I got my license again !!

I remember as if its yesterday, when I bunked classes to take my Driving License. I was happiest person when I got it. I used it about 5 years after which I lost along with my purse, credit card 2 years ago. I filed a complaint in local Regional Transport Office for a duplicate, but I was annoyed to hear that the page with my license entry was missing from the register. Oops ..there is no way out. I rode by new bike almost two years without license (I took that risk as I already have a license as from the number I had). I took a new one last week :) and happy to ride confidently in Bangalore roads .

Regards
Aura

Should software firms block social networking sites ?

In recent past we see lot of activity in social networking using websites. The sites like orkut, hi5 , Yahoo 360, MySpace are few in this sphere. People check less of mails or post less of blogs, but they make it sure that they log in into one of these site and check for new friends or communicate with the old ones often.

1. But is this activity increasing to the level that it needs to be blocked so that the normal buisiness is not affected ?

My opinion would be no. Its managements responsibility that people are connected socially. And when you work a lot and you are mostly near your computer and connected to internet there is no better way that these networking sites.
I use lot of Orkut, it helps me manage my friends, find old/new friends, get to know about people, above all that make best use of extra time.
Hope there is a time when you can find every one in this world in networks like these, the world open and every one is reachable as in case of Orkut.

How Supply Chain software are made ?

Last four months I saw how supply chain software are made as I was working with one of the majors in the domain.
You make click on a website, add the product to cart and click it to buy what you want and it reaches you in days.

1. What really happens under the hood?
2. Where exactly the products come from ?
3. How do they manage all this ?
4. Where do they get the products from ?
5. How do the run the business so efficiently ?
6. How many request comes in a day ?
7. How do the intract with the transportation company ?
8. Do they really have some warehouses or product comes from the company where they manufacture those ?
9. How complex is the software involved ?
10. What on earth is RFID ?
11. To what level things are automated ?
12. How do they handle money ?
13. How do they handle shipments ?

Yea I got a shady picture about these questions . Suppy chain management is really a complex area to venture into.

Aura..

Its Published

Developing PHP Applications for IBM Data Servers

Click here for viewing the abstract

Regards,
Aura

My Book in draft

I never thought I would be a published author. Thanks to IBM :). Do see the draft copy of the book in here
Draft

I had a great team of another 4 authors It was nice working with diverse people . Holger was from Germany, Piotr from Poland, Daniel and Whei-jen from USA . I have snap of the team (we took this picture before Almaden.)

Aura

Tagore

Was reading some works of Tagore..he is really inspiring..he won nobel prize for literature , was dramatist,eassayist , painter and composer of songs ..
typing some words he have written ..the depth of his writtings are immense..

The eternal Dream
Is borne on the wings of ageless Light
that rends the view of the vague
and goes acorss time
weaving ceaseless patterns of Being

The mystrery remains dumb,
the meaning of this pilgrimage,
the endless adventure of existence
whose rush along the sky
fames up into innumerable rings of paths,
till at last knowledge gleams out from the dusk
in the infinity of human spirit,
and in the dim lighted dawn
she speechlessly gazes through the break in the mist
at the vision of Life and of Love
rising from the tumult of profound pain and joy.


Aura

Why India ?

I was getting confused with recuring question of "WHY USA ?" ..came across the Newsweek cover story about India. I was overwhelmed by the fact that I am living in the right place for the 21st century. As said in the journal ..its messy, raucous and fast growing . By 2040 India will be come third largest economy.India is the second favorite spot to invest in the world. But its growing in a bottom up fashion compared to China , where almost every thing is fast ,organized and guided by the government. Yes India grows when government is sleeping . I wonder why not give government some vacation ? Why are they for ?. But yes Indias companies are better managed and better efficient, the credit goes to the new companies the new management, the new era of industrialization. India is biggest market, the personal spending on GDP is 67% with only USA leading with 70%. No wonder why companies both MultiNational and National is making an average of 20% growht in profits !!
Its strangled by the poor, massively inefficient and corrupt public sector and shackled and over regulated private sector ? Is our mixed economy doing any good for us ? India had higher GDP than china in early 60's and its now less than a half of it.Female literacy of 54% and 124/177 of UN Human Development Index. Yes India is a demoracy but is largely ruled by organized minorities rather than majorites. These minorites are landowner , mafia , local busisness people . Its shamefult that 1/5th of MP's are accused of some crimes. Dear prime minister , we want faster reforms , stricter guidelines for growth. Growth needs to penetrate the lower layers and only faster and forceful reforms can induce changes to the lower layers

Aura :)

DB2 is free !! to Test, Develop and Deploy

I feel really proud that the software I worked, I evangelised, I contributed, I learned, I helped, I made...is free to use for the masses ..!!...

