I have never failed at anything!

"I have never failed at anything in my life" - nobody will take you seriously if you say this. I never thought I could say that about myself either as I thought I could fill up books with list of things I have "failed" in. So why did I choose this as the title of this article? I was reminiscing one day on my life and what I have achieved (not what I have failed at) and it suddenly struck me that I have succeeded in anything I had wanted to succeed at. The new revelation dawned on me when I started analyzing why I had succeeded at certain things and then came the realization that I have succeeded at whatever I planned to succeed in. I hope the last couple of sentences would steer your thoughts towards the fact that when you really want something strong enough and you go out there to get it, you always get it. The things where you think you have failed are, in fact, things you didn't wanted bad enough and didn't try hard enough. And if you don't try hard enough, you have, in fact not failed because you never went after success to begin with. 

 Almost any self improvement speech has this famous quote from Napoleon Hill "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve" and I used to think that I can think of a lot of stuff that I can never achieve, However, now that I have figured out that I have never failed at anything, I understand what Napoleon Hill wanted to convey.

 So, in order to understand yourself what I am talking about, first decide what you want, then make a plan listing what needs to be done to get it, and finally start executing the plan. There would be hurdles, set backs, seemingly impossible situations but as long as you focus on what you want, you can go around obstacles, get up and get going again or change you approach and you will get to your goal. To reinforce this mindset, just think about the successes, small and big, that you have had in your life and recall the reasons for your success and your would eventually you too will figure out that "You have never failed at anything in your life".

MIT Video - EdX: The Future of Online Education is Now

MIT Video - EdX: The Future of Online Education is Now

Windows 8, Metro UI and Visual Studio 11

Windows 8:

Windows 8 is Microsoft’s next generation Operating System that has been completely rebuilt from the ground up and is primarily aimed at touch enabled desktop / laptop and tablet devices. It still provides the ability to work using a mouse but to take full advantage of the Metro style interface, a touch device is required. Windows 8 also provides the regular desktop interface which feels and functions very similar to the familiar Windows 7 desktop.

The Metro interface is different from the regular desktop in many ways.  The main theme is that of pages (like browsers) with square and/or rectangular tile which have the ability to provide Live information pertinent to the specific app it belongs to. Apps are launched by touching/clicking the tiles and only the app active in the forefront is functional, other apps that have lost focus go into a suspend status, which is actually a snapshot view of the app from the moment it lost  focus. Switching to a suspended app resumes the app from the very same point it was suspended at and the current app goes into suspended mode. Apps are not normally permitted to function in the background and there are other very strict requirements for getting an app certified, including the ability to launch within 15 seconds, otherwise the app is kicked off. The App function in full screen modes and the other mode is the snapped mode which snaps the app to the left or right edge of the screen and this is the only way to have two apps active simultaneously. Due to very stringent design specifications for Metro apps, the Windows 8 OS performs very efficiently of various devices and the user experience does not suffer on less powered CPUs on Tablets compared to the laptops or desktops.

Metro Interface:

The Metro Interface is composed of Live and/or Dead Tiles in square or rectangular shapes. The inspiration behind this UI is the road or guidance signs in a Metro city/location. For examples signs in a subway station or an airport which provide relevant information at a glance in a precise manner. This was first introduced on Windows Phone 7+ devices and same concept has been upgraded for larger screens. Having used Windows Phone for about 5 months, I am familiar with the MUI and have developed a liking for it based on the productivity improvement. The Live Tiles provide upto date information and one can delve deeper into the information if desired. I have also used the Windows 8 Metro UI on my laptop and although it isn’t a touch screen, but even with a mouse it works very well. It takes a week or so to discover the functionality and also to get used to the paradigm shift from the GUI to MUI, but once I discovered the ins and outs, and used it for a few weeks, it becomes a much more enjoyable experience, especially when I have the same UI on my phone and hopefully on my next tablet. It does take some effort initially to continue using and learning the MUI, but that’s a very short  and shallow learning curve and very quickly one would start realizing the benefit of shifting from traditional GUI to MUI.

Visual Studio 11:

Metro Apps Development: The IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for developing Metro style Apps is Visual Studio 11 on a Windows * device. VS 11 on other versions of Windows do not have the ability to develop Metro Apps at this time. Several prebuilt templates are available to get started quickly with most of the functionalities built-in. Until now most of the developers have focused on using the templates and app using the Metro UI in a more creative way may start cropping up soon. One thing to keep in mind is that MUI is primarily a touch enabled UI and designers/developers are encouraged to keep that in mind when coming up with ideas for MUI apps. Most of the current apps being developed in Metro style are more for information consumption and not information/data manipulation. Next version of Office suite is supposed to have a MUI mode and that would provide guidance to developers/designers on developing such content development apps. The potential is there and is pretty huge so the early developers of such apps would certainly have the first market advantage. Due to the strict design and performance specifications by Microsoft, the developers do not have the freedom to go about designing apps to do whatever they want to, and that should in fact serve as a positive move towards a more stable and efficient experience.

