Retired Life

I have read some good trading books.

There is the classic "Technical Analysis of Stock Trends" by Edwards, Magee,
and Bassetti.
Another is "Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom" by Van K Tharp.

I have a long reading list that I am still working my way through.

(from an older, wiser friend)

Articulation - The Power of Communication

Why are social skills so important (coming from someone who wished he had started training much earlier :) ). Here's one angle to consider : The better you are with people, the easier you open up and talk about what's important to you. Smart people discuss ideas. Ideas are your real children. Have you thought about why you have ideas that you never talk about? Because you're afraid of having them mocked at. You want to protect your children. But, with good social skills, you can create a safe place for your ideas in minutes. I was surprised today to hear myself articulate how what I really want to be doing is building security systems and applications - how I want to be in surveillance and remote monitoring. That is the key to this country going green and cutting costs in healthcare and achieving energy independence. We can do it if we approach it the right way. We are spending way too much money having people watch our backs when they could be doing more useful work.

How Fast is a Wilson Current Mirror?

Assuming you want a reasonable phase margin (meaning, if you have two poles, keep the 2nd one at 2x UGB).

You'll see why your PMOS mirror usually gets away without any explicit compensation cap..

If we assume,

Then, assuming the source follower works good (i.e., its Cgs doesn't come into play because its V(S) = V(S) due to unity gain.. (nice, in reality, you don't get that because of the gmbs - so, straightaway, some of the CGS *has* to come into play)

Also, assuming that 

We get, if you go around the loop,

and 

So, if one substitutes the expression for gm, one gets, again, using 

What we are interested in is, how fast will the cap that the input current sees take to charge to the final voltage. Or, how does this Cc (which is what the I_in now sees) compare with the effective input cap for a simple current mirror? If you call that cap C_simple, it has to be 2 * W1 * L1 *Cox

Giving

Moral? If you want to see a benefit, keep the mirror devices' aspect ratio as low as possible and the aspect ratio of the cascode (which does the unity gain buffer role) devices as large as possible.

NEdit word delimiters

For some reason, unknown to me, on RHEL4, with Gnome, the word delimiters in my .Xdefaults weren't taking effect - so '/' was a delimiter, due to which I couldn't select a whole pathname with a double-click.

Fixed by

ln -s .Xdefaults .Xresources

I Could Pick Up Julia Roberts if She Were Single

Also sprach meine freund. He says there are three rules :

1) Eliminate all desire
2) Do something nice with the girl
3) Retreat. Don't pursue

You should make a spiritual non-religious connection with the girl. What they are thinking about is :

1) How interesting will their life be with you
2) How good a father will you make

There you have it. Now go forth and multiply.

Richard Mulvey : The 4 Minute Man

Check out a segment by this South African. Might be useful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPzclUzBa1I

Maybe you need to buy new clothes if a certain meeting is important to you.

Conner's Specialty : Stating the Obvious

He had to write a book after a great year. Problem is, he did it because he had to do it. Result, a painfully mediocre effort. The only useful stuff is on pgs 13-15 :

Self-image : make mental affirmations to improve your behaviour. Your conduct must reinforce the positive image you have of yourself.

How do you come across? Dress? Resume? Homework? Think ahead of what kind of image you'll be projecting in the moment of truth.

How do you speak about your expectations? Salary? You must know what you want and where you want to go. Responsibilities you'd like to have? Think about all this in advance. You must have a clear statement when faced with these questions. What questions do you have for your interviewer? Consider "Where do you expect this co to be in x years?", "Whom do u consider your biggest c?", "What's been your most successful line de prods?" worthwhile, as opposed to "What kind of quals are you lookng for?", "Is there room for promo?", "When will I have my first PR?".

Like I said, obvious.

Horizontal Scrolling in Windows

You can use the scrollwheel to navigate up and down a page. What about left and right? Hold down the SHIFT key! After 6 years as a dedicated Windows user!

NEdit = Super Edit

Somewhere along the line, they upgraded to full regex support I believe. The backreference thing didn't work well for me, but anyway. Here are the things I've added (though the menus, but you can cut&paste) to get syntax highlighting with Autohotkey code. A true software type might do a much better job at this.

