My Pensive

Outlook help text for lost password... Imagine this as a virtual avatar helping you!

2012-02-02T12:03:00.000+01:00

Crabby answers three common password questions

Crabby Office Lady
Some of the feedback I get indicates that you're having some issues about Outlook passwords. Let's see if we can't salvage some of your sanity and unravel the mysteries of Outlook passwords at the same time.

So: Outlook passwords are driving you nuts, eh? From your letters and feedback, I see that this topic elicits three pain points:

Outlook won't do your bidding and remember your password.
You forgot your password.
You share your computer with others but you want to keep some of your mail private.

Today I'll address these burning problems so that you can get over your password obsession and on with your life.

Question #1: Why won't Outlook save my password?

I know...I KNOW! I get lots of feedback about this very issue: even though you've checked the "Remember password" box, Outlook is being a stubborn old hag and keeps asking you for it. Sisyphus has company now.
Never fear, stonemason, I've researched it and compiled a list of support articles that address this very issue. The procedure to fix this problem varies, depending on what version of Outlook you're using and a few other things. Below are some links to support articles written by password experts that may just solve your problem.
Outlook 2007

I get an Enter Network Password prompt

Outlook 2003

The save password setting is not saved when you connect to a POP3 server

Question #2: Do you have my password?

The short answer: no, I don't have your password.
Listen, I know that we all have a lot of number combinations to remember: the PIN to get money from the magic cash machine; home, office, and cell phone numbers; security codes for our home, car, or daycare center.
So it's no surprise that your Outlook password promptly dropped out of your head (along with the middle name of your youngest child) after Saturday night's wine tasting event. And now, of course, if you can't remember your password you can't get your e-mail; if you can't get your e-mail, you're not going to be able to write your mother-in-law and ask her about that kid's elusive middle name. (Then again, you could look on the bright side of things: no more e-mail means no more spam!)
So...how do you get that password back? (This is my favorite part of this column.) YOU CAN'T. Of COURSE you can't. If you could just call me up and ask me, what good would a password be? And no, Microsoft doesn't have your password either.
Here's the thing: unless you've written the password down or it spontaneously comes to you during tomorrow's morning meditation session, there isn't any real way to retrieve it. It's gone, pal; get over it and move on.
But all is not lost.
If you use an Internet service provider (ISP) to get your e-mail, you'll have to call the company and reset your password. Different ISPs go about this in different ways but it's usually not too difficult. You'll probably even talk to a real, live human who will make sure you are who you say you are. ("Name? Address? Mother's maiden name? Shoe size? Favorite pizza topping?")
If your computer is part of a network/domain (such as at work), you'll need to talk to the administrator in order to reset the password.
Once that's taken care of (and you DID write that new password down, didn't you?), you'll need to go into Outlook and add it in there.
Note Remember: A strong password combines uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Weak passwords don't mix these elements. Strong password: Y6dh!et5. Weak password: supersecretpassword.)

On the Tools menu, click Account Settings.
Select the e-mail account whose password you want to change, and click Change.
Under Logon Information, in the Password box, type the password that was provided by your ISP or mail administrator or the password that you created.
Select the Remember password check box (if you want).

Update Outlook 2003 with your new e-mail account password

On the Tools menu, click E-mail accounts.
Select View or change existing e-mail accounts, and then click Next.
Select the POP3, IMAP, or HTTP e-mail account that you want to update with a new password, and then click Change.
In the Password box, type your new password, and then click Next. Then click Finish.

Question #3: Can I lock Outlook when I leave my computer?

In a word: Not really, other than by using your Windows logon password. (OK, in 10 words.)
See, there is no logon password for the Outlook program itself. The password you set with the instructions here protects your personal data that is used in Outlook, but will not prevent people from using Outlook or help secure data against hackers.
By "personal data," I mean: If you use an Internet e-mail account in Outlook, such as a POP3 or HTTP account, your messages are delivered to a Personal Folders file (.pst) on your computer. You can create a password on your .pst file to prevent the people you share your computer with (normally people at home, not at your office) from being looky-loos.
Set a password to help protect your Outlook information
Note If you forget or lose this password, you will not be able to access this file or its contents. Period. End of story.
If you're running Outlook through Microsoft Exchange — common in business environments and rare for personal or home e-mail — you don't need to set a password for your Outlook data. Protection of your Outlook data is already managed by Exchange.

Finally

Setting up passwords is just part of what should be your security story. I strongly suggest you look beyond e-mail accounts and files and consider the bigger security picture. Take a look at our Security and privacy section on Office Online. I'll just feel better knowing you did.
"Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough." — George Washington Carver

Self- visualisation on LinkedIn

2011-08-15T15:16:00.000+02:00

Since the past month i have been reading and hearing from others about visualisations exercises for self-branding, getting a job, ensuring success in your field etc. From self help literature and also from mentors and friends.

And it comes as a surprise when i see a new detail added to LinkedIn, which capatalises on this.
Ofcourse it does not work as well as its a 'vision' given to you by a third party and not created on your own, but its still quite cool.

The feature, creates a fake template of your profile based on a existing job. Just to push you in a tidy way to apply for it. I can imagine people are more confident when applying to this post, once they already see their virtual avatar has been there, done that!.

The 'happiness' brand

2011-08-13T15:56:00.006+02:00

‘Make your brand a messenger of happiness’

In September 2010, I was part of a creative bootcamp in Frankfurt – called PROJECT M. I use the word bootcamp for the day to day activities felt like one. The work was not as much led by process as by personal passion and the eagerness to create ideas which were ‘epic and legendary’. It was, more than a bootcamp, with the challenge of rethinking the city of Frankfurt as an urban-creative brand.

What we realised during the research phase of the project, was that there were factions of the city that did not meet eye to eye on things. And most importantly the banking industry overshadowed any creative spirit in the city, with a sense of serious competitiveness.

What the city was lacking, was an appreciation for street-level culture and most importantly spontaneous human interaction.

The way the project- M’s tacked that, were solutions that aimed at the highlighting the soft values in life and interpersonal interactions, in essence making the city more social. The famous advert from master card comes to mind, where the protagonist goes through a interaction with a monitory cost involved in it, ending with the catch-phrase – “…for everything else, there is mastercard”, indicating that human values (like humour, kindness, courage etc) are price-less.

One of the ideas that translated as a series of flash- public performances was the – Happiness project. These included pillow fights in between strangers, taking a dog for a walk in a dog suit, a gift-swap flash mob and my personal favourite ‘how to turn yourself into a public theatre’ which used a laptop strapped on a person’s body so s/he could move around and become a walking-talking public theatre. The content being played on the laptop could be interactive visuals, aimed to make people smile!.

This is a lot of fun, but on a serious note it was a branding trend that has become very common in todays enterprises. Lets dig into this deeper.

When Philips posts a news item on its website with the header – Philips mother and child solutions delivers ‘happiness’ at a hospital in Vietnam or you have brand popping up called ‘happy pills’, ‘happy socks’, ‘happy hair’ and many more, you know you are looking at a way of branding that customers are responding to.

Brands have always tried to be associated with positive human emotions, but the word ‘happiness’ poses not only as a emotion but as a way of life. The psychological undertones such a branding tickles, is the need for hedonistic appraisals . Usually people value a relationship in the scale between hedonistic versus meaningful appraisals (in traditional society), but now we see both of these existing side by side and not as polar opposites.

Furthermore, the ‘happiness bug’ is not only aimed at customers but it is generic enough to imply an intrinsically happy company (you might imagine a company with employees, dressed in colourful clothes, smiling from behind their computers).

My question to the brands is, what happens when everyone turns ‘happy’ so as to say. What is the next emotional uppraisal that people would seek. The question is not so much as what is going to be the next trend, but what comes next in the cycle.

It is evident that brands in future will turn more meaningful (assuming trends are cyclic!), advertising a life of purpose and harmony.

'Love peace and happiness' sounds like a good catch phrase to use for your brand in 2013!

I leave you with a nice little presentation i came across on the topic:

The Rise of the Happiness Brands

View more presentations from Jane McGonigal

Wifi network names

2011-08-12T13:17:00.004+02:00

Some wifi network names found on the NS trains (Netherlands local trains)

Brandpunt terra @ Delft

2011-04-25T15:29:00.000+02:00

This post is to congratulate the excellent ceramic work that is being showcased as part of Brandpunt terra exhibition from April 23 through June 4, 2011 at various locations in the historic town of Delft (NL).

I was amused at the use of the material to play with finished and unfinished forms, especially of humanoid figurines. Or using the weight of the material to express lightness. What was peculiar about this exhibition was the fantastical abominations which stretched the visitors imagination to parallel universes and beyond. The showcase at the oude kerk (old church) was especially nice with the strange creatures fitting well in the gothic surroundings.

Some artists that i found interesting:
Michael Flynn(GB)
Alessandro Gallo (I)
Guido Geleen (NL)
Gert Germeraad (S)
Marnix Hoys (B)
Marc Janssens (B)
Peter Keizer (NL)
Pamela Leung (GB)
Jackson Li (CN)
Susan O'Byrne (GB)
Adriaan Rees (NL)
Nick Renshaw (NL)
Kim Simonsson (SF)
Carolein Smit (NL)
Jorgen Haugen Sorensen (DK)
Tommi Toija (SF)
Mariette van der Ven (NL)
Jindra Vikova (CZ)

Phones for the elderly

2011-04-13T16:37:00.001+02:00

We have seen phones for the elderly with few buttons, big buttons, no buttons and ugly looking squarish slabs of while remind you of your old age and that your eyes sight isnt so good so we give you large sized typeface, or you keep dropping things that why we give you a neck cord with it.

What i want to talk about is a particular phone that i like, which is the Jitterbug from Great call.
It does not pretend to be for the elderly, it has a design that could be bought by a teenager for that matter. The focus is on the user interface, such that it is simpler to operate by the elderly. More than that it comes with the whole works - an applications store (focusing on health, safety and routine life) and a wonderful website which addresses the way the elderly like to act and behave (for example you can call a number and order the mobile phone, making it low threshold for the elderly to purchase).

ps. Notice the free calls to japan option (center left), an amazing offer considering people would like to check how their friends and relatives are after the nuclear power plant mishap.

See related articles on phones for the elderly:
-- Phones For Young and Old in South Korea - Korean Carriers have started to sell phones designed for the most overlooked demographics: the very young and the very old.
-- «The Elderphone» - Click Senior-Tel is a full-blown GSM phone for the elderly and confused - with just three buttons.
-- Start-up launches easy-to-use mobile phone - Mobi-Click is generating excitement with its new range of phones that work using just three button.
-- Seniors to be offered S`911-only' cell phones - Cell phones that dial only 911 will be given free to seniors in unincorporated Palm Beach County.
-- Finding the Right Handset For Older Cellphone Users - Currently, seniors make up about 15% of overall cellphone users".
-- Simplified Phones for the Elderly - Mobile telematics company Benefon launches a new cell phone called «Benefon Seraph», it's meant to be a "guardian angel" phone. Ultra simplified with only 3 buttons, it allows for direct dialing to predefined numbers.
-- Verilocation - A mobile phone tracker, Verilocation pinpoints a cell user's wherabouts. It is also expected to be of interest to domestic users; anyone who needs to locate someone such as an elderly relative travelling away from home, small children out on their own...
-- Donated phones can help seniors - Senior centers in Michigan are asking the community for phone donations to better arm elderly people during an emergency

Live Analytics

2011-04-13T15:45:00.000+02:00

It is interesting to see that one of the basic human instincts ' to know what your neighbors up yo!' is true wherever you go, be in different countries, cultures and even and even on the internet. That instinct is called 'curiosity' and it pertains to 'other humans' because we are a 'social species'!.
When i was doing the co-library project with the DOK library in Delft, i watched a wonderful documentary on public spaces called 'The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces' , what fascinated me was the importance of public squares and intersections where the primary activity people indulged in was 'watching'.
Now with the social media hype, everyone knows that the same human tendency is prevalent in every walk of life.

