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"Knowledge makes everything simpler".
Yeah, yeah...I have read this article many times and still it retains its kink. Also explains our natural affinity towards Apple's products and for that matter anything simple.
http://lawsofsimplicity.com/category/laws?order=ASC

http://philly.metro.us/metro/topstories/ap/Jail_Escape.html

Besides this, "The Shawshank Redemption" is an awesome movie.

We were in the final year of Engineering and had joined a short term course for GRE. That was when our vocabulary blossomed exponentially, thanks to books like Norman Lewis and to a small extent the course itself. My close friend, an amazing character called Mr. Vivek used to be a part of the gang that attended the classes and he used to come with me in my bike. The classes were in the noon and the hot Chennai sun had no pity on us. One day I hadn't parked my bike in the shade and after the classes, when Vivek climbed and sat on it, he screamed - "PYROPYGIAN".

iykerworld: hello
shreyas: hi..
iykerworld: how are u doing
iykerworld: i am paul by name
iykerworld: and u
shreyas: doing good and my name is shreyas
iykerworld: ok
iykerworld: so where are u from
shreyas: am from India
shreyas: wat abt u?
iykerworld: from nigeria
iykerworld: i am anetwork marketer
iykerworld: and u
shreyas: i'm an MBA student
iykerworld: waoo that is good
iykerworld: do u know about network marketing
shreyas: is it some kind of viral marketing or something..
shreyas: haven't heard abt it,,yet
shreyas: cud u elaborate?
iykerworld: well that is what the world is going into
iykerworld: and many are making money throught network marketing
shreyas: yeah now i can guess wat it is about it is like u go on growing a chain of network
shreyas: and the more people join ur network, the more you are rewarded
shreyas: guess it should be something like that
iykerworld: yes
iykerworld: but however not only that
iykerworld: it is also about heath
iykerworld: ur heath
BUZZ!!!
shreyas: heath?? wats that?
iykerworld: which is the most important thing in ones life
iykerworld: sorry
iykerworld: health
shreyas: are u meaning health
shreyas: oh ok
iykerworld: yes
shreyas: wats the connection??
iykerworld: ok
iykerworld: the product is for health and for using it and let people know about it
iykerworld: the company pay u for that
iykerworld: do u have ear phone
iykerworld: so that we can talk
shreyas: well no...sorry bt that
shreyas: dun hav one
iykerworld: ok
iykerworld: do u get my point now
shreyas: yeah yeah i get that...
iykerworld: so if u are intersted to network
iykerworld: i will give u the site
iykerworld: u will check if the company is in ur country
shreyas: k..cool
iykerworld: www.somesite.com /*Now don't try to visit the site*/
shreyas: you are doing this job quite nicely []
iykerworld: thanks
iykerworld: u can also check my sponser website from USA
shreyas: sure thing..
iykerworld: www.someothersite.com
iykerworld: check it and let me know ok
iykerworld: if u are interested
iykerworld: my sponser can call u on phone
shreyas: k sure...thanx
shreyas: gotta go now...
shreyas: bye
iykerworld: ok
iykerworld: so that mean u are not interested right


All this, while I wanted to pass time in Business Chat Room section of Y Msgr during vacation.

What’s your favourite letter? Probably no one would have asked you such a question. Even I didn’t think of it until a week back. But somehow this crept up in my mind and pondering over that question for a while, I focused my thoughts on the letter ‘M’. On the first sight it might not look that appealing but some interesting facts may make one’s head turn around.

There are words that come into a language from others like Latin / Greek making generous contributions to English. But some seemingly unrelated words when scrutinized a bit, reveal mysteries. For instance in French, death is “mort”. In Hindi, it’s ‘mar’ and in Tamil ‘maranam’. Even ignoring the connection between Hindi and Tamil, the French/Spanish(morte) and Hindi/Tamil share the sound “mar/mor”. Similarly Mother/Ma/Amma/Me’re share consonant M. Life starts in the latter and ends in the former word discussed and Ma seems to pervade in both. Also consider Man/Manidhan – they represent the same entity - you get the idea.