In each section (denoted by nedit.whatever - shown here just as a label - don't add this line) add the lines given

nedit.highlightPatterns: Ada:Default\n\

Autohotkey:1:0{\n\
comment:"(;.+$)|(^/\\*.+^\\*/)":::Comment::\n\
hotkey:"^[ \\t]*[^:]+(?=::)":::Flag::\n\
command:"^ *[a-zA-Z0-9_]+(?=($|[ \\t]*,|[ \\t]+[^ \\t:=(]))":::Keyword::\n\
string:"""[^""]*""|'[^']*'":::String1::\n\
builtin:"(?iif|loop|return|break|continue|while)\\s*(?=\\()":::Subroutine::\n\
expression:"^\\s*\\w+\\s*(?=[:=])":::Storage Type::\n\
}

nedit.languageModes: Ada:.ada .ad .ads .adb .a:::::::\n\
Autohotkey:.ahk::Smart:None:4::".,/\\\\`'!$@#%^&*()-=+{}[]"":;<>?~|":

nedit.macroCommands: \
Comments>Comment@Autohotkey:F3::: {\n\
replace_in_selection("^", "; ", "regex")\n\
process_cancel()\n\
}\n\
Comments>Uncomment@Autohotkey:F4::: {\n\
replace_in_selection("^; ", "", "regex")\n\
}\n

Correctly Setting Your Prompt in tcsh or csh

This is *the* way (no arguments please)

set prompt='%~/ !>'

How to set your PATH - the wrong way :

(wrong)

setenv PATH whatever
or
set PATH ($PATH:/dir/dir2)

right way :

set path ($path /dir/dir2)
(that's magic, $PATH gets set automatically, in tcsh or csh - bash is crap of course)

Good aliases to set

ll ls -l !\*
lt ls -lt !\* \| less -X
nes echo \$cwd/!\*

Perl Tk Tutorial

I mention this just so it'll be easy for me to find in the future. I'm running this on WinXP Cygwin btw.

http://www.bin-co.com/perl/perl_tk_tutorial/contents.php

I tried starting a debate on which was better for what I wanted to do - perl or autohotkey. Looks like I end up with people tell me how to do what I want in AHK. AHK is super - light, has a basic visual frontend for simple GUI creation, is dead simple to install, no dependencies, and generates executable. Perl is super for serious stuff though.

Guruspeak :

Problem with AHK solutions is that they are tied to a specific platform. Tools like Perl and Java are generally more portable. (With Perl it depends on the availability of the module for multiple platforms esp. with GUI.) You can also consider using Qt directly since it is cross platform. This was built by a company called Trolltech who were acquired by Nokia http://qt.nokia.com/products and this is the backbone for KDE's GUI.

Response :

All too heavy. Autohotkey seems to be the only thing that's light and comes with a decent visual WYSIWYG frontend. And they have a forum with great people who help you out.

The Hardest Part - Made Easy

For a CS guy, this would be a breeze - a GUI that lets you talk to your chip, load macros, save macros. But, me, I have to suffer. Fortunately, through the great work of Mr. Rajat, of Autohotkey fame, I don't have to mess with crap like java AWT or M$ VB or VC++. SmartGui Creator does the work for you - creating the GUI that is, you still have to fill in stuff..



The "macros" part promises to be interesting. I've never done anything like it before. But, my recent brush with iPhone programming has me thinking along the right lines I think - though a true CS programmer might get a shock at my approach :

Have your utility functions
Have an execute queue
Have macro queues
When an event needs to be handled, add the required function call to the execute queue and to the "history" macro queue; then call the execute function which takes that queue as its input
When a macro is called, dump all of its contents into the execute queue and call the execute function

So, you're really building a parser and an exec function, etc. Like I said, a CS man would know exactly where to look to get this done in 5 minutes. Good programmers can code. Great programmers can reuse.

Image courtsey of flamingtext.com btw - see your name in big lights, make cool logos.

Assertiveness 101

Return to my place at InTown Suites and find stuff has moved around - and the bed looks made. They've swapped the linens. Mercifully, my laptop is as it was. Go into the bathroom and I see an extra towel on the bar - yuck, it's the floor rug. That renders all my towels useless. To clean the floor they took the rug off it (which looks identical to the towels btw) and put it on the towel bar with the other towel. That's InTown for you. Beware. Their policy is to give you one set of towels at movein and let you keep them. Talked to the office and got a couple of new towels. Mgr gave me some rot about what are they supposed to do, to clean the floor they have to keep the towels somewhere right? You get what you pay for. Yup, InTown is the cheapest.

