New Travel Shopping Site: ShopPackTravel

https://shoppacktravel.com/category/about-us/

Happy Misjudgement day!

http://www.kqed.org/a/perspectives/R201203300735
This is a good one:

Happy Misjudgment Day. I'm OK. You're OK, and we're all demonstrably less smart than we would like to think.

Until April 2. Then the confidence games begin again, and we can all unsafely assume we know what we are talking about. 

When life makes sense, your stress levels go down

I heard this gem from a podcast of the author of:

http://www.amazon.com/Venus-Fire-Mars-Ice-Hormonal/dp/0978279735

The explanation was in the context of "Relationships" more towards the relationships between men and women. But I think it is very relavent to any "Relationship", ex: employee-manager, vendor-customer, employer-employee, etc. especially in a conflict situation.

"When life makes sense, your stress levels go down. When life doesn't make sense, your stress levels go up".

Self-driving cars get closer every day, but won't hit you – USATODAY.com

Self-driving cars get closer every day, but won't hit you – USATODAY.com

Almost every week, a Google self driving Prius car drives next to me in the freeway during my commute. It prominently displays that it is a Google Self Driving car with some geeky looking contraptions on the roof.

If often peek into that car as I drive and usually I am relieved that there is a driver and usually the driver is holding the steering wheel. So Im not yet confident about the "wont hit you" part.

I think that the self-driving option should be added to the cars like the "Cruise Control" option.
It should be adopted for a more autonomous operation only after multiple years of wide usage.

I think this technology will pan out to be a viable technology in the next 5-10 years. It could turn out to be very useful in countering the effects of distracted driving, driving under fatigue, reckless driving and of course drunken driving.

Hugo - A wonderful movie

Watched Hugo over the weekend. What a wonderful movie to watch with the family!
Very good direction and screenplay. Excellent Music!
The book  is even more delightful. It is more than a book, it is part graphic novel.
The plot combines real life story, real life events like a train crash into the fiction.
It also covers things like automaton which are from a different era!

Maillardet's Automaton-Home Page-Franklin Institute Science Museum
Maillardet's Automaton-Home Page-Franklin Institute Science Museum

The automaton brought me fond memories of the Finite state automata, Turing machines
and the dragon book from the undergraduate days:
http://www.amazon.com/Compilers-Principles-Techniques-Alfred-Aho/dp/0201100886

Finally, Fake Chicken Worth Eating - NYTimes.com

Finally, Fake Chicken Worth Eating - NYTimes.com
Being a vegetarian, all I can say is Yuck!

If you want to avoid meat, why have "fake meat" when the plant world
has so much to offer without faking anything else?

A Democratic Majority, Maybe, but Not a Permanent One - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

A Democratic Majority, Maybe, but Not a Permanent One - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Quote>>

This partisan cockiness typically assumes — wrongly — that the two political parties are wedded to a fixed set of political principles. That's not what the two parties are. They're far more akin to products: specifically, brands.

When a political party begins to fail competitively, as the G.O.P. is clearly doing now, it, too, simply rebrands itself.

>>

Good Article. Very good insight and at the same time it is also stating the obvious!

Is the modern GOP really the party of the Lincoln?

Similarly the Democratic party had it's origins in "Anti-Fedaralism, States rights, Strict Constructionist approaches

all of which are against the political views of the modern Democrats.

Russian Drill Nears 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake | Wired Science | Wired.com

Russian Drill Nears 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake | Wired Science | Wired.com

Some more links about this story:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/scientists-close-to-entering-vostok-antarcticas-biggest-subglacial-lake/2012/01/27/gIQAbGX0fQ_story.html

and a blog by a scientist working on the project:

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~mstuding/vostok.html

Chinese New year - Year of the Dragon

Heard fireworks and rockets in my neighborhood from the houses in my block last night, even though it was a bit rainy.

Apparently this is the Year of the Dragon.

Asia welcomes the Year of the Dragon - Business - NZ Herald News

My Chinese New Year Resolution: Fireworks during 2012 Diwali celebration!

Piete Hein Grooks

I heard from my friend Paul Rohrdanz this poem by Piet  Heien which rang very true: “Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back.”

Found some more here

I think he and his SuperEllipse are worthy of a google doodle.

(SuperEllipse Dining Table)

Why Google is ditching search | Digital Media - CNET News

Why Google is ditching search | Digital Media - CNET News

Really?! So does he really think that the Social search will replace PageRank Search?

I think google is facing the case of Innovator's Dilemma. They need to sustain PageRank/LinkBased Search and at the same time

they have to hold off Social Search and AnswerBased search upstarts. Similar to how Oracle incorporated OLAP, Object Databases, Java etc. into Oracle, fended off the upstarts and kept and grew the market share. I think Social Search will evolve to be another Search feature.

Personally, I use PageRank search when researching topics. I used to use Google News before but that site has grown less relevant. Especially if it shows a lot of nytimes links and if they need subscription to view them, then what is the point? I use Twitter's Social Search for finding news.

I do not use Facebook as I think it it is a bit creepy, I hate it's privacy policies and the feel of a peep-show that it brings. I signed up for google plus but I am finding it not very useful at all, so far. I am somewhat old-fashioned and hence I use blogger.

I would like to stay with google's tools mostly because I am stuck in its walled garden and it is too much hassle to walk out. But I also do not resent them. LinkedIn has not offered anything more than a professional address book. I like twitter's simplicity but it's website interface is too simple and not too productive (try retweeting with a quote for an instance).

Despite all the hype, the social space is very much in a primordial state. Dont believe the status quo. The internet space

changes at light speed. User's can and do walk out from the established players super rapidly (AOL, Yahoo, Myspace, etc.).

I think that social search along with the other searches will fragment the search market and will not replace PageRank/Search links.

And I think that would be an enormously good thing for the users!

Why Best Buy is Going out of Business...Gradually

Good Article at - Forbes http://onforb.es/t22cfc

It has been years since I bought anything at Best Buy. There is no reason to go to that store anymore. It is pushed out of business from the top end (speciality stores,  online, costco, etc.) and the bottom end (walmart, target, online stores whose prices are unbeatable)

Interesting interview from Scott Cook

Very good interview from the founder of Intuit.  Some of the things they are doing at Intuit:
o Teach people around the company by not talking about things but by having them observe how it is done. Kind of like: dont tell them how to do it, but show them how it is done.
o Keeping the team size of the innovators very small - say to 4 in some instances.
o Learning the customer needs and requirements by not listening to what they say but by observing their behavior. Dont listen to their attitude about something but to their behavior. This sort of resembles steve jobs's philosophy of  not asking customers what to do because they wouldn't know. But you discover customer's intentions by observing and understanding their behavior.

http://blog.finette.com/post/15268730784/amazing-interview-with-scott-cook-the-founder-of

Happy New Year Everyone!

