School of Life

'Travu 'L' og

2010-02-28T16:21:00.000+05:30

Trip: Chennai - Bangalore - Kasargod - Bangalore - Chennai

My Car: Zen Estilo LXi 2008 Make
Driving: All alone by me. Hmmmm thats boring....
Kms Covered: 900 + 800 (Including roaming around in Bangalore which accounts to around 50 kms)
Date: August 2009
Mileage: Pretty less this time because of the vehicle not been serviced on time, and also due to up-hill driving. Otherwise 15kmpl in city and 17kmpl on highways. Both with A/C on. Seriously!

How daring it should have been, when it took wheeling around 1700 Kms (onward+return), that too in a car not loaded with a spare tyre! Yeah, the spare tyre was missing for a pretty long time but, thanks to my carelessness, I have not checked it for quite a long period and nothing surprising that I was clueless when, where and how this tyre was stolen. Hmmm, I am desperately in need of a reminder program to be run to reminding me of periodical chores, such as these. Mmm, not my job, it's thier (parents) job to search for such a program!

Ok, well said all those, let me brief about my car.

A Zen Estilo (She is a virgin blue :-) She is, because I get her a daily wash with my own hands! Awhh. Too much.... She just jets to 150 kmphr without jerks and I am really amazed at her pickup (It's disheartening when I gave her a big time growl while overtaking an Innova @ 150 kmpl near Velore) << FYI, the car still runs like a charm. Thanks to those cRV
Scoda drivers for lacking that energy.>> [SPEEDING UNNECESSARILY OR EVEN NECESSARILY IS DANGEROUS. So, play safe. Play with utmost driving sense. There is no restart. I repeat, (Tony's words), NO RESTARTS. It's not NFS.]

Alright, thats it about it!

I must say that I have been deprived of sleep the last night due to the late night stay @ office. Oops, are you one among them who knows me very well? Okay, then I must confess that I stayed back in the office the previous night just to clock 9 hours @ office (Reason: Got up late and came late to office. Well, that's now becoming a habit. I must take up some time management course to avoid such punctuality-mishaps!)

I started from home by 5.30 PM on the friday evening and took the tambaram route << Link to maps>> to reach Sriperumbadur. Then straight towards Bangalore. <>

XML Processing

2010-02-27T23:14:00.001+05:30

1 Introduction to XML Processing

XML Processing can be done in either of the following ways:-

1) Parsing

     a. Involves scanning the document in the following ways:-
         i. Push approach (Example for push parsers:- SAX )
         ii. Pull approach (Example for pull parsers:- STaX)

2) Binding
      a. Involves the following steps
          i. Binds XML to Java objects (Generating java classes from XML Schema),
          ii. Marshalling and Unmarshalling (Unmarshalling means creating a tree of content [java] objects from the XML document [not schema]. Marshalling means creating the XML document from the java objects. Both uses parsing techniques)

3) Transformation
    a. Transformation engine and filter

2 Why Binding?

We are primarily interested in binding, because of the fact that XML binding allows Java developers to access and process XML data without having to know XML or XML processing. For example, there's no need to create or use a SAX parser or write callback methods while going with binding tools such as JAXB or JiBX.

3 Binding tools

Some of the binding tools available in the market are:-

Castor (open source)
JAXB (open source)
JiBX (open source)
XML Spy (commercial)
Jakarta Digester (open source)

A listing of these can be found @ http://www.xmldatabinding.org/

Pondichery, the french connection India

2008-03-13T09:55:00.000+05:30

Down-town Pondicherry is only a 3 hours ride from Chennai, along the scenic beach highway, better known as ECR.

Puducherry formerly Pondicherry, is a Union Territory of India. It is a former French colony, consisting of four non-contiguous enclaves, or regions, and named after the largest region, Puducherry^[1]. It is also known as The French Riviera of the East (La Côte d'Azur de l'Est). Of late, Puducherry is also considered an educational hub of southern India, having 1 central university, 8 medical colleges, 10 engineering colleges, 3 dental colleges,1 law college, 1 veterinary college,1 agricultural college, 10 arts & science, & 5 polytechnic colleges functioning within its territory. Many medical and engineering colleges including one national institute of technology and a state owned university are also reported to be in queue.

We stayed in a bamboo roof-top, a life-time experience.
A beach-view from the resort (Above[LHS]). Mind blowing, indeed....

