Though the user interface is terrible, the site contains a lot of resources which are free and also contains demos and videos as well. Also came Cloudera in the HN Comments. Even they have a few nice training resources. http://www.cloudera.com/resources/training/.

This is now added to my ever expanding list of resources. I hope to go through a few of their lessons/courses when I find time. Meanwhile, I hope they work on improving the UI and offer their users a better on-site experience.

There were a couple of rooms in the hostel where you get to watch a poker game 24×7. A few guys even lived primarily off poker. I often used spend sometime in those rooms trying to get a grasp of what the fuss was all about. Occasionally I joined them, whenever it wasn’t real money that was at stake. Though I didn’t learn much there, I learnt more about it online.

Then there was this second poker wave on Facebook. It was because of yet another popular game of Zynga apart from FarmVille and Mafia Wars. Back then I used to get like 20 requests to join Texas HoldEm Poker everyday. This time I did accept those requests and spent quite sometime playing online. But still it was never equal to the fun that comes from playing it at a poker table with your friends.

Though I am considerably good at the game now, I can never be too sure unless I play more often. There truly is no replacement for real life experience. Wish I was back at college when we had ‘more time’ on our hands. Probably if I get a good gang here in Chennai to play on the weekend’s I’ll do it. Or probably I got to get back to college again.

They have outlined a idea called the Generation Flux which it believes are people who are able to thrive in such a scenario. These are the people who embrace instability and are not afraid to learn new things and adapt themselves. Being future focused is one of the traits of this so called Generation Flux and trying to replicate the past is a sign of vulnerability.

There are a lot of things one can learn from the so called Generation Flux. One of the major things that we can and should try to instill in ourselves is to keep learning new skills. According to GenFluxer danah boyd*, being able to live on one set of skills over a career is not realistic. Raina Kumra, another of the Gen Flux says that she is a ‘skill hoarder’. She says, “You keep throwing things into your backpack, and eventually you’ll have everything in your tool kit.”

Other important skill is to be able to manage information. “To manage large amounts of information is super important,” says Baratunde Thurston. “And the ability to tell a story is more important than ever. Coalition building is an important skill, the ability to connect. Flexibility of skills leads to flexibility of options. To see what you can’t see coming, you’ve got to embrace larger principles.”

According to boyd*, Kumra and other gen fluxers, there is no fixed path, no one to point your way. There is no role model. Anything settled is vulnerable. The article comes back to the theory of natural selection outlined by Darwin -  ”It is not the strongest of the species that survives; nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

*She doesn’t use capital letters in her name

My approach to cricket has been reasonably simple: it was about giving everything to the team, it was about playing with dignity and it was about upholding the spirit of the game. I hope I have done some of that. I have failed at times, but I have never stopped trying. It is why I leave with sadness but also with pride. -Rahul Dravid Full Farewell Statement

He is one of the cricket heroes that I admired as I grew up. Much more than the others who constituted the unshakable middle-order of the Indian Dream Team.

He did his job without much fanfare, distraction or ego. There are a lot of things one can learn just by watching him on and off the ground. And many of qualities  and values that he stands for are applicable to us in everything we do.

I would definitely love to read his auto-biography (if he decides to write one).

Internet is driven by content creation and it is one of the prime reasons for the staggering growth of internet startups. Photographs, Videos, Podcasts, Designs, Blogs everything is content. Most of the websites rely on the content created by its users and try to enhance how others interact with it. Twitter’s Tweets – content. Facebook status update – content. Flickr photo upload – content. Blog post – content. Email – content.

I for my part have been contributing a little content once in a while. Either through one of the rare blog posts here or through tweets or through comments etc on various blogs that I read regularly.  I also regularly take photos when I travel. Though the photos are not equal to that of a pro, it serves its purpose of preserving memories and capturing the fun of the moment.

So when I came across the blog post about Kiruba’s experiment of writing 500 words before 9AM, I was influenced. I too decided to try out the experiment. I hope to write everyday. But not necessarily before 9. I’m not exactly a morning person (with the exception during trekking when I get up before sunrise to enjoy the feeling). With greater quantity it would be easy to improve on quality. So I will write. It can be a blog post here or an entry in my personal online diary, Oh Life or probably a set of tweets or some or all of them.

Both articles are though provoking and definitely worth reading. Each of them have valid points. Clay Shirky says that the digital revolution is in fact increasing the intellectual range of the society. The Net also is playing a very important part in restoring reading and writing as the central activities of our culture. As for the funny videos, spam and other perennial distractions, Shirky says that whenever media becomes more abundant, the quality falls and increase in quality will happen gradually as we bring in more controls. According to him, in the print media, we had erotic novels coming up over 100 years before the first scientific journals.

One point that I having strong feelings about is where Shirky says that:

“Reading is an unnatural act; Literate societies become literate by investing extraordinary resources, every year, training children to read. Now it’s our turn to figure out what response we need to shape our use of digital tools.”

