A Speck on my Thinking Glass

Video Learning v/s Books

noreply@blogger.com (Kuku) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:29:00 +0000

I was looking for some learning resources and came across two interesting sites which offer video tutorials on a number of topics. Two of the most interesting (interesting meaning that they covered the topics that I was interested in) site that I came across were Lynda and VTC.

I decided to try Lynda, since they had a huge set of tutorials and I sort of had a good feeling about them. Of course, I must learn to not trust my feeling anymore after such a bad experience. These video tutorials are for the complete beginners who cannot read off a book.

I had a corporate training once, where they categorized people into different categories. Visual, Touch, Hear, etc etc... Basically what they were telling was that the visual guys understand things by seeing. So it means that if the visual person sees how things are done again and again and again, then he/she will finally get the hang of it. Sort of like how we copy a bowlers action or a batsman's stance in cricket, or like how we try to jump like Schumacher when victorious.
Similarly, a touch person understands by touching and using the object. Sort of like me, who hates using a manual and I just go on messing about a gadget till I understand all its features. Finally, the hear person is like when we were students and the teacher had to repeat things, or we kept reading from books loudly and kept repeating to ourselves till we actually 'mugged' what we were trying to learn.

Coming back to the topics, these video tutorials are for those visual and hear type of persons. And especially, to those who have loads and loads of patience. If you are one of those impatient type of people who just want to get started doing something, then these tutorials are just not for you. Especially, some of those tutors are so very slow that they literally put you to sleep. There was this one guy, who was supposedly a webmaster, who looked so unsure of himself, that he kept repeating and correcting himself over and over again. The jist of the video was completed within the first 10 secs, but he decided to go on and on and on about it for the next 1:55 mins. It would be quite incredible to me if someone actually managed to learn something from it.

Anyway, my preference would be to learn from books and from actual hands-on. That is the best way to learn anything. The great things about books, is that you can learn at your own pace. Skip un-necessary gyaan and try out what looks interesting. For the lazy ones, who want a short cut to hands-ons, an accompanying CD with examples and recorded demo sessions would be a boon.

Anyway, this was an interesting experience and thankfully I didn't burn away any money on expensive video tutorials. Books are good in so many ways, other than academics, they adorn your bookshelf, can be handed down generations and friends to remember you by, and its value is measured in its volume and weight rather than in GBs.

Information Dilution

noreply@blogger.com (Kuku) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:51:00 +0000

The worst thing that can happen to someone is when you have a problem and you look online to help solve that problem. Take for instance the problems that I am having with linux. Many things are not working, or I want to install some stuff and I am stuck somewhere and I need some help to bail me out of that situation.

The first thing that I do usually is to go out and look up on the internet.

Previously - 3-4 years back, when I was stuck on linux and I googled(searched) up something, it was extremely likely that I would get what I wanted within the first 5 results(if not the 1st itself). This was because only relevant information was available on the internet. Now I hardly ever find anything on what I want.

Today the internet is more about propaganda than an store house of information. The top 10 sites are especially built with keywords to garner clicks. The next 10 sites are affiliate marketing and promotions which ask you to buy a $100 product at a special going rate of $50 and so on. Then there is crap from forums and mailing lists and stuff which end up in the high ranked results and is generally nonsense or random gibberish.

After you sift through these vast pages of junk, it is only then that you will find the information that you have been looking for. This is extremely crazy.

Someone has to do something about this. This will be the next big thing on the internet. For example, someone has a problem on the installation problems of product xyz. Now there will be 200 threads on 50 forums where people are posting this problem and others are abusing the software company and other general banter. But finally, only 1 or 2 replies will make sense out of the problem at hand and give a solution. When I am searching, I want these answers as my results and not the other rubbish. Similarly, lots of content are copy pasted and manipulated and distributed all over the web. There should be a filtering mechanism to weed out such duplicates.

How I see the lifecycle of information on the internet is

Scarce -> Little Bits -> Important Points -> Complete coverage -> Duplicasy -> Revenue-oriented spam -> Impossible to find anything.

This has to be nipped at the complete coverage part. The search engines should weed out the last stages. There should be a process to review the content and filter things out regularly. Only when this is done, will the internet be a place to garner knowledge from. Till then, and these days, I am content checking mails for that is the only thing that I can do these days which is exactly what I want.

