The Et ceteras of anything and everything

My First Travelog

2010-10-24T03:08:00.000-07:00

I always wanted to write a travelogue - being an enthusiast as I am, recording your current experiences just by twitting them is just not enough, because you end up with a handful of videos, photos etc. when you travel, and uploading them 'on-the-fly' is something that I am not yet familiar with.

And, there is one just difference in this - my travelogues would (at least at this stage) reflect the travel, and not the stay, as they say "The journey matters, not (always) the destination".

So, here goes my 1st travelogue - this time it is just the route exploration, still Buckle Up !

My first travelog

View more presentations from Nagarajan Rengnathan.

Oh, and by the way, I am interested in recording the destinations (stays) too. I googled for this, and came up with a nice TravelPod to record them. In fact I even created a profile for me. Watch out this space, I am yet to begin :-)

Well, back in action...

2010-04-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

For those who had been reading my blogs on and off, sorry about being a nearly-none-active blogger, since I wrote far less stuff than I expected that I should. For the past one and a half year, it is nothing anyway.

Life around me has been crazily busy. On the personal front, it was a shattering experience of being the one getting everything, and then slowly, exponentially zooming back to nothing.

But, I am catching up. I really didn't have much time to talk about what I have been thinking or doing, or working on, but I do want to improve this situation now.

I believe this begins again. I mean the Blogging. Writing. Dreaming. Anything. Everything. And all that.

BarCamp7 on Cloud Computing

2008-08-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

This saturday is the most expected BarCamp7 @ Amazon campus. ‘Most expected’ because the session was code-named ‘computing on cloud 9’ and also because I attended last week’s session on Cloud Computing @ HYSEA.

Contrary to last week, I felt the audience reaction this week was like this:

Supposed to be demo-packed, the sessions are either incomplete (thanks to the bad internet connectivity) or completely DOS-based command line views...pfff! An important feedback for every organizer of such (barcamp-like) workshops/sessions - please arrange reasonable internet connectivity so both presenters and viewers can have a good experience!

An overview of the complete session is time-lined by Ramesh here (one of these days, I should also try live-blogging, he he). I would like to pick up more off-beat information on the sessions.

Hadoop: Jothi from Yahoo gave a presentation on this software layer on commodity machines. He started with an introduction on grid computing, made an age-old statement that ‘hardware is expensive’ (not exactly a reason to go for cloud computing), and moved on to a non-demo presentation of the framework which is intended to solve problems faced in grid computing. The presentation made me think that ‘thick client’ applications alone can be written, still, Hadoop is surely something to look out for. Especially it being open-source and as Jothi states ‘security is not an issue’, it could surely bring smiles to the developer community. At least it did when he credited Google and its MapReduce algo which is used extensively in Hadoop :-). More than the complete presentation, a picture of their data center (20 or so rows, 5+ stacks...) is enough 1000 words to explain the seriousness! Want to do Hadoop projects? Check out here!

Google App Engine: Anirudh gave us a (yet another) Hello World demo (internally, it is using yet another markup language – YAML & Python) using the App Engine, which is the infrastructure for building applications over the cloud. Calling this the (yet another) ‘next evolution in computing’, the demo was more an application demo, and not much on the infrastructure behind it, as Google App Engine was detailed last Saturday itself. The demo was really ‘techie’ right from command line.

DataDirect OpenAccess – T sales force demo from Mateen showed mof Microsoft Access + Crystal reports and less SalesForce – that you really don’t need to know SalesForce, worry only about your work. The demo is a typical example of SaaS consumption.

AMLOCK – Anup presented on re-engineering amlock for multi-tenancy. This is an example for not owning a solution (cost of ownership) and still hosting it. The presentation is a typical problem-solution based approach.

Using EC2 – Narayana from a start-up company Zveego, showed a command line based demo on virtualized, persistent data storage. It is good to see how EC2 is really easy to create a server machine in just few minutes, and host a web site onto it. It is really a pity when he said ‘google is killing us’ - Zveego has a product which is very much like MapMaker.

