Hey everyone -
I just completed giving my website a face lift - agreed its not comprehensive and I should probably have done more - but I'm on holiday!! lol Anyway, check it out and tell me what you think.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Movie:The Game
So I saw the Game today and its an awesome movie - I totally loved the whole alternate reality roleplaying theme - kinda scary at times but definitely very interesting. Douglas is a great actor and this movie just proves it. Overall, 9/10.
I think I'm becoming a fan of David Finch's movies - I'm going to try and see Zodiac sometime soon.
Heres more about The Game on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(film)
Movie: The Last King of Scotland
I saw the Last King of Scotland today and its definitely a thought provoking movie. In summary, its a story of a young Scottish doctor (Dr. Garrigan) who leaves the comforts of Scotland and goes to Uganda to help and have fun at the same time. The country is undergoing a political revolution at the time with Idi Amin taking over.The story revolves around how Garrigan gets entwined in the political affairs of Uganda and Amin and comes out of his shell of innocence to realize things for what they are.
Overall, the movie was interesting in how it depicted life in Africa - where people with guns are in power and they do whatever they please - Amin wiped out about 300,000 people - those who dared to speak against him.
Heres a little more info about Amin on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_Amin
Overall, I'd give it a 7/10. The movie is very graphic, thought provoking and definitely one that'll make you appreciate a lot of freedoms you take for granted.
How to deal with rejection...
So, I've decided to add some philosophical babble to this blog to give some food for thought to the abstract minded. Also partly because I like to think I'm a philosopher to some extent,...maybe...Anyway, rejection is definitely one of those big things that all of us deal with at some point of time in our lives in one form or another. However, there is no prescribed method to deal with it and different people have different ways to deal with rejection. I'm going to attempt to set down some guidelines on how to deal with rejection, based either on experience or on purely abstract thinking (feel free to disagree)...
So what is rejection? From a pure feelings point of view, its something that takes us to an all time low - we feel bad, lose self-respect/self-esteem, become non-productive, antisocial and worst of all we continue feeling that way for a while. There are a few ways of dealing with rejection - all of them involving accepting what has happened and moving on -
1. Distract yourself, Escape from reality
You could sleep, watch a movie, play a sport, go work out, eat, swim or do anything to take your mind off the subject at hand and come back to it to deal with it later - when you're better equipped (emotionally). This has definitely been my way of dealing with rejection and it works - it just takes a little while to deal with rejection, but once you're beyond a certain point, you're fine.
2. Delve deeper into the reason why you got rejected
Think about the rejection - not so much how you felt at that instant of time - but why you got rejected and how you can avoid it in the future. This one is much harder to do - its much easier to shut down and not worry about anything, though this is the better way to deal with rejection. You know what you did wrong and you're ready to take it on again.
3. Express your rejection
Be creative and think about how you felt when you got rejected and express it - express how you felt. For example, write a poem about the nervousness, the anxiety, the disappointment - talk about the fact that it felt like falling off a cliff - tell people about it - go out and blog about it - throw it out for the world to listen to and that will make you feel better. Letting sad/unhappy feelings escape is liberating.
4. Do good things and be nice, help people
Go out and help people. Clean up your room - send people cards - just be nice. As hard as it might seem, doing good things will make you feel better and will automatically uplift you.
Thats all I can think of right now. A rejection isn't the end of the world - there's always tomorrow.
So what is rejection? From a pure feelings point of view, its something that takes us to an all time low - we feel bad, lose self-respect/self-esteem, become non-productive, antisocial and worst of all we continue feeling that way for a while. There are a few ways of dealing with rejection - all of them involving accepting what has happened and moving on -
1. Distract yourself, Escape from reality
You could sleep, watch a movie, play a sport, go work out, eat, swim or do anything to take your mind off the subject at hand and come back to it to deal with it later - when you're better equipped (emotionally). This has definitely been my way of dealing with rejection and it works - it just takes a little while to deal with rejection, but once you're beyond a certain point, you're fine.
2. Delve deeper into the reason why you got rejected
Think about the rejection - not so much how you felt at that instant of time - but why you got rejected and how you can avoid it in the future. This one is much harder to do - its much easier to shut down and not worry about anything, though this is the better way to deal with rejection. You know what you did wrong and you're ready to take it on again.
3. Express your rejection
Be creative and think about how you felt when you got rejected and express it - express how you felt. For example, write a poem about the nervousness, the anxiety, the disappointment - talk about the fact that it felt like falling off a cliff - tell people about it - go out and blog about it - throw it out for the world to listen to and that will make you feel better. Letting sad/unhappy feelings escape is liberating.
4. Do good things and be nice, help people
Go out and help people. Clean up your room - send people cards - just be nice. As hard as it might seem, doing good things will make you feel better and will automatically uplift you.
Thats all I can think of right now. A rejection isn't the end of the world - there's always tomorrow.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Cool things you can do on the internet (Part I)
So, in response to the question of what kind of questions people would ask me - I've decided to talk about some of the cool things you can do on the internet with the hope that maybe I'll inspire you to do something cool....
1. Create your own website
This seems like a pretty basic thing to do - but surprisingly there are a lot of us out there who don't have a website and don't know where to start - well start with a basic css template and then go crazy with it. Here is a stockhouse of free CSS templates: http://www.freecsstemplates.org/css-templates/
If you're not satisified with that collection, google "free css templates" and you'll find many more templates. If you want a basic css template that you can completely develop yourself, I'd recommend: http://csstinderbox.raykonline.com/
For those of you who want to stay away from CSS, you can always go to googlepages or similar websites to build your web presence. Or you could just stick to a blog (blogger, livejournal...) and use that as your website.
