In this and the next post, I will talk about the positives and negatives of blogging, as it applies to the blogger.
Experts advice to have positive attitude to succeed in life. Highlight only the positives, is what they say. While I agree that the postives should be highlighted, negatives should not be ignored completely. The same applies to most part in this case too, some of the negatives are far more important than the positives. First, let's talk about good things blogging bring to the 'blogger' - at the moment; I am not concerned, at this moment, about how blogging benefits the audience, but the author himself. needless to say, all these are my own ideas, and hence you may find it difficult to agree with them all...Most of these are just points, I won't expand on any of these at the moment. But, i just want to tell you one thing before anything else. Through this blog, for the first time in my life, I am publishing anything at all to the whole world. I feel enormously powered, proud and want to shout out to the entire world, that 'Hear everybody, I have something to say!'
Here are the Positives, I could think of...
1. Improves your self-confidence and self-esteem.
2. Helps one to self-critical.
3. Improves your thought process and also be able to think independently.
4. Helps organise oneself.
5. Improves your observation capabilities. It is especially important for me in my profession too, as a tester.
6. Helps us feel important in so big a world, where we all, sometime or other, feel insignificant.
7. Self-pride about one's own creation.
8. Self-discovery. Uncover your hidden talents and be ready to get surprised. Improve your self-awareness.
9. Helps you identify with other people. You won't typically write anything up without considering how your target audience will like it, or accept it. So, you start valuing others in your own life and learn to care for them.
10. Motivate others into doing something similar.
11. Reach out to people and help them out. Like I said in one of previous posts, there is nothing greater than joy of sharing in this world.
11. Helps practice in specific areas like teaching, counselling and writing. Helps shape you up into a whole new career, possibly!
12. Brand 'YOU'. Creates self-identity. People start identifying you with what you write on. If you continue to excel in this, it has the potential to raise you to a new pedestal and label you as an expert. This of course, won't happen overnight. It takes time, so be patient. At the very least, you can put a link up in your resume and talk to your prospective employers more intelligently! I confess, I definitely have this in mind always as one of my priority items! That is also the reason, I talked about this point more:-)
We will talk about the negatives in the next post...
Monday, July 31, 2006
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Welcome to the wonderful world of blogs - Part IV/b
Here is a follow-up of the previous post...
5. Keep in mind, the fundamental idea of blogs is to communicate your ideas and experiences to others. So, don't give excessive importance to the language (I definitely don't mean here, the use of inappropriate language) including the sentence construction, vocabulary, grammar and even effectiveness of what you write. Of course, all these are important as a writer, but should be kept within limits. This point is of great importance, especially for 'startups' like me and especially true in the case of writers, whose native language is not English. I spend considerable amount of time, thinking about each of the above mentioned aspects. I sometimes rewrite my sentences as much as 3-4 times on an average. This, I know, is bad. Not only it takes a huge amount of my time finishing it up, it also overstresses me and ultimately may even cause me to stop (at least temporarily) writing anything at all. Don't let this happen to you. I am aware of this problem, and constantly trying to get over it. That is actually one of the reasons, I started this blog - to help me practice writing.
6. Create handy templates, so that it is easier to put your thoughts on paper by just filling them up. Make sure to capture your ideas in the right sections.
7. Keywords are nice way to flesh ideas out. Start with a set of keywords, which are key to your message. Progressively add more keywords, until it correctly reflects the idea you are trying to convey.
5. Keep in mind, the fundamental idea of blogs is to communicate your ideas and experiences to others. So, don't give excessive importance to the language (I definitely don't mean here, the use of inappropriate language) including the sentence construction, vocabulary, grammar and even effectiveness of what you write. Of course, all these are important as a writer, but should be kept within limits. This point is of great importance, especially for 'startups' like me and especially true in the case of writers, whose native language is not English. I spend considerable amount of time, thinking about each of the above mentioned aspects. I sometimes rewrite my sentences as much as 3-4 times on an average. This, I know, is bad. Not only it takes a huge amount of my time finishing it up, it also overstresses me and ultimately may even cause me to stop (at least temporarily) writing anything at all. Don't let this happen to you. I am aware of this problem, and constantly trying to get over it. That is actually one of the reasons, I started this blog - to help me practice writing.
6. Create handy templates, so that it is easier to put your thoughts on paper by just filling them up. Make sure to capture your ideas in the right sections.
7. Keywords are nice way to flesh ideas out. Start with a set of keywords, which are key to your message. Progressively add more keywords, until it correctly reflects the idea you are trying to convey.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Welcome to the wonderful world of blogs - Part IV/a
Here I will talk about some general tips on writing. I derive these basically from my own perspective about writing. I haven't referred to any articles or websites here; they may give something more or may be a lot more, but nothing that i say here will prove incorrect. All these are practical ideas, based on my own experiences. I will list them out here...
