The view from my office

The view from my office is pretty good. Comments Anonymous 30 Sep 2006 7:35 pm: Neat. Is it your office or your current client’s office? Have you guys broken even? Or is it still lifeline from the parent? S Anand 30 Sep 2006 9:20 pm: Thanks! This is the Infosys office, not a client’s. As for breakeven, yeah, we actually have!

Tamil lyrics quiz - TMS MGR

Here are words from the middle of 8 songs TMS has sung for MGR. Can you guess which movie they are from? Don't worry about the spelling. Just spell it like it sounds, and the box will turn green. Comments sailesh kumar basu 13 Mar 2009 7:20 am: V.V.Good, who can forget Thalaivars Songs Lyrics and Films. Continue the good work. Anonymous 28 Sep 2006 5:06 am: I am RamaKrishnan. I am also from TamilNadu I am not understand the lines above… Its a songs or anyother thing? S Anand 28 Sep 2006 6:46 am: Ramakrishnan, these are 2 lines from the middle of 8 different MGR film songs. You need to guess the film they appeared in. ashwini 3 Nov 2006 9:51 am: Good selection. ashwini 3 Nov 2006 10:17 am: which song is the 6th one pls. Prasanna 24 Dec 2006 5:46 am: Great site & great effort,Anand!Hats Off!Couldn’t crack no.6.Will you post the answers or can email me?Thanks. Murali Kannan. T 20 Feb 2007 12:40 pm: Very nice work! I’m a great fan of MGR. Keep it up. subadra 6 Mar 2007 2:39 am: but fr the nadodimannan song we found everything.appa went to sleep.the first thing he said in the morning is nadodimannan Mohan.C 27 Sep 2006 12:00 pm: I really enjoyed this quiz I remember old songs of mgr thru this quiz GOOD JOB lakshmi 27 Sep 2006 12:00 pm: fantastic job Anand I really enjoyed it. geetha 27 Sep 2006 12:00 pm: i have answered some Meena 22 Sep 2008 1:22 am: Excellent lyrics. Vivacious. I’m flabbergasted. I am from Trichy. I just loved all these lines. Thanks for recalling such a treasure in our life. You have done a great job. Rajagopalan 30 Dec 2008 11:27 am: Good song selection. Did not get two songs correct. K.Swaminathan 31 Dec 2008 5:40 am: Where I can get the lyrics of our Great MGR Songs. Please advise me. I want free download of lyrics of Mr.MGR songs. Regards, Swaminathan Rameshkarthikeyan 4 Mar 2009 2:13 pm: I need a song but i forget the starting of the song. “Ellam enakul erunthalum ennai thannakkul vaithirukkum " S Anand 4 Mar 2009 3:00 pm: You’re probably referring to Ulagam Pirandhadhu Enakkaaga from Paasam. Got it by googling. Rangan 15 Oct 2009 12:55 pm: I really enjoyed this and i love to do for MGR related quizzes. But sad thing is that i am not able to find answer for one question:-(. My evergreen hero is MGR and i love to watch all MGR movies. What a charismatic person he is! Rangan 15 Oct 2009 1:04 pm: Particularly i love to watch movies like Nadodi Mannan, Thirudathe, Enga Veetu Pillai, Adimai Pen, Aayirathil Oruvan, Ninaithadai Mudippavan, Anbe Vaa, Ullagam Suttrum Valiban, Rikshawkkaran, Rajakumari, Arasakattalai, Madhuraiveeran, Mannadhi Mannan, Kalangarai Vilakkam, Nadodi, Kudiyirindha Kovil, Padagotti etc etc. Some movies may be missed out from this list. I have watched all the above movies more than 20 times. I like his bunny cheeks when he laughs. This kind of cheeks only madhavan (maddy) is having after MGR and this is told by famous director Manirathnam. venkatp 12 Oct 2011 1:53 pm: fantastic…… santhosh 6 Apr 2016 6:24 pm: I want song first. I only remember songs middle line . that’s is patta maram paal varuma paagarkai then tharuma devar magal paarviley.. Can anyone help to find that song..

Software for my new laptop

And so, thanks to Infosys Consulting being spun off as a separate legal entity in the UK, I got my new laptop. (Because our old laptops were legally the assets of Infosys Technologies Ltd, and not Infosys Consulting Inc. Weirder things have happened, but who’s complaining?) My old Toshiba Portege A200 has been replaced by a Dell Latitude D420 (which I was dreaming for, after having just read Jeff’s post on big laptops). ...

Top 10 bittorrent sites comparison

A comparison of the top 10 bittorrent sites. BTJunkie emerges the winner. Comments Dhar 27 Sep 2006 10:55 pm: Not convinced with the comparison. Looks like the chappie Renald is just using to blog to promote BTJunkie. Checked the features of BTJunkie, they are nowhere close to Torrentspy, yet it gets a rating of 9. No way anyone can confirm BTJunkies claims like Torrents Indexed, Torrents Added Daily etc. Neither does the author specify how he confirmed these points. “At first I thought BTJunkie’s numbers must be fake, but I assure you it is real! I tested the number posted with the number in the actual directory for the day and they matched for a week straight!” Yeah, sure! S Anand 28 Sep 2006 6:47 am: Does sound like a plug, doesn’t it? :-) I’m planning to do a test myself. Why don’t you try one too? Sumit Dhar 8 Oct 2006 12:54 pm: http://torrentfreak.com/the-largest-bittorrent-search-engine-on-the-web/ S Anand 8 Oct 2006 2:50 pm: A solid rebuttal. I tried BTJunkie last week. Wasn’t very impressed. And the few movies I couldn’t find anywhere else, I couldn’t find here either.

