Planet ISKCON

The second day of the WWW2006 conference started with Les Carr saying how super-excited he was about everything in the upcoming conference. Les was one of my former teachers back in Southampton University. He is the one who encouraged me to submit a paper for WWW2006.

Then the first minister of Scotland got on stage and gave a talk, singing the glories of mother Scotland. He talked about how the great country of Scotland, with its devolved parliament and independence from oppressive England was making great strides in the world. No nation is more illustrious!

Wendy Hall and Tim Berners-Lee also said a few words. Tim Berners-Lee is the guy who invented the World Wide Web back in 1990 (yup, the Web is only 16 years old).

Sir David Brown, the chairman of Motorola Ltd. gave a speech. He recalled how he estimated ten years ago that there might be 900,000 mobile phones sold every year. Now there are 900,000 mobile phones being sold every 19 hours. He was 46,000% wrong! But at least he was 46,000% wrong in the right direction.

Mobiles are the 4th screen, he said. The computer desktop, the living room, the car and the mobile make up the places were we consume media. The future is personalized content anywhere and anytime. The device formally known as the mobile phone will be central to this ubiquitous media revolution.

Globalization is good. It's a chance for a positive-sum gain for everyone. Smart countries will use communication technology to combat outsourcing of manufacturing by "insourcing" logistics control. For example, there is no reason that a manufacturing plant in China can't be managed and control remotely from the UK.

On to socioeconomics: there will be an estimated 930 million new mobile phones in developing countries by 2008. The proliferation of low-cost mobile devices everywhere will lead to drastically increased economic output from developing nations. Technology innovation will be followed by business innovation, which will be followed by renewed technology innovation, and so on in a spiral of economic growth. More money for everyone! This will create better health, better education, better lifestyle and a better world.

What Sir David does not realize is that with increased economic development there also comes greatly increased suffering, stress, mental illness, pollution and war. As my spiritual master has said: "vaisyas (businessmen) can not be the leaders of any working society, material or spiritual"

Tagging is also being used in the enterprise. IBM has added tagging to its internal contact management system: Fringe Contacts. IBMers are connected by location, projects, position in the organizational hierarchy and now also by the tags they give each other. For example, everyone attending the chi2006 conference might tag themselves, or get tagged with that tag by a co-worker. By collecting all the reverse links one can easily build a list of all attendees, something what would have been otherwise very difficult in such a large organization. No single person has to maintain the list. It is updated organically.

The researchers noticed that the most interesting tags were those that were used by lots of people on a small number of people. These kinds of tags describe special expertise that there few people have. They can be used to identify special skills in the company.

Avaya labs has a similar system. They used to use a system of broad categories (e.g tech, development, marketing, etc) and skills. Every employee was tasked with keeping their own user profile up to date. However, inevitably, people got lazy, forgot the update their profiles and the system became useless.

Tagging collects dynamic user categories by the social relationships that already exist in the company. Changes in people's interests and people learning new skills are reflected in the collective tag cloud.

The talk by the lady from Avaya was somewhat difficult to understand. Loads of text on each slide and a virus scanner constantly coming up during the presentation, blocking the view, all made it very difficult to follow what she was saying. The slides might as well have not been there. Lesson for her to learn: less is more.

Mitre corporation created a system called Onomi. This enables social bookmarking, networks of expertise and information sharing. It integates with del.isio.us, LDAP, email, RSS, Soap, intranet URIs. They now use it as a replacement for email when telling people about something interesting. 18% of the workforce are using it. Most were attracted by a banner ad on the Intranet, as well as by selective announcements to specific user groups.

Yahoo has developed an AJAX tagging engine that suggests tags. This reduces the overlap between tags. If you tag something with one tag, all related tags will be pushed way own on the selection list. It also helps eliminate tag spam. If you use good tags (those used by many other people) those tags get a higher value (in a mutual reenforcement HITS algorithm style). It also awards original tags. People that introduce tags that later become popular are awarded a higher "importance" score. A further advantage is that users don't need to come up with their own tags.

Another presentation by Yahoo research was on combining ontology and flickr tags. Tags are like dynamic/shifting namespace, very different from a static controlled vocabulary. The lack of structure makes it difficult to hunt and search for content, but leans itself well to random browsing and accidental discovery.

Introducing simple subsumption between tags helps highlight that London is in the UK, for example. People will put in hypernyms in the middle strip of an ontology, e.g. golden retriever and dog. But the high-level hypernyms are too obvious, so people forget to add them (e.g. London and UK). Luckily, these kinds of high-level relations are well defined in ontologies. A combination of upper-level ontologies with low-level tags seems to be a promising area of research.

Some people from the steve.museum tagging project gave a talk on how the professional museum curators were very good at describing some things about the museum exhibits and terrible at others. The difference between the professional and layman taggers was staggering.

Tagging is also being used in the enterprise. IBM has added tagging to its internal contact management system: Fringe Contacts. IBMers are connected by location, projects, position in the organizational hierarchy and now also by the tags they give each other. For example, everyone attending the chi2006 conference might tag themselves, or get tagged with that tag by a co-worker. By collecting all the reverse links one can easily build a list of all attendees, something what would have been otherwise very difficult in such a large organization. No single person has to maintain the list. It is updated organically.

The researchers noticed that the most interesting tags were those that were used by lots of people on a small number of people. These kinds of tags describe special expertise that there few people have. They can be used to identify special skills in the company.

Avaya labs has a similar system. They used to use a system of broad categories (e.g tech, development, marketing, etc) and skills. Every employee was tasked with keeping their own user profile up to date. However, inevitably, people got lazy, forgot the update their profiles and the system became useless.

