Outdoors @ Bartiméus

Bartiméus is an institution for the blind and the visually impaired. It houses around 350 people and aims to improve the quality of their life by providing personal advice, guidance and knowledge. It’s located in the midst of beautiful nature in Doorn, Netherlands. (Visit them at http://www.bartimeus.nl/)

 

On Friday 25 February, I got an opportunity to visit and help out at Bartiméus. It was arranged by the customer where I presently work. Bartiméus had an 'Ijskoud weekend' (Ice cold weekend) - a winter party on 26 and 27 February. We were to help out with decorating the place for the party.



The party consisted of several sections; the chapel, the school, the huts, party tents and the skating place. Our team was to help decorating all of these and help set up the party tents. After a briefing from the co-ordinator and a cup of tea, we were on our way.





I helped getting the decorations from the cellar and like a true developer contributed in one of the core services – inflating balloons. They need a lot of them and they needed them fast. The work-floor consisted of three balloon-inflating machines, lots of blue, white and silver balloons, lots of balloon string slipknots and four enthusiastic teammates (surprisingly fellow developers). Three of which kept themselves busy with the inflation of balloons and one of whom responsible to make bunches of five balloons. In a period of three hours, we inflated over six hundred balloons. Impressive eh! Our core services transformed Bartiméus into a party place ready to rock.

I truly enjoyed this outdoor activity. Still jump at every balloon burst though! Thanks Bartiméus.

That small square box!

Thanks to social networking sites like Twitter, Yammer, etc. that small square box has gained lot of importance. I’m talking about the box which holds your profile picture. It’s through this box that the world knows and recognizes you. Social networking allows us to interact with people we haven’t met before (in the traditional meeting sense that is). Whenever you try to remember information about someone, a picture is very essential. For example, you remembering your loved ones, parents is not possible without having a mental picture of that person. This is not just true for persons but also for events. You remember things and feel them through that mental picture. Memory is a collection of pictures. Even that mystery man or woman is remembered through a special mental picture you’ve formed.

Through social networking, we happen to know stuff about someone through their posts. But how do you remember that person? Yes, it’s through that magic, small, square box which generally forms the profile picture. This box is your mirror to the thousands or even millions whom you have influenced in one form or the other. Choose your profile picture wisely!

Our devices are getting wireless and we’re getting wired to them

The 21st century: where it wouldn’t be surprising to see a toddler playing with an iPad (although I still have to get one) or to find someone reporting a crime to the police over a webcam. From the advent of computing, there has been a continuous strive to bring the power of computing to the common man. These common men who used to hang out in café’s are now found hanging around on social networking or chatting sites. Common men who used to blindly trust newspapers, political leaders, religious preachers, teachers or even doctors for that matter now do so only after a background check on the internet. It wouldn’t be wrong to call this era ‘the information era’.

What is information? Are there positives or negatives to having access to it? Information for me is what you make of it. There’s no such thing as too much information. It depends on the recipient. Positives of having access to information are awareness, increase in knowledge, broader overview/mindset. What about negatives? I think lives were much simpler without this information burst. People could live in a cocoon created by the society and the number of people that affected or influenced ones lives was limited. In short, this information burst has literally caused that social cocoon to burst. But this burst has rendered the common man with the weapon which the elite few were thought to have.

Before this outburst, we were used to media like newspapers, television, radio, etc. But what makes information fun these days are the blogs, the tweets, the forums, the leaks; something which the other media couldn’t deliver : Interactivity. These create a sort of transparency which could only be imagined by our fore-fathers. Internet has become a medium which truly unites mankind.

The common man of this era is enslaved by information. He wants to have an access to information all the time. This is reflected in the devices that have sprung up lately. In the lights of smart phones, iPads, it’s now possible to access information all the time. The more wireless our devices are getting, the more wired we get to them. Whether good or bad, it's certainly here to stay!