Do not stand at my grave and weep!

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.

A poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye.

Success

To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived!
This is to have succeeded.

-A beautiful poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Via Roshan. Thanks for Sharing.

Appreciating Your Immediate World

An interesting social experiment result: must read it.
_

Maturity.. Some thoughts!

Notes put down August, 2008

---

Through out, last week I was more-than-more busy with my work and hence could flip only a few pages of the book I am reading currently 'A Beautiful Mind' by Sylvia Nasar which is basically the biography of John Nash, mathematician less known for the Noble Prize in Economics and his contributions in the development of "Game Theory" and more for the movie based on him with the book's name. A passage in the book stuck with me --

".. At nineteen, Nash already had the style of a mature mathematician... He tried to reduce things to something tangible. He tried to relate things to what he already knew. He tried to get a feel of things before he actually tried them. He tried to do little things with some numbers in it. That's how Ramanujan, who
claimed he got his results from spirits, figured things out.."

There's absolutely nothing extraordinary in this passage (book has more extraordinary things about Nash and other mathematicians at Princeton and elsewhere). It hit the chords in my cortex because it enumerates few properties of maturity. This was a question in my mind at different phases of my life till now. How do we know if we are getting mature? One of the senior colleagues in the first company I worked for said once ".. when you start learning from past mistakes and avoid repetition of those mistakes, you know that you're getting mature...". I think maturity also means understanding that however long journey be, it has to start with a step ahead. It also means that however big a task is, it has to start with an initiative (which might not be that glamerous -- in most cases "will" not be). It also means that writing of that brilliant piece of software began with few initial keystrokes. As of writing this, I am begining with a protypical implementation I need to do as part of my job.. first step.. hmm!

Now when I write software (that's the job into which I am for quite some time), I am more in resonance with understanding the requirements and more at ease transforming the requirements into small doable items and then building on top of it. This comes with a risk though. If you don't have your idioms, learnings, standards ready with you, you may find yourself saying "this is all crap" by the time you finish up with the project (Belive me, this has happened with me several times and my friends still grill me for that behavior of mine).

Don't just write software, learn from it and keep maintaining the learnings (may be document them somewhere, and keep revising the patterns).. In the mood of generalization, I would say that don't just do things, learn from what you do and keep the learnings (and for self gratification, keep looking back and you will feel the difference..)

Wikipedia says that Maturity is: a term used in psychology to indicate that a person responds to the circumstances or environment in an appropriate manner; often this implies a response that is reasoned or learned rather than impulsive.

while another resource defines it in a more verbose manner:

What is maturity? Maturity is the ability to control anger and settle differences without violence or destruction. Maturity is patience. It is the willingness to pass up immediate pleasure in favor of the long-term gain. Maturity is perseverance, the ability to sweat out a project or a situation in spite of heavy opposition and discouraging set-backs. Maturity is the capacity to face
unpleasantness and frustration, discomfort and defeat, without complaint or collapse. Maturity is humility. It is being big
enough to say, "I was wrong." And, when right, the mature person need not experience the satisfaction of saying, "I told you so." Maturity is the ability to make a decision and stand by it. The immature spend their lives exploring endless possibilities; then they do nothing. Maturity is the art of living in peace with that which we cannot change, the courage to change that which should be changed -- and the wisdom to know the difference.

So I would say that maturity is signified by following attributes (not comprehensive obviously, so these are just few of them) -

1. You don't react. You 'act' instead.
2. You are not impulsive.
3. You gradually keep moving towards a more stoic behavior. You take both good and bad news in cool manner.
4. While doing your tasks, you keep in mind that failure is "possible" and keep your fallbacks ready. You think of them even when "it is not required" as told by your colleagues.
5. You gracefully say "it was my mistake" if it was. You also tell people if they are wrong and at the same time listen to their point.
6. You keep your words.
7. You don't blabber and talk sense. Words should come out of mouth (especially when people are listening to you) only after substantial thoughts.
9. You keep learning and try not to repeat mistakes.
10. You are assertive in your profession and personal life.
11. You listen to others.
12. You are not judgemental.

There is a saying which struck me - "Win as if you are so used to it and lose as if you enjoyed losing for a change". (A picture of Pete Sampras flashes when I write this).

What do you think about Maturity?

Age & Entrepreneurship!

Via Paul Kedrosky's Blog:

"Today, however, there is a new report out from my friends at the Kauffman Foundation on precisely this question: The age (and education) of U.S. tech entrepreneurs. What is the distribution? How is it changing?

Perhaps surprisingly, the report shows that U.S. tech entrepreneurs are, if anything, older than expected. People founding tech companies over the last ten years had an average and median age of 39-years, nowhere near the age that makes for good stories about dorm room entrepreneurs -- and older than many of us might have thought."

Asciify v0.0.2

Asciify v0.0.2 is an AIR application which produces ASCII arts for images and requires Adobe AIR runtime installed on the system. It has been tested (unit tested I should say rather) on Windows XP SP2 and Windows 7 but *should* run on other flavors as well.

