Sunday, 26 October 2014

A shot Summary of "Proof of Heaven"

I will summarize my learning from the book proof of heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander.

Let me first give you some background on how I ended up buying this book, It all started with an amazon diwali sale. I bought this book because of three reason 
  1. There was a 50% off on this tittle.
  2. It was categorized as the best seller.
  3. My intuition told me to buy it.
Now when I think back, there were many best selling book, but this book in particular help me to the road I was travelling before. It was just what I needed at this time.

The proof of heaven is a real life story of Dr. Eben Alexadar who had a Near Death Experience (NDE) when he is brain got infected with bacterial meningitis caused by a rare bacteria call E.coli.
The bacteria destroys almost all of his forebrain, leaving only his inner brain intact to sustain his body. Eben goes into a deep comma, which the entire medical world though that he would never recover from.

Surprisingly he recovers after 1-2 weeks and gets fully healed in 2 week back to his normal self. The medical world is astounded and labels it as a miracle, but the truth is much beyond that as Eben now understands.

Eben goes passes to the spiritual world and attains knowledge from the eternal being OM. He also meets his guardian angel who accompany him to the gateway and the orb.

Eben also talks about the knowledge he wants to share with the humanity, which was given to him in the spiritual world. 

He talks about the different levels of awareness that exists in this world and how the spiritual world, the angelic beings are connected to us though the common vibrations of the universe.

He urges us to learn about them and to put in the work to gain awareness of these higher level of consciousness that exists parallel.

The universe in held up by the force of love, Eben talks about the unconditional love that he had experienced from the brilliant orb of light which he calls OM. The interconnected nature of every thing is also focused and even related to the quantum mechanics of physics.

In the book Eben is trying the convey the message that their is many realm outside our earth and many things that we humans have shunt overself from. Eben has tried to explain his experience along with the scientific facts.

This is a really wonderful read for all, I strongly recommend to all those who are open to learn about the unknown.




Saturday, 25 October 2014

Proof of Heaven and me

I am reading the book Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander and I couldn't help myself from sharing few things the book is teaching me in the chapters:

In the the chapter Six faces Eben's spirit is traveling from the spiritual world to the earthly world. He talks about the prayer's of all his loved ones that pulls him to the earth especially the prayer of his younger son.

Eben could hear undecipherable sounds from his loved ones, which became clearer as he continued his voyage though the spiritual world.

This means that our prayer can really reach our loved ones in the spiritual world. We should not stop praying for their well being and ask their blessing and protection. They are all very much alive but not in flesh but in ways that we can't comprehend.

Was Eben's spirit forced to come back because of the prayer's of his loved ones ?

or did the core / OM decide to let him go back earthly world as an answer to all the prayer ?

Sunday, 19 October 2014

Weekend learning

Few things I learned today:

1. Always plan your next day before you go to bed the previous day.

Everyone is lazy,  at least I am. You have to do the things you don't like more often and in small steps to overcome those.

2. The body - mind connection is important.

If you feel that your sharpen your mind, most of the time it's hard for us.  You can utilize the mind body connection,  if you do improve your physical health the mental health starts to improve.
I am going to jog again ;)

3. Be a finisher not a starter.

Some people like to start new habits or programs, but loose motivation half way through.
I want to be a finisher, who starts and  completes the programs he initiates. I start this new habit by reading and summarizing one book at a time.

Thursday, 16 October 2014

Wednesday, 15 October 2014

New way to increase my vocabulary

I thought about the different ways to improve my vocabulary and nothing seemed to work for me.

Now I m trying a new approach:

  • List down the words I learn in a blog post.
  • Research about them using vocabulary.com
  • Make at least 5 sentences about them.
  • Blog about the new grammar tips.
This is the new format for my experiment.

New words:

Discretionary

  Going for a jog every morning is a discretionary act and it depends on how health conscious you are at this point.


Sobering lessons
To be filled in the evening
Indecisive :
To be filled in the evening
Grammar tip:

There are no rules dictates that you should not begin a sentence with a conjunction like And or But.
But it has to used with caution as it might get us sloppy habit of using them too much.

Monday, 29 September 2014

Sunday, 27 April 2014

My First Hadoop Mapreduce job

I have been working with hadoop and mapreduce today. This is the command I used to run my first map reduce job.

hadoop jar /usr/lib/hadoop-0.20-mapreduce/contrib/streaming/hadoop-streaming-2.0.0-mr1-cdh4.1.1.jar -mapper mapper.py -reducer reducer.py -file mapper.py -file reducer.py -input myinput -output joboutput

 My Map-Reduce was programmed in python, so i hadto use the Hadoop Streamer to translate the commands from Python. This is the first part of the command :
 jar /usr/lib/hadoop-0.20-mapreduce/contrib/streaming/hadoop-streaming-2.0.0-mr1-cdh4.1.1.jar 
The next part is to specify the mapper and reducer, we have to use the -mapper  <filename> -reducer <filename> format to specify the python code for the mapper and reducer followed by -file for both the mapper and reducer python files.
 -mapper mapper.py -reducer reducer.py -file mapper.py -file reducer.py
The last part of the code is to mention the input and output folders to the mapreduce jobs. We use the -input <folder> -output <folder> :
-file reducer.py -input myinput -output joboutput

Monday, 14 April 2014

User Stories made simple


User Stories are part of agile approach to shift the focus from writing requirements to talking about them.  
User Stories mainly include one or two written sentences, followed by a series of conversations  about the desired functionality.

