvish names & the names of cities.

Well these names are good to sound but might not have any intrinsic meaning. But if it is the meaning that really strikes you, nothing beats understanding & interpreting the names of Indian gods. There is not a single name in the Indian mythology that does not have a meaning and there are even stories explaining the evolution of the names. Most of the gods also have a sahasranama (1000 names). So, I'm kind of planning to make this my new hobby...interpreting names.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Finding Neverland


I happened to watch the Marc Forster’s flick “Finding Neverland”, a tale looming around a theatric writer called J. M. Barrie who wrote the play Peter Pan. There is a scene in this flick where Barrie says “Use the pages of your imagination to find neverland”. (Neverland is a metaphor used to refer to a place where Barrie gets to see perfection & happiness. It is a place where he finds only children and these children never grow old (The child above is a metaphor for the child within each of us who always stay’s young but restricted by our egos). Well it was quite an emotional movie with an awesome ending and I was forced to introspect about the place I would call neverland. Would it be:-

1. Driving a Ferrari Enzo in Autobahn (the best highway stretch on planet earth).

2. Steering a Russian T-54 & destroying a vulnerable target, or say something like the Hoover dam.

3. Making a time machine that is based on quantum theory.

Phew…what a jerk.

Then I tried to think clearly “Have I been to my Neverland before”. Then I managed to put my thoughts together could visualize my neverland as follows.

It’s a place where I and my friends used to play football, where we used to cycle in the rain, where we found freedom in uniform (bunking & watching movies), where we celebrated the new year parties on the terrace rocking, where we hired a boat steered it to the middle of the pond and slept for a long time, where we did the school projects and were the best always, where I met one of my best friends when both of us were listening and singing “Hotel California”, where we looked up gazing at the stars realizing that we were watching history (the light emitted from the stars takes light years to travel to earth so the light which we are seeing actually was emitted so many light years before) and of-course where there is no sorrow & a zillion years of peace……………….

Sunday, August 21, 2005

The Fox Effect

I managed to configure “Sage” in my Firefox browser. It’s a great extension which helps in keeping you updated by tracking the news feeds from your favorite web sites. All you got to do is go to Tools – extensions in your Firefox browser and search for this plugin.

“Sage” is like any regular RSS feed aggregator and the good thing about RSS feeds is that it makes for easy reading minus the advertisements and the pop ups. It also helps by avoiding clutter in your mail, by the newsgroups & news feeds.

There are a great deal of plugins & extensions you can find for Firefox, whilst the many features already in Firefox.

Monday, August 15, 2005

Eater In The Rye

Well I got to tell you that the Indian cuisine is coming of age. I think that is an understatement I’d rather rephrase it as too evolutionary as the former makes it look revolutionary. Yesterday I’d been to a marriage reception of a distinct relative. They opted for a catering based food service instead of a buffet system. I don’t understand whether they had a fixed course dinner or I guess they planned for a 6 course dinner. They had Sweet Corn Soup, Gobi Manchurian and Cucumber Salad as starters. Then the second course consisted of Masala Dosa followed by Rotis with Vegetable Kurma and Paneer Butter Masala. The third course had sweets such as Badam Halwa, Jelaebis and Bhasundi. The fourth course had rice with Rasam and Curd. Lastly, they served desert - ice cream with Chocolate topping.

After the marathon dinner, I walked out to an opening nearby to catch some air and I was surprised to see that the place was a separate enclave where ppl were getting served with some chats. I was really perplexed and was left pondering about the Indian eating etiquette and cuisine.

I just wondered about an idea I read in a book. It said “If you want to sell something to your friend take him to an Italian restaurant and if you want to buy something take him to a Chinese restaurant”. The concept was that Italian food is expensive and Chinese food is cheap. But I can add something more to this quote. “If you want to overwhelm your friend take him to an Indian marriage”

Sunday, August 14, 2005

To Be Or Not To Be

Well, another exasperating week comes to an end, not in terms of working but in terms of not being able to do anything constructive. And now I’m left with some serious conundrums. I have to make a choice in things concerning my career & my personal life.

Whenever I got to make such choices, I just get nostalgic and think about school. When I was in school I had a couple of very good friends, who had different ideologies and convictions. At times they had to face their prejudices and used to have a problem with getting along. And once it happened that they had a cold war going on between them and both of them expected me to part with the other. During this phase, I had to discreetly meet either one of them for their friendship and had to say “I’m with you buddy”. I should add that this was certainly not done on deliberation but rather compulsion. The fact was that both of them were great friends and I really cherished their friendship.

One fine day my buddies recovered that I was cris-crossing, and it hurt one of them really bad. He just came over to me and just said “Buddy at times in life you are at the cross-roads and you got to just choose your path. You have to clearly see two roads ahead of you and you got to make a choice and once you choose you just cannot backtrack”. So what do you think happened next?

I made my choice I’d rather say ‘so called choice’ and bid farewell to the alchemist (my dear friend). Yeah, I called him the alchemist because after a few months he met with an accident and passed away but left me haunted with his words. I’ll never ever forget the words he said.

I keep wondering is it we who make the choices or is it the choices that make us. I don’t think there is anything such as a choice technically. All our lives we keep thinking we are choosing but we end up with what we were meant to deserve. All I can think about in this moment is “today is the first day for the rest of my life”.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

The Fellowship Of Adventure

Well I just finished my first week of work @ Adventure (name deliberately changed due 2 implications). The week kicked out with a 2 day induction program which I personally think was an awful abuse of time & resources. Firstly there were those huge organization charts which looked more like a food chain & made us look ridiculous @ the bottom of the pyramid, then there were about 10 ppts 2 instate the company’s culture, values & ethics. And lastly there was a session about ergonomics (might have been informative 2 ppl who had no cognizance about it). The only thing informative was the stuff about “India Protection Services” an organization with a JV with Adventure for awareness about first aid & things u should do in case of X situations. For instance bomb hoax or fire breaking @ ur workplace.

And then the actual training commenced on the third day which was interesting in a different perspective. I couldn’t probably abstain from writing some dilbertisms wrt it. We had a training coordinator who thought that his job was 2 just commute between the first & the fourth floor with the context of coordinating. We had a couple of sessions which emphasized only on the management aspect as though the threshold work of an organization is management and not the actual technical work & skill ( the work needed 2 make the product work ). Then the quality ppl grilled us on the QMS, CMMI 5 and other such initiatives which r more on the business side. Anyway it was more of good 2 know than need 2 know.

Then we had 2 fill out time sheets for the pay 2 be transferred 2 our account. A gr8 deal of hard work was required 2 do this. You need 2 enter an alphanumeric charge codes for all the activities u do. That means a charge code for a working day, a holiday, a national holiday and yup even the HR induction program. There was some discrepancy in entering the charge codes and everyone ended mailing their info two 2 three times. I pity the HR dude who got spammed but it was his work 2 ensure that we did not goof up in the first place.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Thy Begins

Hi brave new world. Have I arrived on the shores of luminus or oblivion? Time will tell...