Mannipaaya

I love this song- not just for 


Ar Rahman and Shreya Ghosal


But for the lyrics which seems so beautiful....


Unnai yenni yengum
Idhayathai yenna seiveyn..
Idhayathai yenna seiveyn...

Happiness

Happiness - that is all it is all about.  

Ensure two things in life, always:  

1) Happiness in this present moment; see if you are happy now, else make yourself happy. 
2) Happiness in the moments(years) to come - work towards it.


There are various things said about happiness:-

Life is a pursuit of happiness - life will always move towards happiness as it is human nature, to be happy. However, life should not be pursuit of happiness - it should be, happiness in the present/every moment and pursue what you want. Else you will not have time to be happy when you are pursuing it always.

But, see if you are happy in your present moment. Else do what it takes to make you happy.

Make others happy and that gives you happiness

True - the happiness that one derives from making others happy is boundless compared to other material happiness. Happiness in making a child smile; happiness in helping mom/parents; happiness in making some stranger happy by your genuine help or act of kindness. 

However, there is one question that lingers here - what if you embark on a journey just to make others happy and compromise your happiness or unable to see that you are really in to it or happy, would you be able to complete the journey or task, merely by the drive to keep others happy. To put it in simple words, what if you find yourself not happy by doing something for the sake of others or making others happy? (Friends, comment your answers for this question, please). I say, Live your life and make others happy, in all your actions and deeds. And, leave the rest of activity of being in that happy state to others. You can only make others happy but cannot feel it for them. You see what I'm saying? To put in other words, you cannot live others life in order to make others happy - you have to live your own life. If others expect such a thing from you - they are being cruel to you. Most often, those others are people who are the closest and dear ones to us.

But, if your ability to be happy is so integral to you, would you still go for a failed compromise and choose practicality over happiness for flawed reasons?

However, I can't understand decisions and other whatever taken without considering happiness in to the equation. "What good is your life in that case if you aren't giving yourself or others the chance to be happy". 

we are all told the following things at various points in life, in some cases, repeatedly.


"Be practical" 
"You will not get what you want always"
"Things have changed. Time has gone. It is a different world now ".


The aforesaid things are the reality and is a well known truth. However, change yourself to accommodate reality and facts. Change is the only permanent thing in life - but it has its own dimensions, and sides, like that of the coin. People should see it not only from their side or dimension alone - but from the other side and the dimensions as well.

If changing yourself still aint bringing happiness, change yourself further to change the environment and the set up you are in - for happiness is all that is about it in life.

Men of Quality are not threatened by women's equality

A man who treats woman as his property is stuck in the era of inequality. And a woman shall never let this happen - Nathan SP  
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Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences - Susan B. Anthony  

Women themselves have the right to live in dignity, in freedom from want and freedom from fear - Kofi Annan  

Sexual, racial, gender violence and other forms of discrimination and violence in a culture cannot be eliminated without changing culture. -- Charlotte Bunch  

Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their opressors. ~Evelyn Cunningham  

The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. ~Roseanne Barr
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Advanced Women's day wishes to all the wonderful women in life :)

Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own.

In 1991, when I first saw Terminator 2- Judgement day with my dad in Alankar theatre in Chennai, I was scared. How can a person get bullet hits and still walk along, can melt down and back to life again. How can computers walk at all?

My dad had no answers. But he did what he could - took me to that movie.

Few years rolled over and when I was in 9th standard, me and friends watched the same movie at a friends place. We were completely engrossed in to that movie and started discussing it, without having any clue. And, it was dusk by the time me and a friend of mine started back to my locality in a bike (cycle). And, on our way return, out of no where we heard this huge sound of engines and machines rattling up and smog raising engulfing the entire road ahead. For a second, we had our hearts in our mouth - me and my friend. I was still in that movie inside me and to see such sudden change of things right in front of us in a peaceful locality was a shock to me.

Well, thanks to Chennai corporation, that was the mosquito repellent sprayer vehicle which rattled up spewing smoke at us.

