the arya family » life

Online Learning Per Minute Ratio

rajat — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 07:51:18 +0000

What is your learning per minute ratio when online? By online I mean on the Internet. I deeply value learning, and spend most of my free time continuing to learn as much about many things as possible. This is why trying to measure how much I get to learn per minute when online is interesting to me

From my initial analysis here is a list of sites/applications I use, in order of my learning per minute ratio:

1. Google Reader – my RSS feeds themselves are probably worth their own post, but in general I can get a great glimpse of what is interesting by scanning my RSS feeds.

2. Twitter – the more time I spend on Twitter the more nuggets of information I find. I am not following that many people but following the trends is surprisingly effective.

3. Email – more and more things that are important to me are arriving in my inbox every day. Companies and products are maintaining a connection with me through email. So every minute I am reading email I am learning about people or things that are important to me.

4. The Economist – subscribe to the paper edition, but find myself listening to or reading the online edition quite a bit. The audio edition is fantastic for doing errands – you can get through half the magazine in three hours without even noticing. Even if my retention is less when multi-tasking while listening I am still picking up more than if I didn’t have the magazine or was listening to Pandora.

5. NPR – this is a super broad category, but for me it mostly means “Morning Edition” and “This American Life”. Both programs are available on the iPhone and are free. Listening to “Morning Edition” while getting ready in the morning is a great way to be plugged into the days news in a very passive and entertaining way.

6. Wikipedia – after weeding through lots of articles that are not entirely related to what I want to learn about, there is plenty of information that is relevant and I enjoy learning from the site.

7. LinkedIn – every time I come across someone I look them up in Linked In. I do this for companies too to try to see if I can find out more about the people that work there. Each profile provides insight into the company/person/etc.

Surprisingly what is not on the list: Facebook. I learn almost nothing when using Facebook. Facebook provides tons of information about people and things going on in their lives but I rarely feel that I am learning anything about them from using the site.

This list isn’t exhaustive but it jumped into my head. I find myself constantly trying to learn more and as great as the Internet is a tool I was surprised to realize how much value I derive from Twitter vs how little I derive from Facebook.

Posted via email from All Things Rajat

A Few Recent Pictures

rajat — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:03:19 +0000

Here are some recent family pictures from attending Sonny and Tamanna's reception on March 27, 2010. Look at us all smiling

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from The Arya Family

Our New Addition: Snoopy

rajat — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 07:33:39 +0000

We adopted and brought home a two year old rescue beagle yesterday. His name is Snoopy. We are attached to this guy from the first time we met him a couple weeks ago. We are still getting to know each other but his disposition works with us completely.

So welcome Snoopy along with us. Come and visit us and you too get to meet him. He got a great grooming session today and is in the midst of changing his diet and getting used to our house and living in Seattle. His foster family was in Tacoma where he had huge fields to run in. So far he’s doing great and so are we.

Below are some of the pictures, the rest are available here:

Hiking Twin Falls Trail

rajat — Sun, 31 May 2009 23:44:36 +0000

Hiked Twin Falls Trail on May 30th with Bishal. Easy to moderate trail and very close to Seattle. Was a beautiful day and the trail was well-maintained and busy. We had a great time.

Here are the pictures from the hike, and you can grab them from here as well:

Hiking Rattlesnake Ridge

rajat — Tue, 26 May 2009 01:44:34 +0000

Shaily and I hiked Rattlesnake Ridge over Memorial Day weekend. It was the perfect way to start the hiking season this summer, and it was Shaily’s first hike in the northwest. We had a great time though the trail was more crowded than I had ever seen it.

Our pictures from the hike are below, or here:

Townhouse in Seattle

rajat — Mon, 18 May 2009 04:40:15 +0000

In March Shaily and I moved into our first home together. We bought a townhouse near downtown Seattle, next to University of Washington. We love the house we live in now and are slowly getting ourselves settled in. There are still a few things we would like to get to finish the furniture part of setting up the place. After that we’ll move onto artwork/decoration/etc but so far we are having a great time.

You should come and visit us or catch us on Skype and we’ll walk you around on webcam.

Some pictures are below and some more are here.

Pictures from Sledding in Capitol Hill

rajat — Mon, 18 May 2009 04:29:47 +0000

Pictures from all of us sledding during the snow storm in Seattle in December 2008.

Had a great time with Cam, Lyset, Brian, Amy, Shanti, Isaac and Ferdinand. Cam convinced me try some thrilling cardboard sledding using the boxes we had from moving in. Turned out to be a great time.

Some of the pictures are below, the rest are here.