Agile Life - A Personal Scrum - KanBan

Work in progress...

You must have heard so much talk in the business world about Project Management and various approaches to it. Most popular terms used in project management are Agile, Scrum, KanBan, Lean, and a few others. Everybody has been managing projects throughout their personal lives in one way or the other, which made me think of why not apply the same principles of project management to these as well. So I started this blog with the aim of figuring out how to accomplish this and how effective this approach would be. The more I thought and wrote about it, the more I realized that I am discovering* a whole new approach of making my life more manageable and at the same time achieving results that seemed to be always becoming ever so farther away, as more clutter (new goals) joined the apparently un-manageable list of "Things-to-do". *(I am pretty sure there are many others who would have come across this discovery before me). Lets go through the journey of discovering and applying the agile project management principles to our day to day life and hopefully get a grip on our life and achieving results we are always striving for, but seems to be just out of reach.

 The project management theme I am going to use is more leaning towards SCRUM and KanBan, both belong to the Agile category made popular by so many large corporation from almost every major industry, but used more effectively by aviation and software industries.

To get started with Agile Project Management, first step involves making a list of features required in the end product/service. In our personal lives, we can equate the feature set to goals (both are the end results we want to achieve). So here we are actually setting up goals, and the I approach I prefer is to make use of the "Wheel of Life". I wrote a blog entry some time ago about achieving success in personal life and mentioned the famous "Wheel of Life", which is basically a wheel with 8 spokes that cover various aspects of life and if all of these are well balanced, then the life becomes a smooth rolling wheel. For each spoke on the Wheel of Life, you should write down a list of goals that would result in a perfect 10 score. The trick here is to be very specific in what the goals are, not general goals like " I want to be healthy, wealthy and  wise.." . Explain what being healthy means to you in terms of ideal weight, BMI. Indicate exactly how much wealth will make you wealthy. What being wise means? does it mean getting trained on a new skill, or getting a degree in a particular field... and so on.

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Impressions

Work in progress...

I got my HTC Radar 4G, back in December and having used it for over two months now, I feel comfortable writing down my views on the phone OS. I am not going to write about the hardware as there are numerous reviews out there and there's nothing more for me to add, except for agreeing with the majority out there that it is a great entry level Windows 7.5 phone with solid performance and nothing much to gripe about except for the ability to change battery, but then I think to myself ... Hmmm, why do I need to change the battery? not right now atleast...

I have always had great respect for Microsoft products but always feel that they almost always fail to highlight the best features to the end user. Over the years they have come up with some very promising products but majority of them lost their appeal due to a general perception of them being too complex. For example, OneNote is one of my favorite applications, and I see so much potential in it being a great information organization tool. But MS presents it as a Note taking app, whose utility is not clear to almost 90% of MS Office users who got this product bundled with the other Office suite apps. Majority of the people I have talked to have either never opened it once, and others gave it a try but never understood what should it be used for. Another product I was very fond of was PhotoDraw, that probably never move on from Beta state. I am just dreading the day Windows Phone follow the same path, except in this case it might have some staying power due to the fact that the Metro interface is going to be standard for future Windows OS (Windows 8) and other MS products including Xbox, and Windows tablets. MS came out with Windows phone 7 and it was pitched as a phone OS to get things done faster. Now looking back I can see two major flaws in thWindows 7 launch. First it appeared to be an intermediate product aimed at getting to the market ontime rather than a final product. A lot of features were left for the next iteration named Mango. Coming out with newer versions is standard but coming out with a better version of the same product is not. The success of Apple iPhone and Google Andoid phones is based on the first experience a user get. They know there are updates in the pipeline but what they get are phones they are happy with and not looking for future updates. Windows phone 7 should never have happened, just like Windows Millenium and more recently Vista.  Windows 7.5 is such a nice experience but by the time it came around, WP 7 had already confused the people as being a lame attempt to counter iPhone and Android. Now that WP 7.5 is out there, there isnt much of a choice on handsets with various providers. I have T-Mobile as my provider and had a couple of handsets to choose from. Next almost everybody who has a WP, says they just wanted to give it a try and then they loved it. It's hard to find someone who got a WP because he really wanted one, but at the same time it's hard to find someone who used one and is not impressed with it, and that includes me. The Metro interface keeps you focused on the information most relevant to you, missed calls, new emails/messages since you checked them last time, and any number of new notifications/updates on items you pin as LIVE TILES to your home screen. It almost all about LIVE TILES that people either don't understand or understand which makes WP unique. Just as it is difficult to explain how nice a a roller coaster ride is without having someone accompany you on it,  it is difficult to explain the usefulness of these live tiles without having them use it for a week or two. That's about how long it took me to convince myself to stay with WP and not switch back to Android.

