Thought Process

When coffee tastes bitter, it’s time for change

2009-11-09T21:15:00.000-08:00

Few years back, I was enjoying a cup of hot coffee with my friends in office pantry during late evening break. One friend said, "This Coffee tastes bitter", I replied "When coffee from office vending machine tastes bitter, it’s time for change". Topic ended after some discussion. Last week I received a mail from the same friend "Coffee tastes bitter, as you said I should start looking out". I was surprised that he remembered my comment for so long.

Though I didn’t give so much thought to what I said then but when I pondered again it made sense instantly, I could immediately think of some metaphoric indicators for need of change from bitter coffee.
The change may not be necessarily employer change, it can be project or team or any other change suitable to individual circumstances.

So why coffee starts tasting bitter, first simple reason, you are drinking too much lately, which might link to too many breaks during office hours or too stretched work hours. Both the scenarios require some kind of change to keep things in order in long run professionally as well as personally.

Another reason I can think of is, vending machine coffee was always bitter but you started realizing it now, probably because previously you were content with your work and team environment, your efforts were well acknowledged and appreciated, many more things like that so you never really cared for coffee taste but enjoyed every bit of time spent at work but now things are getting little different.

Well managed and executed project promotes team taking break together sharing ideas and cracking jokes to keep motivation high and ball rolling. It also serves as platform for developing non formal relationship with co workers thus time spent in break mattered while coffee just served as ice breaker.
On the other hand, fractured teams also take coffee breaks probably even more frequent than above ones but mostly in groups of hierarchy , venting out concerns and issues in wrong forums, results in bad vibes among team members and doomed project.

Ok one more, you have been in same project/team/location for too long, project is good, team is good but stagnation is creeping in. This is one common problem with key resources in project, they work well and sometimes it proves to be negative for their learning curves. Technology or non technology, any job require people to re-skill themselves continuously. But business continuity and criticality being ground reality does not allow frequent resource movement.
It’s not something which can't be managed, we always handle such problems when people decides to part way with organization so why not before. Any team or manager too dependent on a particular resource(s) should always evaluate "what if" scenarios. At the same time, proactive initiative from management to provide growth opportunities to critical resources in timely manner will not only bring more productivity, enriched skill pool but also employee satisfaction and loyalty towards team/unit/organization. Irrespective of hierarchy, employee feels valued when organization care about their career and personal growth.

Though it’s unrelated to above context but I will still add “number matters but only collectively”, what it implies you don’t want to kill your best “Hen” to get all golden egg at one shot’ . Enrich your hens and golden egg will continue to come for long time.

Last but not the least sometimes personal problems are carried over to work. It’s not unnatural to have influence from home on work and vice versa but when it happens very frequently and you are unable to segregate the environments and your responses then it’s time to change and change for good.
Finally we all have different lives and thought process to handle our own problems/issues/concerns and there is nothing which fits all hence don’t be afraid of change when your coffee tastes bitter because change is not that bad after all.

What’s with the cloud anyway?

2009-08-31T16:18:00.001-07:00

What’s in the name?

“Cloud” is popular metaphor for internet, added with computing it represents highly scalable distributed computing capacity available through World Wide Web.

What’s the buzz?

Availability of affordable high speed network bandwidth allowed access to massive computing resources and services from across the world. Traditional datacenters are costly to setup and even costlier to maintain. Businesses are unwilling to own and manage non core business resources. Data suggests the average enterprise spends $8 in maintenance for every $1 spent on new IT infrastructure. Cloud offers on demand infrastructure and software service with flexible pricing options (pay per use or subscription model). Key is don’t own, use what you want and pay what you use. Gartner predicts by 2011, early technology adaptor businesses will buy 40% of IT infrastructure as a Service.

Companies like Google and Amazon built massively scalable processing and storage infrastructure to support core business operation which they are now harnessing to provide on demand infrastructure and service scalability to other businesses. Interesting bandwidth uses by AWS (Amazon web services) already exceeds their core e-tailing services.

Design basics - Service Layers of cloud computing

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Highest layer offers business functions software running in cloud as service to clients. Software deployed on cloud act as service which can be exploited by user as per need basis, this scenario is very different from traditional “software on desktop” approach. Saas frees user from software licensee purchase and installation and works on pay per use or flat subscription model. Actually everyone of us has used it in one or other way.

Most widely known commercial examples are Salesforce.com and Google apps, Zoho, Microsoft online services.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

This middle layer offers platform abstraction to clients. Widely known example Xen image from Amazon platform cloud, contains linux distro, web server and development environment such as Ruby or Perl. Other examples are

· Java Google Web Toolkit (Google App Engine)

· Python Django (Google App Engine)

· Ruby on Rails (Heroku)

· .NET (Azure Services Platform)

PaaS is generally constrained by service provider’s capabilities like Google only supported Python for app engine before recent addition of java. Microsoft Azure “.NET”. No cross platform so far.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Lowest layer offering standard storage and computing capabilities to client over the network. Hardware resources such as Storage, servers, routers and switches are pooled using virtualization technology to offer on demand hardware scalability. Commercial IaaS is synonym with Amazon due to highly successful EC2 (Elastic compute cloud) and S3 (Simple storage service) services.

Virtualization

Virtualization is most important technology in cloud computing arena, providing abstraction to applications and end users from actual physical resources. Virtualization allows resources (Storage, servers etc) to be treated as resource pool rather discrete systems thus allowing on demand allocation.

Virtualization types

OS virtualization
Platform Virtualization
Network Virtualization

The key benefits offered by virtualization are

Higher resource utilization rate (server, storage)
Resource consolidation
Lower power usage and cost optimization
Space optimization
Disaster recovery and business continuation
Reduced operation costs

Other important technologies include para virtualization i.e. enable single server to be treated as multiple, clustering which allow multiple servers to act as single server. Sophisticated file systems like ZFS which can support virtually unlimited storage.

