hari-ar-cane

Covid/Corona is around since a year now and most of us are attending meetings online almost daily. Although some platforms like zoom has become instant success, but others like Webex, MS Teams and Google also got the chance to do decent business. People are appreciating the easiness and user friendliness of zoom, but paying for the service is still not very popular among common mass. With these limitations, and also restrictions from the employer to use one platform, most of us are stuck with one system eventually, although we started with all and got trained in more or less each of them. There is no harm in using one system, but you do faces technical glitches using them. One of the common issue is the mic and speaker problem. I have personally experienced that mic somehow doesn’t work properly in one or two of these platforms. It’s not that the mic has gone bad, but it doesn’t work optimally or equally with all the applications. So, it is embarrassing when you need to speak up in a m...

 What is an ideal online product review, what should we expect from them? When I read the reviews of any product, the objective is to look for certain answers which can help me in deciding whether to buy a product or not. But, nowadays, every product is having hundreds of reviews and most of them are just the collections of features and specifications of the products. I am really surprised by those people who are creating these useless reviews. The information they are giving in the name of review is anyway given on the listing of the product on any shopping site. Who wants to learn that, it is very frustrating to see these kinds of reviews almost daily in your life. Even, I have seen people comparing two products by just running through their features and specifications from a table.  I have observed that there are majorly two kinds of reviewers: One who is there to make money out of making these reviews, and the other ones who generally are not happy with the products. With ...

"Oh... Definitely, I have seen him somewhere" - she said. But her memory is not helping. In the last few days, she has spotted him a few times. The first remembrance was when she was having the morning tea in her balcony, and he was walking by. She noticed it because she felt his gaze fixed at her for a moment. He was not staring but gave a quick side glance at her, and that penetrated her mind and etched a memory. Then, she saw him in the market, from a distance but did experience similar feelings. Now, it has occurred a few times, and her mind is restless with the thought that anytime and anywhere, he is watching her and she has not spotted him. It's a terrorizing and disturbing thought. "Why am I thinking this way, and why that guy?" She is a rational and logical person. There are hundreds of people one meet, some frequently, some occasionally and few rarely. None have left this kind of impression. "Who is this guy? What's the r...

Sam always see locals spending their weekends participating in some kind of sports activity like cycling, trekking, or playing soccer, badminton, lawn tennis, volleyball, and baseball. Some guys play indoor games like snooker/billiards, bowling or video games. Right from the school days, Sam has always been the guy who would immerse himself in study and research. During his growing years, he did explore all kinds of sports for the heck of it, but never progressed and pursued anything beyond knowing it. Even today, all he knows and does is research, but whenever he gets a chance, he tries to check his skills, be it football, volleyball, table tennis, badminton, swimming, pumping iron in a gym, doing push-ups or pull-ups in a playground. Outdoor sports activities have always fascinated him, but not enough to pursue it regularly. But, on this particular day, after seeing some locals going for trekking that morning, he thought of trying it out himself - A trek on a small hill. Altho...

According to a recent study, blogs, which appears more frequently on search engines, are between 300 to more than 1500 words long. It also says blogs of more than 1000 words are frequently picked up and shared than blogs of shorter length. I agree that this study depends more on the population of readers that share blogs on social platform like twitter. The study also said that to keep up with the word length, the writers definitely feel the pressure, and that is not a healthy option for writers. The blogging is more about sharing your thoughts and ideas freely with others, although a professional and commercial aspect is associated with most of it. Imagine, if the thought process results in a 2000 words long blog, and blogger shrink it down to make it more popular, it may end up in a different piece of work from the original. Similarly, if one produces a blog of 200 words only, he shouldn't try to stretch it to more than 1000 words, which can compromise the content and ideas. I ...

Gumption- It's really a unique word, and a fascinating one too. The word really impressed me. I heard it recently in the movie 'The Holiday', where an elder character suggested the protagonist to have gumption to live a good life. The origin of this word has been mentioned to be of early 18th century (originally Scots). The dictionary meaning of gumption is "shrewd or spirited initiative and resourcefulness". Some of the synonyms which helps to understand the meaning are "initiative, resourcefulness, ingenuity, inventiveness, cleverness, shrewdness, acumen". Another meaning or definition which I personally like is "the ability to decide what is the best thing to do in a particular situation, and to do it with energy and determination". In other words "the strong will and determination to do something". Many a time, in your life, gumption acts as a prerequisite to handle or face a situation, but not everyone is lucky to have it. If o...

