50 things to do in lifetime

The things I already did are in bold, the things I tried or doing are in italics. Here is the list:

1. Paint a self portrait
2. Learn to play a musical instrument with some degree of skill (keyboard)
3. Sing a great song in front of an audience.
4. Plant a tree and carve your name
5. Learn a Foreign Language (French/German)
6. Meditate for three hours in one sitting
7. Make your own pasta, pizza or a perfect meal
8. Watch the sun rise and sun set on the same day
9. Do a first aide course
10. Fast for 48 hours, drink only water!!!
11. Take a vow of silence for 2 days
12. Donate blood
13. Test drive a car you can't afford or vintage cars
14. Learn swimming and then scuba dive
15. Quit something you love - TV & being lazy at home :-)
16. Listen to war stories. Buy a veteran a beer. Ask your questions.
17. Sell everything you don't need. Once.
18. Take a vow. Keep it.
19. Climb something you are afraid of - Mountain, rock wall, tree. Overcome your fear of failure.
20. Get a deep tissue massage.
21. Attend one major sporting event: the Olympics, Cricket
22. Educate a child - donate or teach.
23. See a lunar eclipse.
24. Donate money and put your name on something: a college scholarship, a bench in the park.
25. Create your own web site or blog
26. Run a marathon.
27. Paint yourself a piece of art; it doesn’t matter whether you can draw or not – most modern art is unrecognizable anyway. Hang Your Art In A Gallery
28. Learn Yoga or hit the gym every day.
29. Write a book without the urge to publish it
30. Photography - If you love capturing best moments of life
31. Go on a safari
32. Help Someone Without Wanting Anything In Return
33. Learn To Dance - it’s great exercise and tons of fun (tried but lost interest)
34. Attend A Concert Or Music Festival or New Year Eve
35. Forgive Your Parents or Someone.
36. Read one new book every year (2013 - You can win)
37. Travel - Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, China(Shanghai), USA
38. Home Country - visit two new places every year
39. Learn how it works or how it's made. Repair an appliance
40. Visit car factory may be Toyota or Nano.
41. Design, Plan and build the house
42. Ride a horse or camel in the dessert
43. Learn the names of birds, trees, flowers and impart this knowledge to children.
44. Invent something or Make Money From Your Own Entrepreneurial Project/Business
45. Control your anger and avoid conflicts at work.
46. Publish an article in News Paper (Times Of India or The Hindu)
47. Go Kart Drive
48. Water rafting
49. Go for a bike ride... 
50. Tour a television or radio station
51. Wonder la

What do you want to do/done already? (not in above list)

Chrome & its extensions

I was using Mozilla Firefox browser for many years, now switched to Google Chrome for just one reason - so many add-ons which saves a lot of time.

Please leave comments if you find add-ons which works similar to BBC News add-on to show 10 (or more) new words (vocabulary) every day.

Add-ons List:


20 Cubed
Protect your eyes with this reminder tool to look away from the screen every 20 minutes.


Add Tasks to Do It (Tomorrow)
Add tasks to Do it (Tomorrow) via a simple browser button.

Any.DO
Any.DO helps you remember everything you have to do.

Awesome Screenshot: Capture & Annotate
Capture the whole page or any portion, annotate it with rectangles, circles, arrows, lines and text, blur sensitive info, one-click upload to share. Support PNG and shortcuts. 

BBC News
News feeds allow you to see when websites have added new content 

Browser Clipboard
Browser Clipboard makes copy/paste easy by providing a panel that can hold multiple items.

Click&Clean
Deletes your browsing history, typed URLs, Flash cookies, all traces of your online activity to protect your privacy.

Dictionary.com Extension
Use Dictionary.com, the most popular and trusted online dictionary, to look up word definitions anywhere you go with Chrome.

Domain Availability Checker and Whois Lookup
This plugin checks a domain's availability straight from your toolbar. Perfect for web designers/developers.

Firebug Lite for Google Chrome
Firebug Lite for Google Chrome, supported by the Firebug Working Group.

Google Dictionary (by Google)
View definitions easily as you browse the web.

Google Translate
This extension translates entire web pages into a language of your choice with one click. By the Google Translate team. 

Grammar and Spell Checker by Ginger
Ginger improves your English communication by helping you avoid embarrassing grammar and spelling mistakes! 

IP Address
Find your "IP Address" whenever you want with a single click! 

