Road to Ozzie Land

I am on a 3 week trip to Ozzie Land (yes... you are right. Australia).

With a tiring journey from Bangalore to Bangkok to Melbourne, the

Spring in Melbourne was a great welcome one I needed the most.

As soon I landed, the moist cold air took off all my fatigue of the

journey. This being my second Visit to the city, I was excited to

explore more of the culture, weather and the charm that the

city holds.

The First few days went in jiffy, managing the meetings with our

Clients here and of course the food. I am really not a foodie, but

do not mind cherishing good food. The area where I am staying,

Southbank in Melbourne is a wonderful smorgasbord of food,

wine and people. Often walking back from Work, I get to see

people from all parts of the world I know about. And little less

to say, the evening of the city is as charming as the mornings.

Thankfully, I have a great view of the city from my Home.

Sometimes, I just wait for the sunset, because thats when you

get to see this...

More about my trip in later posts.

See ya.

Discounts on Book by Oreilly for SAPNET

Special offer for O'Reilly User Group program members: Along with your 35% discount off print books, you can now get 45% off all ebooks you purchase direct from oreilly.com for a limited time.

Contact Me if you need the offer.

NPTEL - IISc and IIT Lectures available Online

http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses.php?branch=Comp

Revolutionary Input Technology from T9 Developer

http://news.cnet.com/1606-2_3-50003669.html

Do it for the Country - Chetan Bhagat

21st November - Chetan Bhagat addressed an audience filled with eager young people, and equally young at heart, the senior citizens of Bangalore. The venue was the Odyssey Bookstore

on 100 feet road, Indiranagar. The place was jam packed with people eager to get a glimpse of Chetan, who came with his wife and 2 kids. Also accompanying him were his in-laws

who play a great deal of fictional role in his new novel "2 States". The event was organised by Odyssey to mark the launch of the same book, and the excitement was evident from the participation of the audience. I reached late with my friend, but thankfully the event had just started. It was like a mini Press conference, where people from all corners of Bangalore

had something to express. Many shared how their own life and the story of "2 States" were similar in so many sorts :- the disconnection of North and South, the confusion, the chaos and chatter that goes on in the head of the people in love. And for once, they all found

a hero who they can look up to.

There were really interesting conversations, and Chetan's take on people opinions and their own real life drama. Not just the young folks, but even the senior citizens were intrigued by

the the style of Bhagat. All in all a great session for readers from Bangalore.

More photos of the session in the below slide share.

Chetan Bhagat Session

Google Chrome OS Revealed

Have a look on the Upcoming Google Chrome OS, revealed
publicly for the first time on Nov 19, 2009.

http://www.engadget.com/photos/google-chrome-os-event

SEI Cloud Computing Webinar Q&A

I had a chance to attend the SEI Webinar on Cloud Computing as a part of the SEI Webinar series. I had posted some questions during the seminar, and hence I thought of sharing them with you. The questions were answered by specialists in Cloud Computing at CMU SEI.

What is the scope for Enterprise Cloud ?

Enterprise Cloud is the term that is currently associated to the implementation of private clouds within the enterprise. The goal of enterprise clouds is the virtualization of resources leading to reduced maintenance and acquisition costs from a business perspective and hiding IT complexity from a technical perspective.

How an existing Customer can scale their already purchased infrastructure to Cloud?

There is a term called cloud bursting that is associated to only using cloud resources when local resources are not enough. This is one way. Another way is one-time usage, which is to move to the cloud one-time processing or archiving.

How do you see the Standardization of the Cloud Computing vendors coming up, and the timeline for it ?

The only standardization effort that I know of is from Eucalyptus Systems. Standardization is going to be hard.

How do Cloud Computing Implementors convince Customers regarding Security of their data in the Cloud?

The only way would be to look at their SLAs and analyze the security clauses. If you are comfortable with placing your data given those clauses, then it should be acceptable. It is a matter of trust, both from a partner and a technology perspective.

Thanks to Shane McGraw for getting back to me with the answers.

Is that God really wants ?

It seems we Indians have a special place for the so-called God Men. And these God men attract not just faith loving senior citizens, but an impatient lot of Indian youth, ready to compromise and looking for easy shortcuts to success, ofcourse in a religious way.