Tagging collects dynamic user categories by the social relationships that already exist in the company. Changes in people's interests and people learning new skills are reflected in the collective tag cloud.

The talk by the lady from Avaya was somewhat difficult to understand. Loads of text on each slide and a virus scanner constantly coming up during the presentation, blocking the view, all made it very difficult to follow what she was saying. The slides might as well have not been there. Lesson for her to learn: less is more.

Mitre corporation created a system called Onomi. This enables social bookmarking, networks of expertise and information sharing. It integates with del.isio.us, LDAP, email, RSS, Soap, intranet URIs. They now use it as a replacement for email when telling people about something interesting. 18% of the workforce are using it. Most were attracted by a banner ad on the Intranet, as well as by selective announcements to specific user groups.

Yahoo has developed an AJAX tagging engine that suggests tags. This reduces the overlap between tags. If you tag something with one tag, all related tags will be pushed way own on the selection list. It also helps eliminate tag spam. If you use good tags (those used by many other people) those tags get a higher value (in a mutual reenforcement HITS algorithm style). It also awards original tags. People that introduce tags that later become popular are awarded a higher "importance" score. A further advantage is that users don't need to come up with their own tags.

Another presentation by Yahoo research was on combining ontology and flickr tags. Tags are like dynamic/shifting namespace, very different from a static controlled vocabulary. The lack of structure makes it difficult to hunt and search for content, but leans itself well to random browsing and accidental discovery.

Introducing simple subsumption between tags helps highlight that London is in the UK, for example. People will put in hypernyms in the middle strip of an ontology, e.g. golden retriever and dog. But the high-level hypernyms are too obvious, so people forget to add them (e.g. London and UK). Luckily, these kinds of high-level relations are well defined in ontologies. A combination of upper-level ontologies with low-level tags seems to be a promising area of research.

Some people from the steve.museum tagging project gave a talk on how the professional museum curators were very good at describing some things about the museum exhibits and terrible at others. The difference between the professional and layman taggers was staggering.

I attended the World Wide Web 2006 conference in Edinburgh, Scotland last week. It was really interesting. Lots of knowledge on the future of the Internet. Here is what I learnt:
The first day I went to a workshop on tagging organized by Yahoo and RawSugar.

Tagging is the act of annotating something with a keyword. On the Internet anyone can tag. It puts the user in control. Tagging becomes useful when it happens on a large scale. Tags can be aggregated, organized into sets (like in flickr, youTube and technorati). A good tag set will cover as many facets as possible, e.g. music, artists, song, band, etc. People don't think "definition" when they tag. A tag can express an emotion, a insight, a gut reaction, anything. People are willingly telling us how they feel about something. That's part of the power. It's metadata for the masses.

Tagging works because it does not involve high brain functions of conscious sorting. It does not force people to make a choice (does skiing belong in the "recreation" or "sport" category?), things can have any number of tags. This kind of free, loose association is cognitively easy and makes less time. However, categories are arguably more memorable than tags, because you have had to make more of mental effort to add the category.

Tags can also count as opinion votes. Multiple instances of a tag are collected in bags of tags and determine how interesting a webpage, piece of music, photo, or any other tagable resource is (like in lastFM, My Web and delicious).

Tagging gives a sense of community. Like when playing a massively multiplayer online role-playing game like World of Warcraft, it gives a sense of "alone together". As described in the book, the wisdom of crowds, this leads to more cognitive diversity, less group-think, reduces conformity, reduces the correlated effects of individual mistakes, encourages new viewpoints, leads to less herd behavior and encourages participation.

Benefits of tags are:

• better search
• less spam / ability to identify genuine content
• ability to identify trends and trend setters
• a metric of trust
• ability to measure how much attention a resource is getting
• helps filter by interest (really works!)

Tagging is however limited in that people very rarely tag other people's stuff. Most tags are added by the content author. Tags are also often not very prominent, nor identified and collated in one's account.

Tags also lack structure and semantics. They exist in a large cloud, not an ordered hierarchy. Synonyms and polysemy can lead to a vocabulary explosion.

Search is a pull mechanism. Search engines need to go out an crawl the web to index all the content. This can take days. Tagging is push. Blogs notify the search engines when there is something new to to be had. Readers can be notified of new content the very second it appears.

It is difficult to add tagging to an existing system. Amazon tried this and failed. There has to be a clear role for tags. They have to provide some tangible benefit. The best tagging systems highlight unique contributions, give users control, allow for smaller tag-related sub-groups and allow for personalization.

Tagging can be described as going for a hike in the woods, or picking berries, while categorization is more like driving a car, or riding a rollercoaster.

I attended the World Wide Web 2006 conference in Edinburgh, Scotland last week. It was really interesting. Lots of knowledge on the future of the Internet. Here is what I learnt:
The first day I went to a workshop on tagging organized by Yahoo and RawSugar.

Tagging is the act of annotating something with a keyword. On the Internet anyone can tag. It puts the user in control. Tagging becomes useful when it happens on a large scale. Tags can be aggregated, organized into sets (like in flickr, youTube and technorati). A good tag set will cover as many facets as possible, e.g. music, artists, song, band, etc. People don't think "definition" when they tag. A tag can express an emotion, a insight, a gut reaction, anything. People are willingly telling us how they feel about something. That's part of the power. It's metadata for the masses.

Tagging works because it does not involve high brain functions of conscious sorting. It does not force people to make a choice (does skiing belong in the "recreation" or "sport" category?), things can have any number of tags. This kind of free, loose association is cognitively easy and makes less time. However, categories are arguably more memorable than tags, because you have had to make more of mental effort to add the category.

Tags can also count as opinion votes. Multiple instances of a tag are collected in bags of tags and determine how interesting a webpage, piece of music, photo, or any other tagable resource is (like in lastFM, My Web and delicious).