A walk in the moon light, a search for the coastal nature - Pondicherry

2008-03-13T09:41:00.000+05:30

Wow.......Standing on a roof top, enjoying the view of the sea through the shadow of the pine trees, and the rhythm of the waves, and the sea-shore breeze coupled with a scenic garden in front of the bay of bengal were some of the awesome moments of life, an urban life-styled software engineer can dream of, unless you pay a visit to Pondy and stay in any of the roof-top settlements.

A road trip to Pichavaram - Pondy. A search for the nature and the inner soul.

2008-03-13T09:29:00.000+05:30

Pichavaram stands tall on the list of places to visit in the south (India) , when you have high priority to attain a state of nirvana aka peace of mind.

Mattupetty - Munnar

2008-03-11T16:26:00.000+05:30

Munnar, the queen of western ghats. You can spot the view of the west-ern ghats from Mettupalayam boating center with all it's serenity.

The snap was taken while on a team outing with the Thomson STeAM team - Me, Satheesh, Selva, Murali, Ilan, Meyyappan, Sam, Priya and Preethy.

It was just mind blowing to enjoy the magic of nature blowing a breeze when you kiss the waters in a high-speed boat, with a high-end curve and excitement on your face.....

How to debug a Perl program running in remote Linux machine, from a local windows machine?

2008-01-31T16:31:00.000+05:30

The article covers the usage of the tool ‘Komodo’ (An Active State Perl editing and debugging tool), to debug a Perl program running in a remote Linux box, from a local windows machine.
When debugging a Perl program remotely, the program is executed on the remote system and the debug output is sent to Komodo. Komodo controls the debugging session (e.g. stepping and breakpoints) once the session starts on the remote system. Perl remote debugging works on any system that can run the version of perl5db.pl distributed with Komodo. ActivePerl and most other distributions of Perl (version 5.6 or greater) will work.
To know more about Komodo visit: - http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_ide/

Scenario:

There is a Perl script which is invoked by a nightly cron job, which reads through multiple data sources and creates XML feeds.

You neither want to take pain to invoke the Perl debugger in your remote box, using –d switch or to run it from your local by replicating the entire environment by taking database dumps and all that.

All you want to do is to use a tool, which will allow you to run the perl program in the remote machine, and debug it in a GUI tool in your windows, so that, you can watch out for expressions, and check out the values of the variables, and a lot more.

(If you are interested to debug your perl program, the conventional way, visit: - http://debugger.perl.org/)

Assumptions:-
1) You have perl installed in both your local and remote machines.
2) Very IMPORTANT: - Check whether you have connectivity between both the remote and local machines. I.e., two way connectivity. Test by pinging remote machine from local and local machine from remote. The firewall installed in any of the machines should not block the incoming connection from the linux box to the windows box.

Steps to set up the environment:-

In your local windows machine:-

1) Install komodo.
a. You can get a trial version of the latest Komodo from:-http://www.activestate.com/store/evallicense.aspx?PliGuid=8E08763F-FC3D-456F-BE10-F0D725F660F8&

In your remote linux/solaris machine:-

1) Copy Komodo's perl debugger and its associated libraries to the remote machine by copying the entire dbgp/perllib sub-directory of the Komodo installation to the new machine, or download a package from the Komodo Remote Debugging page.

Note: Do not copy perl5db.pl to the standard "lib" directory of the Perl installation on the remote machine, as this will overwrite the standard perl5db.pl file.

On the remote machine, set the PERL5LIB environment variable to the location of the new perl5db.pl and its libraries.

For example:

If perllib was copied to the /home/me/perl/komodo_perl_debugging directory, set the variable as follows:

export PERL5LIB=/home/me/perl/komodo_perl_debugging/perllib

2) On the remote machine, set the PERLDB_OPTS and DBGP_IDEKEY variables.
This tells the Perl interpreter on the remote machine where to connect to Komodo or the DBGP Proxy and how to identify itself.On the remote machine, set the PERLDB_OPTS and DBGP_IDEKEY variables.
PERLDB_OPTS=RemotePort=:
DBGP_IDEKEY=

a.The port number must match the port number specified in
i. Goto Edit|Preferences|Debugger.
ii. Click Debug|Listener Status to check the current port.
b.Replace with the name or IP address of the machine running Komodo.
c.If DBGP_IDEKEY is unset, the USER or USERNAME environment variable is used as the IDE Key.
d.The variable definitions must be on one line.

