In this blog we will talk about Installing Hadoop Cluster on AWS. For this Demo, we have chosen the Hortonwork's Distribution and we will be using Apache Ambari to do the installation, Management and Monitoring for us. The following Video shows all the necessary steps to do so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dSJDJSTMlo
Here is a Recent Webinar I delivered for Synerzip on Single Page Application - Know your Ecosystem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KoGTHf4r90
Psychology - A needed skill for Effective Leadership
Psychology is a required skilled required for People who aspire to be leaders or people who claim to be leaders.
Evaluate your Leadership Skills
It is my personal experience, many people in leadership positions lack this skill. It becomes more apparent that people in Leadership role ask themselves the following questions
1. Have you asked people you mentor time to time - How are they doing? Are they doing good at professional or personal life?
2. Have captured every opportunity to appreciate them for doing anything good?
3. Have you been candid to give very very specific feedback for good and bad observations about them?
4. Do you remember on the top of your mind, what their aspirations are and where are you with helping them reach there?
5. Have you developed a relationship with them, where they are free to let off their steam(anger, frustration) at you? Believe me this is also one of the responsibilities when you lead people
6. Can you describe your people uniquely in a creative and appreciative manner at spur of the moment, say you are introducing them to others?
7. More Important, Do you?
8. Have you taken time to write a truthful recommendation for them?
9. Do you respect people, Who do what is asked of the? They may be rated as average in their appraisal or would not get highest of raises. But do you acknowledge and respect their wish to live life in that manner
10. Do your people feel like sharing good things in their life? Do they come and share things with you themselves?
Now these are only few of dozens more questions you should ask yourself, if you call yourself as a leader.
Things to do for becoming a better leader
If you want to become a better people's person, here is what I would really recommend
1. Be able to uniquely and creatively introduce your people to people they don't know. The quality of how you introduce your people actually shows, how much respect and admiration you have for them. Practice, Practice and Practice
2. Be sure you stop and talk to your people regularly, more important stop and listen to them more. Talks which happens in corridors, near coffee machines are more important than what goes inside a meeting room.
3. Take very opportunity to appreciate, especially personal things. Some one is wearing a good shirt and really looks good in it, appreciate, you observe their attitude towards life, appreciate it. Its important to catch the smaller things than the larger ones. If you have difference of opinion or dislike a person, especially find things to appreciate.
4. Instant rewards, could be anything. Any Rewards and Acknowledging itself is one of the biggest motivator, even more than money. Treat your people, if needed spoil them. Remember everyone needs to feel special, cared for. Do that much and people will shower you with their trust, hardwork and love. I have seen it first hand, when this happens, being around such people itself is a big reward in life
5. Always remember conversations you had with people. Even if you can't do much about it. Just recalling them and stating you remember and have taken a small step towards itself helps. Nothing is more satisfying when I know my mentor remembers what matters to me.
6. Earn Respect by being good at what you do. If you are a leader who wants to gather people around and make them sit around in professional world, All the best. People in the professional world want a leader who can point to a place and say “That’s where we want to go”. That’s the nature of professional world. People in Spiritual world would say otherwise “Where are you going? sit here and be still” and yes that is right for them.
Well there are dozen more things I can write.
So where does Psychology come into picture here?
Understand Circles
Psychology wise the basic thing in all above is Circle of influence/ego. In Psychology Ego is used in the rawest form, so if you don't like it use a nicer word instead. We have layers of circles around us.
1. Thoughts
2. Body
3. Family
4. Friends
5. Works People
6. Religion/Cast/Region/Classes/Jobs
7. State
8. Country
9. Continent
etc
Human Nature
Human being would in general works towards
1. Attracting people within their circles by providing more
2. Making people jealous outside their circle
Take a moment and think about it, no matter how raw it may sound, recollect your past around the above statement
Entering People’s Circle
The key is you enter people's circles subconsciously not consciously. That is why most people do not get why someone else is being more popular or liked than themselves. More true when you want to be in the circle of your boss, or you are in a leadership position and you are clueless of why people still like their old mentors or other mentors than you.
The easiest and fastest way to become part of any one's circle is
1. Smile and Eye Contact
The moment you see someone, your instinct or subconscious mind makes a decision whether you like him/her. Then your conscious mind finds logical reasons to back that. We are not as logical as we appear
Hence consider a Smile and Eye Contact as cheat codes, use them all the times.
2. Body Contact - Shake hand, a pat on the back.
Again a Shake Hand or a Pat on back with colleagues go long way.
Let me give a non work example, especially for guys. If an average girl hits you in fun, when you tease her, that relationship/friendship suddenly becomes very important.
But a Body contact has to be appropriate otherwise it would give you exact opposite results.
3. Appreciate, Appreciate and Appreciate
This is the third secret. Everyone has a circle of Ego/Self Esteem, they will open doors to people they agree with. Most people think very highly of themselves (no matter what), that is the human nature. Agreeing with specific traits of a person, results in them subconsciously opening the doors to their circles.
Simple examples to help you out
That Shirt looks good on you
Someone’s all Happy today
You two did a good job making that Good Looking Kid. (Always works for new parents, and believe me all babies are adorable)
I really appreciate you being so upbeat despite all the trouble in your life.
I dig the way you can be so consistent.