1. Personal stories or stories about your own family won't sell here. Nobody other than yourself, or your immediate family will be interested to read about you. There are of course tricks to sell them, cover up them in nice wrappers. If you've read any of self-help books by popular authors, you will understand what i mean here. Most of them typically use examples from their own lives to convey something. The author typically highlights the benefits we will bring into our own lives, if we learn from their personal stories, live the life the way they do. Autobiographies, I think are the only exceptions to this rule. If you are a popular figure in any field of work, an autobiography can help you sell all this and even more - basically any crap:-) But, we are not 'them'! So, don't attempt to copy them.
2. Don't borrow excessively from other websites or blogs. Nobody will be interested to read something that is an exact replica of another site or a blog. Links to other sites, however are not all that bad idea. Also, compilations of related pieces of information from seemingly disjoint websites is an excellent idea, that will sell. Though, said easily, there is a lot of work you should do, to make this effective and useful.
3. Set themes for writing upon. This will help organise your thoughts and ideas. For example, you can have themes about 'how to be...', 'what is your ideal...' etc. Replace the dots with anything you feel like, 'How to be a good student' or 'How to be a good human being?' and flesh them out with some readable substance.
4. Learn the art of abstraction (I borrow this term from the new age computer languages). There are a zillion things that happen in our life almost everyday, and ideas that criss-cross our minds all the time. It will be a terrible thing to talk about each of these individually. If you look closer, these zillion things are not unrelated. Group them into categories. When you have enough flesh in each categories, we term them as experiences. Experiences will form good subjects to write on. People will value your experiences, because no two individuals can have exact same experiences. Similarly, ideas are things that are worth sharing with others. People will really apprecite them and will give rise to newer ideas. So, it will help make many lives than you even imagine, richer. One word of caution, however. It will have the desired impact only when done unconsciously, while consciously trying to abstract something will overstress you, at least in the long run.
There are a few more, which I will cover in the next post.Sunday, July 23, 2006
Welcome to the wonderful world of blogs - Part III/c
- Start with clean slate. It is very important and is one of the reasons, early mornings are the best for generating ideas. Like it takes clean environment, for plants to grow, ideas need a clean, fertile place to grow. Like plants can't grow in some place that is already crowded with other plants, ideas can't grow when too many of them criss-cross the mind.
- Rekindle your Imagination. When we were children, we all had lots of imagination. But, most of us lost it on the way to becoming adults. No matter how much difficult it may be, bring that back into your life. People with great imagination breathe ideas all the time. I read somewhere, about Einstein, the greatest physist the 20th century saw, mentioning about one of his dreams as a child chasing a photon. The scientiest carried his dreams through his adulthold as well, till he discovered the photon and many mysteries surrounding it. We too are capable of discoveries (of ideas), if we are careful enough to carry the power of imagination into our adulthood.
- Warm up. If you ask me, getting up early in the morning at 5'o clock and sitting at one place, imagining that the ideas will pour in is just foolish. I rarely am capable of bringing ideas like this. I need to walk around, may be jog up a bit, play a bit, something that will re-energise my mind and that will help me warm up. However, different people may have different ways to warm up. I've not studied people deeply enough to know all of them, but I am sure it is possible.
- Mix primary colors. Whenever my kid of 4 years plays with his 'Leapfrog' multimedia game, I hear this often - "Mix two primary colors to make a secondary color". It is a game which teaches kids about colors. When I thought about it, I found that it is a good analogy to explain about ideas and how they can be created. Like there are primary colors, there exists primary ideas (may not be 3 no.s as in the case of primary colors). When you mix two primary ideas, you get newer ones. ONe learning from this analogy is that there are infinite ideas possible, from just a handful of ideas. Just mix and match.
-Practice. Practice really makes one perfect. Practice is the only thing that make one perfect. If you have fear for anything, do that first, so that you will feel better and easy with the rest of the tasks. It will give you lot of confidence and help you face similar challenges. So, practice thinking, practice creating metaphors and ideas. You will find it much easier to do the same thing the second time around and each time subsequently.
There could be plenty more. But, I think that these the most imporant and will cover for most of those not mentioned here.
- Rekindle your Imagination. When we were children, we all had lots of imagination. But, most of us lost it on the way to becoming adults. No matter how much difficult it may be, bring that back into your life. People with great imagination breathe ideas all the time. I read somewhere, about Einstein, the greatest physist the 20th century saw, mentioning about one of his dreams as a child chasing a photon. The scientiest carried his dreams through his adulthold as well, till he discovered the photon and many mysteries surrounding it. We too are capable of discoveries (of ideas), if we are careful enough to carry the power of imagination into our adulthood.
- Warm up. If you ask me, getting up early in the morning at 5'o clock and sitting at one place, imagining that the ideas will pour in is just foolish. I rarely am capable of bringing ideas like this. I need to walk around, may be jog up a bit, play a bit, something that will re-energise my mind and that will help me warm up. However, different people may have different ways to warm up. I've not studied people deeply enough to know all of them, but I am sure it is possible.
