Life

After about 2+ years of staying in Denver, I will be moving to India the coming weekend.

I have about three weeks of vacation, split across mine and my wife's hometown. I hope that would be enough of a time to recharge myself and start work again on things I love to do. :)

I look forward to getting back to India.

Here is something I sketched drawing inspiration from Deepak's post.

While Google+ does not seem to have gotten any traction yet, you can still see the trickle through of those "early adopters" getting in there. Long back, when I shifted from Orkut to Facebook, the case was similar.

I have been mulling over technological convergance and specifically my outlook on the same with respect to Personal Digital Gadgets.

No, I do not think that is an actual term. By Personal Digital Gadgets, I mean the music player, hand held communication device a.k.a mobile phone, cameras (still and video), gaming devices, and similar 'consumer gadgets'.

Looking at the gadgets I have owned, I have realized that I have a friction with the technological convergance that seems to be happening in this area. The first cell phone I had was a Nokia 3315, a variation of 3310 model for the Asian market. I used it for a good two years before taking another fancier model.

I do not even remember the model number - because inspite of more features, I just used it for making/receiving calls and for SMS (called 'texting' in US).  During that time, I was seeing a lot of my collegues and friends craving for better models that served more than the purpose of calling and SMS. They wanted it to be their music player. They wanted it to serve as a camera - and the industry seems to heed to such a demand, providing ever increasing mega-pixel capability.

About two years back when I came to US, I realized that due to more constrained telephony market, my friends seemed to be constrained by the carrier on which cell phone model they could use. The difference between Indian and US telephony market is a different discussion all together. Anyway, I ended up having a BlackBerry 8700g. That is when I got introduced to the another concept of PDAs - where you used such devices to do rudimentary internet browsing, and email communication. But I ended up using it just for making and receiving calls.

Bottom line of my rant - do we really need all these different features crammed into a single device? In my opinion, a separate still camera provides better results than those pixelated images you glean out of a cell phone embeded camera. Isn't the music player (iPod, Sony, Sansa, Archos) better than what the cell phone can squeal out?

I would rather have separate devices that do their own job well. Perhaps I am more influenced by the *nix philosophy of having smaller programs that do only one thing, but do it well.

After much prodding by friends and cousins, I finally opted for a secured credit card.  It should help me build my credit history.

So, why do I need a credit card or credit history, when I did not bother about it for my stay here in US for a little more than a year? I live very well with in my means. Around 30% of my income go into savings. Although, I have not put an effort into asset growth by investing the savings, I consider that I am finacially healthy. I have taken a vehical loan, to buy a Royal Enfield bike when I was back in India, but I was out of it in 11 months.  Othere than that, I have not been in debt to this day. I really do not need one.

But, as some have explained it to me, it would help me quite a bit if I were to take a loan here, if I had a good credit score. More over, as Trent says:

Here’s my advice. If you’re in a bad financial situation, get rid of your credit cards. Lock them up somewhere where you can’t get at them and don’t use them for a long while. However, if your finances are under control and you’re in good shape, the convenience, consumer protection, and bonus rewards offered by credit cards make them a worthwhile tool.

Hence, I thought I should try and build my credit history. But to build credit history, I need a credit card. To get a credit card though, I need credit history. To alleviate this Catch 22 situation, there is something called Secured Credit Card.

For a secured credit card, the card holder must deposit an amount, which is usually between 100% and 200% the credit limit desired. So, if I deposit $100, I will get a credit limit of $50 to $100. The monthly payment needs to be done like for a normal credit card. This should put me on the track to get some credit score.

I visited my local Wells Fargo Bank, where I have my checkings and savings account, and applied for the secured credit card.

The whole process have roused my interest. :)

Yup. I went to The Rink At The Rockfeller Plaza.

Ice skating looks hard to do, and trust me - it is quite hard if you have not had the experience of slipping on anything that did not give you some friction. I have been sometimes called sure-foot but that is only when I have got some good firm land.

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The ice is not my element. As I type this, my hand aches, and is blue from the numerous fall I have had. And everything else aches. But I am glad I tried this out. :)

I need to find one back at Denver to go ice skating again, and continue what I learnt today.

Ok - the second day in New York, and I visited the Emire State Building. It was totally overrated. The $19 ticket to get to the top floor, in my opinion was not worth it, just because of the hour and half long wait in various queue, and also the shouting salesmen who were selling god-knows-what.

The view up there on the 86th floor was good. It was crowded as expected, but at the end of the day (or the two hour fiasco that felt like a day), I felt it was not the money's worth. Empire State Building is totally overrated.

In my opinion, just roam the streets of New York, or ride the subway - it is a much more richer experience, and worth the expenditure.

