Realm of Randomness ..

Me and Garfield

Along my surf through the web net (hmm tautology), found a lively garfield (now oxymoron) cartoon.

Now same is with me. Truly i feel i draw a quite of  parallels with the dude Garfield. I am lazy, a bit overweight and i adore eating and sleeping. Even i hate Mondays (more on that here) and feel diet is a “die” with T. Me too hate spiders. A kind of sudden chill runs down my spine when i face that fraternity. Even the lucky bite for Peter Parker could not change my lovely hatred for spiders. I have tried entering a lot of weird things mind including fruits, mornings and various other animates and inanimates.

And this strip just elevated my similarity levels with garfield. I feel i, too, am a little too ‘Garfieldish‘ generous. I mean i provide my helping hand to someone just to end up with a feeling that i was too generous to do that. All because i was totally involved working his work out (!!!) I mean why do i have to do that. No need. What rather i should have done was to just provide a helping hand. Not my full hand.

I know garfield won’t have worked this way. He would never have worked this hard. I need to do that too. I need to learn that too. Stop working. Just provide the helping hand and remove it. Anyways the help hardly gets noticed in todays world. Am i turing selfish? Yep… thats another parallel with Garfield!

by Amit Gawande Tags: garfield, humor, self | Posted in introspection, parallels

Tottering along the floor to..

Now this is the topic that hits me everyday, atleast 3 times a day.. uhh .. usually more than that. Somehow i could not pen it out. Finally here it is. But before i move forward,  a confession. This post is mainly with reference to the males. Am not sure how it applies to the other sex. But lemme just blabber it out…

Each day i usually rise, heavy stomached and ill faced, from my seat. Do something awkward between strolling and bustling. Course the floors of my office/home. Finally bang the door and enter the place. And choose a urinal. Now that’s where it is supposed to end. But it does not. Something more happens. More on it in a wink.

Let me first speak out the reason for this whole rush. Firstly i have somehow got molded into someone who likes playing with critical situations. Be it deadlines (not at work though.. have to say … have to say..:P) or my daily chores. Secondly, its all about the pleasure one gets from the sudden and mountainous relief  through abundant pouring. I hope you understood.

Anyways back to the track. The most interesting part follows. Each time i visit the “relief camp“, i see am not alone. There is this whole bunch of varied group and thats when my thinking cells awake and start noting few things. Now let me blog down few of my notes:

• Usually the bunch refrain from the meeting each others eye sight. Each time they do, there is this sudden jerk of the neck, as if something exceedingly hot touched the eyeball, throwing the sights up or out.
• Most of the campers stare at the roof, either with eyes closed or ‘blink’less. May be the roof falls in between. What they are staring is the heavens. Afterall what one attains is, indeed, a divine pleasure.
• There are those few who are relieved enough that they start bubbling at their mobile handsets, basked in the abundant relief.
• If there, incase, is no vacant one, mind clog with this NP hard problem of where to stand and where to stare. Few follow the route to WC, few stare in the mirror rubbing their faces, few pridefuls even walk back. There are also those few who, just unknowingly out of all the unbearabe tension, wash off there hands!

Now there are few more notes in my mindbook. But for now this is it. Need to totter along. Need to attain the pleasure. Here am off.

by Amit Gawande Tags: humor, thinking, urinals | Posted in humor, weird

I am superstitious

What follows is just a prologue. If you want to directly hit my thoughts on me being superstitious, surf to the last line

A guy named B.F.Skinner once carried out an experiment on pigeons to demonstrate the formation of superstition. He placed a series of hungry pigeons in a cage attached to an automatic mechanism that delivered food to the pigeon “at regular intervals with no reference whatsoever to the bird’s behavior.” His discovery in his own words:

The bird behaves as if there were a causal relation between its behavior and the presentation of food, although such a relation is lacking. There are many analogies in human behavior. Rituals for changing one’s fortune at cards are good examples. A few accidental connections between a ritual and favorable consequences suffice to set up and maintain the behavior in spite of many unreinforced instances. The bowler who has released a ball down the alley but continues to behave as if she were controlling it by twisting and turning her arm and shoulder is another case in point. These behaviors have, of course, no real effect upon one’s luck or upon a ball half way down an alley, just as in the present case the food would appear as often if the pigeon did nothing — or, more strictly speaking, did something else.

