Today I had a funny experience of missing Saturday. I am in Taipei these days at my office head office. It was a working day today, as it was adjusted last week(holiday on Friday) for long weekend, but I was not aware of this. 

Today morning I went to office around 10:30 AM, thinking will finish my pending work without any disturbace of meeting and all. But when I reached my office I found office was already open and everyone was in place and working. I was totaly confused and thought I must be misteking and today is friday :p . Now before I could have started my machine, Alex came and told me everybody is waiting for me for meeting :O . I was still in confused state and directly went to meeting room. During meeting also in back of my mind, I was thinking if its Friday or Saturday.. but I was then kind of assured that I must have misteken and its Friday only.

After meeting when I logged in into my machine and saw the day then realized ohh its Saturday ..

Today after opening my inbox, I saw a query regarding Cloud Computing. I found a nice video explaing Cloud Computing ancd would like to share with everyone.

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I’m a

Self-Knowing Organized Lifelong Learner

Below is extract of article from Data Storage connection about Proware’s Epica 42 bay high density raid storage.

“The global leading data storage company, Proware Technology Corp announced to release EP4429, the first high density storage solution of EPICa family, to meet the increasing needs of enterprise customers. As the first large storage provider in Taiwan, Proware is holding the 3rd place in global storage market associated benefits at cost-saving of supplies, space, and power consumption, EP4429 provides.

EPICa RAID system is the new generation of RAID products capable of supporting SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) and SATA drives. In order to meet the needs of its enterprise level customers, Proware chose the Seagate Barracuda ES Hard Drive family product. “Seagate’s Barracuda ES and ES.2 enterprise drives are designed for RAID and new applications where high capacity, high reliability, low power consumption and tolerance to rotational vibration (RV) are primary requirements” said Brian Wickman, executive director, Seagate Taiwan and Korea.” read all

I came across a informative video about Xen. Ross Chevalie talking about Xen and how important of Virtualization in future. Also explains para-virtulization.

This weekend I attended two day workshop on film making organized by MovieMechanix. It was a wonderful experience, though in very short time, They told us all basics and do’s and dont’s for movie making. As a spectator I never thought about details of film making, but after attending workshop I got clear picture, How many things and stages are required in Film Making. So many thing needs to be planned.

Even the worst movie we had watched so far, it had also required too many efforts

Film making can be broadly classified into three stages.

1. Pre-Production: It involves script writing, Direction ( Director interpretation of script, selecting actors, rehearsals, Visual and sound choices.

2. Production :It Involves use of camera (angle, movement, lenses, camera position, lightning etc) , Art Direction, choosing Actors and make them act according to script .

Using camera is very tactful and it one of more effective tool which gives meaning of a shot.

3. Post Production : Most time consuming part Editing and adding sounds. While editing one gives final touches to film and makes it watchable.

As for my first film making exp, I had only 1 evening( 2-3 hours) to think for story, script and to shoot i.e. the pre-production and production. Half day for editing. Anyhow late in evening I decided to make film on exams. So I caught Sonu ( My brother) and started discussing about story( just came in my mind while discussing, what should be story). As the restriction of 2 minutes for length of movie, I thought depicting a small dream of day before exam will fit best, So I explained him the story, and we started shoot by 8 PM. Dialogs we decided as the shoot goes . Took may retakes and did few rehearsals.

Finally, by 9 I was able to complete my shoot, and in morning I stated the editing part. completed my first short film of 2 minutes by 12 in noon . Though the final product was not gr8 but still thinking of first film making experience and in such short time, its not bad .

Its been long time, since I have not updated my blog. Though I had lot of stuff to write but my work and other activities has kept me away from updating my blog. Anyways.. I hope from now I will keep updating my blog on time.

I would like to share few things I did in last in last 6 months.

- Worked on raid6 implementation for our RAID Controller proSUN™. I got some good exposer on IOP331 for implementation of XOR engine for raid6. With raid6 we also successfully released proSUN™ 1.1

- Went for hiking in North-east Taiwan placed called Tsaoling along with my Taiwanese friends. You can find few pics here . It was really nice place with lot of natural fountains. We walked almost for more then 16 Kms. The path of trek was along with Pacific ocean, so the landscape views were amazing.

- Proware IDC made finally its presence on web. We build our website , though very simple yet, we will add more information in coming days. Thanks to IDC team and my friend Dheeraj Rai a.k.a Rai for their sincere help.

- Read few good books like Good to Great, iWoz, Future of Management and Founders at Work. You can visit my book shelf .

- Apart from work, I am also exploring Flex and its capabilities to power our( Paresh, Dheeraj and Me) few ideas and convert into something fruitful. You will read more about it more in coming days.

- Also studying Xen and would like to explore its capabilities along with my few office friends. Again in coming days you will read more about it in my blogs. Also we may like to engage few BE project students on such ideas. So I plan to start guiding projects students from this year.

Apart from all I missed few marriage’s of my very good friends . This week though I finally attended Sujay’s marriage. Spent two days in Nasik and did lot of photography .

Thats all.. for last 6 months, See you in next blog.

-Kunal

Google and all leading social network’s have come together with set of API’s using which anyone can create applications for social networking sites. For orkut, google provides sandbox where one can play and test there applications on orkut.

Watch this video for detail.

I was going through post of Marc Andreessen and I found few interesting points that I would like to share.Below are some quotes from the post.

Pick an industry where the founders of the industry — the founders of the important companies in the industry — are still alive and actively involved.

