Real life project management articles from real people

My attempt to compile a reading list of articles which i or other readers can refer to whenever needed.

Move from technical expert to manager

Printed vs Digital (Shiva and Kali)

I was browsing through a discussion forum on coursera course and stumbled upon this image. It is simply blew me away. Please how the traditional hindu mythology story has been adapted for modern technology.

The link to original source
http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/files/2013/09/somatic1.jpg

Who will bell the cat

My son got a short children's story book as a gift. So naturally i had to read it. This was a collection of 3 famous stories along with their morals. Now if someone is trying to teach my kid something i have to know the validity of that teaching.

Let me present you the stories and the morals listed in book alongwith what i felt about them.

Title	Moral	My Observation
The grasshopper and the ants	It is wise to plan ahead for hard times	No one can argue against it.
The mice in the council	It is no use having bright ideas if they are impossible to do.	Now this is something which doesn't make sense. It is discourages from sharing one's idea to others. Unless we communicate how will we know what works and what doesn't.
The salt merchant and his donkey	Don't be surprised if your own trick is played on you	Not much of a moral in it. But i am not very opposed to it either.

Book Reading : Asura Tale of the vanquished

This weekend i had got the opportunity to read a good book (Asura: Tale of the Vanquished by Anand Neelkantan) on Indian Mythology. It is his first book and was a fascinating read.

I have grown up watching Ramayana on TV and then reading different stories based on the epic war between Ram and Ravana. In those stories Ram and Ravan has been shown as God and Monster with mythical magical power. So mostly i had assumed that these are the pure works of fiction and lets gather whatever moral value we can get from it.

But recently after reading Shiva Trilogy (Amish Tripathi) it has started dawning that maybe there is a real story behind all the grand stories of our mythology. Maybe the real event has been hidden and obscured by the salt and pepper added to these stories.

So in this book the story of Ramayana has been told from the point of view of Ravana and one of his aid Bhadra. Ravana is telling the story from the point of view of his struggle and rise to glory and the problems he faced while ruling and empire. He tries to tell us why he did what he did.

Whereas Bhadra being a lowly aid of Ravana, tell the story from the point of view of a poor citizen of any kingdom. How he loves and hates Ravana at the same time. His comparison of Ravana with Rama is very interesting to read.

While reading we get to realize that in everyday some of the things which we see as virtues can be real evil from another person's point of view. Good and evil are the opposite sides of the same coin.

This book tries to provide an answer to some of the questions like

1. Why did Ravana not hurt Sita? She was helpless and in his captivity. If we ignore magical powers then it is improbable to think that a mighty ruler of vast empire will be afraid of a woman.
2. What happened to Lanka under Vibhishana's rule?
3. How was Ram Rajya in essence? What were the fundamental differences between Rama's ruling and the Ruling of Ravana?
4. What happened to Ram and Laxmana in the end. In many stories i have read that they simply went to Dev Loka (abode of gods), which i think is an attempt to hide some interesting details.

Further the book draws very apt comparison between current society and its problem of caste system, bribery etc in earlier times and gives a sense that fundamentally nothing has changed from then till now.

Asura and Shiva Trilogy both have Shiva as one of the central theme. However in Shiva trilogy it is shown that Shiva descended from Kailash long after Ram Rajya ended. But in Asura, Shiva existed long before Rama and was the god of Asura's for a very long time. This is a disconnect and maybe Amish can explain the reasoning behind it.

These days i am trying to read on how performance of high volume websites like google, amazon, linkedin etc is managed.

And one of the highlighting fact is the use of CDN to serve static contents. So to find out how does CDN work i found a very nice article

How do CDN (Content Distribution Networks) work?

Youth and Alcohol in India

Things are changing very fast here. Gone are the days of one and only Doordarshan channel. Now we have all kind of entertainment content mostly a copy of B graded Western TV shows. Any ways i am not here to lament on what garbage we are getting to watch on TV. Today it is something different.

Yesterday i along with my family went to see the scenic Tamhini Ghat. It is almost 85 Kilometers from Pune. We were having a very good time while enjoying the lustruous green mountains and foggy weather. Finally we reached a place where there was a waterfall flowing from top of the mountain. Being it a very nice picturesque view we decided to take couple of pictures.

While we were doing this, a group of youths (all in the age range of 20-30 years) came there on the motorcycle. The first thing they did is to get off their shirts and briefs and took out some brand of alcohol and starting drinking there. Now don't get me wrong. I have no problem with enjoying alcohol. My only objection is that it was not the place to do that. Go ahead and enjoy it in the privacy of your house or in a bar which is perfectly acceptable. But drinking on a bike ride in rainy season that too in mountain roads. That is sure risky and reckless. And the worse part is that they throw bottles on the road and sometimes smash it on the road.

