Increase Productivity with Power Nap

It is generally said that every adult should get an average of eight hours of sleep. This is the agreed scientific fact so far. See this harvard article for more details.

I am not ready to go by this. Reasons

1. Contradicts the religious beliefs - Allah says pious spend most of the night standing (in prayers)
2. Adjusting to this schedule is really hard given that I need to wake up at 5:30 AM latest everyday

Having heard of power naps, I did some Googling. Out of the results I got, the below site seemed convincing of the benefits of napping.

http://io9.com/the-science-behind-power-naps-and-why-theyre-so-damne-1401366016

Especially, see the video linked on the site above. Its a really convincing one (or is it too nice to be true?)

With some confusion, I turned to Sunnah, to see the guidance of Prophet Muhammad on this subject.

The below youtube playlist was really good, esp the last three clips.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6514cZM-7M&list=PL891F0A15E304F15A

Below are some important points from the video that took my attention:

1. The Prophet dis-liked doing anything after Isha: Go to bed after Isha.
2. The Prophet fluctuated the time of Isha: This makes sense if that is the last thing you do at the end of the day.
3. The Prophet preferred to delay Isha till the middle of the night: Falls somewhere around 11 PM (the speaker assumes night starts from Magrib)
4. The Prophet naps between Qiyam-al-lail, and Fajr
5. The Prophet makes Qailoolah: Napping in the middle of the day. Assuming day starts from Fajr and ends at Magrib, middle of the day falls somewhere around 11:30 AM. It is customary to have a relief of work between Zuhr and Asr in the middle east, and this is practiced to the date.
6. The speaker also emphasizes on the prophetic etiquette of sleep, such as the recitals, and ablution.

If you are familiar with the concept of Qailoolah and thinking of the right time to perform it, the below article can shed light in it (anytime in the afternoon, before or after, zuhr). 

http://islamqa.org/hanafi/darulifta-deoband/24332

Note: If you are someone who takes time to fall asleep, and thinking that 20 minute power nap is not for you, you may be wrong. Napping is not sleeping. Read the below.
http://lifehacker.com/5501942/how-i-mastered-the-power-nap

Unix Phiolosophy: "do one thing, and do it well" Comes to GUI World Now

Unix command line is still widely used. Everyday, it sees new users who appreciate it. You don't see a lot of duplicated effort in command line tools.
There's only one 'cd', 'cp', 'chmod' etc..
Then these commands are designed to work together by using standard input/output, redirections, piping, scripting etc. They all work like one family. The output of one is taken as the input of the other and they can be chained in a single line like awesome players.

find . -name 'filename' | xargs -r ls -tc | head -n1

But, each GUI application tries to redo what others have already done. A word processor tries to do image editing, an image editor tries to do word processing, etc...
This leads to a lot of duplicate effort, and wasted energy. We don't see the culture of one program doing only one thing and doing it well. Even if they do so, their is no specification how they work together and how one can achieve something bigger by putting them together.

It seems the answer is near. It is Plasmate in KDE.

Just read http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130325152022-1791094-my-mother-s-daughter?ref=email

Thought of those days in which I came to know that my was having cancer. I resigned my Job from Virtusa those days, although I was a happy and appreciated employee, and joined OrangeHRM just to have a better work-life balance.

Same feelings.

Use cases or User stories: What is it that we do in OrangeHRM

A user story is very simple and is written by the customer. It's incomplete, possibly inaccurate, and doesn't handle exceptional cases because not a lot of effort is expended making sure it's correct. During development, it serves as a reminder and a starting point for additional discussions with the customer about the full extent of his needs.

No we don't do the above.

A use case is more complex and is written by the developer in cooperation with the customer. It attempts to be complete, accurate, and handle all possible cases. A lot of effort it expended to make sure it's correct. During development, it's intended to be able to answer any developer questions about customer requirements so that developers may proceed without having to track down the customer. 

Yes the above is what we do

XP stories (and similar things, often called features) break requirements into chunks for planning purposes. Stories are explicitly broken down until they can be estimated as part of XP's release planning process.... A story may not even show up in a use case narrative, such as adding a new asset depreciation method to a pop up list.

 No. The above is not done at the specification level. But, probably done during iteration planning.

Conclusion: User stories and use cases do overlap, and sometimes the same at different precision levels. I think we do use cases in 2 digit precision.

