Month: June 2012

Using Moodle

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Almost all companies who are in the business of training and education require a system where they can provide the course materials and take quizzes online through that system. A lot of the premier educational institutes also have similar requirements. This is where the need of a educational content management system (CMS) is felt … a learning management system (LMS). The open source movement has created one such popular package and that is Moodle. Moodle is an open source learning management system which candidates can use to access courseware, give practice tests, quizzes and submit assignments.

Institutes such as IIT-B, IIM-A, IIM-B and IIM-C have been successfully using Moodle for more than a decade now. As a training provider for CFA, we also use Moodle to provide courseware and quizzes to our students. Now you should know that although the fundamental pedagogies of most institutions are the same, the business processes might differ. What that means for Moodle, is that the requirements and expectations from this system differ from institute to institute. For the past three years we were using Moodle 1.9 … a system which has now become archaic.

It works, yes. But it lacks in the functionality extended towards the course administration. In addition there are a host of other Learning Management Systems cropping up … you have KhanAcademy.org’s open source code for non-profitable institutions which is perl based, but is awesome, you have Dokeos and Sakai which are other open source LMS. There are free cloud based systems such as Pearson’s Google App integrated LMS, and there are premium cloud based systems such as Blackboard.

In my quest to upgrade our systems, I was looking at different options and finally decided to settle with a known beast … albeit a higher version … Moodle 2.2! The good part of any open source package is that it’s generally free of cost and open to customizations … the bad part is that well … there’s almost no documentation and virtually no support. You have to figure most of the stuff by yourself and use forums to  get past your stumbling blocks, and this takes time.

Having said that, I was pretty happy with the latest Moodle, here are my findings –

  • The system has gone more and more object oriented. If you wish to change any behaviour in the core modules, simply extend and over-ride!
  • Reporting has substantially improved
  • Theming has become more complex, but once you go through the steep learning curve then you should do fine
  • The core modules are MVC based, so although it is not suggested, you can jump into their codes and alter away!
  • The documentation is virtually absent, the wiki is a mix of versions 1.9, 2.0, 2.2 and 2.3
  • Quizzing modules have been substantially improved
  • Course progress and objectives tracking has been implemented
  • Adaptive quizzes have been implemented, however I have yet to test these
  • Question randomizations are there ensuring that the quizzes students give are random every time

Asus Nvidia GeForce 550X TI

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Yep. I just bought this monster of a graphics card.

Yes. Another navel gazing post, but I think it’s worth the trouble.

After I bought Diablo 3 and started playing the game, I noticed major lags with this game on my desktop. I was not able to diagnose the problem initially, and was relegated to my laptop. I cleared the Normal mode, but the graphics were a bit lost on the minimum requirements .. and something felt missing. I went back to diagnosing the problem and turns out that my video card was overheating for the past 3 months, causing the PCI Express bus to shutdown and thus stopping all PCI devices (including my wireless card!).

The main reason of this, was that the video card’s fan was gone. This was the point when I started delving in the world of gaming hardware … and I followed the white rabbit.

The way I came to this conclusion was by using a software called MSI Afterburner, a software which works with most graphics cards. What it does is that it provides you real-time information about the metrics of your card such as temperature, GPU usage, Fan Speed (of the Graphics card) and Fan RPM. What’s more, with the right hardware, it also allows you to change most of these values. So I tried overclocking the fan to run at full throttle, but to no avail, the fan just would not start!

Now, the hardware used in gaming is all about performance, about driving the hardware to higher and higher … to get that extra bit of richness for all your pixels. With performance, comes a host of problems – heat for instance, where do you transmit all that excess heat? Power wattage is another, the energy required to deliver this performance requires higher wattage. A normal desktop computer requires 115W of power, a gaming computer on the other hand can demand as high as 400+W of power … higher than that of a server!

