PHPCamp 2008

PHPCamp was held first time in India, on 20th Sept 08. It's un-conference where you can share your knowledge/ideas with campers (attendees).

Venue was Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd, Pune. I reached there around 9:30 am. I entered my presentation details on display board. I had two sessions - Performance Tunning in PHP and Debugging with PHP.

After 3 words introductions of 700 campers, parallelly two sessions were started on 7th and 4th floor. My both sessions were on arranged on 4th floor. One was in morning and another in afternoon. My morning session was about Performance tunning in PHP. I entered in conference room with my Suse Linux powered Vaio notebook. I was amazed to see the crowd, who were waiting to attend my talk. Even campers were standing to listen my talk. I didn't expect that much campers in my talk.

After my first talk, I got a chance to meet Ranjeeta, ex-Yahoo like me. She was with her Adda team. I had long technological discussion with them. Then i met Vaibhav Arya, CTO at Directi. He was in my performance talk. He did couple of argue on PHP $_SESSIONs with me in between my talk. During lunch we (my self and Vaibhav)discussed, how to gain performance in web application. "We should reduce system I/O calls, to get better performance", said Vaibhav. As per my (limited) technical knowledge, system I/O calls are biggest overhead in PHP performance. And my performance talk was mostly targeted on how to reduce system I/O calls.

During lunch time I met lots of campers - Rohit, Tarun, BigAdda fellows, few Directi techies. Lunch arrangement was very nice even though un-organizers (Amit / Priyank), didn't arrange it for 700 campers. During lunch timing Vaibhav introduced with Directi's Pretty Hot Programmers.

After lunch I attended session on Web Application Scalability by Vaibhav. It was awesome. Then I had another session - Dubugging with PHP. I discussed about Xdebug in this talk. Campers were impressive with Xdebug's features. Let me thank to Derick Retahns for creating such a nice tools on behalf of campers.

There were few other sessions like Open Social with Orkut, PHP Security, PHP-MySQL tips, Drupal, Joomla etc, though i attended couple of sessions.

I got a chance to meet one of my old friend Anu, who is working at Persistent. We have shared the employer in the past.

I went there with my digi-cam and I tried to capture few moments. You can find it here. More PHPCamp photos are available on PHPCamp Flickr group.

My presentation slides are available on my slideshare.

Finally it was awesome PHPCamp, I pleased to meet PHP community members and PHP users from Pune, Mumbai, Ahmednagar, Bangalore.

Hoping to have high intensity blast next year. It's not about terrorist bomb blast, but it's about PHPCamp '09.

PHPCamp in Pune

In last week I was reading feeds from www.phpdeveloper.org My eye caught on the news about PHPCamp, Pune.

Yeah, PHPCamp is the PHP unconference in India, to make PHP community bigger, where you can share your ideas/knowledge on PHP.

Even Details: Date: 20th September 2008 (Saturday) Time: 10:00am to 6:00pm (Whole day event) . Location: Pune, India

Who should attend this event?

• If you are PHP developer or beginner or want to learn about PHP, come to PHPCamp.

• If you know something and want to share with the community, give a talk on it.

• If you are entrepreneur and want to adopt PHP, come to PHPCamp.

And I've also decided to speak there.

Join PHPCamp on Google Groups.

Hope to see you there :)

A lot could happen with HR executive

When I moved to Pune, it was my dream to find a good girl in Pune. The ultimate goal was to find a girl whom with I can enjoy my weekends. So my life would not be lonely. I don’t want to make my life more misery than it was in Mumbai.

Hence, I always love to use competitor’s product. I have learnt it from my Yahoo! days. One day I was just browsing the competitor’s product Mooskers and I found one girl. I sent her message which intended to flirt. And she responded the message which contained more flirt than I did. She looked quite gorgeous in her Dating Card - user’s public profile which indicated her location as Pune and profession as HR executive. Almost a month passed in message exchanging, then we decided to set a date at Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) in weekend. We met in last weekend. Oh, I forget to mention her name – Diya.

We choose CCD at Baner because we both are staying in Baner, not a bad place to stay in Pune. Actually it’s called as a Baner Village but the real-estate is costlier than Metro.

Here is the almost conversation we had.

“Hi, I’m Jignesh Thummar”, I greeted her with my introductory handshake.

