Raam Dev

Hello, future.

An Overnight Journey to Bombay and Painting Darkness with Light

The fully booked train rolled into Mumbai Central Train Station at four o'clock in the morning but even with nearly all its passengers on-board, it was eerily quiet inside. As the train slowed to a halt, the passengers, only half awake or still sleeping, slowly moved about like zombies, speaking in a mumbled tone and quietly shuffling through the narrow, dimly lit isles collecting their luggage.

I was lucky to be on this train. Sixteen hours earlier, I learned that the last bus to Karwar, the town where the train to Mumbai departed from, had left Gokarna earlier that morning.

After asking a random travel agent, I discovered that my only option was to take a forty-five minute bus ride to Ankola (a bigger town further north) and from there catch a bus to Karwar. Continue reading →

Video: Always Live Mindful and Conscious

[Note to E-Mail and RSS readers: You may need to click through to the site to view the embedded video.]

Join me as I cook dinner and contemplate the need for always living mindful and conscious. The book mentioned in the video is The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (aff). It's a fantastic book and if you haven't read it, I really recommend you pick up a copy.

Living mindful and conscious is a choice that you can make at any moment, even this moment right now. It's not magic and it's not something you need to have special powers to do. Try it right now. Become aware of how you're sitting, your posture; how your neck feels; relax your jaw and mouth; take a deep breath and collect yourself.

It doesn't take a few hours, or even a few minutes. This takes a few seconds. No matter how busy you are, you do have time to do this exercise. And by doing it, you're going to improve your entire day. Or at the very least, this moment.

Reader Survey and Travel Update: Bed Bugs and Booked Trains

A few nights ago I discovered bed bugs in my mattress. It was my first experience with bed bugs so my first stop was, of course, the Wikipedia page on Bed Bugs. Thankfully, they aren't known to transmit any diseases.

Only a few weeks ago I joked about being happy there were no bed bugs in the cheap cockroach-ridden hotel I was staying at in Ujire. It looks like I spoke too soon.

I requested clean sheets and switched from sleeping on the mattress to sleeping on the floor. Some of them still find me, but it's a whole lot better than the mattress.

Starting this nomadic lifestyle of cheap travel, I knew it was bound to happen sometime. As I've said before, they're just bugs! Continue reading →

Discovering Sandals Made of Gold and the Link Between Frugality and Gratefulness

Sandals Made of Gold

It was my first day in Gokarna, a small beach town on the west coast of India. Getting here had been an all-day adventure of trains, buses with flat tires, and a sketchy taxi driver who had us switch cars halfway to the hotel (he told me his driver was picking us up... I thought he was the driver!). However, after spending several months away from any large bodies of water, I was looking forward to enjoying the beach. Continue reading →

21 Ways to Improve Your Daily Health

Spending time in the gym or following a strict diet are great, but they still take place within the confines of our daily life. Improving our health is not difficult, or for that matter even challenging, but it does require making small adjustments to our daily lives.

All the little things we do throughout the day may seem insignificant, but they add up to big changes. Here are twenty-one ways that you can start improving your health today and create a healthier, more pain-free you for tomorrow. Continue reading →

How to Use the New Facebook Like Button

Facebook recently (within the past few weeks) released a new feature that allows for "Liking" practically anything on the web. This is pretty damn powerful, and apparently in less than a week of its availability, 50,000 websites thought so too.

Have you seen these new Facebook Like buttons at the bottom of some blog posts? Here's what they look like:

Initially, I glossed over them assuming they were the same thing as the "Become a Fan" buttons (which are now, confusingly, also "Like" buttons). However, these individual Like buttons are specifically for liking the blog post itself.

When you click on the Like button at the bottom of a blog post, an entry gets added to your Facebook timeline stating that you liked the post (assuming you're logged into Facebook). For example, here you can see that I "Liked" one of my blog posts, The Pursuit of Knowledge:

6 Reasons why all bloggers need to add this button to their posts

If the potential of this Like button isn't already obvious, let me give you 6 reasons why you should be adding it to your own blog posts right now:

Facebook has over 425 million users; chances are that many of your readers use the network. If you're already using a Retweet button for Twitter, there's no reason you shouldn't be using the Facebook Like button.
The Like button is familiar to Facebook users. They already know what it does and they've probably used it several times on Facebook. This familiarity brings comfort and increases the chances they will use it.
Liking a post is a seamless operation for readers already logged into Facebook; one click and it's done!
By liking a post, the reader tells all his or her Facebook friends about your blog post, greatly amplifying your blog's exposure.
If other Facebook friends have already Liked the post, their names will be displayed next to the button. This creates a sense of trust and community and increases the chances your reader will also Like the post (creating even more exposure).
You can configure the Like button to show not only the names of the friends, but also their profile pictures! This further amplifies the comfort level of your reader and encourages them to share your blog post.