As an adult, every individual is entitled to independent thinking, decisions, and actions. However, if consequences of these thoughts and actions turn up against you in a certain point of life, you land up in a situation, where guilty dominates and blurs your mind.  It makes you feel bad and you regret your actions done in the past. In short, it becomes an ugly situation. You start thinking low of yourself. You feel awkward, thinking about what the others will think of you. You start regretting why did you commit the mistake in the first place. You start thinking of ifs and buts of that scenario. It makes you feel so bad that ultimately you are disheartened and get stressed up and who knows it might affect your health. But the thought to ponder upon is, whether it's the action or opinion of others, which one is exactly disturbing. If you stop thinking about others, maybe, it will hurt any more or lesser at least. Also, whatever was the case, you are the one who thought and acted ...

Days are high or days are low So are the feelings they actually show Hard or soft, whatever life blow Sadness or happiness, either will grow But, your perception is always dying to bow You never know what life will throw But, deep inside you always seems to know The toughest part is to say yes or no Whether to take it fast or little slow Whether to keep it high or somewhat low Or it's best to go with the flow Days are high or days are low -hari-ar-cane

For many people, music serves much more than a source of entertainment. One can call music as lifeline, staple food, oxygen, travel friend, gym partner, walking companion, cooking buddy, relaxation source, and sleep guide. People say it's the best medicine for the mind. Mind is generally a place of chaos, it looks somewhat like a busy station or cluttered closet or office desk. If one doesn't clear things from it, it's difficult to add or keep more, be it ideas, thoughts or plans. For most of the humans, this is a difficult task, a notion that is rarely realized or practiced. If they do realize, they are clueless as to how to do it. You will agree that the thinking process is a loop mechanism, and most of the times, an endless cycle, which is very difficult to break. Experts and wise people have devised some methods to deal with it. Practices of Meditation, Prayers, Yoga, or concentrating on activities like exercise, drawing or painting, and listening to music are some of...

"People need routines. It’s like a theme in music. But it also restricts your thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic." -Haruki Murakami

Technology has taken deep roots in our daily life. It would not be false if I say, it has taken over us. Be it your mobile, computer, TV, wifi, bikes, cars, or similar materialistic things. Your holidays are no more peaceful holidays, they are constant exchange of text, pics, news, and information. The mind never is at peace when awake. It is struggling to keep with huge amount of information, most of that it cant process or do not require at the first place. One should ask a simple question, do I really need this much information or resources to live a peaceful life. Is it not a peer pressure to keep up the things, most of which you don't require. The mobile phone with most of us today are powerful gadgets with huge capacity to do many things. They are even better than most of the efficient people on earth today. A phone is not merely a phone, but much more than that, it's your camera, social connection, news point, and professional need. Imagine the number of photos clicked...

One of the good point about Gandhi Ji was that his mind was restless. He always tried something new, he never was contented with his present. He never thought once in his life that he is settled, at peace and satisfied. I think this is one of the many reasons that he was a great person. He never tried to hide his mistakes/faults. He denied primary education to his children, his elder son was very unhappy with him for this. Unfortunately, this was also one of his experiment with life. But many of his other experiments like cleanliness, ahinsa were globally appreciated and accepted. So, don't stop yourself from experimenting, just because of the fear of failing or non-acceptance by society. I agree there is risk, but risk is there in anything and everything in life, the only difference is our faith in the outcome. We are generally happy in taking those calculative risk, where the results are more or less favorable. Challenging yourself is the best thing a person can do all his life...