Inverted Poles and Zeros

I've seen few real gems like this one from Dr. Middlebrook. Makes me devalue my education more and more. Why didn't they tell us about stuff like this before?

This is for analog designers only, so that you don't waste your time. www.ardem.com.

A Career in IC Design

http://cppsim.com/lectures.html

Switcher Design Without Tears

From an expert switching regulator designer :

I personally try to develop a model that starts as an averaged model and ends as a close as possible to the actual implementation of the switcher that I'm trying to design.

While Matlab is useful for quick checks, it is not as useful as VerilogA when it comes to actually designing the controller and doing model/circuit comparisons.
State-space averaging is a neat way to include a lot of variables into your model, but for a more simple and direct way refer to The Fundamentals of Power Electronics by Robert Erickson & Dragan Maksimovic. I strongly suggest that you read this book, especially the control section. It's tough to design a switcher without first having a good handle on the different loop dynamics. If you're working with other folks that are more senior in the area of power management, ask them to share you the very many other issues and hidden obstacles that exist along the way; they will bite you. These are too many to mention on this message.

TWM - Combining Modifier Keys

Button1 = control & shift : w : f.move

Useful when you're using Autohotkey to trap Alt to enhance Win XP.

Mann may also abbreviate as :

Button1 = c & m : w : f.move
Button3 = c & m : w : f.fullzoom
"F2" = : w : f.lower
Button1 = s & m : w : f.iconify
Button3 = s & m : w : f.resize

Here, it's CTRL and ALT together. fullzoom is a big productivity booster in my opinion - you want to quickly maximize and minimize. Now, if I could somehow get my Ultr@VNC to give me dual monitor... I found out that RealVNC is good for that - you can atleast get your desktop to span both screens, though, you're not at true dual montior behavior the way Win XP does it because, when you maximize a window, it takes up both screens. There are some things about Win XP you just have to love. Or else they couldn't charge money for it:)

Of course, these lines go in your ~/.twmrc. Here's a good resource on available functions :

http://www.x.org/archive/X11R6.8.2/doc/twm.1.html

Resume Tips

froma guru

1. Conform to the Specific, Measurable, Attainable, etc rule for terminology
2. Don't list tasks
3. Start and finish on one page
4. Ditch the objective.
5. No grammar errors allowed
6. Resume means summary in Fr, so don't have a summary on a summary. Oops:)
7. Tailor it to where you want to go - so leave out irrelevant stuff.

The Analog Design Flow

Need to get this to the PDK master soon. A good example of the sort of stuff I do is on page 6 here, a good presentation anyways. One of the independent contractor guys says he uses Simucad and Tanner. We used Cadence at work and, while I miss it, I can think of a hundred ways it could be better. One of the heaviest and most inflexible tools you've ever seen. Not surprised they reported a 1.4b loss recently (q? yr?)

To do analog design:

1) Specifications - all values in the absolute maximum ratings (supply, temp) must be set in stone - they should not be TBD
2) Tool for schematic capture (meaning ability to generate a spice netlist)
3) spice - or, if working in RF, an equivalent of ADS or spectre
4) waveform viewer to view results.
5) spice models - this is the huge bottleneck - and depends heavily on a relationship with a vendor like MOSIS. But, there are other options like CMP and e-shuttle. Relationships are the key here - there are people who will let us put IP on their chips so we can test them
6) PDK - which really includes the spice models - we need to know what devices are available in the process, how to estimate die size, etc
7) corner spice models and mismatch models - design for manufacturing.
8) tool to use mismatch and statistical models to predict yield - this is important to productize a design. If you know that a parameter is guaranteed by design, then you don't need to test it - if you characterize it. But, if you know that you will have some yield loss which is acceptable, then you need to prescribe a test that can catch the bad chips

BTW, one name I've heard tossed about in the forums for cheaper analog design - compared to the Cadence suite is penzar : http://penzar.com/

Influential Leadership

Attended an IEEE Networking Dinner on Monday - Sam Palazzolo of Pathos Leadership spoke. Are you an influencer or an influenced person? If you do a favour for someone and he thanks you, the influential response is "You'd have done the same for me". Don't say you're welcome, don't mention it, etc.

There are 6 themes - reciprocity, consistency and commitment, liking, authority, social proof and scarcity.

