On Yoga and the ‘stressed’ software engineers – a search for the truth

Today morning, on the way to office, I happened to meet a young lady who introduced herself to me, as a yoga teacher. I am always fascinated when I hear about yoga, since I never could figure out how all those people managed to see the so-called ‘inner-light’ when they meditated. I could never feel the experience, having tried so at least 2 times before. I’d (and still have) a feeling that all this could be just a passing fad. But, looking at the way she talked passionately about yoga, I started to feel that she could, after all, be a little, just a little right. She had been working as a freelance writer for one of the well-known newspapers, till a few months back, when all of a sudden caught of this yoga fever and joined the band-wagon. But, not the band-wagon of those who just only talk about it, and never do anything actually, but as somebody who practices it and also teaches it to other people. Well, that is fascinating! So, may be there is something true with the whole thing. Anyway, I think I should find it out. So, in the new few days, I will find out more details about this thing called yoga and get enlightened…Watch out for my gospel during the coming days!

However, there was one thing that she asked me about my job, that curiously provoked me. Having told her that I work for a software organization for the past 10 years, the immediate next thing she told me was she knew how stressful that job was – she sympathized with me. She said, her brother who works for a software house is out for work at 6 am and comes back home at 8 pm. I agreed with her that it is quite a work! But, the truth is, I could never ever feel such a stress either in my life, or at work. I’d loved this work so much, and even looked forward to every day, with a lot of eagerness. Even now, all this is true. So, I can’t understand how this hype of software engineers being so stressed out actually caught up with the general public. It looks like even the folks working in the software industry consider it a matter of pride to state that they are stressed. So, when I told her this, she did not obviously believe me, but didn’t fortunately try to persuade me in believing herJ Thank goodness for that, but I am afraid, one day people outside of the industry will hype it so much and make all of us the symbols of stress and put up in the pedestals as most stressful living beings who ever walked on this earth. And maybe even many among us, will be happy and proud to accept it so…

Before you travel abroad...

While I travelled to the US last November for a month, I wished somebody had reminded me to carry certain important stuff along with me, for I suffered a lot there due to my ignorance about those. So, immediately after I came back to India, I prepared this checklist for the benefit of all those who may travel in the future to US specifically and anywhere abroad generally, for a short term (< 2-3 months). There are two attachments here.

1. This is the actual list.
2. This is a sample page that you may want to print out and paste on your check-in baggages, before you leave.

NOTE: This is a post, which only Indian readers may find useful...Probably this may help those in other countries too to get to a similar idea, and start writing up a similar checklist.

My kid just grew up…

Yesterday, I spent a considerable amount of time listening to an audio-book on physics. I got immersed into it, and got so much enthused by it. With all the thoughts on physics still fresh in my mind, today morning, I went out in the morning for my usual brisk walk. While leaving home, I noticed that son had just woken up from bed and was involved diligently in some game of his own creation – he barely noticed me go out. I too, never suspected anything, until I came back after ½ hour. I was shocked to see that my 4 year old son has grown up – suddenly, with no warning whatsoever. Hearing my cries of surprise and an equal terror, my wife came out. She also seemed aged to me, with some of her locks already graying up…Oh, my god! Whatever could’ve happened to them? I showed signs of fainting and I don’t know what happened next. When I opened my eyes (presumably, after a few minutes), I noticed my son is playing the same game in the same corner, as he was before I went out for my walk. My wife was busy cooking something in the kitchen and shouting something to my son. Everything seemed normal. What a strange story, right?

What actually happened is this. What I just observed is a direct consequence of the special theory of relativity propounded by Einstein in 1905. But, the theory is not for daily occurrences of events, but for such extraordinary ones that are characterized by extreme speeds of related objects – more than say, 50% of the speed of light. Don’t believe me?

