Where are we heading to?

Just look at the above video - and well you feel that the revolution in the IT world and advancements in technology is changing the world as we know. It captures the gist of how IT, computer and internet is changing the world so fast that we can't even comprehend the change. If you ever going to leave this earth now and return back in 5 years, Im sure you would feel completely lost with the advent of technology. And, it can be so true even for the most tech savvy person too.

It made me feel really happy about the type of work that IT is involved and the type of work I can do. I'm always game for programmatical challenges (and would love to fail and learn rather than read and learn the concepts), but having been in IT company for more than four years now, I know that development is not the only activity - it is also one of the activity. And, all of them are importanta.

Enough of digression in to IT company working arena - let me continue on for what I wanted to blog for.

As if the video above is not exciting enough and its prediction an exciting journey that we are going to be embark on, Im completely at awe of another phenomenon - AVATAR.

I haven't watched the movie yet. I will soon. However, I'm already thinking of it's ramifications in various spaaces.

As a kid, when I watched Terminator 2 - I didnt understand it much at all. When I watched it again in my high school, some of it started making sense to me and I woke up the realization of robot or artificial intelligence playing its part in the human race in the future. [And, one hint that Im going to give myself in this blog is that I may be part of the AI driven sales related work and lets see if that would realize :)]

That was an exciting idea for me then and even now - and this idea was brought in to our lives by cinema and by one man, James Cameron. It wouldnt have made such an impact as a cinema and concept if not for the manner in which it was depicted in the movie. And, it wouldnt have been possible to depict it that way if not for the advancement in IT.

And, now Avatar, the movie, takes it to the next level. Many of the reviewers are saying one comment about this movie - whatever one were to imagine, it can be brought and depicted in the cineman. The technology to do that has been invented by the movie. This can be really exciting for the cine world on the technology and how it can further showcase great stories [if they have ;-)] - however i'm intrigued by another fact here.

Does this forbode what is to come? Terminator 2 brought in cinema what can be done in reality now (or already in reality at different level) the robotics and AI. And, does this mean that whatever one imagines, one can bring to effect using technology, if not now, in 2154??

Oh My MY! I so want to Live and live till that time and even beyond too [my appeite for living never ceases]

As excited as I'm, I shudder to think of the consequences of such a capability - has anyone read the book (Sphere) or watched the movie by the same name? [The book is much better than the movie] The aforesentence is a testimony to the gist of the concept Im attempting to put word to. The author of the book, Michael Crichton, has imagined and has described all his imagination in much detail in the book, however the same cannot be replicated in the movie. See what I'm saying?

And, the Novel is also about the ability to imagine and manifestation of the same - if such a technology do exist, or comes in to our life in 2154, are we human ready to handle such a capability in a positive way?

Where are we heading to?

This is how it is

I'm going to continuously surprise myself by my abilities for the rest of my life.

Flex -- RESTFul API -- Ruby on rails.

Flex--RESTFul API--Ruby on rails.

I have began.

The Other Blog

What is the other blog?

Well, it is the other blog that I have. I have another one and it is no longer active and hence the other blog.

I will publish some of my posts from my 'the original other blog' hahhaha in the legacy post section here and will use this blog extensively for work, technology and every other thing that I like.

Let me begin. Welcome!

The World I live in

I have all the time in the world...and I have all the things in the world that I can learn......Known is a drop and unknown is the ocean.....it is so true in this life...and especially true...in the life of a software proffessional coz no matter whatever you could have studied (Bachelor of Engg) to become one, or all the learning you do while you are a s/w proffessional, is never enough. You would still feel that there is sooooo much more to learn...and various situations when I stand quiet..wondering...what is being talked around...only reinstates the fact that I need to know more.

Known is a drop ..unknown is an ocean.

Yet, All the world is my stage and I can play the role I choose to. Day b4 yesterday, b4 leaving for office...I had this high energy....was jumping and moving/dancing for some tune being played in computer and I was really happy and enthusiastic...and I kept on telling myself....I have got all the time in the world...to learn and finish off few pending tasks and be eager for more :-). And it felt good.