Another fascinating aspect that is more and more apparent in the otherwise invisible Internet is an attempt for showing whats happening behind the workings of a service, so as to say in the dressing room of the website. This could be to create interest or make the website more transparent or to create a sense of ownership with the customer, the reasons could be many. To give you an example of the ' map' application on this blog, which tells me which countries the readers of this blog come from; imagine the same service provided live (and with more detail, for if a user is registered with you, you can give out some basic details like city/town without compromising individual privacy).

Now coming to the image used in the article, its a screenshot of the live 'watch people shop' feature on the website of the Book depository. So, this is what we are talking about - Live website analytics shown to the user in a neat visual way that makes him aware of the number of transactions happening on the web page.

I could think of improvements to this concept where you would be able to show the density of purchases on the world map, with the possibility of letting the user interact with it (latent elements, which when clicked give layers of information). The same could be done for example to show the sustainable way in which the business is run, including the transportation costs and such mundane information that people seem to get so interested in.

After such a service is introduced, what is interesting to ask is can it serve more than the function of 'interesting data' that is throw at you (after all we are seeing a information overload on all fronts). My opinion is that such information should become more personalised to the customer. Talking about the book depository example, if the company would let me choose options for transportation, which would affect the time taken for delivery of the book and the price for the service, that would be splendid. You are giving the customer more freedom f choice in terms of cost, time saving, how sustainable his transaction is etc.
Furthermore, it could potentially link up readers of the same book in an area to form 'special interest groups'.
There is much to be done with this data, but ofcourse - user experience (and that is what it is in the end) is still a luxury for most companies.

If you find similar example of services, do refer them to me.

Low res is cool!

2010-10-24T23:55:00.002+02:00

Just an experiment using low res graphics for visual aesthetics.

How much is that doggy in the windows?

2010-10-24T20:28:00.002+02:00

Thats what i do when i am on skype calls, shift my folders around!

'I hate superfluous'

2010-08-17T11:14:00.002+02:00

Long hair minimizes the need for barbers; socks can be done without; one leather jacket solves the coat problem for many years; suspenders are superfluous.

~ Albert Einstein quotes

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

~ Leonardo da Vinci quotes

The idea of of the word ' superfluous' in design is highly debatable. It have been given both negative and positive connotations. For example the green brigade would find the idea of a marble fountain in Africa horrendous (superfluous) on the other hand a graffiti artist's attempts at embellishing a subway station is seen as livening up the space (but also seen as superfluous).

Overall, its clear that 'superfluous design' how ever you design it, may not save lives (yet) but in my opinion they act as adhesives, filling up the voids left by less superfluous stuff. This is a very essential function in society which craves and needs its dose of requisite variety.

Its another way to look at it, is shifting your focus when designing from a primary function to its tertiary functions, or perhaps taking on a function thats completely alien to the design context. The more peripheral you go from the assumed main functions, the more superfluous your design would be perceived as. Thus, when designing such stuff, the argument you present becomes very important, especially when communicating to the guys up top shelling out the money. You have to link the design and its function, to the primary functions to show its economic value.

I personally like the quote by Da Vinci, nothing really can be superfluous (or crazy enough, or functional enough etc) after all nature has presets which we work within. All the rules that we think can be broken have been broken, all the things we think are crazy have been done - by nature. We are just tiny expressions of the same wave of thought, quite limited in our capacity yet expansible.

info visualisation

2010-08-04T10:29:00.000+02:00

An information viz. of this blogger page.
Via http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/

What do the colors mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

An ode to Chekov

2010-07-23T23:10:00.000+02:00

In a letter of May 10, 1886, to his older brother Alexander, who had taken up writing before him with only modest success, Chekhov, from his new position as a recognized author, set forth six principles that make for a good story: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype; 6. compassion." It is a remarkably complete description of Chekhov’s artistic practice. Authorial commentary, if not entirely absent, is kept to an absolute minimum. The most ordinary events, a few trivial details, a few words spoken, no plot, a focus on single gestures, minor features, the creation of a mood that is both precise and somehow elusive - such is Chekhov’s impressionism.

Waking life

2010-07-09T16:28:00.004+02:00

I watched this movie a couple of times. I remember the first time watching it on big screen lying on the floor of the NID mess (part of our movie club initiative), we had dragged our pillows and mattresses from our dorms. Fresh from school, no clue about anything! watching this movie (and then requim for a dream the same night!), it was mind blowing.
Below is the part i like best:
(where the protagonist walks down the stairs and bumps into the woman with red hair)...

Excuse me.
Excuse me.
Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant, you know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient polite manner. "Here's your change." "Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw,

I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me.

I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, no. I don't want to be an ant either. Heh. Yeah, thanks for kind of jostling me there. I've been kind of on zombie auto-pilot lately, I don't feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one. It's kind of like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road. And instead of just passing and glancing away, they decide to accept what he calls "the confrontation between their souls." It's like, um, freeing the brave reckless gods within us all.
Then it's like we have met.
(They shake hands)

Steppenwolf - " Not for Everybody."

2010-07-07T17:58:00.003+02:00

Steppenwolf (orig. German Der Steppenwolf) is the tenth novel by German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse. Originally published in Germany in 1927, it was first translated into English in 1929. The novel was named after the lonesome wolf of the steppes.

So why do i write about it here? because it is a thoughtful well written novel fantastically visualising the extremes of emotional & intellectual conflict in mankind . Recommended for the inquiring soul, read it not as a novel but as making transparent this state (“knowledge of self”), leading to the slotting of the choices you make in your life. The aim always and forever being transcendence, purification and evolution (a healing as Hesse describes it).

In particular i find fascinating a complex and fantastic scene near the conclusion of the novel, Harry Haller (the protagonist) attends a drug party at Pablo’s Magic Theater. While there he becomes intoxicated and, finding Pablo and the prostitute Hermine asleep side by side, he hallucinates driving a knife into Hermine’s chest. Still fantasizing, he imagines a conversation with Mozart about the necessity of learning to laugh at the apparently real and to remain mindful of only the ideal, then a trial in which he is sentenced to eternal life for his imagined murder of an imaginary figure. Mozart suddenly returns and becomes Pablo, who likewise chides Haller for his confusion of the ideal and real and then vanishes, with Hermine in his vest pocket, leaving Haller to his thoughts. Sober again, Haller is prepared to resume the game of life, to suffer its agonies and senselessness once more, hopeful that he someday will be able, like Goethe and Mozart, to distinguish between ideas and appearance and to rise above it all and laugh.

Or as Nietzschean says, to overcome himself, to become an “overman,” unfettered by conventional and artificial limits and free to experience.

In the end, to laugh at the novel as just a bunch of words is probably the best we can do to do justice to this piece of writing.

The tale of the tennis Racket

2010-05-29T20:35:00.004+02:00

This was in school, i subscribed for tennis lessons at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the biggest sports stadium/facility in New Delhi. The timings were not the most pleasant, i came back from school at about 2pm and i had to quickly eat some lunch and by 3-4pm it was time to get there. Too short i felt after the meal, and the sweltering summer sun did not make things better. It was of course great to play, i liked the game.
I was not the best at it, probably the second best in my age category. I was always paired up with my competitor, he was better than me. The matched would go on to late evening, the sun would go down, the big stadium lights shining upon the red clay court, it was a wonderful feeling.
My coach used to watch us from the sidelines, i was one of the fastest runners in my category so i knew he had some expectations from me. Anyway, the matches proceeded, i lost match after match, sometimes i won.
But what my coach noticed, was whenever i missed a shot, i would look at my racket sometimes bang it against my leg and say - Darn! or give a disappointed grunt. And then one day when i did that, he told me- "its not your racket, its you"!. That was the single most lesson i learnt from going to play there - take responsibility for your actions, dont blame it on circumstances, objects and other people. A little self revelation that has carried me a long way.

"Change not the circumstances of my life, Change me!"

What is a 'simple' life

2010-05-25T17:54:00.004+02:00

It was a sunny saturday, as sunny as it gets in wintertime in Holland. And i had visitors to whom i was showing the university, the city of Delft and the Dok library i am currently working with. On a unusual request i took them to see the Delft graveyard, it was quite amusing really the way we commented on peoples lack of style in gravestones and what not. But for this theme, ill mention a remark made by one of my guests. She looked at a grave and said "its quite insulting when someone writes a dedication on a grave which goes - She was the most simple person on earth". What she related to simplicity was a life which was standard and boring to her - two kids, a nice husband, child rearing, a car, picket fence, bonechina tea kit etc etc.

This definition of 'living a simple life' it has come to my attention differs from person to person. Some are more positive, taking 'simplicity' to mean hanging out with friends, going on holidays, guy/girl that loves you, small house and the whole social rigmarole. Some mean, a easy going way of life with absence of extremes like 'ambition' or lack of strong beliefs in politics or religion. Then you have the farmer types, guy wants to live a happy life in a farm, close to the earth, animals, in touch with his feelings and so on and so forth.. As Henry David Thoreau* said " I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, i wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life... to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I am highly amused at the steriotypes that you get here...personally i dont want to subscribe to any one of them and still believe in being adaptable to the context, but i do believe simplicity has to do something with a meaningful life as i describe below.

I think this word - simplicity, needs further elaboration. A simple life ought to mean, awareness of yourself and what amounts to your happiness and well being (short and long term)**. And a prioritisation of activities, thoughts and objects to go around it. This is different for everyone and serves only as a bid to cut down on unthinking consumption and distractions (which is what makes it simple!). So the next time someone says to you - i want to live a simple life, ask him/her what they mean by it...

*Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

**We will not go into generational, cultural and other such factors which result in fluctuations in what makes people happy. We are talking in general here.

..its all a bit funny really (on human emotion)

2010-05-24T18:12:00.010+02:00

Given below is a conversation i had with a friend. The context is some anxiousness, some anticipation and uncertainty on my part. There are parts of the conversation missing here, but i will rephrase them for more clarity.

Although feelings have been given to us for the purpose of judgement, they are of various natures.

Some are known to have their origins from the theory of evolutionary biology. For example a female will be attracted to a male with certain characteristics. Then there are feelings that ensure your survival, for example when there is a gunshot, you are scared and a signal is sent to your legs from your brain to run as fast as you can.These are primary feelings, that are evoked by simple action- reaction interactions in the world and more or less have to do with the human body (but not restricted to it, they are also seen in the mind and heart of people). In strength, this emotion is very volatile and strong, but it has a short life. It is a pity to see people who cling to this basic level of emotion and base all their life decisions on them.

There is secondary level of feelings, more to do with the intellect and/or the subconscious (but not restricted to it, it is also to do with a state of being of the body and heart). More subtle, and sharp, its what gives you a sense of intuition. We use it for appreciating art and sometimes performing miraculous feats of premonition, navigating complex signals (like information, judging people, other heuristics). Cultures all over the world have developed ways to enhance 'this', lets call it 'intuitive feeling' - from Chinese calligraphy, martial arts, music, yoga, or proper living etc. By such ways a precondition (harmony between the body, mind and soul or heart and mind for those who don't believe they have a soul!) of inculcating intuition is established. This intuition is subtle, certain and long lasting (as it becomes a part of your character and personality). This is the right tool, to help you make important life decisions.

Sometimes when a emotional event occurs, the primary feelings like attention seeking children make a big hue and cry. The best way is to give it time for them to go silent, and try and tap your intuitive faculties to give you the right direction. Of course there are interdependencies created, if you are very ill and your body is in pain, its difficult to tap into this 'secondary intuitive feeling' or for example your body is addicted to sex, then you will give rise to a primary feeling of love which is short lasting.

and now the conversation: Where we talk about transcending this primary feelings...
Me: God would not have given us a brain if all we had to do was feel. : )

A: ...you are a good soul aditya ...you will definitely get what you seek.....just don't be so tough on yourself

me: bah hah haha!!! chalo lets see, for now the suspense is killing me : D, hahaha!!

