Blissful Life

Author: akshay

  • Google Dictionary !!!

    Google is taking over the internet… It released its own DNS service and I thought that was the news for the day, but wait… Google has rolled out its dictionary, and unlike when it rolls out other services this came in silently. And so, there is a great chance that you may miss this. But I won’t let you do so. For, looking up words is one thing I’ve always used google for. Gone are the days when I had to type define:compere and then get a single line on something.
    Today onwards I will just have to key in the word like I do with any other search term… (Ctrl – K, then “chamois”) and see on the top right along with those big numbers a blue link [definition]

    And clicking on it I will be with the meaning…

    As you can see in the picture, there is easy starring of words (learn new words), pronunciation, synonym, categories, other languages having the same word, web links (what you would normally get with a “define:” tag. And finally there are dictionaries for almost every language. Even malayalam!!!!!

    Just go check it out Google dictionary

    And have happy days learning words…

  • 26/11 and The Colour of Life

    The true colour of life can only be appreciated when we get out of the frame and just stay as a witness.
    This, I understood when I was flipping through all the channels in my television, tonight on 26/11.

    Let me first of all salute all those heroes who died. I wish I have a death like theirs.
    It requires a lot of courage to know that you are going to die and still stand up to a terrorist. I wish to include all of them by name. But doing that would mean they have become our history. They haven’t. They are the martyrs of our reality. They are very much alive in our discussions today.

    All the channels have been airing special bulletins on 26/11 today. With a tinge of sorrow everyone reported about the deaths. And then they showed how life has came back. In NDTV, they had showed the gunshots, the burning Taj, the press lying on the floor, the firemen trying to curb the fire. And then they showed the today of the Taj Hotel. Pigeons flying. Men feeding them. Tourists taking snaps. And a small child crawling on its knees through the pigeons, happiness on her face. It was beautiful. And that is what I wish to call the Colour of Life.

    Life is so very beautiful because it is multi-centred. There is no absolute one thing that everybody wish to do. There is variety. There is diversity. There is colour.

    Just go to a city in the night. You will feel that. There will be lights everywhere. Blue, yellow, neon, sodium. There will be the fruit seller with his orange, blue, black, yellow, red. There will be the flower seller. There will be the stationary shop. There will be the rice shop. There will be restaurants, cafes. There will be the mobile coupon centres, Xeroxing stations, the cycle shop, bars, the hardware shop. There will be the hospital. And not to mention the vehicles on the road – cars, buses, rickshaws, motor cycles. And there would be the trees on the sides which we simply fail to notice in the dark, but when we reach near them we feel an eerie sense of fear of the ghost hiding above it.

    Or just flip the channels of your television set.
    There will be mourning prayers for the dead at some place. Debates about the same at some other place. And then there will be that cricket star who took 5+ wickets in his come back match. And then discussion on how he performed. Then there will be the unexpected 0-1 loss of a soccer club. And their manager’s explanation. There will be prime time movies. There will be soaps. And there will be reality shows. And there will be fashion shows. And there will be a lonely preacher talking about religion. Then there will be some ads. (These ads are the most contrasting colours. They will be so funny sometimes. Like after the interview with the NSG chief about how they finished the terrorists there was the docomo ad where a car hits another and the man who was driving the first car get down to see what happened, suddenly police surround them from all directions, and this man would be holding his hands up “Hands up”. But the police men catch some terrorists from the other car, gives a pat on his back and leaves).

    And there will be people. There will be a fisherman who talks in impure Hindi about how he saw the terrorists getting down from the rubber dingy they used to travel. And there will be a debate where different experts tell their own views about how the world should work. One foreigner telling India should unite with Pakistan. And an angry Indian saying how Pakistan hurt the “people of India”, and how they want nothing but a war. And the anchor who does not let emotion come into the debate, but still pours in questions which can be answered only through emotions. There will be sports stars, analysts, super sexy models, actors (including actresses), yoga masters, commentators, extras, junior artists, real artists, judges, showmen, and the animal planet man who goes after the largest otters. And there will be another debate, where a victim describes very emotionally about how he was terrified as well as all others when they heard gun shots, and how the hotel authorities helped them to escape, and how they comforted each other, and how the NSGs gave them cover and took them to safety under the local police. And then about how there was some report which joked at the victims who suffered. How the government was doing nothing. How Ajmal Kasab has more security than any other man in Mumbai. And he asks the minister P Chidambaram “What have you done?”
    And the minister says calmly “If you were I what would you have done. That’s the answer to that question.” (This is when I came to understand that all our politicians are not fools running after power)

