Ever tried to rename multiple files???? Recently, one of my friends asked me, is there a way to change only the extensions for a set of files. After googling for some time, I got the following. Its really good.
In Linux,
rename gif jpg *.gif
This command replaces the occurance of gif (first parameter) in the file names with jpg ( second parameter) on all files (starting from third parameter)
In Windows,
ren *.gif *.jpg
It really works. I never thought windows has such useful stuff :D. But it works only on the extension. If u want to change the file name, instead of extension, it definitely fails.
Linux still rocks :)
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
What is KISS?
Nice topic na ;)... But If you want this post to talk about the kiss shared by people as the symbol of love, SORRY!!! U have landed in a wrong page.
KISS -> Keep It Simple and Stupid
Tonnes and tonnes of internet sites are based on VERY VERY simple ideas. To name a few,
Somebody might have thought of missing their bookmarks when they go out of home/office, or format their machine. Then they might have really WORKED, (not like me ;)) and came up with delicious. I am a big fan of this one.
Another one is flickr. They thought of sharing photos among people. Really good idea. But one of the things I didn't like about this is, they are limiting the uploads per month. Otherwise, it is good.
One more site is orkut. This was developed as a part time project by a Google employee. Now some of the people I know, don't know what to do if orkut is down. Thank god, I am not yet an addict to orkut :)
These are developed based on simple ideas. But only simplicity is not enough. The core idea may be simple one. But IT SHOULD EVOLVE over time. Otherwise it will be considered as junk and will be directly sent to trash can over a period of time.
Heard about other incidents.
There were 2 countries sending people to space. The problem they had is they could not carry a pen. The ink got leak. So to avoid that one country spent enormous amount of money and came out with a solution. The other country decided to carry a PENCIL. :D
One more event is like, In two production (I am not sure about what is their product) companies, they were packing their product mechanically. Due to some problem with the packing machine, they had a lot of empty boxes coming out of the packing machine. One company spent a BIG money for a research to measure the weight of the boxes and trying to eliminate the empty ones. The other company used a FAN at the exit point of the packing machine. Toooo simple na...
Most of the problems will have a simple solution. The way we approach the problem, decides the effectiveness of the solution. Should not think in only one way. Have to keep our eyes and ears open.
KISS -> Keep It Simple and Stupid
Tonnes and tonnes of internet sites are based on VERY VERY simple ideas. To name a few,
Somebody might have thought of missing their bookmarks when they go out of home/office, or format their machine. Then they might have really WORKED, (not like me ;)) and came up with delicious. I am a big fan of this one.
Another one is flickr. They thought of sharing photos among people. Really good idea. But one of the things I didn't like about this is, they are limiting the uploads per month. Otherwise, it is good.
One more site is orkut. This was developed as a part time project by a Google employee. Now some of the people I know, don't know what to do if orkut is down. Thank god, I am not yet an addict to orkut :)
These are developed based on simple ideas. But only simplicity is not enough. The core idea may be simple one. But IT SHOULD EVOLVE over time. Otherwise it will be considered as junk and will be directly sent to trash can over a period of time.
Heard about other incidents.
There were 2 countries sending people to space. The problem they had is they could not carry a pen. The ink got leak. So to avoid that one country spent enormous amount of money and came out with a solution. The other country decided to carry a PENCIL. :D
One more event is like, In two production (I am not sure about what is their product) companies, they were packing their product mechanically. Due to some problem with the packing machine, they had a lot of empty boxes coming out of the packing machine. One company spent a BIG money for a research to measure the weight of the boxes and trying to eliminate the empty ones. The other company used a FAN at the exit point of the packing machine. Toooo simple na...
Most of the problems will have a simple solution. The way we approach the problem, decides the effectiveness of the solution. Should not think in only one way. Have to keep our eyes and ears open.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
The Art of Presentation
This time I thought of writing something about how a presentation should be. This DOESN'T mean that I am good in presentation skills. I have done ONLY ONE presentation so far and it was not a big success. But definitely increased my confidence that I too can do presentations.
This blog post is about how I think a presentation should be. The presentation I mention here is more related in terms of teaching something new to the audience. Doesn't involve annual reporting, sales and those kind of things.
First and foremost is to mention "Who will be benefited with this session". If the topic is not related to them, people like me will obviously sleep
Never make it a presentation. It should be a discussion. Presentation, I feel, is one way communication. But since the topic is about presentation, I use the same term below.
Lets assume that the presentation is about a technology or tool. Every tool/technology is introduced definitely to solve a specific problem. Otherwise there is no need for it. Give an overall picture of the problem that this technology/tool is intended to solve. Make statements like "This is where this technology/tool can be used."