A: arrey...don't laugh so much

me: it happens

A: r u laughing at the fact that i called you a good soul or that i said you are being tough on urself

me: i laugh because i see all of this as a story of a character named aditya. The character is human, and it goes through all the motions of being human. how limiting!

A: wats so hilarious

me: i am amused by myself.

me: no matter how much you try and transcend this human plane, you are bound to engage in this highs and lows.thats what is funny!

A: its only human...and we are afterall humans...can't escape it

me: yup!

A: i used to think dettachement was the key to everything but it doesn't work..it is not easy

me: detachment is not the solution, the solution is to not be affected by it. just let it flow around you like you are sleeping in a stream. but till now, it still affects me. We have to find that inner calm, which is so difficult to reach, gets disturbed by little little turbulences.

A: hmmm....tough

me: yea, thats why i laugh. As i see myself being disturbed each time, i center myself.

but thats the way for sure'

A: thats why i say never loose hope

coz if you loose that..you have nothing to count on

me: yes yes yes!!!!!

A: : )

The happy new yr song from Adi

2010-05-24T16:01:00.002+02:00

I had made this song as way to try a new communication medium! & to wish my dear ones a happy new year. It was received with some laughter and good remarks about my voice : P! yay!
ok, here...

Media as the 'third thing'

2010-05-24T10:37:00.012+02:00

We did not spend our days gazing into each other’s eyes. We did that gazing when we made love or when one of us was in trouble, but most of the time our gazes met and entwined as they looked at a third thing. Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment. Each member of a couple is separate; the two come together in double attention. Lovemaking is not a third thing but two-in-one. John Keats can be a third thing, or the Boston Symphony Orchestra, or Dutch interiors, or Monopoly or youtube videos.

Fate vs Choice

2010-05-23T23:30:00.007+02:00

ALFREDO*
I want to make you happy, Toto! I'm going to tell you a story. (And he squeezes SALVATORE'S shoulder. It's the signal for taking a rest. They sit in a doorway. ALFREDO starts telling his story, and his
way of speaking is hypnotic, magical. With those eyes lost in empty space, it's as if his thoughts and his words came in from some other dimension, mysterious, hidden...).

Once upon a time a king gave a feast and there were all the most beautiful princesses of the realm. Basta, one of the guards, saw the king's daughter: she was the loveliest of all! And he immediately fell in love with her. But what could a poor soldier do compared with a king's daughter?!...One day he managed to meet her and told her he couldn't live without her. The princess was so struck by the depth of his feeling that she said to the soldier 'If you will wait a hundred days and a hundred nights beneath my balcony, then in the end I'll be yours.' Christ, the soldier ran off there and waited! One day, two days, ten, twenty...Every night she looked out of her window, but he neverbudged. Come rain, wind, snow, never budged! The birds shat on him and the bees ate him alive! After ninety nights he was gaunt and pale and tears streamed from his eyes but he couldn't hold them back. He didn't even have the strength to sleep any more. The princess kept watch...And on the ninety-ninth night, the soldier got up, picked up his chair and left!

SALVATORE
No! You mean right at the end?
(SALVATORE is amazed, dumbfounded; that ending has made a deep impression. They start walking again.)

ALFREDO
That's right, right at the end? And don't ask me what it means. If you figure it out, let me know...

" its happening all over again, the characters unaware and yet affected "

*Script taken from Cinema Paradiso

Ebbs and flows

2010-05-21T13:41:00.002+02:00

The ebbs and flows coursing through my veins
carrying me into shallow pools surrounded by bird calls
into gushing rapids and down a waterfall.
I have not set foot on ground for ages, only
skimmed the surface,
the earthly taste lingering, stuck in-between my finger nails
where i clutched at rock and edifice
I know there is a mountain to climb, a heart to win
and plenty of spirit left in the world
a steady breath that gives you wings
a calm turpitude- the cutting edge
Its the silence, make it your friend
and thy will, will be done

Stranger than fiction: Doe normaal dan doe je al gek genoeg

2010-05-17T13:33:00.004+02:00

'Doe normaal dan doe je al gek genoeg' (translated in english as normal is crazy enough) or as some would say 'truth is stranger than fiction' (in a literary sense). There have been instances in the past that have served as good examples, but alas, they are lost in time. In my recent trip to the Drenthe, some such 'string of words' were spotlighted and i made a mental note to record all such events from then on.

Here is an example of such a sentence - "Sleeping in the shadow of an emergency light".

You could say that....
This sentence is wrought with a sense of - life incomplete. The reader imagines a little boy surviving in the barren war scape- a dead zone, where only scavengers flourish. You imagine him sleeping bunched up, with his pajamas ripped at the ends, the strips trailing down his muddy leg.Military turrets sprinkled across the horizon seem to hover dark and ominous, balanced on their stark yellow search lights. You hear the distant barking of hunting dogs on the prowl, an occasional explosion of a mortar shell, a groan, a whisper, the continuous wail of a emergency alarm, a banshee breathing fire in short bursts. The flames reflected in the boys eyes while he lies sprawled inside a abandoned bunker in the shadow of the emergency light.

But, the truth of the matter is that....
the character was living in a respectable well furnished guest room. And for some strange reason, the architect had placed an emergency sign facing the persons bed. So she happened to place her mattress strategically behind a table, so that her face would lie in the shadow of the emergency light. Just a way to get a good nights rest really, nothing more, nothing less.

"You can not improve upon the silence"

2010-04-22T13:36:00.000+02:00

The place i go jogging (yea, i am finally sticking to it!) is a small strip of tarmac about 200 metres in length close to the outskirts of Delft. Its almost an industrial townscape thus becomes quite empty after office hours. The office buildings are widely spaced with patches of wild terrain, water bodies and rubble mountains. What is interesting is the wide variety of birds that inhabit that space from swallows, wild fowl, swans, all sorts of ducks and geese, smaller birds like bee eaters etc.
Even more peculiar is the behaviour of some insect eating birds, which is what i want to pen down in this post. Judging wind direction, they stay fluttering their wings at high frequency, relatively stationary to their surroundings. This stance is maintained for 15 to 30 seconds, and i am sure takes up a lot of energy (as the birds are not as small as humming birds, rather close to the size of a parakeet). But that moment and space (which i related to a moment of silence) gives them the vantage point to spot their next meal, and they dive down at great speed to fetch it. Its is a calculated way to hunt, using natural forces (winds), positions to offer themselves a moment of 'observation'. Its probably physically hard but i liked the deliberation that goes into it.

Something to do with Beeld (sound) and Geluid (vision)

2010-03-25T01:46:00.003+01:00

So, this round table discussion was about -how you could use, or re-apply archives (audio-visual) and it was organised byV2, Rotterdam as part of the ICT Delta conference 2010. And there was something about using augmented reality, which was forgotten/dismissed midway during the talk.

We opened the discussion, talking about the current state of affairs, where institutes like ‘Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid’ , museum-ise the collection, people pay a fee to come and see/hear the content (curating and controlled distribution). So, now the proposed idea is to get some artists to make something cool out of all the ‘raw material’ that is, lets say is under-utilized.

As one of the directions to the project, we started with the word ‘democratising’, but soon came to a mellower ‘participatory’ – referring to the values behind it.The two polar usage trends include - ’user-generated-shared-controlled’ content on one end and ‘institutionalised’ content on the other. The current trend is very much towards the first, but the challenges that the industry faces are of the monetary and copywrite kinds. A good option would be to ‘nominate/ author-ise’ experts, who would be responsible for creating content (sublevel facilitating agents). They could organise teams, workshops, but would retain some amount of authority ( & responsibly preserve some predeclared values + deliver quality output) during the process. The content created would again become raw material for another project by a different team, managed by another facilitator. Thus, an eco-system of producers-consumers (i rephrase: users- networkers) would be created, with each having claim to the rights derived from the creative output. Similar to how wikipedia, or successful peer to peer networks work.

A question that came up: As it is, people have very little time to do their own tasks, why do you think they would be interested in self-creation of material? its a valid question, but i’d say it totally depends on the context.

Identity was mentioned as an important consideration; on one end you had national identity (where the archive are the treasure house, curating the best of a culture) and on the other hand was the identity of ‘you and me’ (a subjective interpretation).

At this point the words of Rem koolhas (i am not particularly fond of him = i dont understand him yet) echo through my thoughts:

Identity is like a mousetrap in which more mice have to share the original bait and which, on closer inspection, may have been empty for centuries. The stronger the identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion, interpreation, renewal, contradiction. Identity becomes like a lighthouse – fixed, overdetermined: it can change its position or the pattern it emits only at the cost of destabilising navigation. (Paris can only become more parisian – it is already on its way to becom hyper-Paris, a polished caricature. There are exeptions: London – its only identity a lack of clear identity – is perpetually becoming even less London, more open, less static).

~ Rem Koolhas (Generic city, 1995)

What he is trying to say, i think is – that even the differences should blend into a compatible whole. Homogenization, to create a generic almost hallucinogenic world order (if observed from a macro scale).

And then i had an idea: A person’s identity is often made up of the soap operas he/she watches, the you tube videos, the books and movies he/she watches. Perhaps there could be a way to depict it as publicly worn accessories (maybe use augmented reality?), depicting media you like. The ‘product/accessory’ has to be low threshhold, bordering on the browsing culture – does not stop the flow of human activity, yet provides a visual unexpectedness that is interesting for others.

Value check: But It should not turn into another media consumerist project, engaging users for the sake of engagement. It should give off a meaningful message, make the users feel proud, responsible and respected. We should always be aware of the balance between hedonistic and meaningful ways of production-consumption. Both are equally valuable, if not overdone. As i write this, i remember this huge typographic advert on a building in rotterdam which said: Artists must live like everyone else : ) . Poking fun at the apparent ‘pointless ness’ of some art projects!

A question that came up during the discussion was: what would you do with all that content if you were the owner of the media company?. I would say, there are a decision to be made here- i would ask myself, how do i measure my success. Do i want to go ‘open-source’ (free for all to use and develop) or do i want to ‘control access’ (curate, and charge per access). Ideally there should be a balance for both.

It was also seen that giving media in the hands of untrained public, might not serve any purpose. Sometimes, people expect personalised service, & other people to do the thinking for them. Thats where these institutions come in, they provide the platform for such guided engagement and give a positive direction and vision. And it is upto each institution to see how approachable, moldable it wants to be by public opinion.

The 'Culture of Sustainability'

2010-03-24T01:40:00.000+01:00

The ‘Culture of Sustainability’

By Aditya Pawar

MSc. DFI, IO. For Osiris Magazine

www. twitter.com/adipawar

As an industrial designer, a pertinent question that keeps irking me is that of the meaning of the word sustainability. Originally a utopian, ‘into the wild’ ideology, sustainability has now become globally accepted, known by different names like ‘eco-design’, ‘cradle to cradle’ and ‘green’. But what does it mean to various people and cultures – Is it an environmental emergency, a health choice, a technical problem, a historic legacy, a political issue, a new world order?

Let’s do an experiment- try a random search for the word ‘sustainability’ on twitter, and see what results you get. You will be amused at the outcome, but this is what people think it is all about – forfeiting a luxurious lifestyle, turning vegetarian, a conspiracy plan of world domination, a new market opportunity…

Image 1: My twitter search for ‘sustainability’.

The ‘culture of sustainability’ to me means an intercession between different cultures of social-ecological development and intra/ inter –cultural mediation. It is also the exchange we need between sciences and arts, rationality and emotions.