Many of us face either/or combinations of these issues very often- I have a list of references in word. But now the format needs to change to numbers rather alphabetical. I don't use any paid reference manager, so how to do it easily. I can save my reference in bibtex format, but word uses xml format. I use word on two different PCs. How to manage my references. I cant find my reference style in my microsoft word. So, there are solutions internet provide, but require some effort to solve every issue. I have tried putting together everything to answer above questions Start with a search of your reference in google scholar Save the search in your google scholar library. This step will be repeated many times to build your library, but trust me, its one time effort, and far better than others, where you have to do a lot of typing or copy-pasting. Save your list of reference from google scholar in ref man format (.ris). Somehow, it saves one page (20 references) at...

I remember earlier making bootable usb was a big task. Also after so much of effort, chances were that it might not work because of some errors in making process. But now with unetbootin, its really easy. I tried it with different versions of windows (even xp) and it worked always. Just two step to follow once the program is with you. All you really need is the program (download from http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ ) and the iso image file of your OS, and a spare usb (4gb I prefer, as it will be sufficient for all windows editions). Run the program and it will make it in easy steps. If one is facing problem in installation, the common reason is FAT32/NTFS format. If your usb format is different, format it accordingly and try again. Otherwise, I never faced any problem in installing OS in laptop/pc/netbook.

Although laptop makers recommend using windows 7 starter or basic edition for netbook to get best performance, but unfortunately that doesn't happen. I have tried three versions of windows 7- basic, starter and professional. It does run, and you can do things, but will hang in between. The reason being, windows itself is taking ~50-70% of your RAM. So with 1 gb RAM, there is hardly much space left to really work. Even with internet surfing you will see that it stuck many times when there are heavy sites or multiple windows open, as RAM usage reaches more than 90%. I bought my netbook (Asus x101ch) with the hope it will be much easy for me to do simple things  like surfing, listening music etc. But, with OS mentioned above its really not smooth. I have found that XP runs much better, faster and smoother. But for the latest netbooks like the one I have, drivers are the issues, you don't get drivers for XP.

I know that many users face this problem while installing xp on netbook. The moment you boot from external drive or usb, blue screen appears showing some missing files (bootmanager). This happens because of the new SATA hard disks of netbooks are in ICHE configuration that blocks the installation. The simple thing you need to do is change the configuration from ICHE to IDE and try again from external usb/drive.

The common thing which I hear from people is that the present is not good, I don't deserve this, I should be somewhere else, etc . But, if you analyze your life, you will find that only the attitude is not changing otherwise every single part of your life is constantly changing. The problems and issues you are facing in the present were not there in the past, and may not be there in the future also. Same way, the problems with which you were struggling with in past are no more now, they got solved or dissolved with time. Life issues/problems have different ranges, some are short span and get solved/resolved within months or maybe a year, but some take longer time. But every single of them gets out of your life ultimately. The thing which sustains with you is patience and your precious life. The events happening in one's life is predestined, it never is/was what one expects from god, but it is always what God wants and is in good favor of person in the long run. We do feel...

A person who seems impatient at work front might be very patient in his personal and family life. The way one displays his virtue at any particular point of time or place all depends on the situation, his mental strength and his experiences. If a person is left with no other choice but to show patience, then he ends up being patient. But, if you have options then definitely you will react or display the attitude that is easily reachable and not the one which is hard to show.  In earlier days, great living principles were attained by very few people. For more than 90% of the population, the aim in life was to earn bread and live healthy and disease-free. Only a few were there with zeal and enthusiasm to make their life useful and achieve something. But, if we look around us, one will find persons with courage/endurance/patience and other great abilities in them. But, many times they feel it is redundant to show them, and in some cases, they don't realize their posse...

Life can be simply classified into internal and external part. Internal life is all about our ideas and thoughts, which in a broader sense decide our personality/outlook. Clear thoughts give a clear perspective and somehow make life simpler, complex thoughts lead to a confused personality. On the other hand, external life is what we carry in the world; in front of friends, relatives, neighbors,  etc . This external life is mainly dependent on our words/actions. If we say good words, speak politely and our actions are socially correct, we will be considered as a nice human being. But if this doesn't happen, our words/actions/behavior is different then we are called as rude/shrewd/off spoken/ill-mannered/abusive. One can always watch his thoughts for maintaining his outlook, and good deeds can always fetch you good name in society.