ticking away

Thus far, I've avoided all time management gyaan as if it were the plague. The very phrase embodies the pith of everything that is mundane, lifeless, unimaginative, stale...
Thus far, I've managed very well without any extra effort at it.

But of late I'm finding more to do at hand than I am able to juggle and that made me willing to open an e-book I chanced upon. The first sentence of the first chapter had me hooked:

“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
Gustave Flaubert

I haven't read it entirely yet, but I have liked whatever I've read.
Here it is: http://wishful.fileburst.com/creativetime.pdf.
(via wishfulthinking.co.uk/blog/)

we didn't start the fire

He says it all:


(Feedreaders, I'm afraid you might have to click through to see the video. But it's worth the effort)

It is also uncannily reflective of my mood at the moment.

Update: Sorry, the video is off. Someone played spoilsport.. Back again.

video podcasts

I came across a wonderful video podcast that animates the New Yorker cartoons into small 15-second clips. They're really neat and some of them are hilarious!
Check them out: http://www.ringtales.com/

Some of these are on YouTube as well. Here are two that are very funny:






(If you're reading this in a feed-reader, you might have to click through to see the videos)

Video Postcasts are great. I love them! They're so much better than dreary audio podcasts that need 10 times more concentration. If you know of more cool video podcasts that you can recommend, please leave a comment!

code reuse

Remember my Aswan posts (1, 2, 3, 4)?
Well, I just came across an article talking about how Indian software services companies are discovering the same inherent inefficiencies I mention and how they are starting to move to the first level of reuse.

It's ironic how after regurgitating the hajaar benefits of reusability in every exam through the four years of computer engineering, everyone promptly forgets about it after getting into Infosys (or Wipro or TCS... ).

The change in mindset that the Mint article highlights is, I think, the result of the widespread adoption of the Open Source philosophy. Source code of software has become less of a commodity in the minds of people.

Aswan is about the next level of reuse - harnessing collective intelligence to help build software. And service industries are the best proving ground for such a concept.

Aswan: http://umangjaipuria.blogspot.com/2007/05/aswan-part-1.html
Article: http://www.livemint.com/2007/12/03233411/Software-firms-reap-benefits-o.html

yellow

It is such a relief to finally start getting out of convalescence. Apparently all the "yellowness" will take another month or two to disappear but this is the end and I can officially stop being a vegetable now.

I was looking at losing a lot of weight to be the main upside of this long drawn bout of jaundice but it seems like I am doomed to do this the hard way. As consolation, I now know new limits of my patience. Heh.

The real good thing that has happened in these past five past weeks is the breaking of a long rut that I had gotten into. These things are a vicious cycle, almost impossible to notice while you're in it and it only goes downhill. Even brief vacations had not been able to get me out of this. But more on this later. Change is in the offing...