What men live by: Leo Tolstoy

This is my first interaction with Tolstoy. Every now and then I have heard of people saying Tolstoy: author of world's greatest novel – War and Peace.
Finally I have got it. My first Tolstoy's book!!

This one is very collection of few short stories, can be found at –
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6157

All the stories had a moral lesson, but the beauty of it was, all those were "Stories".
I think the simplicity with which Tolstoy put forward the best of lessons in life makes these stories special.

In one of the story, The Coffee House of Surat, we have people sitting in coffee house, each of them belonging to different religion. Each of  them is proud of their own religion and they get into debate, which is
the best?, until wise man amongst them settles the debate.

The other story, rather the most famous of them all, How much land does a man need?, is about greed.

The shortest of them all, Three questions - has the most impact.
How can I learn to do the right thing at the right time?
Who are the people I most need?
What affairs are the most important, and need my first attention?

And, of course the one with from which the book got its name, What men live by, is another one with three questions.
Learn what dwells in man?
Learn what is not given to man?
What men live by?

I am purposely not writing what answers does Tolstoy gives to these questions. Because then someone reading this will miss the beautiful character building of the stories.

This one is smallest of book and the name "Leo Tolstoy" is enough for anyone to pick it up..

Bhagat Singh's Martyrdom day is 23-March-1931

I received message on last year's(2010) valentine day from one of my close friend, message read something like this, "Shaheed Bhagat Singh sacrificed his life for country on 14-Feb-1931 and we are condemned to forget the date, and we are celebrating it as Valentines day"

Being ardent follower of Indian History, I immediately called up my friend and told him, this is damn fake JuSMS and the correct date is 23-March-1931.

This year, the sms came again, now from someone else. Few colleagues of mine were talking about this. I tried to tell as many as can, but to realize that this fake SMS has travelled far to read news in next days newspaper.

http://www.hindu.com/2011/02/16/stories/2011021665731500.htm

News says so called tech savvy people are trying to edit Martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh on Wikipedia and they are making it 14th February. The administrators had to re-correct date so many times, and now they have decided to lock up the page.

This is absolutely stupid behaviour, we are getting some hoax mails, SMS and everyone is just spreading it without verifying the truth.

If someone sends such stupid message to me, then I am definitely going to correct his/her mistake.

If we are not creating History with our deeds, we should not be at least distorting it...

UI issue : A practical lesson

More often than not UI issues are considered low priority. Few days back, I was "Victim" was such an UI issue, left unattended by our fellow engineers. No, it was not in project that we are developing here, but the system of which I am user, MSEB(Electricity Board) billing system!!!

MSEB had introduced new feature where you can deposit money in advance with them, so you don't have to pay the bill every month. They will deduct money every month, and once the amount is exhausted, they will send SMS to intimate that amount is exhausted. So I deposited Rs.2000 with them, and thought that I will be saved from remembering due dates and all!!!

Average bill that I get is around Rs. 400, so the amount was sufficient to last for at least 4 months.

But when the bill came it showed me pending amount as Rs.1777 !!!!

So, there I was, fooled by the online system. Was left to answer questions at home, "Who told you to pay in advance?, now go to MSEB office and get it corrected."

I looked at bill for quite a few times, to understand what's the damn problem with it, but couldn't get anything. So thought of going to MSEB office.

Next day, while going there, checked the bill again, to find what is printed as ,

Total amount to be paid              -                  1780.00

To realize the "-" printed in between is actually a "Negative" sign. Waw!! what an UI issue J

So, moral of the story is, UI issues are very important and certainly not low priority!!

Reactions

From last few months, when I see people around me working(?), I always feel that, reactions, to be precise, reactionary measures are useless. A competent administrator/manager is the one who forsees things and then plan. Having said this, I don't deny the ability of people who react very well to unforseen situations and are able to pull them off. But its commonly observed that, such people, although otherwise common, shows extraordinary skills or I will call it heroism due to call of the hour. And I don't think that, we should rely on this heroic activities for long, what if no hero turns up? So, close your eyes, use your brain, see ahead in time and then plan.

Human behavior explained through Physics principle

You never know what the next moment is going to bring in front of you. At times, you may come across something which is totally unexpected. Something like this happened to me recently.

I was attending one session on Physics. We were discussing about unit of measuring distances, to be precise, very large units of them viz. light years, AU etc. The professor went on to explain, why light years. The lecture continued like – distance between Sun and Earth is measured in light years because the distance is too large and it is not feasible to measure it in conventional units, so we need larger units. So one light years is – distance traveled by light in one year.

Discussion continued, about AU (Astronomical Unit) and went further about how do we measure distances of stars which are far away from Sun, what are the techniques for it?

One of the method was, we know Earth is moving at certain speed in certain orbit. One of the method used this knowledge of Earth's speed and orbit to find distance of stationary object. I will try to explain it here,

(Sorry for the bad diagram, but it is really difficult for me use paint. And anyway that's not the point that we are trying to see here.)

The arc represents orbit through which Earth moves. So when Earth is at position 1, the star appears to right side of the observer, while when Earth is at position 2, star appears on left. Now using the knowledge of orbit, arc, speed of Earth, if we put up some geometrical expressions, we can find the distance between Earth and Star.

To explain this principle, rather to experiment it, professor suggested us one exercise.

He wrote one sentence on Blackboard, "This is reference sentence"

Then, he asked to hold our pen in hand, stretch the hand, and keep the pen exactly in front of our face. Now the he asked to close one eye, and then asked us what is the position of pen with respect to sentence written on blackboard.

With my left eye closed, I could see the pen somewhere on the word "reference"

Then, with my right eye closed, I could see the pen somewhere on the word "sentence"

So this was it, pen was stationary, but as I looked through different eyes, 'Position' of pen 'appeared' to be changed.

The reason being, distance between my left eye and right eye!!!

And this was the Eureka moment for me, suddenly it struck to me that, position of stationary pen appear different to me when I observe it through my own eyes, then how can two different people observing something have same views about anything. If a distance of couple of centimeters in my two eyes result in 'difference'; then it is bound for two different people to have different views on same thing.

Physics principle explains Human behavior with this experiment!!!