geordee

Circle of Trust

Since I joined the Orkut community, I have been noticing a lot of hits coming to this site from Orkut. I couldn’t help, but thinking and searching about Orkut.

Orkut is a social networking site designed by Orkut Büyükkökten – a turkish software engineer – as a personal project in Google. It has grown into a phenomenon with the help of netizens, dedicating their time and “relationships”. But I was particularly intrigued by one of the most important aspect of any social network. Privacy!

Reading through the fine-print, I understand the privacy of our personal information (date of birth, address,...

Solving 3 x 3 x 3 Rubik's Cube

Sometime back, I was searching in the Wide Web World for an easy-to-understand solution for Rubik’s cube. I found many, but none worked out for me. Finally my friends helped me out to solve it. As I got help from many, I started jotting down the moves and thought I will write those down for the benefit of others. That was the first version of this article.

Later, I discovered that people are still having problems with notations, and I introduced a new notation as well.

Read this completely once, before attempting to solve.

Most of us see Rubik’s cube...

Our Deepest Fear

I saw the movie “Coach Carter” and am pretty impressed. The coach kept asking the tough rookie – “Cruz, what’s your deepest fear?”. At one point Cruz finds the answer:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it...

Hunters & Farmers

In a recent newsletter, Jim Womack from Lean.Org has mentioned the hunters/farmers concept in sales, and encouraged the farmers in a lean organization. For the people who have not heard about hunters & farmers, hunters are the aggressive sales people whose interest is in getting sales higher and faster for the moment. While farmers can be quite future-minded, nurturing the customers, slowly building them up to a long term relationship.

These days organizations prefer hunters (we call head-hunters, not head-farmers; isn’t it?) and that helps them meet the short-term targets very well. When the hunters get worn out, they get...

Tiny Little Minute

I was preparing some notes on “stewardship of time” and came across this poem.

Just a tiny little minute, Only sixty seconds in it, Forced upon me, can’t refuse it, Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it, But it’s up to me to use it, Give account if I abuse it. Just a tiny little minute, But eternity is in it. – Author Unknown

I sat there for a moment and wondered how much meaning it conveyed to me. May be the entire message on “stewardship of time” is in it.

Order or Chaos?

It is astonishing if you look at the orderliness in physics and in the applicability of the laws of physics. Order and discipline are also considered as a desirable quality in human life.

It is interesting to note the relation of order and predictability. Predictability helps better ordering and orderliness makes the results more predictable. This is the key for many of the modern process improvement techniques such as Lean.

Lean processes first aims for an order in the system. This first step is one of the most difficult steps as the change needs to be from within. If the...