Anand Rajendran says

When we think, plan, and try to execute….there is a sense of boredom that sets in.
When we work within the realm of limited mind, the BIG vision cannot be accomplished.

Bablis first presentation (Using Linux of course)

Last night in Trieste with Ciro

Last night in Trieste with Ciro, originally uploaded by devranjandas.

This was our last night in Trieste, Italy when Ciro played the piano. I went into the lab again and again to get prints of notes from Internet so that Ciro could play a Hindi song on Piano. After that we had a prize distribution ceremony where Ciro was the guest of honour who would hand over the prizes. The prizes were for the best card player for the year during the one month stay at ICTP. The Sri Lankan guy Dushyant was the best player.The Pakistani and me were chosen the best new comers because we learnt playing cards in ICTP. We hardly slept that night. Ciro is a computer sciences researcher from Peru. In the photo are (from left) Rajiv Manohar, Lucknow, Harish Masand,Ahmedabad, Pakistani guy whose name I have forgotten, Nitin Kawade, BARC, India, Khan sab, Pakistan, J P Rao, Kalpakkam, Ciro, Peru, Dev Ranjan Das, BARC and Pradeep, Mount Abu, India.

The most wonderful way to be happy

If not anything else my recent foray into the “Art of Living Foundation” (which lays a great emphasis on happyness*) has forced me to find out what could be the best way to be happy. They say service without any doership is what makes us happy. I came across this beautiful story that emphasizes that.

http://www.deeshaa.org/the-man-who-planted-trees/

This story appeared in Atanu Deys blog called Deesha. (http://www.deeshaa.org) Atanu Dey is an economist who returned from the US with an intention to improve the rural infrastructure in India. He presently is based in Kolkatta and his model of RISC (Rural Infrastructure and Services Common) is widely accepted by policy makers in India. His blog is a must read and so is the story I am refering to above.

Some photgraphs

I have a cunning plan

"I have a cunning plan. Why not make the New York giants our friends", said King Julian la Madagaskar.

So my plan is why not start a Das Family educational fund..wherein every employed person in the family will donate 1% of his yearly income to the fund. Then this fund can be utilised to buy computers for juniors in the family. Also travel of these youngsters can be arranged with this fund to different places. Travelling to different places at this younger age will make them empowered.

Stir up ur lives.

I kept drinking my tea sweet-less all through, and realized only at the end that sugar was there at the bottom; All I needed was to stir a little to make my tea sweet.

Life signals you so often..

Life signals us so often and we ignore the signals. Sunil told me this story about his friend once. One evening his friend called him up and told him that hes feeling a bit depressed and wanted to talk to him. Sunil was a bit busy. So he thought he would go there the next day. Next day when he reached there he was informed that his friend had committed suicide the last night. Sunil repents to this day having not gone to the friends place that night. We always fall into this trap of perpetual postponement. Life can be harsh at times. Before postponing something, think twice.
The most important things that I have learnt from the job (of course the hard way) are the following. I hereby spend some time in writing them down.

1. One should never fall into this perpetual mode of postponement. As far as possible complete whatever you can do in the day. A little stretch only makes us different people. Happiest people in the world are people who stretch. (physically also..i mean people who do Yoga).

2. The second most important thing I know is proper communication. How to report to your seniors and your co-workers at office has the greatest impact on the kind of work that we do. Try to inform everybody about everything. If you have doubts about what to report, take my advice just report everything. Your seniors might help you out if you report them in time.

3. The third most important thing is commitment. Stick to what you have committed. I have often felt that committing some thing is quite easy. However sticking to your commitment is difficult. Like we do, when we apply for examinations. We are pretty enthusiastic when we apply for exams. But when exams come, we are afraid and feel that the exam should be postponed. It takes courage to confront situations. So also meeting commitments requires courage.

MUSIC 2.0

KNOW WHAT PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD ARE LISTENING TO... AND TELL THEM WHAT IS YOUR MUSIC SENSE LIKE... FIND MORE BY VISITING THE SITE LAST.FM AND GETTING YOURSELF AN ACCOUNT.
I HAVE JUST TRIED TO EMBED THE LAST.FM CLIENT HERE SO THAT U CAN LISTEN TO SOME MUSIC WHILE READING THE BLOG.