Asus Nvidia GeForce 550X TI

So, when I purchased this card, I was suddenly in a flux … a new SMPS … a new cabinet perhaps? Where does this stop? Fortunately, I had a 400W SMPS, which meant that this card runs perfectly on my system. I fired up Diablo, and voila … the GPU usage hit 100%, temperature went from 40% to 80% … and stayed. Stable for the entire while.

Finally, a card which cools faster than it heats up! Added to the sheer beauty of each and every game … things are looking good!

Credit Cards in India

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With the e-commerce sector in India booming, a lot of foreign investors are looking to invest as PE funds in Indian e-commerce ventures. Unlike the Indian outsourcing story, wherein the business is a case of derived demand, the e-commerce stories are catering to the domestic market. With different reports sizing this industry around 5000+ Crores in INR per annum, this is one of the moments in the India Shining dream. One of the major factors in driving this has been the credit card and personal finance industry in India.

The ease with which private banks are issuing credit cards is a testament to the process orientation of this industry. What unnerves me about this is that the same ease is shown when the same credit card user switches to a different card. Over a period of time, users wake up to this and start becoming consumers … demanding better deals on their cards and switching without a moment’s hesitation. What this results into is an easy way out to avoid paying one credit card and get access to another card. Yes … a credit card fraud. The first world nations have already faced this threat and have put up centralized agencies to monitor credit scores.

In the UK, you can do a credit check for free … and that too online. The thing is that such organizations have superior processes powered by reliable and cutting edge technology. Nowadays, I am reading about Credit Cards with Digital Displays. In fact, in the UK the industry is so mature that nation level reporting can be done to find out the country’s credit risk. There are 30 million UK credit card customers holding 66 million cards. Out of these, 62% of all UK adults had at least one credit card. What is great about this is that the government is keenly following this industry and has mandated to the credit card industry to clean-up all malpractices.

India, is still far behind it n these matters … we do have the Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited, but I tried getting a report online and I could not. I had to first make a payment of INR 470, at which I balked. I mean, shouldn’t this data be made available for free? At least to the user on whom its about!

The Credit Card industry in India needs to mature and fast! Otherwise the boon which is fuelling the start-up boom can suddenly become the bane of financial institutions. Proablems such as credit fraud and CIBIL look-ups for all credit related transactions should be institutionalized across the country. Private banks need to stop running after numbers and start working on how to reduce churn. Business analysts need to figure better predictive models for detecting possible frauds (ala Minority Report).

The credit card industry in India is still in the nascent phase, with rural areas still vastly unexplored, there is a huge scope of growth and this industry does require the support of the country to grow. Personal finance will increase personal funding … which will fuel the country’s GDP … reducing the Balance of Payments (BoP) … increasing the Rupee value. An aggressive consumerist movement can give this economy a shot in the arm, and the credit card industry is just winding up for that!

A Question of Ethics

Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

Disclaimer: I do not have anything personal against IITians, in case you are one, then I am not judging YOU, do not take this personally. This is certainly not an IIT bashing post, but I prefer to think of it as a call to action. In case you have some clout in those areas, please think this through and do correct me if I am passing assessment based on the wrong sample set.

In the last couple of years, I have had both the fortune and misfortune of knowing IITians. Fortune because these people have raw brain power … the CAT although is the most competitive exam, but the IIT-JEE is the real test of thinking and application. Anyone who has cracked the JEE on his own merit, is definitely intelligent (although I can’t make such claims for all the people who have cleared the CAT ;-)).

The national institutes (IITs and the IIMs) are a haven of variety, and were created to be an incubation center of the nations next generation of talent. Due to it’s separation from the surrounding environment, and policies … these institutes have also become an eco-system having their own flavor.

Yes, talent is nurtured and given guidance. Some of them do great things … but do they teach things like Ethics in such places? I doubt it.

Of all the IITians I have met in the past (and there’s a lot of them), all of them have indulged in unethical behavior. From simple copying someone else’s notes, to downright corporate espionage. From avoiding taxes to downright embezzlement. From speaking a harmless lie to generate some laughter to downright filing a wrong criminal case.