Tagging gives a sense of community. Like when playing a massively multiplayer online role-playing game like World of Warcraft, it gives a sense of "alone together". As described in the book, the wisdom of crowds, this leads to more cognitive diversity, less group-think, reduces conformity, reduces the correlated effects of individual mistakes, encourages new viewpoints, leads to less herd behavior and encourages participation.

Benefits of tags are:

• better search
• less spam / ability to identify genuine content
• ability to identify trends and trend setters
• a metric of trust
• ability to measure how much attention a resource is getting
• helps filter by interest (really works!)

Tagging is however limited in that people very rarely tag other people's stuff. Most tags are added by the content author. Tags are also often not very prominent, nor identified and collated in one's account.

Tags also lack structure and semantics. They exist in a large cloud, not an ordered hierarchy. Synonyms and polysemy can lead to a vocabulary explosion.

Search is a pull mechanism. Search engines need to go out an crawl the web to index all the content. This can take days. Tagging is push. Blogs notify the search engines when there is something new to to be had. Readers can be notified of new content the very second it appears.

It is difficult to add tagging to an existing system. Amazon tried this and failed. There has to be a clear role for tags. They have to provide some tangible benefit. The best tagging systems highlight unique contributions, give users control, allow for smaller tag-related sub-groups and allow for personalization.

Tagging can be described as going for a hike in the woods, or picking berries, while categorization is more like driving a car, or riding a rollercoaster.

Another visit to Dr. Philip Weeks. He has been reading these blog entries of mine and commented to me that he was impressed by the accuracy of my summaries of the consultations. Most patients, he said, get it completely wrong and imagine all kinds of crazy things that never happened. He concluded that while I may be soft spoken, quiet, reserved, I have an extremely sharp intellect underneath.

Aside: Phil hit upon a long running issue of my personality: people tend to underestimate me. After getting to know me for a while they appreciate by strengths, but, upon the first meeting me, most people are not very impressed. This is especially true of the proud, brash American types of people. They tend to roll right over me. That kind of persona intimidates me and causes me to withdraw even more than usual, further reinforcing their perception of my uselessness. One of my high school teachers back in Germany put it well: "Man traut es dir einfach nicht zu, obwohl du es so gut kannst" (Translation: one just does not have confidence in your ability, even though you can do it so well)

Anyway, on to my treatment.

Phil reiterated that I need to process things by feeling emotions. That will greatly improve by health. I need to turn a consciousness of "I am what I think" into "I am what I feel", though both, of course, are ultimately just material illusion. However, I find it difficult to express, or even be aware of, how I'm feeling. This is not going to change overnight. It's a long process of person improvement and growth.

In the mean time, the best he can do for me is carry on with the treatment. The effects of the acupuncture don't seem to last very long; only a couple of weeks. However, sometime my body will decide it no longer needs to have its disease (attack itself) and I'll be "cured".

Also, living in a warm (but not too warm), dry place would be good for me. Manchester must be the worst place on earth for my health.

My triple pulses revealed that I was doing better overall. Just a little damp left to clear. Dr. Phil stuck some needles in my legs and wrists. My wrist felt especially weird for quite some time after the treatment. There was definitely some serious energy moving around in this bodily vessel of mine.

Philip also gave me some more Chinese medicine witch-brew/tincture to take. His most recent concoction is for strengthening my blood, allowing it, among other things, to carry more oxygen. That's the next stage in my treatment, apparently.

The doc also noticed that my legs were slight swollen legs. Remedy: I need to drink more water (I remembered afterwards that I had indeed been drinking less than usual after loosing my aluminum water bottle a few weeks ago). Solution: I picked up a Platypus plastic water bottle on my way back to Manchester. This water bottle is collapsible, flexible, durable and very lightweight. The 1 liter bottle weighs just 23 grams / 0.8 oz.

Finally, some dietary recommendations for me: more proteen, some nuts; almonds are good (soaking them overnight removes the toxin they contain).

Another visit to Dr. Philip Weeks. He has been reading these blog entries of mine and commented to me that he was impressed by the accuracy of my summaries of the consultations. Most patients, he said, get it completely wrong and imagine all kinds of crazy things that never happened. He concluded that while I may be soft spoken, quiet, reserved, I have an extremely sharp intellect underneath.

Aside: Phil hit upon a long running issue of my personality: people tend to underestimate me. After getting to know me for a while they appreciate by strengths, but, upon the first meeting me, most people are not very impressed. This is especially true of the proud, brash American types of people. They tend to roll right over me. That kind of persona intimidates me and causes me to withdraw even more than usual, further reinforcing their perception of my uselessness. One of my high school teachers back in Germany put it well: "Man traut es dir einfach nicht zu, obwohl du es so gut kannst" (Translation: one just does not have confidence in your ability, even though you can do it so well)

Anyway, on to my treatment.

Phil reiterated that I need to process things by feeling emotions. That will greatly improve by health. I need to turn a consciousness of "I am what I think" into "I am what I feel", though both, of course, are ultimately just material illusion. However, I find it difficult to express, or even be aware of, how I'm feeling. This is not going to change overnight. It's a long process of person improvement and growth.

In the mean time, the best he can do for me is carry on with the treatment. The effects of the acupuncture don't seem to last very long; only a couple of weeks. However, sometime my body will decide it no longer needs to have its disease (attack itself) and I'll be "cured".

Also, living in a warm (but not too warm), dry place would be good for me. Manchester must be the worst place on earth for my health.

My triple pulses revealed that I was doing better overall. Just a little damp left to clear. Dr. Phil stuck some needles in my legs and wrists. My wrist felt especially weird for quite some time after the treatment. There was definitely some serious energy moving around in this bodily vessel of mine.