The presenter should find out some sample problems that the audience can face, so that, the listener can get familiarity with the problem. Better if the listener is asked to state a similar problem and the presenter use it in that session or If possible explain the problem like a story ( I don't know anybody who hate listening to stories. Except excuses. Sometimes excuses will also be interesting).
The important thing is to make the session interactive or keeping the listeners awake. Very tough task man. Place the listener as the person who has to solve the problem. Ask questions like "What will you do if you have to solve the problem?". Get their inputs. Find out the loop holes. Explain them that "This is the problem with your approach". I like to bring the solution from the listener's mouth. This will give some comfort feeling to the listener that "Cool man. I too can solve problems". This is one of the most important factors in making the presentation a successful one.
If the problem stated is entirely new, tell the solution with some gaps to be filled up. Like an overview of the solution. And use the above mentioned approach to fill up the blanks.
Prepare slides/ppts for this kind of approach. So that even after a long time after the presentation, when a persons looks at the slides he should be able to make some sense out of it. Assuming that he remembers something out of this session. I have a weak memory. So tough for me to remember. Success lies there if I could remember
)
Never ever have essays in the slides.(Most of the people know this)
Doubts should be cleared immediately. This will stretch the presentation. But with a doubt, I cannot be fully involved.
This is PURELY my personal opinion. I think these are the most important steps as per my knowledge. Once I get more experience on this, I hope to write more.
I'll try to follow these ideas when I get an opportunity to do a presentation. Lets see what effect it has :)
This blog post is about how I think a presentation should be. The presentation I mention here is more related in terms of teaching something new to the audience. Doesn't involve annual reporting, sales and those kind of things.
First and foremost is to mention "Who will be benefited with this session". If the topic is not related to them, people like me will obviously sleep
Never make it a presentation. It should be a discussion. Presentation, I feel, is one way communication. But since the topic is about presentation, I use the same term below.
Lets assume that the presentation is about a technology or tool. Every tool/technology is introduced definitely to solve a specific problem. Otherwise there is no need for it. Give an overall picture of the problem that this technology/tool is intended to solve. Make statements like "This is where this technology/tool can be used."
The presenter should find out some sample problems that the audience can face, so that, the listener can get familiarity with the problem. Better if the listener is asked to state a similar problem and the presenter use it in that session or If possible explain the problem like a story ( I don't know anybody who hate listening to stories. Except excuses. Sometimes excuses will also be interesting).
The important thing is to make the session interactive or keeping the listeners awake. Very tough task man.
Place the listener as the person who has to solve the problem. Ask questions like "What will you do if you have to solve the problem?". Get their inputs. Find out the loop holes. Explain them that "This is the problem with your approach". I like to bring the solution from the listener's mouth. This will give some comfort feeling to the listener that "Cool man. I too can solve problems". This is one of the most important factors in making the presentation a successful one.If the problem stated is entirely new, tell the solution with some gaps to be filled up. Like an overview of the solution. And use the above mentioned approach to fill up the blanks.
Prepare slides/ppts for this kind of approach. So that even after a long time after the presentation, when a persons looks at the slides he should be able to make some sense out of it. Assuming that he remembers something out of this session. I have a weak memory. So tough for me to remember. Success lies there if I could remember
)Never ever have essays in the slides.(Most of the people know this)
Doubts should be cleared immediately. This will stretch the presentation. But with a doubt, I cannot be fully involved.
This is PURELY my personal opinion. I think these are the most important steps as per my knowledge. Once I get more experience on this, I hope to write more.
I'll try to follow these ideas when I get an opportunity to do a presentation. Lets see what effect it has :)
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Memories from Aztecsoft :)
Today is my last working day at Aztecsoft. Thought of sharing some of my sweet memories from Aztecsoft. The place where I took my first step in my career as a "Project Trainee".
First few days, after the induction programs we, around 20-25 people, were given training (for 1 month) on Java. It was much of a college environment that a software company. :) Enjoyed like anything. During the last week of training, we were asked to do a project. It was about an "Online Treasure Hunt". We were asked to keep it a secret. Nobody outside the room should know what we are doing. It was fun. The most unforgettable thing is "OnDemandAPI". :)) This is the name of the class, that connects to the database and retrieve values. Whenever we need some information from Database, we will ask the people implementing this, "Hei, can you create a method called this that takes these as parameters and returns this?" We didn't think about whether a similar method exists or not. Just do it. Nice experience. Now it sounds funny.
