Monday, November 30, 2009

The "One minute manager's secrets"

It has been long time since I read a book to completions. But I couldn't able to put "The one minute Manager" aside until I read the whole thing. Here a a summary of the text.

"Once there was a bright young man who was looking for an effective manger. He wanted to work for one. He wanted to become one. His search had taken him over many years to the far corners of the world." Finally he met the "One minute Manager" who shared the secrets of "one minute management". He was neither autocratic nor democratic; neither tough nor nurturing. He taught three secrets of the one minute management to the young person. We also going to learn them.

"People who feel good about themselves produce good results"

Secret #1 : One minute Goal Setting

The first secret of the three is "One minute Goal Setting". It is about making sure that we know what good performance is. One minute manager sets each goal and its performance standards with his subordinates in a paper with less than 250 words, something can be read in less than one minute. Once a while people can spend a minute and read the goal and see whether the behavior matches the goal.

Goal setting is so important so that the people can feel that they are achieving. When you go for bowling and if there are no pins standing, would you ever roll the ball? When there are pins but if they are covered with a paper screen, you would try rolling and might hear some sounds which makes you happy. But you would not enjoy the game much. So the manager responsibility is to make the pins visible and then there is no doubt that the people will enjoy the work.

Secret #2 : One Minute Praising

"Help People to Reach Their Full Potential. Catch Them Doing Something Right"

Most often manages catch people when they do something wrong. They are watching behind the paper screen so that they can see the pins well. They would say that you missed eight pins instead of telling that you hit two. The second secret of one minute management is "One Minute Praising". People should told right from the start that you are going to let them know how they are doing. Once a good work done people should be praised immediately and it should be specifically about the particular work and not a general praise. Just spend only one minute for this. Tell them how good you feel and let them feel it and encourage them to do more of the same.

Secret #3 : One minute Reprimand

"We are not just our behavior. We are the person managing our behavior"

The third secret of the one minute manager is "One minute Reprimand". Sometimes really bad things happen and then, you need to go for one minute reprimand. As in the previous secret your should do this immediately. Divide your minute into two. In the first 30 second, tell what went wrong and tell how you feel about it and let them also feel it. During the second half you should remind them how valuable they are to you and to the organization. Reaffirm that you condemn the behavior but you value the person because the person is not just the behavior. Finally agree not to repeat the same.

"The best minute you spend is the one you invest in people"

"Everyone is a potential winner. Some People are disguised as losers, Don't let their appearances fool you"

Finally our young guy became an effective manager by learning and practicing the above secrets and came up with a new principal.

"Share it with others"

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Techiness cannot be used as a warp thread

Software development is one of the industries where the teamwork plays a very critical role. Most of the teams and companies are aware about the difficulties they are facing due to the ill shaped distribution of the 'effectiveness of skills' among the people.


This is not happening automatically. Due to many reasons, the distribution of 'effectiveness of skills' is gradually transforming into this shape.

One can argue that you need to go far in your area of speciality and it is enough to have a certain level of skills in the other areas. Very true, and the above diagrams are not showing the amount of knowledge you have in each area or amount of time you spend on each area but the effectiveness of applying each skill set at your work.

In order to build teams, specially distributed teams which is getting common in practice, people need to be effective in many areas.


If teams need to produce better results the technical skills of the team members need to be weft using their soft skills.

Our techiness cannot be used as a warp thread.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Water for Fuel

There were some news items published on papers and electronic media saying that a Sri Lankan inventor has developed a technology which can be used to run internal combustion engines with water as the fuel. There are some photos in the papers where he is explaining his invention to the prime minister Rathnasiri Wikramanayake. This is not the first of the same kind of incidents. Couple of years ago a person who was claiming that he has discovered a new way of generating energy from sea waves says he will not reveal the secrets to anyone but the President.

Producing Hydrogen or Oxyhydrogen from water by electrolyzing and use them as a fuel for automobile engines is not an original idea. There are thousands of people who did various experiments on this subject and there are hundreds of patents on various methods of doing this. The most famous story of all is the Stanly Meyer's water fuel cell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Meyer%27s_water_fuel_cell). He obtained several patents on his technology (http://www.google.com/patents?id=lLcjAAAAEBAJ&dq=stan+meyer+water+cell) and invited investors to start business based on his findings. After the investors realized that they have been cheated they went to court against Mayer. Mayer was ordered to repay the money he has taken from the investors. Finally, Mayer was poisoned in a restaurant and people say the oil companies were behind the murder. In this video, Mayer is talking about his invention (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6yRn4IAsrU&feature=related) and the Sri Lankan guy is telling more or less the same story.

If you search in the web you will find dozens of web sites dedicated to this technology, some sites even providing all the detailed instructions for convert your car to water (ex:- http://water4gas.com). You tube is also contains lot of videos about the subjects and if you try the Google patent search you can find hundreds of patents related to this area.

