To Mr. Allen

With my intolerant (almost pro-Kira from 'Death Note') view on crime and punishment, some of Woody Allen's movies manage to get to me in a rather, umm, stimulating way. The question of whether we have a (sufficient) moral structure has been, well to say the least, open-ended. Mr. Allen takes it on quite directly in his 'Crimes and Misdemeanors' and the more recent 'Match Point'. More than his movies, I love his laconic quotes which have had a major influence on the way I do what I do; the strongest one being "Eighty percent of success is showing up". So, this post is to share an IMHO interesting thought,

"We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale; most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly. Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more".

- 'Crimes and Misdemeanors', Film

Written and Directed by Woody Allen

Counting change

So after you have become the change you want to see in the world, after you have gotten things moving and after you have begun your "impact", till when do you continue what you started? How do you know if doing something differently can create more "impact"? Where do you improvise and course-correct?

That can be tricky. Establishing a sound model for measuring change might not be the simplest task but delving straight into execution without one in place is only an effort well-wasted. The key to making an effort count for is to make its results countable. It holds true for almost anything that you might want to change. They now have scale-o-meters even for fairness creams and whitening toothpastes!

Here's my 2-step guide to making your own change-counting model,

• Make a metric system – Define numeric parameters that will indicate progress or not. For instance, a tutor uses the reading speed of the kids in her classroom as a parameter to measure her impact. A good metric system gives the advantage of setting quantifiable goals – when has ‘must reach X number in Y time’ not helped?

• Don’t forget a peer comparator – Always make room for measuring how peers are faring w.r.t. the parameters in the metric system. States of more, less and equal impact are all useful indicators. For instance, if a kid in a tutor’s classroom has the same improvement in reading speed as any other kid of the same age, then where’s the impact? 

Shake 'n' Go

Mechanically powered devices are a godsend in times of distress. I realized it recently when a crank flashlight guided me through an 8-hour power cut, till long after my cell phone battery had died on me. Every time the device discharges, all you need to do is crank it and with some physics inside, its battery charges up right back. I also came across wrist watches designed to get charged from the wearer's arm movement.  I wondered how brilliant would it be to have a cell phone that I could just crank and recharge! No need to carry a charger, no more disrupted conversation, no more 'Oops! a dead battery in the middle-of-nowhere.' Extra topping: when on vibrating alert, the cell phone will recover some energy from its own movement. Quite neat I thought to myself. But as usual, I was not the first one to think of it. The Internet returned a gazillion results for 'mechanically powered cell phones'. Check out some sleek solutions here. My favorite amongst these is the iYo charger.

And it doesn't stop here. They are also building talk powered cell phones - yes, these would recharge as you speak into them. Waiting to get my hands on one of those!

'Busy'ness

I often wonder what is Seth Godin's typical day like or whether the concept of a typical day even exists for him. And yet amidst his daily entrepreneur+author+thinker superhuman day, he 'ships' blog posts so frequently as if they were tweets. Maybe his brilliant blog posts are really the usual stuff that's 'on his mind' but the point is as Seth very succinctly puts it - It's all about shipping! Quieting the lizard brain to get things moving and it pretty much applies to everything right from an amazing start-up idea to the long-lived intention of penning down your head onto your own blog.

Now that I have your attention, let me probe further into our sense of 'busy'ness. Let's just for sometime agree that doing a full-time job doesn't afford energy for non-work-related interests during weekdays. However, mostly everyone has 2 full days off every week and invariably everyone has a wishful list of want-to-dos. Typical items featuring on that close-to-heart list are start a hobby, read more, practice a sport or volunteer for a cause. Sigh! but who's got the time for it? Umm..the weekends are practically a third of our lifetime and yet the weekends are somehow not enough! Or is it that 'feeling' busy makes for a convenient way to explain inaction? Is "I don't have enough time" just a deluded version of "I have not been able to get myself to do it yet"? Is the real problem with not having enough free slots for the dear wish-list or is it with what actually makes it to those free slots? And I'll leave it at that.

