Flickr integration is over

I am now aggregating my flickr pictures on tamizhan.com. Overnight, my plugin runs and grabs any new picture I post at flickr.

The sync is an one time static import i.e if I change the title of an existing photo in my flickr account, the change will not get reflected here. I thought of making it dynamic but that would mean checking every photo every night for changes, which has huge bandwidth implications as my flickr account grows (which it should in the coming year).

These fun projects are a welcome diversion, especially since I am having a hectic time at office.

Anyways, next on my plate is AJAXification. Probably followed by a grease monkey user script. That space is looking more and more interesting with every passing day.

Maatrangal

Kaalangal tandha maatrangal,
Vazhkayyil puthu arthangal.

Kannathil puthu kayangal,
Idhayathil palla asaigal.

Kankalil puthu vanangal,
Mounangal sollum kavithaigal.

How the BPO industry will change our lives

“This is nothing short of a tectonic social shift when you contemplate the sheer magnitude of the BPO industry of 2014. However, we do not need to wait till 2014 this change is happening right now. It is taking place right in front of us but like an underwater earthquake, it is invisible to us on the shore.

Like an underwater earthquake, it will create a huge upheaval in the old landscape that we today take for granted. And when this trend reaches a critical mass, like an underwater earthquake, it will change our shorelines completely and forever.

This is not a theoretical possibility. It is a reality that is here and now. It is simply not obvious. It is up to us to help this wave along and to build a BPO industry that will not only be a commercial success but will redefine our country.”

Read more.

An enthusiastic article about the prospects of the BPO industry and what it means for India.

Mea Culpa

“The two young ladies came from well to do upper income stock and were raised in a modern, integrating India. Vandana's father had served in the armed forces and she was raised all over the country. Vaishnavi's father worked for a transnational company and she was raised in Kolkatta. The first is a Malayali and the second, a Tamil. How often in the world at large do you get such diverse streams coming together to demonstrate such radical humanism? Isn't there enough evidence at hand to conclude this?: between this rising sensitive young generation and a responsive society all our ills have the prospect of becoming manageable in a finite time scale.”

Read more.

Off late, I have been focussing on what is wrong with our country and kerala in particular. Too much of negativity, perhaps.

Frankly, I can't think of a better place or better people to live with.

Easy to point out the faults. Difficult to appreciate the good. Even more difficult is to work for change and make everyone's life a little bit better.

There are a few who actually do that. The above excerpted is one such story. The site itself is like a breath of fresh air. Never fails to fill me with hope of a better tomorrow.

I should be talking less about the bad and more about the good. Better would be to stop talking and go out and do some good.

India Suffering ?

A lot has happenned over the last few days. Most of it unexpected. Few of it good.

The biggest of the surprises is ofcourse the rapid ascent of Sonia Gandhi on the national stage. Luck and a few bad decisions by the BJP seemed to have worked magic for her and the congress party.

What do I think of her ?

Not easy to describe. On one side, it certainly is a sign of the age-old Indian tradition of “embrace and extend” still thriving. But on the other side, I see a complete lack of charisma which worries me. Vajpayee is a tough act to follow. He commanded the respect of his coalition partners and naturally dissent was minimal. He steered BJP away from the RSS, winning the hearts of several sceptics in the process. It helped that he had a few good men like Arun Shourie around him. People who actually had the courage to think of change and the conviction to carry it through.

Now coming back to Sonia. Already, we have seen the left misbehave and Sonia not saying anything about it. Not a single word. Worrisome. Will we have a puppet prime minister with the likes of Jairam Ramesh actually calling the shots. Or will the coming days see a more assertive Sonia on the center stage. Tough to predict. Interesting to watchout for.

I am willing to give her the benefit of doubt. Manmohan and Pranab, hopefully, will be given prominent roles and the likes of laloo reserved for what they do best, witty one liners for the next day's headlines.

Which then brings us to the biggest of troubles facing the nation now : The left front. A bunch of old men trying to keep alive a proven failure : Communism. I can't find the right words to describe my feelings when I see Sitaram Yechuri talk. Watching an intelligent guy defend a losing cause is a pitiable sight. He knows his idealogy has failed the world over. Failed right here in WB & Kerala. We know it. He knows we know it. Still he continues. Like an aging superstar trying to relive his best days. One of these days, the voters will see through the facade. One of these days, He himself will get tired of repeating a lie.

