→ A rant about PHP compilers

People seem to want to know if HPHP is widely useful outside of Facebook, and some people are saying “no”. I disagree strongly. In order for HPHP to be useful, you need to have a PHP application which is suffering due to PHP interpreter performance. That matches Facebook perfectly, and they’ve always been the canonical example I use to explain why PHP compilers are interesting. But you don’t have to be Facebook size or scale to have performance problems.

via A rant about PHP compilers in general and HipHop in particular..

Quick Search /
→ You Can’t Innovate Like Apple
September 1st, 2010

Old, but still worth linking again. First, forget about it unless you are willing to invest significantly and heavily to establish a culture of innovation like Apple’s. Because it’s not just about copying Apple’s approach and procedures. The vast majority of executives who say, “I want to be just like Apple,” have no idea what [...]

→ The first step is to start
August 31st, 2010

I’ve heard enough from myself lately, and I’m going to act on it soon. To never follow a dream because you don’t think you’re good enough or don’t have the skills, or knowledge, or experience is a waste. In fact, these projects where there is doubt are the ones to pursue. They offer the greatest [...]

UX Won’t Save You
August 26th, 2010

Why should you have a proper product roadmap, instead of implementing every feature request from the customers: Customer feature requests are closely tied to Customer Acquisition. Every product should have a clear roadmap and a clear understanding of what the product does and does not do. If your team does not have this in place, [...]

Pirate Bay Receives Notice To Keep a Torrent
August 26th, 2010

Another example of Mac Software Developers Awesome-coolnesss ! A few months ago Dmitry Chestnykh, the founder of Coding Robots and copyright holder of Mémoires, discovered that his program – like many others – was being shared via The Pirate Bay. Out of curiosity he decided to download the torrent to find out how it was [...]

Apple’s Attention to Detail
August 25th, 2010

The average respiratory rate for adults is 12-20 breathes per minute, which is the rate that the sleep-indicator light fades in and out on most Apple laptops. Older models such as the Macintosh PowerBook, however, use a blinking LED indicator, with discrete pulses in one-second intervals. The other day, I noticed that my friend’s Dell [...]

A View Into How Apple Develops APIs
August 25th, 2010

Apple first launches a private API for internal use. The API is iterated until there are no more internal questions. It then goes public. Feedback is critical to further refine the service so it has longevity over the span of several generations. via A View Into How Apple Develops APIs – ReadWriteCloud.

Ready to be an open source contributor but don’t know where to start?
August 19th, 2010

This is really interesting. I’m checking out the site right now. OpenHatch is a place for developers who want to be involved in open source but don’t know where to start. You can go to the site and search for a way to contribute based on a language you know or a project you like. [...]

Your beautiful eyes
August 18th, 2010

Amazing macro photographs of eyes – beautiful and creepy at the same time. Your beautiful eyes on the Behance Network.

→ Be Happier: Rent Everything
August 11th, 2010

This pretty much summarizes my argument against owing a house/pet/car/child etc. In short, ownership dampens your happiness and burdens you psychologically. Being able to leave your home and not worry about a pet adds to your happiness. Keeping your housing costs low and not accidentally accumulating stuff allows you to spend time and money on [...]

→ Marketing your Open Source Project
August 5th, 2010

Marketing your open source project doesn’t have to be hard, or expensive. It just takes a bit of resourcefulness and passion. Most importantly, be patient. It will take time to build up your developer audience. Keep at it and they will come. Read more …

One week with iPad
August 5th, 2010

When iPad was announced, I wasn’t really sure if I needed one. All the time I drag my mac around, so I thought I don’t another device to keep an eye on. But when it was released in the Netherlands, I wanted one. My iPad arrived last week and so far it found its rightful place on my desk. Anyway, here’s what I like and dislike about my iPad.

Google finally gets rid of wave
August 4th, 2010

Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as [...]

Morning Stand-Up Meeting
August 4th, 2010

You should begin the day with a team meeting, and in this respect MDD(Meeting Drive Development) is in agreement with XP’s practice of holding daily “stand-up” meetings. Like many meetings that are driven by the calendar rather than by a need, your morning meeting will probably devolve into a pointless ritual that serves only to [...]

★ Risotto à la Vijay
August 3rd, 2010
→ Oh Life
August 3rd, 2010

Every night we’ll email you the question “How did your day go?” Just reply with your entry and it’s saved here instantly. This is a pretty neat idea. The site is nicely done too. → OhLife.com

Fun with School Kids
July 23rd, 2010

After a long grueling road trip for the past 5 days, I finally got a chance to get back to real India, the country side. I visited the school where my mother teaches and some pretty good fun teaching the kids whole afternoon. They are so curious and excited to learn new stuff. After a [...]

Virtual Tour of Trans-Siberian Railroute
July 11th, 2010

Amazing virtual tour of  Trans-Siberian Railway courtesy of Google and Russian Railways. The Great Trans-Siberian Railway – the pride of Russia – is in 2 parts of the world, 12 regions and 87 cities. A joint project by Google and the company “Russian Railways” will allow you to not leaving the house to pass on [...]

→ Low esteem and the factory
July 8th, 2010

If you want to raise your game and build an organization filled with people who will change everything, the first thing to look for is someone who hasn’t been brainwashed into believing that they’re not capable of great work. via Seths Blog: Low esteem and the factory.

→ Pictures
July 6th, 2010

I don’t want to stare at some photo of me at 21 when I’m 50 and contemplate everything I was, or could have been. I don’t want to have to drown in partial truths, grasping at a falling memory to paint in details. I’d rather either remember, or not. Rather know, or forget. I’d rather [...]

ModeShape 2.0
July 3rd, 2010

The ModeShape project proudly announces that version 2.0 is now available and ready for use. ModeShape 2.0 now implements the JCR 2.0 specification (JSR-283). Specifically, ModeShape supports all the JCR 2.0 required features and most of the JCR 2.0 optional features. ModeShape 2.0 supports five query languages: the JCR-SQL2 and JCR-QOM query languages defined in [...]

