Happy Holidays and inspiration abound

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

First and foremost, to our dear family and friends, we wish you the very best in this holiday season. May all your wants and dreams be made a reality through the support of your family and your friends. In this holiday season, I have found myself more introspective and I can say that it is due to the inspirations of the following three stories.

The first story was a linked story from FaceBook. This is a story of an individual that sees injustice around him and effectively leads with his feet. I do not have the words so I will let him describe them in his own.

The piece that struck me in this video was the act of touching feet of this gentle soul. For those that are unaware, here is a little background on the cultural implication of this act.

For about a year or so, I have been taking photographs and trying to better myself at the craft. On my search for yet more information on how to be a better photographer, I stumbled across Chris Jarvis' site where he does an interview with Jeremy Cowart. A good portion of the video interview is invested in getting started in photography and the how did they do it. One piece of the discussion struck me silent; Help Portrait.

The video does it more justice than any words that I can provide.

The final story is of a young women that I work with. For the past 10 years, she has been leading by example in helping the community. She and her family, in preparation for the winter holiday season, spend their time making polar fleece hats & scarves and bundle them with gloves and socks for those in need. Every year she has done this and simply has grown this effort year over year.

These three stories of people giving of their time, effort, thoughts and of themselves to better those around them exemplifies the following quote that I strive to live by.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

In this holiday season, take the time to be thoughtful, considerate, and mindful of others. Happy holidays and may this holiday season bring you all the gifts and thoughts you wish for.

Make the time to inspire others and be inspired.

Lens Hero

As I have gotten more and more into photography, I have been looking for different options for how to shop for a lens and the subsequent accessories that are necessary (at least that is what I keep telling myself). You can search online for comparisons, but the site that I feel has given the best opportunity for doing comparisons so far is LensHero.com.

The breakdowns by camera body and price range to start with allows for quick and easy searches. However, that is not where the real benefits come from. The ability to look at lens based on the type of photography you are doing allows for even more flexibility.

For the maximum effect and with the most starting options available for filtering, I would recommend starting with the camera body type (at the bottom of the page). From here you can add filters for brand, type of photography, price range, aperture, wide angle versus telephoto, image stabilization, or focus motor.

With this many options to begin with, it gives any photographer options for quick searches. This coupled with the ratings being pulled in from B&H photo and quick links to Amazon for purchasing make it an effective search tool.

Thanks LensHero!

Laid back pup - Abby

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Originally uploaded by bhargavap

We had a puppy (and dog) get together at our place this weekend. We had our 3 dogs, Niko, Jack and Zug, Jennifer brought her two down, Jackson and Abby (shown here), and TJ & Emily brought Kita and their new addition, Inara.

It was a great day as the dogs were preemptively tired out at the Marymoor dog park, but they still were able to yammer at one another. I think Zug and Inara will become quick friends.

But all of that being said, this photo of Abby caught my attention as it exemplifies her personality; laid back, relaxed, and darn adorable.

Day 1: The Portland Zoo

The day started quite early (at least for a vacation day). The day came even earlier as we were both up late reading our new books and hanging out. While we were driving, I happened to snap a quick photograph of mountains. It was a bright blue sky and Mount Baker stuck out quite nicely against it.

We headed out of Kenmore at around 8AM to get down to Portland so we could hit up the Portland Zoo. Leslie planned a jam packed weekend and this was our first stop to take some photographs. We arrived in Portland around noon and stopped by our hotel, the Heathmann.

The Heathmann Hotel was a very comfortable hotel with great service. The only thing that I would say was a concern was the size of the room for the cost. I kind of figured it would have been a bit larger. That aside, it was a nice place to stay and its location to the Tri-Met system were definite plusses. After getting ourselves generally settled, we headed out to the Portland Zoo. This was as easy as walking three blocks and waiting for the Tri-Met tram thing to take us there. It was a total of 20 minutes to the Zoo and we were effectively dropped off at the door step. This made it easy to just drive down and then just park our car for the remainder of the weekend.

We arrived at the Zoo and we made our way inside (Bonus #1: If you take the Tri-Met you get money off your ticket to get into the the Zoo, Bonus #2: If you are a member of the Woodland Park Zoo, you can get into the Portland Zoo for free as it is part of the reciprical zoo and acquarium program). We stopped for a quick bite to eat and then made our way into the Zoo for some adventures!

Take a gander at some of the highlighted photographs below or check out my Portland Zoo Flickr set for a complete review!

Subject of the Day: Juanita Flora - Daisies

IMG_8476.CR2, originally uploaded by bhargavap.

Taking my new lens that I absconded with on late Friday night, I wandered around with my wife and took photos while taking the dogs for a walk.