“Diya”, with cute smile on her beautiful face and having quite maintained physic. She wasn’t looking that much beauty as it was described by her photographer. Not to mention, she had a nice frame-less glasses in which she looked damned cute rather than beauty. Her height seemed 5 feet 6 inches and weight around 56 kg. But not a bad look, in huge competition. I was thinking, why didn’t she mention her last name. But in general, whenever girls introduce first time they keep away their last name. But does it matter? For me it didn’t matter at all.

Luckily it was early evening, with few clouds in the sky and her hair were bounded with small hair bend even though cold wind was making her hair falling on smiling face. A perfect climate for date.

We ordered cold coffee for both.

“So how come you are free on this weekend?”, on most of the weekend recruitment keep her busy. I asked her. Just I wanted to start a conversation.

“Yaar, what can I do? It’s a part of Job. We have to go week end, but company give comp-off for this.” She replied.

“Diya, till now you haven’t mention your employer name?”, she already knew my employer's name. So I wanted to know her.

“I do work in Metalica Softwares, the US based company but founded by Indian”

“Wow, good”, I responded.

In between, waiter came with coffee. I thanked him.

“What about you? You are Software Engineer, but are you working in which platform?”, she asked.

“I’m working in PHP. We are making our audience happy on Internet. Our audience’s happiness lead to our happiness.”, I replied.

“I have heard PHP, but I haven’t heard this kind of work profile. I’m in this field since mid 2005. Your profile seems quite interesting and new for me. But first tell me what is PHP exactly?”, still smile was there on her face.

“PHP, Hypertext..... never mind. It’s web programming language. It’s the thing that powers more websites than any other language”, I skipped the technical thing.

I stopped to get response from her. But she didn’t say anything. So I continued, “Umm, It powers Yahoo!”

“Generally I use Rediff or MSN to surf the net. Does PHP power it?” she seems interested to know which other things powered by PHP.

“No. Rediff is in JAVA and MSN is in Dotnet. But which social network do you use to connect with your friends?”, I thought to ask about her social life on Internet.

“Orkut – my favourite site on Internet. Does your PHP power it?”, replied as she has achieved so many things after signing up in Orkut.

“No it doesn’t. They use Dotnet. But world’s most trafficked social network site – Facebook is powered by PHP. World’s first social network site - Friendster is in PHP and even Wikipedia is powered by PHP. I can say almost 40-50% Ineternet media is powered by PHP. Moreover, it’s Open Source!!!”, I tried to explain her PHP in business prospects rather than technical.

“It seems powerful language. That’s why nowadays our company is looking for PHP developers like you. Why don’t you forward your CV to me?”, she tried to get one resource for her employer. No way, I’m not the resource she was looking for!

“Yeah, it’s powerful. But, right now I’m not looking for job change.” I tried to change the topic,” What about your job profile?”

“My job includes recruitment and maintaining the relationship between employees and employer.”, she gave short description about her job profile.

“Diya, I have heard that, HRs are always super busy. What’s the reason of it?”, I asked.

“Because we are only 4 HRs including our manager. Just think, for 500 employees, how can we manage recruitment, employee care, party–picnic organization etc.? That’s reason it keep us busy.”, she answered.

“Ok.”, I gave up, because there is no meaning to fight against HR’s work profile. They have their own HR fundas. But continued with other topic, “People are thinking that IT is in recession mode, is it true?”

“Somehow true and somehow wrong. Because it’s depend on your company’s client and company’s management. If your company’s client is not affording your billing, then it’s true.”, she replied.

“So do you think IT is not safe in India? Does it affect on job openings?”, I asked.

“I can’t say about safety. But that’s sure; there are so many job openings in market. And because of it we are suffering from attrition. In last couple of year attrition rate is very high. This is my first job; I’m here since mid 2005. In my first year, I didn’t see much attrition. In fact it’s increased by 20% compare to last to last year. This is the most important thing, which is making us super busy everyday”, she responded with cute smile.

“Nice research about industry. But do you think, it will affect on appraisal?” I was thinking to ask same question to my employer’s HR. But I’m bounded with my limitations. So I decided not to ask them, I will get to know, when hike letter will come in my hand.

“A nice question. Let me share some confidential thing with you. Just last week we had meeting with company’s upper management. One of my lady colleague proposed that we should take advantage of recession, we will show that, because of recession company need to do cost cutting. And for that company will give less hike compare to last year.”, HR always carries lots of confidential information. One should have girl friend in their employer’s HR department.

