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October 2011

Does wearing glasses make you look mature?

Submitted by ravisagar on Thu, 10/27/2011 - 04:20

In the last 2 years I have been meeting many people for work. It’s been great learning experience for me. I met all kind of people and worked with many. My experience overall is good but yes I met people who later turned out not to be very nice. One thing I always feel and many have also mentioned it too that I don’t really look matured enough! I don’t know may be it is because of the clothes I wear or may be my face is like that. Sometimes I feel nice but I also feel that from time to time you need to look mature too. People say that on phone I sound very matured but when they meet me they think that I am a college student :) Yeah it feels nice but it is not good to loose business just because of your looks.

I do wear formal clothes when I meet new people, it is very unlike me but I enjoy wearing nice shirt and pants with clean shave. I always wonder whether wearing plain glasses add some years to my age? Or at least make me look serious. Of course people think twice before giving business to someone who looks just like a college boy. I am now thinking seriously to buy some fashion eyewear that look very formal yet trendy. I will get glasses with UV filter so I can wear them when working in front of computer too.

Anyways, yesterday was Diwali and its Vishvkarma day and today all the temples will have “Langar”. The kadi chawal they server is delicious!! I also need to get an important task done today, so its gonna be hectic day.

I hope you had a wonderful Diwali. BTW it is really cold today. In fact last night when I was on the terrace watching the fire crackers I felt kinda cold. It is good though that winters are here.

Chalo, have a nice wonderful day ahead!

Diwali 2011 - Should I write a book!

Submitted by ravisagar on Wed, 10/26/2011 - 06:33

Every year during Diwali I remember the things I did in past years. I guess it is not good to remember old days or should we only think about future? I dont know but it feels really nice when I think about past years. I know I shouldn't do it but I can't control the thoughts coming in my mind.

Last Diwali was my first Diwali after my marriage and we decorated the whole house and I made rangoli! yeah. Before marriage I always used to do some stuff every diwali, like go for a long walk, or sit in park for couple of hours, I miss that now. Life is really busy with lot of thing and I know it is not worth it. I am giving up lot of things now and planning to lead a simple but happy life. It is not that I am not happy, I am happy but I have made my life very occupied that sometimes I realize that I am not really enjoying the life the way I should. No matter how much money I earn or how many materialistic things I buy it can't replace the joy of simple things in life. Now when I look at my daily schedule I am always running and doing one task after another, it is like a robot or a machine doing mechanical work. I have deceided that I will not let things go like this.

As I have been saying repeatedly for so many days now that I will not be taking any more projects now, I mean client work. All I will do now is I will work on my own portals. So Sparxsys will not be taking further projects. I prefer working for myself only.

Coming back to Diwali, I like this festival like most Indias but I feel that things are not like it used to be in the past. Anyways lets talk about positive things.

On the other side, Vinod and I have been discussing about an idea these days that we were thinking for the past one year. That idea has something to do with our real passion. We have not yet formalized on that yet but pretty soon we will decide about it and hopefully in couple of months we will announce it :) I am also now thinking seriously of writing a book. I always wanted to document my life, experience in some form. This blog is certainly a place where I write about my day to day life but I also want to write some book, I have not decided whether it will be fiction or autobiography but it will be influenced by my life. I am not really a writer but Vinod asked me to write a book. I do write a lot, mostly on this blog and other places. I am a bad writer for sure but that doesnt matter as long as your readers get the message! Or may be if not a book I will write collection of short stories, may be that will be easy. My problem with writing is that, i hardly read back or revise whatever I write. I find it too boring to read your blogs again :) so if I write short stories I will have to spend less time revising it :p lazy me. I have not decided on that yet and I have not decided whether I will write a book or not but I am giving it a thought! I know there are many people who will laugh when they hear that I am writing a book :) so am I!

Happy Diwali guys! and thanks for reading my blog.

