Crisis of Credit

Amazing Visual on why the economy is going BUST

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Blogging from MS OneNote

As a corporate policy, Blogs are blocked by the websence, the web filter engine in place to police Internet usage, just like an addict finding ways to get his hands on the stuff he is addicted to, I have been trying to find ways to blog from work as I spend most of my time stuck in my cubical. I have used extensions for fire fox with no luck L, now I am trying my luck with the blog publish capabilities of MS office 2007, let me see how this goes through……

 

 

New ground braking technology from Yahoo Mail : Tomorrow's mail today

I have been part of a stunning new feature Yahoo is adding to its Yahoo Mail service. Now it dawns on me why Yahoo said a BIG NO to all the big bucks Microsoft was luring it with.

Ladies and Gentlemen for the greatest invention after the tubes which run the Internet.

Yahoo introduces "The Mail from the future", oh ya can you beat this, yahoo has built an engine which can predict what would be in your in box not now but tomorrow. Do'nt believe me just check out the screen shot I have for you disbelievers....

(Open the image in another browser window and see that I have a mail from Tomorrow, unfortunately its a virus alert from Symantec (buhuhu))

How cool is that, it would be the new cool hotness, just imagine reading tomorrows mail today, lets explore what we can use this information for

• Subscribe to News feeds in your Inbox and yahoo you would know the future, all the winning lottery numbers.
• You would know if your girl friend would dump you tomorrow and you can do it a day in advance yahoo a winner again.
• Filter tomorrows junk mail today.

Well the possibilities are limitless, I wouldnt want to go on as I would want some tricks up my sleeves just for myself :)...

AH I know you love this article, i already see all the fan mail trickling in to my Yahoo mail box :P

My Article on codeguru

Gr8buddy goes techie, well he has always been techie and it's just now that he has started sharing the little he knows with the world.

I have just started writing articles on codeguru which would include tips and examples from the little things I did to sole this and that. I have solved a lot of problems reading posts but have never taken an active role in repaying back all the help I received from the online community, this is my endeavour to contribute and payback.

My first article titled

Tip: Auto Scroll While Implementing Drag & Drop for Reordering Rows in DataGridView

Aims at giving code snippet explaining how to implement auto scroll in a grid view which implements re ordering of rows, when user tries to drag a row beyond the lower / upper bounds of a data grid. I had to do this as a feature and dint get a ready baked solution on line so thought I would work on the recipe myself, now that I know the ingredients and the ways, here I am sharing the recipe with you all.

cheers

Will this happen in my life time?

Have you ever tried copying files off the network and thought to your self, "oh! boy! this is taking like for EVER", well unless you happen to be Sibritt Löthberg from Karlstad Sweden who has a 40GB/sec Internet connection, this feeling is not alien.

I have learned to live with it, as its most of the time a qualitative feeling, I mean it feels like forever, but doesn't actually take forever, you know what I mean, just like the day you got married, or the day your girl/boy friend ditched you...they seem to drag on for ever but surly they come to an end.

like I said I learned to live with it, but today I just couldn't take it, as my operating system (no points for guessing its VISTA) just changed the qualitative feeling in to quantitative feeling, it gave me numbers, numbers which were outrageous... all I tried to do was copy a folder which was about 200 megs to my local drive and the copy status indicator looked something like this

Vista was just telling me that it would take 34110 days and 12 hours, in other words it would take 93.452054794520547945205479452055 years to finish copying my files off the network oh I am sorry a little more than that as i forgot to add up the 12 hours.

Will Naveen be able to see the files on his network or will nature oxidize him.... the question remains unanswered

The Mythical 5% Excerpts from Computing Thoughts by Bruce Eckel

I came across this great article by by Bruce Eckel, here is an excerpt from the same, the full article is available at http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=221622

You've come from very structured learning. We even call it a science. It promises that there will be the same kind of structure and activities in the world. More importantly, you've come to expect a certain high level of success, similar to what you've experienced with your projects and assignments. But the world will not behave.

The statistics are sobering: 50-80% of programming projects fail. These numbers are so broad because people don't brag about their failures, so we have to guess. In any event, this makes the world sound pretty unreliable. Engineering gets better results, mostly because it has to. Bad software usually just annoys people but bad engineering can kill.

An even more fascinating metric is this: 5% of programmers are 20x more productive than the other 95%. If this were a science, like it claims, we could figure out how to get everyone to the same level.

