Job Application Tracker

I am gonna introduce you one of my app called "Job Application Tracker"

Job Application Tracker will put your life as a potential Job-seeker at ease and that too on the fly!

The features provided in this application have been thought of very carefully catering to the needs of maintaining the repository of information about the job applications that you have submitted and lot more right in your pockets.

The features include:
1) Get access to more than 500 major list of companies that you can apply to based on your profession.
2) Be able to maintain/add every possible detail about the job that you are applying to.
3) Your job applications will be categorized based on their status so you can browse the details of the companies easily.
4) Update any information of your job application.
5) We have included one more cool feature of getting a notification which will remind you to send a follow up email to the recruiter if you have not received a reply yet. We have also provided an email template for sending emails to the recruiter.

With a very simple and an easy to use interface, this application will definitely be your best companion assisting you through your job search. Have a first look at our app as shown below.

Wish you great success!!

Solution for the famous Instant Insanity problem

INSTANT INSANITY

Q. You have four colored cubes. Each side of each cube is a single color, and there are four colors: blue (B), red (R), green (G) and yellow (Y) Describing the six faces as front, back, left, right, top, bottom, the cube colors are:

Cube	Front	Back	Left	Right	Top	Bottom
1	R	B	G	Y	B	Y
2	R	G	G	Y	B	B
3	Y	B	R	G	Y	R
4	Y	G	B	R	R	R

The objective is to find ways to stack the four cubes as a vertical column so that each side of the column is showing all four colors. 

ANSWER:

1.      Initial estimate of time required for the task:

As per the requirement we need to find ways to stack the four cubes as a vertical column so that each side of the column is showing all the four colors. Now to find the answer we need to try all the possible ways in which a cube can be placed. As we know there are 24 orientations of each cube (A cube can placed with each of the 6 faces pointing up and for each of these rotate the 4 vertical faces left, front, right and back to the front. The product 6x4 is the number of possible orientations for that cube). Now since there are 4 cubes so total arrangements to check would be 24⁴. Also the cubes can also be stacked in any order giving us 4! Thus the arrangements will be (4! * 24⁴)

2.      Actual time taken for the task:

Given this problem we can easily find out the solution using the computer. However it would be really difficult to try out in reality (to find without the aid of computer). In reality we can find out distinct positions for finding the solutions. Given the cube order, the order of the cubes will not matter. Also the solved puzzle will have 8 orientations as a whole. If we carefully observe the output (output of the program submitted), we can say that there could be one unique solution. How? For the first placed cube, we don't need to check all 24 orientations because any solution would appear 8 times. Why? Since rotating the solution with each of the 4 faces pointing to the front would represent 4 solutions and inverting the stack (the order still remains the same) and then rotating it would produce 4 more solutions. So for the first cube, we can place one face of each of the 3 axes facing up, skipping the other 21 possible orientations. The other three cubes must be checked for all 24 orientations, so the total number of arrangements to check is 3 x 24 x 24 x24 = 41,472. This will give us one solution as shown in the figure 1 (Note: This one solution can be represented in 8 different ways as explained above. Moreover these 8 solutions can be arranged in 24 different ways by changing the order of the 4 cubes.)

Cube	Front	Left	Right	Back
1	R	B	Y	B
2	G	Y	G	R
3	B	G	R	Y
4	Y	R	B	G

FIGURE 1.

Solving 41,472 arrangements (without the aid of computer) would be impractical. Let's try a more efficient way to solve this problem and try to get the solution instantly. This can be done using Graph Theory. Let's see how it is done!

Graph Theoretical Representation

The following steps describe how the colored faces of the cubes can be represented in a graph format to solve the problem very efficiently.

1.      A cube is unfolded and its different sides are described as shown in the figure below.

	BACK
LEFT	TOP	RIGHT
	FRONT
	BOTTOM

                                                          FIGURE 2.

2.      The unfolded version of the four cubes given in the problem is shown below in the figure 3.

FIGURE 3.

3.      Now, we start representing each cube by a graph of the colors that appear on opposite pairs of the faces (as shown in the figure 4).

·         Four nodes stand for the four colors (blue B, red R, green G, and yellow Y) of the problem.

·         Edges are the links between the nodes corresponding to two colors on opposite faces.

·         If a pair of opposite sides has the same color, we draw a loop connecting the node to itself.

·         Because a cube has three pairs of opposite faces, the graph representation for each cube has three edges linking the four nodes, one for each color.

FIGURE 4.

4.      Next step is to combine the four graphs into one representation (as shown in figure 5). This representation shows the color relationship of the 12 pairs of opposite faces of the four cubes. Since as described in the problem that cubes must be arranged in stack eight of the 12 numbered edges give you the colors of each of the column's four sides.  Thus we are neglecting the 4 edges i.e. top and bottom.