• You should use information to differentiate yourself. If you have useful information - share it.
• People like other people who compliment them and cooperate with them - charisma.
• Authority is founded on knowledge and trustworthiness.
• When you want someone to say yes to a request, you can try to first present him with a big request that he's sure to say no to. Present in a nice way that'll make him feel bad to say no. Then, present him a smaller request that will be easier for him to say yes to. For example, girl scouts trying to sell cookies will say - would you like to chaperone one of our sleepovers. No? Then how about buying 2 boxes of cookies instead? (Really? David Lieberman presents research on the foot-in-the-door technique - get them to say yes to a small request first then present the bigger one after you've primed them.
• When you are trying to sell people something, the negative sometimes might work better when you try to get them to go from A to B. If you watch diet/slimming commercials, you'll see this in action.
• Your legacy is made up of your work, family, health, happiness and friendships.
• Ask yourself "In what area is it clear that I can't get to where I want to go with the story I've got?"

If some or all of this didn't make sense to you, you're probably not alone.

There's Art, And..

there's art that leaps out at you - like this one by

The Art of War

by David D'allesandro. You can get an idea of what he's like by searching for that name on Goog video and you'll get a Businessweek sound byte. Seems okay, but, to me, seems to lack the refinement that you expect in a CEO. But who am I to judge based on one sound byte?

One thing he mentions more than once is the "room-changer" thing: Who is the room-changer? Which one creates a dramatically different and more positive aura whenever he or she walks into the room? (tell me about that one - I've seen a few types who cast a spell of doom on the room!) Even if your back is to the door, you don't need trumpets or 'Hail to the Chief' to know that a person of presence has come in.

How?

1. Offer something substantial that's not just self-importance. Energy to listen, solve problems, make things happen. 
2. Be true to yourself and the things you believe. Don't craft a personality. If you choose to take a position on an organizational issue, how will it look in a 30 second political attack ad? 
3. Have a sense of perspective. The people whose paychecks you sign will only say good things about you and tell you positive stuff. You have to have friends who don't care about what your position is. (to me, this also means : "don't try to win all the time - in every conversation")

The things about Nike being a place to learn marketing but not practice it is another big thing I got out of this.

Then, about bosses - they may tell you they're interested in helping your career. What they mean is, "Wise up. I'm interested in making my own career better. If that works for you, well and good." Basically, you want to help your boss's career in the hope that you can rise with her.

I learnt some things I didn't know about GE. I thought GE was a great place where the best people were democratically chosen to be leaders because everyone agreed they were the best. In Jack: Straight from the Gut, the a.b. of Welch, he describes the politics surrounding his own contest for the chairmanship of GE as "thick."

Then, how do you find the mole? Use the CIA trick. David Lieberman would love this one. Say you have three suspects, give each one a different piece of false, damaging information about you and see which one surfaces. Get scared if all three do: You are really unpopular!

One funny part of the book is where he talks about one bad hire he made: Not only was her work shabby and inaccurate, her behaviour was so bizarre that she soon lost all credibility with the people who worked for her. Here is just one example among many: She had this strange relationship with M&Ms. She would buy a giant bag of M&Ms, and instead of having lunch, she would take them into a conference room and lay them all out, by colour, battalions of M&Ms, all with the letter "M" facing her. Never mind the sanitary issues of eating them right off the conference table, she'd talk to her candies before she ate them: "Okay, yellow battalion, your turn!"

Some of these outfits can pay a headhunter a $200k fee for hiring someone in a senior management position. 

In the old days - before the 90's about 1 in 10 CEO's were sacked by the boards. In the new era, it's about 1 in 3.

Socially, once you reach senior management, don't socialize with your employees! You just increase the odds of something nasty happening to undermine your career! Damn - what this must do to the legions of young riffraff aiming for the high posts just for the social life that should accompany it.

One thing he talked about which struck very close to home was a loan shark culture at work: When I was a kid, my dad borrowed from loan sharks. The interest was five percent a week, and it had to be paid every week. If the loan shark's collector walked in, and my dad said, "Look, my kid was in the hospital this week. I can't pay you until next week," the collector would say, "I'm really sorry to hear about your kid in the hospital. Pay me my money."

At some organizations, this attitude is endemic.