Till then, India will suffer. The markets will be painted in Red.

Befitting for a nation held hostage by a couple of states and a failed idealogy.

A change of colour!

White is not among my favourite colours. Ask my room-mates and they will tell you that I rarely switch on the tubelights in our home.

I have stuck with a mostly white design on these pages for a long time now. Several reasons prompted me to retain such a color scheme. But finally, even if it is only for the homepage, I have decided to change. Have gone back to an old favourite : Maroon or something close to it.

These are interesting times in my life.

Work keeps me busy for most of the time. What little remains is spend thinking about the future : the near term and the long term. April is ofcourse the month when my age rolls over. It is amazing how your views on life change remarkably with time. Memories accumulate and Dreams retreat with time. Most of what I thought I will do when I grow up now seem silly foibles of my youth. Time does change you in many ways you never thought possible while you were dancing to the tunes of “18 till I die” :)

Till another day, Vannakkam, Vandanam.

Early retirement

It is something that has been in the back of my mind right from my college days, yes even before I started working :-)

Once you take out work from your life, you have an endless supply of time in your hands and life suddenly seems teeming with possibilities. The promise of doing something new every single day is tantalising, dont you think ?

Ofcourse, boredom is a highly possible outcome. The trick is to keep yourself occupied, this time around doing something you enjoy rather than something you get paid for.

Social service will be the first thing I take up. To be able to make a difference, however small, in someone's life is the intended redemption of a human life. This will most likely involve teaching. I used to teach a good number of my classmates and have been given fairly good reviews of my teaching capabilities. So teaching is definetely on the cards.

Sreekanth and I must have talked endless hours about how with a little effort you can change a lot of things you despise around you. Hopefully, at some point in our lives, we will be able to do something about this rather than keep talking.

Other stuff that I will be doing include,

Travel. First the whole of India and a few choice destinations around the world. Travel is ofcourse expensive and would most likely to remain an unfullfilled dream in the back of my mind ( It must be getting crowded in there :) ).

Learning a musical instrument is something that I have always wanted do.

It is a sad fact but I really do like sitting in front of a computer for endless hours, browsing, reading and occassionally writing. I am perhaps too addicted to the internet to let go completely. I mean where else can someone like me get to be a fashion designer ;-) At some point in the future, I would like to close down all my “for profit ventures” and create something which is informative and usefull.

The word “Family” is ofcourse an unknown variable in this equation. Being a bachelor is investing in time. Getting married is investing in love. Hopefully, I can get a fair dose of both :-)

More than anything else, I would like to slow down my life. I am tired, very much so, of the constant hurry burry of the daily life. Images of a slow calm life, somewhere along the banks of the backwaters of alleppey is a recurring image in my dreams. Someday, I want to open my eyes and find it to be true.

Ambition

“Enakku thevayelaam ettu mani neram thookam, poo pola naalu idli, pudhina chutney, manssukku niraivaana vellai, appa ammavoda oru kai rummy, pooncholai gramathilai oru azhaghana rakshasi .. sunday evening titanic .. saravana bhavan tiffin”

It is a line mouthed by the middle class hero in the Shanker superhit, Mudhalvan. A line which underlines Sujatha's astute understanding of the Indian middle class.

There is one quote which I use whenever talk centres around India. It goes something like this,

The rest of the world has the “haves” and the “have nots”. Only India has the “have but did not wants”.

The dialogue from Mudhalvan best illustrates this. To be satisfied and be happy with the simple pleasures of life is a gift which adversity has bestowed upon the Indian middle class.

Capitalism is fueled by ambition. The great american dream has its roots in the ambitions of the immigrants who set foot in the land of oppurtunities with dreams of making it big.

India is, ofcourse, well known for its “chaltha hai” attitude. A casual approach towards work indeed towards life itself is what best charecterises India. You don't get to find a lot of perfectionists, go - getters, people bend upon conquering the world from India. Occasionally, a raw talent like tendulkar comes around and suprises the world. But people are still searching for the Steve Waugh from India.