    And there is this whole sense of joy, sorrow, humour, love, trust, respect, motivation, failure, desperation, solitude, business, confidence, seduction, success, hope, affection, envy, hatred, warmth,…This is called the colour of life. The way things go on. The way people come and go. The way topics come and go. But life goes on, for ever and ever.

    Just get out of the painting called life and view it as a whole. It’s so colourful. When we are inside it, seeing only our neighbouring pixel, we can’t see the true colour of life.


    Let life go on…

  • Memento – The Simplest Desktop Notes Application

    You ask this:

    I want an application that can be used to attach sticky notes or to do lists or just some notes on my desktop.
    It should run with almost no memory requirement.
    Don’t make me download higher than 1 MB. (I mean download must be less than 1 MB)
    It should be easy to use.
    It must be free.

    and you search the whole internet, you won’t find this:
    Memento. Your tool. Just download it, install it, enjoy making to do lists, (like the pen and pad to do lists) and simplify your life.

    Here’s the site:
    Memento – Guys with Towels

    ——
    Related Posts:
    How a pen and a pad can save you a lot

  • Achieving God

    The success of experiencing what I did and am trying to share with you through this post will depend on how detached you are from your mind. (In doubt? Read the post The Secret to (Infinite) Happiness)
    Earlier I told you about the happiness you get out of the realisation that you are neither your body, nor your mind, and that how your body or mind feels is not how you feel. There we talked about detaching your mind from yourself, and not letting your mind influence you.
    But today we are advancing to the next step. Controlling your mind

    We often find ourselves indulging in pleasures (what saintly people call worldly pleasures). And most often we find that something in us does not want us to do that. Let it be watching television on the day before your exams, or having a deadline closing in and still finding time for everything else but the project, or knowing that you have to exercise for a healthy life, but still in the bed every morning; the times when you say “I couldn’t resist”

    What was it that you couldn’t resist on those occasions? The desire in your mind.

    Until you learn how to control your mind, true happiness can never be achieved.

    And this ability, the ability to control your mind is very difficult to acquire, unless you are willing to train it for hours and hours. (In saintly terms, prayer or meditation)

    But I just found a short-cut.

    Let’s start it straight away. (Works well if there is anything you have been postponing)
    Find a disgusting task, completing assignments, learning, reading, exercising (these will turn to be fun later, as I will show you).
    Try to do it now.
    Your mind is telling you not to do it.
    Try to do it. Mind fighting. You try. Mind. You. Mind. >><< egh… dishyum… dishyum… ><
    Don’t let mind take over you. Control your mind. Teach it that you are the master and it your slave.
    Make it do what you want.
    Now, the first task is the only difficult task. If you can do this by brute force over your mind, you are successful. Everything else is easier.

    The moment you finish the first task something in you starts working. You feel a lot satisfied, confident,…
    These are the symptoms that mind has accepted you as its master.

    If nothing happened it is because you did the task through compromise with your mind. You told your mind to remain silent for a few minutes, while you finish the task. Mind will step aside, and, after you finish the task, take over again. That is not the way. Tell the mind first hand that you decide what to do, and that mind can only accept what you decide. Then do the task. And even after the task, you will remain the master.

    Now, the satisfaction, the pleasure you just had, remember it. Just remember how happy you feel when you are in control of yourself (and not your mind). Don’t forget that ever.

    (If you can, read the rest of this post only later. Though nothing is going to happen even if you read it now, it helps you better to take the control of your mind, if you read it later.)
    _______________________________________________________

    If you are like me, your mind will regain its authority within 2 hours of completing the first task.
    It will hold a diplomatic conversation with you. Mind: “Hey! I accept defeat, you are my master. Will you please let me enjoy for an hour?” It will humbly request you. And you will let it. But the moment you do that mind will be back in power. So, what to do now?