And the word ‘culture’ itself is a complex concept that accompanies many controversies in both definition and application. It does not merely imply a difference in perspective of people in various countries. Culture can be described by means of visual models, such as the 'Onion model' developed by Geert Hofstede (1994) and others like Moalosi, Popovic and Hickling-Hudson (2007) who defined culture as a shared set of three elements: ‘basic assumptions and values’, ‘behavioral norms, attitudes and beliefs’ and ‘systems and institutions’. Therefore Agents like Individual actors with varying ideas and interpretations, self-interested actors, agents in population, taken for granted belief systems, social systems, collective actors (groups, classes) with conflicting interests all become causal agents for a transition towards sustainability. For me the three pillars of sustainability: economy, social, ecology, are also in a way all a fruit of culture.

A good example to illustrate this point is Nek Chand’s rock garden in Chandigarh, India. The example is interesting as this man’s illegal artistic endeavour undermined, and assaulted, the city’s quest for internationalism and utopian overtones represented architecturally, through the modernist agenda of Le Corbusier (the famous Swiss-French architect). Nek Chand systematically collected and re-assembled discarded household rubbish to form a series of sculptures. The scale of his production was prolific and covered a considerable area of land and became the cities most important asset. Chand represents and forms part of a different mindset to modernity, whilst living and working within it, using it as a raw material to reassess and redefine the new.

Image 2: Sculptures made out of broken glass bangles at Nek Chand’s rock garden, Chandigarh, India. Image via flickr.com (Photographer Susan Koshy).

Another example from the furniture design world that comes to mind is the work of Campana brothers. They have long been known for their unique combination of craft-meets-contemporary, recycled-meets-high design furniture. The below shown Transplastic series by the Campana brothers is conscientious design, combining plastic (some call it the bad stuff!) and organic materials (the good stuff!), not judging but rather embraces the beauty that can be drawn from its co-existence. We must rethink our belief in makeable society, and avoid romanticized visions of hippy-esque worlds. As George Carlin, American stand-up comedian says in his show ‘saving the planet’ -“the earth does not share our prejudice for plastic…(plastic) could be the answer to the age old philosophical question-why are we here!”.

Image 3: The Transplastic series by the Campana brothers. Image via www.domusweb.it

Many believe that the ‘sustainability’ consensus is dangerous, and I agree. Since the concept has no political content and can be used for any cause. ‘Carbon neutrality’ and ‘cradle to cradle’ are like magic formulas; sustainability has become a politically correct term, and a label that makes whatever you want to do acceptable and good. No questions asked and no doubt involved. The ambiguity of the term might as well be a chance for “Sustainability”, because it makes it possible to bring together people with very different cultures and different ideas about “their” sustainability.

What we also see now is that the mainstream of eco-design strategies focuses on environmentally conscious energy sources and increasing energy efficiency through technological solutions. However, energy-saving features are only sustainable if they are actually used by people. And therefore an understanding of the causal socio-cultural undertones becomes imperative. Hence, design is increasingly being viewed as a critical enabling component for sustainability because the design function is a concentration point for decisions about a large set of human and material resource flows. Design changes sustainable culture and at the same time is shaped by it.

Looking at ‘cultural diversity’ as relating to sustainable product development, culture tends to be regarded as an issue to be addressed in the design process. This development is based on the observation that diversity in teams allows them to tap into a broader array of relevant information, increasing comprehension of the implications of each potential path taken. Looking at cultural diversity in daily practice can facilitate innovation in sustainable product development by increasing the variety of insights on everyday practices, which can be a source of inspiration for designers.

To give an example, an exploratory study conducted by Noriko Matsuhashi, Lenneke

Kuijer and others on bathing style of participants from different demographic cultures (in this case people from Netherlands, India and Japan), and analyzing it with respect to their water consumption. It was seen that the water usage was affected by the bathing styles (for example using the shower, a bathtub or a reservoir) and the context (posture, tools). For instance, as a way to bathe, ‘shower only’ was reported only by the Dutch participants while ‘reservoir only’ was reported only by the Indian participants; also it was seen that reservoir usage was used less water for bathing.

Image 4: Use of water when using a shower, a bathtub and a reservoir/tub. Image via Noriko Matsuhashi et al. A Culture-Inspired Approach to Gaining Insights for Designing Sustainable Practices. TU Delft - Proceedings EcoDesign 2009.

After the study, the combination of using a water reservoir and a standing posture came to the surface as a possible new bathing style with lower resource consumption. Thus, it’s seen that a cross-cultural data collection did achieve a wider variety of insights than a mono cultural study thus contributing to a better solution set for water conservation.

Therefore, what we should be talking about is the “cultures of sustainability” and not just one culture. Just for you to get an idea of how complex the history of sustainability has been, check out the interactive website - http://archis.org/history-of-sustainability, which is a timeline of trends, authors, projects and fiction on sustainable theories made by Amir Djalali, with Piet Vollaard. All of the theories presented play an important role in how we make a transition towards a sustainable future.

Image 5. The complex history of Sustainability. Image Via www.archis.org/history-of-sustainability

Sustainability concerns nothing less than the future direction of human civilisation. Is there anything more likely to generate discussion and dissent than this? Even if society broadly agrees on what a more sustainable future would look like, the underlying causes of (and hence remedies for) un-sustainability are likely to be so deeply contested that consensus on even the most basic of solutions will probably always remain elusive. A transition towards Sustainability should therefore not be seen as a technocratic challenge, but as deliberative social learning process. Double loop learning, aimed at changing existing beliefs, can be facilitated by the participation of the actors in ‘green’ experimental projects that stretch existing routines, stimulate reflexivity and creativity.

The opal eyed princess with the venusian smile

2010-03-12T15:00:00.004+01:00

One Dutch singer/songwriter (Joop Fisher) made a song in the ninety sixties about Princes Esmeralda who was looking for a man. Three candidates got the opportunity to present themselves. The first two knew exactly the right politically correct words to impress a princes and her father. But Esmeralda was not really impressed by them. The third one was ‘Hans’. And Hans said: ‘well, I don’t really know what to say,. . . . and then he described in a very romantic way the girl of his dreams.. . . and he ended by saying . . . and above all the name of the girl of my dreams is “Liesje”. And then immediately princes Esmeralda responded by saying: “my name is Esmeralda but please, call me “Liesje”.

Image: Bani Thani, a famous Rajasthani miniature painting

Found the lyrics!

zeg maar Liesje

Sprookje – Jaap Fischer Tekst en muziek: Joop Visser
Een koning had eens vijf zonen en een prinses
zij nu had goudblonde lokken
en ogen als meren die niet konden jokken
en ze was de jongste van de zes
maar, deze prinses was huwbaar
vaak gingen de koning en zijn zonen vroeg op pad
en dan joegen ze de hele dag
terwijl zij thuis te dromen lag en wachtte op
ze wist niet wat
en deed ze een stap naar buiten
dan lagen er vreemde prinsen in het gras
vreemde prinsen te fluiten
die wisten allang hoe laat het was
de koning zei: ze kon krijgen wat ze bliefde
ze kon vrijen met lakeien
ja maar, zeiden de zoons, ja, maar dat is geen liefde
En toen kwamen er drie mannen aan de poort om over liefde te vertellen
en de eerste was een geleerde, en de tweede was een vreemde snoeshaan
en de derde was Hans
En de geleerde mocht beginnen:
liefde is minnen
en samenzijn
iets nieuws beginnen, mijn is dijn
warm van binnen
verlegenheid, samen in zee, geen ach, geen wee
maar hola nee, genegenheid
en liefde is niet houden van
je kan van zoveel vrouwen houwen
je kan met zoveel vrouwen trouwen
als je er wat in ziet
maar liefde is dat niet
je houdt van kip met appelmoes
en toen knikte de prinses, want ze hield ontzettend veel
van kip met appelmoes
en toen had de geleerde het over Amor en Caritas
en wat het verschil daartussen was
over Arabij, Eroos en Filia
over een diner voor twee met dansen na
en de prinses was stil en zo luisterde ze
en toen ze wat mocht vragen fluisterde ze
en zoenen
zoenen staat niet in Koenen, zei de geleerde
en ging
En toen mocht de vreemde snoeshaan
en die zei:
o, hoe bestaat het dat ik hou van een lelijke vrouw
zo lief, zo zacht en toch zo lelijk als de nacht
zelfs als ze lacht
o, hoe bestaat het dat ik hou van een lelijke vrouw
ik sluit mijn ogen en haar hand sluit in mijn hand
juist zo klein als zij moet zijn, precies zo fijn als zij moet zijn
als wijn die je zacht ondermijnt, overmant
en dan weet ik dat ik hou van een beeldschone vrouw
die zon verduistert, meer zingt dan fluistert
naar niemand luistert
o, dan weet ik dat ik hou van een beeldschone vrouw
maar als ze langs sjokt als een paard
een lelijk paard
de kop omlaag, de vormeloze dijen
die kinderen doet schreien en schichtig springt en jachtig verder jaagt
dan oog ik naar de vrouw waarvan ik hou
ze komt weerom, ik sluit mijn ogen
dat is dom
ik weet niet goed wat ik moet doen met deze vrouw
waarvan ik hou
En toen mocht Hans.
En Hans zei: Ja, ik weet het nog niet
maar, het moet een meisje zijn met
prachtige kleren en goudblonde lokken
met ogen als meren die niet kunnen jokken
een mond als van honing en dan weer scherp als een mes
en hopelijk is haar vader koning en zij dan prinses
maar
ze moet Liesje heten
En toen keek de prinses hem aan en zei:
ik heet Esmeralda
maar zeg maar Liesje

Comedy of errors

2010-02-27T18:42:00.000+01:00

With a vast amount of visual data available to us, a person needs to bat an eyelid, encourage a fidgety knee before he/she can reinterpret it and broadcast it to the world. Giving rise to everyday fresh subcultures.
What is needed is a bit of time (which our teenage generation seems to have enough surprisingly), some skill (easily learnt on the internet) and just the will to express (I 'do' therefore i am) .

Few interesting examples of user generated content which is also my current personal research interest.

1. Meet Ms. boxxy (if you dont know who is boxxy! - here you go)
2. Hear Pepepe feat. Cyané - Jacinto Cenobio (Amparo Ochoa cover)
3. Get down or Geddan movement!

Why do people visit facebook so often

2010-02-18T13:31:00.005+01:00

Image: Inspired by the painting 'this is not a pipe' - by Rene magritte

I recently saw the documentary - The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces based on the book by the same name. It gives very interesting insights on how people behave on the street, in cafe's and open courtyards. The activities in turn (for example, checking out the ladies, vending street food, chatting up) seem to be well documented in terms of perceived privacy, community feeling, anti-social elements etc.

A very interesting thing the commentator says, when describing a public square is that the primary activity is 'looking at other people'. It is a place for human bodies to interact, weave around each other, look and self-perceive, waiting for a unexpected happening, to get lucky, to bask in the agglomeration. Look out and be reflected in it.

Similarly, in a virtual platform like facebook. People sit at home enacting the same activity - looking at each other, and themselves (as they would appear to others). That seems to me the essence of social networking website.

Interesting link on principles of SxD - http://www.gravity7.com/elements_sxd_2.html

Design a profession or a love affair

2010-02-14T11:22:00.002+01:00

Coming from a professor it felt unreal, almost as if it was coming from an alien (i mean a non designer!, sarcasm intended) uttering those words of advice. There was a glint of truth in it, i cant deny that. The voice said to the team " you guys did a splendid job. And the job was to keep on working, keeping the people involved in the loop". It was all about the people it said, and not about the problem (now where have i heard that one before...)....It was about taking tiny steps at a time.After all you had nothing to lose, it was someone else's problem you were trying to solve. Its just a job it said.