‘Ma’ is also important in Indian classical music. This note divides the 72 melakartha ragas into two equal halves of 36. The first 36 with “shudha madhyamam” M1 and the next 36 with “prati madhyamam” M2. Rotate the letter M in all four directions you get something meaningful – M – normal letter; Rotate 90 degrees in the clockwise direction, you get 3. Another 90 degrees gives W and another 90 gives ∑, the summation symbol. M (neglecting W which is a 180 shift of M) is the only letter that gives the maximum notations for rotations.

M is also the starting letter of words like Majestic, Monumental, Mega, Million, Multi, Mountain, Monarch, Michael Schumacher, Myriad, Mighty, Matador which all signify domination and grandness.

So, how do you like ‘M’?

Snapshots from hostel during Mumbai rains

Here is an excellent video about RSS/Feeds and readers.
http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

However, while adding a subscription in Google Reader, it is not mandatory to give the URL of the RSS/feed, but its enough to give the URL of the main site. For ex. you can give
http://shreyaswrite.blogspot.com while adding subscription in Google Reader instead of http://shreyaswrite.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

RSS feeds are actually XML files in a standard format, so readers basically incorporate an XML parser and pull out the feeds.

Have you ever wanted to listen to famous kirthanais of Tyagaraja rendered by stalwarts like Madurai Mani Iyer, Maharajapuram Santhanam, Mandolin Srinivas etc.?
Visit:
http://surasa.net/music/tyagaraja-archive/

Just thought of recording my experiment with slowness. It all started with an email forward which was talking about the slow movement taking on silently in Europe starting with the concept of Slow Food, which you might have guessed as opposed to fast food. Anyway, as the name suggests the movement is all about going slow. That's it. And in every possible task - do it consciously. Sounds wonderful doesn't it - especially for all those lazy readers. Actually it is.

The prime rationale behind this is to go easy on the anxiety and do things better. Of course, we in fact practise this unconsciously- rather forced to practise it. Imagine you are in caught in a traffic at T.Nagar or wherever, possibly sweating in a hot afternoon and thousands of horns honking at you to move forward when you have just enough space to allow a current of air between you and the vehicle ahead. That is one point where your adrenaline rushes and the stress level goes to an all time high isn't it. Well the good news is that you need not feel such sensations anymore. Consciously shift your thinking about our topic - yes slowness. After all you are supposed to be slow. So, the traffic is somehow helping you. Take a deep breath, and share the philosophy with the honker. Sometimes you'll get showered with pleasant acknowledgements especially from auto drivers. Take them as your motivators and strive forward with your goal. You'll receive enlightenment. Or you can choose to retort slowly- " Youuu..areeee...aaaa... reeeeeal.....bosss......stud". The other party will never know you are praising or scolding. It really saves you from getting a bloody nose.

Further in some countries embracing this principle, the per-week work hours are restricted to 28.8. But the productivity level in these places are comparatively high.(It's interesting to compare this with a typical software engineer's work hours. Maybe its more meaningful to compare with 3 or 4 of them taken together.) That basically is because, the slower you are, the more you are able to see and avoid mistakes and hence lesser the defects and higher the productivity. It's easy on the blood pressure too. Further tea is considered as the drink of the slow. But coffee beats tea any day easily.

What happened to my experiment? It was a huge success. I woke up slowly, ate slowly, watched a slow going movie, again ate slowly and crept into the bed slowly. What about work????? It was a Sunday!

You may be interested in visiting the official slow site : http://www.slowdownnow.org/

J2EE development is going strong and it will certainly in the future. In most places. So, no wonder products aimed at easing stuff up for developers is destined to thrive. So is RSA - http://www-306.ibm.com/software/awdtools/architect/swarchitect/index.html.On thinking what makes RSA tick(read RSA 6 or 7)..the following points spring up in that order:
1. All under one roof - do every deliverable with RSA.
2. Don't sweat it out - It's fairly simple to learn and get acquainted with.
3. Performance - Will talk about this soon.

Now with RSA, you can do/deliver most of your J2EE artifacts and it provides a very good usable IDE to do so. One of the noteworthy things is UML modelling/design. We all know how important is design in any project and a good design cuts cost/rework and adds to the bottom line and so on. But design seldom is stable and it evolves/changes during development. So syncing up the developed code and design is always a challenge and doing it well is very useful for everyone. RSA accommodates this with alacrity.Now the advantage here is that, you can have the design model and development code in the same workspace and it allows for easy referring to the design during development and vice versa. Forward engineering and reverse engineering have never been so easy. Applying design patterns can also be done but I haven't tried it out myself.