So what is the truth behind this technology. Water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. By electrolyzing water we can produce different combustible gases like hydrogen and oxyhydrogen. In order to do this, electrical energy should supply to the system. The output of burning these gases with oxygen is again the water. So the fuel is water and the output is also water and we need to provide electric energy to achieve this. If the amount of energy generated by this method is greater than the amount of energy we supply to the system, this is a perpetual motion machine and in theory, it will violate the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. So it is obvious that we cannot generate enough energy to recharge the battery without charging it from a outside electrical energy source. So the question is whether the electric al energy required for a mile is cheaper than the fuel required for a mile. If we use gasoline to generate the electricity the answer is 'NO'. But as there are much cheaper means of generating electricity there is a possibility to implement this solution effectively.

The Sri Lankan guy has not stated anything about the amount of electrical energy that needs to be supplied to the system and the cost of it over using the gasoline. Instead he is talking about how many liters of water required to travel from Colombo to Anurashapura and the amperage of the electrolyzer. Personally I do not believe that this solution will have an overall economic value to the country. Also this person should learn a lesson from Mayer because lot of companies are seeking avenues for making money out of the oil reserves in the Sri Lankan sea and the politicians also dreaming about the commissions and bribes they can get when the deals are materializing.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Two Day Workshop on UNIX Shell Scripting

Last February I said goodbye to "Primecluster high availability wizards" project. So I have to pause C programming and Shell Scripting and move to Java again. However, it was lucky that I could able to share some knowledge in the two day shell scripting workshop organized by LKLUG; before my memories are gone. I did two sessions, "Advanced Shell Usage" and "Designing advanced Shell Programs". Some materials can be found here and here are some details of the workshop.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Free Host <=> Paid Host. Can You Believe It? Read Now!!!

Usually I do not getting spams in my GMail Inbox because GMail spam filter takes care about them. But last week I got a mail with the subject "Free Host <=> Paid Host. Can You Believe It? Read Now!!!". That was a unusual mail for me because I am not getting this sort of mails regularly. I was wondering why Google put it into my Inbox rather than tag it as a spam. Anyhow I wanted to host several sites so that I visited the site, created an account and hosted two websites. One week after I am feeling that this free service is much better than paid services which I am using for long time. Order your free account HERE. You will get 250MB plus 100GB bandwidth with PHP, MySQL, Perl, and a very good control panel.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Giant human skeletons - Divaina reporter misleads the public


"Sunday Divaina" reporter misleads the pubic in an article published in 2007-Sep-16 edition describing a discovery of giant human skeletons. These two photographs (The one showing the human skeleton appeared on the article) show how smarter the original image has been converted. The original photo is a skeleton of mastodon where you can see a tusk at the bottom right corner. Notice it is in the same position in the edited version and also the man at the bottom is in same action.

When you see something like this, anybody who has an Internet connection can brows and check whether the news is true or false. But if you don't have access to the Internet, you have been "Digitally Divided", huh! . But in this version of new digital divide, in addition to the lack of access to information you get cheated by others who have the access.

Both of the images has been in the Internet since some time and there are lot of discussions and blog posts on them. But the news reporter has not investigated enough to find out whether the news is true or not. Divayina is well ahead than the other newspapers in the country but they should pay more attention to this sort of things.

Friday, September 07, 2007

Theory and Practice

Whenever it comes to the implementation of best practices, it is very hard to convince people the advantage of following them. Recently I did a presentation on SCM Patterns where people found that most of the best practices I explained are the same as they already following. To a certain extend their thinking is correct, but what it implies is not that they are really following them but the fact that those priciples are quite apparent.

Sometimes I advocate people to adopt to 5S. But in that case the respond is much worst. Everybody thinks that they are already following 5S or it is very simple to follow them, but both beliefs are wrong. It is the simplicity and obviousness which prevent them from accepting its validity and usefulness.

This is where you do need a field visit. I have worked in manufacturing plants where 5S has been implemented very successfully. There is a huge gap between what one can imagine and what can be really implement if everybody is willing to contribute.

Sweet download accelerator for Linux

It is axel, http://wilmer.gaast.net/main.php/axel.html. You can specify the number of connections, multiple servers etc. Interesting thing is that you can limit the bandwidth it takes so that you can save some bandwidth for other programs to consume.

Here is a sample command for download ubuntu iso image from 3 servers with 50 connections.

axel -v -a -n 50 http://{mirrors.xmission.com/ubuntu-cd,us.releases.ubuntu.com,
mirrors.ccs.neu.edu/releases.ubuntu.com}/dapper/ubuntu-6.06.1-server-i386.iso

This page has some additional information on usage. http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/download-accelerator-for-linux-command-line-tools.html

Have fun.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

NASA World Wind and Google Earth

Nasa World Wind and Google Earth are the most popular publicly available virtual earth software. Each one has it's own strengths and weaknesses. You should select the appropriate program depending on what you need to get.

