Monday, June 11, 2007
One element of good writing for the independent web[1] which is often overlooked is that your writing is part of a larger story which is not under your control. This is to an extent true for all writing which doesn’t stand alone: an article is part of a magazine just as much as a recipe is part of a cookery book. And like all such writing, it’s perceived as part of a larger whole.
What’s special about the online jungle is that you can’t even assume constant assumptions on the part of the reader. For example, NYT articles are democratic, CNN.com has propganda [;-)], and Fark.com is (adult) funny. If you write your articles in one of these media, and if you keep your average reader in mind (you’d do this is you want effective writing, which is what all this is about) then you’d tailor your articles to suit expectations. But in the larger miasma of the web, how do you decide what and how to read expectations? The web is connected, and the spiders that visit your frayed hideyhole might come on from thousands of different places, and there’s no guarantee of any continuity.
One simple answer is that you create your own universe and let your reader be immersed into it. People buy this oh very quickly. The hypothesis is that every page is special, and a click-through from an adult site is as likely to be impressed as one from a search engine.
As an aside, one technique which is underutilized to propogate this mass-hypnosis is clever linking. Hypertext is alive because it can send your user to other pages. Even though Google has perverted the medium with commercialization, people do like to click on links. Use that fact! Lead them on. Make a story within a story (it’s much better than enclosing an aside in parentheses), or even make them read a worthier one. You get to choose.
Getting back, is there a different way? Creating your universe is oh-very-well, but can you match zillions of varied expectations? A good way is to try to reduce it to a few common ones. A lot of sites use a technique where visitors coming in from a search engine get their words highlighted on the site automagically. Let’s say you come here searching for “porn king” (god forbid). To help you out, my site will highlight all instances of that term in your landing page. Is this good for the visitor? Undoubtedly. Does it match your interests, does it tell your story more effectively? Maybe. In this example, very much not, but it’s still a very user-friendly thing to do.
You probably can cook up a different version of a page for a user that comes in from:
- a social networking site
- your girlfriend’s site.
- a mobile browser (device dependent).
- a competitor’s website, etc.
Condensed, what I’m talking about is that referrals and clever referral management to rewrite your content could pay dividends. True?
[1] Blogs, pages, documentation, stuff which floats.
Tags: musings • reading • web • writing
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Saturday, April 8, 2006
Statutory Disclaimer: I don’t know anything I’m
talking about, and even if some of these make
sense, it’s definitely local wisdom. Don’t go
applying this all over the world. People differ,
their attitudes differ.
Begin:
I suppose a side-effect of knowing many people
is that you experience lots of different things.
That leads to some of your ideas crystallizing
into definite thoughts, and losing a lot of
misconceptions. These past two months of my life
have been very eventful. Unforgettable. A Learning
Experience. I was asked out (to which I said a
very polite no), two of my closest friends are
going through relationship-hell, I’ve been
talking about this to DP a lot, and one close
friend asked me very seriously in class, “How do
you go about talking to girls?” It is then,
perhaps natural that I’d like to write down
something about relationships.
Of the romantic variety. Or those flavors which
are somewhere in between, in confused, muddled
waters. I can’t state this authoritatively, but
I’m sure a fifth of my college-mates are in a
relationship. Of those, around 95% don’t
survive the real world. The question, of course,
is whether to
take the plunge. While tales of bitter breakups
and broken hearts, and scary stories of first-love
-gone-bad-life-wrecked-people abound, I’ll
definitely say that you should. How do you know
you’ve met the right girl if you haven’t met the
wrong one? 
If you like a
girl, do let her know. Rejections are a part of
life. Some girls learn to do it well (as a
corollary, some guys learn to take it well), and
you can remain friends for life. Unless you’re a
full-blown jerk (and sometimes even then) every
girl is flattered when you make her understand
you’re interested in her. Don’t let her convince
you otherwise. And I’ve known guys who have gone
to the ends of the earth to make a ‘No’ ‘Yes’.
Some of them have succeeded. Is doing something
like that worth the effort? Maybe. If you are sure
you can make the ‘No’, something along the lines
of ‘Yes, oh god, Yes!’ 
I’ll advise you to give
it a shot. But no does mean a no. Don’t assume.
Follow through on your proposal. The worst things
to do is lose interest after a while, so be really
sure this is somebody you like. Think of her first,
put yourself second. Do you honestly think she’d be
better off with you? Are you going away somewhere
else after a while leaving her hanging, you jerk?
Unless you’re sure, be her friend, that works out
best in the long-run.
How do you test the waters? How do you find
girls who are interested in you? It is not hard.
There are lots of girls around. Be interesting
yourself. Cultivate humility, good manners, some
measure of talent, and conversational skills. Try
to make her laugh. Be attentive. Be assertive, not
a bully. Don’t listen to everything she says. Have
your principles. And, don’t be desperate for her
to fall for you, that’s probably the biggest turn- off.
What if you just want to have fun? What if you
don’t want anything serious, just a casual fling?
Nothing lasting, just some ephemeral joy. The
first rule perhaps is that there is a cost to
everything. Nothing comes cheap. When people get
to know each other first, that’s perhaps the best
time of the relationship. Both are on their best
behavior, because both want to impress. After a
while, familiarity leads to those self-imposed
rules relaxing. When you get into a relationship
with the intent of having ‘just fun’, those rules
relax much earlier. This, more often than not,
leads to an explosive breakup. But that’s okay
with you, isn’t it? Nothing comes without
emotional baggage. I know friends of both genders
who thought they could handle a casual fling, and
who couldn’t. It’s tough to accept another man
having a go at ‘your’ girl, but wise men do learn
to move on. Oh, but at the same time, I know
people who have three girlfriends at a time
and are insanely happy about it. (Lesson:
people are different, figure out which category
you fall into).
Another oft-quoted dilemma is the Women-are-
from-Venus conundrum. “Who can understand them,
man?” Well, you don’t necessarily need to
understand them to love them. It’s very true that
girls think differently. They have different
priorities (looks, attitude, appearances, ego, are
some which I and many men don’t understand) and
different interests, but find a girl whose core
values (not “We both hate Will & Grace”, but “We
both think money is not so important”) are the
same. That helps, but is not a surefire method for longevity.
One other thing perhaps, is to always be
yourself. Don’t make her think you are somebody
else. (White)Lies like that never
survive. Do believe that you are special and you
deserve someone special. Also have the ability to
make her feel special
(And that is probably enough of Vishnu playing
a censored Dr. Ruth. Hope this’ll help somebody)
Tags: musings
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Saturday, February 25, 2006
The I need a Recharger phenomenon is not new. As part of a build up to this post, I even wrote a poem on it, but it deserves a topic of its own, and it’s something I’ve been meaning to write for a while now.