JSONView
Validate and view JSON documents

Lightshot (screenshot tool)
Easy and convenient screen capture tool. Allows you to make screenshot of any selected area (video and flash too), edit and upload it to server.

Meeting Planner for Chrome
A free tool for finding common working hours across multiple time zones. Launch the meeting planner from your Chrome toolbar. 

Note Board
Note Board

Photo Zoom for Facebook
The best way to view photos on Facebook!

Quick Note
The quickest way to take notes in Chrome, as quick and slick as the best desktop note-app.

ResponseTime Monitor
Shows the response times of up to three webservers in real time. Useful to see how the internet/server connection performs.

ruul. Screen ruler
A fantastically simple on-screen ruler for lining up and measuring type, line height, strokes and just about anything on the web. 

Speed Learning
An extremely simple tool to help you master a foreign language while browsing the Web.

The Hindu news feed
Stay up to date on the latest happenings with The Hindu. Customize news feed according to your own interests. 

TooManyTabs for Chrome
Manage your tabs, improve your browsing, and maintain your sanity when you have many tabs open.

Web Developer
Adds a toolbar button with various web developer tools. The official port of the Web Developer extension for Firefox. 

World Clocks
World Clock. It displays multiple world clocks that you can add, remove, sort and edit.

XML Tree
Displays XML data in a user friendly way. 

Yellow highlighter pen for web
Highlight texts while you read. 

Screen Capture Add-ons for Browsers

Capture the whole page or any portion, annotate it with rectangles, circles, arrows, lines and text, blur sensitive info, one-click upload to share. And more!!!

Firefox Mozilla browser add-ons :  Awesome Screenshot Plus, FireShot and LightShot

Chorme browser add-ons: Awesome Screenshot and Quick Markup Screen Capture

2013 New Year Resolutions

Welcome back, Wish you happy new year. 

2012 was a flat year as it didn't offer too many surprises or tough challenges. It was filled with joy at work, Good health, Short trips, new initiaves etc. Like in agile projects, did 30 minute retrospective of 2012, and jotted few action items for 2013, things I should do to keep myself busy:

1. Establish and maintain the network (professional & friends)

      -lunch/movie with (ex-) colleagues   -attend get-together functions/cultural activities

      -subscribe to group mail ids and tech forums

2. Staying Fit and Healthy 

      -45 minute excercise except on weekend, limit on junk food. 

      -8 hours sleep and 10 minute meditation

3. Manage your budget

      -Attend Finance for Non-Financial Managers course
      -Cut down unneccessary expenditures   
      -Avoid traffic fine or late payment charges, maximize ECS payment

4. Make a trip 

     -Singapore or US      -learn car driving and visit 5 new places.

5. Sharpen the saw (study min 3hrs per week)

     -Master tech skills like Spring (Core,Web Flow,MVC), JQuery and SQL

     -Insurance domain knowledge (Auto & Property)

     -learn the art of writing fat-free emails and fluentzy in english

     -Books to read: You can win by Shiv Khera
     -Publish the tech book if legal team approves it.

6. Get Organized

    -organize your computer                -check & respond to emails, stop procrastinating 

    -Plan your work, work your plan     -Happy Family - eat dinner together every night

7. Try watching lesser TV or entertainment programs

     -Watch BBC or regional news channel everyday (15min)

     -Read e-newspaper in office hours :-)

8. Eco friendly habits in your lifestyle
     -no paper bills or unneccessary print outs and ATM receipts.
     -Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (Wasted food/Energy, donate books/clothes, notes on printed paper)

9. Share Your Knowledge/Experience

     -conduct one or two technical training sessions

     -write minimum six blogs in a year
     -be a good mentor to junior staff

A nice quote on new year resolution - "Stop waiting for the right time. It will never come. You've got to act NOW. Don't let another year go by."

SCRUM IN 30 MINUTES

Welcome, this blog will briefly introduce you to scrum and also helps you to prepare for Certified Scrum Master (CSM) assessment. This blog compiles info from various blogs & the Scrum Handbook.

What is Agile?

Software development inevitably involves learning, innovation, delivery and surprises. Agile aims to minimize last minute surprises in delivery. It uses iterative and incremental approach to develop a software. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, collobarative work, self organized teams and welcomes change in requirements. 

What’s Wrong With Traditional Software Development?

