Pittsburgh timelapse!

Found a nice time lapse of Pittsburgh on vimeo. I miss the city sometimes. I spent about 16 months there, getting my Masters, and although the work was really intense, I still did get to explore the city a lot. It was my first home in the United States, a humble city, with long roots, great people and an awesome university.


A Pittsburgh Spring from Zachary Smith on Vimeo.

RSS Overload!

I am a big proponent of the RSS feed. Although it is not as popular as twitter or facebook, it is a great way to not miss an interesting article on a website that you may or may mot visit regularly. If you do not use it, I would highly recommend Google Reader to keep a track of websites that you like. There are others too, but being a google fan, I haven't tried them. I promise you, you will learn more about things you are passionate about than when you spend time on facebook, and you will never need to worry about missing a feed!


I have been curating my RSS feed from since my time at my undergrad. Its been 4 long years, and over the time I have accumulated a lot of feeds. I used to try trim the number of feeds once in a while, to the extent that I am really proud of my colelcted curation - and needless to say, very attached to it.

While at CMU, I absolutely didn't have time to read, however I still managed to keep up with my favorites. After CMU, I have been into a lot of stuff, including Design, Creativity, Marketing, Advertising, Tech, Startups, News from India included. And the Reader has been a faithful pet, getting to me on a digital platter, all of it..

Now for the problem.

Over a month back, I realized my RSS feed has become an addiction. I was subscribed to over 140 feeds at a point, getting over a 200 articles posted in my reader everyday! That is an incredible overload. Even at 2 articles a minute, I needed to spend close to 2 hours everyday just to not drown under the flood of feeds. On an occasional day, when I missed catching up, it was even worse. And the times when I traveled, there was simply no way I could catch up on the 1000+ unread articles by the time I got back. For such times, there was always the quick route of marking all articles as 'read'. Doing this felt really horrible. I felt like I needed to not miss stuff - its like trying to read all the newspapers for the past fortnight in one go.

Drowning under this weight, I hardly got any time to do anything else. I have a bunch of pictures from over 2 years that need processing, sharing etc. I sorely need to exercise, I rarely update this blog and I have no time to learn new things in depth. And that sucks!

So I decided to target getting down my feeds to a 100 for a start. I got there only last week, gut-wrenched to see some of the stuff I really enjoyed reading. However, if I really have to, I can always head over to those websites. A lot of these feeds posted more than 1 item everyday - and still sneaked in through my no-more-than-10-articles-per-day rule. These had to go.

After getting down to a 100, my next target is 50 feeds. This one is even harder, considering that a lot of the feeds now are my friends' blogs, or webcomics, which usually post only 1 article/day or lesser. I am almost halfway to my new target - down to 76, and I already feel better. This time however, I did not completely remove these sites from my life - I pushed them off to my twitter feed.

The twitter feed is way faster than the reader, but it doesn't show me 'unread' items, which means that I can dip in whenever I feel like it, and not have the 'unread' guilt hanging over my head. That way, presumably I can skim through more stuff.

The high-nosed may scoff that twitter has been around for a while and I should have known this before. I admit that I didn't / don't still get twitter. I hate the fact that I can miss reading something of value. However, I am ready to experiment with it for now. From now on, lots of feeds which post a lot, but in which I read only a few articles - i.e. have a low signal-to-noise ratio will have to go to twitter. The reader would continue to be a place where I add friends, and webcomics and a host of other stuff that doesn't update that often. I guess I would miss a few things, but this would make my reader much easier to clean, make twitter much more relevant to me, and my life uncluttered, happier and more hopefully more creative. In some ways, these would be two separate news providers for me. Twitter carrying the sensational, in the news stuff, while the Reader can continue to be the editorial page - to be read carefully and enjoyed.

Inspired by:
Zen Habits
Chris Brogan - who unsubscribed from over the 100,000+ people he was following on twitter.

Sidenote: Now that I am pushing more things on to twitter, I wonder if I will get to a point where my feed there gets overloaded.. So much so that I can't track it! I guess I will handle this problem when it comes to that.

