Captive Adaptations

Human capabilities need a regular nourishment of exercise and practice, otherwise they fade away into eternal dormancy. Today, I took out some time to hike on Mission Peak, its been nearly 3 years since i visited this last.

With an altitude of 2517 ft, a good gradient of ascent, and a final leg which is a steep climb to the summit, this was one of the trails I used to effortlessly surmount during my “hay days”.

But, the abuse that my physical body has undergone in the past 3 years, with a completely sedantry lifestyle, showed up as early as 20 minutes into the climb. With some effort, I was able to finish what seemed to be a herculean task at times, but I must admit that it was also an alarming realization of how bad my current fitness level is. The mind and body seemed so much out of sync, which only prolonged what should have otherwise been a simple physical activity. Fitness & Weight loss is certainly something that needs my attention soon.

I am sure most of you must have tried various ways to monitor, control and reduce weight gains. So I would be happy to learn about some creative ways to lose weight and get back to my previous fitness levels soon. Shoot your comments.

I managed to meet my own deadline last night, and I am happy that I finalized on another playground to cater to my professional adaptations as well. While this blog provides my daily diet of personal improvement, the new blog should supplement this, acting as a daily pickle to my professional pudding.

I have accumulated significant amount of empirical observations, and I am hoping for a continuous improvement on these observations while I capture, categorize, publish, index, connect and articulate ideas on emerging technologies and market trends, and crave to apply my objective analysis on the resultant.

In short my captive thoughts on the “Genesis, Taxonomy and Emerging Ideas in the world of Technology and Software” will be found on that blog. I will disclose the blog when the time is apt enough for me to share it with you, my dear fans and the rest of the world.

If you have ever experienced life in a pure startup which is at its earliest stages, its easy to arrive at a conclusion that its a natural course of human thought to gear up and wear on the mentality of a warrior. The point of having a pointed focus to doing whatever it takes to get things done, almost pushes you to the brink of erasing the thin line that distinguishes humans from being just another animal who will not hesitate to kill to prevail.

Moderation finds no relevance or place when you start living within this shell. If you have an open mind however its easy to find people around you, who can still reset your drive of madness, and assert that life has much more “meaning” than mindless accomplishment. I had the pleasure of participating & sharing a sweet evening with one such group of friends today.

Most of the time I am good at getting my own job done, but how many times in the recent past have I spent some thought to invest a little bit of my energy and time to celebrate the joy of simple things associated with my friends ? This question leaves me with nothing but mere embarrassment. The noble truth is today I did take note of the gestures and efforts of a few people, and this has only enhanced my admiration and respect in return.

Excited about the topic, can’t help it, I have to spoil it. Topic isn’t about social dating, neither is it about Carbon dating. I reached my “half life” as the clock struck 12 and remembered “Dating Methods” associated to Half Life. As you can see, I am still to come to terms with the concept of considering myself a 30 year old. Life has just been zoom… zoom.. ZOOM…. Its time to say goodbye to my first half life, and usher in the next which I know will not be as eventful as the first, but will demand more wisdom and discipline from me.

As people grow old, they tend to eliminate risk, look forward to what I term “Mythical Security”. For the most part its when you see all your youthful dreams of adventure, accomplishment, travel & romance buried under the cloud of conformity. Will I be more happier being a conformist ?. A tricky question for my own mind.

Mostly I have been more happier when I have braved the storm of life rather than when I have stayed securely on shore and merely existed !. So as the new half life unfolds itself, I am thinking life should be more a matter of tastes than being a matter of tasks.

May be this fresh perspective will help, I am betting on time to spring up a few surprises as well. Just to lighten up the serious topic, here is the link for a cool site, that I accidentally came across today. A nice image to text converter. And guess what sprung up.

Pleasant Surprises, already Huh ?.

Today, I just had a marathon argument with my CEO, on the technology vision and product road map. Not that this is new to me, but at the end of it, convincing every one just drains out your entire energy and it becomes almost impossible to finish off the coding tasks that are piling up at an incredible pace.

Information Overload all around certainly brings with it an overwhelming set of options to filter and details to pay attention to. But this alone does not merit that people just give up reasoned decisions. There will always be multiple ways to skin a cat, and litte time to find the right knife, but that is where “Human Reasoning and Empirical Rules” help you sift through, to get to the most appropriate way of achieving the desired result.

While its difficult to model all the variables into the microcosm of your product offering, it would be pertinent to model atleast the minimum needed according to Occam’s Razor. And any behaviour that we percieve naturally, I think can be modelled with a finite set of variables, provided we identify the core elements around which the others, position themselves. But at every place the Senior Leadership tends to think otherwise, and wants a quick solution. Passion is important in a startup, but it should not warrant anyone to be impulsive. Attention to detail is equally important to build a successful company. Having convinced my CEO to incorporate the right blend of innovation, and time to market, I have invited more work for myself.

