Author: Ajmal

Small Business – Lines of thought

Posted on by Ajmal


                                                A busy shopping street in Istanbul, Turkey

“When you buy from a small business, you are not helping a CEO buy a third vacation home. You are helping a little girl get dance lessons, a little boy get his team jersey, a mom put food on the table, a dad pay a mortgage, or a student pay for college.”

This is a pretty viral note on the internet about small businesses. I remember my dad forwarding this message and is definitely worth pondering.

In a beautiful article originally written for Holdfast Gear by Matthew Swaggart, he writes:

..One of the many emotions that one can feel daily is pride. No, not the ugly kind of pride that thrives on elevating the self above others, but the kind that warms your heart. The kind that you feel when you see your little boy get his first base hit. Or when you walk your little girl down the aisle. The kind that makes you feel an immense sense of gratitude for gifts, experiences, relationships that you realize you really aren’t worthy of.

Recently I’ve encountered some experiences related to my work that, as I have processed them, have caused me to feel a great sense of pride and gratitude for being among a group of individuals who are really a new breed – a group of individuals who have emerged in recent years as change agents in a new, recovering economy. I’m talking about those in small business…

If we really think about it, we can discover a lot of awe-inspiring stories around us. It’s true that many large brands have had small humble beginnings and might have gone through their struggling stages, but small businesses, in the initial states where they are filled with passion, zeal and hard work definitely resonates the above themes.

                                                Another busy shopping street in Istanbul, Turkey
Mathew Swaggart further writes:

The landscape of today’s economy for a startup can be unfamiliar and treacherous terrain. With all of the heart and soul that is wrapped up in starting a business from the raw material of your life, researching, developing, marketing, and delivering a product becomes a highly personal endeavor

Recollecting a recent experience, few years back, I had used services from Tiny Suprise, a gifting company based in Chennai, India for sending some gifts to Netta for her birthday. Not only did the quality of the product impress me, but the entire experience from the perfect timing of the deliveries to the quality of the packaging was top notch. I have been reading about their story recently. I did have other options which are pretty big names in the Indian online gift landscape but trying a relatively new company gave a fresh experience overall. Tiny Surprise may soon cease to be a small company and may turn out to be pretty huge. The same approach even applies to smaller grocery shops near our homes serving only nearby communities and can’t afford huge online portals with their mammoth logistic empires. Definitely, these are all relative and perspectives can vary for different people, but it’s nevertheless very inspiring to see small businesses transforming struggles into catalysts for growth. The quote at the beginning of this article echoes in my mind. God bless.

                                                A lamp shop in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Instilling Compassionate Prudence

Posted on by Ajmal

I always dream of this societal framework everywhere wherein, every person gives his best in whatever they do. Even if he/she’s a novice, I truly believe one can perfect his craft by being proactive, enthusiastic and passionate about what they do. This sort of prudence is something that can positively impact anyone you engage with. On a broader realm, this applies to companies and their engagement with customers and if we move further broad, that’ll change the world. For instance, if somebody is working in a customer care team, he can put in extra effort to bit more gentle and considerate with their clients. Being too gentle may not required by work scope, but that really makes a difference. Similarly, an artist who works professionally can put in extra bits and pieces to make his craft bit more detailed and enriching. Imagine a gardener charged with the task of pruning certain plants as a part of his job. Seemingly monotonous in the first instance, he can put in extra effort to make his output much more beautiful and add his personal touch to it. I had previously written something about “job from the heart“.  We’re not talking about meeting customer needs, but exceeding what they expect from you. This sort of a spirit truly brings in sort of fulfillment in everything that we do. This urge of always trying to give our best, improving ourselves and perfecting our craft helps us grow internally.  And the best way to be prudent is to make our best efforts to surround ourselves with people who uplift us, encourage and compliment us. This is not a motivational note or something similar, but I always thought of writing about this wholesome approach of instilling prudence in whatever we do.

Be it any work that you’re engaged in, I wish it to be filled with beauty, positivity and a state of mind often manifested in the quality of work we deliver. This sort of engagement with other people in different realms of life is what I believe defines us on a deeper note.  God bless you, friends!

Outlast

Posted on by Ajmal

“The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts life. Life is like a cash register, in that every account, every thought, every deed, like every sale, is registered and recorded. Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by day dragging, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.” – Fulton J. Sheen

Illustration by The Border of a Mind Studios.

Virtual Reality(VR) Spiel

Posted on by Ajmal

I got my first hands-on experience with a professional VR system last August. The set I tried was an HTC vive. I had assembled a classic Google Cardboard system couple of years back to get a tiny glimpse of how an entry-level VR system works, although not the best in quality owing to its cardboard body and lower quality lenses.