This first came to my attention when Sanjay, Sony and Vivek came down one day to “talk”. It’d been a while since we had hung out and we all found cosy places on my chair & bed, leaning over each other, legs all over the place and what not. Then, Sanjay’s phone beeped, he picked it up and his hands twittered over the keys as he started messaging. Soon, part of his attention was occupied by the shiny metallic buttons but our conversation continued unchanged. Sony’s phone started insistently vibrating, and he picked up a call, and then somehow it was my turn to make a call. Vivek soon followed suit. Yeah, for the better part of an hour or two, we did “talk”, but with different people
Then of course there is the consistent hogging of a mobile recharger. Ambrosia, the joint that we hang out at is prefered by many because it keeps a stock of mobile rechargers. The unhealthily feature-full mobiles that we carry drain a lot of power - especially if you talk around 2-3 hours a day - so that when we chill out, our mobiles need to juice up too. When friends come over, I have a Nokia & Sony Ericsson recharger handy; borrowing and lending of rechargers is common and everybody is advised to bring a recharger along when you go along for a trip (or you’ll miss the daily dose of your favorite wireless device). Of course, this problem may be solved when the near-mythical fuel cell finally comes along, but the underlying phenomenon remains unchanged. DP [my mentor, teacher and friend who’s been featured far too long in this blog without an introduction - something that I’ll correct soon perhaps with a proper Cast of Characters] will call this harmful and impersonal communication and whatnot, but I’ll think of it as something interesting to observe.
The photo shows Pranav talking on his ancient cell, with Sony in the background doing… much the same thing.
Tags: musings
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Sunday, December 4, 2005
This post is more in the tone of thinking-out-loud and asking for opinions and comments than my usual discourse. As for why this post is here and now, I’ll leave that for later, when some ideas are more mature.
The GPL - for people who need that background - is a copyleft license that essentially invokes four conditions as a premise for freedom (quoting the wikipedia GPL article):
- the freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
- the freedom to study how the program works, and modify it. (Access to the source code is a precondition for this)
- the freedom to redistribute copies.
- the freedom to improve the program, and release the improvements to the public. (Access to the source code is a precondition for this)
In a commercial environment, such freedoms more often than not do not allow making money out of a GPL-ed venture. The traditional sell, hold Intellectual Property (IP), and ensure market dominance strategy does not work out because any client can excercise eir freedom and release your work to the public. While customers can hold you to an NDA, the reverse is never true. Your intellectual property can be squandered with disdain, and this is in a sense, understandable, because GPL and its ideology precludes “ownership” of information, and hence does not understand that term.
I am not a GPL guy (and never will be) - the BSD/MIT license is more my personal taste - but I respect the safety-net provisions in the GPL and understand why those provisions are in place. In any coding community - Drupal for instance being a small microcosm - there are developers who work long and hard at their code. They do have a right to expect somebody else using their code to contribute something back. [Digression: the point I contend is that such a contribution should be enforced - I strongly believe that people when left alone, are essentially good-at-heart and will contribute back anything that they can, and any perceived shortcomings of the BSD/MIT license for not including this clause does not stand up to even evil corporates: the most elegantly designed OS ever (perhaps) is built on a free license, and it contributes something back too]. But since I understand the reason behind the clauses, when I do business with GPL-ed software, I would like to respect its provisions, and still find a way to make money.
Questions
-
Supposing my company is asked to make an accounting solution for a client, and I use an opensource software as the base, but add in my own customizations. My customizations do not stand alone, and therefore, can’t be licensed under a separate, more constricting license. Taking into consideration the IP issues mentioned above, what is the best business model for me to pursue in this instance? How do I make money off GPL? Read [1], [2], [3], and [4], analyze, ponder, brainstorm and decide.
-
How does a totally hosted-solution figure into the picture? Supposing my product is a totally internally hosted solution, like say, Basecamp (but of course, based on opensource technologies), am I violating the GPL by making my customizations “available” to my clients without providing the source? Specifically, I’d like a clear distinction between “using” a program and distributing it - the GPL (at least, version 2) does not seem to give a clear picture regarding hosted web services.
It’s interesting to note what the GPL FAQ says about the issue: (Is making and using multiple copies within one organization or company “distribution”?)
No, in that case the organization is just making the copies for itself. As a consequence, a company or other organization can develop a modified version and install that version through its own facilities, without giving the staff permission to release that modified version to outsiders.
However, when the organization transfers copies to other organizations or individuals, that is distribution. In particular, providing copies to contractors for use off-site is distribution.
Note that, for a hosted solution, there is no transfer of copies of the program, it remains under internal control. So, in this case, is it both legal and ethical to customize a GPL-ed program without releasing the source?
If it doesn’t violate the letter of the GPL, it certainly seems to violate the spirit. There is no way to know the “inner workings” of the program, neither is there a way to tweak it.
- As an addition to 1 above, find out how companies on Opensource models survive. From Redhat, to the near and dear Linuxense.
Conclusion: I definitely do want to use GPL (and even BSD) to do business, but I’m still deciding how exactly to go about it, and what constitutes a sustainable revenue model.
Tags: business • development • musings
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Saturday, November 19, 2005
I had a pretty interesting discussion with DP yesterday, and I should say a few words about it. I hereby proclaim myself an inexperienced expert on love, and warn that all my words should be taken with a grain of salt.
When you do fall in love with a person, as happens to around a guesstimate ten thousand people every day, it is interesting to analyze what happens to you. I’m not talking about testosterone weds oestrogen - they are important just superficially - what happens inside your crazy little head? What are you thinking, putting another person’s happiness before yourself? Why are you so infatuated, so bloody well in love with hir?
Since love is by definition crazy and inexplicable, I seek not to answer that question. Perhaps though, all of us are intrinsically very lonely people and we just need to love to get some sanity into our world. The issue on the table though is that if love happens once, and then is lost (death, indifference, or plain cruelty) can it happen again? Should it happen again?
DP remarks on the callous youth, and how every now and then, one or the other of her students seem to just so easily move on after being scorned or just breaking up and moving on to other people. Is that then what they had love? Can true love ever happen twice? Interestingly enough, she says yes to both those questions, so I find her position contradictory and yet infinitely understandable.
My uninteresting prose will now give way to Byron’s poetry:
In her first passion, a woman loves her lover,
in all the others all she loves is love.
I intepret those words (still remaining gender neutral) thusly: When you love the very first time, when you hear and see a person who you know deep down in your bones is just so right for you, when you think with your heart and soul and find happiness in being with that person, you find love. If you lose that love - that lover - you’re crushed and broken and despondent. But every time you see a candidate you seek in hir those qualities that you adored and worshipped and wished you had again.
That is, so to say, you love being loved… Again, and again.
Tags: musings
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Sunday, May 8, 2005
This is a very sensitive topic, sensitive mostly cause it’s personal, and so I’m reluctant to write this here. I have a policy (since time immemorial) to keep this blog as less personal as I can. While I’ve deviated along the way, mostly this blog has been about philosophical connivings that have little to do with the outer me. The inner me is well… weird enough that it needs rants (like this) to vent off some ill-used steam.
Anyways, this topic has been preoccupying me for some time now. So I’ll start, as usual, with a definition.
No first, the etymology. This phrase wasn’t coined by me… I first heard it out of DP (aah, another character who’s had but a brief mention in the blogs here, and yeah well… for reasons mentioned above, it’ll stay that way), so I’ll attribute it’s origin to her. However, I’m sure, the concept existed way before she first so elegantly put it into words.