Further one has to watchful of their action if it is acceptable in the current situation where you are in. Drinking in front of young kids and your mother age woman is not good. Even in western culture where drinking is highly socially acceptable this type of behavior is unacceptable.

This was not the lone incident. I have seen similar behavior in Lonavala and in Goa.

So please take care of yourself and your surroundings.

Whom do you want in your team

I am working as a project leader. Now the weight of success or failure of a project lies on  my shoulder (kudos to my manager that he has been able to make me feel that way). I am interacting with lot of people on daily basis.

So essentially all my work involved is in planning and enabling people to get the job done. With this now i have also started thinking about what is a team and how to make it better (again kudos to my manager).

One thought is that what kind of people i will like to have it in my team.

Essentially there are 4 types of people (at least in software industry)

1. Very bright and smart tech savy people who are very comfortable working with others.
2. Bright but are hard to deal with. They like to be left alone and do their own thing.
3. Not extremely bright but can do the work and are also good team players.
4. They don't know why they are here

If you have people from category 1 in your team then consider yourself lucky and just enjoy the ride. Project will turn out OK.

People of category 4 are easy to figure out. If for some reason they are in your team, its your bad luck and you can discount productivity and make plans accordingly.

The real trouble begins when you have to choose from people of either category 2 or 3.

If i am not building a nuclear reactor, or a medical system on which the fate of humanity rests i will like to avoid type 2 people. With whatever little experience i have they have given me more trouble than happiness.

That is just me. What are your thoughts ?

IPL and Betting Ho Hungama

These days IPL and betting scandal is all over the news. Media is going frenzy over it. TV news channels are inviting experts like "Vinod Kambli" and "Nupur Mehta" to comment over the Cricket Betting and Bollywood nexus. Almost laughable if that is covered in the prime time 9 PM news. I can understand if it is done in latenight past 2 PM reporting.

So what happened.
Some cricket players formed a nexus with betting bookies and were caught. Immediately they were booked and sent to jail. Well that is not fair. In recent days many politicians and their relatives have been caught doing almost similar thing. None of them has gone to jail. That politician is still serving his tenure in Parliament. All he had to suffer was resign from Ministry.

And now coming to betting. Why is betting on IPL wrong? Let me talk about some famous government approved bettings

1. Stock Exchange : People bet there on the expected value of stock every day. Huge amount of money is involved. Some make money and some loose. We also have betting on future values. If betting in stock exchange is legal, then why not legalize betting on games. Let it be legalized and let government make money on it. And punish those who influence the game to increase their chance of winning just like insider trading in stock exchange.
2. Lottery : This is one of the biggest source of income for government. People are betting on government provided piece of paper

So my request to government and media is that let not make this an opportunity to hide the real issues (big corruption) and make it a media lime light in the hope that people will forget them.
 

Traffic jam in Mumbai

Long wait in jams on a Mumbai road is not a new sight. Celebrities complain of it in their tweets, commoner complain about it all the time. However the recent proposed solution to handle this problem caught me by surprise.
The suggestion is that Government shouldn't allow people to buy car if they don't have parking space. Well they won't let them register the car. Argument given is that people who don't have parking space in their house/societies park their car outside and this causes a congestion on road. And thus the solution is that you can't park on the road.
This solution has some merits but i believe it will cause more mental anguish to people. Now to get registration done you will need to show another document to Transport Office. And we all know of the common malpractice happening in government offices. This will give them one more opportunity to exploit people.
Further the road side parking problem can be solved by fining people/towing away car, which they should be already doing if it is parked in a no park zone. Other approach is to make more public parking available as part of city's infrastructure development. People can pay on rental basis. Any business establishment should provide enough parking space for their customer.
The most essential solution is to improve the public commute system. Put more comfortable buses on the road. Introduce more local trains and more local train stops. Implementation of Metro train is essential for any decently populated city. It will need a strong political will to solve the problem and spending on infrastructure projects.

Dukhi Lal and Candy Business

Disclaimer : This is the story of a very cunning man. The story is purely fictional and any resemblance to living and dead is purely coincidental.