This is easy to figure out — just look at the CEO, chairman or chairwoman, and board of directors for the major companies in the industry.

If the founders of the companies are currently serving as CEO, chairman or chairwoman, or board member of their companies, it’s a good industry to enter. It is probably still young and vital, and there are probably still opportunities to exploit all over the place, either at those companies or at new companies in that industry.

If not — if the industry’s founders are dead, or old and out of touch — beware. That industry is now dominated by companies that are being run by second or third or even fourth generation managers who inherited their companies pre-built, and are serving as caretakers.

Never worry about being a small fish in a big pond. Being a big fish in a small pond sucks — you will hit the ceiling on what you can achieve quickly, and nobody will care. Optimize at all times for being in the most dynamic and exciting pond you can find. That is where the great opportunities can be found.

Apply this rule when selecting which company to go to. Go to the company where all the action is happening.

Or, if you are going to join a startup or start your own company, always make sure that your startup is aimed at the largest and most interesting opportunity available — the new markets that are growing fast and changing rapidly.

In a rapidly changing field like technology, the best place to get experience when you’re starting out is in younger, high-growth companies.

(This is not necessarily true in older and more established industries, but those aren’t the industries we’re talking about.)

here are a bunch of great things that you get when you go to a younger, high-growth company:

• You’ll get to do lots of stuff. There will be so much stuff to do in the company that you’ll be able to do as much of it as you can possibly handle. Which means you’ll gain skills and experience very quickly.
• You’ll probably get promoted quickly. Fast-growing companies are characterized by a chronic lack of people who can step up to all the important new leadership jobs that are being created all the time. If you are aggressive and performing well, promotions will come quickly and easily.
• You’ll get used to being in a high-energy, rapidly-changing environment with sharp people and high expectations. It’s like training for a marathon while wearing ankle weights — if you ever end up going to a big company, you’ll blow everyone away. And if you ever go to a startup, you’ll be ready for the intensity.
• Reputational benefit. Having Silicon Graphics from the early 90’s, or Netscape from the mid-90’s, or eBay from the late 90’s, or Paypal from the early 00’s, or Google from the mid-00’s on your resume is as valuable as any advanced degree — it’s a permanent source of credibility.

In contrast to going to a big company: working for a big company teaches you how to work for big companies. The way things work at a big company is usually unique to big companies. So, working for a big company is often a statement that you plan to spend your career at big companies — and lots of people are very happy doing that, but I doubt that’s your intention or you wouldn’t be reading this post.

In contrast to going to a startup: when you are first starting your career, you should realize that raw startups are highly variable in terms of the experiences you will have. Some can be great, but many are very poorly managed and go nowhere. You will probably be better off going somewhere that’s already succeeding, gain skills and experience, and then go to a startup.

In contrast to going to a mediocre small or mid-sized company that’s not growing: those are great places to go if you don’t want to go anywhere yourself. If you find yourself stuck in one, either figure out how to get the company unstuck and on a fast growth path, or get yourself unstuck.

Don’t just be a “summertime soldier” — don’t go someplace because it’s already successful, and then bail when things get tough.

Any hiring manager for the rest of your career will be able to read that on your resume just by looking at the dates.

High-growth companies virtually always hit speed bumps, or even huge potholes. Stuff goes wrong. Going through the experience of gutting through the hard parts and coming out the other end will be a key part of your real-world education and will serve you very well down the road, especially if you ever start your own company.

Then, once you’ve racked up killer skills and experiences at a high-growth company, feel free to go to a startup.

Picking which startup to join probably deserves its own post. However, in a nutshell, look for one where you understand the product, see how it might fit into a very large market, and really like and respect the people who are already there.

Or, start your own company.

If your startup fails, try another one. If that one fails, get back into a high-growth company to reset your resume and get more skills and experiences. Then start another company. Repeat as necessary until you change the world.

I have been talking and interacting with many software engineers (Senior guys) in recent days. Actually looking for few good engineers who can start working on new product line and build there team for the product(Absolutely great work profile for a senior engineer and that too product like implementing a highly scalable and high performance snapshot for NAS box ) .

When I explain the job profile, most of them gets exited (of course whosoever loves working on technology and have passion for product development wont like to miss such opportunities) . But! when they know its _not_ US/Europe based company, there half of enthu is lost :-O.. I am really shocked!!

I don’t understand why Indian engineers are so much obsessed with ‘US’ tag? Hardly any US based company develop there core technology @ there ODC/IDC.. forget about outsourcing such work!. It makes sense also.. In US there are resources available(though Indians contribute there also in major chunk) who can actually develop and they can keep there technology more safer(attrition rate is low, better IP laws) and better quality of engineers(India don’t have much resource which fits for product R&D).

But hey.. there is world/market beyond US!!Take a look at Asian market… Japan, Korea, Taiwan.. all have already made there mark in Electronics market. Economically these countries are doing great. But unlike US/Europe these counties don’t have good quality of software engineers. Again if Companies are product based they wont like to outsource there core technology.. hence they are opening there development centers in India/China.

Here its really good chance of being part of great products and work on some really good technology and R&D work (esp. for people who don’t want to leave India and want to work on core technologies!!)

Of course if VC’s funds and Indians start there own product development, it will be really great.. but still area where both hardware and software development is required.. Indian market is not yet developed much.. I think its high time Indians should start thinking beyond US and make them selfs independent of any single market..