Rangachari Anand's weblog

Tue, 31 Aug 2004 13:35:06 GMT

A new set of newspaper clippings from India, this time about high school "toppers" (i.e. the ones who get the highest scores in exams. The subject of this article is going to be a little alien to my non-Indian readers. While athletes tend to get the most attention in American schools, its the nerds in India who get all the attention :-)

Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:18:02 GMT

[Second try! I still have to figure out how Radio Userland really works.]

I have posted the second article in my series Lessons Learned to my web site. This one is about the mistakes that we made with respect to distributed programming when we developed our product. I am fairly sure that I would avoid these mistakes again if I were starting out today based on what I know now. However, I have a feeling that even if I had read Peter Deutsch's list before joining Reefedge, I might have still made these mistakes :-)

As the saying goes: "Wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from making mistakes".

Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:10:33 GMT

I have posted the <a href="http://www.coralfringe.com/distributed_system_mistakes.html">second article</a> in my series Lesons Learned to my web site. This one is about the mistakes that we made with respect to distributed programming when we developed our product. I am fairly sure that I would avoid these mistakes again if I were starting today based on what I know now. However, even if I hadread Peter Deutsch's list before joining Reefedge, I have a feeling that I might have still made these mistakes. As the saying goes: "Wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from making mistakes".

Sat, 10 Jul 2004 22:35:25 GMT

Intrigued by the "Mesomorph Gym Equipments Co." or the "Zingaro Wine Spot"? I have updated the gallery with a new album with photos that I took last month in Hyderabad.

Tue, 15 Jun 2004 18:55:04 GMT

Wise advice from the Hitopadesha:

In group work do not take the lead,
Its benefits will be equally shared,
But if the work does not succeed,
The one up front will never be spared.

Mon, 14 Jun 2004 17:32:29 GMT

I am a huge fan of Terry Pratchett. I have every diskworld book he has written and a few of his other ones as well. Of his characters, Samuel Vimes is my all time favorite although Captain Carrot does come close. Apart from being very funny, his books contain a great deal of wisdom. One of my favorite passages from the book "Men at Arms":

The reason the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
    Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in the city on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
    But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
    This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

Fri, 11 Jun 2004 08:46:07 GMT

Earlier this year, Om Malik wrote an interesting item about how he used wireless Internet access during his stay in India. My own experience was a little different - I have posted an article about how "cable" Internet access actually works in Hyderabad. The term "cable" Internet does not quite mean the same thing as it does in the US!

Wed, 09 Jun 2004 19:29:44 GMT

I have started writing a series of articles, called Lessons Learned, about my experiences developing software in a startup. The first article in this series is about how we manage software development in my company and how the process evolved. Let me know if you find this article useful. My contact information is available here.

Wed, 09 Jun 2004 16:46:34 GMT

Testing again.

Wed, 09 Jun 2004 16:17:30 GMT

Just recovered from a disk failure. This post is just to test Radio.