- Mix primary colors. Whenever my kid of 4 years plays with his 'Leapfrog' multimedia game, I hear this often - "Mix two primary colors to make a secondary color". It is a game which teaches kids about colors. When I thought about it, I found that it is a good analogy to explain about ideas and how they can be created. Like there are primary colors, there exists primary ideas (may not be 3 no.s as in the case of primary colors). When you mix two primary ideas, you get newer ones. ONe learning from this analogy is that there are infinite ideas possible, from just a handful of ideas. Just mix and match.
-Practice. Practice really makes one perfect. Practice is the only thing that make one perfect. If you have fear for anything, do that first, so that you will feel better and easy with the rest of the tasks. It will give you lot of confidence and help you face similar challenges. So, practice thinking, practice creating metaphors and ideas. You will find it much easier to do the same thing the second time around and each time subsequently.
There could be plenty more. But, I think that these the most imporant and will cover for most of those not mentioned here.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Welcome to the wonderful world of blogs - Part III/b
Here, there are 5 more in my list (continued from the previous blog) that will help generate ideas...
-Attend seminars/workshops. I have seen that very often, attending such meetings, generate ideas. So, even if you don't see a visible benefit for the seminars/workshops, sign up for them, if you want to generate ideas.
-Take a break and come back. Very true. I've experienced it several times during my own work. As software professionals, we are so used to sitting long hours on a problem, that we run out of ideas soon. Time and again, looking at the same problem and our solution to it, won't help. I bet, most of us, face similar situations, but many are unaware. Try out what i just said, take a small break from what you are doing; when you come back, i'm sure you will have a solution, or at least a way to work around the original problem.
-Get them reviewed. Again, working in software has helped me gain this insight. In software, we use reviews by other people to catch the errors in what we do. Whether it is a peer review or a management review (in work-related scenario), reviews will often work wonders. Extending this a bit further to suit our scenario, another pair of eyes will help us generate many new ideas. Don't think, it is because of your inabilities that you missed these ideas, but it is basically because your eyes and mind get tuned to the issue, after spending a long time on it.
-Expert advice. Sometimes, whatever you do, you find yourself stuck. Even after applying all these tactics, we fail to generate more ideas. In such case, read/listen to experts. It is not necesary that the experts has to be from the same field of work, but maybe something related. Some other times, you may get ideas from a person, who is completely untouched by your area of work. But, that is rare, unless you are extremely observant. If that doesn't give you ideas that you can apply immediately to get over the problems, at least it will give you ideas which can generate the idea that will help achieve the solution. Experts can point you to the right locations, which you can tap to get to the final solution. These can be termed nested idea generators; and know that the nesting can go to any level. But, very often, people get tired after a few nestings, that they give up.
-Look around. In this world, everything is inter-related, including our own life and everything that happen in our lives. Facets of your own life are related to many others, most importantly your family, your colleagues, and many non-living things like your work, the society you live in etc. This also means that ideas are inter-related and co-exist with other similar or even widely differing ideas. One most important source of ideas are analogies. There are parallels in every industry to every other, some are evident, while others are not. Experts term these as metaphors. Metaphors often are found in two dissimilar industries, cultures or way of lives. Metaphors are such powerful objects, that there are examples throughout the history of mankind about many discoveries and inventions that happened likewise. So, if you happen to come across one, just look around and sure will you find similar metaphors, which can be shaped to ideas.
-Attend seminars/workshops. I have seen that very often, attending such meetings, generate ideas. So, even if you don't see a visible benefit for the seminars/workshops, sign up for them, if you want to generate ideas.
-Take a break and come back. Very true. I've experienced it several times during my own work. As software professionals, we are so used to sitting long hours on a problem, that we run out of ideas soon. Time and again, looking at the same problem and our solution to it, won't help. I bet, most of us, face similar situations, but many are unaware. Try out what i just said, take a small break from what you are doing; when you come back, i'm sure you will have a solution, or at least a way to work around the original problem.
-Get them reviewed. Again, working in software has helped me gain this insight. In software, we use reviews by other people to catch the errors in what we do. Whether it is a peer review or a management review (in work-related scenario), reviews will often work wonders. Extending this a bit further to suit our scenario, another pair of eyes will help us generate many new ideas. Don't think, it is because of your inabilities that you missed these ideas, but it is basically because your eyes and mind get tuned to the issue, after spending a long time on it.
-Expert advice. Sometimes, whatever you do, you find yourself stuck. Even after applying all these tactics, we fail to generate more ideas. In such case, read/listen to experts. It is not necesary that the experts has to be from the same field of work, but maybe something related. Some other times, you may get ideas from a person, who is completely untouched by your area of work. But, that is rare, unless you are extremely observant. If that doesn't give you ideas that you can apply immediately to get over the problems, at least it will give you ideas which can generate the idea that will help achieve the solution. Experts can point you to the right locations, which you can tap to get to the final solution. These can be termed nested idea generators; and know that the nesting can go to any level. But, very often, people get tired after a few nestings, that they give up.