Hand to Mouth to India
June 28th, 2010

I wrote Hand to Mouth to India in 1997/8 at the age of 20 and it’s the tale of how I hitchhiked from England to India with no money. via Hand to Mouth to India.

Designing for Mobile First Helps with Big Issues
June 4th, 2010

For years, Web designers and developers have struggled to make Web sites look and act the same in every browser. But every browser is different. They each have their own capabilities and limitations. So making every experience the same across all browsers means not taking advantage of some opportunities capabilities and hacking around existing limitations. [...]

Faceted Navigation with Hippo CMS and HST2
June 2nd, 2010

Categorizing and presenting large volumes of documents is a big challenge. Content can be organized into 3 different models – Using Hierarchies (organized into folders), Using Categories (attaching taxonomy category to a document) or by Using Tags. These three organization models in turn can serve as navigational models as well. When the content size grows larger these models hinder the accessibility of the content. This also affects the discoverability of the content, of course searching is an option but search itself cannot be considered as navigation since the users needs to be aware of what properties the content has and how to specify the criteria. Faceted Navigation solves this problem by providing a way to access the in series of refining queries. The users can drill down and access the content the way they want. Hippo CMS, along with HST provides excellent support for creating a faceted navigation of your content. In this article I’ll try to explain how you can build your own faceted navigation in your website using Hippo CMS and HST.

Multi Channel Publishing with Hippo CMS and HST
May 26th, 2010

When you are using Hippo CMS, the content and presentation logic are clearly separated. This cleaner approach to content management allows the developers to publish the content to various channels without much effort. In this post I’ll try to explain how you can publish the same content from CMS and serve it using HST2 to different channels – Web Sites, Mobile (iPhone), iCal format and Layar (Augmented Reality Browser).

→ Hippo CMS 7 WebDAV Support
May 24th, 2010

The current status is that the WebDAV addon has default support for the Hippo assets folder. This was actually quite easy to develop. This can also be used to copy all assets from a CMS 6 instance directly into a running CMS 7 instance. All other folders are not WebDAV enabled yet, but I have [...]

→ Flickr Data Ownership
May 19th, 2010

With Flickr you can get out, via the API, every single piece of information you put into the system.Every photo, in every size, plus the completely untouched original. which we store for you indefinitely, whether or not you pay us Every tag, every comment, every note, every people tag, every fave. Also your stats, view [...]

Hello world – Again!
May 16th, 2010

As you might have noticed, I started updating the design for this blog. I have been pondering and procrastinating the clean up for long time. I wanted to remove all the evil tags, and categorize the content properly. The site template is based on clean and readable iA3 template and I am experimenting with fonts [...]

★ Copenhagen – Royal Gaurd
May 14th, 2010
★ Copenhagen – Angel
May 14th, 2010
★ Copenhagen – Flower
May 14th, 2010
★ Copenhagen – Mœrsk Building
May 14th, 2010
★ Copenhagen – 8 Degrees
May 13th, 2010
★ Copenhagen – Tivoli
May 13th, 2010
★ Copenhagen – Driverless Metro
May 13th, 2010
★ Copenhagen – Angels
May 13th, 2010
→ Standalone BPM Is Dead
May 11th, 2010

Enterprise Content Management ECM is another great use case for which it makes a lot of sense to offer the BPM capabilities where they are used. In the industry over the last 2 years you see more and more focus on bringing these worlds together. It makes a lot of sense. via Process Developments: Standalone [...]

★ Reverse Lens Macro Photography
May 10th, 2010

Some experiments with upside down lenses

Google Maps Plugin for Hippo CMS
May 4th, 2010

Almost done – will soon be on forge.

→Your Office Chair Is Killing You
May 2nd, 2010

Frequent TV and Web surfers sitters have higher rates of hypertension, obesity, high blood triglycerides, low HDL cholesterol, and high blood sugar, regardless of weight. Lean people, on average, stand for two hours longer than their counterparts. The chair youre sitting in now is likely contributing to the problem. “Short of sitting on a spike, [...]

→ Simplicity isn’t that simple – 52 Weeks of UX
April 25th, 2010

Anyone who occupies themselves with the task of creating truly usable products becomes instantly aware that achieving simplicity is not that simple. For any single feature in a product we must take into account the way it looks, the way it functions, its place in the overall system, affordances to help convey context of how and why it [...]

Rules of Eating
April 22nd, 2010

Never eat on an empty stomach. Never leave the table hungry. When traveling, never leave a country hungry. Enjoy your food. Enjoy your companion’s food. Really taste your food.  It may take several portions to accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned. Really feel your food.  Texture is important.  Compare, for example, the texture of a turnip to [...]

ERROR: column notation .id applied to type name, which is not a composite type
April 19th, 2010

Note to Self: If you are using PostgreSQL with Hibernate and got this error, make sure that the entity names are not in the PostgreSQL’s reserved keywords. So the table name(or the Entity name) “User” is going to give the error in the title!

“Creativity requires mind, and a herd has none”
April 16th, 2010

Experiment with GUIs which don’t trace their descent to Xerox PARC.  Forever renounce the idiotic practice of copying Microsoft, that cheap imitation of a cheap imitation.  If you are creative, create.  Otherwise, strive to find a strong-willed Jobs figure gifted with good taste, and become his loyal servant.  This is how we get quality products, [...]

Apple to xplatform developers: We’re no longer suicidal
April 14th, 2010

These are among what developers would leave behind if they choose to abandon Apple for uncharted and unproven platforms of other vendors. Users do not follow esoteric open/closed platform politics, they vote with their money for convenience, reliability and value. In order to become a better garden for developers, it’s not enough for other vendors [...]

