Howdy World!

Feels like a freshmen once again while in the C++ class, and writing my first program all over again! lol…. it’s so much fun and exciting to try new things which can make existing tasks run so amazingly with scope for possibilities… and today it’s the Windows Live Essentials that made me felt that ways.

Today, I am writing this blog post using Windows Live Writer! Amazing tool… makes it so much easy and flexible.. can’t stop imagining writing blogs at my own pace and then posting it when it’s done…! …ya I know, sounds like the expected, it does have a full-fledged toolbars and dictionary to help me stay on-course and keeps the typos off my blogs.,… hmm… I certify it…COOL!

So, yes that’s one of the tools in Windows Live Essentials, others include but are not limited to; Windows live mesh, live messenger, live SkyDrive, photo gallery, movie maker, outlook connector pack,… to name a few… and it makes me say Wow.. literally!

Never did I had so many meaningful and useful tools at my disposal… all at at once… which really were needed and worked like a charging bull! Now that’s a strong statement! & needless to say these all have been re-engineered/re-designed and once you set your hands on them... you will understand what I really mean... :)

Overall I am happy with how things have come together technology-wise,… a few days ago, via a twitter or a Facebook connection, I saw the video advertisement about Windows Phone 7.. here it is, .. you can watch it below…

And that’s the same idea behind the Windows Live Essentials, .. to enable us to to do our stuff much efficiently and easily. Simple idea but harder to get there, when you got trillion apps, touch screens, shake and compass and all the features that were supposed to help us… got us distracted in ways that we liked… !

So, here I am.. working on these things and hoping to speak to a bunch more at TechDays 2010 in Toronto at the Collaboration Lounge with all these Technologies and enjoying some fun time at the XBox Kinect with the Microsoft Canada team.. would be fun… I hope… if I don’t get glued to the Kinect itself… lol… cheers!

Microsoft TechDays 2010

Intelligence

I thought, I was fairly intelligent based on handful of occasions, when my ideas/thoughts of something completely new, came up few months later, as new products in the industry.
I thought, boy, I have it in me.. I can think from ground up! Such parallelism.. hmm..

A week ago, I was jumping on tweets from one to other, all coming from the people I follow. Then I happened to jump to a tweet by Uday Chopra. Yes, that's right, the Bollywood actor, Uday Chopra (@udaychopra). And, I was surprisingly taken aback by how intelligent others are, too. Uday, by the way, was tweeting about "Bell's theorem" and "Super-determinism".

Now, I have Uday Chopra to tell me to sit back in my thinking chair. For those, who would like to read on what Bell's theorem is & possibly thinking, what the hell "Super-determinism" is, then guess what... you gotta Google it yourslelf! ;)

Anyways, I say that I am on my thinking chair again, because, I feel, like all other things, intelligence is relative too, & that it grows to folks, who would be hard to identify and relate to, by other intelligent folks, until they both meet.

Makes any sense? ...

Let me see, if I can explain my mind out here. I have contemplated for a long time, 2 possibilities:


Possibility case 1:

Case 1 of an intelligent NASA astronaut, academic topper. Guru of electronics, mechanics, mathematics and other-tics. Lets say, this guy has gained all the knowledge available & now, his hunger has increased many-fold to seek the knowledge of universe and multidimensional intelligence unknown to us & other stuff which I cant even think of. (Yes, I accepted!)

So, this guy, after all his years into seeking and doing everything towards this goal, finally finds the "god", the one master-key-answer. Now what?

With all that knowledge, mental-elevation & the master-key-answer, all beyond our imagination, one thing I can think of first is, this guy's knowledge hunger now is permanently fixed! There's no more seeking or "wondering" for him anymore.

Now with all that knowledge, it doesn't makes any sense in thinking if he tries to form his small gang and goes for taking control over the world! or do something on the same lines!! naaa......

What I can think of is; 1) he will filter out intelligence and will educate only the type which humankind will benefit from, collectively. 2) lead a complete opposite of the life, he has lived till now.


Possibility case 2:

And that complete opposite life, I always thought was of a country man, (the case 2, guy). This country man who, lives with his family, has his own farm, livestock, pets and lived each day fully as it comes..... finding joy, happiness and love in all the simple things in his lifestyle. He doesn't care or is aware of, what ISLV is, or what Large Hadron Collider does! All he cares of is his family and happiness thereof.

----

The reason I think the astronaut would lead a completely different lifestyle to what he has lived till now, is because; all the knowledge, intelligence, the "ultimate truth".. and beyond.., is all Zero to him now, zero as in - there is no more distance of understanding of it to/from him, it is in him, the wisdom, the awareness.
& so, I think, the farmer, the remote country-man, could be the only someone, who the astronaut would have interest in, as he could have been the only guy, who would be so far from this but living the exact life, as someone exhausted after a long-long run wud live...

So, looks like, the point I am making here is; Decisions made with having no knowledge & decisions made after having all the knowledge possible, are hardly differentiable! ... think over it..

& all others like me, are somewhere else, in the equation of wisdom and life...

As Einstein once said: "There are only two ways to live your life;
One is as though nothing is miracle; the other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Leave comments. Would be great to hear all your crap too. ;)

Twitter-ation.. & things like that...

