Tagged: random

Fly by blogging


* [[http://www.infosys.com|Infosys]] starts a [[http://www.infosysblogs.com/thinkflat/|blog called Thinkflat]]
* [[http://dingchak.net/|Dingchak]] has a [[http://dingchak.net/?page_id=28|random desi blog title generator]] — hilarious!
* [[http://www.webyantra.net/|Webyantra]] is aspiring to be the [[http://techcrunch.com|TechCrunch]] of India — wonder if I can beat them to it…
* We have a new term to deal with: [[http://www.solutionwatch.com/501/tracking-the-web-with-single-page-aggregators/|singelators]]
* I didn’t know about [[http://inhabitat.com/blog/2006/08/19/light-pollution-the-continuing-spread/|light pollution]], or [[http://www.pixrat.com/|pixrat]] for that matter

Chandu ka dhappa


I’m not really a big fan of this [[http://chandni.wordpress.com/2006/08/14/dhappa-to-me-now/|tagging business]], but I’ll humor Chandu this one time (I’m not going to spend much time writing this up though, so don’t expect much!). Here goes:

**I am thinking about**

* How to setup an account for Asim on my web server?
* The conflict in Israel-Lebanon
* What other blog posts can I finish today
* How do I find more time for reading?

**I said**

So many things on Sunday that if I wrote everything down it would be a book. We got into this major bulla/gulla session that spanned the life, universe and everything! Awesome.

**I want to**

* Do a good job with my internship
* Read several books that have been on my to-do list for far too long now
* Get some frikking creative juices flowing
* **GRADUATE** at some point

**I wish …**

* … the world were a calmer place. I’m growing more and more averse to violence everyday. Scared, even.
* … it was quicker to get to India. Its just too much overhead as now. Specially if these “new measures for increasing security” become permanent.
* … I were more creative.

**I hear …**

* TV in the background
* folks in the cube next to me loudly discussing some low level protocol stuff all day long. I heart my headphones.
* people complaining all the time. Why are so few of us //really// happy with the lives we have?

**I wonder**

* If the universe is always expanding, exactly //where// is it expanding //into//?
* Why are we on this earth? What is the purpose of existence?

**I regret**

Understanding too little, too late.

**I am**

who I chose to be.

**I dance**

now and then. Its fun with friends. I even tried salsa dancing a few times. I’m not passionate about dancing, but I think its fun and a good workout. I’m not great at dancing, but I’m a decent imitator :-)

**I sing**

to my hearts content. I love screaming with //Mehfuz//. I sing in my car. I don’t much in the shower though. I learned classical music a long time back. But that was a long time back :) I love music.

**I cry**

very rarely. But still more often than I’d like to admit. I once cried once I was drunk. Embarassing :)

**I am not always**

productive. Efficient. Disciplined.

**I make with my hands…**

pretty decent desi food. All kinds of //daals// and //sabjis//. Even tried kheer and custard.

**I write…**

very poorly.

**I confuse…**

Poonam Dhillon and Anita Raj. Vaijanti Raj and Mala Sinha. Joy Mukherjee and Vishwadeep.

**I need… **

friends, family and faith. Not in the //need// right now sense, but more in the requirement sense.

Now I’m wondering if I should pass on the baton to other unsuspecting folks. eh, what the hell, go ahead if you feel like it:

* [[http://nakulmandan.blogspot.com/|Nakul]]
* [[http://rasiwasia.blogspot.com/|Rassi]]
* [[http://indoria.blogspot.com|Neha]]
* [[http://directions.wordpress.com|Disha]]
* [[http://jayajha.wordpress.com|Jaya]]

What makes a 100%?


I got an interesting forward from my dad today. Usually I don’t read bulky Powerpoints, but this one was actually quite neat, so I thought I’d share it with everyone. The PPT was about “What do we need to get 100% out of life?” and the logic went something like this — lets say we encode each letter in the alphabet with its position. So A would be 1, B would be 2, Z would be 26 and so on. You get the idea. This is where the interesting bit begins — what we’ll do is, take a few words which seem important in life to us, and just add up the numbers to see how they fare:

* **LUCK**: L + U + C + K = 12 + 21 + 3 + 11 = **47%**
* **LOVE**: L + O + V + E = 12 + 15 + 22 + 5 = **54%**
* **MONEY**: M + O + N + E + Y = 13 + 15 + 14 + 5 + 25 = **72%**
* **KNOWLEDGE**: K + N + O + W + L + E + D + G + E = 11 + 14 + 15 + 23 + 12 + 5 + 4 + 7 + 5 = **96%**
* **LEADERSHIP**: L + E + A + D + E + R + S + H + I + P = 12 + 5 + 1 + 4 + 5 + 18 + 19 + 8 + 9 + 16 = **97%**
* **HARDWORK**: H + A + R + D + W + O + R + K = 8 + 1 + 18 + 4 + 23 + 15 + 18 + 11 = **98%**
* **ATTITUDE**: A + T + T + I + T + U + D + E = 1 + 20 + 20 + 9 + 20 + 21 + 4 + 5 = **100%**

I thought it was pretty neat. And some good food for thought. :-)

BTW, here’s the Python snippet I wrote to generate the above:


import sys

base = 64
sum = 0
letters = ''
numbers = ''
for i in sys.argv[1]:
sum += ord(i) - base
letters += i
letters += ' + '
numbers += str(ord(i) - base)
numbers += ' + '

print "%s = %s = %d%%" % (letters[:-3], numbers[:-3], sum)

**Update**: A slightly shorter, but perhaps more elegant way of doing the same thing:

import sys
word = sys.argv[1]
s = reduce(lambda x,y: x + (ord(y) - 64), word, 0)
l = reduce(lambda x, y: x + ' + ' + y, word)
n = reduce(lambda x,y: x + ' + ' + str(ord(y)-64), word, '')
print "%s = %s = %d%%" % (l, n[2:], s)

Sunflower


I’m looking for a nice, big, bright frontal image of a sunflower. If you have one, please email it to me. (Yes, I have searched flickr already and haven’t found the perfect one yet).