My newfound love for Rap music and artists

 It all started with a very cool rap song (Chill Kinda Guy) from Srushti Tawde. The song blew my mind. I watched and listened to it several times. Even played it for my team in scrum time. :-)

Now this brought memories of Eminem. His song Mockingbird has been my favourite. Recently heard "Cleaning my Closet" and "Stan". Amazing songs. 

Then one thing led to another. Got to appreciate the camarederie artists such as Dr. Dre, Eminem and Snoop Dogg share. Superbowl halftime show is just awesome.

Digital Rupee

 The notion of launching digital rupee doesn't make much sense to me. We already have UPI (for small retail transactions), NEFT and RTGS for higher value. Then exactly what value is this new technology bringing is very ambiguous.

I am yet to find any government circular explaining the merits of it. Ex RBI director Raghuram Rajan opposes it saying that it will give un-necessary edge to Public Sector (Govt owned) Banks and private banks (arguably more efficient) will lose out.

Storyboard in iOS

 Disclaimer - I am in the process of learning iOS and SWIFT application development. These are my learning notes with the hope that it can be useful to someone out there.

storyboard is a xml document representation of UI view. Here I have broken it down to very basic elements. As you can see a storyboard consists of one or more scenes. Each scene has a ViewController which contains view with subviews. Some of the views such as StackView can further nest other views. There you go, it is simplified now.

<document>

<dependencies>...</dependencies>

<scenes>

<scene>

<objects>

<viewController>

<view>

<subviews>

<imageView>..</imageView>

<stackView>

<subviews>

<label>..</label>

<stackView>..</stackView>

<slider>..</slider>

..

</subviews>

</stackView>

<button>..</button>

..

</subviews>

</view>

</viewController>

<placeholder>..</placeholder>

</objects>

</scene>

</scenes>

<resources>

<image>..</image>

..

</resources>

</document>

Black Friday Sale in India

 In papers and online advertisements I saw several mentions of Black Friday Sale happening in India. I am truly amazed and astonished at this development.

Black Friday Sale happens in US after ThanksGiving Day. 20 years ago I had seen people queueing up for whole night in chilly cold near Best Buy, Staples and other famous stores to buy discounted items. Many a times I have heard people bought unnecessary stuff, just because they had put so much effort to be there and returning empty handed didn't seem like a wise move.

Now commercialization is making it happen in India, as if Diwali, Dussehra, Independence Day, Republic Day sales are not enough. God knows how many sales are happening and there is mindless consumption.

I wonder if it is happening in India or other major economies such as China, Korea etc. In any case I hope sense prevails.

Book Reading : So Good They Can't Ignore You

 Who doesn't want to be good. I want to be good and succeed in my career. Thus when I saw this book by Cal Newport in my office library, I had to pick it up.

Book starts with Steve Job's famous speech at Stanford, and advises its readers to 

Do what Steve Jobs did, not what he said.

As per author, following one's passion might just be terrible advice. Following passion means that we know from the begining what we love. But people change with situation and so does passion. 

Further it takes time to get good at anything. You have to force yourself to do the work, learn the skill.

Those who are looking for a high paying or highly satisfying job offer, need to have something called Career Capital (the skills which you are offering). Author argues that you need to build this capital over time and you will have to start with something less glamorous. But you will keep working and keep polishing your skill.

Anyone who wants to excel, will have to practice a lot. And in each iteration of practice, it has to be different and pulling out of comfortzone. Then only it will be effective.

Author asks you to put small bets continually. A definition of small bet is as follows

• It is a project small enough to be completed in less than a month
• It forces you to create new value (e.g. master a new skill and produce new results that didn't exist before)
• It produces a concrete result that you can use to gather concrete feedback

In summary, we have to continually hone our skill, do something which others will value, find a mission which compells us to do more and continually innovate or strain for excellence. It is a tough job no doubt, but brave individuals will reap the reward.

Book Reading : Bored and Brilliant

 These days all of us are in constant state of physical and mental motion. Especially with the advent of computing devices (laptop, mobiles etc) we have become like monkeys jumping from one branch to another branch in Internet, of which I am also guilty. So when I found this book by Manoush Zomorodi it was a must read for me. Here are some of the findings of this book.