It’s not a one off case that I am citing here, its 7-8 different people of different ages and in different circumstances. There is absolutely no qualm for breaking the law, or what’s ethically right. Perhaps its ignorance, but it could also be indifference.

You may say that they have their own set of moral code, but that code seems to be based on the premise of individual superiority over the rest. Which seems logical since they have been hearing the same thing over and over again – a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. I am not the moral police, but a basic level of ethics needs to be inculcated into the raw talent of the country.

They should follow the Spiderman quote –

With great power comes great responsibility.

Price of information

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Rajat Gupta, the head honcho who was caught in the scam with Rajaratnam, the fund manager of Galleon. Little do we realize what was his crime … his crime was to provide information that he was privy to, to the hedge fund manager. In a world where markets are made on information asymmetry, the price of information can sometimes be very high. Rajat  Gupta who had pleaded non-guilty had to provide a bail of 10 million USD. That’s whopping … but what’s worse that his otherwise impeccable profile has now been embellished with the marks of corruption and scam.

I am sure that over a period he will reach a compromise agreement with his organization. In case if you do not know what compromise agreement is, then click the link. The price that the top guy paid for this is with a dream career. A career path which most IITians only dream about. The question is, were the risks taken by the duo really worth this? Are there other modern Gordon Geckos out there who trade their integrity for hard cash?

What is the sad part from this story is that this one mistake shadows a lifetime of achievements. Being one of the only 5 non-media people in the world to interview the Prime Minister of India, being an advisor to the United Nations … all now lies in ruins of shame and regret. The ripples of this fiasco will shake some of the most well known educational institutions in the country … right from IIT Delhi and IIM Ahemadabad (where he graduated) to ISB (which he founded). Places where values such as Ethics and Corporate Responsibility are given the utmost of importance in pedagogy.

Was this price of information really worth it?

The Mistake

Prasad Ajinkya1 Comment

This is a navel-gazing post. Yes, that means I will be talking about my life, and an event which is probably the dumbest mistake that I have made! There is no wisdom or moral at the end of the story, so you might as well stop reading now … but if you want to read about absent minded-ness, then feel free to read on.

It was a good friend’s wedding reception, and he had already followed-up with me about getting the tickets for both the wedding and the reception. The wedding was in Kolkata and the reception in Delhi. I opted in for the reception. Delhi is so much easier to reach by flight, has more frequent flights and I can also work on parallel pet projects in that city. Anubhav knows how I think, so he followed up 3 months, 1 month and 1 week before I bought the tickets. A round trip ticket to Delhi cost me around INR 12000 and it was well worth it.

The interesting thing about travel is that in the past decade of my life I have done so much of it that the anticipation during the entire prelude and climax to the travel has more or less vanished for me. I remember, when I was a child, we used to be so excited on the eve of the day we depart that we hardly ever slept! These days a 2 day trip is almost a routine activity and I have a bag planned for such trips. This means that I hardly ever bother about packing. My cavalier attitude towards this is one of the reasons why my wife gets extra stressed during these times!

On the D-Day, I was all ready, packed and set to go. I met Amit at the airport and we checked in. The Kingfisher airhostess asked us to wait at Gate 8, so without even taking a discerning look at our boarding passes, off we went to the designated gate. There was still time for the flight (we were an hour early), so I went and got myself a good book to read. We had met after quite some time, so we were talking for quite a bit of time. After what seemed like ages, Amit had the good sense to look at his boarding pass … there it was written Gate 10! Horror of horrors …we were waiting at the wrong gate all this while! We rushed off to Gate 10 … only to discover that the staff was closing up there and the flight had left without us!

Kingfisher staff must be used to such mishaps, because there was a standard op that was being carried out here … we were summarily ferried out of the airport and into the main waiting room where we could either collect our luggage and go home, or get onto the next flight. The problem with getting onto the next flight is that the previous ticket was non-refundable and it meant that 2 new tickets would have to be bought.

