Uncertainty, the name of the game

Cricket is the game glorious of uncertainties, and developers’ lives are no less uncertain, just not glorious. Both cricketers and developers need to be flexible and adjust to new situations. Be it change in requirements or the target score. Deal with the uncertainties of the pitch or the legacy code base.

Team work is important

Although there could be solo efforts that can steal the limelight, the fact remains that you need a team to win. You might think that a solo developer can deliver, but I will like to remind that, invariably this solo developer is building on works of thousands of other developers by using other libraries or frameworks.

Different skills make the difference

It takes all type to win the game. You might have all-rounders which add value, but specialists are also needed as there are very few all-rounder that are better than the best specialists. Similarly all kinds of skills are needed for coding, and rarely is there a dev with all skills. Talking of skills, I believe, you are born with the needed skills, but it takes years of practise to master those skills.

With skills you need attitude, that state of mind, which drives your actions. These are the common and opposing personalities that we encounter and each is needed as much as the other.

• The blaster and the wall
• The meticulous and the flamboyant
• The artist and the scientist

The Game Play

There is a definite need to be agile, to take stock of the burn-down or the run-rate after each over, and to revise your strategy accordingly. Breaking the target into sprints or sessions and finally, being time bound.

How to succeed

Like any thing in life, both coding and cricket need passion and commitment to succeed. There are only a few professions, where you do in the weekend, what you do during the week. You need continuously work on your skills even when not in office or a tournament.

There is a need for continuous improvement and to keep abreast with changed rules and strategies. The core tools remain the same, but the way you yield them differ over time.

One more thing

Both are literally back-breaking works but both pay well!

There is a conscious effort to remove the ‘male only’ label and involve the women as well, with good success.

photo credit: hfb @ flickr

The blog is now one year old, woo hoo!

When I started the blog, I was not sure if I could sustain it. But here I am, 1 yr and 49 posts later. Although I could not post once a week as I promised myself, I was close enough.

If only I could share statistics to prove how popular this blog is, but both of you know it isn’t

So, here’s looking forward to another year of blogging, and hope to see you soon with a non-self-congratulatory post.

PS. The break in blogging was a result of a nice long vacation in May.

Let me be quick in saying that my family and I loved the film and think it is one of the best movie. It is a good take on the state of education in the country, a subject I feel strongly about. This is also not about Chetan Bhagat, although the nit-picking could apply to Five Point Someone as well. But I haven’t read it, so can’t say.

I expected more from Aamir, the perfectionist.

I was born in 1978, the same year that Farhan Qureshi (Madhavan) was born. So I felt more connected to the movie than the current generation. This also means that the college period depicted in the movie was the same period I was in college, which is roughly 1995-1999.

So what?

Well you see, a few of the things shown in the movie are, let’s say, futuristic.

Mobile Phones

Mobile phones were launched in India after 1994. The call charges in a ‘scheme’ were 16 Rs. incoming/outgoing. They were not mainstream until 2000 when charges began to drop. Even then, in 2000, I was the only one in my MBA college to have a mobile phone, and that too was given to me by my employer.

So showing engineering college students carrying a phone, pre 1999, was a bit of a stretch.

Mobile Internet

Even if you think ‘chote’ (Rancho) was rich enough to carry a mobile, the movie shows mobile internet being used in the hospital for video conferencing.

• Internet in 1999 was the good old modem based dialup internet at blazing speeds of 56 kbps. Broadband Internet was unheard of until 2005.
• Mobile Data Cards / USB Modems were launched in 2008/2009.
• Even then, I don’t think the speed that Airtel EDGE gives is insufficient for video conferencing. I don’t know for sure, since I am not using one.

Scooter

The scooter that Pia (Kareena) drives looks most certainly like Kinetic Flyte, which was only launched in 2009.

Bottomline

With a little research, which Aamir Khan is known for, the film could have been more realistic. Anyways, if you haven’t seen the movie, please do, it is really good.

P.S. Happy New Year.

Indians want to know:

And the same on Google.com which I assume is US targeted.

Papa, ever since you made the computer a laptop, it misbehaves and crashes. Please make it a computer again!

Read computer = Ubuntu and laptop = Windows. My desktop ran Ubuntu for a long time until I installed Win7 on it. My laptop always had WinXP as shipped by the manufacturer. My daughter prefers Ubuntu to Windows, looks like I am raising a Linux fangirl

I wonder if Scott Hanselman will publish this on http://www.overheardathome.com

Well, I don’t need to beat the dead horse about why one needs to backup data. But with the explosion of digital assets, it is all the more important.

What are my digital assets?

The largest, of course, are photographs. Apart from these, I have a fair smattering of music, code, documents and others.

How do I back them up?

Currently, photos are backed up on DVD and in the cloud (picasaweb). Picasa acts as incremental backup and DVDs are full backups. A copy in Hyderabad acts as offsite backup.

Other things lie around on 2 USB drives and dropbox, plus my disk drives in my PC and laptop.

What other option have I tried?