Tree... O Tree... Which one do U wanna be?

noreply@blogger.com (Kuku) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:56:00 +0000

Lets assume there is a well grown tree in a tree-farm. The tree has some genes that has enabled it to grown really fast and strong compared to the rest. The tree is contributing to the growth of the others by providing shade - prevent heavy sun on the young ones and also preventing the others from being washed away in the rains by staying rooted firmly to the ground and breaking the flow of water. So this is a protective environment. The tree is an inherently strong one but is contributing to the growth of the farm by sharing using its strengths to let the other grow up well.

Say, the farmer doesn't care for this tree, maybe because he didnt plant it and the tree is growing out of place. So he wants to quash the tree. He doesn't water the tree and doesn't give it manure and doesnt give it a chance to grow and become big, which is what the tree wants to be. He instead gives rich manure and water supply to the other surrounding trees What happens to our tree now? How does it evolve?

1) The tree doesnt have nutrient supply and grows weak and dies.
2) The tree tries its best to survive. It grows its roots deep into the ground to get nutrients from within. But it is just surviving and is no more making a difference to the farm.
3) The tree doesnt give a damn about the other growing plants. It is a survival of the fittest here. There are minerals, and the tree just needs to figure out how to get at these minerals. It is the strongest at this moment, so it will not have any problem in directing its roots appropriately and getting at the goods. It grows and it grows bigger, stronger and better.

Now in any of the 3 cases, the other plants are being artifically nurtured and they will not have it in them to fight the odds like insects and weather. They have not yet developed the immunity to fight disease and insects. Their roots have not grown strong and deep enough to let them hold their own against the storm. They will eventually break down and die unless they are being constantly supported by the farmer in all walks of their life.

So in any case the artifically grown trees will have to live on life-support all their lives.
The originally stronger from within tree just needs to realise that it is the survival of the fittest and grow stonger and larger such that not even the damn farmer is able to do anything about this tree anymore. The tree should grow such that the other trees will want to grown under this tree and have a better chance of surviving the odds rather than growing elsewhere.

Tree... O Tree... The others better watch out, its time to break free!!!.

A speechTalk by Subroto Bagchi

noreply@blogger.com (Kuku) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:32:00 +0000

Speech is quite a hard term and something I don't want to use. When I hear the word speech it is something that strikes me as boring and uninteresting. I am not getting a better word for it, but it is something that lies in between speech and (info)session. Or to take the official word that was used for this event, it was called a 'Talk by Subroto Bagchi'. A speech is something like a one-way communication where a guy comes on stage and gives gyaan while most of the audience is sleeping. This session was not just a one-way communication. It was more interactive in a different sort of way. This was where Mr. Bagchi was speaking and we, the audience, were listening(not just hearing). More than that, this was a session where Mr. Bagchi ended his talk in a short time and encouraged the audience to ask questions and share their thoughts on the subjects that he spoke about. This was very nice and not something that I have come across often. Moreover, the talk itself was captivating and you could feel that Mr. Bagchi felt one with his subject.

Mr. Bagchi was obviously inspired by one Mr. Howard Gardner and his talk was based primarily on the works/research of Mr. Gardner. There are two books among those that Gardner has written which has inspired Subroto. One is a book on Multiple Intelligences. Gardner is one of the first guys who questioned the system of measuring IQ and using it as a scale to compare the intelligences of people. He says there are about 11+ different types of intelligences that a person can possess and the area that he/she is intelligent in determines their intelligence and aptitude and not necessary the math-logical intelligence that IQ tests.

Similarly there was another book which Gardner has written called 'Five mind for the future'. This is a book on what kind of mindsets companies will be looking for in the future in prospective candidates. There are five minds that one should have like mastery of a single discipline, awareness of surrounding disciplines, creativity, respect, ethics. Mastering these would let a person scale new heights of success. The talk was good and pretty inspiring. Also, I was quite interested in reading the two books that Subroto has authored.

