Backpacking across Andhra Land

Just came back from a solo-tour to Andhra Pradesh.

Places covered :
Vijayawada - Vishakapatnam - Araku - Borra - Bhadrachalam - Warangal
Budget - 2K INR.

Travelled around 3k Kms by bus over a span of 5 days and am back home now. Going solo was a kinda good experience...life does teach loads of things.....

Will upload the pictures and the details of the tour asap.

[Am planning on a 2 day tour to Central TamilNadu....probably....Trichy/Tanjore.... ;) over the weekend ]

Cross Country biking - India

I happened to met Shree almost a year back in The Bangalore Trekkers Orkut group, and then we used to scrap each other occasionally , and then we met during Bangalore Barcamp 4 wherein he shared his gyaan on cycles and riding them and some kewl gadgets. I knew that he was a geek and a great appetite for whatever he was into ... he had already done Bangalore-Ahemedabad and Chennai-Kolkata on his cycle.

Now, he is on cross country - Arunachal Pradesh to Gujarat. As of this writing , i guess he should be in Assam-W.Bengal border - should have done around 1100 km in the last 12 days.

I wish him all the best and sincerely hope that he finishes it. His blog.

Dress Code and Programming

Justin talks about the Dress code by some of the whos-who in the programming 'fraternity' - some of the greatest minds who have contributed to Computer Science Programming for what it is today. It is a comprehensive collection of the people who have either designed a new programming language/framework or have contributed immensely to the concepts in CS.

Essentially these are the characteristics:
1) bearded
2) long haired
3) casually dressed visionaries

Analysis w.r.t me :
#1 - my hairlines continue to recede and hence dont fit in here :(
#2 - though my rate of growth of facial hair is more than that on the head, but the temperate climate in chennai does not allow me to keep the beard for more than 2-3 weeks. .... hence dont fit in here either :(
#3 - i am casually dressed - in fact i dont know what it means..i wear what i suppose is comfortable , and keeps me well ventilated and doesnt emanate a bad odour :D .... am i visionary??

[ what is programming! ;) ]

Kindling the Android

Amazon launches Kindle. Jeff Bezo's announcement!

The game(or is it a war???) between Kindle vs Publishing industry (print media) is going to be something that is worth watching now. The arena has been thrown open and i cannot but see the gladiator winning.

Android is interesting. My first rendezvous with Android SDK was interesting.

Is someone thinking along both the lines ;)

yada..yada..Yedda

It is sometimes amusing when you see your business idea being implemented by some other firm (and also making money from that). One such thing happened today.

"AOL Gets Into Q&A Business, Acquires Israel’s Yedda"

When i saw this news in my reader, i jumped to read the entire story. Apparently, Yedda's modus-operandi is something similar to what myself and my friend Shravan had thought of 2.5 years back(Wednesday, June 22, 2005 7:40:44 PM to be precise). The idea was baptised as "Gyaan.in" and the idea behind that was :

"Gyaan.in deals with the questions that anyone in the world could have about India, and would employ a group of well read researchers in order to send authentic replies to these questions. Through this, we intend to increase knowledge about this wonderful country, increase opportunities for investment in the country, and hence impact most spheres of the economy in the country."

It was a self-sustaining model with an investment of less than 1Lakh. After careful deliberations and some self-introspection we did not go ahead with the idea and dropped it. I do not repent on the decision made and am sure that there are zillion other opportunities to be tapped.

Gyaan.in inspires me even today as it was my first rendezvous with a good business plan and the passion to start "something-of-my-own". This idea was later converted into a Quiz Blog by me which is totally dormant as of now - this was an attempt to bring in all the quizzing cirles in India under a single banner and promote quizzing as an innovative way of Knowledge Sharing.

Mechanism of action

I was watching a show in BBC (10-11am IST,Sunday) on climate change and the host was showing some examples of how we can conserve our environments..humanure...and blah..blah...the usual Greenpeace stuff...But he also claimed that Animals account for 10% of the gas emissions - the Nitrous oxides, methane..etc etc.. He was trying to record the burps and the farts of the cattle :) and observed the statistic.

Now that's what is called as some exploration!! GreenPeace activists -- where r u!!! Alloooooo!!! Is the next slogan going to be "Kill the Cattle-Save the World" ???

For more read this : Flatulence.

Acc this link : "ALASKA - Public flatulence carries a $100 fine. " lol

The Art of Downplaying (Part -1)

It is interesting to see when you let a person win over you, though you know that you can easily win her/him.

One knows that the other person is cheating him , but he still allows the person to cheat him. The cheater is fascinated by his abilities and the bovineness of the victim; the former is elated at his win. But what lurks in the minds of the 'downplayer'!!! No one knows! He loses to win again - return back with a greater impact and totally vanquishing the opponent. Like the phoenix that burns itself to reincarnate.

