Shocking Revelations

After the revelation that Bob Woolmer, the Pakistani coach was murdered, I felt very bad about the present state of the cricket. They started murdering the Game by a crude weapon called Match Fixing. Now it has gone one step to murder not only the game but also the people involved. I still remember the day when I watched my first cricket match on March 25 1992, finals of Pakistan & England. Though I was not clear on the rules and name of the players at that time, the Crystal Trophy which Imran Khan was holding is still frozen in my mind.



Though I started to follow the game only from 1996 world cup, when these many tournament like today were not played. I admired this game for the passion with people play and as well as watch.But I lost my interest considerably in the game when this happened in the year 2000.I was blown away by the news,when cricketers like Ajay Jadeja, who I admired the most, was also one among them.After that year , though I watch cricket occasionally, I did not enjoy the game and I was not inspired by the game. Even today I need to watch cricket because of one reason that we are surrounded by majority of people who love the game. To be social sometimes it is required.



This World Cup I was keeping an eye only to be aware of current affairs, as I always want to feed my passion for knowing things. But the death of the Pakistani Coach is the next blow to the game that has happened after match fixing.



The revelation is not only on cricket I wanted to mention, but also one of ignominious revelation, that Government of India does not have any official record about the contribution of the most prominent leaders of Indian Independence movement, Subash Chandra Bose. I was perplexed when I read about this. Is this not a disgrace us ?

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Could Blogging Be Dangerous

I am very new to this blogosphere. I started to blogg when I found blog is one of the best ways in express our positive thoughts which will be my annual annals. Inspite of being a record it will be open for others and could be of some use to few people.

Kathy Sierra is the author of Head First series of Java books, also one of the good female programmers.I have always admired her blog on 'Creating Passionate Users'. But this post by her really made feel bad about people in the world who always are in a wild search to curtail the growth of the other people.

Hope things will change,for a better tommorow.

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Ad Hominem

I stumbled today on this term 'Ad Hominem' argument. It was quite interesting, since most of the time we face this in our work environments in the form Design reviewer or as code reviewer or finally as appraiser. They try to attack the person rather than on the subject where it started.. they some time divert from reviewing the code to reviewing the coder....

That was rightly pointed in Jeff Atwood blog on the Top 10 Commandments of Egoless Programming , it was really interesting...you can shell some time on it..I am sure you will enjoy it..

Critique code instead of people— be kind to the coder, not to the code.

Program and Programmer are different...!

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An impetus for Change – "Thank God its Friday"

I used to feel exasperated because of work sometimes and would be eagerly waiting Friday evenings, so that I can take a break. I relax for the weekend and would start the cycle again. Job for me, used to be a 9 – 10 hour slot of weekdays and most of the times it stretches more than that till 15 or 16 hours when the situation demands. I have felt stress because of this extra strain and would feel like running away from this. But most of the programmers would face the same pressure when deadlines demand.

Fish, by Stephen Ludin & Co is a must read for people who feel sick to work, lost energy to engage or passion for performance in work.The authors have paralleled a famous fish market (Pike Place Fish Market) and a financial corporation on the factors of energy, enthusiasm, passion and attitude to work.

They elaborate on how a notorious department known for its indolence in work into the most productive department of the company. He explains how we can make people work and make them understand how we can also enjoy work. This gives a new perspective to work – Work with fun and enjoy work.

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Independence Vs Persistent Nagging

The analogy on oracle join and the behavior of immediate superior by Tom was really cool.
See this.

Your boss could micromanage you and tell you bit by bit what to do. And a lot of it would seem repetitive to you. By the time you were done - you would see that there was a really efficient way to accomplish what you just did in a fraction of the time - HAD YOU BEEN TOLD what the goal was, not how to do it.

Really Cool & I felt it was right !

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A Perfect Digg

This has nothing to do about the crazy but witty Digg.com. I religiously read Seth Godin's Blog, after I was allured so much on his Permission Marketing. His recent post on Digging it out of the ground about a grouping on the Fortune 100 Companies left me in deep contemplation.

The Market Capitalization of Indian ITES and other BPO based companies will blow away many of the Indian Manufacturing Companies.Though, there are many Indian Companies devouring with huge deals like the Tata-Corus, Novalis-Hindalco, Mittal-Arcelor, all fall in one category the Product Manufacturing sector. Is this happening because there is a real need in consolidation in these sector or to withstand to the drastic shift towards the service oriented industry.

Any way expecting a Financialy Robust India in Future. For now, hope the Finance Ministry will first take some stringent steps to curtail the rampant inflation.

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Barking Syndrome

My good friend Gopal sent me a manuscript of his recent speech ,which he delivered in his Corporate club.The Speech was well planned, filled with proper analogies and also motivating.Certain points in the speech were really Captivating.