For no reason, during work, suddenly I felt all the enthusiasm drain out and only skepticism come in and confusion over few things regarding work only compounded those feelings. So much to my high energy and feelings :-D

Still, It's a beautiful life.

I have it all and can get only more in the times to come. :)...My family is really kewl..and nice..and good...with my relatives....and friends..who are really kewl...it sseems a bliss to be living..and this is how I live in :)

AND.....

There is this other world, where I face disappointment, anger, sadness, anguish...pain...and frustration almost on a regular basis. It is a straw in me....which kinda sucks away the life from me..however indifferent I chose to be. The disappointment over the helplessness on the situation or the lack of my action or the excess of which could result in worser results or the apprehension about the prospect that is awaiting me. There are various other things that Im not able to explain but one of those feeling is intent to blog about the same senses....to give a vent for them.

I believe most people in this world have these two worlds.....one world...in which there aint any big issues and the other world, which crops up once in a while to remind and drain most of our gains from the other world.

However, I still believe, its a beautiful world coz it has these two worlds within it....as a part of it and still chugs along...I dont have anything to lose, as I always carry the hope of fixing the other world to betterment :-)

who am I ?

Who am I ? Such a simple question ain't it ? Yet, the answer for this question varies from one person to another....and that underscores the individuality of each one of us. The fact that we are all differrent in one way or the other.True.

Or is it true? Are we really differrent. Last week of september threw up a an inspiring incident out of an accident.

Sixteen year old Hithenthran from Chennai met with an accident and was pronounced brain dead in the Apollo hospital. His parents took the bold decision to donated some of his organs to the people who are in desperated need of donor. They donated his kidney, cornea, liver and Heart. All these organs are serving and helping somebody else to live in this world now. His heart is beating in the body of a girl who was suffering from heart failure. The story of how Chennai traffic police did their job in the quick transportation deservers appreciation and another blog.

(http://www.funonthenet.in/forums/index.php?topic=108352.0)

(http://www.hindu.com/2008/09/24/stories/2008092458800100.htm)

Lets get back to the topic. Are we the body that we have now? in that case, Hithentran is still living in the bodies of another people. It is very important to note that his heart has gone to a girl child. This should serve as slapping reminder to people who differentiate girls and boys (men and women) on some ridiculous criteria. In my opine, there aint much difference to a man or women but for the few physical difference which are there for a purpose and that doesnt warrant a discrimination between the two sexes to the extent seen in different parts of the world. What is needed is discretion. Period.

A quick search on the internet brings back the list of organs that can be donated to others after one's death and that should seal all the discrimination amongst human beings on the physical criteria.

Allright, we've been talkin on the physical level...what about the mind? That is the place where the real difference exists. Or does it?

what sort of feelings do you go through in your life? Happy? Sorrow? Angry? Depression?

Put in the same situation, almost all the people in the world would experience the same feeling.

We feel sad when some one passes away.

We feel happy when our work has won accolades.

We feel angry when we were treated rudely/badly/inappropriate manner.

We feel when we encounter

There is not much difference in the way we all feel given a siutaiton. Do you see what Im saying?

However, the way we handle how we feel (read as emotions), can bring about the difference.

Let us touch upon another aspect on the mind level - thought process.

Do you think you have the control over your thought process? Well, I dont think we have control over our thought proces. I can be wrong here, but that is a remote possiblity.

Thoughts come and go whether we like it or not. You can brand the thoughts as good thoughts or bad thought but they come and grab your attention (or drag your attention from your activity) and goes. However, they will stay if you grab them - see the difference. They grab your attention initially and leave the option to you - if you grab it, you will be in the same though else you will be out of it. Simple.

Ok - even in Mind level, we don't seem to see much difference between humans coz there are not much options left. ;-) wink wink.

Physical level - there is not much difference between humans.

Mind level - there are not much difference between humans.

Then, shouldnt you consider yourself to be fools if you see difference amongst people and discriminate them based on trivial things such as sex, place, caste creed and religion. Give me a break.

We are all one.

If we are all one, who am I? May be there is something that is unique (read as different about me) about me that sets me apart so that I can define myself. But what is so unique about me if we are all one and the same ????