And now being done with disclaimer let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time there lived a very cunning man named Dukhi Lal. He had employed a bunch of people (modern day PR personnel), whose job was just to present his fraudulent activities as a service to society. He had formed a company named "Sewa" and was a good spender on advertisements on any channel available.
Dukhi Lal once devised a scheme of robbing candies from poor children. He promised to double the candies given by poor children in 3 years. Since they were poor and the prospect of getting 2 candies for one was very tempting, crores of children gave their candy. Now Dukhi Lal made a lot of money by doing this candy business. To boost his image, "Sewa" company also started sponsoring the very famous sport of the land "Gilli and Danda". Now all the gilli-danda players wore dresses with emblems of "Sewa".

Some government official detected that this is scam since Dukhi Lal didn't had proper permissions to collect candies from poor children. That official filed a complaint in the court of law.

Now Dukhi Lal and his PR personnel started media war with that government official. They put huge advertisements in news papers, saying how this government official is damaging his good name and to a good service to society.

Some one rightly detected that he cannot put such an ad against a government official who is just doing his job and filed another complaint in court of law.

Now Dukhi Lal is getting desperate. Court is mounting pressure on him. So this time he designs a very ingenious plan.

He again puts a big advertisement in all news paper. This time he is asking all the people of land to sing the revered national song with them on a particular day. He is asking everyone to form a big line of millions of people and sing the song. All of them will of course be under his banner. They will get mementos bearing his symbol and a good feeling of what a nice thing they have done for the society and country.

Will you participate in his new scheme?

(c) 2013 Anup Mayank

Honeybee and Monster

Once upon a time there was a dense forest near Ganga river in current Bihar. There was plenty of food to eat and a large clean pond in the center of forest where all the animals used to come to quench their thirst. Everyone was living happily there.

Then one day a very dangerous and powerful monster "Mahatrikal" came to that forest. He liked it some much and decided to live on a banyan tree near the pond. Mahatrikal started killing animals whenever someone came to drink water. Sometimes he ate them after killing. He was so powerful that everyone was afraid of him. But since there was no other source of water all were worried about what to do.

A group of animals decided to meet their lion king "Sher Singh". They told him their dilemma and asked him to help. Lion said not to worry and promised to look after this matter.
Then lion reached at the shore of lake and shouted at the top of his voice - "Where is this evil creature, who is destroying the peace of my forest? Come and fight with me."
Hearing this the monster came out and accepted his challenge. Monster was very powerful. He simply lifted lion up in the air by his tail and threw him away at a great distance. Then he roared - "Listen you all. My name is Mahatrikal. No one should dare to challenge me again, otherwise i will do the same or worse as i have done to this lion."

Now all the animals were afraid. Sher Singh made an announcement - " Who ever gets rid of this monster will become the new king of this forest." No animal was willing to take that risk. Finally a small honey bee named "Chhutku" decided to accept the challenge.
Chhutku came to lake and said - "Come out you dirty monster. I am here to teach you a lesson.". Upon hearing this monster came out and when he saw that a little honey bee was challenging him, he started laughing and said - "Have you lost your mind? Have you not heard what i did to the lion. Do you want to get squashed? Run away, before i do that."

On this Chhutku said - "Why are you talking so high and mighty? Why don't you come here and fight with me?" Now monster was mad with rage. He started running towards little bee. But he didn't see that there were thousands of other honey bees waiting for him in the nearby trees. All of them started biting and attacking him. Monster was in a very pitiable state. He had no where to run and save himself and thousands of honey bees were constantly stinging him. Finally he apologised and said - "Please forgive me. I have made a terribe mistake. If you let me go now, i will never disturb you again."

On hearing this Chhutku forgave him. As promised monster left the forest and never came back again. Chhutku was made the new king of that forest and everyone respected him for his bravery and smartness.

(c) 2013 Anup Mayank

Visit to FTII (Film and Television Institue of India) Pune

Last weekend my wife had asked me (forced me will be a more accurate statement) to go to the French film festival which was being held at FTII (Film and Television Institute of India). I was a little bit hesitant of the idea. The foremost reason being that i was not sure how we will enjoy french movies (at that time i had no idea that movie will have subtitles too) especially with our 4 year old son who will be bored easily. Second being the usual problem of finding a parking space in an unknown crowded place in Pune (FTII had its own parking space in one of the ground). However the fact that it was free and she was very excited about seeing movie in an open space was reason enough to go there.

FTII is situated on the Law College Road in Pune. It is one of the busy and narrow main road. With the help of GPS and general directions on the road we reached there without any problem. At the gate security person showed us the parking space and asked us to collect the movie pass. In the newspaper advertisements it was written that admission will be on first come basis, so i was thinking that this movie pass will be required to watch movie, but nobody asked for it. Since we were little early, we decided to explore the law college road.
After wandering around for around 15 minutes in which we saw the usual sweet shop, grocery shop, maruti showroom, cafe coffee day etc, we found  a local fast food corner near the institute. There we had tea (for adults) and chocolate milk (which proved little too hot for our son).

