Guru Poornima

Today is a very sacred day... Its Guru Poornami. Guru refers to our master who removes the fundamental ignorance, and enlightens our lives. The poornima is the full moon day, and it has been fixed for revering him. Today is the day of the year we honour sage Vyasa, who set down in writing the Vedas which previously were known only in the form of sound. Check this article that explains Guru Poornima in a very consise and a informative manner. Here is an excerpt from it...

This is a sacred day. It is the day when we honour Sage Vyasa, who gave mankind the precious gem of Saguna worship ( worship of God with Form) and the hope and assurance that Manava (man) can become Madhava (God), that Nara can become Narayana, that Jeeva can become Brahman,... ... ... # Vyasa was a great Rishi (sage). He is described as an incamation of Lord Narayana. He set down in writing the Vedas which previously were known only in the form of sound. He was the great grandson of Arundhati (wife of Vasishta). He codified the Vedas. As he was born on the full moon day in the month of Aashaada, this day is celebrated as Vyasa-poornima. Vyasa glorified the divinity that is equally present in all human beings and propagated this truth to the world. After writing the eighteen puranas, he summed up their message in one line : "Paropakaraha Punyaya, Paapaaya Parapeedanam"(Helping others is meritorious harming other is sinful). "Help ever, hurt never". Vyasa was the great teacher who gave many profound and sacred truths to mankind. Hence his birthday is celebrated as Guru Poornima.

Some Funnies

Learning Sanskrit

I came across an article in Wikipedia titled "Contribution of Vedic Civilization". It explains to us some of the ancient Indian Vedic knowledge, and how it relates to the modern world. One of the impressive topics in this article is the research/experiment "Scientific research on Reading the Vedic literature at MUM" conducted by Travis F.T., Olsen T., Egenes T., & Gupta H.K. This research proved that reading Sanskrit does more good to human health than many other modern languages. Here is an excerpt...

Scientific research on Reading the Vedic literature at MUM

Travis, F.T., Olsen, T., Egenes, T., & Gupta, H.K. (2001).

Physiological patterns during practice of the Transcendental Meditation Technique compared with patterns while reading Sanskrit and a modern language.

International Journal of Neuroscience, 109, 71-80.

This study tested the prediction that reading Vedic Sanskrit texts, without knowledge of their meaning, produces a distinct physiological state. We measured EEG, breath rate, heart rate, and skin conductance during: (1) 15-min Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice; (2) 15-min reading verses of the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit; and (3) 15-min reading the same verses translated in German, Spanish, or French. The two reading conditions were randomly counterbalanced, and subjects filled out experience forms between each block to reduce carryover effects. Skin conductance levels significantly decreased during both reading Sanskrit and TM practice, and increased slightly during reading a modern language. Alpha power and coherence were significantly higher when reading Sanskrit and during TM practice, compared to reading modern languages. Similar physiological patterns when reading Sanskrit and during practice of the TM technique suggests that the state gained during TM practice may be integrated with active mental processes by reading Sanskrit.

Today I started learning Sanskrit from the book titled "Introduction to Sanskrit, Part 1" written by Thomas Egenes. I purchased the book last week, after browsing through the good reviews in Amazon.com. In my earlier blog-post, I mentioned my desire to learn this language.... and today, I am putting it to action.

Whats next to get outsourced to India

Check out this article "India a Global Platform for Knowledge Outsourcing" to learn whatz next to get outsourced to India.

For those who need an intro, here it is...

We all know that a substantial portion of Business Processing (BPO) gets outsourced to India... But, a recent increase in the cost of living raises the bar for average-salary in India. As a result, the outsourcing companies need to shell out a little more money than before. Moreover, countries like Phillipines are proving to be a cheaper solution for trivial business processes. We've just seen Apple's step to move away from Bangalore to elsewhere.

Now comes KPO (Knowledge Processing Outsourcing)... Here is the definition of KPO from Wikipedia:

Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) is a form of outsourcing. It can be said that KPO is one step ahead of Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO). KPO firms provide domain-based processes and business expertise, rather than just process expertise.

KPO is the future trend of outsourcing to India. To learn more about KPO, check out this article.

Year 2020 News in 'Indian Express' paper

The following is a forwarded email... that I found funny.

IndianExpress Top 10 Headlines dated 1.1.2020

1. ' President' Sonia and 'Prime Minister’ Priyanka receive the italy Prime Minister at the airport.

2. SDMK ( Stalin DMK ) Leader Stalin Seeks Chief Minister Dayanidhi Maran's resignation.

3. This is My last film - Rajnikanth

4. "Maruthanayakam " - Shooting will be started soon - Kamal Hasan

5. I will enter the Indian Team soon - Ganguly

6. Indian Cricket Team hoping to win away Test Match after 1985 in England Tour on February – Indian Cricket Captain

7. Vijay is still hearing many stories for his next movie after his debacle in 'Adhi'

8. Cauvery Issue will be settled soon – Prime Minister of India 'Priyanka'

9. Aishwarya Rai marriage is on coming July with Abishek Bachan Son 'Mubishek'

10. India – Pakistan PMs meeting Scheduled on Jan 25th to settle the Kashmir Issue

Steve Jobs' Resume

Steve Jobs has been my favorite among the visionaries of the modern world. While I was having a quick read about him on wikipedia, I ran across his resume. It wud certainly be interesting if this resume gets forwarded to Microsoft (to fill in Bill's place) ;-)

Anyways, its very thoughtful of him to have his so-called resume online. Having read several articles about him, here are some of my observations:

• His formal education had very little relevance to his career...
• Seeker turned entrepreneur
• Visited India in search of wisdom
• Perfectionist, and expects perfection... making him tough to deal with.
• his official pay of $1 per month as the current CEO of Apple, Inc.
• always in his true colour
  

and most importantly, as his resume reads...

• "Not afraid to start from the beginning"
  

What a great entrepreneur he is... co-founded Apple, and is the chairman of Pixar, and NeXT. Its amazing how he brought Apple back into game, just when people thought its decline is not far off. I really admire his dauntless attitude towards life, and his thirst to be the best.

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iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business
Manufacturer: Wiley
ASIN #: 0471720836
Price: $24.95

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Lesson of the day

Its a good practice to learn new stuff everyday little by little. There can be no better time to learn all at once, for there is infinite amount of knowledge to be gained. So, I feel "--- of the day" feeds (eg. Word of the day, Quote of the day, ...) to be very useful in this regard.

Having said that, here is an idea... How about composing our own private-list "Lesson of the day" or "A lesson a day"? Let me explain to you what this list means. We learn new stuff each day from that day's experience (pre-dominantly). Before the end of the day, we can spare a minute to jot down the one lesson that was learnt today. Having a list of just 1 lesson per day makes it more fun...

In my opinion, we get the following benefits...

• Be aware of our mistakes, and hence the lessons learnt
• The lesson gets registered firmly in our mind when we jot it down (putting it in words
• Recall the lesson whenever needed
• Hobby (like blogging)
• Gives you the right to claim that you try to learn from your mistakes
  

Here are a few relevant quotes:

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
- Barry LePatner

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.
- Vernon Sanders Law

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
- Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963), "Texts and Pretexts", 1932

Do you agree with me? ? ?

Read RSS with GreatNews

I was looking for a free desktop RSS Reader to manage my feeds, as I was unwilling to clutter my google desktop / homepage. After a little research on the web, I shortlisted 3 of them... Omea Reader, GreatNews, and RSS Bandit.

Among the online readers, I prefer Bloglines. The Google Reader is out of my list since I did not like the layout, and there are no advanced options to tweak its view. So the bottom line is that I prefer to have a desktop client, which can sync RSS feeds with Bloglines. Thats exactly what GreatNews does... It can sync up your feeds with your Bloglines account. It has an elegant interface, multitude of options, several views to choose from, and a rich feature-set (clean-up tool, browser,...).

I liked it so far. Here is a screenshot:



UPDATE: I ditched GreatNews & Bloglines in favor of the new enhanced Google Reader. Google rocks! Is there anything that Google cannot be the best?

Zooomr - Created by a teenager

Can you imagine creating a web company at age 17... developing the application all alone from scratch, and releasing the product in 6 months straight. Thats exactly how Zooomr, Inc. was started (on a late October, 26th in 2005). I was astonished by the fact Kristopher Tate was just 17 when he decided to start-up a web2.0 photo sharing company all by himself (helped by few others). This site is also very different, and has numerous innovative features. Great work Kristopher!

Here is the team that is behind Zooomr:

Development:
Lead Developer: Kristopher Tate
General Council: Paul Bragiel
PR Council: Eoban Binder

Business Development
Interim CEO: Wendell Davis III

Support
Lead of Technical Support: Michael Van Veen

Localization
Chinese Localization: Mike Taylor & Su Xiangying
.
.
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I am infact greatly inspired by his accomplishment, and you will know what I am upto very soon...

Love for Sanskrit

I learnt Sanskrit as my second-language for a few years in high-school. Though I was aware of the greatness of this language, I just treated it as a subject of study. Recently, I wanted to learn more of Sanskrit, and get versatile with it. I am on a lookout for a very good Sanskrit-learning book at Amazon. I indeed have a great affection for this language.

Just to express the glory of Sanskrit, here is a borrowed excerpt from 'A Tribute to Hinduism' site.

Sanskrit (meaning "cultured or refined"), the classical language of Hinduism, is the oldest and the most systematic language in the world. The vastness and the versatility, and power of expression can be appreciated by the fact that this language has 65 words to describe various forms of earth, 67 words for water, and over 250 words to describe rainfall.

Sanskrit is also known as the language that is most convenient for computer software programming. May be this is one of the several reasons why India produces tons of Software Engineers every year than any other country in the world.