The headset makes use of  “room-scale” tracking technology, which allows the user to move in 3D space and enables interaction with the environment through the use motion-tracked handheld controllers  Gyrosensors, accelerometers, and laser position sensors are generally used to track the position of the head. A plethora of additional accessories are normally accompanied with a VR unit for expanded experiences depending on the function of the accessory.  Special thanks to dear friend AR for his kindness in showing me these stuff knowing my sort of invasive curiosity in these things. In the short time frame to try it, I could test Google Earth VR and also the inevitable test app of any VR experience you name – Roller Coaster. Google Earth’s VR basically allows you to casually stroll through any international destination you could think of. They’ve facilitated enhanced content for locations of international interest and adds to the fluidity and overall richness of glancing at them and being ‘present’ in that space. Roller coaster VR version of vive was the most immersive among the similar ones I have experienced so far. On a broader note, the shift of experiences to this “out of home” sequences stands in pretty stark contrast to the quintessential social media narrative of documenting experiences and sharing it on a social platform. In VR, since the entire experience is on a virtual space, I normally reckon it as a benefit due to the exclusivity of the experience, though people might differ in opinion on that aspect depending on the way they organically intuit.

Nate Goldman puts it well on the Great Escape :

“...in this era of social media escapism, even those aren’t enough. We take out our phones and escape further into the screen, placing greater importance on the documenting of an experience rather than the experience itself. Virtual reality stands out as one of the few new experiences that preclude that option of escape — and instead demand our presence. We may not be in the physical world, but we are completely immersed in a new one: no splitting our attention or pressure to prove we were there. It’s just you, whoever you’re with, and the game. And in this day and age, that in itself feels like a new idea.“

Invisible Strings!

Posted on by Ajmal

“ Joy is like pure clear water; wherever it flows, wondrous blossoms grow. Sorrow is like a black flood; wherever it flows it wilts the blossoms. The universe is a complete unique entity. Everything and everyone is bound together with some invisible strings. Do not break anyone’s heart; do not look down on weaker than you. One’s sorrow at the other side of the world can make the entire world suffer; one’s happiness can make the entire world smile. Wherever you go, east, west, north or south, think of it as a journey into yourself! The one who travels into itself travels the world.” ― Shams Tabrizi

Picture in the brain.

Posted on by Ajmal

Interesting conversation with Dave Howells, advertising photographer, and ex-photojournalist as he’d love to call himself. He explains how he creates his signature frames and his experiences photographing famous people in his clientele. It’s the passion of a person towards his craft like this that puts a quintal of inspiration into you. Thanks, Becki and Chris for hosting this.

Some stuff from the conversation that I felt entertaining:

  • The earlier you get in on a job, the more input you have – one of the earliest piece of advise that he received when he started pursuing photography.
  • Advertising – clients pay for ideas. Editorials – Client pay for filling space in the newspaper or magazine.
  • He walks through his decades of experience in photography in news and media. Technologies that used to be the thing at that time pop up occasionally during the conversation (high-speed flash, for instance). Very interesting.
  • He was asked who was his favorite among the famous people whom he had photographed and he responded that his favourites aren’t famous and that everyone has a story.
  • “If I think your idea is crap, I’ll tell you it’s crap and I’ll be fairly blunt about it in a charming accent, but if it’s a brilliant idea, I’ll probably steal it“, he says.
  • “It’s not about the gear, the picture should happen in your brain long before it’s got to your fingers“
  • ” There’re a lot of photographers who photograph what people look like, but there’re only a few who take pictures of who they are!” Wow.
  • “The more you shoot, the better you get.“
  • ” Ready, fire, aim“

 

Eyes – Windows to the Heart

Posted on by Ajmal

The title seems to bemuse on the outset, but that’s exactly what came to my mind when I happened to read about Google’s new AI algorithm that would predict heart diseases and complications by looking (scanning) at your eyes. It’s amazing to see how machine learning implementations open up new possibilities and seemingly much capable things which we often rendered improbable in the past. In the coming years, I believe they’d partner with healthcare firms to work on even larger data sets and come up with specific pattern identifications and customized algorithms and deep learning applications that would further open up non-invasive diagnosis methods. Definitely, this is the future.

The Verge‘s James Vincent writes:

“Although the idea of looking at your eyes to judge the health of your heart sounds unusual, it draws from a body of established research. The rear interior wall of the eye (the fundus) is chock-full of blood vessels that reflect the body’s overall health. By studying their appearance with camera and microscope, doctors can infer things like an individual’s blood pressure, age, and whether or not they smoke, which are all important predictors of cardiovascular health.”

