Tag: solve

  • Undermining what makes things work

    Undermining what makes things work

    Computers used to improve our lives, automate seemingly mundane work, enable much done with less is omnipresent. As with anything commercially successful, software too has received careful scrutiny, tons of knowledge, plethora of suggestions on how to keep making software better. Probably many of us are aware, software industry is one of the most exciting, most confusing commercial domains of our age.

    My own experience attempting to do my startup has provoked me to the depths about thinking what could be right balance of software as technology forerunner for my company, against company as a managed organization to continue improving the technology. I ponder on questions like, should management be well-versed in technology, or should management be just good, plain old management? But then, how does management perceive managing technology different to any other case for management, say automobile industry? Do I favor a hands-on, roll up your sleeves approach (and attitude) from my management team? Or do I allow managers to carefully handle the veil between upper management aspects, to low-level technical, trench oriented projects?

    To me, the answer is very elusive, and not one that may have a definite answer best and safest weight loss pills. I’ll find out, but there is one small detail that I have some impressions about.

    Technology projects about improving the existing technology are not new. Almost every organization having an IT division has all of their technology projects about improving the existing ones. As it goes with everything else, most of these are assessed with one primary reason – the cost. Large technology changes, cost of maintenance, technology work owned, but essentially maintained by vendors, value proposition to any emerging business … in short, how much do we get over how much we give. That is an interesting aspect, borrowed over from commercial world of business. While there are reasons why such kind of monetary evaluation precedes technology value, the issue gets clouded when technology becomes almost secondary to any company’s growth preference, money comes first (and foremost).

    Amidst all this progress, I keep wondering about the value of existing technology.  To me the clear question is how do organizations perceive the existing systems value? How much of current technology can be written for future? By how much – 5 yrs, 10 yrs, 1 yr? Would we, as users, creators of the technology have the same unchanged need when we are in the future?

    Overall, how do you really evaluate technology improvements when one is unaware to the fact that it is current, existing technology which has led to this situation where you can think about improvements?

    I feel that most of us undermine working technology, over ideal one. Ideal one, if exists, will only come by when you stop looking any further. Working technology, however, is real, error-prone, touches you now. Improvements, not just in technology but anywhere, happen when we start asking the right questions to right problems. The other option is to keep yourself shrouded in veils, pretending there is a problem your teams are solving making few more along the way to improvements.

  • Maintaining relationship – common friends

    I was posed a very trivial question from one of my friends recently. It picked my interest, since I could not readily solve it, and I had the inkling that there is a better, simple solution for this problem.

    The problem was, let’s say I have a table of users as below
    User's table data

    And these users have friends as below

    User's friends data or more easier to read as User's friends data

    Now, the trivial task was find common friends for users 1, and 5, hence naturally the answer should be

    User 1 : Woody’s friends, and User 5 : Andy’s friends  are

    Woody's friends and Andy's friends

    So, the question I had was what could be the best SQL query that would be return me this result?

    Woody and Andy's common friends

    I thought of 2 different SQL queries

    SELECT f.fid, u.name 'Woody and Andy\'s common friends' FROM
    (SELECT f.`fid` FROM friends f
    WHERE f.`uid` IN (1,5)
    GROUP BY f.`fid` HAVING COUNT(f.`fid`) > 1) f INNER JOIN user u ON (u.uid=f.fid)

    -or- another one was

    SELECT f.fid, u.name 'Woody and Andy\'s common friends' FROM
    (SELECT a.fid FROM
    (SELECT * FROM friends f
    WHERE f.`uid`=1) a INNER JOIN
    (SELECT * FROM friends f
    WHERE f.`uid`=5) b ON (a.fid=b.fid)) f INNER JOIN user u ON (u.uid=f.fid)

    Both seem to work, but is there any elegant way of getting common friends in a much simpler SQL query? At this moment, I logically find first SQL query more intuitive since all it does is pickup friends who appear more than once when users are 1 and 5. The second SQL query seems plain brute force approach.

  • Secretmyth BDRips – audio/video out of sync

    More recently, all Secretmyth BDRips I download started to have a audio out of sync with video issue. Real sad, because the movie quality is too good when watching on a 24 inch screen. I use K-Lite, but it seems SecretMyth recommends either KMPlayer or VLC.

    The problem solved using VLC.

  • ID ten T error

    I was having trouble with my computer.  So I called Richard, the 11-year-old next door whose bedroom looks like Mission Control, and asked him to come over.

    Richard clicked a couple of buttons and solved the problem.

    As he was walking away, I called after him, “So, what was wrong?”

    He replied, “It was an ID ten T error.”

    I didn’t want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inquired, “An, ID ten T error?  What’s that?  In case I need to fix it again.”

    Richard grinned. “Haven’t you ever heard of an ID ten T error before?”

    “No,” I replied.

    “Write it down,” he said, “and I think you’ll figure it out.”

    So I wrote it down: I D 1 0 T

  • SSH : Forwarded connection refused by server: Administratively prohibited [open failed]

    Change localhost to 127.0.0.1 and it should work. 🙂

    If that doesn’t solve it, problem might be in sshd_config or authorized_keys2 – Metawerx Wiki: SSHTunnelTroubleshooting.

  • Solving Rubik’s cube

    Finally I can solve the regular 3 x 3 rubik’s cube, and the more complex 5 x 5 Professor’s cube with ease. 🙂
    3 x 3 solve –

    5 x 5 solve –

    Once my children learn to solve it as well, I’ll upload their videos too. 😀

  • Amrita solving Rubik cube


    Can you believe what 11 month old babies are capable of?