Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Traveling to Dallas and Houston..
I am traveling to Dallas and Houston for a week, coming back next wednesday. So blogging might be light to none. Have a good long weekend!
Monday, June 27, 2005
'You've got to find what you love', Jobs says
This is the text of the Stanford Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005. I found this extremely moving and inspiring and worth sharing with all friends.
"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much."
"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much."
OSAF in the Boston Globe..
A great front page article about Mitch and OSAF, along with the lunchtime picture!
A non-flattering side of me in the picture ...sigh!
Software knight Kapor takes up new quest
A non-flattering side of me in the picture ...sigh!
Software knight Kapor takes up new quest
Friday, June 24, 2005
Mars Spectacular!
For all those astronomy fans who have dreamt to be on Mars, here's a chance to get the closest to it. Quoted from an article sent by a friend..
"The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next,
Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the
closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time
Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs
on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars
has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as
long as 60,000 years before it happens again.
The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to
within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the
brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and
will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification
Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will
be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at
10p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.
By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will
rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m. .
That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in
recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see
Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month."
"The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next,
Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the
closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time
Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs
on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars
has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as
long as 60,000 years before it happens again.
The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to
within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the
brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and
will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification
Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will
be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at
10p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.
By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will
rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m. .
That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in
recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see
Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month."
Monday, June 20, 2005
Les Miserables
This saturday we went to see the musical Les Miz. I had set my expectations low knowing it was a 1500 page novel by Victor Hugo being rendered into a 3 hour musical. Having read the english translation of the novel which goes into intricate details of the pain and suffering of the bourgeois leading on to the French revolution in the 18th century, I wondered if this musical would do any justice to it. But I saw amazed me beyond words. I have to say, this is by far the best musical I have seen. The outstanding performances by the cast, the melodious vocals, heart warming music by the orchestra and the extravagant sets made this a memorable experience. It is no wonder that the show has stood the test of time by running successfully for over 18 years now. Music lovers, don't miss this extravaganza!
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
10-hour wait, 3-sec hug
That's exactly the headlines on today's San Francisco Chronicle. While the picture on the front page looked like a middle-aged Indian woman hugging a white kid, I had to be sure I was seeing it right. And what I saw really surprised me. Here it is, right here in the bay area, a spiritual Indian Guru who goes by the name 'Amma' (meaning mother), hugging her followers en masse. She is apparently the spiritual master of thousands in US and Europe, most of whom are non-Indians. And then there is ofcourse the long article about Indian spiritual mysticism that has lured westerners for years. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 70s who had the starry reputation of spiritually guiding the Beatles, Swami Muktananda, Rajneesh, Swami Prabhupada(ISKCON) all have had wide follower base in western countries. While living in India I had always believed Indians to be the more spiritual & superstitious kind, who believed in the supernatural, who believed in the outer elements, who believed in spiritual masters for changing the course of their fates etc etc. And now when I am here, I see no difference. Though the level of faith following is different, in the sense it uses more high-sounding words like 'transcedental meditation', 'awareness of the being' , 'the art of living' , at the very core are we all the same? Still seeking answers to questions we can't answer? Do we all need Gurus to instill faith and show us the right path? Or are we just terribly lost and desperately seeking to hold on to anyone who promises to show us the light?
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
OSCON is coming up..
O'Reilly Open Source Convention is coming up. It is scheduled for Aug 1-5. Even though I wanted to attend it this year, due to other competing priorities I will have to pass. Some of the notable speakers include: Mitchell Baker from Mozilla Foundation, Jonathan Schwartz from Sun and ofcourse our very own Mitch Kapor who will be talking about CalDAV, the new calendar sharing standard. There are a few tutorial sessions, the advanced Python tutorial by Anthony Baxter as well as idioms talk by Alex Martelli. Ted Leung from OSAF will be giving a presentation on how to build parcels(extensions) for Chandler.
This will be a good occasion to meet lot of our volunteers in person!
This will be a good occasion to meet lot of our volunteers in person!
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Giants v/s Kansas City Royals
I didn't believe people when they said the SBC Ball park had wifi access. I am currently sitting in the stadium, watching the game of Giants v/s KC Royals (Giants winning 4 to 0) and writing this blog. Enjoying this moment while Giants are still winning (I hear that doesn't happen often). Given baseball is a game where generally much doesn't happen, this can be very useful. I just got my 4th tutorial on baseball rules and terminology from my colleagues (and I am sure to forget them by the next time I am here). Well it's OSAF's day at the game so I better get back to bonding with my colleagues.
Here's a picture I took from my camera phone and uploaded to flickr and added to my blog, all while sitting in the stadium.
Here's a picture I took from my camera phone and uploaded to flickr and added to my blog, all while sitting in the stadium.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
This American Life..
Last weekend on my way to an errand, I happened to hear an episode of 'This American Life' on NPR hosted by Ira Glass. If you've never heard this series on NPR, you are missing something! At a time when the subject of seperation of church and state is at the core, this episode hosted two stories about people who suddenly realize they're the only ones around who value the seperation and are attacked by the local press and the politicians for their views. In act two, Julia Sweeney, tells her story of how her faith began to crack after a careful reading of the Bible. It's story is excerpted from her play, 'Letting go of God'. What came as a surprise were some excerpts from the Bible that she read on the show. For someone like me who hasn't ever read the holy book(and heard even fewer stories even from my mom who was a catholic before marraige), I had the impression it had stories that instilled love, care, devotion etc (remember phrases like 'Love Thy Neighbor like yourself' , 'When someone slaps you on one cheek, give the other etc). But I was indeed taken aback with some of them. I believe a lot has been said about the stories being symbolic and not to be interpreted literally but this incident has made me curious enoughto add it to my list of books to read at some point.
Monday, June 06, 2005
SUN invites Apple to use Solaris 10
On the eve of the big announcement by Steve Jobs about Apple switching to Intel processors, here's an offer from Jonathan Schwartz :
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20050605
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20050605
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Creative Commons..
For the past one year we have been sharing our office space on 543 Howard Street with another non-profit organization called Creative Commons. All I knew for the longest time was they were an offshoot from Stanford, a bunch of Stanford Law School graduates who had gotten together to do some ground-breaking work. Today we had an inter-entity meeting where each entity show cased their work. We had our usual Chandler demo from the OSAF side. It was quite interesting to hear about Creative Commons, a non-profit that offers flexible copyright for creative work in music, literature, art etc. While regular copyright is based on "all rights reserved", creative commons license allows for "some rights reserved". This allows fledgling artists to share, collaborate and create new stuff with their and other's work. Recently Yahoo! announced beta version of the new Yahoo! search for Creative Commons and our friends at Mozilla have also added support in the latest version of Firefox to display CC licenses of sites as you go thru them. So next time you see the CC license on a website, remember our friendly folks in San Francisco.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
An indian wedding and an oil painting..
We attended a highly elaborate and distinctly colorful Indian wedding of one of Viral's friend/distant cousin this weekend. The wedding and the pre-functions spanned over 3 days. People were dressed in the most exotic outfits, ranging from traditional saris to chaniya-cholis to more modernist indo-western outfits. The amazing medley of colors has inspired my next oil painting. I am using a palette of warm colors consisting of red, yellows and oranges, with designs inspired from a few lace and batik fabrics I got from India. I am experimenting with a new design theme so am a little anxious to see how it turns out. Hopefully I will have a good picture to post in a few weeks. I also ordered the first 2 in the series of Larry Gonick's History of the Universe series on Amazon today. I can hardly wait for those to arrive.
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