Cloud options

Public clouds are maintained by commercial vender with massive computing datacenters, running jobs from multiple clients on shared resources (Storage, servers etc). No exclusive client control on underlying infrastructure services.
Private clouds are on demand infrastructure exclusively owned by single client with control over processing capacities and job scheduling.
Hybrid clouds promises best of both worlds where client share some services while use other in exclusivity. Model promises a lot but add complexity of application distribution across the environment. Initial hybrid implementations are capable of handling stateless applications with no complex database and synchronization requirements.

The good

Agility powered by highly scalable infrastructure environment
Anywhere access to application aka location independence
Abstract infrastructure complexities from developer, users and business
Massive on demand scalability
Optimal hardware utilization
Cost advantage (Pay per use or flat subscription model)
Eliminate over provisioning, don’t need it until actually use it
Accelerated application development
Functional offloading – using cloud only for specific resource intensive functions

And not so good

Security and privacy have been biggest concern for the organization as application and data is physical located in shared environment.
Control over environment as service also need to go through multiple maturity cycle to achieve industry accepted model.
Disaster recovery – Though cloud offers best breed disaster recovery through underlying redundant infrastructure and multiple hosted environment but network disaster can pose threat system to availability.

RESTful Architecture Style

2009-06-23T20:45:00.001-07:00

In the world full of design principles and architectures, every new architectural style promises to learn from the failures and fill gaps left open by previous ones. With so many architectural recommendations and frameworks around, what makes REST special and why it matters? Answer is simple it make “World wide web” or more popularly called “Internet” work and work like dream. Yes, our very own Internet is a loose implementation of REST principles or in other words internet is almost “RESTful”. Some people even go to the extent of calling REST as an extension of HTTP design.

REST stands for Representational State Transfer; this term was coined by Roy Fielding in 2000 in his doctoral dissertation. Roy is one of principal writer of hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP) specifications; dissertation is available online here <http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm>. REST concepts have been around for quite sometime but recent emergence of service based designs have put it under spotlight. As Roy has summed

“[REST] scales well with large numbers of clients, enables transfer of data in streams of unlimited size and type, supports intermediaries (proxies and gateways) as data transformation and caching components, and concentrates the application state within the user agent components.”

We started with fewer and smaller organizations with even smaller IT solutions. Need for components communicating/transacting with each other were limited but as enterprises and businesses crossed geographical and demographical boundaries large scale integration became need of hour. Conventional architecture allowed less strict rules which resulted in disparate system which are hard to integrate without getting into low level implementation details. Designer around the world felt need for more standardized approach to how components should be modeled to make integration easier.

Service oriented architecture and web services gained momentum on promise of integrating heterogeneous systems with utmost ease. SOAP interfaces (web services) solved many integration issues but complexities of solutions sometime resulted in more problems than intended solutions. Even flexible WSDL interfaces could not achieve complete independence from underlying implementation. It’s almost impossible for two arbitrary designed components to work together without knowing interface conventions and transfer messages. REST tried to address issues related to non restricted architectural styles resulting into to component specific implementations.

As architectural style, REST defines set of rules which system should comply with to achieve “RESTfulness” and reap the benefits. Why it is more appropriately called style because REST is very abstract as it does not define too many low level details unlike conventional architectures thus rather than being a concrete design it represent a style for architecting services. By defining rules at highest level REST tries to prevent low level component locking. In past decade internet amazed everyone with growth, for a business to be successful internet presence become absolute necessity. Internet can be termed as biggest integration project in the history of computers and its architecture supported speedy expansion really well. This helped in making REST case even stronger.

At the core of REST is stateless client server interactions using uniform interface using which representation of resource state is transferred to requester client. It radically shift design from being API centric to information/domain data centric. You must have heard a lot about interface based design as generally termed as “design to interface” where underlying implementations are abstracted from consumer clients. Pretty neat, but REST takes it to next level by keeping interface constant. Every piece of information offer same set of methods with single identification scheme. New services add new piece of information which can retrieved/manipulated using standard requests. Unlike to RPC style systems, where services are modeled around what they do.

In formal terms REST defines objects as Resources, Resources are identified by single identifier scheme typically a URL or URI, implementing similar set of methods to support information manipulation and retrieval, thus each involved component understand each request and response. Each part of request complies with an interface. There are no adhoc messages. Conventional design proposes "do something" Vs REST's "make something so" though both result in similar outcome but focus moves from verb to noun.

GET - Retrieve information or state of resource

PUT - Update information or state of resource

POST - Add information

DETETE - Remove information

These methods are borrowed from HTTP, though REST is not tied with HTTP but as present most successful implementation of REST style, internet is based on HTTP so it has found way in to the REST acronyms. “GET” being most used method in web application to retrieve information is well suited for extending its role to RESTful designs. Basic idea is to implement these standard set of methods for each entity or resource to enable standard retrieval and manipulation across the heterogeneous, geographically separated systems.

Here is an example* to show conventional Vs REST implementation, An RPC application might define operations such as the following:

getUser()

addUser()

removeUser()

updateUser()

getLocation()

addLocation()

removeLocation()

updateLocation()

listUsers()

listLocations()

findLocation()

findUser()

Client code to access this application may look something like this:

exampleAppObject = new ExampleApp('example.com:1234')

exampleAppObject.removeUser('001')

With REST’s resource centric approach

http://example.com/users/

http://example.com/users/{user} (one for each user - where {user} is either the user name or the user id)

http://example.com/findUserForm

http://example.com/locations/

http://example.com/locations/{location} (one for each location - where {location} is the location name or the location id)

http://example.com/findLocationForm

Client code to access this application may look something like this:

userResource = new Resource('http://example.com/users/001')

userResource.delete()

Important point is resource representation is completely independent from state of resource. Client can request representation based on it own requirements. This approach enables multiple format consumption support at server end serving same resource in multiple formats (i.e. HTML, XML). Its like enabling web GUI and web service interface for the resources.

Another important REST principle is statelessness of server, each transaction between client and server to be self contained so that server need not keep track of served client and consecutive requests from same client can be served by different server resources, making better use of available system resource and easier replacement of failed units. Imagine no more memory hogging client session, but this does not mean REST does not allow stateful design, state can be maintained at client end, in other words client is responsible for providing complete request including authentication info each time, on server session or no session, cookie no cookie, server provide same resource state to each client. This also enhances “cachebility” of resources to reduce network hopping.