A special friend, is of requirement one of the opposite gender (oh, unless you’re homosexual, in which case, it’s necessarily one of the same gender) who walks the fine line between a friend, a beloved, and a sibling. She’ll stray between those lines a lot, often enough and far enough that these distinct relationships will blur and blur more until you’ll never be able to figure out any fitting defintion. You’ll love such a person… obviously: you’ll be genuinely fond of her, you’ll be proud of her, you’ll adore her, you’ll take care of her, you’ll want to hug her sometimes; you’ll laugh and cry with her, and you’ll try your best never to not lose contact with her. Like Dil Chahta Hai says about a particular relationship: it’s something that cannot be put into words, but which becomes so so important to you.
On the surface, the phenomenon may look like a fabulous (fleeting) infatuation rolled into fondness and some grounds for friendship, and for doubters, it can never be proved otherwise, but you should be able to realize love when you see it
I’m not a person with many close friends, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never had a ‘special friend’ until a few months ago. And just for feeling what I feel now, I’m insanely grateful that I have her.
Tags: musings
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Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Friendship isn’t a big thing; It is a million of little things
That isn’t my quote exactly, Wikiquote helped, but I wish it were mine. It condenses everything I have to say about the topic in one line. About problems in friendship, I have to say a bit more.
I have always been a person who has gotten along pretty well with everybody, and as a corollary, I’ve never had strong connections with many people. I’m a decided introvert, and I have few pretty close friends. But at the same time, I’m quite “friendly” to a lot of people - a lot. And I’ve been irritated at a lot of people, but I don’t think I’ve hated anybody. And yeah, I’m almost always willing to give way if it makes things better, mostly because I don’t really care about most of the people I talk to… I care more about living a life unimpeded.
In unflattering terms, I don’t have a backbone. I don’t stand up for my issues. I don’t try to get to know people. Neither do I care about most of the people’s views. I don’t consciously or unconsciously think about my friends a lot - even a lot of my close friends, and I do a lot of stupid things which have hurt a lot of people.
I’m lucky though that I’ve had some good friends who have taught me the secret of a continuing friendship, and it’s pretty simple. Don’t judge. Don’t even try. Don’t try to find reasons, don’t make a fuss. People make mistakes, even your closest dearest friends. Making them admit it is not going to solve stuff, just forgive. And forget. I believe there is something in every friend I have that I like and respect above anything stupid or silly or even vicious that they might do. I know, because I’ve consciously been all of these things, and still been forgiven for it.
And lately, I’ve been sincerely glad I am like this.
Tags: musings
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Friday, April 8, 2005
Cluetrain has been the central factor I use to judge businesses for some time now, and it surprised me today that the only reference that I found to it in this blog is a rather shallow one when I mention ASmallOrange. Time to rectify that 
The essence behind Cluetrain that I like is that it urges companies (even, or particularly big corporates) to be more personal in the way they deal with their customers. Instead of presenting an unapprochable corporate front to their lowest-tier customers, companies are urged to open up their doors and facilitate an honest employee-customer relationship - in some cases, friendship. This is the idea that business, at the very bottom, are fundamentally human, and therefore it requires a human touch for it to be the most successful.
I first heard about the Cluetrain manifesto when I heard it being refered in connection with Fastmail (whose email id I still use), but I should’ve recognized signs of its proliferation even earlier. Perhaps the most famous (and over-used) example is Google and it’s do-no-evil mantra, and it still remains the most successful psuedo-example. The Cluetrain manifesto though makes the most sense if you are a startup. Take the earlier case of Fastmail, or even ASO which has seen an explosive growth simply because of its word-of-mouth advertising. Head over to their forums to see why this is justified.
The entire text of the Cluetrain manifesto book can be read online, and I urge people even remotely interested in marketing to give it a glance. Even the chapter names are illuminating.
Tags: musings • reading
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Monday, April 4, 2005
Vijay came over here yesterday, and as always, we had a ripe little argumentative session. Condensed, my side of it should’ve gone like this:
There is no such stable thing as “human nature” - the combination of drives, urges, reflexes, responses and the way of thinking that makes it up is something that is a product of evolution, and therefore, as a rule, constantly changing. Unlike animal nature though, our responses change much more rapidly, mostly because we are able to respond to changes in our surroundings that much more faster and more intelligently.
In a sentence, we can train ourselves to have a different “nature”. (I’ll prove this later)
This brings about an interesting byplay to arguments, conditions and states of being that are rejected simply because they are “unnatural”. Take the case of socialism, which many feel goes completely against the human ideal, or polygamy, or same-sex relationships, or a single parent family… What if we can (and we can) retrain ourselves so that all these conjectures suit us? Is there something intrinsically unnatural to humans then? I can imagine different societal constructs where many of today’s unworkable social ideas, economic models, sexual mores etc. can be made to function, and the society still describe itself as “normal”.
Retraining ourselves is actually very hard, perhaps impossible without the presence of an actual societal model to which you plan to convert to. However, a scenario may run thus: Consider a group of 100 core believers in Socialism. They emigrate to Mars and establish a colony there, and they build a society where the children are taught that work is service. In such a society (living in relative vaccum without any subversive contact with Earth) we might imagine the children to grow up to a world where they do not accord any great merit to material posessions, but rather to the ideal of helping other people (The Jesuit ideal, “men for others” comes to mind). In such a world, their selfish nature is satisfied because it is in their interests to help others… they are taught, it is their core nature that serving others is rewarding. The economic model of such a society I’m sure too is viable, though I’m not experienced enough to detail it here. This is something that perhaps you might have a little trouble accepting, but do think on it, this is something I believe.
Interestingly, if you’d notice, in such a world, Objectivism still holds true, the individuals are acting in their selfish interests, although perhaps the system as a whole holds that ideal in scorn.
Now consider something as innately distasteful as polyandry. As an aside, I choose sexual issues not because I have a perverse streak, but because everybody has a strong opinion about them, the resolution is more effective this way. And oh, I didn’t choose polygamy because sometimes the men just don’t get it :-D. Yup… back to polyandry, consider a world where this is normal. (Another interesting aside, it used to be so in Tibet). A rational man in the current society would have a great deal to say (and do) when his wife goes gallivanting with another man. But consider why our reaction is modeled this way… is it a natural response to the act, or more a response to how our society is modeled? The reaction is naturally one that has been evolved through the ages, and it makes perfect biological sense because if a man is able to keep a woman all to himself, he is more able to ensure that it is his sperm that impregnates her. Crude? But aye, I claim this is still the sole “natural” reason. Every other reason we can claim is something that has evolved because our society is structured this way (And I hope I’ve already shown how a society can be structured differently). Consider a world where such a competition does not exist, where a woman can choose who to be pregnant with, or more sensibly, where who the father of the child is, is a non-issue. Would we still be justified in feeling polyandry unforgivable?
Heinlein’s novels explore this theme very well.. consider reading his “Stranger in a Strange Land”, “Time Enough For Love”, and his recently discovered first: “For Us the Living”
Tags: musings
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Wednesday, March 16, 2005
I installed OpenBSD a while back on my old system. It’s a PIII 500 with 64M RAM, and it’s been a testbed for new operating systems that I might be interested in. I got introduced to the UNIX world through Linux, but I’ve never spent a lot of computer time in that platform. I switched to FreeBSD as soon as my wireless chip got supported (a stumbling block which prevents me from installing Linux the way I want to, another being that I want things to “just work”) but OpenBSD seems more attractive currently because it natively supports my wireless chip in the latest nightlies. So, I downloaded a nightly build and got to installing it, and that’s when I found out something really nice about it.