Todays Reccomendations

I spent the first half of the day playing cricket. With so much work pending at office I hurriedly biked to office. Only to find that I wanted to look at the firefox extensions. It started there and stopped at 7:00 PM. I surfed all through the time in the office. So couldnt find time for any work. From Firefox, I went to Performancing and from there to this Research Scientist in Google. So I will put up todays reccomendations.

1. Performancing (Search on Google)
2. http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/
3. www.jeteye.com
4. http://www.guidingeyes.org/ (USA is horrible yar..see such a buisness idea..dogs for the blind)
5. http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/: T V Raman : the Google Reasercher (Every Computer Scientist should dream to be like him)
6. emacspeak (Chack on Google): This is Dr. Ramans Work
7. Little India : This is the largest circulated Indian Magazine in the US..

Finish tough tasks first.

This one is an old favourite with productivity gurus, and with good reason. Complete a difficult task first thing in the morning and it sets the tone for the rest of the day. Alternatively, laze around for the first two hours and you spend the rest of the day catching up.

Michael Masterson talks about setting aside an hour each morning to work on your most important life goal, and to do this before you start your regular work.

If you're writing a book and can't find time for it, fit it in at the top of your day. Not only will you still manage to get all your other work done, but you'll also feel a lot better and will actually end up finishing that book.

Copied from some performancing blog..

GANDHIji

I had my first opportunity to watch the movie GANDHI few days back. The movie was a starkling example of how a movie should be moulded to touch the hearts. It touched mine for sure. Rather than just going back to history books n depicting on the silver curtain what happened and all, Richard Attenborough has been succesful in portraying a GANDHI. The man who had all the courage and will power in him to motivate India to first think, then ask and then achieve freedom(!He dint have internet n aaj tak i know), his dignity n simplicity, his power of confidence -- I could see in the eyes of the man portraying Gandhiji.This is excellent movie-making.Its given me an impetus to rethink freedom once again. Some lines from there. . .
" Congress milti hai har saal, har jagah. azaadi ke liye. main kehta hun azaadi tab tak nahin milegi jab tak hum hamare kisano tak nahin pahunchenge. jab tak hum unke jaise nahin jiyenge. jab tak hum unki tarah kapda nahin pehnenge, kyunki awam hamari kissan hi jyada hai. "( "The congress meets every year for freedom. but we wont get freedom by suchthings. we have to go further. we wont get freedom until n unless we go n live with the peasants, wear what they wear,eat what they eat,until we tell them the meaning of freedom.")

For me freedom is thinking and doing the right thing. And whatever you achieved is your success.If I persuade my Maa to think that morning walk n yoga is important for her health, then I am exercising freedom coz freedom is also convicting people into what you think.Thats what Gandhiji had done then. We can think about all types of freedom all through our lives, every moment of our lives. People thought the like then. We should also have such broader thoughts. Thoughts which reflect how you feel about your fellow countrymen, how sensitive you are to rather important things.

In the months after i had been to dada's place in mumbai, i have watched a hell lot of good movies.Some movies are master pieces which everyone should feel facilitated or fortunate enough to get an opportunity to watch these.Here I list some of my favourites.
1. The Shawshank Redemption, for learning the importance of hope n belief in your life
2. A Beautiful Mind, to know that nothing can stop u if u have ur ORIGINAL IDEA
3. Bruce Almighty, to learn giving importance to smaller but important things in life
4. Gandhi, by R. Attenborough to find the rationale behind simplicity n non-violence
5. Sweet November, to know and feel love
and u should never forget to watch MADAGASCAR- its the funniest movie i have seen. If u want to know what is creativity and if u ever want to spread knowledge through some medium, go watch it.

Personalities of the day

I have been short of mad bout him...Some hints..Hes a Brazillian...


And this guy was born in Orissa, now chairman of the National Knowledge Comission...

For I am the first and the last.

For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.

I am the wife and the virgin.

I am the mother and the daughter.

I am the arms of my mother.

I am the barren and my children are many.

I am she whose wedding is great,and I have not taken a husband.

I am the midwife and she who does not bear.

I am the solace of my labor pains.

I am the bride and the bridegroom,

I am the mother of my father

and the sister of my husband

and he is my offspring.

I am the slave of him who prepared me.

I am the ruler of my offspring.