Summing few advantages, offers better support for load balancing with implicit statelessness, high level of client server independence, does not need separate directory mechanism due to single resource identification scheme, layered design support. In real world, Amazon S3 and blogs are great example of RESTful service implementation.

With some much attention around REST, EE6 has proposed to include JSR311 -JAX-RS: The Java API for RESTful Web Services. This API will enable developers to rapidly build Web applications in Java that are characteristic of the best designed parts of the Web. This API promises to make RESTful web service development easier to abstract away low level details much like JAX-WS does for SOAP protocol.

Though REST promises a lot, but as we will see more and more business implementation, actual value of investment will start appear so will the issues. As it proposes data centric approach thus there is a learning curve in thinking solutions in terms of resources and their state. It is easier to model simple read around REST but complex business scenarios yet to be tested, there are still lessons to be learnt and only time will tell whether all gaps are filled or should we start looking for another new approach.

Good design is good business!

2009-02-21T09:35:00.001-08:00

Ideas require favorable circumstances to flourish but facts can stand for themselves in all the situations, only difference being in adverse situations we start analyzing facts more closely. This statement is more relevant in today's scenarios when world economy is not painting very pleasant picture, client spending is shrinking, even out right good ideas are hard to sell. So what is the fact that can stand for itself even in such situation “Good design is good business".

Though design holds uttermost importance in any product lifecycle but here I am specifically referring to technical design of IT systems. So, why good technical design is good business?

Software services allowed businesses around the globe to expand beyond geographic and cultural boundaries, reaching to diverse customers in time and cost effective manner. But at the same time inability of IT solutions to respond to changing market place, completion and customers have forced otherwise successful businesses to shut down. Close analysis of any such successes and failures invariably points towards IT system design. In current economic scenario IT system design becomes even more critical for serving and served businesses.

Our organization serves customer all across the globe creating and maintaining client business support systems. For continuous business growth it requires organic (more business from existing client) as well inorganic (new client business) growth in client IT business. Moving up knowledge ladder of existing client's IT ecosystem provides vast opportunities for new business development and good solutions (read designs) created by us serves as steps in that ladder reaffirming client’s faith in our capabilities and delivery model. They are like Oscar trophies; next movie (project) can easily generate funding based on previous great work. So why good design makes sense for everyone involved?

In simple words, better design always translate into better code, making maintenance and extension cost effective and easier to justify to anyone needing it. Thumb rule is good IT systems are self sustaining, making them favorite of higher up management and frankly who doesn’t like hassle free IT systems saving corporation millions spent on maintenance and failed attempts of extensions. Also, ability to scale provides business confidence to respond to changing market dynamics. Remember everyone want a piece of good cake i.e. interface with flexible, bug free (ok lets settle for almost bug free), stable system, scalable good design can help in giving each one a piece they deserve.

For serving businesses like our organization, good design is easier to code and providing most efficient resource and time utilization (if you include time and effort spent in coding (fixing) bugs for bad design). Good designs leaves scope only for small coding bugs, but save time spent on filling functionality gaps. Good system can be sold for extension even in bad times because they are built to scale with least cost, but other way (bad system) it is hard even in perfect times.

Finally in good times bad design may go unnoticed but in bad time good system (design) stands out so do the bad system and you would not want to be standing out with second one.

So let’s go over few simple rules for creating good design

Traditional development model (water fall etc) requires design to start after requirement phase but starting early with high level design uncovers relevant questions in early stage saving repeated cycles of communications and documentation between business and technical teams. Believe me knowing business better and first hand always result in better technical designs.
Design should justify each of participating technologies. Though it will be superficial to say technology decisions can be cost independent but key is to identify right technologies to use based on business requirements, evaluate various available options (products), quantify results, share with business, if not easy , won’t be impossible to get business sing your tune.
Always design to services and components, map requirements to components/services and interfaces and things will start falling in place, giving you right kind of questions to ask.
Don’t run to code, instead spent time on understanding requirement and creating right design else you will be spending more time filling functionality gaps later. Right design will ensure you are left with enough time to realize it in the best possible way.
Don’t reinvent wheel, use best practices and patterns to save time and standardize your solution.
A layer of abstraction solves hundred problems by making interface information clearer for each business component and consuming channel.
Business components design should not be too coupled with consumer channel, remember web is not the only channel, it’s just one of them, if not code, design for business components with multiple interfaces to ensure system is capable of further extension with least impact.
Functional and non functional are equally important, you cannot make system faster and scalar if you never created functional design for one. Believe me you will spend twice the time doing the same thing if you first code for functionality then for speed and scalability.
Share design thought with developers to ensure high level design sync with low level realities.
Always remember testing is not just a phase in development cycle it is equally important to designing or coding, bottom line if you can't find it, you can't fix it. Stress on allocating right amount of time, effort and tools for testing.

This all sound reasonable for new systems but what about existing ones, existing system enhancement and maintenance is bigger chunk of work we do for our clients. Existing system are great teacher for anyone willing to learn about what to do and what not to. There are numerous good and bad systems present in IT world giving practical examples of do and don’ts.

Redesigning any such system which is not build around good design practices is not an option most of the times but few techniques can still help in making future enhancements easier and less time/effort consuming.

Analyze new requirements and existing system; remember code and data can tell you what business document may not.
Create high level design with component contract specifications for new enhancements.
Analyze interfacing with existing system components and identify ones that are violating your expected contract terms.
Target these components for sandboxing. Create abstraction layer around such components to prevent design decencies with new design/code.

Lastly, no system is perfect but we can aim to reduce gap between real and prefect system to minimum by making good designs.

Evolution

2008-11-28T08:48:00.000-08:00

Human killed only for hunger
he evolved,
he learnt new ways of creating life,
he learnt to connect with other humans parted by great distances,
he learnt to reach sky and talk to stars,
he learnt to predict catastrophes
and
he learnt killing for religion
he learnt killing for color
he learnt killing for language
he learnt killing kids and mothers
he learnt how to kill without feeling pain of killed
he learnt killing for reasons
he learnt killing for no reason
he learnt killing just for killing
he only learnt killing after all !
he evolved to be inhumane!

