Power of Data and the joy of visualization

Lately, I have been into Data science. I never truly believed a future event can be predicted out of the data collected over the past until I saw some serious predictions made by the peers of my Data science class. Being a Computer Science student or a usual software professional, the first thought always goes to the algorithm and the mind is such a way molded to concentrate on the algorithm and never see what can be achieved with the data. The algorithm always takes the center stage and spotlight is never on the data. Take a step back and have a broader view. Think like a Data Scientist. Connect the dots and search for the meaning it reveals. Predict the future event and be surprised. That is one simple way to appreciate the power of data.

In a recent video, I came across, I found how powerful data can be and how visualizing it can make a lot of sense to even the commoners. In this video, Enormous quantities of data are combined and processed an presented in a sport's commentator's style to reveal the story of the world's past, present, and future development. It is narrated in a spectacular way using augmented reality animation. He visualizes the data in a very meaningful way to show the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers - in just four minutes.

The painful process of booking takal tickets in IRCTC

I used to live in Madurai. I got an internship at a company at Chennai few months back. Since then I became an active user of IRCTC booking tickets every alternative weeks to visit my home. I visited almost every day to either book tickets or to check the pnr status or the refund status of the cancelled tickets. At one point I almost thought of making it my home page! Then one day I had to book tickets in last minute planning to go home. I decided to book my tickets in takal quota. It usually opens at 10. Nearly 1/10th of the Indian population will fight for the few tickets left.  That day I was one of them.

I logged in with my laptop by 9.55am waiting for the takal ticket booking to open. As the clock striked 10. I raced to enter the to and from destination and clicked search train. It got struck. I waited patiently as I expected it. The page dint move forward for more than 2 minutes. I cant afford to lose time, So I refreshed the page and it got logged out. Again I entered mu username and password to log in. It took time to log in but did. Again I entered the to and from and clicked search trains. It listed the available trains as I clicked on one of them to show available seats, Half of them was booked with less than 50 seats left. I clicked book and filled up my details as fast as I could and clicked proceed. I then entered my credentials and clicked pay and crossed my fingers.A wheel appeared on screen and it seem to rotate forever and ever. More than 5 minutes went and there was no sign of tickets booked. I checked my mail and phone for any sign of booked ticket. But nothing was there. Then the message appeared on the screen ' The requested page cannot be displayed'. But the money was taken from my account. I dint waste time, I again tried booking a ticket without worrying about my last failed effort or wasting time. This time only 15 seats were left. So again I repeated the process with double the speed and clicked pay. Again the familiar wheel appeared on screen. I was hoping it works this time. Just then the ticket displayed on my screen. Yay!!! I booked my ticket. But that joy was short lived when I discovered my ticket status was WL18!! When I checked 3 minutes back, there was 15 seats left and now all was gone and its just 10.20am!  and there was no chance of people booking a day before the travel to cancel. So I had to cancel the one I booked. But I needed a ticket to get  home. So I opened a tab and went to a bus ticket booking website. They are never crowded and you can find tickets for any given day. So with all the frustration that irctc gave me, I chose a random bus to my city and the payment process went smoothly with ticket in my phone within just 2 minutes. I should not have wasted time and money on booking train tickets. Instead  I should have come straight to the bus booking that never gives you heart breaks.

And for the record -  I wont accept technology has grown in leaps and bounds and IT field is escalating unless people can create a railway booking website that can handle any amount of traffic and successfully cross through payment gateway for every passenger's booking. 

selfie selfie everywhere!!!

Wasn't camera invented to capture rare events, celebrations and soon to be sweet memories?
Yes, it was, but now it has become viral. Whenever one put on a new dress or when hanging around with friends in a mall or beach or anywhere else. Taking a selfie doesn't end there. It goes on with uploading it in Facebook wall and crossing a minimum of 100 likes. Sometimes the main idea behind going on a trip or a outing becomes taking photos until you get a cool dp for facebook or watsapp.  Not just in tens but hundreds of them.  Enter a restroom in malls, office I bet you can find somebody pointing there cellphones at mirror and making funny faces.There will be somebody in everybody's friend's list who changes his profile pic on a daily basis and just for that sake taking selfies vigorously until dp of the day is achieved. It turns you into an attention seeker knowingly or unknowingly. Give it a break!!!

