June 15th had a total lunar eclipse. Which means that the earth came between the sun and the moon, and overshadowed the moon. What was a full moon, disappeared and then came back to its full shine. This took place in the wee hours of the night, and i would probably have slept through it ( I was to drive back to Delhi the next morning), except that I was unable to sleep. So, got out of bed and went out with the camera to look at the show being put on by the heavens !
This post by a friend on FaceBook started off a thought in my head. Is that really living ?
I think that failure or success has nothing to do with living.
As an example : Lets say you are in some hill station. You have a beautiful view before you - trees rolling down in the valley before you, the mountains further away with snow on them, a cool breeze flowing. You soak in the view and feel alive. Its not about failure or success at this time.
Like this, you can see many examples in your life where you felt alive - and nothing to do with the outcomes.
I think we have been brainwashed into thinking of failure and success. What is success anyways ? How do you define success ? Too often people miss the point and start equating success with wealth.
I have been having a real dearth of time. The last few months have been really hectic after tenCube got acquired by McAfee and I joined McAfee. There is just too much to do and time is running short.
So, after a long gap, the BN website has been now upaded with the 2011 calendar in soft copy. The pics have all been taken by members of the group and the design was done by Chaitanya, another BN member. We have amazing talent within the group.
Last year, I had been editing each pic and uploading. But this year since CV had done all the work, I only had to resize and put it up on the site. So, I wrote a small python script for resizing the huge original pics into web manageable ones. The
script reads all the images in the directory and resizes in 3 different sizes. Following is the python code - and its amazing how small a piece of code this is.
from PIL import Image import os, glob
#adjust width and height to your needs thumb = 200,150 small = 800,600 normal= 1600,1200
for infile in glob.glob("*.jpg"): file, ext = os.path.splitext(infile) im = Image.open(infile) im.thumbnail(normal,Image.ANTIALIAS) im.save(file + "_normal.jpg","JPEG") im.thumbnail(small,Image.ANTIALIAS) im.save(file + "_small.jpg","JPEG") im.thumbnail(thumb,Image.ANTIALIAS) im.save(file + "_thumb.jpg","JPEG")
Started playing RIFT yesterday - I got totally bored with WoW and anyways it was too demanding a game at end game. I just was not able to find the time required to raid.
So, after a lot of thought, I signed up for RIFT.
Initial thoughts on the game : Its a game which could have been great. Comparison's with WoW are of course going to happen.
A lot of people would have told you that its a polished game. I will differ. Its got more 'realistic' graphics than WoW. However, a lot of things that we think about when we think of WoW are missing.
Some things which I think should have been taken care by the devs are :
All races of a faction start at the same place. I find this a put off. If you have 3 races per side,they should start of in different starting areas.
All the races look the same, with hardly a difference in how they look unless you are a dwarf. Sure there are hundreds of customizations on how you look, but once you start playing in the 3rd person perspective, they all don't matter. Contrast this with WoW where the orcs look totally different than the taureans than the undead.
An element of fun is missing. All the quests, the feel etc is so serious. It gets boring.
The good and the bad of the game has to be the soul system. Essentially what it means is that you have 3 talent trees, and you can choose which 3 trees to use out of 8 available. This is pretty cool as it allows for a lot of customizations. However, since this is thrown at you pretty early pretty fast, you end up confused. As you get each new tree, you get 2 new spells with each. The spells in the different trees overlap many times, and this is lame.
I initially started out with a Warrior class - as I was looking at end game kind of content, but got bored.
Rerolled as a mage - who got the souls of a Warlock , a Necromancer and a Chloromancer. So far, this is feeling much better as to what I like playing.
Yesterday was not particularly a good day. Still recovering from a bout of seasonal flu, and was feeling quite low in the day. Late at night, was not feeling like sleeping and was browsing the net, chatting with friends. When suddenly an email popped up. A reply to a mail written 2 years back! Wow! This changed the total 'feel low' mood. I am a firm believer of Karma, and this coming up makes me an even bigger believer.
Sumit was an intern in Symantec, and on the time of completing his internship came up to me to ask for advice. He was in a different team - but still wanted some advice from me. It was probably cause I was more approachable than other managers. The conversation and the reply are below with kind permission from Sumit.
Firstup the mail I had sent out on 2008.
from Vibhu Rishi
to Sumit Agarwal date Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 3:38 PM
subject Best of luck in future endeavors
hi Sumit,
My interaction with you was very brief. But here are a maelstrom of thoughts that I have i wanted to share with you but never seem to get the time to say them :) . They are in random order, so maybe difficult to read the mail at one go ;)
I see great potential in you. Go forth and conquer.
