Wearable Tech

Every Tom, Dick, Harry and his cousin Lily is making a smart-watch. The more I read about it the more it becomes evident that a watch revolution is coming. A multi-functional thing that sits on your hand and does wonders! As of this writing I know of Sony, Apple, Dell, Motorola, LG, Qualcomm, Samsung and a host of other companies planning to make watches (or wearable-tech)

Now, now! Wake-up CASIO. You guys are the pioneers of cool and sturdy watches. Back in the days, you guys defined wearable-tech for starry eyed kids like me.

I know, I know you have a smart-watch in the market already. The Smart-watch with Bluetooth however is amazingly 19th century for what the general public is expecting from Smart-watches or (wearable-tech) in general now.

So what would I expect in a CASIO G-shock branded wearable-tech watch?

1. Step Counter
2. Altimeter
3. Thermometer 
4. Floor Counter
5. Heart beat meter
6. Sleep monitor
7. Vibrating Alarm
8. Atomic timekeeping
9. Solar Power
10. Tough
11. An amazing app that syncs all this data and lets me download it for my own further analysis

I know this would take some iterations to get to ultimate reality. And we (I am shamelessly representing all wanna-be pseudo-health conscious geeks like me) are ready to wait and purchase through all those iterations. But its already late, and if you have not already started, I think you guys are mighty late to the game!

I know most competitors are going the Android way – pluck some apps into your watch, make it read your SMS, Caller ID etc. I don’t find a reason to pour 200$ down the drain to read SMS On my watch. What I need is way cooler and geeky. And I really really hope that its a G-shock!

What I am

Sometimes I wonder, is Sesame street really for kids? I mean considering that even I (the man!) have written about them two times already on this blog here and here and then significant part of most of my weekends even now is spent video-surfing Sesame street on YouTube!

For some of you who don’t know, there is this small segment in Sesame street where a celebrity comes over and either teaches the viewers (presuming they are kids) a word or if the celebrity is a singer, then they actually sing one of their famous compositions with lyrics converted to appeal kids. Over the past several years there have been numerous celebrities and even I am catching up on them every weekend.

However, I discovered a gem of a song that Will.i.am sung on Sesame street and its titled – What I am. Though it’s a kid’s song, it is amazingly inspiring and has a very catchy tune.

Hear it here … and be inspired!

Will.i.am–What I am

And if you are particularly bored, here is a compiled list of some of my favourite songs on Sesame street by celebrity singers:

• Outdoors – Jason Mraz
• Don’t give up – Bruno Mars
• 1,2,3,4 – Feist
• A Song About Elmo – Adam Sandler
• Hot N Cold – Katy Perry
• Lullaby - Andrea Bocelli
• Lullaby – Ricky Gervais
• I Don’t Know Y – Norah Jones

Yeah, why should only kids get to have all the fun?

Ramen

One Japanese food item that gets undue attention amongst Indians (at least the ones that I know) is Sushi (and to a certain degree – Sashimi). May be it has got to do with the colourful way that Sushi is presented or may be that we can’t digest the fact that the sashimi on sushi is raw.

Anyway, like any other person determined to explore culture, I learned to eat sushi (yeah with chopsticks and wasabi) while in MBA. Later I graduated to liking it and have had a lot of sushi sojourns ever since.

Sometime last year, however I ventured out to one of the lesser known items (at least to me) of the Japanese culinary experience. The Ramen. Ramen is a huge bowl of soup with noodles, meat, flavoured egg, spring onions, bean sprouts and a broth that is amazingly flavourful. Slowly and steadily, Ramen has now climbed up to the spot of being amongst my most favourite foods of all times. Yeah right up there sitting close to the butter chicken and my mom’s dried fish chutney.

All my friends who wanna try Japanese cuisine, I strongly implore you to go treat yourself to a bowl of Ramen. The broth is amazingly flavoured and with all the herbs and spices, it is a culinary delight. And the thin piece of meat literally melts in your mouth (Sorry Vegetarians – I haven’t had veg-Ramen) Btw, if you are a calorie conscious eater – Ramen is on the heavier side and you may wish to treat yourself only occasionally.

