Cricket, Tennis and Kabaddi!

To start with cricket, major news is India Supreme court banning owners of IPL franchises RR and CSK. A major setback for the BCCI, it’s high time it cleans up all the politics. In other proceedings, Bangladesh beat India to win in an ODI series first time. They already white washed Pakistan before us. Surprisingly, they even beat South Africa after India. This team is on a roll now!!

After Bangladesh, India toured Zimbabwe. All senior players like Dhoni, Kohli, Rohit Sharma rested. Rahane lead the side with new faces. Thankfully team did well; white washing opponents 3-0 in ODIs and also leveling T20 series 1-1. Losing to Zimbabwe would have been a big debacle!! The Ashes are going on in England. Australia trying to win there after 14 years. They lost the first test, but won the second one comprehensively!

Kabaddi season 2 is going on now. I remember season one was a big hit; I watched quite a lot of matches whenever I went to Mumbai. I didn’t have TV in Pune then, now I would be able to watch whenever I can! Wonderful sport with lot of speed and presence of mind, am sure this season would be a hit too!!

Wimbeldon 2015 got over this month. Djoker won it, and it was his 4^thWimbeldon title if I recollect right. Beat FedEx in finals. Federer was in wonderful form, and favorite, I couldn’t watch the match, but was hoping for a Federer win. Djoker won in 4 sets, and is just getting stronger and stronger. It seems Federer may retire in a couple of years now, he had a great career. He took over from Sampras, remember beating him in Wimbeldon long time ago, and there was literally an era of Federer, before Nadal and Djokovic appeared!!

BAHUBALI!!!

This is the must watch, much talked about movie released recently!! Movie is shattering all records day by day, it is a massive movie, most expensive movie ever, it earned 100 crores in 2 day, 35 hours to be precise!!  It is a humongous and massive and epic proportion movie, I would say it has surpassed anything Bollywood could ever dream, and Hollywood has ever made!!!

The graphics, the action, the music, the effects are all just astonishing. I saw it on a Monday, and surprisingly on a Monday morning 10:30AM show, it was housefull! I saw a housefull first time after Infy Mysore training, speaks volumes of the popularity and anticipation in the people for the movie!

Movie is actually shot in Telegu, and dubbed in Tamil and Hindi. The high frenzy was mainly because the director has made wonderful films before, and the star cast is also legend in industry down under in India. I want to watch it again. This is the first part, second part is going to come next year, which will conclude the story. It was a mind blowing experience watching this movie, and I want to experience it again!! This movie should bring India an Oscar for sure!!

Below link gives some astonishing facts of Bahubali:

http://www.scoopwhoop.com/entertainment/baahubali-facts/

The question will remain in everyone’s mind for a year: Why did Katappa kill Bahubali?

Trek to Purandar!!

So I am working in shifts, and as I said before am facing a bit of problem in shift transitioning. Last week I had my second week of night shift of this rotation. Last day of night shift was on Saturday night, and had afternoon shift from Monday. I had to make sure my transition is smooth and quick. Instead of sleeping on Sunday, I decided to go for trek, so that it would be a much needed break as well and also will be able to sleep in night, fresh for day shift hence. It was a horrid week; I was on incident calls throughout shift, 2 days in a row.

So anyways, I called up my dear buddy Rajesh Sir, and asked him wassup! Proposed him to go for trek, and he agreed. Purandar fort was in my mind since long time. I remember my good old friend Kedya telling me you need a vehicle to go there and the trek is also not tough. We looked up the map and started. It comes on the Mumbai Bangalore highway, towards Bangalore from Pune. The weather was nice, not rainy but a bit cloudy. The fort is 65 kms from my place.

We were riding on Activa, and for good part of 65kms while going I rode. It was wonderful experience. There is a big tunnel also which comes in between. The road is good, nonstop and well maintained. There was not much traffic as well, riding was a pleasure. There is a Balaji temple also which comes on the way; we decided to do darshan there on the way. It was a first time visit to South Indian temple; it was very colorful, well maintained and well administered. Also it was first time; I rode so much on a highway too!

We moved forward to the fort after darshan, there was a ghat we climbed. Yes, I rode there too right till up there. It was first time experience riding up a ghat, Rajesh was giving me useful tips too for driving up, it helped and we reached up to the entry point of trekking. Purandar fort is now under Indian army, they are building training camp there, so no camera or camera phones allowed. We put our mobiles in the activa dunk.

We started trekking; it took us around 2 hours to go till the top. Yes, we went right up to the temple. There is very less left of the fort, but the temple is still impact. It was my 4^th Fort trek, already completed Singhad Fort, Lohgard Fort and Murud Zanjeera Fort. Completed all treks, like others even this was a bit tough, but I dint give up, took breaks and kept going and did manage to conquer Fort Purandar!!!

Google I\O 2015 Keynote

It’s 4:45AM in the morning. I am still in night shift mode in my long weekend. I had ordered July month Digit and got it yesterday. It has the 2 hour key note of Google I\O 2015 in its DVD, one of the major reasons I ordered the July issue.