BPM on-demand – A demo by Jayaprakash from Cordys is more about the Process Factory and how process centric web applications can be developed. If not for the poor internet connectivity, this would have been a complete demo on business processing online. MashApps is an interesting new term now coined by the Process Factory which is something to watch!

P2W2 – This is from a startup, and the demo shown by Chaitanya is really cool. He showed a tool that recorded the voice and had voice editing options which are no match to any voice editing tools available over the net! The demo is about their online marketplace for services.

Tell-a-friend on the cloud – Given by Hrish from Pramati, his ‘word-of-the-mouth’ marketing tool is an embeddable widget which can be used to tell a friend about your blog or anything you did over the web. There is less about the tool and more about Pramati’s various DB scaling techniques already discussed last week.

LootStreet – This is an out-and-out start-up company by 2 guys from Ahmedabad (2008 passed-outs!!!) with a caption ‘every price is negotiable’. Introducing real e-commerce in India, their solutions are (in their own term) rudimentary communication of shopping over the internet. Surely, start-ups such as this (immediately after graduation) were never thought of in India in 2000 (that’s when I joined the tech world), which shows India is growing, and growing faster.

Acuvate – This is another start-up, and the presenter, Hitesh, just introduced his company as the next dimension of PaaS.

The BarCamp concluded with Map-Reduce algorithm show by Suganth.

On a ‘feedback’ish note, every such session organizers have to ensure the coffee machines are kept well away from presentations. They were louder than the presenters :-)

Cloud Computing Workshop @ HYSEA

2008-08-24T00:16:00.000-07:00

It takes an effort in the form of a Workshop on a pleasant Saturday morning and a couple of friend’s company to wake a guy like me from a long slumber and bring me back to blogging!

India’s First Ever Workshop on Cloud Computing was conducted by HYSEA @ Google Campus on Saturday.

Instead of talking about the complete workshop, I would like to pick up a few sessions to feel the overall experience. Though all sessions were good, here is what I felt the crowd reaction was:

Yes, a perfect Bell Curve, where there was a lot of applauds in the middle, when there was Microsoft’s demo of the Live Mesh.

MSV Janakiramm started with a suggestion of calling SaaS as “Storage as a Service”, had his talk centered on Cloud Computing for Consumers. Particularly, the demo was very interesting and kept captivated till the end. You can look and try the mesh live, which was very recently launched in India. Nice to think (from his own words) Windows Update as a Cloud Service :-)

Saji Antony from Cordys talked about Cordys's Limited BETA product “The Process Factory” (BPM On-Demand), which was the other demo-based session yesterday, although this one was recorded. The crowd felt the slow but sure change from Mash-Ups to Mash-Apps happening in the web.

There was equal amount of excitement for the MyPicks web application built on Facebook. The one by Rajiv Shivane from Pramati started with the challenges on computing over the Cloud, then came to the biggest challenge in IT – how to scale up your DB. This talk was full of information on the best possible (although called unorthodox across the world) ways to scale up your database.

From the other sessions, there are few munchies to remember:

1. Animoto - Considered to be the beginning of the end of slide sharing, gets you a nice music video from your images and pictures. Their users just shot up from 25k to 250k in just 3 days!

2. Ooyala – (Also a video technology company) is one among the very few software companies started working without a server. A nice example for a server-less software start-ups.

3. TimesMachine – Pretty known and old, but popular digital magazine from Times NY. You can read almost any (Times) news – even the history.

4. GrepTheWeb – An initiative from Amazon using Hadoop from AWS.

5. Heard about Google’s GQL? It’s just another attempt to create a generic (??) SQL interface for Linux and Unix platforms.

The biggest challenge with Cloud Computing in my opinion is in its validity and usage by large enterprises. Questions like storing my own data on a server of some service provider and the IP security and its safety will be large as you go on your journey in building the enterprise (though maybe not foreseen initially). Cloud Computing is yet to be governed and made clear as it is still in its nascent stage.

Anyway, there is something coming up on the same next week in Bar Camp 7. Let’s see.

Back to PEC !

