Few ways to Cultivate Lifetime reading habit

• Set times
• Always carry a book
• Make a list
• Find a quiet place
• Reduce television/Internet
• Read to your kid
• Keep a log
• Go to used book shops
• Have a library day
• Read fun and compelling books
• Make it pleasurable
• Blog it
• Set a high goal
• Have a reading hour or reading day

Read more:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/14-ways-to-cultivate-a-lifetime-reading-habit.html

Credit Crisis Visualized

For ordinary folks like us jargon like CDO's, Credit Swaps, Credit Freeze, leverage etc can be confusing to comprehend, here is a nice visualization of what this credit crisis is all about:
http://vimeo.com/3261363


Source:
http://yihongs-research.blogspot.com/2009/02/credit-crisis-video.html


Venkat Reddy

Curious Case of Benjamin Button

For people who have seen Brad Pitt's Oscar winning movie "The curious Case of benjamin button", aside the interesting story the fascinating part is how they managed to portray brad as a 80 year old guy for most of the movie.

Here is a behind the scenes look at the making of the movie:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ed_ulbrich_shows_how_benjamin_button_got_his_face.html

Movie trailer
http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/thecuriouscaseofbenjaminbutton/


Venkat

Impressive Flickr Favs

Flickr boasts one of the best online photo collections, over time I bookmarked some photos which have compelling qualities. Most of these are captures of people in natural settings, some how such photos have a story of their own. There isn't any specific theme for the collection, just a arbitrary assortment of nice photography.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31417894@N00/favorites/show/

None of these are mine, its a collection from various public photos, though I am horrible even at basic photography its an attempt to spot good ones.


Enjoy,
Venkat Reddy

Tough Times

A comical depiction of company logo's to reflect the current economic crisis.

Original Source:
http://yihongs-research.blogspot.com/2009/01/renewed-logos-after-crisis.html

Venkat Reddy

Cooliris

If you happen to use sites with lots of pictures like Flickr, Picasa try this browser plugin Cooliris which gives a elastic view of the images. Scrolling through tons of images in sites like Flickr makes it a breeze and its a eye candy too. Its not just image site but works with lot of other sites like youtube, amazon listings where you might have to sort through lot of listings.

http://cooliris.com/

I have installed it for Firefox, I suppose it supports other browsers too, you have to check that out.


Venkat Reddy

Indian Fiction

If reading fiction interests you, here are some fiction novels with a Indian backdrop which I can recommend.

Beneath a Marble Sky by John Shors
This historical fiction is set in 16th 17th century with rich descriptions of Mughal time period. The story is centered around the construction of Taj Mahal, though I have never seen it, reading the book made me enjoy more than I could seeing it in real.

The temple dancer: A novel of India by John Speed
This novel is also set in 17th century India, but its a blend of portuguse, Hindu and Mughal cultures. At the center of the story is Maya, a deva dasi who is promised as a gift to Grand Vizier of Bijapur by Portugese traders. Most of the story is a description of their adventurous journey from Goa to Bijapur. The other main character is a Portugese lady Lucinda who also accompanies the trip.

Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
This is set in modern India, where in a US born Indian marine biologist travels to Sunderbans in search of Irrawaddy dolphins. She befriends a local fisherman and a Interpreter to help her find these dolphins. The descriptions of local life and Sunderbans were really absorbing.



Venkat Reddy

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