One other thing to note as a blogger is that the Like button isn't tied to your Facebook account or Fan page. When a reader likes your blog post, the message that shows up on the readers Facebook timeline links directly back to your blog. This is great because the potential for exposure is huge -- a reader doesn't need to be your Fan or friend on Facebook to share your content!

How to integrate the Facebook Like button on a WordPress blog

For WordPress blogs, I prefer adding the Like button using a WordPress plugin like this one. However if you just want to add the Like button to your theme manually, you can drop this snippet of code in your theme's single.php file, just after the line that includes the the_content(); function:

[html wraplines="true"]<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>&layout=standard&show_faces=false&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:60px;"></iframe>[/html]

For more information, including extra parameters for modifying the behavior of the button, check out the Facebook Developers Documentation page.

You are an Artist

Everything you do is art.

From the moment you wake up until the moment you sleep, you're creating art.

Brushing your teeth? Art. Putting on makeup? Art. Getting dressed? Art. Eating breakfast? Art. Kissing a loved one? Art. Driving to work? Art. Doing your work? Absolutely art.

Speaking to a friend? Art. Walking to lunch? Art. Reading email? Art. Writing email? Art. Browsing the web? Art. Daydreaming? Art. Brainstorming? Art.

Every single thing you do is art.

You cannot escape it. Whether you choose to believe it or not is irrelevant. The very fact that you're human makes you an artist. You have the gift of conscious awareness, the gift of choice, the gift of creativity. Continue reading →

A Vision for Life on Earth

I have a vision for a world where everyone is healthy and educated. A curious world of independent, open-minded, knowledge-seeking individuals who always strive to improve the world around them. A world where no one is bored, stressed, or unhappy. A world where people are compassionate to all life and sensitive to Mother Nature.

A sustainable world where people embrace simplicity and recognize that physical things can only bring temporary happiness and unnecessary waste. A world where people explore the inner wonders of their own being and see it as the real final frontier.

A world where entertainment and joy come from spending time with loved ones; where improving ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually is a never-ending, lifelong endeavor; and where everyone realizes that happiness comes from within and not from an external source. Continue reading →

Video: My First Night in a Cheap Indian Hotel (Sleeping with Unwelcome Visitors)

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My first night in a cheap Indian hotel was not without its surprises. As this was my first experience, I somewhat overreacted to the visitors. In hindsight, the unexpected visitors are to be expected in these places. Continue reading →

Restricting WordPress Tags by Category

Have you ever needed to display category tags? If you want to only display the tags associated with a specific category, unfortunately the built-in WordPress functions will not suffice. Why such basic functionality has to this day not been added to WordPress is beyond me.

Thankfully, after much frustration and research, I have found a working solution using a plugin called Sensitive Tag Cloud. You can visit the plugin home page, or download the plugin from the official WordPress Plugin page.

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, access the configuration page (Appearance -> SensitiveTagCloud) and ensure that the "Restricted to current category" option is enabled.

Now to display the tags for a specific category when you're browsing that category, edit the archives.php file for your theme and find the section related to browsing by category:

          <?php /* If this is a category archive */ if (is_category()) { ?>
                <h1 class="pagetitle">Category: <?php single_cat_title(); ?></h1>

Now, right below that second line, insert the following function to call SensitiveTagCloud:

<?php
  if( function_exists("stc_widget") )
    stc_widget();
?>

You can also wrap the function in a div if you want to style it. Here's how my archive.php file looks now (minus the unrelated sections of code):

          <?php /* If this is a category archive */ if (is_category()) { ?>
                <h1 class="pagetitle">Browsing: <?php single_cat_title(); ?></h1>
<div style="background:#EAF3F3 none repeat scroll 0 0; border: 1px solid #D0D8D8; padding: 20px;">
<?php
  if( function_exists("stc_widget") )
    stc_widget();
?>
</div>

And with those changes, here's how my Category pages now look:

This allows for browsing the tags associated with a specific category, while eliminating irrelevant tags. I write on a variety of topics, so there are a lot of tags that are unrelated or that would be out of context. For example, the "Blogging" tag in the Personal Development category would likely mean something different than the same tag in the Technology category (the latter having more to do with technical things like this article on WordPress).