2007-09-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

It seems like yesterday when I stood on the same building, waiting, expecting...the longest wait that lasted only for a few minutes when finally my name was announced by my placement officer on behalf of Vanenburg Business IT Solutions. I went to the same college again, this time to stand on the other side of the dais, for the same company (now called Cordys). I am feeling nostalgic for my college days now and the only cure for this is a trip down my memory lane.
My fruitful, funny, adventurous and energetic 7 years in Cordys melted right in front of me when I visited PEC (Pondicherry Engineering College), as one of the panel members for the recruitment drive.

As I gave a short speech to share my experiences with Cordys, I was no more an “industry guy sharing my experiences to students”, I almost became the student myself, the old days passing my mind, days which were truly wonderful though they did not seem the same at that time...

The hall at admin block where we conducted the exam brought back fond memories in which I saw myself sweating, bent-headed, doing engineering drawing, the same hall which I now supervised the exams we conducted - believe me, I felt horns sprouting from my head making me feel that the world is round.

That’s the beauty of looking back – it turns the ordinary into memorable, the mundane into magical...

I visited the computer lab that I so stealthily visited during the brief stint of my college life. Remember there is a reason to be in college...the next 30 to 40 years of your life will shape up on the basis of how your spend your time in college.

The final day of our campus visit from which we picked 4 students into Cordys family is memorable in many ways. This is when I visited the classrooms and professors from my Department of Civil Engineering. Oh, its nice to feel the classrooms occupied by me, the sounds of slamming books and dropping bags, the thrills of bunking classes, the fun of movie-going, the joys and embarrassments of facing the person you were talking about, when the same person come standing behind you, everything came rushing to me.

These were the classrooms we sat, letting our minds wander, thinking about canteen or someone ‘special’...

I was never the brilliant student of my department; I sat the 2nd row merely because of my height...but even after these 7 years of my neglecting to visit the college, my Professors still remembered me...!

I promised a sure visit sometime in November again for a quality time spending with my gurus who are still an inspiration to many of us including me...

I looked back just once when I started to leave from campus and smiled to myself. It doesn’t matter so much that I never trekked Himalayas, never scored a single run for the country, never even got married till now.

What's Happening?

2007-09-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

And it just happened...the Hyderabad Twin Blasts; it really shook the city...!

Both the blasts happened at the crowded places of the city:

· An open air theatre in Lumbini Park, and

· Gokul Chat - the only branch of the famous chat center

Initially, all fingers pointed to terrorist group(s). As of now, some suspects were identified. You can Google and find this. And this one too.

There has been no denying that the terrorist activities are now shaping up to new forms and possibilities, but it really shocks you when it happens in your city - the place where you live. While we communicate from/to our nears-and-dears to confirm nothing worse happened, you can't stop feeling sad for what really happened for others.

Just like the ones that rocked Mumbai in 1993, some more in Coimbatore, the attack on Benaras temples, and then one near Charminar, Hyderabad (barely 5 months ago), we forget incidents. Some of them surface after years which create a different interest, now that the incidents are past.

But, there are some things we can really do help in such situations:

1) When the securities on our office gates try to check us, our cars, our bags, don't deny. Using our power at that time thinking "How dare he check me" or thinking naively as "How come he checks me, he sees me daily!" will surely not help.

2) Note down helpline numbers, message friends; call the ones we know for confirmation. We may not be able to stop the incident, but can at least help in minimizing the damaging after-effects.

Oh, and there are new ones, recent one...this is the collapse of a new bridge (under construction). Life goes on.

The Incredible Music Machine

2007-03-02T21:54:00.000-08:00

I got this video from a relative in Canada. This music machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa.

97% of the machines components came from John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft Iowa. Yes, it’s farm equipment!

It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment, calibration, and tuning before filming this video, but as you can see, it is WELL worth the effort.

It is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian.

A note - Youtube’s upload facility is amazingly faster than any Mail box I ever had (next only to Outlook) :-)

Some logos, ads and their meanings!

2007-02-03T02:39:00.000-08:00

A collection of some nice, creative, stunning and catchy logos can be seen here in this PPT. I've aggregated these from the forwards mails I receive.