“But Diya, if you will give less hike, then your company’s attrition rate will be increased more than current rate, isn’t it? So do you want to reduce attrition rate or give less hike to your employees?”, I raised the topic in more depth.

“That’s the thing we got stuck. That meeting was lasted for 5 hours on this topic only. Still we are doing survey about other company’s policy for this year. But again, it’s up to your employer’s upper management. ”

It was around 9:00 pm. She wanted to meet her friend at Pizza-Hut, Aundh. I hope, he is not her BF. So decided to leave CCD.

“Nice to see you and pleased to meet you as a friend.”, I thought, she can help me in job change whenever I need it.

“Same here. Bye”, seemed that she was in hurry. But smile was still there.

“Bye, Jignesh. Take care”. She was gone.

After coming out from CCD, I just looked on the CCD board. It’s saying, “A lot can happen over coffee..." It was somehow true.”If not a lot, but sure something can happen over coffee…” Yes, something was happened.

Note: Competitor’s product name is changed to hide my work profile. My friend Diya’s name and her employer’s name are changed to protect her job. She doesn't have any relationship with Talentica.

Disclaimer:

In this post, all are my own and Diya’s words. I’m employed at Talentica. My employer’s HR department don’t agree on this. If you think, they do agree, then you might need some serious medication.

Google is selling Orkut to Facebook

“Google has tried to stand in Social Network market. It has developed Open Social API to make better look of web. Since Open Social API launch, Google is failed to attract good social apps developers who can put good application for Orkut’s apps product directory. Because of huge competition, less audiences and less advertisers, Google has planned to sell Orkut to Facebook. From 1^st May 2008, www.orkut.com will be automatically redirected to www.facebook.com .

All Orkut users’ profile will be automatically created in Facebook with same Orkut user name and password. Orkut’s scrap page would be converted into Facebook wall. Orkut communities would be Facebook groups.

Moreover, Facebook agrees to launch next version of development platform which would be based on Open Social API. The current platform will support till the next platform launch. And the apps which are on the current Facebook platform would be converted into Open Social platform by Facebook engineers. So Facebook will hire the developers who know both Facebook platform and Open Social API. Facebook will plan to open its second development center which would be in India.

This deal will be entirely in cash rather than stocks.”

I got this news from my old pal who is employed at Googleplex.

He he he LOL :D

Every year on 1^st April Google does some big announcement about Google’s new product or reveal the technology behind existence product. In actual, it’s April fool hoaxes which lead to an intellectual sense of humor. So I thought this year I will make April fool hoax before Google does.

Look on Google's previous April fool hoaxes at here.

Happy March ending :)

Quitting from Smoke

Tobacco smoke is extremely complex in makeup, with over four thousand compounds identified in its composition. A total of sixteen known carcinogens, fourteen alkalis, and numerous other compounds with known biological activity are included in the four thousand plus compounds. Tobacco smoke is a mixture of gases in tiny droplets, and when a person inhales, about fifty percent of the inhaled smoke is retained in the lungs, and some of the droplets are deposited directly in the walls of the bronchial tubes. It directly causes lung cancer.

Each cigarette contains from one to three milligrams of nicotine, and for smokers who inhale, up to ninety percent of the nicotine is absorbed into the lungs. Nicotine causes constriction of the superficial vessels in the limbs; it raises the blood pressure; it increases the pulse rate; it makes the heart work harder. Its effects on the digestive tract are insidious and complex. It can cause nausea and vomiting, especially when one begins to smoke. It acts as a stimulant on the central nervous system. From above conclusion, single cigarette sounds like a dose of lethal poison.

And the worst thing about nicotine is that it's addictive. The levels of nicotine can easily be manipulated during the manufacturing process. "If," the level of nicotine is artificially increased, then smokers would naturally become addicted much faster. More addicted smokers mean more cigarettes sale. And more sales lead to more profit for cigarette companies. They intentionally kept nicotine high so people got hooked!

“Nicotine is physically and psychologically addicted to human”, stated Dr. Ashmita (new friend, came in contact from one old relationship with her friend), who works at Cancer Ward, Surat General Medical Hospital.

"Smoking cessation (stopping smoking) represents the single most important step that smokers can take to enhance the length and quality of their lives", says Dr. Yogesh Vaghela (an old pal since schooling days), who is Surgeon General in medical science.

Former drug addicts have testified that it was easier to quit heroin and cocaine than cigarettes.