Philip also gave me some more Chinese medicine witch-brew/tincture to take. His most recent concoction is for strengthening my blood, allowing it, among other things, to carry more oxygen. That's the next stage in my treatment, apparently.

The doc also noticed that my legs were slight swollen legs. Remedy: I need to drink more water (I remembered afterwards that I had indeed been drinking less than usual after loosing my aluminum water bottle a few weeks ago). Solution: I picked up a Platypus plastic water bottle on my way back to Manchester. This water bottle is collapsible, flexible, durable and very lightweight. The 1 liter bottle weighs just 23 grams / 0.8 oz.

Finally, some dietary recommendations for me: more proteen, some nuts; almonds are good (soaking them overnight removes the toxin they contain).

MacZOT.com Fans want Pzizz because 'According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleep deprivation and its effect on work performance may be costing U.S. employers some $18 billion each year in lost productivity. Another study pushes this cost to over $100 billion.' - link to full article

I posted that advert clip so that I get a free version of that software (via BlogZOT). It uses NLP to enhance the sleeping/napping process. Taking frequent naps allows one to sleep less overall which means more time for doing pure-goodness activity.

MacZOT.com Fans want Pzizz because 'According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleep deprivation and its effect on work performance may be costing U.S. employers some $18 billion each year in lost productivity. Another study pushes this cost to over $100 billion.' - link to full article

I posted that advert clip so that I get a free version of that software (via BlogZOT). It uses NLP to enhance the sleeping/napping process. Taking frequent naps allows one to sleep less overall which means more time for doing pure-goodness activity.

Dr. Dr. Jeremy Rogers, a long time researcher at the University, recently took up a new a job in industry working for a large consultancy company. To commemorate the occasion my research group went out to dinner to an Italian restaurant called the Olive Press. I went along for this important social occasion.

However, due to my restrictive diet the only thing I could eat was a red pepper soup and some baked potatoes. It took quite some time negotiating with the waitress to find these few items on the menu that were eatable for me. Most of the so-called vegetarian options had eggs in them. What to speak of all the wheat and cheese in practically everything. I guess that is the nature of material (Mediterranean) world.

I took many pictures. View them here.

Dr. Dr. Jeremy Rogers, a long time researcher at the University, recently took up a new a job in industry working for a large consultancy company. To commemorate the occasion my research group went out to dinner to an Italian restaurant called the Olive Press. I went along for this important social occasion.

However, due to my restrictive diet the only thing I could eat was a red pepper soup and some baked potatoes. It took quite some time negotiating with the waitress to find these few items on the menu that were eatable for me. Most of the so-called vegetarian options had eggs in them. What to speak of all the wheat and cheese in practically everything. I guess that is the nature of material (Mediterranean) world.

I took many pictures. View them here.

No yoga this session. B.'s body is not very well suited to it and everyone else who came wasn't too eager for bodily exercise either. In all, 4 of our regular guests came.

We chanted "om namo bhagavate vasudevya" for a while. J. commented afterwards that he really relished it. He said he was meditating on the story of Dhruva Maharaja (which I read out during the relaxation period of the yoga the previous week) through the chanting.

We then chanted the Maha-Mantra. I found that super blissful. F. commented that, since the mantra was quite new to her, she had to concentrate very intensely to get it right and keep up with everyone. I pointed out that, although she might not realize it at the time, that kind of intense meditation results in huge spiritual benefit. It was very inspiring to see her try so hard.

After the meditation we talked about the 3 modes of material nature, as explained in the the 14th chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita.

I played six different pop songs and everyone guessed which of the three gunas (modes) each song induced. Can you guess? The songs were (note: you need to have iTunes installed for the links to work):

• Superbeast by White Zombie
• Human Behaviour by Bj??rk
• Agnus Dei by Libera Boy's Choir
• Aria: Gott ist unser Sonn und Schild (God is our sun and shield) by Johann Sebastian Bach
• Punk Rock Song by Bad Religion
• Ray of Light by Madonna

We then proceeded to each read a verse of the chapter until the end. The conclusion: overcoming the modes is easy. Just practice bhakti-yoga.

No yoga this session. B.'s body is not very well suited to it and everyone else who came wasn't too eager for bodily exercise either. In all, 4 of our regular guests came.

We chanted "om namo bhagavate vasudevya" for a while. J. commented afterwards that he really relished it. He said he was meditating on the story of Dhruva Maharaja (which I read out during the relaxation period of the yoga the previous week) through the chanting.

We then chanted the Maha-Mantra. I found that super blissful. F. commented that, since the mantra was quite new to her, she had to concentrate very intensely to get it right and keep up with everyone. I pointed out that, although she might not realize it at the time, that kind of intense meditation results in huge spiritual benefit. It was very inspiring to see her try so hard.

After the meditation we talked about the 3 modes of material nature, as explained in the the 14th chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita.

I played six different pop songs and everyone guessed which of the three gunas (modes) each song induced. Can you guess? The songs were (note: you need to have iTunes installed for the links to work):

• Superbeast by White Zombie
• Human Behaviour by Bj??rk
• Agnus Dei by Libera Boy's Choir
• Aria: Gott ist unser Sonn und Schild (God is our sun and shield) by Johann Sebastian Bach
• Punk Rock Song by Bad Religion
• Ray of Light by Madonna

We then proceeded to each read a verse of the chapter until the end. The conclusion: overcoming the modes is easy. Just practice bhakti-yoga.