When he was talking about the first two minds of discipline I was struck by a anology myself. What he says is that you have to be a master of a single discipline. You have to be thorough in that particular disciple and there will a demand for only such domain experts in the future. However, the second mind says that you should know not just one discipline, but various disciplines around the one in which you are the expert. This doesn't mean that you should be able to practise these other disciplines, but you have to be able to see from the perspective of other domains and have to understand the existence of these other disciplines. This is needed in order to grown in your own preferred discipline. Something on this area could be a skyscraper. A skyscraper is meant to scale new peaks and rise up as high as it can possibly get. But this cannot be done by just going up. You have to build your base and foundation. As you grow higher, you have to expand horizontally to support the height gains, lest you topple and fall flat or back to ground zero.

The only dampner after all that was when I got back home and looked up the prices of these books. Not something that I can afford to buy at this point. :)
But do look up Subroto's blogs and google up the articles that he has written. These are definitely worth a read.

Edit: I remembered some anecdotes from Subroto's speech. I will update this blog post as and when I remember excerpts from his talk.

1) A mind of Respect. Subroto mentioned about having respect for others. Others can be collaborators and opponents. A case in point was the ongoing conflict at Singur. As Subroto points out, all the confict and confusion there was the result of lack of respect between the heads of the political parties. Mamatha doesn't respect Bhuddadeb, and Bhuddadeb doesnt respect Mamatha. So they both started bickering and fighting over issues without putting the state at priority. The only priority was putting each other down and finally they never tried to resolve the conflict together. But both had respect for the governer of the state - Gopalkrishna. When the governer called them together to reach a common understanding, then only both sat together with the governer and tried to initiate a dialog. So one should have respect for their peers to move ahead in career and life.

2) A mind of Creativity. As Subroto said, India and Indians have totally lost that creative spirit in them. After the towering temple Gopurams, the wonderful architectural carvings in the temples, maybe even the mughal inspirations such as the Red/Agra forts, the Taj Mahal, the rajput creations in the Rajasthan forts, there has been nothing else creative enough that we Indians can be proud of. I remember a quote by an eminent person who said that Bangalore is not a Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is a place where innovations happen, new products and techonologies are born and ideas become reality. In Bangalore we just assist Silicon Valley to realise their ideas. What have we Indians done that has showed off our creative skills. Maybe the one thing that Subroto didn't mention was the recent spurt of creativity in us helped bring about the technological revolution and we brought the concept of outsourcing to the world(I dont know the history of outsourcing, but this is what I feel we did). Subroto says that when you travel to Europe, you see bridges large and small over rivers and water bodies. No two bridges are built the same. Bridges are the symbols of the creativity of a civilization. The architects get to show off the creative side of them when building the bridges. Whereas in India every single bridge is copied from an existing design, either in India or from abroad. Even the Bahai temple in Delhi which is considered an architectural fascination has its root in the Opera House in Sydney. We Indians leave our creative minds in the bed when we go to work each morning. We are afraid of putting forth ideas to our bosses and are content doing what we like and earn the money that our bosses pay us. This has to change and change for the better.

3) An interesting question that Subroto asked of the audience was 'Who all in the room has undergone a surgical, invasive, operative procedure in life?'. Of course this flurry of medical terms was added to the questions after some people began thinking about the symbolism of operations and raised their hands saying that they were 'operated' upon by their managers in work. :D Funny people. So then, I pose the same question to you. 'How many of you readers have ever undergone an operation/surgery in your lives?' Of course few in the audience did raise their hands. Now think about this question before you read further into the post.

As a matter of fact, it is true that every single one of you who are reading this post has indeed undergone a surgical procedure in life. And when is that? It was when you were born and your umbilical cord had to be surgically cut off and you were seperated from the womb of your mother. Why did Subroto bring up this topic? It was to bring forward the role of the midwife who helps pregnant mother deliver. The midwife does this without supervision and without anyones interference and questioning. I think this was to show the mind of ethics or something similar. Basically, one must be an expert in his/her job and take it upons oneself to resposibily execute his/her task in the best manner. Not to the best of ones efforts, but in the best way. Period.

Reasons for choosing a job in your Career

noreply@blogger.com (Kuku) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:59:00 +0000

The below view point is from the perspective of career progression. It is especially for those who are ambitious and want to make it big in life.

