An Enlightening Story

There was a small family of husband, wife and a child. The child was very sharp in observing the habits of their parents. Everyday she was observing that her parents were going to bathroom and lock the door from inside. After a while they were coming back. She did not know what they were doing inside but she noticed that they lock the door when they go inside. One fine day she went to bathroom and locked the door from inside. She played with water for a while. Her mother was busy in doing some other work. She did not notice that her child is inside bathroom. After a while, the child started to shout that someone has locked the door. Her mother came and told the child that she had locked the door from inside and asked her to open but the child did not understand that. She started to cry louder. Her mother was helpless. She did not know what should be done. She called her husband, her neighbors and they broke the door and helped the child to come out.

Now relating the same story to our life: We are in the same state as that of the child. We have closed the door of the ultimate truth. We have locked ourselves in this materialistic world and everyday we think that we have many problems. We think that someone is forcing us to stay in this locked state. There are many books which tell us to open the door, many saints advice us to do the same but we don't understand that. We don't know how to control ourselves. We are always in the search of happiness but we forget that happiness is within ourselves.

This Kannada quote describes our state more clearly : ಅಂಗೈಯಲ್ಲಿ ಬೆಣ್ಣೆ ಇಟ್ಕೊಂಡು ಊರೆಲ್ಲ ತುಪ್ಪಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ಹುಡುಕಾಡಿದ ಹಾಗೆ ಆಯ್ತು. "ಆತ್ಮಾರಾಮಾ ಆನಂದ ರಾಮಣ" - We get the real happiness when we look within ourselves.

I have started reading "Mankutimmana Kagga" and I am very much inspired by the way it is written. It is written in such a way that we can easily relate to our current state. I will be posting few more thoughts in the coming days. Your thoughts are welcome.

My Thunderbird - An Awesome Bike

I was planning to buy a bike from past 5 months. I always wanted to buy a bike which is a high funda technical bike and have great looks. My first thought was to buy a pulsar 150. My sister suggested me to have a test ride on my brother-in-law's bike - Royal Enfield's Thunderbird which is a 350cc bike. I was initially very reluctant to ride that bike as I had no experience in riding a bike.

I learnt bike from Ashoka who is my close friend, hostel-mate and classmate during my engineering days. I owned a TVS-XL which was less than 80cc :) during my engineering days but had a great experience riding that vehicle for more than 11,000 kms. It did not give me even a single trouble during these 4 years not even a puncture :). Even now I have an immense attachment to that vehicle. I use that during weekends.

After some hesitation I finally decided to have a ride. I did not know how to start that bike also :). My brother-in-law thought me the basics of that great bike. On that day I rode the bike for around 2 or 3 kms. I was really impressed by that ride. The pickup was great. The looks were awesome. It was a sort of love at first ride. After that ride I started looking at the details of that bike. I started reading reviews. Many people suggested me not to buy that bike as it is very heavy but I could not take my heart away from that bike. I went to other bike showrooms to have a test ride. No other bike was an alternative to thunderbird. One fine day I went to Royal Enfield showroom to ask for the onroad price. I then realized that a newer model of thunderbird is coming and hence there is no stock of the bike. They told me it might take a month to start booking of the bike. During that time I read the technical details about this bike and I could not make my mind to buy any other bike. Around 20 days later, they gave me a call to book the bike. I went to the showroom and booked my new Thunderbird twinspark. After a week my new thunderbird arrived. Now my bike's kilometer reading says 300. Really I enjoyed every kilometer I have ridden on this bike except the first 20 km which was my first ride from showroom to my home as I was afraid that someone will hit my bike on the very first day :). Now I am very much comfortable with my new bike Thunderbird - Twinspark.

The Number Seven

It has been a long time since I blogged last time. This time I thought I would write something different, So I chose to write about number 7. I was always wondering that why Ramayan has 7 sections . Was there some numerology associated with it? I then started reading about the same. I found some of the interesting things so I thought I would share with you. This time I will use kannada to blog about this as I don’t want to dilute the content by translating it to English.