Then we headed back to FTII, movie was being shown in Shantaram auditorium. To reach there from the entrance you have to walk for about 10 minutes on a slightly sloped pathway.

Then we reached Shantaram Pond. It was a nice view with chairs and red carpet. But the most sought after seats were on the stairs and balcony like platforms. At 7 they started the adjustment of projector ( i wish the organizers had done it sooner, not when everyone is comfortably seated). Further people were coming with their own pillow and blankets which was very comfortable and handy when you are sitting on the floor.
It was a collection of short movies (each being 15-20 minutes in length). The first one was "Piano Tuner". A very suspenseful and thriller movie. Maybe the soundtrack of the movies was too good or maybe the dolby surround sound system was very good, the overall effect was simply amazing.
Several other good movies followed "She can be your grandmother", "Blue Shadow", "Mozart", "Edmund was a donkey".
Finally after 7 such movies my son's patience ran out and we decided to say goodbye to FTII and Shantaram Auditorium. Thank you for providing an entertaining and memorable evening.

Oracle : Finding tables with given column name

One of my colleague today come to me asking where  can i find this column (LANDING_PAGE) in DB of our application. Actually he was not even sure of the column name. It was a field in UI. Our application has more than 200 tables and my tables are heavy (having many columns). So human search was futile. Thankfully there is a query in oracle which came to rescue.

select * from user_tab_columns where column_name like '%PAGE%';

Movie Review: Special 26

This weekend we decided to watch movie "Special 26". The reviews were quite favorable and it had been some time since we had seen movie in theater.
We prefer going on an early morning show because the movie ticket rates are one third of the regular afternoon or evening show (Rs 90 only for Platinum seat at E-Square multiplex at University Road in morning).
The main actors of this movie are Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher, Manoj Bajpai and Jimmy Shergil.
It is based on the life of con-men who duped several people and business person during the 1980s. They posed as fake CBI agents or Income Tax Officials.
The movie is decently paced and has good elements of comedy to make you laugh. I liked the scene where applicant answers - "Milke ukharenge Sir. Kuchh Hum. Kuchh Aap.".
Even though Akshay Kumar is the lead actor, i will say the movie revolves more around Anupam Kher and Manoj Bajpai. They have done superb acting.
There are some loose ends in the story (the story of Jimmy Shergil is not that convincing and the love interest of lead actor seems unnecessary.) However it is worth watching for a good relaxing time.

Mahavir Mandir Patna

It is for those who have either lived in Patna or had a chance to board train from Patna Junction. Mahavir Mandir is one of the very famous landmark. I was a frequent visitor during 1994-2002. The atmosphere there itself gives you inner calm. Recently i got a chance to revisit and relive peaceful moment. Here are some pics.

View From Ground Floor	View From Second Floor
View From Second Floor
Second Floor	View of Mosque from Second Floor

Movie Review : Nothing But The Truth

"Nothing But The Truth" is a very gritting story about a journalist and her conviction to not name the source no matter how hard is the choice.

Story begins with a conversation in school bus where our main character is sitting with her son. Later she prints a story about how government has ignored the right intelligence (hint of Iraq attack by US). Later the journalist is prosecuted by government and jailed for not obeying the court order of revealing her source. Now slowly her life disintegrates. Her marriage is falling apart and there is no end of her hardships. Despite this she stays true to her conviction.

In the end it is shown that she is going for a 2 year jail term and there she remembers the conversation in school bus and thus viewer are told about who is the first hand source.

It is a very well directed movie. Story moves at a reasonably well pace. End is the icing on cake.

Movie Review : War Horse (2011)

When i was watching this movie, i didn't know that Steven Spielberg has directed this movie. Thus there was no prejudgement.
This movie is the story of a horse and a boy during first world war time. It is a drama movie. Story revolves around the theme that "How horse has touched the lifes of many people around him." Overall a very decent film. I will not put it in the league of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Catch Me If You Can", but definitely worth watching with your family over a relaxed saturday evening.

There is one scene in which horse is scared of the tank and bombs and becomes deeply entangled himself in barbed wires. English army sees it and one soldier is brave enough to go out in no-man's land to free horse. English soldier is met by a German soldier and they together cut the wires and set horse free. The decision of who will take the horse is settled by tossing a coin instead of a gun battle.

This scene is very touching and teaches us that we should have common sense and human decency even in worst of the situations.