The First Step to Making a Difference

Do you want to stand out and make a difference in the world? Are you tired of feeling less successful than those around you? Do you want to be somebody?

If so, the first thing you'll need to do is stop being like everybody else and start focusing on what makes you, you. If you try to be like everybody, you'll end up being nobody.

We are all unique; each and every one of us has a history that is uniquely different from everyone else. None of us have the exact same past. The combination of things you've experienced, people you've met, choices you've made, and tough situations you've been through are one hundred percent unique to you.

Your history -- your past experiences, successes, and mistakes -- make you uniquely capable of handling specific situations and solving specific problems in the world. You are so unique in fact, that the only path in life for you to take is your path. Continue reading →

Frugal Travel Report for April 2010

This is the second in a series of reports detailing my travel expenses during a six-month sustainable travel trip through India, Vietnam, and Nepal, as outlined in The Plan: 6 Months, 3 Countries, and $3,000.

Frugal Travel Reports
March 2010 (includes Pre-Travel expenses)
April 2010
May 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010

While its only been a few days since I released the March 2010 report, I want to get on schedule and release a new report at the start of each month.

During the month of April I spent more time in hotels and ate at restaurants more frequently than cooking for myself. The increased lodging and food expenses reflect this trend.

The entire month was spent living in Ujire, making new friends, working on my laptop at the office in town, and exploring nearby places like Jamalabad and Moodabidri. Continue reading →

For the Love of the Command Line

One of the reasons I fell in love with the command line is that it makes getting stuff done fast and straightforward. It's a world of pure information and constant activity and one that requires only the keyboard; your hands don't move back and forth between the keyboard and a mouse hunting for graphical elements on the screen and wasting valuable time.

The command line has so many advantages over the GUI. There are no annoying dialog boxes, no GUI quirks, and no frozen windows. If you want to automate something, you write a script. All POSIX-compliant systems have nearly identical tools and their options and configurations are likely to be the same. When you're unsure about something, you simply pull up the man page or read the through the documentation to help you along.

The world of the command line is a world for tinkerers, for curious people, and for those with a desire to do more.

Communicate with Humans not Statistics

Have you noticed that the combination of global news, social media, and information and communication overload have dumbed down our senses? They've shifted the focus of our communication, whether that communication occurs at home, at work, at a party or networking event, or even on a blog with our readers.

Instead of talking one-on-one, we have meetings, conference calls, chat rooms, blogs, podcasts, and newsletters. We're forced to communicate with an ever growing audience. We try to communicate with everybody and as a result we genuinely speak to no one.

Communication is becoming de-humanized

Joseph Stalin said, "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic." Unfortunately, these days the same is true for communication: Interaction with one person is a conversation, interaction with ten million is a broadcast. Continue reading →

Lessons from a Crab: The Right Path in Life isn't Always Obvious or Easy

On the way to the remote farmhouse where I'm staying in Ujire, India, there is a small stream that crosses the road. It's a beautiful and calm place, surrounded by dense forest with just enough opening in the canopy to let a few rays of light through.

Big and beautiful butterflies are abundant, floating high above on black and yellow wings. An endless array of birds, their exact whereabouts hidden by the thick greenery, call out and sing in an acoustic dance.

A short distance upstream, there is a pool of water that collects underneath a stone ledge, measuring about twenty feet wide by four feet tall. Feeding the pool, a small waterfall runs in, adding to the surreal beauty of the place. Continue reading →

Frugal Travel Report for March 2010

Frugal Travel Reports
March 2010 (includes Pre-Travel expenses)
April 2010
May 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010

***

As promised in my previous post, The Plan: 6 Months, 3 Countries, and $3,000, I will begin doing monthly travel reports that detail how I spend my budget each month as I travel through Asia. This monthly report may become a regular long-term thing, but for now I'm committing to doing them for at least the next six months.

