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Everyone wants to make a name for himself. Everyone wants to do something new and extra-ordinary. People like me (read software engineers) want to develop “something” cool. BUT, the stage where most of them go wrong is the very first one. Most of them think that the road to develop something cool starts from a particular “language” or a tool. But I beg to differ. I say the first stage is “The Idea”.

Most of my friends and others around me think that having a particular skill set is very important to develop something the world hasn’t seen till now. And for this they end up reading through piles of books, which claim to make them a master in C, C++, PHP, Python, Web 2.0 and what not. This is all OK, but the problem is, when they have gone through the books, done all the exercises, made all the samle projects, then they have a question in their minds “Now What”?

What I think is that this question should have been asked in the very beginning of the journey. And it should have been answered by the occurrence of a new idea.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for reading books, developing skill sets, learning new technologies, etc. But the only point I want to make is that all this is a “means” to give your “idea” a shape. They are not where your story begins. What if you spent a lot of time acquiring perl skills and then when (and if) you get your brilliant idea, you find out that the best way to implement it would be using C. Are you back to square one? No. Skills acquired are never a waste. “Concepts” developed can easily be applied to the new tool that you have to use.

But one more thing, its again not a hard rule that now you should just sit in your chair all day long and keep thinking. I bet its much harder to get the idea stream flowing that way. Ideas don’t have a pattern that they follow while coming into your mind. They may come to you any place unexpected (I get most of mine while bathing ).

But there is something you can do to ensure that your brain gets accustomed to recognize an idea when you do get it. So, while you are reading through that book on C programming, don’t just get engrossed in typing out the exact source code that’s fed to you. “Think” about whether is that enough? Can you make some modification to it so that it becomes more efficient? Can you tweak it a bit to do more than its already doing?

Keep your eyes open when you go around your daily chores. Think when you open your door whether wouldn’t it be nice if the door could recognize you are there and open itself. There’s your idea. And while you are at it, think wouldn’t it be even nicer if your home would have poured you a cool drink itself when you enter it?

Now, tell me whether you would like to wait to think about these ideas till you read the book’s epilogue, or do you want to start thinking now?

[tags]tip, idea, languages, concepts, programming[/tags]

© Shantanu Goel | An Idea Is All You Need

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• If you are twittering kinds, doesn’t matter online or offline
• If you blog or are interested in all things blog and blogging
• If you live in Delhi, have lived there, have been there, or just connect with Delhi somehow else
• If you want to meet up with your fellow twitterers and bloggers

Then you’ve got to be a part of the your very own City of The People With Hearts, Delhi. How, you ask? It’s as simple as pointing your mice and keyboards towards Delhi Tweetup to get the latest on every scoop about blogging, twittering and blogging and twittering in Delhi (and outside as well).

And if you want to be a little bit more involved, you can also join the Delhi Bloggers’ Yahoo Group.

[tags]Delhi, New Delhi, Twitter, Blog, Blogging, Delhi Tweetup, Delhi Bloggers Yahoo Group[/tags]

© Shantanu Goel | Twittering Away With Delhi Bloggers

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A gaping mouth was all I had when my 3 year ol’ Canon Powershot S1 IS’s LCD/EVF went blank all of a sudden a few months ago. Nothing could be seen, clicking the picture button resulted in blank pics. Googling about it revealed an advisory by Canon, stating that it is a known issue with the CCD image sensor. Canon impressed me by that notice when they said they will fix it for free, even for cameras out of warranty period, and will also pay to-and-fro shipping. Contacting canon support in India (support, in India? Is that a joke?) resulted in just their ignorance about any such advisory.

Undeterred, I sent the camera to the land of dreams (USA) with a friend, e-mailed the Canon USA support at carecenter@cits.canon.com with my predicament, and they promptly sent shipping labels to my friend. So far so good. But a couple of months went by, with no word from them. Customer support told me they are awaiting parts. Sad I was that day .

One fine day, I just checked the status of the return shipping label on a whim, and found that they had shipped my camera back. I was disheartened thinking it had been returned unrepaired, but then my friend called to let me know that they had sent some other camera back. I thought they might have sent some low price, refurbished camera, but atleast a working camera is better than a non-working one.

Today my friend came back from the US, and what do we have? A brand spanking new Canon Powershot S5 IS (8 MP, 12x Optical zoom, flip out and twist LCD). Yessir . I truly heart Canon. Here is a pic of my new baby (Ah, the irony, the clicking powerhouse has been clicked with a low-res phone camera, but anyways.)

