Tools & Showcase
No carpenter ever says he knows to use a hammer or rates himself 9/10. But rather he showcases his work! Why is it so much different when it comes to the IT field. I know drupal, I know joomla, I know perl! They are are just tools! What matters is what you can do with them. As carpentry is the only thing necessary for a carpenter before learning any tools, shouldnt developers first learn to be good programmers?
Shifting Chords and Sounding Barres the easy way!
I have always believed that my skill in programming was a gift delivered by means of a learning accident. And that if I cracked this accident, I can cause it to happen with anyone.
However today I discovered an easy way to learn chords and specifically barres accidentally.
The technique is not to focus on playing the chords and barres at all 
We are talking about two challenges:
1. Shifting Chords
2. Sounding Barres
For a long time I believed that to get smooth transition between chords I need to play a chord make a perfect transition to the second chord and then strum and so on. That is so wrong!
The best way to learn to instantly and quickly shift chords is to practice constant strumming.
You are allowed to miss the chord or even hold it wrong, but not allowed to missing a strum or a beat. Once you shift you practice to hold on to the beat and rhythm, very soon the chords just comes to you naturally. Even when some chords sound muted, or you just cannot transition that quickly, just keep strumming. Your brain will learn even when you don’t realize that it quickly needs to transition and will make that happen. It worked for me.
Last week I wanted to fix my long due challenge with Barre chords. But I had a compelling reason to work on my strumming instead! So I ignored the muted strings and just focussed on the strumming. I continued to work on the rhythm like everything was fine. And today I am surprised to notice myself barre effortlessly!
I had actually discovered and forgotten this technique when I had initially overcome my challenges with quick chord transitions. I owe a lot of thanks to Ashish. His methods of teaching was to get me to continue strumming and maintain the rhythm even when my chords where not sounding perfect and even when my left hand couldn’t keep up with the right.
Called to be Conquerors!
“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” John 3:8
Last Sunday I had a wonderful time at church. It is so pleasing to experience true leaders share their message. It started with the passage
“Then the LORD said to Moses, “See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship“. Exodus 31
Note, the Lord is speaking not of a goldsmith, nor a silversmith, nor of someone who works with wood. But of someone who can work in all of them! To make artistic designs! Now this man was a slave who was making straw and bricks with the rest of the crowd in egypt and yet here he is with a calling to build one beatiful masterpiece – the tabernacle!
When the Lord anoints you with his Wisdom it makes people wonder where you have learnt what you know and demonstarte! Afterall the Pharisee did ask about Peter -“Where have these man this knowledge, seeing that they were uneducated”. Similar questions were asked about Jesus. In modern days, you don’t have to be a business graduate or an engineer for God to bless you with skill in any such field. Such Learning is beyond any form of teaching. You are not just the best among the crowd but exceptional beyond comparision! Like Joseph, Like Daniel, Slaves and Captives who became the most powerful men of their times. Daniel learnt all knowledge and skills of the egyptians just like the other scholars, yet he was beyond comparision and the King’s counselor. Something made him special and that’s the anointing of the Spirit!
I know I can have the best mentor and coaches for the fields I like to learn! But its the anointing that is going to make the difference. I feel so shameful that I have tried to justify my learnings with books I have read, teachings I have heard, methods and principles when all the while it was the Spirit guiding me. For clearly David says – “I have more knowledge than all my teachers, because I give thought to your unchanging word” Psalm 119:99
You reap a hundredfold when there is famine and thats your minimum standard! You are called to split the red sea, still time, break through barriers. A person who has experienced such blessing cannot be satisfied with mediocrity success. As the pastor spoke, I began to realize that I have been moving away from the trust in God to my own attained knowledge and learning in recent years. And though by human standards I am doing well, from the standards the Lord has clearly shown me before, I know its mediocrity that I am living with. And that I can do so much more with His strength. For it is our right to move with force and break all barriers, afterall it is written again – “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” – Romans 8:37
Clearly such Calling is from the Lord and it is for everyone who desires.
“And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh” Acts 2:14
Practice and Play
A famous chess coach advised me when I was a very young boy…
Master – “Solar, I know what’s your problem! You don’t practice.”
Myself – “You must be joking. You know I play chess for atleast 4 hours a day!”
Master – “I know you play for many hours. But you seldom practice”
To me, this conversation didn’t make much sense then. Today it was an eye opener.
As I was driving back from my dance class. I realized I was dancing but never practicing. I was
practicing my guitar but never playing. I was improvising on situations but never preparing.
It all of a sudden dawned to me that practice and playing and two different things with a very thin line. You practice with care To play with Confidence. Even in chess playing is not practicing. When you practice you are alone. You work on isolated concepts to perfection. When you play, you aggregate imperfections to make a Whole!
So are you the kind who is always practicing or are you the kind who always plays? Take a moment to consider this analogy in every part of your life. Work, Relationships, Recreation … Maybe it will make sense. Remember it took me more than 12 years to understand that simple but profound statement. And I think it is going to change the way I learn things forever. If I haven’t lost you yet, maybe there is more to consider. Maybe there is a meta-state where there is continuous practice tending to play and continuous play tending to practice. A state where you are both practicing and playing and where one complements the other! I am beginning to wonder
mukt.in experience
I had a good experience participating in mukt.in. There were a lot of interesting people and ideas floating all over the place. Even though this event was happening just the second time, there were good set of speakers from all over the country. I spoke on the topic “Learning to develop in the open source world” (Download the presentation). 
I was extremely excited when I got to speak again the third day to an even bigger audience. I learned quite a few interesting things and streamlined my concepts when the participants acknowledged how the methodologies I had mentioned were exactly how they started and continue though they didn’t realize them consciously. I learned tidbits on usability from vindoh’s presentation and as he said an hour’s talk can’t teach you everything about usability but it at least did spark an initiation .Besides the talk and learning it was also a great experience to meet old friends after a very long time. I also learned about the contributions of opensuse and their new packaging system from cyberorg . Who can tell you better than a novell developer himself We were sitting till 4 am in my room after the last day of the event and a little bit of socializing checking out on QIWI-LTSP. I was quite surprised to have my laptop boot using pxe with all the drivers including my webcam working, completely automated.
QIWI LTFS is not yet in production and he is still working on it.It was fun with cyberorg and it got better to know that he is also from a training background and runs a Novell certified academy of his own. I had promised him to really try using opensuse as my primary desktop for a month, a hard move being the debian addict that I am. I for once believed I could never leave apt for yum and yes I wont. But zypper seems to be as good as apt, and having learned about zypper in opensuse I might really migrtae! My other concern is migrating my emacs configuration as debian has a lot of necesseary elisp already packaged. It is not just about the packaged elisp for emacs but also how well they play along even when I am using a compiled version from git. I guess Suse’s quick build service could be of some help. I am going to figure it out tonight! I am eager to start using kde4, it seems pleasing to the eyes. I wonder if it really matters as everything that I do I do it in emacs except for browsing. Anyways it feels good to power on a sexy machine!