I enjoy building stuff (most of it is useless). Mostly web based at the moment. I use Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, jQuery, Vim, MySQL, Linux, Capistrano, et al for my craft.
I have been doing international purchases for a very long time without looking too much into their conversion rates. I was under the impression banks and PayPal would have the same conversion rates. Recently, I made quite a few purchases prompting me to look at the conversion rates these merchants charge. It turns out that these guys have different rates from each other. Here is my latest credit card statement (edited to include just international payments):
The first one is to a website called twilio.com. I made this payment via my Standard Chartered credit card. Their conversion rate is INR 47.21.
The second transaction is for USD 90 that I made via PayPal. PayPal in turn charged the same Standard Chartered credit card. PayPal's conversion rate is INR 46.12. A difference of INR 1.1. Not that it's a huge difference. But why would they have different conversion rates?
Conclusion: Link your credit card to PayPal and use PayPal for all international transactions.
This is absolute non-sense. Why PayPal doesn't allow resident payments within India? How does one pay for service/product produced by another Indian resident who has chosen to accept money via PayPal?
Earlier last week I got admitted into St. John's Medical College Hospital, Bangalore for a surgery called 'plantar fascia release'. I have been having heel pain for the last 6-8 months. After trying out some forms of physiotherapy I decided to undergo this surgery.
This was a planned surgery. I had been consulting with my surgeon ever since my heel pain started about 8 months ago.
I got admitted one day before the surgery. Towards the evening the nurse who was attending to me took my blood sample at least 4 times for various tests. They examined my blood pressure a few times. In the evening they shaved my left leg from knee until the ankle. They also instructed me not to eat or drink anything after 10pm.
The surgery wasn't as small as I thought. I was thinking it was a small operation if not minor. But it was much bigger than that. Even my surgeon had given me an impression that it wasn't big deal. I woke up at 6 in the morning on the day of the surgery, took bath and took the tablet the nurse had given me the night earlier. Around 6:45, the nurse gave me a few injections, measured my blood pressure again and took another round of blood samples. By 7 I was on the stretcher to go to the operation theater. I was wearing just the hospital uniform. Just my underwear beneath that. But they asked me to remove that too. Once I did that the stretcher went to the OT.
Once in the OT, they removed all my clothes and put on glocuse drips first, then they attached electrodes on my chest to measure the heart beat. They attached some device to my left forefinger as well. I didn't know what that was. The anaesthetist came over and told me that she is going to give me a spinal anaesthesia and I won't feel anything below my waist for the next 3 hours. She also said there won't be much blood loss. I said ok. I think they were 2-3 of them. They made me lie down like an arc and gave me an injection on the spine somewhere near my waist. I am not sure if it was just one injection or several. I guess its more than one. After a few seconds she pricked on some parts of the body and asked me if I was feeling anything or not. I wasn't feeling anything below my waist but could feel it above it. I told them that. Then they hung a dark cloth above my stomach across my waist. That made sure I couldn't see what was happening beyond my waist. Then they also attached an oxygen mask to my mouth.
The surgeon came over to me and told me he is going to start the surgery and it would take about 15 minutes. I didn't have a faintest idea of what was happening to leg or for that matter anything beyond my waist. All I could see was the screen in front of me. All I could hear was the beeps above my head (I think that was heart rate) and some chattering of the anesthestists. Without anything else to do I just started breathing heavily just like I do while doing yoga. After a while my upper body started shaking slightly. I didn't know what it was. After a few moments the surgeon came over to me and said the surgery is done. I was indifferent. They started removing the screen and covered me up in clothes. They moved me to a different room and put on the oxygen mask again. I don't know how long I lied there. I was feeling a bit snoozy. I heard the nurse talking to the one in my ward. Then they moved me back to the ward. Later my wife told me the whole process took about 3 hours.
Once in the ward I was feeling nothing in my legs yet. I could see heavy bandage in my heel and the nurse put up some ice cubes around the bandage. She said it will reduce the pain and also swelling. All this while they kept giving me heavy pain killers. After about 2-3 hours nurse came and instructed my wife to start giving me water followed by juices. If I threw up then the liquids must be stopped. Otherwise I should be given light food. I did feel like throwing while eating rice up but somehow controlled it.
