They have named you for a reason, so that everybody can call you by that one name to uniquely identify you from the other person. If you are sitting next to a person, I call you by your unique name to distinguish you from the other. That is how naming works.

With introduction of nick names, the classic functionality of names is endangered. If I call Robert, Bob, its one more name that I have to remember. And there are likely to be more people similar to the name Bob than Robert. I don’t want to address Nathanial by Nate. If your parents have named you Nathanial, they wanted everybody to identify you with that, not as Nate. I get confused. Moreover, I have to think twice on how to store your name in my address book. And if you are on social network like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, you have different names for the same person. It even makes smartphones like Android* and iOS dumb. And I get even more confused when different people refer to you by different names. It even makes it difficult to search you on Google, Picasa or YouTube.

Why do we need all that mess? Why cant we have one and only one name associated with a person. Nick names/Pet names are inefficient, useless and they in fact invalidate the real purpose of names. If you don’t like your name, man the f* up. Live with it.

 *Android has a built in feature to merge Robert with bob and Nathanial with Nate

This is a short movie inspired by Numbers, Geometry and Nature. Its amazing to see how different theories like Fibonacci, Golden Ratio, Delaunay, Voronoi are used by nature to create amazing life form. Its magical that a honey bee who doesn’t know anything about Mathematics or Geometry can create the strongest nest structure, spiders who doesn’t know anything about Chemistry can create strongest web that we have ever seen. Nature knows every thing, be it Mathematics, Geometry or Chemistry.

More information and source here.

Here is the simple and delicious recipe for vegetarian tacos. I tried it, believe me it tastes great. Invite your friends Sunday evening over tea and make them this Tacos. They will be asking you for this recipe for sure.

Today, August 15th 2010 is 63th birthday of India. Happy Independence Day to all my fellow Indians.  Here is a great Indian National Anthem video by A. R. Rahman and other best artists from India, my all time favorite.

I often do this at movie theaters and then I realize I shouldn’t have done this, awkward moment. No hard feelings buddy.

Credit: The Oatmeal

You’ve got a big, important report to write for work and you’re dreading it. The deadline has been weighing on your mind for weeks and so far, you’ve done nothing about it. At this point, its do or die situation. Still, you set aside time this afternoon to buckle down and get to work, but instead you’re playing Solitaire, you’re checking Facebook, you’re reorganizing your pens, you’re chain-smoking on the fire escape, and you’re feeling like crap. You’re procrastinating.

If you think you are alone in doing so, you are wrong. Everybody I know is facing the same situation. They keep delaying their important stuff. Some people think that this is not the right time or perfect time to do it, some people think let me just watch one last Youtube video before I get started on it. The reason are different but the phenomena is same, Procrastination.

The only way to make procrastination productive is to get SOMETHING done instead of EVERYTHING. This will at least get you started and starting means the hardest part if over, which is stop delaying. Let me know in comments how you deal with your Procrastination and how you make your day more productive by GTD.

I used to use library when I was a kid. It was a fun way to explore new books and the mystery of the world. But internet changed it all. I haven’t used library since ages, as everything I want is available on the internet. (You know, the not-copyrighted ‘free’ ebooks that you can download from P2P, you know what I mean)

I went to the city library few days back just for a change. I got a library card and thought of borrowing some book for a change. The book I wanted was already checked out by someone. So I had to put it in a request. But the system of request and holding is very inefficient, here is how.

If you want to borrow some book, you search library catalog. If the book is checked out by someone already, it gives you an option to reserve that book once it is available. So whenever that person returns the book, the system emails you about the book availability. All this is fine. But the book is now on hold and library keeps it for you for 10 days. If you don’t show up in 10 days, the next person who reserved the book gets it.

So the problem part is the 10 days hold period. For example, I recently requested a book “Into the Wild“. I got an email after 2 months of waiting. Currently the book is on hold for me. They will keep on hold for 10 days. And there are 78 more people waiting after me for this book. So the book just stalls for 10 days without any use, even if there are 78 people waiting for it. Suppose if I don’t show up and the next person in queue also doesn’t show up, that will make the resource (in this case, the book) unavailable for next 20 days, even if no one is using it.

I bet this is happening every day at library. 1000s of books are kept just on hold, making the system very inefficient. Most of the resources are just staying on the shelf even if there is hunger for knowledge. Which is against the idea of library. I don’t yet know whats the best way to manage this. Let me know in comments if you have any idea. May be someone will implement it after reading this.

Why haven’t I thought of this before. This could be the greatest toilet hack ever. And given the simplicity and the amount of time required, this prank can be done by any freak. Just try it yourself at different locations at different time. I would love to see this kind of modern-era disturbance.

A few days back, one of my friends suggested me to watch the movie Outsourced. I watched it and liked it (liked it should be read in comparison to “loved it”). The movie was based on outsourcing American jobs to India. An American telemarketing manager lost his job in US and he was given a choice of going to India and train people there or just let go his current job.

Yesterday, I came across this great reality TV series 30 days about outsourcing. Chris Jobin, 37, a computer programmer from New York is laid off from his job. He came to know that his job has been outsourced to India. He decides to go to India and live there 30 days to find his job but he couldn’t (he’d need “Indian experience,” he’s told). He ends up working as a telemarketer in a call center.

The most interesting part about this social experiment was how Chris’ mind changed over these 30 days.

When initially he heard that he got laid off and his job has been outsourced to Bangalore-India, he was very frustrated and angry on the Indians who were getting his job. Well, that’s a natural human behavior, anyone would have reacted the same. Chris thought that the only reason the jobs were getting outsourced was because of the cheap labor. His father argued about this at dinner and said “I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s going to create a growth market and a place to sell American products and services. If companies don’t take advantage of cheaper labor resources, then they become less competitive, they disappear, and the jobs disappear with them.”

While working in India for 30 days, he saw how Indian economy was catching up, how India was exactly the same as 1980’s US. He was amazed to see that 16 people were being fed by his single job outsourcing. This completely changed his mind. He realized that people who were doing his job were not even aware of the job losses in US. And it was wrong to get angry on these people, it’s not their fault. The people who decide to outsource American jobs are the billionaire executives, VPs and CEOs.

Well you wouldn’t get the complete picture unless you see this episode yourself. Here it is.

Some american dudes visited china and they are talking about their experience of their stay. Now this is what I call the first-hand-experience. Their words describe the true flow of their experience. For some reason I loved it. The video is long (about 10 mins) but its worth watching it.