Hippo CMS Image Browser Update
April 9th, 2010

The next tag/version of Hippo CMS will have an updated image browser. The images can now be displayed both as List or a Thumbnail Grid, see the screenshots below. The Grid View is implemented using simple css and ul tags. Here’s an example of the HTML/CSS that is used to convert a ul with images [...]

→ From Chidambaram to Cambridge: a life in science
April 8th, 2010

In this charmingly narrated autobiographical essay written for the Nobel Foundation, 2009 Chemistry Laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan recalls his Indian roots, the shaping role of his exceptional parents and teachers, the affective care he received from his grandmother and aunt, the twists and turns of his scientific career — and how he came to his lifelong [...]

→ Why the iPhone Simulator is Awesome
April 8th, 2010

The iPhone simulator’s method seems magically wonderful. Since the iPhone OS is MacOS, all the kernel APIs are the same. The natively-compiled frameworks, libraries, and display engine are built from the same source code, so you know they’re the same too. And your Mac’s CPU is a lot faster than the iPhone’s CPU, so the [...]

→ Object Oriented CSS
April 6th, 2010

Code re-use in CSS almost non-existent. File size in CSS just keeps getting bigger as we continue to modify it. CSS code is often too fragile. It can get ruined by the first person to touch it. via LukeW | An Event Apart: Object Oriented CSS.

★ Makizushi @ Home
April 4th, 2010
→ The trouble with Chinese
March 22nd, 2010

The trouble with the word Chinese is, it is an adjective as well as a noun, and it not only is both singular and plural, but it always sounds plural because of the “s”. A Chinaman is a man, beyond any doubt. A Chinese sounds somewhere between a tapestry and a couple of Chinamen. via [...]

→ Movable Floors
March 20th, 2010

Hydrofloors® vertically movable floors enable the client to exploit the surface area of a swimming pool by converting the associated terrace or indoor pool room for other uses e.g. recreation, social events, for dining and dancing. via Hydro Floors →

→ Four Ways to Mix Fonts
March 19th, 2010

Is there a way to know what fonts will work together? Building a palette is an intuitive process, but expanding a typographic duet to three, four, or even five voices can be daunting. Here are four tips for navigating the typographic ocean, all built around H&FJ's Highly Scientific First Principle of Combining Fonts: keep one [...]

Update: Easy Forms 2.0 for CMS 7.3
March 19th, 2010

A quick update on Easy  Forms plugin for Hippo CMS – it is now updated and compatible with latest Hippo CMS Release 7.3. The 2.0 version artifacts are now available in the forge maven repository. I’ll provide the details on how to configure and create the Easy Forms in a following post, though it is [...]

Common Lisp vs Java
March 17th, 2010

I’ve been sort of wanting to learn LISP for long time (~ 10 years). Now finally I got some chance to try that out. I’ve started reading On Lisp by Paul Graham along with Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel. I find them pretty invaluable in learning Lisp. It has been nearly 9 years since I’ve [...]

Keukenhof Opens with Theme: From Russia with Love
March 17th, 2010

Theme 2010: From Russia with Love Russia: a colossal, beautiful and mysterious country. Under the theme From Russia with Love, this year Keukenhof pays homage to a special country that has a special past. Follow the themed route from the entrance of Keukenhof and you won’t miss a thing. You will walk between the main [...]

→ Rainbow Cake
March 17th, 2010

via  Whisk Kid →

Updated: Related Documents Plugin for Hippo CMS 7.3
March 8th, 2010

The Related Documents plugin for Hippo CMS allows the editors of the documents to select “related” documents of the current document. The plugin provides automatic suggestions using Similarity Search and Referring documents. Also, the document editors/authors can hand-pick the related documents. The plugin is now updated for CMS 7.3(released last week). You can get the [...]

★ Turin – Ciok Art! – Chocolate Cabbage
March 7th, 2010
★ Turin – Gobino Chocolate Experience
March 7th, 2010

I’m not a much of a chocolate guy, but Gobino Chocolate experience is something I really enjoyed.

★ Turin – Totally Tally!
March 6th, 2010
★ Turin – Vittorio Emanuele II
March 6th, 2010
★ Turin – Mole Antonelliana
March 6th, 2010

Mole Antonelliana (Also National Museum of Cinema) – The Quintessential Photograph of Torino

★ Turin – View from Palazzo Madama
March 6th, 2010
★ Turin – Training Capital of Europe
March 4th, 2010

I’m giving training in Training Capital of Europe

→ Improving Community – The power of good, centralized documentation
March 4th, 2010

A successful open-source community documentation initiative has: Comprehensive documentation provided on a central, official website. Inline comments and user feedback. The most common paths on the website are the most visible, intuitive paths. Fluent navigation and document hierarchies. (The URL matches the Breadcrumbs matches the content. If users get lost, users give up). Accurate and [...]

→ Audi – "Beauty in Engineering"
March 4th, 2010

Via Audi “Beauty In Engineering” from Aladino Debert on Vimeo.

→ Holi 2010 – The Big Picture
March 3rd, 2010

via Holi 2010 – The Big Picture →

Smart Console now on Hippo Forge
March 1st, 2010

Finally I got sometime to move the Smart Console project out of sandbox. The project is now hosted at Hippo Forge. There are two things that are aimed with this project . One – to provide a simple, user friendly JCR Explorer and Console for any repository. Obviously, I’ll add Hippo Repository specific features to [...]

The First Golden Hippo
February 27th, 2010

Yesterday I joined the hippo professional services team for a fun filled team event with go karting evening and the first ever Golden Hippo Award event. The evening started with go karting fun, we were competing with each other. This was the first time I ever did this, I failed miserably in the qualifiers. Clearly I’m [...]

→ 52 Weeks of UX
February 27th, 2010

A discourse on the process of designing for real people – a terrific blog by Joshua Brewer the Director of User Experience at Socialcast.com and  Joshua Porter is an interface designer and co-founder of Performable. A must read/subscribe. 52 Weeks of UX →

→ Jim Reeks: The Man Behind the Mac Startup Sound
February 27th, 2010

Who’s the man behind the sound you hear, every time you startup your Mac? One More Thing onemorething.nl went down to San Jose to track him down: Jim Reekes. He worked for Apple for over 12 years, during which he left his mark on everything sound at Apple. via OMT in San Francisco #3: Let [...]