Often I've had or heard discussions on why someone chooses a particular job, or if someone is looking for a switch then what kind of a job is he looking for or what shortcoming is he finding in the current job. As I heard various discussions about it I came up with my own thoughts/advice on what criteria should go into choosing choosing a job when one might want to make a switch.

Broadly speaking, there are just 2 reasons one would switch to a particular job - Money or Job-Satisfaction.

Money is simple. The greed for earning more money drives one to joining high paying companies. There is no other reasoning behind this.

Job-Satisfaction on the other hand has different meanings attached to it.
1) Job satisfaction could mean doing something that you enjoy doing.
2) It could mean having a good work environment - this includes friendly peers, motivating management etc...
3) It could mean being recognized for your work monetarily or non-monetarily.
4) It could mean being able to balance your personal and professional life, well.
There are a lot of such things associated with job satisfaction and there are quite a huge majority of people who feel that money is not important and it is the job satisfaction that you get in a company that decides whether to stick to a company or switch from a company.

Here is my take on it. There is no such thing as a fully satisfying job. Job-Satisfaction, while an important parameter in choosing a job, cannot retain you in that job role. Job Satisfaction in most cases directly conflicts with the other parameters that add to job satisfaction especially if it directly conflicts with the managements goals. Lets face it, no one in his/her right sense of mind will launch a company just so that they can hire people and keep them happy. This is the stark reality of life. As a saying goes, "there is no such things as free food".

When a company is established, the sole motive of that company is to make money. Period. In order to make that money, the company might want to provide a good working environment so as to get the best minds who would want to work in such a place and continue to work in such a place so that they will help the company achieve its goal of making money.

If your ideology and ambitions matches with that of the company, then you are one of the chosen few who have got a truly satisfying job. But then you would also need all your other parameters to work out like having teammates who share the companies vision, yet you work effectively as a team. Having managers who care for you and your professional development. So on...

A very very select few have a truly satisfying job and continue to find that job satisfying, year after year after year, without making any compromises.

Now, what is the easiest way of gaining job satisfaction and being satisfied with this job always. Again this can be done in just 2 simple steps.
1) Do what you love to do - write code, make robots, manage people... whatever you might like. Just do it. And what better way to do what you like, in the way that you like, without people breathing down your back and deciding for you how to do it, other than starting your own company. That's right. Do what you want to do by running your own company.
2) Make money doing what you love doing - Yes, to sustain your company and to sustain what you love doing, you need to make money doing it. Very simple. If you cannot make money doing what you love, then you cannot do what you love in due time. You will have to start depending on other for moral/monetary support and then they will start involving themselves into your affairs because they will have right on you since you depend on them.

The basis of the 2 points above is - Start and successfully run your own Company.

How do I start my own company? With money, of course. To set up anything you will need money. You will need a large capital to start off(even for a 1-man software company, you will need a PC, software licenses, electricity at the minimum) with and you will need backup funds since your company will not be profitable from the word go. Till the time you break even, you will need money to support you personally and support your company.

To get this capital, approach a bank or a venture capitalist, or work for money. Work for the highest paying company, without worrying about job satisfaction. The world is a pack of dogs and it is only the Alpha-Dog that survives best. Work for money, save the money, and set up your own business in the future. Or if you don't want the hassle of setting up shop, then work for money, save some of it for when you want to take a break, live life luxuriously with the rest of the moolah. If you don't want to live like a king, then at least work for the money and use the money that you earn to help those that cannot earn enough money for a living. Do some charitable work with the money that you earn if you don't want it. At least earn that money. The company getting richer by the day, make money off them and feed the poor. Be a Robin Hood and be proud of yourself, then doing nothing and wanting nothing and just being a burden on the Earth.

Think about this when you are thinking of changing your job, or thinking about your current job. If you are not satisfied with something, do something about it and stop cribbing and being a burden on yourself and others. You know you have it in your to make your life better and make a difference. Its up to you to do things correctly and do things at the right time in the right way.

EDIT: As was expected, such a strong opinion will not but meet with resistance. So, let me make some clarification after understanding the point of view of others and how they have read what I have written.

