13 Years Later

A lot changes over 13 years, but we realized that the camaraderie we shared was not one among them, thankfully!

K and I have been good friends since 1996 and shared many a wonderful moment in the company of sworn comrades. Those were times of bliss that now seem from a different era altogether. Together, with several others, we've seen the passage of a phase which marked many a wonderful moment of life that is now etched deep within as an unforgettably iconic spell, which I'm certain will be related to posterity with deep passion and enthusiasm.

As time took us our different ways, we drifted out of touch, momentarily, and then re-connected, thanks to the ever so far-reaching capabilities of new generation technology!

And now, just sometime ago, when K announced a visit to Chennai, I was thrilled beyond words. We met, after a whopping 13 year interlude, like old-timers, who parted fleetingly, only to come back into the fold once again. Over a fare of exquisitely spiced Indian fare, we caught up on times that were fresh in our minds, yet seemingly so distant. Reliving those times, we became young once again, transported back to a phase that we continue to relish and will do so forever.

I'm always in awe of how life is a giver - a giver of good things, times and people that make living truly a blessed event.

Like every coming together of such epic proportions, there is always a before and an after - and this time too, I found that the only difference was in the pictures taken, back then and now! 

Privacy & Google

There's a lot of hullabaloo about Google's new privacy policy that kicked in, effective yesterday. As I leafed through some pointers, a few mentions, I thought, were worth making a post, given that there is an increasing blur in the lines that divide an individual's privacy and the public domain at large.

I found these quite interesting, so to speak.

Is there a way to prevent Google from combining the personal data it collects from all its services?

No, not if you're a registered user of Gmail, Google Plus, YouTube, or other Google products. But you can minimise the data Google gathers.

It's important to keep in mind that Google can still track you even when you're not logged in to one of its services.

But the information isn't quite as revealing because Google doesn't track you by name, only through a numeric internet address attached to your computer or an alphanumeric string attached to your Web browser.

Is Google's new privacy policy legal?

The company has no doubt about it. That's why it's repeatedly rebuffed pleas to delay the changes since announcing the planned revisions five weeks ago. But privacy activists and even some legal authorities have several concerns.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy rights group, sued the FTC in a federal court in an effort to force the FTC to exercise its powers and block Google's privacy changes.

A federal judge ruled the courts didn't have the authority to tell the FTC how to regulate Google. The FTC says it is always looking for evidence that one of its consent orders has been violated.

Earlier this week, the French regulatory agency CNIL warned Google CEO Larry Page that the new policy appears to violate the European Union's strict data-protection rules.

Last week, 36 attorneys general in the US and its territories derided the new policy as an "invasion of privacy" in a letter to Page.

One of the major gripes is that registered Google users aren't being given an option to consent to, or reject, the changes, given that they developed their dependence on the services under different rules.

Footnotes:

Excerpts from a slideshow article on Google's privacy policy featured in the Times of India

ccTLD rollout on Blogger

Over the past couple of days now, Blogger has been gradually rolling out redirects to country-code URL’s (or ccTLD’s) for all Blogger sites.

What this means is that "if you are in India and viewing [blogname].blogspot.com, you will be redirected [blogname].blogspot.in. A ccTLD, when it appears, corresponds with the country of the reader’s current location."

Unfortunately, this update has been a cause for some major issues where the same post will show different sets of comments depending on which ccTLD readers visit. Which explains why some of your comments remain hidden away, while yet some others keep doing the vanishing act once every while.

I have written to the support folks at Intensedebate and have been in the process of a number of un-installs and re-installs, but technology sometimes can be geekier than the geek! ;-)

I'm hoping that a solution emerges soon - meanwhile, for those who have been so kind to comment on my posts, I'd like you all to know that your comments are safe, though invisible - which I'm told is a momentary lapse of reason on the part of Blogger! :D 

Remembering Jobs

He'd have celebrated his birthday today had he been alive.

Redefining Oblivion remembers the pioneer Steve Jobs and how the landscape of technology changed due to one man. 

Foggy Chennai

Woke up to a foggy grey morning! Confusing weather here in Chennai, something that people say hasn't occurred before.

One usually sees the likes of this in parts of North India where winters mean foggy, dull mornings and days.

Here, this surely is different, very different. 