I have massive respect from Google since long time. If you read my ‘Technology’ label posts here, you could easily infer the same. I have read The Google Story, and got really impressed by their ideology and values. I\O 2015 keynote started by a note from the VP of Sales, who unsurprisingly is an NRI, key takeaways were there are currently 4000 different Android mobile models in the world, 8 out of 10 mobile phones shipped last year were Android, and another very impressive thing which we take for granted is Google is same for everyone. A student in rural India and a professor in MIT USA can both search google search engine and get the same results. Another highlight was there are 1 billion plus users each of 6 top Google products currently, really impressive all this!

Second note was on the Android M Developer Preview. M is the next major Android version (after the current L implying lollypop). There are not going to be major UI changes this time around, they have rather focused on removing maximum bugs and making it as clean as possible. There are 6 main areas of focus in M. First is App Permissions. Now permissions won’t’ be asked while installing, but after install when you try to access a feature like voice, permissions would be asked one time. You can also revoke or grant any permissions for the app from app settings. This is really nice feature from security point which was missing from Android. One of the experts in my hackathon prep session had highlighted this last year.

Second was Web Experience. They have introduced a feature called the ‘Chrome Custom Tab’. What it does is when you click on any links inside you app, it opens the link in chrome maintaining the theme of the link’s original app. The loading is very fast as the app is able to pass the information to Chrome ahead of time. The dev version of this is currently available; commercial release is Q3 this year.

Third was ‘App links’. It mainly involves linking multiple apps. This is essentially a security feature of sort, when you click on a link in one app, the android platform will verify from the server the authenticity of the link and open the link in the respective app providing security and convenience. 

Fourth feature is ‘Android Pay’. Using Android pay you can make payments using your mobiles at stores. A good step in convergence I believe. No more need to carry wallets!  Android pay is simple, secure and has choices for users. To make payment all you need to do is just unlock you phone and expose to NFC reader, simple indeed! When you add your credit card to Android pay and new account number is created, and your credit card number is not shared with the store, thus secure.  You can register for this via Google, via banks or via you carrier, so secure in that regards. Android pay will work in 700 stores to start with in US. Android pay will also be integrated for in-app purchases.

Fifth new feature is fingerprint support. Devices have been providing this since 2011 but with their own application. With M, this will be standardized across all devices, as it will be integrated in the OS. Fingerprint supports will be useful for 3 main purposes: Device Unlock, Play Store purchases and Open Authentication APIs. The last one is mainly for developers, where they can easily integrate the feature in their apps. 

Last but not the least was Power and charging. There is a new smart feature for managing power called ‘Doze’. What it will do is if there is no activity for long period of times, like say when we are sleeping, the device would go in a deeper sleep state. This will enable longer battery life, however all features like alarms and incoming messages over the net would still be active. Compared to L, M devices were tested to last 2 times longer in standby mode. For charging they have developed a new USB Type C standard. Charging would be 3 to 5 times faster, the chargers would be flippable, so you could insert it in your device socket either ways. Small, but very insightful and important change.

There are loads of other new useful features like easy word selection, floating keyboard toolbar, direct share,  Flex storage, App standby, etc.. Official release of M is in Q3 2015. And guess who would get it first? Hell yeah.. the Nexus users!!!

Next note was by David Singelton, Director of Android wear on Android wear, obvio maan! Currently there are 1500 watch faces. As of May 2015, the latest watch LG Watch Urbane also comes with new features like Wifi. Features like GPS and offline music are already there. Seems eventually this will replace mobile phone in few years’ time for basic computing, entertainment and communication.  The latest release of Android wear will have always-on feature. No need to shake wrist or push button to check time. This feature is extended to apps to integrate on home screen. Examples include a grocery list or a map will stay on the screen till you want.

Next feature is wrist gestures. This one I like especially. Flip your wrist to go through notifications. Their moto is wearable app should be glanceable, actionable and effortless. Awesome indeed. He also showed the hordes of features available in wearable devices now, those include microphone, haptic motor, accelerometer, compass, gyroscope, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, barometer, heart rate monitor, and GPS. Whao!! Dint imagine all this in a watch!! You can virtually do anything with the watch now, if you can dream it, you can build it is the message for the developers. All the code would run independently inside the watch, another big add on. Currently there are already over 4000 apps specifically for Android wear.

Next was announcement of ‘Brillo’, the operating system for IoT. Next ‘WEAVE’ a communication channel using which devices could talk to each other. Brillo would be available from Q3 2015, and WEAVE from Q4 2015. Another great feature in M is ‘Now on Tap’. This is google now going epic in NLP and smart use of 30 level neural network of Google! Just tap on the Home button anywhere, and see Google Now unlock the magic!

