Analytics on my mind

"It is way past midnight.
And I couldn't get any sleep. 
Cause Analytics was on top of my mind."
Sleep caused that pithy poem. But it is really true. It all started about 4 weeks back when someone asked me to suggest a topic for presenting in a conference. I suggested "Analytics for media devices" and was promptly asked to present it at an embedded developer's conference. The topic was relevant to my work of course. But I hadn't really thought through when I suggested it. By the time I prepared my material for it,  I realized that 40 minutes was too short to cover the topic at any depth.
I did try my best.  But I think I may have fell short of really helping everyone understand what it really means. Hence this blog post.  I may not share this poat with a vast audience.  But I need to write this down somewhere.
"Smart devices", "intelligent devices", "Self healing networks", etc are terms that you hear every where now. But most of the explanation around this so called "smartness" revolves around a lot of hype about Android,  smart phones, cloud computing, big data, etc. Every one seems to have forgotten "analytics" in the midst of that. That is what actually brings intelligence to these devices. Almost all the devices that are termed as smart and intelligent actually has this statistical science as the centre piece.
A question that was asked their was how is it relevant to embedded developers? It is... very!   When you are building smart devices, it is important to understand the science behind it. And to utilize it for building smarter devices, over the entire product life cycle. I am not sure whether it is really obvious only to me. So if you do come across this post and you have an opinion, do post! For details on my presentation,  you can always go to the embedded developer's conference,  bangalore may 2013, website.

And then the new year came!

As 2013 starts, I was thinking of about the year past, and of course, making my new year resolutions. Last year proved to be a mix of good and bad, with things getting evened out.
The new little one in the family came in 2012, but I also had to stay in Bangalore without much chance of spending time with her. I had to travel a lot, but then a lot of travel involved visiting family. Overall a year that was spend mostly on the road and alone.
Lots of really sad incidents too, especially nearing the end of 2012, the school shooting, the Delhi gang-rape, SRT's retirement, etc. It really looked like the world was ending on some level. I hope that 2013 is better!

As for new year resolutions, I did make a list of usual suspects. Although the one thing that I did add, is to become a bit more sociable and chivalrous this year. Hmm.. there is one more! I think I will start on that book I had been thinking about for a long, long time. Atleast I should write more! God knows I write little, as it is. I did buy a couple of notebooks and a pen with the intention of writing in it. I started scribbling on it and realized that I am woefully out of touch with writing. I need a keyboard to form a sentence. The good part is that it forced me to think about what I am writing before I even put pen on paper, since there was not much chance of changing it without making it messier.

Alright then, see you later. Have to get back to writing another design document! *sigh*! When will I get back to writing code?!

Surprise!!

I am back. I didn't think I would make a blog post again this quick. But then today is a special date 12/12/12 that happens once every hundred years. Besides this kind of confluence would not happen again for the next 88 years. The next one would be 01/01/01 in the year 3001! In fact if the Mayan Calendar had its way, the world would end way before that! That's right, folks! In a couple of weeks the world may very well have ended. But don't worry if you missed this date. We do have plenty of dates remaining for the end of the work. For more details you can check here

I am sure you can pick a date that suits you better!

For the more apocalyptically (Is that even a word?) inclined, advanced wishes for a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year!

A long gap!

That was a rather long gap! I had forgotten entirely about this blog, until my better half reminded me. And that was thanks to the fact that I recently registered my domain name and linked it to my Google site. Yes, that's right! I am the proud owner my very own domain and website, thanks to Big Rock and Google respectively. The whole set-up cost me under Rs.1000 for two years, including free e-mail forwarding. I am yet to see the test mail I forwarded to that account though. No matter! I am sure the good folks in Big Rock would send it to me in some time.

In case you want to drop  by it is www.harishnair.in

I guess between the last post and this one there has been more changes in my life. A change in Job and a new member in our family! The second one is the more momentous change obviously!

So after this rather spontaneous outpouring, it is back to sleep! :-)

The last few weeks I have been reading a lot of blogs for one reason or another. I also read a book by Sidin Vadukut, "Dork: The adventures of Robin Einstein Varghese". The book is based on a single blog post that he made a long time back. His blog is also a great piece of cyber property to hang out in. I read most of the posts there, though I hadn't actually followed it earlier. It kind of inspired me to kick start my own blog postings/musings again. I haven't updated much on my blogs here, though I do update my twitter feed (http://twitter.com/harishnairr) occasionally, atleast much more than my blog posts! I have 140+ tweets, compared to 15 blog posts in a much shorter time. By twitter standards even that is low.

Anyway, so you can now read some of my more elaborate musings here from now on. I am planning to update it atleast weekly.

Last few weeks had been very hectic with a lot of travel and very little sleep. I kind of made up for that yesterday, with a lot of sleep. But still feeling tired. Not planning to do any travel for the rest of the month. Hopefully the plans won't change. The next month is a different story though. With lots of travel plans already in the making. Three out of Five weekends are already being painstakingly planned to the last minute detail. Hopefully the plans won't change again in the last minute!

I recently made a to-do list on my phone. The list is pretty long and fills up the whole screen space on my mobile (which is quite long, mine being a touch screen 5800). Hopefully I will be able to finish up a lot of that soon!

I am also planning to join a gym to shed a few(!) pounds that I have gained... I will update on that as soon as I have finalized a place, finalized the fees, and finalized the timings, a lot of finalization to do!

Alright then, till the next post... hopefully soon!

Another year gone by

And here we are... The last year was pretty momentous one for me. I managed to get hitched. Which is partly the reason for being quite for so long. Marriage has kind of mellowed me down (hmm.. and bloated me up as well). Blame it on the stress free days. It is kind of comforting to know that when you get home somebody will be there for you. And when you wake up in the morning somebody is next to you. And breakfast/lunch/dinner on the table which actually tastes good, doesn't hurt either (I help with washing the dishes and doesn't mind that)

Apart from the obvious change I have decided to put a bit of theory that I am reading into practice. Recently I got my hands on '7 habits for effective people' by Covey. Well, I usually don't buy self-help or self-improvement books. But the phrase 'effective people' caught me. I have to admit that the first time I glanced at the title, I substituted 'successful' instead of 'effective'. This got me curious and I wound up buying the book. But it wasn't just a read-through-it-and-forget-about-it kind of book. It describes some simple habits which can help you over the long run. And the first habit I am trying out is - "Be Proactive".

That was just 2 simple words. But implementing it in practice is a pain. What it implies, for me at least, is to not just crib, but do something about it. Well, there was a lot of stuff written. But essentially it boils down to this. And this post is kind of something I have been cribbing about for some time. So here it is... :-) Lets see if I can make this a habit!

There... I have added Twitter

There... I have added Twitter account to my blog!!! Nobody can accuse me of lagging behind in technology!!! :P