John Bart King

Living near Philadelphia, I was thrilled to find out that John Bart King was the fastest bowler produced by the United States. His statistics in first class cricket (the only type he could play) are enviable. You can read more about him at wiki which is the source of this post.

Philadelphia was very prominent in cricket during the early 20th century. There were many cricket clubs that still exist - Merion, Germantown, Belmont, Philadelphia.

Career statistics

Competition FC
Matches 65
Runs scored 2134
Batting average 20.51
100s/50s 1/8
Top score 113*
Balls bowled 13729
Wickets 415
Bowling average 15.65
5 wickets in innings 38
10 wickets in match 11
Best bowling 10/53
Catches/stumpings 67/–

Source: cricketarchive, 18 August

Michael Holding on Pace Bowling

West Indian Michael Holding was one of the four quartets of Pace Bowling during the great 1970s for the team. He was known for his silky action and devastating effect. In an interview, he said about the use of helmets and protective gear and the effect on batting - 'A lot of batsmen today, their technique is so faulty that if they were to have that 30 years ago, they'd be dead.' Read more of his interview.

Dealing with stress - use your History

When confronted with stress, it is mostly a flight-or-fight response. We tend to react and do something right away hoping it will resolve the issue. This approach very likely won't be successful or at least it won't leave you with a sense of satisfaction in you having dealt with the problem correctly. I am basing this on my history of course. After decades of dealing with situations, I have realized that there is no substitute to ultra-calmness first. Take all the factors in, let them sink in. Give it time - no need to rush to action. Over a period of time (it could be hours or even days), you will come up with alternatives. It may appear that the first or second solution that comes up seems perfect. But hang on to it for some time and sit or even sleep over it. When you are back to a perfect sense of normality, you will realize the best course of action.

Secondly, think back of all the situations you have dealt with - the hundreds and thousands of them. Most likely, like most people, you would have gotten past those with success. That should give you confidence that you will be able to handle any new situation well. Just remember this fact and let sit/sleep over the issue. Thoughts will materialize and lead you to action.

Life saver Mudra

The Apan Vayu Mudra is considered a life saver mudra. According to Keshav Dev, the finger position can have a first-aid function when you use it at the first sign of a heart attack.

To do this mudra, fold your index finger so that its end presses against the base/ball of the thumb. Then bring the thumb, index and middle finger so that their tips press against each other. Let the little finger stretch out.

As Reflexology believes that conditions of the body are influenced by the different parts of the foot, Accu-pressure believes different parts of the hand influences different part of the body. As such having healthy hands is an indication of a healthy body. You need to be able to keep the movements of the fingers through your life.

The basal area between the middle and ring fingers is where you can influence the health of your breathing and frontal sinusitis. Gently massage this area with your thumb for 1-3 minutes to feel the effect.

To read more about Mudras and their benefits, check out Gertrud Hirschi's wonderful book 'Yoga in your hands'.

Timeliness in communication

There are many things we bring to the table as a Migration consultant. Our primary goal is to help the client succeed in their migration efforts. In the end we want to see the task completed successfully, on-time and within budget. We achieve this more often than not. However at the end of a project, the feeling you get whether or not you did a good job tells it all. Did you do everything you could in your powers to achieve that goal? Could any of the delays been avoided if you had taken timely action, etc.

In working with clients for many years, I have found no matter what specific consultancy you provide and how good your at it, it won’t help (to get that feeling of satisfaction) if you don’t follow some basic professionalism tenets. One key trait that must be part of the character of a consultant is Responsiveness in Communication.

Client needs:

I am not talking about good communication skills. That is essential. I am talking about what is your SLA when it comes to you communicating with the client. When a client sends out an email about an issue, how soon can you respond? If you cannot respond within an hour, many clients view a slack (what is he doing? This is so important to me, etc, etc.). Especially if you are 100% on the project, you need to be in touch with the client even sooner, at least acknowledge the email and say you are working on it. Nothing can be more reassuring for the client. Imagine a Marketing lead user who has to deal with 100-200 users and they are migrating and have a host of issues they are coming across. As the issues pile up, it reassures them tremendously knowing the MC knows about the issue.

Secondly, it helps them more if you state when you can get back on the issue with an update when you first acknowledge the receipt of the issue. Leaving that open might work with some clients, but as a professional, it is again our opportunity to help re-assure the client that we are indeed taking care of their issues.

