Personalized google homepage , Jini

Google has launched personalized homepage , check it out !
In case you have worked on portal server and relative stuff (I have not directly - but have friends who do) , you will know the difficulty of what they have achieved - drag and drop portlet windows !
Not sure if they have a proper full fledged portal server running in the background or just a bunch of scripts which spew up the markup.
Whatever be it - it is damn cool and "sexy" :-)
Now , if only they allowed you to syndicate your own content based on atom/rss feeds - maybe someone should file that as an RFE with them ;-)
But the stuff that has been done is damn cool already !

While we are at it , got to this through Google Blog - check it out , you might pick up something interesting.
From the blog entry here , it looks like the personalised homepage is implemented (atleast in part) in python , so all python "fans" can rejoice :-P

Also , finally decided to plunge into JINI - reading the tutorial here.
Also check out Jim Waldo's blog here. If you are interested in distributed computing like I am , you will learn shitloads from the posts and the resulting discussions/comments.
Also try reading this - very very interesting piece.

Post Secret

http://postsecret.blogspot.com - some are so so nice , others make you feel so lonely , all of them cheer you up !

Also check out http://www.aseltine.com/rhee/ - V learn something fom this :-D

Sith

Check this review out : http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/articles/050523crci_cinema hilarious :)
I think MMN can learn a thing or two from them ... both seem to share the same "style" ;-)

Bill Joy

Most of my close friends know that I am a HUGE fan of Bill Joy : what he has accomplished , and more so created an environment to be accomplished in breathtaking ("Innovation happens elsewhere").
Came across a nice set of pages while going clicketty click this weekend .... brought joy to my life :)
Ok , puns apart : really nice read !

http://archive.salon.com/tech/fsp/2000/05/16/chapter_2_part_one/index.html Interesting article - part of a book : should get it someday... I have read Rebel Code in the past and was very disappointed with the book - hope this is different.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/billjoy.html cool ! (read the part about Linux ;-) )

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html Whoa ! The "controversial" article.

I keep hearing a lot about JINI from BillJoy , James Gosling , et al ... should try to understand more about it - I just have a vague idea that it is an ultracool network based code and services.

Came across this book - "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System by Marshall Kirk McKusick, George V. Neville-Neil" , need to buy and read it too ...
When in 2nd year in college , I remember reading a book by Tanenbaum about the Minix operating system - what I enjoyed about the book were the code walkthroughs - made it look so easy to author an operating system ! ( Give the Minix book a whirl if you are not yet initiated into this world : a really nice read - one of the design goals of minix is precisely that : make it easy to teach OS).

Ok , other news/rants :

* AJ is doing great in his college. Results are out and as usual he is "top" :) Congrats buddy , you rock !

* Aparup is back in Bangalore - and getting married in July end ... Shireen has already agreed to let me "test" her cooking during the weekends :-D (or has she ?! ;-) ). Aparup vouches for her cooking and says it is excellent though she denies that - atleast it will be 1000x better than what I can dish out :-P.
So /me gonna be one happy guy when I get back to Bangalore - now only to get a house close to his and I can have late night card games , some heated tech discussions , food and all round great time :-)
And before I forget to mention it publically - "Congratulations Shireen and Aparup" ! (note : higher priority to Shireen ;-) ).
July end ... around the same time I came there 4 years back - I feel soooo old :-(

* Wont be making it to Bangalore this month ... manager might turn up there mid next month , so will reschedule trip for then.

* I think I have Alok's Emperor's New mind with me ! (Just found it while searching for "An Eternal Golden Braid" - a book I bought and never read ...). Should return when I get there ... how did I miss this one while moving ? More importantly , how did he miss it ?! :)

* The fire is back - getting highly irritable nowadays : should immerse myself into something in my freetime else will go nuts !
Rajesh is after me for documentation (which I am keeping on forgetting : note to self - complete them !) and most probably will shoot down any project idea before I deliver those. So should try my hand at some other task. Now where was the opengl book I was reading ? .... GURU need help with ideas here !

* I am getting irritated with people who go ga-ga over any and every open source software just 'cos it is open source.
If two competing products with functionally similar feature sets were presented to me , I might prefer the opensource version - but the operative word is functionally similar : UI is a part of the app and a functional requirement (if it is not , re-prioritize) .
Being all religious about opensource just 'cos it is opensource (btw, open source does not mean "free" : read fine print in license) is plain stupid - use what is best , and if you have choice among the best - choose wisely.
There is absolutely no point in reinventing the wheel (unless abnormal circumstances exist) - that being said : I do it all the time - but for fun , not to "solve world hunger problem".

Found them !!