The next interesting event is my allocation to a project. All my batch mates were getting allocated to different projects. Very few people were left. "Mera number kab aayega" (When is my turn) kind of expectation.
Then WE THREE were called. Who are we??
Rohit (My linux guru), Siva and Mani (me). In the training period, we know each other. Thatz all. Our Manager (Ramesh) called us. My inspiration. I never expected a manager to be like him. He is very talented, polite and always provides advices whenever we needed it. Our meeting was to give an overview of what we'll be doing.
We entered his cabin. There was one more person with him. Prabin. Another inspiration. He will always tell us, you guys got a very good opportunity which others wont get. Make use of this. You have to do this, do that. Sometimes, he will sit with us, do night outs before releases. These two people did quite a bit of work in shaping us up.
We had our introductions. Then Ramesh told us that we'll be working on PostgreSQL. This is the first time I heard that word POSTGRESQL. I didn't know whether i heard it correctly as it didn't meant anything for me. Then he said, "This world might not be as sexy as the java world. But you can learn a lot". The same words he used. After this meeting, I came out and asked Rohit and he told me what PostgreSQL is.
Another event is Allocation of machines. Rohit is a bit senior to us as he did his academic project there itself. Since he is passionate on Linux, he told Ramesh that we all need complete Linux boxes with no windows in it. He wanted us to explore the power of Linux. Siva too had some hands on experience on a Linux desktop. I never had. I was scolding Rohit like anything. The only commands I knew, when I got a machine, were, "ls", "pwd", "cd" and nothing else. I didn't even know how to open a terminal to execute these commands. :)) I was very embarrassed. I will always ask Siva for commands and how to open this and that. Since Rohit is the the main cause for all my sufferings, I avoided asking him. Later I thought of taking revenge on Rohit and bugged him for all "how to do". If he got fed up with my questions, I'll tell him, "I could have been well with a windows box. You selected linux. Teach me." We were asked to sit a separate cabin. Only we three. Sometimes, Siva will play a single song for a whole day. Me and Rohit will get sick of that song and scold him like anything. But he wont listen to us. Will continue. :)
As days passed, I got to know about Rohit and realized that he is really a nice person and he is now one of the best friends I have. I'll frequently start arguments (a trick to learn more about linux) with him saying Windows is good. You cannot do this in Linux. Then he will tell me, this is how to do that in linux. Now I feel more comfortable in Linux than Windows.
We three became good friends. Sometimes, 2 of us will form a team and start ragging the other. We'll behave like elementary school boys. Literally pulling the other's chairs and falling down on the floor, shouting... People have asked us many times whether we three are school/college mates. We'll tell them that "No... We three are from different places. We met only in Aztec." Really a wonderful period in my life.
Siva was not much into java. He was doing some work in C, and me and Rohit were working in Java. Days passed. Our team expanded. We got a new Lead. Anoop. He has given us some work to do. Which we couldn't finish. We could not finish another work that was given before he was introduced to us. So we thought, if we didn't do this, he will think that we people are not good. We are not doing anything properly. So me and Rohit decided to do a nightout and finished the work. Then next day Anoop came and he appreciated us for completing it. As we came to know more about Anoop, we felt that we had wrong assumptions on him. (We should not have done that night out ;)) He is very very friendly. He never talked to us like a Lead. He never maintained a distance between us. Always talk as a friend. He is one of the persons who will frequently give his comments on me. "You have this good quality. Improve it. These are your -ve points. You have to do this to overcome that". Really a nice person.
One person I have to mention here is, Vaidhy. I have already mentioned his name in one of my blogs. He is a geek. Whatever technical problems you give him, he will come up with a simple working solution. He is another role model of mine.
Then I got a project in which we had to work at the client location. While doing this project I got another good friend. Sumit. Nice person. He is senior to me. Always we'll have discussions like "this is what we should do to solve this problem". We have learned a looooot from each other. The winner is obviously me (haa haa) :). I have learned a lot more from him than he did from me. Not only technical stuff but also other things like how to interact with clients, and other personal qualities like the way we talk and do things.
We were accompanied with one more girl, Veena. She is very sincere in her work. That building had 8 floors. She will never use elevators to go between the floors until and unless any of the employees from the client location accompanies. :) Me and Sumit never used stairs :). Anoop was leading our team. He will tell us "Learn from her. You lazy guys". Work(This word is hidden from our present and future managers) / Walk like her.
After a few other projects, comes my last project. We were 5 people in this project. Me, Sumit, Rajasekar, Daya and Ashwini.