Jitters of War

The situation concerning Iran and the US-Israel backed alliance is hotting up and growing more and more concerning.

Today, more specifically, the world needs to be at peace and instances such as these threaten to destroy the very fabric that we so protectively guard.

Explains how fragile maintaining peace can be.

Goodbye Whitney Houston

Many nights we prayed, with no proof anyone could hear
In our hearts a hope for a song, we barely understood
Now we are not afraid, although we know there's much to fear
We were moving mountains, long before we knew we could.
There can be miracles When you believe
Though hope is frail, It's hard to kill

Redefining Oblivion pays deep homage to the evergreen Queen of Pop Whitney Houston who passed away on Saturday. Her voice enthralled millions worldwide and I am "grateful for the GIFT of her."

Footnotes:

Lyrics from "When You Believe" by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. The song was written and composed by Stephen Schwartz for the 1998 DreamWorks animated feature The Prince of Egypt. 

"When You Believe" was awarded the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 71st annual ceremony on March 21, 1999.

Blogger Error

My comment management system powered by intensedebate has been acting up lately. Some of your comments on the previous post have disappeared, and some remain hidden away, unknown and inaccessible.

Upon login to the comment aggregation system, I see two links of my previous post, one in html and the other by the title itself - something that hasn't happened until now.

I'm imagining that this error was possibly triggered off by blogger changing local domains from .com to .in which may have upset a number of plugins and associated systems.

I'm hoping that this is momentary and presume it will be resolved.

Meanwhile, has anyone of you noticed your domain changing over from .com to any localized suffix?

The Times of Ooty

Footnotes:

Picture taken during my snap vacation in Ooty during the last weekend. Changed a great deal, yet, this place is charming as ever and will forever remain closest to my heart wherever I go! 

Republic Day - The Making of a Superpower?

Some excerpts from an article on India's growth featured in the Times of India on Wednesday, 25th January, 2012;

"But just adding new hands to the workforce won't help. The government has to make sure that kids get a good education at schools and colleges. This will need money, but more importantly, some checks to make sure that schools actually get built and teachers do their job properly. By 2007-08 , more than 82% of the world's population was literate. In India, the number is 67%.

So, just pumping in money and sarkari schemes after education won't suffice. Governments and progressive politicians will have to chip away at deep-seated social and religious prejudices.

A healthy workforce is a productive workforce. India's state-led healthcare system is tottering. Data like the number of new hospital beds added in every state hide the reality of large-scale graft, nonexistent infrastructure, spurious drugs and abysmal healthcare management.

To find out which states have the worst public healthcare systems, you just haveto see the list of states where over 80% of the spending on healthcare goes to private hospitals , clinics and doctors. The list includes Andhra Pradesh, Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh.

Only 11% of India's population has any kind of insurance, so it's easy to understand why for a poor family, a debilitating disease affecting an earning member can be a financial disaster. Just like we saw with education, across nearly all health parameters , Muslims, backward classes and women fare worse than other Indians.

The eight northeastern states of India are not only landlocked, but locked away from mainstream public imagination. That's a pity, because northeasterners are among India's best-educated and healthy people. We need more roads, airports and rail routes to connect the region to mainland investors, markets and opportunities."

Footnotes:

Excerpts from an article by ToI reporter Abheek Burman.

The 381st

This post marks the completion of 381 posts on this blog. Spanning a period of 6 years and from across several locations, I feel elated at the manner in which I can now reach out to all of you who are some of the finest harbours of creative excellence.

Thank you all for Redefining Oblivion. 

SOPA-PIPA and Us

Some excerpts from Mashable's take on why SOPA will take us back to the dark ages;

"It’s not just books, music and movies. The Internet is empowering people to create all sorts of businesses and distribution systems. They leapfrog the old hurdles, ignore the gatekeepers and go straight to the public.

Yet the language in SOPA is so irrational that I can only assume that the authors and backers wanted nothing more than to fundamentally change the rules of the web: To shut down the open post fields, kill reposting (goodbye, Tumblr), end shared videos (sorry, YouTube), expand the definition of what it means to infringe (sorry, Twitter, no sharing links that aren’t yours).

When you turn copyright infringement into a felony and say that anyone can accuse a website of providing ”infringing” tools (and apply severe penalties whether or not you do something about it), you are essentially making it impossible for anyone to do anything online without fear of retribution."

