cricket, ipl

3 Reasons why India should stick just to IPL

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I wasted sleep yesterday night to watch Indians play test cricket and lose. And here is my advise to India – stick to IPL and do not bother about playing world cups. 

3. Better Prime time

In this world cup India matches start(ed) at night 10.00PM. Given that only Indians watch cricket how can they schedule all India games at 10.00PM? You are wondering about the non-Indians sitting in the stadium? –  they were brought to the stadium with beer – like how they do in Indian elections. 

With IPL the game bends for you. Games start at 3.00PM to kill afternoon boredom at office and they give a break so commuters can fight the way through traffic and reach on time to watch the next match at 7.00PM. And go to sleep at night 10.00PM. Early to bed and early to rise – IPL is good for your health.

2.  Guaranteed Runs

In IPL, any team will have 2 good bowlers and the rest will be like henchmen in movies who are there to be beaten up. So just save your wickets till the henchmen come on the scene. And to support the super star batsmen are the flat pitches. There is guaranteed fireworks in every match.

World cup is so boring. It is like watching a one day – too many dots because of good bowlers. And the pitches are not flat. All the balls keep coming to the chest or face and poor Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Jadeja cannot handle them  – so unfair.

1. You never lose

I was rooting for Chennai Super Kings till they lost. And Bangalore, my adopted city, reached finals. I conveniently changed my allegiance. You cannot do this with the world cup. Since India is gone I cannot start rooting for another country – there is no fun in watching a game without rabidly supporting a team.

In IPL and the Amru sports – like the world series or super bowl – no one goes home sad. At times you watch a game supporting for both the teams. I watched a world series once where I supported New York Yankees because of Derek Jeter and also at the same time rooted for Boston Red Socks – because they had flair and their players had unkempt hair and were such mavericks. 

So Modi, I hope you are listening. Increase the IPL games and we will all be winners. 

microsoft

PINIP, MINO and VINOSX – Upcoming products from Redmond

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Following the phenomenal success of BING ( aka – Bing is not Google) which is actually Microsoft’s Live search renamed and a 100 Million dollar marketing budget , Microsoft is preparing more product launches along similar lines.

PINIP – Pinip is Not iPod. Bloggers will go crazy with this name – Zune never had the hipness to it. Along with a 1000 Million dollar budget, they can use the money to buy it off the shelves and prove Zune has more market share than iPod.

MINO – Mino is not Oracle. With Oracle now owning MySQL the rich and poor use Oracle’s databases. By renaming MS Sql server with a jazzy name like MINO – Oracle will have to forego hogging the database market and instead concentrate on reviving the companies it killed by buying them – like PeopleSoft, Sun etc.

VINOSX – Of course you guessed it right – V is not OS X and is actually Vista repackaged. Difficult to pronounce but with a 100000 Million dollar marketing budget with lots of youtube ads, banner ads, television ads, super bowl commercials Microsoft can sell this name..and the OS.

Its all in the marketing folks – poor Sergey,Larry, Jobs, Ellison, Torvalds don’t seem to know this and are wasting their energies and R&D Budget.

tamil, tv

How to watch Tamil TV Serials !

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The last couple of days I am watching Tamil TV Serials – during lunch and dinner. I have to socialize with the guests who are visiting us. It will not be manners to read a book when guests are around you see.

So here is how I entertain myself.

1. Watch the side actors. Usually the main heroine ( no heroes ) will be talking a few pages of scripts in one go. And time to time the side actors will keep looking at each other. It is so funny. At times one actor will try to look at the other – and she/he will be listening intently and will not look.

2. Watch for mistakes. There are so many. Usually when there is a large crowd there will be 5 or 6 people who will never get a dialogue. Keep looking at them – and they will keep seeing into the camera now and then.

3. Guess the cliche statement that will emerge out of the actor’s mouth. You will win all the time.

“Enn uyiruai kuduthaavathu unnai kaapaathuvaen”
“Vaanga. Coffee saapidureengala”
“Nalla mugurtham paarthu sollnuga”

There is more to entertain yourself. Guess what they really wanted to speak.