This 85MM 1.8f canon lens gave me a new appreciation for prime lenses as well as some killer clarity on the photos themselves.

I continue to use the manual settings in finding the right exposure. I only had to throw away a few frames this last time.

One new thing I did learn was the power of shooting in RAW, but I am still torn on whether to continue to use this format. The basic editor on the Photoshop Elements software I have does not really have a lot in support of RAW, but I will keep fiddling around with it.

Subject of the day: Park benches

IMG_7273.JPG, originally uploaded by bhargavap.

Sitting lonely all on its own.

After reading just a small portion of the book, "Understanding exposure", I ventured in to using the manual settings on my camera. While I do not fully understand how it all interlaces just yet (I fell asleep last night reading), I was able to pick up a few critical things to make the exposure of my photos appear to come out correctly.

As simple as it sounds, watching the exposure and light associated was as simple as watching for bracketing in the view finder. As I shifted the dial, I was able to see the immediate result on the exposure. Now to just learn how to keep a steady hand for those just long enough exposures.

I am going to keep playing around and finding out what to do next.

Subject of the day: Mailboxes - As mail does arrive

IMG_7216.JPG, originally uploaded by bhargavap.

In an effort to continuously improve my photography, I will be doing my best to take photographs every day and look for new ways to improve my basic understanding of the attributes of my camera.

If you have ideas of the types of subjects that would be interesting to you, I would be happy to focus on on subjects as I read them.

Continuous light and a bit of the sky line

IMG_7140.JPG, originally uploaded by bhargavap.

I went off in the middle of the night and checked out if I could make the cool effect happen by working with long exposure times. I took the instructions that I had from the fireworks display and played around with settings. This was the first foray in the some night shoots.

Finding the right words through vocabulary profiles

The past few weeks have been an interesting time where the power of vocabulary is often misunderstood and, more often, underestimated. Every organization/team/social group has a vocabulary that is expected in order to be considered to be part of "the in crowd" or accepted.

The vocabulary you choose will have different axis; audience, emotional content, domain expertise, and learning style elements.

Whether it be your group of friends with whom you went to high school or your college colleagues or your work team or your bowling league, they all will have an expectation of the type of language you would use. Try using your sports event language in your work setting or your work setting language at your next dinner out with friends (ok don't try either of those, just image it). You will get strange looks if not outright shock at work (especially if you are a hockey fan!).

This impact is only compounded by politeness theory and the emotional responsiveness. The phrases like "who dropped the ball" and "whose fault is this" are rooted in anger and the real underlying question is missed by the recipient. In an attempt to diffuse the emotional response, the answer will often be deflective. The real question that should be asked in this situation would be "It looks like we missed something here. What steps do we need to take to bring us back on track?" The first two statements are focused on the who of the problem set while the latter is on the result. While obvious, it is worth stating; remaining calm and results oriented will always yield higher dividends over equal and opposite pair of behaviors.

The other vector to consider is that of domain expertise. As you work with different groups, it will be important to learn their specific language and jargon. This is not to say that you should fake it, but rather, be inquisitive and learn that is outside of your comfort zone to become more effective.

Some examples of terms:

• Program management: expectations, analysis paralysis, risks, issues, etc.
• Development: algorithms, design, multi-threading, "chewing on glass," etc.
• Test: Defects, test cases, scope, static/dynamic, white box, black box, etc
• Configuration management:SCM, trunk, branch, CM, etc.
• Operations: Network/power capacity, SAN, NAS, farms, etc.

While these are by no means the limit of the terms you will likely be expected to know, but it helps distinguish the differing expectations and perspectives between your team members in a software development project. Keep asking questions and be ok with saying I don't know.

The last area is determined by the learning style of your recipient; sensory vs intuitive, auditory versus visual, active versus reflective, and sequential versus global.

• Sensory learners look for facts while intuitive learners look for meaning.
• Auditory learners prefer words while visual learners prefer pictures.
• Active learners prefer to do versus reflective learners prefer to derive the solution.
• Sequential learners prefer order delivery versus global learners prefer the big picture.

Each of these different areas have language that is associated. It is better described with actual examples:

• Sensory active visual global learner would prefer to see how to create the chart that reports the cumulative usage of a service.
• Sensory active auditory global learner would prefer to read the instructions on how to create the chart that reports the cumulative usage of a service.
• Intuitive reflective visual global learner would want to understand why the chart was necessary and then work through the tools to create the chart.

These are a lot of differing areas to try to concentrate on when trying to simply have a conversation. Don't try to focus on all of them at once! Choose one and become proficient. Once you are proficient with one area and then move on to taking on a new area.

Over time, it will become second nature to pick up on people's vocabulary and then being able to mirror it as quickly as their body language.

Day at the park with a good friend!

Yet another day at the park