Onto a new Home

So, the blog migration is done and the new address for all future posts would be: https://medium.com/@kesari

I'll be keeping this site on Blogger up, with all the archived posts. As part of the migration, I've taken along posts from the last 2 years, about ~100 recent posts since I resumed writing.

Please update your feeds and notifications, and see you there!

"I know what you did last summer.. and pretty much everyday!" - Check out your life catalogued on Google

Couple of weeks back, I was in Bangalore to conduct a workshop at the National Institute of Design (NID), Bangalore. After reaching the hotel, I googled the NID location on map to check distance and the commute time. As I was about to close the page, I stumbled upon a small link on the left that said 'You last visited 11 months ago'.

I was surprised, since I had indeed been to NID a year back, for an earlier workshop. Intrigued, I clicked on it and saw the below:

Now this got interesting since it showed the actual date of visit in 2015 and not just that, but where I stayed (Ivory Studio One at Indiranagar) and when I travelled that day, how long I was at NID, and when I left. And then I noticed the bars at the top which seemed to have similar catalogued information, for other days as well. To investigate further, I clicked on the next day. Now it started getting beyond interesting:

This showed my itinerary on the next day, after I had got back to Hyderabad. It had a complete chronicle of the day - the time I left home, the bakeries I had visited to book a cake for my kid's first birthday party. The cake pictures I had taken at the bakery on my mobile phone (and which was backed up on Google photos) is neatly catalogued alongside.

The timeline continued to show Karachi bakery, the last one I had visited and where I finalized the cake. Then, it showed my visit to the printers for the birthday cards - and the rest of day at office - time I travelled home - the route I took that day - and Google's guess of whether I drove, cycled, took train or walked, perhaps based on the speed of movement. Now this was just too much of my personal life catalogued, and it was quite eerie! The only apparent comfort being Google's assurance that this information is safe & private, until I choose to make it public.

Finally, to understand what else was up for grabs from my google-created life travelogue, I explored further and discovered a variety of rich information - all my trips by year; every single place I had visited; the favorite joints; average travel per day and so on and on. All this information was available for a historical period of 3 years, which was when I transitioned to an Android smartphone, and incidentally handed over my life to Google!

Now, all along I knew Google has been storing my data - my Google searches, my Android phone location, map searches, photos backed up, my office inbox, my calendar. Being a data afficionado and one who takes out time to track all possible data points in the daily events, this was a conscious choice and something I have been excited about. But what caught me by surprise here was the neat processing and linking up all of these together to create a rich and frightening catalogue, which leaves nothing to imagination.

For now, I will definitely continue giving out my data, but will be a bit more circumspect about the possibilities.

'Ambush marketing' your competitors: Hyderabad billboard wars

Care Hospitals opened one of their biggest branches in Gachibowli, Hyderabad a few months back. In the midst of hundreds of ads and billboards put up by Care Hospitals all over Hyderabad, I was alarmed to see the below billboard put up by a competitor, right next to the new Care Hospitals campus.

Continental Hospitals had taken a brazen approach to rent out a prominent billboard right next to the location and has put in this tongue-in-cheek hoarding. This is unmissable for anyone taking the highway, and is all the more prominent in the night, with use of right brand colors of 'Care Hospitals' just as seen in the neon lights right behind the billboard! A classic case of ambush marketing at its unsavory best!

Hardly a few weeks later, I stumbled upon this billboard by Oakridge International school, again in the Hitech city area in Hyderabad.

I saw variants of this board in other places where ‘Pilani -or- Princeton’ was replaced by ‘Symbiosis -or- Stanford’. Seems to be a case of an 'International' school glorifying Ivy league universities abroad, while belittling their Indian ones with a similar rhyme to the name. I wonder whether they’ve also used a ‘IIT -or- MIT’ comparison somewhere!

Clearly another variant of ambush marketing that could degenerate into an ugly spat. When I googled for these, I couldn’t find any local news or mentions, and I wonder how the affected parties have reacted to these.

But if the intent of these boards was to grab attention and be talked about, they sure achieved their 'intended' purpose.

Hans Rosling - a tribute

In the past week, the discipline of Data Visualization lost Hans Rosling, a stalwart & leading proponent of Visual story telling. He passed away at the age of 68. That he was a master story teller with data is widely known, and one can get a glimpse of some of these brilliant narrations in his TED page.

A key highlight of all his talks was to demystify statistics and make seemingly boring numbers come out alive on the screen. One of the reasons he stands out in the Visualization world is his unusual combination of diverse skillsets - depth in statistics, eye for visual design and riveting presentation with screen presence.

His efforts have been lauded for taking pains to simplify statistics for the common, non-data audience. He has gone to the extent of explaining heavy concepts like population growth and climate change through Lego blocks and other physical props. Experimenting with innovative ways of presenting data, he had also used Augmented Reality to present data in 2010, several years before AR and VR came into mainstream parlance.