                        FIGURE 5.

5.      Next step is to find two sub-graphs from the figure 5. such that each sub-graph use all the four nodes just once and includes all the four edges numbered from 1 to 4. Also, while choosing the sub-graph we need to take care that each node would have only two edges.  These conditions would provide us two sub-graphs with one representing the four front-back pairings, and other representing the four left-right parings. Thus, we are looking for two cycles C1 and C2 which each use all of the cubes (1- 4) and the edges between the same two colors come from different cubes.  For example, on one cycle, if the edge connecting R and G is (1), the label connecting R and G on the other cycle must be different than (1). The two sub-graphs are shown below in figure 6.

FIGURE 6.

6.      Now that we have these two sub-graphs we can arrange the cubes and solve the problem. First we have to look for the edge in the first labeled (1).  Look at the endpoints of this edge. Suppose we go from color Red (R) to color Blue (B) by travelling clockwise along this edge. Stack your first cube so that Red is in front and Blue is in back.  Now, look at the second sub-graph and find edge (1) and note its endpoints Blue and Yellow (Y), so that we travel from Blue, clockwise across edge (1) to Yellow.  Put color Blue at the left and Yellow on the right.  Now, proceed in the same fashion with cubes 2-4.

So we have:

Cube	Front	Left	Right	Back
1	R	B	Y	B
2	G	Y	G	R
3	B	G	R	Y
4	Y	R	B	G

 Thus using Graph theory we can get the unique answer very easily.

3.      Source code of solution:

I have written a code (Cube.java) that successfully finds all the possible ways in which the cubes can be placed to get the required output. Cube.java takes advantage of the computer's speed to check all the (4!*24⁴) arrangements for finding out all the possible solutions with all possible arrangements. For a particular order of cubes we have 8 solutions. Since we can arrange cube in 4! =24 ways, thus the possible ways in which we can arrange the cubes= 192.

OUTPUT:

               Front   Left     Right   Back

Cube 1:   R         B        Y        B

Cube 2:   G         Y        G        R

Cube 3:   B         G        R        Y 

Cube 4:   Y         R        B        G 

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

I am not the first person to write a blog on this topic, however some problems come again and again which forced me to address this issue.

Are you having some problem in your life? Are you upset with yourself or somebody? Are you not happy with your success? Are you angry on someone? If your answer to anyone of this question is yes, that means you are not doing things that you are supposed to do.

The main problem behind any problem is that we don't know why we are facing that problem. The immediate question arises why we don't know? Are we too busy to find out what the problem is? YES! Every-time when we face some problems our mind gets entangled thinking on the after effects of the problem. Rather than finding solution to the problem we start worrying about what others will think, I am nowhere, what will I do now, blah blah... If we are so busy worrying about the problem how will our brain work? Think about it. I am going to address this issue and try to share my experience.

One of the famous quote of Gandhiji says: "Be the change that you wish to see in the world".
It means: "We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need now wait to see what others do."

If you are a person who thinks nobody care's for you, then first thing you need to do is start caring for others.

If you are a person who thinks that people don't respect you, then start respecting others.

Keeping it simple, you just have to do following things to solve your problem:

For example: If you are a person who thinks people don't help you: 

1) Think what made you to think this: 

You cannot solve your problem without knowing why is it happening. This is the first step to understand your problem. So list down the things that made you to think that you have this problem. There will be a lot of reasons that made you to think this. May be it could be because of particular event, may be because of past experiences, it may be because its your belief, etc.

After doing step 1 you know why the hell you are going through a tough time :P

2) Start analyzing the situation: 

It's now time to analyze the points that you listed in first point. It's time to put yourself in other's shoes and analyse the situation. Keep all your worries aside and analyse that particular event that made you to thing that you have some problem. Think from others perspective. By doing this you will get to know the actual reality. You will get to know why that person acted like that. May be you were arrogant, may be you didn't help that person in his crisis, it could be that the other person is selfish, etc.

After performing step 2 you will come to know the source and event of triggering the problem.

3) Adopt reverse approach: This is the key step in order to solve the problem. Now you know, why you are facing a problem. Now its time to solve the problem. You just have to do a simple thing: Be the event that you wish to see (modified Gandhiji's quote ;)). Help that person to catch his positive side i.e. you need to help that person in his problems to make him believe that you will always be there during his problems. Don't be afraid to sacrifice yourself for others. By saying sacrifice I meant, sacrificing your expectation and helping others. You need to adopt reverse approach since it might be the situation with others as well. If you want positive things to happen in your life, you need to do positive things and attract positivity. 

After doing this step, your problem will automatically be solved, why you have got a new friend ;) A Friend in need is a friend indeed

Take a step forward towards a better life. Start taking decisions and start implementing them :)