Asciify v 0.0.2 is out with following features:

* Colored "Asciification": Draw the character in the RGB color of the corresponding pixels.
* Option to invert the background and foreground colors: This is because black background makes the apparent inter-character distance lesser (increased proximity) and hence looks more appealing with colored character set. It looks worse without colored pixels though.
* Brightness change control: This will help in recalculation of pixel characters.

Known Issue:

* Performance really needs a revamp. A huge one. Do not close the application when you notice a "Not Responding" message on title bar. It will be back in few seconds. I am working on the performance but could not wait to release this.

Download Asciify v0.0.2 here.

As they say a picture is worth more than a thousand words, following is a snapshot of help showing major feature components in this release: [click on the photo for reading it out]

[From earlier post]

Why would you want to install this over a large number of websites doing it?
* Uploading the image to server and rendering it back to the browser. Hmm.
Why run back n forth when that does not add value? ASCIIfy will save
time!
* You don’t want to “not being able to create ASCII Art” when somehow
you are not connected to internet. ASCIIfy is so much more available.
* You can save it in so many formats other than text!

ASCIIfy v0.0.1

ASCIIfy v0.0.1 is an AIR application which produces ASCII arts for images (currently only JPEGs considering its version 0.0.1 and my temptation to roll it out early). Asciify v0.0.1 requires Adobe AIR runtime installed on the system. It has been tested (unit tested I should say rather) on Windows XP SP2 but *should* run on other flavors as well. Attributing to Adobe AIR it *should* also run on Linux systems. I’ll update this post with my tests on Ubuntu 8.10 soon.

Following is a sample image created using ASCIIfy:

Original image:

Features:

• Convert an Image into ASCII Art and render the ASCII art in an editable text viewer.
• Save ASCIIfied image as JPEG, PNG, Adobe PDF or HTML.
• Get an approximate Histogram of the image.

Written using: Flex 3, Flex Builder.

Runtime: Adobe AIR.

Third party: For saving the ASCII Art as Adobe PDF, this uses Alive PDF library [http://alivepdf.bytearray.org/].

Internet is flooded with a number of software which do this but I believe this is one of the first attempts which use power of AIR to bring this experience to desktop while keeping the RIAness of Flex.

Why would you want to install this over a large number of websites doing it?

• Uploading the image to server and rendering it back to the browser. Hmm. Why run back n forth when that does not add value? ASCIIfy v0.0.1 will save time!
• You don’t want to “not being able to create ASCII Art” when somehow you are not connected to internet. ASCIIfy v0.0.1 is so much more available.
• You can save it in so many formats other than text!

Where to download it from?

Download Asciify v0.0.1

Happy ASCIIfying!

… And do provide your valuable feedback here or at awasthi dot manoj at gmail dot com.

Monty Hall Problem!

Monty Hall Problem is named after the host of an american game show with the name "Let's make a deal". Problem has many variants. One of them is:

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

Should the player switch? That's the problem.

I tried this. There are 3 doors. 1 of them contains cars and hence probability of choosing a door with car is 1/3 and that with goat is 2/3. When one of the door with goat is opened then the question reduces to two doors. So probability should be 1/2 now and it should not matter whether you switch or not. But it does and that's why it has been most discussed paradox problem. From Wikipedia entry -

Because there is no way for the player to know which of the two remaining unopened doors is the winning door, most people assume that each of these doors has an equal probability and conclude that switching does not matter. In fact, the player should switch—doing so doubles the probability of winning the car from 1/3 to 2/3.

Why the probability is not 1/2?

This difference can be demonstrated by contrasting the original problem with a variation that appeared in vos Savant's column in November 2006. In this version, Monty Hall forgets which door hides the car. He opens one of the doors at random and is relieved when a goat is revealed. Asked whether the contestant should switch, vos Savant correctly replied, "If the host is clueless, it makes no difference whether you stay or switch. If he knows, switch" (vos Savant, 2006).

Increasing the number of doors

It may be easier to appreciate the solution by considering the same problem with 1,000,000 doors instead of just three (vos Savant 1990). In this case there are 999,999 doors with goats behind them and one door with a prize. The player picks a door. The game host then opens 999,998 of the other doors revealing 999,998 goats—imagine the host starting with the first door and going down a line of 1,000,000 doors, opening each one, skipping over only the player's door and one other door. The host then offers the player the chance to switch to the only other unopened door. On average, in 999,999 out of 1,000,000 times the other door will contain the prize, as 999,999 out of 1,000,000 times the player first picked a door with a goat. A rational player should switch. Intuitively speaking, the player should ask how likely is it, that given a million doors, he or she managed to pick the right one.

from coding horror blog -

When told of this (that switching was more lucrative choice), Paul Erdos, one of the leading mathematicians of the 20th century, said, "That's impossible." Then, when presented with a formal mathematical proof of the correct answer, he still didn't believe it and grew angry. Only after a colleague arranged for a computer simulation in which Erdos watched hundreds of trials that came out 2-to-1 in favor of switching did Erdos concede that he was wrong.