Traditional approach has strengths and weaknesses. Its great strength is that it is supremely logical – think before you build, write it all down, follow a plan, and keep everything as organized as possible. It has just one great weakness: humans are involved. Hence a lot of problems occur.

Agile principles?

1. Measure the progress through Working software instead of documentation done up front.

2. Do colloborative work & empower cross functional team to make decisions.

What is SCRUM?

SCRUM is not acronym, it is an agile method i.e. it is based on iterative & incremental approach to develop a software. Each iteration/sprint is timeboxed, usually 2 to 4 weeks. A major theme in Scrum is “inspect and adapt”. 

In Scrum, there are three primary roles: The Product Owner, The Team and The Scrum Master. The key artifacts of scrum are product backlog, spring backlog, and burndown chart. It involes short meetings like sprint planning, daily standup meeting, sprint review and retrospective.

SCRUM FRAMEWORK

Benefits of SCRUM?

Properly implemented, Scrum will:

1. increase of speed of development
2. Support shareholder value creation
3. Achieve stable and consistent communication of performance at all levels

SCRUM Roles:

The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing return on investment (ROI) by identifying product features, translating these into a prioritized feature list, deciding which should be at the top of the list for the next Sprint, and continually reprioritizing and refining the list.

The Team builds the product that the customer is going to use: the application or website, for example. The team in Scrum is cross-functional and includes all the expertise necessary to deliver the potentially shippable product each Sprint. It is also self-organizing (self-managing), with a very high degree of autonomy and accountability. The Team in Scrum is seven plus or minus two people. Stable Teams are associated with higher productivity, so changing team members should also be avoided.

The ScrumMaster helps the product group learn and apply Scrum to achieve business value. The ScrumMaster is not the manager of the team or a project manager; instead,The ScrumMaster does whatever is in their power to help the team be successful. The ScrumMaster contributes to team success through mentoring, coaching, helping remove obstacles, helping problem-solve, providing creative input, and guiding the skills development of team members

SCRUM Keywords:
Sprint items are estimated using Story Points. The points completed per Sprint is called the velocity of the team. A realeastic release plan is always based on the velocity of the team.

Definition of Done means coded to standards, reviewed, implemented with unit test-driven development (TDD), tested with 100 percent test automation, integrated, and documented. The implemented feature should meet all the agreed acceptance criterias.

Information Radiator:

Product Backlog Grooming: includes

1. detailed requirements analysis
2. splitting large items into smaller ones
3. estimation of new items
4. and re-estimation of existing items

Sprint Review

After the Sprint ends, there is the Sprint Review,It is simply a demo of what has been built. Present at this meeting are the Product Owner, Team members, and ScrumMaster, plus customers, stakeholders, experts, executives, and anyone else interested.  The Sprint Review is an inspect and adapt activity for the product.

Sprint Retrospective:
It’s an opportunity for the entire ScrumTeam to discuss what’s working and what’s not working, and agree on changes to try.

“Scrum is hard, but it sure is a whole lot better than what we were doing before!”

SQL Developer: Ctrl+V or Delete options not working

To resolve the problem you have to go to:

Tools -> Preferences -> Accelerators -> Load Preset -> Default -> OK

CreateProcess error=87, The parameter is incorrect.

On computers running Microsoft Windows XP or later, the maximum length of the string that you can use at the command prompt is 8191 characters. On computers running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.0, the maximum length of the string that you can use at the command prompt is 2047 characters.

This limitation applies to the command line, individual environment variables (such as the PATH variable) that are inherited by other processes, and all environment variable expansions. If you use Command Prompt to run batch files, this limitation also applies to batch file processing. read more

Solution:

Rename the folder(s), give short names. e.g. C:\maven\repository to c:\m2\rep.

...FOR TOMORROWS MEMORIES

First overseas travel, Shanghai 

Summer time @ Chennai

Prowareness Kick off trip to GOA

PQQ TEAM BOWLING OUTING - 30 NOV 2012

visit again :-)

Travel Light: documentation in agile projects

Some believe that Agile doesn’t require (or, even, cannot support) documentation.  Agile manifesto never says documents are waste or not useful.  Agile documentation says: travel light (Write fewest documents), Just-in time, Update only when it hurts.  You may save time & cost without documents but the project may fail in long run i.e. when the project is given to another team for maintenance. In simple words, no projects should be developed without supporting documents. read more