Later that day my surgeon came over to me and said I need to forcefully urinate. Urination would be difficult for the first time because of the anesthisia's effects. It would have blocked the nurves leading upto that area. Urination did turn out to be very difficult. It wasn't painful but I couldn't control that part of my body. After taking some rice for lunch I went to bathroom with help of my brother and wife. That turned out to be a bad decision. My heel started paining and the next 1 hour was unbearable. It subsided only after I called for nurse who gave me another pain killer. Later my doctor told me I wasn't supposed to put any weight on my operated leg! I didn't dare to get out of my bed after that.
The day after surgery: An attendent took me to the dressing room where they removed the bandage they had applied after the surgery. Only now I could see that part of the leg. I could see the stitches in side of my heel. I can't recall how many stitches were there exactly. Probably 6-7. Only now did I realize what was that shaking of my upper body during the surgery. They were trying to cover the heel with bandage after stitching it up. The attendents put up a plastar starting my knee until the toes. The plastar makes sure weight is not transferred to the heel area. Doctors kept visiting me to see how I was doing. They kept giving my pain-killer injections through out my stay in the hospital. But they prescribed pain-killer tablets and anti-biotics tablets to use at home for about a week.
Day#4: Doctor advised me to take a pair of crutches and also sent me off to physiotherapy section where they trained me on how to use the crutches. Later that day I got discharged from the hospital. My doctor said I need to be on crutches for the next 3 weeks. They would remove the plastar only after 3 weeks.
Post surgery: It has been difficult to move around. Pretty much every routine task is difficult. I can't go to bathroom easily. Shower is completely ruled out. So taking bath is difficult. I usually tie a cotton cloth just below the knee where the plaster starts and then cover up leg until knee in a polythene cover and then take bath. So its kind of 2 levels of protection. Even if polythene leaks the water the cotton cloth catches it. I've stopped taking bath daily now. Another thing I need to be careful is the slippery bathroom floor. I can't carry anything with me as both my hands would be on crutches. A simple thing like carrying a towel is also difficult. No shaving, no coffee, no drinks, absolutely nothing. Luckily, my wife is a very patient girl. That's a virtue given by God to most women. At least housewives and mothers. So things aren't that difficult for me. But even then I feel guilty of taking too much help. So I try to reduce as much trouble as possible.
Side-effects
1. I have had back problems in the past. Only after I started a set of yoga/exercises clubbed with a specialized seating arrangements I got my back pain under control. But after the surgery I felt my back is slightly weeker. But this subsided after I came back home.
2. A good side-effect is that I am getting a lot of rest at home. Since I can't step out of home even office is ruled out. I work from home.
3. Absolutely no exercise. The only form of exercise I can do is move my fingers. That helps in healing faster.
My operated leg hasn't pained much after the pain that I induced on myself by my stupidy. It started paining lightly after my pain-killers got over.
I am waiting for the plaster to be removed now. I'll update this post after that.
Day #23: Today I got my plaster removed. I am able to put weight on the oprated leg. It pains slightly but I guess its more of fear than anything else. I haven't used this leg for more than 3 weeks now. So I am scared to put too much weight. But I am definitely feeling better. Though I can't use my left heel I can use rest of the leg. I am also taking some more pain killers and anti-acid tablets.
Day #24: I started walking with just one crutch today. Not too painful. I can walk with one crutch easily.
Day #25: I started walking without the crutches for the first time. I still can't put 100% weight on the operated leg. But I can walk without any support. I am using my MCR footwear that I was using before surgery. They are available in medical shops. They make walking easier.
Day #26: I took shower without any covering on the wound. Felt a bit odd. But it seems to be ok.
Day #45: I have been walking around with my MCR chappals still. Though its better my leg is still not 100% all right. I think its going to be a long healing process. The wound seems to be drying up. It pains at times though. I still can't say if my plantar fasciitis is cured or not. The left heel is still numb at some parts.