In a world where entertainment is 24/7 and with a tap or click away (Facebook, Quora, Twitter, Youtube and myriads of such websites and apps). We don't every give ourself a chance to be bored. It would have been great if these activities helped us in getting more mental peace or advancement in life, but it does none of that. Instead of that it leaves us exhaused and confused.

Author argues that we have to give our brain a chance to be bored. Then only we can reflect and think of ideas which can change us and our lives or in a sense make us brilliant.

Have you noticed number of tabs open on your browser. In my case it definitely goes more than a dozen. Why do I have them open? Because I feel a need to absorb information from vastly different number of sources (listen, read, watch). What am I doing with all this information. Probably not much.

People are afraid of boredom, in one study a candidate preferred to shock himself 190 times instead of spending time in thinking. It is becoming ever harder to read a physical book, or even to concentrate on an article and derive learning and meaning out of it. Even taking notes on electronic devices in classroom and meetings are not making us focussed. Taking notes on pen and paper forces us to slow down and think.

People are getting afraid of conversation. They are preferring email/text over face to face communication. But communication over text/email doesn't have empathy. It may appear efficient, but it feels very transactional. Conversation happens because there is history and empathy among the group of people.

PGS (Phantom Gadget Syndrome)  Having a feeling that your phone is budging or ringing even when it is not. It is a symptom of our emotional dependence on these devices.

Enormous amounts of pictures are taken and shared everyday. We spend countless hours on looking at digitally enhanced pictures. It has become a photomania. Author asks the question - "Are we indulging in visual gluttony?"

Video gaming is another tech intrusion in our lives. My 14 year old's favorite is Minecraft. There are many addictive games like Candy Crush, Two Dots. These games suck up your time like anything. If left uncontrolled 10 minute thing will spiral to 2 hours. Game advocates claim to help in improving brain functions, but these claims have no solid scientific backing. Popular advice is to set a time limit of 10-20 minutes (self-regulation), but we know that self regulation is very hard to follow. Gaming and advertising industries are based on mind control.

It is getting harder and harder to do deep work. Work emails, text messages are claiming our attention all the time. In this fully connected environment we don't have time for being alone, which  is reducing our creativity. 

Book talks about challenges for readers. Here are them

1. Observe yourself - Without changing your habit, observe how many a times you are picking phone, browsing internet etc. As they say understanding self is very hard.
2. Keep your devices out of reach while in motion - Dependeing on individuals, but in short it can mean no phone usage while walking.
3. Photo free day - Restrain all your impulses of taking photo that day.
4. Delete that app - Is the app serving me or hurting me? Does the app make me feel bad about myself?
5. Take a Fakecation - Vacation in the form of break from digital onslaughts, which distracts us and keeps us from thinking beyond everyday.
6. Observe something else - Go to some public place. Spend some time there. Observe what is happening there. You can use your imagination to think of what is happening.
7. Bored and Brilliant 
1. Identify an aspect of life which is challenging or confusing to you
2. Do mind numbing or boring thing in isolation for 30 minutes. E.x. watching water boil
3. Now go back to step 1 above, and start writing down in physcial paper on how will you solve it.

The main essense is to bring focus back in our life. If you try to do a bit  of everything, you are going to make a millimeter of progress in million directions.

My Trip to Coonoor

 Recently I got a chance to spend a very relaxing time in Coonoor. I have tried to capture some of my emotions in videos.

Above is the view from our hotel. Mysterious mists came so often and covered the mountains.

A view of tea gardens

Squid Game

 Just finished watching "Squid game" on Netflix. There are so many thoughts running in my head. Writing all of them will take time. 

However today the top one thought is that even though everyone says money isn't everything, but it is definitely one of the topmost thing.