For example:
export PERLDB_OPTS="RemotePort=127.0.0.1:9000"
export DBGP_IDEKEY="jdoe"

Steps to debug the code:-

1) Listen for Debugger Connections
a. In Komodo, on the Debug menu, click Listen for Debugger Connections.
2) Start the Perl Program on the Remote Machine
a. Start the debugging process using the "-d" flag:
perl -d program_name.pl
3) A Perl Debug tab (a pop-up) is displayed in Komodo, which would say that there is an incoming connection.
4) Debug the Perl Program using Komodo
5) Click Step In, or Go/Continue to run to the first breakpoint. See Komodo Debugger Functions for full instructions on using Komodo's debugging functionality.

Disabling and Enabling the Perl Dev Kit (PDK) Debugger (This may not be always required):-

If you have installed the ActiveState Perl Development Kit (PDK) on the remote machine, the system may be configured to use the PDK debugger when a Perl debug session (perl -d) is launched.

To use Komodo's debugger, disable the PDK debugger on the remote machine first. If necessary, you can re-enable the PDK debugger on the remote machine later.

Disabling the PDK Debugger on the Remote Machine:-

To disable the PDK debugger on the remote machine, perform the following procedures:

export PERLDB_OPTS=

i.e., set the PERL5DB variable to an empty string.

Bullshit bingo. What's that?

2008-01-31T15:18:00.000+05:30

BSB or Bull Shit Bingo can be considered as a managerial term or more specifically a corporate GAME to improve your attention span at staff/team meeting. Believe me, meetings will never be the same again, once you start playing this game.

(For more managerial terms, visit:-
http://management.about.com/od/begintomanage/a/MgmtGlossary.htm)

Here’s is how you play the game:

1) Before (or during) your next meeting, seminar, or conference call, prepare a card, we name it a "Bullshit Bingo" card, by drawing a 5 x 5 square with columns, five across and five down, and write any of the following terms in each of the 25 blocks:-

1. Synergy
2. Strategic fit
3. Core competencies
4. Turbulent environment
5. Out of the box
6. Think outside the box
7. Pushback
8. Bottom line
9. Revisit
10. Take that off-line
11. 24/7
12. Out of the loop
13. Benchmark
14. Value-added
15. Proactive
16. Bandwidth
17. Win-win
18. Iconic
19. Fast track
20. Results-driven
21. Customer-driven
22. Service-driven
23. Client focus(ed) or Customer focus(ed)
24. Paradigm
25. Empower (or empowerment)
26. Knowledge base
27. At the end of the day
28. Touch base
29. Mindset
30. Ballpark
31. Game plan
32. Scenario
33. Leverage
34. Cascade
35. Sequential or sequentially
36. Ubiquitous

A typical Bullshit Bingo Card will look like this:-

knowledge base	win-win	24/7	performance indicators	best practice
fast track	empower	risk management	revisit	blame culture
result-driven	value-added	silo	out of the loop	pinch point
at the end of the day	benchmark	core business	touch base	synergy
I hear what you say	networking	differential	the big picture	ballpark

(You can take a printout of this and keep it with your notes while setting forth for your next meeting.)

2) The next step is to pay a little attention to the speaker, and check off/ strike off the appropriate block, when you hear one of those words/phrases written inside the bullshit bingo card.

And here comes the next step of the game, which requires some real courage.

3) When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout that magic word: "BULLSHIT!"

4) The one who shouts the most number of times can be crowned as the winner of the game.

So, now you know how to stay awake in the boring meetings and how to stop people from using too many buzzwords in corporate.

This game is also known as "Buzzword Bingo" with a slightly different collection of words. Here's a site with a random buzzword card generator for different work-categories:
http://www.lurkertech.com/chris/bingo/index.html

Disclaimer:-
The game is not intended to make fun of the serious meetings, but to make serious meetings more serious by adding a flavor of sarcasm. You can otherwise shout BSB, instead, or shout Bull, if you feel that the magic word, bullshit, is not very professional.

Here’s a testimonial from someone, who have won the game:
Well I won the game but I lost my job. When I screamed bullshit my old boss had security throw me out of the building. I stayed awake though!!!