Once again, hosted a Saturday Feast at my flat. 5 guests attended. It was K.'s and F.'s first visit to my place. On the menu:

• gem salad with cherry tomatoes
• bengali sak spinach
• mixed vegetable curry
• sweet potato pie
• clove basmati rice
• vegan sesame seed digestive biscuits

I had planned to finish the meal at 14:10, but alas, you know what they say about the best made plans. It took me 3 hours to cook everything and we ended up eating a very late "lunch" at 14:40. On the positive side, at least everyone was really hungry.

F. was amazed at the taste of prasadam. Prasadam is spiritualized food that has been offered to Krishna. The food becomes non-different from God.

Some people ask to see God, but why should we limit ourself to just using only that one sense? Eating prasadam is, quite literally, tasting God. I remember the first time I had prasadam, I ate soooo much. It is quite an other worldly experience. No one will argue that point. Proof by direct personal experience.

After prasadam we chatted for some time. The Krishna conscious knowledge was bubbling out of Nanda Sunu, he impressed everyone with his broad, brahminical understanding; he then also lead a very nice kirtan. I learnt that one of the reasons F. was attracted to Vedicsoc was the cleverly worded answer to the question "Do I have to give up anything?" on the Vedicsoc website. Then we read the story of Madhavandra Puri, who's birthday it was.

We also spent quite some time singing the glorifies of the new Apple Macintosh computer I recently acquired (more on that later). It is a very impressive, elegant and powerful machine. Apple certainly has put lots of love, devotion and attention to detail into its design. I used it to magnify and display the story of Madhavandra Puri on screen, so everyone could follow along as we took turns reading.

After an enlivening, blissful 4 hours of each other's association, we broke up for the day. F. left carrying two volumes of the Krishna Book!

Once again, hosted a Saturday Feast at my flat. 5 guests attended. It was K.'s and F.'s first visit to my place. On the menu:

• gem salad with cherry tomatoes
• bengali sak spinach
• mixed vegetable curry
• sweet potato pie
• clove basmati rice
• vegan sesame seed digestive biscuits

I had planned to finish the meal at 14:10, but alas, you know what they say about the best made plans. It took me 3 hours to cook everything and we ended up eating a very late "lunch" at 14:40. On the positive side, at least everyone was really hungry.

F. was amazed at the taste of prasadam. Prasadam is spiritualized food that has been offered to Krishna. The food becomes non-different from God.

Some people ask to see God, but why should we limit ourself to just using only that one sense? Eating prasadam is, quite literally, tasting God. I remember the first time I had prasadam, I ate soooo much. It is quite an other worldly experience. No one will argue that point. Proof by direct personal experience.

After prasadam we chatted for some time. The Krishna conscious knowledge was bubbling out of Nanda Sunu, he impressed everyone with his broad, brahminical understanding; he then also lead a very nice kirtan. I learnt that one of the reasons F. was attracted to Vedicsoc was the cleverly worded answer to the question "Do I have to give up anything?" on the Vedicsoc website. Then we read the story of Madhavandra Puri, who's birthday it was.

We also spent quite some time singing the glorifies of the new Apple Macintosh computer I recently acquired (more on that later). It is a very impressive, elegant and powerful machine. Apple certainly has put lots of love, devotion and attention to detail into its design. I used it to magnify and display the story of Madhavandra Puri on screen, so everyone could follow along as we took turns reading.

After an enlivening, blissful 4 hours of each other's association, we broke up for the day. F. left carrying two volumes of the Krishna Book!

No one came.

I waited for 30 minutes in an empty room passing the time by chanting. Then, to my surprise, just before I was about to leave, three people arrived. Within the course of about 5 minutes three members arrived, each independently thinking that they were really late, but other people would have already been there and they could catch the end of the session.

So, we started the session 35 minutes late with part two of the killer power yoga session (which wasn't all that difficult).

Then we chanted a full round of the Maha-Mantra. All the attendees were regulars, so we could go at a faster speed than usual. That was blissful, as always.

We then talked about some issues of free will and (pre-)determinism that had been an ongoing issue of debate for some time. We read BG 7.21. In the purport Prabhupada says that we are completely controlled and have independent free will, both at the same time.

Amazing, it's not a contradiction. The purport makes complete sense (at least it does to me, J., of course, didn't think so).

No one came.

I waited for 30 minutes in an empty room passing the time by chanting. Then, to my surprise, just before I was about to leave, three people arrived. Within the course of about 5 minutes three members arrived, each independently thinking that they were really late, but other people would have already been there and they could catch the end of the session.

So, we started the session 35 minutes late with part two of the killer power yoga session (which wasn't all that difficult).

Then we chanted a full round of the Maha-Mantra. All the attendees were regulars, so we could go at a faster speed than usual. That was blissful, as always.

We then talked about some issues of free will and (pre-)determinism that had been an ongoing issue of debate for some time. We read BG 7.21. In the purport Prabhupada says that we are completely controlled and have independent free will, both at the same time.

Amazing, it's not a contradiction. The purport makes complete sense (at least it does to me, J., of course, didn't think so).

Once again 4 guests for the university club. A new person named K. came who was already chanting 16 rounds and had found out about Vedicsoc from J. at the temple. He was interested in Krishna conscious yoga to improve his bodily health and asked lots of questions.

I had just gotten back from London a few hours earlier. I therefore didn't have any time to prepare any food for the session, as I usually. I also didn't have much of the usual equipment and paraphernalia that I usually bring.

I taught a killer power yoga class. Everyone was sweating, groaning and asking "is the next asana savasana yet"? Maybe I was a bit too hard, but everyone said they liked it. Hey, maybe I'll be even more cruel next time (heh-heh).

I talked a bit about my experiences traveling with my spiritual master (something I'll post more about later) and answered intermittent questions from left-field.

Once again 4 guests for the university club. A new person named K. came who was already chanting 16 rounds and had found out about Vedicsoc from J. at the temple. He was interested in Krishna conscious yoga to improve his bodily health and asked lots of questions.