More on this and its connection with me and my being superstitious here.

by Amit Gawande Tags: first look, superstition | Posted in sensible, sudden words

Twitter in Blog/Website..

I always wanted to add my tweets to my blog, to pen in the sudden and randomly generated vibes in me. I use to do that at twitter. But i wanted to pull in the thoughts at one place. As i owned the place now, i thought of a dedicated section for the purpose and hence came into existence the “Blabber Land“.

If you follow the link, you can find the live demonstration of twitter in blog under the first section named “Abrupt Blabberings“. The procedure is pretty not-so-complex sorts. And with a simple but informative article like this your work is greatly reduced. Thanks Remy …

But still it would need a bit of a scripting and customizing on your part, for better results that is. Few points to remember (basically the ones i didn’t )

1. Make sure you add the <div id=”twitter”> section at a proper place. Before pulling the tweets, book the place holder and test the looks with the dummy data. Customize the div section.
2. Add the pre-fetch message at the blog. Let user know something is about to happen in the section. A progress indicator would be a plus.
3. Now add the scipt that fills in the place holder booked earier i.e. the <div> section. Make sure you rename the tweet in getTwitters(‘tweet’, to the id you have mentioned in the <div> section above. So in this case, it should be renamed as “getTwitters(‘twitter‘,”
4. Adding the script section towards the </body> tag of your page would always be favorable. The simple reason being the browsers don’t start any parallel downloads i.e. of images etc as long as they don’t download the scripts. It is always recommended that scripts, wherever possible, should always come right at the end, after most of the page is completely loaded.
   

by Amit Gawande Tags: blog, twitter | Posted in blog, twitter

Superstitious and Me??? ..Nah…

Yep that’s the way it is whenever you ask that renowned question to even slenderly educated guy. There is this eerie feeling in being superstitious. But i feel knowingly or unknowingly, we do follow superstition. Ok, lemme not talk about the universe for whole. Taaadaaa … I, myself, do follow superstition. Or lemme say i am the most superstitious guy among the people i know. No better proof than my following acts …

1. I maintain my position for the whole match whenever india is winning a cricket match. Or whenever something, out of my control, is happeing in accordance with my wish.
2. I try and change whatever i can when something is not betiding as i wish, to find out that right position to maintain (refer 1)
3. As far as possible, i try and avoid … Uhhh … the path crossed by a cat. I know thats really foolish of me. But that is just to keep my mind away from any unwanted superstitious thought, if something bychance goes wrong.
4. I have my own “tasks-not-to-do-now” list which i, by all possible means, avoid to carry out.

Ok, i will stop this whole self-bashing ceremony now. I know there would be pretty more. Will add them whenever am frustrated with myself. Anyways, I feel most of my superstitious acts are more of an attempt to prevent my mind from wandering in the dusty desert of superstition. You see if something does go wrong if i didn’t do __, at the back of my mind it keeps tinkering me, further adding to my superstitious feeling. That’s superstition to prevent increasing superstition.

But i know whatever i say, i need to stop doing this. I need to stop falling to superstition just for the sake of not falling for the greater ones. I know .. I am working on that … Have already overcome few of mine. Blog on them soon …

By the way, i did find an interesting article. A guy named B.F.Skinner carried out an experiment on pigeons to demonstrate the formation of superstition. He placed a series of hungry pigeons in a cage attached to an automatic mechanism that delivered food to the pigeon “at regular intervals with no reference whatsoever to the bird’s behavior.” His discovery in his own words:

The bird behaves as if there were a causal relation between its behavior and the presentation of food, although such a relation is lacking. There are many analogies in human behavior. Rituals for changing one’s fortune at cards are good examples. A few accidental connections between a ritual and favorable consequences suffice to set up and maintain the behavior in spite of many unreinforced instances. The bowler who has released a ball down the alley but continues to behave as if she were controlling it by twisting and turning her arm and shoulder is another case in point. These behaviors have, of course, no real effect upon one’s luck or upon a ball half way down an alley, just as in the present case the food would appear as often if the pigeon did nothing — or, more strictly speaking, did something else.

So i guess i now know how it all started for me. I was ruined socially. Heres all my energy to end that …

by Amit Gawande Tags: acts, reason, superstition | Posted in acts, sensible

Vande Mataram..

