Why we will never have immortal songs ?

There are old hindi movie songs that can still blow our mind. Kishore Kumar, Mehmood, Muhammad Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar have always been everyone's favourite. Some songs have been marked as immortal and rightly so, as they still have the capacity to blow our minds after decades of their release. 

Now, the new genre of songs.. I mean from the 90's are hardly recognized as immortal ones. I don't have enough data nor I am qualified enough to comment on the quality of songs to segregate which ones should be immortal or not.

But I have an observation, or may be a gut feeling to explain this. With the rise of internet and youtube, we can see the songs of contemporary movies along with the video from the time they start advertising. What happens is that all the songs are registered on our minds, not only by its melody and words but also as the picturization of it. It happens to me that when I listen to a song without looking at its video, I discover fragments of lyrics or music that is awesome which I have never cared for when watching it with the video.

A a large and mass effect, this phenomenon results in the fact that the popularization of songs are not limited only to the melody and words but also the picturization. Along with that, we have too many songs and too fast access to almost everything.

Therefore, may be we will never have immortal songs or if it is immortal, nay be it is released before the 90s.

Best self help advice

Yes, just do it.

http://www.socialanxietycures.org/best-self-help-self-improvement-myths-blown-to-bits/

Some rules to live by

This post doesn't come with the guarantee that I follow them all. But, if I did it would have been awesome.

I am trying. Well, as my professor Dr. Dibakar Sen says... lets start with that.

1. Triers try, doers do.
2. Wake up early morning and look at the sky.
3. Never, at any point of time, stop your relentless quest to find happiness.
4. If you want to be happy, nobody can stop you.
5. Be oblique, be eccentric, look everything with skepticism. Be creative. (Even look at this post with skepticism).
6. When going gets tough, love can get you going.
7. Never underestimate yourself.
8. Practice deliberately.
9. Have a notebook to write anything interesting you come across.
10. Read books, if you can't, read blogs.
11. Grow interests, work on them, and learn skills relevant to them.
12. Money is no evil, it is the way you use them.
13. Forget the past, don't forget the lesson.

Whoa, it finished with the magic, cult and interesting number 13. Well, read about that. So you are following rule no 10 already if you have clicked in that link.

Links

1. Here is a link demonstrating Weierstrass functions.

http://www.math.washington.edu/~conroy/general/weierstrass/weier.htm


I didn't quite understand the concept myself, but somehow it is hilarious. Zooming into a function !!! Well, I have never heard about that. 

Just I did !!



2. 203 fun facts on mathematics

http://www.math.hmc.edu/funfacts/allfacts.shtml


3. Overcome fear

Via: The April Center for Anxiety Attack Management

Car wheel alignment, Eigen value problem and excellence

Today morning I was attending a class on dynamics taught by Prof. Rudra Pratap. He explained today in detail the process of mass balancing using simple linear and angular momentum balance theorem. It was basically a disk rotating on a rod with an angle. Refer to the picture below.

It was an enjoyable class and then, he started writing a symmetric matrix (After attending Prof Jog's class, I like to call it as second order tensor. It feels good.) of the moment of inertia of the . The moment of inertia about the three principal axes are the diagonal terms of the matrix. Obviously, the other terms of the matrix are zero. 

Now, from the result of the mass balance problem, it was deduced that if we keep the plate in certain orientations then there is no requirement of torque at the  support points. Subsequently, the orientations were those of the eigen vectors of the moment of inertia matrix.

So, car or bike wheel alignment is essentially a eigen value problem and subsequently any balancing problem involving two masses placed on a rotating rod.

Now, when we go for aligning car or bike wheels, the mechanic does it. He knows by practice that if the wheels are properly balanced and are aligned the support don't feel any reaction force. Even if he knows how to fix the problem better than you and me, he does not have the insight of the problem like we do.

So, what are we going to do with the insight ?

We deduce a lot from the knowledge. As an engineer, we can look at a similar problem and know the solution using this insight and that is where the difference and significance comes. As I mentioned in a previous post about my own hypocrisy, I don't feel that bad about it now.

Now, why the word "excellence" is there on this post title?

It comes from the fact that creativity has a lot to do with knowing something and associating that knowledge correctly to other problems. And that we can learn from this car wheel alignment problem. This skill of associating knowledge requires practice and thinking from the side of the person having that knowledge. To attain excellence we have to practice associating our knowledge to appropriate problems to find solutions.