#Stolen_lines

I came across few lines I really liked and found it really funny and I wanted to share it on my blog.

This one is from quora
★What is the most catastrophic mistake made by an intern at a tech company?
Plugging out the main server in order to plug in phone charger

And one more from I_dont_remember_where:P
★A candle goes out when bad things happens somewhere out there!
Internet of Things??!!

Typical Yash Chopra lines!

I realised a few days back the modern age directors are imitating Yash Raj in writing heart touching dialogues with deep meaning. Yash Raj movies are synchronous with overflowing romantic dialogs and Karan johar's is filled with witty comical ones. Here are few of my favourites from some of the hindi moview I watched. I have translated them to english.

Om Shanti Om- "When you want something with all your heart, then the whole universe will conspires in helping you to achieve it.” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

 Guru-"You gave me 5 mins right? ... in 4 minutes 30 seconds I finished everything ... 30 seconds profit, profit ... this is called business"

Guru-"Why are you people upset with me? ... with my growth ... or with the speed of my growth" 

3 Idiots-"It feels bad when a friend fails ... but it feels even worse when he comes first"

 Chak De India-"We will die and come ... but we will not loose and come"

 Jab Tak Hai Jaan-"Every love has its own time..that time was not ours.. but that doesn't mean that the love itself wasn't there.."

Jab Tak Hai Jaan-"Either he (God) has to kill me ... or else he has to lose and send you to me"

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi-"In life we choose some relationships ... and God chooses some for us"

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi-"God does not give the same to same happiness to everyone, we should snatch our share from him"

 Aashique2-"This life was going on ... but I started living since you came"

 Barfi-"Even silence is a language of love"

 Raanjhaanna-"A lover doesn't get scared when his love is getting married ... he gets scared when he is getting married"

Zindagi na milegi doabara-"While getting a pay check ... do you get tears in your eyes?"

Someone I met..

There is a guy in the place I work. I dont want to name him. He is a HR. I have never met someone so commanding. He is young must be in his late 20s or early 30s. He doesnt hold an MBA from IIM but some decent business school. The very first day I walked into this company, He welcomed us with his over powering speech. It was more of a warning_covered_with_honey kind of speech. He keeps saying he is cool. He has got a dont_you_mess_with_me_or_your_ fired kind of attitude. He said simple things about the company and how to behave in a corporate but at the end of his talk, we were convinced not to meddle with him ever. I try many a times to find what these people are thinkng while they speak to you. But never could I even guess whats running in their mind. I dont know how these HRs get this skill. Is this fed along with course work to every student of Premium Business school?

New Year 2014

New Year..New place.. New Job.. New Friends.. Carrying New and Old hopes and moving forward to live up with new resolutions( I dont usually take them or I forget them as jan moves:P) And thats not to be a weak women who is ready to cry even on slightest provocation and face every challenge alone boldly. Crossing my fingers and hoping god has good things in store for me and everybody around me in this year and then.
Happy New Year.
May all your efforts reap good results. May Good health be with you and Happiness fill your way.

Exploding Clicks

Gangnam Style: YouTube’s Most Popular Video, Ever

Thursday was Thanksgiving. Yesterday was Black Friday. And today is Gangnam Style Day — the day the world’s most-popular-but-not-sure-why video became the most popular video on YouTube ever, with some 804 million views!!! I was wondering what made this dance style so popular!!

For those who haven't seen the video yet...

DARPA Grand Challenge!

   The DARPA Grand Challenge is a race for a $2 million prize funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the most prominent research organization of the United States Department of Defense , where cars had to  drive themselves over a hundred miles of challenging desert terrain without and  communication with humans, using GPS, computers and a sophisticated array of  sensors. This was the first in a series of challenges aimed at a congressional mandate stating that by 2015 one-third of the operational ground combat vehicles of the US Armed Forces should be unmanned.