Brandon Specktor reports for Live Science.

“Whether you’re getting your eyes scanned by a trained ophthalmologist or Google AI, the biggest clues to your overall health may lie in your blood vessels.

Blood vessels can provide a valuable snapshot of your heart health, revealing clots, constrictions and other abnormalities associated with various cardiovascular diseases and conditions. But because most blood vessels in your body are hidden beneath your skin and other tissues, it can be hard for doctors to access them without potentially expensive or invasive procedures.

The large vessels on the back of your retina — the light-sensitive layer of tissues at the back of your eyes — are an exception. Retinal veins and arteries are directly visible through your pupils, meaning a simple, noninvasive eye scan can reveal whether your retinal blood vessels are constricting from hypertension, clotted with cholesterol or afflicted with various other heart-health risk factors. Doctors look at retinal scans primarily to diagnose glaucoma and diabetes-related eye disease. Increasingly, however, researchers have been using eye scans to screen for high blood pressure and all of the cardiovascular ailments that go along with it.“

Absolutely exhilarating!. I am very eccentrically inquisitive of how far they can explore the wide sea of engineering, preferably in finite element analysis or structural engineering. I already came across several firms that have software products with AI built in automating a lot of calculations for structural components used in building design and infrastructure projects based on international codes of design practice.

Igniting Dreams!

Posted on by Ajmal

A beautifully done tribute to late former Indian president and aerospace scientist Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Beautifully shot by Matt Shaw and directed by Senthil Kumar, the video gracefully walks through his struggles and awe-inspiring journey in 6 minutes. My father had gifted his book Wings of Fire when I was in school and I was really inspired by his firm determination and hard work in working towards a dream.

Short Summary: It’s a stormy day on a bridge over the Indian ocean, to the island of Rameswaram, a night train delivers the morning newspaper to a newspaper boy who rides out into the storm to deliver the news and is the first to read the newspaper everyday as he reads all along his morning route, under the big banyan tree and sitting on the boat while his father rowed people from the island to the mainland. One day he sees the picture of a spitfire aircraft in a newspaper article about the Supermarine Spitfire, a fighter jet used by the British in World War II. He cuts it out, makes a paper rocket out of it and makes it fly and puts it up on his wall. This newspaper image became his life’s purpose. His dream was to fly a fighter plane as a young air force pilot but he fails the Indian Air Force Pilot entrance exam after India’s independence. The young man did not give up and went back to his reading habit, that helped him overcome his fear of failure. He switched lanes to become a rocket scientist on autopilot, flying missiles and testing nuclear weapons, and rising to the highest office in the country. And when he was President of India, from 2002 to 2007, he was the Chief of all the armed forces in the country. It was finally time for his childhood dream to come true. He was flying a fighter plane, at the ripe old age of 72 years as the President of the world’s largest democracy. One of the oldest men in the world to ever fly a fighter plane, which was his childhood dream. And that’s when he wrote the famous motivational line to all children :  “Dreams are not what you see in sleep. Dreams are those that don’t let you sleep.”
The story of a newspaper boy who woke up the country. A true story to ignite the power of dreams in a billion young Indians.

‘Golden Pothos’ – Propagation Craft

Posted on by Ajmal

I am really fond of money plants and try to grow them in literally every container I get my hands on to an extent that Netta on getting an empty bottle from any corner of the home or from groceries, she would routinely ask me ” Here’s a bottle, wanna grow in ’em? “. If you have been reading here for long, you might recollect this earlier post wherein I had shared an illustration. Money plants have a multitude of names. You might have heard names like golden pothos, Ceylon creeper, hunter’s robe, ivy arum, money plant, silver vine, Solomon Islands ivy, and taro vine. All basically refer to the same thing.  For this post, I shall call it a money plant. It’s very easy to propagate a money plant if we know a simple technique. Initially, when I started with money plants, I used to cut them randomly at different points and they used to wane off and don’t develop roots. I would like to share an easy-peasy tip on propagating money plants effectively. I’m posting this after trying and testing with different sets of plants and it works really well. In fact,  It’s a very simple procedure. You take out a considerably large branch of an existing well-grown money plant and cut at either side of the stem at the root of each individual branch.  Take a look at the illustration below:

Cut a set of around 5-6 leave like this to grow a complete bushy set.

Carefully hold them and insert them into a clear glass bottle with clean water and leave for 4-5 weeks. You’ll find roots gradually developing and it can be either left off in water itself or can be transferred into a mud pot. You can place it just about anywhere.

Beauty

Posted on by Ajmal

 ❝ Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination. ❞

~W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon, and Sixpence, 1919
(Chapter XIX, spoken by the character Dirk Stroeve)