Shame we going back to, where we started from!

2008-10-21T18:56:00.001-07:00

Quebec City is located approximate 255 Km away from Montreal. In fall season,colorful arrays of trees on both side of highway make journey quite pleasurable. Inside Quebec city you find yourself among old stoned building which is kind of nice if you are coming from new age city where sky scrapper are build with glass and steel. Prominent places to visit can be divided in to two part one inside walled city and other on the periphery outside the wall.


Way to Quebec City	Quebec Parliament

Quebec parliament is humongous architecture built with stone, symbolizes glorious French culture. Interesting no Canadian flag is visible in this part of Canada for all obvious reasons. But this building score excellent on the scale of architecture and beauty.
Walled city is located on the top of mountain and give picturesque view of water front on one side and outer Quebec city on the other, this place has it all, mountain highs, waterfront (Saint Lawrence River), lovely surrounding, great heritage buildings.
Inside walled city external old house structures are maintained to recreate magic of old French times but insides have been converted into restaurants and shops to cater needs of 9 million visitor coming here every year. I would have loved to see street markets and shops recreating magic of old Quebec city but like everywhere commercialization has taken its toll on glorious past.In spite of all this, Quebec city is undoubtedly one of most beautiful cities I have been to.


View of Walled Quebec City	Saint Lawrence River

Hotel Le Château Frontenac is built on a tall cape tall cape, is symbol of Old Quebec city, it overlooks Saint Lawrence Rive giving spectacular view of vast natural beauty around Quebec city. This hotel has not only been part of french historical moments but also been silent observer to the second world war strategy discussions between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt at Citadelle.


Hotel Le Château Frontenac	Wall painting

In addition to beautiful structures, Quebec city also displays various forms of art to visitors, if you notice carefully its a wall painting not actual people in their balconies
If you have desire and strength to climb on mountain top then Quebec city provides you ample reasons to do so, every single step towards top gives you a unique view of Lawrence river, ships and city below. It was worth going to the top when I could capture these shots.


View from top of hill

This journey will always stay alive in my heart and soul. As I wrote in previous post, some cities has their own life, Quebec city is surely one of them.

1984 – My take away

2008-10-19T17:39:00.001-07:00

Geogre orwell's 1984 is not only a interesting but also very compelling read. Each finished page puts you in hours of thinking. Somewhere it says a good book is one which tells you things which you already know but in more systematic way so that you can collaborate your thoughts around it.1984 does not state any unobvious or unknown fact. But, instigate your thought process on patterns which have existed forever in our society.

Some books have their own life; they live through centuries, through vast geographic diversities, making sense for people living in Mathura to Manhattan equally. You don't have to read these books but instead they talk to you as you turn pages. I know few of them Fountainhead, The class and 1984, this list will surely grow as I get to read more books.

"1984" posses a fundamental question of power and its existence. Why war and enmity between nations exist and why it will exist forever. Book repeatedly states three unique rules of power, 1) Ignorance is strength 2) Freedom is slavery 3) War is peace. They are more like oxymoron but when you read through context its all start making all sense.

I will start with my favorite one "Freedom is slavery", As we live in society we follow rules and regulations and become part of the system. In other words we are slaves to norms instituted by society & government and in return government promises our freedom. Any individual not confirming to social rules can not ask for same guarantee to his freedom. By being part of society we loose our identity as individual and any crime against us is considered as crime against society thus inviting appropriate punishment by system or government. Or in other words, in any disintegrated society each individual is responsible for his own safety, by not confirming to any rule though free, but responsible to keep his freedom intent. Slavery to system is key to keep personal freedom.

"War is peace" is an oxymoron but again equally relevant in current context, war with external forces is always used by governments around the globe to maintain peace inside the country. War provide required strong emotions to suppress all other issues of importance, when country is at war no one questions tax hikes, ration cuts or delay in otherwise development projects. Anyway what is greater than national pride to citizens. Over the years governments and rulers have used this to best of their interest, Correlating this with current situations around start making sense immediately. Billions getting spent in defeating external enemies while internal enemies like poverty, illiteracy and epidemics always stay undefeated due to unavailability of required funds. Governments are eager to put billions into weapons and bombs but funds always fall short for giving food to everyone. A good war is useful to everyone but poor. Rulers & government gets full hand on funds usage which would be questioned otherwise, middle class gets something to watch on TV in evening and feel proud about. Frankly speaking, all money spent on wars around is more than enough to eradicate all other vices like poverty, hunger, infant mortality. But again who really cares.

Last one is "ignorance is strength", this one is even more appropriate in context of our country. In addition to all other benefits education enable us to ask questions. It opens window of mind, it develops a sense reasoning behind all actions. We start asking questions to people in responsible positions. We expect accountability from other leaders while Ignorant masses provide unquestioned absolute power to rulers. For years, rulers denied right to education to all section of society to suppress this reasoning, accountability and transparency. Ignorance is surely an strength for rulers who want to avoid accountability and transparency .

This novel was written sometime in 1947 but equally contemporary to today's situation. History repeats itself and in social context it repeats more often. Years passed, centuries passed but society always remained divided in three sections High, middle and low. Rulers changed, name changed and way of ruling changed but even societies and countries created in the name of human equality could not remove these sections. Few from middle moved to high, few from high fallen to middle but low remained low, in darkness. Interesting, middle always took support of low pretending to fight for their cause, to reach higher but once they reached there they pushed low back to where they always were. Every time after bit of imbalance everything settled back in same format which existed forever.

Montreal & Quebec - where old meets new - 1

2008-10-17T17:51:00.001-07:00

I have always admired cities with heritage, with long standing culture, with their own soul. New cities have their own charm sky scrappers, big shopping malls, flashy restaurants but like old songs old cities leave never fading memories in visitors mind. Time spent in such cities stays with us though out our life.