There are operating systems, and then, there are operating systems… there’s Windows - ubiquitous, feature-rich, a bit of a kludge and rumored to be buggy, there’s Linux, the official alternative, and then there are these cute little *BSDs lying around the place. OpenBSD, even among these BSDs is not the most popular one, and I suppose it’s the only fault in an otherwise close-to-perfect OS.
OpenBSD has two mantras, they are very dissimilar and sometimes contradictory, but of all the OSs I’ve tried out, it comes the closest to the way I want software to work. The first of course, is that “Everything should be done right”. That’s not quite it, what makes some people hate the OS is it’s tiny (but very important and never-forgotten) addendum, “Everything should be done right… or not at all.” A very good example of this is when the opensource OSs started adding wireless support. Linux used the ndiswrapper kernel extension, and FreeBSD implemented ndis emulation in the kernel… they support newer wireless devices by emulating the Windows (NDIS) driver interface, allowing these OSs to use Windows drivers. OpenBSD would never implement something like that. What they did do is launch a campaign to get closed firmware opened up (see above article) and write proper BSD licensed drivers for that, sometimes even reverse-engineering proprietary drivers released by the vendors. So yeah, do it right. On the flip side, Openoffice hasn’t made it to the Ports collection, neither has Samba3… some stuff like Apache2 and Etheral have been completely removed.
The second mantra (and at times I think it is not in tune with the first, but just because of that, it makes OpenBSD special) is just that “stuff should just work”. And they’ve largely managed to stay by it. A default OpenBSD install detected my wireless card, my sound card, even my Firewire port that I hook my Ipod onto. As a stark contrast, you need to recompile the kernel in FreeBSD to get sound! So yeah, it’s special and the combination of these mantras makes OpenBSD into something I’ve grown to love.
There is of course, the part about some things that I need (/me begging for Openoffice 2) not being there in the ports, and living with that is hard. It’s however, the most secure OS on the planet, and just the idea of immersing code-reviewing ideology with the “just works” thing made it special enough for me to yell about it to you. As always, your mileage may vary, but do try out OpenBSD (and adore the goldfish.)
Tags: chaff • musings
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Wednesday, August 4, 2004
It is interesting to note that during my entire trip of South India, the girls with me were probably the most hassled when we came back to Kerala. This is after we visited big cities like Chennai, Bangalore and Mysore, and it confirms a theory that for long I’ve held true: ‘Chastity belts breed perverts’.
I think I haven’t elaborated on this particular situation in my state before; it’s something that I’ve chosen to write about in my next LOBA column, so you’ll hear my say then. But until then, I’ll leave you guys with a short poem.
To look, not to
stare
To smile, not to
gawk
To talk, not to
hoot
And to learn when to give up,
and when not to.
Tags: musings
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Wednesday, August 4, 2004
Lessons learnt:
- If you can’t do it yourself, don’t complain.
- If you don’t have the authority, don’t command.
- Don’t couch ineptitude with laziness.
- Help the group and the group will help you.
- Ask before you take liberties.
- Your friends can be wrong.
- Respect rules.
- Respect others.
- Respect the Majority, but don’t be ruled by it.
- Say Please, Say Sorry, Say Thank you.
I have major problems with (3), (5) and (10) above.
Tags: musings
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Wednesday, August 4, 2004
People party differently, or rather, some do not. Since we are social animals, getting together to celebrate or enjoy is pretty much a done thing everywhere. Some people (like me) however do not like crowds that much, I’d rather have a book to read and a computer to be by than dancing and singing with much more gregarious people. That’s not to say I don’t like people, in fact I find them fascinating, but I find direct continous communication somewhat stressing. It’s one of the reasons why I like email and text-chats, and one of the major reasons why I prefer online forums to actual live meetings. I can speak in a crowd impromptu, but it takes more out of me than say, a group-email that conveys the same facts. I don’t have an issue with me being like this, I rather enjoy the way I am ;-).
What I have an issue with is the fact that some people who do party (and caps all the way for that), consider that I’m somehow not normal. This short trip that I was on last week put on the table something I’ve realized for some time now: people enjoy life differently, and I’m in the minority.
For the people above, here’s a live and let live premier.
Tags: musings
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Sunday, July 11, 2004
Aesthetics is not a branch of science. That is, if you define science as a study that includes exact measurements and theories, aesthetics most probably won’t fit the bill, because the needs of people (and their desires) differ. It’s more like pschology - a pseudo-science, one that attempts to categorize the reactions of a broad percentage of people so that they can be weeded out into normal and sub-normal. But like many other such tricky knowledge, it’s very important to how the world works.
Nobody buys a car that looks like a box on wheels. You’ve got to have curves, and just the right amount of appeal. Nobody buys a bike that’s entirely silent. It’s got to have a drone, and the more distinctive a rumble, the better. It’s very difficult to estimate where aesthetics end and marketing begins in many cases, because both are sciences that aim to please. Aesthetics does it in the name of art, marketing does it in the name of money. When you pool both in, a good idea becomes a workable one, one that appeals to a lot of people.
For design, aesthetics is often called upon more, rather than marketing. One of the basic rules of design with respect to publishing is that humans scan a block of text; rarely do they read, especially in environments like the web where time is of essence and the bushels of chaff are many. For a designer to become effective however, he must know which areas of text to highlight and which to use simply as page-fill. A rule of the thumb to follow is that when a document is more than 60% page-fill, it’s useless. So succintly, the point I’m trying to elaborate is: be brief. And expanding it to the context of the entire design scope, be simple.
Simple doesn’t imply plain. People who’ve stared at Nakshatra [2] collections will know what I mean. It is the special designer who can bring out the beauty in simplicity. Gaudiness often serves only to point out the flaws in the design; a minimalistic layout which uses the needs of the design as a guide to creating web pages that breathe well and think easy will be much, much more effective. In other words, it should be the content that decides the wrapping, not the reverse.
My first web page was an exercise in futitlity. Vysnu in its current incarnation is in some ways, much better, but there is oh, so much more that I can do. It’s still too heavy on the eye, and the elements do clash every so often. I can’t promise a redesign any time soon, but when I do it, I want it to be much better.
Oh, and analogous to the great coding principle that I live by (and what Vivek taught me) “Keep it Simple and Stupid” is “Keep it Simple and Stylish” when it comes to design. At least, that’s how my philosophy is wired. So KISS and make up, and lets be on our way.
Tags: development • musings
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Saturday, May 8, 2004
A recent google search made me remember a promise. And since I’m a late redeemer, I thought I’d give it a go.
