Pranav Bhat- Freelance Programmer

I think i need to re-organize in a big way! Now, that exams are done(almost over a month ago) i almost have the entire day to myself and I know that I am not utilizing it to its full potential. Now, i am not a productivity expert but effective time management should be an inherent quantity in everyone these days.

Thats why I have decided to rip things off the way they are going right now and organize myself and my time in a better way.

Lets hope that this new timetable that i have created goes well. Wish me luck.

What can we learn from the Euro 2008? Certainly a quote which has become a trademark of Addidas comes to my mind: Impossible is Nothing! This has proved to be true especially by teams like Russia and Turkey who have earned a place in the semi-finals of the Euro 2008. It is especially commendable in the case of the Russian team because they were struggling to qualify for the tournament and now they are in the semi-finals.

So, I thought there is definitely something to be learned from these two teams which were considered as “under dogs” before the start of the tournament. Hence, I saw Russia’s yesterdays match against the Nederlands very closely and drew the following conclusions which i feel are the reasons for their success.

1.Strategy: The Russians had a very good strategy from the onset. They perfectly knew how they should react for each and every move of the Netherlands. Moreover, they had a strategy for every player and a predefined role set for each and every player of the team. I can easily co-relate this with the process of software development. For developing any software or a project a clear and lucid strategy and the concept of the software and the approach to go about it should be clear in the mind of the programmer or developer. If the project contains more than a single developer (most projects do unless it is a small scale freelance project) then this point is even more important. Each and every person involved in the project must know his roles and duties.

2.Consistency: Another thing that caught my attention in yesterdays match is the consistency with which the Russians played their game. They had a strategy and they stuck to it and the strategy in itself was good and hence they got the rewards for it. So, consistency is the key. I did realize the importance of consistency at several points of time in my life: While trying to reduce my obesity ( I lost 22 KGs in 4 months), while studying or while programming. So as far as I am concerned consistency is important. You need to follow a strategy or a process that you have defined for a project consistently over and over again.

3.Conviction: Conviction is another important thing along with consistency and strategy. Many times while studying, i had a proper strategy to study, had all the plans charted out and all the timetables made but i lacked conviction which eventually led to the failure of the study plan. Hence, making a strategy which is good is important but i think more important is the conviction and the dedication with which you follow the strategy.

These are the points that I think are responsible for the success of these under dog teams like Turkey and Russia. I think that these three points can be used anywhere we work, whatever we do and most times than not we WILL find success. Of course, these things cant be understood unless you experience it themselves like I did; it is not that I am hearing these things for the first time in my life but then it is always better when you experience it yourself!

I was just asked by a friend of mine whether I paid $10 on wordpress.com to have my blog redirected to my domain name pranavbhat.info or did I pay for a domain and then downloaded wordpress from Wordpress.org and then purchased another $10 for website hosting? So, I thought this is a good time to write the reasons why i decided to download wordpress and decided to buy a web hosting package.

1. Freedom to make changes as you want: With wordpress.com blog where in you get a “yourname.wordpress.com” blog you cannot make changes as you would have wished to. There are hundereds and hundreds of plug ins developed for Wordpress and even more, maybe thousands of themes developed for the wordpress platform. You can use these themes the way you want on a wordpress.org blog which you cant do on wordpress.com blog( Contradict me if i am wrong here but as far as i know i am not)
2. Have additional features that supplement your blog: Suppose your own a technology blog and you have a pretty good user base and a good user interaction. To enable more interaction with the users and to enhance your community you would need a forum or a message board. So, what if you want to have a forum software like PHPBB or SMB or even wordpress produced BBPress. You can do this on a self hosted blog i.e a wordpress.org blog but not on a wordpress.com blog.
3. Email Accounts: Suppose you wanted to have an email address like yourname@yourblogname.com. This is easily possible when you buy a web hosting package but relative difficult when you have a wordpress.com hosted blog. Ofcourse you can do this by buying a seperate email package and then change your MX entries at your domain registrar account. But, that would be a repetitive process. You can also have the domain registrar redirect emails sent at anything@yourblogname.com to your free email address like anything@gmail.com. So, email accounts isnt really a problem but email accounts like yourname@yourblogname.com definitely adds more professionalism and creditability. Email accounts are absolutely essential when you own a business blog.
4. Advertisements: Blogs are these days a great way to make money although it isn’t easy; but people do make money from blogs mainly in the form of advertisements and the major source of advertisements is Google Adsense. In wordpress.com hosted blog although you can promote products using affiliate links you cannot have Google Adsense on your blog. That is possible in a self hosted wordpress blog as you can see in my blog.

