Tapping creativity by panning

While I was on the streets of Bangkok a few days back, I really wanted to take some different kinda snaps instead of the regular freezed ones.


Going back to the hotel room, I quickly Googled for the 'Panning' technique to capture subjects which are in motion and give the image a feel of the subject's movement.


The picture besides was taken using the panning technique in which you should be on lower shutter speeds, focus on the subject and then move your camera in the direction of the subject just as you hit the capture button. 
This way, your subject (the person and the bike in my picture) is in focus whereas the background gives a feel of the movement that your subject is making.


Am sure there could be many more creative ideas once you get a hang of this technique.

A developer's life is NOT just about CODING

A developer's life is not just about writing good code and communicating well with stakeholders. It's also about knowing other tasks which are not really meant or defined for a developer if you read the 'Job description' documented by the company.


These could be anything from configuring Oracle installations, mounting file-systems on a Unix box, writing small pieces of code to automate mundane tasks, fixing something that is wrong with Continuous Integration servers and the list goes on. 
I also know a few developers around who would simply shun from such kind of jobs because they think it's not a part of their role as defined by the company. 


However, if one thinks about it wisely, the advantages of running such odd jobs once in a while are manifold. I will list below the advantages I see out of them...

1. They hone your R&D skills on a platform which you have probably never seen earlier.
2. You are allowed to make mistakes just because you are learning and everyone knows that you are trying your hand at an otherwise specialized job.
3. You get to talk stuff at stand-ups which could be totally new to others, and hence impressive of you :)
4. In the process of searching for solutions, you learn better use of Google keywords.
5. Once you regularly showcase your skills in these odd directions (after having proved your developer acumen of course), people look forward to you as a techie and logical guy, and not just yet another developer around the corner.
6. You get to work with really low level basics and lingos which you might have never heard or used after your graduation.

Hope this makes sense to my developer audience.

Mom, why do they switch off aircraft cabin lights during take off and landing?

I was on a flight last week, and as it goes with my inquisitive nature about anything on wheels, I kept wondering about a lot of things around me like how does the movement of wings affect the flight, why do flight attendants request passengers to pull up the window shutters, why are the cabin lights switched off during take off and landing.


Once home, I googled it up and found the answers.


As for the cabin lights being switched off, from some amount of reading around it's apparent that those are done because emergency situations are more likely to occur during landing and take off.
In case the worst happens, they want our eyes to be already adjusted to the darkness around us (on a night flight) instead of passengers trying to pave their way through pitch darkness that surrounds ones eyes if there is a sudden transition of the intensity of light.


Found it to be one of the noble precautions that the aviation industry takes to give us safer yet comfortable in-flight experience...


I will try to write about answers to my other inquisitive thoughts about an aircraft in some other post.

After a days work...

... No, I would not blabber about anything. This is just a post tell you guys (and also Google search engine :-) ), that I have renamed the blog to something which is more relevant.
I could not do much justice to the older name ('growwithjava'), because AfterADaysWork, I just could not find the courage and enthusiasm to again go back to write or talk about java or any technology, which I anyway TRY to DO the whole day.

This new name gives me mental flexibility to write about anything and everything after a days work minus the embarrassment of having to write under a different 'mask' :-)

Hope I continue to enjoy writing this for the small number of adhoc visitors I have each day... and hope they enjoy reading as well... Cheers!

Stable and stylish tuk-tuks!

I was in Bangkok (thanks to wifey and her company :-) ), and was fascinated by these small public carriers on the road. They are colorful, play loud rock music, are decorated right from the hood to the silencer to the wheels, have cool looking drivers, they sport silencers whose sound are a treat to a "thump" lover's ears.

More importantly, apart from their visual appeal, what I liked about them is that they seem to be lot more stable given their larger wheelbase and lower height than the desi auto-rickshaws. Sure, they seem to have put some good thought into the stability of these 3-wheeled 'rockets' on Bangkok roads.

Here are a few pictures, hope you enjoy them...

Telecommuting - Boon or bane?

The place where I am currently employed has overshot its capacity, and they plan to shift a few teams to another location which is inconvenient for most of the folks.
I wonder why management doesn't think of telecommuting as an option for us. The advantages are manifold ranging from increased employee satisfaction to better employee retention to monetary savings for the company.

The one about savings could be a big one am sure, considering the cost involved in setting up IT infrastructure, the cubicles, sundry facilities and so on. Yet, there are no visible talks of allowing folks to work from home. Of course everyone understands that being in a developing country that we are, there could be issues with logistics like frequent power failure, poor internet connectivity etc. but the onus of getting this in place can lie with the employee, failing which he/she can be made to lose this privilege.

Given the boon surrounding this arrangement, I really dunno why companies especially in India are hesitant to let people work from home. Just like we start new processes like Scrum, automating test cases, setting up CI servers and what not in software development, why can't we just kick-start and try this one as well on a pilot project?

Everyone likes to be clicked, even non living objects

After a 15-20 minutes of photo session with a lot of angles, intensity of flash, composition of the clips, finally zeroed down on one good click.
(f/7.1, 1/180, 200) 

Body vs Mind - A Realization

Realized that the body would never ever want to get out of its comfort (read lazy) zone to work-out, go for a walk, do household chores, take up tasks which are important etc.

It's only the mind which has to control it.
I know that's a cliche which can be found in any book that you pick for 'self-improvement', 'teach-yourself' etc. I realized that without reading one :=)

Decided to get back to my fitness routine, and accepted (more importantly REALIZED) the fact that the body would never allow such a tiring thing to happen to itself.
It's my mind which needs to get my body outta the shell to get going...

Money or personal time? I chose the later...

Took 2 weeks of continuous leave from work. This wasn't much called for as such, because the work-load hasn't been too demanding for the past couple of months with a few minor releases and POCs at hand.

However, to take leaves and do nothing much except spend time with parents(after long!), getting back in shape and garnering new skill sets, seemed more valuable than letting the leaves lapse or to get them encashed at a paltry rate.

Too late to even think of this blog - it's just 2 days to the end of my vacation :=). Still, better late than never!

Woah..

... it's been more than a year since I posted, lotsa stuff happening - new house, new work, extra bit of work, some dreams, newly found liking for watching movies and enhanced laziness :-)