1) Starting your own company - This doesn't mean buying a multi-storeyed office in silicon valley. It doesn't mean having a workforce with developers, HRs, security and so on. By your own company, I am refering to some entity that will make you your own boss. It can be something like sitting in your room and starting a web portal. Or, creating a new application for windows, or for mobile. It can even mean(and something that I am interested in) being a freelancer or an independent consultant. You might work on a contract for another company or you might be creating something for some other company, but you are your own boss. You can work when you like, do things how you think it should be done as long as it serves the purpose of the one buying your product/service and they pay you for it happily. Maybe a better word would be a business rather than an establishment.

2) Clarifying the stand - There are people who don't want to work for money and don't know what to do with money. There are people who work only to keep themselves occupied and have little to do with the money involved. Such cases are exceptions. I have reflected this is the title, where I have added the word 'Career'. What I have said applied to people who are career minded and want to progress in their career. That is what my stance is. Its not for people who are working for timepass.

When I mean work for money or starting your own company, there is the feeling that it takes a lot out of your and you won't be able to balance your work life. Well, then you fall in a different category. If spending time with you family is your main criteria, then that is one of the KPIs for job satisfaction. If you are earning decently well to support your family and still get enough time to spend with your family, then you are a satisfied individual. You cannot complain that you are not having job satisfaction, because you will then never be satisfied as you will have to trade off one thing against another.

Also, my viewpoint is not for the family oriented, but more for the individualistic and career minded. To summarize what I have said - One can never ever be 100% satisfied with a job, so one might as well earn as much as possible in the quest for greater satisfaction.

Your thoughts on this greatly appreciated. :)

The Economics of Things

noreply@blogger.com (Kuku) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:49:00 +0000

It all started when I was thinking about the cost of the iPhone 3G. Whenever we discuss about electronics, the first thought that comes to mind is that it is cheaper in the USA. So, we try to get someone from the US to buy the product when they come to India. Of course, we need to avoid customs while doing this, so that we retain the advantage of the lower cost without additional customs duties.

Of course for those of you who think its nice bringing in stuff from US, you are actually smuggling goods illegally. Then there are some clauses that state you can bring in goods worth upto Rs. 20,000 duty free from abroad.

Anyway, so, let us say, that an electronic item costs 20k in US and the same in India. I feel that does not mean that the product will be met with the same acceptance levels in both India and US. There has to be a pro-rated system of evaluating the costs of products. While an item costing $1000 might be cheap in the US, the same item costing Rs. 45000 is not considered cheap here. Since the buying power of the people here is much lesser.

Lets take a simple salary structure. Based on what I have heard from friends, they can get around $3000 per month during even internship or lets say, doing some really low paying job. Now an item of $1000 is a third of the months salary. For an entry level IT employee in India working in an MNC, the salary would be around Rs. 30,000 pm. So an item of the same rate, converted to India Rupees, will be costing almost 1.5 times a single months salary. On what will this person survive if he/she buys this item. Hypothetically, if the same item is sold at Rs. 10000 in India, then the value could be said to be the same as that of the item in US.

However this is not realistically possible. As the oft used adage goes, India is a land of contrasts. Many sections earn around Rs. 10,000 per month, where the IT guys in big MNCs earn well over Rs 50,000 pm. Bringing the product costs down, will only lead to the flooding of the market thanks to the buying power of the IT folks. The other thing is that the product, if manufacture in the US, with a margin of say 50%, would costing $500. This is roughly Rs. 22,500 in India, which is still quite costly. The manufacturer cannot possibly sell the product for any lesser even if he forgoes the R&D, shipping and octroi costs. Finally the last and the worst side effect would be that India will become the base for smuggling goods out. People can buy things dirt cheap here and sell them at incredible profits abroad.

Incidentally, that is exactly what is happening right now with this entire outsourcing business. Goods are produced cheap in India and they are being sold with huge margins abroad. Why shouldn't/doesn't the govt. cash in on this?