I met with some of my friends (all in mid 20s), independent and aware of right and wrong, who got into the hands of these God Men by mistake or sheer bad luck. Based on the conversations I had with some of these people, I realised how gullible we all become in the hands of a God Men. Of course, these God Men have tools of their own trade required to so create the charm on their "victims". Some of the experiences of these friends of mine have been through embarrassing situations not just for their themselves but their families too. These encounters usually start with the a chance acquantanice connecting the to-be-victim's family to this God Men who supposedly holds the mysteries of what lies ahead and can diagnose or even cure bad lucks, missteps and failures in life. The family / individual strong in the faith of God gets convinced to check this God Men and hopes to fulfill the desires. What starts is a lengthy dialogue, where the God Men uses the context of an Evil Spirit influencing the life of the Victim. He then plays around with the faith of the individual and bends him/her to his / her demands. All in the God's name. Shocked relatives, and family members remain witness to this "Godly" act, disturbed but still hopeful of the "miracolous power of the God Men".

All said and done, the point I want to make is why our society so gullible to take in any God Men so serious. Why we leave the chance, the destiny in the hands of other individuals rather than taking steps ourselves. What is going on here, that we allow such God Men to make merry on our beliefs and faiths, and allow them to have their own agenda. The Agenda of Power, the agenda of Control - thats what the God Men really wants.

But is that God really wants ?

Database Taxonomy

Amazing article about the various Databases
and their classification in an intuitive
way.

Must read for all geeks

http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/11/03/OneSizeDoesNotFitAll.aspx

Cheers!
Vivek

Somebody caught me questioning ?

Me at Bangalore Cloud Users Group

concat() method in String class uses StringBuilder

Hi,

Good link to understand that concat() method in String
class uses StringBuilder class.

http://www.venishjoe.net/2009/11/java-string-concatenation-and.html

Also, included in the link is the performance analysis of
+ operator, concat method, StringBuffer and StringBuilder.

Bye,
Vivek

Amazing Startup - Emo Labs

My Library - Part 1

This is part of my library at home, open to world for the first time :)

It shows an array of books on topics spanning from Technology,

Leadership, Sales & Marketing, Entrepreneurship, General Fiction,

Sci-fi, Strategic Planning and others. Some of my collection here also

includes Books part of the SAPNET library that I had reviewed or

reviewing at present. Thanks to OReilly for that.

At any point of time, I concentrate on 3 books on diverse focus areas.

But I always keep referring to other in the library.

Stay tuned for part 2 of my Library, including some real exciting

additions recently.

Frontal view of the shelf

Side View (Closer)

Closer View of the shelf

View of the bottom Row

JAD Decompilation Log Analysis Tool

JAD Decompilation Analyser
--------------------------------------

Lately, I was involved in some work revolving
Decompilation of a Java Web Application. The Source
Code is unavailable, and the Client requires some
immediate changes and features in the application.
JAD comes out to be the forefront of the solution
to this problem. Hence I used the same, and found
not everything is retrievable. But JAD really gives
an extensive Log to the users abou the problems
it faced with extracting the source code.
I also needed to generate some Documents stating
per Class file basis, the status of its Decompilation,
whether it generated errors/warnings and how many.
To Solve my woes, I wrote a simple Command Line
App in Java 5.0 that parses the Log file generated
by JAD, and creates an Onscreen report stating
the following :-

1. Per file, Status of Decompilation : PASS, PASS with Warnings,
FAIL and if Errors/Warnings, the list of the same neatly aligned
with the classname.

2. Summary of Result : No. of Files Decompiled without Errors/Warnings,
No. of Files Decompiled with Warnings, No. of Files Failed

3. Success Ratio.

I hope some of you would require this at any point of time,
and hope the tool serves that purpose. I will make available
the link around Evening today (6th Nov) once I am back
to home.

See you around and keep looking for this post for updates
(link first.. )

Bangalore Cloud Users Group Meet - 2nd Nov 2009

I had been to Bangalore Cloud Users Group Meet held at

HSR layout on Monday, 2nd Nov 2009. The Agenda was

the Introduction to Cloud Computing with AWS by

Jinesh Varia, Evangelist from Amazon.

I was accompanied by my colleagues Karthik, Ankush

and Siva.

