Random Musings

Internalize this advice..... to stay relevant in any sphere... Side Projects IMPORTANCE OF SIDE PROJECTS Side projects are important for a few reasons. Programming is a creative process. Side projects allow programming without deadlines or restraints. Side projects allow programming in an exploratory way. EXPLORE NEW TECHNOLOGIES Every day there are more and more bleeding edge technologies coming out. A side project is a great place to try them out. There’s no reason to worry about bugs or performance issues because it’s just a side project. You’re not depending on the project to pay your bills. It’s ok if the website crashes. CREATING FROM SCRATCH Most jobs I’ve had so far were mostly maintenance work. Adding new features, fixing bugs, troubleshooting performance problems, refactoring existing code. Though I’ve built more than a few applications from scratch, it only takes me a couple months to lay the foundation, and then I’m in maintenance mode again. Side projects require creating ...

Why people remain poor..."Isolation"...interesting perspective... "If the world really is held together by people like Lois Weisberg, in other words, how poor you are can be defined quite simply as how far you have to go to get to someone like her. Wendy Willrich and Helen Doria and all the countless other people in Lois’s circle needed to make only one phone call. They are well-off. The dropout wouldn’t even know where to start. That’s why he’s poor. Poverty is not deprivation. It is isolation." "We live in an age where with a solid Internet connection and someone to guide you through the process of self-education (admittedly something many people don’t have) you can learn just about anything. Certainly enough to qualify for some of society’s highest-paid positions. But unfortunately that’s not enough. Because despite the fact that it’s easier than ever to learn the things that will qualify you for a well-paid position in the world, it’s not easier (perhaps ev...

'Jugaad" a very Indian word for frugal innovation. "the essence of which is captured by the Jugaad mindset, a Hindi word that in a nutshell refers to making do with what one has to solve one’s problems (also implying a certain degree of improvisation). In a business context it means bringing innovative products to market despite limited resources – if not thanks to limited resources, since it is the financial constraints of producers or customers (or both) that drive the innovation in the first place. Frugal innovation results in great value: no-frills, good quality, functional products that are also affordable to the customer with modest means. " Read more here of one person's experience

Interesting idea to make bribe's legal by Kaushik Basu.. Some titbits "An Indian website, ipaidabribe.com, set up last summer by anti-corruption activists, reveals just how grasping officials can be. It has documented over 8,500 instances of bribery adding up to nearly 375m rupees ($8.4m) in backhanders. These include 100 rupees to get a policeman to register a complaint about a stolen mobile phone and 500 rupees for a clerk to hand over a marriage certificate. The amounts are much larger to facilitate income-tax refunds, where the standard “charge” is 10%; sums between 5,000 and 50,000 rupees change hands" " The category of payments he would like to legalise are “harassment bribes”, made by a person to get things to which he is legally entitled. In such cases, Mr Basu argues, the giver should be granted immunity from prosecution and a proven complaint should result not only in punishment for the corrupt official but also in a “refund” for the bribe-giver. These step...

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo .