deviationz .LOG

If ever there is something that fascinates me as far as photography goes, then it surely must be sunsets and the last few hours leading to it. No matter how many pictures I take, I always end up with something new and more amazing each time I click. Now if you think i am lying (I usually try not to!!) , then see for yourself.

A good image to look at if you have those thoughts !!

This is a follow-up post to Karma. Thinking over and reading quite a bit has made me move over from Karma to good karma.Yeah, ok !! So what about it ??

It is a lot easier to define bad karma as compared to good karma. Cheating/copying in an examination is a bad karma (or action), and I don’t think many would disagree. And so is illegally downloading movies. The definition of a good karma can sometimes lead to a counter-argument of sorts. Imagine if someday you saved the life of a rabbit from being shot dead by a hunter. Now that is good karma, because a man can survive on vegetables (or so the vegans may argue, since man is an omnivore). But imagine if you had saved the same rabbit from a tiger !! Now would that be good karma or bad? Depends on how you look at it , right ? Saving a life was good karma, but also bad karma in this situation. Snatching someone’s meal is bad karma. Now is it not an irony that what you thought of to be a good karma could also have been a bad karma.

All right, all right !! That’s a lot of karma’s in one paragraph, what do you intend to say ?

To make a long story short; its perfectly alright if you don’t help a person, but don’t do a karma that will bring misery to the other person. Now I really don’t know whether to save the life of a rabbit from a tiger !!

During the trip to Chicago this summer, I had the chance to take pictures of and from the Sears towers at almost all times of the day and night. Here are my favourites of the same.

A picture of the Sears Tower Tower taken from the Rush Medical Center

Sunset behind the Sears with the Buckingham Fountains in the foreground.

Thunderstorm approaching the Sears Tower from the west as I stand in the viewing gallery.

A view of the famous Chicago Loop

If Chicago is synonymous with anything other than the pizza, then its got to be the Bulls and King Micheal.

In Buddhist teaching, the law of karma, says this: `For every event that occurs, there will follow another event whose existence was caused by the first, and this second event will be pleasant or unpleasant according as its cause was intended to bring in happiness or misery’

Karma in this “KALIYUGA” is of prime importance because there is no rebirth. Rebirth, according to me, is a chance given for every soul to correct the mistakes that he had committed in his previous birth. Karma in very simplistic term is ‘a deed’, which may be good or bad.

Karma always has a consequence and everyone knows that. Every human being does karma in order to reap the benefits of having done that karma. But in true sense, that is not how it should be. Karma and its rewards have always been a thought for me. Karma should not be done in order to get a reward. In simple terms, no man should do a karma keeping the benefits in mind. Karma should be done without thinking about the rewards. That is true KARMA. The rewards should follow the Karma. The reward should not be the reason for doing any karma. It defeats the entire purpose of doing karma.

Moving on to an even more interesting thought, this world is full of three kinds of people - the atheist, the agnostic and the believer. I feel that the atheist is the most confused of them all. About the agnostic, I have a very different perspective. I am sure the agnostic and atheists would not agree to what I am going to put forth. Whenever any soul on this earth, be it an agnostic, an atheist or a believer is beset with a very grave problem or misery, he inevitably thinks of some supernatural power. The atheist now thinks whether GOD really exists. The agnostic never sure does think about this but never says anything because his mind would not let him think about anything that is non-scientific.

Now coming to bad times, I have a gut feeling that this supernatural power which believer’s call GOD is responsible for creating them. No man, including me, thinks of the welfare of other human being until beset by a problem. That is when the realization of KARMA comes in. People go to temples, make offerings, and give alms………but what for?? It is only to get a reward out of the good karma done. Good karma is done involuntarily by a very few percent of people in this world. Rest of the good karma that is done is only because of the reward which they think come with it. Bad times are god’s wily creations to help increase the chances of good KARMA.

I have been trying to make a sincere effort of doing karma and not worry about the results it brings. Even the holy Hindu scriptures and preaching say: “Karam kar phal ki iccha mat kar”.( do the karma and don’t yearn for the fruits of it ).

I know that it is very difficult to always do the right things or to adopt the right practices. It will take time. But the pleasure (psychic) of doing a good karma is unsurpassable.

Think and act!!

What can be better than having the best of two worlds. The feel of a MAC and the functionality of a PC. I would not call myself a MAC freak yet, but I really do love MAC’s eye-candy looks. It has a rather simplistic design and a feel-good factor to it. I do like the feel of linux, but I don’t think I have the energy nor the time nor the REV’sto get the RPM’s to work.

But with Windoze (zzzz!!!) usually crashing referencing its non-existent memory (like a person with amnesia) and then doing a “butterfly effect” thingy screwing everything else, I have to reconsider my options.

It was day as rare as the occurence of a solar eclipse ( That’s pretty rare, ain’t it ? ).It was a day when yours truly was speechless, literally. And the reason for it was nothing too spectacular, but something of the size of a pin’s head on my tongue, referred to mouth ulcer or more specfically here a tongue ulcer. And it hurts like hell when I try to move my tongue to talk, as it rubs against my teeth. .

The thing that hurt me more was the fact that I had to be quiet the whole day, and communicate with my roommates like stone age man, using signs !! But I did see a few happy faces around me, which makes me wonder if I really do talk a lot.

And keeping with the promise (atleast for the time being) of posting a picture/log everyday, here is silence………

I will use this page to showcase some of my favourite pictures. I am good at capturing inanimate objects, or so I think ! I will let you be the judge on that.

A snap of ice formed from dripping water on a cold blacksburg day.

Sunset across the river Mississippi, very close to the St. Louis Arch

Just after a summer shower, nature displays its color palette

A dragon fly allowing me to get as close as I wanted to, probably interested in getting its portfolio made!!

Things at last seem to fall in place, and its an amazing feeling. At last the deviant logs are up and running which in itself is a proud moment for me. And for the people who pay attention to detail, you would have already noted the time that this message was posted.

And the icing on the cake is that this wordpress powered log is XHTML 1.1 complaint. For those who don’t know (or don’t care), XHTML is the industry standard since 31 May 2001. Does this mean that it will be rendered correctly in all the browsers ? I have tested this on Internet Explorer 6 and Mozilla 1.7.2
and will wait for comments from all of you before I really accept that all browsers show the content the way I want it to be shown and not the way the browser wants to render it. I know IE has its rendering issues, and I am keeping my fingers crossed.

With the first post out, the log moves from beta into v 0.1 but there is so much more to be done…..