lunatechian (lunatech-ian)

Pure love

Just discovered 'blog this' on flickr and ran into this nice photo too. Simply beautiful. It really captures two people in love

I was checking the scrapbook of some people on Orkut. My findings if you are a female, here is what you will see in your scrapbook

1. hello XYZ this is abhijeet I belong to banglore but live in rajasthan I like to be in touch with new people
2. hi i am from Foobar. can i be ur friend? see my profile and plz tell me ur reply
3. hi XYZ wanna b frnds
4. HELLO AM A SOFTWARE ENGR IN GURGAON TELL ME ABT U AND ADD ME
5. poems
6. ascii art
7. copy-paste stuff (jokes/stupid poems/stupid puzzles) from emails
8. hai fine? actually i saw ur cute still fine, ur studying where and see my profile about me and first make friendship then yeah fine ok cute send me a scrap.

If you are a male, don't expect anything to come into your Orkut scrapbook - thank god for small mercies.

And while I am in the rant mode - guys, here is a message from sanity department. Please take time to get to know the Real World. It is better to know girls in the Real World as opposed to trying to pick frnds in the Orkut forums. There are people I know who masquerade as girls on the forums - to serve as good material for jokes to pass time in the boring meetings.

The names have been changed to protect the fucking idiots. Am I the only one left in the world who is pedantic about spellings :-/

Interesting bits from the paper Managing Impressions Online:Self-Presentation Processes in the Online Dating Environment

In the section Self-Presentation and Self-Disclosure in Online and Offline Contexts

Therefore, if participants aspire to an intimate relationship, their desire to feel understood by their interaction partners will motivate self-disclosures that are open and honest as opposed to deceptive. This tension between authenticity and impression management is inherent in many aspects of self-disclosure.

In section The Importance of Small Cues

For instance, one participant said she looked for profiles that were well-written, because "I just think if they can't spell or" formulate sentences, I would imagine that they're not that educated." Because writing ability was perceived to be a cue that was "given off" or not as controllable, participants noticed misspelled words in profiles, interpreting them as evidence of lack of interest or education. As one female participant put it, "If I am getting email from someone that obviously can't spell or put a full sentence together, I'm thinking what other parts of his life suffer from the same lack of attentiveness?"

This is something I completely agree with. I form an opinin of people based on how they write their emails. Emails with too much slag or sms-lingo turn me off.

In section Theoretical Implications

Additionally, our interview data suggest that online representations of one's ideal self — when combined with the increased accountability engendered by an anticipated face-to-face interaction may serve as a tool to enable individuals to minimize the discrepancy between their actual and their ideal selves.

An example of this is

In another case, a woman who misrepresented her weight online used an upcoming meeting as incentive to minimize the discrepancy between her actual self and the ideal self articulated in her profile: * I've lost 44 pounds since I've started [online dating], and I mean, that's one of the reasons I lost the weight so I can thank online dating for that. [Because] the first guy that hit on me, I checked my profile and I had lied a little bit about the pounds, so I thought I had better start losing some weight so that it would be more honest. That was in December, and I've lost every week since then. (MaryMoon, Los Angeles Female)*

Today was my third day at the gym. I can see that going to the gym has become a part of my routine now and I don't have to make any mental effort to motivate myself to go there. There is one good thing about getting older (FYI, I am 27 now), it is quite easy to discipline myself. The process of getting into a new habit requires deciding that I want to do it, finding a good enough time slot for it and doing it. I was able to transform my habit of reaching at lunch time at the office to reaching at 9 AM just by deciding that I wanted to do it and then doing it. I can feel the difference from my college days, when I would make all kinds of excuses for not doing something.

Today completes my one year at Yahoo! Bangalore. This is the first time in my life when I am not thinking of quitting a job after six months. A big thanks to spoOnman aka Pankaj Kaushal for referring me here. Looking forward to another fun filled year here.

The below is not my writing. I picked it from the comments left at " The Importance of Having Friends Who Disagree".

Somethings I have observed,which are indirectly related to topic (well more to the topic of ideas really) are:

• Now a days, more than ever, even if you implement an idea/prototype which you do not yourself believe in much or consider low-impact; people may find it interesting and find out a new way of using than what you could not even think. Somethings become popular just like that:(. (This is not to suggest that popularity is necessarily a measure of cool ideas)
• It is difficult generally in practice for people to reject an "new" idea which is implemented (tangible) and available to play with; than an idea presented in theory/verbally. I mean both can get rejected, but it relatively takes greater time to reject the former than latter unless someone has implemented very badly(in which case even a good idea can get rejected quickly).
• A good measure of finding a person which you mention, quickly, is how fast and right that person understands the concept of "po". After explaining "po", from the other persons reaction, you can make out how close he is to the perfect guy. I have seen that some guys do not bothered to listen; then there are those who nod their head and say they understood ; but the closest are those who just start building upon an idea from where you left or branch out from it or start another path. Basically, if idea has any inspiration/possibility they seek before giving it up immediately. It means they give due consideration before judging it black or white. Most of the times I have seen that both people involved come out with something slightly or completely different than the original.
• Some people develop "disagreement" as a coolness trait, assuming it to be a characteristic of an "independent thinker". They generally are successful in drawing a lot of attention. It is in my opinion, important to cross-check them, by looking at their cool ideas/reasons/explanations carefully and having your own opinion about it. It is sometimes easy to fall in the trap of pseudo-disagreement friends too:)

I joined the gym today. Yahoo! provides free gym memberships to all its employees and after a year of making excuses, I joined up today. Some observations

• I joined the gym together with my manager. Hopefully, whenever one of us tries to run away, the other will motivate him to keep going
• This is the first time that I joined a gym which gave people fitness trainers. I can attest from my personal experience that this is very important. This is the first time I left a gym with only minimal amount of pain in my muscles, thanks to proper warmup and cool down sessions
• During my warm up session, I had a spell of dizziness. I am not sure why this happened, but I had to slow down after that. My guess is that it was caused by my high-sugar, low-nutrition diet. I should take time to research some low fat and nutritious food which are easy to make or buy