→ Codeorgan.com
February 25th, 2010

The Codeorgan works by analysing the body content of any web page and translates that content into music. The Codeorgan uses a complex algorithm to define the key, synthesiser style and drum pattern most appropriate to the page content.Have a go at http://www.codeorgan.com/ → codeorgan.com

→ JBoss Tohu
February 24th, 2010

Designed to support question and answer style interactions where the set of questions are dynamic and potentially dependent on the answers received Initially targeted at interactive web applications, however technology independent and could be used in B2B scenarios, mobile devices, etc An embeddable component that complements and works within existing UI frameworks such as Seam/JSF/Spring [...]

★ Madrid – Carnival
February 14th, 2010
★ Madrid – Royal Palace
February 14th, 2010
★ Madrid – Puerta de Europa
February 14th, 2010
★ Madrid – Iron Sculptures
February 14th, 2010
★ Madrid Carnival – Laurel & Hardy
February 14th, 2010
★ Madrid – Fountain of Cibeles
February 14th, 2010
★ Madrid – Palacio De Cibeles
February 14th, 2010
★ Madrid Carnival – Marilyn Monroe
February 14th, 2010
★ Madrid -Ritz Hotel
February 14th, 2010
★ Madrid
February 14th, 2010
★ Madrid
February 14th, 2010
→ LESS – Leaner CSS
February 9th, 2010

LESS is an extension of CSS. You can write LESS code just like you would write CSS, except you need to compile it to CSS. LESS extends CSS with: variables, mixins, operations and nested rules. LESS, written in Ruby, is available as a gem. Just do a ‘sudo gem install less’ – if you are using [...]

→ One Week App
February 9th, 2010

Developer Sahil Lavingia is working on building a complete iPhone application in one week. The effort started from Sunday and so far seems to be going to be at a nice pace. Along the way he’s also sharing some nice tips on how is implementing the features. Your weight, your kill-to-death ratio in a first-person [...]

→ A rant about PHP compilers
February 8th, 2010

People seem to want to know if HPHP is widely useful outside of Facebook, and some people are saying “no”. I disagree strongly. In order for HPHP to be useful, you need to have a PHP application which is suffering due to PHP interpreter performance. That matches Facebook perfectly, and they’ve always been the canonical [...]

→ Computers shouldn’t make people feel like idiots
February 4th, 2010

For those of us surrounded by the minutiae of computers all day, it’s easy to forget there’s a world of people out there who just don’t get it. And it’s not their fault. It’s ours.Apple has decided it’s worth throwing out advanced features in order to get these people onboard. via Computers shouldnt make people [...]

→How to recognise a good programmer
January 30th, 2010

Passionate about technology Programs as a hobby Will talk your ear off on a technical subject if encouraged Significant and often numerous personal side-projects over the years Learns new technologies on his/her own Opinionated about which technologies are better for various usages Very uncomfortable about the idea of working with a technology he doesn’t believe [...]

Project Kenai: as good as dead
January 29th, 2010

Project Kenai, however, will be discontinued for public use. Oracle will continue to use it internally and look for ways that our customers can take advantage of it. The timeline for users to migrate their data and projects off of Kenai will be posted at kenai.com. Please see the FAQ there for more details when [...]

Mutt for GMail IMAP on Mac OS X
January 27th, 2010

Mutt is an advanced email client for *nix systems that runs in a terminal . Here’s how you can use mutt on Mac OS X [Snow] Leopard  and configure for GMail account with IMAP. All mail clients suck. [mutt] just sucks less. First download and install MacPorts. Open a terminal window and install Mutt 1.5.20 using [...]

RIP Sun Microsystems
January 21st, 2010

The end of Sun Microsystems, Image via James Gosling’s Blog

→ Matte Nano theme for iPhone
January 21st, 2010

The best theme for iPhone I’ve used so far

My Love
January 20th, 2010

My love is like an iron wand       That conks me on the head, My love is like the valium       That I take before my bed, My love is like the pint of scotch       That I drink when I be dry; And I shall love thee still, my dear,       Until my wife is wise.

→ Quote: War vs Peace
January 12th, 2010

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance.  In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace — and what did they produce? The cuckoo-clock. – Orson Welles, “The Third Man“

→ Letters of Note: Your pal, John K.
January 11th, 2010

In 1998, aged just 14, aspiring young cartoonist Amir Avni decided to get in touch with the creator of Ren & Stimpy, John Kricfalusi. Being a hardcore fan of Kricfalusis work, Amir sent him an introductory letter along with a few cartoons hed drawn, some of which contained relatively unknown characters of Johns. To call [...]

→ Utterly insignificant pale blue planet
January 10th, 2010
→ Swiss Slap Speeder With $290K Fine
January 9th, 2010

A 53-year-old man learned that lesson after receiving a record-setting fine of nearly $290,000 for driving 85 mph in a 50 mph zone through the small town of St. Gallen. Adding insult to injury, he was driving a car worth a fraction of the fine — a Ferrari Testarossa. Why the hefty fine for a [...]

→ Quality control in application development without unit testing
January 8th, 2010

Depending on your development methodology, unit tests can serve a number of different functions. But if used purely to detect bugs then they are a very high cost approach for low return.Unit tests dont test the overall program, only isolated units. This creates many holes integration, timing, re-entrancy, inter-module communication that need to be tested [...]

Notes on Performance and Stress testing
January 7th, 2010

Some notes I wrote sometime ago while working on Performance testing using JMeter for a client: Definition of Terms Performance : The application’s ability to meet a certain goal, such as a desired response time & latency, level of throughput, concurrency, etc. Capacity: The total load the application can handle – Quantity of Data, Number of Users, [...]