“Unnoda Call Sheet mudiyuthu. Seekiram sethu tholai”
“Vaanga. Beer saapidureengala?”
“Marriage set innamum ready aagalai – 2 months thalli date iruntha sollunga”

Here is my suggestions to the script writers to hook up people like me.

1. Mix up a few sports news in dialogue.

“Chennai Kings kalakuraangala”
“Chelsea manager sothapeetaan”
“Gilli marana adi adikuraan”

2. Product placements.

For instance, all the actors use a cellphone. Why can’t they use it to their advantage –

“Entha Phone ithu? Oh Nokia N97. Cool machi”
“Wow Flat screen – Samsunga – nalla color kaatuthu”
“Oooh Mac Book” ( If a day comes to this Steve Jobs will be selling movie tickets in black )

3. Mix a few PJs

I understand you script writers dilemma. Years of writing cliche after cliche dialogue has blunted the brain. Suddenly you cannot ask them to write jokes – atleast browse on the internet and insert a few PJs here and there.

“Knock knock”
“Why did the kozhi cross the road pa?”
“Intha Blonde joke kelaaen?”

God save Tamil TV Viewers.

linux

Finally Switched from Vista to Ubuntu 9

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Finally I have made the jump from Windows to Linux – the 3rd time. First 2 times I did it when I was on a J2EE project ( weblogic environment ) and a SOA project ( Tomcat ). Once I rolled off the projects again I had to go back to Windows.

Now this is the 3rd time I am switching and along with it the development environment of Apartment Adda to Ubuntu and I will be here for quite some time – perhaps till I get a powerbook 😉 The build and production are already on linux – so it was easy to make the switch – the scripts were all working. A few things were holding me back – like Nokia PC Suite, ITunes, Chrome – but I am feeling better already for having made the choice.

1. Ubuntu 9 is slick, good on eyes and blazingly fast

My thumbrule for judging the performance of an OS is – everything should launch like how a notepad launches in Windows XP ( vista notepad takes longer than XP notepad). In Ubuntu most of the apps meet the critieria. Ubuntu boots really fast and is immediately responsive after desktop comes up and doesn’t cheat like XP or Vista. 

2. Terminal

I had putty for SSHing, a cygwin window for tailing error file, and a command prompt for building, running tests – I know I could have merged cygwin window and command prompt – habits die hard. Now I have one window – with tabs for each of the above. Really neat – and I have switched to the mainframe green – gives me a nostalgic feeling since thats where I started my career.

3. Multiple Workspaces

I am a big fan of multiple workspaces. Missed it in Windows and earlier OS X versions. Helps segregate work and fun. Now with extended desktop and multiple workspace – it is productivity quadrapled. And to switch all I have to do is to move the mouse to the desktop area where there are no windows and scroll the mouse wheel – and it switches.

4. Feeling light

I am not running any of the memory hogs :

1. AVG Anti virus
2. Windows Defender
3. Windows Firewall
4. Spybot S&D

5.Unixiness

Vi, cron jobs, apt-get ( debian specific though ), pipe, grep – the list of toys is endless. Now when I think back I should have switched in Jan 09 when I got this laptop. But kept postponing the switch thinking it will take time to set things up – apparently it took me half a day yesterday and the time / frustration saved from today onwards will pay back within a week.

What I will miss : 

ITunes, Chrome, Nokia PC Suite, Tortoise SVN, HeidiSQL… Do let me know if youknow of some alternatives.

So after crying here : http://kvrlogs.blogspot.com/2009/02/vista-is-a.html and misjudging here : http://kvrlogs.blogspot.com/2008/04/rendezvous-with-vista.html – I have made the switch wholeheartedly and following is the request my machine will be making to the webservers all over the world – doesn’t it look beautiful 🙂

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042523 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.10

election, gloom

Who will lose in this election?

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It is easy to accurately predict who all will lose in this election. A fractured mandate is bad for the country.  Here is my list of losers because of this election 09.

