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At ThoughtWorks Pune office, we were observing a regular pattern in Stand-up. Everybody will start to speak with “Yesterday, I did this… I did that…” and whole team used to feel it more of a status update and not giving idea and sharing the context. To address this issue, one of our team-mate came with a suggestion to avoid using word “Yesterday” in the stand-up. Now you don’t have word yesterday with you, you will be automatically forced to give a update which involves not only yesterday’s work but more than that. This worked great until following conversation happened…
(Names of the team-members are changed)
Friday, 14 Sept, 9:30 IST
…
Ganpat: “Yesterday, I worked on …”
Keshubabu: “Ganpat, don’t use word 'yesterday' or at least avoid using that…”
Ganpat: “Ok. Day-before-today I worked on…”
Whole team: !!!!!!!!!!!

That was a funny incident but, we really experienced value coming out of avoiding using word ‘Yesterday’. This helped us to achieve sharing of context of the story and not just yesterday’s work.

Today, after watching 'Shootout at Lokhandwala' (SAL), I realized that there is huge difference in the quality of movies produced in Hollywood and Bollywood. Directors like Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen and Steven Spielberg make movies which has lots of research and study. Not only the shot but the finest detail of shot gets enough attention. Movies which are having based on past events are shot with great precision to make sure that they don't have any present day detail.

In SaL I found few blunt mistakes which could have been fixed while shooting or at least at the editing time. On the top of mind few things come are -

• Tata Indigo! - The movie is shot in 1989-1992 timeframe. When Sunil Shetty makes a blank call to his wife, I could see a white colored Tata Indigo car passing by. Its impossible to see that car in 1991! The car was launched in India in year 2002. Strange to see that car in 1991.
• AA Group posters! - In the song 'Ganpat' when group of people are dancing on the top of a bus, we could easily see 'Anil Dhirubhai Ambani' Group advertisements on the light poles. This group was founded in 2005 after division of Ambani group of companies. I thought roots of this group were founded in 1992

In addition to that, there are other small mistakes too. Which you can easily find like the bikes which were not present in movie time line etc.

Looks like Indian directors have to put little more efforts in research and analysis to make movie more authentic and real. Movies like Hollywood ending, Schindler's List were based on past events. They were so real that you will believe those were produced from original footage which was conceived in the movie timeline.

Off to see Shrek 3!

Have you checked Pipes? I am really bad at predictions but I think this is going to be a great tool for bloggers, personal websites and even for commercials! The simple concept involved in pipes is really so powerful! When I first used Google Reader the way Google creates a stream of RSS feeds appealed me a lot.

Pipes is sequence of different modules which can do variety of things for you. You can ask for user input, sort the output, filter posts and lots of other things. This gives you complete liberty to process the RSS feed!

In two minutes I created a pipe. To demonstrate its power, wanna read my blog in French? Here comes the feed!

I used Babelfish translate service to translate the feed content.

I recently completed my one month in my new company. I hold my temptation to express my first impression of company for more than three weeks. I believe, to be fair you should spend at least a month before writing about new company. I was new to concepts of “Flat Organization”, “Agile Practices”, “Stand-ups” and “Sign-ups”. I was hoping to spend a fair amount of time in learning this process and be a part of it. Surprisingly I found it very easy to learn basics of that. Practicing them was even easier because of “Pair Programming” and other similar approaches.
I am not Odd man standing out anymore. I am a thoughtworker! (Somebody at my work will ‘disagree’ with that! )
ThoughtWorks, is amazingly different than other organizations I have seen, visited or been. Following are the things which come on top of mind when I compare ThoughtWorks with any other companies.

1. No cubicles! – This is a blessing! Everyone sits around tables which mostly look like dining tables. All of your team members, are at a proximity where you can directly call him and have a discussion across tables! This increases a little noise in office but it’s worth it. I learned to work in that now.
2. Very energetic team which is very rare to see. In a technical discussion we always run out of time because of overwhelming ideas to discuss on table.
3. Agile at its core which is practiced very religiously!
4. Resources availability. Company which provides high-end latitudes to everybody for personal use. There are virtually not restrictions for personal / technical growth.
5. Every ThoughtWorker is passionate about what he/she is doing!

Comparing ThoughtWorks with any other company is like comparing apples and oranges! Their fundamental structure is different.
I met few of very interesting people in new workplace. I had lots of technical discussions. The very strange thing was, in ThoughtWorks one of my friends opens and closes the discussions with only single phrase –

“Hey, I don’t agree with you! How about that?”

Need for Speed: Carbon is the latest release from EA. This game is way ahead of its predecessors in physics and modeling. The stunning graphics, great music and nicely arranged plot made my day.
I have been playing NFS since NFS 2. Since then I played every release and my all time favorite is Need For Speed Porsche Unleashed. That game was something really stunning graphics, Porsche theme and way too real than its competitors!
I was wondering, what will be the next version of NFS: Carbon? If we see the trend of games, it can be categorized as follows:

• NFS 2 - Plain racing
• NFS 3 - Pursuit
• NFS 4 - Racing with better physics and realism
• NFS 5 - Theme based game (Porsche lineup)
• NFS 6 - Pursuit (Reloaded version of NFS 3)
• NFS 7 - Underground theme
• NFS 8 - Underground theme reloaded in much better way
• NFS 9 - Mix n' match of pursuit and career mode
• NFS 10 - Underground theme revisited again with strong pursuit and territory based career mode

EA has always tried to put new race modes and latest cars. A constant effort to make NFS more than just racing can be observed in previous games. So what can be the next theme? I think a more realistic betting could be another option. Player earns and bets in racing. If you loose all the money, you are out of the career mode and your cars will be lost.
The customization is the key now. Autosculpt in NFS carbon has done a great job. NFS carbon was having many other things such as crew members and some racing modes. I miss drag racing though!

What you think?