Rajasekar is the guy I interviewed and selected. But when selecting, I didn't had much hopes on him. I thought he wont work very hard. But on working with him for a couple of projects, I realized I have selected a right person.
This is the first project in which we are working with Daya and Ashwini. These two girls are really good and they work like anything.
Me and Sumit took the advantage of being seniors. We will find architects, talk to them, design and distribute the work. (I am honest. We DID take up some important modules of the project and finished those modules. I am making it clear that we WORKED). We learned a lot in this project.
Sweet memories... Will definitely miss Aztec.
First few days, after the induction programs we, around 20-25 people, were given training (for 1 month) on Java. It was much of a college environment that a software company. :) Enjoyed like anything. During the last week of training, we were asked to do a project. It was about an "Online Treasure Hunt". We were asked to keep it a secret. Nobody outside the room should know what we are doing. It was fun. The most unforgettable thing is "OnDemandAPI". :)) This is the name of the class, that connects to the database and retrieve values. Whenever we need some information from Database, we will ask the people implementing this, "Hei, can you create a method called this that takes these as parameters and returns this?" We didn't think about whether a similar method exists or not. Just do it. Nice experience. Now it sounds funny.
The next interesting event is my allocation to a project. All my batch mates were getting allocated to different projects. Very few people were left. "Mera number kab aayega" (When is my turn) kind of expectation.
Then WE THREE were called. Who are we??
Rohit (My linux guru), Siva and Mani (me). In the training period, we know each other. Thatz all. Our Manager (Ramesh) called us. My inspiration. I never expected a manager to be like him. He is very talented, polite and always provides advices whenever we needed it. Our meeting was to give an overview of what we'll be doing.
We entered his cabin. There was one more person with him. Prabin. Another inspiration. He will always tell us, you guys got a very good opportunity which others wont get. Make use of this. You have to do this, do that. Sometimes, he will sit with us, do night outs before releases. These two people did quite a bit of work in shaping us up.
We had our introductions. Then Ramesh told us that we'll be working on PostgreSQL. This is the first time I heard that word POSTGRESQL. I didn't know whether i heard it correctly as it didn't meant anything for me. Then he said, "This world might not be as sexy as the java world. But you can learn a lot". The same words he used. After this meeting, I came out and asked Rohit and he told me what PostgreSQL is.
Another event is Allocation of machines. Rohit is a bit senior to us as he did his academic project there itself. Since he is passionate on Linux, he told Ramesh that we all need complete Linux boxes with no windows in it. He wanted us to explore the power of Linux. Siva too had some hands on experience on a Linux desktop. I never had. I was scolding Rohit like anything. The only commands I knew, when I got a machine, were, "ls", "pwd", "cd" and nothing else. I didn't even know how to open a terminal to execute these commands. :)) I was very embarrassed. I will always ask Siva for commands and how to open this and that. Since Rohit is the the main cause for all my sufferings, I avoided asking him. Later I thought of taking revenge on Rohit and bugged him for all "how to do". If he got fed up with my questions, I'll tell him, "I could have been well with a windows box. You selected linux. Teach me." We were asked to sit a separate cabin. Only we three. Sometimes, Siva will play a single song for a whole day. Me and Rohit will get sick of that song and scold him like anything. But he wont listen to us. Will continue. :)
As days passed, I got to know about Rohit and realized that he is really a nice person and he is now one of the best friends I have. I'll frequently start arguments (a trick to learn more about linux) with him saying Windows is good. You cannot do this in Linux. Then he will tell me, this is how to do that in linux. Now I feel more comfortable in Linux than Windows.
We three became good friends. Sometimes, 2 of us will form a team and start ragging the other. We'll behave like elementary school boys. Literally pulling the other's chairs and falling down on the floor, shouting... People have asked us many times whether we three are school/college mates. We'll tell them that "No... We three are from different places. We met only in Aztec." Really a wonderful period in my life.
Siva was not much into java. He was doing some work in C, and me and Rohit were working in Java. Days passed. Our team expanded. We got a new Lead. Anoop. He has given us some work to do. Which we couldn't finish. We could not finish another work that was given before he was introduced to us. So we thought, if we didn't do this, he will think that we people are not good. We are not doing anything properly. So me and Rohit decided to do a nightout and finished the work. Then next day Anoop came and he appreciated us for completing it. As we came to know more about Anoop, we felt that we had wrong assumptions on him. (We should not have done that night out ;)) He is very very friendly. He never talked to us like a Lead. He never maintained a distance between us. Always talk as a friend. He is one of the persons who will frequently give his comments on me. "You have this good quality. Improve it. These are your -ve points. You have to do this to overcome that". Really a nice person.