World Wind is mostly based on Landsat7 imagery which are consistence throughout the world. Google Earth provides images with very good resolution but sometimes they are not consistent. For example, the Mahaweli river takes a mysterious bend just after the Katugasthota town and the adjacent images are very much differ in resolution and aligning. It makes a big doubt on the accuracy of the system.

But if you want to locate a place in Colombo World Wind can't help you with its low resolution images but Google Earth will show even markings in your tennis court.

I like the smooth motion of World Wind and it's 3D views. Even when you move over the tiles without tilting, you can see the 3D nature of the terrain. The colors also visually appealing than in the Google Earth.

World Wind has a very rich geocode database. If you search for a remote village in Sri Lanka, the chances are very little that you failed to get it. Also it provides several layers that you can switch to and they are in different resolutions and contains different data.

Also you can see the real time weather with animation in World Wind and some scientific visualizations.

Although World Wind provides USGS maps as a layer they are way behind features of Google Maps. Although Google Maps is a different product it is superior with its API and the coverage. Recently Google Maps added geocodes for entire India so that the detail maps are available for any place. We can expect Google will soon release maps for Sri Lanka.

There are lot of interesting things in both World Wind and Google Earth. Each will provide more and more features in the future. But more than anything, World Wind is Open Source.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Internet Access via bluetooth DUN

Usually I want to boot into Windows only for two reasons. First, to check whether the Windows installation is working. Second, to connect to the Internet using my mobile phone whenever I couldn't able to find a socket to plug in. The software shipped with the Samsung E730 (has very good screen resolution and you can plug it to your USB port to charge it) is only run in Windows.

I am using a Mobitel connection and GPRS is working fine for me. The settings are as follows.

DSN1=0.0.0.0
APN=isp
use blanks for username and password

In Windows I can just plugin the cable to PC and use the program "Internet Access" which shipped with the phone to access the Internet. Also I can connect using bluetooth DUN using a bluetooth software. But in Linux I tried to talk to the modem using the cable but fed up with the error messages. So I decided to give bluetooth a try. This is how it should be done.

You need to have the 2.6 kernel which has adequate support for bluetooth.

root@sapumal:~# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
00:12:47:EB:57:AC sapumal

Open the file /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf and uncomment the following lines

auth enable;
encrypt enable;

also notice the line
pin_helper /usr/bin/bluez-pin;

create a file /usr/bin/bluez-pin and make it executable. File contents should be

#!/bin/sh
echo "PIN:1234"

the number 1234 is the PIN which you need to enter in your mobile phone when pairing the devices.

edit /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf. My file looks like this after the modifications.

rfcomm0 {
bind yes;
# Bluetooth address of the device
device 00:12:47:EB:57:AC;
# RFCOMM channel for the connection
channel 1;
# Description of the connection
comment "My Phone";
}

You need to replace the device name with the one you got when you scan for devices.

Now restart the bluetooth service
root@sapumal:~# /etc/init.d/bluez-utils restart
* Restarting Bluetooth services... [ ok ]

Connect to the device using hcitool
root@sapumal:~# hcitool cc 00:12:47:EB:57:AC
Here the phone will prompt for the PIN.

Search for DUN service
root@sapumal:~# sdptool search DUN
Inquiring ...
Searching for DUN on 00:12:47:EB:57:AC ...
Service Name: Dial-up networking
Service RecHandle: 0x10002
Service Class ID List:
"Dialup Networking" (0x00001103)
Protocol Descriptor List:
"L2CAP" (0x00000100)
"RFCOMM" (0x00000003)
Channel: 1
Segmentation fault

Create a file /etc/wvdial.conf that looks like this:

[Modem0]
Modem = /dev/rfcomm0
Baud = 115200
SetVolume = 0
Dial Command = ATDT
Init1 = ATZ
Init3 = ATM0
FlowControl = crtscts

[Dialer gprs]
Username = test
Password = test
Phone = *99***1#
Stupid Mode = 1
Inherits = Modem0

Now connect DUN
root@sapumal:~# wvdial gprs
--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.54.0
--> Cannot get information for serial port.
--> Initializing modem.
--> Sending: ATZ
ATZ
OK
--> Sending: ATM0
ATM0
OK
--> Modem initialized.
--> Sending: ATDT*99***1#
--> Waiting for carrier.
ATDT*99***1#
CONNECT
--> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately.
--> Starting pppd at Thu Dec 14 22:31:16 2006
--> pid of pppd: 13061
--> Using interface ppp0
--> local IP address 192.168.52.5
--> remote IP address 192.168.52.1
--> primary DNS address 203.115.24.221
--> secondary DNS address 12.0.0.0

when you want to disconnect just press ctr-c and the process will terminate gracefully

In case of I/O errors you can try to remove the computer from the bluetooth devices in the phone and retry connecting.

112,0-1 B

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

How to get the best look in the best Distro of the best OS

This is how you give Ubuntu user interface a Mac OS X like look. See the screenshot of how it happened in my machine. Only thing you need to do is, find some free time and visit http://www.taimila.com/ubuntuosx.php. Also don't forget to add some of your creativity too.