My Ideas and Ideals (V 1.0)

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Are you inside the box ?

I attended a session of a innovator last week.........by Porus Munshi
He authored a book "Breakthrough Innovation"
He gave very valuable inputs for way of thinking and how and why we won't be able to think out of box.
He gave a simple problem to solve that very often asked to test your IQ but in a little tricky way.
Give me at least 10 different ways to divide the Square into "three" equal parts. He gave a 5 mins time and asked how many people got more than 5 answers.
I could see many hands raising with full happiness. Then he asked how many people got number of solutions between 5- 10 even I could see some hands who got that number. Then he asked how many got more than 10 solutions ?
Nobody raised hand then he askedhow many got more than 50 or 100 so on...... ?
Then he showed us how many ways you could have divided the square into 3 equal parts. It is a simple logic and people started thinking why didn't I think of that :)

Inside the box
But the reason nobody could think was the limit he set for that was just 10 and people didn't think it is necessary to think beyond it.
If you get a task which will ask you to solve the problem in a way, you could think of only 2 or 3 ways not more than that.
That's where people can't think out of box.
This was just one example he gave and then he told many different people who have done many inventions and how and why they could do it.
It was worth hearing his session.
If you get a chance to read the book I think you might get much more things .
Happy reading !!!!

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Are tabs addictive ???

Are tabs addictive? When i heard about these tablets 2 years back i thought these are some things might take long time before it reach to our hands. But very soon my thoughts were proven wrong and there are tabs available from 3k to 40k right now in the market. So even this fever hit me with 20k. I joined this tab club a month ago after i bought samsung galaxy p3100. Some of my team mates have these tabs from around an year back with an ipad fever. They kept telling me that tabs are addictive n u cannt really live with out these once u r used to it. Now i started feeling it. I could give u some examples for it.
1: my mom n dad visited me this month. My mom told me that she want to buy a laptop. I asked her why she wanted a laptop. She said she want to talk to all of us in video i.e skype. I asked her do unhave any other requirement ? She said she want to create some excel sheets for her office use. I showed her both these things in both laptop and tab. She was impressed with da ease of use of tab compared to laptop. She listed down the below advantages of tab over a laptop....
Compact Touch screen (easy to touch whatever she wanted than typing) Easy to carry n charge She can play games easily Take n edit photos One touch login for video chat (skype) ...
All the above things she learned in just a week n she was ready to buy it before she leave.
2: On a small short term business trip i am going to Denmark this weekend. My wife was eager to know if i am taking da tab with me, when i told her i am taking it with me just she gave a smile n said ok. But i could hear her inner voice ;-)
3: This is last but not least my 2 year old daughter when is crazy about the games like antz, taling tom, turbo kids n many other rhymes apps.
I could list many things here...i just wanted to give the idea....i am looking forward 4 something else new tecnology/trend which will change the world of tabs to something else....hope that day is not far.
Happy reading !!!!

Monday, October 29, 2012

Too much of Object orientation !!!

This just came in my mind after a long day of training on plugin development in java.
Interface ShortTermTravel {
         Void    prepareVisaDocuments(String... docs);
         Void   getPhotoFromGkVale();
         Boolean   validateDocuments(String... docs);
         Double getForex(String estimation);
         Long   getMatrixCard(String CountryCode);
         Void    packBags(Object[] foodItems, Object[] clothes, Object[] misc);

}
Everybody has to go implement this interface who want to go for a short term trip.
But the implementation could be different from company to company :D
Happy travelling ♡

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Interesting Vs Challenging work

We recently asked for a feedback in our office.we got pretty different feedback from different people that they are not getting challenging work and some said they are not getting interesting work. These two things made me think what exactly they were trying to tell.

Interesting work vs challenging work

What is interesting work for u? It might be different from person to person.
If u ask me I might say writing a two page application in HTML5 and any JS frameworks would be interesting for me,but might not be challenging. But the same thing could be challenging for an entry level developer.
If you have to implement some complex algorithm into Java code that might be more challenging than writing CRUD operations in JDBC.

Sometimes we come across things which are interesting as well as challenging. Did you ever felt like that ?
So, according to me if you are willing to work on anything with your full interest that would be always interesting, but to achieve that target if you have to struggle that would be the challenging work which you would love to do.
Most often I feel debugging legacy code is the challenging job to do, it is challenging but many people won't love to do it because they don't find it interesting.
"Developers are interested in creating legacy code not maintaining it"

So, nobody can define what is interesting work what is challenging work. You have to think yourself to find out what is interesting to you and what challenges you are ready to take on !!!!

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

My Abroad Experiences - Part 1

After a long time I got an o pportunity to travel abroad for 2 months to Denmark, my previous visit was to US that was in 2007 winter. I was happy to go because I got this offer after a long time as well as the place was different this time. I was never been to Europe earlier. So I thought I will have both the opportunities to work with some new people as well as understanding the other continent people as well.

Only concerning part for me in this travel was I have to travel alone. I am kind of person who like to talk a lot. Blah.... Blah.....Blah. But unfortunately I had to travel along that too for a period of 2 months :-/
I asked for an apartment to stay there where I would be able to cook some veggie food as it is difficult to get something like Alu-Gobi sabji there in any restaurant in Kolding. As there was a Service apartments group was there named "Kolding Byferie" , my manager booked that for me.

I started from Bangalore on 10th October 2010 the magical date 10-10-10 and the flights were from Bangalore to Frankfurt a long flight of 14 hours and a waiting of 7 hrs in Frankfurt airport to get a connecting flight for a place called Billund in Denmark. After getting down @ 6 PM there I had to take a cab for a nice place called Kolding, DK. It was about an hour drive to reach this place.

