Blissful Life

Blog

Notice: after planning it for years, I moved this blog out of blogger/blogspot (which google has abandoned long ago) to wordpress on a fine evening in Dec 2024. This notice will stay here to warn that things might be broken. Let me know if you find anything.

  • Do You Realize Your Value

    During the civil wars in feudal Japan, an invading army would quickly sweep into a town and take control. In one particular village, everyone fled just before the army arrived – everyone except the Zen master. Curious about this old fellow, the general went to the temple to see for himself what kind of man this master was. When he wasn’t treated with the deference and submissiveness to which he was accustomed, the general burst into anger. “You fool,” he shouted as he reached for his sword, “don’t you realize you are standing before a man who could run you through without blinking an eye!” But despite the threat, the master seemed unmoved. “And do you realize,” the master replied calmly, “that you are standing before a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?”

    The above story tells us more than one thing.

    1: Don’t be afraid: Don’t fear anyone. Fear never leads to productivity. It only leads to restriction. But that doesn’t mean we have to show fearlessness everywhere. Be brave when it matters. Stand up and speak out against injustice. But,

    2: Be tactful: Like the Zen master, show tact. Request something and you may get things that you may not have got if you had ordered for it. Inject humor (not satire) and you may be winning hearts even faster.

    3: Never give others a chance to devalue you:Ever found yourself shouting against someone to stop shouting? Ever wasted time watching senseless soaps in the television? Then you will understand what I mean by not giving others a chance to devalue you.

    Remember: You will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.

  • Win Friends, Stop Worrying, Start Speaking – Dale Carnegie

    The Dale Carnegie Page

    Dale Carnegie’s summaries of his books :

     How to Win Friends and Influence People

             How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

       The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking

             Don't Grow Old - Grow Up! by Dorothy Carnegie

    Though these are only summaries, they are very useful

  • Hundreds of Proofs of God’s Existence

    Hundreds of Proofs of God’s Existence

    …(1) Ask atheists what caused the Big Bang.
    (2) Regardless of their answer, ask how they know this.
    (3) Continue process until the atheist admits he doesn’t know the answer to one of your questions.
    (4) You win!
    (5) Therefore, God exists….

  • Tips for Making Your PC Eco-friendly

    Want to save the world? Already switching off lights and fans when not in use? What next? Make your computer energy efficient. There is (in Windows):

    • Power Options: in Control Panel –> Performance and Maintenance (category view)
      Here, there are Power Schemes and Hibernate tabs.

      I have set the Power Scheme as follows:
      Turn off monitor : After 1 min
      Turn off hard disks : After 10 mins
      System Standby : After 15 mins
      System hibernates : After 20 mins
      And it works extremely well for me. Every time I go to drink tea, or fight with my brother, even if i forget to switch off the monitor, it automatically goes off.

      Hibernating is a very powerful power saving tool that many often do not use due to lack of awareness. Enabling this is very easy. In Power Options, there is the Hibernate tab. Enable it.
      Now is the tricky part. Normally when turning off, you can see stand by towards the left of turn off. When hibernation is enabled also, there is standby there. But now, if you press Shift, you can see that it turns into hibernate button. Click while pressing shift* and your PC hibernates like a polar bear does in winter.
      The advantage of hibernating is that you can turn the power supply off like when shut down and you can resume your session from where you stopped as when stood by.
      *Note: You can press H instead of pressing shift and clicking.

    • Switch off: When not hearing music, you can switch off the speaker (so that you can even prolong the speaker life). When only hearing music you can turn off monitor.
      When working offline, turn off modem. After printing turn off printer.
      After shutting down, turn off every hardware that you can – monitor, speaker, printer, blue tooth device so that the next time you turn on, you switch on only the things that you need.
    • Protect : CPU – play small games instead of huge EA sports games.
      Monitor – adjust the monitor settings according to the company recommended settings.
      Speaker – play soft songs, lower the volume.
      Modem – avoid overheating by keeping your hands on the modem and taking the heat off.
      Keyboard – Don’t bang on the keys, not even the enter key or space bar. Don’t eat powdered food in front of the keyboard.
      Mouse – Dust the dust from the mouse pad. Click softly. Increase mouse speed in pointer options of mouse menu in control panel.
      The whole computer – use UPS, prevent voltage fluctuations.
    • Hardware: When buying new, always choose the better product. Like between CRT and LCD choose LCD. Buy a speaker with a separate power on/off switch.
      Buy a table designed specifically for your PC, so that you easily switch off accessories that aren’t necessary.
      Larger RAM means faster work means lesser time means lesser energy.

