Stretching the limits - Why

Have you ever stretched your limits? If you have done it, why did you do that? What did you infer by stretching the limits? Did it make you happy? Did you feel so good? If you felt good, why did you feel good? If you felt bad, why did you feel it that way?

So many "silly" questions.

By stretching, i didn't mean slogging in office for more hours. Now, you understand that this is not that "silly". By stretching, i mean - the thinking, your thinking (damn serious?).

Why should we stretch our thinking?

I feel that one should keep stretching their limits to infer that we are limitless.

It is not expanding the boundary or expanding the thinking envelope. It is experiencing that we are limitless.

So, let us stretch the limits and become limitless (got the gyan?)

Top of the mind Thinking

Whatever clever we are, we just do most of the things from top of the mind. We do something when others watch us and we tend to do totally different thing when there are no one around us[another variation is when you are near a person know to you versus when a stranger is watching you].

You can have any value system (it evolves or degrades over time, i m not commenting anything on the value system) but make sure that it is available at the top of your mind. In a very passionate/emotional situation, we tend to do things from top of the mind. If you happen to do something against your value system, just don't feel sorry. But make sure that you make an initiative to bring the value system to the top of your mind.

More than thinking, "top of the mind thinking" is more relevant in day-to-day decision making.

Once you do that, you will never feel sorry in life (buying certain things that you dont need, deciding on your next job, taking an extra scoop of ice cream in Baskin Robbins, dieting and life style changes that we are trying to alter everyday etc).

Is your career a Gambler's Fallacy

Read Law of averages, Law of large numbers, Gambler's Fallacy and my previous post Standing in the sideline.

We stand in the sideline without much contribution (i should accept that there is no dearth of oral contribution). By contribution, i mean mutual value creation. We think that many people in the past were successful by just doing that we are doing (being close to idle). When something goes wrong, we tend to think about a "pyramid" and compare our growth with the pyramid. We just think that it is natural to get dropped at the bottom. 

Is our career a gambler's fallacy?  Those black balls never come next time and we keep betting on the black balls. Like the previous times, we continue to lose this time too (and probably next time).

Standing in the line for extended period of time is like gambler's fallacy.

So, i happen to conclude that law of averages, law of large numbers and gambler's fallacy helps people who think. Thinking fuels you to make better bet.

Standing in the sideline

When the game is on - you can play it or choose to be on the sideline.

Wherever you want to be (it is just fine. If you don't play this game, you always have time to play another game), just say it loud and be specific (to yourself and others)

• Let your stand be loud and clear to others so that others don't lose/experience the game. 
• You have to be loud to yourself. You must not count the returns when there is no input. And just standing in the sideline doesn't make any sense - you don't have time to play another game (which would have really a game changer game in your life)

When you are on the sideline, it makes sense to be clear to others/you that you are on the sideline and move on to play another game.

Open Gyan - News and Update

This year is quite good for Open Gyan. Having started this initiative during 2009, it is glad to see some momentum and we see that this initiative is taking off a bit. We decided that it is apt time to invest more time (personal/leisure) and as a result we came up an idea of focusing on two areas. First is DS & Algo and the second one is Linux. DS/Algo helps us solve the problem and Linux makes it simple (KISS principle).

OpenGyan - Logo

This year, we would be doing series of workshops in these two areas. Each area will have at least two workshops (basic and advanced). As we already said, the workshops would be hands-on (and we just don't stop with prescribing something. we sit with the students and make them do things. So the learning will be mutual).

Next comes the update.

OpenGyan gets a logo.

We are bootstrapping new website. Please visit us and share your thoughts [www.opengyan.com]. 

• Open Gyan

After getting inputs from few of our friends, we prepared/updated our main presentation slides for "what is Open Gyan". We are constantly updating our goals and priorities based on your inputs. We are looking forward for your inputs.

Once again, we would like to thank you (a tonne) for supporting us and spreading the goodness. Please share with people that you know who can benefit out of this initiative (students/professors in colleges).