One person I have to mention here is, Vaidhy. I have already mentioned his name in one of my blogs. He is a geek. Whatever technical problems you give him, he will come up with a simple working solution. He is another role model of mine.
Then I got a project in which we had to work at the client location. While doing this project I got another good friend. Sumit. Nice person. He is senior to me. Always we'll have discussions like "this is what we should do to solve this problem". We have learned a looooot from each other. The winner is obviously me (haa haa) :). I have learned a lot more from him than he did from me. Not only technical stuff but also other things like how to interact with clients, and other personal qualities like the way we talk and do things.
We were accompanied with one more girl, Veena. She is very sincere in her work. That building had 8 floors. She will never use elevators to go between the floors until and unless any of the employees from the client location accompanies. :) Me and Sumit never used stairs :). Anoop was leading our team. He will tell us "Learn from her. You lazy guys". Work(This word is hidden from our present and future managers) / Walk like her.
After a few other projects, comes my last project. We were 5 people in this project. Me, Sumit, Rajasekar, Daya and Ashwini.
Rajasekar is the guy I interviewed and selected. But when selecting, I didn't had much hopes on him. I thought he wont work very hard. But on working with him for a couple of projects, I realized I have selected a right person.
This is the first project in which we are working with Daya and Ashwini. These two girls are really good and they work like anything.
Me and Sumit took the advantage of being seniors. We will find architects, talk to them, design and distribute the work. (I am honest. We DID take up some important modules of the project and finished those modules. I am making it clear that we WORKED). We learned a lot in this project.
Sweet memories... Will definitely miss Aztec.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Microsoft Invents Split Screen PC
Again got this from slashdot. One of the nice features. Sometimes when working with my friends (parallel programming), I'll be thinking what if we had two keyboards connected to a machine. I tried it once :), connecting two keyboards on both linux and windows boxes. Both OS accepted inputs from both the keyboards simultaneously. Thought about what if they accepted inputs for different applications. ie. Each application receiving inputs from each keyboard. :)
Now Microsoft has come up with a software that splits a computer screen in two halves, each side with its own operating system, desktop, applications, cursor and keyboard. Really a cool software from M$.
Now Microsoft has come up with a software that splits a computer screen in two halves, each side with its own operating system, desktop, applications, cursor and keyboard. Really a cool software from M$.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Open Source Replacing M$???
Im back...
Again I got this information from Slashdot. Previously Mono had support for .NET platforms. Now they have support for VB WITHOUT any code changes. For every software we use in Windows, we have a equivalent (sometimes even better :)) FREE open source software.
IE - Firefox,Mozilla......
Office - Open Office
Outlook (Express) - KMail, Evolution.....
Media Player - xine
U name it... there will be an equivalent open source software.
So what does M$ going to do, to keep it unique in market??? Lets C...
Saturday, February 03, 2007
After a loooooooong time :)
Recently I installed Adobe Reader 7.0.8 on my Fedora 6. There is a known bug with this release of Adobe Reader. "expr: syntax error". As usual, I googled for the solution and fixed it by changing a couple of lines. But still, adobe reader didn't open. Whenever i start, it terminated. No error messages. No windows :(
Later I came across this link. It instructed me to export a variable. Habbaaadaaaa.... Atlast, it is working now.
When i started my career 2 yrs back, before each release, my Manager always ask the testers to do some smoke test and stop us from touching the code (even adding comments). At those times, i felt like, why he is doing this!!! Now I understand the complete reason. No bug should creep while doing even a minor change. Especially, when a product is released to thousands/millions of people, we should take some extra care. Otherwise, it will affect the customer b'coz, he has to spend some sleepless nights trying to fix, and this in turn affects the manufacturer.
Recently I installed Adobe Reader 7.0.8 on my Fedora 6. There is a known bug with this release of Adobe Reader. "expr: syntax error". As usual, I googled for the solution and fixed it by changing a couple of lines. But still, adobe reader didn't open. Whenever i start, it terminated. No error messages. No windows :(
Later I came across this link. It instructed me to export a variable. Habbaaadaaaa.... Atlast, it is working now.
When i started my career 2 yrs back, before each release, my Manager always ask the testers to do some smoke test and stop us from touching the code (even adding comments). At those times, i felt like, why he is doing this!!! Now I understand the complete reason. No bug should creep while doing even a minor change. Especially, when a product is released to thousands/millions of people, we should take some extra care. Otherwise, it will affect the customer b'coz, he has to spend some sleepless nights trying to fix, and this in turn affects the manufacturer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)