Thirdly, don’t forget to get back to the client on the issue within the promised time. Stick to the timeline you mentioned and provide an update, whether it is resolved or not. Many times, you won’t be able to troubleshoot the issue yourself and will need to rely on others (team members, Product, Support, etc). It is important to let the client know that you are engaging help as necessary. That message adds to their confidence level in your and Aprimo level of resolving an issue. They do understand that you don’t know the solution to every problem. What matters is if you can get others to assist you in that resolution in a timely manner.

Slack in any of the above three, on a repeated basis, undermines your ability to make you a trusted advisor.

Internal team needs:

Responsiveness to communicate need not be limited to those with client. It matters even within the team. Do you respond on a timely manner to your peer’s or Manager’s requests. Have you responded to an email within 2 hours at least 95% of the time? If not, you might be taking on too much yourself and that hurts your ability in supporting the groups.

Things like filling out time sheets on time, submitting time sheets at the end of the 15 days, putting in your status reports every week, etc. are in a way being responsive with your communication. Remember that someone else is waiting on you to get his/her job done. Most likely they are working over the weekend to finish up reports for others to use. How much do you hate to wait on others when you know you can get the job done in a few minutes? It is not a good use of time to wait for anything that we shouldn’t.

In the end, being responsive determines how much you care about the needs about your client and your fellow team members. It sort of defines you in the eyes of others.

Yoga at Heebner Park

Namaste,

Yoga at the Park starts Sunday, May 31st at 7:00 AM at Heebner Park in Worcester. You will find the park on Rt. 363, 1 mile south of Skippack pike.The practice will be at the Gazebo which you can find at the back of the park. Start walking to the back of the park once you park.

These Gentle Hatha Yoga classes will be for 1 hour duration.These classes will continue till Labor day weekend every Sunday, except for announced breaks.

All are welcome. Please bring your own mats. Wear comfortabe clothing that lets you stretch and scratch :). Please pass on the message to anyone who can benefit. Look forward to seeing you in one of the classes.

If you are new to Heebner park, you can check out some pictures I took at HeebnerPark. You will see pictures of the Gazebo also where we will be practicising.

Mudras for joint pains

You might be surprised. How can such a simple thing as pressing the finger tips help ease/cure joint aches. Hold your surprise. Just try these.

I came back from playing 3 hours of Sunday morning Cricket last week. I hadn't played cricket in decades! Only a month back I got a taste of it in Portland, Oregon. My body was sore. A hot shower and an afternoon nap took away most of the pain. However, my left hip kept telling even two days after. When I bowl, I shift weight onto my left leg and hence my hip takes a moment of tremendous increase in load. This happened about 30 times for the four overs I bowled. In addition, running between wickets on wicked, uneven ground didn't help.

I was reading Gertrud Hirsch Mudras book. There was this Joint Mudra. What you do is press the thumb and the Ring fingers of the right hand together gently. Press the thumb and the middle finger of the left hand gently. The other fingers are stretched out. She said her joint pains, once determined as chronic, went away after months of practice. For me trying this mudra for 5 minutes did the trick. I tried this is bed before going to sleep! Next morning there was no remnants of any pain. While I can't say for sure the mudra did the trick or was it just enough time after the cricket, there is no harm in trying. In fact, I keep trying this mudra as often as I can.

Yoga for allergies

Typically people look at asanas and breathing to help allergies. While pranayama can have a positive effect on overall health, the almost unknown part of yoga to the general new-comer is the mudras. Mudras are symbols made with hands and fingers. There are also some mudras that involve the whole body. More than symbols, there is a scientific reasoning why Mudras are beneficial and explains why Yogis placed a great emphasis on these. The nerves that run through the body ends in the tips of the limbs. We all know that Reflexology works on the belief or reason that these nerve endings in the foot can be used to influence parts of the body/mind. Similarly, the same nerve endings in the fingers and hands have such effect. Some of the mudras as used in other health techniques but called something else. More about that in another post. For allergies, apart from other precautions such as less stressful routine, etc. Mudras form a great tool to combat them. The following mudras are effective combating allergies specifically frontal sinusitis.

Varuna Mudra: Here you bend the little finger of your right hand until its tip touches the ball of the thumb. Place the thumb on top of the finger. Then place the left thumb on top of the right thumb and encircle the left hand around the right hand. Remember the finger tips needs to be pressed gently enough so you feel the energy in there.

Kubera Mudra: Here, with each hand, you press the tips of the thumb, index and middle finger together. The ring and little finger press into the middle of the hand.