First, a primer. Objectivism was stated by a Russian exile to America, Ayn Rand, in the early half of the last century, and unlike other such treatises, Rand appealed to the public through her books, one of them Fountainhead, which was excellently received in its time and another Atlas Shrugged, which didn’t receive quite the adulation she expected but is nevertheless today considered the cornerstone of her philosophy. It is different from more popular and established schools of thought in that it equates egotism with moral excellence; indeed one of the corner-stones of the philosophy, often quoted, is that “Selfishness is a virtue”. Ayn Rand further expounds that the basis of every man’s actions is his “moral code”, and the only way establish a just moral code (which she then elaborates in a 20+ page speech by a character in Atlas Shrugged) is to be firmly rooted in reality.
You cannot have your cake and eat it too, she says. “A is A” - the Aritstotelean observation is from where she starts her thesis, and she arrives at her conclusions - which are numerous, widely debated and often contentious, but which certainly are radical.
One of the major criticisms of the philosophy is that it is too ideal - utopian; it doesn’t touch a chord with many people because it doesn’t describe the world around them. To use a more mundane but perhaps apt comparison, Objectivism is the Superman of philosophies; it has grace, poise and laser shooting eyes, but arrogance often pales to something more real: your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman definitely scores more points. (Completely off topic, but the new Spidey trailer is amazing <g>). Most of the characters in Rand’s novels are superhuman, they don’t seem to face life the way normal people do, they aren’t shaken by calamity, they weather every storm and reach the port safely, much like many a romance novel.
I remember defending the edicts of objectivism on numerous occasions because I used to consider myself an objectivist. Used to, because although I certainly admire most of the basic tenets, I’ve found some facts that do not fit my life.
One: Selfishness is a virtue, most definitely. But I’m also somebody who strongly believes in love. Not to mention that I’ve grown up in a school that has as its motto, “Men for others”. Selfishness in the traditional definition (as in Me, Me and Me) cannot encompass something that is very relevant and important to humanity: compassion. I would propose a new definition, but I’ll leave that to future articles on the subject.
Two: Humility. There is no such thing as a humble objectivist. Arrogance and pride (even deserved pride) are certainly good qualities, but an equally good quality is humility. Something which allows human beings to share the rewards, acknowledge the good graces of others, and something which makes every one of us more likable.
Three: The reluctance to dialogue. Objectivists tend to divide the world into two spheres: the believers and the non-believers, and after such a separation has been achieved, they believe that any dialogue with the outcasts is useless. They believe that if people can’t realize the basic tenets of the law before them (the ‘laws’ are certainly simple when examined at a glance), they will never come to terms with them, and any futher conversation with such people is anathema. This I reject because of plain common sense - any philosophy if it has to succeed has to evolve.
Let’s stop it at three. There are some more, but they are smaller issues best discussed later. Objectivism isn’t a fundamentally flawed philosophy, it isn’t even that egotist if you examine it in a certain manner, but it certainly has some flaws. The very fact that Objectivists haven’t come up in a big way anywhere certainly points to that. How to refine this philosophy to make it succeed is frankly, way beyond me. But I’ll encourage you to think on it.
Tags: musings
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Monday, April 5, 2004
If you care to look at the sidebar, you’ll find that I’ve found time to bother you with only 10 posts last month. Troubled times are the reason. A detailed account of the chaos in my life would bore you and would put me back into The Bell Jar, so I won’t stray in that direction. Besides, the purpose of this blog is not to unburden myself, it’s to share my infinite =) wisdom with you. So pull up a chair Andrew, and listen to my dregs of wheat.
Golden rules. You see them around you every day, and you follow it unthinkingly because it is the product of collective wisdom. I’ll extinguish my wrath on a particularly stupid one: “Two people, two children.”
First off, why is it absurd? You would think that if everyone were to follow this rule, then the problems of overpopulation (which is particularly drastic in my country) would simply go away. I don’t have any problem with the basic premise, what I do have a problem with is that this kind of a message is sent to people in the form of compulsion rather than education. If this were rephrased to something like “Don’t have more children than you can afford to bring up” I would be very happy. Of course, the collolary states that “Do have more children if you can afford it”, and it’s a sentiment that I have no opposition towards. Rich people can definitely have more children. If they can bring up their children well, how are they harming others?
They are harming others, you say. Everybody has a social responsibilty, you say. The rich kids are taking away a chance in life that could’ve gone to a poor kid. There are some strong flaws in this stream of logic:
- Poor kids are more worthy: So the poor kids are more deserving of a chance? Says who? Are rich kids somehow less worthy than poor ones?
- Social responsibility: If by creating more rich kids, we are creating less poor ones, isn’t the world a better place that way? Aren’t we fulfilling our social responsibility then?
- The rich can become successful easier: Success doesn’t depend on how rich or poor you are. Economics is driven by four factors: Land, Labour, Capital and Entrepreneurship. If you don’t have the skill to utilize your resources, whatever they are, it doesn’t matter how rich or poor you are. Success, is thus independent of capital. It depends only on abililty.
Tags: chaff • musings
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Tuesday, March 23, 2004
This article, and many related, made me formulate my definition of
marriage
Marriage is a relationship between people, based primarily on love and mutual respect, where each person in the relationship maintains consensual, independent and unobligatory ties with every other person (not necessarily sexual or of an equal nature), and where the major purpose of such a relationship is the welfare of progeny.
Dissected, marriage is…
- …a relationship between people. The extent of plurality in the relationship is not an issue, and because of this, the definition does condone polygamy, or other related forms, providing the other conditions are met.
- …a relationship where each person maintains consensual, independent and unobligatory links with every other person. Consensual implies consent (both in the legal context and in the ordinary one). Independent means that a person’s relationship to a partner in the marriage does not depend on other partners. Unobligatory means a consent which is freely given and not based on external considerations. Also note that every one of the persons united by marriage should consent to every other person. See the examples for more detail.
- …for the welfare of progeny. This is a condition which can be, but generally should not be relaxed. The major purpose of a relationship of this nature to demand codification by society (imho) is to accord recognition to its children, and as such, the purpose of this kind of sanction is null and void without this clause.
Now, some scenarios to clarify things:
Suppose you are in a two-person heterosexual monogamous relationship (the commonest form of marriage on the planet). Suppose your spouse desires another person and maintains an active relationship with that person. Even with your consent, this kind of relationship cannot be a marriage between you three unless you and that person has a meaningful relationship too (this does not necessarily imply a sexual one). Since marriage also implies a responsibilty to progeny, all three of you would have to contribute to raising children.
Again, if you and your spouse have an “open marriage” (a term often associated with swinging, but generally only implying that lawbook adultery is not a consideration), and if you have regular sexual relationships with other people, this situation does not preclude a marriage by this definition, as long as you and your spouse have a meaningful relationship (even if not sexual). As such, two people who are not attracted to each other (sexually) can be meaningfully married.
Of course, interesting things happen when marriage becomes more plural. Language will have to rush to keep up. Co-husbands & co-wives anyone?
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Tuesday, March 9, 2004
Defining
- Anarchy
- Anarchy exists when there is no form of government control over the people and they do as they please.
Rational Anarchy is something a little different. Rational Anarchists deplore any form of government and realize that in the end, all forms of organizational control curtail rights which should be free. The reasons that Anarchists are against autocratic government are obvious, but some explanation might be required for democracy:
- Men are created unequal.
- The majority is not always right.
- An uninformed majority is always wrong.