Let's say that this follows the 80-20 rule. Roughly 80% of programmers don't read books, don't go to conferences, don't continue learning, don't do anything but what they covered in college. Maybe they've gotten a job in a big company where they can do the same thing over and over. The other 20% struggle with their profession: they read, try to learn things, listen to podcasts, go to user group meetings and sometimes a conference. 80% of this 20% are not very successful yet; they're still beginning, still trying. The other 20% of this 20% -- that's about 5% of the whole who are 20x more productive.

So how do you become one of these mythical 5%?

These people are not those who can remember all the moves and have fingers that fly over the keyboard erupting system commands. In my experience those in the 5% must struggle to get there, and struggle to stay there, and it's the process of continuous learning that makes the difference.

Because of what I do, I've met more than my share of these people. They read a lot, and are always ready to tackle a new concept if it looks worthwhile. I think if they do go to conferences they're very selective about it. Most of their time is spent being productive, figuring things out.

The big issue is knowing that you're going after that 20x productivity increase. Which means getting leverage on everything you do. Never just "bashing something out," but using the best tools, techniques, and ideas at your disposal. Always doing your best.

And deeper than that, understanding that the leverage point doesn't always come from the obvious thing, or from what we've been told, or the commonly-held belief about what works. Being able to analyze and understand a situation and discover the hinge points of a problem is essential; this takes a clear mind and detached perspective. For example, sometimes the choice of programming language makes a huge difference, but often, it's relatively unimportant. Regardless, people will still spend all their time on one decision while something else might actually have a far greater influence. Architectural decisions, for example.

So you must learn continuously and teach yourself new technologies, but it's not that simple. It's definitely good to learn more about programming, but you can't just learn more about programming. For example, just in the world of code, here are two of the biggest pain points:

1. Code is read much more than it is written. If people can't read your story, they can't improve it or fix it. Unreadable code has a real cost, and we call it "technical debt."
2. Code reviews are the most effective ways to find software defects, and yet we usually "don't have time for them."

Coming from the world of ones and zeroes we'd like to believe that things are deterministic, that we can provide a set of inputs and get the same outputs every time. I know because I believed this for a long time, and it took some hard knocks when I was a physics undergraduate to begin -- only to begin -- to wake me up. Many years later I was in a workshop and one of the other attendees told me what I had been learning all those years; she said "All models are wrong. Some are useful."

We are in a young business. Primitive, really -- we don't know much about what works, and we keep thinking we've found the silver bullet that solves all problems. As a result, we go through these multi-year boom and bust cycles as new ideas come in, take off, exceed their grasp, then run out of steam. But some ideas seem to have staying power. For example, a lot of the ideas in agile methodologies seem to be making some real impacts in productivity and quality. This is because they focus more on the issues of people working together and less on technologies.

A man I've learned much from, Gerald Weinberg, wrote his first couple of books on the technology of programming. Then he switched, and wrote or coauthored 50 more on the process of programming, and he is most famous for saying "no matter what they tell you, it's always a people problem."

Usually the things that make or break a project are process and people issues. The way that you work on a day-to-day basis. Who your architects are, who your managers are, and who you are working with on the programming team. How you communicate, and most importantly how you solve process and people problems when they come up. The fastest way to get stuck is to think that it's all about the technology and to believe that you can ram your way through the other things. Those other things are the most likely ones to stop you cold.

In my first jobs, I saw lots of managers making stupid decisions, and so, logically, I came to the conclusion that managers and management was stupid. It's a commonly held belief in our profession: if you're not smart enough to deal with the technology, you go into management. Over time I very slowly learned that the task of management wasn't stupid, it's just very, very hard. That's why all those stupid decisions are still being made; management is much harder than technology because it involves virtually no deterministic factors. It's all guesswork, so if you don't have good intuition you'll probably make stupid decisions. Napoleon wanted lucky generals rather than smart ones.

Here's an example: some companies have adopted a policy where at the end of some predetermined period each team evaluates everyone and drops the bottom 10% or 20%. In response to this policy, a smart manager who has a good team hires extra people who can be thrown overboard without damaging the team. I think I know someone to whom this happened at Novell. It's not a good policy; in fact it's abusive and eats away at company morale from within. But it's one of the things you probably didn't learn here, and yet the kind of thing you need to know, even if it seems to have nothing directly to do with programming.

