Great Music @ NPR

NPR (National Public Radio) plays some of the best music in late evenings. I am listening to it right now, relaxing before a very busy week starting tomorrow.

Guns,germs and steel

Watched an awesome documentary on National Geographic based on the book titled "Guns,germs and steel". I always wanted to read that book and I think the documentary has done a great job explaining the book.

The book basically tries to reason out as to why europeans have ruled most of the earth in the past few centuries. Jared Daimond attributes the benefits to the european geography. I won't mention any other details, as i the book definitely deserves a reading.

How to unleash your creativity

Read a very good article on Scientific America.

Some of the key take aways were
* Creativity can be developed and boosted
* Use "Morning Pages" to jot down your ideas. Pour in anything that comes to your mind early in the morning on to blank pages.
* There are four skillsets that need to be developed namely Capturing (of ideas), Challenging (working on tougher problems), Broadening (diversifying knowledge) and Surrounding (the way you manage the physical and social environment)
* Creative people are very productive. Lots of their ideas don't work but the point is they have lots of ideas.
* Creative ideas always get challenged, the reason being people need lots of time to get used to them. It's important not to get discouraged. You have to put up with failures and keeping creating in face of them.
* Rejection goes hand in hand with creativity. Creative individuals think of failures as new opportunities.
* Take breaks between work. May be a walk or a small nap.
* "Blasting through the blocks": Sitting down with a piece of paper and writing down your fears and inhibitions about completing a project.

Busy time

Past two to three weeks have been awfully busy for me. I had a project deadline to meet and was swamped with changes and code reviews.... I finally got my changes checked in but then bugs started popping up, so was busy fixing those....Quite overwhelming... However I am hoping that the worst is over now and once I am over all of this...I will breathe a sigh of relief and will be happy about my work...Only time will tell that though...

Also have been playing a lot with my new ipod touch and am loving it...Hats off to Apple...Those guys are true innovators of consumer technologies....

Juno

Watched Juno this weekend. Really liked the movie especially the soundtrack.