I also made a conscious decision to keep work/professional matter outside this blog, but given the need of the hour, I have to find another blog space to capture, categorize, and build a taxonomy of the ideas that are floating in the fabric of my mind. Ideas are ephemeral, blog them for posterity. (nice, i like this statement that my mind just spewed out)

Here are the options I am currently weighing.

1. I thought about the space at 360 that I recently created, but there I reveal my true identity, which is not suitable for professional blogs. ( I don’t want to be liable for conflict of interest issues, nor do I want to answer breaches of confidentiality etc)

2. So should I opt for another space in Blogger itself ?, or are there other blog sites that provide richer features to articulate my ideas.

3. Since those daily updates will comprise a heavy doze of Intellectual Property, I need more control and flexibilty to play with the content.

I need to wrap this up by the weekend. Any suggestions are welcome.

I have never been an avid TV viewer, and for the past 2 years I don’t own one either. But sports is something I miss, and especially moments like this. Click on the link below.

Its all about showing the ball some direction and allowing gravity to do the rest, it truly left my jaw dropping. While writing the above statement I am in no way undermining Tiger’s amazing control on his nerves and instincts, having just played “mini-golf” a week or so ago (at which I sucked), I can seriously relate to how tough it is for these guys.

I am sure my fellow golfers over the previous weekend will enjoy this !

This is my first attempt at podcasting. The content is of a “Standup Comedy” act that I did in Oct 2003, for a “Diwali” event, where the entire Event Management was also my responsibility, finding no takers for this entertainment slot, I just decided to have a go at it. Whether it was a success or not, is for lurkers (and my only fans) like you judge !

The talk orients around a lot of intellectual stuff as well, as it tries to bridge the Eastern, Western and Indian cultures in a very satirical level. Check out the links below and click on the respective icons.

For advanced bloggers/podcasters, the atom feed on this blog or the feed on the feedburner should enable the ipodder client, or the Doppler client. However I have not tested them. Any comments/issues on your finds while using them are welcome, I will try to correct them as and when I find time.

Most of us by now have heard the gaint strides of computing towards becoming a utility, and many among us have wondered how Grid and Utility computing are going to change the way we work, live and grow. While almost all of them have concentrated on the “Utility Infrastructure”, I think the best gains of electricity as a utility was in the “Consumerism” it fuelled.

Imagine all the gadgets we use today because of electricity as a “utility”. Almost everything !!. So, I have always believed that the emergence of computing capability as a utility will catalyze the use of services as we know, and today I came across one such simple adaptation.

Craigslist with Googlemaps. Simple but fantastic consumer utility. Thanks to Paul. Enjoy !

Ah !, the world (with creative humans) seems to have answers for everything. I was just too tired for the past couple of days, and felt like I needed some help even to blog. While consistency has never been my forte, I have somehow managed to stay ahead of the curve, attributing everything to the magic of “chance”.

And yet again, I chanced upon this. “Bloggy“, say hello to the cousin of the aforeblogged “Clocky“. Don’t people tire coming up with innovative ideas like this. But then may be, they will come up with a “Thingy” for that tiredness too. World is so full of amuzements.

BLOGGY’s BLOG
CLOCKY

While machines start taking over our mechanical jobs (like waking up) and even our creative jobs (like blogging), i think “Automated Reasoning” is not far behind. And may be “Semantic WEB” has already catalyzed the idea of EPIC, and it might happen sooner than 2014. Are we missing something right under our nose ?. I am feeling a sense of urgency as I write this, this might be our true “Wake up call”.

Its time to ruffle a few feathers and stir up a hornet’s nest. I just can’t help but touch upon the controversial subject of “Religion & the Divine plan”. While being brought up in a traditional Hindu family and having studied in a strict “Catholic Convent” my parents and relatives would have expected me to be a Theist. But as in turns out, I quite moved in the opposite direction.

The biggest fallacy of religion as I analyze is attributing everything to a “Divine Plan” and concluding that all human actions (good or bad) are pre-destined. If all human actions were accordingly the result of a predetermined “divine plan”, then this premise undermines the “human ability” of choosing to be good, if one wanted to, and at the same time provides an easy alibi for people who knowingly choose the wrong path.

Lets take the example of “Mehmet Ali Agca”

who shot the Pope and then when the Pope said that “Virgin Mary intervened to save his life”, Agca in all his innocence, just claimed and insisted that he was part of the “Divine Plan” and hence was not liable for his actions. Do you see the irony?

How do you counter this ? If all people who choose to be virtuous are not doing anything “great”, (it was all destined) and all people who have submitted themselves to rotten vices are doing nothing “damaging”, (it was their destined path), then why should anybody do anything good at all?. Why should humans show restraint, empathy and practice virtues like sacrifice, love and sympathy.

Personally, I don’t really appreciate the concept of “Religion” in any form, although “Spirituality” is something I am open to discuss. I feel all humans are born only with vices (the pure instinct to survive), some of them choose and try to transcend this barrier, while for others like me it’s just too huge a barrier to surmount.