MY SMOKING HISTORY
It was 6th April 2004, I smoked first cigarette in my life. Not to calculate how many days and how many cigarettes I smoked. Initially I was not heavy smoker (i.e. in 3rd and 4th year of Engineering). As I was struggling for job searching in Pune, I was in much frustration for not getting interview calls. In this phase the rate was increased. After coming in Industry it was regulation. In general, smokers can make friends very easily – as they are always gossiping together at cigarette/tea tapri(shop). And if your friend offers a cigarette, you can’t refuse to him. Initially I used to smoke 3-4 per day, but later on it increased to 8-9 per day and some days or on occasion it was reaching up to 13-14. Really it was too much, I knew that I was crossing my limit, but I couldn’t able to control on it. Since very long time I’m thinking to quit from it. But every time I failed on my decision. Now surly, it’s time to quit from it. I thought too much on it. And it’s DONE now.

CONCLUSION
I'm convinced cigarettes are dangerous and deadly; they kill more than four hundred thousand people a year; they're loaded with nicotine by their makers, who've known for a long time that the stuff is addictive; they could be a lot safer if the companies wanted, but the nicotine would be reduced and thus sales would suffer.

Special thanks to my friends, co-workers who tried to take me away from cigarette smoke. But I didn’t thorough it. It was my mistake. I confess it.

INSPIRATION
I inspired from The Runaway Jury – a novel by John Grisham. In last week when i was reading this novel I decided to quit very soon. The nicotine related most of the contents are taken from his novel.

If you are smoker and bit interested to read novel, please read this novel. It’s worth to read. If you want e-copy of this novel, just drop a mail to me. I will send you.

PS: come back after a week to know, pros and cons of quitting from smoke.

flickr has been cloned

I was just flipping through my google reader, i saw one blog and that guy has just posted the blog on his photos. I would not reveal that great blogger's name. But I can say he is very famous "funny blogger" in blogging community.

Almost one year back, the internet media startup ibibo has recently launched beta version of ibibo photos . Have a look on it!!! Its completely cloned from flickr , a yahoo!'s photo services company. I'm wonder, does any flickr developer or product manager has joined this startup. When ibibo started, mostly they hired from Yahoo! Bangalore. A typical startup company's policy, hiring from competitor.

Just have look on this product. After seeing my snapshot definitely you will say, its just directly copied form flickr. Scroll down to see all the snapshots, which i took for my flickr and ibibo photo accounts.

Snapshots

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own and neither Blogger nor any other party necessarily agrees with it.

Trekking at Harishchandra Gadh

I was much curious to join any trekking group as I love to see the god’s creations. And luckily I got the trekking group in my own company. In Talentica, so many folks are trekking lovers including our most senior Project Manager. They organized a trekking a few days back. I decided to take part on their trekking. And now officially I’m member of Talentica Trekking Club (TTC), it was announced by TTC’s Chairman and President Ranjan Kumar.

The Trek was on Harishchandra Gadh in Sahyadri, Maharashtra.

Trekkers:

• TTC’s Chairman and President – Ranjan Kumar, the fish-ponder and employee title announcer of Talentica.
• TTC’s Senior VP – Sandip More, ______________ (it’s for you… Please add a comment about his description).
• TTC’s Financial Controller – Rakesh Pathak, the Marathon winner (Talentica Marathon)
• TTC’s Resource Manager – Ashish Pande (Pandeji), he is master in describing the Dams among all over the India. He has visited all of the Dams in Maharashtra. And particularly he loves to visit Bhushi Dam, Lonavala. He visits Bhushi Dam monthly.
• TTC’s ex-General Manager – Manoj Rana, the guy who made a place for me in Talentica.
• And of course me – Jignesh Thummar, Do I need the description about me?

Journey:

Harishchandra Gadh is located on Kalyan-Ahmed Nagar main road. If you are in Mumbai, you can pick any ST bus which is running towards Ahmed Nagar or Nashik via Aale Phata and you have to get down Khubi Phata. If you are in Pune, you can pick any ST bus going towards Ahmed Nagar or Nashik and you have to get down Aale Phata. And from Aale Phata to again you have to pick a bus towards Khubi Phata. And from Khubhi Phata there is 8 KM distance to Khireshwar- the base village of Harishchandra Gadh, is the starting point of trekking for trekkers. Even though there is direct bus to Khireshwar from Pune which start around 4:00 pm from Pune Station. (Later on we got to know this). This is the journey route for Harishchandra Gadh. Let me tell you something about our experience.

