Categories
Psychology Uncategorized

What’s in a Name?

whats_in_a_name

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet”

Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

I recently was put in a situation where the name might have played a role in the final outcome of that situation and then I reminded myself of this famous quote from Shakespeare. What’s in a name? Ideally, characteristics of a person is what really should matter right? Shakespeare puts it so deftly, so elegantly and as such would inspire people to put the name aside and look at who the person really is, what their abilities are, what sets them apart from others, how they think, how they work,..etc..

What’s in a name? It’s just a name,…right? But is it really?

Is Jose, the same as Joe? Watch this video!

For humour, here are some unfortunate names of people, and some very interesting names of products, and some even more bizarre product names.

And of course, Apple Watch!… I guess ‘iWatch’ would have been a bit creepy.

source: http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2014/09/10/first-look-at-the-new-apple-watch/
source: http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2014/09/10/first-look-at-the-new-apple-watch/
Categories
Business Self Development

What Should you write about?

Recently I was asked for some advice. This person said that they were always interested in writing, but never could really figure out what to write about. After following some of my blog posts, they asked me for some insight into how to decide what to write about, how to plan their writing, how often write, how to determine who the target audience is? etc…

First and foremost, I was flattered that someone asked me for advice on writing. I also felt some pressure to give appropriate answers to their questions. However, when it finally dawned upon, I realized that the real answer was very simple.

The question as to what you should write about is like the question “How Should I live my life?” The answer really isn’t that complicated. You just do. You just live. That is as simple as it gets and as complicated an answer as it gets, there is nothing more to it. Likewise, if you want to write, you should just write, there is nothing more to it.

You may ask, but don’t I need to know what to write about? Don’t I need to plan? Don’t I need to learn the different styles of writing? Don’t I need to be interesting? Don’t I need to know who I am writing for? Who is my target audience? What is my purpose for writing whatever it is that I am writing?

No… Don’t think about all that – Just write. In due time, you will discover the things that you are passionate about, in due time you will realize what your style of writing is, who your target audience is, who you want to write for, what message you want to send across the screen, or the glossy pages of a magazine, or whatever medium you choose.

The best way to learn anything is to start doing it.

How do you learn to ride a bike? How to you learn to swim. How do you learn to play a guitar? How do you learn to drive a car? Never mind that, how do you think you learnt to walk? Too often we ponder upon the result of our actions for too long and never actually see any result because we never really try to do that thing.

The biggest price that you pay for an action is the price of not taking it.

Categories
Activism Global Politics

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge – Revisted

A week ago I wrote an article on the Controversies surrounding the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge and my response. The spread and intensity of the Ice Bucket Challenge does not seem to be slowing down. In the past one week, I have come across some interesting thought provoking facts and some very interesting opinions.

Animal Testing

animal_testing

Some people including Pamela Anderson have decided to say no to taking the ice bucket challenge and no to donating to ALS charity because of their stance on animal testing. Anderson wrote:

Sorry -I can’t bring myself to do your Ice bucket challenge.I enjoy a good dare- It’s always good to bring awareness – in fun, creative ways / I don’t want to take away from that.but it had me thinking. Digging a bit deeper. I found that we may not be aligned – in our messages. So…- I thought Instead / I’d challenge ALS to stop Animal testing /– Recent experiments funded by the ALS Association, mice had holes drilled into their skulls, were inflicted with crippling illnesses, and were forced to run on an inclined treadmill until they collapsed from exhaustion. Monkeys had chemicals injected into their brains and backs and were later killed and dissected.

[The Daily Banter]

If you dig deeper you will find that ALS research is not the only place where animal testing is used. In fact animals have been used repeatedly throughout the history of biomedical research. Early Greek physician-scientists, such as Aristotle, (384 – 322 BC) and Erasistratus, (304 – 258 BC), performed experiments on living animals. (source) In recent years, the practice of using animals for biomedical research has come under severe criticism by animal protection and animal rights groups. To express my view on has been difficult for me.