Let 2012 bring peace and prosperity to everyone!

Here is a message from Bhagavat Gita. This sloka exhorts everyone to lift themselves by their bootstraps, be self-reliant and to love themselves. This secular message of freedom, personal responsibility and self-affirmation is one of my favorite slokas:

Uddharet Atmana Atmanam Natmanam Avasadayet
Atmaiva Hyatmano Bandhuratmaiva Ripuratmanah.

"Let a man raise himself by himself, let him not lower himself; for he alone is the friend of himself, he alone is the enemy of himself."

PC Adventures - Part 2

My new office PC is finally setup. I received a Dell Latitude E6420 with Windows 7 installed. 
After a long bout of XP, this new OS is really refreshing. I have been subjected to the pain of  several Vista machines at home so I was expecting the worst from this version of Windows.


The Dell machine itself is designed better than the  bulky designs of the previous Latitudes that lacked finesse or taste. The new PC had curvy lines that softened the rectangles and made it easier to look at. I liked the soft impact feel of the keyboard. The machine is much lighter than the previous ones and the battery lasts longer. I wished the screen would have been larger. It is not heating up as the previous Dell and it is very quiet. It comes with Bluetooth so at some point in the future, I will switch over to Bluetooth accessories.


Windows 7 has the feel of Windows 95 in terms of the maturity of the product. My machine had adequate RAM and a fast HD so the experience is pleasant. Thunderbird, Chrome and even IE are easier to use in this machine. I stopped using Firefox altogether. 


 I got started up fairly quickly after dropping my files from the backup into the Documents folder. The new OS even has backup feature built into it. Wireless networking works much better in this OS. But the most important feature is the quick startup and shutdown. It took less than 2 minutes to restart the machine. XP would have taken more than 7 mins. This make the machine a much greener alternative as this will save a lot of power.


I used the following note to import the itunes library into the new installation: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1451


The bottom line for me is this. I was seriously considering a switch over to Macintosh after the bad experience with XP and with Vista. But with the new Dell Latitude E6420 and Windows 7, I am dropping that project. 

Adventures in moving to a new PC - Part 1

I requested for a new office PC and I am moving to my new PC. I am stuck by how painful the experience is. After getting used to the Apple devices (ipad, ipod, etc.) I am now very aware of all the pains that I am putting up with my PC.

Moving or Copying Files and Folders

I am simply trying to copy my documents and other folders to an external drive so that I can copy them back in my new PC. Currently I am at Windows XP. It made me realize how deficient the Windows Copy command is. It routinely stopped and gave me complaining about something or the other and gave me no way to continue with my action unless I started over. For example, it stopped if a file is in use. It stopped if it encountered a file that it thought had a long file name. If Windows can create that file in it's file system, I dont understand why it cant delete it. The fact that Microsoft could write an article to deal with this issue is baffling to me:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320081

I finally deleted my offending file with the long name by using the tips at:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/23801-45-delete-folder

>>

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics (More info?)

 

Path Too Long

To work around this problem, reduce the length of the path to less than 256
characters.

In Windows Explorer, select the folder one level above the folder that
returns the error. Right-click the folder returning the error and then click
Rename. Rename the folder to reduce the number of characters used in the
folder name.

Rename the folder so that the target files that are deeper than the MAX_PATH
no longer exist. If you do this, start at the root folder (or any other
convenient place), and then rename folders so that they have shorter names.

Rename subfolders in the path to a file so that the total path or file name
is less than the max_path setting or 256 characters. Start with subfolders
that are closer to the root so that you are always working with less than
256 characters.


You cannot delete a file or a folder on an NTFS file system volume
http://support.microsoft.com/defau [...] -us;320081 

>>

SyncBack utility

Finally I gave up Windows commands and downloaded the freeware SyncBack. It was a breeze to use. It still could not deal with long name issues but it made my task of backups much easier.

Essentially, I am copying my Documents and Settings folder to an external drive so that I can copy back the contents. 

To Be Continued...

The man he killed - Thomas Hardy

I am watching "Civil War" - Documentary by Ken Burns. The battle scenes are really sad to watch and the causality figures in those battles are stunning. You get the true meaning of the term "Cannon Fodder" by listening to the battle descriptions. The most poignant moment for me was the reference to Thomas Hardy's poem: The man he killed, which describes the meaninglessness of war and how people rationalize the business of fighting wars:

"Had he and I but metBy some old ancient inn,We should have sat us down to wetRight many a nipperkin!

"But ranged as infantry,And staring face to face,I shot at him as he at me,And killed him in his place.[5]

"I shot him dead because—Because he was my foe,Just so: my foe of course he was;That's clear enough; although

"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,Off-hand like—just as I—Was out of work—had sold his traps—No other reason why.

"Yes; quaint and curious war is!You shoot a fellow downYou'd treat, if met where any bar is,Or help to half-a-crown."

By the way many of the Civil War battle descriptions also reminded me of the Pink Floyd Song:

Us and them
And after all we're only ordinary men
Me and you
God only knows
It's not what we would choose to do
Forward he cried from the rear
And the front rank died
And the general sat
And the lines on the map
Moved from side to side

Story about the largest mall in the world located in China

What a Bizarre story! If this is how China achieves the huge growth rates, this is also how its bubble will burst.

Here is another evidence:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/jamesreynolds/2009/04/chinas_olympic_venues_now.html

Yet another one is here:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/02/high-speed_rail_china

However, this article says it is the strategy of China to keep building.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/weekinreview/07wines.html

>>"Here in the nation that is too big to fail, as long as the bad loans don’t overwhelm the good, the waste is tolerable. That, to me, is the essence of the Chinese strategy,Just keep the machine going fast enough.”>>

I am not really convinced this is going to work.

This is the same argument that we heard during the dot com bubble, the housing bubble and the other bubbles of the Bush years!

Emancipation of Serfs in Russia

Since I have been watching the Civil War documentary from Ken Burns, this article caught my attention.

At St. Petersburg, Russia, on March 3, 1861, Alexander II of Russia emancipated the serfs. His justification to his nobles : “If we don’t give the peasants freedom from above, they will take it from below.” He abolished serfdom by imperial fiat.

Watching Ken Burns' Civil War Documentary

I started watching Ken Burns' Civil War documentary series in Netflix. I think this subject is a must-read for anyone trying to make sense of modern American Politics, American Wars and even the American Psyche.