Here's another example: People are going to ask you the shortest possible time it takes to accomplish a particular task. You'll do your best to guess what that is, and they'll assume you can actually do it. What you need to tell them for an estimate like this, and for all your estimates, is that there's a 0% probability that you will actually get it done in that period of time, that such a guess is only the beginning of the probability curve. Each guess needs to be accompanied by such a probability curve, so that all the probabilities combined produce a real curve indicating when the project might likely be done. You can learn more about this by reading a small book called Waltzing with Bears.

You need to pay attention to economics and business, both of which are far-from-exact sciences. Listen to books and lectures on tape while you commute. Understanding the underlying business issues may allow you to detect the fortunes of the company you're working for and take action early. When I first started working I looked askance at people who paid attention to business issues -- that was suit stuff, not real technology. But those people were the smart ones.

A great new source of information is podcasts. Anyone can do these so many of them are bad, but there are some real gems out there, podcasts that specifically cover topics in our profession. I learn a lot from these, and they help me stay current.

Here's another thing you probably didn't learn here. Both the world of business and the world of programming is legendary for flailing about with fads that promise to get things done better. The easy fads are patently ridiculous, or become so in short order. The harder ones to spot contain some reason or truth that prevents you from quickly dismissing them. Sometimes you need to pick out the good stuff and throw the rest away, and to do this you need to exercise critical thinking.

I saw a grocery bag that said "studies show children and teens who eat dinner with their families at least 5 times a week are 50% less likely to use alcohol." The bag's conclusion was to start eating dinner together and that will prevent alcoholism. Is eating dinner together the dominant factor? Or is there something else that causes both eating dinner together and reduced alcoholism?

Here are some more which many people have seriously believed:

• Companies don't have to make a profit anymore. It's the new economy.
• Real estate always goes up, even if salaries don't.
• Or even: A university must be a traditional campus and not an office building.

It's even harder when you come from the world of ones and zeros where we really, really want to believe that everything can be deterministic. It's harder than that when you understand that adding people into the mix and scaling up a system changes the dominant factors, while everyone around you still believes it should all be deterministic.

There's a book that uses studies to debunk beliefs about managing people and projects; it happens to be software-based but the thinking could be applied almost everywhere. This book is called Peopleware; it's small and fun to read and I recommend it to almost everyone. Alas, it really isn't a book of answers, it just firmly destroys many closely-held ideas about how people work in business situations that involve programming. The best thing about it is that it reminds you how easy it is to take a wrong idea and build a bad world around it. It helps you ask questions.

So when you go into your new job with your head filled with technical knowledge from the last couple of years, and you add what I've told you today, you may be tempted to assume that everyone at the company has foolishly gotten themselves trapped with bad ideas. But there's one more very important maxim from Gerald Weinberg which doesn't really answer anything as much as gives you a way to understand what happens. He says: "Things are the way they are because they got that way ... one logical step at a time." It's the legendary frog in the saucepan. So from your fresh new perspective things might look ridiculous, but remember that each decision on the way was made by someone weighing the issues and making what seemed like the best choice at the time. This viewpoint doesn't solve the problem but it can make you more compassionate about the people who are stuck there.

You'll need to make a lot of mistakes in order to figure things out. So be humble, and keep asking questions.

What happens in our body during exercise?

What happens in our body during exercise?

1. Breathing rate increases to ensure more air inside the lungs and so more oxygen
   
2. Heart rate increases to ensure more blood is available to all working muscles and other tissues; this helps in getting more oxygen and more nutrients for energy.
   
3. Muscles who actually responsible to create activity in the body contracting and relaxing and they cause movement in the joints; in this process energy is spent.
   
4. Brain needs lot of sugar (glucose) every second to function efficiently and this is maintained by blood sugar at 80-120 mg/DL always and this is the responsibility of liver.
   

In a nut shell    Lungs -------------------------------procure Oxygen

        Heart and blood vessels--------distribute Oxygen

        Muscles-----------------------------consume Oxygen

When these three areas function correctly, our endurance/aerobic capacity/stamina/Vo2max increase sufficiently. Good endurance means good longevity and healthy life. No wonder Japanese live longer than anybody in the world. More physical activity/work/exercise all will help you live longer.

When we exercise, our heart beats faster for example from resting rate of 45-65 beats/min to the maximum rate of 200+/min depending up on the age, fitness levels and health of the person. Lungs can breathe to a phenomenal level of 150-200 litres'/min during peak exercise when compared to resting levels of 6-10 lit/min. Our Blood pressure can rise from resting values of 110/70mm of Hg to 200/110mmof Hg without affecting the body. Blood flow to working muscles can increase from 15% to 88% during peak exercise. There are temporary as well as permanent changes occur in the body which we consider as physiological adaptations. If there are no adaptations, means that there are no benefits.