This weekend has been one of the best so far in my life till now !
Some of the very best school memories I have are from KV Pallipurram (near Trivandrum) where I did my 7th till 9th.
The the school , the teachers , the library (I used to devour books there !) and most importantly the friends from that school : I had such a load of fun it is not imaginable !
At that time , I was yet to be interested in computers - and so all my time was devoted to enjoying life :) And enjoy I did !
Like all good things coming to an end , first dad got transferred from Attingal to Trivandrum , and then from there to Coimbatore - after which I completely lost all touch with that amazing batch of friends : something that I have regreted ever since.
Some of you might be knowing how I have made futile efforts to get back in touch with them again - have not been very very persistent in my efforts , but attempts nonetheless.

This friday , was trawling the web as usual before going to bed through google when I found this website !
I can never thank Jeevan enough for putting this site up - contacted him , and he very genourously added me to a y! group which had most of my batchmates from that class !!
I was so surprised - still not got over it !
Still not got over the very heavy nostalgia attack I had since then :)
Wanted to get lot of things done this weekend - but everything is on hold while I reminisce about that "era" of my life *sigh*

Lekshmi C Nair , a real good friend of mine from that class replied to me this weekend ... hopefully will be able to get in touch with more people !
Man , how I miss them :-(

Some interesting links

Lot of you might have seen this : An Automatic CS Paper Generator (if you have not , give it a whirl - it is pretty cool !).
What is even better is that the authors nearly pulled off a coup - they took a randomly generated paper and almost got it presented at a conference ! Read more at the site.
Some of the responses from the conference committee and analysis of them are damn cool ... I especially enjoyed this.
While you are at it , read this too.
(I have come across the above links from the SCIgen site ... )

I happened to comment to vipin about how I did not really enjoy modern art - my definition here was very vague and based on what I have seen ... I am not very knowledgable about it , neither have I really seen many styles/pieces of art.
Usually , I really enjoy paintings like these and the ones here (courtesy vipin).
Ofcourse , he pointed me to a Dali's site (not fair not fair at all !!) and yep , as you can guess ... no more , not liking modern art sweeping statements ;) (While you are there , check out the quotes by Dali ... esp the one "Every morning when I wake up, I experience an ..." such a statement by anyone else would be termed arrogance ! but for Dali ... it is different :-D)
I still dont fancy cubist paintings and those splashes of colors style stuff ... I rather prefer more "traditional" paintings of people , landscapes - more "real" ones ;-) (coming from a guy who is almost always in front of the comp - this is rich !) ... and considering my near to zero skills in all of these , I think /me should just shut up and enjoy the work of others :-)

While we are at this , take a look at this - all you perl guru's might have some way of improving it :) And yes , from what I read , Tim Bray did mention this to Larry Wall ... who said perl 6 is gonna change it :-D (Note - this is a niche : not a general comment about perl's regexp parser).

Joined new team ... and already learning so much that it is akin to drinking from a fire hose !
Some really cool code has been written in this product , and using things I was not very comfortable with since I never used them before ... nio , xml streams , etc.
Reading up on xmpp , related JEPs , ... - exciting stuff !! and the team is small and damn good - should be interesting times ahead :-)
Hopefully , I should be in Bangalore on 15th or so ... not yet confirmed !
Will try to catch up with friends then (will be at Vipin's place : so will be definitely meeting him ;-) ) - though I will be quiet busy trying to catch up with the new team.

Ok , I downloaded the quake code (again :-P) and this time I am a bit more serious in trying to understand its mysteries !
And I am going to do it solo ... without any books to help me ;-) - ok , ok , some of you can already see this attempt ending in a failure but who knows , who knows indeed !

I have said it in the past , I will say it again ... maddox rules :-)
Check these out from the archives 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , - just a random sample of what I have opened up here ;-)


Now , it is time to get back to work ... oh wait

Forgot to flog Fali.
He tortured me through 3 hours of the most boring and senseless movie _ever_ - called Kaal.
It is small consolation that he regreted watching the movie himself :-)
Ok , for people who dont know who fali is , he is a class mate of mine from college - a damn cool dude - goes by the official name of Fouzan Ali.
/me met him after almost 4 years , and yep he has not put on any height since I last saw him ;-)
Met him , Vijaya (his wife) and NY ... hmm , I should attribute part of the blame on Neeraj too - the idiot should have stopped fali from buying those tickets !
*sick* movie people , really really pathetic.
Vivek Oberoi (name correct ?) is such a lousy actor and keeps sprouting the dialogue "Cut the crap" or some such asinine drivel - and his idea of looking pissed/irritated/angry/etc is to make a face as though he is constipated.
I dont even want to start off about the other "actors" and props (read actresses).
Ok , I will shut up now about this topic - opens up way too many wounds which I am trying to heal :-(