The willingness of a huge population to fight a war for a fundamentally unjust cause;

the ability of even honorable people to rationalize their unjust cause in the name of patriotism and in the name of rights;

that so many people fight so hard for for their rights to deny rights for other people;

the willingness of the people to continue tragic and costly wars that cost huge number of lives;

patience (or helplessness) of the people in putting up with feckless generals who make stupid and arrogant mistakes resulting in the death of hundreds and thousands of people;

the generals with huge political ambitions and the corrupt ones who blur the lines between war and politics and business;

that the war is really cruel, for it was really sad and gut wrenching to hear about some of the battles and its causalities.

And sadly, every one of the above statement is still true and is being clearly demonstrated up until the very latest wars and the very latest politics of today...

I thought that the political success of Lincoln during the Civil war was much more impressive than the military success of the Civil war generals. Union lost more people than the Confederates and the Confederates had more impressive military victories and the Union had more bone headed losses. How did he keep his support through the war and manage to get reelected impressively for the second term in the middle of such uncertainties? And I'm still not clear about why the Union decide to fight this war with such conviction. So far, it doesn't appear to me that most people in the Union were prepared to spend so much money and lives to free the slaves. So why did they fight so much?

Need to finish watching the series and perhaps start reading Lincoln biographies...

Doctor Watson

Inflection Point: An event that changes the way we think and act. -Andy Grove

Watson winning Jeopardy is an inflection point. I think the comparable event is the release of the Mosaic browser. At that time, we could read email, subscribe to mailing lists, connect to the modem and read uunet archives. Even though there were not many sites to visit and O'Reilly published all of the useful sites in a single book, we could see the possibilities and feel the excitement at that time. It took several years to realize those possibilities though.

Presently we routinely dial into help desks and cellphones to talk to the computers. Google voice search really works. And we now have Watson, a clear inflection point that shows off the advances in Computers understanding Humans. Will there be pitfalls out of this advance, of course! But not if you believe this guy....

>>

Watson Graduates From Game Contestant to Physician Assistant

Quoting from this article:

If science fiction author and physician Michael Crichton were still alive, he might be crafting his latest take on technology run amok using the Watson project as inspirational fodder.

Not to worry, Durlach explained. With so many years of training and practice, doctors may be the ultimate information judges -- ever using it but never yielding to it.

"You know physicians," he said. "They see themselves as the chief decision makers. The very tradition they come from would suggest a very, very low probability that they would take the computer's decision over their own."

>>

Yeah Right!

Low Cost Drip Irrigation From Silicon Valley

This is a very promising story about a very low cost drip irrigation system, DripTech from Palo Alto, for small farm plot farmers around the world (India, china, etc.)

I grew up in a home overlooking small plot agricultural fields where they were growing crops like: Turmeric, Sugar Cane and Rice using the water from a canal off of the river Cauveri. During the monsoon rains and in the wet season, when there would be water in the canal, the field would be green and fertile. During the dry years, the talk of the community around us would be about when the government was going to release water in the canal. The water came from Mettur Dam in the river Cauveri.

Later on, the government subsidized electricity for the water pumps and the pumps would irrigate the land with water from Bore wells. Clearly, I could see a lot of wasted water compared to the drip and sprinkler irrigated farms that I see in California.

There is already a lot of water wars in southern india. More than 80% of the farmers in india are small plot farmers owning 1-5 hectares of land with average plot size around 1 hectare. Their monthly income is between Rs 1500 and Rs 8300. Cost of this system can be as low as Rs 6500.

If this approach takes root (no pun intended) this can be really really good for the small farmers.

Canon T3i DSLR has been released and it is not much better than T2i

According to the PCMag article, Canon T3i is not much better than T2i. The specs are the same, it just has a 3 inch retractable LCD screen compared to T2i. It is always good to know that the technology you bought did not get obsoleted barely 2 months after purchase.

color theme for emacs

I used to put a lot of color customization variables in my .emacs. It is nice to see color themes package for emacs. I got the package from:

http://www.nongnu.org/color-theme/#sec5

unzipped it into my home and added the following to my .emacs. It just worked.

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/colortheme/color-theme-6.6.0/")

(require 'color-theme)

(eval-after-load "color-theme"

'(progn

(color-theme-initialize)

(color-theme-hober)))

It is nice to see emacs dragged kicking and screaming into the easier way of doing things. Stallman would certainly not approve of this, im sure....

Quote From Newton

If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." - Isaac Newton

(latin equivalent: nanos gigantium humeris insidentes)

David Brooks Column: Amy Chua Is a Wimp

I do not often agree with Brooks, but boy, does he sense here. I am starting some projects at my work with several disparate teams and his points about participation in a group and the collective intelligence of a group ring so true.

Also, I can now explain why my grades sucked during my first year of college :)

Unmuting comcast DVR

Yesterday, my comcast dvr suddenly went mute. I can see the picture but there is no sound.

Instead of calling comcast which will first make me go through dumb 101 troubleshooting procedures, i googled: comcast dvr unmuting

And I found this fix in 1 min:

1. Press the "Cable" button at the top of the remote to put it into Cable Box control mode.
2. Press and hold the "Setup" button until the "Cable" button blinks twice.
3. Enter code 994. The "Cable" button will blink twice.
4. Press (do not hold) the "Setup" button.
5. Enter code 00141.
6. Press whatever button you want to map the mute function to.

from: here

Almond Breeze, Silk Pure Almond Spark Fight in Dairy Case - WSJ.com

Singing the virtues of Almond Milk...

Almond Breeze, Silk Pure Almond Spark Fight in Dairy Case - WSJ.com

CAN 35MM SLR LENSES BE USED ON DIGITAL CAMERAS?

If you take a 35 mm SLR lens and divide it's focal length by 1.6 you get the equiv dslr lens focal length. For example, if you take an 80mm lens of 35mm SLR, the equiv DSLR focal length is 50 mm.

The conversion table is at:

http://www.porters.com/LENS%20COMPATIBILE.pdf

Russia in color, a century ago - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Russia in color, a century ago - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Absolutely gorgeous color pictures recalling a different time and a different place (or is it really?)!

First book of the new year

I persisted and finished through Patrick O'Brian's 4th Aubrey-Maturin Novel: The Mauritius Command. Once I got the time to read it, the book was such a page turner. But being a historical novel and as it was written by Patrick O'Brian, the book was fairly complex to read. Patrick uses a lot of complex and somewhat obsolete words and expressions and ofcourse there are a lot of nautical terms. But once I got over those issues and got used to reading these books, the humor, the plot and the action kept me completely hypnotized.