Masterful Men

Relax, this post is not about how Federer will age. This post is about my respect for two masterful men whose faces just happen to be really similar. Federer - master tennis player and Tarantino - master filmmaker with one marked similarity - the fluid style! Despite my bias for Rafa, when Federer rises with both his feet in the air to hit that inside-out forehand, I behold that sight in awe. One of Tarantino's masterful acts is his swanky take on revenge in Kill Bill. Smooth yet genius renderings - be it Emilio's death, Bill's narration of Pai Mei's tutelage by the fire with a flute or the classic Relief and Regret after killing Bill with which Tarantino closes Kiddo's character. Check out glimpses of pure genius for yourself.  

Privacy lists on IM, anyone?

How we like talking to some people more than others? How we like to be interrupted (read pinged) by some people more often? How on some days, nostalgia makes us want to connect to one part of our life sooo much more than the rest of it? Oh and, how we sometimes want the rest of the world to drown out when we are in the middle of certain conversations! Times when other pings feel rather annoying..And yet, our flat IM (office communicator/gtalk/yahoo messenger) contacts list has everybody who we ever added to it since we began internet chatting! We can either be online to everyone or offline. On one hand, the invisible setting just blocks everyone out. As good as disabling the chat feature, right? And on the other, the block/blacklist feature is for non-friends! Well, not always useful :) Yahoo! messenger's stealth settings allow to either be online/offline(invisible) or permanently offline (=block) to someone but have to be set distinctly per contact. Aaargh! super tedious, ain't it?    

I want privacy lists in my IM! I want to be able to create lists of people based on the context of my interaction with them and be able to set my status separately for each of these lists. Imagine lists for family, school friends, college friends, work pals, close buddies, once-close buddies et al miscellaneous and the flexibility to set here/idle/brb/dnd/out/random custom status for all of them So if you want the privacy lists too, raise your hands and say Aye Aye Captain! or you know you can even just Like this post.

Surprised??!!

At the inaugral edition of the PechaKucha night Hyderabad, a gentleman presented a 20x20 talk on his new venture, let's call it V. It is a place that takes orders for surprises i.e. if A wishes to surprise a loved one B on a special occasion or even otherwise, A just needs to furnish the V-team with some info on the likes/dislikes of B and voilà! they will generate a bunch of 'free' thoughtful ideas from which A can pick one and then pay V for 'arranging' the surprise. I was surprised! at the presenter's enthusiasm about the idea of outsourcing of all the things - a surprise?

Umm..personally, I wouldn't find an outsourced surprise particularly flattering. Surprises are after all gestures which at least I appreciate not for anything else but the effort that goes into making them happen; that feeling of 'Awww..you did ALL this for ME?'...I wonder how many would argue that having someone else plan/implement a gesture does not reflect insincerity and even shallowness. Howmuchsoever convenient it may sound, I wonder if a splendid or extravagant outsourced surprise can for anyone really even do what a sincere compliment can. Knowing that there is an existing clientele for this venture makes me more curious than ever on how varied are the ways in which various people feel about creating moments in relationships.  

Wishing the V-team all the best and really looking forward to discover how this venture idea takes off! 

Towards better design..

Let's talk about focusing on the design of a solution. The Russians nailed it when they used pencils in space - my first lesson in focusing on the solution instead of the problem. However, in designing solutions to problems, a third option tends to add to the confusion - the problem, the solution and the 'cleanup'. In the context of Russian space research,

- Not being able to record data in zero-gravity space is analogous to the problem.

- The pencil is analogous to the solution.

- NASA trying to invent techniques to somehow make sense out of bad data recorded with an earthy pen!

Well that in all its absurdity is analogous to the cleanup and it tends to creep into most designs. The cleanup solution, as usual, has its attractive instant gratification but neither does it solve the actual problem of 'not being able to record data' nor does it stop the bad data from coming in. The mess persists forever!