                           Today i visited a Chinese cuisine with my mom and her friend's family. It is called Chopstix.It is located in k.k nagar in a remodeled old fashion house which can house maximum of 30 people. we started out with starter. I ordered for a puket fish. It did not have the scent of a fish. A person who is not informed its a fish food will never be able to identify it. Anyone who does not like the stink of fish will like it. then we set out for a platter.it is a dish consisting of 5 different preparations of chicken in a single plate,each was served on a cabbage leaf.then we moved on to sizzler. it is nothing but chicken mixed with mushroom, sweet corn,capsicum and onion along with sauce but it was definitely a different experience.its usually served in the hot wooden plate smokes rising above the dish even after it is brought to the table.then we moved on to the main course.we choose dragon chicken and noodles and a thai dish to go along with.noodles was not different from any I tasted beore and dragon chicken had chicken so soft and it melts in your mouth.then shredded chicken is also so different that leaves you wondering what makes it so unresistable .Even if my stomach had little space to accommodate anything. I pampered myself with smoked brownie with ice cream. it is shown in the photo below.

 It has a hot chocolate brownie over which ice cream sits. the brownie piece is surrounded by hot liquid chocolate right out of a hot pan! the ice cream melts by the heat beneath it. whoever invented it should really have such a creative eyes. Others tried mojjito, its a mock tail( for those who have not come across this term). The whole lunch was delicious. I could not pick  which part of the course lasted in my mouth for a long time. It was an overall treat!

 you should fancy yourself such a meal once in a while!

Wishing you and your family a new year that holds pleasant things, bringing you delight in everything you do. May all the days of this new year be special and memorable making it a treasure of happy moments. let the new year be more beautiful than your best past.

Regards

Riddhi

Google tricks!

Google is the most popular search engine but it is also a very funny site. Google always comes out with some funny Google Doodles and there some tricks available to get some more fun at Google. Here I am sharing few Google hacks which will entertain you and you can use them to amaze your friends if they do not know about these funny Google hacks.

Google gravity will make all words and links and search results to fall under gravity in the browser. you can pick the link you want from the stuff lying in the bottom of your screen!
try Google gravity

Goglogo allows you to create Google Style search engine for yourself. Its a free Google Logo Creator.click here to create your won logo!

Epic Google makes the size of the texts keep to increase and finally it will come out of your screen. try epic Google

Search with Google without getting results from Google sites such as Knol, Blogger and YouTube.
try it using the link below.
google_minus_google

google kids is a safe way of searching and going around the web for kids.it is not sponsered or any way related to google though. click here to try Google for kids.

Annoying Google really annoy you as it will convert the alphabets in upper case and lower case randomly. try annoying Google

Who's The Cutest! Wanna know who is the cutest person? , Just give this Google hack a try and you will come to know. Type 'who's the cutest' in Google and click I'm feeling lucky to see the answer.

Hope that you guys remember that Pacman was the Google Doodle for two days and removed later. But if you still wanna play Pacman on Google homepage anytime then you can do that using this trick. Type 'Google Pacman' in Google and click I'm feeling lucky.

Google sphere

Today i was too bored. i was typing some random words in Google. i ended up with something called Google sphere! Perhaps it is not a wow thing, just a new thing i found that i would share it with my blog readers. Few would have seen it already, if not click here .

celebrate this christmas with cake!

To make this festive season more sweet , make a cake for your loved ones. Here are few easy steps before you end up with a nice cake.

To make 2 ponds of cake you'll need ,
1/4gms of all purpose flour
1/4gms of finely grounded sugar
1/4gms of grounded sugar
6 eggs
100gms of dried grapes
1 tea spoon of baking powder
1 tea spoon of cocoa
1 tea spoon of vanilla syrup
1 tea spoon of chopped lemon skin
caramel made from 200gms of sugar

method:
Mix grated butter and sugar well.

yellow and white part of the egg separately and add the white part of it to all purpose flour and baking powder.

Add it to the previously mentioned mixture little by little.

Add caramel ,vanilla syrup, chopped lemon,cocoa to it and mix it thoroughly such a way that no bumps is created.

Choose a bowl in the shape you need the cake. The walls and the bottom of the bowl is coated with butter so that the final product does not stick to the bowl.

Pour the the contents into the bowl such a way that the bowl is half filled.so that there is space when the level of cake rises in oven.

Spread the risens over it and put it in oven for 7 minutes and after that let it stay for 5 more minutes there.

Take it out and let it cool for some couple of more minutes.

Finally serve it with wine..

cheers!!!!

Merry Christmas!! :)

ipad mania..!!