And what do you guess, I am gonna do after posting this? You guessed right – I am going for a sumptuous meal of Ramen.

Be cool Honey Bunny

Just finished a marathon few evenings of watching movies by Quentin Tarantino. To be precise these are the movies I saw:

• Kill Bill Vol. 1
• Kill Bill Vol. 2
• Reservoir Dogs
• Inglourious Basterds
• Pulp Fiction
• Django Unchained

Now most of the people I know share a love-hate relationship with all of Quentin’s movies. Everyone agrees that the storylines are good, but many people also complain of his use of excessive violence in all of his movies.

Frankly, I don’t understand his rationale behind making his movies so gory, but probably that makes them look – “I don’t give a damn” – cool. The kinds in which you can identify the lead character as a super bad a$$.

I didn’t exactly grow up seeing his movies. I mean my conservative middle class Indian upbringing would have definitely forbade me from seeing anything of this sorts. But, over the last few years I stole a glance of a scene from here and there (mostly from YouTube I guess) till I finally succumbed to watching the whole movies. Quentin’s movies tend to grow on you and the more you see, the more you love them. I got hooked and I guess I have managed to see Pulp Fiction at least 4 times.

Pulp Fiction–Dancing Scene

Now, I have become a self confessed Quentin fan. I like his style of “cool” and I can pretend to like his gut wrenching goriness. After all, I have to live up to be a man. Anyway, just in case you are interested – What do you think is my favourite Quentin movie of all times? Well – its Inglourious Basterds. Its cool, and in his own style, Quentin manages to rewrite history in less than 3 hours.

Inglourious Basterds–Trailer

And before I end, I know I still have to watch Death Proof and Jackie Brown. I shall do that real soon.

Multi-function Personal Computing

Have always steered clear of controversial topics on my blog and shall continue to do so. So without stating an opinion, I would like to give my informed and intellectual readers some reason to ponder.

The whole fiasco with the NSA Prism controversy makes me feel that after all the hullabaloo is over and we get back to our life of cynicism, if there is one industry that should evolve or revolutionize is – Web-based storage. I use this as a generic term for all companies that maintain our data – for us by informing us (Webmail, Social Networks, Micro-blogs etc., Cloud based ERPs, Analytics, CRMs and any other Enterprise IT tool) or slyly behind our back by tracking our browsing habits (the Advertising networks).

I had already visualized a geek-nirvana where I would carry 1 device every where for pleasure as well as for work (a future smart phone). This kinda device would have an OS that would be capable of running as a Mobile, Tablet or a Desktop Machine. It would have enough solid state memory to keep my frequently used programs on it, while safe keeping rest of my data on an extended storage device in the cloud. The processor would of course be powerful enough to handle all my personal computing needs (Gaming, Video, Software etc.).  It would have off the shelf docks that would let me plug it into a Keyboard, Mouse and a Monitor to do my business applications (yeah, the OS would support my Office Mail, ERP, Documentation and Presentation software). I would carry the same device for my presentations, plug it in (or Bluetooth pair it) with the projector and won’t have to worry carrying multiple devices.

This reality was just set back by a few years because of the mere fact that we all just realized that whatever is in web-based storage is public knowledge. Some people will be increasingly weary of these providers and it might just end up stifling innovation.

Or I am just way too paranoid, and nothing will really happen and I will end up buying this device for Christmas of 2014.

Gimmick

I have been blindly buying this brand of eggs that had this “Lower Cholesterol” claim boldly posted on its top. Well, as you may expect, they are almost twice as expensive as the other local brands that are available. After close to a year of regularly buying these eggs, I recently decided to “investigate” how much more cholesterol do the cheaper varieties of eggs contain.

This time around when I went to replenish the eggs at home, I casually looked at the “Lower Cholesterol” eggs calorie content. It is 318mg per 100g. As for the local normal eggs? Well they are at 320mg per 100g. Considering the way this entire nutrition label mess is actually calculated, 2mg difference is not only just a negligible difference but also it could be a rounding error.