Never mind, the count of people who have made benefits through this game outnumbers the count of people who didn’t reap benefits through “Bull Shit Bingo”.

Primary reference: -
1) www.companyculture.com

Other references: -
1) http://www.landofsurfandbeer.com/bbingo.php
2) http://www.lovelyjane.btinternet.co.uk/bullshit.htm
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword_bingo
4) http://www.hjsv.com/games/bingo/bingo-d.html

Pointers in Java

2008-01-29T14:04:00.000+05:30

Well, you might have heard of pointers in C and C++, but not ‘Pointers in Java’. Sounds right?

Hope you heard it wrong that Java does not allow using pointers. For your information, Java also supports pointers!

Surprised?

Well, read on!

Java allows or does not allow the usage of pointers, or in other terms, direct memory access, is still a debatable topic. But to be faithful to the design, and the so called features, pointers should not be there in Java.

Let’s open up a debate, and if you think that Java does not have pointers, keep up your spirits and fire away the following arguments!

a) Java does not have pointers.
b) Java does not allow pointer arithmetic.
c) You can, no way, directly access your computer memory. It’s all the job of the JVM used by you, be it Sun HotSpot or Oracle JVM or AegisVM. The programmer doesn’t care.
d) Java has been designed to keep away pointers, to allow security and portability, because, pointers allows the programmer to go low level and access memory in his own style and manner.
e) In Java, can you access uninitialized or deallocated memory? No, right! Well, that's because of the lack of pointers.
f) Can you do memory management with Java? No, because you need to have pointers to access memory directly.
g) Even though Java has no pointers, it has reference types, which allows indirect access to memory. But, trust me; it stands for the features of Java such as portability and security. Reference does not allow you to break such features.

Enough said; now it's the time for those who think that Java has pointers and pointer arithmetic embedded in a sarcastic fashion. Let those love pointers support their views with the following justifications.

a) Java has pointers. Reference:- http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/t...es.html#106237

b) It says: - An object is a class instance or an array. The reference values (often just references) are pointers to these objects, and a special null reference, which refers to no object.

c) To be specific, Java 1.5 really supports pointer arithmetic.

d) It's all about the sun.misc.Unsafe class, which you shouldn't use incode you intend to be portable.

Now Unsafe class has become the talk of the town, let's peep into what's that all about!

Get set, go!

The public class sun.misc.Unsafe provides a wide variety of “dangerous” utility functions, including direct memory access (which can be used to simulate pointer arithmetic) and object access which is much faster than reflection.

Please run the following program to see what happens, when programmers have direct access to memory.

import sun.misc.Unsafe;
import java.lang.reflect.Field;

public class TestPointers {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
Unsafe unsafe = getUnsafe();
System.out.println("Unsafe = " + unsafe);
System.out.println(" addressSize() = " + unsafe.addressSize());
System.out.println(" pageSize() = " + unsafe.pageSize());
System.out.println(" pageSize() = " + unsafe.pageSize());
try {
unsafe.putByte((long) 0xa000, (byte) 47);
} catch(Throwable e) {
System.out.println("IN THE CATCH BLOCK");
e.printStackTrace();
} finally {
System.out.println("IN THE FINALLY BLOCK");
}
System.exit(0);
}

public static Unsafe getUnsafe() {
Unsafe unsafe = null;
try {
Class uc = Unsafe.class;
Field[] fields = uc.getDeclaredFields();
for(int i = 0; i < fields.length; i++) {
if(fields[i].getName().equals("theUnsafe")) {
fields[i].setAccessible(true);
unsafe = (Unsafe) fields[i].get(uc);
break;
}
}
} catch(Exception ignore) {
}
return unsafe;
}
}

Congrats, you have just crashed your JVM.

Also check out this bug: - http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4420961

Open question:-

If Java does’nt supports pointers or pointer arithmetic, why does Mr. NPE, aka Null Pointer Exception exists, why not it is called as NRE (Null Reference Exception)?

Best regards,
Ajith Joseph | Virtusa | +91 44 42002700 Extn: 3513 +91 98842 55029 ajith.joseph/yahoo POD: ajith.joseph/Thomson

An outing to commemerate the success of production release

2008-01-29T14:02:00.000+05:30

Commemerating the success of our product going live, and then the QC sign off of the next version of our product, we bid no reasons to celebrate. The team took a day off to set out for a team outing on 27/12/2006, to enjoy the double success.