However rational anarchists by definition are not terrorists, loons or morons. They realize that they live in a less than perfect world, where other less secure people need rules to live by, and a functioning society to tell them what to do when. So while maintaining an indifference to governmental controls, they do their best to remain within the framework that society has placed on them. When they go out of bounds, rational anarchists may, depending on their moral code, shrug and accept punishment or retalitate.
There are many examples of anarchy in books (several authors seemed to have stumbled across it independent of each other) and a very few examples in history, but a working anarchy would, I think, mean an overhaul to our entire value system. Till then, we have rational anarchy to contend with.
Tags: musings
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Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Intelligence is a fun topic to delve into. Early sentient intelligent studies were incredibly one-sided, focusing only on homo sapiens sapiens, and failed to resolve any of its mysteries; much later when scientists started to search for other intelligent life on our planet (and found many, but let us consider the incredible dolphins and orangutans), things started to get more interesting. If we can find out the difference between our lesser cousins and ourselves, we could find out the real meaning of being sentient. Many differences have been found. Humans can laugh (though there’s no evidence that dolphins can’t or that orangutans need to), contemplate the future, appreciate art, and have commited relationships. However, there is no single test (except anything prejudiced in our favor) that denotes that a dolphin or a big ape is any less intelligent than we are. Both are amazing creatures, able to adapt to a variety of situations. The dolphin’s cousin - the killer whale - is perhaps the only ‘intelligent’ sea predator.
Perhaps one reason we can’t define what it means to be human is because it is an ever-changing ideal. An Egyptian is hardly similar to a modern man - both had immensely dissimilar ideas, viewpoints and morals. Like every experience, every conversation, every new thought changes a single human, every great revolution, every piece of invention and organization changes the ideal of humanity as a whole. And lately, that pace of change has been inexorably greater, mostly because of Augmented Intelligence.
Every technology or tool that we invent makes us more capable. If intelligence is a measure of how capable we are at solving set tasks, it can be said that every tool makes us more intelligent, however crass that analogy may be. But when talking about simple instruments like a hammer or a microscope, there is a clear dilenation between the inanimate tool and the human behind it. When immersive computing is brought into the equation, things are subtly changed. Most of the time, that is because the computer is an infinitely resourceful tool, able to mould itself around the intelligence of its user, extending it - perhaps to do rigorous number crunching or extensive analysis. Remember the match between Big Blue and Kasparov? It wasn’t Big Blue who beat Kasparov, it was the research team behind the computer, but we forget the distinction easily.
Augmented Intelligence is thus a misnomer. Our intelligence increases only in that we are able to do more tasks easily, and some tasks that we couldn’t do before. It is no different than the earliest of our inventions: using fire to eat cooked food. But since Augmented Intelligence arouses in us visions of a metal man, a hybrid between man and machine, nanobots and more, which somehow give us more capabilities than a normal human, we tend to shy away from it. In reality, the cellphone that you have, the calculator that you use, the computer that you send emails from, the TV or radio that brings you information all augments your intelligence. And like every other piece of technology, it changes the humanity in us only so long as we let it. Augmented Intelligence, like its counterpart Artificial Intelligence is at the heart of many controversies and false truths of the Silicon Age. And yet, it is also an under-exploited capability that we humans have, right now.
Aside from the way AI has subtly changed our lives, we refuse, perhaps for fear of losing our humanity, to clearly examine how a man-machine relationship works. A closer look at the interface between a human and a computer, and the various ways to enhance that relationship would be in order if we are to further add to our humanity. One of the subtle ways in which to do that would be to organize man-machine vs man-machine chess competitions. Instead of perpetuating a Man vs specific Machine in a special context, the focus will then change to the collaboration between Man and Machine. That would help everyone.
Tags: musings
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Saturday, February 14, 2004
I’m sure that in Kerala, there won’t be a single practising male gynecologist. The reason for that is of course the incredible reticence that people have about talking sex. Of course, that’s not a polite (ahem) inter-gender topic anywhere, but I’ve noticed this taboo extending to even simple and commonplace issues, the least of which is sex education. Ever noticed when girls around you don’t go to the temple? Everybody knows about the monthly “problem” that they have, but no girl I’ve known has admitted it. The first time I figured it out I was genuinely puzzled at their inability to say it outright. Nowadays I shrug it off. And oh, this isn’t about girls alone. I’ll be too embarassed to provide examples on my side of the gender (and oh, then there’s the other reason I talked about).
I’m sure too, that this attitude is dangerous. In Kerala, bad things don’t happen to us. All the bad things that we see on TV remain there - behind the pixellated screen. It’s all the fault of the Western Culture, all of us around here are sane, healthy people who are don’t do these ugly things. Sex? Sex is ‘something’ that married people do. But let’s glaze over that and come to babies. They are so much more presentable.
I remember the first time in school that a teacher tried speaking to us about sex. He was a pretty progressive priest (my school is run by Jesuits) and he started off by writing this on the blackboard: “Sex is Sacred”. And then, in the next thirty or so minutes, proceeded to totally embarass both himself and us. That’s the first time I distinctly remember that I saw this caginess in our culture, and I’ve found it many times since.
I’ve also noticed that it’s worse between parents and children and among older people. The least you can do if you’re a parent is to tell your children that sex isn’t bad, and then tell them where they can find good, correct information about it. That’s over at Scarleteen in case you didn’t know.
Tags: musings
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Wednesday, February 11, 2004
The sum of any art form’s punch lies in the effectiveness in which it brings together its component forms. For a simpler (read older) art form like painting, or sculptoring, there are perhaps one or two elements to bring together: sand and clay and paper and ink makes great art. Since most of the newer varities of art play on ‘fuzion’, it becomes an art in itself to bring together all the elements to make a great piece of work.
That’s something I thought about when I watched Kal Ho Na Ho today. Lesson learnt: Don’t skip the songs, they are the good part of a bad movie.
Tags: chaff • musings
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Monday, January 26, 2004
Today is India’s 55th Republic Day. It marks the day of the largest number of organized parades in the world, from the biggest at Rajpath in New Delhi to the smaller but no less colorful throughout the country. I watched almost the entire parade on NDTV today - and while I don’t consider myself particularly patriotic (this is the first time I’ve taken an interest in it mostly because droning hindi commentaries on Doordarshan mostly make me gag) it was nice to watch all those ‘military might’ rolling down the red carpet. Which brings me to…
…military might in general. Parading strength is a good thing, remembering that you are strong is wonderful. But translating strength as weapons, armor, tanks and planes is silly. Sure, people need to know that the armed forces are wonderfully sleek and equipped, but a country holding a nuclear ace (if indeed that’s what it is) can afford more liberties with its parades - focusing more on what the country is about: I was more interested in the ‘floats’ that came after the guns, though as a rule they look more like colorful cartoons than living parts of a whole. Somebody should revamp those floats and make it glow. A mature country should celebrate its people, not its weapons.
