Lady of New york

There she is majestic on a beautiful New York day.

Location:United States

PICO IYER - Writer,traveller,globalist and great human being.

As a boy growing up in Mumbai (Bombay then) the name Pico Iyer always stood out quite distinctly in my memory as a young reader of the TIME magazine. The reason for this was  the common background I share with him by virtue of his last name 'Iyer' which is a common Tambrahm (Tamil brahmin) last name.Though I never knew much about him at that time I was reading his articles in TIME I have always been curious of him. That mystic of his unique name made me scrutinize his writings even more then the usual in search of finding clues to background. To me he always came off as a truly global citizen with mass a international persona.

While all this was in early 80s and here we are in 2013 with internet and its now great to not only read Pico but to connect to Pico online. What a great life he leads to which includes among other things a friendship with Dalai Llama himself. 
I recently came across this interview and reading at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTOdTGdwYiU

What a great writer, thinker and marveloous human being. 

Hope to add some of his recent books to my kindle reading list.

Haunting sounds

For sometime I have been considering collecting sounds that have a haunting effect on my senses. Every now and then I will come across music that can be categorized as visceral or primitive and speaks to us directly by reaching out and grabbing our soul. The substance of the sound sometimes appeals to that which is primal in all of us. Of course this is all very subjective and may not have same effect on everybody as it may have on me but there is some music that has universally subliminal in its effect.
I am not referring to music that I connect to because I grasp the meaning or I like the genre or for that matter even because its on top of charts.  
I must admit that I do have a weakness for crooning music from all parts of the world whether its found in blues or wailing reggae or techno or folk or sufi or even regional music in places like vietnam or thailand.

Let me start with the one I came across today and then follow it up with others that I may have heard in the past.  Going to just label all these as haunting sounds even though they may all not be that haunting but you get  my point.

	Pakistani music that sounds like sindhi or punjabi I am not sure but I like the sound.
	One of my all time favorites by Billie Holiday.
	UK based group indi-pop group Bhangra knights song "husan" featured in a Peugot commercial in the 90s.
	"Por una cabeza" from the album "project tango". This is one of Hollywood's favorite pick to be used as the score for depicting intense (its never casual in movies) Tango scenes. You must have perhaps heard it in movies like "scent of woman", "True lies", "Schindler's list" etc.
	Baul music : Moroner dine kemon kore bolbi Hari (On your last breath, think how will you remember your Lord), by Babukishan Das Baul, in Bengali via Youtube

Osborne effect

"Osborne effect"

Adam Osborne

Not many have heard of this term in recent times but was a reasonably well known term during the 80s and probably even early 90s.

The term refers to the practice of  pre-announcing products before their availability. The rationale for such an announcement is to build expectations from existing and future customers that will ensure steady sales as the previous version of the product is abandoned. The downside of this strategy is that lot of times the announcement itself could cannibalize the sales of the existing product line.  

The term "Osborne effect" should not be confused with "Vaporware" which became popular in the 90s especially from that Redmond company and refers to the phenomenon of giving the impression that a product will soon be shipped based on a Demo or prototype of the product itself. 

Anyway, Osborne effect is named after Adam Osborne the american entrepreneur,engineer and 

I recently came upon the significance of the number 432, 000 in Hindu mythology and astrology. 432, 000 is the number of years that constitutes our current epoch or yuga we are currently living in.

How did it happen ? Well ,  Its not because I am considering monastic pursuits in Hindu theology but I landed on it at the end of a search trail for information on the Mayan prophecy on the impending end of the world on December 21 2012.

After having read up on the background of the mayan prophecy I trying to look for links between the mayan calendar and the hindu calendar to see if there were any connections that could substantiate the apocalyptic predictions.  It turns out that the connection is really numerical in nature and hinges on the number 9.
Now number 9 has significance in lots of ancient civilizations.  Nine is the total number of planets or 'grahas' in indian mythology.

Support for Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation

If you have been to Wikipedia lately you will notice a personal appeal for support from its founder Jimmy wales. I must admit that that my first reaction on seeing that banner was a sinking feeling that this is the beginning of the end of something good. It was those cynical neurons in my brain sending the signal - that of course this is one of those things that has always been too good to last, what did you expect ?. And that the powers to be out there will scheme to kill it sooner or later and say even if it was not so conspiratorial, the natural forces of capitalism will takeover and render Wikipedia unsustainable for the digital have nots and future generation. I sincerely hope that for the sake of humanity that that does not happen, that digital altruism prevails and guarantees wikipedia for eternity and all generations to come. 


This past year at least I must have used Wiki just as much as Google for all my informational needs both personal and professional.  I just took at a peek at my browser history and here is what I learnt in just last month alone......


.. that Ibn Batutta is the greatest traveller of all time and not Marco Polo as I had presumed both in terms of distance and scale.  I would consider Ibn Batutta as the the first truly global citizen who spent 30 years of his life travelling and exploring the world to gain knowledge and wisdom but those kind of similar experiences and knowledge can be tapped into by anybody today by just a few clicks on Wikipedia. 


.. that Giordano Bruno the 16th century  Italian mathematician , philosopher and astronomer who was burned at the stakes during roman inquisition and was a proponent of the concept of infinity and the heliocentric planetary model. He is said to have been inspired by arab astronomy which made its way into Europe via the silk route.


.. that naked cowboy's real name is Robert John Burck. 


... that MasterChef is originally a BBC cookery game show format that has been adapted in 10 other countries besides UK - Israel, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, Greece, India, Peru and Belgium.


... that Zynga the social gaming company founded by Mark Pincus in 2007 is valued at 5 billion dollars more than Electronic Arts (insane!)


...and much much more...


This type of knowledge sharing and abundance is unprecedented in human history and it would be a great tragedy if Wikipedia were to shutdown or move into private domain.


Wikipedia is at the center of  democratization of knowledge and its contribution is  much bigger than what Gutenberg's printing press did to usher in reformation, renaissance and eventually industrial revolution to Europe and rest of the world.

 I encourage you to contribute if you can afford it.

WPF

Its been little over 6 months that I am attempting to teach myself WPF. 


I am liking many things about WPF but still bit unsure about XAML. Don't get me wrong I am not intimidated by learning a new format or a new paradigm.  I learnt windows programming by hand coding .RC files so I am all for XAML coding.


What I am worried about is Microsoft's penchant for abandoning technology with lesser adoption or worse introduciong a drastically redesigned version.  I hope I would not be left high and dry after investing my time and energy into this.


I have jumped straight into 3d WPF instead of Windows GUI. Whether this is a good idea only time will tell.


Meanwhile if anyone has any recommendations of either books or WPF podcast do let me know.


At the moment I am wiring myself strongly with codeplex, several WPF books and some excellent 3d samples out there.