I had just gotten back from London a few hours earlier. I therefore didn't have any time to prepare any food for the session, as I usually. I also didn't have much of the usual equipment and paraphernalia that I usually bring.

I taught a killer power yoga class. Everyone was sweating, groaning and asking "is the next asana savasana yet"? Maybe I was a bit too hard, but everyone said they liked it. Hey, maybe I'll be even more cruel next time (heh-heh).

I talked a bit about my experiences traveling with my spiritual master (something I'll post more about later) and answered intermittent questions from left-field.

Apple has just released a new series of TV ads for advertizing the Mac. They are really well done. Fun, modern, short, to the point, good looking and trendy, imaginative. I think they'll be a huge success.

Here's a link directly to the videos.

I'm thinking that a similar type of ad for highlighting the benefit/coolness of Krishna consciousness could work wonders. Imagine:

Old disgruntled unhappy person: "Hi, I'm a religious believer."
Modern smart looking person: "Hi, I'm a Hare Krishna."

Apple has just released a new series of TV ads for advertizing the Mac. They are really well done. Fun, modern, short, to the point, good looking and trendy, imaginative. I think they'll be a huge success.

Here's a link directly to the videos.

I'm thinking that a similar type of ad for highlighting the benefit/coolness of Krishna consciousness could work wonders. Imagine:

Old disgruntled unhappy person: "Hi, I'm a religious believer."
Modern smart looking person: "Hi, I'm a Hare Krishna."

We have a server hard disk crash and we could not restore the files from the old drive. We have restored the files from the only available backup.

The available backup for your domian was backed up only on april 22nd.

Yup, the company that I use to host this website (Surpass Hosting) has had a major hard drive failure. They lost a week's worth of their client's data. I'm seriously considering moving to a different hosting provider that is more reliable. Anyone have any suggestions?

In any case, I've managed to restore most of the data from records I've kept on my personal machine and the nice cache features of MSN Search and Yahoo search (Google's cache isn't updated frequently enough, and other search engines are updated too frequently). It will however be some time before I have everything back to working order. Expect a few glitches here and there.

We have a server hard disk crash and we could not restore the files from the old drive. We have restored the files from the only available backup.

The available backup for your domian was backed up only on april 22nd.

Yup, the company that I use to host this website (Surpass Hosting) has had a major hard drive failure. They lost a week's worth of their client's data. I'm seriously considering moving to a different hosting provider that is more reliable. Anyone have any suggestions?

In any case, I've managed to restore most of the data from records I've kept on my personal machine and the nice cache features of MSN Search and Yahoo search (Google's cache isn't updated frequently enough, and other search engines are updated too frequently). It will however be some time before I have everything back to working order. Expect a few glitches here and there.

4 guests came to Vedicsoc this week. Those are pretty good numbers considering may people have exams just after the Easter break. One newcomer was F., a lady in her 50s or 60s. She had been subscribed to the mailing list for quite some time and said she was attracted to attend this week because of the reminder email I sent out:

Welcome back, once again, step right up, this way, this way to the action packed treasure filled session of Vedicsoc!

Easter holiday is over and we're back. This week starts with a power yoga bang. We'll also do our usual meditation and discuss: inspiration!

What inspires you? What gets you motivated to get out of bed in the morning? We'll find out (and hopefully make getting out of bed in the morning a lot more delightful than it no doubt already is).

F. ended up staying almost hour longer than she intended to. She kept saying she had to leave to get to another meeting, but found it so interesting that she kept delaying for "just 5 minutes longer".

Topics that inspired people were:

• Unique, interesting spiritual people with a profound aura/sense of peace
• People that have managed to avoid doing something utterly generic and boring with their lives
• U2
• Nothing inspires me anymore

I made the point that all these sources of inspiration are fickle and limited. We should be looking for the ultimate, unlimited, uninterrupted source of inspiration. And guess what? -> Krishna provides just that.

4 guests came to Vedicsoc this week. Those are pretty good numbers considering may people have exams just after the Easter break. One newcomer was F., a lady in her 50s or 60s. She had been subscribed to the mailing list for quite some time and said she was attracted to attend this week because of the reminder email I sent out:

Welcome back, once again, step right up, this way, this way to the action packed treasure filled session of Vedicsoc!

Easter holiday is over and we're back. This week starts with a power yoga bang. We'll also do our usual meditation and discuss: inspiration!

What inspires you? What gets you motivated to get out of bed in the morning? We'll find out (and hopefully make getting out of bed in the morning a lot more delightful than it no doubt already is).

F. ended up staying almost hour longer than she intended to. She kept saying she had to leave to get to another meeting, but found it so interesting that she kept delaying for "just 5 minutes longer".

Topics that inspired people were:

• Unique, interesting spiritual people with a profound aura/sense of peace
• People that have managed to avoid doing something utterly generic and boring with their lives
• U2
• Nothing inspires me anymore

I made the point that all these sources of inspiration are fickle and limited. We should be looking for the ultimate, unlimited, uninterrupted source of inspiration. And guess what? -> Krishna provides just that.

[download mp3]
Place: Cardiff Soul Centre, Wales, United Kingdom
Time: 63 min.

Summary:
Devamrita Swami asks a group of people at the Soul Centre: "what inspires you?". Most answer that they are inspired by "Krishna". One person says he is inspired by "the general spiritual potential in everyone". A lively discussion results.

[download mp3]
Place: Cardiff Soul Centre, Wales, United Kingdom
Time: 63 min.

Summary:
Devamrita Swami asks a group of people at the Soul Centre: "what inspires you?". Most answer that they are inspired by "Krishna". One person says he is inspired by "the general spiritual potential in everyone". A lively discussion results.