Having said all the above points, wordpress.com does have certain advantages above wordpress.org. Some of them are:

1. Automatic Updates: As soon as there is a new version of the wordpress platform, the wordpress.com automatically updates itself so that you dont have to manually update it. In a self hosted wordpress blog , you will usually have to update and install the blog by yourself. However, these days most web hosting packages do provide automatic installation, updation and uninstallation from their control panel usually under the fantiasco suite.
2. Better community features: Wordpress.com usually helps in building a better community as compared to a self hosted blog but if you are social networking expert or good at it then it should not be a problem even on self hosted blogs.
3. One username many blogs: On a wordpress.com blog you just need a single username to create as many blogs as you want. On wordpress.org you need to have a separate installation for each blog. Although this is resolved by the use of Wordpress Mu which is a multi blogging system on which wordpress.com is based.

So, as you can see there are several advantages for self hosted wordpress blogs and a couple of them for wordpress.com blogs. However, for me the advantages of a self hosted wordpress blog are far greater than those of a wordpress.com blog and hence i have chosen a self hosted wordpress blog as my personal cum professional blog.

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For the past year or so from Feb 2007 I have gone through the entire process that takes place when you plan to study in the US. This had taken almost one and a half year for me, including giving the required exams(GRE,TOEFL) to applying to the universities, getting admits, selecting the universities from all the admissions that you have got and finally applying for and getting a F1(Student) VISA. I have gone through the process and believe me this is NOT for the faint hearted.

There have been ups and downs and uncountable number of arguments with my parents who have been very understanding and took up with all of my yelling at them( and I really regret it now . ) And now finally its over and I have the VISA, the admission to Northeastern University, Boston and a ticket to Boston in the first week of August.

So, I just hope everything goes as planned and all my dreams come true. I pray to god to give me the strength to do all the hardwork that is required!

Wish me Luck!

I have also launched a new project category which will enable me to post the latest projects that i do as well as all the projects that I have done in the past. I will also post detailed information about the project including the technical information as well as code snippets wherever possible.

Thus please check out the my freelance programming projects and do contact me if you need to outsource any kind of programming.

Cheers!

Now, I have give all of YOU readers, another reason to comment on my blog. My blog is now openID enabled.Many of you might be asking what the heck is this openID? How good is it for me? According to Wikipedia openId is:

OpenID is a shared identity service, which allows Internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site. OpenID is a decentralized, free and open standard that lets users control the amount of personal information they provide.

You can read the entire article here on Wikipedia.So, what this essentially means that using an openID you can post comments in my blog using your wordpress.com, YAHOO,AOL and several more. So, now can i expect more comments from my readers ?

As you might have noticed I have taken to blogging in a big way. I got a cool new site design going and made a couple of posts that have been long pending. I always wanted to blog but never really had the motivation to and couldn’t find a reason good enough to spend time blogging until i read blogs from Darren rowse at problogger.net and Chris Garrett who have recently published a new book on professional blogging. Although i have not yet bought the book because Amazon doesn’t ship books to India yet, I am going to tell one of my friends to get the book for me the next time he visits India or in two months time when i will be in the US as a student. So, I might not be a expert in Social networking and blogging like Chris and Darren I thought I can atleast have a list of 6reasons why I blog!