I am the silence that is incomprehensible

and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.

I am the voice whose sound is manifold

and the word whose appearance is multiple.

I am the utterance of my name.

For I am knowledge and ignorance.

I am shame and boldness.

I am shameless; I am ashamed.

I am strength and I am fear.

I am war and peace.

Give heed to me.

I am the one who is disgraced and the great one.

But I, I am compassionate and I am cruel.

Always respect me

For I am the shameful and the magnificent one.

WE SLOTHS WILL BE FASTER SOON

It really pleases me to introduce myself as a DAS. Off late, we have realised that one virtue that has never left walking with us is laziness. We are people who will surpass any limits to see that we do not let laziness feel left out.That was perhaps the reason why Dada chose the URL as http://the-sloths.blogspot.com/.
The DAS family has a very short known history(i bet nobody else in the family has any knowledge about my grandparents' parents), still we pledge that we are going to become a grand great family with the help of we, the Internet users and our siblings who are steadfast growing to be the future Internet users. The idea of growing such a blog had crept inside me a few months back when i saw the wikispaces people demonstrate about a family's paris trip blog. And then an important discovery was made. We( RIN2,PINTU,DEV N JULI) found alll of us were really enthusiastic about this feature called COLLABORATIVE COMPUTING n WEB2.0-3.0 etc etc. All of us felt that we had visions to achieve through the internet. We convicted that internet had the ability to empower us.
Ans then to my surprise I found Dada's invitation to family blogging today.

I want to share one of our foremost aims in life--- TO GROW. Like everything else has started to grow, right from India, enterprise, and even our own Bhubaneswar is developing , we also aspire to grow. And to grow, we need to empower. And empowerment starts with enterprising. It starts with making everyone grow besides you. At this stage, besides joining one of India's foremost IT companies in my mind, I am bent upon an idea of starting an Event management firm with the help of a dear old friend of mine called Srikanta Samal. He has been a freelancer doing event management for the past 3-4 years. Even Juli and Pintu are really interested in involving themselves into it.

I and him, want to grow into a bigger event management firm as big as showbiz and wizcraft. Following into this curl, I did a little bit of study.Let me give you a introduction to this crap.Event management is a process of organizing a professional and focused event, for a particular target audience. It involves visualising concepts, planning, budgeting, organizing and executing events such as fashion shows, musical concerts, corporate seminars, exhibitions, wedding celebrations, theme parties, product launching etc. It is a good career option which does not require much investment and offers a lot of independence and flexibility. No formal degree or qualification is required, but the person should have a genuine passion for conducting events, have very good organising ability and be flexible to work for long hours.

This however , is a scene way ahead. We need to be look-ahead carry adders to do this stuff.

The Bloggers

The last time I was there at home, we (PINTU, RINTU, JULI and me) decided to start documenting our lives on a BLOG. Blog empowers. Thats what we all thought. Ours is a big family back home in Orissa. If you count all my cousins,uncles and aunts, there will be plenty of them, almost 50 in numbers. Their ages range from 5 year to 70 years. All these people can be classified to belong to three distinct generations : people who don't use Internet (or rather aren't likely to use Internet unless Internet becomes a commodity), the Internet Users Users (that makes the "we",I mentioned above) and the future Internet Users. The future Internet Users are those who are still at schools and dont have good access to Internet. Why use Internet as a criteria? Because Internet is such an agent of change that it separates you from others. It changes the way you think and work. Like while all pre Internet era people thought of doing small buisnesses and conventional 9 to 5 jobs, the Internet Era people are enterprising and have taken courage of choosing alternate careers.The idea is that it is the present Internet users will write the blog and future generations will join us . The Blog has two clear objectives: to empower ourselves and to bring us closer.
So lemme now introduce you to the people:
These two fellas (younger bros) are contemporaries. Kind of born on the same day, same hospitals but from different parents. Both of them presently live in the same house in Bhubaneswar. Rintu (the guy with the green T shirt) is growing to become a software engineer with Infosys and Pintu thinks of starting his own enterprise back home. The car obviously is not ours. Thats belongs to the owner of the rented house where we live. My sister Juli (not seen the photograph: probably shes taking the photograph) has done her MBA and looking for jobs in Mumbai. I work for a scientific organization in Mumbai.