Opening Honda Pilot's Rear Hatch with a dead Battery

The other day my wife called me at work asking me to return home immediately as our 2009 Honda Pilot wasn't making even clicking sounds when she tried starting it. I knew right away that little Nyle must have checked out all the switches in it and left a couple of lights on overnight. Well, the Mr. Know it all wasn't worried at all, he had stowed away a pair of jump cables away in the storage space at the back of Honda Pilot. All That was required was to go home, take the cables out, and jump start. What Mr. Know it all wasn't prepared for was that the rear hatch wouldn't open with a dead battery. Hmmmmmmmmmm............ not to worry, Mr. KIA knew there's always Google to go to for getting advice on solving any problem in the world, he had stopped following the well established rule of RTFM (Read The Manual). Well. any help forum MKIA Googled were filled with people complaining about Honda not having an option to open the rear hatch with a dead battery, and the jump cables could not be taken out unless the rear hatch was opened. Luckily, deep buried inside one of the forums was a comment about the solution being on page 93 of the vehicle's user manual, however the very next comment mentioned that the user manual showed how to replace batteries in the key fob. That dampened any hopes I had, but then I realized the link provided by the original poster was pointed to page 90 and not 93, and there it was on page 93 showing a two step process of opening the hatch without using electric power. It involves just opening a small plastic panel on the inside of the hatch and manually unlocking using a convenient lever provided by the wonderful Honda engineers. Unfortunately I couldn't find the posting again (will update whenever I find it again), however, Google comes to the rescue again and here's the link to 2009 Honda Pilot User Manual, you will find the solution on Page 145 instead.

How to attract success!

Success is something you attract, and to attract one needs to become attractive themselves. Here,  "becoming attractive" really means "to be prepared". When the opportunity arrives at your door or you arrive at the opportunity's door, you should be prepared or be attractive enough to let the opportunity to enter your life. More often than not, people attribute success to luck, being at the right place at the right time. One such example could be a chance meeting with someone who provided you an opportunity to work on a specific project that gave huge dividends. What people won't realize is that you had prepared for exactly such a chance meeting by polishing certain skills, working very very hard for long periods of time. And then, you had been to so many places searching for just the right person or opportunity to be available that suits the skills or resources you had acquired.

When Zig Ziggler said "Work harder on yourself than on your job", he was pointing towards  acquiring the right skills that would help you become attractive. For, when you have the right skills you can go out there and  knock at the opportunities' doors and one might open up for you and opportunity may find you attractive enough to let you in.

To get started with becoming more attractive, first decide what you want, or in other words set your goals.

• Decide what you want?
• Who do you want to meet? 
• What books you want to read? 
• Which places you want to visit? 
• What experiences you want to go through? 

WHEEL OF LIFE

It is important thing to write your goals down on paper. There simply isn't any other way to convert a dream into a vision, and convert a vision into a goal, and convert a goal into a reality, than to writing it down. Each of your goals have to me very very specific. if you want to loose weight, specify how much weight you want to loose, or what is your target weight. Next, specify when you want to achieve your goal, also referred to as the timeline. Again be very specific and set up an exact date by which you want to achieve that goal. Wheel of Life is a very effective system for planning out your life. For a well balance life, make sure you cover all eight spokes of the wheel of life. A balanced wheel of life will run smoothly, and so will your life, unless some areas are neglected or over emphasized. Without balance the wheel would wobble and may fall apart altogether. Specify what is required to score a perfect 10 on each of these areas of your life, and when do you plan to be there, and then plot where you are currently along the spokes. This will give you an idea about which areas need more effort and time, but it is important not to neglect any of the areas, even if you are ahead compared to the others.

Once you have your goals list prepared with specific measurable parameters (metrics) to be achieved by specific dates (timelines), you are 80% percent through with your journey. Rest 20% is sheer persistence and focused hard work. You will have bumps, hurdles and distractions along the way, but just like a sail boat, no matter which way the wind blows, keep adjusting your sails so that you are always moving in the direction of your goals.