Why is this ?

Can it be something as simple as the fact that oppurtunities were simply not available as a result of which lethargy set in at a national level ?

Or is it simply a lingering legacy of the british rule which left behind an absymally poor country and people shorn of ambition ?

Or is the fact that knowledge/art and not business was what was encouraged during the ancient maharaja days.

Or is it the fact that from a long time back, we have had a history of renunciation where people realising the meaninglessness of the material world have given it up and found comfort in the spiritual ? The idealogy behind the matrix, that the world that we see around us is an illusion, is something widely prevalent in local literature and nothing new to us.

In any case, the new wave of capitalism is changing the way India functions. National research instituitions which for a long time worked under the “knowledge is free” principles are actively patenting their ideas and defending their IPs. The IITs are getting more and more concerned about their industrial collaborations and profits.

Capitalism definetely has its pluses. But it distorts the moral fabric of the country. Americans are just waking up to this fact.

Should we be worried ?

I dont know. Change is as always inevitable. Clinging to age hold traditions will take us nowhere. Looking back and glorifying the past is something Indians are good at. Something which I regularly indulge in.

But I can't be oblivious of the fact that poverty is rampant. Money, however ugly the word might sound to be, is what is needed to take us forward.

Let us take an example which I am best qualified to talk about. Me. Here I am, doing everything in my wherewithal to earn more. There was a time when I used to write simply because I enjoy writing. Now I try to think of ways in which I can increase my traffic and earn more.

Still, I console myself by thinking that I am doing this with a short term goal of earning more to meet a long term goal of early retirement and social service.

The sheer fact that I am ashamed of thinking up of ways to earn more shows the deep seated guilt in the middle class minds associated with earning more than what is reasonable.

Maybe, I am a hopeless romantic or an idealogical fanatic or an emotional fool.

But here is what I hope,

I hope to see an India where money is seen as a means to an end and not as a lifelong quest. I hope to live in an India where people have all the money in the world and are still able to give it up if needed.

A return to the time of the Budha, someone who had everything yet gave it up all and embarked on a search to find the true meaning of life. The only worthwhile quest that life has to offer.

Ground-breaking work in understanding of time

“A bold paper which has highly impressed some of the world's top physicists and been published in the August issue of Foundations of Physics Letters, seems set to change the way we think about the nature of time and its relationship to motion and classical and quantum mechanics. Much to the science world's astonishment, the work also appears to provide solutions to Zeno of Elea's famous motion paradoxes, almost 2500 years after they were originally conceived by the ancient Greek philosopher. In doing so, its unlikely author, who originally attended university for just 6 months, is drawing comparisons to Albert Einstein and beginning to field enquiries from some of the world's leading science media. This is contrast to being sniggered at by local physicists when he originally approached them with the work, and once aware it had been accepted for publication, one informing the journal of the author's lack of formal qualification in an attempt to have them reject it.

In the paper, ”Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity“, Peter Lynds, a 27 year old broadcasting school tutor from Wellington, New Zealand, establishes that there is a necessary trade off of all precisely determined physical values at a time, for their continuity through time, and in doing so, appears to throw age old assumptions about determined instantaneous physical magnitude and time on their heads. A number of other outstanding issues to do with time in physics are also addressed, including cosmology and an argument against the theory of Imaginary time by British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.”

Read more.

I just had to post this on the main page. I mean, with a title like Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity, how can you ignore it ?

Google ROCKS !

I guess, It is obvious. Everyone knows it. Any other company would have been content to lay back and rest on their laurels. But they are not that kind. No Sir. They keep coming up with fantastic ideas like Google news and the latest one about which I will be talking about.

I signed up yesterday for their latest product : Adsense.

What is it ?

It delivers targeted advertisements to your website. For years, online advertisers have been talking about targeted ads but nobody has ever really delivered. And google has. In a big way.

Just take a look at the ads on this page about kerala. The ads are about kettuvallam houseboats and the karakathi beach house ! That is how targeted it can get. And I didnt have to do a thing. Google understood the content of the page and delivered the best ad for it. Infact, the ads were so targeted that I felt very tempted to click them myself ! In the end, I did a google search and learned more about them :-)

This page about a US VISA bill affecting indians has ads about green cards and immigration.

