The light in my cube

Micro versus macro businesses

2006-12-20T01:47:00.000-08:00

What if everybody did a microISV and nobody was available to work for large organizations. What if every individual was a business entity. Well in a perfect world, people would work towards a common cause and build airports, skyscrapers, malls, we would have a perfect eco-system. But seriously not everybody's personal goals and thoughts align towards common goals. The very idea of running a micro business is the ability to think and act on your own. So does that mean we should never have large projects at all? So how did the GNU and Linux movement fall into place to build a complete operating system. A lot of Ifs and Buts is what we have out there.

We do need macro businesses to pull of large projects, personally I do enjoy strolling through a large mall and eying all the fancy products out there. These kind of projects would never happen 'easily' in a micro business driven environment. But there is a time and place for macro and micro businesses. Micro businesses are lean and offer an advantage of nimbleness, especially useful when trying out new things that demand an ability to adapt quickly. But take a look at a large airport project, you wouldn't be changing the runway plans on t-10 days, you wouldn't change the passenger lounge overnight, Its mostly about making minor modifications, this is where macro businesses excel. What I'm driving at is that macro businesses and large projects are a necessary evil to accomplish large tasks. For an individual who feels out of place in a macro model, its mostly the need to control the creativity and tweak every little thing, like work hours, need for money and the kick of doing the right things, These things can best be done in a micro model. The micro model is small enough to be tweaked at every little place by a single individual and at the same time powerful enough to accomplish fairly complex projects. In short do your right thing as a micro business, and if it works well, it will evolve into a macro biz. But remember the rules when the transition happens.

To be continued...

beauty demystified

2006-10-09T00:13:00.000-07:00

Everytime I see a beautiful face, I have wonder if we're using well defined patterns to judge good lookingness, so is it all a numbers and patterns game? Whatever it is the picture is surely stunning.
Seed: Beauty is in the Processing-Time of the Beholder

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Save all your money to make more money?

2006-10-09T00:02:00.000-07:00

Expensive frappucinos leave a bad after taste of guilt, so does every purchase bigger than your monthly savings. This NYTimes article is right on time to remind one that all those financial advisors maybe making you too much of a miser, sit back and think why you're saving all that money for? OfCourse everybody wants to be a millionaire and then what?

Skip the Coffee? What’s Money for, Anyway? - New York Times

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Portable MP3 Players evolution

2006-09-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

The guys at <a href="http://www.mobile-review.com">mobile-review</a> took a slight detour from the usual reviews of the latest mobile phones, and came up with an unbiased article on the current status of the portable MP3 player market. As more and more phones are trying to fit into the portable music player, this article is right on time.

technorati tags:mp3

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dawn.jpg

2006-08-20T05:37:00.000-07:00

dawn.jpg
Originally uploaded by girishbs.

The swirling morning mist stirred a lot of thoughts. As city dwellers, especially in the third world, we rarely see beautiful scenes like this. Most of the developing world is in a race to build bigger and uglier concrete jungles. It is scenes like these that remind me that many a child may never experience the serenity of living in nature. Is that the cost we are supposed to pay for being urbanized?

Break-neck pace

2006-07-05T07:14:00.000-07:00

We have created a society where speeding through life is considered fashionable. People drink coffee, drive and call office to say they're late. Then there are others who repeatedly press elevator buttons, as if some magic hand will make it go faster. Its business at light speed.

The result is stress and pressure in the most unexpected of situations. Our body and mind cope with pressure only to some extent. Then the usual after effects kick in.

In a way our mind is also an organ like any other in our body. And to keep it healthy it needs the right inputs and good dose of exercise. I've figure out that the less you multitask the easier it is for the mind to handle situations. As for exercise a weekly schedule of meditation and yoga goes a long way in keeping it healthy.

Another technique that works great is the 'be-here-now' method. How many times has your mind wandered off as you read this post, think about it. Do things that you want to and your mind will stay here and now. But regular mind-exercises will train it to do the same with boring tasks as well.

Set your priorities, do things one at a time, and have a regular time for some mind training, You can beat stress and have it all nice and easy

Do you enjoy your corporate life?

2006-07-04T01:16:00.000-07:00

I remember a line from the movie 'Gods must be Crazy', it goes like this, "Man has invented a system so complicated that it takes 18 years of schooling to get through it". And he hit it right on the spot.

The closer you get to the last few years of schooling the more you would have forgotten about our natural abilities to be creative and self learning. Now, I'm not against a good education, but I'm disappointed at our system that only preaches what others have done and not how to tap into our creative potential. And living a 'corporate life' is the culmination of these efforts.