 User Stories are similar to use cases but they are not the same, they replace the large requirement documents used in software development.

User Stories are not even narratives, they are much simpler than that. User Stories are the most of the time misunderstood for requirements and use cases in XP teams.


User Stories are one or two line description that convey what the team has to work on.
The main objective of user stories is to trigger conversations and discussions about the requirements within the team.
Although the User Stories are very short, they still have two important characteristics:
  1. Customer Value - The stories should be written in customer’s terminology. It should focus on the end result the the customer values, not the implementation details.
  2. Completion Criteria- Each story should clearly define a completion criteria. The customer can describe an objective test that would allow the programmers to tell when the story is successfully implemented.

A Simple Explanation of Map-reduce

In Map-reduce the data is processed breaking the data into small chunks and then processing them parallel.

 In Map reduce, we use the concept called hash-tables. Hash Tables mainly contain the Key-Value pairs.

 In Map-Reduce another main feature is the Mapper and Reducers.

 Mappers traverse though the file grouping the Keys together.

 Reducers then collect the organized Key value pair from the Mappers and perform the computation.

 Most of the time the Reducers will be assigned a specific Key value that they will look into in alphabetical order.



The Mapper work on the small blocks of data to produce the outputs called Intermediate Record. In Hadoop these intermediate records are the key value pairs.

 After the Mapper has finished, the next phase is Shuffle and Sort.

 The Key value pair are shuffled and provided to the allocated Reducer and then the value is sorted usually in the alphabetical order.

 The Reducer will only have one Kay value and list of sorted values. The Reducer will then do the final computation on the values. 

 We can get the final result in the sorted order by merging the result by adding an extra step or by using only one reducer (which is not very scalable) 

Sunday, 6 April 2014

Learning GTD



I recently watched this video about 'Getting Things Done' by David Allen, I found it really inspiring and though I should share my note with the world.

These are my notes:

 It's very easy to get off the GTD wagon, it's just as simple to get back on that again.

The much smarter way would be to think about each time you again start doing would certainly be a duplicate event.

Most of the time, when we are stressed out and we decide to take some time out and write things down we start to feel more in-control of the situation. This is the result of what is called as "distributive cognizance".  

Why does GTD work ?

  • Potential Meaning overload
  • Alot of your competitive edge is how you deal with surprises, personal or professionally.
  • Mind like water-Perfectly appropriate response to and engagement with, whatever is present.
  • Your ability to perform any work efficiently and effectively is directly connected to you ability to concentrate. Your ability to concentrate is directly related to your ability to eliminate distractions.
  • Most of the distractions comes from 'mismanaged commitments'.
  • The mind is limited in it's ability to manage commitments, because it is handicapped in it's ability to remember and remind.
  • Until your brain trusts that their is a better system, it won't let go of that job and won't stop worrying.
  • There is an inverse proportion between the amount of something that is on your mind and the amount it is getting things done.
  • The reason why the brain is contently getting distracted by different things that has to be done is that the brain is trying to be the reminder system, at which it is not very good at.
  • If you don't give your attention to what has your attention and it will take more attention from you than it deserves.

How Does GTD help in Self-management ?
  • In order to get things of your mind, you must know that:
  1. You have captured, clarified and organized all your commitments at all horizons.
  2. You will engage with as often as you need to.
  • Your ability to refocus on the right things at the right time in the right horizon is the master key of knowledge work athletics.


  • The two aspects of self-management:


  1. Control: Conscious focused engagement, aware of all options at any one time and place.
  2. Perspective: aligned and clear about decisions, direction and priorities.


  • The Matrix of Self-management:     


GTD Models

  • Mastering Workflow:  The five keys to gaining control.
  1. Collect - Anything task that have life longer than the thought. The stuff that you need to collect meaning about.
  2. Process- Clarify the task, what kinds of action has to be done for the task.
  3. Organize-   Task should be organized to right time.
  4. Review- Keep coming back to the system to make sure that you are doing the right task at the right time.
  5. Do
  • Horizon of focus (Perspective)

50,000 ft - Purpose, Principles
40,000 ft - Vision
30,000 ft - Goals
20,000 ft - Areas of interest/ responsibility
10,000 ft - Projects
Runway - Next actions

Bottom up approach in finding the different perspectives.