Mouli's thoughts and musics over two decades
Warren Buffet to start a steady process of donating 85% of his fortune – mostly to the worlds largest philanthrophic society – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This is in the order of billions by the way. Wow. Just recently Bill Gates announced that he is stepping down from the throne at Microsoft and he is going to concentrate on his philanthrophy.
I wonder, if these two events are related ??
[news gathered from slashdot]
Jason and Micheal have dedicated fridays to leadership in their excellent ‘blackbelt productivity’ blog. They have an excellent summary of John Maxwell’s book on 360 degree leader. Very very nicely written.
Check it out here. [weblink]
I opened up my bloglines page today, and the cutest thing ever was there. They were doing some kind of maintanence work on bloglines. Usually the “Under Maintanence Message” is so drab, that it is mildly irritating, and you start beginning to wonder, when they will fix it etc etc.
This message in bloglines, was so cute, that I almost was not irritated at all. Very pleasant.
A gold mine of a find – hacknot.info website. The archives section contains a brilliant section of articles. Ranging all the way from Debugging 101 to the article titled the subject line of this post. The author (who says that he has about 13 years of experience in the software industry) says that he compiled this list of Great Mistakes in Technical Leadership by observation. He says there is no way of learning this, other than taking note of stupid mistakes committed by others.
The article starts off with the following quote :
If you are a good leader who talks little, they will say when your work is done and your aim fulfilled, “We did it ourselves.”
— Lao-Tse, cited in Becoming A Technical Leader – G. M. Weinberg, Dorset House, 1986
Read the full article here. [weblink]
Some brilliant sketches, available (mostly) royalty-free from http://www.fromoldbooks.org/
Basically these are hi-res scans of some very cool sketches from Old Britain.
[source the ‘Things that you make go hmmm blog’]
Gina, over at Lifehacker, has a good post up, giving her first impressions of the new Vista Beta.
From the emphasis on searching and not browsing (Spotlight) to the Windows Sidebar (Dashboard) which runs Gadgets (Widgets), to the built-in Windows Calendar (iCal), the similarities are striking.
Check out the full article at lifehacker .
Just stumbled upon this today.Copyscape is a really cool tool, which scans through an archive that it has built from pages on the internet, and gives you a list of websites that closely resemble content on your website. I ran my blog through, and I found only pages, with some content resembling mine. I am not worried, because this was ‘quoted’ content anyway. Several blogs had ‘quoted’ from the famed feynman commencement lecture.
Check out http://www.copyscape.com
Interestingly it has a very google-sque appearance.
I am long time fan of the Digital Photography School. They have done it again. A beautiful piece on how cropping a digital photograph can enhance the pic by leaps and bounds. Check out the article. It has quite a few examples, where you can see with your own eyes the grade of improvement.
The digital photography school has a beautiful write up on how to shoot sunset photographs. I love sunset photography, and I agree with several points in this write-up. Check it out.
Look around you – The wonderful thing about sunsets is that they not only create wonderful colors in the sky in front of you but they also can cast a beautiful golden light that is wonderful for other types of photography. As the sunset progresses keep an eye on other opportunities for shots around you (not just in front of you). You might find a great opportunity for a portrait, landscape shot, macro shot etc behind you in the colden light.
Check out one of my sunset snaps.
[location Mussoorie, Uttaranchal, India]
HP and Sun were one of the first companies in the silicon valley to bring in telecommuting. ‘Working from home’ became a phrase common in the valley. After almost 4 decades (telecommuting started in 1967 in the company), the new CEO is tightening his reins and has said ‘no’ to telecommuting. His rationale behind this rule is that, people need to get back to teaming and increasing productivity. He has said that high performers do not pose a risk or a problem when they work from home, but it is the lower end of the productivity spectrum employees who usually do not benefit. These people would increase their shared learning and increase the productivity if everyone came to office, and all leverage on one-another’s strenghts.
I think I kinda agree with him. I believe strongly in teaming, in shared learning, and in leveraging on one-another’s strengths for a single common goal.