Mahasirs Mudra: Similar to Kubera Mudra but keep the little finger extended.

Bhramara Mudra: Called the Bee mudra. Place the index finger into the thumb fold, and the tip of the thumb on the side of your middle fingernail. Extend the ring and little finger.

Practice each of these mudras for about 5 minutes.

The overall health can be gauged by how healthy the fingers are and the range of movements in them. As we age, it is important to keep every part of the body active. Mudras are not only a great way to keep the hands and fingers active, but they had astounding health benefits as well. This has been proven in many researches. Gertrud Hirschi, in her wonderful book, 'Mudras: Yoga in your Hands' quotes Keshav Das many times in such research.

Invalid format error - Pandigital 10.4 inch frame

The 4GB flash drive wasn't big enough to hold all our photos. So I ordered a 16GB Kingston drive and transferred all the photos to it. I eagerly plugged in the flash drive into the frame. The first picture comes up fine, but there is a green-crossed small rectangle in the left bottom of the screen. Oh-ho! That isn't good, I think. Expectedly the next picture never loads up and I see a dim Invalid format error.

I check the flash drive thinking it maybe good to format it. We can only format it as a FAT32 system. Now, this isn't the latest format for hard drives, the NTFS is. NTFS is also faster. I download an utility that changes the file system to NTFS and the DPF doesn't even show the first picture. These frames use a much cheaper processor than your PCs and no wonder, they can do so little.

I change the file system back to FAT32. I read that this system has limitations with file name and length. So I edited all the folders not have spaces, quotes, etc. Same issue - photos don't display. I then created sub-folders and limited each folder only to contain only 100 objects/files at a time.

I downloaded another utility - XYPlorer - to search files that aren't only JPEG. This neat utility can find files based on regular expressions. Of course there are many such files - *.ini, *.alb, *.this and *.that. I removed all of these to no success.

All above takes about 2 hours. The frame would shows the pictures okay when I was using a 4GB flash drive. So I retained only those files that were in that flash drive and removed rest of them, back them to my laptop. The photos show okay.

I then transferred one folder at a time to the flash drive from my backup thinking I will hit that folder that contains some file causing the Invalid Format error. This takes about another 2 hours to load and test. After all folders from the backup are back on the flash drive, the frame is functioning fine - shows every photo okay.

So which files caused the error? I don't know even know - bummer. But looks like copying the files again did something good.

PanImage PI1002DW 10.4-Inch Digital Picture Frame

After returning the HP 820A4 frame, it took me a while to buy me another digital picture frame. Not that there aren't many, but none of them are deemed reliable enough. Even the Sony's have quite many negative feed backs despite their high cost and positive reviews. So I didn't want to spend too much money anyway to end up with a clunker a year down the line.

Costco had this great deal on the Pandigital 10.4" frame with 1GB internal memory, I thought I will give it a try. The coupon would reduce the price by $40 and my cost would be $99. Not bad for a 10.4" frame with 1 GB memory. This frame also had a dark brown/black frame that suited our family room. The display resolution is 800x600; you need a 800x600 at least for those 8"; on this bigger frame the pictures look sharp and bright. The frame has had wireless adaptability i.e., with an adapter it could go wireless. Costco also has this great deal - you can return almost anything within 90 days for a full refund; enough time to test out a $99 product.

The frame is pretty impressive. The colors are great though I wouldn't go gaga over it. There is a brightness control knob on the side. It can take either a USB flash drive or a mini-USB one. So I could use one for the wireless adapter and the other for a secondary source.

The random transitions are among the best I have seen even among PC screen savers. The frame can also play avi files and music mp3 files - nice, but not my requirement now. I just want to view our photos sitting and biting dust for a long time. Common, we haven't even seen our wedding photos for such a long time.

The menu system is fine; I am not so annoyed as some others are. The remote is tiny. The frame doesn't immediately respond to the click, making you click once more. But, don't do that as it will result in a default action on the screen to come up.

One biggie this frame doesn't have is auto-orientation. Many frames boast this, but I haven't see one that can perfectly accomplish the task. So, I have decided to live w/o this feature.

The remote doesn't have a ON/Off button which is a second minor nuisance. However, you can turn the frame on with a switch and run a schedule so that you don't have to worry about turning on and off reaching behind the frame always.

Overall I think it is a great bang for the buck given the size and features, notwithstanding the lack of Auto-orientation and a remote power on/off switch.