Check this out…

Firefox - the new browser

During one of my previous posts, I talked about how Google videos help millions of people around the world to keep up-to-date. I recently discovered a better method of doing this - live feeds. If you are working in the field of IT, you would've heard about this new technology many times already (I will write more on live feeds in a future post). But, for the time being, just understand that live feeds is a means to automate the delivery of updated and newer information to the readers of host websites. It provides links to articles, audio clips or videos, depending on the type of information.

There are software tools to help keep up with live feeds - like the most popular RSS Reader. I've been using this till recently, before I discovered the new browser, talk of the IT industry - Firefox. Firefox is a browser similar to the Internet Explorer, but much more powerful. Internet Explorer is almost synonymous with the browsing experience, for most PC users. Even being technology savvy and knowing the power of software and knowing how it can change the lives of people involved, I was resistant to change over from my favorite browser. I didn't have an idea then, how powerful Firefox could be and it could change my browsing experience. Firefox is not just about browsing the internet, but about the newer capabilities it adds to a standard browsing experience. It is the browser for the new age, and adapts easily to changes. Firefox is open source technology, which means that programmers all over the world can make their own contributions to it. These changes can be small or big, which decides the impact it can make to be overall browsing experience. Firefox has provided a very convenient way to contribute these changes to it, called extensions (Link to website of extensions)

Another feature of firefox that immediately caught my attention is the concept of bookmarks. The concept is similar to that of Favorites in the Internet Explorer, but are more powerful. Bookmarks can be managed in folders, much like files. It supports live feeds, which is the main subject of my discussion here. However, I won’t discuss much about it here, but just say that to support a live feed inside Firefox, just select 'New live bookmark', specify the URL where the feed is available and you are ready to go. Every day ( or whichever frequecy the feed provides), you will get the updated information at the tip of your fingers.

I have been using Firefox for a couple of months now, and find it enormously useful (the only downside being tremendous hogging of memory - I believe Mozilla is actively on top it to solve the issue). I am still inventing newer and better way of doing things with it. Believe me, Internet Explorer (the next version of IE - IE7.0, not released yet, claims to have all that Firefox can do) seems to be just a toy in front of Firefox. Go get Firefox, this is the in thing now!

World Wide Web – the 8th wonder

While I was reading a news article about the World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, one question that kept occurring in my mind was what would’ve happened if he chose to patent his invention. When he created that first ever hyperlinked text in an HTML page and helped setup the first ever web server of the world, little would he have imagined that his discovery would help the world grow leaps and bounds in just over a decade. In fact, it didn’t even take it a decade for the world to benefit from the power of the WWW, that it is virtually impossible today to imagine our lives without it. Today, WWW is synonymous to internet for most of us.

I started a pet project to find out how much Berners-Lee could’ve been richer if he had chosen for the patent and slapped a royalty fees to the usage of WWW. I progressed a bit over the last week, but soon I realized that it is a futile exercise, because the web is often much more than it meets the eyes of all of us. There are too many dark, invisible areas to the web. The information that is accessible to all of us through search engines barely scratches the total amount of info available in the web. It is superficial, while there is the real treasure house, lying dormant and often invisible to the public, deep inside, which run from huge databases with terabytes of information and are dynamically created based on search queries and depending on the context of such queries. I searched on the web, and found this whitepaper about such a thing called deep web. The paper is very lengthy that I didn’t have the patience to go through it completely, and so I am not quite sure if it is same as what I am talking about. But, it definitely looks similar.

http://www.brightplanet.com/technology/deepweb.asp

It estimates that (as of 2003) the deep web outsmarts the info available in surface web by at least 500 times! Though the paper gives all that supports its claims, I believe, the numbers are underestimated (at least as of now). The deep web is probably much more deeper than we all think. And, the fact is it is ever ‘deepening’. With the entire world marching towards process automation, there is more and more information in those deep sea waters…Sadly, you will never be able to unearth all of those, unless you know the contexts well.

