What Women Want

This is an old and a difficult question. I guess thousands of men hit their heads on stone to find a rational answer to this. Jacques Lacan, a well known french philosopher, says the following story regarding this.

"Let's imagine a person X is sitting alone in a restaurant and a couple enters from the door. X notices the couple. Whom from the couple (man or woman) will X quickly stare at? If X is a man, of course he will stare at the woman. There's no question about it. However, if X is a woman, upon which one do you think her eyes will quickly land on? The man? Not really. She too will check out the woman. But why? Admittedly, and understandably, the woman's object of desire is the man. However, that itself does not drive her gaze. What she is really interested on is the woman whose object of desire is the same man. Who is the woman who wants this guy? Why does she want him? This is what drives a woman's gaze."

Confusing enough? However I think one cannot blame the author because of the inexplicable nature of the subject. I read this in an article written by Lacan some time back and repeated it in my words. In my experience I can say that Lacan was particularly correct here. 

Inspired by many experiences, I created the following story to express my opinion on this. It is described in the form of an experiment.

Go to a guy and offer him a pencil. He might accept it with gratitude or refuse it giving a reason. Pretty simple. Now approach a girl and offer the pencil. Most probably she will refuse it with some reason. Now you have to say this. "Fine, that other girl loves pencils. I'll give it to her then". At this point I can predict the girl's response precisely. "No, No; Don't give it to her. Give it to me."

The story might sound silly, but I suggest you (especially if you are a guy) to put it in parallel to your life experiences and check.

Although I'm not smart enough to come up with a satisfactory answer to the original question, I think this post can be ended with the following useful conclusion.

"A woman wants something only if she knows that another woman also wants it"

අසංතෘප්ත

පුපුරා යන වළාකුලෙක
උතුරා යන ගං මෝයක
දැඩිවී එන රළ පහරක
උසුලා නොහෙනා භීතිය
හැඳින්නේද නිවැරදි ලෙස


වියළී ගිය තුරුපතකට
වැහැරී ගිය දැව කඳකට
විහිඟුම් අරුතක් එක්කොට
සතුට සෙවිය හැක මිහිපිට


මල් කෙමියක රොන් අවුලක
පීදී එන ලිය ගොමුවක
නුරා පිරුනු හැන්දෑවක
සතුට තිබෙන බව කියන්න
සතුට දුටුව බව කියන්න
එපා සතුට මෙහි ගෙනෙන්න

Smart with a smartphone

Recently I started using an iPhone 4 as we're into the business of iPhone apps development. I really like the technology stack used for developing iPhone apps. However, I was wandering whether there is a real value of the phone in day-to-day life compared to the relatively high cost of the device. Ability to check mails any time, take a picture and shoot a video, listening to music while on the road and sparing otherwise unproductive time engaged in an interesting activity (read a book, play a game) sound interesting, but do not account for the high price. There should be lot more uses for a smartphone in the current day's life. Gradually I started downloading more and more apps and inventing ways of integrating them to my way of living which, as I think, improved my quality of life at least by a small fraction. Following are my favorite apps and how I practically use them.

1. Notes

Now I do not borrow papers to meetings, trainings, etc. "Notes" app in iPhone provides a simple interface to type important stuff and recall easily. However, I need more integration to this such as an easy search and link with my mind maps.

2. SimpleMind 

A great mind mapping app to quickly put thoughts into mind maps. Mind mapping is a very productive modern way of organizing and recording knowledge for easier recall and processing. I expect more from mind mapping apps. It will be really nice to have ability to combine mind maps and selectively show / hide content. A community mind map may be a great idea to share knowledge.

3. Mom Planner

Simple app to write tasks on start of day and mark as and when its done. Before using the iPhone I used to write down the tasks (both professional and personal) I'm supposed to complete within the day in a paper. This is a very effective way of managing daily tasks due to 2 reasons. First, it helps you to remind the tasks. Second, something written is always more effective and likely to be done than one just kept in mind. Now the smartphone provides an easier interface for this with many more capabilities than a paper.

4. Daily Deeds

This is an app targeted on people who want to develop little good habits and track the improvements. You can track what you did each day in favor of the new good habit and keep a record in a goal-oriented fashion.

5. Google maps

Very useful to find places when driving. One flaw is that the places in Sri Lanka are not properly geo-coded yet, so you cannot enter an address and find the geographic location correctly. However, it is still useful for finding roads.

6. Eurocenter maps

This is a map application we developed for offline maps. Great when there is no internet connection. In addition it has the capability to record paths you traversed. I tend to forget places I visit just once, so this is really smart functionality.

7. Flash light 

Usage is obvious.

8. Calorie counter

Useful to find the approximate calorie count in restaurant food. This might be more useful in a country with a better food culture where you get exactly what you ordered in a restaurant. However, it is still useful in Sri Lanka too, to get a rough idea about the caloric load of food before ordering in a good restaurant.

9. Dictionary

I use a normal dictionary app called "English" and a wordnet dictionary app named "Wordweb". Both are highly useful. The wordnet dictionary helps to view the semantic relationships between words in the form of a taxonomy.

10. RunKeeper

This is an app to record the duration, length and calorie consumption in jogging sessions. It uses GPS to record the path and provides a simple interface to save the data both locally and into the web. Most interesting part is that it is done as a social networking activity so that I get connected with the other guys living in geographically closer locations who use the same app. You see the progression of each other's activities. This is a great way to motivate yourself to go for a workout.

11. Knots

A quick guide for tying various knots.

Although there are hundreds of thousands of apps available, only a very small fraction of them is useful for a particular person's life obviously. It highly depends on his or her interests and the way of living. I'm eager to know how others use smartphones productively in their lives. Currently I use only utility apps, but the business apps can add a lot too. Apparently smartphones together with social networking will revolutionize the people's lives. It is logical to expect to see more and more people using smartphones as an essential tool in their daily lives. The prices should go down and the data connections have to be more ubiquitous. Meanwhile, I will try do my homework to be ready for that new shift.

C++ Rocks!!

Windows 8 is on the horizon
while sad .Net fades away
Java fallen into devils hands
The devil they worship as Oracle

I'm still not completely hopeless
In the forsaken land of collapsed giants
'cos I'm under the shadow of a behemoth
whoz fertile from gone to unborn

Immortal native to every platform
where others come and go
They got no druthers but only you
when performance is on the go

Ending the wait for Godot
0x flaunts colors
Mesmorize I scream in joy
Here's the way to fly

Learnt to dive without scratchin'
you gave light through darkness
heart of a faithful developer
bestow I on you