Get the Gyan

Get the Gyan, it is never too late.


Either you learn it hard way or learn it from others, make sure that you get the gyan. Learning it from others is just an optimization. Don't bother if you cannot optimize.

Get the Gyan.

When you ask for Feedback again

People often ask others to give them feedback on them - what they feel, what would make them effective, efficient, better. An usual, cyclic ritual.

When someone gives you a feedback,

• at least have a courtesy to say "thank you" immediately (at least before a month).
• when you ask the feedback the next time, make sure that you convey people what did you do with feedback that was already given. How did you act on it? If you thrashed them, just say so but politely. It is much better than not saying.

Without the feedback of feedback (a courtesy), the people do not actually need to be courteous again. They have options - option of giving feedback to people who value it.

Do-It-Yourself (OpenGyan) - Write a (your own) shell

This is one of the exercises we give to students in our workshop on Linux programming. Many of the participants understand the concept behind the shell and use basic process management system calls (fork, exec, wait and exit) to write a miniature shell on their own. Given time (and effort), i think one can write their own shell. Here is the requirement for a brand new shell (feel free to assume/add more requirements). As an additional effort, try to find the features that are missing in existing shells and implement those in your new shell.

Write a mini-shell with a following features

1. The shell should receive command from the user and execute it. If the user just gives the command, you have search the command in all of directories defined in the environment variable PATH. If you are not able to find the command, you have print "no luck, seems like your program is toasted". If the user specifies the path along with the program, it is enough if you just load and execute it.
2. You should store the last command that is execute and its exit status.
3. You should implement a facility to run the program in background.
4. You should remember last “N” commands and print it upon user request.
5. You should name your shell and it should appear as the prompt.
6. When you type "quit", you must quit from your shell with a greeting.

Hope you find this interesting. Happy Shelling....

Success And Failures

To be successful, you just need one success.

To be successful consistently, you need numerous failures and phenomenal failures.

The failures are bound to happen when you make those baby steps.

So, when you fail. Just get up and go ahead.

Open Gyan, Linux Programming Workshop - Slides

As i updated sometime back, Badhri and I will be presenting our second workshop in 2012 on Open Gyan's Linux Programming. This workshop is part-1 covers only process, memory and file i/o. The second part would be interprocess communication. Since we felt that IPC is bit complicated (and lengthy), it would be better not to cover everything in single sitting. So we split that into two.

We have prepared presentation slides (this is not office, we are not using MS powerpoint, thanks to Google docs) and a companion exercises course hand-out. Would be great if you can have a look at them and give your feedback to make it better. There are few slides that are incomplete and those will be completed in couple of days.

You can send me an email (grabyourfreedom@gmail.com) and we will add your name to contributors/reviewers list.

Open Gyan, Linux Programming Course Hand-out

Open Gyan, Linux Programming Presentation Content

Thanks everybody, for supporting Open Gyan. 

Here is our Facebook Page - http://www.facebook.com/opengyan

Reason of why we are not excelling

Is there a reason for why we aren't excelling?

Why we don't do programming (let us say work) little better? Why aren't we little nicer to others? Why are we taking everyone for granted? Why do we think that we are correct (not always but 110% of times)?

We pity a lot - not on others but on ourselves. The bigger world doesn't expect us to be bigger, greater or nicer, in fact the world doesn't need us to be great. It never cares for individuals. It just extinguishes the matter that is not relevant. The world keeps changing its skin like a snake. If you don't excel in your thinking, you are gone, you become history.

We fail to exist because we fail to excel. We fail to excel simply because we are clever, just clever enough to find a reason to fool around like - i didn't have good primary education, i m a villager, my boss is not great, i don't have a corpus to spin off a start-up. All these can true. Even if these are true, it doesn't really affect one. It is the self-pity and finding reasons that affects us the most.

I hope, one day, i will come out of this self pity and start doing something meaningful to just prove to myself and simply enjoy my drive in life journey.