And I took the less travelled road.

Ultimately, there is death and all roads lead to the same destination. However, there are only two kinds of roads.

First one is kind of a four lane highway. You drive smoothly, enjoy the view and think you are happy. But you are not, because ultimately that road becomes boring, it is the same view over and over again, and the monotony eats us like a bug.

The second one is more or less like a hilly road. There are bumps, and ferocious animals on the way and no street lights sometimes. But also the view, the enjoyable moments of sheer natural beauty and the adrenaline pump of near-escaping some mishap. And perhaps a tribal waving you ta-ta-bye-bye, a hitchhiker's breathtaking story... no food, so you survive on water and suddenly an inn out of nowhere and this and that. You don't even feel you are going somewhere. And without even knowing it you are happy from the core of your heart and that is what matters most.

I am in awe of (read utter jealousy to) people who takes the hilly road. Today he is a family man, and may be 10 days after in the sea, doing a somersault and then teaching some kids how to fly a kite, and then solving problems as a business analyst using one hell of technical jargon or whatever...

You can see them in the streets, in the bus, in the bookstore, and in malls and dusty village roads. They have something in their faces, a brightness that can not be seen by most of us because we are busy doing some s***. But, I sincerely hope, one day I will have enough courage, knowledge and the most importantly a large heart to become happy like them.

Aakax'r fale salu aru kolu - Muk dia ai bixalota'r ata tukura
Ai oximor ata tukura... Aru moiu tumar dore bixal hoi jau

[I looked at the sky and asked - Give me a part of this amazon
A part of this infinity.. And I will grow big and big like you]

Book Review - Talent is Overrated

Talent is Overrated - What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else

by Geoff Colvin, Published by the Penguin Group, 228 pages

Well, it was hard to read this book. It took nearly three days to go through 200 pages, even after I almost skipped a chapter. And rightly so, because the concept on which the book is based is deliberate practice...not just practice. You don't just slog through it, and get to enjoy phenomenal success...

How can truly excellent people, like Stephen Hawkins and Michael Jordan, do what everybody else can't do ? There are only a few people who are truly amazing, excellent and awesome at what they do. All of us, we work hard. We put in long hours in what we do - engineering, teaching, music, sports whatever. Even then, It is a matter of shame if we calculate the total number of hours we have put in the work we do, and the level what we have achieved. Of course, we have explanation for the same - we are not talented, we don't work as hard as them and the most easy explanation - we ain't lucky enough or we are not god gifted.

There are eleven chapters in this book. The author explains the mystery of talent, and why everyone uses it as a convenient excuse to slog through life in the first chapter. Then comes the proof, why talent is overrated. A close examination of the lives of great performers take out the inconvenient truth.. that talent is overrated. May be god-gifted talent for a specific task like music, sports or academics does not exist, but what if general intelligence (smartness ??) or IQ has an effect.

Is that really so ? Well, the answer is NO. And this book explains.... why ?

It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. Its the things we know that just ain't so - Josh Billings

So, what is it ? The author examines all of talent, overall smartness or aptitude as a turning point for truly exceptional performers. But the actual result says something different. These things don't matter at all. With the example of Tiger Woods, and Benjamin Franklin it is obvious that rather than god-gifted talent or smartness, they had something different; or to say properly, they did something different.

Then what is a better idea that can explain this puzzle ? Practice. And its not the practice what we do. Its the practice with deliberate effort. And it takes a long time, as explained in the 10 year rule or 10000 hours rule.

Deliberate practice must accomplish something, its not just practicing in our comfort zone. If it doesn't require any special effort, its not deliberate practice. And then the author explains what is deliberate practice. And how does it work ? Though it may not be a good idea for me to explain it, because I am not Geoff Colvin. The reader needs to read it themselves, and I don't want to take out the element of suspense - the element that makes you a great performer, someone line Tiger Woods or Sachin Tendulkar.

So, how can we apply those abstract principles in our lives; we are all different - as persons, as professionals and as performers.

There are explanations to how we apply those principles to our lives, to to our organizations. And there is another interesting chapter on motivation too... Well, as expected, there are unanswered questions. But, a book is always better if it leaves foods for thought.. and this one does that exactly.

We got to take charge of our life, deliberately.

A poster I made for deliberate practice in http://diy.despair.com/ . The image is taken from the cover of the same book.










The book can be bought here.