Art Prodigy

Of all the art styles Abstract art is one style which is really perplexing with its both simplicity and complexity at the same time, if you have seen works of Picasso or Jackson Pollock you will know what I am talking about. Recently I saw a documentary about a 4 yr old child prodigy who's abstract art work is really mind boggling. It just amazes me as to how she could have created some thing so wonderful.

Here is a link to some Marla's paintings:
http://www.marlaolmstead.com/mainwork.html

For a typical portrait painting you are just reproducing the object in front of you, but in abstract art its just pure creation of your mind, there isn't any physical representation of it.

Image Courtesy:
http://www.marlaolmstead.com/mainwork.html

Venkat Reddy

More of Cello

A while back I sent a link of Zoe Keating playing her cello. If you liked that you will like these even more.






Tetrishead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJiybW81mXA
Tetrishead (better sound quality)
http://www.imeem.com/people/chO_Hi_/music/Pg4C2MOW/zoe_keating_tetrishead/
Exurgency
http://www.imeem.com/someonefindalice/music/FlwC5GkK/zoe_keating_exurgency/
Walking Man
http://www.imeem.com/people/chO_Hi_/music/Tjg-KlJV/zoe_keating_walking_man/

Yo Yo Ma is another very well known in the classical style, here is a improvisation of Bach Cello Suite No 1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZn_VBgkPNY

These are the two artists who really made me get hooked to Cello sound. If you compare the sound of all musical instruments there is something moving about the sound of a cello, its considered as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. Listening to techno or any other contemporary music revs you up for the duration of the song, but cello is something that lingers in your mind for a long time.


Venkat Reddy

Making sense of current Economic situation

Last couple of weeks have been a awash with flood of economic news by newspaper articles, TV news, blogs etc. Each of these are full of strange terms and jargon barely making any sense aside the fact of deepening the uncertainty. All the news sources single out a firm like Lehman, AIG or various CEO's to channel the blame, with so much micro look its hard to distill out whats the root cause of all these fiasco. Watch this interesting talk by Robert Reich a Economics professor at UC Berkley, in a short summary he places the single source of blame on Alan Greenspan. He was the Federal Reserve Chairman who during early 2000 reduced Fed borrowing rate to such ridiculous low rate that banks and private heavy weight investors were awash with cheap surplus money. The only way these institutions can make money is by lending to every tom dick and harry whether he needs it not.

Here is a summary talk:
http://fora.tv/2008/10/01/Robert_Reich_Finds_Causes_for_Wall_Street_Meltdown

There is a tab called "Play Full Program" if you want to watch the complete talk.


Venkat Reddy

Tragic Indian Family

I am sure it must be over the news channels by now, its just plain sad that a entire Indian family of 6 were found dead in Los Angeles, the entire family was shot by the father himself. Based on some letters he left behind, he justifies this action due to financial difficulties.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/10/06/california.murder.suicide/index.html

The thing that outrages me is that, unlike India in US there are number of avenues you have to keep going even if loose your shirt. Part of the blame can be on the typical Indian communities which have these stereotypical expectations that you always have a live upto certain standard of expectations no matter what the circumstances are. This fatherly character shot his wife, his 70 year old mother inlaw, his three sons 19, 12 and 7 yr olds and finally shot himself.


Venkat Reddy

Sarah Palin

For people in US who are familiar with Sarah Palin the potential Vice-president, here is a interesting analogy I came across:

*************************************************

You are on a 747 flying to Asia.

Suddenly, on approach to land, the head flight attendant gets on the public address system and says...

"Attention all passengers. This is an emergency. The pilot and co-pilot have both suddenly died. Are there are any passengers who can fly this plane and safely land us?"

Two passengers volunteer to help. Now, you, the passengers must vote on who will land the plane.

The first passenger to volunteer is a fully-qualified professional co-pilot from another airline. He's flown hundreds of flights and logged thousands of hours flying commercial jets. He knows 747's inside and out. He knows all the major airports, runways, and regulations. He knows how to talk to air traffic control. He understands how planes work. He can land in the dark, or in any kind of weather. He says to the passengers, "I know this plane inside and out. It's my job. I've been doing it for years. I'll get you all safely on the ground, on-time."