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Saturday, January 10, 2004
Sanitized from an email I sent:
Recently I became interested in prayers and what they *really* mean and my mother and I talked about it quite a bit. There are a lot of gaps in her understanding (and her knowledge) of all these shlokams (stanzas) and condensations of nice little prayers. I learnt however to say the Ramayana and Mahabharata in ten sentences. But I’ve realized that my children won’t know a tenth of what I know. That’s a tenth of what my mother knows and that’s a tenth of what my grandma knew. Not that I’m going to compulsorily teach them anything, but even if they become interested I won’t be able to point them in any direction. Which is kind of sad, now that I think about it, since although most of the prayers are outdated and silly, some are really nice poems whose literary worth is often underestimated. For e.g., the translation of those ten sentences of Ramayana into English would be a lesson in brevity. I’m going to do that translation one of these days.
I hope somebody out there is collating all these word-of-mouth prayers and translating them to a live language, like English. But somehow I don’t think so; authors have better things to pursue. [..] One of the things that any school should do is to teach children the history of their locality - their city, state, country and the world - *in that order*. I don’t know a twang about the history of Kerala and I think it’s a huge gap in my brain. [..] I want to know a bit about this mainly because I’ve realized that however imaginative you are, writing about completely fictitious people is artificial. When I write about stuff that happens in America, I’m going by the 21-inch view that I get from the TV, and the even smaller (or the bigger) view I get from books and the net. Though some of that is close to reality, it’s a static one where the chain of motion is only in my head (and that’s limited since I’m only one.) When I write about stuff that happens around me, the chains of motion are infinite and unpredictable. I’m not hinting at a true story or an autobiography (God save me) but the fact that something which happens around you is closer and truer. I haven’t exactly written a story which is that true yet, though I’ve started experimenting in poems. [..] I have to edit what I said before, stories which have characters you don’t know, are artificial as long as you don’t know what will happen if those same characters were to be transplanted to your backyard.
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Sunday, January 4, 2004
I first read this in a Robert Heinlein novel (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), but I think I’ve always known this: people don’t really know where any place is, they just know how to get there. Take any place you know, and tell me, in absolute units, how far and in which direction, that place is. Quite right, I can’t expect you to bring me displacements, human beings measure distances more. It is interesting that the farther the place is, the less you know about its real position in the world. Take, say Beijing. If I had to walk, swim or fly from my house, I would have no idea how to reach there. But with my eyes closed, I can get on a plane that’ll get me safely and easily to the Tian’anmen Square. As the world gets smaller (vis a vis, transport gets faster, or communication becomes immersively instant) it will matter less and less where you really are. (Unless of course you are in the Kalahari and sweating your brains out)
This sense of transportation - the way we get from place to place - is also a fascinating thing to explore. My parents have a very good “place-sense”. Both of them can easily tell another person how exactly to go to another place. If you have to reach the Ferderal Bank, go to such and such a place, and then as you drive down, you’ll see such and such a building and immediately you can take a right and viola! I suspect most of the people in the world are wired this way.
I’m not. Not at all; I do most of my travel on autopilot, and the only way I can really understand and remember a direction is if I’m doing the driving and somebody is telling me exactly when to make a turn, and to really burn it into my head, I have to do it two or three times. I can’t find a place even if you handed me a map and marked a big red spot on it (especially then). I’ve thought about it and I think it’s because my ‘markers’ are more obtuse than the landmarks other people use that I can’t explain them (and I don’t consciously remember them). Most of the time, I make turns without thinking and I just know that the house in question is just around the corner.
Since I’ve now discovered this chink in my armor, I’ve resolved to correct this - the solution is pretty simple. Just pay more attention =)
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Friday, January 2, 2004
People tend to be very relative about the word ‘old’. It’s one of the words that would be untranslatable to a little green man. I, for one, think 25 is prime, 30 is middle-aged, and the rest of the life is a one-way street to ga-ga. My brother is 16 and I think he shares similar thoughts; this self-delusion (if it is indeed that) is a general malaise affecting all teenagers and like-minded people. Scratch that, it’s something affecting everyone. As you grow older, the word ‘youth’ grows older with you. Youth and Wisdom: can I have both, mama?
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Tuesday, December 16, 2003
When I was 15 or so, an editor of a local newspaper came to school, she wanted articles written for a teens’ supplement her paper was starting. I went to a meeting she called for, listened and spoke little and my invisible self studied her more than I studied her words. Then I was a little less rebellious than I am now, and the drab articles that she asked for gave me ungoverned useless artistic license. But as she was leaving, she stood and said, “And now you will submit this by?” - and as all such open ended questions, she met with no answer, whereupon she set an arbitrary date, and then she said a few words of which I’m thinking of now: “Nice. A deadline. A deadline helps you to perform better, don’t they?”
Since that was another open question, nobody spoke, people thought. I thought. And I’ve thought about that a lot. Deadlines don’t help me. Not at all. If someone comes to me and tells me, you’ve got to complete this project by such-and-such a date, my brain stops working unless I can convince myself that the project isn’t so important or that I like it. There is the dreary comforming bit of it all where one should always do as (or better than) one’s neighbours, in every aspect of my life. Deadlines make the thing most alive in me, dead - I always tend to put off everything that I have to do. If I have to have deadlines, I’d rather have them at the end of a month than at the beginning of another, I’d rather complete a piece and submit it on November 20th than on December 1st.
I suppose there are people who are helped by deadlines. I suppose, in some small way I too am helped by them, and I don’t notice it since I arrange my life so that most of my deadlines are flexible. If it were an absolutely rigid one, my short-term burst would take care of problems, but then I’ll vomit after the impetus. Deadlines and me don’t mix. I wonder what that says about me.
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Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Pray, define rape? As far as I understand it, it’s a violation of the human body, an act whereby another person takes something from you. Something that you value. It follows that if you don’t value your body, and you are willing to give yourself away, you can’t be raped. Please understand that I’m not saying that prostitutes or mentally insecure people can’t be raped, I’m saying that people who attach no value for this sexual act can’t be. When you are raped, you lose something of value inside you - your body, or a piece of you inside you that you are willing to share with only a few other people. If you don’t accord any importance to that part inside you, but instead consider it as something to share with everybody, however dross or crass or repulsive that person may be, then you can’t be raped. Perhaps the word ‘rape’ itself is a misnomer here, I use it in the frame of meaning of “an unwilling sexual act,” rape itself means much more, and incidentally, it’s a crime of anger, not attraction.
I hope this is a simple enough extrapolation of a simple idea: If you don’t value a thing, you shouldn’t worry about losing it.
Pray, why do we wear clothes? Aside from modesty and social conditioning, I’ll wager that we value our bodies enough so that we only reveal them to people we like and trust. People who we don’t like don’t get to see us (‘us’) simply because we don’t like them enough. Nudists bare all, always. If I was a nudist, then I would have to go naked even in front of people who I find positively repulsive. Leaving aside silly reasons like being naturists or going around in the way God made us, this makes me value my body not at all. I’d like to infer that nudists don’t mind anybody looking on them because they don’t accord importance to their nudity.
But of course, seeing is not touching. If we decide to accord the same laxity that that nudists have towards their bodies to sex, then rape will no longer be a crime. Because the way we refuse touch is say “No” - the way we refuse sight is to wear some clothes. I’d like to believe that every person will selectively like or dislike some people - every person will have a code of values by which he grades other people, and no man or woman, just by the sake of existing, has the right to someone else.
That’s why I don’t like Nudism.