Great men are not born. They are made. From time immemorial, even with kings, its not always someone who is born in a great family that becomes great, but people who think different that they reach heights others did not even dream off.
some criticism and helpful ( in my opinion which may be totally wrong ;) ) tips
- Dressing is important. make sure you dress for what you want to become and not what you are. I should probably not be giving this advice as I myself don't dress appropriate, but then I do not know what I want to become ;) .
- Keep your body language positive. Most people will have good looks, wear good clothes, but not know how to keep their body language positive. Walk with purpose. Look with intent. You already have some of it, just keep it in mind , and you will develop a 'presence'
- Your interaction here has been with some individuals who are ... umm.. hyper. This may give you an impression that maybe that is the way to go, yelling and getting the things done. On the short term it works well, but if you plan to have your own company, you get better loyalty out of people in other ways. I know people in pretty high positions ( govt service and private firms) who are the most humble people - but the people who follow them are loyal to the hilt. Its your choice which path you take.
- You stammer a bit. I notice that it hampers your communication abilities. This is normal. I had it in school ( 11th class ) . it happens when your thoughts outrace you, and your words cannot keep up with your thoughts. The way we mostly try to cope up with it is to try and talk fast. But sometimes, to go fast , you have to go slow. Slow down your vocal speed. Think through what you are going to say, and say it slowly, deliberately. You will get out of this habit of rushstammer.
You want to become someone great. Know that you cannot have everything in life. there will be setbacks in life - most of which are out of your control, some , because you messed up. Don't be hard on yourself. Give yourself room. One learns to run by falling repeatedly. You can't blame yourself for falling. Just get back upright and go ahead. Rough roads lead to smooth ones with time .
In fact I believe rough times are not that bad as everyone makes out them to be.
Develop a few role models. I find it helps me. If I am in a particular situation where I am not getting answers, or do now know how to proceed, I think what my role models will do. That gives you the answers.
Baki, enjoy life. There is much more in life than work and making money. Take care of your health - no amount of money can give you back your health after you have lost it. Live life to the fullest - the time does not ever come back. Make time for doing things that you want to do. My philosophy is to sit aside sometime, and think - what are the things i would think of and say 'oh shit ! i did not do this' , if it was the last day of my life. That gives me a list to work with.
chalo. enough of gyan. :)
Have Fun.
Ride Safe.
Vibhu..
The reply I got yesterday out of the blue. Thanks Sumit :)
from sumit agarwal
to Vibhu Rishi
date Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 11:11 PM
Hi Vibhu,
This might feel weird as i am replying to 2.5 years old mail, but your mail became younger day by day through all this time. The thoughts are coming randomly as am typing, please bear with that.
After my internship at Symantec, I got a PPO as gautam had pushed my CV. But as I had already shared this with many of our team mates and may be with yo also that I didn't like tech much and wanted to pursue a career in finance or do a start-up.
So after college, I declined the offer from Symantec and started my company in Gurgaon. We ran it profitably and professionally till Jan-2011 and then arrived at decision to exit. The whole start-up experience (1.5 years) was great and may be can share it some other day :). This was the period when I got to see the world closely and learn from it.
After exiting from the biz, I applied to number of finance companies, but got call from just one company and that was JP Morgan. After multiple rounds of grilling, they hired me in Investment Banking division.
Tomorrow is my first day at JPM, Mumbai and I would like to thank you first. May be we didn't spend much time during my stay at Symantec, but I have been following you continuously since then. Reading about your bike trip from Pune-Hyderabad-Nagpur-Bhopal-Jaipur-Delhi-Dehradun..... was quite a experience and definitely some day I wanna pull something like that.
I wanted to attend the recent bike nomads meet in goa but couldn't because of biz commitments and exploring my options. Now I feel that I can think straight and can afford to do more things I always wanted to ( Riding long is one of them).
I plan to purchase a bike in next couple of months, hence will need your expert advice.
I was horrified to see the distruction caused by the quake and the subsiquent tsunami. People say that the 2004 Tsunami in the Indian ocean was more distructive, but the images from the current one are the ones that make a dent in ones mind.
This is the second time that I am having this feeling of awe and horror together. The last time was when the planes crashed into the Twin Trade towers. One manmade calamity, and the other by Nature.
Its a wakeup call. No, I am not talking about the predictions about the end of the world. I am more thinking in terms of living our lives. I used to have a blast. But somehow, I too have been drawn into the rat race and living has just become a stream of days of just exisiting. Working, working, working.