Here is the review of Patrick's Aubrey-Maturin series in nytimes book review:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE5D9113CF935A35752C0A967958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Here are the highlights of that review that made me hooked on to these Novels:

=========

On the foundations of this friendship, Mr. O'Brian reconstructs a civilization. The Royal Navy at the beginning of the 19th century was a world of extraordinary breadth and complexity. Its hundreds of ships, the larger of them regular floating cities with close-packed populations of 1,200 souls, allowed Britain first to survive and then to prevail in a struggle whose cost and size would have been unimaginable only a generation earlier. These sailing ships -- today reduced to quaint and soothing images on wall calendars -- were in their time the most complicated machines on earth, and the deadliest.

Patrick O'Brian presents the lost arcana of that hard-pressed, cruel, courageous world with an immediacy that makes its workings both comprehensible and fascinating. All the marine hardware is in place and functioning; the battles are stirring without being romanticized (this author never romanticizes); the portrayal of life aboard a sailing ship is vivid and authoritative.

=========

Retailmenot.com coupon codes

This site: http://www.retailmenot.com/ seems to have relevant coupon codes. Often places like hotels in Las Vegas give a very good price, it is just that you need to save the magic word which is a coupon code. I saved about 30% using coupon codes, which is quite a chunk of money.

Novice Swimming Class

Yesterday i finished my Novice Swimming Class for the fall quarter. We had a kayaking lesson in the de-anza swimming pool. I paddled an ocean kayak and learnt skills like getting back into the boat if it capsizes in the water. Once again, I strongly recommend Mary's classes for learning to swim and to improve one's swimming abilities.

Here is my swimming teacher Mary Donahue's homepage.

The Beginning Swimming classes that she teaches in winter are listed here.

Winter classes are from Jan 3 - March 25.

Hand-Sharpened Pencils, Just $15 | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

say what??...

Hand-Sharpened Pencils, Just $15 | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

apps folders in itunes

>>o It is not clear why itunes doesn't support folders for apps. It is a big pain to reorganize apps on every device that connects to itunes.

Cancel that. It seems like the latest version of itunes has this feature where i can reorganize apps through DnD.

ios 4.2 update for ipad

It took about an hour fromshows up my home computer over DSL internet to download 551M of the OS update which sounds about right. The ipad update finished in about 10 minutes.

Some things that I was eagerly waiting for:

o Multitasking: Pandora Radio worked all the while I was syncing the device.

o Search within a page: finding it was a bit difficult, but it is just integrated into the search box. As you typed the string, there is a Next button that looping you thru the hits.

o It is not clear why itunes doesn't support folders for apps. It is a big pain to reorganize apps on every device that connects to itunes.

o So far I have not been able to use the Airprint to print on a printer shared by my Visa PC.

I have to see how this OS compares to the 4.1 on my iphone which keeps choking often. On ipad the OS appears to be very stable so far.

ios 4.2 update for ipad

It took about an hour fromshows up my home computer over DSL internet to download 551M of the OS update which sounds about right. The ipad update finished in about 10 minutes.

Some things that I was eagerly waiting for:

o Multitasking: Pandora Radio worked all the while I was syncing the device.

o Search within a page: finding it was a bit difficult, but it is just integrated into the search box. As you typed the string, there is a Next button that looping you thru the hits.

o It is not clear why itunes doesn't support folders for apps. It is a big pain to reorganize apps on every device that connects to itunes.

o So far I have not been able to use the Airprint to print on a printer shared by my Visa PC.

I have to see how this OS compares to the 4.1 on my iphone which keeps choking often. On ipad the OS appears to be very stable so far.

iOS 4.2 will be released at 10 AM today

Here is the ios 4.2 announcement.

iOS 4.2 Now Available, Brings Multitasking to iPad

I checked itunes and the update is not yet available.

This post says the update is available only at 10AM PST

http://techpinger.com/2010/11/apple-ios-4-2-to-be-released-at-10-am-pacific-time/

I am very curious to check how the servers are going to hold up. I am going to check at 10AM today.

Kind of like the online version of standing in the line outside the Apple store for a new release of an Apple device...

Amazon.com: How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond (9780316098304): John Powell: Books

Amazon.com: How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond (9780316098304): John Powell: Books

I heard about this book from Science Friday show today:

Science Friday Archives: How Music Works

Giants Win First World Series for San Francisco - NYTimes.com

Giants Won! Renteria and Lincecum and Wilson were fabulous!

Giants Win First World Series for San Francisco - NYTimes.com

And the sweet thing is George W came for all the world series games in the Rangers stadium and their team lost :))

RT @davewiner: "Getting Things Done" sounds like "Using An Outliner." http://r2.ly/729c

Totally right.
I had connected these concepts when I read this book 2 yrs ago.
In practice it works very much like an outliner.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Novice Swimming Class

Today we went into the deepwater pool (up to 16 feet) in the swimming class. We first practiced our underwater swimming stroke in the shallow pool, wore our flotation pad and then headed out to the deep pool. In the deep pool, we then got a hang of the pool, lost our fear of the deepwater with help from the pad.

Then we removed the pad, pushed ourself up in the edge of the pool and sank in the water. This gave us a sense of going inside the deepwater and then we floated up. All along, 2 lifeguards were assisting with the training. We then jumped into the water from the deck and then floated up and then swam to the sides with assistance. Finally, we used the springboard to dive into the pool feet first and then swam or kicked to the side. All along, we could also wear our flotation pad and practice treading in the deepwater pool.

It was an exciting class and I never thought I would ever get into the deepwater pool. It was looking very daunting in the first day of the class. Now I have a feeling that I could deal with it. Mary, the instructor, says that we could dive head first into the pool by the time the class would end. That would be awesome. Actually, If I am able to tread water by the end of the class in that pool, i would have achieved what i wanted to achieve from this class.

Obama, Jon Stewart and Change - NYTimes.com

Obama on Daily show was gripping. Jon gave Obama some tense moments. I watched Obama's appearance when he was a Senator and he was a bit loose then. This time, he was acting a bit tight (presidential as some would say). I thought obama really did say: "larry summers did heck of a job" echoing George Bush's comment on Brownie. But he recovered very quickly and sharply once Jon tried to make fun of him and said it was "pun intended".

Obama, Jon Stewart and Change - NYTimes.com

Yes they Cain! SF Giants, Matt Cain take 2-0 World Series lead!

Absolutely joyful to watch!

The bayarea is abuzz with October baseball fans! (including myself)

SF Giants, Matt Cain take 2-0 World Series lead

I never thought baseball would be this much fun to watch!