So here goes my list:

• Fame: Who doesn’t want to be recognized around the world; even if its not around the world the fact that my blog is read by my friends who comment on my blog and give honest opinions about what i think is such a high. Moreover, If you develop an authority over a niche in which you are really good at then you can talk in conferences like Darren and Chris does.
• Money: Who doesn’t want a little extra income or that extra pocket money? Surely, i dont mind; and bloggers can earn a lot of money from their blogs; Although it must be advised that it is not for the faint hearted.
• Promoting your services: I have used this technique effectively. I am a freelance programmer and I have used this technique effectively over the years to get projects and find new clients. The best thing about this medium is the fact that clients come to you instead of you going to clients which i think is an awesome prospect in itself.
• Make friends:Blogging all about social interaction. You write for people to read and comment and you do the same for other peoples’ blogs. This leads to REAL friendships and not virtual ones.
• Come on TV: If the example of professional technology blogger Amit of labnol.org can be taken he has been featured on CNN-iBN. Now, it isn’t everyday that you get featured on TV.
• Satisfying your creative pursuits: Thats what I blog for most of the time as well as to vent out my frustration. You might not believe it but writing a simple post has got me out of so many frustrations and irritations that it has now become a habit for me. As soon I get angry over someone or something or get really irritated, i come online and write a short post about it(dont search this blog you wont find it here ) and the frustration reduces considerably.

So, i think these reasons are good enough for me to keep blogging and yes i will for many more years to come and will be more consistent with my blogging!

Its been a while since i last wrote a blog post; for the past 10 days or so, its just coming online, checking emails, reading the stats of my blog, checking my adsense account for my tech blog( which ofcourse doesnt make any money yet) and going offline. Now, I am not that much a blogger and you might have guessed until now that I am not that much of a good writer as well(I write programs better. Check here) but I do here and there squeeze some blog posts on this blog. So, what has kept me offline from this blog is the fact that my exams are going on and i need to give more time to my exams than my blog

The good news however is that I have only one paper left before i can sign off from K J Somaiya COE and engineering colleges for ever.

As you guys might have guessed from my earlier post that I will be going for my masters in Computer Science from Northeastern University, Boston. So, I thought this might be a good idea to post my analysis(  ;)   i can atleast try)  of my 3 years of engineering. Although people do say that engineering didn’t teach us much, i am sure if not about technology but it did teach me things about life that I wouldn’t have learnt anywhere else. So, in the next weeks to come starting from 5th of June, I will try and dig up stuff from my pensive( aka Albus dumbledore style) and  post things and  all the wonderful and not so wonderful experiences  of engineering.

Also, along with engineering, I have also gone through the process of applying to several US universities and finally getting admits from the universities to selecting the university to finally getting a visa to booking of tickets. So, I am also planning to post my experience of this process as well.

So, there is a lot to be written about and thats a difficult ask from someone who isn’t used to blogging and writing. Hence, please bear with me and encourage me(read: by the way of comments) and do check back for all these things that i have enthusiastically lined up!

Cheers!

It was Monday and I was tensed; not because it was Monday but because of the fact that I had my VISA interview for my student VISA scheduled at 12:00 noon. All the hardwork for almost past 2 years came down to this day, to this very moment, to these 30 seconds of my VISA interview and I am glad that I got my Visa approved and now I can pursue my Master’s in Computer Science from Northeastern University, Boston. I hope this new phase of my life will be as interesting as life has been until now and lets hope all goes well. So, now its just my final exam to be given and then prepare for my departure and fly to Boston.

Wish me luck and lets hope all goes well. I will definitely keep posting here about the latest in my life and interesting things about this journey called LIFE!

Cheers!

I messed up big today! I accidentally deleted almost more than half of the blog posts in my blog reducing the size of my blog to 8 posts…yep..you read that right…8 posts…..and I a greatly disappointed with myself.How could i do such a stupid thing; that too myself being a programmer! However, I am not the only person who is at fault; wordpress, with all its glory and people going ga ga over it has been equally guilty! There was no warning of any sort when i clicked on the god damn delete button that all the post would be permanently be deleted; which is commonly the norm when you create a software!!!

So, i am highly disappointed and greatly saddened by this; but certainly a lesson learnt!!