2006

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.

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

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. ...

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’s internal subdomains.

Employee management at Saravana Bhavan. (via Vadivel.)

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 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

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 ...

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.) ...

Scoble on To videoblog or not to videoblog.

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

I stopped using Google Analytics when I redesigned my site. I track my own statistics. This gives me access to raw data, and I can do my own analyses. I wanted to know the keywords on Google that led to my site. (Google Analytics only gives you phrases.) I also wanted independent words. If you search for “Calvin and Hobbes”, I want to count only “Calvin”, knowing that it’s in the context of “Hobbes”. ...

The 10 Laws of Simplicity.

These are stills from Kamal's movies. Each link points to a different movie. I have jumbled the images. You can move the jumbled blocks around, like a jigsaw. Can you guess the movie? Comments Sathya 15 Sep 2006 8:03 am: its not changing colour ;-( S Anand 15 Sep 2006 8:22 am: Well, Sathya, then the answer must be wrong ;-) Nah, unlikely. There must be a spelling variation I had not anticipated. Why don’t you mail me the answer, and I’ll fix it. Thanks! Sathya 15 Sep 2006 9:28 am: movie 5 has a zigsaw tht does not belong to the movie. S Anand 15 Sep 2006 11:18 am: You’re right. Sorry! Fixed it now. Anonymous 15 Sep 2006 4:42 pm: hey tht was nice and very easy.i was able to find out the answers even b4 moving the pics.enjoyable though Ashwin 16 Sep 2006 1:21 pm: Vettayadu Vilayadu is an excellent movie and its doing well in theatres also. Sillunu oru kadhal is not that much good.. Emtan magan is also worth watching, mostly the comedy is good. That’s all about current movie status in Tamil nadu. Ashwin 16 Sep 2006 1:25 pm: I dont’t know much about the old movies, any how i enjoyed playing with the Puzzle. Anand, i will call u later… saranya 20 Sep 2006 9:23 am: anand puzzle three is excellent i got in 5 mins itself its so interesting to play this saranya 20 Sep 2006 2:14 pm: i have solved the 4th puzzle Ram 13 Oct 2006 2:09 am: Can u please tell me the name of the first movie Ram 13 Oct 2006 2:10 am: I have solved 2, 3,4 and 5 but i dont know first…can any one tell me the name of the first movie.I had seen that movie but i cant remember the name of the movie..please help damind 28 Oct 2006 6:33 am: i got four, but i am not satisfied cause i know the answer for the fifth one and its not accepting the right answer ashwini 3 Nov 2006 10:06 am: Second one is varumaiyin niram sivappu only. 4th one not clear at all. subadra 5 Mar 2007 3:18 pm: we solved this too,Anand.we r enjoying it ravi 8 Mar 2007 9:36 am: very good 5one ????????????????? senthil 14 Sep 2006 12:00 pm: i got all 5 answers.. yipeee :-) dhan hak sak 17 Jun 2009 3:16 pm: ha ha ha…. Innum difficult level edhavadhu iruka Renuka 8 Jul 2009 10:40 am: I can see that I’m taking this quiz three years after it was posted - came to know of this website very recently. Awesome! This must be one of the easiest quizzes :-) Or probably the only one! 5/5. Ramki 24 Sep 2009 10:39 pm: Hi Anand, I think I got all 5 right. However, second one which I think is Varumayin Niram Sivappu is not getting highlighted. Am I wrong? TRG 8 Apr 2011 2:15 pm: well set 5/5 retna 2 Feb 2011 2:00 am: finaly i got all answer correct, but the answer for no.2 i think is correct but i don’t know y its not highlighted. can anyone hepl. tq

The best time to buy everything: when to buy air tickets, get great deals on electronics, and so on.

I've mentioned the lead pair of famous romantic English movies. How many titles can you guess?

Arrange books by colour. It looks lovely.

What would an honest in-flight announcement sound like? Among other things, it would say… Please switch off all mobile phones, since they can interfere with the aircraft’s navigation systems. At least, that’s what you’ve always been told. The real reason to switch them off is because they interfere with mobile networks on the ground, but somehow that doesn’t sound quite so good.