Hans Rosling was a big inspiration for us, in the early days of Gramener. We have leaned on his vast repository of work as part of our talks to educate audiences and in introducing concepts to our clients. Gapminder, the non-profit website and visualization tool that he founded were used as benchmarks in our early work. Over the years, I have continued to use some of his brilliant videos in my Visualization workshops, including one just yesterday.

Thanks to his pioneering work, the industry has benefitted immensely and his legacy will be carried forward. If you're looking to get started with Hans Rosling and his body of work, I'd recommend to take a look at the AR talk from 2010 where he covers 200 years of global history, the wealth and health of nations through a 4 minute talk.

Dangal - wrestling to Wrestle

I arrived late to the Dangal party. But thankfully, I caught up with this movie a couple of weeks back, before it moved out of most theatres. The uniform reaction I heard from people who watched the movie was “What perfection - everyone in the movie seems to have learnt & lived wrestling so much so that nothing appears to be an enactment”. I must agree, since I looked up Geeta Phogat’s Gold-medal winning ‘real’ match after the movie, and it didn’t come close to any of the prelims matches shown in the movie!

I’m a big fan of sports movies and particularly those inspired from real life events, for they celebrate triumph of the human spirit against insurmountable odds. They not just inspire people to march-on when massive challenges come in the way of their passion, but they also do the dual job of endearing them to a new sport. Several Bollywood movies have done an outstanding job here, like Chak de India (Hockey), Bhaag Milka Bhaag (Athletics), Mary Kom (Boxing), Lagaan & MS Dhoni (Cricket, though this sport hardly needs any further push). So have movies in Tamil like Irudhi Sutru (Boxing), Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu (Kabadi) apart from other commercial movies with sports as a key track - like Chennai 600028 (Cricket again) or Ethir Neechal (Athletics). They have done a world of good to promote sports and get audience interested in stuff beyond the obvious cricket bat-and-ball, when on the ground. Perhaps its no coincidence that a lot of non-cricket sports leagues have sprung up in India, in the recent years.

What struck me with Dangal was the incredulity that something like this could have happened in real life. The first thing I did after stepping out of the movie hall was to google and check how much of it was real vs reel. Understandably, the director has taken some creative liberty and added elements to make the movie work commercially - such as the antagonist character of Indian national coach and Phogat Sr getting locked up during his daughter’s Commonwealth Gold bout, to name a few.

Nevertheless, there are several aspects from Phogat’s journey that makes his real story on the love for wrestling & the doggedness to get a gold medal, incredible. Without doubt its good to see such stories come out in the open, be taken up commercially (albeit with some ‘reel’ embellishments) and achieve the reach they have, rather than taking a puritan approach by being a stickler for factual accuracy and bury such tales forever.

The Dhaakad video from the movie has been playing on repeat mode in my machine for a few weeks.

'Magical legacy' of PC Sorcar: Show experience

The Legacy

The name PC Sorcar has been synonymous with magic in India, from as far back as I can remember. In my school days, I remember a few occasions where the bandwagon of PC Sorcar Magic shows had rolled onto my hometown, Madurai. Then, it was the 2nd generation magician from the same family, also called PC Sorcar Young who performed.

I did not get an opportunity to watch this earlier, and my exposure to magic was solely through movies like The Prestige, Illusionist, Now you see me or through TV shows of street magic by the likes of Dynamo or David Copperfield.

I recently caught up with my first magic show in-person, couple of weeks back, when we took our kids for the PC Sorcar magic show playing in Hyderabad. Currently, its a person from the 3rd generation of the family who is the key performer, named Pouroosh, also called PC Sorcar Master. With their legacy spanning generations, looks like the family is fast running out of unique & differentiable names.

The Show

When I checked the schedule to book tickets, what first surprised me was that the 2-hour show was running twice-a-day and everyday, continuously for over a month. Not very different from a movie schedule, but for much longer, considering that movies these days exit theatres in just a few weeks! Also, the seat pricing was reversed, with balcony seats being the cheapest and front-rows commanding a premium.

After a good introduction, the show began with some legacy acts, handed down several decades from the first PC Sorcar. Classic acts like pulling a warehouse of items out of an empty cube, making pigeons appear & then vanish, cutting a lady using multiple swords, impaling a man with spears were spellbinding. There was a special appearance by PC Sorcar Young, the 2nd generation legend to do the 'X-ray vision' act, wherein he not just guesses what people write on a board, but also does impossible mathematical computations on them or converts plain markings to master sketches, defied all logic. 