Mahabalipuram and the Golden Sun resort in the outskirts of Chennai were the hotspot destinations.

The team started at around 10.00 AM from the office heading towards Mahabalipuram, taking a ride through the scenic beachway of E.C.R, and reached at Mahabalipuram- the Shore temple town at around 11.45 AM in the morning.

Mahabalipuram is one of history's intriguing enigmas. The ancient Mamallapuram, as Mahabalipuram was formerly known, was flourishing port town of the Pallava rulers of south India who chiseled in stone a fabulous "open-air museum" of sculpture under the vault of a burning Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, India sky. The sight of famous ‘Five Rathas’ which were excellently carved in single stone, enthralled us. There was also a half-built temple on the way to the hillock. We were amazed at the architecture of the temple. It is indeed a master piece.

Then we steered up to the light house located at the top of the hill. The light house was used by pallavas in the ancient times. The aerial view of the town at one side and sea at the other was also a captivating sight. It was spectacular to watch the deep blue sea from such an altitude.

Team had a wonderful time going around various caves and hillocks in Mahabalipuram, taking various memorable snaps.

After visiting Mahabalipuram, we set out towards GoldenSunResort, a sea shore resort which is around 1km from there in E.C.R Road. GoldenSunResort is a fascinating place occupied with many facilities to enjoy and chill out.

We had a very nice and scrumptious lunch out there in the resort followed by some interesting and exciting events. After finishing the lunch, we had real fun playing cricket with all our team members. Once again, our young and vibrant team of software engineers and QA's showed that they are good at cricket too.

Then we settled down for a chit-chat enjoying the gentle breeze coming from sea, for some time that helped us to know more about ourselves. Next we had a long walk by the side of the Beach while some still playing around.

Then we had several indoor games like Carom, Table Tennis, and Badminton which left us fresh and active to rock further.

Next comes, the Swimming, which made all, enjoy the most. At last, but not the least, we spared our time sitting near the beach, with nice evening breeze, and were taking funny snaps which were memorable.

Then by around 9.00pm we returned back to Virtusa, and the long drive through the E.C.R was also fun and memorable.

Memories to cherish and moments of great fun were left in our minds, which brings back the energy within us and the memories of those fun packed events still lingers in the air like a dancing flower.

The first outing

2008-01-29T13:59:00.000+05:30

Ecstasy had no bounds, for the our team, when it was announced that we are going for an outing on June, 30, 2006, as it was an unexpected one. Our team is a well-knit group of thirteen enthusiastic members, and all the team members, came up with lots of suggestions for the outing, Finally, Radha Park Inn international, suggested by one of our team member, turned out to be the destination of choice.

We kick-started for the bashing party, in our own way of blending fun with laughter, lead by our Project Manager, and the Senior Tech Lead, both know for their excellent team management and sense of humour, at around 6’0’ clock in the evening, leaving behind yet another day with fun 'n work. The evening seemed to be little chill too, as the city was preparing to receive its South-west monsoon. A perfect day, for a perfect bash.

The party was arranged in Radha Park Inn international. It was a half an hour drive, from the "Lords"(that's the name of our building), filled with excitement to freak out in the night. The place was awesome and happening with excellent interiors and some great music playing at the background. The Banquet, started with cutting a cake, imprinted with the team name, and followed by 2000- year old south Indian recipes with western, Chinese and other Asian meals.

The desserts of the Park Inn cafe threw a torch of heaven, and as per our Senior Software QA Engineer, it’s the best place to get all brands of ice-creams under one roof. The wide varieties, of dishes were mouth-watering and its yummy taste will stay forever. The evening was so exciting and rejuvenating that our knowledge champion, was about to get back to the "Lords" to resume his work.

It was a fabulous evening and its memories still lingers in our minds, bringing an upward curve on the lips, whenever we talk about that outing.

An outing to MGM

2008-01-29T13:58:00.001+05:30

Our team of young software engineers took some time off from their busy schedule for the quarterly team outing on 8th March 2007. From the numerous suggestions given by the team members, MGM was chosen as the fun-spot destination.

The team took off from the Lords after the lunch, cruising down the grand scenic beach highway, rolling towards Muthukadu, where the MGM theme park is situated.