-Look around. In this world, everything is inter-related, including our own life and everything that happen in our lives. Facets of your own life are related to many others, most importantly your family, your colleagues, and many non-living things like your work, the society you live in etc. This also means that ideas are inter-related and co-exist with other similar or even widely differing ideas. One most important source of ideas are analogies. There are parallels in every industry to every other, some are evident, while others are not. Experts term these as metaphors. Metaphors often are found in two dissimilar industries, cultures or way of lives. Metaphors are such powerful objects, that there are examples throughout the history of mankind about many discoveries and inventions that happened likewise. So, if you happen to come across one, just look around and sure will you find similar metaphors, which can be shaped to ideas.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Welcome to the wonderful world of blogs - Part III/a
This is one of most interesting pieces of this article. So, it is naturally longer than others, which also means that I would need to split it up into at least 2 sub-parts.
When I started to appreciate writing and wanted to do some on my own, this was the first question that was big in my mind. This question is applicable not only for writing, it is applicable for any creative art like sketching, music composition, choreography, modelling, theatre and even design of new software, games etc. During my childhood, I grew up seeing and appreciating cartoons that used to appear in newspapers by the renowned Indian cartoonist R.K.Laxman. His cartoons often had only a few strokes of pen, with which he vividly described the person he is targeting to depict. But, more than his sketches, I really liked the way he brings in subtle humour and through it, a true representation of life in the whole country. I used to wonder, doesn't this man run out of ideas? What does he do, when he doesn't have anything to publish for tomorrow's column? I believe, the same question is equally true for any journalist as well. Don't those people who are regular columnists in the newspapers or magazines, as well face such situations? I am sure, this is the single-most fear in most of the people, who imagine to get creative in a short run. I thought about this, and over the years, I found something that resembles an answer to this question. I will list out my findings...
Understand first that creativity doesn't have a shortcut. One can't imagine to get creative from tomorrow, with no prior experience or preperations to it. Preparation is the key. So is, practice. Once you start on your mission, don't stop, whether you are tied up with something else, whether you feel unconfortable...Most of those are just excuses to ourselves, and can be overcome with some effort from our side. But, if you feel stressed, stop it immediately because, creative juices won't flow freely when you are stressed. Let me list out here some thoughts and ideas about how to generate ideas...I won't talk about each of them much here, for there are many. I may discuss each of them separately in future posts.
Since there are many, I will list here in this post only a few, which i regard as the most important. I will follow it up, in my next post with more...
- Focus. Lot of times, things happen right in front of your eyes and you don't see it. It is because, you really don't focus on it. It is because, you may not be interested in it. Focus or concentration at work, is of prime importance to get ideas.
- Observe. Observe carefully each minute details of what you see daily in life. While you drive, while you are at work, while talking to people, while surfing the net, anything. Ideas often hide behind these minute details.
- Think through. Often there are non-obvious stuff about anything you do, or others do. For those who work in software projects, project post-mortems are very familiar. These are group discussions conducted by the project team members, after the project is delivered, with the intent of finding things that could've gone wrong. Do similar brain storm sessions, yourself. At this stage, don't involve others in these brain storm sessions. We are much more capable and effective when it comes to thinking, if we do it on our own.
-Identify the best time of your day, to think peacefully. To me, the best time is the early mornings. I believe, it is the same for most people. Get up early and spend sometime for yourself. You may like to take a nice morning walk, when you can think through the happenings of yesterday, or plan for today. I bet, you will get lots of new ideas at this time of the day. It just needs some little practice. In case you think, evenings will work out better in your case, that is OK as well. It is very imporant not to stress yourself too much in any case.
- Talk to people and listen to them. It is another good way, which will help in building up relationships too. Fundamental benefit of a team working together on something is that they often generate much more than the sum total of each one's individual capacity, provided they gel together enough. It is possible, because not all people think exactly the same, and hence could generate various (but congruent) ideas that will take us towards the final goal. Like- minded people gel together easily and are best suited for team work, let's say in a project of any kind. But, we don't necessarily need only like minded people to get us ideas. Infact, just the opposite will serve us better.
I have some more ideas about getting ideas... I will talk about those, in my next post.
When I started to appreciate writing and wanted to do some on my own, this was the first question that was big in my mind. This question is applicable not only for writing, it is applicable for any creative art like sketching, music composition, choreography, modelling, theatre and even design of new software, games etc. During my childhood, I grew up seeing and appreciating cartoons that used to appear in newspapers by the renowned Indian cartoonist R.K.Laxman. His cartoons often had only a few strokes of pen, with which he vividly described the person he is targeting to depict. But, more than his sketches, I really liked the way he brings in subtle humour and through it, a true representation of life in the whole country. I used to wonder, doesn't this man run out of ideas? What does he do, when he doesn't have anything to publish for tomorrow's column? I believe, the same question is equally true for any journalist as well. Don't those people who are regular columnists in the newspapers or magazines, as well face such situations? I am sure, this is the single-most fear in most of the people, who imagine to get creative in a short run. I thought about this, and over the years, I found something that resembles an answer to this question. I will list out my findings...