Footnotes:

This post contains excerpts of Mashable's opinion on SOPA.

Redefining Oblivion firmly believes that Copyright Infringement cannot be condoned and hence they are not bad words after all, but to think that one will possibly no longer be able to re-post links that aren't yours is quite  something else.

So technically, in future, this post will constitute a violation, perhaps?

Are we ready yet?

Human Nature

Though numerous other understandings of human nature exist within the New Age movement, all agree that some form of the divine exists within the self, and all similarly look to practices of self-development as central to cultivating knowledge of that divine essence.

This fact reveals one of the most important commonalities across all New Age approaches: the New Age possess a strong belief in individual human evolution.

Evolution within the New Age worldview does not mean biological evolution in the Darwinian sense. Rather, New Agers believe that individual human beings ideally evolve over their lifetime (and multiple lifetimes), achieving greater and greater awareness of their divine natures.

Footnotes:

Excerpts from a very interesting article on 'New Age Human Nature and the Purpose of Existence' I came across. Makes good reading. 

Streets of Philadelphia

Staying with music, Streets of Philadelphia is an Oscar winning song, by Bruce Springsteen. It was sung for "the first mainstream film on HIV/AIDS" in the 1993 film, Philadelphia, starring Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks. The song was an absolute hit in a number of countries, particularly Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and Norway, where it topped the singles charts.

It was included in the album 'All Time Greatest Movie Songs', released by Sony in 1999 and is among my most favourite soundtracks of all time.



Footnotes:

With inputs from Wikipedia. 

Birthday Boy - Page

Composed by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of the British rock band, Led Zeppelin in 1971, Stairway to Heaven is 'often considered one of the greatest rock songs of all-time.'

In the words of Page, Stairway to Heaven "crystallized the essence of the band. It had everything there and showed the band at its best... as a band, as a unit. Not talking about solos or anything, it had everything there. We were careful never to release it as a single. It was a milestone for us. Every musician wants to do something of lasting quality, something which will hold up for a long time and I guess we did it with "Stairway". [Pete] Townshend probably thought that he got it with Tommy. I don't know whether I have the ability to come up with more. I have to do a lot of hard work before I can get anywhere near those stages of consistent, total brilliance."

Footnotes:

Today marks the 68th birthday of Jimmy Page. Redefining Oblivion pays tribute to this legend who is one of the most influential and important guitarists and songwriters in rock music, and salutes his journey of excellence that began with The Yardbirds until Led Zeppelin, and beyond. 

Dusting into Time

A few days ago, I was leafing through some blogs that were, once upon a time, very active and current. Over time, however, I notice many of them have remained 'unfed' or worse - discontinued.

And I wonder, what is it that makes people abandon something that they have been so passionate about. Is is the lack of time? But when one embarks upon a journey of passion, one certainly takes the effort to make space and time to further that activity. It is perhaps a feeling of loss of thought or block that comes with time? Or, for some, was it really something that was chanced upon merely by accident only to notice and understand later that the 'once-upon-a-time-cool-thing' isn't cool anymore? Now, how uncool can that be?

Whatever the reason, it ain't a very pleasant sight to see a lot of dead blogs floating around! 

Opening Statements - 2012

Eschatological beliefs, transformation, mysticism, transition, apocalyptic and other things apart, it is hoped that this year will bring about positive change.

Redefining Oblivion wishes all of you a Very Happy, Healthy, Prosperous and Purposeful 2012, and beyond.

Footnotes: 

Opening Statements - 2011

The Ramparts of 2011

Post # 84

I don't know if this year has been one of adversity, opportunity or possibility, but for me this year has been one of hectic activity! A lot has happened and has happened fast. Certainly, this has been a very quick year outpacing almost all of its predecessors.

Inundated with work, I have been a wee bit negligent of my blogs, often visiting here in fleeting moments yet drawing a great deal of comfort and satisfaction from here and fellow-bloggers.

As is the case with every year, there are new learnings in life that grow in dimension with the passage of age - and this year has been a great teacher. It has taught me to focus on the inner strength to stay grounded and counter hardship and I definitely am a stronger person owing to the experiences that I have lived through this year.

