Internet De-addiction for Dummies

Until recently, I was hopelessly addicted to the internet, and it was affecting my productivity at work (Nope  my manager did not point this out in the yearly appraisal - it was a self realization :) )

I'm still addicted to the internet now, though on a much smaller scale. My two cents worth of tips-

1. LeechBlock

LeechBlock is a Firefox add-on that lets you set timeout policies (i.e what to block, when to block, how to block) for different websites. Start with a daily goal and progressively cut down the total time spent online.

2. Cut down on friend feeds

If you see your Facebook friend list (assuming you spend considerable time on Facebook), many of  them don't belong to the  "close" circle and clearly you have little interest in their daily status updates.  Disable their status updates  from your feeds, and you suddenly find Facebook less noisy. Of course, they're still on your friend list, you can always find out what they are up to if you want to.

3. Check Facebook/Email only when updated

People generally don't check their mobile phones every minute to see if they received a new SMS - new messages gets notified by a beep or buzz.  On similar lines, you can enable POP3/IMAP access on your mobile phone and you will be notified of any new emails- you need not hit refresh every 3 minutes t o realize  there are no new emails. Or you can use Webmail Notifier add-on in Firefox which pops-up and makes a notification sound when a new e-mail arrives, saving you the trouble of hitting 'refresh' and the frustration that follows. 

You can install Yonoo sidebar which notifies you of status updates from your Facebook/Twitter accounts, all in one place. Yonoo sidebar when used with tip#2 above can be very effective- getting  notified  about the status updates/tweets of closest friends as and when  they happen, at the same time preventing you nuking  the refresh button every 3 minutes.

4. Use an RSS reader

You can use an RSS reader (like Google reader) to deliver feeds from your favorite blogs and sites all in one place, so that you don't have to frequent those sites.

5. Garble your Facebook password

If checking Facebook becomes obsessive-compulsive and if nothing above works, this is the final step - garble your Facebook password to something like $&;*%*W and store it in a text file somewhere  on your home PC (so that it's inaccessible at work). Believe me, after a  dozen times  you would be to lazy to recover this 'forgotten' password  while at work!

Email Vs Chat

E-mail is my favorite means of communication, and I'm not so much a fan of  text chat .On the personal space, unfortunately, the power of e-mail has been largely restricted to group-forwards and other spam. Imagine  writing letters a couple of decades ago when e-mails were almost non-existent - one had to pen down his thoughts on paper, fold it into an envelope, paste the appropriate postage stamp and drop it into the nearest post-box before the 'next clearance' time. And wait. E-mail replaces this with an instant 'send' button. But the e-mail still lets users to structure their thoughts, allowing them to communicate precisely at their own  natural pace.

 

 Chat, on the other hand brings in a level of spontaneity , expecting users to respond immediately  and constantly forcing them to 'be at it'. This level of spontaneity may not be required most of the times. I like writing long e-mails and realized that I would have equally enjoyed writing letters for the same reasons if I were born  before 50 years.

Sandhyavandanam at Sunset

Sandhyavandanam is a religious practice that should be performed by Hindu men thrice everyday. I visited Tonnuru Kere recently and happened to capture this beautiful moment.

 

This post is dedicated to all those important people in my life who have been urging me to get started with Sandhyavandanam, and I promise them I will- sooner or later.

Motorbike trip to Melkote

  I and my friend recently visited Melkote on my motorbike. Melkote was a prominent centre of Srivaishnavism during 12th century and is the abode of Cheluvanarayana Swamy Temple and Yoga-Narasimha Swamy Temple. Melkote is located in Mandya district around 140 km from Bangalore. To reach Melkote , one has to travel on the Bangalore-Mysore expressway and take a right turn after crossing Mandya town and travel another 40km.

 We started on an early Saturday morning and  it took us around 4 hours to reach Melkote (including the time spent on breakfast at Kamat Lokaruchi on the way :) ). We rode at 70kmph most of the time on the Bangalore-Mysore expressway, but once we took the right turn and entered Melkote road, we had to carefully navigate curvy roads, speed breakers and curious villagers who were drying hay on the road. The other place of interest is the wildlife sanctuary near the temple. We did not spot too much wildlife here, though. Start to finish, we covered 300 km and consumed about 6L of extra-premium petrol.

   

 Green Fields on Melkote Road

 

     Cheluva Narayana Temple

Yoga-Narasimha Swamy Temple on  the hill

The Kalyani (Temple Pond)

Cheluva Narayana Temple visible from the hilltop(L) One of the many children who make their livelihood on the steps leading to the hilltop(R)

   The Steps leading down from Yoga-Narasimha Swamy Temple 

  Melkote Temple Wildlife Sanctuary

A Squirrel

I was playing around with my new mobile phone camera when I noticed this shy squirrel silently licking away the kolam in front of our house. I tiptoed close enough and after several lousy clicks, managed to capture this one :

I later learned that kolams are drawn out of rice flour for precisely the same reason- providing food for insects, ants and other creatures. I was impressed how detail-oriented our culture and tradition is !!

Coffee (v)ending machine

The cafeteria in my workplace has a sophisticated bells and whistles machine which happens to dispense coffee at times. No wonder, this machine will end your coffee drinking habits. I always had a small hunch that this machine was originally invented for caffeine de-addiction.

The machine comes with fancy menu buttons like "Espresso", "Latte Macchiato," "Capuccino", "Decaf" etc that are internally wired up so that the default reaction of the taste buds is always "yuck" , no matter what buttons you press. The only menu that delivers as promised is "Hot water".

The level of sophistication is mindblowing - the milk is fed in separately from a refrigerated chamber , while the required quantity of coffee bean is crushed and extracted every time someone mistakes this gadget for a coffee dispenser. There are also options to set the correct temperature, pressure, gamma radiation constant, boiling point, freezing point etc of the dispensed fluid. There is also an user friendly LCD screen to display lame excuses for not being able to dispense coffee at times- like "Coffee bean dispenser jammed", "Water is not hot", "Please use only buffalo milk", "Try later. Very busy now", "User horroscope mismatch" etc.

All this circus for a cup of hot south Indian filter coffee.

An idea to the Finance Ministry

A passing thought (slightly insane though)- How do we cut down counterfeit notes circulating in our economy and at the same time passively bring the black economy under the scanner of income tax folks? Remove and purge all 500 Rs and 1000 Rs notes from circulation.

If you observe, counterfeiting activity is largely confined to higher denominations (Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes) . The bad guys will not print Rs 100, 50 or 20 notes as much enthusiastically as they would print Rs 1000 or 500 notes. Also, people would turn to cheque, demand draft or other electronic means for large monetary transactions, as it would be extremely cumbersome to handle cash in the absence of large denominations.

Our champions of Aam admi in political circles cannot cry foul, because according to accepted norms, the Aam admi is not generally expected to deal with 500 Rs or 1000 Rs notes !!