I belive the Govt. should take steps to improve the buying power in India and strive to improve the economy. I read in some forward, that the economy of the developed nation is growing because people buy. Its a cycle. People spend money, companies make money, the companies pay out more money to their employees, the govt. gets a share of the money, the govt. invests the money back into the country, the people are happy and they spend more. It goes on like this and I belive in this philosophy. But somewhere, that chain is broken in India.
1) Companies find ways to keep their money and not give it to the Govt - Tax sops and holidays
and stuff.
2) If the Govt. gets money it goes into the coffers of the politicos and not of the nation.
3) People are irritated with all this and either don't spend money, or instead spend money in the US and help improve their economy.

This corruption has to be tackled somehow and I have no hopes that the state of corruption will improve anytime soon. But, in my opinion, the economy can be boosted in this way.

1) Remove all import duties on goods coming in from abroad. No customs/octroi etc. Unless the product coming in, is in direct competition to a product being produced indigenously. In that case, levy full duties on the product. If someone is interested in big brands and wants to show off his/her brand power, then he/she should be prepared to lighten his/her pockets too. Else, be happy with brands produced within India.

2) Of course, the brands produced here should be good quality and the Govt. should see to it that this happens. Set up small-scale and medium-scale industries that not only provide employment, but also churns out good quality goods at a fast rate. Promote companies to come to India and set up shop, provided that they provide sufficient employement to the lower/lower-medium class. Give sops to these companies to lure them in. But...

3) These companies cannot produce goods cheap and sell them abroad. India has showing itself as a strong buying power and the companies should now realize that they needn't come to India only to produce goods cheaply, but actually to sell first-grade good here. Instead of the seconds that they keep selling all the time. Any goods exported out will be taxed heavily so that these companies don't just exploit our country and indirectly share their profits with India.
A good way to do this would be to give the companies land at low costs, provide high quality infrastructure, and bring out a condition that makes India one of the cheapest places to produce goods and yet produce them with great quality. Such goods should be sold in India primarily, and should the company want to sell it abroad(which they will if they want to keep their margins) then they have to pay the Govt. in the form of taxes/duties.

This way the goods brought in from abroad will be at the same rates as it is when brought abroad. Companies can afford to reduce their margins while selling it here with the assurance that the cheaper costs here will not affect market dynamics. Companies will feel good setting up industries here and won't mind sharing some profits with the country thanks to good infrastructure and increased buying power.

Finally a possible way to prevent/reduce goods being smuggled out. Check the manufacturing/sale date of goods(this has to be sealed onto the product during purchase) costing more than say Rs. 5000, and if it is less than a year or 6 months, then it has to be declared and this should be marked on the return tickets/passports. Older goods can be taken out since it would have been used anyway and won't find a market abroad. A possibilty for clothing could be to force the companies to brand their products different when they have been manufactured for sale in India. Like Van Heusen India, or Peter England India. So when such a product is being sold abroad through illegal channels, it will loose the brand value. The companies can of course brand their original names on goods that are manufactured especially for export.

These are just my opinions to help improve the economy of India. Ideas like this or variations could be the way forward to help boost the economy and get a grab on the burgeoning inflation. Again, this would also help bridge the economic divide in the country by providing a lot of employement especially in the manufacturing and agriculture sectors where a stark divide is present.

A Career in Project Management

noreply@blogger.com (Kuku) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:06:00 +0000

I have decided on a career path for myself. I have long since been dreaming of being a developer and I have always love developing and writing code. But then there are times when I also have to think into the future. A career as just a developer is not really a viable option. Sometimes you have to go out and break away from your comfort zone. The world does not need developers. There are thousands and ten thousands of developers just waiting in the market for their chance and it is near impossible to be different in the developer crowd. Even if one is really different and is able to carve out a distinguishing feature in themselves, it is an even uphill task to actually prove this out there in the open market.

Yes, all this is possible. There are so many who have been successful developers and continue to do so. But then it is not something that the world is actively looking for. The world is looking for Managers. As the number of developers increase, the number of managers have to proportionally increase to keep the developers under control. Let’s face it, developers cannot keep themselves under control. They need someone to guide them and to tell then what to do and how to do it. With enough mentoring and coaching the developers should be able to manage themselves and hopefully the newer colleagues in the field.

So, I need to take some concrete steps into the world of Project Management as my first entry point into Management itself.