The other volunteer is a hockey mom from Alaska. She has taken a few flying lessons in a small commuter plane in the wilds of Alaska. She has logged only a few hours of flying time so far, and doesn't even have her pilot's license yet. But she says, "Look, the fact that I haven't been flying with the big airlines and don't have my license yet, is actually a plus! I'm an outsider! You don't want someone from the big airlines to land this plane. You need someone just like you -- not some big shot professional pilot! See, I don't play by their rules. I do things my own way!"

Who would you pick to land the plane?

**************************************************

Its just plain unfortunate that they even considered her as a potential candidate, if all that Americans care is to have some pretty looking candidate on TV everyday she would rank high in that department.

Source:

http://www.twine.com/item/11xh5dngx-p6/here-s-a-new-way-to-think-about-sarah-palin

Venkat Reddy

Ubiquity

Some of the common repetitive tasks we all do are like google search, wikipedia search, word lookup, maps, weather, calculate etc. Try this new FireFox plugin called "Ubiquity" which makes these routine tasks super fast and easy.

Download
http://labs.mozilla.com/projects/ubiquity/

Tutorial:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_User_Tutorial

You might want to skim through the brief tutorial to get a hang of it.


The above plug in is for the browser, if you like the idea there is a similar tool called "Humanized Enso" for Windows desktop.
http://www.humanized.com/


Venkat Reddy

Photosynth

Recently Microsoft Labs introduced a new technology called "Photosynth" where in they can construct a three dimensional virtual view of a place using the discrete photos taken for that place. Like say people visiting Taj Mahal might take various photos, now this tool can crawl the public images of Taj Mahal and construct a virtual tour of Taj Mahal using those picture, its interesting how it can wire various pictures to give a three dimensional view.

Aside Taj Mahal there are lot of other interesting places listed out, you would need a plug in to view, here is the link:

http://photosynth.net/default.aspx


Venkat Reddy

Largest Theatrical performance

I was referring to Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. The thing that caught my awe is the sheer scale of performance, its not just the $300 million budget but the precision and co-ordination of 15,000 performances is just amazing.

Here are some pictures:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/2008_olympics_opening_ceremony.html

For a video:
http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/player.html?assetid=0808_hd_ocb_hl_en197

For Americans this might be a little intimidating and a glimpse of whats coming next.


Venkat Reddy

Nanook of the North

"Nanook of the North" is a documentary film shot in 1922 portraying the life of a Eskimo family in the upper regions of Canada. If you are interested in the lives of Natives I would recommend watching this movie. Its just amazing how they could survive for thousands of years in such a harsh Arctic weather, with no vegetation, sparse animals to hunt and practically no tools at their disposal. The irony is that they are the most happiest. In this age it would be almost impossible to capture the pristine lives of such Natives, being shot in early 1900's it was possible to find such natives who weren't exposed to modern world yet..

Venkat Reddy

Are Americans really that stupid

Here is a video of a random sampling of Americans with few basic world general knowledge questions, watch out some hilarious or rather really stupid answers. Its hard to believe how people could be so ignorant.



Religion of Israel
Muslim

What religion are Buddhist monks
Islamic

Who is Fidel Castro
Singer

How many sides a triangle has
4, 1, may be no sides

Currency in UK
Queen Elizabeth Money

Kofi Annan
Possibly name of a law firm, a coffee Name, not sure


Link to the Video:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/834847/are_americans_really_that_stupid/


Venkat Reddy

Contact Juggling

For the unaware, juggling seems like a silly circus tricks, but in reality there are lot of people out there who take it as a serious hobby. Here is a interesting improvisation of juggling a single sphere in a rather unusual way.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mjNLTZOJOCA

The way he manages to make the body flow fluidly around the sphere is rather amazing.

Venkat Reddy

A life of fascinations

For mere mortals we can hope to excel in one field of our chosen profession be it a doctor, engineer, teacher etc. Unusual exceptions are people like Da Vinci who happen to be a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Here is one unusual modern day multi faceted personality, a founding member in Microsoft, Paleontologist, Inventor, Nuclear Scientist, Nano researcher, world renowned French Chef and award winning Nature photographer to name a few.

Here is a talk by him at TED:
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/271


Venkat Reddy

Simple Life

For all of us who grew up in mother culture where food is cultivated and material comforts are ready made, its difficult to imagine any alternative lifestyle. Its a common notion that hearts content money and material comfort are reciepies for happiness, here is a article which shows a simple life on a remote island in Pacific ocean where you hunt your own food, no electricity, no basic amenities, basically no material comforts we take for granted. Such a life might sound miserable or rather primitive but on the contrary people there seem quite happiest.