Who am I ??

I'm a muslim; I'm a hindu; I'm a christain; I'm a jew

On the occassion of Gandhi jayanthi, I had the opportunity to watch a wonderful movie named Gandhi (no surprises here :-D). I regretted and realized the mistake of not watching this movie so far and also how ill informed I was about Gandhi and too a good extent of the various devlopments that shaped Indian independence. The movie was good on the handling the content of Gandhi and Indian independence and fitting it in to 3 hour time frame of movie standards. I'm not much of a movie critic and will stop at this level.

In that movie, Gandhiji utters a sentence which goes like - I'm a muslim; I'm a hindu; I'm a christain; I'm a jew. It was such a wonderful expression which speaks of oneness in humanity and the intent of Gandhiji to convey this message. If I juxtapose the unfortunate events happening in present day India, I wonder how can these self proclaimed saviors of religion who hail from this land claim their affliation to one particular religion alone? - when the father of nation can proclaim that he encompasses all of them.

Also, Gandhiji couldnt complete his planned trip to Pakistan. I wonder all the good that could have happened had that trip to Pakistan been completed by Gandhiji. The innumerable battles and fights for border issues, the two wars India and Pakistan fought, the creation of a seperate nation of Bangladesh, the Kashmir issue and most importantly, the mistrust amongst the people of the two nation. All these could have been potentially avoided had that trip happened or so I think so.

????

Now it is Hogenakkal - what next and what more?

For all the people who don’t know about Hogenakkal, please Google it and you will be greeted with results that take you to a beautiful, pristine waterfalls present inside Tamilnadu, close to the Karnataka border. Now, if you can see the image (map of south India) then it wouldn’t take much effort from you to understand a simple geographical thing I’m going to put across. Tamilnadu has ocean surrounding it on one side of its entire border and on the other three sides are the states – Andhra Pradesh on top, Karnataka on top left and Kerala on the left.

A simple observation would reveal that Tamilnadu lies at the bottom (geographically) of the Indian states. And, TN doesn’t have any perennial rivers originating inside its border – very tough luck huhL. Well, not really or until till recently. We had the sister states on the border of TN sharing the water they received in an altruistic manner (per agreements though) – kudos to them. Ok, what has changed? I will blame it on the easiest of reason in the world today – population explosion. The number of people depending on the water increased across all the states and sister states are now finding it difficult to share their water per agreement/or nation forbid “supreme court ruling”.

Why the difficulty? Take for instance, Karnataka’s agricultural land cover. I don’t have the exact statistics but the cultivatable land inside Karnataka’s border has increased manifold in the last couple of decades and all these fertile lands need water. The same statistics exist inside TN also, but the percentile increase is much lower thanks to the lack of availability of copious water, which is required to make any land cultivatable.

Ok – how did KN get abundant water? Simple – they build more dams on the down Stream of Cauvery inside their borders to hold more water inside their borders. Hey, it is the duty of the KN Govt. to protect and provide for its people. And, they are doing that splendidly. However, they may be doing that at the cost of people of TN.

How? Let’s see that.

The more the dam they build, the more their capacity to hold water inside their borders and less the flow to TN.

The Cauvery water is also being used to supply water to the Bangalore city. This was not the traditional usage of Cauvery water inside KN and it put extra pressure to hold more water to quench the thirst of an ever expanding Bangalore city

Lack of skillful utilization of water inside KN, crop rotation is not much prevalent and all the crops cultivated are water consuming.

In addition to that, if all the states to the north of TN block water flow how will this state ever get water?

Ok – here is where leaders of TN have failed. They have not paid sufficient attention to small and large water bodies inside TN and that resulted in them draining away. Also, effective and efficient practice of farming was not encouraged and not much time and effort went in to research of farming.

However, having said, they have started to focus on this regard recently and ‘rain water harvesting’ implemented compulsorily in Chennai city is an example. And, the proposed sea water to drinking water plants in TN also stands testimony to that.

Solution on national level:-

1) Make a governing body or society for farmers across the nation; if govt. doesn’t do it, its high time farmers took the initiative themselves.