I used slideshare to prepare the presentation. More than publishing these logos and ads, I liked to demonstrate how easy and simple it has become nowadays to collect your content, prepare PPT and share them to the world. A rather easier way than adding images on your post making it long and boring :-)

The search for an online feed reader

2007-01-23T12:55:00.000-08:00

Long ago when I asked my colleague to suggest a news aggregator just for my academic knowledge, he suggested using WizzRSS. My first impression after using it was - why would anyone like to open an RSS reader in a browser and track?

Then of course, I had necessities for an RSS reader.

I need an RSS reader to manage my limited feed links and read/track them effectively.

Soon, my feed links started growing, and so did my accessibility options. With a computer at home, the limited feed links became “ever-so-growing” feed links, and I got tired exporting feeds as OPML from my home machine, send it as a mail, and then import them in my office to track. And vice versa!!!

You see the problem?

To be always in touch with my feeds from any point of time is nearly impossible with client based RSS feed readers. It means tying my feeds to a single computer.

But client-based readers are powerful and dead fast, and it was difficult to get a web based one which satisfied my requirements.

But, what’s my requirement, anyway?

I need a feed reader that helps tracking my feeds online, so I can access them wherever I go.

A good article on TechCrunch caught my attention, which covered exactly what I wanted! After trying out some of them from this article, and some more, I got a fairly good idea of what is expected out of a web-based RSS reader:

Feeds to be track-able online. It’s good to access them using a user-id (or mail-id) wherever I go and whatever machine I use.
A good UI which requires lesser learning curve to understand the functionality. Most people know their requirements, but the tool should help them map into functionalities.
Sorting the feeds, preferably by date. This helps “tracking” feeds based on a specific period.
A bunch of simple, basic, shortcut keys that help handling feeds faster and easier.
Rating and sharing posts with friends / network. Not a big requirement, but still popular among users.
Miscellaneous – social networking, searching, tagging, and recommendation engines etc. that are more popular with web 2.0 invention, but have little to do with frequent feed readers.

We have a lot of them that gives these functionalities, but some of the key differentiators mentioned below make the web-based feed readers unique:

Read/Unread posts – I have as much a necessity to make an item “unread”, as I make them “read”. This is indeed a special feature in client-based web readers. Currently, very few readers provide “unread” functionality. Try NewsAlloy.

Preferences management – It’s great to even remember my read and unread posts every time when I log-out and log-in. Sounds pretty obvious to do if you have a Read/Unread isn’t it? But it’s rare to find one with this functionality. Nevertheless, this is an extremely useful key feature noticeable on all client-based RSS readers.

UI rich – The learning curve for using any online application should be as shorter as possible. Provide a “desktop” like UI on a web browser with multiple scrolling panes and panels, and you are the best! Also, nowadays with AJAX / JavaScript / Flex tools, it’s so easy :-) GritWire with its client-like UI is developed in Flex, and it’s nice to use.

Performance – Performance should not be sacrificed when having such a great look and feel. Loading time must be faster. You wouldn’t like to click on “Import OPML”, and go for a coffee break till it is loaded :-) Google Reader is the fastest I’ve seen in terms of loading content.

Documentation – Needless to have a competitive documentation covering all the features, but its helpful if at least proper tool tips are provided for every button, and the headings are bold enough to notice :-)

I have a fairly good list of feed readers to try and feel (Google Reader, BlogLines, GritWire, Rojo, Goowy, Feeds2, Attensa, NewsGator, Pluck, NetVibes...), but I would recommend:

NewsAlloy, for it covers 4/5 differentiators I mentioned above. The tool tips are yet to function.
GritWire which resembles a thick client and so nice to work with, except for its import OPML, which is currently throwing errors while trying to import any OPML.
NetVibes which gives a portal look-and-feel, and is pretty easy for any kind of customization / configuration.

While I am now in a process of converting (and tagging) all my feeds from my favorite client based feed reader (it’s FeedReader) to my online web reader, a true RIA feed reader would be surely the one which would provide the best breed of features from the two camps (client and server), and that’s yet to come :-)

Harry Potter and the...

2007-01-06T09:51:00.000-08:00

Like most kids in the world (he he :-)), I am a great fan of the boy wizard, and now since the title for the new book is announced, I feel tempted to mention it in my blog...

