Karthik's blog

We are all born and brought up with an education system that is way too inefficient in the history of human race. Yes, education systems vary widely with each country, but I would like to talk about the system in general, and Indian in particular, and what needs to be present in the system to enhance it. The current system and its practicality: - Mathematics: Log tables, Find angles between Parallel Lines, Sin x, Cos x derivatives, Theorems used to prove angle formulae, Matrix inversions, Complex algebraic equations, Hyperbola, etc. - Physics: Calculate the swing distance of a pendulum, Calculate heat energy/ calories, Angle of refraction, - Chemistry: Organic Chemistry, Inorganic chemistry, Non metallic compounds,   How many of these subjects have been used in the practical life? Not even 10%! Is Matrix inversion useful for an MBBS doctor or a general physician? Nope.  How useful are these in real life for a School teacher / Electrical engineer ?  General mentality- "Kee...

This is a wonder herb-combination. Its benefits are extolled in all ayurvedic texts.  The plant combination is worshiped at Srisailam shrine since time immemorial. Basically, it is a laxative, when used regularly, is believed to keep health intact, improve eyesight, make body feel light and improve immunity tremendously. Daily in the morning, I take 3 pinchfuls of triphala powder mixed with a spoon of honey. My immunity is extremely good and I am keeping very fit. (...to be continued.)

(*Representative image) (Note: This is my personal opinion and I do not wish to slander any company or it's products.) I have heard enough from people around me - What a waste of money! Was this necessary at all? Blasphemy! and what not! Let me digress why I chose a Macbook pro, especially 2015 13inch retina display, and after a week's use, feel I had made a very good decision. I have had my fair share of experience with all kinds of devices. My first mobile phone was an android device Galaxy pop from Samsung. I loved it for its features. There were tons of apps, even a flight radar app, and I was simply amazed. It went well for a year after which the company stopped producing it and dropped supporting the phone. Slowly it started lagging, battery life became pathetic and was prone to heating issues. While the world was running Android Icecream Sandwich, I was still on Froyo. Even at that time, apple products were really famous and I used to snigger at apple fans a...

When I was a child, people used to tell me to inculcate a ‘Good Habit’ — Reading newspapers. Those people who were applying for Government jobs and civil services were advised to meticulously digest lots of information from the newspapers. Well, as I grew up, I got to know that I live in an era of disinformation and Media and News outlets are the worst source of information — Propaganda, lies, yellow journalism, and what not! And may god save those who still follow this rubbish. Recently I took a glance at Civil services examination newspaper. I found the toughest papers to be easier and I myself was amazed at the depth of knowledge I had of the subjects. So how did I gain such a knowledge without ever reading a single newspaper article? Here are the tools: Twitter Feedly Blogs Reddit Twitter This is a microblogging platform. One opinion does not exist here. You see an issue from all the sides, gain perspective from all directions and have access to...

THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL IN EACH AND EVERYONE'S LIFE - TIME MANAGEMENT! Once upon a time, I took to PC gaming for stress busting purposes and started to play Warcraft, a very addictive game. Slowly I got addicted to gaming so much that one day I played the game for 5 hours flat! I realized too much time has been wasted on this and I could not complete some critical tasks.  I felt awful about the wasted time which could not be brought back at any cost. I was pondering over my loss of not doing important tasks on time and delaying them until the last minute and completing them under tremendous pressure.  I realized my mistake and wanted to spring back to my feet. I started my research on Time Management. I started practicing it and now I feel super productive and really great in my work and in my life. After trying all the methods and testing them, I am presenting the same here in a nutshell: First, I highly recommend my blog viewers to watch th...

  vs  A few years ago, there was a huge craze for so-called 'Modern Art.'  Modern Sculpture, Modern Painting, what not. I started seeing too much about this stupidity in Mumbai, Hyderabad, etc., Modern Art  My definition: It looks bizarre, abnormal and does not involve any talent. Take a look at these for yourself and judge: This picture is of 'veiled lady' sculpture, a replica present at Salar Jung Museum. I was stunned by its beauty because, at first look, the statue seemed as if there is a thin cloth draped on a woman's face. It is pure solid marble! This, I feel, is pure talent and I have not seen such a stunning art again. Probably this is from Rennaissance period. What do you term this?  Even a child can do something better than this! This is a painting --> What is this? -> Ugly, warped and depressing! Maybe a stuff for so-called 'Intellectuals' but for sane people, ...

There is no need to stress on the utility of Wikipedia . I am an avid Wiki reader and not a single day passes without me opening the website. Somewhere I came across Wikiwand and tried it. Amazing! It became so handy and helpful to me that I decided to write a small post about it so that the readers can benefit from it. Wikiwand - This Chrome extension tool is fantastic. It gives me an amazing experience while reading The best and most useful feature of this tool is that if I hover my cursor on any hyperlink related to Wikipedia, a small preview window comes into view displaying a short description from the parent article. This feature reduces the effort to look up each and every unknown term and is immensely useful. Do try it out:     http://www.wikiwand.com/

I got my inspiration to write this post as I was reading about Israeli drones which are currently being used by India in warfare.  The technology used is really amazing! I wanted to put up a post about these amazing gadgets, Above Pic: Dassault nEUROn Israeli Drones: I feel USA drones like predator, reaper, etc., are nothing in front of these Israeli suicide drones Even though each drone is designed for a specific purpose, the strategic idea behind these drones is really amazing and noteworthy. IAI Harop (Suicide Drone!)  It is an anti-radiation drone that can autonomously home in on radio emissions. Rather than holding a separate  high-explosive   warhead , the drone itself is the main munition. This  SEAD -optimised UCAV is designed to loiter the battlefield and attack targets by self-destructing into them. [1]  The drone can either operate fully autonomously, using its  anti-radar  homing system, or it can take a man-in-the...