Nicholas Carr also has some very valid points on his side of the arguments. He focuses on the division of attention due to the internet affects our ability to focus the mind and sustain concentration. It also is not limited to the time when we are using our digital devices. It also changes the habits of our mind adapting to the use of technology. He says that to read a book is to practice an unnatural process of thought. Reading a long sequence of pages helps us develop a rare kind of mental discipline. It is this control, this mental discipline, that we are at risk of losing as we spend ever more time scanning and skimming online.

Rather than letting the medium take control, we should be in control. Of course, it is true that we have far more distractions than what our parents or grandparents had. It is our responsibility to recognize that and assert that control over the medium.

You should definitely read both articles if you haven’t already read them.

Spent four days at Goa with friends at a rented house near the Baga Beach. Roamed around North Goa in a bunch of two-wheelers. Beaches, Beaches and Beaches. And lots of food. It was an amazing experience.

Should have posted more here. Time has passed on though. Probably I will add more here later on. You might never know. But search engines will and my future self will be able to read it as well.

If you are planning for a trip to Goa and would like to get more details, do contact me about my experience at Goa. I am willing to share more.

http://www.chennaitrekkers.org/2012/01/emperors-welcoming-2012team-3-medium_19.html

PS: The photos that I took during the trip can be found at http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150474440750496.365889.501815495&type=3

That is when I realized that while getting the site up from the server error, I had deleted most of the plugins because one of them had been causing the problem I didn’t know which one. And at that time, I had also deleted the Akismet plugin. It was the one, which was protecting me from thousands of spam comments all these days. It had come preinstalled with all versions of WordPress shipped after 2.0. I didn’t actually realize its importance until it was gone. Akismet has premium plans as well as free plans. If you are running a small business blog or something that doesn’t run on WordPress, Akismet is a definitely a service worth paying for.

Few of us from Chennai took a train to Bangalore on Friday night and reached Bangalore station where we got into the Innova which was waiting for us and started off to Coorg directly from there. After stopping briefly for breakfast, we reached Ranganathaswamy Temple at Srirangapatna. (Only after reaching the parking lot did I realize that I had already come to this temple when I was in Mysore with my GA team fellas in October 2010).

The next stop was Namrodoling monastery (also called Golden Temple) in the Tibetan settlement of Bylakuppe. The place was almost identical to some of the monasteries that I saw in Ladakh, with similar paintings, dragon statues, monks etc.  After roaming around the shops nearby, we went to a forest (this one somewhat similar to Kuruva Islands in Wayanad), the name of which I don’t know because it was written only in Kannada. (Damn you!). (Update – The name of the place is Nisargadhama, which is an island similar to Kuruva formed by the river Kaveri). The entrance to the place had a rope bridge hanging over a river. We also went on an Elephant ride at the place. (This is not the Dubare Elephant Camp!). We spent some time there taking pics at the river and then among the bamboo culms with the sunrays emerging from between them.

Still water rafting was lined up next. At the entrance to the Dubare Forest, we got a chance to do some rafting. We got into an inflatable boat and the instructor gave a paddle to each one of us. He gave a couple of instructions regarding coordination and something which no one bothered to listen to anyway. We spent half an hour in the river rowing. It surely was tiring. (Now I understand why the Winklevoss brothers are hulks). We didn’t go to the Elephant Camp at Dubare and started off to our resort near Sunticoppa.

The great part about our trip to Coorg was the resort. Riverside Cottages. Set 8kms away from the nearest town, Sunticoppa, this place provided some awesome panoramic views. One old retired army officer owns the place. The dude came and gave us some gyaan about Coorg and its history since some 17th or 18th century.

As specified in the resort’s website, at night, the true glory of nature comes out in the open. One could see millions of stars just waiting for you to reach out and touch them. An amazing view. Really.

The next day we went to the river bank at the bottom of the hill near the resort. Then after a few pics with the owners of the cottages, we checked out. Our next stop in the journey was at the Sri Omkareshwara Temple followed by another temple the name of which I think is the Sri Bhagandeshwara Temple. Then we went to the birth place of Kaveri river, Talakaveri. A temple tank has been erected at the place, where most pilgrims wash their feet and some take bath. A few hundred feet above the tank level, lies the hilltop which provides an astonishing 360 degree panoramic view. After some pics at that spot, we proceeded to another view point on the way down where again we kept taking more photos.

After a very late lunch at Madikeri town and some coffee shopping, we went to Raja’s Seat where we watched the setting sun and got mesmerized in its magic. While waiting for the sunset, we also went on a tiny toy train. That was the end of the trip. From that place it was a long drive all the way to Bangalore.

For the road trip, thankfully, we bought an aux cable on the way to Coorg and we connected our phones and music players to the car stereo to listen to a huge collection of amazing songs whenever we were inside the Innova. I don’t think we listened to any song more than once, except for a couple of songs which we couldn’t resist listening twice.