List of unusual words beginning with X

While looking for words starting with X: List of unusual words beginning with X,

I came across this interesting site:

http://phrontistery.info/x.html

World Series Backdrop Comes in Red and Blue - NYTimes.com

I said it before here and NYTimes is also saying it.

This year's World Series is Blue Vs Red!

World Series Backdrop Comes in Red and Blue - NYTimes.com

Paul the Octopus Who Predicted World Cup Winner Has Died - ABC News

The Octopus that entered the pop culture, including some bollywood movies, has died.

Paul the Octopus Who Predicted World Cup Winner Has Died - ABC News

Wi-Fi Direct Promises Device-to-Device Connectivity: Tech News «

Wi-Fi Direct Promises Device-to-Device Connectivity: Tech News «

If this pans out, it will be nice. I can have hopefully have a Wifi-direct adapter for my printer, hard drive, camera, stream data, music and video over the wifi, etc. This will probably replace AirPlay but probably not in the next couple of years.

Using feedburner to connect twitter and blogger

This weekend, I discovered the blogger and twitter extensions in chrome. It is now very easy to blog about anything very very quickly. I was also trying to kickstart my twitter habit. While doing so, I found myself blogging an entry and then tweeting that entry at the same time. I always wondered why blogger wouldn't tweet for me when i posted my blog entry. Maybe its because they are competing tools in a sense.

I then found out from this link that feedburner allows posting tweets for every blog post automatically. feedburner was recently acquired by google apparently. I then created a feedburner feed for my blog and in the feed preference, i requested for twitter connection. This was fairly easy to setup and in a minute or so, i am now setup to tweet for every blog post. If it worked, this post will be the first one for me that will appear as a tweet as well.

Picture of a Mosquito Heart

This Picture of a Mosquito Heart Is The Year's Best Microphotograph | Popular Science

Novice Swimming Class

Im taking the novice swimming class at DeAnza college. The class is from late September to first week of December. The instructor Mary Donahue is a very good swimming teacher. I think that subjects like this taught by really good teachers like Mary will really develop people with good skills that can be used through the rest of our lives. I think community colleges are such a good use of my tax dollars. The facilities in de-anza college and the teaching quality are just so good.

Here are my class summaries:

Class 1:

This class was all about getting used to the water. We had to dunk our head and immerse ourselves inside the pool. We learnt beach ball float and got used to floating in the water learning about the nature of our bodies in water (i.e. your body floats naturally!). We got used to holding our breath and floating in the water.

The final exercise in the class was to do a somersault by doing a beach ball float and then a windmill hand rotation.

It was a lot for the first class but it got our attention.

Class 2:

In this class we learnt about treading water, watched videos about water safety and practiced the previous class material. We did more of somersaults and floats. Then we started floating in the water and doing flutter kicks.

Class 3:

We learnt about jumping into the water from the deck and swimming from there. We learnt about underwater stroke, i.e. swimming under water. We learnt about backstroke (soldier, monkey, bird(or airplane)) and swimming while facing up. Using the underwater stroke we swam to the bottom of the pool and did handstands. We also learnt about the rudiments of freestyle by keeping our hands like chicken wings and swimming that way. The other drill was to keep our arms well stretched and swimming forward using flutter kicks.

We jumped into the pool from the deck and swam facing down and later facing up using backstroke.

Class 4:

This class was all about learning freestyle swimming. We watched videos about freestyle swimming, the entry, pushdown, pushback and recovery (maybe there were different terms for these). We were not supposed to learn breathing while swimming yet. We did a lot of drills of swimming in backstroke and then freestyle, swimming under water and then freestyle, etc.

Fear the Beard!

Crazy persona of Giants' Wilson has sober roots - MLB - Yahoo! Sports

Apple ipad purchase

We bought an ipad this month. It is a very cool device and reinforces my desire to switch over to Mac. It is really a media consumption device and not a computer. You can browse, read books (but too heavy to be a good ereader), read mail, calendar, write simple docs, notes, mails, etc., listen to music, watch netflix and youtube, tweet or blog, use all the cool apps, play games, etc.

And you get to do all these in a very enjoyable and interactive way. That is what i like about ipad. You can do almost all of these on a PC but you will not enjoy doing any of these as much as doing them on ipad. Usability makes all the difference in using these devices.

For example, i felt that my PC became really usable only after i switched over to google chrome (firefox sucks and IE is horrible), itunes, latest version of thunderbird, picasa, etc.

What i dont like about ipad? The screen just has too much glare. The device is a bit too heavy. The screen gets too smudgy after a few minutes. You cannot search within the page in safari web browser.

Another major gripe, you cannot watch any flash content. I think Steve Jobs just picked a religious war and not a technology fight. His reasons for rejecting flash are not very convincing. However, i do agree about the poor quality of the current Adobe plugins. My chrome browser and firefox crashes too often in shockwave plugins.

Apple ipod and ipad are surely "walled gardens". But im not complaining too much because I think the "walled gardens" like the one that Apple built are pretty convenient, pleasant (not many virus infections or mcafee caused slowdowns to prevent them) and makes me very productive. If i want the freedom and anarchy of an open environment, i will go to my PC and Linux machines, but i am happy that i have a choice of going into beautiful but restricted "walled gardens" like what Apple provides.

Amazon to Allow Book Lending on the Kindle - PCWorld

Amazon to Allow Book Lending on the Kindle - PCWorld

Final: Giants win National League Pennant - NYTimes.com

Final: Giants win National League Pennant - NYTimes.com

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Was a REAL TORTURE!

And loved every innings of it, especially the last one!

This year's world series is BLUE state vs RED state!

FEAR THE BEARD!!

GO GIANTS!!

First class postage stamp

As of today, it seems like it is 44cents for 1oz first class US postage.

Early Voting in California 2010

I voted early for this election. This year's voting sheet was really long. It had a long list of different propositions. Some of them really are about lawmaking which in my opinion should be in the hands of the legislators. Isn't that the way "democracy" is supposed to work? You elect legislators and they are supposed to make laws?

California's "Direct Democracy" through the Proposition process, in my opinion, is out of control.

However, I wouldn't want to get rid of it altogether. For example, in the last election, there was Proposition 17, which changed California to have "Open Primaries". I am eagerly hoping to see a lot of moderate candidates as a result of that Prop.

As for the long voting sheet, I really hope that they bring in some good web applications to show the voting recommendations from notable opinion makers, from newspapers or even from your social network. With a very busy schedule, I really do not have the time to read about the merits of a little known proposition in my county government. I would rather take the word of someone that I would trust for this one.