When do we get correct adaptations?

It takes about 12 weeks for complete adaptations, that means you start enjoying the benefits of exercise only after 12 weeks. Heart rate comes down, heart muscle becomes stronger, lungs can breathe more volume of air helping in pumping more oxygen and nutrients to all parts of the body, BP comes down, brain works efficiently, muscles get better in size and strength increases. Range of motion in all joints improves reducing the degenerative process thus slowing down the Osteoarthritis. Above all the immunity improves and resistant to disease increases. Japanese people live longer because they work longer and harder. Exercise adherence is very crucial for everlasting benefits.

 

Benefits of Exercise

• Longevity of life:
  
  • There are many research papers to support this and all over the world, people who work harder live longer. This happens by improving all the functions of the systems of the body and by increasing the immunity of the body. The day you stop exercise you lose all the benefits with the interest that means you skip one week you lose two week's benefits.
    
• Increased Functional capacity:
  
  • Ability of a person to perform daily activities with vigour and alertness depend on his/her fitness levels. As you exercise, your functional capacity gradually increases.
    
• Decreased Fat and Increased Muscle:
  
  • As you exercise regularly, body fat decreases slowly; especially if you are doing low intensity and prolonged duration of exercise. For muscle to improve one must do strength exercises at least 2-3 times a week. So one's fatness or muscularity explains the food and activity habits of the person.
    
• Increased flexibility:
  
  • One must do some mobility exercises as a part of regular exercise regimen. These will help you to maintain the movement in the joints and the elastic ability of the muscles and tendons.
    
• Better Lipid profile:
  
  • You must know that HDL (good cholesterol) increases only by exercise and all Indians have poor HDL levels; with right amount of exercise, one can easily maintain LDL (bad cholesterol), Total cholesterol and triglyceride (free fat) levels.
    
• Protection from Heart Disease and diabetes:
  
  • With regular exercise, coronary arteries (blood vessels which supply the heart muscle) have less chances of having blocks thus reducing the risk of heart attacks. Even after heart disease, it's the exercise is the corner stone of rehabilitation. Right intensity of exercise helps to get good sugar control in diabetic persons.
    
• Protection from Osteoporosis:
  
  • Best tool to protect from brittle bone "osteoporosis" is to exercise; strength exercise and weight bearing exercises greatly help along with good diet and health.
    
• Better Immunity:
  
  • As we exercise regularly our immune globulins the proteins which are responsible for immunity increase. It is observed that better exercise, better the immunity.
    
• Mental wellbeing:
  
  • It is seen that people who exercise regularly are more positive in nature and enjoy the best of life.
    
• Exercise doesn't cost you:
  
  • Effective exercise doesn't cost you much; if you cannot do today tomorrow you are going to be busier so you better start now.
    

Hotel Soap

While i was stumbling I came across this page, this is very funny that I couldn't contain the urge to blog this.

Text from : http://humour.200ok.com.au/soap.htm

What to Do With Hotel Soap

The following letters are taken from an actual incident between a London
hotel and one of its guests. The Hotel ended up submitting the letters
to the London Sunday Times!


Dear Maid,

Please do not leave any more of those little bars of soap in my bathroom
since I have brought my own bath-sized Dial. Please remove the six
unopened little bars from the shelf under the medicine chest and another
three in the shower soap dish. They are in my way.

Thank you,
S. Berman

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Room 635,

I am not your regular maid. She will be back tomorrow, Thursday, from
her day off. I took the 3 hotel soaps out of the shower soap dish as you
requested. The 6 bars on your shelf I took out of your way and put on
top of your Kleenex dispenser in case you should change your mind. This
leaves only the 3 bars I left today which my instructions from the
management is to leave 3 soaps daily. I hope this is satisfactory.

Kathy, Relief Maid

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Maid - I hope you are my regular maid.

Apparently Kathy did not tell you about my note to her concerning the
little bars of soap. When I got back to my room this evening I found you
had added 3 little Camays to the shelf under my medicine cabinet. I am
going to be here in the hotel for two weeks and have brought my own
bath-size Dial so I won't need those 6 little Camays which are on the
shelf. They are in my way when shaving, brushing teeth, etc. Please
remove them.