MGM is one of the destinations stamped with a ‘wow’ factor on the East Coast Road, popularly known as ECR. Winding its way along the Bay of Bengal, the newly revamped highway connects Chennai with Pondicherry. The team arrived at MGM in not more than one hour, enjoying the soothing breeze along the east coast road. The journey was packed with lot of fun and laughter.
MGM Dizzie world on ECR in Chennai is second to none when it’s compared to fun-filled, high-energy entertainment and is synonymous with some of the biggest entertainment parks in the country. With an average annual entry of 3 million people, Dizzee World boast of exhilarating rides while adhering strictly to international safety standards. Apart from its world-class rides, these parks also exhibit a breathtaking amphitheatre that hosts and projects a variety of events, besides the popular Maryworld, a unique children’s world within the park.

Each members of the team grabbed a ticket rolled on to the wrist and started with the rides, which includes Giant wheel and Tora–Tora that we see in exhibition and some really exciting ones like the spider, disco saucer, Frisbee, ranger, and above all the roller coaster. The ranger was a heart pulling ride which made the guys really dizzy. Few of the big rides were under maintenance. The water games were also thrilling and entertaining. Apart from the rides and the water games, there are a lot of food stalls and restaurants too ranging from the sugar candy to the Beer den. Then there were those game stalls out of which few are good – just good and some were really boring.

After finishing all the possible rides in the Disney’s counterpart, we set out for dinner at Food Village, a multi cuisine restaurant located in the ECR. Food village was yet another place for enjoyment, laughter, pleasure, humors, and last but the most exciting event, “the dinner”.

Food village, the perched up land with thickly grown lawn, in which the team sat under the canopy of stars, crunching their way through crispy finger chips such as Foccaza, and rounding off the meal with a sinful portion of desserts reminding Tiramisu and its kinds. People enjoyed the rustic atmosphere. The cuisine, they say, is easygoing - Mediterranean, with an accent on Indian, Italian and Chinese. Many people from the city drive out here just to come to the restaurant, the signature continental restaurant on the scenic beach highway which connects Chennai and Pondicherry.

With all such amazing experiences, we called it a day and went back to our dwellings.

MGM is one of such amusement park which guarantees the fulfillment of even the inferential meaning of the word “amusement”. And Food Village, a den of great taste.

And thus it was not just the above destinations which were entertaining, even coasting down the midnight-black highway of ECR was thrilling and soothing at the same time.

Celebrating our outing with the one and only, Rajinikanth

2008-01-29T13:55:00.000+05:30

The spirit of celebration, a la Diwali, was very much in the air when our offshore team decided to celebrate the quarterly outing with millions of fans of Indian cinema’s top entertainer and Superstar Rajnikant’s magnum opus, Sivaji: The Boss, and an equilibrated power dinner @ ‘The Residency Towers’.

The Rs 84-crore cinematic extravaganza was a wondrous spectacle, hitherto unseen on Indian cinema. When top-drawer talent team up, the result can only be top class. The coming together of the Big Three, superstar Rajnikant , super director Shankar and super composer A R Rahman has dished out high-quality stuff. Mellifluous music, awesome action scenes, technological finesse, candy floss romance and, last but not the least, the typical signature Rajnikant mannerisms in galore. Frenzied fans of Rajnikant could not have asked for more.

After enjoying this grand visual spectacle, the team drove down for a sumptuous buffet in the ‘Main Street’, a bustling 24 hours restaurant serving ala-carte & sumptuous buffets and dinner @ ‘The Residency Towers’, Chennai.. The interiors complete with a pedestrian crossing, Victorian Street lights and a magazine kiosk created a great ambience for the occasion.

Savoring European, Oriental & Indian delicacies from an interactive kitchen was a zesty experience.

This is what I say when someone owe me a treat

2008-01-29T13:51:00.000+05:30

Memories to cherish, friends to chill out, restaurants to offer banquet, everything is out there. World is so vast, so vast that it can make us lost in time, yeah.... it is also true that it may not be bigger than our hearts. So, when everything is up there, why not time. Time never goes negative, nor can we bring it back, unless man invents a time machine. Tomorrow, when we are really busy, time will make us play jigsaw puzzles with it, and then we can only ponder ourselves with these memories lingering in the air like a green leaf, turning yellow.

Come, buddy, let's go for the treat.