Cellphoon Reapars

I found this from Neeru Khosla's (wife of Vinod Khosla) blog. A very interesting blog post from the director Shekar Kapur. Very heartwarming story reminiscent of "slumdog millionaire".

Who fired Steve Jobs?

Given Larry's comment ( "The H.P. board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago."), I was curious about the smart ones in Apple board who fired Steve Jobs.

Here is the link where i found the answer. The bright businessmen who did this smart move were:

A.C. (mike) Markkula

Peter O Crisp

Arthur Rock

Henry Singleton

Philip Schlein

John Sculley

I remember reading that Steve Jobs insisted on getting rid of Mike Markkula from Apple board as part of his taking the role of Apple CEO again.

I always wondered about this list because when I worked at Taligent, people used to point to a conference room in one of the buildings and mention "this was the conference room where Steve Jobs was fired".

Matt Taibbi on the Tea Party - Rolling Stones article

This article is sure to get more publicity:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904?RS_show_page=0

Malcom Gladwell's Post in Newyorker about social networks

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

(good takedown of social networks as an agent for political change)

Pidgin Docking windows on my desktop

I am using pidgin 2.6.5 (our current IT standard issue) and it has a really bad default option that docks the windows in an annoying way. Once you bring up the buddy list, it will shove the desktop and the other windows to its side. I really couldn't find a way to disable it easily. After googling,

i found this:

http://pidgin.im/pipermail/support/2009-July/004511.html

I followed the advice in this post:

> You've enabled the "Dockable Buddy List" in the "Windows Pidgin > Options" plugin and then dragged your buddy list close enough to the > side of the desktop that it has docked. > > If you disable that feature, it will no longer dock. 

I invoked: 

Tools->Plugins->Windows Pidgin Options->Configure Plugin and disabled (Dockable Buddy List)

Ripping a DVD for iPod/iPhone

Moving workout videos to ipod/iphone makes them easier to take out.

Here is how it is done:

o dvdshrink or dvddecrypter can be used to take the vob files out of the dvd into filesystem.

o Handbrake for Windows can be used to convert the vob files from the file system into mp4 files.

o The desired filesize can be configured during the Handbrake conversion so that the output file is small and can fit in the ipod/iphone.

Remastering the video files into a different DVD turned out to be a challenging task and i gave up on it. I tried with adobe premier and with windows dvd maker and both of them crashed or took too long and hence i gave up.

itunes upgrade problems again and iphone issues

itunes asked me to upgrade to version 10. I took up the offer because i wanted to upgrade to the new ios 4.1 that was made available today. My iphone got very slow after i upgraded to ios and the 4.1 version was going to fix some of those bugs.

Unfortunately, itunes upgrade on my xp machine did not go well. After upgrade, the ipodservice that connected to the devices did not start up. I got the error:

iPodService Module (32-bit) has encountered a problem and needs to close...

I was going to follow Apple's advice and downgrade itunes when i came across this thread:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2565060&start=0&tstart=0

It was a lifesaver. The suggested workaround really worked for me:

Morgane wrote:
I have encountered the same problem related to iPodService.exe v10.0.0.68, also running WinXP SP3.

I experimented a bit and found a workaround, simply using the old iPodService.exe from v9.2.1.4. It seems to work fine so far.
You can do it as follows:

1. With iTunes v9.2.1.4 installed, make a copy of the folder "Program Files\iPod".
2. Install iTunes v10.0.0.68 (confirm/ignore errors related to iPodService.exe).
3. Delete (or rename) the folder "iPod" in "Program Files" and rename the folder "Copy of iPod" (or whatever you named it) created in step 1 back to "iPod"

iTunes now uses the old iPodService.exe.
It works with all my devices (several generations of nano, classic, and iPhone 3), but I don't know if the new devices released yesterday will also work.

Poincare Conjecture

A video that introduces the history of Poincare Conjecture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUoaTrQTM5o

The quote that i liked in it:
By logic we prove by intuition invent
- Henri Poincare

A good primer on this topic: http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/what_is_the_poincare_conjecture/

iphone problems and resolutions

My iphone 3GS stopped working on Friday and required me to upgrade when i tried to sync.

It seems like it was coincidental that there was a new iphone OS release and i had hardware problems at the same time. I spent the Friday trying to get it fixed.

Multiple attempts to upgrade the OS and trying to "Restore" from itunes did not work. I kept getting Error 23 while trying to restore. I took it to ATT store. They tried to sell me all kinds of crap without getting my iphone problem resolved. They directed me to the Apple Store. I went to the Valley Fair Mall Store and unfortunately it was just too crowded and I couldn't get an appointment to get my iphone fixed. Apple Stores have a service department called "Genius Bar"s which address Apple hardware problems. The next appt I could get was on Sunday evening which was too bad. I checked the appointment scheduler on the Apple Store website late at night and I got an appt at 9AM at Palo Alto Store. I drove to the store and the "Genius" guy there got me a new iphone 3GS device. He got it upgraded to ios 4.

But the sync did not work and i thought i would not get my data. Fortunately, when I did a "Restore", I got all the data from the backup. I couldn't be happier. I still had to type in all of the passwords again but all of my data showed up.

iOS 4.0 upgrade seems to be ok. The device freezes infrequently and you had to push the power button to kill the app that froze. Lifehacker site has some good tips about iOS 4.0. My main pet peeve about iphone was that the device changed orientation unpredictably and there was no option to lock the orientation. We now have that feature. My next pet peeve was addressed by the folder functionality which helped in organizing Apps into folders so there was no clutter.

I am now able to use Voice Control feature of iphone. It never worked for me before. But after reading some of the websites, it seems like you have to do 2 things:

o wait till it emits a beep/ding before you say your command

o say your command clearly and confidently like a Jedi master.

If you get the hang of it, it works really well and i am very happy with this feature.

Other cool things are the "Universal Inbox" with the mail, the calendar looks better somehow (I now started receiving invitations properly and it never worked before), so is the mail app.

Overall my gloom about iphone gave way to a good feeling with the brand new phone and the OS upgrade. I think Apple has a store that is as good as its products and a phone that is a lifechanger.

Orthogonal Defect Classification

I have been reading up a lot on this interesting methodology, which specifies a very simple process for capturing the necessary information that can help the stream of defects reported against a software product into a stream of information that can help in improving the software development process. This is a method for doing ongoing rootcause analysis on product defects that is lightweight to implement but turns about high value.