Day #46: I visited my surgeon today. He said it will take about 3 months at least to completely heal. 6 months would be the maximum. He also asked me to stop all medication. This is really longer than what I thought it would take to fix my leg pain. If I had known this I would have tried a bit more harder with exercises and physiotherapy. But its too late to go back.
After 8 months: My heel is about 90% alright now. There is no pain while walking as well. I am able to walk pain-free. There is no pain in the heel but there is still some numbness. One of my doctor friend told me that heel is a slow healing area. I have been doing some exercise to the heel while I have restarted my regular excersize regime. The doctor was wrong again in saying it would take about 6 months to heal. Its much longer than that.
I wanted to book a few tickets for my friend and his wife. They are planning to visit Goa for their honeymoon. I wanted to gift these tickets to them.
Start date of the journey wasn't decided. But return dates were decided. So I started booking 2 tickets from Goa to Bangalore using irctc.co.in. I started the booking process at 10 in the morning and couldn't reach the billing section until 11:30. It would take forever to reach from one step to another. Even login would take 5-10 minutes. Then I would select 'Plan my trip' and start selecting all the journey details only to be logged out at every step after waiting for minutes together. I finally managed to book tickets and selected a gateway managed by Citibank. It presented me with 5-6 options to choose what kind of Credit Card I have. I chose Citibank card and then changed my mind and clicked on a different option so that I can pay by a non-Citibank card. !!%^& I was stuck. I didn't let me go anywhere. No buttons/links to go anywhere else. Browser back button doesn't either.
With no options left, I started the whole process again, starting from login. This time I was slightly faster. I managed to reach the billing section by 12:30 and chose the correct credit card option. I paid the ticket charges (Rs.1522) and the credit card site forwarded me back to IRCTC site. Another shock was waiting for me there. I was logged out. So I logged in again to see my reserved tickets. I couldn't find them. They were not booked! By this time my Credit Card company sent me an SMS saying 'Thank you for spending 1522 at IRCTC'. I checked my email thinking the tickets might have arrived. No new emails. I went into 'My Transactions' and checked 'Booked History' and 'Cancelled History' too. Apart from asking me my password at each of these steps I couldn't find my tickets anywhere.
With no other option left I called up IRCTC's 24 Hrs. Customer Support at: 011-23340000. After waiting for 3 minutes someone attended me:
Me: Hi, I booked my tickets from your site but haven't received the tickets. But my credit card has been charged.
Operator: Give me your username
I tell her my username. Wait for a few minutes again.
Operator: Your tickets haven't been booked'!
Me: Oh! What about my money?
Operator: it will be credited back to your card in 2-3 days.
Me: Thank you
While I was talking to the operator in English she was answering me in Hindi. My Hindi isn't great. I believe I understood everything she said ignoring her rudeness.
After assurance from IRCTC that my money will be refunded I started the marathon booking process again.
I have a fast connection at home. I closed all other browsers and just kept IRTC site open. I just didn't wanted to take any chances. This time I clicked on 'Quick Book' link, filled the form and clicked on 'Quick Book' button. It popped up an alert asking me again if I want to continue or not. What the hell, why would I click on book if I don't want to continue? Anyway, I finished booking the tickets and finally the tickets appeared in my account. The tickets appeared in my mail box too. As usual the credit card company sent me another sms thanking for the sale. My clock was showing 1:00
The whole process of booking tickets took me 3 hours and cost me Rs. 3044. A little less than half of that would be refunded in 3-4 days as today is a Saturday. I doubt they will refund booking charges. I don't understand what's the point of Internet here. It was supposed to make things convenient and easy to use.
I have decided to go to the nearest train booking station to book onward journey tickets. That would cost me 1502 exactly and will take less than one hour. No convenience charges, no waitings for page loads, no credit card failures, no refunds and no failed logins. I just have to wait for a little in the Q. But I don't mind.
The battery in my MacBook Pro has completely dried up. It will cost me 8k to replace it. I decided to go for an inverter instead that can supply power to my MacBook as well as a few other essentials at home. I am guessing a decent inverter should cost about 12-13k. Now that I had decided to buy a inverter it made sense to go ahead with my other plans as well. I had been thinking about investing in another good desktop for home. Now seemed like a good time. Last week I along with my friend Srini went to SP road and bought everything except the Monitor. I wanted to do a little more research on monitor. I finally decided to buy a 24 inch Dell monitor.