• ರಾಮ ಎನ್ನುವ ಶಬ್ದವೇ ೭ರ ಸಂಕೇತ. ಅಕ್ಷರಾಂಕದ ಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ರ=೨, ಮ=೫ ರಾ+ಮ=೨+೫=೭.
  
• ರಾಮ ಹತ್ತು ಅವತಾರಗಲ್ಲಿ ಏಳನೇ ಅವತಾರ.
• ರಾಮ ಜನಿಸಿದ್ದು ಏಳನೇ ನಕ್ಷತ್ರ ಪುನರ್ವಸುವಿನಲ್ಲಿ.
• ವಿಶ್ವದ ವಿಶ್ವತೋಮುಖವನ್ನು ಒಳಗೊಂಡ ಸಂಖ್ಯೆ ಏಳು.
• ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಾಂಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಒಟ್ಟು ಲೋಕಗಳು ಏಳು: ಭೂ:, ಭುವ:, ಸ್ವ:, ಮಹ:, ಜನ:, ತಪ:, ಸತ್ಯಮ್.
• ಭೂಮಿಯಲ್ಲು ಸಪ್ತ ದ್ವೀಪಗಳು; ಸಪ್ತ ಸಾಗರಗಳು.
• ಭಾರತದಲ್ಲಿ ಸಪ್ತ ಕುಲಪರ್ವಗಳು.
• ನಾಮದ ಮೂಲವಾದ ನಾದದಲ್ಲಿ ಮೂಲತ: ಸಪ್ತ ಸ್ವರಗಳು.
• ವೇದ ಮಂತ್ರದಲ್ಲೂ ಮೂಲತ: ಸಪ್ತ ಛಂದಸ್ಸುಗಳು: ಗಾಯತ್ರಿ, ಉಷ್ಣಿಕ, ಅನುಷ್ಟುಪ್, ಬೃಹತಿ, ಪಂಕ್ತಿ, ತ್ರಿಷ್ಟುಪ್, ಜಗತೀ.
• ಕಾಲವೂ ಏಳು ವಾರಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಭಾಗಗೊಂಡಿವೆ.
• ಕಾಲಪ್ರಜ್ಞೆ ಕೊದತಕ್ಕ ಸೂರ್ಯನ ಕಿರಣಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಏಳು ವರ್ಣಗಳು. ಇವೆ ಸೂರ್ಯನ ಏಳು ಕುದುರೆಗಳು.
• ಪ್ರತಿಮನ್ವಂತರದಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಧಾನ ಋಷಿಗಳ ಸಂಖ್ಯೆ ಏಳು. ಸಪ್ತರ್ಷಿಗಳು.
• ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಾಂಡ ಹೇಗೋ ಹಾಗೆ ಪಿಂಡಾಂಡ ಕೂಡ. ಈ ದೇಹವೂ ಏಳು ಧಾತುಗಳಿಂದ ನಿರ್ಮನಗೊಂಡಿದೆ.
• ದೇಹದಲ್ಲಿ ಚೈತನ್ಯ ತುಂಬಿರೊದು ಸಪ್ತ ಪ್ರಾಣಗಳಿಂದ. ಐದು ಜ್ಞಾನೇಂದ್ರಿಯಗಳು, ಮನಸ್ಸು ಮತ್ತು ಬುದ್ಧಿ.
• ಆಧ್ಯಾತ್ಮ ಸಾಧಾಕನು ಮೇಲೆರಬೇಕಾದ ನಾಡಿ ಕೇಂದ್ರಗಳು ಏಳು: ಮೂಲಧರ, ಸ್ವಧಿಷ್ಠಾನ, ಮನಿಪೂರ, ಅನ್ನಹತ, ವಿಶುದ್ದಿ, ಅಜ್ಞಾ ಮತ್ತು ಬುದ್ಧಿ.

Referenced material : ವಾಲ್ಮೀಕಿ ಕಂಡ ರಾಮಾಯಣ - ಶ್ರೀ ಬನ್ನಂಜೆ ಗೋವಿ೦ದಾಚಾರ್ಯ

Twenty-Twenty-Twenty keep your eyes healthy

During a recent visit to an optician, one of my friend was told of an exercise for the eyes by a specialist doctor that he termed as "20-20-20". I thought I should share this will all of you. It is applicable to all of us who spend most of the time sitting in front of computer.