Should I worry about the future - Achieve anything in life

Submitted by ravisagar on Wed, 10/19/2011 - 10:46

Yesterday for the first time ever in my life thoughts of old age scared me. What if I get sick in old age. Even in the young age when we get sick with cold or any small disease we get so helpless and need someone to take care of us. In the old age it is very tough. What if I am unable to handle the pain of old age. These scary thoughts came in my mind but I quickly diverted my attention to something different. I guess we should not worry at all about it and enjoy every bit of today. Yeah I know it is easy to say but very hard to follow. How can I stop my mind from thinking about future. Not possible. So what is the solutions. Old Age and Death is an inevitable truth. Delaying it won't stop it from happening. I really want to know now how people in very old ages manage their lives. How do they convince themselves that there is lot more in life than knee pain, diabetes and regular medication.

Exceptions are everywhere around us. I have seen many old people enjoying their lives to the fullest. I guess I and everyone else should start doing something for their lives no matter how old they are. As long as we are alive we have many years left to live. A 40 year old man may still have another 30 or 40 healthy year ahead. Which is lot of time to do new things, travel the world, start a new business or correct their mistakes. Thats the spirit. Everyone should have a mission in life, as long as we have a desire to achieve something we have every new day with some new challenge and a very good reason to live.

I know lot of people are stuck in complicated jobs or situations where they are not really happy with their lives, my message to them is to make a plan first and write down all the stuff that you want to do in life. It could be any thing and you can write down even the craziest things that you want to do in life for eg - climbing Mt. Everest!! Yes why not. If you have ever watch Discovery channel and seen climber reaching the peak of Everest, I am sure you must have imagined yourself in there place. I have. So what stops us from achieving our goals and desires in life?? I think everyone has some desires but they don't try to achieve them because they are not confident in themselves to even try to achieve it.

So I am just listing the things that we can do to achieve our goals and dreams
1. Make a list of all the things we want in life - this could be a high level list, not a micro-level list.
2. Keep this Main list handy, paste it on your desk!
3. Review the list everyday without fail. This will remind you about your goal in life.
4. Make a sublist for every unique goal. The sublist should have the action points of things that are needed to be done to achive that goal.

By now you have done a wonderful thing. You have just created your life plan. You dont have to follow these plans rigidly, you can do modifications in it from time to time as long as it contributes to your goal.

Now comes the difficult part to follow your plan. The main problem is that people back out when they encounter any obstacle in life or they are discouraged to follow that big dream. My suggestion is to keep yourself motivated remind yourself everyday about the goal. Everyday in the morning, close your eyes and imagine yourself achieving your goal. Lets say you want to buy a big house with lawn and swimming pool, then imagine it everyday without fail. Collect pictures of your dream home and paste it everywhere you can. So the next time any obstacle comes in your life just think about your goal and you will feel little better and you will get some energy to stay on track or find a deroute :) yes if you fail once, try again, you fail then try again, but don't get emotional, you can always make little adjustments in your plan and find a different route to your goal.

I am not writing thing post as a Gyan :) I am also trying to following the above things and I will surely write more on this topic in future. If you have some ideas or suggestions then please share them in the comments. I would love to hear your thoughts on this!!

A quick update

Submitted by ravisagar on Sat, 10/15/2011 - 07:17

I have not been updating my blog regularly for the past couple of weeks. BAD. Not good. Sorry for that. So here are the quick updates I can remember.

1. I got Hair Cut after 4 months, though I still have above average hair length and I am growing more.
2. I shaved yesterday.
3. I am working on super cool features on www.ggsipu.info and I am sure it will help the students a lot. The features I am adding on the site will help the students in getting more marks in their exams. Yeah simple but killer. What else could a student ask for? :)
4. I am NOT taking any new projects. The main reason behind it that the money is not worth my time and working on projects for other people is like a job. That's not what I want in life. I am a free bird, I do whatever I like. I don't like anyone bossing me. Now I say no first to clients and I only only select projects that are really challenging and the client is willing to pay good money for my great work :) (Self promotion)
5. I am working on Free Drupal Videos these days and I will be posting them real soon. This will help other who want to learn Drupal and all the videos will be Free of Cost. Yes, thats true.

Need to stop now, today is KarvaChauth so need to do lot of household tasks. Bye.

Old lady under the tree

Submitted by ravisagar on Sat, 10/08/2011 - 10:27

I dont really know what should I say. This pictures speaks itself. It is so quite yet one can watch it for sometime, there is some mystery on this lady's face. I dont know how to explain this. She is probably reading some holi text, I took this picture near Jantar Mantar, Delhi early morning. The sunrays falling on her back has brighten up the whole image. Also check the "roti" besides her.