Understand first that creativity doesn't have a shortcut. One can't imagine to get creative from tomorrow, with no prior experience or preperations to it. Preparation is the key. So is, practice. Once you start on your mission, don't stop, whether you are tied up with something else, whether you feel unconfortable...Most of those are just excuses to ourselves, and can be overcome with some effort from our side. But, if you feel stressed, stop it immediately because, creative juices won't flow freely when you are stressed. Let me list out here some thoughts and ideas about how to generate ideas...I won't talk about each of them much here, for there are many. I may discuss each of them separately in future posts.
Since there are many, I will list here in this post only a few, which i regard as the most important. I will follow it up, in my next post with more...
- Focus. Lot of times, things happen right in front of your eyes and you don't see it. It is because, you really don't focus on it. It is because, you may not be interested in it. Focus or concentration at work, is of prime importance to get ideas.
- Observe. Observe carefully each minute details of what you see daily in life. While you drive, while you are at work, while talking to people, while surfing the net, anything. Ideas often hide behind these minute details.
- Think through. Often there are non-obvious stuff about anything you do, or others do. For those who work in software projects, project post-mortems are very familiar. These are group discussions conducted by the project team members, after the project is delivered, with the intent of finding things that could've gone wrong. Do similar brain storm sessions, yourself. At this stage, don't involve others in these brain storm sessions. We are much more capable and effective when it comes to thinking, if we do it on our own.
-Identify the best time of your day, to think peacefully. To me, the best time is the early mornings. I believe, it is the same for most people. Get up early and spend sometime for yourself. You may like to take a nice morning walk, when you can think through the happenings of yesterday, or plan for today. I bet, you will get lots of new ideas at this time of the day. It just needs some little practice. In case you think, evenings will work out better in your case, that is OK as well. It is very imporant not to stress yourself too much in any case.
- Talk to people and listen to them. It is another good way, which will help in building up relationships too. Fundamental benefit of a team working together on something is that they often generate much more than the sum total of each one's individual capacity, provided they gel together enough. It is possible, because not all people think exactly the same, and hence could generate various (but congruent) ideas that will take us towards the final goal. Like- minded people gel together easily and are best suited for team work, let's say in a project of any kind. But, we don't necessarily need only like minded people to get us ideas. Infact, just the opposite will serve us better.
I have some more ideas about getting ideas... I will talk about those, in my next post.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Welcome to the wonderful world of blogs! - Part II
My next question has been troubling me for long, ever since i started to think about creating a blog of my own. As i just said, the internet is teeming with millions of blogs and is ever-increasing in number. More and more people fall 'prey' to this, as if there is some huge magnet trapping all of them into this. IN that case, do you think somebody will care to read your blog? Do you think, i will get the time or even care to read somebody else's blog just for fun? Chances are less than one in a million. If there are million blogs out there, i may read just a handful and some of that could be because i just stumbled upon them, while searching the net. It's google power!
Unlike the previous one, this question doesn't have a straight forward answer. Before you write anything, find out who your target audience is. But, if you ask me, do I know the target audience for my own blog, I have to admit that I don't have one; infact, I never thought about it. The decision to write a blog anyway, was probably a foolish idea. Being a starter, I needed practice so badly to get the attention of my audience, whoever it may be. This was a good enough reason for me to continue with my idea of creating this blog. My idea is to continue with the blog for some more time (maybe an year, or even 6 months), get some feedback on it, then scrap it and start another one with much more focus and with a target audience in mind. So, please don't go away (if there is somebody who is reading it) and stay tuned. So, if you are serious about blogging, be strategic and choose your target audience. But, if you just want a practice session, like I did, it should be just fine as well. But, in that case, don't have expectations...
There is one more reason for this decision, in my case. When i thought about all this again and again, I hit upon an idea, a very simplistic one. When you don't know the truth about something, and want to find it out, what would you do? What better way can there be to find it out, than try it out yourself. So I decided to. Now, I realize, it is truly addictive. We will discuss about the good and bad about blogging at a later stage. But, right now, I enjoy it a lot and so, urge you too to try this out...the pleasure of sharing is the ultimate joy in this world!