    Finally. Don’t install unnecessary programs. Not that you needn’t install the new browser that google releases. But make sure that you don’t install an audio recording/editing pro software that you don’t even know the use of, just to know how it looks like (like I used to do for years).

  • Why Reading is the Best Habit?

    I consider reading as the best hobby because it is:

    1. Easy: Everyone learns reading at their schools. So, there is no need to learn something new.
    2. Cheap: Look around you. For every electronic thing, there will be one magazine or book in your room. Why? It is a lot more cheaper (the positive way to tell ‘lot less expensive’) . if you go to a super market, it is more probable that you will buy a book than an electronic good
    3. Healthy: Reading saves your eye from tv, computer, etc.
      For sitting while reading, or even lying down, you will have to employ many muscles in your back and legs and abdomen, thus leading them to strength.
    4. You are the master: You can read at your own pace. You can re-read. You can fast forward. You can skip. You can rewind. You don’t get addicted.
    5. Mobile: Can you sleep beside your guitar on your holidays, if you had to travel in a crowded train with two bags in both of your hands?
      Books can accompany you wherever you are, just a matter of a few inches.
    6. Huge: You start collecting stamps. All easily available stamps are collected. Over. Your hobby, heads nowhere.
      There are so many books written, that you cannot finish reading even everything you’ve got in your private library, let alone search for new grazing grounds.
    7. Universal: Unlike other hobbies like tv shows, collecting, bird-watching, etc., reading is universal.
      That is, you read Harry Potter, you have friends all over the globe. But you watch birds near you. Those may be unheard, elsewhere.

    Add your own……

  • Destination Infinity: The Japanese concept of 5S

    Destination Infinity: The Japanese concept of 5S
    Simple management techniques for a better life.
    Also some examples for the greatness of Japanese men

  • Bharath Operating System Solutions (BOSS) – Indian LINUX

    The C-DAC (Center for Development of Advanced Computing) developed a Linux operating system for Indians, a few years ago. It is now in its 3rd major version – Tejas.

    Unlike Windows, every application in it can use any Indian language as its interface. That is, apart from being able to type in Malayalam or any language, with BOSS, you can actually see Malayalam words instead of File, Edit, etc. And if you are visiting Malayalam websites, on the title bar of the browser, you can see actual Malayalam letters instead of those little rectangles you get with Windows.

    BOSS can easily be downloaded from their website.

    It also has automatic updates. If you can’t use those in Windows due to pirate concern, you CAN with BOSS.

    Installation is quite user friendly, though there can be a slight problem for beginners during disk partitioning. But this can be easily done, if you have a windows system with many disk drives already installed. So you can just delete one partition manually, and tell BOSS to automatically partition the free space that is created.

    After that everything is quite easy. Even users new to Linux won’t feel hostility. The taskbar has the ability to hold many desklets, like the Google desktop gadgets or vista desktop gadgets. Languages can easily be changed. Updates easily done. Even installations of new software have been given a graphical end. A synaptic manager, lets you find which all software is available at various web resources, and lets you install those, with just checking and clicking.

    There are nice CD/DVD writing tools. A swap disk that lets you free yourself from being tied to the memory limit of your RAM. Simple Games. Everything that you will ever need.

    For more information go to bosslinux.in

  • Best Posts – Archive

    Any thing that felt good sense for me will appear here.