I have tried a few backup tools, Windows 7 backup utility, some more apps on Ubuntu, and found everything lacking in one way or other. I haven’t tried the Apple Time Machine or Windows Home Server. But, from what I have read, they might be answering most of my needs listed below, expect being cross platform. I have not spent much time trying online backup solutions because of the reasons mentioned earlier.

Problems I face?

Synchronizing data is my biggest problem. Although, dropbox is great, I can’t use it to backup my photos or music. In addition, I am afraid to plunge head long to an online storage system, since downloading all of them in India will be a real pain, not to mention, expensive.

What will an ideal backup tool look like for me?

In a sentence, “Drop box on a (USB) stick”.

What was that again?

Well, let me expand. These are the list of features, if I were to write a backup tool, which I might do some day.

1. Installation: When I install the software (which was trivial in first place), it asks me only one question. What do I use the PC for, with a set of clear options (think big graphical buttons).
   Options include:

• Web surfing
• Home office
• Games
• Programming
• Creative work

1. First Backup: When I plug-in the external drive (big enough), it will prompt to use the disk for backup and then backs up all my important documents without me telling which are important.
2. Sync and Restore: The next time I plug-in the same drive, it does a silent sync, without bothering me. At the end of the backup process, if any of the files are removed locally, it will show me a friendly dialog allowing me to restore or permanently delete them.
3. Multiple Computers: I can use the same external drive to backup multiple PCs as well as sync multiple PCs running multiple operating systems. If a file exists on multiple PCs, it will intelligently update the local copies on all computers to the latest version.
4. Web Backup: It can back up the most important files to several web backup providers.
5. Self contained: Ideally the software should copy itself to the external disk and sets itself to auto run. Thus if the disk is plugged in to another PC, it could simply start the sync process without the need to install the software first.
6. Miscellaneous: Burn DVD, restore older version, etc.

What next?

Don’t know. May be I will write a utility when I get some free time, which is unlikely. Hopefully dropbox extend their sync over intranet to sync using disk. Maybe someone reads this writes such a tool. I am open to collaborate with a few like minded people in developing this. Maybe something in Java/Jython/JavaFX to keep it cross platform.

If there was ever a totally unqualified opinion, here it is. A blogger for 6 weeks and change, this is my thought what a blogging tool should be.

Those who came here searching for the ultimate editor, I am sorry to disappoint, only ideas here.

To start with; I have tried WordPress online editor, Scribefire, Windows Live Writer and Drivel; and found them all lacking in one aspect or another. Currently I find Live Writer to be better than the rest. Trying out OneNote which has few features I like.

So, having laid the foundation, here are the features I would like to see in a blog editor.

• Allow you to plan and schedule posts
• Help to collect and organise ideas
• Integrated RSS reader
• Darkroom to allow focussed editing
• Post templates
• Allow easy formatting, preferable Textile or Markdown formatting
  • Advanced source code formatting ability
• Automatically cross reference posts
• Suggest related content

Let me try and expand that, and also the reason for them being there. Well to start with I thought of the workflow behind blogging. This involves planning, preparing, producing, proofing and publishing.

Planning

Given that I made a promise to self, to post an article each week, I would prefer to be able to plan and schedule my articles. So an integrated calendar that shows my past posts and future ideas / drafts will help a lot.

Preparing

Personally I use delicious to organize content and ideas. In fact I tag all stuff I will like to blog about. So I need an editor that can pull my delicious bookmarks and keep them readily accessible. I could then lookup all my ‘toblog’ bookmarks and develop what catches my fancy. My bookmarks also act as my reference tool.

In addition, if the editor has an integrated RSS reader, it will complete the content discovery part of the workflow. Throw in a quick ‘blog this’ action, and that would be great.

Producing

So we have planned our posts, gathered all reference material and have a blog dancing in our head. The next step is to jot it all down. To add structure to this very creative process, I need a wizard. So when I click ‘New Post’ a wizard pops up showing a list of available templates. For example, I could have a Q&A template for my Entrepreneur’s Series. Refer this post of 20 post templates. Based on my selection, the tool will create a pre-formatted text, thus giving a structure to my thoughts. Needless to say the templates library itself is editable.

While writing, it would be great to minimize distraction, so a darkroom option will be great. In addition, ability to use textile / markdown formatting will be wonderful.

In addition the editor needs to have decent support for inserting media, images etc. A light weight imager editor will be most welcome.

Proofing

Once the post is near complete, it is time to shine it. In addition to the standard features like spell and grammar checks, it should have interlinking facility, which is the backbone of the internet. So I will like that the editor parses the post in the background and pulls up a list of related posts, like Zemanta. In addition it should automatically link to all known words. For example, it should automatically insert a link to Zemanta, in the previous sentence. While it is doing this, it would have figured out the tags related to this post and added them as well. In fact if it has figured out the tags, finding related posts is as simple as looking up my delicious bookmarks with similar tags.

Publishing

The final step is publishing, which is something each editor is able to do. Live Writer does it best as it can show a live preview, to the facility is completely optional.

So, what do you think? What’s your workflow and editor of choice?

P.S. I have written this post on Word 2007. So far, this looks good in the producing and publishing department.

Bonus tip: Install Workrave for automated breaks and exercise tips.