1. Environment

With the makeshift horse traded government trying to hold on to power on a day to day basis – the environment will never show up any where on the radar. Instead we will see environmentally unfriendly projects getting sanctioned at a furious pace – because even before the PIL can be submitted – the minister in charge might be replaced and a new government would have come. Make hay while the sun shines will be order of the day. Sorry Earth.
2. Economy

I feel sorry for the poor sods (including yours truly ) who have sunk their money in Stock Market . I am predicting market to fall to 8000 in the next few months. The parliment will be run by everything other than pragmatism. With the netas whims and fancies changing on a day to day basis – and along with it the fluctuating majority – and along with it the market will keep plunging. 
3. Aam Aadmi 

The new Government’s life span is in weeks to months. They will not think even of a 1 year long project. So no new infrastructure projects will start, no improvements to healthcare or education will happen- everything that a Government is supposed to do – goes for a toss. 
Of course the politicians are not responsible for this mess – they would say it is the Aam Aadmi is to be blamed for having voted such a fractured mandate.
The world will turn dark tomorrow ( May 16th when counting will begin ). Brace up folks – and get ready for a rough ride in the coming few months. Probably my next posts will make fun of our pathetic situation and wont be this gloomy – so don’t blacklist my blog yet 🙂

startup

Specialization is for insects

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There is this age old debate – should you specialize on a skill, or generalize and become a jack of all trades?

Heres a quote that answers the question :
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
– Robert A. Heinlein — from The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
There are exceptions – but as a generalization – the above quote is spot on. In any career you will have your main stream ( BA, Developer, QA, Architect etc. ) – but to become really kickass in your stream – you have to develop other surrounding skills.
Where I am coming at is – as an entrepreneur you will be forced to don many hats. I have met a few entrepreneurs who will dig through their card holder to give me their appropriate business card. They actually have multiple business cards with various designations like VP, Architect, CTO, Business development manager etc. Perhaps they might not be the best in all the roles – but overall they trump the specialists.
So go ahead. If you are a developer talk to your QA, BA, PM, HR, RM, BDM, MD – on what they do, how they do, problems they face, how they tackle – whenever you get a chance – these chats will help you in your career and will help you some day when you run a startup – where you have to be a little of everything.
So become the jack of all trades and a master of one or two.
bangalore, chennai

Chennai Vs Bangalore

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Some people will live and die for a city. I am not one of them – and I will objectively analyze which city is a best fit for me – a 30+ year old dad, techie, non-pub hopper, digs Chettinad food and Saravana Bhavan, and who enjoys the beach. By now you know where my allegiance is 🙂
Beach Vs Mall
The beach might not be how it used to be 10 years back – but still the salty air and cool breeze are the same. No one can prevent the breeze from hitting me – and every time I go to Beasant Nagar beach it reminds me one of the fun times I had there – late night cricket, intellectual and mushy exchanges…numerous.
When I go to a mall I get blinded, suffocated and when I come out I feel drained of my energy and am happy to get out of the mall.
Chennai : 1 
Bangalore : 0
Traffic
Traffic has shot up everywhere – even in tier 3 cities. Chennai traffic is still smooth like butter. You wait only once in any signal – lots of flyovers and smart traffic management ensures you keep moving. Bangalore – uggh.  Driving is zero fun in Bangalore.
Chennai : 2
Bangalore : 0
Food 
Chennai has got great food at affordable rates.   Saravana Bhavan and chettinad joints are there everywhere – Karaikudi, Ponnuswamy, Anjappar – and you can get a tall Falooda for 75Rs ( in Anjappar ) with an umbrella. Try to get one like that in Bangalore for the same price. 
However, to Bangalore’s credit the type of cuisines are endless – konkani, mangalorean,egyptian…you name it – it is there in Bangalore. It might be costlier than Chennai but I would award equal points to both.
Chennai : 3
Bangalore : 1 
Chennai Super Kings vs Bangalore Royal Challengers
Awarding points to both. BRCs seem to be fighting back.
Chennai : 4
Bangalore : 2 
Cars

Chennai wins hands down. I spotted 2 Audis in a space of an hour. There are so many Mercedes. And once I was sandwiched between 2 Mercedes – felt as if I was being escorted like a rock star. Bangalore? Too many indicas, sumos – and even if an Audi R8 pulls next to me I will not notice – I will think it is a figment of my imagination.
Chennai : 5
Bangalore : 2
Weather