The session was kickstarted by the founders of

Bangalore Cloud Users Group, and instated the spirit

of a Users group and their vision. Then the stage

was taken over by Jinesh who presented a crisp

session, partly hijacked by the flurry of questions

from the audience (some highly relevant).

Nevertheless the event turned out to be a success,

with Pizzas and Cola treating the hungry souls.

I really appreciate the effort of Mr. Prem and

Mr. Vinod from the Bangalore Cloud Users Group

to have arrange this thoughtful session, and looking

forward for many more of the same.

Any new technology or a paradigm requires the

effort of their proponents to spread the word

and encourage the adoption. Bangalore Cloud

Users Group surely has long way to go, but has

definitely started in a style.

Takeaways from the Jinesh's talk :-

1. Interesting Case studies of AWS uses

2. Some really interesting questions from the audience

3. Security issue still a great hurdle for Cloud Computing

adoption

4. Software licensing on Cloud - utility model - a topic that

requires more discussion.

I hope to see myself to speak at any of the future sessions

of Bangalore Cloud Users Group and hope to find the

readers there too.

Note:-

Only concern was the travel time to and fro for the

Event. Hope the event is held at City Centre rather

than one corner of Bangalore.

Till then Good Night

Finding the Professional

A few months back, I had the opportunity to visit a one-of-its kind Outdoor learning programme called Pegasus around 3 hrs ride from Bangalore in the middle of nowhere. That opportunity landed me among a batch of bright engineers and managers, all anxious and excited to

explore the possibilities of the programme. The motive for this team (me

one of them) was three-fold. First, we were expected to participate and learn from the outcomes of the programme so to apply them in our daily work. Second, To evaluate the programme and bring in new ideas so to adapt the activities for our organisation's work culture and customer

centric practice. And third, to relax, enjoy and have a great time.

I am not here to describe what all happened there, which is supposedly to be kept secret, but to

reflect the outcomes of the same. The 2 days gave us a chance to go beyond our cliché , our invisible bindings and forces that keep us stuck to what we know. The variety of activities that we all participated brought the best and worst of all us in open, thereby giving us a chance to rediscover the "Professional" in each one of us.

Today, while reading Subroto Bagchi's new book "The Professional", I was not surprised when he mentioned an interesting incident with the Pegasus camp, and how he found true leaders among the team of individuals who had been to this camp.

A great read. If you guys haven't got a chance to read the book, grab a copy now. Its an excellent read. Or you can grab the last issue of Forbes magazine and read the review for the same.

What Am I Reading these days ?

Do you think Entrepreneurship can be taught, learned or is it an instinct?

Entrepreneurship can be taught, learnt and is an Instinct too.

There are countless examples to prove that Entrepreneurship is an instinct. Look at the rags to riches stories, how ordinary people start with a small setup and end up being a role model for all budding entrepreneurs. 

Entrepreneurship as a Science can be taught, but not the Art.

Now, what is Art and Science of Entrepreneurship. Science is the executional principles of starting and then growing as an Entrepreneur. Embracing an idea, building a product on the idea, pitching to a VC and other steps in the life-cycle of a startup. The Art of Entrepreneurship is the guts and instinct that cannot be taught. It is the Spirit and urge to build something valuable. This cannot be taught, but it can be acquired but not learnt. The great stories of Entrepreneurs, their efforts, their losses and wins act as a catalyst to inspire and to instil the spirit. This is because as Humans, we learn more through 

examples.

A budding entrepreneur is like a Child, who looks for inspiration and motivation from his/her parent. The parent in this case are those wonderful individuals who have built and sustained great organisations. Therefore, I feel there is more than need to connect these children with parents.

Random Pics

Valley of the Digital

My Old Book Rack

Gloomy View of the City (15th October 2009, 3:50 PM)

Old is Gold

IT is Kolkata

I landed in Kolkata on Thursday, a cloudy day mostly bringing
in lot of lazy moments for me. Slept the whole day. The next
day I was really interested in exploring the IT landspace
in Kol. And there I was on this Website : http://www.kolkatatech.com/

Not much of fancy events though compared to Bangalore, where
everyday something or other is happening on IT events front.

But nonetheless, It makes me feel that IT in Kolkata is still
an half-written book, which needs lot of work, and initiative
to stand up against the mights of Southern cities.

I would love to hear more from you guys on this. Add your
comments on this, and lets start a conversation.