My stance on this is the hope to find middle ground on this issue. I do believe that if animal testing is ‘necessary‘ to find cures of diseases that affect us humans, then perhaps it may be justified for humans to do so. However, it is my hope that scientists push towards a more ‘humane’ form of testing or simply find ways to steer away from animal testing and towards other models.

What is your take on the practice of using animals for biomedical research?

Wasting Water

This issue has come up time and time again in conversations with people who are against ‘wasting water’ for the ice bucket challenge. My take on this is that in the context of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, I do not believe that people are wasting water when they take the ice bucket challenge. It has been an integral part of ALS awareness campaign. Please read “Controversies and Cynicism Surrounding the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge“.

To those skeptics who argue that water is being wasted in this Ice bucket challenge, I challenge them to do a little thought experiment: In the context of raising awareness of ALS, imagine taking out the water/ice aspect of the challenge where people simply donate money to ALS charity and then challenge others to do the same. Do you see this as an effective campaign? (The question is rhetorical. The obvious answer is NO. For supporting argument please read “Controversies and Cynicism Surrounding the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge“).

However, let me take a step back for a moment. There are many elements involved when something becomes ‘viral’. Certain elements are necessary until an idea has reached ‘The Tipping Point’, but once it passes that tipping point there isn’t much that will stop it from spreading and at this point certain elements lose their status as ‘necessary. ‘(Recommended reading “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference“). In this case the ALS ice bucket challenge may have already reached a point where using Ice/water may not even be necessary.

Where is the Money Going?

alsfye2014

You can view ALS Association’s financial statements online. At first glance one might think it’s a negative that ONLY 28% of funds go into research, but a closer look reveals that ALSA has a broader mission:

“We also spend money on care services to people living with the disease and public policy initiatives to encourage the advancement of legislative policies that benefit ALS families. Again, we spend a total of 79% on programs and services.”

The ALS Association has a four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and has also been rated favourable by Charity Watch (watchdog groups in the industry). Just how much weight should be placed on this spending measurement and the ratings in general is a flashpoint in the non-profit world, says Suzanne Perry, a senior editor at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. “It’s a love-hate relationship. If [charities] get rated highly, they broadcast it everywhere. If they get a lower grade, the methodology is ‘flawed,’” she says.[http://fortune.com/2014/08/22/ice-bucket-challenge-als-charity/]

Some have claimed that employee salaries at the ALS Foundation are out-of-this-WORLD![Political Ears] ALSA however says that the salaries of its executive staff are in line with the job markets where they are located—and in line with those of other national charities. This addresses the question: “Are employee salaries at ALSA high compared to other non-profit organizations?.” But the bigger question is “Should employees at charitable organizations be getting paid that much at all.

ALS Association addresses some of the donors and skeptics in “The ALS Association Debunks Fake News Article that Went Viral”. It seems to me that ASLA has been performing according the Non-Profit organization’s guidelines. But the question is: Is this enough?

But wait, here’s how Dan Pallotta shows us that “The way we think about charity is dead wrong”

But lastly:

ALSA: Oh you know what’s a great idea – Let’s Trademark “Ice Bucket Challenge”?

ALSA filed an application with the US Patent and Trademark Office seeking to trademark the term “Ice Bucket Challenge”. WAIT…. WHAT!?!

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Many people called the move “disgusting,” “shameful,” and “in poor taste,” leading the group to withdraw its application.  WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?

So my final take is this: Know where your money is getting spent! Non-profit organizations usually have their financial statements available to public and if not, you can ask for it. Study what they are doing and if it aligns with your values, donate generously, if not, then voice your concerns.

We live in a highly democratic era of the Internet – every tweet, every video, every blog post and every Facebook comment counts.

Also, take an analytical approach when judging whether something is right or wrong. It is difficult to make people work for non-profit organization – people do need to get paid, but the question again is: are those salaries justified – you tell me!

So this is my (second) take on the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge – What’s yours?

