some stuff

Have you ever felt that there is so much stuff to read about (blogs, books, newspaper and what not)  but so little time? Have you ever wished to have that amazing power where you just gulp the entire page by just looking at it for few seconds? I feel it every day. I have 500 feeds sitting in my reader. How do I get to them? Is it humanly possible? Some people argue that you just have to peruse them and only read the exciting ones. Believe me, there are quite a few good ones there.

So, I thought I will check what kind of a reader I am? I always knew I wasn’t a fast reader but I just wanted to measure it. So, I went to my friend for advice. The friend who seems to have answers to all my questions. No money for right guess! google So, I found this page which measures your reading speed? Go ahead and take it. Seriously. Go. Come back and then continue to read my blog.

Ok, I scored 262 which puts me in average bracket   But you know what, that is good. I now know where I stand. If I go with what is mentioned in that page, excellent reading speed is somewhere between 500 – 750 words per minute. Can you belive that? If I can reach that level, I will literally be reading twice as much as I do.  OMG, I can’t believe this. Isn’t that awesome?

What was your score? I will probably google for more information and tutorials to improve my reading speed. I will post next month same day (approx), how much improvement I have made. If you are interested in it, leave a comment. It would be nice to have a company

Well, that’s all I have for today. Happy reading! oh, if you have any tips for me on how to cover lot of material in short time, please let me know.

On that note, I shall move to my next assignment for the day.

Cheers,
Mahesh Murthy

I have been thinking about this for a while now (infact for very long time like months and months you know).  What is negativity? A quick googling for the definition brings up many results, some of which are : “Indicating opposition or resistance”, “Expressing, containing, or consisting of a negation, refusal, or denial”.

Is opposing or resisting really an indicaiton of negativity? For example, when you say something or voice your opinion about something and the other person disagrees with you, is he being negative? When you force a bunch of people to do something and if one or two people don’t want to do it because they don’t believe in it and they inturn discourage others from doing it, are these guys being negative?

Is negativity a very subjective term? Would you call a person negative just because he doesn’t believe in what you are saying? Where do you draw the line between keeping an open mind and listening to his opinions/arguments and just shutting him off because it is just sucking up your energy?

Such questions were really troubling me for a long time.  How do I know if I am in a negative environment? How do I know if I am in an environment where people are smarter than the decision makers and they disagree for a reason? So, I thought I should put down my learnings here and open up a discussion (assuming someone reads my blog).  It would be nice to also keep a record so that next year, I can revisit this and may be laugh at myself for being totally wrong!

“oh, this will never work. I have seen it all before. It has not worked before and will not this time”

Is there anyone who hasn’t heard such things before. It could be anywhere, at work, in a social gathering anywhere. Personally, I get really annoyed by such statements. I have learnt to patiently ask them why they think like that, what information they have collected before making that statement and so on.

lesson 1: Always control your emotions, ask for clarity.

lesson 2: Educate yourself. Same things which were  an epic failure yesterday could be a big success today. There are so many external variables. Learn about all those and decide if that person is right or wrong.

lesson 3: Keep away from people who just whine about something without really giving an alternative solution.

lesson 4: When you are in the middle of a battle, have a open mind. When someone says you are wrong, don’t let your emotions take over. Only a man with great character can accept he is wrong and take action. It is not a sign of weakness (oh comeon, we all have read and heard this 1924 times). But there is no harm is repeating/reminding right?

lesson 5:  Once you are convinced that you are totally right, go for it. There is every chance that you are wrong and will screw it up big time but take responsibility for it if you really did screw it up. fire your ass off. Penalize yourself harshly so that you don’t do that mistake again.

If we all followed this diligently, we can live in harmony without bickering, ill feeling and what not.

Go back to an isolated place and just think about this for a while. These are so obvious things, but do you really do it? Saying is easy, putting your hands where the mouth is something else. Can you do it? Think!

If you have reached till here, you are awesome and I am awesome

That’s all from me. See you later.

Mahesh Murthy

It’s been almost a month since I have blogged. I didn’t have anything in mind to blog today but just to keep it going, I thought I write something. I just bought Programming Collective Intelligence and Building Scalable Websites . I am so looking forward to reading them. I just started with collective intelligence today.  I bought this one because we decided to read this in the book club at work. Usually, we read 2 chapters and meet once a week and discuss. It is real fun.

This time, I won’t make any promises of blogging about my opinions/learnings regularly (as I did for pragmatic programmers and failed gloriously). But, I will give it another try this time. I am setting an easy goal. 5 blog posts atleast dedicated to collective intelligence. Let’s see how that goes.

I thought I will start reading the other book simultaneously but I am pretty sure I won’t get to it. I have other things going on right now (I bought agile development with rails and quickly working through the excercises). The book is still in beta but that is fine. I want to get my hands dirty with rails 2 quickly and build something. I am lovin’ it!

Alright everybody. Time for some rails, ‘god of war’ on my psp and ‘lord of rings’ on my awesome projector.