One small step
January 7th, 2010

mvn clean install brain:run-exploded -Psleepy

→ 50 Things we know now that we didn't know this time last year
January 3rd, 2010

Grumpy people think more clearly because negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking. The calmest place on Earth is on top of an icy plateau in Antarctica known as Ridge A, several hundred miles from the South Pole. It is so still that stars do not twinkle in the sky because there is no turbulence [...]

Looking back & Looking forward – Happy New Year!
January 1st, 2010

Happy New Year! to you all whoever is celebrating it.  2009 has been a roller coster ride in my life with some major events happening. Some good, some bad and some best! First of all a review of what I was wishing to do, I made 5 resolutions last year January 1st and its time [...]

→ What’s Coming from Hippo in 2010
December 22nd, 2009

The Hippo CMS  team has big plans for 2010. Early in the year they intend to launch a new web 2.0 platform. This open source product is aimed at the enterprise, to ensure “improved communication, collaboration and knowledge retention while lowering the burden on IT resources.” Features include an integrated approach to user-generated content, an [...]

★ Snowmen – I made two :-)
December 20th, 2009

More than an hour, 3 tools(cheese cutter etc) and a lot of snow resulted in two-face snowman  They are now stuck in a blizzard!

Quote – Bill Watterson on work & life
December 17th, 2009

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top [...]

A course on Death
December 11th, 2009

Everybody who is alive is interested in their own Life, and I think anyone who is interested in Life, should be having many questions about Death. I ponder, albeit less philosophically, about the death, soul and other concepts. Because of my family background, I have fairly good acquaintance with various hindu religious scriptures – like The Bhagavad [...]

The Hindu on Telangana Issue
December 10th, 2009

I completely agree with Hindu’s Opnion about the formation of a new state Telangana by splitting Andhra Pradesh . Aside from the unwisdom of breaking up South India’s largest State, a separate Telangana will fuel demands for a separate Rayalaseema, for a separate coastal Andhra, and, maybe, even for union territory status for Hyderabad — and [...]

→ Career Advice
December 10th, 2009

And therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things.  Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy.  Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don’t.  No one does.  You shouldn’t be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren’t real and they [...]

→ Google Goggles – Use pictures to search the web
December 8th, 2009

Visual search for Android Phones, Click a photo and search for it. Not sure how good it is. May be some one with Android can tell. Google Goggles – Use pictures to search the web.

→ Lessons Learned From Java EE’s Evolution
December 7th, 2009

Rod Johnson talks about Java’s evolution, in particular J2EE, presenting the lessons to be learned from its failures, like committee-led standards and container-managed frameworks, preparing to avoid such mistakes in the future. via InfoQ: Lessons Learned From Java EE’s Evolution.

Etherpad Goes to Google – Just Another Silicon Valley Soap Opera
December 5th, 2009

Be a smart computer scientist Get a job at Google Leave Google,create startup Use your Google resume to get high profile Silicon Valley backing Build something cool, win some fans Sell to Google Tell Silicon Valley insider press about sale Kill product, break a few hearts, get absorbed again by Google but with millions of [...]

Easy Forms ß1 for Hippo CMS (Video)
December 4th, 2009
→ Google Public DNS service not ideal for everyone
December 4th, 2009

Unfortunately, despite the anycasting, advanced caching, and extensive security features, Google Public DNS is not the ideal DNS service. For one thing, it's not called “experimental” for nothing. From my home, I can’t reach 8.8.8.8. Packets end up ping-ponging between the addresses 9.9.9.18 and 9.9.9.17. Apparently some routing engineer at Google is a bit dyslexic. [...]

→ Eko – Ecological & economical traffic light concept
December 1st, 2009

Eko light is a simple yet, highly practical concept for traffic lights that not only helps preserve the environment by reducing pollution but promotes safer driving as well. Eko can be easily installed onto existing traffic light systems without much effort while significantly improving overall traffic dynamics. via Eko – Ecological & economical traffic light [...]

→ You’ll never get what you want.
December 1st, 2009

If you think you’re a genius, that’s great. But you’re not. Even if you are, realise that you aren’t. Even if you actually are, keep it to yourself. Key words here: “Show, don’t tell.” Long story short, do what you enjoy. Do it lots and lots. You’ll get better at it. There’s no easy way [...]

EasyForms for Hippo CMS 7 – Some progress
November 30th, 2009
Converting .mkv to XBOX 360 compatible format
November 29th, 2009

1. Download Handbrake 2. Select the .mkv file. 3. Click Toggle Presets if presets are not visible already. 4. Select “High Profile”. 5. Start. Once encoding is done, copy the resulting file to a USB drive, plug into XBOX.

Photowall
November 27th, 2009

Here’s what happens when I’ve freetime and a photo printer. Posted via web from moc.nariKyajiV|VijayKiran.com

EasyForms Plugin for Hippo CMS
November 27th, 2009

Now onto adding more field types and other whizzbang fields and stuff.

Using Ram Disk for Maven Repository on Mac OS X
October 23rd, 2009

Using Maven sometimes becomes a pain for a large project. Compiling sometimes takes forever. Recently I heard a tip on our office floor that if I use a RamDisk for maven repository it may be faster. So I tried to find out easy way to setup the RamDisk on Mac OS X (Snowleopard). Here’s how [...]

Hippo Forge Friday
October 23rd, 2009

On October 30th, we at Hippo are organizing the free Forge Friday hacking event. If you are using any software from Hippo or interested in implementing it in the future or even just wanted to know more about Hippo Software, this is a great time to come and join us during the Friday Forge event. [...]

→ Photos – World Animal Day
October 16th, 2009

→ Big Picture

→ Mustard Siblinghood
October 15th, 2009

In a study of more than 3,000 mustard seedlings, scientists discovered that the young plants recognize their siblings — other plants grown from the seeds of the same momma plant — using chemical cues given off during root growth. And it turns out mustard plants won’t compete with their brethren the way they will with [...]