Categories
Enlightenment Philosophy Psychology Self Development

In Pursuit Of…

In-pursuit-of

If every action is performed in succession, then the consequence of those actions is inevitable. There is basically a formula to life. There is no mystery, it is simply mathematics. Action and result. Cause and effect.

This video is both funny and deep, if you really think about it. This is the conclusion to  the coyote and the road runner, the never ending chase. We have always been led to believe that the coyote is the bad guy and the road runner is the good guy who is smart, fast and funny.  But this video tells a different story. Yes, it is funny, but think about it again and you will see a different picture emerging behind the humour.

When the viewers who watch the cartoon think that the coyote is never going to catch the roadrunner, the coyote persists. Real dream chasers, the mad ones, the crazies, keep chasing their dream even when everyone around them begs them to stop and give up and pursue something else. When one thing does not work, they try something else, and then something else, they change their angle, their technique, beaten up, broken down they keep persevering. See they know a secret that most people don’t, or perhaps choose to ignore because of the pain it may cause.

If every action is performed in succession, then the consequence of those actions is inevitable. There is basically a formula to life. There is no mystery, it is simply mathematics. Action and result. Cause and effect.

If however, your actions do not get you your desired results, then it is not that you have failed, it is simply the result of your combined actions. Perhaps you have not performed an actions well or the timing was not right, perhaps there are some factors that you have not considered, maybe your approach is not optimal. Dream chasers, those mad ones know this and they change their approach, change their technique, change their angle, or whatever it takes to get them to where they want to be.

Eventually they do – they all do!

But we know that don’t know? We need only to look around us. But what happens after you get to where you wanted to be, what happens when you finally achieve ‘success’, what happens after you have made your dream into a reality?

Sometimes people keep chasing a dream and forget about everything else, their family, relationships, health, and instead they become obsessed about it, putting themselves on the line, risking everything and never giving up.

When they finally achieve their dream, they are sometimes left with a void and the question:

Is this all there is?

The chase is over, the task is complete, the chapter is closed, so now what? Sometimes people develop an identity crisis. The passion, the thrill of chasing their dreams leaves them hungry for more, but they don’t know what else there is to chase. Just like the coyote, they try different things, fall into a lousy state of mind, anger, depression, feelings of worthlessness. This happens a lot with very successful people. Even if people manage to maintain a healthy state of mind and do something else that brings meaning in their lives, they still miss the chase, they crave the process of converting raw power of their passions into their desired results.

We have seen many athletes, after achieving unimaginable level of success and retiring, return back to the game, or a businessman after retiring comes back, or a filmmaker keeps coming back because sometimes that is the only thing that brings meaning to their life.

But the question I ask is: Is it worth sacrificing everything you hold dear? Should you chase a dream at the expense of your health? Should you pursue success while sacrificing the love of your friends, family or your personal relationship?

I can’t speak for everyone, but perhaps they key is balance! But an even bigger solution is the answer to

WHY?

Why do you want what you want? The answer to that question is perhaps the starting point to brining balance. When you truly answer that question, either you will realize that it is not worth pursuing, or you will find that you can achieve the same ‘why’ by pursuing something else, something which you may not have to sacrifice the other things that are dear to you for, or you will realize that the WHY is what brings you joy and power in your life which you can directly inject into your work as fuel and move forward.

Take Stock

Another way to bring balance is taking stock of your accomplishments. Think about it! Many things that you now take for granted were once a dream, a goal, something that seemed so far fetched you couldn’t even comprehend what it would be like achieve it. Maybe it was graduating with a degree or a diploma, or owning your own car, getting a job, earning $X dollars in salary, owning a house, asking someone out, or getting married to someone that you love, travelling to a destination you always wanted to go to, starting a business, or getting that promotion. Just think about it?

Stay Thirsty…Keep pursuing…

If you’re not growing, you’re dying.

The human spirit needs growth, no amount of success brings as much meaning and joy as growth does and in fact that might even be one of the laws of nature. Companies need to grow, to invent, invest, innovate, people need to grow financially. One dollar 10 years ago is not worth one dollar today, and today’s dollar will not be worth that much in the future. Likewise with your dreams and goals. If you are in pursuit of something, keep at it, if you don’t have something to chase, go find something. Mind you, your dreams don’t have to be materialistic, it can be to better a relationship, it can be spiritual, it can be a health goal. Whatever it is, go get it.

