Nitin Khanna

I was once described as a philosopher programmer. I think I'd like to describe myself as a lifelong student.

How to be awesome…

Some of you out there read LifeHacker. It recently covered an awesome story about Jerry Seinfeld’s method of being awesome at what you love. Seinfeld says, what ever it is that you’re supposed to be doing, do it everyday. If you blog, do it every day. If you want to improve on your health, run every day. That way, once you’ve been doing it a while, you’ll not want to quit.

To read the actual story go here

and to read it’s effect, go here

I read this second post yesterday morning and I thought, “Hey, I can do this with my blog. I can simply, blog everyday!” But it’s a lot more tough than that! I sat down last night, hoping to write this exact blog and starting my 366 days of being awesome. I couldn’t. It takes a lot of conviction to start something you know will take a full year and will need your attention every day. That scared me. I couldn’t even direct myself to the blog, wasting time elsewhere and hoping I’d never need to write this blog post.

When I got up today, I decided that I just had to do this. No point in dilly dallying, I’ve just got to do it! So here it begins, my 365 day trek towards a fuller blog with a lot many more posts and a more awesome me 🙂

A lot of you will think, this isn’t possible/whatever/”I can’t do that!”. Trust me, you can. The two posts above have changed my way of thinking and I’m glad for it! Here’s to hoping I pull through it and I know for sure, you’ll all be watching! 🙂

Image Courtesy – http://www.starpulse.com/Television/Seinfeld/gallery/Seinfeld-tv-sp13/

On Reading

I believe reading to be one of the best ways to open your mind. When you’re reading, you’re really getting a chance to read a line and think about it. It is in that second, when you hold a thought in your mind, that you really grow as a person. People often say to me, “Oh forget it, I’ll just wait for the movie.” But that’s not the right way to go about life. When you’re watching a video, the next second comes too fast. You don’t have time to reflect upon what just happened. Thus, you just go with the flow and enjoy it, without thinking. When you’re watching a film with friends, you really enjoy, because you’re collectively not thinking. When you come out of the film, you realize what your real emotions are about the film, but the moment is past and you don’t think further about it.

 

Ever seen Friends or Seinfeld? At the end of every punch line, there’s a whole bunch of background people laughing. The show makers put that laughter there so that you don’t pause the video and think about it, you just laugh. They don’t want you to think if the show is funny enough because a lot of times the show won’t be, it’ll be ok. But when you hear other people’s laughter, you’ll be obliged to laugh. That kills your thought process.

 

Here’s an experiment – Ever seen a movie that you liked and some friends of yours didn’t? See the movie once more and then go to Wikipedia or IMDB and real the story from there. Think about what you liked about the story and whether it made sense when you read it. You’ll find out in an instant if the story really is that good or not.

Pebble Smartwatch: The why and why not

There’s a new project on Kickstarter, the wildly popular crowdfunding website. It’s called Pebble and it’s breaking some records. The goal of the project to get started was $100,000 and as of the writing of this post, the project has  $6,193,523 of funding pledged from people.
The watch, made with an e-paper display, the same display that the basic line of Kindle devices uses, is extremely customizable, correctly priced (at $150, it’s the same as the Sony smartwatch and probably does more) and as you can see from the Kickstarter page, has gained the love of 42,000 early bird backers.
https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/597507018
Sounds awesome doesn’t it?

No.
Yes, it’s got great features like an amazing choice of apps, analog or digital or typographic watch face, Android remote SMS, email and phone call notifications (iOS doesn’t support those features yet), caller ID, accelerometer based functionality, an ARM processor for near-infinite modding capabilities, bluetooth and even a 7-day battery life (ZOMG!), but all these features are over shadowed by one tiny detail –
E-Paper.
The watch and it’s entire ecosystem is based on the concept that you are using it in the day(light)!
Remember how irritating it is when you want to read from your Kindle but the light is just not enough to let you read? Remember how that wonderful afternoon in the sun with your favorite books turned sour as soon as evening hit the valley?
That’s what’s gonna happen with the Pebble smart watch over and over again. You’ll need to find just that spot that works. You’ll have to move to the only light in the room as soon as a phone call comes in, just so that you can read the caller ID before you decide what to do with the call.
What I’ve pointed out doesn’t seem to be of much concern to those funding the watch, in fact, when I tried to explain this issue to someone on twitter, I got it handed to me on a platter! (Apologies @mcowger if you didn’t want to be highlighted!)
http://twitter.theinfo.org/190114510063935488
I’m not saying don’t buy the watch. In fact, if you’ve got the dough, put it in right now before the project funding stops on May 18th. You’ll even get the watch cheaper than market price ($99 instead of $150) so it really is a good deal, just make sure you switch on the lights in your bedroom before you look at your watch at night!
After-note: The Pebble manufacturers added a back-light to the watch to combat the useless-in-the-night issue, probably as an afterthought, so, I as an afterthought, am going to talk about the Sony smart watch that came out the same time as the Pebble project was launched. Don’t be surprised because it’s called Smartwatch or that it runs Android. Or the fact that despite being technically superior than Pebble (multi-touch color OLED display), it’s going to sell much less.
http://www.sonymobile.com/us/products/accessories/smartwatch/
That’s all folks!
N

Birthday Musings

As I leave another birthday behind, my head is pounding and my body is sleep deprived. I realize that I’ve not slept comfortably last night and that I should have.

My mind wanders towards those older times when, as a kid, I used to sleep at 10-10:30 PM on April 3rd and did not get up before 7 AM on the 4th. I’d be greeted by my family and wished a Happy Birthday. Then I’d go to school, a bright smile on my face, and take care of the events of the day. When I came back from school, we’d have a party with all of my friends.

What changed? Remaining awake till after 12 midnight became a habit. Then, celebrating the beginning of my birthday became a habit. This, in turn, led to a habit of sleeping late and getting up late and what follows is a cycle of watery eyes and burning foreheads. I realize now, how sleeping on time, waking up on time and going through the day before celebrating the happy occasion was a great idea, not just for me, but also for my parents. The world works on fixed schedules. There are no special off days for individuals, just holidays for everyone. Time and tide wait for none.

Perhaps, I should go back to that model. Perhaps, in this fast paced world of Facebook notifications and instant messaging, it is a good idea to unplug from that connected life at the right time of the night and drift into a peaceful sleep. Perhaps I need to stop attending the midnight masses.

Or, maybe not. There’s plenty of time to grow up. Now’s probably not it. 🙂

Wall Gardens on the Internet

There’s a lot of talk about sharing and being social on the Internet. Well, the trends say otherwise.

 

I recently wrote about how sharing is dying because of the numerous social networks. It seems that people want to share more but privacy concerns and the changing model of social networks is not allowing that anymore. I almost wish we were back to the “Have a webpage, will talk to the world” times.
http://nitinkhanna.com/sharing-but-no-joy/
Validation for this comes from an unexpected corner. A conversation between a few networking professionals on twitter was about this very topic. The irony of the situation – the way twitter is modeled right now, I saw any part of that conversation only because I follow each an every one of those individuals involved in the conversation.
The whole discussion revolves around the idea that the Internet itself is getting more social. Everyone is trying to create social networks around their products and this is fragmenting the concept of true sharing on the Internet, which at one time was all about hosting a webpage where your thoughts were readable by anyone who knew the URL. To add to this fragmentation, the concerns that every country’s government is having about the privacy of their citizens are causing those social networks to be more closed than open.  In the above tweet, @EtherealMind has a very important point. The Internet was pretty social before these social networks came along. I guess the only point I’m making is that if you really want to be social on the Internet, start a blog, post on it and tell your friends to tell their friends about it.