One thing was the Barking & Appreciation Syndrome. The Barking Syndrome is what we face most of the time in IT industry from immediate superior. It could be due to stringent deadlines or compliance or anything no matter what it is. The alternative appreciation syndrome which he suggested was a valid point to be taken home.

And about one of the analogy he used, Kamsa & Krishna made me really laugh for some time. My question was simply this, After hearing the prophecy that Devaki and Vasudeva's baby is going to kill him, then why did he put them in the same cell :)

Most of the time people dig their grave themselves.

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Power of Association

The Association technique for memorising is phenomenal. This is one of the best techniques for memorising any thing under the sun. Associating unknown with the know things in a creative way.

When I heard two people discussing on the usage of two sentences " Power went off / Current went off". Immediately a spark in my mind which reminded me of the relation between Current and Power.

Power = Voltage X Current

I am still able to remember this without any confusion, only because of the associated learning I did in my school days. It was Power = Very Important. I could quote many things which we learn by association with some easy known things in a creative way. This is method must be taught to all the children from their elementary school, which will really help them to memorise things easily, quickly and hold on to it forever in their life. This also will improve creativity amog the children. Even now we can use the same method in memorising the names of different people.

Though the amount of information stored in the hard disks of different servers all over the world cannot be memorised, but some essential information which are often missed out required in building successful relationships like name and bithdays can be memorised and recalled with this association technique. Just associate the name of a person with some creative picture in your mind for 5 seconds, Thats it...You will remember forever :)

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Selection Vs Execution

The old Gavaskar and Bradman days are over, where shot selection was important. But today it is shot execution which matters like Gilchrist and Gibbs.

I started the post with cricket as an analogy only, I really don't want to talk any more about cricket after the nasty defeat yesterday.

Now in every industry due to the horrible competition, we are forced to perform all the time and not select the best oppurtunity. There was once 10,000 people came gave CAT for IIMs , but now its 1.5 lakh people give every year. Though there are so much of variations in choices, there are huge number of people competing for the same. The days has become like, though you are intelligent,.

This reminds me of a famous Tamil song by JP Chandrababu,

"All Intelligent people Don't Succeed, All Successful people need not be Intelligent."

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Not Measurable = Not Controllable

Metrics and Quality go hand in hand. That was one of the many good learnings I had in the TCS Integrated Quality Management System Training @ SEEPZ. This reminds me of a quote

"If you don't know where you are , A map is Useless".

Being in TCS for the last 9 months, this was the first time I felt the planning in TCS was so farsighted. The Vision, mission, and the goal sheets from CEO to team members like us are perfectly cascaded. But most of the people who attended the training were showing all means of discomfort and boredom in their faces. They were not interested about the system with which they are working for more than 40% of a day.I think knowing about the process and policies of the company we are working is a must, and we must make use of the benefits provided.


But for me the two days of training gave me lots of input on Quality and Security perspective of a IT Servicing Company. I am also trying to implement the same in my day-to-day work to help the company achieving its vision.

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A Tribute to Sheldon

Amidst the world cup exhilaration and the pandemonium due to the rampant inflation and stock market fall I missed to make a post on this. This should have been posted a month ago, but better late than never.

I never had the habit of reading until my sophomore days. Even I was one among the crowd who used to comment others for their reading habits as bookworms and bibliophiles. I was annoyed many a times when my friends used to sit with bulky novels which were authored by some weird names. But ingenuously speaking it was the fear of English which withheld me from reading those novels.

Once I had a bet with my friend Gopal, on reading the ‘Master of The Game’, written by Sidney Sheldon. The bet was to complete the book. Though I had the fear of verbose language in it, I was determined to read that, due to the bet. I completed the book in four days. But that did not stop me; I read all his 18 books in the next six months.

After I started reading novels, the next thing was critics and comments on various authors. For Sidney Sheldon there were loads of criticism among some of my friends that his works are too much feministic, sensual and simple. But for me though it was like that, his English was not too verbose and also at the same time not slipshod. You don’t have to master a dictionary to follow what he wrote.

He had no profound philosophy to promote. He wrote about lives of people, mostly ordinary - their highs and lows, their kindness and meanness, dreams and disappointments. I have seen many of the college girls religiously reading Sheldon’s novels, because most women felt they were their own stories. He had many bestsellers in his kitty though they were not approved by critics. He did not bother for critics; He was bothered only on readers. “The Naked Face” – Sheldon’s first novel which was scorned by book reviewers sold 21,000 copies in hardcover. The novel found a mass market in paperback, reportedly selling 3.1 million.