I end with this video. It is one of my favourite scenes, a tear jerker, a real inspirational moment.

Categories
Activism Marketting Science

Controversies and Cynicism Surrounding the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably have been part of or at least heard about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. It’s all over the internet, on the news, talk shows, Youtube, and it has completely taken over everyone’s Facebook news feed. The Ice Bucket Challenge aims to raise awareness for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

The Challenge

You complete the challenge by pouring a bucket of ice on your head or donating $100 to an ALS foundation, you then nominate other people to do the same – it’s simple, fun, it’s for a good cause and it’s effective.

EVERYONE is on this – actors, singers, professional athletes, news reporters, billionaires, and of course regular folks like you and me.

It has spread like wild fire and It has become a world wide phenomenon. It’s HUGE! But whenever something gets this big there are bound to be some controversies and cynicism.

So what is ALS?

ALS is characterised by muscle spasticity, rapidly progressive weakness due to muscle atrophy, and difficulty in speaking (dysarthria), swallowing (dysphagia), and breathing (dyspnea). Median survival time from onset to death is 39 months, and only 4% survive longer than 10 years. Most die from respiratory failure, usually within three to five years from onset of symptoms. (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis)

Enlightened church against raising funds for ALS research:

Check this out!

The Catholic church of Cincinnati is asking it’s members to not donate to the cause because the organizations involved with ALS Association funds a research that uses embryonic stem cell research, and the church has gone as far as asking its school principles to not encourage students to raise money for the cause.

I don’t even know what to say to that. This is not the first time religion has come in the way of progress, and sadly it won’t be the last.

How much awareness is too much awareness?

Then there are people who have now started complaining that there is just too much of this, too much of the ice bucket challenge videos on the news, on talk shows, on Youtube and Facebook. I personally know some who say they are simply annoyed and fed up of it and are looking for ways to block this content from their Facebook feeds.

This not only upsets me, it angers me profoundly. I didn’t see these people complaining when Gangnam Style was all over the place, neither do they have a problem with posting a selfie every 10 seconds, oh but yes, they do have a problem with videos that help spread awareness of a deadly diseases.

The question I ask to these people is: Would you be annoyed or would you be willing to block these videos if YOU or your loved one had ALS? Watch this:

You do feel pretty stupid now, right? If you still don’t get it, let me demonstrate what you are exactly doing when you say something like this:

No Ice (Ice Baby), Just Cash

There are people who have complained that the whole Ice over head is totally unnecessary and people should just donate the money to ALS. With all due respect, you are being ignorant, or simply knowingly neglecting the fact that the ICE bucket challenge is THE single most important factor in raising awareness for ALS. Apart from doctors, how many of you actually knew about ALS? I’ll be honest – I did not know about ALS until this ice bucket challenge came along!

Secondly, an interesting comment I read the other day was that people are likely buying the ice to do the Ice Bucket Challenge, instead they should just donate that money to charity.

Marketing my dear Watless, Marketing!

That’s like telling companies to stop spending money on ads and just put that money into improving their products. If that was the case, no one would buy their products because no one would know about it.

5 reason the Ice Bucket Challenge is so effective is:

  1. You are asking people to take a very specific action – pour a bucket of ice over their head, or donate $100 to ALS charity. 
  2. The action to “donate $100 to ALS” is a very specific action which directly translates to raising funds. It is not “help raise awareness” or “show support” etc..
  3. after the challenge is completed you nominate other people. You’re connecting, you are spreading the world in a very direct way. People are using their social connections which are much stronger than holding a sign that says “Donate to ALS”
  4. It’s fun! Cold ice water on the head, face and body is something people don’t experience on a regular basis, it puts people in a different state, physically and emotionally. It is engaging!
  5. The Challenge! – It is almost like we are mentally wired to prove ourselves. Remember the time at the school playground – “Bet you can’t do this?” What did you do? You ended up doing it. Now you are an adult, but your reputation is still at stake! 😉

Then there are people who are complaining that some will pour a bucket of ice, just to get away from giving $100 to charity. SO WHAT?! It’s almost as if, these people didn’t want to donate the money, and are upset that other people got away with not donating. Even if they don’t donate, they are raising awareness for ALS, and even if these people nominate 3 others to do the same, we potentially have hundreds of people spreading the word and donating. Plus, I know so many people who took the challenge AND donated to charity!