Quote from the article
"The twin pillars of a classically happy life - strong family ties and a general absence of materialism"

Article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7427768.stm

If you really want to understand why such a simple life is more meaningful and sustainable I would highly recommend reading Daniel Quinn's "Ishmael".

Ishmael
http://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-Adventure-Spirit-Daniel-Quinn/dp/0553375407/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212287096&sr=8-1


Courtesy of the picture
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mytripsmypics/1365722296/


Venkat Reddy

Dualistic Tao Principle

A nice Tao quote I came across, not sure to what extent this applies:

" Thirty spokes join together in a single wheel,
but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move.
We shape a lump of clay into a vessel,
but it is the emptiness inside the vessel that makes it useful.
We hammer doors and windows of wood for a house,
but it is the empty inner space that makes the rooms livable.
We build with the tangible, but the intangible is what we use."


Venkat Reddy

Aqua Zen

Most of the aquariums we encounter have few gold fish , couple of rocks and few aquatic plants spread around, nothing interesting about it. Check out this new radical rethinking by a Japanese designer about how a aquarium aught to be designed, these new nature inspired aqua designs are nothing less than Zen experience.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michelebrutti/tags/takashi/show/

http://youtube.com/watch?v=adDeLAdWnHM

The difference here is the arrangement of same building blocks in a perfect harmony, not randomly throwing things into the aquarium.

Zen: Seeing into one's own nature.
by Hui-neng

Venkat Reddy

Biggest Drawing in the world

Usual guinness records span something like 100's of feet by 100's of feet, that scale itself is awe inspiring, but the madness would be treating the globe as a canvas and drawing a self portrait sounds bizarre and improbable. Well not so for this slick guy who drew a self portrait by moving a suitcase around the world with a embedded GPS device and track its journey. Quite a impressive idea.

Making the art
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irDEzQovftM

Official Site
http://biggestdrawingintheworld.com/drawing.aspx


Venkat Reddy

-Ideas worth Sharing

Inner Resources Vs Outer Resources

Inner vs. Outer Resources

Consider these two lists (not exhaustive, just for the sake of illustration):

Inner Resources

• Creativity
• Self-Discipline
• Confidence
• Intelligence
• Determination
• Courage
• Knowledge
• Skills
• Attitude
• Passion
• Awareness

Outer Resources

• Money
• Assets
• People
• Technology
• Food
• Land
• Electricity
• Transportation

Which is more important to you? Which do you spend the most time developing?

Source:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/03/resourcefulness/

Venkat Reddy

Meditative State

For people who have been doing meditation for quite some time might have experienced moments of intense energy and a feeling of oneness with the environment around you. If you wondered why that is so, here is a nice talk at TED conference by Jill Bolte a Neuro Anatomist who talks about the explicit roles of left and right brain hemispheres. The right treats all information by our sense organs as a stream of energy without any preconceived notions before the left picks it up to dissect it. I guess during deep meditation we are deliberately switching off the left to make the right more prominent which is causing those feelings of intense energy.

Here is the link to the talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

Note: The speaker never mentions anything explicitly about mediation, its purely my personal opinion.

Regards,
Venkat Reddy

Who am I

If asked how would we define ourselves:

1. Smart	51. New age	101. Informative	151. Important
2. Intelligent	52. Persistent	102. Meticulous	152. Awesome
3. Honest	53. Inquisitive	103. Sharing	153. Free-thinker
4. (Self-)Disciplined	54. Deep	104. Straight	154. Worthwhile
5. Driven	55. Clever	105. Integrity	155. Calm
6. Helpful	56. Kind	106. Efficient	156. Inspiration
7. (Self-)Motivated	57. Happy	107. Healthy	157. Human
8. Inspiring	58. Enthusiastic	108. Bold	158. Leader
9. Insightful	59. Brave	109. Intense	159. Searching
10. Focused	60. Weird	110. Nice	160. Conceited
11. Curious	61. Genuine	111. Methodical	161. Expert
12. Positive	62. Sincere	112. Straightforward	162. Systematic
13. Interesting	63. Committed	113. Rational	163. Precise
14. Creative	64. Proactive	114. Free	164. Effective
15. Open-minded	65. Witty	115. Writer	165. Earnest
16. Successful	66. Energetic	116. Optimistic	166. Wealthy
17. Experimental	67. Knowledgeable	117. Influential	167. Teacher
18. Determined	68. Unique	118. Evolved	168. Communicative
19. Conscious	69. Giving	119. Diligent	169. Trustworthy
20. Thoughtful	70. Arrogant	120. Odd	170. Pragmatic
21. Courageous	71. Intuitive	121. Motivating	171. Special
22. Passionate	72. Friendly	122. Outside-the-box	172. Eclectic
23. Personal	73. Compassionate	123. Challenging	173. Interested
24. Caring	74. Great	124. Bright	174. Extreme
25. Organized	75. Articulate	125. Centered	175. Fearless
26. Confident	76. Intellectual	126. Intriguing	176. Strong-willed
27. Independent	77. Thought-provoking	127. Authentic	177. Savvy
28. Generous	78. Detailed	128. Consistent	178. Cool
29. Funny	79. Humorous	129. Obsessive	179. Risk-taking
30. Growth-oriented	80. Productive	130. Truth	180. Relaxed
31. Dedicated	81. Thinking	131. American	181. Powerful
32. Inspirational	82. Thinker	132. Outgoing	182. Helping
33. Thorough	83. Prolific	133. Fun	183. Seeker
34. Innovative	84. Loving	134. Introspective	184. Valuable
35. (Self-)Aware	85. Clear	135. Progressive	185. Entertaining
36. Open	86. Original	136. Real	186. Imaginative
37. Geek	87. Best	137. Simple	187. Motivational
38. Ambitious	88. Different	138. Opinionated	188. Gifted
39. Vegan	89. Active	139. Guru	189. Genius
40. Practical	90. Goal-oriented	140. Work-centered	190. Reflective
41. Nerd	91. Industrious	141. Experienced	191. Goofy
42. Logical	92. Enlightened	142. Friend	192. Transparent
43. Adventurous	93. Brilliant	143. Eloquent	193. Professional
44. Good	94. Quirky	144. Balanced	194. Shrewd
45. Analytical	95. Eccentric	145. Unusual	195. Dynamic
46. Entrepreneur	96. Rich	146. Contemplative	196. Amusing
47. Wise	97. Unconventional	147. Broad	197. Strategic
48. Crazy	98. Purposeful	148. Serious	198. Connected
49. Spiritual	99. Growing	149. Assertive	199. Strong
50. Hard-working	100. Inspired	150. Lucid	200. Encouraging

Source:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/02/steve-pavlina-branding/

Venkat Reddy

Ad Blocker Plugin

Like many if you are often irritated by those pesky ads popping up all over the Webpage you are reading, you might find this "adBlock plus" tool handy.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

Note: its a Firefox only plugin. I left the default filter "Easy List (USA)" on, which blocks most of ads posted on US websites. After a long eye straining surfing experience its quite a relief to view the pages without the ads.

Venkat Reddy

Money as Debt

For long money has such a allure, its more like a magic, its source is always a mystery. Questions like who creates money is something we don't ask often and with myriad of complex global transactions its not easy to comprehend it. Money arouse in early ages as a convenience when barter system was the only option, but in its current form its no longer just a convenience, its something which defines every aspect of our lives. Watch this wonderful documentary which traces money from its inception to its current form and makes us seriously question things which we never bother to think about.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

No matter how much the brilliant thinkers portray capitalistic monetary systems as the best thing, I personally feel its flawed because a exponential monetary growth system cannot be maintained over a finite resourceful world, in doing so we will end up exhausting ourselves to death.

Venkat Reddy

Layered Cello

The experience of a live Symphony is quite exhilarating, 30-40 people playing various instruments really absorbs you. Watch this performance by Zoe Keating who creatively plays Cello instrument as if she were an entire string ensemble condensed into one woman. This is one of the best cello performance I have heard, no matter how many times I hear it, the music keeps haunting.

http://poptech.org/popcasts/PopCasts.aspx?viewcastid=169

Some thing unusual here is that she layers her play over some repetitive background music layers, the way she layers her instrument is just perfect.

Venkat Reddy

Frozen in Time

Watch this nice experiment in Grand Central Station where over 200 people on a given cue just stop doing what they are doing and freeze in time for 5 mins. Notice the perplexed expressions in the commuters. Its good to see something unusual once in a while

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo

I guess the group that organized this stunt is called ImprovEverywhere, looks like they pulled off 70 or so such surprises in public places.