Hitchhiker’s Guide Turns 30
October 15th, 2009

How did I miss to post this ? On October 12, 1979, a novelization of a popular British radio series first saw publication. In the next 22 years, its author would become an icon of humorous geek literature, would write four sequels to it, and would, tragically, die of a heart attack at the age [...]

My OmniFocus Theme
October 10th, 2009

Here’s the theme I customized to use with OmniFocus. If you like it and want to install here’s the link for the theme file – OmniFocus – Clean Theme

UP 3D – ★★★
October 8th, 2009

The last 3D movie I watched, ICE AGE 3 – Dawn of the Dinosaurs, was pretty disappointing – both technical and story wise. So I was a bit hesitant to goto UP – 3D. But I really had a nice time watching the movie in 3D. As far as the plot goes, UP 3D wasn’t that [...]

How did they get the stripes in Stripe toothpaste?
September 18th, 2009

The stripes were created by a special device that was fitted to the nozzle end of the tube: a tube within the tube, if you will, about one inch in length and perforated with a ring of small holes around the top. Toothpaste tubes are normally filled from the flat end, which is then folded [...]

Sneak Preview 1
September 15th, 2009

Version 0.01

Work in Progress …
September 11th, 2009
→ Photos from recent hindu festivals
September 8th, 2009

Many Hindus throughout India recently celebrated Ganesha Chaturthi, a 10-day festival celebrating the birth of Ganesh, their supreme god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune. Hinduism, the predominant religion in India, is rich with traditional festivals and rituals, celebrated in many ways and locations around the world. Collected here are a few photographs from recent [...]

Dessert Sunday: Orange Pudding
September 6th, 2009

Ingredients 3 Cups Orange Juice 3 Table spoons Ground Rice 1 Cup water Grated Rind of 1 Orange Sugar to taste Rosted Almonds Preperation Stir all the ingredients together-except the almonds-and cook over very low flame, stirring constantly, until the pudding thickens like thin custard. Pour into a shallow serving dish, let cool, and decorate [...]

→ What is wrong with HTML 5
September 4th, 2009

Part the first: The Hypertext Markup Language was designed to describe the structure of scientific documents and how they related to one another. Part the second: The Hypertext Markup Language is used to describe the way a given screen of information is structured, presented and responds to user input. Thesis: Everything wrong with HTML5 can [...]

→ Final list of Project Coin changes for JDK 7
September 4th, 2009

Project Coin got its name because it is about making “small change”(s) to the Java programming language for JDK 7. Sun’s Joe Darcy has been leading the project. In his blog post, Project Coin: The Final Five (Or So), has announced which small changes will actually make it into JDK 7. → Discussion on Artima

→ Robert Frank’s Elevator Girl Sees Herself Years Later
September 4th, 2009

“I stood in front of this particular photograph for probably a full five minutes, not knowing why I was staring at it,” she says. “And then it really dawned on me that the girl in the picture was me.” → Robert Frank’s Elevator Girl Sees Herself Years Later

Ikea changes to Verdana
September 3rd, 2009

If you have at least a 3.52739619 × 10-5 oz [1] of interest in Design and Typefaces, you might have already heard of IKEA switching its official font face from a customized version of Futura to Verdana. There has been some heavy criticism on the change. In general, most of the designers consider the type face change a disaster. [...]

→ Ice Men
September 3rd, 2009

Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo sculpts more than a thousand ice human figures in Berlin for WWFN (World Wide Fund for Nature) they melted in 30min. → Ice Men

→ Media multitaskers pay mental price
August 26th, 2009

People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time, a group of Stanford researchers has found. → Stanford study: Media multitaskerspay mental price

★ Flowers
August 24th, 2009
★ Still life
August 24th, 2009
Richard Feynman: The messenger series
August 12th, 2009

If you have studied Physics in any of the courses, then you must have heard of Richard Feynman. I used to read the 3 volumes of “Feynman Lectures on Physics” religiously when I was in my engineering. Microsoft’s Project Tuva has now hosts some of the Feynman’s lectures, unmissable if you are physics geek! → [...]

→ What to look for in an Open Source Company
August 12th, 2009

In just over three years, four companies that Fenton invested in while at his current firm Benchmark Capital, or previous one, Accel Partners, have sold for a combined $1.6 billion. Fenton, who ranks on Forbes’ Midas List at No. 50, was an investor in JBoss Inc. (sold to Red Hat Inc. for $350 million), Zimbra [...]

→ Ten things we don't understand about humans
August 8th, 2009

We belong to a remarkably quirky species. Despite our best efforts, some of our strangest foibles still defy explanation But as science probes deeper into these eccentricities, it is becoming clear that behaviours and attributes that seem frivolous at first glance often go to the heart of what it means to be human. → Ten [...]

Video: How to add a workflow step to Hippo CMS 7
August 7th, 2009

Berry explains how to add a workflow step to Hippo CMS. This video tutorial takes you through the process of adding a button to the CMS that calls a workflow action on the repository. You can find the discussed code on the Hippo Forge: forge.onehippo.org/projects/workflow-action/ via: Arjé Cahn

→ Let's make the web faster
August 5th, 2009

There are many ways to make websites run faster. In this section, you can discover performance best practices that real web professionals employ in their everyday work. These practices have improved the user experience for millions of users and we hope they are useful for other web developers. → Let’s make web faster

Specialization is for insects
July 29th, 2009

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 [...]

Already Broken
July 18th, 2009

I’m pretty sure that the Heaven, if it exists, has the Internet, otherwise it won’t be heaven. I hope my dad finally gets some time to get online and reads my blog. “You see this goblet?” asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. “For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink [...]