Playing sounds backwards

You can play a video backwards and still recognise the scenes quite well. Can you do that with sound? I tried it on this Bryan Adams clip of Summer of ‘69 (mp3). When played backwards (mp3), it almost sounds like Arabic! Instruments sound weird backwards too, like the guitar played backwards and drums played backwards. It’s seems obvious once you see the wave file. The picture below shows the guitar. The sounds are clearly not symmetric left to right. ...

Where you host determines your page rank on Google

Google’s dirty little secret talks about how Google determines whether your site appears on top for a search depending on whether you and the searcher are in the same geography or not. So if your server is in Kazakhstan, expect fewer hits.

Tamil lyrics quiz - TMS Sivaji

Here are words from the middle of 10 songs TMS has sung for Sivaji. Can you guess which movie they are from? Don't worry about the spelling. Just spell it like it sounds, and the box will turn green. Comments Anonymous 2 Oct 2006 6:28 pm: help out wth the 5th one alone. sounds familiar,bt guessing fails. Anonymous 2 Oct 2006 6:29 pm: hey gt it got it. got the 5th one also.gud one ashwini 3 Nov 2006 9:54 am: Excellent songs ashwini 3 Nov 2006 10:20 am: Found out all songs. deen 16 Nov 2006 9:45 pm: 5th is pakappirivinai pls. mark the numbers for songs arun 13 Dec 2006 9:03 am: i think i have answered most Hema 5 Mar 2007 11:55 am: I have answered most. One or two with the help of your mother. Very interesting and thrilling. Excellent work done. Keep it going. subadra 5 Mar 2007 3:05 pm: appa and i got all correct lakshmi 24 Sep 2006 12:00 pm: all are correct. geetha 24 Sep 2006 12:00 pm: ha got some maduraimouli 8 Jan 2012 4:19 pm: rende rendu theriyalaye…naan enga poven periamma ? yarai keppen?

London Test Automation Conference at Google

Presentations and videos from Google’s conference on test automation at London. I was at the event, and learned a lot.

Calvin and Hobbes trivia quizzes

Calvin and Hobbes trivia quizzes.

Creating variwide charts in Excel

I mentioned that it's possible to create variwides using X-Y scatter plots. The video below shows how. Comments sathya 22 Sep 2006 4:08 pm: I can see the video. I use BSNL broadband. Howver Ihave th problm that i cant hear th audio. this is the case even with youtube. looks like BSNL does not allow streaming audio. S Anand 22 Sep 2006 4:40 pm: That’s a pity. Well, at least the video’s OK, and good that I’ve enabled captions. (Hope you can see those?) Ashwin 6 Jan 2007 1:50 pm: Yes Really useful sumesh 6 Apr 2007 10:42 am: i cant see the video

Visualisation - locating hubs

OK, we agree we need to centralise more. But do we really need additional hubs? If so, where? We’d shown that this bank could further centralise 55%. They had 10 regional hubs. We felt these weren’t enough. But how to prove it? For regional activities, the key factor is distance. (That’s why they’re regional and not central.) For example, cheque clearing can be delayed at most one day, to transfer the cheque to a nearby hub. Shipping them all to, say Gurgaon, would take 2-3 days and that’s too long. ...

Visualisation - activities to centralise

Surely we don’t have many activities to centralise? We already have a central hub for processing operations! We heard that from a fair section of our client organisation. They initially had operations spread across their branches. Some years ago, they had established a central hub and many regional hubs. Yet, Only a few prominent operations were centralised. Others were just regionalised. Regionalisation was inconsistent. Some branches still did these at their own premises. Branches still did the bulk of the work. We made a list of activities, surveyed all their branches and hubs, and got a good sense of which activities were happening at branches vs regionally vs centrally. ...

Google internal subdomains

Google’s internal subdomains.

Employee management at Saravana Bhavan

Employee management at Saravana Bhavan. (via Vadivel.)

Visualisation - centralising improves productivity

When you put people together, they tend to learn from each other. For example, we found one hub opening accounts much faster than another. Why? One guy had found this free software that enables auto-completion, and had installed it on his machine. Copying him, everyone else had done the same on their machine. So the hub as a whole was faster. When multiple hubs are put together, they’d all be as fast as the fastest (we hoped). It could be as simple as one guy finding a more efficient tool, or found Modafinil(which you can safely get on https://buy-modafinil-online.org) to help increase focus during working hours. Again, an Excel sheet can give us the estimated increase in productivity. ...

Blue Oyster Spiral

Blue Oyster Spiral is a video zooming into the Mandelbrot set for two-and-a-half minutes. Hard to believe that it’s just one simple equation. Comments Ki 20 Sep 2006 3:45 am: neat

Visualisation - centralisation smoothens demand

Often, presentations and documents make complex points. It’s useful to convey these as a simple visual. It’s worthwhile to make the effort and do a simple visual for every slide or paragraph. Once, a retail bank asked us if they should centralise their operations. They had operations distributed across branches, regional hubs, and a central hub. After 2 months of work, this was our story: Centralising smoothens demand Centralising improves productivity Your activities are decentralised (so you should consolidate) To do that effectively, you need a few more regional hubs Centralising smoothens demand ...

Visualisation of data

I have managed to fill hard disks of all capacities within a few months. My first PC had 10MB of disk space, while I work on 140GB today (remember: that's 14 thousand times more capacity in 14 years). Both were filled within 2 months. (An aside: the number of files / folders hasn't growth by 14,000. The files themselves have grown in size. I have roughly the same number of files/folders today on my machine as I had 14 years ago.) ...

To videoblog or not to videoblog

Scoble on To videoblog or not to videoblog.

Hrishikesh Mukherji movies

Down the memory lane with Hrishikesh Mukherji’s movies via Shruti.