A nation full of 'engineers'

Asmita smiled as she put the finishing touches on the purple horizon in her painting. It depicted the beautiful dusk she had one seen from her Aaji’s house in the village. It showed a glowing sun setting amidst the blue mountains, far away in the evening haze. Cows grazing on the yellowed landscape, and a silhouette of the dry trees parched for water, in the hot, dry Indian summer. With a last sigh, she glanced with wistful eyes at the painting as she put away her tools - her palette, paintbrushes and the oil paints she had just finished using - into the box-bed. This was the last time she would paint in a long time to come.
Rohan’s Mom called him back home for dinner just as he was about to score the last fifteen runs required for his team to win the T20 cricket match with kids from the neighboring building. “Coming Mom”, he shouted back impatiently, slightly angry. Cricket was the only thing he had ever cared about for as long as he could remember. His eyes twinkled as he faced the opposition’s bowler, his bat swinging in a wide arc, cleanly striking the ball along the pitch for a boundary. This would be the last time he played the game for the next three years.

Nakul sat crouched under the bush, patiently and noiselessly as he waited for hours for the bird to show up. He had spotted its nest just after noon. It was high up on the tree, cozy between the trunk and a thick branch, away from the wind. It was close to dusk, surely the bird must return now, as they always do. Maybe it had gone out hunting for the day, as they always do. His legs hurt from sitting all day in this position, the camera hanging around his neck, his neck sunburned. He waited with baited breath, and... There it was! She had just flown home. In a sudden rush of excitement, he clicked away furiously, capturing the bird in its full glory; swooping in on its nest, landing nimbly on the edge, trying to be fair to all the bird babies as her beak went around distributing the spoils. The chatter of the babies made him happy, joie de vivre running through him. It was the last that that camera ever clicked nature.
Today, and later in the month they will all be appearing for their engineering entrance exams. Fighting to get into the 10,000 or so seats that ‘good’ engineering colleges in the country on offer. Not one of them will get a seat. None of them will be good engineers.

Not because they are not smart. Not because they are not intelligent. It is because, they were not supposed to be engineers. They were supposed to be painters, and poets, and athletes and ornithologists, all excelling in their fields. 5 years later, they will all be working for as ‘software engineers’, working at a tiny back-office, fixing bugs created by some unseen overlord in some far away land where they have never been. Or faking accents, helping some middle aged lady in Wyoming figure out how to use the new blender she just bought.

Working for a different overlord than the one they gained ‘independence’ from 60 years ago. Or the same one.

Very few of them will actually go back to work at their passions.

Very few of them will actually do work that will change the world in some way.

Very few of them will actually be ‘independent’.

Very few of them will ever be free...

Can I go to war with you on my side?

In this article, former Indian cricket coach Gary Kirsten says of the Indian World Cup winning captain MS Dhoni:

“I have read that great leaders in the world give credit to others when things are going well and take responsibility when things are going badly. MS Dhoni is that to the ‘T’.”

Indeed that is the hallmark of a great leader, and in fact should be true of every leader if (s)he wants to win the trust, admiration and respect of the tribe. Not just as lip-service, but that is how a leader should feel from the inside. Because very few victories are achieved just due to the leader. It is always a team game. And by giving credit to people the leader empowers each member of the tribe - allows a sense of joy and belonging to  permeate through.

By taking responsibility when things go badly, the leader takes away the downside - the fear of failure. This allows each individual to be creative without fear of retribution.

“I want to go to war with this guy,”  Kirsten said talking of the skipper.

Are you someone who I would trust enough to go to war with?

Strangers across the Room

Their eyes met at the campus bar. She was a slim petite girl. He had a broad muscular frame. At first instant, it was electric. A connection both felt. It would have been nicer if they had had a chance to talk.

She with her conservative upbringing was too shy to initiate contact. He was too skeptical to leap at the opportunity. It would have been nicer if they had had a chance to talk.

That night before sleep cradled her, she thought of what could have been. As he turned on his pillow, he wondered if he should have gone ahead and asked her out. It might have been nicer if they had had a chance to talk.

But then again, somethings in life are best left unsaid… There is a joy in incompleteness. There is a joy in the ‘could-have-beens’. In the memories which never took place…

A Heaven to Compare

There was once a guy named Janardhan
Worked hard each day from eight to seven
Sometimes even till eleven!
In the hope that he would end up in heaven

Grew up in scarcity,
In school he calculated mass, velocity, density,
One of the brightest there
Destiny still forced him on a path as only she may dare,

Till yesterday he ploughed hard his field,
Cursing God for unlucky seed,
Dependent on the monsoon for his bread,
A difficult and lonely path he tread

He wished for a better life,
Away from all the strife,
On the other side the grass is always green,
In his dreams he saw a place with great sheen

A place where water was aplenty,
and the girls were dainty,
If only he could go there,
How much better he would fare

Today he was struck by lightening,
Transported to Shangri-La, in a moment delightening.
Where even in his wildest dreams he’d never been,
Here the cows were plump and the fields were green,
And he should have been as happy as ever seen!