Designing Design?

noreply@blogger.com (Kuku) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 02:13:00 +0000

Whenever I sit down to make my website, I get thinking, how should it look? I always start with focus on the looks and then once I make a nice flashy page, I start thinking, "Isn't this too gaudy?", "Is this page really usable?", "Will this page have huge load times with all that graphics?". A lot more questions come to my mind and eventually I would have worked on a reworked the page about 10 times finally giving up on the very concept of creating a page.

I decided to sit down and think it over. On of the great help that the corporate world has given me is that is has taught me to think from the client's point of view. For me, my clients are the visitors to my blog and I have to think from their point of view. If I were to be visiting a blog then what would I like to see there? The content is of course of paramount importance. If there is no content then what is the use of creating a blog? So, lets move on and think about what else will make a difference. The differentiating factor is the design.

I took this as a case study and tried to think practically and with real life examples. The first success story that hit me was Google. Before Google, we had famous search engines such as Yahoo, Altavista before Google came in. What was it that made Google click?

1) Simplicity: This was one of the key factors in making Google a success. The page was clean and uncluttered and had just the information that the user wanted - the Search Box. No fancy portals, no news content, no distractions. They weren't trying to sell their other products from their search page.
2) Performance: The design was so clean and simple that it was downright effective. There was no large graphics and images to be loaded on the page and hence page loaded times were simply amazing. People started thinking that Google is a faster search engine not because of their sophisticated algorithms (which of course they had) but because of their page load times. And they let their users know how fast they were. They had and still have that small timer at the top of the screen which shows how long it took to display(find?) the results. The users were happy to know that they don't have to waste time to get their search results.
3) Innovation: Google brought a new product into a market which already had enough of similar products and still managed to take the world by storm. They brought in innovative technology in the form of AJAX, they brought in innovative design philosophies, they brought in innovation in the form of usability and features. New ways to search and filter search data. New range of products bubbling out of the Google labs every few weeks.
4) Usability: If I give a kid the Google page and asked him to work on it what would he do? There is one text box, so he might go there and enter something. There are just two buttons to click and he would go ahead and click on them. The second button says search, and so when he clicks on it it shows him a page which contains a lot of references to the term that he entered. He understands that the page gives him more information on the text that he entered. There is nothing else that he can do on the page and hence its so intuitive to use the page. No distractions whatsoever.

I believe that one should learn from the example that Google has set.

An another important thing that I have learnt is consistency, not bordering on Monotony. Its important to have consistency across all your products in terms of look and feel. Intuitiveness is so important. The user should feel at home using the product without having to spend hours in front of the help pages. Once he spends even a few minutes in learning a product, he shouldn't have to spend more than a few seconds in using the other products from the same stable. That is consistency. Of course consistency shouldn't be at the cost of monotony. The user shouldn't get bored of seeing the same kind of pages day in and day out, and that needs a lot of creative thinking.

I have tried to use as much of this research as possible when I have created my blog pages. I do believe that I will still need to improve the look and feel of these pages, and I will do that overtime. Of course your valuable feedback is ever important in this endeavor of mine. :)

The SMARTer your Hard Disks, the Healthier they are

noreply@blogger.com (Kuku) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:34:00 +0000

Recently, about a month back if I remember right, I suffered from my first HDD crash. My Linux partition crashed and since that was were my boot loader was, my PC promptly went down. It took me about 2 days to get my Windows partition back up and running but the damage was done. I had just upgraded my Ubuntu from 6.06 to 6.10 to 7.04 and all that effort was lost. Additionally around 25 gigs of data just went down the drain. The problem was a physical crash and it would cost me more to recover the data than to get myself a couple more Hard Disks.

So, how did it all start? The first hint came to me when my PC booted up one day and I got an error on the screen saying S.M.A.R.T. returned a status error. S.M.A.R.T. stands for Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. In case you don't know what that is then you must go into your BIOS the next time you reboot and have a look at the option. And in case it isn't activated, I highly recommend that you turn it on immediately. A boot up time loss of 1 second isn't anything when compared to the hours that you would need to spend to recover data lost due to a crash.