2. Create your own custom search engine
So google has a lot of cool things - one of which is their custom search engine builder: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
This is a cool way to index all your websites and if I understood it correctly, make some money out of it too.
3. Create your own products and start your own mall
This one is relatively new to me but I discovered it on digg as part of a larger article definitely worth reading for all you money minded bloggers out there:http://www.insidecrm.com/features/101-ways-monetize-blog122007/
The websites you can use to create your own products (shirts etc.) are:
http://www.printfection.com/
http://www.cafepress.com/
http://goodstorm.com/index.html
There are several other cool links on the inside crm link.
4. Integrate Google Maps, Google Picasa, Blogger and your website
The cool thing about Google is that they release APIs about their services - which to mean translates to some way to make use of those websites on your blogs. And more often than not, there are several help groups/discussion forums to help you figure out how to use them.
Just google Google Maps API or Google Picasa API.
5. Create a blog/website and track who's visiting
The easiest way I think to do this is to use Google Analytics. http://www.google.com/analytics/
Just paste some code in the pages you want to track and voila - you now know everything about your visitors from their location to their connection speed to the browser they use!
6. Watch TV/sports/movies online
I'm not exactly sure about the legality of some of these websites, but since they're still online, I'm guessing they're doing okay. The big storehouse of TV shows is
http://www.alluc.org/
http://www.dailymotion.com
I generally get my dose of sports by downloading sopcast and watching sports hosted via:
http://www.myp2p.eu/
You can download sopcast at:
http://www.sopcast.org/
As far as movies are concerned, alluc has some movies, but there are several other websites, one of which is:
http://joox.net/ (discovered by a secret source)
You can actually download movies at that website.
Another website collection of videos/movies:
http://www.start2enjoy.com/
7. Listen to your favorite music free on Pandora!
Pandora is a great way to discover music you like - I'll not say anything more and let you discover it for yourself - effort definitely worth spending:
http://www.pandora.com/
(The only sad part is that it doesnt work outside the US:( )
8. Create your own wiki
With wikipedia being the most popular internet encyclopedia, you can contribute in more ways than one. Theres a wiki which tells you how to start a wiki and redirects you to several websites which provide free wiki hosting (called 'wikifarms'). Enjoy:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science:How_to_start_a_Wiki
That's all for Part I of cool things you can do on the internet. You can check out other cool websites I stumbled upon here: http://harshm.stumbleupon.com/favorites/
1. Create your own website
This seems like a pretty basic thing to do - but surprisingly there are a lot of us out there who don't have a website and don't know where to start - well start with a basic css template and then go crazy with it. Here is a stockhouse of free CSS templates: http://www.freecsstemplates.org/css-templates/
If you're not satisified with that collection, google "free css templates" and you'll find many more templates. If you want a basic css template that you can completely develop yourself, I'd recommend: http://csstinderbox.raykonline.com/
For those of you who want to stay away from CSS, you can always go to googlepages or similar websites to build your web presence. Or you could just stick to a blog (blogger, livejournal...) and use that as your website.
2. Create your own custom search engine
So google has a lot of cool things - one of which is their custom search engine builder: http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
This is a cool way to index all your websites and if I understood it correctly, make some money out of it too.
3. Create your own products and start your own mall
This one is relatively new to me but I discovered it on digg as part of a larger article definitely worth reading for all you money minded bloggers out there:http://www.insidecrm.com/features/101-ways-monetize-blog122007/
The websites you can use to create your own products (shirts etc.) are:
http://www.printfection.com/
http://www.cafepress.com/
http://goodstorm.com/index.html
There are several other cool links on the inside crm link.
4. Integrate Google Maps, Google Picasa, Blogger and your website
The cool thing about Google is that they release APIs about their services - which to mean translates to some way to make use of those websites on your blogs. And more often than not, there are several help groups/discussion forums to help you figure out how to use them.
Just google Google Maps API or Google Picasa API.
5. Create a blog/website and track who's visiting
The easiest way I think to do this is to use Google Analytics. http://www.google.com/analytics/
Just paste some code in the pages you want to track and voila - you now know everything about your visitors from their location to their connection speed to the browser they use!
6. Watch TV/sports/movies online
I'm not exactly sure about the legality of some of these websites, but since they're still online, I'm guessing they're doing okay. The big storehouse of TV shows is
http://www.alluc.org/
http://www.dailymotion.com
I generally get my dose of sports by downloading sopcast and watching sports hosted via:
http://www.myp2p.eu/
You can download sopcast at:
http://www.sopcast.org/
As far as movies are concerned, alluc has some movies, but there are several other websites, one of which is:
http://joox.net/ (discovered by a secret source)
You can actually download movies at that website.
Another website collection of videos/movies:
http://www.start2enjoy.com/
7. Listen to your favorite music free on Pandora!
Pandora is a great way to discover music you like - I'll not say anything more and let you discover it for yourself - effort definitely worth spending:
http://www.pandora.com/
(The only sad part is that it doesnt work outside the US:( )
8. Create your own wiki
With wikipedia being the most popular internet encyclopedia, you can contribute in more ways than one. Theres a wiki which tells you how to start a wiki and redirects you to several websites which provide free wiki hosting (called 'wikifarms'). Enjoy:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science:How_to_start_a_Wiki
That's all for Part I of cool things you can do on the internet. You can check out other cool websites I stumbled upon here: http://harshm.stumbleupon.com/favorites/
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Welcome to my website!
Hey everyone! So this is my first attempt at blogging. I was hoping to create a blog to complement my website so that the whole user experience could be more interactive. I've never really blogged before, but I will attempt to chronicle my important highlights/experience, talk about things that interest me (and could potentially interest you) and answer any questions that anyone might have for me.
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