How useful is the iPhone!?

 

‘It is not what the device can do, it is what you can do with your device’ – Anonymous.

Last weekend a few of my friends planning to invest (waste ?) in the latest iPhone3GS release enquired which were the frequently used apps I used?

I mentioned about a few which I felt were useful and frequently used (but coming to think of it again, I am having second thoughts). Some of my close friends know me to be a gadget freak (recently acquired tag) and a camera clicker. (Of late Its my camera which has been getting more invites.)

So let me taking some time to list down a few of the Apps I frequently use in order of frequency of my usage:

App Name	App Icon	What is it ?	Comment	My Rating
Twitterific Lite		This is a TWITTER Client allowing Geo-Location at the touch of a ICON. Most of my tweets have a Geo Tag and my twitter id is @kanchirk	Easy to Tweet	3/5
Camera
Email
Word Warp
Jumble Solvr
Audiobooks
Voice Notes
WeatherBug
DailyFinance
Public NPR
Midomi
BOA
AAA Discounts
Blog Writer Lite
Comic Touch
Trailguru
Facebook
Nationwide

I am excluding Contacts, iPod, Calculator and Cell phone capability which I believe are the USPs of iPhone apart from the very Cool design and UI. There are more than 18 apps downloaded on my iPhone. But these are the ones which I prefer.

The iPhone has the convenience of a Hand Held Computer and with a Car Charger, it has become more useful. I still remember many days when I missed my Blackberry pearl and hated iPhone for short battery charge time and slow response when you fill its storage with songs, photos and other stuff.

Disclaimer: The above list is to simply for record keeping purpose. Please do not waste your time initiating a discussion with me regarding the ‘Utility’ value which I would defer from discussing or defending.

Note that most of the Apps are free and do not involved any more cents than the heavy initial down payment of 2 year contract with AT&T.

Jazz Effect

 

Ever since I heard ‘Sound of Music’ I have become a life long fan. As a matter of fact, only English songs whose lyrics I could figure out in first listen are the songs I prefer for repeat hearing. To be more correct I prefer ‘Blues’ instead of ‘Rock’.

My Wifey is a big music fan and her interests range from Local to International flavors. Her preference is for Instrumental music without vocal’s.

Last year during a visit, to my friend SK played this on this recently acquired Record Player. The difference in sound quality with respect to mp3 music was tremendous. The ‘something stupid’ song by Frank Sinatra blew me away. I believe I listened to it at least 3 times then and there.

Below is a rehashed remix video of the original song which is also likeable, but as they say ‘Nothing beats the Original’.

I am looking forward to keeping a collection of our favorite songs. If you have the original Audio for this song, please pass it to me.

Hanuman Chalisaa by M.S.

 

Recently my wyfee had suggested me to read hanuman chalisaa every morning. In general I am aware Hanuman Chalisaa is the praise of Lord Hanuman written by Saint Tulsidas. It is believed that daily recital of Hanuman Chalisa is supposed to keep away all the worldly troubles of fate. Even though I know a lot of my friends who read it everyday during my early years, I have never read it myself. I might have heard it many times, but just that - heard it, not listened, not absorbed or understood. Since I am still not that quick in reading the Tamil script, I took a printout of the original in Roman script aka English.

The first couple of days I read it I struggled to pronounce the words correctly. I decided to sing along with the rendition whatever was available on Youtube to learn it by heart and get the pronunciations right.

My wyfee requested me to play the M.S. Subbalakshmi version. With a slight bit of reluctance I got a video on Youtube and played it.

It just seeped me in. Just like that. Whaaammmmmmmmmm !!!!!!!!

Guess what…………

The 10 minutes of recital is so effective and excellently recited after 24 hours It is still reverberating in my head.

Anybody who has grown up listening to ‘Venkatesha Suprabhatam’ every morning knows M.S. and the Magic of her voice.

But this was astonishing 10 minutes I have had in recently times. Neither the sound of Niagara falls or the thrill of Hershey park rides or Special FX of any movie has been so enthralling.

Ever feel a little low or tired anytime in future just go ahead and put on the M.S. recital of any shlokam you like, I bet it will be more effective then any of the ‘self help’ books you have in your book shelf.

Blogging thru iPhone

Today I have been able to setup and activate my iPhone app which will allow me to write blog with only the phone.

Fasten your seatbelts and expect a lot of tweetposts on this blog.

This weekend the twenty20 world cup starts. Looking forward to it.

Apologies in advance for the numerous typos.

For those who don't know, you can follow me on twitter @kanchirk

Cheerio !!!

Random Reality and Recurring Thoughts

 

One of the complexities of life is which leg does the SOCK go on? It is still not clear why the SOCKS are designed to be ambidextrous? Think about it.

“ZooZoos” have really caught my imagination. The Vodafone ads are quite watchable. But the whole question is whether it has a better ROI then either Animation or using Animals (read puppy)? Strange as it may seem, there are lots of things which exists the way they are because nobody has questioned. In a business what is the economic sense to invest in a new paradigm of advertising to create market interest by fuelling in more money?

Another question I have found it difficult to grasp is post facto what is the need to find a relation or pattern between in an occurrence. There tend to be a lot of conversions around what will happened and what got screwed up. Don’t you think So?

With more and more technologies being used there is going to be a Tsunami of info-porn. Wonder how it will be (mis)used.