So, coming back to the question, how much will all this make Bernes-Lee richer, I would say that it is rather an impossible question to answer. Because, if he had chosen to patent his discovery, the world would’ve been indistinguishably different than today.

This is one of favorite subjects, so I will come back some other day and discuss more on this…I hoped, the mean time, you will have a fun time, doing some research on this aspect…

The festival called ONAM

Yesterday was Thiru-onam, the 4th day and the most significant of all among the ten day celebrations of the Onam, the top cultural festival of Kerala, my native place. Kerala, is the southern most state of India, arguably the most beautiful with a very clean environment and inhabited by people who are among the most educated and lively people in the country. Many times, they are so lively that none of them will allow any industries to come up in the state (that is a different story, but)! But, fortunately because of this very fact that there are no industries, there is very little influx of people from other states into Kerala, like me, who actually belong to the capital city of the state, came to Bangalore in another state, in search of a job and living. We will discuss about all these, in a later post. Right now, we will talk about the myth behind this festival called Onam.

It is a myth and everybody knows that. But, every Keralite believes in it and truly lives up to it. Though Onam was accepted as Kerala's national festival during early 1960's, it has defintely been around in Kerala, observed by one and all of the Keralites, for several years before that, maybe even several centuries earlier. I don't have much affinity to history, to have known the true fact.

Long time back in the history of Kerala, there was an 'asura' king called Mahabali, who was very noble to all his subjects, so noble that his fame started to spread in all the 14 worlds (the universe, is believed to have 14 worlds in the universe according to the Hindu mythology; I don’t know what these ‘worlds’ could signify in modern astronomy – maybe planets, maybe galaxies, or may even be entirely different universes, which is hypothesized by the most modern string theory).

Though regarded as the most noble among all kings who ruled Kerala ever since history, Mahabali was an asura and as all asuras wanted, he too wanted to be on the top of the devas and rule over them. So, he perfomed a great yaga (a practice of prayer conducted in front of a large fireplace), at the end of which he believed to be blessed with the supreme power, that will help him conquer the devas in the heavens.

The news about Mahabali, the asura king, reached Indra too, who is the king of the heavens and the , one of the 14 worlds. He started worrying about his own existence and the inhabitants of his kingdom, and approached Mahavishnu, the almighty, the one who created the universe…Mahavishnu thought hard over this and realizing the greatness of the King Mahabali, decided that he is worth another ‘avatar’ to conquer the King. Thus was born Vamana – the fifth avatar of the GOD.

Vamana was a small boy, when he arrived at the great yaga, performed by Mahabali, It is believed that Vamana asked for some land, only as much as he can measure using his feet 3 times over. Mahabali didn't suspect this little kid and hence readily agreed. Then, Vamana began to grow and grow and grow, till he became as huge as his one foot could measure out the whole of the sky, the other measured the whole of the land and didn't have the place to put him 3rd foot on! Now, the truly benevolant and true to his words Mahabali, lowered himself and asked Vamana to rest his foot on the king's own head. So, Vamana did and lowered the king to the patala (the world below the earth). But, while doing so Vamana was so obvisouly pleased with the king's humbleness and honesty that he allowed the king to have a boon of his choice. The King, so true to his nature, asked if he could visit his kingdom and his subjects he loved so much, once in a year...The request was immediately granted and thus was born the ONAM...

ONAM is celebrated during that time of the year, when the Great King Mahabali is believed to come to his kingdom and visit his subjects for a full 10 days...What a truly noble idea this whole thing is, correct?

For more details on ONAM, visit http://www.onamfestival.org/

In praise of India

Though not an advocate of any religion (in fact, I am just the opposite), I recently visited a blog by Subhamoy Das pertaining to Hinduism, of which one particular post was very interesting to me…It is about the praises that were showered by some of the greatest minds in the world history, upon India over many past years. Doubtless, I was impressed. Read on…

http://hinduism.about.com/od/history/p/indiaquotes.htm