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Anna Hazare into Blogging and Social Networking

With the advent of Web 2.0, blogging also took steady growth. Since the availability of the high speed broad band connections easily blogging took exponential growth and the growth is ever increasing. Addition to blogging is the social networking. Social Networking sites have become part and parcel of life. Even the minute fluctuations in day to day life or in mood, they are being quickly reflected on the pages of social networking sites. We are sharing more things on these sites pages than with the fellow human beings. Hope in the near future, machine-man interaction will be as common as or even simpler than communication between human beings.

Celebrities are also started with their blog sites and web pages to convey their messages and to socialize (on web) with their fans. Celebrity blogs are popular now and many bollywood actors have turned into bloggers, few of them making decent income by blogging also. Amitabh Bachchan blogs daily on BigAdda and receives on an average 350 comments per blog. Recently, we have witnessed the power of blogging when Anna Hazare sat for hunger strike in demand of Janlokpal bill. Many bloggers were updating the happenings from the site. The role of social networking sites was also incredible. In less than a day’s time many thousands liked the page on Anna Hazare and the event pages to get updates.

New addition to the list of celebrity bloggers is Anna Hazare. Understanding the necessity and power of blogging and social networking sites, Anna is also joining the league. He has started his blog with an intention to cater people World wide who are eagerly waiting to know his thoughts. Currently with the help of Vijay Kuvalekar and Raju Parulekar his blog site is being updated and currently available in English, Hindi and Marathi later to be made available in other vernacular languages also.

Anna Hazare is using WordPress and Blogger platform for hosting blogs. His WordPress blog page is well organized and the blogs in a particular language can be easily found. May be in the future, the blogs on blogger page will also be properly organized.

WordPress blog page – www.annahazaresays.wordpress.com

Blogger blog page – www.annahazaresays.blogspot.com

Anna can be followed on Twitter and Facebook also

Facebook page – Anna Hazare Says

Twitter page – Anna Hazare Says

Hope his blogs will be well received by the people World wide.

Misguiding Indian Engineering Colleges survey Rankings

Engineering colleges are increasing exponentially. Students planning to take admissions for engineering courses need not worry about getting a seat. Many colleges are offering the management seats just for nominal fees. Like every year many surveys are being conducted on the engineering colleges and the results are being published in the popular magazines. Every time for the surprise of people and students, unknown and unheard college names will take the lead over the well established institutions.

The survey will be done on various factors such as infrastructure of the institution, faculty with doctorate degree, research output, placements and finally the popularity depending on the ranking of the number of students taking admission to the courses. I don’t know how these surveys will evaluate research output of the colleges. One more important thing about these surveys is that it will cover only the colleges which voluntarily agree for the surveys by paying money.

Most of the times only the private engineering colleges will come forward for the surveys as it will increase the popularity of the college and also possible to get good ranking by spending some extra money. Government colleges won’t be having sufficient funds for spending on such surveys and they stay away. Ultimately the benefit for the private engineering college is even an average engineering college will get good ranking in the paid surveys and in a reverse engineering view college gets more number of admissions.

Not only these surveys increase the popularity but also allow the colleges to give a page advertisement in some of the leading magazines of the country. The transparency and reliability of such surveys will never gain importance as no one will bother about these things and the private colleges will be happy for getting wide coverage more than they deserve.

Recently was going through the survey done by on of the leading magazines in collaboration with some private sector agency. As I expected, the newly opened and least popular colleges were on the top of the list. The newly opened colleges most of the time will have no research output and poor infrastructure facilities. But according to the survey these colleges are excellent centers of engineering education.

These surveys are in a way misleading general public. Students not aware of the colleges techniques of advertising colleges will be misguided landing up in the low grade colleges. On the other hand students lacking guidance on the colleges and the courses will blindly rely on these surveys and face troubles by the extortion of the private engineering colleges. It will be appropriate if the popular magazines stop publishing these kinds of surveys ignoring the social responsibility only for the sake of money.