Yes, the title was announced, and with more than 1,00,000 search results already for the title, the writers and bloggers are now in a beeline making predictions on whether the book might become the best seller of all times!

More than the title, I liked the way it was announced. If you go to Rowling’s web site, have a look at the rose eraser in the middle of her desk. Click on it, and it takes you to a room. There is a door, a window, a mirror and a table over there. The same eraser is placed back in this room on the table for exit. (For some strange reason, the Access Enabled version never worked for me!).

In the mirror, you'll see a passage. Click on the farthest door knob, and you get a Christmas there. Click the center of the main door on the screen, and a garland appears. Click then on top of the mirror (on the ceiling seen through the mirror) and you'll see a decoration over the ceiling. Click on the cobwebs, any one which is on both the sides of the door (One on the top of the door next to the switch, and the other near the table). They disappear. Noticed the chimes on the window? Click the second one from right, keep it pressed. It turns to a key, and taking it to the keyhole, opens the door. There will be a wrapped gift there, clicking on which opens a hangman game!

(Now as I write this, I see the hangman journey does not work anymore, there is a sign saying not to disturb. Only the light switch next to the door works).

But as they say “there is more thrill on the journey than the destination itself”, there was not much thrill in playing the hangman (as I read the title already); partly also because the title seems a little off-color.

Well, really, the title is not that appealing as her earlier titles, which sounded "adventure" and some thrilling plot to wait for, though there really IS lots to expect!

The title “Deathly Hallows” is already in debate too, by the way!

For a truthful reader, the ending does not matter. The journey was adventurous, and interesting. But the title really disturbs me. The thing is, it might kill off my expectations (like it did, for many faithful readers) I have about the journey I am about to travel. But, maybe, the title is just to create hype about the plot, who knows? :-)

But, Irrespective of whether Voldemort kills Harry or not, I feel bad when the author mentions she might kill him just to kill off the merchandising. Or perhaps, marketing dynamics, huh?

Let’s see. Till then, keep pondering about the title :-)

BarCamp3 @ Hyderabad

2006-12-18T08:50:00.000-08:00

BarCampHyderabad3 is in the third in the series of Barcamps being organized in Hyderabad. This time, it’s about Web 2.0 communities, and organized at the Infosys campus.

Starting with Bharat and DD Ganguly from DimDim, there were many speakers this time compared to the previous one, but mostly are duos from the same company – Jay Pullur and Ramesh from Pramati, Kapil and Vishnu from Slideshare, Brijesh and Jaiganesh from Infosys, and Ashish and Vignesh from my employer, Cordys.

The theme of this bar camp was, in my opinion, debate! Yes, there were debates almost for every presentation right from the beginning. The initial one (kick-off by Ramesh Loganathan) was itself delayed by about 40 minutes with many talks and questions in between. Bharat started his presentation on DimDim but never completed it, and was taken over by DimDim’s CEO DD Ganguly. The most argued one was Jay Pullur’s session on rich web-desktop, which took more than an hour to recede.

The one with least questions might be Janakiraman (on MSN Live Bots - a re-telecast from DEVCON 2006), which is mainly because we were busy laughing on the Bollywood BOT and its cute answers :-)

The most techie stuff was a presentation by Vishnu on Java-Ruby and the most interesting was Ashish’s presentation on Web 2.0 People. His presentation is completely non-technical and mind boggling. I didn’t see the presentation when he prepared it, waiting for a surprise and I got it as I wanted :-)

The grand finale was by Vignesh, whose presentation was one of the very best I’ve seen in recent times. It was so good that the discussion still continued even after the presentation was over! We almost felt its yet another “Cordys Day” :-)

For someone who attended BarCamp2, this must be a disappointing experience, for there are no sponsors, no freebies and no T-shirts.

But leaving the rest, there was at least some good memories of visiting a nice campus (Infosys), a couple of T-Shirts from Slideshare and some good questions to ponder, triggered by Ashish :-)

Why Third Monkey?