We started around 7:00 pm from Pune and picked a bus towards Nashik, which dropped us Aale Phata around 9:30 pm. From Aale Phata to Khube Phata its around 1 hour journey in ST bus, if you get the bus. On Aale phata we inquired about the bus for Khube Phata. Everybody was telling that, there is bus frequency at every hour. But during early night to get a bus towards Khube Phata is on your luck. We got bus around 12:00 am. And we reached there within 40 minutes. It was Poonam on that night. So moon, stars and hills around it, were clearly visible. The look around Khube Phata was awesome with nice climate. During night you will not get any vehicle for Khireshwar – base village. Not any option. We had to walk to reach base village. And we started our trekking from Khube Phata itself. There is a nice Dam on the way to base village. We all were walking very fast. While we are walking Sandeep More was telling us ghost stories. He was telling that, during his one trek he met a lady ghost and she had mobile in her hand. But we all knew that the ghost thing is all fictions. We were just laughing on his stories. Even Pandeji asked him, why he didn’t take ghost’s cell number. Within an hour we covered almost 5 KMs. We were not that much tired but we decided to take rest for couple of hours, because actual trekking was long. From base village to Harishchandra Gadh is almost 4 hours trekking. And we found one School on the way. We ate some snacks and fruit juice.

School was nice place to take a nap. But when Ranjan Kumar was snoring at that time it is very difficult to take a nap for 5 minutes. Ranjan Kumar has started snoring since he get entry in his sleeping bag. Though we took some physical rest and it was needed.

In early morning we stared around 4:45 am and around 5:30 am we reached base village – Khireshwar. It was Poonam’s night and we ware thinking that we could plan this night trek. And most of the people had done night trek on that day. They must have started in early night and taking fun of camp fire on the way and they could reach around mid night, take rest for 4-5 hours and morning they can roam around Harishchandra Gadh.

The trekking journey was too much nice, though some places are little bit risky. And some risky places there are railings, so that you can take a support of it.

We reached there around 9:15 am. So it’s around 4 hours trekking. There is temple of Shivji and very good Shivling. There is eatable food available on the top. So no need to carry more food with you, otherwise your trekking bag will be heavy. You can get, Pauha, Tea, Sabji-Roti and Khichdi. But we found, one family bought packs of Maggy. If you go there, keep Maggy packs with you. You can boil maggy in the restaurant owner’s utensils. You will not get any kind of juice on top.

There is one point Kokan Kada, it’s half an hour walk from temple. It’s very nice point to see the scenic beauty of Sahyadri Hills. If you are standing, you can’t take view of the down side. Really if you want to take a view, you have to laid down on sleeping pose. Then only you can see it. We feel, the magnificence of Harishchandra Gadh is Konkan Kada. If you go to Harishchandra Gadh and you don’t visit this place, then you are missing something. We snapped so many photos there in different poses.

Another point, Taramati Point, almost 40 minutes almost vertical climbing from Temple. It is the top most point on Harishcahndra Gadh. It’s risky to get on the top of that point. If you are not much tired, you can visit this place. From this place you can see the complete view of Harishchandra Gadh. Here you can see the Dam of base village. And the road from Khubi Phata to Khireshwar.

Now time for back to pavilion. We started 3:15 pm and we reached 5:30 pm on the base village. Again the same case there is not transportation after 5:00 pm towards Khubi Phata. So you have plan accordingly. We were too much tired. We thought to take whole night rest in base village and catch a bus in next morning towards Pune. But it was Sunday. On next morning we have to reach office. There is bus from base village to Pune at 5:30 am. But luckily we got lift in car. Around 7:00 pm we reached Khube Phata. And we got one truck. The truck ride was nice and Manoj was enjoying talk with truck driver. Manoj wanted to seat in truck like he is seating at Talentica’s reception desk’s sofa as a guest. First time in my life I travelled in truck. The truck driver drop us Narayan Goan, form there we got bus towards Pune. And we reached Pune at 11:00 pm.

Overall, it was my first trek, but I enjoyed too much. The awesome trek with Talentican trekking crazy public. Our Project manager has been 14 times there. So you can amaze, how the beauty of this place. Even I have heard that people are trekking on this place during monsoon. It must be fun as well as much risky in monsoon.

The photos this trek can be found here

Really it was warm welcome in the trekking world!!!

PS: Don't forget to add a comment about Sandip More