In Memory of Dr Baab Mallya

Five years back blogging was not so popular and also only a few Indian bloggers had their own blogs and blog sites. All used to have blogs on different platforms, one popular web platform holding many bloggers and readers from India was Sulekha. Till today it is there with some modification technically but majority of its readers are Indians. Early bloggers on Sulekha were not bothered much on money, page ranks or popularity. Only thing they did is to post quality blogs regularly and had huge readers. The reader community was not just for name sake, it was like communication between reader and writer with feelings. One of the bloggers from Sulekha who had filled the blogosphere with his travelogues, cooking recipes, medical anecdotes and personal blogs was Baab Mallya, a neuro surgeon by education and a writer, poet and an artist by choice. Though many are under the impression that his real name is Baab Mallya, his actual name was K B Mallya aka Kasargod Balakrishna Mallya. It is very saddening that he is no more with us.

Dr Mallya joined Sulekha around 2006 and he continuously contributed the blogs and very soon kept the pages alive, with comments filled with feelings. His journey onto becoming a specialist neuro surgeon spending almost 18 years is really inspiring. In a single word he was ‘Genius’. It is very difficult to list his interests and likings in this page, he did whatever he liked and in whatever he did, he succeeded. He was active in blogging till he moved to a remote village near Mangalore. He was a man who enjoyed his life fully in all the aspects.

He was not only active on sulekha but also on many web pages contributing or commenting (constructive criticism). By reading his blogs and comments, one can easily understand how he used to interact with the readers. Many will miss him and his blogs. Even passing away of Dr Mallya recently was also informed on blogosphere by one of the bloggers from Sulekha itself.

On a personal note, I interacted with Baab many times through email and through his blog columns. Every time he responded generously. I didn't get the chance to meet him personally. Unfortunately, the last comment he posted on sulekha was for one of my queries. Really am unable to believe that Baab is no more. No one can beat his web posts or whatever he has contributed to medicine or blogs.

Baab… Rest in Peace.

'The Last Lecture' by Randy Pausch - Video

Some time back I posted a blog on the book 'The Last Lecture' authored by Randy Pausch. The book is a best seller and it is translated in many languages including the regional languages. The book was inspired by the popularity of his Last Lecture named 'Achieving Childhood Dreams'. The video of the lecture is available on YouTube now.

Bombay - Karachi Halwa

Unexpected holiday once in a while in the routine schedule is welcome and I love to look forward such days. But if the holidays itself become majority in a week then it is very difficult to spend time. Getting used to taking class for minimum two or three hours a day, not getting how to spend time without doing any work sitting idle at home. To get out of boredom learnt preparing Bombay-Karachi Halwa from one of my colleague. I don’t know how the name came to this halwa!

Ingredients required for preparing Bombay-Karachi Halwa:

Quantities are important for this halwa so add all the ingredients in definite proportions

Corn flour (50 grams)

Sugar (100 grams) for preparing Sugar syrup using water (100 to 125 ml)

Ghee

Cardamom powder

Cashew Nuts

Method:

First prepare sugar syrup. Next, in a non-stick pan mix corn flour with 100 ml water. Mix well without any lumps, don’t make the solution too dilute or too thick. Add little ghee and keep pan on low flame. Keep stirring, when the liquid mixture of corn flour gets thickening switch off the flame. Keep stirring the mixture adding the sugar syrup in little quantities. Once the sugar syrup is mixed with corn flour mixture, again switch on the flame and add three table spoon of ghee little by little keep stirring as before. Add a pinch of cardamom powder and cashew pieces (and color if necessary) and mix well. Switch off the flame and spread the mixture on a plate greased with ghee. Leave it for an hour and cut into desired shapes.

Instead of sugar syrup, honey or jaggery syrup can be used.

Mobile Phone Charging Kiosks

Discharging of Mobile Phone Batteries is the common experience for the people travelling frequently. There is no way by which one can easily charge the batteries. Many carry mobile chargers and keep for charging wherever they come across the plug sockets. Sometimes we can see people charging the phones in bus stands and railway stations. We are obsessively associated with the mobile phones, even if the signal is not available on the phone for a while we get tensed and won’t be in rest till we get a single dot on signal indicator! Also, we like to capture all the things and like to store everything on phone, irrespective of whether it is any private photos or confidential matters such as credit card, debit card and even online banking passwords.

In the Metropolitan cities, there will be charging kiosks which will be having charging pins of almost all kind of mobile phones. The charging of mobile phone batteries can be done either by the chargers connected to the power supply or by connecting the mobile phone to the laptops or computer through USB port. Similarly, the mobile phone charging kiosks at the public places also use either work on electric supply or by computer ports for charging phone batteries.