With peace,
Unlike the previous one, this question doesn't have a straight forward answer. Before you write anything, find out who your target audience is. But, if you ask me, do I know the target audience for my own blog, I have to admit that I don't have one; infact, I never thought about it. The decision to write a blog anyway, was probably a foolish idea. Being a starter, I needed practice so badly to get the attention of my audience, whoever it may be. This was a good enough reason for me to continue with my idea of creating this blog. My idea is to continue with the blog for some more time (maybe an year, or even 6 months), get some feedback on it, then scrap it and start another one with much more focus and with a target audience in mind. So, please don't go away (if there is somebody who is reading it) and stay tuned. So, if you are serious about blogging, be strategic and choose your target audience. But, if you just want a practice session, like I did, it should be just fine as well. But, in that case, don't have expectations...
There is one more reason for this decision, in my case. When i thought about all this again and again, I hit upon an idea, a very simplistic one. When you don't know the truth about something, and want to find it out, what would you do? What better way can there be to find it out, than try it out yourself. So I decided to. Now, I realize, it is truly addictive. We will discuss about the good and bad about blogging at a later stage. But, right now, I enjoy it a lot and so, urge you too to try this out...the pleasure of sharing is the ultimate joy in this world!
With peace,
Monday, July 17, 2006
Welcome to the wonderful world of blogs - Part I
Here i will talk about my own perspective on blogging. Since this post is quite large, I will split it up into many parts, the first of which you are reading now.
Blogging is a very recent phenonmenon, at least in our part of the world. It is not more than 2-3 years, i heard first about this. At that time, i didn't give much attention to this. But, as time passed by, it became impossible to keep unattached to it. There were blogs everywhere, by people who you know, you read, you listen to. Now, there are blogs about virtually every subject under the sun. I didn't want to be left out, so I decided to start one myself. I somewhere heard that the easiest way to become noticed, to be branded as an expert in any field, is to start a blog! But, there were two fundamental questions which bothered me. The first question obviously was what is really so great about blogging? Why is the entire world moving towards it, as if it came under the influence of some pied piper? A pied piper on the internet, the idea seemed quite funny:-) How did it gain so much in popularity?
Here is my version of the answer. Let's dissect the types of blogs that we find nowadays a bit. Blogs are found in several categories, whether they are text based, audio or video blogs. They can be business related, personal diaries, or with no specific intent, but just to enjoy the pleasure of sharing. My own blog belongs to the last category, at the moment. I don't have any specific reason in mind to write all this up. But, just think. Why would anybody take the trouble to write about anything, which is definitely going to consume at least an hour of their time, only to help people who they never have seen or even heard of? Of course, I accept that many people don't have any bad intentions in doing that; but, are all of those, good? If so many people in the world are good, why is not the world a better place to live in?
My version of the answer, is yes, why not? Why do you believe that people can't have good intentions? I agree there are some selfish, but often harmless motives behind such sharing. I too have such, like I want to be good at writing, at analysing, communicate effectively with others (primarily through the feedback mechanisms in blogs), and also to get more popular, appreciated and known to the world! If I can write this up just for the joy of sharing with others, others can too. Most of us are too self-centred that we absolutely feel that we are only guys in the world like ourselves. Nothing can be far from the truth. Think about it. There are billions of people in the world. Don't you think it is only logical for at least one percent to have the same ideas as you? Maybe a bit too much, 0.5 percent, i think is just fine. So, there are at least half a million people in the world who are at least as good as you, or maybe even better. Doesn't my argument seem to make sense? Another reason for my thinking in these lines is, I want the world to be a better place than it is today. Enough of selfishness, and closed door deals. We had had enough of it. Won't you like the world to be a better place to live in than today, at least for our kids, where people care to share, respect each other's feelings and live in harmony. I am sure, there are at least half a million others who share the same ideas as mine. Otherwise, do you think, the world would ever have survived this far? No way.
We will look at the second question in the next part, which i will post tomorrow.
Blogging is a very recent phenonmenon, at least in our part of the world. It is not more than 2-3 years, i heard first about this. At that time, i didn't give much attention to this. But, as time passed by, it became impossible to keep unattached to it. There were blogs everywhere, by people who you know, you read, you listen to. Now, there are blogs about virtually every subject under the sun. I didn't want to be left out, so I decided to start one myself. I somewhere heard that the easiest way to become noticed, to be branded as an expert in any field, is to start a blog! But, there were two fundamental questions which bothered me. The first question obviously was what is really so great about blogging? Why is the entire world moving towards it, as if it came under the influence of some pied piper? A pied piper on the internet, the idea seemed quite funny:-) How did it gain so much in popularity?
Here is my version of the answer. Let's dissect the types of blogs that we find nowadays a bit. Blogs are found in several categories, whether they are text based, audio or video blogs. They can be business related, personal diaries, or with no specific intent, but just to enjoy the pleasure of sharing. My own blog belongs to the last category, at the moment. I don't have any specific reason in mind to write all this up. But, just think. Why would anybody take the trouble to write about anything, which is definitely going to consume at least an hour of their time, only to help people who they never have seen or even heard of? Of course, I accept that many people don't have any bad intentions in doing that; but, are all of those, good? If so many people in the world are good, why is not the world a better place to live in?