    Actually you shouldn’t have allowed the mind even a moment. The more freedom you give your mind, the more it will take control of you. But still, you got trapped. Now how do you bounce back? Simple. Remember the pleasure you had when you had mind under your control? Yes, that pleasure of satisfaction and the feel of control (far better than even OP :D). Remember it. Savour its sweetness. So you have two pleasures waiting for you, one silly, fragile pleasure and the other everlasting, supreme pleasure.

    Remember it and fight your mind. Lo! Your control is back with you. And don’t lose it to mind ever again.

    Just go in full control of your mind for a day or two.
    And when you are pretty sure that you have your mind under your control, let it have some fun, still under your control. Some controlled entertainment. For an hour or so. And every otherwise gruelling thing you do, command the mind to treat that it is fun.

    The mind is a great servant but a horrible master

    And when letting your mind have fun be cautious. Our mind is so tricky that sometimes it will make us think that we are in control while actually it is in control. This can be called pseudo control. But you can easily identify whether you are having pseudo control or actual control. Just command your mind to do something, if it obeys you are in control, and if it doesn’t you’ll have to start taming it again.

    So, once you have tamed your mind, like a good pet dog, it will obey whatever you say. And may be if our mind does have some secret potentials like the saints say, then some day we will be able to bend spoons.

    And when you are in complete control of your mind, then you are in control, you are God, the Almighty.
    Enjoy the bliss.

  • Some Windows Keyboard Shortcuts You Probably Didn’t Know Of

    I found out some shortcuts recently which I didn’t know of.

    • Ctrl + Tab will switch through the tabs in a tabbed window like that of Firefox
    • Alt + Enter will open up the properties of a file or folder when it is selected (while enter opens it)
    • F2 can rename an item
    • Win Key (start) + Tab will cycle through items on the taskbar, without opening them (then, pressing Enter will open them)

    While dragging an item for copying or moving

    • Ctrl while dragging a file will cause it to be copied
    • Shift while dragging a file will cause it to be moved
    • Alt while dragging a file will cause a shortcut to be placed in the destination folder

    While exploring in windows explorer

    • Left and Right Arrows will collapse and expand folders (so will + and – in the number pad)
    • * (in the number pad) will expand all folders below the current selection
    • F6 will switch panes

    While viewing folders (like in My Computer

    • Backspace will let you go to the upper level folder
    • Alt + Right or Left Arrow will go forward or backward

    While editing text

    • Ctrl + Backspace will erase a whole word.
    • Ctrl + Left or Right Arrow will go one word left or right
    • Ctrl + Home or End will go to the first or last position
    • Shift + Any movement selects text. (Shift + Ctrl + Home will select from first to the point where you are, Shift + Home will select the line up to where you are, like wise)

    Some of these have been filtered from worldstart.com

    Get time to enjoy life

  • When You Look Back At The End…

    Life whizzes past you so quickly that you forget to do or get what you really want to.
    You go school for years and finally there will be a day of farewell and you suddenly feel you missed to do something. You spend your youth, your winged days and finally when you start slowing down you find that you could have did even more when you were younger. And when you finish bringing up your family, you think you could have did it better. You retire, and you find that you did nothing more than anyone would have done. Finally you are ready to breath your last, and while you look back at your life, you feel like you have messed it up. Wasted a whole life.

    Why is it such that it strikes us only at the end, when we have got little time left, that we are doing things the wrong way? Is there no way to get an advance notice?

    Fortunately, there is. And it’s really simple.

    Just think of the flashback that’s going to happen at the end. What scenes would you want to see. Make them happen now, right now.

    There’s nothing you can’t do that you would wish you had done. Our only fault is that we procrastinate. We take life as it comes and do nothing to make it as we think it should be. We lack the courage to take the initiative to make things happen.

    We think that there is always a tomorrow.
    But we forget that there isn’t always.

    We think that nothing will happen if we don’t do it now.
    But we forget that later we may wish we had done it.

    We think that we will end up losing.
    But what have we got to lose?

    We think that life takes us to where we will reach.
    But we forget that we decide where life should take us.

