Though many disagree, and think of software development as a mundane, non-creative task, as Kevin Carlson@DDJ puts it aptly, it is a work of art! “I suppose the question is this: “where are the limits of the scientific approach in software development?” I mean, we are, ultimately, talking about an act of creation” - Kevin Carlson (note the nested quotes! ;) ) Many of my non-IT friends have asked, how I keep myself interested and how I stand to sit (pun intended) in front of the PC for such long hours and not get burned out?! The reason for this question is partly, I guess, because not every developer that writes software, thinks of it as an art form, and hence most software automate mundane tasks .. users often do very boring stuff with computers .. stuff like filling forms, writing email etc. ...

Nice idea this one. So, here is my list Chennai, TN* Pondicherry, PDY^ Bangalore, KN* Delhi, DL Madurai, TN Kodaikanal, TN ^- weekend visits * - multiple times (weekdays) ;) I have another idea. A chronologically organised milestone-events list for a year. Maybe that will take some time to compose! Good for another post eh?! [tags]2006 summary, year in cities, travel[/tags]

I just downloaded Windows Live Writer At first look, it looks good! I haven’t been able to say that about most Microsoft products off late. The last product that was awe-inspiring was perhaps VC++ 6.0 (such wide range of features), IE 6.0 (it was big deal when it came into the market) and maybe, to some extent Office 2003 (a lot less buggy and smaller file sizes than previous releases). ...

It is not just M$ that struggles with frequent patches for its products. Mozilla just released a whole host of bug fixes in a new release 2.0.0.1. You can download it here or use the direct links below. Http Direct Links to Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab Windows Linux Mac Ftp mirror: ftp.osuosl.org Firefox 2.0.0.1 home dir: /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0.0.1/ windows: $home/win32/en-US/Firefox Setup 2.0.0.1.exe linux: $home/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-2.0.0.1.tar.gz mac: $home/mac/en-US/Firefox 2.0.0.1.dmg There are some issues upon upgrading. Some plugins have trouble working, notably Google Accelerator. You might want to disable that for a while and wait around for an upgrade. ...

Having joined Novell recently, the opportunity to learn a bunch of new development skills has come up. Novell products make extensive use of the mono platform for applications development. After 4 long years, I find myself in need of re-learning some windows application development. I tried setting up mono on my windows pc, and encountered some peculiar issues. I had installed mono and then went looking around for an IDE. Well, monodevelop sounded kewl, and tried to get in compiled on windows. I found that I needed to setup cygwin if I need to build it, and another 100 MB download is not what I wanted to be doing. ...

… that, my friends, in Italian means “Good bye! We have arrived!!”. I have recently movd from my 4 year old job at HCL Technologies, Chennai to Novell, Bangalore. The first day at Novell was nice. The experience exuded professionallism on the part of the company and the people that I am going to work with. Life seems exciting. On the very first day, I have a machine, access to email, food coupons, bank account, an airtel connection, travel info and more than I can remember. Amazing how quick things can be done these days! ;) Finally, I did feel the loss I should have felt when I left HCL, my colleagues for the last four years! This quantum change, I hope will bring more challenges and exciting engineering problems for me to work. (God I sound cliched!) ...

As with Discovery, after a lot of hurdles (some within me and some otherwise), here I am about to take-off on yet another journey, that, I hope is going to be as exciting as the last one that I took, when I joined HCL-Cisco ODC. I has been an amazing experience in the last week or so, when I have been reminiscing about what I am about to do, what I have done, the wonderful people that I encountered and worked with, and the good and bad times. ...

Not that many are reading this blog, but hey, I’m back nonetheless!! Let’s see if I can sustain my blogging! I’ve been getting ready for a change from my current job. For those who don’t know, I’ve been working at HCL Technologies, Chennai, Cisco Offshore Development Centre, for the last 4+ years. Reasons 1. my wife’s moving there! 2. My WIFE’s MOVING do you need more!! ;) I hope to start work with a company in Bangalore. So you guys in cool B’lore, here I come! ...

JavaScript, MochiKit, PHP, X, TinyMCE et. al.Nice article comparing some AJAX toolkits that are talked about these days. Also Anant is doing a very kewl project for Google Summer of code, called GuideXML, an online AJAXified XML editor that is sponsored by Gentoo! Way to go Anant.

JSON Resource Guide