Back to how the problem started. It was just another evening when I switched on my PC after returning home from work. After the POST checks, the SMART check flashed a warning saying that an error was found in the HDD and I should back up all data and replace the disk. I didnt really bother about it (which would later turn out to be my biggest mistake) and carried on with the boot. Further reboots over the next few days didnt throw any error and I had soon forgotten about the problem. Then again one day I got the same error. From my past experience, I didn't care about the error thinking that it will go away soon and was just a minor issue that threw the error. The system also threw an error about being unable to boot into GRUB (the linux boot loader). I thought it was a connection problem and I unplugged and plugged back the HDD cables inside the cabinet. A few more days passed and suddenly my system refused to boot up upon a power-on. I tried to check what the problem was and then I realized, to my shock, that the HDD wasn't being detected in the BIOS.

I realized that this was why the GRUB wasn't booting the previous time the error occurred. The BIOS wasn't detecting the HDD though it was plugged in. I had a flashback and I remembered the SMART warning that I got the week before. I hoped and prayed for just one chance that the HDD would work so that I could back up all the data from it but that hope never saw the light of the day. My HDD was gone and so did all the data that I had carefully downloaded and accumulated on it. I realized my follies and decided never to ignore any warning message that comes up in the BIOS or elsewhere.

From my experience, I just have one advice for your download freaks who have gigs of data on your HDD and have everything to lose in case of a crash - Play it safe, Play it S.M.A.R.T.

Choosing a Linux Distro

noreply@blogger.com (Kuku) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:28:00 +0000

One thing that I wanted to do was to install linux on my box and finally start using it. Over the course of the last 10 years, I have been installing linux and then using it for some trivial purposes and then deleting the partition to free up space for windows. I started of my journey with RHL 6.2 and subsequently have installed various versions of RHL, SUSE, Mandrake(not Mandriva), Slackware, Caldera, PCQLinux(:P) and Fedora even. Of course I have never stuck to any one in particular. This time I decided to try Ubuntu.

Of course the hype bit me and I too wanted to see what this Ubuntu was all about. The Ubuntu that has been taking the world by storm. Also the main reason that I wanted to work with/from Linux was that I felt I could learn more from doing development in Linux rather than in windows. There is so much of untapped learning potential in OSS and development in the OSS environent. There started my sojourn with linux.

Change my Hosting provider

noreply@blogger.com (Kuku) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:22:00 +0000

My first step was to have my own website so that I can start creating PHP/AJAX/RoR/Perl and whatnot pages and see how they work. So I decided to start searching for a webhost. I was previously hosted with squarebrothers. But I had to change after their servers crashed one day and all my data was lost and the subsequent customer helpdesk was apalling. I decided that their service was worthless and decided not to renew my subscription with them.

That was when I looked all over the net in search for a good webhost. I looked at close to 15 options and finally decided to go for bluehost, one of the biggest reasons for this was that they supported RoR. Since that was my prime focus after AJAX, I decided that I might as well have my webhost support all the technologies that I need rather than I having to change later. Also what I noticed was that the owners of bluehost were proactive in adapting their hosting service to the latest technologies and practises. What made my job even more simple was that they had just one hosting plan. :)

So, my next job was to initiate transfer of my domain from the previous host to the new host. I had to unock the domain first. Then I had to create an activation password (called by differing names depending on the domain registrar) and give that to my new host. It took some time(approx 1 week) from the domain to be handed over from the losing registrar to the winning registrar. Once all that was completed, my domain was successfully transfered and I could being using my new hosting plan.

Development Plans

noreply@blogger.com (Kuku) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:21:00 +0000

I have lost quite a bit of touch with programming and scripting languages over the past couple of years. Since I do all my coding in ABAP, I have not touched languages like java and C except for some rare situations where I was maybe experimenting with some features either for me or for a friend. So I decided to get back to programming and learning languages and technologies.

Since the past few months my main target was to learn AJAX and create some pages/projects based on it. Also, I have been reading a lot about Ruby on Rails and I am keen on learning and using RoR too. I also want to host my own blog site and photo album site and I decided to learn PHP in detail and do a lot of scripting on PHP to become proficient in it. Lots of dreams you might say, but those are my dreams and I have to accomplish them soon.

My first step in learning these was to have my own webserver (either locally or hosted or both). I also wanted to do all my coding on Linux and hence that was my next task. So how did that fare?