While most of the acts were good and held the suspense element, the show did seem a bit of a stretch for the 2 hours duration. Perhaps due to the prolonged build-up done for some of the acts, which looked a bit dreary and dull, or because the final act, performed in pitch darkness wasn't as great a climax to the show.

3 generations of PC Sorcar on stage (Young, Pouroosh & his toddler son)

But the show is worth a watch and it definitely captures the imagination of kids. In an age of short movies, Youtube & WhatsApp entertainment, keeping the attention of audience through shows like this sure calls for showmanship, acting skills, screen presence and above all great stamina to perform 400+ shows, right through the year.

Simple pleasures of having your coffee hot: Some ideas

I'm all for having my coffee or tea extra-hot. Its a disappointment every time, when it quickly loses temperature in the space of a few minutes. And I hate it to finish off the beverage cold or at best, lukewarm.

I am the kind who usually runs back to the oven to reheat my tea when its half done. To confess, there are times I've ended up reheating the same tea a couple of times, before actually finishing it.

This has made me wonder whether there aren't any elegant solutions in the form of a custom, improvised coffee mug.

Googling got me some options. A popular one was the insulated coffee mug, which doesn't really solve the problem.

Thermos insulated mug

Then, there were the reheatable mugs that could be plugged into a power socket or even through a car charger. A bit messy and certainly not one you'd want lying around your table.

Stainless steel coffee mug from Alibaba

I was looking for a combination of a mug -cum- thermo flask that retains heat best, one which comes with a reheat option without those ugly props.

Concept by Green Lama and Design HMI LLC

And, I landed on this page which seemed to offer quite an elegant solution. This kickstarter campaign had originally been launched with some issues, and then relaunched to completion.

Product launched by Green Lama on Kickstarter

With this campaign getting closed, the product doesn't seem to be in the market yet, but with limited availability on their home site.

Looks like I'll have to wait some time until I can have a steaming cup of coffee, all the way to the end!

Autobiography of a Yogi

I had just completed reading Autobiography of a Yogi. Its a fascinating read, packed with abundant learnings, so much so that you'll have to re-read it many times over to absorb it all.

Swami Yogananda has truly established a bridge not just between East and West which is the stated overarching purpose, but the book transcends several dual worlds with ease - yogic mysticism vs science, ancient vs modern worlds, ascetic life vs materialistic pleasures. The writing style alternates between light stories, spiritual messages & heavy stuff on self-realization. As with most philosophical stuff, one can conveniently absorb whatever they can at the moment and skip onto other portions.

The book chronicles the life of 4 yogis at available levels of detail, and also talks briefly about several other saints. Interestingly, you get to hear not just a capsule of their teachings, but also get a first hand account of their lives, including their innate flaws in formative years and how they were reformed by their gurus. Understanding the human compulsions of yogis, their emotions and attachments to loved ones (though subtle and fleeting), makes this all the more relatable to rest of us, ordinary mortals.

This book fills an important void, because the real yogis have always been mystic, secretive and hence their ideals and life accounts have been largely lost on the general population. In an age where there is rampant misinformation & misuse of spirituality with an overflow of charlatans, its truly a remarkable attempt that someone has gone into great detail to demystify, explain the science behind what is perceived as magic and make it all relatable.

Some important takeaways for me from the book were:

• Influence of a guru in shaping one's life
• Importance of yoga - that magic can happen through simple control & regulation of one's breath
• Listening to our inner call by understanding the higher purpose - and that you don't have to necessarily give it all up and live in a Himalayan cave (though thats an attractive proposition!)

No wonder the book is listed amongst the 100 best spiritual books of the 20th century, and is highly treasured by several renown individuals, including Steve Jobs.

Goodbye 2016 and Hello 2017

Its time to reflect back on the past year and set some broad goals for the one just begun. By comparing notes with a similar post I made around the same time last year,  here is my reflection:

• 1. Done a decent job with execution by sticking to things planned at the start of the year.

• 2. Spent time learning new things, primarily around data, analytics, design and technology. Feeds through feedly and other modes of reading I had setup for myself have proven to be effective. Though I couldn't hit my Goodreads challenge of 20 books, I think the learning has been good, and some of this catchup can be done in 2017.

• 3. Maintained the rhythm of writing through the past year with 4 blog posts every month. There is an increasing intent to find time to write more and on varied interests, and hopefully that would happen this year, including the impending migration out of Blogger.

• 4. I had called out self-organization and house-keeping stuff as areas to focus on. There has been some progress here and I've recently started logging my daily time to understand this better. With close to a 3 weeks of data, time-logs are proving to be quite helpful in this area and I intend to continue this for atleast a few months.

• 5. Travel & Movies had taken a slight back-seat in the past year, and this is one such instance where the balancing act needs to improve.

Here's to a Happy, Healthy and Spirited 2017 for all!!