    And that’s why I’m saying:  

    Live the best life you can, so that in the future no one can point at your life and say “Hey! You missed the point”

  • Is An Amoeba Conscious Of Its Existence?

    Just think of living things and non-living things.
    We know that we are conscious of ourselves. But what is this consciousness? Where does it come from?

    Think in terms of atoms. There are atoms and molecules in our body. They are certainly not conscious.
    We have many carbon, oxygen, etc. combined to form proteins, carbohydrates, etc. They too aren’t aware.

    Now we have these things interacting to form cytoplasm and cells.
    Is it in these little corners of our body where we begin to realize our existence?
    Why does the DNA replicate? Why does it control the cell? Why are mitochondria synthesising energy? Why does the cell grow, divide? Why?

    So, the question:
    Is an amoeba conscious of itself??? 

    We are not amoebae. So we do not know it directly.

    But let us think of our own selves.
    We are made up of cells. But we are not aware of our cells. (Otherwise there would have been many many people talking in your head right now)
    So let us assume that cells aren’t conscious of themselves.

    Now, the next question:
    Then who is conscious?
    Take a single cell and you don’t get consciousness. But bring them all together you get people discovering relativity theory and nuclear fission.
    Where is this consciousness originating from?
    Is it from the cells itself? Are the cells actually self aware?
    If yes, then what is this awareness?
    We know that a cell is made of nothing but proteins and similar stuffs. What is it that makes an artificial protein different from a natural one. Why can we make an artificial heart, artificial eye, but not an artificial life?

    Now, if it is not the cells that are conscious, but the agglomeration; How does the neurons form mind? Or how do we think? What happens between the two moments when we are fast asleep and when we’ve just awaken? What is thinking through my mind right now? What is reading this post in your mind right now? Who are you?

    Why is artificial intelligence impossible? Why can we make powerful cranes and trains but not a clever robot?

    What is the difference between life and death? What is the electricity that runs through our bodies and make us move, talk, think? What is consciousness? What is life?

    Are we just runners in a relay passing the baton of life from our predecessors to successors? Are we even authorised to know why this fire called life burns?
    —–

    (Though I don’t believe a God exists) Oh God! Please let me know !!! Please!!! (saints say that you should do this very thing to attain realisation, so what I’m doing right now is practically online meditation, or online praying or praying through blogging. Well God must be having an internet connection too, hope that he’s using a search engine far more powerful than google, and finds me)

  • Who Must Start Blogging? – People Like Nishan

    Anyone can start a blog. But some people must start a blog. If you are any one of the following and haven’t started a blog yet, you should immediately start one, for the sake of the blogosphere.

    1. Travelers:
      If you travel. Be it anywhere. Your own city, foreign countries. Any time, any number of times. Be you young, be you old. Doesn’t matter whether you travel a lot or have just gone for one single summer trip this month. If you travel, you must blog. It is not for you, it is for others. Others who like to travel, who like places, who like to know cultures.
      So the next time you travel, make sure that you start a travel blog and post detailed stories about how you made the trip, how you felt, what you saw. And add a lot of pictures and stuffs.
    2. Professionals:
      Do you work? You should blog about the special moments you had while doing what you do. If you’re a doctor write about patients, and special cases, and miracles. If you’re a teacher blog about children. If you’re an engineer blog about your next assignment and how you’re going to do it.
    3. Innovators:
      Do you often get ideas that come out of nowhere and seem just fantastic? You are an innovator like in the IBM ad. If others don’t notice your ideas, then you should blog them because there could be people whom you don’t know desperately in need of those ideas. And if others do notice your ideas, then you should blog them too because there will be people who you don’t know who will benefit from those ideas.
    4. People who always finds something interesting (the born bloggers):
      People think there’s nothing else to talk but you find something else, always. You are the kind of blogger who just fills his blog with all types of interesting things ranging from sports to movies, politics to philosophy, anything and everything.
    5. Writers:
      You noticed a name in the title and didn’t understand what I meant? Nishan Ansari is the literary secretary of my school. He writes fantastic essays, poems, stories, book reviews, anything you can imagine of. But we must wait for the next edition of our school magazine to read him. Is this anywhere near fair? Such beautiful words must immediately reach readers. What he and others like him must do is this : immediately start a blog and let the creative juice flow. Don’t wait for others to pick you up or think that nobody will read you, when you have it in you, and you decide to do it, you will automatically ascend the stairs of popularity.