And, then started my romance with James cameron's film. I have seen almost all of his films, barring one or two. And, I have seen all of his films multiple times over. It is through this films that I realized that I have struck a similar chord with the man. Science fiction, Space science, Exploration, the thrill of it and boundless amounts of excitement this nature and our minds have in store for us.

And, I saw the following video a short while back and I told to myself, James Cameron, no wonder I love you.



Some of his inspiring lines from the speech are...


Curiosity - its the most powerful thing you own.
Imagination - is a force that can actually manifest a reality.
Don't put limitation on yourself.Other people will do it for you, don't do it yourself.
Failure is an option - but fear is not.

PS: Another author whom I love is Michael Crichton. Sad that he is no more :(

I do

I DO

And, I have to do lot more in life.

TED - Bill Gates talk on Energy

Bill Gates talks about Energy at TED;



Link to original talk if the video does not display

Orkut - now and then. And, when......?

http://www.orkut.com/Main#Profile?uid=2880291781645158378

I have been accused of living my life in Orkut at one point of time in 2006. That is how insanely I love orkut. It is my first social network site and the one that I really thrived on. I love meeting people, connecting with them and orkut provided me an opportunity to do that online what I never could do so far in the net.

Having said that, this post is a look at what Orkut is now (so called new version) and how I still like the old one better to this one. And, my own suggestions on it's road map - for I love Orkut and as a member, I'm allowed to have my vision for Orkut. C'mon, Eric ain't the only person who has vision for Google products :-D.

I can't list down and do a through a differentiation between the old version and the new version. However, I'm going to list down the key features that I noticed and why the new one doesn't seem to be just right yet.


Old Orkut

• The UI has three vertical pane - better and intuitive way to navigate.
• Scrap book opens up in a fully blown page retaining the left pane which helps in navigation.
• Photos are displayed in much bigger size - which is really good.
• There is a difference in content when you switched between home and profile page. The middle pane displays different data while the left pane remains the same and maintains the consistency in navigation. Right pane is also there - which can go away and display some thing else if needed.

New Orkut

• The UI has 2 vertical pane display.
• Scrap book opens up in the same place as the updates from the other user would be.
• Photos are displayed in a small size compared to the previous version.
• The right pane - it is as static as the old HTML is. All I can see is three boxes on the right side of the display that doesn't change if Im viewing the home page or profile. It is just static and to be frank, kinda annoys me too.
• All the friends are displayed in the friends box. I don't think anybody would want to view all their friends in the same tiny box using a list sort of UI.
• Rating the user as Fan or Cool or Sexy is not present. Or, Im not able to find it.
• Color customization is an ill equipped customization and not feature rich and also for the below point.
• OLD Orkut appears when,
• I click on the fans on profile
• Settings
• Manage friends
• Manage communities
• More info link on the profile page.
•  I think the rendering of old UI is still called or used for some of the links. And this brings about inconsistency in the look and feel.
• I LIKE
• The ability to approve members on home page
• The option to view friends based on their classification/groups.

Remove

• Search Web button. If I want to search the web, I will use google in a next tab. I dont want to have an option that lets me use Orkut to search web - too many buttons. And even if it is there for a purpose, it needs to be presented in a better way.
• Remove multiple links in the page. Profile is listed twice in the page. And, Home and Profile stands as two separate tabs on top - looks incomplete.

Please see the below image - Green is the one I like; Red needs another look by orkut folks.

Vision

Orkut can mimic the real world socializing - this brings in a huge scope of things that can be part of Orkut but select few can be tried and tested as feature. Like,

• Get Introduced to - this feature can be used by members to get introduced to other members.
• Collaborate more with google's other social products. Bring in features that can involve interaction between orkut and Picassa, Blog, Maps. These are all web user driver app and they can be integrated with orkut in more ways than one.

Curious question to Google

Why is orkut coming up in the first few listings of the search of my name? Is it a conscious decision by apple to not promote its own app in the listings? Not even my blog (this one) gets listed in the search results of mine. See below.