वक्त नया है

 उठो जागो ये वक्त नया है | 

थी रात अँधेरी बादल गरजे,

संदिग्ध हुए मन भ्रमित हुए, 

तिमिर छटी अब सूरज निकला है | 

देखो अब यह सुबह नया है | 

क्या शिव ने हलाहल

यह जहर कहाँ से आया 

मानव मन में अँधियारा छाया 

सभी थमे और भयवान खड़े हैं 

क्या शिव ने हलाहल उगल दिया है ?

मन की पीड़ा न बांटे कोई 

मिलते न रिश्ते न नाते कोई 

कैसा कारावास पड़ा है 

इस बेड़ी को काटे जो ,

वो किशन किधर खड़ा है ?

देव कहाँ और दानव किधर हैं 

एक भ्रम अथाह पड़ा है 

समुद्र मंथन कैसे हो 

सारा उत्साह खंडित हुआ है 

क्या शिव ने हलाहल उगल दिया है ?

(c) Anup Mayank 2021

Chariot and boat

 Recently I read "Tales of Egypt" by Roger Green. It is a 3 part collection of stories of Egyptian Gods, Magic and Adventures.

As is evident that river Niles play a very prominent role in all the stories. Pharaos used to travel in royal boats. Even Sun God (Amen Ra) travels in boat.

When I compare this with Indian context, Ganga is the prominent river in Indian mythology. Yet I haven't read stories of boat/ship travel as main means in Mahabharata and Ramayana. Instead it is horses and chariots. Even Sun god (Surya Deva) travels in a chariot driven by seven horses.

This is definitely interesting and worth thinking about.

Easy explanation of how to calculate available IP addresses in a network

Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals

Took advantage of lockdowns and cleared my first Azure certification exam

Kaushiki Chakrabarty - A devotional bhajan in raga Bhairavi with Soumik ...

Book - Lord of the flies

Just by serendipity I happen to land on the book "Lord of the Flies". This is a classic book by Nobel prize winner William Golding.

While I started this book couple of times but due to one reason or another I was not able to progress beyond first few pages. Then one interesting thing happened. I was watching movie "The Commuter". In movie actor discusses about this book for 2 seconds in the context of a book report. Movie is average action thriller, but this was a sign to get back to book.

I won't try to summarize this book, as it maybe one of the most popular books in world. Top 100 read novels and two movies based on this.

Anyways what touched me is the fact that how attitude of the hunters changed when they painted their face. Paint is the symbol here. I think by attaching ourselves to symbols we loose our senses and try to justify that symbol by all means.

Book also reflects on the absurdity of behaviors and the fact that what will grown ups say when they find them doing these absurdities. It is again a symbolism for any group of people doing something illogical in the name of accepted belief and not wondering what will an intelligent being (maybe God) think of. 

Smart watch and not so smart person

Today morning, I went to the supermarket in my housing society to buy few household stuff. After purchasing, I saw that a security guard was there to verify the purchase with receipt. With my receipt in hand I was quickly done.

Behind me was a gentleman who had few items in his bag. On asking for receipt he fumbled in his belongings for several minutes. Apparently has lost it. No big deal. It happens. However what he did next caught my attention. He tried to convince security person that he has a receipt by showing digital copy of it on his smart watch. Poor security guard was transfixed. From his bewildered look, I guessed that he has never used it. He may be wondering why is this fellow trying to show time to him, when being asked for a receipt. 

With a smile on my face, I left that place thinking - "You can make devices smart, but what about people?"

Technological impacts through the lens of Tools and Weapons Book

"Tools and Weapons" deals with modern technologies such as Cloud Computing, Social Media, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the impact of these technologies on society, governance, privacy, etc.

This book is co-authored by Brad Smith who is currently serving as president of Microsoft. One of the remarkable learning is that Brad is by training a lawyer who is leading a very high tech company working on all the tech which has been mentioned in this book.

Book draws on the learnings of Microsoft when working with government agencies to help catch genuine wrongdoers and keep customer's privacy in mind. This is a fine balance to make and there are some fine learnings from that.

The chapter on Rural Broadband is fascinating to me to understand the challenges rural areas face and the potential application of TV signaling technology to connect them with the rest of the world. 