Last week I got chance to visit Montreal and Quebec city. Though fall is beautiful season in North America but this part of Canada is specially blessed. Nature paints entire surroundings in beautiful colors. Road journey is treat to eyes, leaves in different colors give impression of beautiful paintings.

Montreal & Quebec city were french colonies with history of 400 years behind. French culture is still very much alive and kicking. People prefer to speak in french. I never imagined that in this continent, I would ever face issue of people not knowing English. But probably this sense of culture and language is keeping this city alive and deep rooted in glorious past.

Beautiful old church, basilicas and government building standing tall in middest of Montreal downtown gives it different character than any other new city downtown as Toronto. I would rather use pictures to explain my point. Its interesting to see prestigious McGill University situated in the heart of downtown.


Church	McGill University

Montreal Olympic Stadium 1976	Art at downtown - Illuminated Crowd

Montreal has two different world coexisting on same turf in harmony, downtown has an underground city with kilometers of shopping space while magnificent church and basilicas can be seen on every corner of city keeping old Montreal very much alive. Its amazing to see big fashion brands store in vicinity of oldest churches of north America .

Notre dame basilica

I have been fortunate enough to visit famous Notre dame basilica located in old Montreal, while it's exterior displays magnificent architecture but inside beauty is even more fascinating. I am sure you will also be awed with its beauty and elegance.It has been silent observer of french rise in Montreal. Built in phases, its an absolute monument of glorious french history in Montreal.

Check out more of Montreal & Quebec city in next post.

2008-10-17T11:22:00.001-07:00

Ubuntu story continues

I shall start from where I left last time. Recap, was facing issue with CPU utilization, every time I change my wallpaper CPU spikes to 100% and even after closing "Change Appearance" window process did not exit keeping CPU overloaded. After lots of googling, got one workaround and it worked. So, these days I am living happily ever after with my dual boot Ubuntu/Window laptop.
The primary reason for installing Linux was to understand: if linux has matured enough to provide cost effective but uncompromising option to users who wants to relinquish costly and hardware sucking Window in near future. After using Ubuntu for quite sometime answer is absolute ‘Yes’. Except few glitches here and there, Ubuntu provide all necessary functionalities one needs from PC and that too without being too Geeky. Ease to use is pretty important things when it comes to be popular whether its machine or people?. I would surely avoid any TV which requires me to spend 3 hours on setup for playing a movie. So with PC why would any normal user require to know kernel architecture to read his mails? Make sense?

PS. I intentionally avoid much of technical detail to keep things easy to read. For anyone who wants to know more on CPU overload workaround, mail me I will be happy to help.

Ubuntu story

2008-10-05T09:35:00.001-07:00

For quite sometime, I was planning to install Ubuntu on my dell laptop Vostro 1500 currently with Window XP but busy schedule wasn't allowing me. Two days back finally I downloaded Ubuntu hardy(8.04) from ubuntu website, burnt iso using Infrarecorder.Installation was pretty easy. Ubuntu provide option of partitioning HD in three ways, new users can opt for guided one while more serious users can try customize partitioning.

Entire process took around 35-40 minutes and my laptop was ready to dual boot. Personally I don't like orange brown default theme but there was numerous customization options available to change how you want to make your ubuntu look. Look and feel was last thing to worry. First thing after installation was to make wireless network setup work. It wasn't as simple as I thought.

Most wireless cards including broadcom ones don't provide linux drivers thus ndiswrapper package is needed to use windows wireless driver. Ndiswrapper requires pretty straight installation but nothing worked even after installation. I spend next four hours trying various options to make it work. but all vain. At 1:30 AM I finally decided to give it break for the day.

Next day I started all again but this time I was lucky and found out firmware for my wireless card is not available thus should be extracted out of windows drivers.

Finally managed to find script for same, viola it worked. Now I was in position to give serious thoughts to make ubuntu my default OS. Frankly ubuntu beats window hands down when It comes to speed and other customization options.Also, able to tweak your OS the way you want and every process running is so transparent that gives you a feeling of familiarity. You know what's going on your PC unlike windows where every thing looks like a black box.

Everything was pretty exciting so far. but here comes the twist in the tale.

I noticed my CPU fans running very fast, checked top was surprised to find dual core cpu was running 100% busy. What the heck, I am not even running anything CPU heavy. Found process eating up CPU cycle was "gnome- appearance". Googled a bit and here it was, I am running Nvidia GE force with 8400M display card and buggy driver ported with it, is incapable of doing required rendering in linux thus CPU ends up taking all the load for display.

Bad, bad real bad...., read somewhere nvidia has fixed the issue but fix is not available in public domain to use.

So my ubuntu dream has hit big roadblock, probably need to explore fedora.

But on the other hand I learnt so many new things in the process and that's what matters in the end. Isn't it?

2008-09-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

I Fail
Lost one more time,
every time I try to be you, I fail
why pretensions so hard to pretend
I want to be you, using human as things at will,
but why it itches somewhere deep inside,
you said emotion is commodity
but why I can't buy load of happiness,
you said way to the top is paved with heads,
but why my feet are turning red with unknown blood, every step I walk
you said success needs compromise
but why it does not feel alright,
you said life is great at top
but why my eyes speaks loneliness,
is it my failure to evolve or
is it some truth still breathing inside me.

2008-09-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

To bail out or not!
Today US economy stands at very critical point. Major financial institutions are wiped out by bad debts and credit unavailability. This time banker's greed is given name of "Sub prime loss". It’s scary all over.

Federal agency is not left with any option but to intervene and take control of things before everything is destroyed.

US congress and treasury are discussing bail out plan worth 700bn dollar to clear this mess on street. This controversial bail out is under lot of scrutiny from various section of American society and US senators. Things are not as simple as it may sound, giving fund to ailing financial institution will not resolve everything and clear mess for once and for all.

There is no guarantee that even after putting huge burden of bail out on middle class taxpayers, financial crisis will not take its toll. Managing fund to resolve crisis and at the same time making sure that it does not make way to tainted executives bank account will be very difficult. According to unconfirmed news, top honchos from troubled financial institution have already started flexing their political muscles to get lion share of bail out money.