This is the impact of growing craze for apple gadgets. It is an ihome..!!



iPad has definitely become the most popularly sold gadget after the iPhone this year. But, at an exorbitant price of $729 for a mid-range iPad, here’s a look at what you’ll have to do to earn the scratch to get one.

New Networking speed record!

Just how fast do you think your home Internet connection is? Does 10Mbps, or even 100Mbps make you feel as though you are king of the world? Well, just like in life for most of us, there is always someone else out there with something faster, bigger and better than what we own – with the researchers over at the California University of Technology to hit a new world record where data transfer is concerned, touching a combined rate of 186Gbps within a wide area network circuit.

To put things into perspective, 186Gbps translates to moving 2,000,000 GBs each day, which is fast enough to transfer nearly 100,000 full Blu-ray discs, where each of them will comprise of a complete movie and all the relevant extras, in a single day. You will not find such a connection arrive for commercial use anytime soon though, but at least there is a new bar to beat for record seekers.

Forcing People To Turn Eco-friendly

                        Buying and running cars and two-wheelers is soon becoming a costly affair with a Planning Commission working group suggesting a green surcharge of Rs 2 on every litre of petrol. Increase in annual vehicle insurance value of all private vehicles,hike in parking charges and steep urban transport tax collected at the time of purchase of private vehicles are moves to force people use public trasports. A 'green surcharge' on petrol may seem like a good way of improving eco-friendly behavior, but it's actually not as good an idea as it sounds. For starters, the price of petrol in India already has a massive tax component and adding further to it amounts to over-burdening the consumer. Further, if the idea is to nudge people to use public transport and move them away from private vehicles, it is unlikely to work as things stand. The simple reason for assuming that is that most Indian cities have no public transport infrastructure worth the name. As the metro in Delhi has shown, creating world-class public transport will do more to move people away from private vehicles than trying to force them in that direction without any viable options.  

Will 2012 Be The Year For Women In Tech?

If 2011 was the year for talk surrounding women in tech, here’s hoping 2012 will be the year for action. Most of the people I met hardly know any names of women who sore high in the field of tech whereas names such as Bill Gates,Steve Jobes, mark Zukerberg is all over the place. Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, is perhaps the most well-known of the lot, but she’s not the only one. When faced with the choices of learning databases or teaching, girls are selecting the latter — and it’s stifling innovation and the pursuit of knowledge. There are simply too few women mentors and leaders who are committed to encouraging girls to develop a natural curiosity towards these fields. And its no wonder that the list of powerful women in Tech is not so lengthy as compared to that of men'. Every issue of Tech magazine this year carried some news about steve and the facebook guy and the blackberry guy.
So I hope 2012 will be a year of Women in Tech.

Get ready for IPv6:

It's an IPv4 world today, but the days of IPv4 are numbered.

As of February 2011, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) had allocated all remaining public IP address ranges to the five global regional Internet registries. A quick look at this IPv4 Exhaustion Counter below shows a total of 13.24 /8 (8-bit) IPv4 address ranges remaining, for a total of less than 3,400 remaining unallocated IPv4 addresses. Essentially, this means
IPv4 is played out.

Apple tv coming up with  magnificient curved screen:

There has lately been widespread speculation about Apple jumping into the TV market.I recently read that steve jobs wished to create an integrated television set…that would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud !! And here it is..not a full fleged one though.. “iScreen”  showing a spectacular curved glass display is not a leak of an Apple design, but it’s a concept of what the rumored Apple TV .It will become reality, possibly sometime between now and 2013.

Samsung's Secret Weapon Against Apple: 

Samsung is developing a new technology that could finally give it a significant edge over the iPhone. However, it’s not an entirely new technology, but rather a more polished form of an existing technology that few consumers have had the chance to experience: a flexible display. Flexible displays have been hyped as the future of cell phones and mobile technology for the past several years. But it wasn’t until now that consumers may finally see the true potential of what a flexible display can do.That said, both Samsung and Nokia are planning to launch new devices with a flexible screen in the coming year. Apple isn’t going to jump on the flexible display bandwagon unless it feels that there is a need for a bendable iPhone. If flexible displays do well for mobile devices, it’s only a matter of time before they make their way to computer monitors, and eventually larger screens, which would probably come from TV makers like Panasonic.