Blogging after a long gap ! How does it feel !

Its been quite a while since i blogged. Seeing the timeline of the last post looks like its almost 5.5 years. It's been so long that i even forgot that i had a blog profile. Randomly, today i sat down to write something just for the sake of writing! Thought why should not i blog instead of just scribbling in my notepad.

To my astonishment when i entered blogger.com i was signed in automatically and i had a profile. Whaaat! Anyways memories started flowing in. Not about how i started the blog but about how idle I was at that time. Now i am not idle in the usual sense, but idle in the .....well maybe the right word is the artistic space ! Does this phrase makes sense!

When i started 6 years back i did not know what to write but now i see i am writing fluently. I know its garbage but i can at least move on typing words after words without worrying about the spell checks i have to do or checking the sentences for grammatical correctness. Neither i am worried about someone reading this or even if no one reads it. But still there is a day dreaming situation in the back of my mind that some one from the nowhere in the world making a connect to this post and sending a like. ( what sending a like, sorry i am facebooked too).

Six years back i thought i will write, post tidbits and information from the internet jungle that people would admire and keep sharing. But, that never exceeded more than a post or two. Yes, i did not and then created a profile at various places in the web to write something. But, now I am just not worried about anything. I am just writing in the sense as if i am talking to someone, making my contribution to the data content in the digital world.

Now to the most important question, am i  going to convert this reconnect to the blogging world a usual affair. Or is it just going stop at this post !! Let see mates !

Going without sleep: Version 2

I had earlier written in my blog about the record for going without sleep. But, last week 25th may 2007 a cornishman Tony Wright claims to have stayed awake for 11 days and nights. The Guinness book of records no longer recognises attempts at this challenge because of the potenetial health hazards involved. So, the record set by Randy Gardner in the US in 1964 will never be changed in the Guiness Book.

Tony Wright was continuously monitored by webcam and CCTV cameras and had a stream of visitors at a Studio bar where he attempted this record.

By attempting this challenge he says he has successfully proved his interesting theory which says that Humans can shift from one side of the brain which is tired, to the other. He also adds that his 'stoneage' diet of raw food helped his brain to be functional always.

So anyone ready to challenge this record.........

I just read a lovely poem by Wisława Szymborska. She is a Polish poet, essayist and translator. She won the Nobel prize in Literature in the year 1996.To the poem now..


Love at First Sight

They're both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

Since they'd never met before, they're sure
that there'd been nothing between them.
But what's the word from the streets, staircases, hallways --
perhaps they've passed each other a million times?

I want to ask them
if they don't remember --
a moment face to face
in some revolving door?
perhaps a "sorry" muttered in a crowd?
a curt "wrong number" caught in the receiver?
but I know the answer.
No, they don't remember
They'd be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.

Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.

There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn't read them yet.
Perhaps three years ago
or just last Tuesday
a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood's thicket?

There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
Suitcases checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream,
grown hazy by morning.

Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

Going without sleep

Army researchers have found that soldiers struggled to make snap decisions in emotional situations after being deprived of sleep for two nights. This was published in the latest edition of the journal sleep. Doctors say that people need 8 hours of sleep for a healthy living.

The longest ever a person went without sleep was 11.5 days. The record is held by a person called Randy Gardner. What the wikipedia has to say about it is below:

Randy Gardner holds the Guinness world record for the longest period of time a human being has intentionally gone without sleep not using stimulants of any kind. In 1964, as a 17-year-old high school student in San Diego, California, Gardner stayed awake for 264 hours (11 days) with the help of friends, TV reporters, and shooting hoops. On his final day without sleep, Gardner presided over a press conference where he spoke without slurring or stumbling his words and in general appeared to be in excellent health. "I wanted to prove that bad things didn't happen if you went without sleep," said Gardner. "I thought, 'I can break that (Peter Tripp's 1959) record and I don't think it would be a negative experience.'" Sleep experts now believe that such sleep deprivation stunts are dangerous (Veasey et al., 2002).

It is often claimed that Gardner's experiment demonstrated that extreme sleep deprivation has little effect.[citation needed] This is primarily due to a report by researcher William Dement, who stated that on the tenth day of the experiment, Gardner had been, among other things, able to beat Dement at pinball. However, Lt. Cmdr. John J. Ross of the US Navy Medical Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, who monitored Gardner's condition at the request of his parents, reported serious cognitive and behavioral changes. These included moodiness, problems with concentration and short term memory, paranoia, and hallucinations. On the fourth day he had a delusion that he was Paul Lowe winning the Rose Bowl, and that a street sign was a person. On the eleventh day, when he was asked to subtract seven repeatedly, starting with 100, he stopped at 65. When asked why he had stopped, he replied that he had forgotten what he was doing.

So folks sleep well and lead a healthy life......

User defined Technology

The new year is in full flow. The shops are crowded with year planners. Some quite small, fits in to the trouser pocket perfectly but some find it inconvenient as it has severe space constraint. They cannot write down their plans detailedly.The second one a lot bigger with plenty of space to note down things but can only fit in to the coat pocket and certainly not stylish. The third one, quite big made for the work table.

One had something which the other did not have.Quite irritating but people have to choose one and i certainly can say most of them chose one with which they are not fully satisfied.everything we use, we adopt to it rather than the product adopting to us. The Motorola cell phone i earlier used had the functionality of setting up 5 alarm timings. Got to wake up at 7:30, set a alarm for 7,7:20,7:30 and for emergency 8:30 It was a good function to have. But, the Sony Ericsson phone i have now allows me to set just one alarm time and that sucks. Suppose i want to wake up at 8 the alarm rings, I stop it and i think let me sleep for 10 more minutes ;-) i need not explain the risks involved.

May be this feature is not important for many people but this one particular functionality of the cell phone plays a big role in the lives of many people.And every product we use when we take a closer look at it does not have something we wanted it to have.

No matter what high end technology we have in our hand its not helping us out fully or solving our problem altogether. I think this concept of giving what the individual wants in his hand is not going to happen in the near future, as still there are plenty of things left in this world to be invented, modified, researched and so on. A time will arrive in the life cycle of the particular product when it reaches the threshold level and every new version of the product does not have much changes in it than the older one. Then, this concept of user defined technology or product will come where every customer is given a product which he has thought upon in his mind that would serve all his needs and his every single aspiration gets SATISFIED.

"Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed, the only animal that is never satisfied" Henry George (1839 - 1897)