If you want to Guys, you will always find a way.
Many people who are angry about someone, will react to this advice saying I can not do “Kiss Ass”.
People who feel this has two issues
- They have not clearly understood the advice. The advice is be true of what you appreciate. Find things that you could appreciate
- They have people issues themselves. Their personal feeling are troubling them. They need to vent it out but not at anyone’s else expense.
Conclusion
Be Illogical with People, Be Logical with machines. Highly Logical People are
The most boring
The saddest
and the most unhappiest
people in the world. People work at subconscious level. Logic does not work all that good at Subconscious level.
Be fun, open, transparent and more real. And knowing the above science you can be easily be part of anyone’s circles (if you wish so). For me this is very natural since I have practiced this for many years now.
All this becomes apparent to you if you study psychology and people around you. Easiest way is to be aware of how you feel and why you feel that, that itself is sufficient to learn psychology. Just be true to yourself when you do that, that is the trick.
Disclaimer
Having said that, being Human’s we are not meant to be perfect. Our Perfection is in our flaws. You will not want some people to be part of your circles at all. Its fine, but understand that their is a scientific reasons for this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxCjPhqBfwQ
This is an preliminary design for my Arduino Uno Powered Self Balancing Robot. This Robot is built using Arduino Uno R3 as its main micro controller.
[singlepic id=89 w=320 h=240 float=]
The concept behind the Robot is simple.
[singlepic id=90 w=320 h=240 float=]
Its got only 2 wheels. The Robot needs to balance itself constantly and navigate itself around. This is much like how a Segway works.
The Body of the Robot is made of Lego NXT blocks. It uses two "hs-311" servo motors, these are full rotation servo motors. These are mounted on Lego Frames using HSK311CR NXT mounting kit from mindsensors.com. The concept is very simple Arduino Uno will motor whether Robot is falling forward or backward and send commands to the Servo Motors to go forward and backward to compensate. In reality the Robot is constantly falling and compensating for the fall.
Arduino relies on a 3 axis sensor to know whether its falling forward or backwards and calculates how much to move forward and backward.
Apart from this the Robot has eyes using Ultra Sonic Sensor. These enable the Robot to see few inches ahead (in theory) and know if something is blocking its way and if so, it will change its path.
[singlepic id=91 w=320 h=240 float=]
Disclaimer - The Robot is under construction, the above theory would be tested and modified as it is built and running.
Component list -
The Robot is build using
- Lego Technic/NTXT Blocks - 2 Full Rotation Servo Motors (HS-311) which plugs into Motor Shield directly - NXT Mounts for Servo Motors ((HSK311CR from mindsensors.com) - Enables Servo motor to be put in Lego Blocks - Enables Servo motor to rotate Lego Wheels - Arduino Uno - Arduino Groove Sensor Shield for Uno - Arduino Servo Motor Shield - 3 Axis Gyroscope Sensor which works with Groove Sensor Shield - Ultra Sonic Sensor which works with Groove Sensor Shield - Temperature & Humidity Sensor which works with Groove Sensor Shield
Make AR Drone Follow Objects it sees keeping a constant distance.
[singlepic id=58 w=800 h=600 float=]
Image Reference - http://blog.parrot.com/2012/06/07/ar-drone-give-you-personal-training/
* No Copyright violation intended - References are provided to source of the images
Sub Goals
The idea is to use OpenCV and one of its many techniques to Track Object. Simplest of them being Track Objects by color.
Theory
This is just one of the ways, there are many other ways to do so. To keep things simple in the first attempt, this method is preferred
Reference - http://opencv-srf.blogspot.ro/2010/09/object-detection-using-color-seperation.html
Before we talk about using OpenCV to measure Depth, we need to understand more about Computer Vision.
Human Beings have 2 Eyes to give them a Perception of Depth. We focus on an Object and that Object is in center for both of our eyes. Rest of the objects which we do not focus on either move left or right. Our Brain uses this information to figure out the depth/distance.
Here is an example taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereopsis
Human Eye focusing on the Whale. Note, it is not focusing on the Cube infront of the Whale
Note the Cube appears on the Right
Note the Cube appears on the Left
Human brain uses this disparity of position of Cube to compute Depth
If same has to be applied to Computer Vision (CV), then in the above picture the Light Objects are closer and Darker Objects are farther.
The biggest problem to apply the above theory to AR Drone to track object and especially its Depth is that AR Drone has only one Camera (One Eye).
Now We can bring in 2 cameras into picture as follows
and this setup works well, but for Computer Vision if you are experimenting in a Lab
What we need is a light weight solution which gives our AR Drone Camera a Stereoscopic Vision.
Here comes another theory and believe me there is no claim from myside on getting the following scientific concept of prisms right. (Probably more reading, buying prisms and working with it would help me ascertain the theory right, but for now its a concept, so don't yell if I got it wrong)
[singlepic id=57 w=800 h=600 float=center]
The idea is to use some light weight prisms and mirrors to make the AR Drone see things as follows
Then use Open CV to create a Depth Map and then AR Drone Program will see Objects as follows
The Lighter parts are closer than the darker part
References -
The Idea is to use
While all this is theory at the present moment, I hope you enjoyed reading it. The next steps for me are to play with Open CV on Node Js and do the following things