Yesterday, I bought the last 2 missing pieces for my desktop setup from the same vendor, Surabhi Computers. Along with a dell monitor I also picked up a Netgear wireless adapter. The whole desktop is not by a single brand. I instead chose to pick and choose my own parts. Along with having my own hand-picked configuration it also lets me have the latest and greatest technology available in the market. Technology market changes too fast. I wanted to take advantage of that. So the question now is, what did I pick?Dell 24 inch monitor (ST2410) Price: 13,000
Netgear Wireless-G USB Adapter (54mbps). Price: 800
Others HDMI cable. Price: 700 Creative speakers. Price: 2300 I picked a heavy iBall CPU Case. Price 2100 Spike buster from staples. Price: 400
Here is my whole setup at home:
It all cost me 38,350 (I don't remember the price of a few things).The CPU was assembled by the vendor himself at no cost. I have installed Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) on it and its working flawlessly now. The next challenge for me now is to train my wife to use this setup. That appears to be a bigger challenge than setting up the whole thing :)
Update: A similar setup from Dell (Dell 580s) minus the wireless adapter and a 320GB HDD costs about Rs 42,750+5% vat. My company got it from a vendor for one of my teammates. So looks like my effort was worth it.
In my earlier article I explored finding candidates from Chithrakala Parishath of Bangalore. It was surprising that none of CKP students had online portfolios. This made me extend the search for different colleges in other cities too. In this article I am exploring art students from Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalay, Pune and J.J Institute of Art, Mumbai. Both reputed art schools. In fact our existing designer is from Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalay.
Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalay, Pune
Searching for "Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalay" without location preference yields 27 resumes.
Of these only 4 candidates reside outside of Pune. Out of those 4 candidates one is is in Sholapur another in Chennai and the remaining 2 in Mumbai.
Only 2-3 people were willing to work outside Pune-Mumbai.
None of the resumes had any links to an online portfolio.
"Abhinav Kala Mahavidyala" yields another 3 resumes.
One of them was in Bangalore while the remaining 2 were in Pune.
Whats surprising here is Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalay has only 30 candidates in the whole of MonsterIndia.com database. Am I missing something or am I am making any typos while searching?Sir JJ College of Art, Mumbai
Searching for "sir jj" shows 414 resumes. But it includes candidates from the medicine field. This is because JJ also has a medical college.
So if I search for "sir jj" but exclude resumes with "medicine, hospital" it gives me 285 resumes. This appears to be a little more accurate.
If I add Bangalore to the above mix it gives me 72 resumes. It was much better and filtering this was much easier though I didn't find any candidate from this lot.
Conclusion My earlier finding about not many graphic designers having an online portfolio is true for these 2 colleges as well. But what's more interesting with these 2 colleges is, people from here prefer advertising or are into advertising field. Furthermore, not many are willing to relocate outside of Pune and Mumbai. So I am cutting short my search with these 2 colleges.
This is unbelievable. Chitrakala Parishath is a well-known art school in Bangalore. But none of their students who are looking for a job via MonsterIndia.com have an online portfolio! At least I couldn't find one.
Background: I am trying to recruit a visual designer/graphic designer for my company. We already have a designer but trying to add one more. An online portfolio is the first thing I look for in a graphic design candidate. Without that no resume can get through the initial screening. No hyperlink in the resume? You are out of the door. Its easier to judge technical skills using a conversation. But its 100% not possible to gauge a person's graphic design abilities in a conversation. Two of the best designers I know of can't communicate well at all. But their works will speak for them. So I never consider communication or language to be a prerequisite for a good designer. But an online portfolio replaces communication as the point at which I make the first judgment. Without that I have no way of knowing whether a designer is good or bad. If you noticed my earlier article, I use my own ways to search for candidates to get through weed. One of them is to search by college names. This is what I find for Chithrakala Parishath:
Searching for "Chitrakala Parishat" without a location preference yields 43 resumes. None of these have portfolios. These include some highly experienced people in some of the best companies.