Extravaganza

2008-01-29T13:49:00.000+05:30

The event “Extravaganza”, took a giant leap today with an hour full of fun and games blended with josh.
The whole of the Thomson team in Virtusa's Chennai ATC(advanced technology centre) seemed with full of vim and vigor, as the events conducted today were really 'rocking'.

Once again, the events drew lot of participation signifying the level of interest that employees had towards such events.

It started with Round robin, which literally took the josh out of the team and the venue turned into a .... The events demanded a total participation and the environment was set in such a way that it induced everyone into action by using thier charm and fun loving attitude. Showing high-spirited merriment is'nt a new affair with the team Thomson. Those who could not participate in yesterdays events had a gala time trying hands at the 'Doggy Waggy' event, which was fully loaded with excitement and enthusiasm. The Elephant crawling event was a real dare show, and the guys embarked into it presumptuously by showing lot of flexibililty and courage. Finally, the gift pack was given to the winners as well as the runners-up.

In short, todays events were lavishly staged and packed with spectalcular entertainment.

The taste of success

2008-01-29T13:36:00.000+05:30

Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.

The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom. God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into its nest.

I've got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end. Afterall, the difference between try and triumph is a little umph. Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. Flaming enthusiasm of these navigators, backed up by horse sense and persistence, brought home the quality that most frequently makes for success. The success of our flagship product, eCommerce & access management module, version 1.0 going to production.

The eCommerce and Access Management 1.0 went live on 11/06 with many other strategic initiatives of our client applications. The 1.0 version was also successfully integrated with a next generation product.

The occasion was aptly celebrated by the team members in Chennai techonology centre by cutting a cake and exchanging their experiences in the team. The cake which threw a heavenly feel was also inscribed with the quote which goes like ..."Our effort gets transparent and shares limelight only when it shows up -- The Result...".

In spite of the hardships and rigor, the highly elated team was able to bring out the best out of them. And finally with the system in production without major concerns threw a high note on the symphony of team work. All we cay say with confidence is that, yeah, it is truly said that, 'Team work works!'

The principle of "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are", paid off in getting rid off these obstacles.

To come again on that point with vigour and rigour, I should say, in spite of many hardships the team faced, such as changing Requirements, very slim release cycles, unknown undelying product, third party QC, to name a few, the principle of "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are", paid off in getting rid off these obstacles.

Transitions...

2008-01-29T13:30:00.000+05:30

Transitions happens in every walk of life; to be precise, life is engineered and fuelled by transitions. Perceptions categorizes the kinds and likes of transitions, and those transitions triggered with a deep root of dedication and sincerity mixed with various other virtues of the mindset brings forth the good luck for a better transition, and those which comes out of time, due to non-availability of the above virtues as input brings forth normal or not so good transitions, and the transmission in this case, more often would be automatic, rather than manual. Time plays the game here.

Tim Berners-Lee

2006-01-22T16:09:00.000+05:30

Tim Berners-Lee is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, Senior Researcher at MIT's CSAIL, and Professor of Computer Science at Southampton ECS

A graduate of Oxford University, England, Tim now holds the 3Com Founders chair at the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL)at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He directs the World Wide Web Consortium, an open forum of companies and organizations with the mission to lead the Web to its full potential.
With a background of system design in real-time communications and text processing software development, in 1989 he invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing. while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He wrote the first web client (browser-editor) and server in 1990.
Before coming to CERN, Tim worked with Image Computer Systems, of Ferndown, Dorset, England and before that as a principal engineer with Plessey Telecommunications, in Poole, England.

In 1989 the objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.
Strangely enough, the web took off very much as a publishing medium, in which people edited offline. Bizarely, they were prepared to edit the funny angle brackets of HTML source, and didn't demand a what you see is what you get editor. WWW was soon full of lots of interesting stuff, but not a space for communal design, for discource through communal authorship.
Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space. In the mean time, I have had the luxury of having a web site which I have write access, and I've used tools like Amaya and Nvu which allow direct editing of web pages. With these, I haven't felt the urge to blog with blogging tools. Effectively my blog has been the Design Issues series of technical articles.
That said, it is nice to have a machine to the administrative work of handling the navigation bars and comment buttons and so on, and it is nice to edit in a mode in which you can to limited damage to the site. So I am going to try this blog thing using blog tools. So this is for all the people who have been saying I ought to have a blog.