A vast majority of the people I have met in my corporate life are groomed to think like a typical cog in the organization, no matter where in the hierarchy they stand, they go by the mantra 'Put up with the idiosyncrasies of running an organization and be rewarded'. Very few people would confess that they would rather be doing something else.

I'm sure there are lot of people who say that they love the tight scheduled globetrotting and frenzied late night phone calls in the name of productivity. But Its blogs like ripples and slackermanager that put us back in reality. Its only a matter of time before the truth catches up with anybody who's enjoying the spoils of a lost creative personal life.

What I'm trying to get to is that we spend a huge amount of time at our day jobs, and we better realize what we are giving up. The usual victims are family life, hobbies and of course health. What we gain is usually money and that feeling of being part of a bigger 'succesfull' community. Trying to balance work and life in a corporation will only get you some distance.

I have myself tried doing strict 40 hour weeks, mid afternoon jogging sessions, it does'nt go far. I was never able to stick to it for more than a week. There is always a false sense of urgency in every business task and there's really no space for balance. I used the term 'false sense' because not every cog in the wheel agrees with the need for urgency. Now if you could set the pace of business according to your needs, then you could decide how much of work is good for you and what you are willing to give up for a good life.

Day jobs are a necessity for most of us, we need to earn a living. But not at the cost of an enjoyable livable life. Think of a day job that does'nt feel i like a drag and thats what you should be doing for a living. I look at 'earning a living' as the fuel, once you're full tank, use it to go somewhere, otherwise all that fuel will wasted in a few years.

Think about it for a while and if you think you value your life and passions more than your job. Then hitting it on your own is the right way to balance what and how much you want to work on. MicroISVs are something that is going on in my mind, will put up a separate post for that.

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A day in chaos

2006-06-30T03:46:00.000-07:00

I always feel that an average day in my life is a journey through chaos. And there are days when things happen like clockwork. So today I set out to figure what creates this flow of changes, what could change it.

Chaos theory describes something called "order in randomness", using that as a metaphor I can see a pattern emerging in my daily life. Eat, sleep and live are actions that I do everyday at more or less regular periods. Its the things that I do in-between, that seem to summarize a day as chaotic. And what goes on in between?, other than the physical needs of the body which are addressed at regular intervals, its the flow of thoughts in my mind which make up a typical day.

Interesting, so chaos and order are right there in my mind?. Maybe, Now is there order in chaos. Yes, I alternate between work, play and entertainment, but if we alternate between these activities at a very rapid pace, say every few seconds, then take a look at it over a time frame thats much larger, it appears chaotic, dont know which one I'm doing when and for how long.

The trick in finding order in chaos is to know that there are a limited number of things we do, and to see it from the level/distance which will make it look like a set of repeating activities in a day. From this perspective the duration is all that seems to be random and the tasks are just repeating. Hmm...If we can somehow fix the duration everything suddenly transforms into a rhythmic repeatation of well known tasks.

Now is'nt that what we call focus? working on a task long enough to meet some milestone.

What I'm trying to get to is that chaos is just another state of exactly the same set of thoughts and ideas. And all I have to do is use bigger timeslices for the same set of tasks to transform it into orderliness.

Crazy?, well thats what I am.. Cheers!

In search of the ideal mp3 player

2006-05-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

Follow me on my hunt for an good MP3 Player, just could'nt hold the iPod mania anymore.

What should I look for in a player?
Sound quality would be my top most concern, I'm a little fussy about how music sounds. The next biggest concern would be memory to hold atleast a 1000 songs at 192kbs, and yes I prefer MP3 for its simplicity (atleast 5Gb). I'm not a big fan of DRM so multiple bit rates and non-DRM formats are a necissity. And finally battery life and a small form factor make all the difference. Personally I Dont really care about videos/photos.

The iPod
Even though its a universal favorite, I did use a friends player for a while and found the sound to be slightly flat and lagging in the top end of 18-22khz. Average sound quality is what I can say. And using iTunes just didnt catch my fancy.

iShuffle
Interestingly it seems the iShuffle has better sound quality. But limited memory (1gb), lack of a display and steep learning curve for the controls put me off.

Initially I checked out flash devices, skip free playing is a huge advantage. But price/gb really hits you, by the time you reach usable levels like 4gb. So my hunt kind of narrowed down to hard disk based players.