Wishing all Indians, including myself, a Very Happy 62nd Independence Day. Been a great start, let me revisit the most prestigious moment for an Indian.

Its really an amazing feeling watching Indian flag raised above others. Kudos to the Golden Boy, Abhinav.

Update: I dunno for some obscure reason, i see most of these videos are pulled out from youtube, for some copyright infringement i guess. You can watch the video here.Thanks Shrirang for bringing this to my notice.

by Amit Gawande Tags: independence, india | Posted in sensible, sudden words

Journey to a self-hosted blog …

Finally i succeed. I have been working on this site for around a month now. I, though, had finalized my contents quite a long time back. But it was because of my random vibes, i could never really convince my mind for a dedicated hosted weblog. But finally…  Though am not sure is it a simple blog or a ‘blogsite‘?

Anyways this the first draft of the site i had in my mind for myself. I will note few points which, according to me, really heighten the user experience levels. It was all as a result of hours of skiing along the web and the constant feedback to myself of my experience as a user. So let me begin ..

1. More space for the actual content on the page
2. Clear separators between two posts
3. Easy on eyes font family and sizes
4. Non-disturbing ads
5. At hand list of recent post and comments
6. No bulky colors
7. Easily accessible links and catchy titles
8. A consistency in the overall site

I have thrived to please most of my expectations. Anyways i will, for now, not talk about my real journey right from ‘Blogger’, where it all started, to ‘WordPress.com’, where it all beautified, to ‘WordPress.org’, but just the final phase. The final shift, for me, was never a real pain in … uhh… head. And it shouldn’t be for anyone either. Only thing it requires is more of interest for designing and blogging.

So it all started, once on a frustrated day, with research on the preprocess. Had to earn my domain name ‘elatedamit‘ which i did. Bought the domain at rediff. Few pitfalls, never ever search for the domain you are planning to buy. Especially never on GoDaddy. The reason being various sites internally use GoDaddy for booking domains and, due to some random problem with their coding i guess, they are under impression you bought the domain even if you haven’t. Best example, Google Apps.

Moved to the host part. This was the most reasearched topic by me. I compared rates, providings, user experiences, expert comments and even overall look and speed of the hosting site itself. I really could not single out the best hosting site. Various people said, it depends on requirement. I feel the only thing it depends on is your luck. Choose, depending on how much you can spend, the best appearing host and leave it to luck. Hope that you won’t face any problem.

Roamed and jumped from Dreamhost to Bluehost to eWebGuru. But finally i stumbled upon Lunarpages based on the cost to feature analysis. I have hosted my blog with lunarpages for around a month now. I haven’t faced any issues of downtimes or slow responses yet. One valuable and important suggestion. Never complete the process right at the first time. Let them know you are interested. A guareented bargaining is about to happen.

Once your domain and hosts are connected, what remains to do is limitless. Remove your age-old thinking cap. Upsurge your creativity buds and dive in the vast sea of designing ‘blogsites‘. There is lots to learn and bit to earn too.

PS: Do let me know your views on the overall experience of the site. Let me confirm if  i am normal or has randomness caught my mind too

by Amit Gawande Tags: blog, hosts, user experience | Posted in Blogroll, sensible, web

Gulped…

Tired. Bored. Empty-Skulled. I gulped another cup of cappuccino. And on my way back, i just churned my head out to find why do i usually drink coffee/tea.

The mentioned three properties are just few of the ones that make me amble towards the vending machine.  In reality, i feel i don’t need any reason for supping coffee. Earlier it was to make sure, with sleepy patches of time curling over my head, i don’t drivel down the office desk to the ground. But along my stroll through the professional life, the life itself mandated me to sip that muddy liquid each day on specified time. Now is the case that i feel tottery if i don’t drink the coffee at the time prescribed by my life.

I feel my life is getting hold of me. I feel it should be the other way round. I need to do something. I need to think. I need to drink a cup of coffee. But this time its non-prescrbed. Thats the start…

Else the day won’t be long when my situation would be as shown, with coffee howling “You used to gulp me because you wanted to. Stop gulping me because you have to”

by Amit Gawande Tags: coffee, random, slap | Posted in real-life, sudden words