This is how it is - Now and then. Orkut. Question is when? and what do orkut has to offer and when?

iPad

It is quite a feeling to write about Steve Jobs, right after I did about Bill Gates - I'm going to save it for some other time.

However, this is about one of his creation - iPad. As I watch this event, online and hear it, I feel the endless urge to be part of creating something like this.

Bill Gates - to enable pc what it is now

Bill Gates - one of the world's richest man, ever. And, I haven't worked with him, yet, but have always worked on one of his company's software all the time of using computers.

Three years ago, when I was having a casual discussion with work people on various things in world, we gradually drifted to the topic of computers and PC. And, my friend commented saying " he is the one who made software industry. No one till that point thought of writing software and expected to be paid for that". It was not a working thing or business model till Bill pushed it and struck insanely rich. People had worked only on hardware and hardware people worked on softwares for them.

And, by writing this post, I have in no way diminished my interest in opensource or some of the apple products, but have to concede that almost all of my computing have been on windows products. And for the question of "Is windows operation system the best one for PC " I decline to comment, much more than what is already known. However, it is till date the most successful platform for personal computing and using which the majority of the industry grew and thrived and thrives till date.

I have used apple Macintosh, Linux but couldn't quite come over the fact that what is that windows has that enabled it to be most used (market share) till date and why and what the former don't have?

Having said that, my appreciation for Microsoft is mostly for the aforesaid reason and the one below as well.


Bill Gates - To enable pc what it is now (mostly good and little bad)

http://www.gatesnotes.com/

would you apple?

Would you apple?


Rumor has it, apple is working on its own search engine as well. http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=6800&tag=nl.e539


And, Google will not be the default search option in their latest iPad or iSlate or iWhatever. It may even be pushed down to their other products to be removed as an option.


Why does everybody jump in to search bandwagon? I would write a new post for that - Watch out for that.


But one thing that impressed me was how easily some of the really cool technology giants interfaced and used each other products - for eg.
1) Apple having google as the default search option.
2) Mozilla having google as its default search provider in the browser tab
3) Motorola using Android OS (Google mobile OS) to build its new range of smart mobile phones.


Now all of these synchronization (or) integration stands at tender hooks, which can or may fall off soon. 


Possible reason :- 


Google launching Nexus one - mobile phone that is targeted at the mobile market
Google launching Chrome browser - that is targeted at the browser market.


Google was tipped to target and hit the Mighty Microsoft - and it did, and does. For chrome OS is going to come out as well. Their first success was the search (away) from Microsoft and the Gmail.


However, Google now is treading in to the market space of its technology friends - who may not like it and severe their association with google.


Let us just wait and watch this space.  

live 100 % every single moment

Live 100 % every single moment. Whate ver you do let your attention be on that. Even wasting time is fine - but dont waste and attempt or pretend to do something else the same time.

Im so in a not so describable state - but still I think I always retain my cheerful state. I think it is a fault with me - I dont know how to feel sad or get dragged on or be overwhelmed by some of the mundane things in world. Im by default happy and at at times that doesnt seem to be appropriate - I dont know why.

I have my wants and what I want I know.

And, coming back to 100% feel - this repeat thought got reminded this time by looking at AR Rahman song....how good it is , all time. He does what he wants and gives it all.

And, not everybody is as lucky :-). And, the extra effort required to do something you like will always pay off but expending that extra effort and also having clarity on those things amidst confusion in your surrounding really makes me not do anything. how conveniently have I found a reason - phew.

Nevertheless - live 100 % every moment. Peace

There are always opportunities in life

Life is nothing more than opportunities and there are plenty of them. We miss some and we hit some and still there are plenty of them - it applies for things personal as well as things work wise as well.

I dont think there is anything as work wise as well - what you are, what you are. Personal or workwise.

There are plenty of opportunities in life - that is what I want to tell myself and never is it ever late.

It is a confusing post reflecting my state of mind :)