hrishikeshballal.net

I am Hrishikesh Ballal, but that much you must have figured out by the domain? Welcome to my website. I have had this site in one form or the other for the past 12 years. I am Mechanical Engineer specializing in Operations and work in the software world. Currently, I work with IronPython in the context of managing the behavior of chaotic systems especially during the time they are operationalized and scaled. My work focuses on how we interact with these systems with a focus collaboration and information aggregation using technologies such as .net 3.5.

My focus at work and study has always been a mixture of Design and Operations. Working fulltime, completing the degree and trying to have a social life and pursue my interests was one of the most challenging experiences in my life. I am very passionate about environmental issues and am interested in sustainability especially with application of advanced technologies. Recently I was offered a fellowship to work on solving the collection and end-of-life aspects of ewaste in developing countries and it was the thesis for my degree.

I am very fascinated by algorithms and actively working with them was one of my most enjoyable jobs. I am also into technology research and entrepreneurship and intend to start a not for profit technology company one of these days. In the summer of 2007, I was involved in co-starting a non-profit Internet company with (for) a friend which led to mixed results but the experience was invaluable.

Music, Meditation, Mathematics and Design in general have come to define my spirituality. Studying and practicing music actively has been one of the most rewarding personal experiences. Designing and executing a global operations platform for my company over the last two years along with studying Systems Design has been a life changing experience. Therefore the spirituality statement.

I have come to realize that the most important thing in my life are my personal relationships with my partner, friends, family and acquaintances. Internally therefore, it is my life's mission to strive to be a kinder more humane person by pushing my boundaries through inner and outer exploration. I try to do this by being a life-long learner and practicing love, compassion and kindness with myself and anyone who crosses my path.

In my previous life, I was involved with open source software. I used to use and actively develop applications for the Fedora Project. I have scaled that down the development aspect to almost nothing now-a-days but hope to keep my friendships from there.

I have had cygnus2936 as my online ID for as long as I can remember. The 2936 was the registration number on my first and only motorbike's plate. It was a Kawasaki. Incidentally, it was also my telephone extension in one of my previous jobs. That was at Yamaha Music. That is when I had my own personal Keanu Reeves moment.

I moved to this domain some time ago. It is a bit long but thats my name. In real life, everyone calls me Hrishi. The H is silent so it is pronounced as 'Reeshee'. The etymology is religious related to Hinduism, personally, I blame it on the English language because there is no English equivalent to the original Sanskrit character.

Contact

Feel free to drop me a line at cygnus2936 at yahoo dot com, I will most probably get back to you. I am kinda good like that with email. You can also find me on Facebook and other social sites if that is your cup of tea.

About

This is my personal website I have had for quite some time. My views and opinions are expressed here and in no way do they represent the views or opinions of my employer, nor are they endorsed or approved by them in any way. In other words, I am the king in this part of the jungle.

Content

Software

This site uses a whole bunch of software: I use Wordpress for content management and you can subscribe to the Atom or RSS feed to get the latest. This particular theme is based off a template on freely available CSS tutorial site and some hacks by me. I coded the CSS and PHP from scratch using SciTe and I have a MySQL database running behind this website serving content.

Disclaimer

This site was redesigned and released on July 2009 and there is no particular version for this site. This site is uploaded "as is" without any warranty for fitness for a particular purpose. I am not be liable for any data loss, damages, loss or profits or any other freaky stuff while using or misusing this site. This site is best viewed on any browser that is remotely standards compliant and can read CSS on 1024x768+ resolution screen.