2006-12-17T06:52:00.000-08:00

So, why did I name it the third-monkey? Because “third monkey” was taken by someone already! :-)

Well, seriously there is no specific reason for that. Instead of the traditional name blogs and blogs with no reasonable names, I thought something different is good for a start!

But, again, why third monkey? There is this famous joke about “monkeys in a tree”. There are many corny versions of it, but the one that was the most popular is this:

Q: Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?

A: Because he was dead.

Q: Why did the second monkey fall out of the tree?

A: Because he was stapled to the first monkey!

Q: Why did the third monkey fall out of the tree?

A: Peer pressure!!

It suited well, so I took the name :-)

The many other versions can be googled, but I found this the funniest:

Why did the first monkey fall out of the tree?
It died.

Why did the second monkey fall out of the tree?
It forgot to let go of the first monkey.

Why did the third monkey fall out of the tree?
Monkey see, monkey do.

Why did the fourth monkey fall out of the tree?
Peer pressure.

Why did the tree fall down?
Because it thought it was a monkey.

Why did the boy fall off his bike?
He was hit by four falling monkeys and a tree.

Have fun!

Surprise!

2006-12-14T19:20:00.000-08:00

If not for my first blog on DEVCON 2006 (too good story to miss the blog space), this could have been my first webblog!

Yes, it’s truly surprising to see myself start blogging. Originally created on June 30th, 2006 and after being inactive for a long time (6 months???), I decided it would be worth the wait, so let me get started!

I would like to post articles in this blog about anything and everything, which might mean like Work, People, Strategy, Knowledge, Learning, Growth, Innovation, Music, Fun, Experiences...Confused? Then let it be :-)

I've read somewhere about blogging which said:

The fastest way to understand blogging is to try it out the phenomenon that's transforming web and media to a participatory activity.

What will happen if you start participating? Who knows...it might be fun though :-)

A Disclaimer - The content of this blog is heavily dependent on my mood swings!

MUGH - My first experience on a developer conference

2006-11-19T11:18:00.000-08:00

This Sunday (19^th November), I had the opportunity of attending DevCon 2006 at the Microsoft Office in Hyderabad (Gachibowli). DevCon is an annual event which facilitates knowledge exchange among developers and architects from various organizations. MUGH conducts conferences on the innovations around .NET, and this year's focus is on the recent developments in .NET framework, and SQL Server 2005.

Personally I am very much excited about attending this event. But, it seemed to me it was the same for many developers here as well! 450+ registrations on the website, and almost equal number of attendants…it’s good I started early to arrive at the right time. By the way, did I tell you this is also my first visit into the Microsoft campus? :-)

The program started with a presentation by the sponsors, MAQ software, on Mobile devices market and .NET Compact framework. We had a nice idea on the latest (selling) cell phone brands in the market.

Followed by which, Cordys (that's my company!) presented on SOA and the Green Field Myth. It’s about the paradigm shift we need to have on getting into SOA architecture, and a nice demo on Cordys platform and how it does abstraction to deliver software as a service. The demo was received really well!

There were a couple of eye-catching presentations from Microsoft Team on Web 2.0, Atlas, and on MSN live by Janakiraman (the TV9 guy). MSN Live demo was about a couple of Live Bots (type a query...get an automated response) and it kept us awake after lunch :-)

We had some more on C# 2.0 features and what to expect in 3.0. Though its interesting to see more classes and support getting added, but additions always come with more complexities :-)

And then the last was on WS-Factory, which was fast-paced and completely technical. I felt it dragging, but that might be because it’s the last for the day?

Its interesting to see the developer community in such an active mood till the end of all the demos. Though every session was not on time, and it got extended by almost an hour, the lot stayed back, and did not agreed for conducting parallel sessions to speed up!

In hindsight, its sad to note that there were some hiccoughs throughout the program in the form of the delays in security checks (no ‘parallel processing’ :-)), double registration (there was an online registration but that’s not considered), non-availability of pen and books (lucky I got a paper and pen to scribe), bad lunch, no directions in campus/canteen…

There was a continuous disturbing tick…tick sound throughout every presentation like a time bomb that’s about to go off any moment…I finally managed to find what it was…it’s the sound of System Clock running on every presenter’s laptop coming through the speaker! :-)