Interesting Jobs

He says he was afraid of only three things in life "electricity, heights....." You got to see this video :-) -> link

More presentation goodness

This time from Seth Godin. His article is on how to put in a little more thought into your power point creation but get a lot of reward in return. Give it a read, well written with concrete examples as well.

How much effort do you put into your presentations

In the enterprise software context/world we don't have a presentation guru. Presentations are considered as part of the job responsibility of most of the normal functional roles. It is more common to see presentations be a part of the day to day job for functional managers (program, product, project) and for sales and marketing folks than for developers and other engineers.

Most presentations follow a common company template or stay simple. This is not a bad thing but if the goal is to influence people through the presentation that the medium and the tools being used might be as important if not more as the content being presented.

Data Visualizations: Modern Approaches is an aggregation of different presentation techniques. Specifically addressing the problem of data visualization. Good link to have in your book marks list.
(HT to Guy Kawasaki )

Links:
Data Visualizations: Modern Approaches
presentation zen.

Remind me not to teach my (future) kids driving

I accidentally drove one of our cars into the other this morning. I had a not so small dog in the back of the suv and so could not see out of my rear view mirror. I proceeded to back out and ran straight into our other car. Looks like we have to replace the hood :-/ $$$....

Yeah, good thing my wife is kind, loving and did not marry me for my attention to detail or driving skills.

be prepared

http://locator.thevision2020.com/

Stardust

It was a fulfilling movie going experience for me. I am an "all the way" Neil Gaiman fan, so this was a beautiful gift from my wife to me (Thanks Kim). I enjoyed the show 100%.. I loved the richness of the story with its ability to surprise me with magic. As in, it is pretty obvious that you are watching a world where magic is in the open but it still manages to get you when you see magic occur.

There is something beautiful and special when a story is essentially a coming-of-age story and a love story between a prince (from a magical world) and a fallen star but you never stop to think - how exactly does the "love" i know of translate to something shared between a prince and a fallen star. Instead you just accept it, get caught up in it and find yourself rooting.

:-) Then again maybe I am uniquely qualified to enjoy movies like this completely. I can easily suspend disbelief and be completely lost in a rich land provided the story stays seamless as it keeps stretching reality. This one did that for me.

Highly recommend it but YMMV. Btw, to be 100% honest, my wife mentioned that she felt like it dragged a bit in the middle. The run time is ~2hrs.. it felt like 45 mins to me :-)

Small World

I was in LAX on Thursday on my way to Austin. My standard ritual during my return trips is to consume my elixir of choice at the starbucks in the terminal.
The girl who took my credit card looks up at me and says "Are you from India?" I nod with a smile (it is pretty obvious if you look at me) She then asked "which state are you from?" This caught me off guard since most people are not familiar with the states in India. I said I am from South India. She continued confidently, "TamilNadu?".. I was bemused and did the nod again. "Vanakam" ... I did a double take but I had heard her right, she repeats it "vanakkam".
Vanakkam is the word for 'welcome' in Tamil, my mother tongue. She answered my unasked question with, "Yeah I took Tamil in college". Did you go to school here I asked (referring to USC/UCLA etc). No no... of course not. I am from Poland she said. It turns out that Tamil is offered as a foreign language in Poland.

It is a small world indeed. Coincidentally my wife is going to Poland in a few weeks.. maybe she will be able to practice her meager but growing Tamil vocabulary there ;-)

If I was a book, I would be

You're Siddhartha!

by Hermann Hesse

You simply don't know what to believe, but you're willing to try
anything once. Western values, Eastern values, hedonism and minimalism, you've spent
some time in every camp. But you still don't have any idea what camp you belong in.
This makes you an individualist of the highest order, but also really lonely. It's
time to chill out under a tree. And realize that at least you believe in
ferries.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Been a while since I posted. Work has been holding the leash pretty tight on my collar. I like these mindless quizzes. This one actually is fun. They ask you just 5 questions (IIRC) and then Bang! they have mapped you to a book :-). I am actually the opposite of their conclusion though I can understand the mapping based only on the questions I answered. I have a sneaking suspicion that they have a pretty simple decision tree and once a leaf node is reached, they stop asking more question :-) since they have no where else to go.

HT to Tish for this link.

A picture is worth a thousand words