Also one latest buzz which I am looking forward to is how the world is going to handle the “possibly jingoistic” assertion of South Korea

Thoughts and Reality

 

Its been quite some time since I made my last blog post. There have been a few key events in my life which I will share with you all eventually. All for the Best of course.

I have been reading a lot of stuff and keeping myself occupied. Of late I have been carrying so much thoughts cramped into my brain that people around me can read me as being stressed rather than the aura of peace-with-self. Ironic right ? Sometimes you discover things from others which you should be knowing by yourself. This is the reason it is said “Thoughts are what you are”

Strange as it may seem time flies and you bet if you don’t capitalize and properly invest in it, life would have just zoomed by like a movie.

Wonderful things keep happening around and it takes some stepping back to get the big picture.

My best friend of 30 years arrived in the USA around 3 weeks back and already he has paid me a visit and We exchange a phone call every other day. Can you Imagine a friendship which has outlived competition in “pre-school”,”college”,”town”,”extra curricular activities”,”career” and changing times. Wow !!! By gods grace we both have shared a lot of wonderful events and progressed to learn about way to live from the way other around us and we ourselves have been living.

About reading.. I have cut down the amount of blog posts I have been reading by a lot. Some complaints I have about blog posts is that it is a random topic, It is not self contained and it is seldom complete. Think about it.

You have the ability to rise and shine and accomplish whatever you wish you can, Always it is a just a matter of effort, focus, persistence and time.

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Getting everyone on the same page

 

If you ask your fellow team members to explain what they understand by ‘Test Driven Development’, today you are likely to find very few common thought lines.

The reason behind this is not vague understanding, it is different application knowledge.

If the only tool one knows is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Similarly when somebody begins doing ‘Test Driven Development’, the initial learning curve to accept the way of writing software is pretty steep. There are no standards. One tendency is to copy and not think. Because there is no reference, One can either be happy with the frog-in-a-well living or completely insecure with the efforts. Whatever the case, getting things right in the first place is hard learn in the initial stages.

With continuous efforts and trial and errors, one can eventually discover the best practices by experience or by referencing the experts in the industry.

As a software architect, when a system design is completed, there is effort needed to bring all the developers on the same page.

I am trying to think on lines of documenting my experience and information sharing to get everybody to generate the common minimum standard output expected as a developer.

That is another problem to be solved.

Software Knowledge ‘Application’

 

When I was quite young, I was once asked a mathematical question to be solved mentally.

What is the result of 0.17 * 0.83 * 2 + 0.17 * 0.17 + 0.83 * 0.83 ?

It took me several minutes of mental calculation when I got the most approximate value.

It was one of the earliest A-HA moment of usage of learning equations in mathematics.

I thought it was cool. Who knew an equation like (x+y)^2= x^2+y^2+2xy would be useful mapping of the problem asked.

Another A-HA moment of mathematics had come when a friend discussed about the use of Curve equations in a computer program to determine the trajectory of a object thrown in space like a Baseball pitch ( Bowling in cricket parlance). It was astonishing to discover that even though I had memory to mug up all the equations in the world, I was not really applying the solution to the real context in the world.

Do you ‘always’ apply your engineering brain to solve all the problems you encounter in your daily life? Do let me know.

As a solution architect in the software career, I have encountered numerous challenges and resolved them. Many resolutions were top of the head, some were innovative thinking in the limited knowledge and some were mediocre. There is always a room for improvement in the next iteration.

According to my limited knowledge and experience, there are 3 kinds of knowledge out there.

One is Reference

Second is Mapping

Third is Extrapolating.

Reference knowledge can always be searched.

Whatever knowledge you already have at your disposal can be used to Map to a solution for a problem at hand.

Extrapolating requires ‘Mapping’ the right context to the right problem.

The main concern I have always had about education is ‘how do we use the learned knowledge in our head to resolve problems lying in front of us’.

As I see TDD examples in the search space, I find that most of the examples are pretty lame and not really teaching the mindset of Test First Development.

Secondly over a period of TFD, there are some best practices which one learns by refactoring and improving on every iteration.

Thirdly like with every new technology or like the Six Blind Men, everybody interprets the methodologies to suit their own perceptions and have a own variant of the methodology.

Given sufficient time, I would like to change the curriculum’s to include ‘Real World Application’ and ‘Problem Mapping’ skills to be imparted with every new skill out there in the world.

That is another problem to be solved.

New Tech Term Blues

Whew !!!

This is Terrific.

Its 1:20 am EST as I wrap up reading to know more about some more acronyms like EDM, XBAP, yada yada yada

It seems as I keep reading/understanding/learning/applying these terms in technology, I am beginning to get inundated.

Is this ever going to end ?

I don’t know but am sure, this will get me work and earning my moolah.

The fundamentals remain the same. But the ideas to implement are rehashed and abstracted to fit into some kind of steady logical extension which makes some sense and begets question why was this there not earlier ?

Is it the early adopters who drive these change requirements or is it the early stumbles ?

I am not yet lost and hope you are not too.

In humans with time, there are changes. Some so subtle that it surprises the moment you become self-conscious, and some so distinct that your aura allows it to occur.

I was mentally crazy and physically lazy about keeping up to date with the latest trends in tech markets, but worry no more, I am back and this is going to rock, I am going to be better.

Attitude Always Optimistic.