As its built on Eclipse, development ease is also taken care of. Further it supports And to use RSA, the tutorials are fairly good and the time to learn it will be minimal, provided the user knows what he wants.In any system, the wait time experienced promotes a feeling of added complexity. And this factor is less in RSA. Since there is no need of a separate designing software, it will be easy on the system resources as most of good UML design softwares tend to eat up more resources.

Ofcourse, there's a lot more in RSA than what's mentioned here which haven't been discussed like JSF/Junits/Change management linking/Code review tools/Plugins etc. Overall the experience with RSA for J2EE development is good.

Now then, I just happened to come across The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I haven’t completed it yet, but just halfway through. There was one concept that catches me of the protagonist Howard Rowark ; he does everything he feels right and gets on. Moreover, the question he asks the Stanton dean pointing to the Parthenon, is killing. I was musing over that question for a long time. I felt it was a very apt question and everybody should think over it. He asks the dean, commenting about some architecture - Gothic or Renaissance I don’t remember, but he questions him - why specialty or perfection has to arise of other’s work alone? Why not the work you and I do be considered special by us? And so goes Roark with cold confidence everywhere; cold enough to invite criticisms more than praise.

Practically Roarky characters are difficult to find. In fact I’ve never met anyone like that. There has been always a tinge of humility when a person talks. But then, I don’t even know it’s good to emulate him and what realization will humans achieve being like him. You can do with “Howard Roark Syndrome” for more of this. But the line of tale is splendid and gives a different feeling while reading. Enough of objectivism now; Coming back to my own life I’ve changed my Active Status message in instant messenger to “Howard Roark” and this stimulated my friend to learn more about Him and we had a good discussion about Him. By the way I have changed my “I am away” message to “With Dominique Francon”;-).

I don’t get much time to read now. For Chennaites, they might empathize with me about the traumas of traveling from West Mambalam to Old Mahabalipuram Road by bus. By the time I reach home, I don’t have any other feeling but to hit the bed and catch some sleep. So, it’s very difficult to make time for reading. I tried doing it in the bus, but somehow I didn�t like it. My favorite reading position is in a sofa with a pillow thrown in. And yes, with a good cuppa. By the way, for the uninitiated, Objectivism is the philosophy of Ayn Rand and has been vividly portrayed in her books like The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged etc. Someone enlighten me on what objectivism is all about .

It was raining yesterday and I decided to test my culinary skills. I took the challenge of making the kesari, a famous South Indian sweet dish. All that is required to make this delicious dish is a glass of Rava, some ghee for frying, some cashewnuts, sugar and water. The quantity of water should be twice that of Rava and sugar can be 2 - 2.5 times that of Rava. And of course you need some patience and some people to share the dish with. Ah..I forgot one more important ingredient... the kesari color powder. There's a lot of rumor going around that this causes cancer; You may neglect this though, if you want a white kesari.

The color of course, is an individual preference. Environmentalists can go for green, Aussie supporters yellow, sailors blue and communists red. But the South Indian household seems to have a penchant for orange color and hence, orange is the color with which kesari is identified with. Kesari finds it place often when the family of a boy visits a girl's place to fix the marriage. Perhaps kesari is a litmus test to see how the would-be bride cooks. So, the bride's family takes special care to prepare the dish to a perfection. They serve it along with the Bajji(you wouldn't have missed this one, if you have visited the Marina or the Besant Nagar Beach). So we can say kesari is the first dish the groom eats in a bride's house. You can see how important this dish is. Usually this is followed by a coffee which the girl serves the groom's family. This is the time when she is evaluated to be or not to be. Spilling the coffee on groom's mother can be considered as the height of embarrassment. And.. this is the time when exchanging glances is encouraged, for a change. And this is followed by an audition. Here the voice of the girl is tested.No rap/pop/filmi songs are allowed. Breaking down at high pitch is a strict no no. Finally if the girls passes all the tests, she is allowed to make kesari in the groom's kitchen.