The Art of Downplaying is a fascinating field of human psychology that amuses me a lot. The complex calculations of a downplayer is very crucial, as his stakes are very high in this strategy. A single mis-calculation can lead to disastrous consequences with zero tolerance of returning back in the game. It is a very fragile and contentious issue and has to be trudged with utmost care.

I also forsee this as an excellent marketing and design strategy - again, with CARE. One announces market for a product , and the same person creates a dumb product (though, he has an excellent one waiting to ambush the market) and leaves it open in the arena. Many new competitors enter the arena. They fight among themselves building more dumb products and creating a huge market in the process; but our strategist lurks in the dark - he is outcasted by others for entering the market with a dumb product and is equally ridiculed. Suddenly, he turns around and announces the advent of the next big thing and creates a market upheaval. (Timing of the launch, type of launch, period of dormancy, timing and type of the re-entrance are the most important parameters here)

Its a check-mate :)

Birth of 'EYB'

(05:05:51 IST) Roshan: no way
(05:05:52 IST) Roshan: bye
(05:05:56 IST) Venkat: this game is good
(05:06:00 IST) Venkat: u say something and say bye
(05:06:06 IST) Venkat: we should p[atent it
(05:06:12 IST) Roshan: yes. :P
(05:06:14 IST) Roshan: but now
(05:06:14 IST) Venkat: bye
(05:06:15 IST) Roshan: bye
(05:06:19 IST) Venkat: surebye
(05:06:20 IST) Venkat: bye
(05:06:23 IST) Venkat: bye bye
(05:06:33 IST) Venkat: and 2 consec byes means end of conv.
(05:06:39 IST) Roshan: oh, if you add another bye to that you can be the backstreet boys
(05:06:46 IST) Roshan: prepubescent girls will go nuts
(05:06:50 IST) Venkat: ahhhh!!!
(05:07:07 IST) Venkat: i prefer both pre and post!
(05:07:16 IST) Venkat: so wat should i do!! [eternal damnation]
(05:07:21 IST) Venkat: >>
(05:07:29 IST) Roshan: well think away
(05:07:30 IST) Roshan: bye
(05:07:34 IST) Venkat: we think.. and thinking leads me to say
(05:07:38 IST) Venkat: "eyb"..
(05:07:48 IST) Venkat: we just reverese it.. but its great.. no one will understand it
(05:07:55 IST) Venkat: it will be like ajax...
(05:08:05 IST) Venkat: u say "eyb" and generate user's interest...
(05:08:21 IST) Venkat: ppl will ask u for the explanation and u can give a real prolix interpretation of the same
(05:08:26 IST) Venkat: eyb eyb
(05:08:30 IST) Roshan: wow
(05:08:38 IST) Roshan: the millions in consultancy fees!!
(05:08:40 IST) Roshan: eyb
(05:08:47 IST) Venkat: u got it !
(05:09:01 IST) Venkat: i will give u a 20% stake in it... u may even opt out of it...
(05:09:17 IST) Venkat: lemme check if the domain exists
(05:09:31 IST) Venkat: ahhh!!!
(05:09:45 IST) Venkat: Etobicoke Youth Band ... :(
(05:10:02 IST) Venkat: but still we patent it and sue them
(05:10:39 IST) Roshan: :P
(05:10:43 IST) Venkat: eyb eyb
(05:11:05 IST) Roshan: haha .... :)

To do when bored!

Save an alien.

Get some investment advice.

Make some neat paper skulls.

Make a robotic-snap-o-lantern.

Job searches.

more and more... but first finish these :)

Sit back and Cry!

Right from the day since i saw the Photosynth demo in one of the TED talks, i wanted to get a feel of this wonderful application. It reminded me of my grad days when i was trying hard to get a 3-d reconstruction of a face from pictures taken at multiple perspectives. I was unable to come up with an algorithm due to the technology bottleneck and the associated memory requirements (Finally, i went on to propose a new algorithm for Face Recognition, but i wasn't satisfied with the results as i had made some assumptions which were not practical in the real life ...anywayz... life went on). My machine was just a 64MB, 733 Intel P3 machine. I knew that this was a very interesting area and anyone how could come up with a kicka$$ algorithm would rake in millions(and billions).

I went to M$ Live labs to check the progress made on this software and get a hands-on.

I was more than happy when i saw the 'Try It' link. The browser refreshed and i got this error :
"Windows XP SP2 and Vista Only

The Photosynth technology preview runs only on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.

If you feel you've reached this message in error, you can try anyway."

Am i pushed to the darkest corners of the Earth ... can someone hear me .... alllo.... why is this piece of software OS dependent!!!!