Venkat Reddy

Cheaper Talent Hypothesis

The common trend now every company looks for is, the cheaper the IT guy rate the better the deal. Objectively this sounds fine because the company is saving a lot of money, but in reality would the company be able to get a better deal by bringing in talented programmers at a higher premium. Here is a interesting article by Martin Fowler who explains why this indeed is true.

http://martinfowler.com/bliki/CheaperTalentHypothesis.html

Its really difficult to drive this point to old school companies who think a army of cheap programmers is a bargain than small teams of really talented people. No wonder why there is so much inefficiency all around.

Venkat Reddy

Longevity Revolution

For most Indians an average life span of 60-65 yrs is considered a good run, though for healthy Americans it spans at 80-85 yrs. For a Indian with good diet (not considering typical desi food) and active lifestyle we can bump it up to may be 80-85, but anything beyond that is almost like living dead, with most of organs almost finished. Interestingly few people have started to question as to why that should be the case, cant we prolong it as much as we like. Think of a old house or a car, if a part is old we just replace it, that way we can keep extending its life. Though the analogy sounds convincing, in reality lack of complete understanding of a human body is the current limiting factor. I am convinced to a extent we are just a matter of few decades away where in we can opt for how long we choose to live, natures constraint would be thing of the past. Here is interesting video which explores the possibility.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4336018714668472419

In a Utopian society where people can live as long as they like, it rises challenging questions like what on earth would people want to do with some much available time, would we really want such a choice. May be yes may be not.

Venkat Reddy

Benjamin Franklin

Author, Inventor, Scientist and Revolutionary.

Quote:
Who is wise? He that learns from everyone.
Who is powerful? He that governs his passions.
Who is rich? He that is content.
Who is that? Nobody.

Venkat Reddy

Few Quotes on Social Service

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
by
Mahatma Gandhi

“Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.”
By
H Jackson Brown Jr

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
By
Rabindranath Tagore

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.”
By
Benjamin Disraeli

“Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.”
By
Albert Schweitzer

“Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.”
By
George Bernard Shaw


Venkat Reddy

Grameen Bank

We all are quite familiar with the Grameen bank, a micro credit lending institution which lends micro loans to poor without any collateral. Lesser known is that it was conceptualized by a economics professor Muhammad Yunis who returned back to Bangladesh after a short stay in US. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace prize for his contributions in lifting millions from abject poverty. Most of the current micro-lending programs are derivatives of the initial concept he started. Watch this wonderful speech at Brown University he gave recently, he talks about a interesting idea called "Social Business" wherein contrary to the aid programs he says how new business models can engage poor to lift them out of poverty.

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/buniverse/videos/view/?id=129

Its slightly lengthy in time with introductory talks, but worth the time.

Venkat Reddy

Subprime

Currently there is a big hoopla about the ongoing meltdown of subprime housing market, apart from the scary tone of the articles I couldn't understand a iota what the heck is a subprime crisis, if you too feel the same way, you should watch this comical conversation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_qK4g6ntM&NR=1

Damm capitalism, look at the irony of the situation, we as individuals have choices either to invest or save. Invest and your money gets gambled by so called reputable Wall Street firms, or save to see it depreciate with inflation. Hmm what should we do?

Venkat Reddy

Spaces

By spaces I mean the buildings where we work, live and visit. For most part we have a notion of how any particular building looks, I mean the structural composition and typical shapes. Its rare we come across buildings which invoke a sense of awe and wonder, they could be nothing of any sort of what we thought a building should be. Rather than meeting a pure functional aspect, if a building can invoke a emotional response like one we feel when we watch a great painting, thats a remarkable architecture. Few days back I was watching a architectural documentary called "Sketches of Frank Gehry", an interesting analogy I found was that you can think of his buildings as abstract paintings. In abstract art the painter breaks apart various objects and reassembles the pieces in a abstract form, instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context.

Attached picture is one of his famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao Spain.

Venkat Reddy

Dreams

Most of my growing up days have been quite passive, except for passive recollection of events, I barely remember putting my mind to any active thinking. In the last days of engineering one classmate noted in my farewell book by saying "if you don't dream how will dreams come true". It didn't even cross my mind the depth of that statement at that time,
years later every time I recollect it, it just drives sense.