Related to this is an intersting book that i am reading:
Handbook of Software Reliability Engineering
There is a chapter in this book discussing ODC as well.

emacs-clipboard gotcha

I was using emacs on linux and i was accessing emacs window on a vnc terminal window on a windows box. I couldn't seamlessly transfer copy paste, clipboard contents between the windows. Here are the things that must be done:
o For enabling copy paste between vnc and windows, use the app: vncconfig
o For enabling copy paste between emacs window and the other windows on the linux box as well as the windows box from which i was vncing into, you should do this in your .emacs file:
(set-variable (quote x-select-enable-clipboard) t)
o I tried invoking the emacs function: menu-bar-enable-clipboard but it didn't enable the clipboard but once i evaluated the above lisp fragment, things seemed to work fine.

MyMaps on iphone doesn't work - here is a workaround

I was trying to use the MyMaps function to help organize the places to visit for my vacation.
Mymaps works on google earth app on iphone. However, it doesn't work on google map.
Google earth is not very useful for your travel needs.

Here is a wonderful workaround i found from this site:
http://www.skiptotheend.com/blog/2008/08/29/planning-holidays-with-google-mymaps-an-idiots-guide/

It has to do with building the my map, using the kml of the my map to send to a script at:
http://maps.taurich.org/cgi-bin/print-kml.cgi
which formats the map to a useful format and you can then print a pdf of it to view in the iphone.
This is much more functional for viewing the map itself.

However, if you want all the details of the places that you added (their address, etc.) the above instruction wont work. You have to print the map into a pdf and email it to yourself and view it in the iphone. So i ended up using the pdf+email workaround.

Google maps user interface around the map is rough around the edges and leaves much to be desired.

You could book mark the locations in Yelp and Yelp works very well by integrating the Location awareness of iphone. But all these apps are walled gardens. Once you put information in there you need to stay within the features of the app. They do not allow to export out the data to another app for exploiting the strengths of another app.

Dido's Lament

One of my new discoveries in concert music is Dido's Lament.
The aria is pretty simple and is sung when Dido commits suicide and is about to die and she sings it to her maid:

When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate,

The instrumentation is a Passacaglia with descending bass which gives a sense of enormous pathos to the aria. The best version i have heard so far is Susan Graham's.
If you are feeling sad or depressed you want to put your arms around it and give some realization or visualization for the depression, this song and Susan's rendition of it is your best bet. She wrings the pathos out of the words and music which seeps out slowly and takes enormous shape around you in your ears and in your minds eye.

The words "Remember me" reinforces and etches the sadness in your feeling, ensuring it is not brushed away or ignored and hence it pacifies and assuages the dark feeling. At the same time, the words "No Trouble" and "forget my fate" rings again and again it is going to be okay after all.

And all of this is reinforced by the ground bass lines. While they paint a deep blue as they ominously start going down, they resolve each time at a comfortable place where it is dull but it is not so dark. This passage from dark to dull each time consoles the heart and gently pats the soul to reconciliation. The train that started descending down to the abyss in the beginning of the aria come to a gentle stop at the end of the aria.

Wonderful music!

How to Listen to and Understand Great Music - by Robert Greenberg

This is the first teaching company course that i took and it was absolutely fabulous. I finished all 48 lectures of it. The instructor is a very good teacher and his voice and his lecturing style are very suitable for the audiobook. This is not a book that gives you drowsiness as you listen to it and on the other hand it keeps you very attentive.

The course is a combined music history and music appreciation course. I learnt a lot of subject matter from this course. The only complaint i have is that the author sometimes has an edgy sense of humor so this course is perhaps not sharable with small children. But the subject matter itself is very accessible for children too, especially if they have some musical background.

Book Reviews: Patrick Lencioni's Business Fables

I read the following books from: Patrick Lencioni

In general, I hate business or philosophy books that are structured as fables. The following books just made me cringe:
Who Moved My Cheese?

Our Iceberg is Melting

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Books But Patrick's way of storytelling is a bit different and less cringe inducing when the book is well written. However, when he uses the same style for all of his books, soon they get old and as annoying as other fables. Having said that, his concepts are very good and very usable. If you want to cut to the chase and save yourselves from those fables, you can read the methods from his website.

Here are my reviews:

Three Signs Of a Miserable Job

This book talks about how the root of misery in workplace is rooted to 3 things: Immeasurement (lack of measuring one's progress in the job),
Anonymity (when people are not known, recognized and appreciated for what they are and what they bring to the job)
Irrelevance (People need to know how their works matters to someone or a group of people).
I liked the fable part which was actually instrumental in illustrating the above 3 concepts. The fable was about an old executive trying to revive a clunky pizza place using the above 3 concepts.

The Five dysfunctions of a Team
More than the concepts, you need to read the fable which illustrates how an executive revived a team and helped them function well. The five concepts are too many to remember crisply, however, here is how it stuck in my mind.

When you have a team of people, they need to function in such a way that they are accountable to each other. They should expect open criticism from their team and should not feel vulnerable because they could be criticized. So you could have conflicts and you should not be afraid of facing such conficts. Conflicts need to be played out and resolved instead of trying to achieve artificial harmony which does not resolve the underlying conflicts. After having such conflicts and the decisions are made, everyone needs to stick to their commitments and be accountable for those commitments. And the team must pay attention to the results of the team. So individual goals should give way to the goals of the team.


Death By Meeting
This book is when the fable structure stopped working for me. Essentially this book talks about how the meetings must be like performances. They should have drama and conflict and they have to be played out and resolved. Just like the different forms of performances (ex: sitcom, serial drama, movie, etc.) you should have different types of meetings: daily checkins, weekly meetings, monthly strategic and quarterly offsite reviews.


Three Big Questions For A Frantic Family
This fable was the most boring. But the concept was interesting. It asked families to make a value statement for themselves embodying what made their family unique. Then it asked families to identify their most urgent rallying cry (like: buying a new home, getting the child into college, etc.) for things they should do in the next 2 to 6 months. Then it asks to identify defining objectives, the way they will achieve the rallying cry. Then it asks to outline the standard objectives, i.e. standing responsibilities. This is a good framework for families.

I liked all these books but the above order indicates my ranking for this series.

Interesting program in KQED forum this morning

Interesting forum program : Astronomical Update

I need to check out the book from:

* Ken Croswell, astronomer and author of "The Lives of Stars"
More info:
* View images from the Hubble Telescope : at HubbleSite.org

Need to check out the book and the website.