    Well this list is just a beginning. Anyone who feels like blogging must try it. Because blogging is awesome fun. And fifty years from now, when you’re looking back at your life, won’t you wanna say you got into blogging long back in the 2000’s?

    So you’ve agreed about it and trying a hand. Here are some basics. You are reading this and you know what a blog is. Blogs can be self-hosted like other websites, or hosted at free providers like google, wordpress, etc. Blogger.com is the blogging platform I’m using and I recommend it to you too. But wordpress is also a good try. Once you go to these sites, they are designed in such a way that any layman can start blogging. (It’s just the motivation part, which I’ve given)

    And when you start blogging and become successful bloggers (which I’m sure you will), don’t forget to link to me and get me some reputation and traffic. Wish you all the best in your blogging adventure.

    Don’t forget to check out my other posts about blogging.

  • Imagining Nothing

    What if there was nothing?
    No me, no you, no blogs, no people, no life, no planets, no stars, no universe, no nothing.
    It is beyond imagination. Imagine nothing. (What? Imagine OK but nothing? How do I imagine nothing?) Of course you can imagine the lifeless planets. But you will have to remove them from the frame too. And then you will have to remove the frame from the frame. There is nothing. And there is no one to know that there is nothing.
    You can try to imagine because you exist. But what if you never existed? What if no one ever existed? Who would witness the universe? And what if even the universe never existed? There is nothing to witness and there is no one to witness. But what is that? Nothing? What is nothing?

    Quite incomprehensible? Thinking about nothing is an excellent way to pass time. But the real fun is after it. Once you think about nothing, everything you think about later in life will start seeming “nothing” to you.
    The whole universe would have been meaningless unless someone ever existed to witness it. And you? You are one of those who have been privileged to witness the universe. You are the meaning of this universe.
    Everything that happens between these privileged people is meaningless compared to how meaningless it would be if there was no one to witness this universe.
    The fact that you exist is the most important thing. There is nothing more important than it. No problem, no war, no question, no answer, nothing is even equally important.

    You are here. And nothing else matters.

  • What if the PM directly orders the District Collectors? (and technology assists them)

    I just found a solution for corrupt politics. If I can get one great Prime Minister, I have made a plan to rescue India. Consider:
    There are only around 600 districts in India. Assuming that all of them have one and only district collector we will have around 600 district collectors. All of them are highly educated, highly qualified IAS officers and therefore most probably sincere to their professions too. A district is quite a manageable area for a single person to administer efficiently. So, District Collectors can efficiently look after their respective districts. But what they lack is sometimes the power to make laws and sometimes the support of a minister concerned with what he’s trying to do (that is what we mean by a corrupted government)
    Now assume that we have one great Prime Minister. And around 50 % good collectors (i.e. 300 of them). Let all others be corrupted. All the ministers, all other executives. We just need 301 people on our side.

    The PM after being elected conducts a grand conference. On day 1 he talks to district collectors from one state, about the problems the state is facing and about what they can do. He asks them about the hurdles they are facing in nation development. He lends them complete support for anything that they are undertaking (provided all the collectors from that state agree). He promises to help them out of any complications that are being imposed on them by state ministers or other central ministers. He gives them high class security.
    And he gives them an email id and a phone number. Any collector can at any moment contact him directly and talk to him and ask his permission and if needed ask his help in dealing with a troublesome minister or such.

    This is done with every other state. And within a month every collector in the country is connected to the Prime Minister. And the collectors can do reforms that were previously impossible due to interventions by others.

    What I mean is virtually a parallel government. But this one is legal.
    Instead of the Members of Parliament (We do have MPs, but they are not acting in between the PM and Collectors), we have District Collectors. It is not true democracy, but it seems like it is better than democracy as it is in India now. The PM acts directly through the Collectors. So there is no time lag. There is no efficiency drain. Corrupt politicians are no more a problem.

    One great Prime Minister and India will never be the same again.