Next was introduction of brand new product ‘Google Photos’ by Anil, another Indian, we were in majority, hell yeah!! Lot of kool new features of sharing, searching and editing in there! Awesome indeed. Great feature is backup and store unlimited fotos and videos for free. Up to 16 Mpx for fotos and 1080p HD for videos!!Google Photos is already available.

After this there were announcements specifically for developers community on new products, and new features in existing products for developers. It was a wonderful event, I felt really inspired. The major takeaway was domination of Android in world market, and use of Android in Brillo stack, something of a major takeaway for me indeed!!

Working in shifts 101

It is a wonderful Monday morning. Its 6:30AM in the morning, I am sitting in my balcony of flat 302. There are some clouds moving around, there is a lot of chirping of the birds, a pleasant breeze is moving around and the temperature is wonderful 22 degrees. I got up at 4AM fresh midway of my 4 day long weekend. I had night shift last week and have same next week. It has been almost 6 years in IT industry ,I have worked in shift majority of the time, wanted to write this down since long, finally doing it.

When I joined Infosys as a fresher I had around 6 months training in Mysore campus, and then I got allocated to the unit: IMS. It stands for Infrastructure Management Services; it involves mainly supporting client infrastructure and more importantly working in shifts. I started working ,initially found  it tough working through the night as it was something new, also had some back problems, but I went along my merry way.

The first thing about working in support domain and consequently in shifts is accepting it. I never thought or asked why am I working in shifts, I accepted the fact that I have to and found peace within. I see a lot of freshers these days who don’t want to work in shifts, sometimes you have no other option and to be happy you need to accept that you have to do it, only then you would be able to do it happily.

Working in shift has a lot of advantages as well, we get home pick and drop in cab free of cost, we get shift allowances and we also get wonderful long weekends like the one I am currently enjoying. There are some cons as well, like it leads to obesity if you don’t have proper diet and exercises. Also your body cycle changes frequently and I would not recommend working in shift all your life, I am planning to stop it once I get married towards end of this year. However initial phase of the carrier, when you are young and energetic you should do it if you do not have any other option.

I want to give some tips about working in night shifts especially based on personal experience. First thing is don’t sleep in office during shift, because if you have some sleep then you will not be able to sleep properly when you go home, and consequently feel tired the next night. All this affects your performance at work. So be awake all night, and make sure you eat at least twice in the night. Make sure you eat something before you sleep, as it is hard to sleep on empty stomach. Make sure you have curtains in your room, no noise disturbances, and also if you want, wear an eye mask. Sleep for at least 8 hours and make sure you are fresh when you get up. Drink a lot of water throughout day and night.

Working in night has never been a problem for me. I like it in fact as there is comparatively less workload and we also got night shift allowance, however I am experiencing some difficulty in changing of sleep times after night shift to other shift currently. I was not doing night shift in Amdocs since couple of years and doing it now so perhaps not used to this. Hopefully I will adjust soon. Well its 6:45AM now and I have also booked a 9AM show of the movie Terminator, one of the perks of working in shift, you get to watch a movie on Monday morning, when majority of people drag themselves to work!!!

Time for some social work.

First of all I am thankful to my dharam fiancé who reminded me, that I had not blogged since long time, and I should write a post soon. I have been busy in office, and also had some minor health problems: cough and cold due to weather change. However, I have a long weekend now, almost 4 days and here I am with my new post.

I have always believed that you must give back to your society in some form. Last year I did some monetary donations for various causes. However, I always wanted to do something non-monetary too, devote my time for some social cause.

‘Outreach’, is Cognizant’s social work entity. They send us regular emails of activities performed by them, and asking for volunteers. I had registered last weekend to go and teach in a school, however I got placed in shift and could not go. This weekend too they sent mail, I had night shift the day before but I was determined to go as I had 3 days off after.

Another factor was that this time it was in my locality, so transportation would not be an issue. We had to go and teach English in nearby government school as written in email. I registered for the event, and got the reminder for the same. I went to the school and met other volunteers, there was a bit of change in plan. We had to actually do survey in the local village.

We were given some forms for the survey. The aim was to encourage villagers to send their kids to school. We were targeting kids between 6 to 14 years. We went to each and every home, an asked them if there are any kids at home in that age and if they are going to school. If not we would encourage them to send to school and take their details for admissions purpose. Surprisingly majority of the homes where kids were there did go to school, it was good to know!!

Couple more questions we asked in the survey. First being if there is toilet in their home or not. Second being do they have water supply. Everyone had water supply, and few did not have personal in-home toilets and used common toilets.

We were split in two teams, each team having 4 volunteers. We roamed for couple of hours in the sun. I had just finished night shift, which was hectic. When I came home I was feeling very exhausted, however I was happy that finally I started what I wanted to do apart from my daily work. Something for the social cause. It made me realize how lucky I am to have a good home, good education and good job. It made me happy that I did some work at ground level, and worked with colleagues to make a difference in the society. As I have said once, ‘There are a lot of talkers’ and takers in this world; we need more of givers and doers!!’