A pig and a chicken are walking down a road. The chicken looks at the pig and says, “Hey, why don’t we open a restaurant?” The pig looks back at the chicken and says, “Good idea, what do you want to call it?” The chicken thinks about it and says, “Why don’t we call it ‘Ham and Eggs’?” “I don’t think so,” says the pig, “I’d be committed, but you’d only be involved.”

So what would you call yourself...?

Before being a designer i am a human being (with its conglomeration of relationships), and after design i am a citizen, belong to a culture, faith etc. The ethics i uphold as a human being mirror what lies at the heart of design -a value system which looks at societal benefit, a creative evolution, a set of discisions that need to be taken to make that necessary positive impact for the future. Thus there is a symbiosis established (where the question of commitment almost becomes

tautological). It happens to be that i make my livelihood by design, but by god!! its a damn good fit.

Mathematics as poetry

2010-02-01T00:04:00.004+01:00

But, If you have that intention, you should make of it a great volume; explain it all so fully and so distinctly that those gentlemen who cannot study without yawning; who cannot distress their imaginations enough to grasp a proposition in geometry, nor turn the leaves of a book to look at the letters in a figure, shall find nothing in your discourse more difficult to understand than the description of an enchanted palace in a fairy tale...
~Derrick Henry Lehmer
American mathematician

~ photograph by Aditya

Packaging semantics

2010-01-27T16:56:00.007+01:00

Once upon a time a zen master said " discern between the content and the container". As much as i would like to agree with him, i see that the container is still important. Penetrating that skin is not in the power of the consumer within us, its has to be the scalpel of discrimination that comes from wanting to lead a meaningful life. Cutting meaning under meaning, burning the unwanted scraps in pit fires and keeping warm in the satisfaction that he knows ...

Skins for sale! you want to be Mick jagger, Salma hayek or Gandhi. The skins are available for you 24 hours, advertised by the media, endorsed by the brands. Like flies they cover you from head to toe, and you smell like a prototype fresh from the porcelain fles - shiny and sterile.

I remember a design professor of mine telling me that the best packaging was no packaging at all. But i would not take such a harsh stand on it, after all my fellow humans always dont want something meaningful, quite some of them want hedonistic, all consuming pleasure.
So someones got to design for them, why not me, you or someone who understand how these layers of meanings work.

Below i give an example - the idea is to look at a packaging and ask the question - what product is this packaging for? how did i know that? if the packaging did not exist, how would people people use, carry around, keep the product?....

An excellent way to look at packaging is in the form of message carriers, Like the bounding boxes in a comic dialogue. The shape, line wt. orientation, proportion all should convey the message inside. Extra addendums like price tags, labels are all integral parts of it.

The era of pocket books

2010-01-24T18:18:00.016+01:00

It was when we were in school...1he 1990s; in the 8th grade, the world of a teenager was beset from all sides by necessary evil, one of them being the introduction of pocket books. Pocket books as the name suggests fits a shirt pocket perfectly, designed to be carried everyday. You had books with religious content like the Hanuman chalisa, academic books (maths, science & other subjects - primarily used to cheat in exams) but most notorious was a class of pulp fiction, the covers of which you see above.

The books were greeted with social censorship, the school toilets being a common reading place for them. The same reason James Bond was considered an adult film to begin with and now kids at age 10 watch it as an action flick.

I personally have not had the inclination to go through them, but the artwork there in has a style inescapably kitsch, signified by fire, blood, women in western clothes (epitome of a loose woman!), alcohol or cigerettes, money, a man and a gun. All the art is usually hand painted by professional fine artists (as also were the Bollywood billboards). I remember them being very popular in railway stations, strung together in mobile bookshops. Currently, these pocket books are nearing extinction, with their readers reduced to reading James hadley chase, Mills and boons and what not. Another reason is because a lot of it was in regional languages, and never got translated for the english readers.

Dieters words of wisdom

2010-01-22T00:19:00.005+01:00

On leadership...
Over beer and nuts at ID Cafe. January 2010

1.
If you see the need for something and keep wondering why no one does it, you are the one to do it.

2.
Die hard 4 (live free or die hard):
Matt Farrell: Do we have anything, like, resembling a plan, or anything?
John McClane: Find Lucy, kill everybody else.
Matt Farrell: I mean, more like a plan, like, a way to do that.
John McClane: Find Lucy, kill everybody else.

Sometimes its as simple as that!

Request Calls

2010-01-15T16:05:00.005+01:00

Recently for a project we were calling the help desks of companies for quotations about their equipment sometimes internationally. Instead of a short answer we expected we got sucked into he procedure of form filling and with outcomes such as "we will get back to you in 3 days".

This is what the procedure is...

1. name?

2. email?

3. confirm email...(send email at so-&-so email address)

4. company and position?

4. phone (skype or phone)?

5. you are given an enquiry no

6. your request forwarded to someone...

7. someone gets back to you in 2-3 days

This is a heavy interaction. Where all you should give is a link or a number such that the company can access your contact information. That is the precisely why we have functions like business cards on our phones, so we can send comprehensive packages of contact info.

Similarly at expositions often the organisors give you a bar code when you sign up and fill the contact info forms. The bar code can be scanned by the exhibitor is he wants to get in touch.

So one of the solutions can be that the telecom companies give you a unique identity code (say an alfa numeric no), if a company sends a blank sms to it they receive your contact information via sms. Alternatively the system can be web based, where you register yourself on a web page and your contact info can be relieved if your identification code is typed.

Recently found a nice service to cut down on time when calling companies. Although it does not deal with contact information, it gives a great relief from the drab automated replies you have to hear sometimes. The web service is called - Fonolo.

Mark my words

2009-12-08T19:47:00.004+01:00

Drawing by Mark van Huystee. Presented to me on the day of the exploring interactions presentations.

Mr. Universe - Persona study

2009-12-06T15:11:00.007+01:00

Persona 1: Arnold

Age: 22

Lifestyle: Bodybuilder- spends 9 hrs a day in an airconditioned gym, Rest of the time in advertisement shoots and other press related work.

Wt: 235 lbs.

Persona 2: Muhammad

Age: 72

Lifestyle: Whirlpool distributer- Carries refrigerators (wt. 400lb) to distances upto 50km, uphill, all days of the week, all year round. Rest of the time he minds his flock of sheep.

Wt: 75 lbs.

''my mornings are best when my neighbors wear good perfume in the elevator''

2009-12-04T18:12:00.007+01:00

Getting out of bed is the toughest part of the day . I look at my unshaven face in the mirror, the left eye looking at the right and visa versa, again no time to shave today. Dip my hands in the basin of luke warm water, splash it on my face smoothening down my ransacked morning hair. Tandpasta Toothpaste, badschuim creme, shampoo elke dag, ultra sterk styling mousse, nivea for men, and i am ready to go. Cold inert hands stumble when tying shoelaces, i am already late for the morning meeting. I pick up the necessary junk near my bed; watch, lip cream, atm card, keys, coins and move towards the door. A blast of freezing cold greets me, as i half fall half walk down the ramp to the elevator, curling my finger tips into a fist. 'clingk' the elevator comes to a stop, doors open, i walk in....into...into an orange orchard. It smells fresh, omni potent, celestial for about 15 seconds and then i m on the ground floor. The perfect start of a good day : )

Indeginous innovations: Jugad

2009-11-29T19:58:00.010+01:00

'Jugad' (or Jugaad) is a word you would find many an indian designer use, its trendy! and we swear by it. It does not have a direct translation into english but epitomizes a characteristic tendency in indian people to put together the most random of ingredients to reach a solution. It appeals to the design sensibility because of its quirky nature and guerrilla aesthetics. Traditionally the word has been used in the positive (relating to evolutionary innovativeness and anti-establishment practices) as well as in a negative sense (ad-hoc creations which are low quality).

The word Jugad also has undertones of 'hands-on home made solutions', use of locally found materials, often with no sense of style and re-use of everyday objects. Today, we can see many designers like the Campana brothers, droog design, experimenta design and a bunch of public artists playing around with an aesthetic sense very similar to the jugad philosophy.

To give you an example of what Jugad means, watch this video - 'Indian Peugeot advertisement'. Also, given below is an image of a tripod that i used during my bachelor degree, it was efficient, strong and self-made from scrap metal and as a value addition a great conversation attractor.

Note: Conterversy between Jugaad, DIY, guerrilla design methods..
At this point i quote Steve portigal, he gives a clear picture of how these methods should be distinguished between. He talks about it in context of design research:

I fear the slick presentation of the notion of “guerilla” tells people they can get something for nothing, that insight, innovation, a new understanding, etc. can be accomplished easily. In fact, to do this well, guerilla or traditional (a split I’m not sure I would agree with), is hard, takes practice, and takes work. It can ALSO take time and money. I understand that “optimize” isn’t as powerful a selling notion as “guerilla” but I think there’s a real risk of hype here. As a practitioner in this field I see a lot of crappy research by ill-informed people and I see a lot of organizations struggle to understand what to do now that they’ve done crappy research. I don’t presume that cheap/effective/optimize/”guerilla” means crappy, but I do worry that there’s a subtext that promises quick-fix DIY approaches to a complex set of techniques. Books that promise you can lose weight in one week instead of hard work with diet and exercise over a sustained period of time may sell, may motivate, but the fundamental promise is flawed and that hype is misleading. I think optimizing and demystifying can be a way to bring people in and bring them along to be successful at the “good enough” level, but there’s an important tone difference between that and promising something for nothing.

Speech as a social sense modality

2009-11-29T03:44:00.006+01:00

Non theoretically! i propose a look at human speech (communication in the broader sense) as a social sense modality. This is only in the case where it is used with intention.

Have you ever seen a line of ants which is carrying back food to their nest, if you look closely the ants chat up with their antennas when they cross each other. Its part of a probing nature that is inherent in all communication. You could imagine a conversation between two ants, A and B to go like this -

(A)nt: yo wssup, where you comin from.

(B)nt: oh nothin, just taking a stroll on the carpet, by the way we found some jelly beans buried 20 feet north west from here. Are you on duty in this sector?.

(A)nt: I dont like jelly beans!. Anyway i am the queens personal stylist, i am not into food collection at all. You must be new to the camp?

(B)nt: kind of, i was born day before yesterday. I am in the foraging team for the summer season.

The richness of human language affords us with layers of subtle probes to sense information or get a feel of the situation. Like the ants above, when we are in a situation we use speech (and body language) to identify, prioritize, sense threats/opportunities, make moral and pragmatic judgments. If we look at non verbal communication itself as signals we broadcast, there automatically kicks in a response mechanism from other social human beings in our vicinity.

The application of this thought can be found while designing survey forms, questionnaires etc or in the domain of public relations /human resources.

Why did the 'leaves' cross the road?

2009-11-18T21:44:00.028+01:00

I watched a family of leaves cross the road. The leaves tumbling and frolicking across the cold concrete and the soft blades of grass. It was a spectacular event, in the sense that - if the road had not been built, the forest not urbanised where would you see such a poetic reciprocal overlap. It reminded me of the advertisement of 'Mr W' that i had seen on tv, where the wind becomes a part of the human exchange (although in an ulterior sense we are part of it; the 'it' being an extension of nature). This co-existence we must preserve in the designs that we make. And this harmony should give rise to an aesthetic that appreciates this balance.

I have been recently reading a book - Trespassers (inspirations for eco friendly design) by Ed van hinte and Conny Bakker. I quote a few lines from the book that echo this thought -

in the case of design for sustainability, traditional gloom and doom environmentalist thinking has indeed given in to a strong belief in a makable society, but unfortunately in some cases it consists of a hopelessly romantic and naive world in which we are all coerced into living together happily ever after in heavenly green colonies eating fruit and dancing about all day. No more business, no more industry, no more reality.