The sorry state of Hospitals
June 20th, 2009

Seems like Hospitals want to make sure that the patient’s attendants are also getting equal amount of pain and discomfort. Here is the photo of the people whose relatives are in ICU getting treatment, just like my father. I’m waiting in the same chairs and room every night for the past 10 days. Its a [...]

Customizing Hippo CMS – Getting Started
June 19th, 2009

This post is part of a series which will be focusing mainly on Hippo CMS’s extensibility. These posts are more targeted towards the developers who want to customize and enhance the core CMS functionality.

→ Wordnik.com
June 9th, 2009

Wordnik wants to be a place for all the words, and everything known about them. Traditional dictionaries make you wait until they’ve found what they consider to be “enough” information about a word before they will show it to you. Wordnik knows you don’t want to wait—if you’re interested in a word, we’re interested too! [...]

1969's View of The Internet
May 15th, 2009
→ TED talks now in 40+ languages
May 13th, 2009

Probably you have heard of TED or watched none of the conference videos already. Now the TED conference talks are being translated into many local languages. The TED Open Translation Project brings TEDTalks beyond the English-speaking world by offering subtitles, interactive transcripts and the ability for any talk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. → [...]

Debugging maven-jetty web application in NetBeans
May 12th, 2009

Setup Jetty to run with Debugging enabled on port 8000 export MAVEN_OPTS="-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,address=8000" Run Jetty using Maven Plugin mvn jetty:run In NetBeans, Goto Debug→ Attach Debugger menu. Select Java Debugger(JPDA) and specify the port as 8000. Now you can debug the webapplication using NetBeans.

→ Afghanistan's has only one pig
May 9th, 2009

Afghanistan’s only known pig has been quarantined because of fears over swine flu, officials from Kabul Zoo say. Acknowledging that being Afghanistan’s only pig is a lonely existence, Mr Saqib says he hopes to find Khanzir a female companion soon. However, he says, because of swine flu, “it is a dangerous and difficult time to get [...]

★ Santorini – Sunset at Firostefani
May 2nd, 2009
★ Santorini – Lunch
April 30th, 2009
★ Santorini – Cruise
April 30th, 2009
★ Santorini
April 30th, 2009
★ Breakfast at Santorini
April 30th, 2009
Trip to Santorini
April 29th, 2009

Today evening we are leaving for Santorini, Greece. I always wanted to goto Santorini ever since I saw the iconic blue dome images everywhere. This is going to be short trip for 4 days, but I’m sure we are gonna have a lot of fun and enjoy the beautiful scenery of volcano/caldera, sea and the [...]

One week with Hippo
April 28th, 2009

Last monday I’ve started with my new job as Product Consultant at Hippo. It has been eventful week. I started working with the JCR API/Content Management and Other Hippo Components. Here are some reflections in my understanding during last week:

★ Fruit Punch
April 24th, 2009
PSD file format
April 24th, 2009

From comment in the code of Xee // At this point, I’d like to take a moment to speak to you about the Adobe PSD format. // PSD is not a good format. PSD is not even a bad format. Calling it such would be an // insult to other bad formats, such as PCX [...]

"The Bride Was Beautiful"
April 23rd, 2009

Katie Kirkpatrick, 21, held off cancer to celebrate the happiest day of her life. Katie had chased away cancer once, only to have it return – to clog her lungs and grab hold of her heart. Breathing was difficult now, she had to use oxygen. The pain in her back was so intense it broke [...]

Back in Holland with New Job
April 21st, 2009

I’m back in holland after getting married and yesterday I joined the new job as Product Consultant at Hippo B.V.. The last month has been really hectic, getting the necessary documentation for the new job and also because of other personal stuff like getting married etc.

Just Married
April 21st, 2009

After  years of negotiations with our elders and longest drama of my life, I got married with Neha last week during my trip to India. And we have a brand shiny new website about us: www.VijayandNeha.com To keep noise to signal to a minimum, we’ll be uploading our photos, and publish our blog in that [...]

Last day of Work
March 17th, 2009

Today was the last day of my work at International Criminal Court (and with LegalCraft). I was working on JEE(Seam/JBoss/Oracle ADF and other stuff) for the past 1.5 years with them. Though the work was enjoyable at times, it was mostly disappointing and unsatisfactory for me, except for a couple achievements in introducing the Open [...]

→ Good design: The ten commandments of Dieter Rams
March 14th, 2009

Good design is innovative. It does not copy existing product forms, nor does it produce any kind of novelty for the sake of it. The essence of innovation must be clearly seen in all functions of a product. The possibilities in this respect are by no means exhausted. Technological development keeps offering new chances for [...]

Seam Mail (2.1.1) – Attachment not working when body type is 'plain'
March 7th, 2009

I was working with a Jboss seam application, and found out that I cannot send attachment when the body type is set to ‘plain’. After searching the seam bugs, I found this: https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBSEAM-3970 I checked out the code to rebuild the fixed seam-mail.jar. If you are also experiencing the issue, then you can just replace your [...]

Piquant Potatoes in Jackets
February 28th, 2009

Tonight’s Menu Piquant Potatoes in Jackets: Potatoes stuffed with fresh indian spices and yogurt

GrowlMail breaking Mail after Safari 4 Beta Installation
February 25th, 2009

After installing the latest security update on Mac OS X 10.5.6, Mail began to crash on startup. It printed out the message saying the problem may be because of the GrowlMail plugin. Disabling the Growl and removing the GrowlMail plug-in didn’t help. I’d to remove the GrowlMail.mailbundle from both the ~/Library/Mail/Bundles and /Library/Mail/Bundles. Now the [...]

named broken on Plesk Server
February 24th, 2009

After I updated one of my Centos Servers, bind/named was broken giving out error : cannot access ‘/var/named/run-root/var/named’: No such file or directory Error in named configuration /etc/named.conf:6: parsing failed Seems like the latest ‘yum update’ broke the named configuration, I had to rebuild the named.conf using the plesk tool dnsmng: 1 2 3 4 [...]

