What else?

Ask the So What Question

2011-10-25T11:19:00.001-04:00

What questions we ask does really matter. Think big.

manilla

2011-08-12T10:59:00.005-04:00

Couple of days back I started using manilla service on Aparna's recommendation. I have to say I'm already liking it a lot.

I feel manilla is similar to mint.com in some ways but different in others. For example, like Mint, manilla can show you the balances on your credit cards but unlike Mint, it doesn't show you all the transactions on the cards (at least for now). Moreover, manilla allows us to add our travel accounts such as Delta Skymiles, Avis, Marriot Rewards etc. giving us one dashboard showing the points on these accounts. And there is much more.

Before I start using a service of this kind I generally do a bit of research. So browsing around, I found good reviews about the company and its service. For other skeptics like me, here is what the media is saying about manilla:

The New York Times: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/manilla-hopes-to-organize-household-bills-and-finances/

The Wall Street Journal: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/02/28/hearst-launches-dashboard-for-the-home/

cnet News: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20037157-36.html#ixzz1FICSucBu

More reviews and links can be found here.

It took only a few minutes for me to set it up with most of my accounts and now I have one place to go look at. Try it out if you like, its free.

Keyboard Shortcuts

2011-07-24T10:49:00.029-04:00

I believe the more efficiently we use our keyboard, the more time we can save while using our computers.

Most of us use the basic keyboard shortcuts such as for cut, copy, paste, undo, redo etc. Windows 7 supports hundreds more. Many of them are not commonly-known. In this post, I'm sharing some of them that I have been using almost daily and think are good mouse-click-savers.

Hope you guys find some of these useful.

Reference: Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts

Book review: "So What?: How to Communicate What Really Matters to Your Audience"

2010-12-30T09:59:00.021-05:00

Yesterday, I finished reading - So What?: How to Communicate What Really Matters to Your Audience written by Mark Magnacca. I liked the book so thought would write a few words about it and hence this post.

The book is organized in about 125 pages containing 10 chapters all of which essentially convey one single central message i.e. to communicate effectively by answering the "So What" question. Mark has used a simple tone and has clearly illustrated with several examples that effective communication is a must have tool which, can make you a better marketer, presenter and orator. Every chapter of the book begins with a unique quote which tells us the theme for that chapter. My favorite quote from the book comes at the beginning of the 8th chapter :

"The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." -- Mark Twain

I also enjoyed reading the examples of how Coca-Cola came to market domination and how President John F. Kennedy announced his desire to land a man on the moon. My favorite phrase from the book is the title of chapter 7 : "winging it versus orchestration". I firmly believe that good preparation is absolutely necessary to make a solid presentation or speech.

In summary, the book teaches how to be a better communicator by always keeping the audience in the mind. If you want to be a better sales-person, presentation-maker or public-speaker, this book is definitely worth a read.

Ain't reading good?

2010-04-24T11:09:00.027-04:00

I love reading a lot these days. Here is a list of books I ordered for reading this summer -

Hope to publish my reviews for some of these soon.

My Own 3G Network

2010-04-04T21:55:00.007-04:00

Since I am not very pleased with AT&Ts often unreliable 3G network, I decided to start my own. Here is a preview -

Let me know if you are interested in subscribing. :)

Mumbai Airports

2010-03-27T22:08:00.007-04:00

5 things I liked:
1. Nice new infrastructure.
2. Good use of sign boards to guide us to different parts of the airport.
3. Free trollies and free rides between international and domestic airports.
4. Fast immigration checks and customs services.
5. Presence of lounges and vending machines.

10 things I disliked (personal experience):
1. Rude immigration officer.
2. Ground staff demanding "Bakshis" (tip) for everything they do.
3. A security gaurd asking me what did I bring for him and expecting an answer. (My answer was a big awkward smile.)
DOMESTIC AIRPORT:
4. Unclean restrooms.
5. A stray cat running amock at the terminal.
6. A lady creating big fuss and drama after being asked for relevant documents before her boarding.
7. Expensive (by Indian standards) coffees and sandwiches.
8. A gaurd clearing his throat in front of other people and then frequently spitting into a trash can.
9. No wifi, no Internet on the terminal.
10. Too long queues before boarding.

Cats & Kittens

2009-07-23T23:12:00.003-04:00

My Master's Thesis Abstract

2009-07-16T16:21:00.003-04:00

Low cost availability of sensor nodes makes them an attractive choice for sensor networks and their applications. To keep the costs low, sensor nodes are generally unshielded. This unshielded nature of sensor-network nodes combined with their ease of deployment, makes them vulnerable because an adversary can capture these nodes, copy security information to make replicas and deploy the replicas in the network to render malicious attacks. Replication attacks can be extremely hazardous to a network if done in a strategic way. For any node replication detection protocol, the three most important design issues are memory usage, detection probability and energy consumption. Previous node replication detection schemes either incur large memory overhead or consume excessive energy, particularly in the central region of the network. This thesis presents a Memory Efficient Line-Selected Multicast (MELSeM) algorithm which uses efficient bloom filter data structure. We propose a novel distributed technique for detecting node replication attacks using MELSeM. MELSeM reduces the average memory overhead of the network by nearly 70% than the previous distributed schemes while achieving nearly same detection probability.