Ever so suddenly freed of his bind,
Something yet kept pricking his mind,
He was in heaven! But he didn’t have a clue
In his mind he was ever so blue

Until God thundered, “Why so serious?”
For, no wonder, He was furious,
“What kinda bloke pines in heaven?”
To which replied Janardhan,

“Mi’Lord you see,
Now that you mention this as heaven,
I wonder myself why happy can’t I be...”

“And this may sound sappy,
This place being so free of care,
But I can’t be happy,
Despite my humble home bare,
For I ain’t got another heaven to compare!”

The Dream II

I was standing at the cliff edge. The roaring sea far below, pounding in all its majesty to my right; a small hut behind my back on the left – a poor man’s shop offering some snacks and drinks. Shabbily laid out plastic tables, not exactly new and shiny, but still offering solace to the weary traveler, and a hot cup of tea with biscuits if he so wishes. The day was hot, and the three of us had come a long way. My companions till now were – my friend, a vastly more experienced person at this kind of a thing, pointing out to me all the perils that the way had brought, unfailingly, in a way that would not be possible unless it is from the very bottom of the heart; and then there was the guide. Rugged, acquainted with the way of the mountains as well as a mountain goat, unflinchingly leading us through valleys and passes, never once unsure of his footing; as though He himself had created the rocks which we trod upon.

The journey had been challenging, but it was all towards this end. It was here which would decide the destiny, the path of all that would matter. The way down to the sea was from the left, winding, across plateaus and mountain paths. It seemed reassuring, considering that the guide and the companion were both already heading down the path. Did that look like the best way for me? I had faithfully followed them this far, unquestioning and without any harm, but was that the right way for me? Or could it be that the time had come when we split, me heading out in the search of my own destiny.

Unthinking, I veered towards the cliff edge, the waves crashing at the bottom of the cliff, threatening, menacing and unforgiving. Losing my balance, I almost careened over the edge, when suddenly I heard my name called out from the distance. It jolted me back into conscious, but I had now seen over the edge of the cliff. I had seen the sheer face of the mountain. It stood gloriously, for all these years, withstanding all the battering of the sea, the yellow sandstone gleaming under the bright hot mid-day sun. Was this it? Was I meant to take the plunge? Wouldn’t it be much faster, if not a sure shot way to reach the sea?

Just as I stood contemplating all of this, clouds gathered in the sky. As if reflecting the tumult in my mind, the environment transformed. The wind started blowing across strongly, the waves, small and calm till now transformed into large ones, dashing against the rock displaying an anger known only to them. Beyond the mountain, a twister swirled into life. The monster started snaking its way towards the cliff as I watched, transfixed, rooted to the spot.

He veered towards the cliff, threatening to swallow my people in one gulp. As I glanced towards my left, I saw the desk, with my laptop calmly resting on top. In one moment, as if deciphering my attachment to it, he moved swiftly to swallow the desk – laptop and all, never to be seen again. As pangs shot across my heart, worrying next for my beloved, the devil circled about, waiting for me to make my next move. A look of fear must have flitted across my face, because even as I regained my composure, he seemed to sense my weakness and snort at me, a smirk almost discernable within the dusty folds.

Then I saw it. Beyond the hut and the twister, stood a building, on the leeward side of the mountain, away from the sea, protected from the elements by the mountain, playing shelter to scores of children.. In a flash, my life flashed before my eyes, it was time for Qayamat – the Final Judgement. I had to decide, what I would do next. I could still dive off the cliff, and in a moment all of this picture would be behind me. I would have to count on him to be taken by surprise, and follow me into my dive leaving the others alone. I had to trust myself to land safely into the sea. If my dive failed, it would still be over quickly, I would crash onto the rocks, still spared the pain of indecision. Or I could run and join my people, the same people who I had trusted through the entire journey, and who still looked beseechingly at me through frightened eyes, ever worrying for me, the soft kindness visible even through their dilated pupils, always wishing the best for me. But I knew what he was about to do. Even as these thoughts formed in my mind, he swirled to the building – as if following my instructions, tearing apart the building, hurling innocent children to the ground, mockingly inviting me to fight, to save them, to take on a might far beyond anything I had ever dared to in my young life…