It will be very interesting to see, that in the process of bail out if federal treasury ends up giving funds to same people whose greed is reason behind this biggest financial mess. These people are biggest shareholders in troubled institutes and any bail will directly or indirect aid to their personal wealth.

On the other hand if fed does not act, then ailing institutions will collapse, creating havoc in financial markets across the world. Credit crunch will make getting loan even more difficult for middle class Americans.

Bottom line whatever may happen middle class is set to loose like always. Is there anyone learning a lesson out of it?

Welcome G1, iPhone time to run!

2008-09-24T18:14:00.001-07:00

Today is a historic day for mobile communication. T mobile released HTC G1 mobile, its first mobile based on open source Google mobile platform. It comes with touch screen capability. Here is picture available from various Internet sources.

How much price tag of 179$ with T mobile contract plan.
When Will be available on 22 Oct 2008 in US. By Nov 2008 in UK. Other part of world first quarter 2009
Display 3.17" 65K color touchscreen, HVGA (480×320) resolution.
Battery Life Talk time 5 hours, standby 130 hours.
Camera 3.1MP
Frequencies GSM/GPRS/EDGE/Wi-Fi/UMTS/HSDPA 850/900/1700/1800/1900/2100Mhz
Size in numbers 4.60” x 2.16” x 0.62”; Weight: 5.6 ounces.
Colors white, black and brown.
Storage 1GB MicroSD card preinstalled. Supports 8GB MicroSD.
GPS Yes with Google Maps
Application store Android Market
Music Preloaded Amazon MP3 Store
Internet video YouTube
Users can buy third party apps from android market.

2008-08-28T22:36:00.000-07:00

Gray

Skin is cover of emotion
all black and white,
Every crest is nadir upside down,
each end is new start in rewind,
many laughter dissolved in tears
people laughing at endless sorrows
not sure which one runs deeper,
High water killed many
other lost without,
some could not live with fire, some without
why everything is so void, not taking any side
leaving me confused, I can't see any black or white
why cant I take side, resolve my faith,
lost in Gray, color of everything
of all emotions, pain and happiness.

2008-08-14T19:44:00.000-07:00

AR Rahman- A pure genius - Dude you rock !
"Fountainhead" is my all time favorite book so is "AR Rahman". If you have read fountainhead, you would have understood why Rahman is "Howard Roark" of music.
Every time I hear his mesmerizing compositions, I can not stop gasping about his genius. I believe he is truly gifted and his music is capable of making god's presence felt around you. Its a tall order to praise Rahman for his music because its literally means stating a universal truth.
I am always overwhelmed with his unparalleled ability to create new sounds and what intrigues me most is, he does that every single time.
In this world of mediocrity, doesn't he ever feel tempted to get "inspired", bad joke I know :).
Anyway I tried compiling my absolute favourite Rahman song list, not that all his songs are not equally great but just that these songs leave me speechless every time I hear them. Not in any order just pure magic.

Nahin Samne Yeh Alag Baat Hai (Taal)
Dil hai chota sa choti si asha (Roja)
Bharat Humko Jaan Se Pyara Hai(Roja)
Tu Hi Re (Bombay)
Ae ajnabi(Dil Se)
Mitwa (Lagaan)
Chale chalo(Lagaan)
Ek Tu Hi Bharosa(Pukar)
Pagdi Sambal Jatta (The Legend of Bhagat Singh)
Saanwariya Saanwariya(Swades)
Yeh Jo Des Hai Tera(Swades)
Pal Pal Hai Bhaari(Swades)
Tu Bin Bataye(Rang de basanti)
Rang De Basanti(Rang de basnti)
Ik Onkar(Rang de basanti)
Khoon Chala(Rang de basanti)
Luka Chuppi(Rang de basanti)
Roobaroo( Rang de basanti)
Tu Bin Bataaye(Rang de basanti)
Mayya(Guru)
Azeem-O-Shaan Shahenshah(Jodha akbar)
Jashn-E-Bahaara(Jodha akbar)
Khwaja Mere Khwaja(Jodha akbar)
In Lamhon Ke Daaman Mein(Jodha akbar)
Mann Mohana(Jodha akbar)
Vandemataram (Vandemataram)
Chanda suraj lakhon taare (Gurus of peace)

Here is link to you tube video, very old Rahman's interview from the "Roja" time.

2008-08-14T07:42:00.000-07:00

Mom and dad
I don't need reasons to love you because
I am your never ending work day,
I am your long forgotten aspirations,
I am your lost vacations,
I am your wet chilly winter early mornings,
I am your walk to office to save for my cricket bat,
I am your unwatched movies,
I am your favorite hobby,
I am your favorite singer and your song,
I am your old black shoes and your faded paints,
I am your un-bought car making way for my dreams,
I am your sleepless worried feverish nights,
I am your long wait in sun outside school,
I am your board result anxiety,
I am your missing piece of sweet,
I am your ambition,
I am your confidence,
I am your pride and your shame,
I am your tears and your smile,
I am your fear and your strength,
I am your sorrow and your joy,
I am your blessings,
I am your dreams,
I am you.