In this world all enemies and friends are clearly indentified and all solutions become fixed: wood is sustainable and plastics are wrong; all people should travel exclusively by bicycle and cities are unnatural ugly things. Trespassers sets out to violate fixed ideas like these.

Even though both the writers are coming from European society, living in relative luxury (and thus can easily debate n defending unsustainable luxuries) they are right when it comes to saying that human creation is also a part of nature and in fact coexists beautifully as if thought about sensitively.

Below is a fun idea i had of going to public parks and making tiny zebra crossings for the leaves to pass over man made roads. Just something i am going to try out : ).
Also, in line with this thought is George Carlin's - Saving the planet....when he says - "who knows, maybe nature created man to invent plastic", "Maybe the answer to the age old question - what is the reason that we exist - Is plastic"!

Also worth mentioning is the “Resilience theory, first introduced by Canadian ecologist C.S. “Buzz” Holling in 1973, begins with two radical premises. The first is that humans and nature are strongly coupled and co-evolving, and should therefore be conceived of as one “social-ecological” system. The second is that the long-held assumption that systems respond to change in a linear, predictable fashion is simply wrong. According to resilience thinking, systems are in constant flux; they are highly unpredictable and self-organizing, with feedbacks across time and space. In the jargon of theorists, they are complex adaptive systems, exhibiting the hallmarks of complexity.”

Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia : TEXEL, Netherlands

2009-11-12T00:40:00.015+01:00

I stood watching the sea at 15:00h, the sky was a sliver haze the sun tearing through in shafts of pungent light that lit up the voluminous water below. The seas were reluctant to give in to the winds, hustling and bustling, stubborn and viscous, each molecule holding on to its brother making it a solid entity with a skin of fluid quartz.

I passed by a coffee house, it said - 'sunlight is a state of mind'...

Its was 15:15h when the mist appeared on the horizon, its rose up from the sea at incredible speed, drifting towards the shore in cascading sheets. The first layer hit me at 15:05, i felt dew drops form on my eyelids instantly, a 12 hour process condensed to a second. It was above 90% humidity, a sub aquatic dampness that filled your lungs.

I was riding my bike now, focusing on keeping a steady pedaling rhythm. It was 20 minutes before i realised i was lost - the only rider for miles around. Visibility was down to 6 meters maybe, i crossed a swamp, a bird nesting ground by the sound of it. Could hear the crackling and cooing of birds all around me, once in a while a luminous stork or herring flew overhead and vanished into the curling fog. I was going deeper into the whiteness, there was frost on my clothes and brows. I cycled harder, the body heat melting the ice and making me wet from shoe to hood. I did not mind, the experience was mind numbing, the visions and sounds ethereal. I stood leaning against the sea, a white horizon-less blur, waiting for the next wave to make a whisper.

- Written after a trip to texel, the biggest of the northern islands of the Netherlands.

November 2009. Images are copy write Aditya pawar.

Preconditioning and configuring anticipation.

2009-09-24T15:20:00.006+02:00

When i put up pics on facebook, I always wonder- what makes people like some pictures and not others?. There was a picture that i quite liked, thought it was a compositional masterpiece, had the quality of 'isolated elements in harmony' that i so often try and capture - But no one liked it!. One of the reasons could be that i make personal associations with the photograph, maybe memories of a walk, the feeling of being cold, or a phone call i received just after i took the picture.

But there is more to liking something...i think its called a frame of reference.

The reason why we categorize our collectibles, information, images, stuff is apart from being easier to locate, identify and make sense of also to do with the emotional response related to me. Imagine the layout of a museum, where you walk down a white corridor which opens out into a massive hall, the white of the walls pierced by frames of artwork - stark and staring. A comfortable looking bench in the center of the room, people walking in silence, some intently staring into the pictures.

Apart from the quality of the space, what also becomes important is the composition of the collection, what feeings does it inspire - is it all dark, melodramatic, puzzling or bizzare. If the collection shown in a room is varied and without connections it would inspire disinterest perhaps confusion. The appropriate clustering of stuff then becomes very important. Thus if i have a special folder for arty photography in my facebook, i am more likely to get more pictures that people like out of that than from another album (only if there is consistency in emotions i would say). The same is true for spoken conversation, the clustering, frames of reference, play of variety and highlights become important for the listener to remain interested.

Frames of context, references are evident all around us to cite some famous examples...

i). The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Roles were assigned at random. They adapted to their roles well beyond that expected, leading the guards to display to authoritarian and even draconian measures. Link - prison experiment.

Funny Frames

2009-09-13T14:38:00.007+02:00

This ones about photography. As i was walking back from the delft station one day, inadequately dressed for the sudden drop in temperature; I crossed a street i thought i had shot (i get that feeling of deja vu so often nowdays)....and wondered....

How would you orchestrate a funny frame?. It seems that funny-ness is sequential most of the times, and would consist of more than one frame (a story). But there are pictures inherently funny because of properties like extreme contrast, coloquial humour, or momentory moments of embarassment. Its like the pictures we see on blogs like lolpix.com an numerous such blogs. Sometimes the pictures are faked, sometimes not, you can never exactly tell when. There was an artist, forgot his name who came up with the concept of 1 minute sculptures - aah! edwin wurm. He got people to pose with props in a wierd, acrobatic, funny or just plain stupid configurations. The element of fun comes from the 'awkwardness' of the incommon occurance that he artificially creates. He refers often to comic references and recreates them in real life. As i neared the end of the road i had a vision of a funny frame (inspired by real events) - a Sardarji wearing a pink turban standing in the middle of a field of pink tuips (keukenhof) eating strawberry icecream in a cone!.

So, the element of funny-ness can be created artificially or is a function of the 'moment' if it has to be captured in one frame.

The easier way is to capture or recreate a series of pictures or go for a short movie. Aah! but the challenge to narrate a story in one frame is just too challenging and tempting to dismiss. Aa icon i respect from that point of view is is david lachapelle.

Another outlook is offered from the 'emotional response' perspective.

I remember Alyque Padamsee give his provocative speech on the day of my bachelor graduation, where he talked about the importance of impacting the ' emotional retina' of the people with your creative work.

And here are Scott adams words on humour and emotion:
"The most common dead end in trying to write jokes is to focus on objects instead of emotions. For example, one of the most frequently suggested topics for Dilbert is "bunk cubicles". The idea is that employees would be stacked in cubicles, like bunk beds. The idea is so visually appealing that it would be easy to construct a gag around the physical appearance of a bunk cubicle. But that would be a dead end. A bunk cubicle, however clever, is still just an object. It wouldn't come alive unless the focus of the joke was on how the employees react to the concept. " Further more he goes on to say the 6 dimentions of humour -cuteness, meanness, bizarreness, recognisability, naughtiness, cleverness, but thats beyond the topic of this discourse.

- to be continued...

Memory Archeaology

2009-09-12T01:19:00.003+02:00

Map Design, gaming and city tours

Designing maps so that they capture the emotions and memories of the locations through time. Long ago, i had a concept of a star beamer in mind, it lets you capture the scene in a particular location in a city at any given point of time (past, present or the future). Study change in memory with respect to a person, space etc in time. It is something akin to the videos that play at select locations in a strategy map based games like the age of empires. The videos inform the player of the situation, its severity, characters involved and ofcourse there is him as a part of the whole narration. It is a powerful way to document sensoral archealogy - mapping senses through time.

This also has implications when a person wants to brand a city. How would a city be percieved thrugh time? we have to give it some thought.

Fractional distillation and cradle to cradle design

2009-09-12T01:18:00.005+02:00

This post deals with a need to recycle a lifetime of thoughts.

"WE WILL LET NO IDEA DIE A PREMATURE DEATH "

Amen!!

*Hey whats the latest gossip?!

*Its something about about cradles and sustainability!

* whats that suppos to mean my friend?

* It has to do with recycling things

* Even thoughts?

*Never thought about that!!

* Well then, let me propose a theory of 'thought distillation'...

- Have you ever seen a chart showing the fractional distillation of crude oil. For me a

design assignment is like that. The input is information in forms of literature study, observations, blah blah and blah... all this is heated up (process called conceptualisation) facilitated with a perpetual lack of time and our asses on fire. And out plops a solution! but it is accompanied by several other quanta of solutions which may or maynot related to the profit objective. some are vaporised instantly asoon as they occur, some live to see the light of day in the form of personal projects or initiative.

* cool! what about the residue and waste?

* The residual idea too has a function to perform

* Then perhaps it should be documented and preserved for later alternative use.

* Thats exactly what i am saying.

* So let us pledge ourselves to this cause...

Controlled Chaos

2009-09-12T01:17:00.012+02:00

m:i believe in chaos. thats what i tell people. but its actually controlled packets of chaos

9:48 PM s: hmm

what do you mean

5 minutes

9:53 PM m: diff. to explain without context. but lets say i am working in a group... i start by throwing millions of ideas on the table, scattering collective thought. importantly creating conflict/ arousal. humans have a tendency to order things...thus with time the group organises itself into best suitable configrations (comes up with the right solutions). Its like a self- collapsing blackhole!! - imagine exploding something in millions of tiny pieces...they radiate outward in sow motion...after a threshhold, they start getting attractd to one another again, and swiftly come together in an altogether better orientation. Now imagine you can inject this explosion-implosion process in a linear design process (withing a design team)...= results in a optimum solution.

well it depends on context!! this is just a visualisation

9:54 PM s: hahahahahha

awesome

m: it works

9:55 PM s: you have to draw this for me sometime

m: i also dare the people here to come to india to taste the unpredictable.

ill draw it

9:56 PM and mai you

s: ill beliuve it when i see it ;)

Self Affirmation

2009-09-12T01:15:00.005+02:00

And the mirror spoke seconds before it crashed to the floor
‘Sorry, I lied to you’.

A person would belive anything that affirms his belief in his/ her on capabilities. The behaviour is typical of a ego-formation and self image creation/ affirmation. Thats a good reason that flattery sells. It is especially interesting to see how sarcasm, humour and double meanings can flatter as well as steriotype a person. Its always nice to come up with those : )

Image photography by Caryn Drex

Speed of growth and decay

2009-09-12T01:13:00.006+02:00

What is the relationship (if there is any) between

the speed of growth and decay of living organisms and the man made world.

When provided with the optimum amount of nourishment and love a plant would grow at a certain speed, adapting to the climatic conditions and the environment he has to face. There is a famous example of a person who just by telling a rose bush that it was safe, got it to grow without any thorns. This was probably possible in a succession of steps, where the stalk of the rose bush was grafted and planted anew each time - a generation effect.

Similarly human beings have a optimum biological growth rate in ideal conditions. How is that determined? what determines that? is it predetermined, or perhaps only falls in a certain range? Is it possible to configure the conditions in a persons lifetime so that he is closest to this speed of growth. Can we measure it? What when we consider mental growth along with the physiological one.

Is there a speed of growth optimised for different organisms and contexts that would make them live in harmoney and balance longer?

On common occurances

2009-09-12T01:12:00.001+02:00

Everyday situations that can be turned into bussiness opportunities:

1. man comes to his friend in a que and asks him to buy a coffee for him - thus avoiding the Q and saving time.

2. man sharing Auto, man getting of futher takes full money from the passenger getting off before.

Walking up and down my fake smile

2009-09-12T01:10:00.009+02:00

It has happened so many times that i am thinking about a problem and suddenly there is a flash of realisation which for a millionth of a second seems to be the deepest underlying truth i could get at. But before it takes form into proper words and pictures it evaporates. It is a subconscious phenomenon which has been running parallel to my conscious thinking. i cannot retrace my thought back to that flash as it was not a part of the conscious flow. I can rethink all that i was thinking about when it happened, like walking up and down the street around the place you think you lost your key. But you still cant find it, it was a wisp of air.

You would need the highest levels of concentration to tap your unconscious consciously, it is surely possible.