The problem is so unintuitive one of the most notable mathematicians of the last century couldn't wrap his head around it. That's ... well, that's amazing.

Sunday evening went well with this problem!

customer service, an experience

Recently I had few experiences of bad customer service with a telecom company Reliance communications which is a huge company. Few days back I again had a bad experience with the same company. In all instances, I visited a reliance web world store in Sector 18, Noida and experience was one of indifference to the customer and customer was me. In latest experience, I went for a disconnection and wished to know the amount I needed to pay. Executives kept me moving from one person to another and then said that some server is not working and hence I need to come again some other day. The words "come again" were a dej-vu experience. Same words were said when I earlier came to reliance for a connection, when I came for a broadband disconnection and for a query (then too there was a server issue - called "technical problem" - which seemingly is a NP-hard problem for reliance meaning no solution exists in finite time.

First experience was an amazing one - I went to reliance for a connection with few documents which I thought are required and was told to get x, y, z documents required and "come again". I went with the documents x, y, and z after 2-3 days. I was told that just that day they had a letter from head office which says that document 'z' will not work and instead a document 'p' is required and hence I had to "come again" with document 'p'. I was frustrated, irritated and showed my anger to the employees - but they behaved as government employees. Smiled. Said "sir, ab yeh to rules hain company ke. hum thode hi banaate hain." (Sir these are company rules, we don't make them). Well, I went with that document and got the connection. Last experience that I wrote above about was the disconnection of this connection.

By chance, I also had to visit vodafone store for paying my bill. I went to the vodafone store which is ironically, located just beside the reliance web world. Their system of paying bills is automated with three machines set up. Still, it had a guard and two service executives. These executives looked more like dumb bimbos but well, they were there for any help with the process of paying bills. They were also there to give you a privilege card with a smile which vodafone was giving you as an appreciation of paying bill. That's what customer service is about.

I remember when I went for a connection and their corporate plan for the company I work for was over - I showed disinterest without that plan - and how that guy jumped in, talked to his superiors and within seconds got me registered as the vodafone customer. He asked me to get a few documents ready which vodafone will get collected from my office. That's what customer service is about.

Trust me, reliance executives would not have cared. I know from my experience.

All in all, I want to say that cheaper is not going to get you the market Mr Ambani. In this business customer satisfaction is going to take an edge and that comes more from the quality of service than being cheaper.

So Mr Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, Listening?

Long long ago..

I used to write blogs and used to love it. I got stuck with lot of work at office, home and elsewhere. Lots of it, believe me. Now everything subsiding so possibly I'm going to write something. Do drop by!

What will India do now?

Normally when we write India it signifies the state i.e. the government but here I refer to the people of India. India, the largest democracy in the world is undoubtedly greatest because of the religious, cultural, ethnical, historical and geographical diversities it posesses.  

Date for Elections has been announced i.e. April 16, 2009. 

With this announcement, many debates have started on who to vote for? What India needs? What youths of India need (and I notice that this debate is larger than any other - as if India is just a young India - and other age-groups have suddenly exterminated). 

Yesterday night I was watching NDTV's show Vinod Dua Live and heard few thoughts by M. J. Akbar and was impressed by the clarity of thoughts he has. He said that it is not about a young prime minister or an older prime minister. What youths want is a person who can think for them, who can give them a future or vision, who can also understand that youths are not only people with cell phones in hand and ear phones stuffed in ears but actually they are also people who don't yet (year 2009) have basic necessities like food and water and electricity at their homes. Even they are young. Although for making it to Times of India home page you have to be a dynamic IIM graduate who cribs about not being offered a Rs 1 crore salary job (like his seniors) OR a software developer who has been sacked off job recently but we have to accept the presence of the youth who still asks if he can get some work for Rs 100 a day. 

According to Dua, there are several different classes of youth in current Indian society. One class is so rich that it does not care who rules and how. They are so well off that who wins or loses and who governs does not make any difference. This class does not vote. Then there is a group which is well off, which takes education and gets a decent job. This group thinks that it cannot make a difference. This group also does not vote. Then there is this group of youth who is not well off, not even educated enought to get a decent job and who believes still in democracy and it is this group which is going to decide this time who comes to power this election. 

My personal opinion is that it is our country and if we remain a spectator then same things will keep happening. I've heard more than 100 times in my life advice that if you want to change the country then join politics but I don't buy that opinion and think that we can change the country even by selecting the people who govern. we have this right to think on which political party has most rigid plan for the development of India and right to exercise our vote to get them to power. Now onus is on us. 

In America, Barrack Obama won the elections against J. McCain. It was an election of Hope against Fear. People chose hope. I think here in India also we will make a rational choice rather than coming in influence of fanatics who are not even sure of what they want to do.