Searching for "Chitrakala Parishat" in Bangalore yields 38 resumes and none of these have portfolios too.
'chitra kala parishat' and 'chitra kala parishath' (with a space between chitra and kala') yields 21 resumes. Again no portfolios.
Searching for "chitrakala parishath" yields 87 resumes. I still haven't found a portfolio yet. More notes on these candidates:
27 among these are females
A couple of candidates have a blog where they show some of their work. But its not good enough to make a hiring decision.
Majority of 87 candidates are in Bangalore.
I still can't understand how a person can claim to be a experienced graphic designer and still can't show his/her works to a potential employer. After all every piece of graphic design can be shown to naked eyes. What could be difficulties of creating a portfolio?
If its a print material, scan it or take a photograph
If its a web site/app, then either provide a link or take screenshot
Ad, info graphic, illustration, any other design? Take screenshots or include them as is.
I am trying to recruit a front-end engineer for my company. This position is also often referred to as UI Programmer or UI Developer or UX Developer. For me they are all same. A good UI programmer needs to know high-end JavaScript, a deep knowledge of how DOM works and using CSS to layout HTML. S/he will also know browser problems and avoids those pitfalls while developing his/her web site. If you are so deep into then the chances are s/he would have worked with good frameworks too. We use jQuery. But I have used Prototype in the past and that shouldn't be a problem too.
We have an employer account with Monster. So we use that for all our resume finding needs.Finding a good UI programmer is more difficult than say finding a Ruby programmer. For example searching for 'javascript, css' in Monster yields more than 25000 resumes!
Searching for 'ruby' gets me 4982 resumes while python yields 5373 resumes. Java gets me more than 25000 resumes too. Searching for jQuery without specifying anything else yields a whooping 8776 resumes.To narrow down my searches, I switched to Power Search and just left 'javascript, jquery, css' in the 'All Keywords' field. That means every resume in the search result will contain these three keywords (this itself yields 4959 resumes). With that setting set for all my subsequent searches, I proceeded to increasingly rarer keywords. Here are the results.
Firebug yields 139 resumes. Going further, I started searching for more keywords within these search results:
Searching for "page speed" within these results (note the quotes, meaning those words should be used together) yields just 3 resumes. Much better.
YSlow yields 24 resumes. Slightly better than "page speed". Its understandable as YSlow is known better than page speed.
gzip yields 0 resumes! Does this mean nobody uses gzipping to compress their assets while using Firebug?
Searching for 'YSlow' alone yeilds 29 resumes. That means candidates who have worked with YSlow also know about Firebug. That's a good sign.
'minify' OR 'minification' yields just 6 resumes. Quality of these candidates were much better. Among these 6 candidates, 3 turned out to be backend programmers. One was not looking for a job and another one was too experienced for the position I was trying to recruit. That leaves just one candidate. I am still talking to him.
Searching for 'html5' yielded 31 resumes. Quality of these resumes was good too. But it showed me a lot of backend programmers too. I spoke to about 5 people from this list and still in talks with one of them.
I still haven't short-listed anyone for this position yet. But I will be posting all my experiments and explorations here in a series of articles.Notes: I don't care for educational qualifications, the location, preferred location. People are extremely flexible about locations. Money changes pretty much everything. People with even strongest reservations about relocating will agree if you raise the salary by a little :) Only female candidates seems to have slightly stronger location preferences.
I have had severe back problems for more than 2 years now. I couldn't sit in a regular chair for more than a few minutes without getting up of severe pain. I have seen a lot of doctors and had some partially successful treatment. Though the situation is much better now, I had to look at alternatives to a normal chair while I was hopping between orthopedic clinics.
