Kids learn everyday

My niece and nephew are so cute that I barely think of what I say while interacting with them. Recently their mom (who happens to be my elder sister) have brought into light some inappropriate repercussions of my actions and words. I have realized that kids learn very fast and from now onwards I should be careful.

So, when we visit them this time , I would like to teach them something. I can tell them some good stories (they love listening to stories) or may be some art work or could be something else. All in all, I would like to contribute something to their learning.

Stories of Shakespeare? Err…I know very few stories of Shakespeare. And I have to brush up myself for those which I know.

Other simple stories?

Some General Knowledge Topics? Have to build a list.

Functions of heart, kidney, pancreas and liver? Well let me take out my biology books from the store-room.

Morals and ethics?

Painting?

Importance of various foods?

Piano or harmonium?

Any other idea? Please let me know………….

Hey Linux learners !

I can use so many adjectives to describe Linux. Linux is interesting. It is powerful yet simple. It is beautiful and glamorous.

If you really want to learn Linux, go to Lessons at Linux.org

One thing that is so special about this website is that it will make you fall in love with linux.

Technical writing in software companies

Often it is found that software companies are not able to define their requirements for the job of technical writer. They give an advertisement in the local newspaper or an online job portal and specify just good English as the main requirement of the job. But I think there is more into it. An ideal technical writer should have an interest and understanding of technology.

The job of technical writing in software companies is two-fold:

1. Preparing software documentation : It involves rigorous consultation with the software developer. The objective is to help any other technical expert to understand the syntax and logic of the program using flow charts, data flow diagrams, etc. Here is where your technical knowhow come into play.

2. Preparing user manuals : It involves writing online guides, help files, installation guides. It is to be written in simple English avoiding any computer jargon. It is like explaining the how-to and applications of your product to a layman. Here is where your English language skills come into play. A wrong grammar may completely change the meaning of any sentence. So correct grammar is very important.

So. in my opinion, software companies should hire technical writers with the following skill set and qualities:

Good written English with correct English grammar and sentence construct.

Knowledge of SDLC, programming languages, programming logic.

Ability to create E-R diagrams,flowcharts, use cases, data flow diagrams, etc.

Excellent communication skills to interact with the software developers.

Knowledge of documentation(writing) tools.

WordPress stats vs Google Analytics.

Okay, so I thought that WordPress stats gives you information about visitor sources also. I thought I would love to know if anyone is reading my blog. Did a quick go-through the wordpress stats FAQs and found that it does not provide visitor info. Instead it refers “Sitemeter” for visitor-analysis. I signed up for a free account at sitemeter….it asks you to put a sitemeter code in the HTML part of the pages(posts) you want to track. Just followed the instructions.

So now I have the results, that is the sitemeter stats for my wordpress blog. Thanks to all my visitors for reading my blog.

WordPress says that it uses the same code as Google analytics. But unlike WordPress stats, Google Analytics shows you the visitor sources as well.

Kids are so funny yet cute

I was just browsing and reading blogs randomly when I found a blog where a lady wrote about a funny event. The lady being a child care taker, was surrounded by children.

She asked them “How do I go to heaven? Will I go to heaven if I sell my house and live in the countryside?”. The chidren said “No”.

Once again she said “Will I be able to go to heaven if I mopped the church and sit there for hours?”. Again there was a shout saying “No”.

Again she asked ” Will I be going to heaven if I help the poor?”…The reply was a firm “No.

She tried once again ” So how do I go to heaven if I really want to?”. One of them stood up and shouted ” You gotta be dead first”.

Is PageRank really that unimportant?

Today I visited a subdomain of our site after a long time and found that the PageRank of this url is 5. I said Vow! Thats Gr8.

The question is : Wouldn’t you be happy if your PageRank goes from 1 to 5? Would you be wrong to think that you may have better chances of better rankings? Its true that you may or may not have better rankings since there are other factors also which Google consider while determining the ranking. But at least PageRank, which is ONE among all the factors, is in your favour.

Imagine that you are working towards better G! rankings of a website. And you have been doing link building, for say three months. No other task…you are not doing any changes to the site……and you are just dynamically adding content to your site regularly(that is, actually updating your database daily). No other changes on the site. Just link building. No change in rankings. After two months you notice an increase of upto 4 points in the PR . Would you be happy? I felt happy. I put it this way – “Google considers the sites linking to my site as important. Google acknowledges and rewards my link building campaign”.

ABOUT PAGERANK:

According to Google, high PR means a page with higher importance.Importance is judged by the number of votes (links) given by other people(sites) to you and the importance of those sites in question.

When a site links to you, Google considers it as a vote for you. The more number of votes (links)you get from different people (sites), more Google considers you as important. While assigning you a PageRank, it questions the importance of (PR) of the sites linking to you as well. So it can be thought as this way – Pages having high PR are linked to by few pages with high PR or by quite a number of pages with low/moderate PR.

A few facts about PageRank:

PageRank is a Google Trademark.

The actual PageRank considered for computing the rankings in SERPs is different from the Toolbar PageRank. The actual one is the Internal PageRank which is very complex. The ToolBar PageRank can be thought of as a simpler representation of the actual PageRank (Internal PageRank).

PageRank is just ONE of ALL the factors Google considers for determining the rankings for a particular keyword. Some examples of other factors considered for rankings in SERPs are :
Frequency of the occurence of the query keywords in the anchor text of incoming links.
Complete page devoted to the topic related to the query words.
There are several such factors.

The concept of PR was developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

References:

http://www.google.com/technology/

http://www.google.com/librariancenter/articles/0512_01.html

God is the greatest programmer

I often indulge in spiritual thinking……. on the matters of life, death and the purpose.

Lets take our body…there are so many consequences for the actions performed on our body. For example, heat causes us burns. Too much workout exhausts us. We may even have a muscle or bone injury. If we drink less water, we get dehydrated. If we take potassium cyanide, we are dead. For any other poison, the consequence depends upon the type of poison and the duration. The same poison may or may not be fatal to ather animals.

I always question why. Why does heat cause burn? What is burn? A burn is a change in the chemical (organic components) of the skin accompanied by pain. Pain is a bad feeling which is the effect of this stimuli…see how evident is the difference between this pain and the effect of smelling a rose. So God created these feelings as well. These are so complicated.

To me, God’s creation looks like a massive computer program with the use of different types of loops. Its like a never ending program.I wish to write more on this topic but perhaps later or perhaps in some other post. For the time being, see an
analogy between a computer program and God’s creation………………Have a nice time………………………..

I want to express myself.

Hello readers

First of all, thanks for dropping by. I have decided to express my thoughts through blogging. Let me share my thoughts one by one.