When I saw these, I knew Google had a winner on their hands. This will change the online advertising industry in a way nobody could have thought about. And it came from the most unlikely direction.

Ofcourse, there are still a few issues. This site's home page is not getting very targeted ads. I read in a forum that a page listing download mirrors was getting ads about lady's mirrors :) But I am confident that google will solve them sooner than latter.

And finally, we will have ads which are related to and enhance the content of the page. Way to go !

So if you have a website and want to make some money, go ahead and partner with google.

Nucleus.

I am a big fan of nucleus ( which is what is used as the backend script for this site ).

Why ?

The first choice to be made when anyone looks for a weblog script is to decide whether to go for static publishing or dynamic publishing. Dynamic publishing can be a big overhead if you have a lot of visitors and the database chokes on the number of connections per second. On the other hand, static publishing can be a big pain if you change your templates or skins as frequently as I do.

I did play around with movable type for some time but found it incredibly slow. Again, the fact that 2.51 might be the last free version ( ? ) put me off. I didnt want to get stuck with something which will not move forward unless I pay for it.

I found nucleus to be a well-designed script with a really cool plugin interface which enables me to extend the script in whatever direction that I want without bothering karma :-)

I have been writing a few plugins for nucleus like the Macros plugin or the Ping pong plugin or a few others about which you can find more information here.

Today, I have coded up something which I wanted for a really long time. Click on the comments link and check out my new threaded comments plugin. This is alpha code. So please be gentle with it. If you come across any errors, kindly send me a mail with a small explanation of what went wrong.

Enjoy :-)

MP3 Players.

When I went to the states, I had two things in my mind to buy for myself.

The first one was a laptop. But when the time came to buy one, I couldnt persuade myself to spend so much of money :(
The second thing that I had in my mind was a MP3 Player. What seemed an easy buy turned out to be quite a difficult one what with the various flavours of MP3 devices available like the Flash based devices, hard drive devices, MP3 CD players, MP3 Mini CD Players and even MP3 Mini Disc players.

I bought one of these after considerable dilly dallying but ended up returning it a week later :(

Finally, Just when it seemed that I may not buy another one afterall, I ended up buying two :)

The Muvo and the Samsung Yepp ( the one I bought is the next version with a much better design and a sleeker remote. Unfortunately, I am unable to find a picture of that on the net ).

The Muvo is a small flash drive capable of storing only a limited number of mp3 files at a time. The small physical size of the device is a big plus though as is the “driver less pain less” integration with win2k upwards. I have been carrying this along with myself and been extremely impressed with it.

The Samsung Yepp, on the other hand, is a MP3 cd player. The plus points of this being that it has a cute little remote with a FM receiver in it. I have had nothing to complain about this either.

All in all, My MP3 Players have left me a happy man. Money well spend, for a change :-) And nothing beats listening to Jagjit Singh in Office :-)

Jagne cheena mujse,
Mujhe jo bhi laga pyaara.

Sab jeetha kiye mujhse,
Mein har dham hi haraa.

Tum haarkar dil apna,
Meri jeet amar kar do.

Nostalgia.

Did anyone know that I was a blogspotter once ?

Does anyone remember the first design of itismylife.com ?

Or even this or this ?

After a long period of drifting aimlessly, I have reached a point where I am satisfied with my blog tool and host. Only the design will change from now onwards :-)

meek

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.”

Jesus Christ said those words in the famous sermon on the Mount, 2000 years ago.

I have always wondered about that one ever since I read it. According to a certain Mr.Darwin, “Its a jungle out there and it is the Survival of the fittest”. If you look at it, the two more or less contradict one another. Darwin paints this world as a jungle where you fight for your surivival with all you have got. Jesus asks us not to fight, give yourselves up in love and says the world will be ours.

I have always wondered which one is right.

Anyone who is cognizant of the real world knows what it is to be out there. A normal day of work is a game of oneupmanship played by you and your colleagues with a biased manager monitoring and pushing his own strategy. Niceness is a required quality in the other guy ( not in you ). Nobody returns a favour anymore. Aggressive, confident people are the winners here. And all this seem to point that Darwin indeed is the right one.