As the apartments group has a reception inside it, it would be closed at 5 PM as they mailed me that they will keep it in a box outside the reception and they mailed me the pass code of that box as well. I thought that would be an easy task to get it because some of my colleagues who traveled before me already explained me how that works, so I thought everything is perfect.

By the time I reached there it was completely dark as it was already around 7:30 PM and the reception was closed as expected. I asked the cab driver to help me out to get the key and he helped me pulling out my luggage from the boot and find my key of the apartment too. Then the real and unexpected problem started, It was written on a cover - M-4 on the key cover, and the driver explained me that each building has an alphabet as name and each has 4 apartments in it. That was really easy to understand and he asked me to roam around and figure out the building written as M and go inside the find the number 4 apartment. This sounded pretty easy to me and I said thanks to driver and he said good bye.

Then I started finding buildings and I was able to reach out all other letter buildings but M,N,O,P buildings are missing. After roaming there for 30 mins I was sweating like hell , not only due to pulling the huge luggage bags due to the tension building up in my mind, what I should do if I am not able to find this building, because in these countries nobody will be outside after 7 PM. After 30 mins I was able to find one old lady with a dog who came for a walk.... I approached that lady and she showed me a route and said go straight and take a left and walk for few mins you will find the first building as M. She was my angel that time :-)

I walked in the way she showed me for 20 - 30 feet and I could see a big lake in front of me and the left road was completely with mud and stones and not even a single light on that lane. I was completely pissed off with that and I reached back to reception and took sometime to calm down myself. Then I started thinking and luckily I saved a help line phone number on my mobile and I activated international roaming before I go. I tried that call and a guy picked up and was trying to explain me the route, and I was not in a position to listen to him. I asked him to comedown and take me to that apartment and he was telling that would be charged :-) I was almost thought of using F**k off to him. But I controlled and asked him politely that it would be great if you could come and guide me to the apartment. He came after 10 mins and asked me to walk n pull my luggage in that muddy and stony road which was a huge pain in my A**. but somehow I reached the apartment before middle of the night. I thanked him and said Good night.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

I lost and got it back :-]

Last weekend, I had a nice sleep after lunch and started feeling like going out by evening. I asked my wife, shall we go out? I got a response back saying "yes" and we have to get the groceries for this month. Then I realized the mistake I have done but I can't do much about it now. I had to get ready and go to a super market with a big list of things to buy with my wife and 10 months old daughter. After spending 1 hr in searching required things and putting them in the cart I paid the bill with my credit card and asked the guy to deliver the things to my home.

I started back to my home, on the way my wife found good fruits in a fruit stall. she got down from my bike and I was holding my daughter on the bike itself. My wife asked me for money once the things are given. I gave my wallet to my wife and she paid the money to the vendor and gave me back the money. This shop is just end of my street. I took it and kept on my bike's tank. Once my wife sat on the bike I handed over my daughter to her and started my bike. As soon as my bike moved my wallet fell off :(

I came back home and sat for sometime and my wife asked me the bill details of our shopping. then I kept my hand in pocket and realized that there is no wallet there. It is a panic moment when you know that 3 credit cards and 2 debit cards and 2000 Rs cash is lost, to add some more value to this Original Driving License :)
I should say my wife's face was really in tension and started becoming red with in a minute. Though I was in tension I said, OK, don't worry I will walk back to that place and see if I could find it. I went through the road making my whole body as eyes to find my wallet back. I know for sure it is impossible to find it on the road anyway. Still hope keeps us alive, so I tried from my side without any luck.

After 10 mins I have decided to block my credit cards because the delay in doing this may cause big loss of money. My condition for money is really bad after booking a flat in Bangalore a month back. I can't afford a sing;le rupee loss in my current condition. I started my laptop to login and get my card numbers, suddenly my mobile started ringing..... This was the builder, to my surprise he asked me the first question "Have you lost your wallet ?" with a surprised voice I said yes. He said don't worry somebody got it and they gave me a call to find your number. I just wanted to make sure it is correct or not, take down his number and call him.

I thanked "GOD" that time really by saying "you proved that you exist". I called that guy immediately, he told me where to go to get it. I ran to that place and he was waiting for me. I didn't notice that somebody stand next to my bike and watching me and my daughter. His name is "ChandraMouli" and working for DELL as senior analyst. He took my wallet immediately and saw my visiting card in that, but unfortunately my mobile number was not there in my card. So he started looking at other visiting cards in that and found my builders card and called him for my name. I surprised with that and asked how did you came to know this my mine and remaining are someone else. He smiled and said I think you are still in tension, just relax. Your license is also there in your wallet ;). I thanked him many times, he said he has to go somewhere and friends are waiting for a party then I had to take leave before we exchanged our mobile numbers. till date I couldn't call him back but still I owe him a party for sure.

This is the story of this week. So far .......soo goooood.
Thanks a lot for reading.

Related Links:
Funny personal story with my manager !!!
My Other scribblings

Friday, September 16, 2011

Developers Comments ....

These are the comments people found in their code while debugging the old applications. These so called Legacy applications suck many times while debugging. But the comments mentioned in this code might be a relief for the developers who are trying to understand the code. Most hilarious comments we have seen so far are as below. Njoi

You're not a real developer if you've never left an apology comment for the next person! :P
//Jesus and this code have one thing in common: both were resurrected
// TODO:HACK: remove me after demo is shipped.
else { // requirement says this would never happen!! }