Ahem. Heres where things get tied.
Chennai : 5 ( wanted to give a negative score )
Bangalore : 5  ( awarding a whopping 3 pointer ) 
Bottomline – it is a tough choice. You go where your career takes you – rest of the things you can compromise and live and hope things change for the better. 
And finally to sum things up here is my haiku that I wrote when I was in Chennai.
Audi might have got its quattro
But Chennai still has its bovonto*

Dhoni might be from Ranchi
But he is now Chennai’s own Machi**
* Bovonto is a fruit drink looks black in color and bottle says – “does not have fruit juice or pulp”. Is as bad and unhealthy as a Pepsi or Coke and does not have an Amir Khan or SRK peddling it – but tastes fantastic. You can still find it in Chennai.
** Valid till he is bought by a Mumbai or a Kolkata team.
books, paulo coelho

Fight the Good Fight !

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Book Review – The Pilgrimage


The book is all about fighting the good fight!
When we were young we had dreams but did not have the skills to achieve the dream. Then we educate ourselves, and through apprenticeship learn the skills to achieve the dream. However while doing so we lose sight of our dream and when we have the skills – we do not fight for the dream. “Fight the good fight” – Paulo’s guide tells him – inorder to achieve your dream. 
The second interesting thing is – we all fight for a reward. We achieve a dream so we can get a reward. But we never think what we will do with the reward. Once you answer it – the process of achieving your dream, getting your reward becomes easy and more meaningful. 
Finally, during the course of the book you will realize how a devil is as important as an angel. Confused – let me explain from what I understood. Angel is the one that protects you. Devil always looks out for its own good and is selfish. Wondering how a devil can help you? Well – devil is the one who will help you inflict injury to your enemy – so if you can use your devil appropriately – he will not desert you in a fight ( to save himself ) but you can use the negative energy to inflict injury to your enemy – and win the fight.
I will not recommend this book if you are not a Paulo Coelho’s fan. Try Alchemist first and then come to this book – you might appreciate it. 
What I like in Paulo Coelho’s books is how he gives different perspectives to well established things (devil/angel for instance ) and how you can relate your life to the events in the protogonist’s life  as you are reading the book.
Now I am off to fight the good fight 🙂 
cricket, india

IPL 09 or Election 09 – which is the best entertainment?

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I feel Election 09 is more wholesome entertainment than IPL 09 – here is my top 5 reasons.
5. Cricket is a boring sport and IPL is trying to make it interesting and is quite successful in it. Politics has been the world’s most oldest profession/game/sport and Elections make it really interesting. So no contest in this front.
4. IPL has got too many statistics – Net run rate, Batsman’s average, Bowlers average – it all confuses me and is too much for my mind. I like what Election 09 is going to throw up – all within 545 seats distributed among 1025 parties – and you can play the permutation and combination to see who can make the magic 272 – except make sure you dont club the 2 big parties ( now why don’t they partner for a change…that will be fun!)
3. IPL needs gimmicks like cheer leaders, bollywood actress and actors to keep people glued to the screen. Netas need no help from any quarters. They goof up enough, say outrageous things, call names of their opponents – its like reliving kindergarden once again. 
2. IPL is short lived. You have it for a few weeks and then its all over. But Election 09 is going to continue for ever – according to most of the predictions it is going to be a hung assembly. It is bad for the economy but good for TV, Newspaper, Coffee machine gossip. A humble farmer, a 10000 shoe owner, a buffalo milker – everyone has a chance to lead us now. Tell me can IPL give you so much of thrill – that too not for just a couple of weeks – but for the many months to come? 
1. Best reason of all – IPL is a non entity in the world’s eyes – except Australia, SouthAfrica, Indian sub continent. No not England – they invented Cricket and pushed it down our throats – but now have switched to Soccer. But Election 09 will keep Mr.Obama, Zardari, Sarkozky, Putin – all glued to the television sets, twitter accounts or whatever – to find out how the political landscape is shaping. Which language should these leaders start learning – the language of the cows, language of the soil, language of kids ( hehe 🙂 )? 
We are giving them nervous breakdowns – because like it or not India is on the highway to becoming a super power and Election 09 is going to be a major event in the World’s history. IPL is a mere blip. Forget Mc.Cain vs Obama battle – that was nothing. Lets watch Congress vs BJP vs Third Front vs We-are-not-the-fourth-front vs The-unknown-front-to-be-formed after election front.
So, get ready by stocking up on Filter Coffee. Cut down on your morning jogging routine to give more time for reading Newspaper. Things are going to get very interesting. Trust me – you will not bother reading the sports page.
 