In the true sense, all of us are headed forward in life and that each passing day delivers us into the future for the better, I have no doubt of. I have learnt that life isn't all about myself but largely about ourselves, and that togetherness in harmony is perhaps the best one can ask for at all times.

I'd like to sincerely thank all of you, my dear fellow-bloggers, my friends, family members, colleagues and associates for being kind and considerate and unconditional in your support and encouragement.

So, as this year draws to a close, I wish all of you a very safe, fun-filled holiday season and a truly happy, prosperous, healthy and blessed New Year.

This is my last post for 2011 and I will see you all in 2012 with a renewed sense of hope, happiness and peace, which I wish all of you and your families.

Footnotes:

The Ramparts of 2010

Merry Christmas

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Merry Christmas, folks. Have a wonderful and safe holiday season! 

Footnotes:

John Lenon's 1971 masterpiece Imagine continues to be listed among the 500 greatest songs of all time.

Posts of the Past - A Tag

Its been a long while since I did a tag and when DI, of Destination Infinity tagged me to do an interestingly different one, I felt elated.

The tag is about listing my favourite posts so far falling in seven different categories. Apart from the good-feel of doing this, I naturally enjoyed revisiting some of my posts of and from a very different time, often reliving the time and frame of mind when I originally made them.

My Most Beautiful Post(s) - Normally there should be one listing under each head, but this one time, I chose to make an exception, for writing about childhood and those wonderful yester-years are easily the very best, evoking a great sense of nostalgia and cheer. The Flowing Brook and Idyll's Dream are a two-part series, I wrote about on the recollections of childhood, at the insistence of fellow blogger Vimmuuu of V-Lokam. They will remain my most beautiful posts for all time to come.

My Most Popular Post - Darfur, among places, torn in strife and war, has always been very close to me. Its longstanding pain enduring a sea of humanitarian crisis is difficult to be escaped by anyone. On Wednesday, April 08, 2009, I wrote a post titled Living Darfur, outlining some statistics of this ravaged nation. To date, this has been my most popular post, and also the most visited. I continue to receive visitors from many countries, landing up on this post and quietly assimilating some very disturbing facts outlined therein.

My Most Controversial Post - Sometime in September 2009, Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram reiterated a well-known fact about how rude people from Delhi were. Having lived there myself and experienced the trait first hand, I wrote Republic of Rudness, the message of which I still maintain today. Needless to say, some parts of the blog-world took offense and termed my post biased, while I was only repeating what the world already knew very well!

My Most Helpful Post - There's nothing like giving and being witness to another's growth. So, when I got a chance to do some very little of that on the blog, I jumped at the opportunity. And, "when on the morning of 30th June 2010, Elizabeth Sholtys, Co-founder and Chief Executive of an non-profit organization called the Ashraya Initiative for Children (AIC), wrote me an email introducing herself and her organization and what they do, along with a request to show support for their efforts, I decided to feature them on my blog, knowing fully well that such a noble cause requires marathon effort, courage, persistence and above all a sense of dedication that cannot for once be compromised."

A Post whose success surprised me - Everyone has a Superhero, a dream icon, who has been a source of deep inspiration. For me that icon came from Krypton as Superman. One can imagine therefore the collision of ideology with a fellow-blogger who happens to an ardent fan of the spider, er, Spiderman, I mean. The wrangling with Vimmuu, on a post about who reigns supreme, soon caught on like wildfire and quite surprised me for the children we became in the process and also for the way in which it was received.

A Post, I feel, didn't get the attention it deserved - Having written close to some 400 posts now, over a period of 7 years, I have been very fortunate that a good deal of them have been appreciated. I don't think I could single out any one post as being one that hasn't quite gotten the attention it deserved. That, much of my writing has been taking in good stride and earned some bit of recognition in the blog-world, I'm certainly very happy and humbled. No complaints!

A Post that I am most proud of - I'm deeply reverent of my family and the wonderful things they have done for me. I don't find an occasion not to remember them for all the good in me and I believe that my strength comes from them in innumerable proportions. I wrote Praying Hands as a tribute to my Father, whose "remarkable resilience and his patience which has furthered my upbringing in the most positive manner. But for his toil and unconditional dedication, the wonderful side of me would never have been possible!" This remains the post that I am most proud of, and will be for all time to come.