In a community initiative, if an NGO invests more on tending to its subjects (say poor/abused/sick) than on reducing the possibility of more subjects being generated, then it has fallen into the cleanup trap of solution designing. Time to realign its focus!

Two good questions to ask for validating a design D: 

• 
  
  Does D help me get what I want (space research data/welfare of subjects)?
• 
  
  Will D take me closer to ending what I am trying to fight (bad data/poverty/crime)?

Success if both affirmative!

The power of the band

Silicone wristbands, more popularly known as the awareness bracelets have become a way to express loyalty to a cause or belongingness to a community. My personal favorites are Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong bands and these.

One day over lunch, one thing led to another and a new band idea was born. We all mortals, at some point in time are on the usual diet control regimen imposed on us by self/doctor. So at any given place, the number of people on a diet is mostly huge enough to form a local support system and in moments of temptation and weakness, all diet-ers could use a little push or some may even do better with the feeling of being watched over.

A lot is possible with 'I am on a diet' bands! Imagine the Subway guy at the office cafeteria regulating the mayo on your sub taking a hint from your wrist band. Or picture an onlooker giving you a kind look to back you fight the chocolate bar at the supermarket. I know fellow foodies understand what I am trying to say.

I thought I should establish our IPR on this idea ASAP. In all its humour, due credit also goes to my friends Dhruv and Suhas.  

El goce de aprender una lengua nueva

Well that’s Spanish for ‘The joy of learning a new language’. A few years back, while helping out my kid sister with her English coursework, I came across one of Pablo Neruda’s poems ‘Keeping Still’. Impressed, I then went on to read more of his stuff in English and eventually stumbled upon a beautiful collection of his sonnets called Cien sonetos de amor - 100 sonnets of love. As I read more and more of his poetry ranging across war, communism, love and odes to heroes, the ‘lost in translation’ tag at the bottom of every poem kept irritating me. One day I decided, for what it’s worth, I’ll learn Español. After 3 months of formal lessons at Maitrise, now I can comprehend most Spanish constructs and actually read Nerudian poetry for myself rather than relying on an unknown translator’s impersonal interpretation. So what is the point of this post? 

First is to get me started as a blogger. Second is to talk about ‘One world, one language’. Whether it is going to be Esperanto or English, ever wondered how much more data can be exchanged and how many more connections can be forged between people across the world, at work or through online social networking, if we have one language that everyone knows. A common language in which everyone can think-blog-share-comment. Say if I were to travel to a country where no one except the hospitality staff spoke English, there are only two ways in which I could possibly soak in the people. I would either have to hike around with a translator or try to "ramp up" on the local language in a week or so. On a lighter note, learning common phrases can be useful for survival but this is what could happen to tourists who try to grasp a new language within a week. Besides, now even if I decide to fluently speak at least 3 more languages (3 already done!) before I die, I can only cover one-seventh of the total languages of my own country. Yes, India alone has 22 official languages.

Nelson Mandela said, 

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart."

So true. We see this happen all the time, don’t we? Ever felt left out in a discussion when two friends suddenly started to argue in their native language? All of us tend to express ourselves better in the language that we can think in but internalizing as many languages as we might need is not a scalable option.

Only if the existing language barriers dilute away can we share content within the currently cross-lingual communities. Translation is okay but unless we all conceive thoughts in the same way, which is greatly influenced by our linguistic training (see linguistic relativity), we cannot really communicate as fully as we want to or like to think we are. An ideal scenario would be one where one common international language is learned by one and all which also implies that each one of us will have to be at least bilingual or even trilingual in the future so that we don't risk losing contact with the culture and literature associated with our homeland's history.

I have already added learning Esperanto on my to-do list.  Apparently the language is designed to be grasped by anyone in about 7-8 months and is proven to improve the learner's approach to learning other languages. Sure will be a useful exercise. Will update on how that goes!