Review of books from Mr. Shankar Patil

For past few months, I've once again started reading books. For few year, somehow I had stopped the reading.

Without taking much time, I'll start writing books that I've read recently, and how I felt about it.

Today I'll mention few words and my rating about the books, that I've read recently of Mr. Shankar Patil.

Valiv - वळीव  (4.2/5)

Valiv is a simply amazing book. Everybody should read it at least once. Although all stories of Shankar Patil has a background of village and related lifestyles. Valiv goes more deeper and will touch your hearts. I remember we had a

lesson in 10th with the same 'valiv' name. I didn't understood the intent of the story then. Now when I read it from the book, I came to know, that to make the lesson short most important parts of the story were removed. Education

board seems to be very creative, in such things, I guess. But this is a must read for everybody. These are 5-6 paged stories but they are really very good.

Bandhara - बंधारा (3.8/5)

Good book. This doesn't contain entertaining stories though. Various serious rural stories with good picturization and characterization.

Aabhal - आभाळ  (3.8/5)

This book is similar to Bandhara. Good book. Don't look for humour here. Various rural stories underlying emotions, values, poverty and the way people behave

Fhakkad Goshti - (4/5)

Interesting and funny stories. Don't miss it. It is very surprising to find how easily these stories gets evolved.

Tajmahalamadhye Sarpanch - ताजमहालमध्ये सरपंच (4/5)

Enjoyable and funny stories.  Although they aren't that hilarious, but surely it will make you laugh few times, and bring a smile all the while, reading this book. Dialogues and characterization is perfect.

Patlanchi Chanchi - पाटलांची चंची - (2/5)

First of all, before reading this book, I didn't know this is an autobiography of Shankar Patil. Overall it is a decent autobiography to read. You can find how a small-village boy who is very emotionally attached to his family, friends and his pet animals gradually keeps moving on by overcoming day-to-day hurdles. Usually it happens in most autobiographies,  that you don't get to see other side of the person. But not in this one. Shankar Patil have managed to stay away from portraiting himself as a poster boy.

Although there are few interesting stories weaving around Mr. Patil and their brought-up, but still this book fails to grabs the attention. Or may be I'm not a kind of autobiography reader. :-)

More on few other books, after few days.

Till then, happy reading. 

My Favorite Dilbert strips on PowerPoint

My favorite Dilbert on PPTs.
Dedicated to all those victims of Presentations. One day I'm going to find who invented the Powerpoint.
 :-)

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Article of Nisha Kirloskar in Maharashtra Times

Here is an article, written by Nisha Kirloskar (my elder brother, Suhas' wife) in Maharashtra times. It tells her and Suhas' feelings and experiences about how they raised Saniya (my niece).

Cloud Computing Vendors - (Azure - Part 5)

As we have gained sufficient understanding of what cloud computing is, let’s take a look at who’s offering what in cloud computing platform.

Google App Engine:
Google App Engine is a platform provided by google, for developing and hosting your apps in google’s data centers. It is built closely around Google OS. Its good for those developers who are familiar with Google OS and related framework. It is still in beta stage.

Amazon Web Services.
Offered by Amazon, these are collection of remote computing services. You can even deploy and run Microsoft applications here. It offers all components of a basic cloud computing infrastructure like compute, storage, database management and queue. This available commercially for everyone.

Personally, I have not deployed any solutions on these two platforms, so I will prefer to speak less about it.

Microsoft Windows Azure:
This is my favorite. Microsoft provides ‘Windows Azure’ as a cloud computing platform. Azure, is a platform for executing windows applications on cloud. It also stores data on cloud. Azure is an operating system that runs on machines in Microsoft data centers. The most important element for going with Azure is its integration with .net and Visual Studio. It supports any .net language and provides a tight integration with Visual Studio .net. You will get ready-to-use templates in your Visual Studio that helps you to develop and deploy cloud solutions. We will start discussion Azure and its components, in more details in next posts.

Comparing ‘Cloud Computing’ to Rent-A-Car - (Azure - Part 4)

Following comparison might speed up, digesting ‘Cloud Computing’ concept.

Imagine, ‘Tata Motors’ has just launched a nation-wide ‘Car-Rental’ service. Assume that with that service, renting a car has become dirt cheap. And they are passing cost benefits, of their scale of operations, to consumers. Assume, it has become so cheap that people are giving second thought before buying a car.

The repercussions…?? Definitely, you will be more than happy. You are going to save money for every imaginable reason. You don’t have to buy the car. No worry of fixing accidental repairs. No more Parking Tickets. No worry of depreciation. No need to hire the driver. No need to spend money on maintenance of the car. No need to buy insurance. No worry of resale hassle, and its valuation. Pure joy of paying, by “per km”. How does it feel? No doubt. Comfortable. (Rather I’m feeling, that it is such a great idea, I should discuss it with Ratan, Anil or Mukesh) :-)

Fun apart. But if you just think aloud, ‘Cloud Computing’ might be beneficial in similar ways, in days to come. It will keep you away from the hassle of buying hardware and licenses before starting a new project. No more IT hardware / helpdesk-support personnel required. No more patch management. No more worries of hardware upgradation and license renewal with every passing year. No more depreciating assets. No more questions of what to do with the investment, once the project is over. No more worries of scaling up and out the infrastructure, after user increases. Just enjoying pure joy of ‘Pay per Transactions', while leaving all these worries to 'cloud vendor'.

Hope this comparison helps more, to understand ‘Cloud Computing’.

