This is the summary of the book titled “How to age healthy and strong at 50 and beyond” written by Isaac Finnegan and published by Majestic Franchise Unlimited LLC in Oct 2024. Reaching the age of 50 is often considered to be the peak of a lifetime but the author debunks this myth. Taking us on a journey through physical fitness, nutrition, mental health, preventive healthcare, lifestyle and mind body connection in distinct sections of his book, he gets us started on a transformation where aging translates to empowerment.

Regular exercise, a healthy diet, and routine medical checkups are essential for men as they get older so that they can lower the risk of various health conditions that otherwise come with aging. Suppressing emotions and toughing them out does not cut it anymore. Relaxation, meditations, social connections and seeking support are preferred instead. When this energy manifests into personal and professional lives, it can lead to greater satisfaction and fulfillment.

Common health concerns like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, prostrate issues, Osteoporosis and reduced bone density, depression and anxiety and others require men to get professional help as early as possible. Factors that affect midlife include testosterone levels, reduced muscle mass, mood changes, improper diet and exercise, excessive smoking and alcohol consumption and avoidance of screening tests.

Cardiovascular exercise, strength training, flexibility and balance, breathing control and mindful movement, rest and recovery must be prioritized. Similarly, nutrition needs must be understood. A good intake of proteins, vitamins, and minerals as well as fiber are necessary. Hydration, also, cannot be overstated. All these serve to fuel the body for you to thrive in your later years. In the event of chronic conditions or when battling preventive diseases, getting input from nutritionists is important. Boosting your immune system naturally after checking with a doctor is also good practice. To put these in practice, try regular exercises, sleep adequately, stay hydrated, manage stress and avoid harmful habits.

Exercise and relaxation techniques work great for mental and emotional well-being as well. Men need to prioritize their health and take self-care. Seeking support from friends, family or mental health professional can also be beneficial for men dealing with stress. Stress is one of the silent killers and inadequately coping with it leaves a tell-tale sign in old age. Therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes must be undertaken to cope with it. Rehabilitation from bad habits is also available for help. Surrounding ourselves with people who care about us and are there to listen can make the journey less lonely.

Sexual health and intimacy are one aspect of this. Hormonal shifts, lifestyle choices and unhealthy conditions contribute to dissatisfaction. It is never too late to make positive changes and regular medical checkups can help. Taking a comprehensive approach to sexual health including communicating with your partner, can help maintain satisfaction and fulfilment. Intimacy goes beyond personal closeness and encompasses emotional, mental, and physical connection with one’s partner.

Incorporating mindfulness and meditation techniques can significantly boost the benefits from all efforts, in addition to maintaining a positive outlook, and achieving clarity and emotional stability. Making them part of your life makes you happier and healthier.

A number of alternative wellness practices are also available that attempt to address the underlying issue through a combination of one or more of the above and addressing mind, body, and spirit as a whole. Similarly, preventive care and screening from medical professionals helps to constantly monitor our current state and progress. Getting 7-9 hours of quality sleep is similarly important. Support groups and community resources are plenty and create a safe space for men to share their experiences and learn from others. Books, websites, and apps also make it easy to imbibe the best practices. Finally, we must take charge of our own health.

 This is a summary of the book “The Freedom Frameworks: infinite possibilities to achieve career independence on your own terms” written and self-published by Jack Cohen in 2024. The author argues that you are your own asset and that skills, experience and relationships are key to professional success. He draws on his vast business experience to propose freedom Frameworks for you to thrive in your career. The goal and the path are for us to articulate and we can only invest in ourselves. Setting quarterly priorities and meeting them, learning to read people and team dynamics, facilitating collaboration by establishing a common context, viewing experiences as objectively as possible, learning from mistakes, and being honest with oneself are some of the other suggestions in his book.

To pursue your dreams and cultivate freedom, face your demons, which often arise in the form of resistance. Identify these fears and work with them to develop the courage and confidence to progress. Clarify your dreams by asking yourself who you want to become and on what timeline. Reframe resistance as helpful, like facing defeat to improve your tennis game. Defining who you want to be and planning your path forward is crucial. Visualize your intended future and take notes on your current reality. Bridge the gap by outlining specific steps to move toward your desired future. Invest in your most valuable asset: yourself. Economic independence provides the freedom to make career choices without immediate financial pressure, relying on your most valuable asset: yourself. Invest in building skills, gaining experiences, forming relationships, and getting things done better. Connect the dots between past and present, applying new knowledge to improve your skills and earning power.

To turn your value into greater earning power, be reliable, responsible, and accountable. Develop skills, experiences, and relationships to become more capable, adaptable, and interesting. Balance depth with breadth and push yourself outside your comfort zone. Surround yourself with supportive people, such as volunteering for industry groups or seeking mentors for long-term growth. Set quarterly priorities and protect them from distraction. Use the Red, Blue, and Black methods to prioritize activities for 90-day goals. Reassess and readjust allocations quarterly to make the most of finite resources. Set due dates and do dates for different projects and establish "border protection" to maintain uninterrupted focus. Learn how people behave to improve communication and team dynamics. Understand different behavioral styles, such as control, power, influence, and authority, and understand how people make decisions. People do not care how much you know until they know just how much you care about them. By understanding how people make choices, you can better understand and manage your time effectively.

Team success requires a common context and accountable team members. The "issues clearing model" helps address conflicts constructively by stating the facts of the situation, how the facts make the speaker feel, what judgments or conclusions they have drawn, and what the speaker would like to have happened next. Viewing experiences as neutral as possible is essential, as the story we tell ourselves determines our feelings.

Create curiosity and ask better questions to improve decision-making. Use the "Shark Theory" to avoid analysis paralysis and take small steps forward to reach the tipping point. Learn from mistakes, embrace your journey, and be yourself. Focus on overdoing rather than overthinking and compare where you are now to where you used to be.

Embrace your development journey, even when it's slow or feel lost, and tap into your grit to see your goals through. Trust in yourself and don't be afraid to stand out from the crowd. Be honest with yourself, mitigate your weaknesses, and be caring yet direct with others. Manage any liabilities in your temperament through self-awareness and practical strategies.

 

This is a summary of Generative AI Trends surveyed from various vendors across industry sectors, as made available publicly from their respective websites.  For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to machine learning algorithms that generate new content including but not restricted to text, images, audio, and video. For those in technology, this includes all AI products that can generate test cases, datasets, and code. This form of AI transforms work across different industries.

In the Healthcare Industry, there are plenty of health records and medical devices that demand to be properly vetted. Generative AI can create realistic data sets for various scenarios that can help with testing software products associated with these healthcare assets. When analyzing medical images, discovering new drugs, and making personalized drugs, LLM-as-a-judge can also come in helpful to test. This leads to better quality and safety.

In the design and manufacturing industry, there is a need to create new designs for new requirements based on existing designs and patterns and AI models can learn and mimic humans in doing that. So, efficiency and innovation are both boosted, and Generative AI can simulate various production scenarios and identify potential flaws or issues before they arise, which makes production both effective and efficient.

In the field of customer experience across retail industries, copilots and agents have become immensely popular because of their ability to be human like in their responses while providing relevant information. While they are getting better at conversations, they also have the ability to factor in numerous steps delegated to software agents that can help them better frame a response to the customer. For example, one of the steps can be a calculator agent that converts one form of measurement to another for better correlation. Both the domain and the language can also be varied for different chatbots.

In the fields of software testing and security testing, Generative AI is a game changer and has garnered a lot of attention to AI safety and security. Issues and reports can now be filed faster than ever, which makes integrations less painful and more collaborative than ever before. It is also helping to reduce manual testing. Scripted automation and data-driven testing helped tremendously to do that, but with generative AI there is indeed a revolution. Creating new tests and adapting to situations with minimal human intervention is now possible autonomously. Unlike traditional methods where the software engineer was training the testing bots, Generative AI uses models to learn the patterns without human intervention. This is referred to as Autonomous test case generation.

In the field of monitoring with alerts and notifications for both active and passive observance of metrics and measurements of diverse systems in different industries, Generative AI is proving to be a blessing in reducing both the noise and improving the quality of alerts all while processing large amounts of machine data that are generally difficult to comprehend without investigative querying. The expertise to solve problems and troubleshoot software issues across a fast evolving and complex landscape of technology products and services has always demanded more from CloudOps and DevOps Engineers and AI models and Generative Models are providing the best of anomaly detection, outlier detections, false positives detections and responding to human investigations in a chat like interface which is a welcome addition to the tools these engineers use to keep all systems up and available for mission critical purposes. 

 The previous articles talked about infrastructure but business and infrastructure go together. While describing generative AI and infrastructure to support AI models, cloud engineers who participate in new and upcoming business initiatives can bring their AI chops to contribute to proposals.

As with all aspects of writing, Generative AI can be helpful to write business proposals. AI has a transformative power in business and it only helps to remain competitive. The McKinsey Global Survey highlights the rapid adoption of generative AI, with one-third of organizations using it regularly. This article explains how to integrate generative AI into proposal writing.

Generative AI reasons like a human to generate content by mimicking human language patterns. The same models can be extended to music, images, designs and more. Specific actions can be automated with agents and made part of the flow so that the models can leverage that to enhance content. When a human drafts an article in solo mode, it might be usually 500 words per hour but with generative AI, this can be up to 2500 words per hour. It saves time in knowledge management, leading to higher proposal-win rates.

The way to unlock efficiency in bid writing, for example, is to leverage Generative AI to access and organize crucial information because models can learn the salience of various topics in the domain and predict what comes after say, a given topic. Brainstorming and thinking is still the forte of humans and for the near future. By combining both, writers can dedicate more time for creative approaches to their proposals while leveraging run-off-the-mill language and content for specific topics. This results in a more compelling proposal. Early adopters can outshine competitors and capture new opportunities. Emphasis must be on educating leadership about generative AI to harness its full potential and create a culture of acceptance within the organization.

As with any emerging technology, safety and security must be constantly assessed. If there is reason to believe that a suggestion in the generated content might not be true, a review will catch that. It is therefore necessary to watch out for hallucinations in the generated content as much as it is time-saving to leverage the points cited in the generated content that would have taken a while by itself. Care must also be taken to remove bias and make the data more inclusive for the AI models. This will improve the outcome of the research and the proposal. There are AI Standards to adhere to for fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. Vendors often use the term “Responsible AI” to demonstrate compliance to these principles.

The right tool for proposal writing also makes a difference. It should align with your purpose and be future-ready so that the full return on investment on AI can be unlocked. Since organizational needs evolve, continuously enhancing and refining the expectations from the tool also helps.

Proposal writing is an industry in itself. AI enhances stages for creative ideation, evidenced ideation, contextualized ideation, story-boarding, narrative structure creation, evidenced-winning prose evaluation, case study insertion, statistics insertion, “Tell me how” evidencing, incorporation of win themes, issues, and requirements, scoring criteria analysis, mega-extraction and mega-transformations and embedded semantic research. All of these can be used with slight modifications for bids & proposals, marketing, sales materials, thought leadership, internal communications, and public relations.

#codingexercise: CodingExercise-01-19-2025.docx

 There are N points (numbered from 0 to N−1) on a plane. Each point is colored either red ('R') or green ('G'). The K-th point is located at coordinates (X[K], Y[K]) and its color is colors[K]. No point lies on coordinates (0, 0).

We want to draw a circle centered on coordinates (0, 0), such that the number of red points and green points inside the circle is equal. What is the maximum number of points that can lie inside such a circle? Note that it is always possible to draw a circle with no points inside.

Write a function that, given two arrays of integers X, Y and a string colors, returns an integer specifying the maximum number of points inside a circle containing an equal number of red points and green points.

Examples:

1. Given X = [4, 0, 2, −2], Y = [4, 1, 2, −3] and colors = "RGRR", your function should return 2. The circle contains points (0, 1) and (2, 2), but not points (−2, −3) and (4, 4).

class Solution {

    public int solution(int[] X, int[] Y, String colors) {

        // find the maximum

        double max = Double.MIN_VALUE;

        int count = 0;

        for (int i = 0; i < X.length; i++)

        {

            double dist = X[i] * X[i] + Y[i] * Y[i];

            if (dist > max)

            {

                max = dist;

            }

        }

        for (double i = Math.sqrt(max) + 1; i > 0; i -= 0.1)

        {

            int r = 0;

            int g = 0;

            for (int j = 0; j < colors.length(); j++)

            {

                if (Math.sqrt(X[j] * X[j] + Y[j] * Y[j]) > i)

                {

                    continue;

                }

                if (colors.substring(j, j+1).equals("R")) {

                    r++;

                }

                else {

                    g++;

                }

            }

            if ( r == g && r > 0) {

                int min = r * 2;

                if (min > count)

                {

                    count = min;

                }

            }

        }

        return count;

    }

}

Compilation successful.

Example test: ([4, 0, 2, -2], [4, 1, 2, -3], 'RGRR')

OK

Example test: ([1, 1, -1, -1], [1, -1, 1, -1], 'RGRG')

OK

Example test: ([1, 0, 0], [0, 1, -1], 'GGR')

OK

Example test: ([5, -5, 5], [1, -1, -3], 'GRG')

OK

Example test: ([3000, -3000, 4100, -4100, -3000], [5000, -5000, 4100, -4100, 5000], 'RRGRG')

OK

 Infrastructure development with a collaborative design-forward culture:

There is business value in design even before there is business value in implementation. With the pressure from customers for better experiences and their expectations for instant gratification, organizations know the right investment is in the design, especially as a competitive differentiator. But the price for good design has always been more co-ordination and intention. With the ever expanding and evolving landscape of digital tools and data, divisions run deeper than before. Fortunately, newer technologies specifically generative AI can be brought to transform how design is done. By implementing core practices of clear accountability, cross-functional alignment, inclusion of diverse perspectives and regularly shared work, organizations can tap into new behaviors and actions that elevate design

Design boosts innovation, customer experience and top-line performance. Lack of clarity, collaboration and cross-team participation are the main limitations. Leading design teams emphasize clear accountability, cross-functional alignment, inclusion of diverse perspectives and regularly shared work. Design can also provide feedback to business and product strategy. More repeatable and inclusive design processes yield more thoughtful, customer-inspired work. Better creativity, innovation and top-line performance compound over time. For example. There can be up to 80% savings in the time it takes to generate reports. The saying is go faster and go further together.

The limitations to better design are also clear in their negatives that can be quantified as duplicate and recreate work while customer input is often left unused. Systems fracture because people will tend to avoid friction and save time. Ad hock demands tend to drift design from solid foundations. Vicious development cycles eat time.

No one will disagree to better understand a problem before kicking off a project. Many will praise or appreciate those who incorporate feedback. Many meetings are more productive when there is a clear owner and driver. Being more inclusive of others has always helped gain more understanding of requirements. Defining clear outcomes and regularly updating progress is a hallmark of those who design well. Articulation of a clear standard for design quality and leveraging a development process that is collaborative are some of the others. Leaders who are focused on organizational structure do suffer an impedance to adopting design first strategy but they could give latitude to teams and individuals to find the best way to achieve goals and run priorities and initiatives. Care must be taken to avoid creating a race to satisfy business metrics without the diligence to relieve the pain point they are solving.

Inclusivity is harder to notice. With newer technologies like Artificial Intelligence, employees are continuously upskilling themselves, so certain situations cannot be anticipated. For example, engineering leaders working with AI tend to forget that they must liaison with legal department at design time itself. The trouble with independent research and outsourced learning is that they may never be adopted. Cross-team collaboration must be actively sought for and participated in because the payoff is improved cross-functional understanding, culture-building and innovation – leading to better end product. Some teams just use existing rituals to gather quick thoughts on design ideas. Others favor offline review and more documentation prior to meetings. Sharing as a value by stressing openness, as a habit by maintaining a routine, as an opportunity to see the customer come through the work and as an avoided risk by reducing back and forth brings a culture that leads to a single source of truth. Designing must involve others but not create different versions.

#Codingexercise: https://1drv.ms/w/c/d609fb70e39b65c8/Echlm-Nw-wkggNYXMwEAAAABrVDdrKy8p5xOR2KWZOh3Yw?e=YjxxZA

 One of the fundamentals in parallel processing in computer science involves the separation of tasks per worker to reduce contention. When you treat the worker as an autonomous drone with minimal co-ordination with other members of its fleet, an independent task might appear something like installing a set of solar panels in an industry with 239 GW estimate in 2023 for the global solar powered renewable energy. That estimate was a 45% increase over the previous year. As industry expands, drones are employed for their speed. Drones  aid in every stage of a plant’s lifecycle from planning to maintenance. They can assist in topographic surveys, during planning, monitor construction progress, conduct commissioning inspections, and perform routine asset inspections for operations and maintenance. Drone data collection is not only comprehensive and expedited but also accurate.

During planning for solar panels, drones can conduct aerial surveys to assess topography, suitability, and potential obstacles, create accurate 3D maps to aid in designing and optimizing solar farm layouts, and analyze shading patterns to optimize panel placement and maximize energy production. During construction, drones provide visual updates on construction progress, and track and manage inventory of equipment, tools, and materials on-site. During maintenance, drones can perform close-up inspections of solar panels to identify defects, damage, or dirt buildup, monitor equipment for wear and tear, detect hot spots in panels with thermal imaging, identify and manage vegetation growth that might reduce the efficiency of solar panels and enhance security by patrolling the perimeter and alerting to unauthorized access.

When drones become autonomous, these activities go to the next level. The dependency on human pilots has always been a limitation on the frequency of flights. On the other hand, autonomous drones boost efficiency, shorten fault detection times, and optimize outcomes during O&M site visits. Finally, they help to increase the power output yield of solar farms. The sophistication of the drones in terms of hardware and software increases from remote-controlled drones to autonomous drones. Field engineers might suggest selection of an appropriate drone as well as the position of docking stations, payload such as thermal camera and capabilities. A drone data platform that seamlessly facilitates data capture, ensures safe flight operations with minimal human intervention,  prioritize data security and meet compliance requirements becomes essential at this stage. Finally, this platform must also support integration with third-party data processing and analytics applications and reporting stacks that publish various charts and graphs. As usual, a separation between data processing and data analytics helps just as much as a unified layer for programmability and user interaction with API, SDK, UI and CLI. While the platform can be sold separately as a product, leveraging a cloud-based SaaS service reduces the cost on the edge.

There is still another improvement possible over this with the formation of dynamic squadrons, consensus protocol and distributed processing with hash stores. While there are existing applications that serve to improve IoT data streaming at the edges and cloud processing via stream stores and analytics with the simplicity of SQL based querying and programmability, a cloud service that installs and operates a deployment stamp with a solution accelerator and as a citizen resource of a public cloud helps bring the best practices of storage engineering, data engineering and enabling businesses to be more focused.