Self Introspection

Choosin a Startup to Work for

With the successful marketing of Ajax and the associated Web 2.0 confusion, the profusion of startups is quite understandable. Under these circumstances, it is very much natural that a growing number of enthusiasts wish to work in a startup and make some good quick money (stock options, et al) along with a good learning curve. Choosing a startup to work for is equally important as desciding whether to start a new company or not. Though the experience of working in a startup is quite exhilarating , it should be well understood that it has equally greater impact on the career that one chooses.

I wish to enumerate certain DO's and DONT's while choosing to work in a startup and how to evaluate them and take suitable course of action :

- Decide on your priorities in life ; i.e., whether you are ready to sacrifice (trade-offs) certain 'privileges' for the sake of other benefits. This should be brainstormed well and all the possible outcomes (+ve and -ve) should be well examined. There are lots of options that you may need to consider - few for eg., working long late hours, money, relationships(bf, gf ;) ), travel etc.

- Do a personal SWOT analysis - find out your forte` and weaknesses. W.r.t, the IT Industry , find out the domain that interests you the most and how much experience you have in that domain. Are you well versed with the techinical intricacies and troubleshooting. What is your skill level in the field of interest and what is your skill level in the domain that you are currently working in(it is so often possible that your area-of-interest does not coincide with the area-in-which-you-are-currently-working).

- Identify the Startups that are working in the intended area of interest. Usually word-of-mouth or good social networks helps one in identifying startups and their fundamentals. Also, being a member of the social forums(Yahoo/ Google groups) helps in identifying the startups operating in and around the intended-area-of-work. Blogs often provided a greater insight into these.

- Once you have identified a set of startups that match your critieria(this is done by a simple visit to their website and getting an idea of what the company is into), try to get a contact who is working in that firm. Have a chat with him/her over a cuppa-caffine and understand how they operate and the working conditions.

- If things look fine and you have identified your prospective employer, fix up an interview/meeting with the person who runs the show or the manager in charge. During the course of the interview(either before-during-after) do express your interest to work in the firm for 1-2 days [probably over the weekend, since most of the startups work all days ;) ] so that you get a feeling of the nature of work and also you can exhibit your skills. Mostly this step will be well appreciated and the firm will accept it.

- The 1-2 days that you are going to work in the startup is very-very important and crucial for it decides on the future course of action that you might need to take.
Try to find out the intentions of the show-runners (i.e, whether they want to make some quick bucks by creating a product and selling it or want to sustain in the market - i prefer the latter to the former, as i believe that once the focus shifts to selling the company, innovation takes a backseat and one just works towards getting a larger client base and leaving the product innovation behind).
Try to find the attitude of the 'prospective' co-workers. What is the skill level of these people and whether they really know what they are doing and whether they are competent to do what they are asked to do. How will they match you or you with them. It often helps to work with highly talented people(NOTE : I HAVE NOT MENTIONED THE NUM YEARS OF EXPERIENCE THAT A PERSON POSSESSES) , as they can be a great source of knowledge and learning.
(I personally will not look into the infrastructure facilities and other add-ons as i believe that once the cash inflow is steady , things automatically start looking rosy).

- If all the above satisfy you then its time to talk about money. Discuss the remuneration structure(yada yada , now some of you may tell me that satisfaction is what counts more than money - that's very true , but one also needs to keep himself and his family happy .. hence money is 'more'-equally important :) ). Also consider the fact that market is on the boom and growth rate of the IT industry is pretty exciting.

- Ball is in your court now and play it accordingly.

I have tried to enlist some of the very simple steps that one needs to consider and am sure that many will have more inputs to share. Let me know if this was of any help to you.

Should History be repeated?

When Dhoni and his lads arrrived in India after winning the T20 WorldCup :
- Mumbai traffic on the roads came to a halt for around 3-4 hours
- Lots of money and awards were given to the team
- the players got more endorsements
- a selected few in the team got 'more' money than others
- few members of the Indian Hockey team went on a fast in front of the Karnataka CM's office/house
- more ladies went ga-ga on Yuvi
- all the TV channels had this as the main news for 2-3 days (and some of them even continuing now :) )
- people said that this is like the 1983 WorldCup team returning back

well... the last observation was quite interesting..... and led me think about the actual aftermath of the 1983 WorldCup.
The mighty WestIndians visited India and 'destroyed' :'crushed' : 'mutilated' the Indian team :)

Now, Australians are visiting India ..... Does History repeat itself!! Interested in predicting ????

Check out the Summary of Results (From CricInfo.com):

alt

Sheep Theory

coming sooooooon .....

Aha! Java

Jon Bentley talks about the Aha! Insight in his book Programming Pearls.