Need to wake up. Look out. Look at life again and enjoy each day again. The world wont end in 2012, but you do not know when your life does. Its doubly important that each day you live you have memorable experiences.
Torchlight : an Indie game - the closest to Diablo you can get. Since Diablo seems to be delayed indefinitely, this is a good passtime.
Sports
Football World Cup Yeah !
Olympics
And how can one forget the Vuvuzelas
CWG gold rush in Delhi
I dont follow cricket, so please do not ask anything for that. ;)
Government/India
Mostly can only remember the corrruption.
CWG scam
Radia scam
2G spectrum scam
Wikileaks
Work/Tech
Joined McAfee. Working with the WaveSecure team - the whole reason for me to join McAfee. This is phone software not AV software, so do not ask me any AV questions
In One97 worked on an OutBound Dialer - which got shelved just as we got the 1st version running and stress tested on 1500 ports - tripple that of the previous best. Worked on PayTM a mobile payment initiative.
Tried out ChromeOS from hexxeh's builds, booting off the USB drive
Did a bit of prelimnary coding on Android.
Learning Django coding.
My Configuring Bugzilla post was a hit this year. Lots of people were able to install Bugzilla and left their thanks in the comments field :)
iPad got released this year. Waiting for iPad 2 before I buy it ! :D
Hmm, now I look back - damn. Thats a lot of stuff for a year ! Lets see what 2011 has in store.
Usually I just take the aisle seat while flying on night flights - what all can you see outside the window - right ? Flying has become so common-place that we just dont give much thought to it. Its another boring 2 hr flight is what we think.
But, I chanced upon this video a few weeks back.
So, this time I decided to keep my mind open. At checkin for the Delhi-Bangalore flight I asked for a window seat ... and experienced the magic of flying... again.
The Magic of Flying
As the flight took off, the lights on the runway start rushing by and with a final heave the plane takes up to the air. Isn't that amazing ? We are there - in a small tube - up in the sky ! Peering down, looking at delhi lighted up I wondered about the amazing amount of electricity needed to run the city. Houses, streets all lighted up. And yet, the most intense light was from the columns of cars lighting up the roads, making even the street lights look dull.
The plane took off in a direction where we were headed towards central Delhi, and had to take a U turn to correct the direction. The world from above looks so different , and as I was peering around for where we might be, I got my bearings by a beautiful sight - the Lotus Temple lighted up ! In the distance I could see the tall buildings around CP.
As the plane started approaching the Delhi suburbs/ Gurgaon, the topography of the houses changes to single or double story houses. Suddenly a flash caught my attention and looking in that direction I saw another unforgettable sight - fire crackers bursting. From ground level, we look up at the glitters these cause, but from the plane they are way below - just above the house levels. Different ways of seeing the same thing !
Pollution Line
Suddenly I got a feeling that there was some kind of shade above me. It felt wierd... a blackness and I was wondering ... untill ... all of a sudden I realized that it was actually an atmospheric effect. The blackness was actually the air at this level, free from the pollutants, while below it was the brownish glowing air with all the trapped pollution of Delhi. God ! It suddenly struck me how much of an unhealthy place we live in.
Just above the line demarcating the pollution line was the moon. A thin crecent moon, and since the air was so clean up here, I could make out the dark side of the moon - where the earths shadow was falling. So, I could see the entire sphere of the moon - the lighted part and the showded part. Mesmerizing.
I see shapes
As the flight progressed, and the pollution from Delhi became lesser, the entire country side started to become darker as the dispersion effect of the pollutants became lesser. The small towns and villages were dotted across the landscape. A beautiful sight. The villages in India are not really well planned, so they have these amorphous shapes - which take the shape that your imagination gives them - something like how you give shapes to clouds. The most interesting one I think was the JellyFish. The main town was the body of the creature, and since it was a big enough town, there was a bit of dispersion effect from the smog - giving the body a bloated kind of image. The tentacles were the roads leading to the town. Some Imagination eh ?!
MoonSet
Near the end of the flight, I saw the moon set. The moon by this time was at the horizon, and as it was slipping below it, all sorts of light refraction effects were happening. First the crecent changed from being circular to more angular with two vertical ends attached to a flattening horizontal line, till only the stright horizontal line was left, which itself winked out of view. Unforgettable. A MoonSet , seen for the first time.
I did not have any books with me this time. But the flight was anything but boring, and flying is such a wonderous magical experience which we seem to have forgotten.