And now coming back to our kesari preparation. All you need to do to get kesari is to fry the rava in a tava with some ghee till the rava becomes golden brown and keep it aside. Now in the same way fry the cashew nuts too. Be careful this time, the time in which cashew nuts change their color from golden brown to black is not very long.

Now add bring the water to a boil and add the fried rava in it, cook it till the rava comes to a thick consistency, now add the sugar and the rava will loosen up. Keep cooking for 10 minutes. Add the cashew nuts and mix it well. Turn the gas off and taste it. I assure you, you'll love the taste. You can go in for a slight variant of this - the pineapple kesari. The only additional work to do is to toss some diced pineapples to it. And don't forget to favor the Aussies this time. Some pineapple essence can also be added to get the flavor.

There is a complement to kesari by the name Uppuma, which can also be made using the rava. This is a common breakfast in South India. But more about this, later.

I am here, staring at the monitor savoring a machine vended Nescafe. I wouldn’t say I am too unhappy about it and all. After all, I am documenting these thoughts just after reading columns of Behram Contractor a.k.a Busy Bee in the site www.busybeeforever.com.
This is a really good site I should say. It contains lots of articles by Mr. Contractor whom I like very much. I also like John Grisham. But it is because of a different reason.
I like BC because of the satire he brings out in a very simple form that’s easy to understand. I admit, though I read a lot of books, I really don’t get the full grasp of some of the books I read. Often Behram Contractor(BC) is compared with P.G.Wodehouse(PG). But for me BC is better than PG. This might be because when I tried reading a P.G, but I wasn’t able to make out the humor twist in it. I wasn’t laughing because of the humor in the book but I was laughing at my own state of not understanding P.G. So I like B.C more than P.G. Further B.C views things from an Indian angle that makes his columns and ideas easy to identify with.

Of late, I have become addicted to coffee. I don’t know why. It may be because I was trying to emulate Patrick Lanigan of The Partner, who drinks lots of coffee. I am averaging 4 cups a day now. I don’t feel guilty about it. Maybe I’ll feel when I am 40. But that’s ok for me since I am enjoying the present moment. I can proudly say I am living life king size without any consciousness conflict (what a term!). And so goes my life with an extra indulgence thrown in always in whatever I like doing.

It’s not that I am really happy because I don’t have anything to do. In fact, I have a real problem now where I am stuck without any daylight near. But still I am happy because I have read somewhere ‘And this too shall pass’. And I have learnt to believe in Hope, and even in failures I attribute it to my suspicion in my belief in hope. Failure or Success, and this too shall pass sometime soon. And so, I will indulge in my happiness to an extra extent.

It’s rainy season here. I always dislike carrying anything unless it is of utmost importance. For instance, I hate to carry helmets to restaurants and theatres. So for this reason, I never like wearing a helmet when I go to these places. I am not an atheist, so I believe in God more than I believe in my helmet. This of course is not for all to follow, unless you want to meet God very badly. So even though I dislike wearing it, I wear it. God can wait. Similarly, I hate carrying raincoats even in rainy season, when it’s not raining. But yesterday my father pestered me so much to take the raincoat. When I wore it, it was too much stuffy. I felt bad. But when I started from office in the evening, I came to know how it is to feel grateful. Yes, there was a heavy downpour, peals of thunder, and flashes of lightning; and me under the safe cocoon of raincoat. I even experienced the sadistic joy of watching my friends completely wet. Even today I’ve brought the raincoat. It’s not raining. But I don’t feel the slightest remorse of bringing it. So, I have learnt, it’s always good to ensure things are safe and strive towards that aspect rather than praying to god while dying. So, I henceforth will not feel lethargic towards doing things that’ll make me safer, even though there is some level of discomfort involved in it.

So that’s it. It’s almost time to leave. I am now happily taking my raincoat and helmet.

Gestalt is the brain’s ability to see the big/whole picture. According to gestalt studies, it’s been found that most of the people can find shapes even if they are not complete, say a broken circle is identified as a circle. When 1,2,3,4 are mentioned, the brain immediately visualizes a 5. So in order to use gestalt in any field, try covering up the easier aspects first. Then by gestalt understanding the tougher aspects will be easy.

After a long deliberation, this blog is created; Primarily because my company decided to block my previous blog site which was with rediff. And yes, I'll be migrating all my blogs from my previous site to here soon.