Simple enough, buy the next flight and reach Delhi. However, the prices were all inflated to INR 9000 – INR 10000. At that point, we decided to cut our losses and cancel our trip. What saddens me the most out of this trip is missing opportunities to attend the reception … due to the colossal act of stupidity. This post is also going to serve as a humble reminder to me to double check all documents.

After reaching home, the amount of explanations that we had to do, and the tum dono se yahi expect karna chahiye remarks still sting :) <—this smile is the smile of weary person who just wants to put this behind him and move on.

10 reasons why Diablo drives me nuts

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I have been playing this game for a month or so now, whenever there is a weekend, I do put in my 4-5 hours in this game. Some of the features in this game absolutely drive me nuts! Here are 10 reasons why Diablo drives me nuts!

  1. No offline single-player mode. Which means, my internet connection HAS to be available. Plus for slower internet connections (which is common in India), the game is virtually unplayable. Not to mention the regular scheduled maintenance downtime on Tuesdays, meaning for 1 day a week I cannot play the game I own.
  2. Limited Video card ranges. I would think that a company as big and experienced as Blizzard would not make this mistake, however they have. The video cards with which D3 can run is limited to a handful, which means the bulk of their loyal following from D2 will either have to buy a new computer (which I did) or watch the screencasts on youtube.
  3. Real Money Auction House effectively means that to play in the higher tougher modes, you have to fork out more cash for items. Although I will not stoop so low, but it’s a possibility that many players are facing.
  4. D3 as a product is not fully ready, they have released the product into the market to ship it first. This could be done to simply beat other games which are coming out and slowly eating at the games market share. Games such as Torchlight II (which went in Beta last month), Star Wars, Amalur, Rift (which has a major upgrade lined up to be released in front of WoW: MoP). When you ship an incomplete product, bugs are bound to rise. The good thing about Blizzard that bug resolutions come quickly through patches, but each time a patch is rolled out, that means further downtime. Blizzard, do you want your paying customers to play the game or just sit by grumbling while you patch things? The amount of threads and trolls that I have seen on the Blizzard forums shoot up whenever a new patch comes out. I mean, go ahead and admit it that the architecture of the game has not been thought out properly.
  5. The game is geared to be played on higher and higher difficulty modes. So when you ultimately kill Diablo in Normal mode, you move on to the Nightmare mode. Now, the drops given by Diablo are so mediocre that they quickly become unusable in the next difficulty mode. Now, this can be a minor technicality, but then the only time I would keep the drops that Diablo gives me is when I defeat the game in Inferno mode and wait for the PVP season to begin.
  6. Every RPG these days turns into a farming and grinding game. There are some crazy farming videos that I am seeing these days, heres one. Well, if the game turns into one GearQuest, then I the facebook game GearQuest is better, eh? And free t boot!
  7. Now this is petty, but I have to bring this up! My favourite class, the Paladin has been nerfed.
  8. For each class there are two types of weapons, a 1-handed weapon which can be dual-wielded and a 2-handed weapon which requires both the slots. Now, the benefits of the 2-handed weapon are not as great as having two 1-handed weapons. What that means, that I will never use a 2-handed weapon for any of my characters because I am not using the stat-gains from one of my item slots (the other hand which is now stuck with carrying the 2-hand weapon). This seems to be a problem in game design. At least make the stat gains from 2-handed weapons worth the trouble damn it!
  9. With the Auction House, come the hordes of gold farmers and gold vendors on each game. WIth them comes incessant spamming on general chat about different websites offering the cheapest gold. I had earlier blogged about the Economics of Gold Farming in World of Warcraft … I guess D3 also is relegated to the same fate.
  10. Each of my characters are stuck on their own servers. So when the Americas’ server is down, I can’t play with my Level 35 Barbarian, if the Asia’s server is down, I can’t play with my Level 15 Demonhunter, and so on. Which means that I am stuck with one server (unless I power level all my characters)

One of the main reasons of me loving Diablo II so much was its great replay value. But what D3 has done is forced me to replay this game even when I do not want to!