Something

2009-06-13T19:49:00.003-04:00

It has been high time since I've written any blogs here. Today I thought I should not keep postponing this and restart by writing at least something. So here we go -- "SOMETHING"!

Ever seen cascading errors? Here is an example.

2009-03-29T12:35:00.002-04:00

North Carolina Trip

2008-01-04T15:05:00.000-05:00

50 Not Out !

2007-09-22T19:27:00.000-04:00

The following content may appear gibberish ... so viewer discretion is requested. Myriad of thing have happened in last 50 days of my life. Yes, these are my first 50 days, outside India or inside US. And today i'm standing 50 not out, in/on this land. Let the words speak for themselves -

Delta 17, NY, Number 23, Atlanta, Delta 4389, Gainesville, UF, Hub, Book-Store, CISE, Gator1 card, RTS rides, Arbor Park, 16^th Avenue, Walmart, #355, T-mobile, Soccer on basketball court, Computer Networks, ISA, Graduate Student Orientations, Cricket, Advance Data Structures, E220, College football craze, Vending machines, E118, Gatorade, ICEC, Badminton, Computer Networks and Security, Career Fair, Surprise quizzes, Samsung SGH X495, Subway veggie delight, Assignments, Table tennis, Scrubs, HP tx1000z, Projects, Lake Arbor, Mashed potatoes, Video lectures, Bedbugs, Poker, Oaks mall, night walks, Strawberry shake, Dahi Handi, Laundromat, Paneer or rather Tofu Makhanwala, Winn Dixie, Pingo, India Bazaar, Route 16, Ganesh Pooja, Rubiks cube, ....................................... , Go Gators!!!

My F1 Visa Experience

2007-06-27T13:55:00.000-04:00

Place: Mumbai Consulate Day & Time: 13^th June 2007, 8:15AM

Got to the counter for interview at around 9:30AM
Visa Officer (VO): A cute and co-operative, blonde lady

VO: Hi (smile)
Me: Hi (full smile)
VO: What are you going to do in the US?
Me: Master’s in Computer Engineering
(She repeated after me … Master’s in Computer Engineering … typed something)
VO: OK, so who is going to sponsor your education?
Me: My grandfather and father are jointly going to sponsor my education. I’ve also borrowed an educational loan of 4 lacs and have got a 40% tuition waver from the University
VO: What does your father do?
Me: He is in business
VO: What type of business?
Me: Both my father and grandfather are commission agents of food grains and jaggery.
VO: Do you know what your father’s annual income is?
Me: The combined income of my father and grandfather is over X lacs per annum.
VO: OK, How much do you have in savings?
Me: XX lacs
(She typed something again …I guess she calculated the amount in dollars …)
VO: So how are you going to manage for your second year’s education?
Me: As I said mam, I have borrowed educational loan of 4 lacs and I’ve got a 40% tuition waver from UFL so the total tuition fees for my entire MS course is around 16K dollars… (Before I finished she asked another question...)
VO: What did you do in your UG?
Me: Masters … sorry BE in Computer Science and Engineering (nervous smile)
VO: When did you finish your BE?
Me: In 2005
VO: What did you do after that?
Me: I’m working in XXX since then.
VO: What is your annual income?
Me: over X lacs per annum
VO: ok, your visa is approved (smile)
Me: Thank you (smile)
(I was in a hurry to leave the darn chamber... wasn’t expecting such a long interview)
VO: Have a great day
Me: Same to you mam (a huge smile again)

Came out of the consulate, was a feeling like having won a battle.

I believe I had such a long interview because I was the last one in the queue, nobody was waiting and she had all the time in the world to interrogate me. Besides this, I think she didn’t’ understand my father’s business.

An Incident Worth Remembering

2007-06-03T16:42:00.000-04:00

One motto I believe in is – “Nothing is impossible”.
If you give your best you can achieve what you want.

One of the challenges that I tackled successfully is the incident of scoring high marks in the last semester of my engineering.

It went like this – I had written my first semester papers very well and was expecting a score of more than 70%. But when the result for first semester was out, I was shocked. I had secured 66%, my lowest score in last five semesters (but fortunately, high enough to be distinction). One may think how can one be shocked even after a distinction but this is what i am. This was something unexpected. I had decided at the beginning of my engineering to score better marks every year. I was quite successful doing this. My marks were as follows –
First year – 65.86%
Second year – 70.33 %
Third year – 71.40 %
So to achieve my target of being better every year, I had to score more than 76.8% in the final semester which was a huge ask. During the same time period one of my friend gave me another challenge, he asked me whether I could make my average of engineering count more than 70% which meant I would have to score a mammoth 79% to do that. I accepted that challenge.

I gave my heart and soul for doing this. I slept for 5 hours a day in the final month of my exam. I got so anxious that I used to talk in my sleep about the subjects I was studying (according to my cousin). I secluded myself for that one month. I kept saying to myself that I should never let my hopes die. Finally I finished the exam. I didn’t know how much I would score. What I knew was I had given my best efforts.

When the final results came out my joy knew no bounds. I had secured 79.86% in my final semester. So my final year score was 73.46% which was better than my all other scores. To add to that I even managed to get my aggregate of engineering count more than 70%.
Thus I was able to confront and overcome the challenge I had accepted.

Finally I would like to say - “If we start doing what we should and then what we can, we will find out someday that we are doing what is supposed to be the impossible.”