I consider “The Master of the Game” as his Magnum opus, not since I read that as my first book, it was an excellent narration for six generations. I would rank his works in the following order.

1. Master of the Game


2. If Tomorrow Comes


3. Bloodline


4. Rage of Angels


5. Morning, Noon and Night


6. The Naked Face


7. A Stranger in the Mirror


8. The Best Laid Plans


9. Tell Me Your Dreams


10. Windmills of the Gods


11. The Sands of Time


12. The Doomsday Conspiracy


13. The Stars Shine Down


14. Nothing Lasts Forever


15. The Sky is Falling


16. Are You Afraid of the Dark?


17. The Other Side of Midnight


18. Memories of Midnight

Sheldon once quoted that - I try to write my books so the reader can’t put them down. I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end of a chapter, he or she has to read just one more chapter. It’s the technique of the old Saturday afternoon serial : leave the guy hanging on the edge of the cliff at the end of the chapter.

Today I am reading 2 to 3 books every month; this habit has to be attributed to this master story teller, who may not have taught me moral thoughts but had induced a vigorous reading habit in me. He has implanted a habit in me.

I eulogize for him today as one among the millions of Sheldon readers, we miss you!

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Concatenating Rows in a Table

Though I work with Oracle DB for the past nine months religiously this is my first post anywhere related to oracle. Its high time , I thought to give some post on Oracle ,which are though not something which was never found by any other people but it was quite interesting for me when I first tried it. Though there are many virtuosos on oracle blogging around the world vigorously, I also wanted to be a small part on this big knowledge sharing base.
Concatenating the rows of the table will always be required when you are working with database. At those time the following query would be handy for you.
hari9ir2@GENEVART>create table t(
2 name varchar2(20));
Table created.hari9ir2@GENEVART>INSERT INTO t VALUES('Hari');1 row created.
hari9ir2@GENEVART>INSERT INTO t VALUES('Haran');1 row created.
hari9ir2@GENEVART>INSERT INTO t VALUES('Ragunathan');1 row created.
SELECT LTRIM(MAX(SYS_CONNECT_BY_PATH(NAME , ' ')),' ')AS Full_Name
FROM (SELECT NAME , ROWNUM rn FROM t)
START WITH rn = 1
CONNECT BY PRIOR rn = rn -1;

FULL_NAME
------------------------
Hari Haran Ragunathan
To know more on the this refer this column in oracle magazine - On Favorites and Connect by .
Hope this tip could be useful for you.

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Financial Literacy = Financial Independence

Keeping this big idea in mind Robert. T. Kiyosoki has wonderfully crafted his book Rich Dad Poor Dad. This book is worth reading to have a change in an individual's financial outlook. The mention of Robert Frost Lines on

Two roads diverged in a wood,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost, from ‘The Road Not Taken’

holds good not only for the idea he has conveyed but also to Kiyosaki's new way in delivering a financial guideline.

You can also give a try , since I could sense a lot of change in me after reading the book.

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Programming / Coding Conundrum

From the day I entered into this software industry the notion of Programming / Coding was quite dubious. We call the act of writing a program in any computer language as Coding during my college days.Coding was simply a miscegenation of Logic with syntax of a computer language. But now in this software space its quite different they say the act of writing a program is Programming and not as coding. Its only a part of a bigger life cycle. There are more important things than programming.

With this doubt in mind when I was peeking for more information to clarify my doubt, I stumbled on many good things. This piece of information on Why Programmers can't Programmers...Program made me bemused. That made me to reevaluate my skills. There was also one more thought which hit my brain, whether the skills of programmers are made blunt by the type of work which is provided by most of the so-called software servicing companies or they really lack the skills. My personal finding is that not all those who have ambition of great programmers are not actually utilized in programming though they enter software industry. Because most of them do the famous Cntl+C & Cntl+V, as i found in the rantings of a software professional about making crap code worse.

I am still in deep thought, whether I am in right place where I expected to be doing some real programming or this is what the real programming is.

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The World Is Flat ...Do You Accept This ?

Thomas .L Friedman,in his book World is Flat , has lucidly described the most important phase of LPG - The Globalization. The classification of globalization into three periods based on Country, Company and Individual was one thing to be noted.

The catchy lines on description about the call-centers ,Outsourcing and software companies in bangalore , made me re-read it umpteen times. Though the main reason behind reading it numerous times was, I also belong to the same Crowd :)

This is a must to read , for Software Professionals working in Indian IT companies.

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If I had a Professor like this......

This Clever liar / Professor has the ability to make all his students sit tight in his class. If every individual has a mentor who will counsel their students with care, Success will be marked for all of us.

Its really a cool Idea.

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