I am aghast and I feel tricked. I shall be more careful reading nutrition labels going forward and not just buy fancy looking stuff in the supermarket. Aren’t we all just slaves of pretty?

Cheapskate ergonomics

I wanted to invest in a sit-stand computer desk but looking at the ridiculous prices and my unpredictable place of residence, I decided not to invest in one at this time.

My quest for healthy living however continues. And now I have figured out a cheaper way of adjusting the computer monitor (in my case it’s a Laptop screen) to be at a height that keeps my neck and eyesight straight without causing any strain.

The investment? Well, buy a good keyboard and mouse. I bought the Microsoft Comfort Curve (Yeah it works with Ubuntu). But I am sure any keyboard would do. Get a shoe-box or old directories (or anything that you can use to place your laptop on!). And viola, you managed to elevate your monitor. Cheap, reliable and good for a healthy living!

I got a New Balance shoe box. Yeah probably they would have never thought the box could “balance” something “new” this way. And the added advantage? You can hide all your bundles of wires inside the box to give your desk a minimalist look.

Keep trying

Love this post by Seth again. Inspiring indeed. We don’t try half the things in our life because we set the bar impossibly high for ourselves. We wish to be perfect, give our best, and keep deprecating whatever piece of art we come up with (Yeah it may very well be the proverbial Lizard brain at work here).

May it be writing, singing, acting, painting or any other art that you wish to pursue there is a high probability that you would be very bad at it to begin with. But any art is 90% perspiration and hard work and 10% talent (yeah I made the stats up). So unless we try, suck at it and fail over and over again, we can never improve. Hardly anyone is born with a talent so good that they are amazing right out-of-the-box.

The trick is to never give up and keep trying. Someday you will improve a little notch better than yesterday and you suddenly realize, you are the best at what you are doing!

Forced self-control

The zoo in Singapore has a segment on a Sea lion's self-control. The trainer keeps a fresh juicy fish right in front of the sea lion's nose. Then she tells the audience that the Sea lion won’t eat it till she signals him to. The poor lion looks at the fish then at her and then back again at the fish. This goes on for several seconds, then she signals, he pounces on the fish and we, the audience clap! More information about this behaviour in this paper.

Sea-lion Self-control

Now for the last few days I have been consulting this Hotel. For our consulting assignment, we have been given a room to work from. And then, they serve the choicest food from the hotel (for their esteemed guests) right outside my room. Everyday morning breakfast, afternoon high-tea and evening snacks are nicely decorated and placed outside.

Then they make sure that some of that aroma comes inside so that I feel hungry. And they have put a clause in our contract which indicates “You shalt not eat whatever we serve outside”. So effectively, I see, I get enticed, but I can’t eat. And everyday when I walk past that food, I think of the sea lion. Someday, I will get my big fish too.

Neck pain saga

I take public transport everyday on my way to work. And I have been working long enough to see how people’s tastes and routines have gradually changed over time.

So I began working long long ago when MP3 players were the rage of the town. Everyone carried their own collection of personal music everywhere and entertained themselves with earphones in their ears and completely oblivious of their surroundings. Then after a few years came the handheld game consoles. People started travelling with the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP and everywhere you could see them play games. After a few years, we then got the smartphones. Initially people would Facebook and chat with their friends on the phones. But then came the games. We tried killing a lot of pigs for a while, then some of us gave up and others continued.

These days, when I travel I see everyone glued to their phone screens, maniacally playing Candy Crush Saga. In the train everyday morning, if I peek into anyone’s screen (mind you that’s just out of interest to see their progress, than anything else!) I can see them feverishly crushing candies as they tumble from above their screen.  I checked and indeed, Candy Crush Saga is the most popular game ever (May 2013). I am sure it will be superseded by some game in the future. I am also sure that if there is one disease that this generation is gonna suffer from is – chronic neck pain. We already have managed to damage our eyesight by too much eye strain and now we are complementing it by crushing candies.

Imagine if SETI could come up with a crowd sourced game that could somehow help us search for alien life forms. If it was as addictive for people, I am sure we would have met some aliens by now.