2008-08-13T13:57:00.000-07:00

Who need real greatness?
Most of the time I left wondering about people, I keep on asking myself, whats wrong with me? Why cant I see all the goodness which other people can see in all great human being around me. I also want to feel greatness of these people, I want to feel blessed for living in same time as theirs.
Its been quite some time I have spent in this industry and though it looks like, but ours is not very different from any other.
I believe we guys can speak more polished lie compared to any of our counterparts, exception given to sales/marketing guys who can beat us hands down. Ever wondered who quoted project at such a low man hours and impossible timeliness, he is your sales guy.
Its ironic our is high tech industry but most of time, most of us busy doing is something which can not be called technical by most shameless guy.
And its not that we are forced to do it but just we like doing it because its easiest way to the top.
I always used to tell my manager friends that if you want to know whats really happening in project talk to developers who are considered lowest in hierarchy. They will tell the exact state of project delivery and whether its going to happen or not.
Like it or not truth is higher the guy, lesser he knows.
I started this note talking about goodness of people which I cant see while others do.
What I said above has very interesting connection to that.
In India, whenever there is drought situation our great politician will go for an aerial inspection, reason being father you are, lesser scary it looks.
So coming to back to far view, my question to guys sitting on top why cant they see what any other developer or fresher can see. Why cant they understand that a guy who keeps bumping in to discuss all trivial but blown up issues is an glorified idiot not a real performer. He is just massaging your ego and increasing his visibility. Or probably they all know the truth. But because its their own way to reach where they are.
I always get fascinated with some people's unmatched ability to convert most trivial thing into next "Armageddon". Big salute to you all. But I am really sorry that I cant see all the goodness in you guys. Over the time I realized if you solve big issues without complaining then they weren't big enough. So go and complain. Or better avoid work using these issues.
Its really sad but true that in my last 5 years in this industry even after working with 3 top IT giants, number of real techies I met does not cross my finger count.
Ask me, reason is fairly simple, we don't want good people to grow. It takes effort and time to really evaluate a person and who has time for that.
Another simple reason, if you came this far bullshitting, you will never want any one smarter than you to come near you.
I had seen numerous ingenious ways to avoid work and believe me every passing days people are getting better at it. But still at the end of day don't they feel empty inside? You can fool everyone around but your own self, or probably they don't have time to think about it because they might be busy working on next big bullshit.
Anyway accept my best wishes but sorry however hard I try i cant see your greatness!!!

2008-07-24T12:04:00.001-07:00

Browser is new operating system!!

With increasing number online services browser has become most important piece of software running on PC. Here are few takes

-Riding high wave of web based social networking services FireFox successfully registered world record of 8.5 million browser download in a day.
-I am writing this note using google docs which clearly out-weight PC installed software with far lesser consumption of hardware resources and useful features such as auto-save, sharing and online publishing.
-FireFox add-ons have been discussed in lengths in various blogs and articles so wont go in details of that but will surely point out their usability in making my surfing more meaning. Intelligent browser and add-ons are helping user in finding out contents matching to their interest, easy information sharing, scheduling tasks to many more useful features as "read later" tagging.
-Recent addition of off line support in google doc and mail has increased usability of these services many folds.

Today, it may seem little far fetched but in year or two a PC with only browser and Internet connection will be sufficient to do what I might be doing today with hundreds of software installed on it.
Talking about browser companies and competition, MS IE dominates browser market with 74% market share, FireFox distant second with 18% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers).
Difference is huge but FireFox is rapidly making inroads into MS strong hold by joining hands with software giant google (ever wondered why google is default search engine in FireFox) and strong support of developers. Frankly, I would love to see many more people running FireFox not because I am against MS but due to sheer usability of various add-on available with FireFox.
Over past few years more and more efforts have been spent in engaging users inside browser and loads of statistics suggest people spending more and more time over Internet. Which proves effort spent by companies like google, Facebook and yahoo have been fairly successful in keeping people online. Recent surge of micro blogging services like twitter, identi.ca, jaiku have helped in making Internet much more livelier and connected medium.
With increasing number users and steep rise in advertising money spent on Internet every piece of code which can be plugged into browser and engage user's attention has become a business opportunity and all companies are trying their hardest to gain biggest piece of this cake.
Microsoft is clearly lagging at the moment and has to come out with something very radical to maintain its leadership. Though, Microsoft has never commanded any respect for being innovative, but their capability to replicate is unmatched (check out Zune!!) and always resulted in creation of money spinner. Thus, I am eager to see post big bang FireFox 3.0 launch what MS has in store for its browser IE 8 which is in beta 1 currently, available for download @ http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/default.mspx.
It is quite clear the company with strong browser userbase will have upper hand in Internet advertising and social networking arena. Recent acquisition of many web 2.0 companies including MS failed bid to buy Yahoo indicates next wave of consolidation in Internet business and the one with best vehicle (read browser) will win the race.

2008-06-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

Mr Gates I owe you a lot....
27 June 2008 was the last day of Bill Gates as full time Microsoft employee. I am sure it must be a roller coaster ride full of ups and downs. Detailing what he has accomplished, is something out of my writing caliber. But I would certainly like to thank him for what he did for me and many more people like me.
For those who are still unclear about this connection, here are few hints.
Remember first time when computer caught your fancy, I can still remember my first ugly dreadful drawing in ms paint. I believe windows and Internet are the strongest reasons for bringing Computer out of scientific labs to the common people and making such a wide medium of information sharing.
Even after decades of presence of Unix/Linux and Macs, number of people using these Operating systems for personal usage is minimal. Accept it, 99% people using Internet are not very tech savvy and they are happy using MS windows which is hundred times easier to understand and work with compared to geeky UNIX or Linux (taking exception for few flavors). There is no reason why a common user should be nerd. Why one should know computer architecture for buying music from amazon or camera from eBay. Internet is just a medium and facilitator for enhanced information sharing and communication.
Coming back to Mr Gate's contribution to my life.
Today siting in Stratford and writing programs for our banking client, I feel Mr Gates and his company is hugely responsible for this amazing phenomenon where a guy from (so called) third world nation is brought to this unknown small place(believe me I never heard of this place before coming here) to give technical consultancy to an enterprises in developed nation. I can not deny many other strong factors such as cost but at the same time these reasons alone could not made it possible.
From being fascinated with computer for first time to writing enterprise application its all connected and link surely reaches to Mr Gates. The reason which brings me here and make me do what I am getting paid for, is lot to do what Mr Gates has created or rather sold ( I heard he bought windows OS from someone else not sure of authenticity of this so please excuse if otherwise).
Microsoft is often blamed for lacking innovation and using unethical way to maintain market leadership, and there are good amount of facts available to support it.
But despite all these, as an individual Gate's contribution in providing common platform to collaborate and share is enormous.
India can attribute a lot of its progress to services and mainly IT and ITES which is directly or indirectly related to availability of skilled human resource. And part of credit for creating this resource pool obviously goes to Mr Gates.
I read some where if you can make someone's dream come true, god will bless you and I am sure Bill must be highly blessed for making so many dreams true.
Thank you Mr. Gates.

