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| Pun? Obviously… |
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| This team on our floor love balloons which made this possible… R.I.P. Captain O Captain |
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| Making his debut on the white board.. Senor Speedy Gonzales… |
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| Who doesn't know this… |
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| A tribute to Mr. Alan Shore & Watterson for this great expression |
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| Reference “A Mathematician's Apology” - Dr. Hardy |
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| Humility; WTF is that? |
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| :D |
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| Getting up @ 6 am is a bitch |
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| Trying my hand with Water Colors... |
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Try 2...
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| What imagination Watterson! You can find an expression for any sentence; any emotion you want to show |
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| Just filling the white board |
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| Finally Welcome to 2015!! |
One Evening on a gloomy April Sunday he watched the story of Pixar on Netflix. “Some crazy guys thought about an idea and made it into reality. As the story goes, Pixar made Toy Story in which they put their sweat, sleep and blood. Toy Story became the first real computer animated movie that was a commetcial success. This was the dream of many people working and they slogged and achived that.” He loves this part of the story, hits the space bar to pause and walks to the kitchen to grab a cookie. He is noC. Auguste Dupin, but his grey cells start itching. It had been a while since such BS has happened in his top floor. Hmmm… Shutting that room of thought using the ignorance and social rationality technique he has developed over the past few years gives him some relief from the itch. He gets back to the video again. Mr. jobs comes on and makes a statement:“Pixar was hit by the Second Product Syndrome after the great success of a product. What Next? What did we want to do?”…. Thakkkk
Realizing the walls of that room are going to blow to pieces he hits pause again. Walks out and drinks another glass of water. Sensing that would be last resort he just goes to sleep. His evening passes by, with a glass of wine to numb the senses and some crap raunchy and slapstick comedies to keep the room locked.
Weeks go by without any action and the room is still locked. Then on one mundane Monday, as he sits on his desk looking at the bright computer screen listening to his favourite classical music the room walls start cracking. He is hapless here in the office. He knows his scope of rationality will not be able to handle the room being broken into bits; after all the rationality is socially acquired. Being pragmatic and yielding to the social constraints always seems to work; call it hypocrisy or otherwise. Who would dis-agree, that is the path of least resistance. He thinks wrong tangent… back to the problem at hand.. The walls crack further and his anxiety increases… The creeking sound is mind boggling… Againist all his experience, mustering the courage he has, he breaks open the lock to enable a steady flow… Since the door is open now, the thoughts don’t just bomb out.. they come in as bullets..
a) You wanted to achieve X. Awesome you have done all that now.
b) You wanted to do Y. Great you did that too.
c) What next?
He waits more. Nothing!! He is startled, is this it? All this anxiety for nothing. Just one small question. No more.. then he examines c)… What next? He starts to answer that question and its like a string of lighting bolts hitting him and he goes boink… You have a goal, you are done with that. What Next? That’s a very difficult question. Was that goal so easy to achieve? Did you aim very low? What is the yard stick to measure that? One question opening a plethora of worms… What is the motivation to keep going? Is A right for me? Is B right for me? Then he realizes that his rationality as it is not enough to answer this… This requires a different kind of a reason… Something that would not complicate and narrow down, but simplify and generalize ... hmmmm… Suddenly it hits him… in all the chaos and complexity a simple answer…
Search for “What Next?” is the answer to “What next?”
A simple recursive solution which engulfs and de-mytifies all the chaos around him…
Dead Phantom
I have been using Picasa for so many years now. When someone uses a tool for so much time, he or she becomes used to the standard UI and look and feel. Google as you know does a great job in maintaining this homogeneity over a period of time and the changes are gradual and are just absorbed.
One of things which might really look naïve to be put on the blog is the details of the photo in the google albums. This is something that I noticed just a couple of days back and was stunned by the amount of details shown. See picture below:
Photo taken using my Nokia mobile
Photo taken using my Canon PowershotThis information is stored in the image header and this is just processing of data on the header (My Assumption!). This is such a simple application of technology and such nice output.
I was really impressed!!
I am always criticized of being cynical about things around. Maybe that’s how my brain is wired. So I did some googling and found some nice articles with great statistics India@62 After all people believe statistics, even though Des McHale calculated that “The average human has one breast and one testicle”.
Cynicism is a hard habit to suppress. But then you wonder how is it possible that we believe all these statistics when the media (all forms) exposes scam over scam almost on daily basis. Some of the tax that we have been paying it seems is being used to get the cars, the treadmills required for the CWG at an exaggerated prices, and then some is going to the pad-yatra security, arrangements etc that our GREAT leaders take so often. Whatever remains is used up to build statues and special roads around the politicians’ residence: If only yeddyurappa were our neighbor! But what right do we have to complain. They are after all our own elected representatives right. The best among us! The leaders… I think it says a lot about us.
Next Sunday is our 63rd year of
This blog will go down my memory as something written in disgust about myself, about the feeling of being helpless even though the statistics say otherwise.
Integrity as a word and its usage was introduced into my vocabulary when Al Pacino delivered his famous speech in the movie “The Scent of a Woman”. The idea as he says was that since Charlie is not a snitch he has integrity. He was standing up for what he believes and is not afraid of the consequences. He ends up saying that this is what the leader should be made of.
Forget leaders for a while. I believed that this is what a Just human should be made of. But over the past year this idea of integrity and the possibilities of following it or breaking it have been making rounds in my grey cells. The conflict inside me has I think reduced my testosterone levels even though studies suggest that marriage is directly linked to the reduction of the former.
So the fact that the threat of resignation will help you get what you want is a strong tool. Next question, Is it ethical? Once you do that do you consider yourself to be a man at the same benchmark of integrity? Oh there is a dichotomy here. One part of the world (Lets call this NE) says, this is pure business. By resigning you are just reminding that you are really required for the company which otherwise they had taken for granted. NE part of the world also goes on saying that unless it is absolutely necessary a company wont change something that is already working and hence such a big disruption is needed to get the results. The fallback is that the company might realize that you are not actually required and if the threat was just a threat then you are in a big soup.
Now the other world (let’s call this E) thinks this act is absolutely unethical as one is taking advantage of a weakness. For most part of my professional life I have been a part of this E. Just the fact that I wrote this blog, proves my doubts about the idea. Not really going into the miniscule details of this idea, the central theme is if after resignation one is good enough for a job, he was good enough before that. All that is required is to convince the company about this. The flipsides, one may have to wait too long and by time he gets what he wants the opportunity is stale and lost its luster. When a person from E resigns, he has to leave as he is supposed to have tried all the arguments and his interests are not inline with the company’s. Hence he has to move and not accept any counter offer. Accepting would mean compromising on the idea of integrity for E.
Open ended right. Now how can one solve this conflict of the mind? I am still trying. As you can see breaking the so called integrity definition of E part of the world gives more flexibility. All you can say “Every action we do is pregnant with possibilities; possibilities which have physical, emotional, social and intellectual implications. The trick is to find the right balance”.
Dead Phantom
Have you ever seen a road so straight and so long and so so barren that you don’t see anything along the horizon? Well I saw one such road and imagined driving here @ night would make me shit in my pants.