Is My Child's Montessori a Real Montessori?

My son starts preschooling next week. I am not much worried about his education as he already
1. Recognizes vowels in Tamil
2. Can count up to ten
3. Can add up numbers using his fingers for counting
4. Knows colours
5. Draws basic shapes
6. Colours inside shapes
7. Knows some rhymes
8. Can tell meaningful stories (can even make up one for you)
9. Asks a lot of questions
etc..
I think the above may be well enough for a child of 3.6 years.

We , my family including my parents, didn't leave some basics such as learning alphabets solely at his teacher's hands. Even if he doesn't even learn a single word from the preschool, it is fine with me as he already knows what a child should know academically. Instead, I expect him to learn morality, how to cope up with others, how to accept both success and failure equally, socializing with others etc at the preschool.

There are a lot of preschools, often called montessories - appropriately or not - in our area, but I was picky in one since I find that the teachers there are kind, somewhat broadminded, and have a sound religious background.

I met brother-in-law uncle today, who is a principal of a secondary school, and his wife runs a nursery for more than six year. He told me that they have purchased a complete study pack spending around 400,000 LKR which guides a child from 3 years to 14. Having not spending that much, I was thinking why they could not get some free materials from the internet and print them out in good quality themselves which would have costed much less than the amount they had spent. Thought of trying it out myself.

Did some searching online and found that keywords homeschooling, preschool, and montessori bring more relevant contents. And, being new to montessori method, just read some article here and there but came across something very important; how to check whether the preschool my son is going to attend provide montessori education or not. The following are the criteria I came across from The American Montessori Society

• mixed-aged classes, in which older children serve as role models and helpers;

• a full array of developmentally appropriate Montessori learning materials;

• teachers with credentials from a Montessori teacher education program;

• adherence to the Montessori instructional approach, with teachers serving as guides rather than givers of information.

Getting curious on evaluating my son's preschool with the above criteria. Whether they follow montessori or not is not going to change my decision on whether my son will study there or not. But, the online research gave me some inspiration to try some montessori concept on my son.

Need to learn some more and try it out.

Anti-Islam Movie Contradicts Youtube's Community Guidelines

Google, if wishes, has all the reasons to remove the anti-Islam movie which creates a big fuzz these days. Such removal will not be the first time, as Google has already removed such offending clips when it came to holocaust denial. It had also removed numerous videos posted during Gaza Invasion, as the videos contained dead bodies claimed to be killed by Israeli soldiers.
Term:

YouTube is not a shock site. Don't post gross-out videos of accidents, dead bodies or similar things intended to shock or disgust.

Try the following link and see for yourself.
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7FBB27616F4428B7

The anti-Islam movie is in clear contradiction to the following Google Community Guidelines, but still resides there safe and sound in youtube, enjoying the popularity.
1. Hate Speech
Term:

We encourage free speech and defend everyone's right to express unpopular points of view. But we don't permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity).

In the same page Hate Speech is defined as:

"Hate speech" refers to content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group. For instance, racist or sexist content may be considered hate speech. Sometimes there is a fine line between what is and what is not considered hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation, but not okay to make insulting generalizations about people of a particular nationality

2. Harassment
Term:

Things like predatory behavior, stalking, threats, harassment, intimidation, invading privacy, revealing other people’s personal information, and inciting others to commit violent acts or to violate the Terms of Use are taken very seriously. Anyone caught doing these things may be permanently banned from YouTube.

In the same page Harassment is defined as:

It comes down to respect. YouTube is all about sharing and interacting with the community in respectful ways. If you're not sure whether a video or comment you've made crosses the line, follow a simple rule of thumb: if you wouldn't say it to someone's face, don't say it on YouTube. And if you're looking to attack, harass, demean, or impersonate others, go elsewhere.

Sri Lanka's Rating Based on Media Freedom For the Past Ten Years

I was just going through the rating of countries according to media freedom from Reporters Without Borders'.
What caught my eyes is that we (Sri Lankans) are just one step better than Somalia, and rated 163rd of 179 countries.
I then started comparing the ratings given to us during the past ten years. The results below.

2002 - 51
2003 - 89
2004 - 110
2005 - 115
2006 - 141
2007 - 156
2008 - 165
2009 - 162
2010 - 158
2011/12 - 163

Numbers speak. No comments from me.