Writing this post after a long time... I have recently experimented with this platform and I am really impressed with this platform and decided to write a post on this. So here we go: Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, - These are all e-commerce platforms which changed our lives. They provide a wide range of products to customers around the world. But they do not provide all sorts of products. Suppose you are a producer of a unique product like some hand-made soap, it is one thing to have your own showroom and trying to create sales. It is something else to sell online. If you want to go sell online, there are few options like google shopping, these above mentioned platforms  or your own e-commerce website. Having your own e-commerce is one of the best as you have complete control of your products, sales, etc and you can create your own unique brand. But here comes the problem - You need to create a website hiring developers, maintain the website and everything else....

Today, I was asked a very beautiful Logic Question by a very brilliant person. I took a minute to think about it and solve it. But then I was soo amazed at my own intelligence and aptitude that I am posting about the problem and my solution. (Sorry for bragging but I wonder how a brain works if not by divine intellect.) Here is the question: Question: You have got 90 pool balls which look completely identical in shape, size and weight. Only one ball in the complete set has a lighter mass. You also have a weighing machine. Tell me a way where you can find the anomalous ball in least number of iterations (steps). Well, I have never come across such a puzzle till now, and was a bit dazed in such a scenario. Then I trusted myself and started to think, and the solution was brilliant: Doing it linearly weighing each ball takes 89 iterations. My solution: Divide the entire set of 90 balls into 45 each, Weigh them on the weighing machine. You get the set containing the ball with li...

There are many content editors for blogging on Mac platforms. But there are almost none for Windows. I have two blogs : One for WordPress and one in Blogger. The editors in both of them suck and I needed a very robust content editor to do all my changes and publish them in one stroke. Well, MS Word is one of the best content editors ever created. Why not use it for blogs? After trying very hard, I came up with the following solution: Blogger is not supported in Word 2013 though it has provision to enable it. According to my observations, Google is implementing 2-page authentication which is failing the authentication process through MS Word. This is according to my guess after running few trial and error methods. Now why WordPress Authentication fails? Well, I solved it and it is really a silly workaround. Let us have a detailed workaround: You click Manage Accounts in MS Word and select New and select WordPress Now If you click on next, you will get to the following win...

Just felt my desktop to be too impressive and productive. So I wanted to showcase it on my blog: Things used: 1. Rainmeter 2. Omnimo Skin Pack 3. Elegance 2 clock Skin 4. Wallpaper: http://www.wallpaperup.com/11578/Nature_focus_moss_macro_blurred.html Let me know your comments.

Few days ago, while I was opening my Laptop in Airport, I have noticed people looking in awe at my laptop screen as I unlocking it with a picture password. Well, it did seem futuristic but it all started with the introduction of Windows 8 way back. Still no one knows that the feature exists. No one utilizes the feature. Why memorize a conventional password with all names, characters and symbols? In many MNC firms, we are required to change the passwords every 3-4 weeks.  The passwords are required to have symbols, Upper and lower case letters, numbers and what not. Just imagine my plight to remember all those shitty passwords which change every 3-4 weeks and there must be different passwords for different accounts. My thoughts: Use a Picture Password instead of creating pain in User's ass. They will be extremely easy to remember as they align to how our brain works. We can remember gestures easily compared to a set of numbers or symbols. A ...

Macros in Notepad ++   Every developer needs to know about Hi, Today I am going to write about an interesting feature in Notepad ++ every developer needs to know:  Macros. Most of the developers know that Notepad++ is a very light-weight and handy tool which does amazing stuff. For those who do not know, Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by  GPL  License. Based on the powerful editing component  Scintilla ,  Notepad++  is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendliness,  Notepad++  is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption, re...

We have some really productive features in Windows 10. Most notably Task View and Start Menu/Screen But in order to fully realize their potential, I felt that they should be activated by Hot Corners just like in Mac OS. So here are some tweaks to achieve the same. I used: 1.        AutoHotKey : Great program for sending keystrokes. 2.        Hot Corners 2: To activate hot corners. Step 1. Install AutoHotKey: I used it to send keystrokes to the processor. Installation is fairly simple. Step 2: Enter the following script in notepad and save it with an “ .ahk” extension: TaskView.ahk                   Send {LWin Down}{Tab}                   Send {LWin up...

In all of creation there are no better and more powerful medicines, tools, techniques, methods etc. than to tune in with the rhythm and laws of Divine and Almighty Nature. Ayurveda, hygiene, lifestyle and diet are crucial to good health. To attain good health, Ayurveda prescribes the daily routine and the seasonal regime. The daily regime or routine is called “ Dinacharya ” in Sanskrit. ‘Din’ means 'day' and ‘acharya’ means 'to follow' or 'close to'. According to Ayurveda to maintain a healthy and disease free life one should follow a daily routine or schedule. It is important to follow a daily regime in order to be optimally healthy. Dinacharya is one of the best things that you can do to prevent disease, stay in balance and treat almost every illness. The Ayurvedic Rishis (Saints) considered daily routine to be a stronger healing force than any other medicine. In Sanskrit the daily routine is called the  Dinacharya . Ayurveda recommends that ...