It's Been Good Life

Recently I finished reading this book It's been Good Life . Its biography of Issac Asimov , one of the best science fiction author known to man kind. I must say its was an interesting read. And let me add this immediately. How the hell can somebody write so much ? and too high quality stuff. Well to be fair I have not read much of his books but I know how much people liked his writings and how much they loved him. I was so shocked to go through the list of this man's writings which itself takes many pages in the end of the book. That's so much of work. Thank you Issac , for letting us know how much one person can really achieve in single life if he is really passionate about it and is very sincere about it. What do i mean ? Was he not above average ? Of course he was .. by all means. But then by going through his early life using this book I could see that was normal life just like you and me. He started writing sci-fi stories and as usual some of the usual stuff go rejected and then he improved it until it gets accepted. And then he just started. He wished he could die while typing some of his book .. such a dedication to one's work... I am humbled sir ..

     He also best known for his three laws of robots which are considered as foundation of the field robotic (the term which he coined). 

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law At the same time it was interesting to see that in so many ways he and his life was just like you and me. Why I like this part much is then it keeps the hopes high .. to still reach the sky just like the way he did. He also studied PhD (Chemistry) as in early life he was not sure writing can give him enough money to feed the family. Had issues with marriage , people in Universities and society etc etc.. But he kept working ...and see what that turn out to be !!       Thank you  Issac for being here and making us think .. think and  think , imagine .. visualize until thing start making sense using whatever science known to us so far .. and giving us so much to read that we could hardly finish .. It was great time having you here.. And yes we also believe It's been good life .. well one of the best !!

Ben Saunders : If you think you can , you can ..

Today i came across very inspiring story of Ben Saunders at TED. Ben basically like to ski. And he went to North pole skiing from Russia to Canada. That's it .. simple to hear.. but may be we need to read it again .. north pole and did i tell you this was solo adventure ? yes it was :) And that's the best part of this thing. There are so many things to admire at such an adventurous attempt starting from the place where where he went, climate conditions at that place, all the meticulous planning this Guy would have done to carry himself through this thing. And he was just 26 at that time. He shares his experiences at TED conference. Actually this is comparatively old story 2004 but i came across the TED video only today. (Well i read it exactly when i  needed some inspiration .. ). A very interesting thought he shared which excited my a lot is :

When you are at north pole , the complete earth is below you (well almost we all know its bit tilted but that's not the point here you morons !!) and its rotating very fast .. all happening below your feet .. man hat would the thing to experience and imagine right when you are standing at north pole !!! Though we would not get the perception coz most of the times we would find it flat rather than a single point as north pole. Hence you need to carry some GPS device. One more joke was .. When he reached there and called three people his mom, girl friend , CEO of the sponsor company and all he could reach was 3 voicemail boxes !!! poor world  PERIOD.

He also shares some insights into what sort of planning he had to go through it as he had to carry all food,clothes, camera,gps and other cool devices. He was blogging daily when he was on this cool adventure taking photos , videos  all along the way .. I specificly loved this part also. Well even though these guys must be living every moment of their success ,they are bound to forget some things when they come back home and try to write it down.. So live blogging would make sure they can capture all the thoughts ... Well i must say he was not the first one to do so on north pole .. So yes guys before him must be more adventurous Its just that I came across this video. May be Ben also does not like this rank and hence wishes to make return trip to south pole all by himself and his skis without using any dog or snow vehicle ...

I do not know what he does for living .. but man i envy his life.. He has not much coding to do .. forget fixing bugs your as well as somebody else .. he travels the world .. plans executes .. next plan .. Also keep visiting great institutions as motivational speaker.What all do you want from the life ? The last thing Ben mentions in this presentation is when he was 13 years old he had got remarks in school progress report that he lacks impetance to achieve anything worthwhile.I love it when life tells us big jokes like this.

For more details don't waste your time reading about some body's blog who reads about other people but go to his site who actually did such thing !! 

Thank you Ben for letting us know if you think you can , you really can. No matter what your school progress report said .. You can beat them all if you decide to do so ..And for not acually not believing in that stupid report. 

Happy adventuring. 