*The title for the post is something i picked up from

Sujay Sanan during a early morning conversation. I

remember mint and honey tea in a warm room, shimla, 2007.

My Salvation lies in your love

2009-09-12T01:09:00.019+02:00

I meet many wonderful people each day, i know not how to judge. I see the twisted halos, some hand painted, moulded in wax, some carelessly disarrayed. Its a image worth a thousand words, a picture you see in tints and flavours of your own mood. Like a wafer thin transparency,crystalline substance, you see the charcters reflected within enacting their curious stories. Many of them lying floating on the surface of the sea, after a time melting, overlapping, lying fused with one another till they ultimately dissove into the liquid whole.

...when i have lost all care for all that i own, thats when i miss you. Well i had a dream now, that i stood beneath the liquid sea, with you by my side.

Designers inquest

2009-09-12T01:09:00.017+02:00

Design is an inquest into the relationship of cause and effect and after a point about manipulating it.

what interests me as a designer professional is to understand this relationship in the broadest

sense. It means that i seek the holy grail - the ultimate theory for everything, trying to connect

one project to another, a certain human trait to something completely different, always curious about

buttery effects, layers of meaning. Trying to experiment to identify, make linkages, create ever changing

mental models. so what is the 'given' here? in this

huge mess of a formula or you can call it the life you just lived. Its YOU, isent it.

whether you take it up-down and start with yourself or visa versa, the goal is evolution. At this

point i must make the distinction of the word 'evolution' with 'survival'. lets say for a second

we believe what Darwin said - Survival of the fittest. Now, based on that what do you need

to evolve? grow a inch taller, to get that edge every second of the way.

You have a sharp mind, a beautiful smile and a body to go with it. You are beneficial to society,

do your job well, have respect from your colleagues and family. A house + car + beautiful husband/

wife is just the beginning. This quality of evolution is internal something that has to do with you

and only you. That i think is the goal of design in its deepest sense.

All about finding a purpose of worth

2009-09-12T01:09:00.013+02:00

Had a very interesting conversation wth my roomate today. Refreshed the memories of the two years of toil and sweat freelancing in delhi.

It was about an architect classmate of his who had started his own render farms. The guy supposedly had an eye for the visual arts and was facinated by the 3 dimentional virtual space. He self learnt all the necessary programming languages and came up with a software to make 3D models n 6D! (giving cross sections as per requirement) so you could see the internal structure f the building or the product in much detail.

What was interesting about this example was that the person in question had captured a niche market by R&Ding on a tool.

The point of learning from this example is the importance of subsidiary knowledge beyond your profession. A addendum that sets you apart from the rest, something that makes you unique because of the sets of knowledge and skill that you posses.

Another point worth mentioning is that the outcome had a practical output which was scalable i.e it could be used by other designers and architects, thus had the potential of reaching millions of people on this planet. It was an idea which was sure to make money. It was an idea that made money because it saved time and costs (of errors), this is what marketeers talk about when they say 'design to address the pain' .It became popular because it was web based, the medium of comunication and promotion was easily accessible.

We are everyday trying to suppliment our intuition, foresight by artificial means, but tapping collective resources, by working together. This product facilitates that in a very practical way. This also goes in line with the IDEO's moto of liking 'T' shaped designers.

Green films

2009-07-03T11:59:00.005+02:00

I have started a new blog recently about the osiris film that we are going to make. You can find a link to it - here. The idea is to keep the blog updated as we plan the movie making process.

The below few lines are other miscellaneous scripts for a set of movies advertising 'living green'. It is semi-officially going to become a part of the promotion campaign for the OSIRIS network - a student organisation in TUDelft of which, currently i am a board member.

* Concept 1: "whats the big idea"

....to be continued......

Vacation dream

2009-06-24T15:54:00.004+02:00

I had a strange dream.
I was following a man with a map in his hand
we were on a train bound east
the landscapes grew browner, the trees redder
i awoke with a start as the train grated to a stop
peeked through the metal bars to see where i was
saw a huge globe like structure in a playground pass by
and then a labyrinth of flyovers all leading to nowhere in particular

The man got off, i packed up what i had and got off too
i though we were headed for a popular destination
he told me it was just another way to get there, he had some people to see, some things to do
and walked up the stairs
In my vapourous friend i had little faith
did i have money enough?
were there airports in this city of no name?

I walked up the same flight of stairs
only to find myself at the foot of a begger sleeping there
entry to no mans land.

From the corner of my eye i glimpsed a woman in yellow
i had seen her before, where?
in the train perhaps.
She always seemed to be rushing from one place to some place

I picked up my spirits, accepted the situation
and followed her up another spiral of stairs
this did indeed lead somewhere, a huge house in dark brown
Somehow it missed a door. i was there thats it
on a platform in mid air
took an exploratory stroll and could sometimes discern corridors & rooms
The ceiling stretched way up into the twilight sky
the walls too distant to see, blurry but with the texture of books read and re read a million times

I saw the characters in my little personal movie
all appear in this strange mansion
engaged in different activities, always in motion, always with no time to talk
i was looking for a conversation, some clarity
just to ask which way to go?

The lady must have sensed my inquiry
and motioned me to enter a colossal chamber
again the dark polished wood, aging brassware, ochre lamps, peeling manuscript walls
and darkness clinging to the corners and edges of everything

She walked straight into a wall, or i thought so
but she definitely transmuted into a thought
and i could see it in my mind, yellow
a fluttering banner with the women painted on it and some illegible text
I could not read it or touch it, it was not there
but i could see it and hear it

It told me that it was a message that had roamed the earth for centuries
it was not something special meant for me
i had just bumped into it as i sought answers
It told me that it appeared to people before a war was eminent
it told me that it was a warning, a message foretelling danger

and then it was no more
and the room was gone
and the man and the woman
and i knew how to find my way back home
but, i wondered what i was supposed to do, now that i knew

Tiles and links

2009-05-03T13:50:00.003+02:00

This topic deals with the photographic presence of tiles and decoritif patterns on the internet. I know a famous guy who derived a language of aesthetics for websites from such patterns of tiles and rugs. The geometries in place have an application in city planning, product design, art, cooking etc.

Below are some links, i will add more as i find them...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiles4ever/

Guidemap to your Mcleodgunj trip

2009-04-29T13:33:00.006+02:00

Since people keep asking me for information regarding this beautiful place as if i am an authority on it, i have decided to put it all down in my blog for the curious to see.

A). To get there:

i). you can take a bus from himchal bhavan (delhi) to dharamshala (himachal pradesh) - book tickets online here - http://www.hp.gov.in/hrtctickets/

From dharamshala, there are local buses going to mcleodgunj at short intervals. its a 11 hr (approx) journey by bus. The the Himach tourism (HRTC) buses till 2008 were all seaters.

ii). Or you could go to the ISBT (inter state bus terminal) in Delhi and book from any agent that has a bus going to dharamshala/mcleodgunj.

They usually have sleepers. But have a very half hazard way of getting you to the bus which involves waiting in a park, being transported by a autorickshow to the outskirts of the city, where you wait near a petrol pump till the bus comes and picks you up!. I am sure that is not the cae with all travel agents, but it can be scary i fyou are travelling in india fr the first time. If you are traveling alone book a single sleeper or you might get coupled with some strange chap on a double sleeper.

I advice you take the sleeper while going ( so you dont feel tired the day you land), while coming back you may take a seater if you so wish. The return tickets can be booked from mcleodgunj itself, there is a HRTC counter on the main square. Be sure to book return tickets atleast 2 to 3 days in advance.

Buses are also available from Chandigarh, but i am not aware of the details. Also possible is a rail route but it takes upto 14hrs and is not advisable.

B). Stay:

All hotel bookings must be done in advance unless you know people who can host you. Staying in mcleodgunj is a much better option than dharamshala, as there is nothing to see in dharamshala itelf. If you dont find a place in mcleodgunj you might have to shuttle back and forth from dharamshala which would waste a lot of daylight time.

You can hunt online for hotels or decide to get there and search for something (its tough to do that in summer and if you want a room for multiple people).

*we stayed at this place called Kareri lodge in mcleodgunj ( the no is 01892 221132) and paid Rs. 700 for 3 people per day.

*Another option is a place called bhagsu (dont know the name of the hotel there), it is above mcleodgunj where the waterfalls are. And the contact phone no. for the bhagsu chap (named Bijay) is 01892 221735, & mobile no is 09805299489. Stay in Bhagsu is much cheaper than mcleodgunj. The accom. has a shared bathroom and a toilet but kept clean. The advantage is that you can walk up to dharmkot to see the snow line (approx. 8 hrs return journey from bhagsu on foot).

*A few other options for which i do not have contacts (maybe google it or refer the lonely planet for india) are

- a place called chocolate log (its a tidy little cafe with an attached hotel), mcleodgunj

- Glenmore cottages, mcleodgunj

*You could also search for staying places in Naddi, its higher than mcleodgunj, slightly more expensive than mcleodgunj but has very nice hotels.

Remember that the further you go from Mcleodgunj the frequency of transport services decreases. So it is better to find the bus or lorry transport timings from the hotel you book your ticets with.

C). Places to see:

iv already mentioned the names of the interesting places around. Refer the himachal tourism website - http://himachaltourism.gov.in/page/Getting-to-Himachal.aspx.

A place i missed mentioning before is triund.

On your way back from mcleodgunj, do visit the norbulingka institute (http://www.norbulingka.org/), its a few km from dharamshala (buses can be got at frequent intervas from the dharamshala bus stop). probbly you can reserve your last day for it, its beautiful and worth a visit.

Have a pleasant journey. If you are lucky you would witness a few concerts in the restaurants. The food there is beyond belief, its superb! make the most of it : ).

See if you have the possibility of renting bikes, that would be best.

In Joy : )

-------------------some further reference-------------------

http://www.himachalpradesh.us/dharamshala/index.php

http://worldsmiles.org/dsala/dharamsala_map.html

http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Himachal-Pradesh/Mcleod-Ganj/blog-45487.html

http://www.world66.com/asia /southasia/india/himachalprade sh/triund

http://www.footstops.com/nickmclean/blog/4675/
http://sanyam.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/cloudy-triund/
http://realtravel.com/mcleod_ganj_upper_dharamsala-reviews-a5132810.html

Attacking the windmills

2008-10-20T18:17:00.000+02:00

the place is called Kinderdijk. It has 19 of these old windmills still running to pump the water from the lower region to the upper ones.

juxta positioning

2008-09-04T01:50:00.001+02:00

A juxtaposition of 2 culturally polar images; picture 1(right): rolling stones album art and picture 2 (left): Kali Goddess. The poster is intended make the audience observant and sensitive about
application of images in context of culture.
Though it might provoke some fundamental religious hindus the poster is necessary as it seeks to promote a deeper understanding of 'icons' - which more than often are superficially used for political agenda etc (and overshadow deep embedded value systems which are more important).

A muse

2008-08-17T20:59:00.001+02:00

Its strange that you cant get anyone to muse you! thats really strange!!. its a state more from the person (the one who owns the muse) side, and bestowed (almost gifted) to the object of the muse. This object could be a flower, a sound, a person, a experience. The interaction that follows is continous, a node gets established somewhere in the imaginationscape in your head. Another point of view, another gateway to a characteristic way of thinking that you place in your mind arena. All thoughts born are aware of this node, it has made its presence felt and affects the mind ecosystem. Externally it trickles into your discisions, your work, your art and poetry and philosophy of life. Its like how picasso had the blue period or the rose period.
its beautiful!

Canopus in Argos

2008-07-14T19:42:00.003+02:00

I discovered a vagabond artist (with green eyes!) who sits hidden by the crowd in one of the busiest market complexes in Delhi - Nehru place. He sells 2nd hand books (and sketches when the crowd thins)...he seems very well read - the old story telling variety, a bit of a cynic though.