Evening Soul Talk in Cardiff Soul Centre. One notable guest was Taj, a lady doing a PhD in marketing. She was kicking the advertising for the soul centre into high-gear. Being a marketing guru (as GD called her), she knew how to create a whole portfolio of offerings, membership schemes, advertisements, press releases, etc. The Soul Centre has already benefited enormously from her expertise.

GD??(TM)s advice:

??oeOur duty is just to keep on trying to present Krishna consciousness to the people, even if there seems to be no success. Very soon people will become more desperate and suddenly there will be a huge demand. Just like when the Iron Curtain came down. It was so sudden. It surprised everyone, even the CIA. A similar thing can happen anytime. From one day to the next everyone may suddenly want to practice Krishna consciousness.??

My new phone served me well. It enabled all the communication that allowed me to better serve my spiritual master throughout the day. I managed to chant 35 rounds throughout the day. Long car trips be thanked.

After the program we drove down to Swansea for futher adventures in Krishna consciousness.

Evening Soul Talk in Cardiff Soul Centre. One notable guest was Taj, a lady doing a PhD in marketing. She was kicking the advertising for the soul centre into high-gear. Being a marketing guru (as GD called her), she knew how to create a whole portfolio of offerings, membership schemes, advertisements, press releases, etc. The Soul Centre has already benefited enormously from her expertise.

GD??(TM)s advice:

??oeOur duty is just to keep on trying to present Krishna consciousness to the people, even if there seems to be no success. Very soon people will become more desperate and suddenly there will be a huge demand. Just like when the Iron Curtain came down. It was so sudden. It surprised everyone, even the CIA. A similar thing can happen anytime. From one day to the next everyone may suddenly want to practice Krishna consciousness.??

My new phone served me well. It enabled all the communication that allowed me to better serve my spiritual master throughout the day. I managed to chant 35 rounds throughout the day. Long car trips be thanked.

After the program we drove down to Swansea for futher adventures in Krishna consciousness.

As there has been some confusion, please note:

The travel diary is not real time. It describes events that happened roughly two weeks ago. I??(TM)ve only now gotten to writing up what happened. I??(TM)ll be publishing the diary gradually over the next few weeks.

Hope that clears things up.

As there has been some confusion, please note:

The travel diary is not real time. It describes events that happened roughly two weeks ago. I??(TM)ve only now gotten to writing up what happened. I??(TM)ll be publishing the diary gradually over the next few weeks.

Hope that clears things up.

I wake up, chant, fix breakfast, do a mondo-ironing session, arrange an appointment with a physiotherapist in Germany (where we would soon be going), sort out a change in driver (Mark the Driver would now transport us to Cardiff), pack my bag, answer intermittent computer questions and fix a simple lunch (due to limited time):

Cooked:

• rocket and carrot salad
• tahini pasta salad (used up all the spare vegetables, which would have otherwise spoiled while I was away)
• lentil and tomato soup
• corn on the cob
• (samosas and cake from two days ago were deemed too old by GD)

And, at 14:00, off we went. Next stop: Cardiff, Wales.

I wake up, chant, fix breakfast, do a mondo-ironing session, arrange an appointment with a physiotherapist in Germany (where we would soon be going), sort out a change in driver (Mark the Driver would now transport us to Cardiff), pack my bag, answer intermittent computer questions and fix a simple lunch (due to limited time):

Cooked:

• rocket and carrot salad
• tahini pasta salad (used up all the spare vegetables, which would have otherwise spoiled while I was away)
• lentil and tomato soup
• corn on the cob
• (samosas and cake from two days ago were deemed too old by GD)

And, at 14:00, off we went. Next stop: Cardiff, Wales.

A website called BlogZOT is doing an interesting promotion. They giving away the SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys software for free, provided enough people post blog entries pointing at their website (like I just did). Altogether MacZOT and TheCodingMonkeys will award $105,000 in Mac software to bloggers around the world. But mainly, I think, the idea is to increase people??(TM)s awareness of both of these websites. I think a lot more copies of SubEthaEdit will be sold in this way. If nothing else, their Google PageRank will skyrocket (PageRank is Google??(TM)s way of measuring the importance of a website on the Internet). This is a good promotion strategy.

Check it out at: BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com

A website called BlogZOT is doing an interesting promotion. They giving away the SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys software for free, provided enough people post blog entries pointing at their website (like I just did). Altogether MacZOT and TheCodingMonkeys will award $105,000 in Mac software to bloggers around the world. But mainly, I think, the idea is to increase people??(TM)s awareness of both of these websites. I think a lot more copies of SubEthaEdit will be sold in this way. If nothing else, their Google PageRank will skyrocket (PageRank is Google??(TM)s way of measuring the importance of a website on the Internet). This is a good promotion strategy.

Check it out at: BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com

[download mp3]
Verse: BG 7.1
Place: Candidasa??(TM)s flat, Manchester, United Kingdom
Time: 70 min.

Summary:
We can??(TM)t understand everything because the maya energy is bewildering us and our senses are imperfect. However, by taking knowledge from the supreme source we can understand everything.