Quotes from Curious Case of Benjamin Button
February 21st, 2009

Some quotes I liked from the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this [...]

Pathé Bolt Gift Packet
February 20th, 2009

I just got my pathé disney bolt gift packet. It is AWESOME!! So here’s the stuff I got from bottom-left to right : Bolt Watch, Bolt USB Splitter, Bolt Flying Disc (Frisbee) and The Bolt Book. Ah, the joy of being lucky and actually winning cool stuff

★ Varanasi
February 19th, 2009
★ Violinist
February 19th, 2009
★ Baby
February 19th, 2009
★ Portrait
February 19th, 2009
★ Portrait – Valérie
February 18th, 2009
★ Portrait – Valérie
February 18th, 2009
★ Portrait – Valérie
February 18th, 2009
★ Portrait – Chris
February 18th, 2009
→ What you should copy
February 18th, 2009

The key ingredient I see in successful apps, Mac or web — and, really, in creative commercial endeavors of any kind — is that the creators are building something they themselves love. That’s what you should copy. – John Gruber via Daring Fireball

→Interview with Andrew Stanton
February 15th, 2009

David Poland sits down for a chat with the co-writer and director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo, Andrew Stanton.

My Inspiration: Swami Vivekananda
February 13th, 2009

Just like every one else, I am continuously inspired by various people, phenomena, places, things etc. In these posts, I’d like to share/blog about those that inspire and motivate me in and drive me in various aspects of my life, work, thoughts. When I was in my 12th (at the age of 17), I had all sorts [...]

WordPress Auto Update error
February 11th, 2009

If you have the WordPress Auto Update plugin enabled, and try to do the automatic upgrade via WordPress Auto update feature, you may get this error: Fatal error: Cannot redeclare pclziputilpathreduction()  To fix this, just disable the plugin and try again.

Doing the "right" thing
February 9th, 2009

In the well thought-out article analyzing why MySQL founders chose to leave Sun: [The hackers] may feel that their work is simply not “right” – either in engineering or moral terms. And whereas concerns about the other annoyances of daily employment can often be largely suppressed, the issue of doing the “right thing” is more [...]

→ Refactor My Code
February 1st, 2009

Wouldn’t it be great to have a site that cares about your code ? That threats it as a piece of art and at the same time, encourage people to make it better and more beautiful ? → RefactorMyCode.com

→ Programmers are Tiny Gods
January 29th, 2009

Programmers are the Gods of their tiny worlds. They create something out of nothing. In their command-line universe, they say when it’s sunny and when it rains. And the tiny universe complies. So if you’re working with a programmer, you have to treat him or her like a God. You have to pray. You cannot [...]

Slumdog Millionaire
January 23rd, 2009

The soundtrack is a noisy pastiche of rap, hip hop and funk Bollywood. AR Rahman fully deserves his Globe – if the film can deserve so many – but Slumdog is obviously not his greatest soundtrack. – Soutik Biswas in ‘Why slumdog fails to moves me’ I haven’t watched the movie yet. But I completely [...]

→ Google AJAX APIs Playground
January 23rd, 2009

The AJAX API Playground is currently loaded with over 170 samples for 8 Google JavaScript APIs (Maps, Search, Feeds, Calendar, Visualization, Language, Blogger, Libraries and Earth) that you can edit and run to help you explore what Google’s APIs have to offer. There are also save and export features. The save feature allows you to [...]

Update: Learning Guitar
January 17th, 2009

I made a little video to show what I’ve learned so far. The password is the name of instrument I’m learning to play, no caps.  

(mt) feedback form
January 14th, 2009

Here is the mailer I got from (mt) today. Once you click the “Tell Us Anything” button, it takes you to the form with just one large text area, no boring surveys or no 10 field customer data, answering who am I, where am I and other stupid stuff.. just one field. I’m happier being [...]

→ Frequently Forgotten Fundamental Facts about Software Engineering
January 14th, 2009

Robert L. Glass from IEEE Software vol. 18, no. 3, 2001, pp. 112, 110–111: This month’s column is simply a collection of what I consider to be facts—truths, if you will—about software engineering. I’m presenting this software engineering laundry list because far too many people who call themselves software engineers, or computer scientists, or programmers, [...]

Open-plan office sucks
January 13th, 2009

“Australian scientists have reviewed a global pool of research into the effect of modern office design, concluding the switch to open-plan has led to lower productivity and higher worker stress.” – news.com.au This was the same thing I thought and have been arguing with management since I started my career. In fact, this is one [...]

Macworld '09 and the new unibody 17" MacBook Pro
January 7th, 2009

Except for the new unibody 17″ MBP, the other three announcements (iLife ’09, iWork ’09 and iTunes DRM Free Music) were not pleasing the mac fans out there. I still skeptical about the new MacBook Pro, given that I’m very happy with my current one. I don’t want to upgrade at least for the next [...]

30th Jan: An Evening with Malcolm Gladwell →
January 4th, 2009

The John Adams Institute is proud to present an evening with Malcolm Gladwell. [30 January 2009] What if the Beatles had never gone to Hamburg in 1960? Would they have become a sensation? What if Bill Gates had been born five years later? Would he have revolutionalized the world? Excellence, we often think, comes from practice. But [...]

Happy New Year
January 1st, 2009

Happy New Year to all. Last year, just like every other year , was fantastic filled with all the joy, sadness and wows and oopses of the life. I hope every one had a good one too.  Here we go again, another day another year, but still same old people, problems, joys, sorrows I need [...]

Photos from Swiss : Sneak Peak
December 28th, 2008
Leaving for Winter Vacation
December 19th, 2008

I’ll be leaving today for my winter ski/snowboarding/hiking holiday for 10 days. Tomorrow I’ll be in Samedan, in Switzerland. This is the first time I’m going to a ski resort. And most of the time I’ll be in St. Moritz.  As the ‘birthplace’ of winter sports, St. Moritz has achieved world fame and nowadays is the [...]