Now, those who know I worked for a quality outfit might wonder about this. Was it like that in my place of work? What I can say is that the businessscape is extremely competitive. To survive, you have to compete against a lot of shady outfits and cost is king. So is delivery. If you can't deliver, you're in trouble. Which is worse, to know that you're dead if you don't get across the tracks before the train gets there or to dread nasty meetings on a daily basis? My take.. it trickles down from the top. If you're careful about how you hire, you'll never get into such problems. I've seen entire teams dragged down because one or two resources don't care about pulling their weight. And they'll wrestle - they're pigs, and they love it. Hiring is one of the toughest decisions that involves so little work. Really, what can you do? You can ask questions, but how hard is that? This is where experience and judgement come in. Even the smart ones who can deliver can become tyrants and terrorize the other members of their team and make other worthwhile contributors walk up and leave. I've seen that happen too.

Based on what happened to me, the next time you contemplate changing groups internally, you're looking at getting a whole bunch of answers. Which business group are you really part of? What is the history? Why do you guys sit here when the rest of that business group sits there? Who is really responsible for this project? Which business group is going to pay for new hires to staff this project? What if things don't go well? Who cracks the whip? If I do deliver, what can I expect in one year? In two years? In three? And the thing you might find really hard - telling your present boss about this opportunity and getting his take on it. Sure, things aren't going well. But, he has a stake in seeing you depart gracefully. It makes your boss look bad if you just up and go.

What d'Allesandro says is to walk quickly if you find you're in a loan shark culture - at least start looking now!

And the part of the book I really liked :

At John H, we had a simple cultural goal: We wanted to make the company a great place to be at and a great place to be from.

A great place to be at, in my opinion, is one where there is a free exchange of ideas, where there is some humor and fun, and where people's contributions are rewarded. Why did we want to make it a great place to be from? Because no organization can hang onto all of its good people. There is only one head of marketing slot, only one CFO's job. If nobody leaves, you wind up with many highly talented but extremely frustrated men and women.

Great one! Reed Hastings, in "No Rules Rules" talks about building a team with high talent density. Part of that is - adequate performance earns a generous severance package 😊

Soft Skills Aren't Soft

Just ask Peggy Klaus

self-awareness
trustworthiness
conscientiousness
adaptability
critical thinking
attitude
initiative
empathy
confidence
integrity
self-control
organizational awareness
likability
influence
risk taking
problem solving (that's definitely not a soft-skill)
leadership
time management

Now, which of these do you learn in school? And which ones can you learn playing on a sports team?

Thinking about an MBA? Consider this : a survey by the GMAC found that MBAs were strong in analytical aptitude, quantitative expertise, info gathering, but lacking in other vital areas - strategic thinking, comm skills, leadership, adaptability.

What soft-skills do you need to work around politics - org awareness, spreading your influence, having a mentor, managing up, deflecting gossip.

Other skills you need to succeed - being able to ask for help and ideas, listening to your gut, self-belief, being able to change game-plan and priorities, and getting back on your horse after being knocked off.

Know your bosses communication style - how often does he need updates, emails, face-to-face chats, etc.

Think you're ready for leadership? Think again - know your strengths and w's, take the initiative to address your shortcomings, influence and motive people to think and act the way you want, let others express their ideas and trust them to do the job, express your needs and goals clearly, swallow humble pie occasionally, treat everyone with r irrespective of rank. Do you enjoy working with people, helping them grow and be successful? handle uncertainty well? make decisions without all the facts? need everyone to like you? want immediate and constant reinforcement? feel nervous about having legal and financial responsibilities for others? balk at the idea of evaluating or firing someone? have the time for this?

Career tips.

The New Millenium

Finally, this blog celebrates its 1000th post. Took its time, but it was worth it - getting all that crap out of my system:) You've wondered who this guy is. Here's how I looked at 1 year of age (I wonder what the age-enhancement experts could do with this):



The main theme of this blog is democratization - putting more power in people's hands - to do good of course. This is also a forum for telling big businesses that their products suck. What better way to improve the world?

Smartvue and Mistral - The Perfect Combination

Mistral seems to be a big player in this space. Check them out. Definitely, there's some Indian-ness in the look of their webpage - functional, but dull. But, they seem to be having a field day. Smartvue is more slick. But barely. My take is that these guys will be the pioneers but will get eaten up once the big guns like GE find out that this is a good market. Pity. All that hard work.