Note: Contact canon immediately if you are facing the same problem and your camera is one of these:

- Camcorders: ZR60, ZR65 MC, ZR70 MC, ZR80, ZR85, ZR90, ELURA 40 MC, ELURA 50
- Digital Cameras A60, A70, A75, A300, A310, S230, SD100, SD110, A40(*), A80(*), A85(*), A95(*), S1 IS(*), S60(*), S200(*), S330(*), S400(*), S410(*), S500(*)

[tags]canon, customer care, powershot, S1 IS, s5 IS, CCD problem, blank lcd, blank evf, blank picture, image sensor problem[/tags]

© Shantanu Goel | I Heart Canon

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Am back from home but still there’s not much time to write much…Am unable to visit you all too. Please bear with me for a few more days …

Meanwhile, just wanted to let u guys know that yesterday, bro and me gifted a Maruit Alto to Dad as a birthday gift. His first car…Dad was so happy and I was even happier cuz it was my first step to *try to* repay everything he has done for me so far…

And yes, my roommate has written something that is in context of a common friend of ours but applies universally. It happens so often with the poor male species..tsk tsk..
Go and read “Neha Network Systems” by Amit.

© Shantanu Goel | Still No time…

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Whew, that was a tough week…But now its a bit light and am going home today … So will get some good food for a change…
“Maa ke haath ke bane khane ki baat hi kuchh aur hoti hai…
neways, just d/led this video by green day “Boulevard of broken dreams” and it totally rocks…
Green Day always seems to surprise me with the variation in their style and they do it in such a kewl way..
The song is from the “American Idiot” album and if the title song (american idiot) was written and sung with loadsa attitude, this one shows us their sentimental side as Billie Joe longs for someone to accompany him in the journey of life….
If you haven’t heard this song yet, then go here to download the video Green Day Videos.

© Shantanu Goel | Finally some respite

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An apology to all my visitors for not having written anything lately. Work load has increased a lot all of a sudden and its hard to find time or energy to write on anything….
Guess, it’ll remain like that for a few days…Something new and interesting is in the offing, so lets hope that turns into reality…
Will get back to you guys soon…
© Shantanu Goel | An apology

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While coming to office today, I just ran a cursory glance over the newspaper and a small news item settled at the back of my mind “Bugs bunny to be a superhero”. After coming to office I thought about reading up on it. A quick search on google news revealed a lot of news items. Gladly anticipating to see our own *wabbit* in a new role, I scanned the results which were something like:
Bugs Bunny turns slick superhero!:
Bugs Bunny and pals getting futuristic makeover

But what irked me was the presence of these results:
Bugs a bugged bunny over ‘Loonatics’
Look what they did to the wabbit

Exploring a litle more I found that Bugs will now be renamed “Buzz Bunny” as he, along with five others, is transported from the looney toons to “Loonatics”. Quoting from one of the reports:
Hes got no eyeballs, or his eyes are shaded. His ears look like spears. His paddle-fists look like theyre groping for some kind of weapon.
By Golly, is this the Bugs we know. More importantly, is this the bugs we want?
Where will be the good ol’ humour, where’ll be the funny antics, where’ll be that “being cruhed by a tractor and coming out flattened and then getting air pumped in to regain normal body”, where’ll be our wabbit.
Where will be “What’s up Doc?”.

Quoting more from the report:
“He sports Mel Blancs funny, nasally voice.And, its not you better laugh or Ill shoot you.
When you reach inside a figure and pull out its guts, put an iron over its face and smash down its expression, you have ruined its legacy, a state-of-mind and body passed on to descendants.”

For God’s sake, we don’t want a new superhero. We already have enough anime action and enough american heroes are cleaning the streets of evil just good enuff. But if warner bros. still wants a new hero, fine, go ahead and create a new one, leave bugs alone…
I don’t want a gun-slinging, hard-talking, lean-mean-fighting machine, I want my buggy, looney, bugs back…

Somebody do something :*( :*(
© Shantanu Goel | Someone’s gotta do something..

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I learned this today ” Never get too excited too ealy” and i learned it the hard way

Had posted this earlier today:
—My earlier post—-
Ever heard of recursion through google??
Quick, open a new browser window and head over to google. Write “shantanu goel” (without the quotes) and hit the “I’m feeling lucky button”. Guess where u end up….
Where else but here
Yeah guys, my blog has finally acquired the no. 1 rank for my name as the keyword….

————-

But as soon as I posted this, just a few hours after that, my blog again slipped to the number 2 spot. Guess it was a case of The Page Rank 100 Incident…

Go away..Let me sulk a bit so that I can overcom this… *boohoo*

© Shantanu Goel | A lesson learnt

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Just when I was about to switch over to Copernic, there came another update on the google desktop search and man, is it just WOW!!
Google Desktop now supports:
Firefox
PDFs
Music
Videos
Images

Just what the doctor ordered…Go and download this baby [Link]

© Shantanu Goel | Google Desktop Search

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Here’s a brand new template….
Comments, Compliments, suggestions are welcome….
Do tell me if u find something broken cuz I think there are many. For one, I can’t find a way to modify my archives template which is not showing blogger comments section.
Till then…

© Shantanu Goel | Tada……