But wait. Ever had a fight and not felt bad afterwards ? Ever worked/fought hard for something and not felt hollow afterwards ?? I am a passionate debater : one who rarely gives up. Lately, I am beginning to hate all that. I wonder why I fight hard to establish a point I myself am not sure about in the first place. I wonder why I work late nights ( and on weekends ) just to earn a higher appraisal rating enroute to a higher salary. I have acheived a lot and yet I want more. I am worried about a future when I should be happy about the present. It is this feeling that you are in a rat race that makes me do all that. It is as if I stop for a moment's rest, I might be left behind.

Something tells me Jesus is right.

Something tells me, I must change myself. I must remove all forms of aggression from my behavior. I must learn to be meek : to give up. I must learn to be satisfied with what I have. I must stop dreaming and keep my feet firmly grounded. I must learn to see the beauty of what is there before me rather than dreaming about a beauty that never will be.

Life is an illusion : Maya. This is something I keep saying but never have realised its true meaning. Slowly I am getting it. I am learning to lose and more importantly, slowly learning to enjoy it.

Not for me the turbulent mind of a chaser of dreams. I long for the peace and calm of a mind which has only love, gentleness and kindness inside it. Not for me the turbulent waves of the sea. I long for the gentle stillness of the stream.

I want only love to live inside my heart. nothing else.

and for that, I must be meek.

Something tells me the contradiction in the above line ( “must” and “meek”) ensures that I may not acheive this. But I am going to try.

A conversation with Dr.Muralidhar Pai.

An interesting conversation with Dr.Muralidhar Pai in Malayasia,

Sir,

I am not afraid of using my real name. It is just that I like to sign my mails with the more personal nickname of mine, which is /.\ n a n d. I hope, that clears your confusion. I had given my complete personal details to rediff.com. They chose not to publish it.

Now let me answer to your colleagues comments,

{All throughout the story you say there is a god, everywhere in everybody who (The god himself) is teaching us love.You choose to end with- I want to live in a world where there is no God (Is it not contradictory).

Yes, Sir .. It is contradictory ... Not by accident ... It is meant to be ... I and you, *intelligent* guys of this world can understand to a certain extent, the essence and meaning of the word God. But put yourself into an uneducated man standing on the soil of Ayodhya. What is going through his mind ? His views of God are influenced by the epics and the various (mis)interpretaions of God by people who want to twist the mass opinion in their favour. So although God is a noble notion in itself, It is not practical in a world like ours. That is why i say, until each one of us have the sense to understand God, let there be no God. And everyone knows that to expect all people to be sensible is impossible. So I wish to be reborn in a world, where there is no God.

You say, let there be no religion (You claim to understand true meaning of religion and then deny it).

Same as above. I understand Religion. Others dont. Others are a majority. So I dont want religion in order to have peace.

You say, let there be no believers. For, every believer (Have you lost faith even in yourself, have you lost faith in the world. This world is so beautiful because majority of people can think rationally not because of handfull of fanatics) can turn into a fanatic with the right amount of provocation.

The sensible people of this world are always the passive observers. And the fanatics, even though a minority, are the more active and hence dangerous. In India, while the intelligentia shun the politics, the ignorant and the *gundas* take control of the government and decide the way we live.

Until man has the sense to understand God (After writing so much about understanding how can you say that man does not understand god. Or you think you are not man), let there be no God. Indeed, a Krishna, Jesus or Allah would be willing to die a thousand deaths if that would bring peace to this world.

Yes, I am a sensible man. But I am also a minority. No use what i think. It is the *mass* thinking that needs to change. and it wont. So I dont want a God.

Let us kill religion (Do not borrow words from the same fanatics whom you denounce in the name of decency)so that humans can live. Yes, I want to live in a world where there is no God.

Fanatics understand tough words. Only by shocking people with tough words can i hope to change the status quo. If i had used any lesser words, I would have got far lesser impact.

Is it not just to show yourself as god or you believe you are equal to god}

I have no pretensions of being God or showing off. I am just a concerned citizen who refuses to see India burn and keep quiet. I have written what I thought is right. To take it or leave it is your perogative.
Thanks and Regards.