Questions:

• What about those who don??(TM)t get the operunity to access this knowledge?
• Isn??(TM)t spirituality in everyone anyway? Why accept this process?
• So whatever Krishna says you have to accept without question, right?
• But Krishna knows everything that we are going to do, how do we have any independent choice? Krishna knows that Arjuna is going to fight and is simultaneously trying to illicit his surrender. How is there free will?
• Is there a point at which we can understand Krishna completely?
• Is there a capacity, so some people can understand Krishna more than others?
• Will the mahabharata happen again in the next yuga cycle?
• Will the BG will be the same in the next cycle?
• Are people??(TM)s souls continous throughout the cycles?
• Since Krishna is outside of time and the souls merge into him between universal annialiations, is it possible to be reborn in a time previous to the current time?
• Doesn??(TM)t it get to a point were we have to accept things with blind faith?
• Can you convey knowledge and realiation in such a way that people that aren??(TM)t following the process can understand?
• When we reach the highest destination we will have a form, right. So what will we look like?
• In paintings we see that Krishna likes a certain type of clothes, but those are just the clothes of ancient India.
• But there surely was a time when people didn??(TM)t dress like that? This is just a small part of the cycle.
• BG does give a complete picture, but my questions are always about details and I can never get detailed answers?
• So, if I did not take part in any chanting, there is no way that someone could impart the message to me?
• Can you explain something to me without me having to realize it myself?
• How far do you feel you??(TM)ve gotten?
• Don??(TM)t you get to a point in KC when you understand the way everything works, but you say it??(TM)s infinite.
• I read that a grihastra can be as good as a sannyasi, is that right?
• How long have you been practicing?

[download mp3]
Verse: BG 7.1
Place: Candidasa??(TM)s flat, Manchester, United Kingdom
Time: 70 min.

Summary:
We can??(TM)t understand everything because the maya energy is bewildering us and our senses are imperfect. However, by taking knowledge from the supreme source we can understand everything.

Questions:

• What about those who don??(TM)t get the operunity to access this knowledge?
• Isn??(TM)t spirituality in everyone anyway? Why accept this process?
• So whatever Krishna says you have to accept without question, right?
• But Krishna knows everything that we are going to do, how do we have any independent choice? Krishna knows that Arjuna is going to fight and is simultaneously trying to illicit his surrender. How is there free will?
• Is there a point at which we can understand Krishna completely?
• Is there a capacity, so some people can understand Krishna more than others?
• Will the mahabharata happen again in the next yuga cycle?
• Will the BG will be the same in the next cycle?
• Are people??(TM)s souls continous throughout the cycles?
• Since Krishna is outside of time and the souls merge into him between universal annialiations, is it possible to be reborn in a time previous to the current time?
• Doesn??(TM)t it get to a point were we have to accept things with blind faith?
• Can you convey knowledge and realiation in such a way that people that aren??(TM)t following the process can understand?
• When we reach the highest destination we will have a form, right. So what will we look like?
• In paintings we see that Krishna likes a certain type of clothes, but those are just the clothes of ancient India.
• But there surely was a time when people didn??(TM)t dress like that? This is just a small part of the cycle.
• BG does give a complete picture, but my questions are always about details and I can never get detailed answers?
• So, if I did not take part in any chanting, there is no way that someone could impart the message to me?
• Can you explain something to me without me having to realize it myself?
• How far do you feel you??(TM)ve gotten?
• Don??(TM)t you get to a point in KC when you understand the way everything works, but you say it??(TM)s infinite.
• I read that a grihastra can be as good as a sannyasi, is that right?
• How long have you been practicing?

27|1Ahead of the rest of the travel diary: here the pictures from my recent trip. Locations are as follows:

• Swansea: pages 1 - 2
• Weimar: pages 2 - 6
• Berlin: pages 6 - 9
• Leipzig: pages 9 - 11

27|1Ahead of the rest of the travel diary: here the pictures from my recent trip. Locations are as follows:

• Swansea: pages 1 - 2
• Weimar: pages 2 - 6
• Berlin: pages 6 - 9
• Leipzig: pages 9 - 11

Gurudeva was riding in a small Toyota in Los Angeles. Mukunda and Carana Renu were in the back seats. They were stopped at a traffic light when a SUV slammed into the back of the car. The driver had taken his eyes off the road and didn??(TM)t notice the red light and stopped car. The SUV hit them so hard that you could read its license plate number on the rear bumper of the Toyota. Thankfully no one was seriously injured. No visible human damage.

Taking advice from David (a qualified nurse), I tried to arrange a doctor??(TM)s appointment for Gurudeva??(TM)s whiplash, but failed on the first few attempts. Damned be NHS bureaucracy!

Cooked:

• wild/rice
• spinach salad with carrot strips and tomatoes
• french green beans
• mixed vegetable curry with coconut milk
• split mung dal soup
• broccoli and pea samosas
• peppermint tea

(GD??(TM)s comment: Hare Krishna ??¦)

I ironed a whole load of washing. I also re-scheduled a discussion with the various people that come to Vedicsoc. It had to be arranged around the only doctor??(TM)s appointment I could get at such short notice. A private doctor.

We took a taxi to a nearby private hospital. They, unlike the NHS, they were happy to see (paying) patients. Their doctors give generous 15 minute consultations (10 minutes is normal), or will even talk to a patient for 30 minutes (for double the price). All the staff were smiling and friendly - for good money, no doubt.

GD gave me some advice on how to conquer the PhD interviews:

I told the tale of my barely passing my end-of-year interview.

GD:

??oeDon??(TM)t see everything so negatively, the main thing is you passed, right? They are sharks. Don??(TM)t be a submissive momma??(TM)s boy, they won??(TM)t appreciate. Take a course in ps ychology of sales, law (both salesmen and lawyers need to anticipate possible objections and present arguments to make the sale/defined their clients), assertiveness, presentation, debating and/or negotiation.??

Other snippets of advice:

??oeIt??(TM)s not a teacher??(TM)s job to adopt the paradigm of the student. The teacher opens the student up to new paradigms. If someone asks for complex details, first give them the overall framework, only then do they have something to slot the complex details into. For example: you don??(TM)t entertain someone without knowledge who asks a really intricate computer question. They wouldn??(TM)t benefit from, or even understand the answer.??