Theodore Rex [ABRIDGED] [AUDIOBOOK] (Audio CD)

I listened to this book about 2 years ago. A fine book detailing the life of Teddy Roosevelt one of the great American Presidents. This was a man with a great appetite for everything in life. His hunting was big, his political career was supersize, his dedication to his causes and what he got done for them were big too. You can learn a lot about the way American politics is run in this book through his life. Although times have changed some of the basic workings of political life has not changed much. This was the first guy who understood the power of the bully pulpit, which still defines an important way in which the presidency operates, even in this era where anyone having an internet connection can have a pulpit. Here is also a president who sowed the seeds of American imperialism, which is still an important tendency of American foreign policy. Here is also a hunter and a conservationist who did so much to the cause of environment. American presidents still reach over to conservation initiatives for defining their legacies and Teddy set the blueprint for the grand presidential conservation initiatives. Here is also a Republican who started out representing the interests of the rich and the powerful and who turned into a polar opposite of a progressive minded populist reformer. For me, while this book illustrated all of the above points about Teddy, the essence of what i got from this book was a portrait of a man of BIG ambition, BIG actions, BIG appetite, BIG impact and BIG legacy.

Book Review: Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (Paperback)

Recently finished the audiobook version of this book.
Engrossing book for me, combined elements of History, Technology, Governance, Politics, Nautical science, technology, astronomy in this story of how Longitudes were "discovered" or more correctly how they were established. A great account of how the nautical and navigational technology advanced through the active involvement of monarchy and the royal institutions in Britain. This is another example of how the original inventors only partially benefit from their hard work and innovation and how others exploit them and make profits from them. One more lesson is how the academic group think can hinder innovation and how practical techniques often overtake other techniques that are considered to be technically purer. In this case, the "Lunar method" of finding the longitude was considered technically more accurate by the academics, but in practice it was impossibly difficult. Meanwhile, the chronometer based method was much more easier. However the astronomy establishment looked down upon the chronometer method and threw all kinds of roadblocks at it. However, the practical chronometer method succeeded.

Last 12 months in SQL query

After some researching i found the way to query for last 12 months in sql:

The following expressions can be used:

select add_months(trunc(current_date, 'MM'), -12), trunc(current_date, 'MM')-1 from dual;

here trunc function truncates current date by the granularity of month so the returned date out of current date is the first date of current month.

add_months function is used to subract 12 months out of that date. Using interval was not recommended for this purpose according to asktom:
http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:1157035034361

This code bit retrieves the DAY of the first month (sunday or monday, etc.)
select to_char( trunc(current_date, 'MM'), 'DAY' ) from dual;


This link gave a good overview of all available oracle sql functions:
http://www.ss64.com/orasyntax/functions.html

Using these expressions in OBIEE

I was trying to use these in OBIEE Answers report. But had no luck. Still has to figure that out.
If i used these i get the following OBIEE error:
Error getting drill information:

Error Codes: YQCO4T56:OPR4ONWY:U9IM8TAC:OI2DL65P

Odbc driver returned an error (SQLExecDirectW).

State: HY000. Code: 10058. [NQODBC] [SQL_STATE: HY000] [nQSError: 10058] A general error has occurred. [nQSError: 27002] Near <(>: Syntax error [nQSError: 26012] . (HY000)

Book Review: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (Paperback)

I read this book during the beginning of last year (2008) and have been practicing this method for getting organized for about an year. I can totally vouch for its effectiveness. The take away for me is that organize your work into a simple system consisting of file folders and a prescribed way to label and organize your folders. Then bring all your work items into that system. Then crank this system periodically by processing the items that come into the system. The premise is that if you have this operating system for your work, you will not get items piled up on your desk but you will be processing the items efficiently.

I have to admit that i am rather poor follower. The author's advice about using a good filing system to organize your workstuff is spot on. Labelling your files, making them easily accessible are all valuable advice. I have switched over to the plain manilla folder system instead of hanging folders. One practical tip i found out is that, if you want to use plain manilla folders, the best way to keep them standing up inside your filing cabinet is using bookends, especially the heavy tall magnetic bookmarks do the job admirably well. Authors advice to put everything into paper and organizing the folders instead of keeping anything inside your brain is very valuable. Surely by doing this, you reduce the stress. The only thing is that you need to visit your filing system periodically. That is the issue that keeps stumping me and I keep telling myself to go back to visiting my inboxes and processing my incoming stuff.

Book Review: ENIAC, the triumphs and tragedies of the world's first computer / Scott McCartney.

History of computing is full of unsung geniuses and hard work put on by so many people who are not given enough credit for their work. Eckert and Mauchly are these 2 great inventors of the first electronic computer who were not given enough credit for the invention of computer. This book claims that the computer scientist: John von Neumann stole away the credit for a lot of the ideas (especially the memory device) from the ENIAC team. History is kind to those who articulated and popularized an idea rather than the original minds who conceived an idea. The book also vividly illustrates how many of the inventions, especially those as complex as a computer do not occur out of the blue, but they are the result of a long tradition and history of ideas proposed around them and happen when various other conditions become favorable and the right people with prepared minds happen to be at the right place to take advantage of all those favorable factors to push the invention out. Also once an invention comes into being, it gathers momentum of its own and soon enough the envelope gets pushed so far ahead that the original invention appears so far removed and ancient. ENIAC is a fitting example of that where a light switch has more computing power than the 30 ton ENIAC.

Book Review: The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson, Sr. and the Making of IBM

This book read like a novel, in fact a better novel than many that i have read. It starts with white collar crime then a life remade through determination, then rich business exploits and adventures follow, but it has drama and ups and downs. The central character is a charismatic super-hero but he also has a number of fantastic flaws. There is a lot of family dysfunction and tragedy, but still the son receives the baton from the father and excels his achievements in many ways.

This is about Thomas Watson Sr. who built IBM to be a great corporation by building a great culture and becoming an embodiment of that culture. IBM is a very customer oriented and sales oriented company. But it also made huge R&D investments, spearheaded enormous number of technical advancements and did a number of "bet the farm" technological initiatives. So they are no doubt a technology company. But the important thing about IBM is that it a very customer and sales oriented company. And the reason lies in it's history and its roots laid out by Thomas Watson Sr. And this book essentially gets into the essence of what IBM is all about by dissecting the life of Mr. Watson.

Some of the fascinating things to learn from this book are how the computing era dawned from the mechanical calculators and the cash registers. Mr. Watson figured out how to sell technology long before others did. This explains totally the "IBM Middleware commercials" which only talks about the solutions and the business benefits and never gets into the technological mumbo-jumbo.

Lou Gerstener in his book: Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround
talks about how his turnaround job was essentially to re-establish IBM's culture like it was under the Watsons. Reading this book will really help in understanding Lou's book and what he accomplished at IBM.

When I read that book, Mr. Watson's persona often reminded me of Larry Ellison (Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle ) with their outsized ego, penchant for publicity and self-promotion and impeccable business instincts. I was delighted to find out that the author thought the same too.