2007-11-22T11:03:00.000-08:00

Dreams unlimited

One life many dreams.... small dreams....big dreams...ever changing dreams...shrinking dreams...dying dreams

I wanted to change the world, I wanted to change country, I wanted to change people, I wanted to change lives, I wanted to be the change.
Always dreamed of unattainable never doubted that I can not.

Growing up made me coward I can see that my dreams are shrinking. Slowing I am killing them all. Every time I start nurturing one reality creeps in.
Now, I just dream of having a cushy job, expensive car, dream of house with out loan, dream of living in foreign land.

Passion is dying, Size of courage has fallen short, rebel is tamed.

One more dreamer has lost his way. I have to clean up pieces of shattered dreams before reasoning checks in...

2006-04-16T23:36:00.000-07:00

Relationship

Relationships always intrigued me. No one knows why one works and why other doesn't.
Some you make, some are blood relation. I am not sure which ones are better.I dont think anyone would agree that given a chance he/she would have found better mother. But on the contrary, imagine if we would have got friends like you get your aunt and uncles :).
Ok ok enough of blabbering,here is my ten pointer to make any relation up and running or probably rocking (Not applicable to parental because that is anyway perfect :))

1.Never try to avoid fight as it leads to suffocation and eventually kills the relationship.
2.Sometime your partner is not looking for advice but just for an ear.
3.Timing is very important, restrain from giving advices at 12:00 mid night else you may end up fighting like cat and dogs.
4.Believe in good news first. Always start your conversation with positive notes, negative things can follow.
5.What you want to improve in your partner can only happen with example. Improve one thing in you and your partner is bound to respond.
6.Don't try to be mother to him/her, because we all have one already. :)
7.Always remember nobody is perfect and also perfection is very boring :)
8.Find something of common interest.
9.Personal space is very important, find thing which you like to alone.
10.No relation is one way, if you feel you have one then you are in wrong one.

2006-04-10T07:29:00.000-07:00

Who need reservation?

For quite some time I started believing, slowly but surely india is progressing to become developed country.Indian IT companies already made a mark in world for their software and BPO services.Manufacturing and pharmaceutical are happening in big way.Infrastructure seems to be improving across country so do the purchasing power of middle class.
Suddenly one fine morning newspaper reports that our so called champions of social justice want to implement quota system in institute of Higher education. read( IIT and IIM).
Argument in support, something as week as social justice. Do they even understand this word? Social justice is "Justice in society" but can any of these champions please clarify how would it be a justice if it is based on some one's caste.
On one hand our constitution promises to treat each individual equally irrespective of caste, creed, religion and gender. and on other we have reservation based on caste and religion. Quite contradictory isn't it?
I understand by providing equal opportunities to all we can grow as society and as a country but giving opportunity to one on the expense of other because he belong to some caste is ridiculous.
It has been quite evident that reservation has been a great failure in doing any social justice other wise after giving reservation for 55 yrs we would have transformed our society in to most developed one.
Interestingly, we have a law in place to punish a person if he/she make caste related remark against a person but at the same time laws like job reservation make it impossible to forget one's caste.
Nobody is against providing facilities to needies in terms of books,free admission forms, free coaching which government is already doing. But after giving all this you say that we will give admission to some one who has scored less but belongs to certain caste.
This whole scenario reminds me of fountainhead where Howard Roark should not make great buildings because other architect should be giving chance in the name of humanity.Ridiculous is very weak word to describe all this.
Dear social justice champion sir, let me assure you whether you will achieve your so called social justice or not, but surely you will achieve all political mileage you are aiming at.

Now picture this

Java Developer 2-5 Yrs
Skill - Java,J2EE, Webservices, XML
Caste- XXX

Business Analyst
Skill- Finance future/options trading
Caste-YYY

"Choose your leaders very carefully because their decision will shape your future".

2006-04-04T00:12:00.000-07:00

Friday I watched V for Vendetta, kinda different from regular stuff but If you are watching in nite show with half sleepy mind than tough one to survive for 3 hrs.
Story of a masked guy code name V who stood against fascist government in London, interestingly u don't get chance to see his actual face in entire movie :). But movie is very relevant to current world scenario...Some big shots keep on shouting loud about WMDs and even after invading whole country they could not produce any things to substantiate their claim while on the other hand some people are convinced that their religion is always under threat, hence keeping themselves busy in polluting young minds and killing innocent people...
Let me ask you how many of you actually bothers about religion, caste or nationality of the guy sitting next to you in office (Here I am safely assuming that whole world sits in cubes like me :))
In my short career with IT, I always felt your domain name contribute more to your personality:) than your last name.
Often a guy with @microsoft.com is more respected than @sataym.com (no offence meant to satyam :) plz)
So my message to all you guys out there go and grab best of domain name for yourself. Personally,I would love to have @google.co.in :)
Ok ok enough of this worldly stuff, lets talks about something which interest everyone at least in India.
Today India is playing 3rd ODI against England, till now things looks good...117/4 yuvraj completed 50 and raina is also going great..
But I feeling sorry for poor chap kaif another duck in this match....
Now.let me do something for which I am getting paid :)

2006-03-30T05:31:00.000-08:00

So here is one more addition to blogging arena.....
I dont claim that I will write something which may interest you or something which will impact your life....
I will be just writing whatever I think I should be writing....anyway its my blog... huh ... arrogant....!!!!
but thats the way I m !!!
ok ok... no more self description.....
Today I attended an interactive session with Sun Microsystem's CIO (Chief Information Officer :) frankly I wasnt aware of such a designation till today ).
Quite impressive guy when comes to talking and knowledge...., he talked length about what SUN is doing and did in past from chip designing to grid computing....
You wont believe SUN made 64 bit chip long before any other company actually started working commercially on concept.So why whole world was not aware of it....???
Ok before going any further let me pose one question which is your favorite software company (no IT service provider companies plz...)
mine being Google not because they made google earth or gmail, cos they not only make wonderful product but also ensure that everybody around is aware and talking about it.... :)
right!!!
thats something about importance of marketing yourself and your achievement.