I was lucky I got this shot.

Old lady under the tree

More Drupal Podcast coming - Sparxsys

Submitted by ravisagar on Fri, 10/07/2011 - 11:00

Couple of months back I started creating Drupal Podcasts which I made available for everyone to watch for free. I published 2 of them on our website www.sparxsys.com , I created more podcasts but they all need editing. I was budy delivering projects to my clients and I couldnt finish them. Now I am totally focussed on them. I have started the work on it. I have created more Drupal Podcasts. If you have any suggestions for me then do write to me at ravi at ravisagar dot in and let me know what topic you would like to learn. I will be very happy to create a free podcast. In my earlier to podcast I focussed on basic Drupal stuff. In my next podcasts I will create screencasts on Views and CCK, the most powerful and useful Drupal Modules.

To make the videos interesting and meaningful I will take the example of some real case. It may be inspired by my Drupal experience of the past years. Working for client projects under pressure teaches you lot of things.

I can openely say that Drupal changed my life in a big way. It enabled me to fulfill my dreams and I made many portals using Drupal. I started working for clients and I worked only in Drupal. I want to promote Drupal to as many students as I can. In the past 2 year I have been organizing workshops in colleges and companies. People regularly calls me and ask me to give them training on Drupal. I have provided online training to some people but it is kind of difficult. Not everyone has a reliable and fast internet connection in India yet.

To bridge the gap I will make Drupal training short video podcasts and I hope people can benefit from them. Moreover it will be completely free for anyone to watch online!!

Good bye for now and remember I reachable at ravi at ravisagar dot in and I will be very happy to answer your queries about this Drupal Podcast.

Dussehra 2011

Submitted by ravisagar on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 16:38

Today is Dusshera, I dont have to tell you about this festival :) Overall the day was nice though I didnt really do any productive work. I got up early today and I worked on ggsipu.info for couple of hours. Tomorrow I will work hard and finish some long pending tasks.

So it is final now. I am very selective about taking client's projects now. I will focus on internal projects now.

Tum Bin coming on local cable channel. I ordered Pizza. I am a bit tired today.

I dont feel like typing much today so I will wind up this blog.

Good Night!!

Beraham Darindey won the first round of Counter Strike Challengers League

Submitted by ravisagar on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 11:11

I am blogging after many days now, actually I was kind of busy since last week. It was my Birthday last week, last month and the work was hectic too. Lot of new things are happening yet again and I have decided that now I will focus mainly on my own Drupal based websites, we do earn money from them and we will focus more on it to make more money. I will take client projects but only when the project is really challenging and the money is good :) yeah yeah I know it is greed.

On the other note, I came office today, last week I sent my nominations for the gaming challenge. It was our team's chance to play today for the first level. All the levels were knock out. You loose you are out! So we had only one chance to win. So before the game, I installed Counter Strike on my Laptop, setup the server and our team members practiced for an hour or so. When we entered the Game room the atmosphere was sizzling and it was like college days were all the people gathered in one dark room with their laptops and mouses :) It was fun, we one the game in straight sets. The name of our team is Beraham Darindey and we are now in Level 2, I am pretty sure that we will win this tournament!!

Oct is here and the weather has become pleasant now. Days are still hot but not that bad. I could say it is winter time in Delhi, atleast in the morning.

These days I have started working on ggsipu.info and we will continue working on it now. We have stopped taking any new client projects. We have other in house projects that we will work on in future. Working with clients is not very satisfying for me. I have done any unique thing or learned much in Drupal. I have also not organized any Drupal workshop recently. Too bad. Some students contacted me for the workshop and I will schedule this free session in their college. We use Drupal to earn money and it is our responsibility to give back something. We promote Drupal and by organizing these free workshops in colleges we are doing our bit! Also I will resume making free Drupal Podcasts. I created two of them couple of months back but due to work, we couldnt do much. Now we will not make any excuse and I promise that soon I will create more free Drupal Podcasts, which anyone can view for free on www.sparxsys.com

I am very happy today, felt really good after so many days. Feeling alive from deep inside.

Have a wonderful day guys!!

Bye