Richard Stallman

I do belong to software field and so i should have known but i did not. And i was not alone. None of my friends knew it either (well this still does not mean that i should not have known but it explains the situation better). But i was fortunate enough to work with a guy who knew him and who very much knew what Richard means. One day he asked me to read Free As in Freedom book which explains how it all started for Richard Stallman . In case you still do not know much about him please read as much as you can about him.
In college i never cared about Linux and certainly not for Free Software. But after reading that book i changed. Seriously there never was a book read in recent times which influenced me so much. I got to know about What is really meant by Free Software for the first time in my life and at that very moment i knew i belong to this movement. Agreed , i am not as hard core hacker as some of his fans are but still i knew i gotta be part of the whole thing or i will not be what i am !. At least i can start using open source software.(Well open source does not necessarily mean Free as Richard always points out) but this can certainly be start and i got started.

Why i like Richard so much ?
When i read the book i just found myself agreeing with most of the part. As simple as this. He has taken a very important task of our time to protect freedom of end users (consumers of software product). Many people currently fail to see what he means but he sees what we can not see. Also his motives do not seem to be for money but only for freedom. Yes to me he is one of the greatest Freedom Fighter of our time. Being from India i come across many stories about how western people are trying to steal age old wisdom of ancient Indian people by patenting everyday things. This makes me give serious thoughts for any patent related issues. And this is where i see more potential in Richard's ideas. He is out there spreading GPL V3 now which i completely supports .. He is helping us to prepare for things to come in far future.
When there are great people around , common people have natural tendency to compare them and so comparison between Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds becomes inevitable. I do not like to chose here as these two people have done completely different things and both of them are great but if it comes to that i am with Richard without any doubt. If it was not Linus , it would have been somebody else. Something like Linux was bound to come. But i am not sure if we can say similar thing for Richard. His role in protecting end users rights when it comes to software is the biggest and will remain so in times to come.

Thank you Richard , For letting us know battle of Freedom is far from over .... You teach us what Freedom really means.

George Washington Carver

I first got to know about this person when my mam gave me a book(एक होता कार्वर) as present when i was in 12th . I was not the kind of reader those days which i am these days. But i used to think that these rich guys or students from the cities have easy access to so many things and hence they get so many better opportunities. I did not belong to poor family as ours should be considered well to do and i could have afforded many things which poor people could not . Still i would worry more about what i did not have. And then i got this book which i read in one sitting. And i never ever said i got less after that. How else can you finish that book. One just keep wondering what is next and what he is going to do. If somebody else even completes education in such conditions that itself is an achievement forget the kind of research Carver has done. I wonder and ask what would i have done if i had found myself in such situation and i simply go blank. Carver mentions it was his faith in Jesus which kept him going.
Simply reading story about this man makes me feel anybody can take education. And not just for sake of it but something which can give you capability of brilliant research in your field. Anybody who thinks he/she does not have very good conditions to take education should read about this person and ask themselves the question : Is my situation really worse than his ? If not what are you waiting for ? And i am sure yours will be lot better than his. So go education .. get your dreams !!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Carver

Luther Burbank

Luther Burbank the famous botanist and horticulturist. We had a lesson about him in school days. I did not know much about plants and related science at that time. Far from my imagination was inventing new varieties of plants. For experiments ...For human progress .. for anything it might prove to be useful. What do i love more about him ? Whenever i read about how many varieties he has invented in his career and how many plants he used for his research (millions of plants), i keep thinking what kind of hard work is this ? I feel like tired if i do double the normal work i do on any given day and here there were people on earth who spent their life with millions of plants and never thought they have done enough. It make me think that whatever i do it's going to be very small work compared to this and i should just stop even thinking about my work as 'hard work' .

This person has many things named after him. One of which is Shasta daisy (see picture above).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Burbank
http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/21.html

Thank you sir for showing us what hard work means.

Thank you .. whom ?

I keep thinking . So inevitably i hit the problems around me. It makes me think .. Oh God ... how can we solve this ? It looks almost impossible to do. At least people like me or so called normal people can not do it. But things still happen. Greater things than we can actually imagine and there are living examples to support this statement. People who have achieved impossible. This blog is a way to thank all those people for just being here on earth to do whatever they did. They give me reason to carry on . Try harder. And after reading their stories i feel , if they can do it everybody should be able to do it. No.. i do not mean to underestimate their hard work. That would be the last thing on my mind. But if people from such difficult situations achieve such big success in different walks of life , i simply can not stop being positive.
These story motivates me when i am at my low. This is also one of the reason to list them here as and when i come across them . So that i can just glance through this section and be on track again. Thank you sir/madam .. thank you for being here.You give me reason to try one more time.