2) Nationalize all the rivers and give the control to an independent body of eminent and appropriate people.

3) Linking of all the rivers in the country should start and start right now. Implementation of this activity should be in such a manner that it takes in to account all the nature’s flood and drought pattern.

Some of the aforesaid activity needs lot of political will and commitment from parties dedicated to the welfare and progress of the nation. Also, farmers all over the nation should empathize and understand each other’s problem and should co-operate with each other to effectively use the scantiest of resource – water, the elixir of life. All of us have the same source and instead of competing for the same, cooperation should be the way forward.

It pains me to read about the regular flooding in Orissa and other northern states in our country while Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh and some parts of Maharashtra are constantly gripped by drought. We have enough intellect and money power to fix this disparity existing in our country.

Let there be enough resolve to fix this crisis in our country, which I believe would solve much of the agrarian crisis in our country.

Jai hind!

88888

88888

What is this? Eighty eight thousand,eight hundred and eighty eight of what??? Does it involve any money? Well, if it does...then lots of people will be hooked to this number with majority of them hoping to get the money, with each expecting the same amount (88888) :-D. Seldom people realize the joy of giving.

All right, enough of this digression(intentional ) from the context of the topic. 88888 stands for a time line - 8th August (8th month) of 2008, starting from 8 pm for a time period of 8 minutes a wonderful thing will befall the citizens of the Chennai city - Yes, they will get the immense knowledge of themselves. Yeah - I mean it. Do you want to dare differ with me? well give a try ;-). The knowledge that they would get in this 8 minutes would be of a women who has taken care of all of us in all the ways possible, she has fed us, she has given us shelter, she has has given us the place to stay and she has given us, ourselves - the real AMMA in true sense. Our Mother Earth. Pardon your weak intellect if it mistakes this reference to any particular political party ;) :-D

88888 - is a campaign organized to highlight to the people the harm they have done to earth in the form of pollution of land,water, air - the environment on the whole. As a result of it we are facing something called as GLOBAL WARMING - wow kewl jargon. What is global warming - globe warming. Simple :-D. But the issue is not any laughing matter.

Why is it raining in Bangalore and Chennai during mid summer?

Why is Ooty and Darjeeling getting progressively hotter year after year?

Why are our monsoon getting erratic?

Most importantly, why did so many catastrophic natural disaster seem to occur more often in the last 10 years?

Some of the disasters I can remember on top of my head are :-

- Gujarat Earth quake

- The Tsunami

- Kashmir Earthquake

- Hurricane Katrina

- Myanmar Flooding and hurricane (last week)

- Earthquake in China (yesterday)

Have you ever wondered why these things are happening? If you have not so far - then please do. Mother earth is reacting for whatever bad that we have done in the only way she knows - through storms and weather and climatic changes. Now hold it - What bad have we/I done? Hmmmmm...Good question....what bad have we done.......If you don't really know....then as the old age saying goes...it is better late than never to know of them....

First step that you can do is support the campaign 88888 (http://www.88888.co.in/)

For 8 minutes, on the 8th August 2008 at 8 pm, turn off the lights, wherever you are and look at the beautiful sky. We only got one Atmosphere and one land to stand on or build yourhouses or skyscrapers upon :-). Please do this much for her.

Ok - switching of light does what to mother earth??? You save so much on the usage of electricity. Imagine Chennai city completely dark and quite, with the knowledge for 8 minutes....wow. This is such a huge and symbolic gesture that as people of this city..that you can do....Nothing else. The Tamil nadu Government will take notice of the people's action, The Indian Govt. Citizens of various cities in the world would be watching us with inspiration and will take this forward. Your chance to be the change you want to see in the world.

Switching of your light wouldn't enable you to save any electricity coz you can't store electricity in the first place :-D...How many of you didn't know this simple fact??

88888 is a campaign aimed at switching of the lights of your house or work place but it switches on your awareness - that is what it is all about. What do you want? A bulb that runs on electricity or the glow of your knowledge?

The choice is yours.

Y to the E to the S - its YES !+

YES!+ or Youth Empowerement Skills workshop is an amazing and must try for anybody between the age group of 18 - 30 years of age in this world - enough said.

