Lucky me !

Last week, Chris Newman was at our office here - who is also senior architect of messaging server team. I got to chat and discuss things with him - it was just amazing !
He gave a few short talks (had to wake up at 10 am daily last week :-( ), and listening to him share his views & experiences and getting his opinion on some of the things we planned to do (am I glad I had that chat !) was really good.
Isn't it cool or what ? :-D


PS : Not a plug for Sun, just mentioning for friends who ask me why I am still here :-D

Future home ?!

This is one heck of a house to live and grow up in !

streak of sadism ?!

Maybe sadism is too strong a word.
I am referring to Malayalam movies here (excluding the current generation of largely unwatchable crap that comes out) .
There are a lot of them where the very last few scenes of the movie, the viewer is left with the final twist for the worse - that too after things have supposedly become 'fine and dandy'.
If you dont catch it, you will still have a good enough expierence - but if you do, it becomes extremely ironic.

- hero and heroine just missing each other at the traffic signal to be separated forever though they have surmounted all 'difficulties' to reach that point.
- hero getting 'cured' of his diseases and starting life afresh with his loved ones just to show us the last image that things are just the way it used to be ! (just saw this movie of Srinivasan ... which triggered this post :-) )
- a long and painful struggle for some objective throughout the movie, just to give it up at the last minute 'just like that' (no, not the sacrifice angle !)
etc, etc. The seasoned movie goer will identify the movies I might be referring to above, but these are just instances ... I dont want to list all the endings I know :-P

It does add a high degree of unpredictability to the whole expierence, and yes - I have seen people not always taking it well. Whether you like it or hate it, it sure as hell was much more enjoyable to me ! The blend of comic, humor, seriousness and wry twists made it very entertaining.

Return of the loony gallery

Guru has promised me that he is reviving his gallery (ok, not really promise - but what the heck !)
Though he has sent me the link a couple of times in the past, send me references to it, etc ... this was the first time (apologies bugger !) I am seeing the whole thing online : yes, yes - I have seen most of the originals ... As usual, his imagination is kickass and makes me smile :-) (anyone remember under the moon ? ;-) )
Here to hoping that lot more of his insanity comes online !!

Dog menace

A 4.5 year boy old gets brutally attacked by a pack of 15 dogs - his windpipe gets torn, his throat is severely lacerated and his neck is almost severed off : and he succumbs to his injuries at the hospital.
This is the second such incident in very recent times in Bangalore where a kid is attacked by a group of hounds and is killed.
My condolences to the family .. this is totally out of the blue and very unfortunate.

Though the knee jerk reaction would be to lambast BCC and the current govt, dog menace has always been a problem in Bangalore - and claims that it has grown only in recent times is a load of crock. Since the time I moved to Bangalore almost 6 years back, the primary worry for me and lot of my friends getting home late from work was not the fear of robbers (the sense insecurity w.r.t that has significantly grown since then btw), but the fear of dogs.

After the two recent incidents, the response of NGO's was along predictable lines - some nonsense about how dogs dont attack unless provoked, etc : what was the provocation here ? That a kid is small and weak and so a likely 'prey' ?
I am against cruelty to animals - but public posturing should be moderated against safety of humans : a trite line without taking circumstances into consideration is just going to weaken the position and put the animal rights advocates to ridicule.

emacs vs netbeans ?!

Check out James Gosling's post here :-)