My version of the answer, is yes, why not? Why do you believe that people can't have good intentions? I agree there are some selfish, but often harmless motives behind such sharing. I too have such, like I want to be good at writing, at analysing, communicate effectively with others (primarily through the feedback mechanisms in blogs), and also to get more popular, appreciated and known to the world! If I can write this up just for the joy of sharing with others, others can too. Most of us are too self-centred that we absolutely feel that we are only guys in the world like ourselves. Nothing can be far from the truth. Think about it. There are billions of people in the world. Don't you think it is only logical for at least one percent to have the same ideas as you? Maybe a bit too much, 0.5 percent, i think is just fine. So, there are at least half a million people in the world who are at least as good as you, or maybe even better. Doesn't my argument seem to make sense? Another reason for my thinking in these lines is, I want the world to be a better place than it is today. Enough of selfishness, and closed door deals. We had had enough of it. Won't you like the world to be a better place to live in than today, at least for our kids, where people care to share, respect each other's feelings and live in harmony. I am sure, there are at least half a million others who share the same ideas as mine. Otherwise, do you think, the world would ever have survived this far? No way.
We will look at the second question in the next part, which i will post tomorrow.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Google Videos!
Google, as you know, has been extremely helpful to search for anything under the sun and read about them. Now, with the launch of Google videos (still in beta), you can view them too in your desktop. These are really wonderful instruments to learn stuff. Each day, newer contents are getting added to this site, and at an alarming rate. These videos deal with diverse topics, some of these deal with specific domains, technology, news analysis, and some of them just pure fun.
Google is a very technology savvy company and houses some of the brightest minds in industry. In the software industry, information and knowledge about it is the key to survival. For top class businesses like that of Google's, and to stay ahead of all its competition, this is most critical. Hence, very understandably, the company gives prime imporance to educating its employees of the latest happenings in technology. It constantly conducts workshops and seminars about technology for the benefit of its employees. Not only that, it captures some of these sessions in video and posts them on their website and makes them available to the general public (free of cost), through google videos. Google understands and appreciates the value of sharing, because it knows that this is one of the ways of keeping their own business ahead of the competion. Some of the videos that i really liked are
a. Being a Software Testing Expert by James Bach
b. On Exploratory Testing by Jon Bach
c. On Fitnesse, a Java unit testing framework by Rick Mugridge
There are lots more interesting ones, but i have'nt seen them all. I suggest those of you that are really interested, frequently visit http://video.google.com, and keep checking for newer contents. Better still, use the site's live feed to check for new videos automatically.
What is so great about all this, you may ask? After all, the concept of video blogging is not entirely new to the world. But, it has so far been not domain-centric, but used mainly for fun. One of the reasons i feel so greatly about this, is that most of us in India, don't ever get to listen (forget the videos) to some of the gurus in their respective fields featured through these programmes. This nice gesture from Google goes a long way to support the true spirit of globalization. Now, i have a lot more respect for this company, which I already had a great regard for, especially after reading the book Google story by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed.
Thank you, Google!
With peace,
Google is a very technology savvy company and houses some of the brightest minds in industry. In the software industry, information and knowledge about it is the key to survival. For top class businesses like that of Google's, and to stay ahead of all its competition, this is most critical. Hence, very understandably, the company gives prime imporance to educating its employees of the latest happenings in technology. It constantly conducts workshops and seminars about technology for the benefit of its employees. Not only that, it captures some of these sessions in video and posts them on their website and makes them available to the general public (free of cost), through google videos. Google understands and appreciates the value of sharing, because it knows that this is one of the ways of keeping their own business ahead of the competion. Some of the videos that i really liked are
a. Being a Software Testing Expert by James Bach
b. On Exploratory Testing by Jon Bach
c. On Fitnesse, a Java unit testing framework by Rick Mugridge
There are lots more interesting ones, but i have'nt seen them all. I suggest those of you that are really interested, frequently visit http://video.google.com, and keep checking for newer contents. Better still, use the site's live feed to check for new videos automatically.
What is so great about all this, you may ask? After all, the concept of video blogging is not entirely new to the world. But, it has so far been not domain-centric, but used mainly for fun. One of the reasons i feel so greatly about this, is that most of us in India, don't ever get to listen (forget the videos) to some of the gurus in their respective fields featured through these programmes. This nice gesture from Google goes a long way to support the true spirit of globalization. Now, i have a lot more respect for this company, which I already had a great regard for, especially after reading the book Google story by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed.
Thank you, Google!
With peace,
Friday, July 14, 2006
Great tool for a 3D design
Here I will talk about the amazement I had when i discovered something I had been searching for quite sometime, from the least expected quarters. Here is the full story.