tech choices

Tech Choices a StartUp Developer has to make

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The eco system for programming languages and frameworks is well evolved – and is continously evolving. As a web developer you are faced with many choices. I have tried to capture some of the options I had to evaluate for Apartment Adda. I have left out the esoteric languages and frameworks which have not become mainstream yet.

Programming Language – Java, PHP, Ruby, Python

This is the first decision a developer has to make and might be the easiest choice – pick the one where you have the most expertise. However if you are well versed in more than one language – pick the one that will suit your startup – based on the funds you have ( cheapest to host will be php to Java hosting being expensive) , speed at which you want to release ( php/rails being fastest to Java being the slowest ), team’s expertise ( java developers being easy to find and ruby developers being hard to find ) etc.
Framework Choices – Rails, ActiveRecord, CakePHP, Spring, Hibernate, Django..

In most of the cases the framework and language decision will go hand in hand. If you pick Rails and active record then you will be going with Ruby. If you pick Spring,Hibernate – then you will pick Java. In the end it all boils down to the passion and expertise you have with the languages and frameworks.
One advice I have here is – do not pick a language/framework to educate yourself. You can try to learn from a hobby project – but not with a startup. The honeymoon period is only till your launch date when you can learn/play/experiment. But after launch you cannot go back on any of your decisions – and you cannot afford to have downtime, bugs or incomplete features – customers these days are spoilt with high quality and feature rich applications like Gmail, Facebook etc. and they will expect the same out of your product too. So picking a language/framework where you are The Guru will save you from lot of trouble.
Database – MySQL,PostgreSQL

Tough choice here. Both are equally good. MySQL wins the popularity contest.
Javascript Frameworks – Dojo, MooTools,Prototype,Scriptaculous

Try looking at the showcases each framework provides and also look at the sample code. Pick the one that will suit your design and also factor in the size of the compressed file. I do not understand why the browsers won’t include the javascript framework in their installers.
Development OS – OS X, Linux, Windows

Sometimes you are forced to work with an OS ( Windows because of Nokia PC software which will not work in linux). Some times you have no choice but to work with an OS ( linux for hosting / build machine ). Most of the time, for a startup, you will not have money for luxuries so you can only drool at OS X screenshots. Sigh.
Hosting – Shared or Dedicated

Avoid shared hosting. It will be the cheapest option – but you will have trouble later with ip address being blacklisted because a spammer was sitting next to you. Dedicated hosting costs a little more but it will be worth it and also you get full control.
GWT

A developer’s dream come true – need not touch javascript. If you choose GWT most of the tech choices are already made for you.
HTML/CSS : Table vs DIV

I don’t have enough expertise with DIVs so I built my layout with Tables – simple as that. Even though I hear lot of advantages of DIVs I decided to go with Tables – looks great even when browser is resized, resolution is changed, some content decides to grow out of hand etc.
Richeditor frameworks – YUI Rich Text editor, TinyMCE, NicEdit

No clear winner – each has its own quirks and strong points. This one you can easily change even after going live.
IDE – Eclipse, IDEA, Netbeans

Perhaps IDEA might be the first software license I purchased. There are open source alternatives for almost everything – Office, Photo editing etc. But IDEA burns all the open source alternatives to ash with its blazing speed and shortcuts.
I guess this covers most of the choices I think I made. Do point out any choices I might have missed and any better alternatives you have come across.






Here is the life story of a speck

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