With these posts, I'm planning to wind-up discussing 'cloud computing' at a high level. And in next post we will try to reach more closer to this cloud.

Cloud Computing. Concept behind it - (Azure - Part 3)

How many times you have deleted older files and folders, just to make space for new files and apps? What if you don’t have to do it from today onwards?

The concept of cloud computing is very simple. Imagine you are working with a very low end PC. For example, let’s say there’s no sufficient hard disk space. Even the processor, RAM and every other aspect of configuration is too basic. But you want to host your application that requires high memory, disk-space and bandwidth.

Here, the solution would be to connect your PC to internet. Connect to a super-computer, and host your application. Very simple. Isn’t it?

Taking it forward, this discussed, so called supercomputer, is nothing, but a vast network of machines, providing combined storage, memory and infrastructure. Lets see if this diagram will be able to explain it at high level.


It also takes its own backups at regular intervals and if one machine fails, another is swapped-in, without user knowing anything about it at all.

We’ll dive in more details in next post. Till that time watch dilbert on ‘Cloud Security’.

Cloud : What’s in it for me? - (Azure - Part 2)

First let’s see how it works, and then we'll see how it helps you.

Cloud involves the large number of computer servers and other resources as a group. These are made available, in the form of their combined capacity. Cloud computing users are either Publishers (those who deploys the application on cloud) or Consumers (those who accesses these applications).

Now you know how it works, so let’s see if these benefits interest you…
1. No Maintenance: No client-side application deployment or maintenance.
2. No Capital Investments: Initial IT investments involved in traditional hosting server-based solutions, are avoided.
3. Reduced upgrade costs: Over time, as technology progresses, existing resources become obsolete. In traditional on-premise hosting, we always need to upgrade hardware. In cloud computing, what you worry is paying only usage fees.
4. Ready to use: We can cut down time spent in setting up the initial hardware and software installations.
5. Scalability: Applications can now quickly scale up or scale down their usage of services as per market demands, during peak hours of activity.
6. Reduced operating Costs : Operating costs are reduced drastically, almost 6 times less. (I will write a separate post for this)
7. More Focus on real work: People now can worry about their actual business and writing applications around it rather than how to build and maintain infrastructure to support those apps.

The list is long, but for a time being, lets stick to simplicity.

In next post, we'll try to cover its risks as well. Till that time enjoy virtualization with dilbert. :-)

Cloud what??? - (Azure - Part 1)

So, just now, you have mastered your preferred language, framework and technology. But before the dust settles down, you are hearing organization’s push towards ‘Cloud Computing’. Now what's this??? You must be wondering, whose need is it anyway? Is it just a new gimmick or simply another buzzword to nicely decorate your resume.
…
So, lets take couple of examples to understand why would somebody use cloud computing.
Scenario (1)
Lets say I'm launching a site that provides information, snaps and videos of ongoing 20-20 cricket matches. Now I have my web site up and ready. If I'm opting traditional hosting with some ISP, I have to provision for the hardware/software requirement considering the peak activity. This means when the matches are going on, around 50,000 user might be using the data for 24 hours, and it will also require very high in and out bandwidth. Suppose I invest, considering this peak activity, most of the time, this capacity will be unused. Especially, when there are no cricket matches or once the 20-20 series is over.

Scenario (2)
Take another example. Imagine, you are a developer, struck by an idea in the midnight, about a new wonderful application (ofcourse wonderful. Everything looks so, atleast in its inception phase). It is going to provide awsome facility to its users and you in return are going to reap good amount of profit. But the problem is how and how much would you invest in infrastructure. How much would it be sufficient? Are you going to buy server class machines on your own? What will you do with the infra later? Or what to do with all those machines if you don't get sufficient users?

So, imagine a cloud computing as a solution for this. Imagine there is somebody out there, in cloud, who is providing everything that you'll require, on rent. Now your application is able to handle the peak time activity. And on the other hand, you charged only for what you have use. just like the latest cellphone-plan's "1 paisa billing". Isn't that amazing? Taking everything on rent and paying only for what you require, dynamically. At this stage, we will see it is as means of "Paying only for the computing, storage, bandwidth that you have used".

We will cover it in more details in next post. Till that time evaluate cloud computing with Dilbert.

Ud jaayega hans akela - Kabir - Kumar Gandharva

Listening to Kumarji's nirguni bhajan's after understanding its meaning is real pleasure. Today I'll share with you the one that I was listening for many years and liked it from my heart. But when I understood its meaning today, I liked it even more and really got amazed. Kumarji singing Kabir's verse is heavenly experience.

उड जायेगा हंस अकेला
जग दर्शन का मेला ।।धृ.।।
The swan will fly away all alone
Spectacle of the world will be a mere fair

जैसे पात गिरे तरुवर के
मिलना बहुत दुहेला
As the leaf falls from the tree
Is difficult to find

न जानु किधर गिरेगा
लगया पवन का रेला।।
Who knows where it will fall
Once it is struck with a gust of wind

जब होवे उमर पूरी
जब छुटेगा हुकम हुजूरी
When life span is complete
Then listening to orders, following others, will be over

यम के दूत बडे मजबूत
यम से पडा झमेला ।।
The messengers of yama are very strong
It's an entanglement with the yama

दास कबीर हर के गुण गावे
वा हर को परन पावे
Servant kabir then praises lord and finds him soon.

गुरु की करनी गुरु जायेगा
चेले की करनी चेला ।।
(Now in the end he also warns Guru will go according to his doings
and the disciple according to his)

Translation source: Rabindranath Tagore's book - "Songs of Kabir" (1915)