Tweetak tweetak twititya..
Wow, twitter has in a way revolutionized communication. Recently, I found people from all walks of life having an audience to share directly without any middle-men, media, or editors.... to talk-to, inspire or just simply connecting with thoughts. I find this communication very genuine as it gives a one-to-one touch. The way all this has penetrated into everyone's daily live is amazing!

And this, has always got me excited & interested; the useful applications of technology. I had a strong inclination towards achieving what a certain tool could best possibly deliver, rather then how amazing a tool was. Although, not undermining the tool, I always found the value of the tool in what it could help deliver & leverage other tasks/applications.

Useful application of technology:
Back in the college days, we were learning C++. In one of those fresher classes we were introduced to writing code on sorting, palindromes etc, & were assigned to develop variants of these programs ourselves at home. I had read and heard amazing powers of C++ and really wanted to dive deeper then what was assigned. So, instead of doing the assignment, my first real C++ program was a system password access utility integrated at the BIOS level, I even made it a little colorful too, used C++ graphic, fonts and system beeps for wrong password entered; flashing screens on wrong passwords. All colors and behaviors thrown-in to make it look like a real BIOS utility. That was some real hard application with lots of fun! I would go back to the code every few days to re-do things and make it work a bit better. I enjoyed doing all that.

Also, that reminds me of one another episode related to coding and design. Back in the college days, me and my partner, Navnit, had a project to do. Navnit's focus was mostly on the code, whilst my focus was mostly on the GUI. I was more worried about how the data readability and how it would make sense to the user. The "beauty components", as Navnit would refer it, humorously. Now, it turns out, that's what we have been missing all this while. The data making sense & user experience, that is. Something that was just a cliche then, now is a job profile and organization across all horizontals and verticals are aware and implementing positions to get that "beauty component" working.

At the end:
Utilities like twitter, are not just codes, they are purposes, supported by good codes and an interfaces that combines and actually make the code generate value & achieve it's purpose.

Some twitter people I enjoy reading from include but are not limited to;
@ShashiTharoor @BeingSalmanKhan @DeepakChopra @simonsinek @RicksterCDN

the case of a blank cd

Lessons from small incidents are sometimes priceless.
Key: Have an open mind, and ask questions.

I was at work, when I overheard one of the team leads on a bridge call, on speakerphone. The guy on the other side required a blank cd to move/store some data. The team lead got up and started looking around for the blank cd and got it in next few minutes from a different manager.

I was watching this, and at the end asked anyway, to the team lead, if he did found a blank cd, to which he said "yes, John had a few". I cheered him, and he smiled and went back to his desk.


Background:

During my college internship preparation, I got a lifetime of wish coming true, in the make of a telephonic internship interview from the dream factory itself, Microsoft at Redmond. I prepared for it all day and night, and every time I lifted my head from books and the laptop, I magnetically flew into the dream of how it all will be working with Microsoft finally, and how I would just do anything to be there... (not that I dont dream the same..), but back then I learnt one very important quality.

The internship interview was for Program manager. The quality I learnt was of, "asking questions".
It didn't matter as greatly, that you knew the subject deeply, as compared to, if you are an actively thinking individual who processes information actively and ask questions about things, to confirm or to understand/learn more, before investing your time and resources.

In the telephonic interview, I was asked, how would I redesign/rebuild a house which had no walls but just the fully furnished floor, and a limited budget to finish.

Of course, most would agree that the first thing that comes to the mind naturally is, how much budget you have and how much time you got to do this. And the interviewer, wont give out hints to you, he/she will just listen and mark you on that.

So, as I said, asking questions, has to come from actively processing things and removing the "no pop-up questions" restriction from your mind. Let it ask and counter-ask.

So, In case of the CD, it's important to ask about the whats & whys.
What would you like to achieve?
What data are you trying to move/copy? (Is it alright to copy "that" data to a removable disk?)
Do we have an alternative to achieve that objective?
Can only copying be a solution?
Can it be copied to other network drives?, how about a USB stick ?
What better can we do, for situations like these, next time onwards?

And in case of the unfinished house:
Why is this house unfinished?
Who owned it and why only the floor is intact but the walls are all gone?
Is it a demolition or a result of a natural disaster or something else?
Why do the owner now wants only the walls built, when there's so much scope for a new house design? Is it legal & safe to rebuild?
What if an event like this happens again? (the one that destroyed this house)
Would it make any financial sense to re-do it as compared to buy a new one or build a fresh one?


Lessons:

• The answers fuel the questions towards greater clarity and understanding of what you are dealing with. So, always start with asking questions to yourself and always try answering and figuring out, by asking or by studying about it.

• State your requirements in more comprehensive broad terms, to avoid bounding people to the words and terms. For example, I read this somewhere: If a fire safety manual would say "grab a blanket, and cover the victim". It closes the reader's mind for the moment, and forces the reader to run and look for a "blanket", when anything that could have covered the victim and terminated the air supply as a fire fuel, would have done the job!, including your own coat, or a good roll on the floor. What we want to achieve is to block the air supply fueling the fire. Likewise, asking for a help to achieve an objective is more open ended, and leaves the reader to evaluate options, think with an open mind, as compared specifically asking for CD. So, what can be done is, state your objective clearly then maybe followed by what you think is the tool required to achieve it. If your listener/reader is an active, open-minded thinking individual, he/she will get the information.