I needed to physically design a rather complicated piece of furniture for my kid's study that I just started working on lately. On a nice Sunday morning, we all family members got together and brainstormed about the idea and managed to get a mental picture of it. Designing in mind is much like designing in air. One hectic day at office is all it takes to lost it, especially for people like me, who forget things very fast. So, i started to search for a tool which can help me put that in my computer. I laid my hands initially on AutoCAD (I happened to have a copy of that in my friend's computer) for the purpose. But, I discovered soon that there is a disconnect. Fundamentally, I didn't need something of that calibre to suit my purpose. But, I was so obsessed with it, that I literally wasted 'hours' to learn how to use it, before i finally learnt that I flawed.
The other day, i just was browing the internet as usual. I happened to go to the Google lab pages. I found something vaguely similar to what i had been looking for - SketchUp. I didn't believe it could well, but nevertheless decided to try it out. Download and installation didn't take much time and hence I was ready to use it in just around 5 mins. To tell you the truth, i was amazed. No complications, a cool interface and a really awesome set of features is what this tool has. Technically speaking, this tool doesn't differentiate, between 2D and 3D objects, from a user perspective. Just draw a line (even free-hand drawing), and choose a menu item to visualize it in 3D. It is as easy as that to use it. There are lots of cool features, all of which I won't describe here, but someof them are orbit, walkthroughs, camera position adjustments, look around etc. It is a great tool for all those non-techie people, to create a 3D picturization. Even if you are a techie, you won't too much disappointed with all those advanced features like layers, texturing, alternative rendering, dimensioning etc. The best part of it all is that it is absolutely free! So, what are you waiting for? Start using Google SketchUp.
I needed to physically design a rather complicated piece of furniture for my kid's study that I just started working on lately. On a nice Sunday morning, we all family members got together and brainstormed about the idea and managed to get a mental picture of it. Designing in mind is much like designing in air. One hectic day at office is all it takes to lost it, especially for people like me, who forget things very fast. So, i started to search for a tool which can help me put that in my computer. I laid my hands initially on AutoCAD (I happened to have a copy of that in my friend's computer) for the purpose. But, I discovered soon that there is a disconnect. Fundamentally, I didn't need something of that calibre to suit my purpose. But, I was so obsessed with it, that I literally wasted 'hours' to learn how to use it, before i finally learnt that I flawed.
The other day, i just was browing the internet as usual. I happened to go to the Google lab pages. I found something vaguely similar to what i had been looking for - SketchUp. I didn't believe it could well, but nevertheless decided to try it out. Download and installation didn't take much time and hence I was ready to use it in just around 5 mins. To tell you the truth, i was amazed. No complications, a cool interface and a really awesome set of features is what this tool has. Technically speaking, this tool doesn't differentiate, between 2D and 3D objects, from a user perspective. Just draw a line (even free-hand drawing), and choose a menu item to visualize it in 3D. It is as easy as that to use it. There are lots of cool features, all of which I won't describe here, but someof them are orbit, walkthroughs, camera position adjustments, look around etc. It is a great tool for all those non-techie people, to create a 3D picturization. Even if you are a techie, you won't too much disappointed with all those advanced features like layers, texturing, alternative rendering, dimensioning etc. The best part of it all is that it is absolutely free! So, what are you waiting for? Start using Google SketchUp.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
what does 3 dots signify?
Hey guys,
Most of us use it, and I use it most of the times. It's my favorite way to say that there is much more to say than what i just said. didn't quite get it? Well, fundamentally it indicates that i have lot more to say than can be represented by words. Words are not often enough to represent things the way they are. At a more spiritual level, it is a representation of 'life' for me. Life just goes on...Now you are getting it, right?
yes, the blog is about my life, the life of all those who i know. It will also deal with things we hold so close to our lives - like our hobbies, our work, our family...the list is endless. It can be sometimes technical, sometimes spiritual and some other times even just jottings with no specific focus on anything. But, I sincerely hope it to be of some use to all those people that are good to read '3 dots'. I can't commit myself on the frequency of posts, but i hope to do some justice to it, so it won't be too long between the posts...
So, i basically i mean to say, i will use this blog to talk about all these and more...
With Peace,
Most of us use it, and I use it most of the times. It's my favorite way to say that there is much more to say than what i just said. didn't quite get it? Well, fundamentally it indicates that i have lot more to say than can be represented by words. Words are not often enough to represent things the way they are. At a more spiritual level, it is a representation of 'life' for me. Life just goes on...Now you are getting it, right?
yes, the blog is about my life, the life of all those who i know. It will also deal with things we hold so close to our lives - like our hobbies, our work, our family...the list is endless. It can be sometimes technical, sometimes spiritual and some other times even just jottings with no specific focus on anything. But, I sincerely hope it to be of some use to all those people that are good to read '3 dots'. I can't commit myself on the frequency of posts, but i hope to do some justice to it, so it won't be too long between the posts...
So, i basically i mean to say, i will use this blog to talk about all these and more...
With Peace,
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