My initial six-month journey has a very tight budget: $250 USD per month. I already outlined some of my first-month expenses in a previous post, but this report is a more formalized overview and explains how I actually lived on such a budget.

Frugal travel involves more than simply setting a budget and then looking for the cheapest places to stay. It also means traveling more slowly, always accepting invitations and offers to stay with friends, and choosing to have a more authentic experience by living like the locals.

Without the generosity of friends in India, I'm not sure I would have made the first month's budget. However, I don't have friends everywhere (at least not yet!), so once I move on from my current location in Ujire, meeting this budget will become a lot more challenging.

This first month was an opportunity to see just how realistic my $250/mo budget was and I'm happy to report that it's absolutely realistic! Continue reading →

The Plan: 6 Months, 3 Countries, and $3000

I'm currently about a month and a half into my life-changing, soul searching, press-the-reset-button-on-life trip to India and I realized that I have yet to announce my plan for the next five months.

The word "plan" may be a little too concrete though; it's more like a rough outline. When I decided to uproot my life and switch to the lifestyle I had always dreamed of living, I knew that I needed some direction.

After all, how am I supposed to book a flight if I don't know where I'm going? Continue reading →

Sprout Your Ideas by Watering Them With Confidence

Have you ever had an idea that you immediately pushed aside because you felt that you weren't good enough to follow through with it?

Perhaps you thought you didn't have the skills necessary to make the idea a reality or you felt that you'd end up producing something that you thought was crap.

Stop.

You're better than that. You're ten times more capable than you think.

Ideas are like seeds. Just as a seed needs water to grow, ideas need confidence to sprout. If you stop watering the idea before it has time to grow (or worse, not water it at all), how will you ever know its potential?

Just as a single seed can become an enormous tree, every idea has the potential to change the world and drop seeds of its own. If you don't even give your ideas a chance, you've condemned them all to failure.

Would you rather give hope to your ideas or condemn them all to failure?

Be confident in your ability to make every idea a reality.

It's OK to stop putting effort towards an idea when you've genuinely recognized that it's not working, but don't give up before you've even started watering it.

We need more people who are confident enough to take their ideas forward. The world needs you to give hope to your ideas and believe in yourself long enough to take at least take the first steps.

You have incredible potential. All those things you believe you're not capable of doing are only true because you tell yourself so.

The next time you have an idea, give it a chance. Water it a little and see what happens.

Dabbling in Logo Design

I'm a minimalist at heart. For the longest time I refused to use anything but plain text for the header of my personal blog. However, after realizing the importance branding and differentiating myself, I decided to come up with some type of logo.

All of this started with the idea of making eye's out of the two a's in my name. I opened Photoshop, created a new document, added some text and began dabbling.

I thought it would be interesting to show the progression of the logo as I dabbled with the design. You'll notice how I go full circle from minimalistic, to busy and crowded, and then back to minimalistic.

Here's the one that started it all. It started with the idea of making eye's out of the two a's in my name. At this point I wasn't even treating the logo idea seriously.

This is where I started to take the idea a little more seriously and began mixing in my tag line.

I played with the Photoshop custom shapes tool and found some grass.

I took the custom shapes a little too far; looks too busy.

Realizing that the green grass looks a lot like hair, I moved the face away from the letters.

Not liking how the tag line was spread all over the place, I brought it together at the bottom.

My perfectionist self couldn't be happy with the hand-drawn smile. So, using the same font as I used for my name, I created a parentheses and turned it on its side for the smile. I also changed the eyes using a hard-rounded brush instead of a soft-rounded brush.

For the final revision, I tweaked the tag line and replaced the commas with dot separators.

Design is definitely not one of my strong points, but I'm happy with the way the final logo came out. In fact, it's probably the best and most creative logo I've ever come up with. 🙂

Video: Eating a Cashew Fruit

[Note to email and RSS readers: You may need to click through to the website to view the video.]

Have you ever wondered what a cashew looks like straight from the tree? The farm where I'm staying in India has dozens of cashew trees growing (they're harvested for good money).

One day, while exploring the farm, a cashew fruit dropped from a tree and almost hit me on the head (maybe if it actually hit me I would have discovered a universal law). Continue reading →