Watch this nice music video of a kid who dreams up a spaceship to destroy a impending meteorite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIExZvqX4j4

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."
By
C S Lewis

Venkat Reddy

Tenth Dimension

With our natural perception of length, width and depth its easy for us to sense a 3 dimensional world, but any dimension beyond that is something incomprehensible. Here is a interesting video of visualizing what higher dimensions would feel like. I was lost after 4th.

Mind bender:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU1fixMAObI&feature=related

There was a nice comment by someone saying "we exist only in between the nothingness of the nothing"

Venkat

Elegance

If you look at each piece of the picture, a run down scooter, shabby sidewalk, two old Indian women reading a newspaper sitting on the scooter, it doesn't look that interesting, rather sounds silly. But some how it looked quite interesting, may be its the elegance of the two women in their crisp Sarees totally immersed in their task oblivious to the surrounding.

Picture Source:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boaz/2183823587/

Venkat Reddy

Moods 1/10, Numb

“Self-acceptance comes from meeting life's challenges vigorously. Don't numb yourself to your trials and difficulties, nor build mental walls to exclude pain from your life. You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory.”
By
J. Donald Walters

Photo Source
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrbranco/2162220915/

Venkat Reddy

Wrapping up 2007

Start of new year offers a chance of another 365 days to make the best, but before we set the course its good to reflect on the past 365 days to understand where we are and where we want to head to. With its due share of ups and downs, for the most part of it 2007 has been quite good especially in terms of my personal growth. Here are some reflections of my 2007:

Thanks to Web 2.0 tools like Blogs and Google Reader, never had I read so many influential posts, among the best I should thank Atanu Dev's blog on Indian development and Steve Pavlina's blog on personal development for their positive impact on me. For 2008 I need to find more quality blogs and reduce the 200+ feed clutter to a manageable chunk.

Though I did start blogging in the middle of year with around 50+ posts so far, thats minuscule compared to what I really wanted to. For 2008 post more summaries of other blogs and my personal views on various topics, to put a quantitative target 4 posts/week would be reasonable. I liked the idea of "Moods" I tried with couple of posts, hopefully I could come up with more such ideas.

Books are one aspect I really enjoyed for most part of 2007, the ones I could recommend are "Selfish Gene", "Losing my Virginity" by Richard Branson, "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer, "More than Human" by Theodre Sturgeon (partially read), "Richest Man in Babylon" by George S Clason and "The History of Money" by Jack Weatherford. Though I read around 10-12 books, thats no where close to my goal 25 books/year.

Thanks to Netflix for helping me find a lot of quality movies from hollywood, bollywood and a lot of foreign languages. Few 2007 recommendations are , Heaven and Earth, The Straight Story, Apocalypto, , Driving Miss Daisy, North County, Only Human, Life is Beautiful, Garden State, The Last Kiss, Anwar (Hindi), Mr and Mrs Iyer (hindi), Black (hindi), Downfall (German), Road Home (Chinnese), "Nowwhere in Africa" (German). Out of total 68 movies in 2007, most of them have been documentaries on Biographies and Arts. Going into 2008 it would be predominately documentaries but will also like to watch more foreign movies.

Thanks for Atanu Dev for his posts of Indian Education, "Reach a child" initiative is something I would really like to make it happen in 2008.

Importance of Spiritual pursuit cannot be de-emphasized, getting to know "Isha-Yoga" has been a wonderful thing in last Nov, looking forward to meet Sadguru and experience advanced programs of Isha in 2008.

Lately I am convinced natural vegan diet is way to go, rather than a sudden change in the diet it would be better to make a gradual transition from meat based foods to fruits and vegetables based diet. So the goal is to make the transition complete by 2008.

When it comes to exercise never had I been able to keep up the rigor I had in college days. For 2008 it would be more disciplined visits to YMCA, with more participation in group classes. Seattle surrounding is such a wonderful place to explore hikes and road bike trips, purchasing a road bike is in the plans. Golf and swim lessons are in the pipes for summer.

On a personal level, smoking is one nasty addiction I never feel good about myself, though I have been away from it on and off, this is one serious hurdle I need to overcome if I need to make complete healthy lifestyle. So watch out tobacco you are history no later than early 2008.

With this let me make some peace with 2007 and heartily welcome 2008

Have a great year everyone.

Venkat Reddy.