The book was for a 100 bucks (one of Doris lessings - Canopus in Argos series), i had exactly 99 Rs.!! the chap was kind enough to return me back the 9 bucks, so i got the book for 90, and got treated to chai as well ! .

I asked him why he was selling books and not painting, he said - look around and tell me how many people enjoy their jobs, or the occupation they have in society, its all a must-do, it gives no lasting pleasure...what gives eternal joy is something as small as looking out of a moving bus or train with your cheek pressed to the cold glass window...thats why i sell books. He believed that he had just begun to understand what he wanted to paint and was getting back to it after a gap of 10yrs. A man of small pleasures.

pushed around

2008-04-10T19:45:00.001+02:00

They looked at one another in incomprehension. minds driving the wrong way in a narrow street, each waited for the other to reverse first.

Fake death

2008-04-10T19:09:00.001+02:00

Lawson Pines: We die only once, and for such a long time.

Bobby Long: Molière.

*text taken from the movie - a love song for bobby long, i highly recommend you to see it.

Pebbles of faith

2008-04-10T18:43:00.001+02:00

These stones are artices of faith, balancing on a wayside passage, sometimes alone, sometimes in anthill clusters.

The mundane beauty of this simple shrine, and the thought that a single rainstorm, a strong wind could scatter them away....(dust to dust). The frail, ethereal, ephimeral nature captivates a sense in us which appreciates simplicity. On the other hand we appreciate monumentalism too, where we stand humbled before huge intricately carved temples and tombs, bowing in awe at its permanence.

This sparks a conversation on contradictions between nature and us, us and other people, us and our surroundings etc...such that we realise ourselves as belonging to an immense whole balanced by these opposites

"There is no right or wrong, only right and left."

Frozen fossils.

2008-03-25T14:55:00.001+01:00

Its no longer frozen mammoths that you hear of in National Geographic.
A long time has come to pass.....it is all barren now.
Nothing lives or moves. it is longer than an eternity of repetitions.
The sign on the museum showcase said:
This article that you see frozen in the midst of ice, was used by man to brush his teeth. ...and this to drill holes in the wall........

The future is the present.

Yo ! mama

2008-03-23T17:17:00.001+01:00

Aaaaaggh! so apt for my profession

Self worth

2008-02-24T09:23:00.001+01:00

Well i would like to question back...what gives you a feeling of self worth ( i am not using the word self esteem as it involves the ego) ? I can only say for myself....but iv been observing the phenomenon of self worth in people for some time, for some it comes with power, money, dominance over others, good clothes!, good health, a nose job or something as temporary as a manicure. And i say to myself - whats the point of it all if the feeling of self worth depends on external factors, it only makes sense if its a intrinsic quality that you can carry with you irrespective of the situation.

We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

~ T S Eliot

Empty thought bubbles

2008-01-31T16:02:00.000+01:00

There is a void
I fill it with a thought
It silts down to my toes.

A restless sunshine
hiding in my palms,
scampers to fill
in the gaps.

I skip and i hop
smile a routine good bye
and i shuffle my leaden feet
till a melancholy immobility
settles in.

Sherlocks Curse

2008-01-26T11:10:00.001+01:00

"A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library where he can get it if he wants it."

~ Sherlock Holmes details a brief theory of knowledge in The Five Orange Pips by Arthur Conan Doyle.

I as a child of 12 was facinated with Sherlock holme's character, a person who had selected knowledge but in a extreme sense. There was an instance where Watson told him that earth revolved around the Sun, Holmes said - now that you have told me that, i will try and forget it, as the information has no use for me.
I emulated the trait all throughout my school education, having selective knowledge in subjects that i liked.
This just to show how profoundly a childs mind is affected by his childhood experiences.

Odgen nash - My Dream

2008-01-26T10:49:00.001+01:00

A poem by Ogden Nash entitled 'My Dream'.

This is my dream,
It is my own dream,
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt.
Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.

All hail the chief!

2008-01-02T07:42:00.002+01:00

These spiritual window-shoppers,

who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.

They handle a hundred items and put them down,

shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.

But these walk into a shop,

and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,

in that shop.

Where did you go? "Nowhere."

What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."

Even if you don't know what you want,

buy _something,_ to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project,

like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference

what people think of you.

~Rumi

I like birds

2008-01-02T07:25:00.001+01:00

This is one of the pictures from a series, where i tried to animate my facebook profile picture. I changes the scene every week for about two months. The scenes started with me and the birds and the painting in the backdrop, with the next few frames of the birds flying around and me immobile and resolute. The last few frames saw me dissapearing, along with the the frame, and only a bird and a scribble left to say - something happened here.

Feeling free

2007-12-02T16:55:00.001+01:00

caught between a half yawn, with my hands bunched up around me,
turned to stone by a stray wind.
The world around me is methodical and cold,
perfect in its sense of purpose.
The leaf moves a fraction of a inch
to provide just enough tilt to tip the raindrop into the pool,
which ripples in harmony precisely when the drop touches its surface with velocity.
(you could try and see if perhaps the surface ripples in anticipation of the drop, before it actually hits it...but you will find, the reaction is flawless....some people call it physics..)
The wind has taken its time returning.....atlast laden with the scent of a million experiences, happy memories, and quaint forgivings.
Arms fully stretched, i flap them around and feel the air around vibrate with power.
feeling light and free to face the challenges ahead.
i see the life behind this synchronic perfectness, the intense
enormous intelligence that operates it so obscurely. ...And bask in its warmness.

Art- resistance to propaganda

2007-06-05T09:41:00.001+02:00

Something i liked for its artistic narrative and topic of discussion....... ps read the complete writeup (website given below)

source:http://www.viviennewestwood.co.uk/flash.php OR

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329835642-103425,00.html

vivienne westwood on''active resistance to propaganda'' manifesto

ACTIVE RESISTANCE TO PROPAGANDA

We shall begin with a search for art, show that art gives culture and that culture is the antidote to propaganda.

Points still to be made.
1) Whistler: The artist has no responsibility but to his work. There is no Progress in Art.
2) Symposium on Culture ? Nobody knows what it is
3) Culture will overcome Propaganda, the nature of Propaganda.
4) We discover Progress. End of the journey.

Few t shirt ideas

2007-03-05T18:58:00.001+01:00

a few t shirt ideas i got printed fr myself this month.

A royalty free rebel

2007-01-27T22:15:00.002+01:00

ramble on, in obscure ways
trying to manipulate spontaneity
where is that little speck of me ......
i sense what you want
i read an eye for an eye
realise its scrutinous bother
but i have a sentence to word
and a mind to betray.
time, curves up over and under
enslaving the aging child
spilling his cries on millions of lies
on mum people with their mouths dry
infect, hypnotise, sterilize
a family bestowed with hybrid pride ...

Dakor ( between ahmedabad & Baroda )

2006-11-24T21:29:00.001+01:00

The children of Dakor ( iv mentioned the place before ) , the guy in the last photograph became a special friend...and he was clever enough to realise what i was doing in the last photograph and bend low to get shot !! the little girl at the window was shy.The orphanage was huge and empty, and the light filtered joyfully through the grilled windows ,lighting the play at work here..enacted by these wonderful children.

A-muse

2006-11-24T21:16:00.001+01:00

Image: Anonymous image picked up online

This is one of my best loved photographs ..the elusive times of the flower children, the gypsies,pixies & heretics...iv often imagined myself inside the photograph, a soul resonating life.. loving, dreaming, loving.

I hate graceful people

2006-11-24T21:08:00.001+01:00

The above pics are taken off the net, the 1st one which says ' i hate graceful people' is the one i like best...its amazing what effect you can achieve with a few words and a image.

Supernatural kido: Little red riding hood

2006-11-24T20:56:00.002+01:00

Image: A photoshop-ed blonde Japanese little red riding hood.

Ruskin bond had a scary story about a village full of faceless people. I remember being terrified of it as a child, and this picture was a image in my mind where i saw the little red riding hood (without a face) scaring the wolf shitless!. I have no idea why i thought of her as being japanese, perhaps something to do with japanese baby faces (cuteness) as a good contrast to the horror of not having a face.

kido taking a nap

2006-11-24T20:46:00.000+01:00

shot outside the pvr cinecomplex in saket, a street urchin takes a nap under a lee model stiking a funny pose. the kid had a good laugh after i showed him the picture!!

Vitamin water

2006-11-24T04:26:00.001+01:00

Came across this mineral water brand which has a very unique way of advertising, the following lines are tken off the label:

vitaminwater
power C
dragonfruit ( C+ taurine)

legally, we are prohibited from making exaggerated claims ablut the potency of the nutrients in this bottle. therefore, legally we wouldn't tell you that after drinking this, eugene from kansas started using horseshoes as a thighmaster or that this drink gave agnes from delware enough strength to bench press llamas. heck, we cant even tell you this drink gives you the power to do a thousand pinkie push-ups......just ask mike in queens.

legally, we cant say stuff like that-
cause that would be wrong, you know?

vitamins + water = all you need

made for
the center for responsible hydration
whitestone,ny 11357
vitaminwater.com

random pix

2006-11-12T20:53:00.000+01:00

1. saree display

2.linear textures of a newspaper seller

3. buffing plates for a marriage

4. nude descending a staircase ! kidding ...- red man on stairs

6.a girl and her grandmother

Requesting silience

2006-11-12T20:48:00.001+01:00

MOST OF THE ARTWORK/PHOTOS ETC ARE AUTHENTIC RARE PIECES OF AMUSEMENT, TREAT THEM LIKE FRIENDS.

copywrite.adityapawar
(i know!! copywrite's a joke here, but anways!!)

Avani, uttaranchal

2006-11-12T19:58:00.001+01:00

I am recently (23.10.06) comming from a NGO in Uttaranchal, a organisation called AVANI (tripuradevi,pithoragarh-262531, Uttaranchal), around 8 hours drive from Kathgodam via almoda.Mountainous terrain,with a spectacular view of the Nanda Devi mntns. (himalayas on the nepal border), pine forests, cultivated land, fruit orchards etc. Expenses being guest house at avani- 500 rs/day, taxi round trip from kathgodam- rs4000, kathgodam to delhi via local train- rs75. The organisation is providing alternative sources of income fr the local people, currently they weave wool into various merchandise.The things to look out in the region being Malta (local variety of oranges) season -around october/ november, Jya - a local variety of salt tea ( made of tea leaves in hot water, ghee, salt and puffed rice/mudi floating in it), Pot harvesting in Kesardevi around August/september, and if you are lucky, you could go on late night/ early morning strolls and hope to meet a wild pather; i tried but tch! without luck (and i just had my nokia 1100 torch phone to light my way!!so...)...i had to be satisfied listening to bush tales at dinner.Also went to Dharamgarh, a remote village with a history of trade links with tibet, 10 km from tripuradevi, but thats another story......

On influence and conviction (contd..)

2006-11-12T19:54:00.001+01:00

.... I remember that time to be of exponential growth in many ways. i had a short temper, and teachers advised me that i should take 10 deep breaths, and move 5 steps back before i decided to act on my anger.
i found the suggestion primitive, so i devised my own checklist for anger management. 1. see the situation as 2nd & third person, and then act 2. see the situation from a birds point of view (neutral outlook), and then act...for humors sake i imagined myself to be a sparrow somwhere watching myself. 3. imagine yourself projected into the future, look back at the situation, and then act.....but the point i am getting to ...is that a lot later...i realised the importance of the birds point of view, or 3rd person view being so very instrumental in convincing people, and in a way convincing yourself...currently i follow the principle of multiple points of views in a specific context in multiple times. Another crazy way to percieve time is in the form of extended time (.. and if it comes full circle = timelessness ) i.e imagine a act in 'timelessness' or the 'infinite future'.

Another angle to look at is from the point of view of the overlap between motivation and conviction....