Background

I have been participating in quite a bit of forums. For quite a long time. From back since 2003-2004, I have been in forums. Not too long, but the participation in the forums did help me launch my own projects, with the help of like minded people I found through forums.  Some of the forums I participated, in the rough order of join date:

1. Aelyria.com
2. AstaHost.com
3. Drupal.org
4. HostBidder.com
5. LoreleiWeb.com

Aelyria (previously Alleria), got me introduced to forums, when I was actually searching for an online RPG. That hooked me up, and spawned many failed attempts at creating my own RPG - Chaos And Order. But that effort also resulted in me writing a novel (yet unpublished), and providing inspiration for a lot of my artworks. I joined AstaHost and HostBidder to get a webhost and domain name. The result was WiseTome.com and Splat. I am still a toddler in Drupal space, but I am glad I got involved with that community. LoreleiWeb Forums provided me with friends and inspiration for many ventures like CGPainting.com and providing art products and services.

Enough with the background, let me get to something I have learned.

Use Forums To Help Launch Personal Projects

Lurk before you post. Yes - even though, as a forum administrator myself, I would wish lurkers would post early, my honest advice would be to lurk a week or so, when you stumble across a forum and join. This will get you acquainted with the vibe of the community.

Know the rules. Not just the written forum rules and policies. When you lurk, you will notice there will be some unwritten rules. Some things, purposefully avoided. Some customs. Some way of participating in the community. Make a note of such things before you start to indulge in the forum.

Expect the worst from people, but take the positive of everything said. Yes - some people can be jerks. Internet has that tradition of such trolls, ego maniacs, and the odd lots from days of UseNet. It is not a surprise that every forum has a part of its membership filled with such people. Just ignore them, and concentrate on what you came into the forum for.

Do not expect every one to like your idea, or contribute to it. You would have joined the forum with an idea for a personal project of your own. You have a vision, and would give anything to have a handful of people to help you out in it. But remember that the others are in no contractory obligation to help you out. Do not act like a jerk or throw temper tantrums when your post remains with zero replies.

Find common grounds between others project and yours. As I said, it is hard for two people to have an exact same match of ideas. Especially when your plan is grand and elaborate. When such is the case, see what others are interested in, and find smaller things that more than one can work on.

“Draw, Antonio; draw, Antonio; draw and don’t waste time,” he (Michelangelo) scrawled on a sketch he gave to a lackadaisical young pupil and studio assistant, Antonio Mini, in 1524.

As I say, keep practicing.

Read the rest of the article at The New York Times.

Come to think of it, shouldn't we be applying it to everything we wish to excel in?

Rico answers a question he asks, Should Businesses Have Quotas Based on Race and Gender?

My short answer to the question - no!

Rico justifies the need for such quotas.

This is where a need for a race-based quota exists. A company that relies on constant and effective marketing must hire people that are representative of the areas where the business wants to set up shop. In other words, hire enough Indians to craft an effective marketing campaign for Indians, and hire enough Filipinos to provide more effective market research in their own community.

And further says:

To be clear, setting up a varied workforce shouldn’t be for the sake of finding the weak spots of each demographic. Ensuring that enough people of a certain race and gender are in your company should be oriented towards creating more understanding for customers.

I can not disagree more with this approach. Making it a law to say a particular percentage of a particular race or gender must be hired in a business is against the freedom of choice the people who run the business.

It is one thing to make similar laws to ensure that there is no discrimination. But justifying such laws by saying that 'it is good for the business' leaves the person or the organization running the business without a choice.

I agree to the fact that there must be varied views for a healthy business, but it should not be forced on to people. If the business chooses to take views of only a specific race or gender into consideration for running its business, then it may fail and die. But that is its choice. It cannot discriminate someone on basis of gender or race - it must treat everyone with equal opportunity. But to force an organization to have a particular percentage of a particular race or gender in its workforce is to deny an equal opportunity of the idea behind the business.

Do not get gender and races (or castes or any other taxonomic term) quotas into business and poison the business. The business will thrive or die based solely on the idea behind it. It should be motivated to have different ideas and not forced into it. Forcing it only gives avenues for corrupt induviduals (you know who I am talking about) to leverage and make a buck out of it. It makes it only better for these people - not the businesses nor the people of a particular gender or race.

It is not just the money you need to budget and plan on how you spend on things. You should be budgeting the time too.  This is something of a relavation that came to me - and just before the start of the year of 2008, I contemplated on it.

I did a rough budgeting of time for all the things in my life - but here, I will share a little on the time I spent on my personal projects.

1. WiseTome.com + Splat
2. KalaaLog.com
3. CGPainting.com
4. Drupal + Website 'crafting'
5. Chaos And Order (Literature + Online comics)

Out of all the time I had in a week, I decided to spend a part of my time on these personal projects. After setting priorities with other things, I was able to alot around 28 hours per week on these things.

So, roughly - per week - I will be spending 8 hours each per week on items 2 and 3, and 4 hours each per week the remaining. The week and a half has led up on a shaky start. I guess, I will have it organized as some project pages here.