20-20-20:

Step 1:

After every 20 minutes of looking into the computer screen, turn your head and try to look at any object placed at least 20 feet away.
Why? This changes the focal length of your eyes, a must-do for the tired eyes.

Step 2:

Try and blink your eyes for 20 times in succession
Why? To moisten your eyes

Step 3:

Time permitting of course, one should walk 20 paces after every 20 minutes of sitting in one particular posture.
Why? Helps blood circulation for the entire body.

Eyes are mirror of the soul, so do take care of them, they are priceless...

Otherwise eye would be like this.....

I have written a small batch file for windows which locks my screen every 20 minutes. I will share the procedure to do the same :

Step 1:
Copy the following contents into a file, say "lock.bat" (Dont miss .bat extension)

@echo off
rundll32.exe user32.dll, LockWorkStation
cls

Step 2:
Goto Scheduled Tasks
(Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> Scheduled Tasks)

Step 3:

• Create a new scheduled task (File --> New --> Scheduled Task)
• Double click on that and a dialog box opens.
• In the Run option, Browse the .bat file saved.
• Check the box "Run only if loggod on".
• Goto schedule Tab. Make the necessary changes and then click on Advanced settings.
• Check the box "Repeat Task" and fill the values that suits you. (I scheduled for 20 min and duration as 24 hours).

Now your screen locks for every 20 minutes. If you dont want to lock your screen but you need to get an alert after 20 minutes the change the batch file to the following code:

@echo off
echo.
echo Turn your head and try to look at any object placed at least 20 feet away.
echo.
pause

I Know that I wrote a long article but hope it is useful. Comments are most welcome.

Browse without Browser!!!

I was always under the impression that we cannot browse the internet without the browser but this is not the case in reality. We can browse without any browser!!! and a patent has been awarded for this innovative idea!.

The method uses a telephone device to browse. It begins by connecting the telephone device to the server. The server will have a speech recognition software installed in it which will recognize the user's voice and converts it into command and searches the internet based on the input and it will give back the output which will be read to the user by another software which is able to recognize the content. This method has an option for the user to ask the server to fax a copy of the webpage to him. A detailed description of this method can be find here

Acheivements in 2007 at IBM

I spent 2 tenures in IBM during the year 2007. The first one was the internship tenure of four and a half months. It was a great experience to start my career at IBM. We were six interns who worked during this period. The problem that we were asked to solve was to find a way to host the eclipse on the server and provide a browser interface to access it. We got a very good exposure to various technologies that were emerging. Initially we did not have any idea about how to solve the problem that was given to us but we gave the name Eclifox (Eclipse on the firefox) to the project. We had no clue how to put the first step but we were quite fortunate that we had great mentors at IBM who really guided us in approaching the problem. We then slowly started to make some experiments. We got some breakthroughs and finally we succeeded in building a prototype to prove that the problem can be solved. We got some great feedbacks from managers and even criticisms but no one expected that interns' project will make so much voice in IBM. Finally our project got into alphaworks. Here is the link to our project. As per today's status it has been downloaded 609 times!

In the second half of the year, I worked as regular employee at IBM. The Internship really helped me in making my life comfortable at IBM. Currently I am project zero committer. I along with my colleague got 2nd place in hackday which is an event that takes place in IBM to encourage the employees to show their talent in various areas. I participated in another contest called Coderfest'07 which is again a programming contest internal to IBM and our team got qualified to quarterfinals which is going to start from 7th jan of this year. Among 1800 and odd participants 37 teams are qualified for quarterfinals. I took part in one of the voluntary projects which had an aim to help the freshers who join IBM and we ended up in building a nice portal which had all the necessary information for the freshers and got some very good appreciation form our directors.

To conclude, 2007 was a good year in my career at IBM. I hope I will do even better in 2008 and will strive hard to achieve that.