    For Inspiration:
    The Don’t Quit Poem: The don’t quit poem
    Know Your Value…………: You have a potential
    It’s called Mindset!!: As you think, so you are
    Beat That Voice Inside You Which Tells You – “You Can’t”: Running and reading
    When You Look Back At The End… : Live the best life you can…
    Imagining Nothing : It’s possibly impossible
    Pale Blue Dot: Looking at earth from a huge distance

    Eccentric thoughts:

    Making the best out of poverty: Convert poor to trained workers
    The Art of Respecting: Respecting is acting

    On Spirituality:
    The Worst Thing for an Ambitious Young Man is – Spirituality: What advaita is
    Why do we do what we do do?: Why are we here?
    Do You Think Everything Happened By Chance?    : You’d rather believe it otherwise

    On Politics:
    X Party : “Y and Z are bad, elect us” : Past defects or future promises? What do you need from candidates?
    കേരളത്തില്‍ മഴ പെയ്യുമ്പോള്‍: Can even rain help the innocent?

    On Patriotism:
    Do you love your nation or fear her?: Importance of loving nation rather than respecting
    Valentine’s Day : I Love A Girl: Love your country

    On life:
    7 simple steps to save earth: written for earth hour 2009
    7 things to do during holidays: So that you don’t get bored and spend time productively
    What to do when you make a mistake?: Get up and go

    On computer:
    How to increase the number of people who read your blog: Traffic raising tips
    How to Make Blog Post Through Emails in Blogger: Send an Email and It Will Become a Blog Post, How?

  • Quotable Quotes – Archive

    Every quote that appeared in the Quotable Quotes Section of this blog, will appear here.

    “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
    – Albert Einstein

    “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.”
    William Feather

    “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don’t make it a leg. “
    – Abraham Lincoln

    “Make yourself indispensable and you’ll be moved up . Act as if you’re indispensable and you’ll be moved out.”
    – Jules Ormont

    Success: To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!
    ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

    “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”
    – Babe Ruth

    “The formula for a happy marriage? It’s the same as the one for living in California: When you find a fault, don’t dwell on it.”
    – Jay Trachman

    “If the complexity of brain suggests the existence of God, the insignificance of earth suggests the exact opposite”

    “The scientific name for an animal that doesn’t either run from or fight its enemies is lunch.”
    –  Michael Friedman

    “Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
    – Oliver Wendell Holmes

  • Seven Simple Steps to Save Earth

    The aim of Earth Hour and similar movements is to reduce energy usage. This can be possible only with us changing our ways. We can

    1. Walk: Has to go to the shop? Walk.
      Or if you have something to carry, use your cycle. No cycle? Buy one. It gives you exercise. It gives earth oxygen.
      Walk from your work to home. You can’t walk to work in the morning, it sweats you. So, in the morning, use a bus or jeep. But come back walking. In the beginning it is difficult. But as your leg muscle improves walking can be fun.
      (If you are young, you can run for a difference. I am doing this for the last 15 months, and last year I won 4 medals in the school athletics meet)
    2. Read: Read as a hobby. Read for pleasure. You can substitute TV, music, films and computer games with books. And what more, unlike films, you can imagine novels as you wish to.
    3. Switch off:
      Lights and fans when not in use, when unnecessarily used.
      If you have a habit of sleeping with the fan on, kick it. While in bed, Switch off the fan. Open the windows. Don’t drape yourself in a blanket or sheet. Think of something else, and not about fan.
    4. Computer: Learn standby mode and hibernating mode. Put into standby when you drink tea. Hibernate when eating lunch.
    5. Cook less, eat row: Food materials have the highest nutritional value when they are consumed fresh. So, don’t cook. Just eat row things which can possibly be eaten row. (Vegetables – pea, carrot, cucumber, tomato, lady’s finger; all fruits; pulses – germinating grams). Drink water instead of tea or coffee.
    6. Talk less: Energy of any kind is energy. So, the chemical energy in your body stored in the form of ATP molecules is also something that must be conserved.
      Talk little, move little, think little.
      Save energy for your activities, eat less, cook less, conserve.
    7. Support others: If you can’t do any of these for yourself, just encourage others those who are doing. Thus they continue and onlookers start doing these. Support movements like Earth Hour.

    Think. Act. Live.