S. Berman

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mr. Berman,

My day off was last Wed. so the relief maid left 3 hotel soaps which we
are instructed by the management. I took the 6 soaps which were in your
way on the shelf and put them in the soap dish where your Dial was. I
put the Dial in the medicine cabinet for your convenience. I didn't
remove the 3 complimentary soaps which are always placed inside the
medicine cabinet for all new check-ins and which you did not object to
when you checked in last Monday. Please let me know if I can of further
assistance.

Your regular maid,
Dotty

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mr. Berman,

The assistant manager, Mr. Kensedder, informed me this morning that you
called him last evening and said you were unhappy with your maid
service. I have assigned a new girl to your room. I hope you will accept
my apologies for any past inconvenience. If you have any future
complaints please contact me so I can give it my personal attention.
Call extension 1108 between 8AM and 5PM. Thank you.

Elaine Carmen
Housekeeper

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Miss Carmen,

It is impossible to contact you by phone since I leave the hotel for
business at 7:45 AM and don't get back before 5:30 or 6PM. That's the
reason I called Mr. Kensedder last night. You were already off duty. I
only asked Mr. Kensedder if he could do anything about those little bars
of soap. The new maid you assigned me must have thought I was a new
check-in today, since she left another 3 bars of hotel soap in my
medicine cabinet along with her regular delivery of 3 bars on the
bath-room shelf. In just 5 days here I have accumulated 24 little bars
of soap. Why are you doing this to me?

S. Berman

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mr. Berman,

Your maid, Kathy, has been instructed to stop delivering soap to your
room and remove the extra soaps. If I can be of further assistance,
please call extension 1108 between 8AM and 5PM.Thank you,

Elaine Carmen,
Housekeeper

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mr. Kensedder,

My bath-size Dial is missing. Every bar of soap was taken from my room
including my own bath-size Dial. I came in late last night and had to
call the bellhop to bring me 4 little Cashmere Bouquets.

S. Berman

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mr. Berman,

I have informed our housekeeper, Elaine Carmen, of your soap problem. I
cannot understand why there was no soap in your room since our maids are
instructed to leave 3 bars of soap each time they service a room. The
situation will be rectified immediately. Please accept my apologies for
the inconvenience.

Martin L. Kensedder
Assistant Manager

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mrs. Carmen,

Who the hell left 54 little bars of Camay in my room? I came in last
night and found 54 little bars of soap. I don't want 54 little bars of
Camay. I want my one damn bar of bath-size Dial. Do you realize I have
54 bars of soap in here. All I want is my bath size Dial. Please give me
back my bath-size Dial.

S. Berman

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mr. Berman,

You complained of too much soap in your room so I had them removed. Then
you complained to Mr. Kensedder that all your soap was missing so I
personally returned them. The 24 Camays which had been taken and the 3
Camays you are supposed to receive daily. I don't know anything about
the 4 Cashmere Bouquets. Obviously your maid, Kathy, did not know I had
returned your soaps so she also brought 24 Camays plus the 3 daily
Camays. I don't know where you got the idea this hotel issues bath-size
Dial. I was able to locate some bath-size Ivory which I left in your
room.

Elaine Carmen
Housekeeper

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Mrs. Carmen,

Just a short note to bring you up-to-date on my latest soap inventory.
As of today I possess:

- On the shelf under medicine cabinet - 18 Camay in 4 stacks of 4 and 1
stack of 2.

- On the Kleenex dispenser - 11 Camay in 2 stacks of 4 and 1 stack of 3.

- On the bedroom dresser - 1 stack of 3 Cashmere Bouquet,

- 1 stack of 4 hotel-size Ivory, and 8 Camay in 2 stacks of 4.

- Inside the medicine cabinet - 14 Camay in 3 stacks of 4 and 1 stack
of 2.

- In the shower soap dish - 6 Camay, very moist.

- On the northeast corner of tub - 1 Cashmere Bouquet, slightly used.

- On the northwest corner of tub - 6 Camays in 2 stacks of 3.

Please ask Kathy when she services my room to make sure the stacks are
neatly piled and dusted. Also, please advise her that stacks of more
than 4  have a tendency to tip. May I suggest that my bedroom window
sill is not in use and will make an excellent spot for future soap
deliveries. One more item, I have purchased another bar of bath-sized
Dial which I am keeping in the hotel vault in order to avoid further
misunderstandings.

S. Berman