I got 2 such 'Aha!s' today :

1) Java does support Short Circuit Operators(or short circuit evaluation)

public class myTest2 {

public static void main(String[] args) {
myTest2 sct = new myTest2();
if (sct.isTrue("left") || sct.isTrue("right")) {
//you may swap the 'left' and the 'right' and observe the behaviour
System.out.println("Expression is true.");
} else {
System.out.println("Expression is false.");
}
System.out.println("All done.");
}

public boolean isTrue(String msg) {
System.out.println("in isTrue (arg = '" + msg + "')");
if (msg.equals("right")) return true;
else return false;
}
}

2) Loop unrolling leads to instruction level parallelism. But am not sure whether this will have any effect on the way Java is architectured. I presume that stack based architectures(Java/JVM) do not have any effect on ILP.

Any thoughts or Ahas!!!!!

Getting Leh'ed

Plans are canceled and am not going to Leh this year :(

Toxicity

Seth speaks about Toxic bosses in one of his latest posts...

".....toxic bosses are far worse than toxic employees. Because bosses are often able to define reality, at least for those in their sphere of influence, they can cause whole sections of an organization to go off the rails....."

I would like to add couple of more observations here :

I find that toxic bosses do not only cause the derailing of the system but they infuse a sense of low-morale and inferiority complex in the team (this is among the non-toxic employees.....the dumb ones remain dumb); not to mention the complete lack of direction and doing-things-for-the-heck-of-it syndrome. Now let me change my gears slightly here and direct you to what Scott Adams mentions about smarter people having lesser intercourse than dumb people ; he rationales that

"....dimwitted get so much action is that they tend to be more attractive than smart people.Hot/dumb people are more likely to mate with other hot/dumb people and produce hot/dumb kids...."

Are Toxic bosses byproducts of this observation!!!

Along similar lines... Toxic bosses recruit more Toxic employees(who are essentially dumb) and the virality spread across the entire organization.The generality of the dumbness increases ( and i dont want to think about what happens to the future state of the organization).

Check out Seth's post on Toxic Employees too ;)

Reckoning BCB4

Barcamp Bangalore (version 4.0) concluded yesterday @ IIM Bangalore campus.There was a similarity between both Barcamp Bangalore 4 and Proto.in - both of them were organized very well, but both of them lacked CONTENT.




Especially in BCB4, most of the collectives were just 'Global Gyaan'; and only a very few talks were worth the praise. Some of the speakers were doing a product demo, which I was least interested in.(Guess what, a speaker was demo'ing her .com site and mentioning that clikcing on a link takes one to a diff page...blah...blah...blah). I had to simply walkout from many sessions, especially on day-2. I had expectations from the Usability and Ajax collectives - but both of them disappointed me with again...the 'global gyaan'. I heard the 'web2.0' and 'ajax' atleast a zillion times :(

The ruby collective had some interesting talks , especially the one on deploying the rail apps - it was an in depth coverage of the various aspects of deploying and hosting(came to know that the Apace server has a higher memory footprint than Nginx and also does a thread level processing of requests).

The Biking collective (on Day 1)was simply amazing with some cool bikes in the display(and also to ride).Shree had got his freind's (KP's) bike Petalon which was a clear winner among all the 4 bikes present there. Rohan (& his freind) had got thier Treks which was also good.The session gave lots of gyaan on the cycles, the sitting and driving postures, the kits and some nice accesories. Shree had a GPS receiver and couple of rear lights.

I had more expecations from BCB4 and am sure that the in next Baracamp(BCB5), the collective co-ordinators will take extra "precaution" in terms of content.

Some pics taken during the event (More can be seen here):

Barcamp Bangalore - 4

Venue: IIM Bangalore
Dates : 28/29 July, 2007

Barcamp Bangalore is finally here this weekend :) The coordinators have done a great job of maintaining an absolutely neat wiki (without any spam and arbit info).

Lots of collectives happening at the same time ...with loads of information and interesting sessions...




So if you are in Bangalore , then drop in(after registering, or i am not sure how much the mods will insist on registrations)...anywayz , it should be fun with loads of gyaan.

I will be live blogging during the event, if my lappie works :)

First Date with Flex

Installed the Flex Builder(Public Beta 3) from the CD provided by the Adobe folks during Proto.in. The CD contained the Demo versions of the Flex Builder, Flex Builder plugin for Eclipse and AIR(and some documentations).

Read the accompanying docs for an hour and was all set to play ;)

Quick features and comments :

- The IDE(Flex Builder) was very light on the memory(given the fact that my lappie is a 2gig machine ;))
- The framework is exteremely easy to learn and i was creating small apps within hours, and was impressed with the results.
- When compared to ADF/JSF, i think this framework is beautiful and extremely developer friendly - but do NOTE here that i had used the IDE for messing around; since , the IDE is a demo and costs 399USD for a license, developers who do not have the dough(folks like me)need to check the command line options - i hope to work with the command prompt today and check out the easeness of development.
- I have yet not started playing around with building DB cohesive applications using FLEX, but i do not think there should much problems.

I am looking forward to the full version of Flex by the end of this year and a FREE IDE :D. I need to learn RoR and compare it with Flex and AIR.