Creative ZEN Micro
I've always been a fan of creative in terms of 'bang for the buck' and Zen Xtra 30gb sounds good. There is one universal gripe that people are putting up with, All of Creative's 5gb and above HD based players need a special partition which can be used as USB data drive. In short music & data cant be on the same disk :(

Iriver
Surprisingly iRiver seems to top in sound quality. Some reviews are talking of a sluggish interface, and obiously Expensive.

So far I have my mind set on IRiver H10 20gb.. let me know if I'm wrong

The art of happiness

2005-03-21T03:20:00.000-08:00

I dont know whether I'm a philosopher, but I had formed my own unbiased opinion of life and its purpose at a early age. And now as I grow older (wiser..huh?), I'm tempted to read and compare the opinions of worldy greats.

My recent read was The Art Of Happiness, and quite frankly it struck a chord. Even though the book is not written by tht Dalai Lama himself, Cutler has posed some common questions that come to a commoners mind like mine.

Here's my interpretation of the book,

The Art of happiness - HH Dalai Lama & Howard C Cutler

"The very purpose of life is to seek happiness."

That quote says it all. There can be no self help book, The lama's answers are drawn from the rich nuances of life.

The source of happiness is in our minds.
The comparing mind, is never content, sportsmen drawing million dollar salaries are as discontented as you and me. When our annual income jumps from X to Y, we'll soon figure out a need for more and be discontented. I could'nt agree more, once our basic needs of food and shelter are met, any new need is nothing more than a superficial need created by our minds. Does that mean we give up all and live like an ascetic? (The word balance, is the clue).

Our feelings of satisfaction often depends on whom we compare ourselves to, Which can be used in a positive way, we can increase our feeling of satisfaction by comparing ourselves to those who are less fortunate. (changing our perspective)

Working on our inner outlook is a more effective means of achieving satisfaction

Happiness vs pleasure. We are always confused between the two, most of the times we confuse our need for sensory pleasure as happiness.

Training the mind for happiness is simply a matter of cultivating more positive mental states like kindness. There is one key / secret,
Change takes time.

Quote: "Every day as soon as you get up, you can develop a sincere positive motivation, Deliberately selecting and focussing on positive mental states and challenging negative states."

Quote: "Ethical discipline, wholesome action, reclaim our innate state of happiness"

Quote: "Human nature is essentially compassionate and gentle, when life becomes too complicated and overwhelming, it helps to stand back and look at a higher goal (After reflecting on what gives value to our life, and what gives meaning: of seeking happiness and spreading kindness)"

Quote: "lonliness and connection: is something that we have created in our minds, compassion is not something that comes out of a romance, once we do away with the childish definitions. Its actually opening up with compassion to other people. Intimacy is not about the popular opinion of two people in love, its about compassion, the experience of connectivity."

Quote: "Put yourself in the other persons shoes and experience his pain, and your anger will fade"

Facing suffering
Kisagowtami asked the buddha to revive her son , and the buddha asked her to get mustard seeds from a house that hasnt seen death.

Self created suffering
We often add to our pain by being overly sensitive and sometimes taking things too personally

But its not fair! (why tolerate somebodys nonsense?)
look at a problem objectively, you may be annoyed by your boss, he may be annoyed by something else: by analysing this you would'nt be faced with additional anxiety. It does not mean being passive, be active (evaluate your alternatives)

Balance: is all about avoiding extremes, which is often fueled by discontentment.

Have realistic expectations.

The art of mind mapping

2005-02-24T01:56:00.000-08:00

Attempting to map your mind usually leads to interesting insights. Sometimes it helps in organizing your thoughts, setting priorities, but surely it will provide a nice big picture of whats happening in there, And trust me its nothing more than nicely written bullet points.

Okay on with it, Its not a good idea to map your entire mind at a single go, though I wonder what light it might shed. I use freemind for most of my work, but if you're willing to spend money mindjet has a good looking product. I generally pick something thats been bothering me for a while and use mind map to analyse it.

So today let me pick my computer, its littered with software , I've got no clue of what to get rid of (looks like I need everything). And this mind map is going to map my idea of what I use my computer for.

Step 1:
Identify what I use my machine for.

Browsing

Documents

Coding

music

Now lets fill in what applications I use/need for the same, Starting to look good. Just need to remember that every applications must fit atleast one of the purposes that I've defined. here goes..

Thats a lot, and it sums up what I need for getting things done. Anything thats not on the picture needs to be claened up!. Thats not all, it also shows the number of things I'm trying to do on a computer, shows that I need more fresh air and excercise. Well you can draw your own conclusions...