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Monday, December 1, 2003
December is on. In all the novels that I read, december rhymes with winter. It’s a snow-month, flakes of white ‘substances’ that are as exotic to me as marihuana, and as exciting. For me, december is colder. Dimmer, thinner, wispier than other months. And definitely less livelier. Everything seems to wind down after a long, lovely (ugly) year, and I catch my breath for a while, now and again to let in the last of a year that I enjoyed (wasted).
Have you seen rain? Not slight drizzly rain, not the boring drops that fall and then pitter away like boring drops of rain. Not that, like this one:
One day, it started raining, and for six months it didn’t stop…I’ve been to all kinds of rain in Vietnam, slow rain, hard rain, sleet rain, rain that came in sideways and sometimes, rain that seemed to come out of the ground itself. (A quote from Forrest Gump, reproduced from memory)
I’ve seen rain, though I haven’t seen snow: slow rain, hard rain, rain that comes in sideways, and sometimes, rain that seemed to come out of the ground itself. Once, when it was raining - really raining, not like the boring drops of decemberwinter - I went out on the terrace and soaked it all in (really). The next day, I got a huge cold and the beginnings of asthma, but I didn’t mind.
I think, in small ways like this, people are blessed in different ways. I can’t see snow, but I’ve been given rain as a substitute. And I think I love rain, and what it means and what it means for the snow around me.
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Saturday, November 15, 2003
There’s a lot of emphasis on getting things right. I suppose that is needed, even essential. Nobody I’ve met however, can get things right (get every single detail right) the first time. And yet, that’s what every student who goes through an examination is supposed to do. From the point of view of an evaluator, this may not be so big a deal since everyone who takes the exam is in the same boat, and after all, “To err is human, to excel divine” and all of us seem to be searching for a bit of divinity.
One thing that this examination process lets go through the sieve-holes however is a crucial analytical skill: that of identifying and correcting mistakes, and finally to submit a revised and finished product. In an ideal examination scenario, a student would look over his valued paper, learn from his mistakes, identify the areas where he is weak and work to improve his paper as a whole. However, I’m sure that the percentage of students who do this is very small, perhaps in the order of <5%. And yet, debugging - the act of finding out mistakes and correcting them is crucial in any workplace, especially so if your job demands analytical reasoning skills. This skill, like many other skills that we aren’t taught, we learn either because of things that we do in real life, or when we’re stuck at a juncture in our job - incidentally, this is part of the reason why job offers carry an “experience” requirement.
One of the best ways to learn to debug is (as the term implies) to learn to program. When you write a piece of code, you rarely get it right the first time; debugging is often considered an art (just like coding is) and more often than not, the secret to get a program working is to know how to debug, not how to logically work out the code. If you’ve got children, please teach them BASIC.
Getting it right the first time isn’t that crucial for most of us, learning how to get out of a hole (both at the workplace and in life) counts, so get it wrong and then get it right. But do find a way out of the hole.
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Friday, November 14, 2003
I’m a creature of habit. It’s not that evident when you first look at me, but most of the time, I do things just because I’ve been doing them my whole life. So when I want to start on a new venture, the best (and perhaps the only) way to make it successful is to do it again and again and again until it’s like tying shoe-laces. Some habits though are harder to form, harder to keep mostly because there is a world of difference between the living and the inanimate (yet more lively) thoughts that take up a huge portion of my head. Living a Blog is hard.
Blogs are conceited drivellish idiomatic snatches of thought that pulls in readers like an electromagnet pulls in nails - where the electromagnet throbs to your heartbeat and the nails more often than not, hurt. When you’re proud enough to start your blog, you’re stupid enough to assume responsibility. And exactly like the wheels that churn in real life, responsibility is a pain, but it’s also the stuff of life—it’s the currency (in the absence of paper) that people value you by. If you have to earn your way in the blogging world, you just have to be proud enough to assume you’re important. And you are.
Of course, it’s another matter to actually make this work. [/me promises regular updathes.]
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Friday, November 7, 2003
How much trust do you have in a person? I suppose it depends on how you’re related to that person, if it’s a close family member you put in a lot of your trust and if it’s somebody you don’t know at all, you are a lot more hesitant. Trust has to be earned and so it’s almost as valuable as respect (and perhaps more). How do you trust a person you don’t know? You get to know that person, you talk with that person and you get to know what kind of a person he really is. After a sufficient amount of time that’ll vary depending on how trusting you are, you’ll know that you’re willing to stand as surety if that person wants a loan. In the end, trust boils down to acceptance without concrete proof. I’m sure it’s all very complicated than that sentence, but I think I can, within limits, define trust like that. Let’s see the dictionary definition of
trust
[1] the trait of trusting; of believing in the honesty and reliability of others; “the experience destroyed his trust and personal dignity”
[2] certainty based on past experience; “he wrote the paper with considerable reliance on the work of other scientists”; “he put more trust in his own two legs than in the gun”
Yes, pretty similar. You get to trust a person by knowing what kind of person he really is. So what if you can’t get to know the person? In the magic wonderful peculiar world of the World Wide Web, nobody really knows who anybody else is. The girl that you’re flirting with could be a 60yr old man. I’ll leave other problems to your imagination, but my thesis is simple: since you can’t be sure who that person is, you can’t trust him.
Or can you? Since the net has started, people have looked for a solution to this problem, because as I said earlier, trust is important for any human gathering. From very early trust groups to a more recent attempt, people have tried hard to bring trust into the equation. Attempts like Friendster fail to ensure any kind of perfect trust. But Friendster works as it does in real life. The people closer to you, you can trust more. But it still fails because it’s not easy to make new friends when you really can’t find out who that person is.
Now you’all will hear my solution. In fact, it’s not mine, it’s lifted off law books: Innocent until Proven Guilty. For the ten thousands of perverts there on the net, there are ten million good people out there. There is a chance (as there is a chance in real life too) that you’ll come to trust one of those bad people. But people are, and should be, innocent until proven guilty, never the other way around. I suppose, in the end, it all comes down to trust. You should have enough.
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Wednesday, November 5, 2003
What is the first name of Nostradamus? If you know that, you’re more of a history (or sensation) buff than me. The 16th century physician with his quatrains of silver poetry has influenced more prophets and seers around the globe than any other force combined. So what makes him prettier than the rest of them? I don’t know and perhaps he really did see the future, but I’ll point deliberations on that to this answer: Chance. But that’s not what this is about.
Predictions and astrology, the mythical and the metaphysical are as much a part of the human drive to explain everything as anything else. It has spread its roots into every century that man has lived in. It has as much followers now (perhaps more) as it did in the 16th century. There have even been attempts (in fiction, of course) to wrap it around science, attempts that I find very interesting. But over and above all that, it seems we need to know what will happen in the future. Science doesn’t have an answer to that need: it is an ocean of doubt in which people will endlessly wallow; scientists are never absolutely certain of anything. For certainty, we have to look beyond it.
I think this is because of the human need to search for reference points. A young child looks to his mother and his house; older, he looks to his school and when he goes to college, he compares the college to the ‘still point’ in his life then - his school. We jump from one stable stable to another like pack horses that can’t graze together. I really wish people could be happy while in doubt. But I doubt they can. That’s why they look to other people.
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