No, I'm not kidding. That is actually enough said about the yes+ course coz the only qualification is for you to be young (as specified in the age group above ) or young at heart ;-). If you are going to think of any other reasons not to do this course, just do something for me in the next 2 mins :-)

Go to www.google.com and type "Yes+" in the search bar and see the results for yourself.

Now,

Go to www.youtube.com and type "Yes+" in the search bar and see the results for yourself.

Finally,

Go to www.orkut.com and type "Yes+" in the serch bar after logging in to the site and see the results for yourself.

This course is rocking all over the world and it doesnt really require much from you than few hours of your time for yourself :-). Please do this much for yourself as there is nobody else in this world who can care much better for you than yourself.

I'm back - Astlavista baby ;-)

Its been a while since I posted anything in my blog and offlate restricted my activity in blogger to to just commenting on bawandinesh.blogpsot.com. To be honest, that blog has increased my logging in to blogger often than anything else.

Hmm...who is this Guy Bawa?? (Baws..as I call him)...well....he looks pale white in color...and has long hair...and heck a lot of grey matter inside the outer hair strands ;-). He can talk about anything from cooking great foods/baking cakes to health to UN to Yoga to Sanskrit to Maths to Financial planning to reading books (yoooooo lots of them) and what not....

What not?? - Piano baby...he is, as one of my friend put it, is an exponent in piano playing. I had the privilege of watching him play with another European great piano player...last year dec in Blore...hmmm....that was a kewl concert.

if you get your chance to meet him...dont forget to ask a question or two... ;-)...you will be surprised with the answers...and most of the time...it will be a single word reply - 'SO'. I dont really have any clue as to what one will make with such a short reply :-D......

Other than that.....he heads WAYE with his trusted friend...Dinesh (he deserves another blog..do watch out for that).

That's about it with regard to Bawa/Bau/Khurshed or Baws or atleast for now ;-)

PS: Just now sent me blog URL to Bawa and incase he drops in to my blog...wanted to have an updated blog awaiting him ;-).

Also, I have added an image of me with Baws from last year dec time. I will be having my arms across Dinesh Bhayya and Baws- WAYE is in between my arms ;-)

chaooooooooooooo

Bandh- I'm liking it............

31, March 2007 - bandh(total shutdown) in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. As a hail from this state and the state (or should I rather say the ruling party) has called for bandh in protest of Supreme Court order. I wonder if protesting a SC order is legitimate under our constitution? Or the better of my sense seem to remind me that its we who created these constitution and anything goes in this world. I believe this is enough of digression from the subject of this blog to the points am making in the above sentences.

Yeah - why am liking this bandh? I have never seen so many people being in their homes (respective homes, btw) and just about finding ways to wile away their "forced" break. It is funny to see the kind of activities they resort to 1) sleeping 2) cleaning 3) TV taking the major chunk of activity on this day and all other worldly matters comes as the 4th point. But, I'm not liking this band for these reasons also. It is some thing more and a thing for which I'm so passionate about, the nature (Earth - wow our only place).

To think of the number of Vehicles off road in TN in this 12 hour time period is mind boggling. It is estimated that almost 98 % of vehicles (that would normally ply on any other day) would be off road for this 12 hours. I'm so happy coz this is the time frame that the nature mends herself. To the number of ecological and other natural damages we have done to our very own environment, it stands as a pathetic testimonial to our lives. The pollution of vehicles, the industrial activities and all other activities (phew other bad acts of our pollution are not coming to my mind now :( ) that has quite literally left our nature in coma. This bandh could just give a break to the eternal pollution of our lives, though it is momentary, in relative terms to the earth's lifespan and our acts of pollution. But I'm still glad and liking it.

We always under estimate the nature's capability to mend herself. Left to its natural activity , this nature could amazingly spring back to its original form of past years and make Chennai less pollution free in a short span of time. The advantage of this are manifold. Decline in the respiratory problems of people ,better water, and more cohesive ecosystem that could turn out to be a better place for us to live and share.

A better nature is the panacea for all our present troubles and that begs the question why we aren't looking in this direction of achieving the same.