Then there is the “How long will this last?”. Even if all of this dissipates in the next 2 weeks, we have millions of people now being aware of ALS. Let’s say this Ice bucket challenge inspires only ONE person, that one person may some day find a cure for this disease! BE POSITIVE!

Don’t Waste Water

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There have been many people complaining that the ice bucket challenge wastes a lot of water. People are not wasting water for the sake of fun, they are raising awareness for a deadly disease. It is a medium that is being used for a good cause. For further explanation read “The 5 reason that the Ice Bucket Challenge is so effective is:” above. What have people who post such pictures achieved? What have you done for ALS or for the water crisis in Africa by posting such pictures?

Sure, I do agree together with many people who took the ice bucket challenge, that we shouldn’t waste water. In certain places in Africa and India, people may want to approach raising awareness for ALS in a different manner than using ice/water.

But wait… there’s a twist!

Watch this video below:

Accordingly to National Geographic, it takes 2,700 litres of water to make one t-shirt. ONE SINGLE T-SHIRT!

Screen Shot 2014-08-22 at 19.39.53

 

Which is enough for one person to drink for 900 days! 900 DAYS!

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So to the people who don’t want to “waste” water on this ALS Ice bucket challenge, are you willing to sacrifice that cotton t-shirt you’re wearing right now?

I took the challenge, I donated

If you do want to donate, I suggest donating to your local ALS charity so that people in your region can benefit from it, for e.g. if you are in Canada, you can donate to http://www.ALS.CA/ICEBUCKETCHALLENGE

That’s my take on the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge! What’s yours?

Categories
Uncategorized

Earth Hour 2014!

 

In support of Earth Hour, we dimmed the lights on Okinara’s Facebook Page.

Join us! Turn off your lights, light up some candles! 🙂earth-hour

Categories
Software Technology Uncategorized Web Web Development

Sublime Text

The meaning of sublime according to the dictionary on my Macbook Pro is:

of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe

And Sublime Text 2 is just that. I kept hearing about its legendary speed, and flexibility but I never quite bothered to check it out until my love for NetBeans started to fade. Netbeans had been my programming companion for a long time now. I had been using it since 2009 when I made the switch from Eclipse. That is a long time! More and more Netbeans was starting to prove that it was bloated, slow – especially during loading, the updates didn’t always retain the features that I liked and it kept hogging my CPU and memory. I decided to give Aptana – a flavour of Eclipse another chance after almost a 5 year gap. It has been a long time since I abandoned working with Eclipse. I liked what I saw. It brought back some old memories, and overall it felt as if Apatana was a ted faster than Netbeans. But things were about to change when stumbled upon Sublime Text 2. At first I thought it is just a Text Editor, but it’s not, it’s way more than a text editor. This thing is so flexible you can turn it into an IDE. Here are the reasons why every programmer should at least give Sublime Text a chance:

Its beauty is sublime:

alpha_goto_anything2_large This piece of software is simply beautifully designed. There are many themes to choose from but the default theme with black background and highlighted special words is just stunningly gorgeous and is a pleasure to work with. Another very interesting feature is the small preview bar on the right which  gives you a zoomed-out view of the file that you are currently editing – I never thought I wanted it until I saw it!

Super Fast

Aptana Studio 2 Netbeans 7.3.1 Sublime Text 2
aptana-3-logo netbeans sublime-text-2-logo-full
Took around 30 seconds to load  and background project scan lasted for 1 minute 15 seconds and the program ran slow until the scan was complete. Took around 33 seconds to load and the background scans went on for 2 and half minutes before I decided to close the program. By the way, you cannot stop the background scans in Net Beans, which really is a bummer. Just took 5 to 7 seconds to load and closed as quickly as it could load too. This thing is clearly fast… VERY FAST!

Powerful Search AKA “Go To Anything” (⌘ + P)

Command + P is the shortcut key for search (the feature is known is “Go To Anything” and rightly so) on Mac and I’m pretty sure the P stands for POWER! Which really means the search just commands power. The search is super fast and it start displaying the possible results the moment you start typing AND it displays the contents for the file that most likely is the one you are looking and changes it if it does not fall under the correct results. Go to anything

It Knows!!

It knows what you are searching for even if you are telling it to search for the wrong thing. For e.g. if you make a typo, it still gives you the correct results; also knows as fuzzy search.

fuzzy search
The user types in “hutil” instead of “util” but Sublime, still displays what the user most likely meant. – It’s smart

With Netbeans and Aptana (A flavour of Eclipse), almost always I would open up the terminal or Finder on Mac to search for text within a file or to search for a filename. Now, I don’t need to do that!

Multiple Selection

This just blew my mind away. You can select multiple lines of your code and modify them simultaneously! That is super amazing! You can even select a word which could be a variable or some command throughout your file and change its name. Another scenario where this can come in handy is when you have a list of things which you need to put into an array. I used search and replace the “new line” characters. Now I do multiple selection and edit away. Multiple Selection is awesome!

Tonnes of Cool and Useful Plugins

I must warn you! If you are coming from a feature rich IDE like Netbeans or Eclipse you might be surprised at the bare minimum approach of Sublime Text, but don’t be fooled by what you see the first time you use Sublime Text. There are tonnes of plugins available out there there that can transform this magical text editor into a full IDE and that’s the beauty, you only install the features that you actually want and no more thereby keeping this editor as ‘slim’ as possible. I will write up another article on my favourite and must have plugins for Sublime Text 2. If you like this article, share it! Got a comment? Post it! 🙂

Categories
Internet Software Technology Web Web Development

This is Why I’m closing the doors on OpenAtrium for Good!

I think the title of this post is damn right to the point isn’t it? We were using OpenAtrium 1 at work a year ago, but due to so many issues of having too many errors, memory leaks, and being just overly bloated, I decided to stop using it.

Fast forward to 2014: I started looking for a collaboration and project management tool again and decided to check on the development on OpenAtrium 2. It is based on Drupal 7 core which I thought was amazing. I downloaded and installed OpenAtrium 2 and it had a colour packed home page which looked attractive, but one that I quickly got annoyed with.

The OpenAtrium website now has a responsive design and is mobile friendly, but at what cost?

Who is OpenAtrium really for?

OpenAtrium is targeted towards web developers and architects, end users probably won’t be that interested and even if they won’t understand it because the software is complex and multi-dimensional. As you can see in the screenshot of OpenAtrium.com below, this is supposed to tell the viewer what is inside OpenAtrium. There are images and short descriptions for each component, but that is it. There is no link to get into technical details. Data Security for e.g. says Granular access control side wide – an architect would need to know how this is accomplished! How are Events managed, what is the workflow like in order to determine whether this piece of software is suitable for their organization or not.

Screen Shot 2014-02-19 at 11.34.43 AM

 

Where is the Contact Page?

Wait! What? There is no Contact page. I’m forced to use twitter or Facebook? You’re kidding right?

Oh wait a minute, yes there is a link to the contact page on the FAQs page,oh…but it DOES NOT WORK! And mind you this is supposed to lead their customer’s  to a page where they can contact their sales team! AMAZING!

Phase2 can offer custom enterprise platform development services, specific to the solution set Open Atrium offers. For more information and to contact our sales team, go here.

 

Where is the Documentation?

There is NO direct link from OpenAtrium.com to documentation! That’s right! You get to see OpenAtrium Documentation AFTER you download the software and install it.  During Installation, I kept getting errors which were very crude MySQL errors which told me absolutely NOTHING. I finally figured it out by googling it.

Okay, seriously,… where is the Documentation?

A link on the Home Page(of the OpenAtrium installation) does take you to a page which kind of looks like a documentation page, but nah.. it really isn’t! It’s more like a prank! The Webinars are LONG and do not get to the point quickly! When you click the How To Guides, it’s empty! Phase2 probably need to read a “How To Guide” for writing “How To Guides”.

Oh but wait, they do have links to Spanish Documentation! You can’t even get the English version right! As the Linux philosophy goes:

Do One thing, do it right!

FAQs? – What are FAQs for?

The FAQs on the OpenAtrium site seem like sarcasm. The questions are ridiculously long and the answers are worse. For e.g.

Q. We’ve been trying to model what a Group, a Space, and a Team wold look like using existing metaphors and it’s been challenging to map from an OA 1.x perspective to an OA 2.x perspective. the access controls at the bottom of a node edit form are particularly confusing due to inconsistencies in terminology. The ones on the side bar look like they’ve been renamed appropriately. Could you provide some clarity?

Most of the questions seem like they might be coming from people working at Phase 2 (The company behind OpenAtrium).They should change the title of the page to “FAQs that our developers keep asking us”

Other Broken Things on OpenAtrium’s website:

  • Credit’s link at the bottom of the page takes you to an empty box that says “Credits”
  • Copyright details at the bottom of the page seems like it’s not updated.
  • No Contact page
  • No direct link to OpenAtrium Documentation

Finall conclusion: it almost seems like that Phase2 might actually have a good product, but they’ve made OpenAtrium.com and documentation very difficult to navigate and left chunks of it out which really just drives away the people that might actually be interested in using this product. UNLESS, that is their whole purpose, drive the developers away and target the endusers and managers that have little to no technical skills making it a really sneak sales technique and a kind of faking to be truly OpenSource. Or maybe they just have low standards!

I am angry, disappointed and feel deceived and betrayed by the people behind OpenAtrium.

Categories
Entertainment

Winter Battles – Fight The Snow

This year Mother Nature has been pounding us with large quantities of snow. Last winter I was away from home and half of this winter was spent away from home too. This was my first snow fall in many months and it felt as if I was receiving a grand welcome gesture by Mother Nature. It snowed all day! For those who are not fortunate enough to get snow where they live, yes it does look beautiful, but clearing the snow is not always a walk in the park. In fact many would say that it is one of the most dreaded and disliked winter activities. I for one quite enjoy it, and on this fine snowy day, I decided to make my excursion a little more interesting.

Check out this dramatic take on the events of a snowy day from morning to night. The video was shot and edited by myself.

Background score from The Dark Knight Rises (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack).

– On Thin Ice
– Mind If I Cut In?
– Why Do We Fall?
– Death By Exile
– Imagine The Fire
– The End
– Rise

If you like it, share it. 😉

Categories
Holiday Celebrations

Makar Sankranti 2014

Although there is much of this planet I have yet to explore, I doubt that there is any other place in the world where festivals are celebrated at such a grand scale. I have spent 8 out of the last 12 months in this strange, peculiar, impressively beautiful land of India. In these past 8 months I have celebrated Holi, Diwali and Makar Sankranti. Out of all celebrations I find Makar Sankranti – the festival of kites the most dear to my heart. I remember when I was a kid I together with my family would come visit India and travel of to places all over India, however when January 14 approaches no matter what part of India we are at, I would force my parents to come back to my home town in Gujarat just so that I could fly kites.

Here is a video compiled from the kite flying event of the year. I had very limited photo and video footage to work with. I tried what I could to combine some fun moments together for people to see. Song is Phir Se Ud Chala from the bollywood Movie Rockstar(2011) , sung by Mohit Chauhan, music by A.R Rahman and lyrics by Irshad Kamil.

Video and photos mostly taken by me on Makar Sanranti 2014 and the day before. Final video edited and compiled by me.