First option: Standing desk
This was my first experiment when I couldn't sit anymore on an office chair. This was inspired by Jamis Buck's article on standing. I found immediate success in the sense that at least I could work for longer periods. My legs were aching for a month or so. Then I got used to it. In about 4 months my back pain was under control and I could sit back and work again. But that was short-lived too. I had in injury in my left foot which prevented me from standing for longer periods. That's when I switched to my second option: a bean bag.Second option: Bean Bag
This has been the most comfortable position. The position doesn't hurt and I can work for really long hours. I keep the bean bag next to my standing desk. This helps while getting up from the bean bag. I just keep my laptop on top of the standing desk and move out. Though I haven't had any problems with this arrangement, I wasn't happy holding the laptop on my laps. The macbooks heat up pretty fast and I don't think its good. So I started looking around for alternatives. My current experiment: Exercise Ball
A colleague suggested this option. I did a bit of research and found this might be a worthwhile option to check out. I bought a 75CM ball from a Reebok showroom and blew it up until my forearms are in straight line with the keyboard when I sit on it. It cost 2k. I have been using this for about 2-3 weeks now and its been good so far. I still can't work for longer hours with this. My sides hurt if I sit for too long. If I am in a mood to work for more than a couple of hours (especially coding) then I switch to a bean bag. Otherwise, I can see the difference. I don't feel a pain in the back. I use my feet to balance myself, so it gives a feeling that I am playing with the ball. When I get up the balls starts rolling. Some times I also this for doing exercises.
Update: My former colleague Shiela suggested http://www.teeterhangups.com/. The trick here is you use a inversion table and reverse yourself. She says she did it for 3 minutes every day for about 3 months and it pretty much cured the lower back pain unless she is picking heavy objects. I am seriosly willing to try this. But I haven't yet found a place to buy these in India.
Update: I have been using the exercise ball for about an year now and it has become my primary mode of sitting in front of my computer. In fact I find this far more comfortable than a chair. I don't have a computer chair at home anymore. I occassionally use the bean bag though, espcially when I want to watch TV and work on the computer at the same time.
I thought I'll post my views on some ways you can avoid some of these.
Post misleading job descriptions
I use a number of techniques to gauge the authenticity of job description and the company posting it. Some of them:
Check whois database to see who has registered the company domain. For example if you are looking at a wipro ad, checkout whois for wipro.com. It gives out vital information on the company including the office address and some times the owner too if the company is small. (Visit http://www.whois.net/ or there is a whois shell command on most Unix machines). This technique obviously doesn't work as well for big organizations.
Visit their website, right click and select 'View Page Info' on Firefox. This gives you information about when a particular page has been modified and some meta information about the company. These meta tags are quite useful in knowing what services they are offering etc.
Visit their jobs/careers section and look at their other job openings. Chances are they might have listed down the position you are applying for.
Visit a popular job site and see how many openings they have posted in the recent times. Its an indication they are hiring aggressively.
If you have a HR friend with an access to a jobs database like naukri or monster, ask them to send you some sample resumes from that company. You can also ask them if there are lot resumes floating around from that company. That could be an indication that people are leaving that company and there is some immediate problem in that company.
Surreptitiously modifying a job seeker's resume
Use pdf files and not word docs. Some people insist on word documents so that they can add salary information and notice periods to the resume. This is what my recruiter used to do before sending resumes my way for technical interviews. But they can always specify that as part of an email or a separate note. So use PDFs or HTML docs.
HTML is particularly useful if you happen to have a personal website. The biggest advantage with hosted HTML files is that you can attach a google analytics code and then track which IP is visiting your website and then track the visitor by their IP. Once you have the IP, you can find out its longitude and latitude by using a site like http://ip2location.com. Once you have that then finding where the visitor is sitting by using a service like http://www.gorissen.info/Pierre/maps/googleMapLocationv3.php is a piece of cake. I have done this quite often. Its very satisfying to know who are looking at your profile and where they are sitting physically.
Pressuring job seekers into interviews
There is nothing like a free lunch. So don't fall into the trap of good talk from recruiters. They are trained to talk nicely and have a vested interest in it. If the they find a good candidate or if you don't suit thier job, you will never see or hear from that recruiter again. This applies to a sweet girl's voice too. You will never hear it again. So avoid this trap. Recruiters are purposefully extra sweet to candidates. And they cautiously setup the trap. I have seen this first hand.