The impact of AI to process vast amounts of data to get actionable intelligence is now mainstream news. It is unfashionable to say that someone is not working on AI. However, AI is as good as the person who trained the AI system and built a computational model. It has been proved to be biased. Social media feeds show you only those content that you showed an affinity to. There have been reports of automated resume screeners having a negative bias against females and certain ethnicities. The use of Facial Recognition is becoming mainstream in consumer products (cell phones, PC) and enterprises to provide targetted selling. This has a serious implication on privacy.

In conclusion authors (Brad and Carol) provide their perspective on technologies that are going to impact everyone's life and what are the challenges ahead along with some solutions. Governments, citizens need to be aware of these impacts so that they can safeguard themselves against the misuse of these tools and prevent conversion to a weapon.

Enacting a drama

In my village, Durga Puja is a big event. People staying in faraway cities also try to come and be present in this joyous occasion. This year I also got an opportunity to be there.

One evening while there is a group prayer (sandhya arati), I met one of my friends Mr. Lakshmanji. After some pleasantries, he casually asked if I am interested in playing a part in the drama. Let me tell you that the village drama is very prestigious. It typically starts around 10-11 in the evening and can go till up to 4-5 in the morning. It is watched by a large group of people and is broadcasted on loudspeakers. I have seen many dramas in Durga Pujas during my childhood. I have always been mesmerized by the meticulous performance exhibited by drama actors. Some village elders are still being revered for their drama prowess.  

So naturally, I was excited and terrified of this opportunity. I have never acted in any drama before this. Either at school or in college. The closest I did was in BHU where there was a 30-minute training session. Nowhere close to what is being done here. After some thought, I decided why not. After all I got one life to try. I was told that drama will be tomorrow. It will be a Maithili (mother tongue of Mithila region) drama. I requested for a small role.

After dinner, I went to the rehearsal place. In one room, there were many people seated together and were discussing what to do and what not to do. Some of them are very senior to me and many of them I didn't know. Anyways they were very kind to me and asked me to review one character. After reading the script I found it to be very lengthy and found my confidence dripping. So I requested some smaller role with not that much lengthy dialogues. Finally, I was given the role of a one-eyed lawyer who is kind of introducing the main character Mr. Nilo Kaka to the audience.

I rehearsed that scene with the person who will be playing the main character. He is a very senior person and many times acted drama veteran. Further, his character was insulting my character in the drama which was unnerving for some weird reason. Initially, it was very hard. I was not loud enough. I was facing in wrong direction and so on. After couple of retakes I found some strength. By then it was a late-night and we parted.

The next day I tried to remember my lines as much as possible. Harassed my family members with my dialogues. In the evening I was messaged on the loudspeaker to meet. In the rush of all this, it didn't come to my mind to find out what will be the costume, etc. I presumed that drama committee will provide it. Obviously, I was wrong. It is volunteer work and I had to arrange a suitable dress. They helped me in finding the eye patch which is very essential for my character.

After a few more rehearsals with my friend Mr. Lakshamji I was as ready, I could be. One of the big learning for me was the importance of backstage support staff. There were few people who were helping artists with makeup. The atmosphere was very jovial. The role of women is also played by men. They were wearing saree and blouse and joking all around. The most important role is of the prompt reader. This person is responsible for reading lines of character in a medium voice so that the microphone doesn't catch it and at the same time, artists are able to hear it. The role is the lifeline of drama.

Anyways my turn came in and I was ushered in. I relaxed and tried to enjoy this moment. To my surprise, I did quite okay and so was told by others later. It was a very rewarding experience for me and I have so many learning lessons.

Successful memory

Why do we remember? Or the apt question is why should we remember? Then the next question is how should we remember?
These questions have been addressed (tried to address) in book "12 rules of life"

As per author who is a practicing psychologist, successful memory makes us ready for future.

In his words
“This is what happened. This is why. This is what I have to do to avoid such things from now on”: That’s a successful memory. That’s the purpose of memory. You remember the past not so that it is “accurately recorded,” to say it again, but so that you are prepared for the future.

Discipline paradox

Freedom—even the ability to act—requires constraint.

And that constraint is discipline. Without this constraint we are never free. This is a beautiful paradox.