If the charging at the kiosks is done using USB port then there are chances that the owner of the kiosk can access the data on mobile phones. There is also possibility that the data on the phone can be misused.

Always make sure that on which source the public charging kiosk work. If there is any doubt regarding its source of charging or not sure about it, don’t take chance. Just switch off the mobile phone and keep for charging as accessing the phone data is not possible when it is switched off.

Video Lectures a good source to rely upon

Number of engineering colleges are increasing exponentially, the demand for the qualified and experienced teachers is also increasing as the available human resource is limited compared to the demand. Colleges are becoming only money minded leaving the priorities of providing basic infrastructure and failing to maintain even the minimum teaching standards. Economically rich students are relying on the tuition and coaching classes, on the other hand economically poor cannot afford for private coaching classes and also these cannot understand the contents from the ‘hi-fi’ prescribed text books.

One of the solutions to overcome the limitations of available good resource is to rely on video lectures available on the internet. In India, all the IITs and IISc have joined together in developing video lectures on the subjects which are generally prescribed in almost all Indian universities. The project of developing video lectures on the subject is named as ‘National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning’. Many of the engineering branch courses are included in the first phase of it and few more courses are to be developed in the second phase of NPTEL.

These courses are available freely and also easily downloadable in even MP4 format. Students not having good teachers for the subject can rely on these video lectures and improve their knowledge in turn performance.

One more advantage in these video lectures is some of them are recorded in the real class rooms so that the students watching the videos will also have the feeling of listening in the class. The videos are accessible on the website NPTEL

Alcohol doesn't solve any problem

Alcohol or alcoholic beverages are available easily than the necessary things. Drinkers get everything easily, within no time two drinkers can become good friends! The conversation with drinkers is very difficult as they speak as if they ruled the World for half a century. We can find such people on the bus or train journey, they will be waiting for someone to listen their words.

The drinkers will give a common reason that to come out of depression or to forget their pain they will drink. Alcohol makes the nervous system weak and the ability to sense the things so it is common that drinkers are more prone to accidents. Even a bit of alcohol is not good for health but a few self declared intelligent people encouraging it as it is considered good for health and keep us healthy. But none of the authentic research has proved that alcohol is good for health.

Drinking doesn’t solve any problem. For people living on meager income, drinking in a bane as the earning member of the family spends everything on it making his family to suffer without food. Some drink for the sake of fun, leave them as they will do it as a means of spending money but some how about the people who have to live only with small income. If the elder earning member of the family itself is a drinker, then no wonder if the next generation also continues the same.

Alcohol addiction is a social problem, we should educate our own people about its danger. Medicines available in the market are not helpful in keeping people away from drinking. One should have a strong urge to leave Alcohol as it doesn’t solve any problem in reality.

Took a short leave from Blogging

Had decided to write at least one blog per day but because of workload and relocation to Hyderabad kept me away from blogging. Didn’t write anything in the last few days. Slowly getting adjusted to Hyderabad weather and work load in the college. I have been assigned with handling two subjects and a lab for the students. Enjoying teaching students of entirely different back ground as am teaching one of the computer subjects to the Mechanical branch students and one more course and lab for the MCA department where the students are from diverse back grounds ranging from statistics to political science. In the mean while I got the seat confirmed for pursuing higher studies. The classes will commence from next month, looking forward to experience the post graduate classes!

Most of the classes are assigned in the after noon immediately after the lunch break. The difficulty in teaching is to take classes in the noon as students will be ready to go to sleep with the indication of yawning continuously after the lunch. The challenge for the teacher is to keep the students awake cracking some jokes and explaining simple concepts. Being an engineering student some time ago I had the freedom of studying only easy topics for the exam but now being a teacher I should read, understand and teach the concepts irrespective of whether the topics are easy or difficult.

I am slowly learning the work of a teacher, keeping track on syllabus coverage, writing lecture plan and maintaining attendance records of students. Was assigned with the internal exam duty, had to stand for two hours without doing any work just having look at busy writing students. Exam duty is quite boring but still no other go as it is the prime thing to be conducted in any course.

Not getting enough time to visit any spots in Hyderabad as the college working hours only take more than half a day. Had been to home also last week applying two days leave on the eve of Ganesh Chathurthi which is also one of the reason for not blogging as I didn’t have internet access.

Hoping to blog regularly from now onwards as am back from short blogging vacation!