Aura :)

The Kodak theater

Los Angeles
Originally uploaded by kiranh.

This is where the OSCARS happen ..

Almaden..

This is the best office you can have in this world. Almaden is everything for IBM, Its where most of the IBM technologies were invented. On top of hill, serene enough that you can never think about the bad things in life. ARC as its known is where the best people in IBM works, and you can see around in the corridor photos of IBM fellows , Nobel Laureates, ACM fellows ...ahaa ..I wat some body I know personally up there ..Do you dare ?

But yes I have some freinds in Almaden and I can only pray their phots comes up there..

Cafetaria is awesome ..working in IBM and never had a IBM burger ? come to Almaden . Yes it was tasting good ...at least I can say i have eaten what researchers in IBM eat :)

Star STAMP

Can you stamp a star ?

I am asking about the real star ?
Yea you can.. see this



Aura ..

Venice in LA

Never heard that ..yea there is a venice beach in Los Angeles. It has Gondalas as in Italy.

The beach is wonderful, it has an open gym !! if you got little more muscles than every one ..do come over and show it off!! ..but most of them doesnt waste time like that ..they do what others show off for.

Singpore story

I wonder how this country with about 600 sq km ..(30X20km).. is one of worlds most prosperous nations. I shows if you are in right time at right place ..no body can stop you. Yea its position and increasingly globalized south east asian economy is boon to this small nation which thrives on just business and make it clear to every one "size doesn't matter".

Stuck in tokyo..

Always hear every thing happens reverse in JAPAN ..so we all call it a JAPAN thing..one of them is that what i heard ..if we take loan and spend in Japan ..you get reduction and when you try to save ..you loose mone. And I was had to halt in japan more than 12 hours ..but yea met lots of people about 40 airplanes were stuck and had a good time all around roaming :)
Thanks to singapore airlines

Aura..

The wipro experiance!!

The only software company I knew before I ever heard of something called as "software" existed is Wipro. And its because it not just in IT, its everywhere, from soaps (FMCG) to bulbs (CE). The big joke about wipro was when the newspapers highlighted "Wipro bought Chandrika Soap" and we were wondering ..we buy it every week. I worked in the Wipro corporate office for a week.It was an amazing office, the constructions were remarkable. The cafetaria was awesome and food was yummy and cheap. As an guest from IBM, I wandered around the campus which had swimming pool, tennis court and much more ...

Aura.....

db2 disconnect DB2DDC

I am moving to "Lab Services Team" for "Websphere Portal Server" inside India Software Labs.

As a fresher, I was inquisitive about most of things that can happen in Software Industry, fortunately or unfortunately I am still like that. These 2 years have been fantastic , with wonderful people and state of the art technology around. I feel proud that, I have seen the usage of what ever I have learned in college, call it operating system concepts/ data management/ compiler and theory of computation and what not. I think "Databases Management Systems" is only technology that uses all aspects of Theoretical Computer Science.

And one was answered the first day by "Krishnan". The question was "How fast I need to type letters in keyboard ?". Peeping into his computer screen, saw him logging into "Lotus Notes", couldn't count how many letter's he typed in a second. Never knowing the number of characters displayed in password screen is not proportional to the letters typed.

I owe a lot to two people, who has been my friend, guardian, mentor, team lead, guide...., and they are "Prasad" and "Suma",

I feel proud that, I have made more friends than colleagues. And all I take back with me is that.

I thank my management, for being with me all the time and understanding my career aspirations.

My watch tracked my Schoolmate.

I had broken the glass of my watch, and was happy to see its still running fine. I got a watchmaker shop after "Killipalam"
and before "Thampanoor" I suppose its called as "Chentitta".

I went in and, I understood I was talking to a real professional repairing watches ( He/She who dooes so is also called horologer).
The art of repairing mechanical things has always admired me. Sometimes I try to do these things,
and I have screwed up at least 5 watches in good health in my high school, because of which my "dad" stopped wearing watches.

The microscopic crank propelled by a very small spring or jerk from piezoelectric Quartz crystal, is 50000 feet view of the
technology that drives watches with minute and hour hands. Our horologer, has many open specimens of these watches in his
desk, I would say the skeleton of these time machines. I am sure, he doesnt have the architecture diagram, nor the work flow
graph, nor design spec for each timepiece. Yet he should have got smiles in many people because he got their watches working.
Watches are important to people mostly because its perfect gift and hence an emotional attachment for most people. FOr some its
their first earning, for some its status symbol and there are "n" number of reasons why we like watches.

We started talking, and he was proudly saying, I didnt have a chance to continue my studies, even if I was doing good in it. And
'I learned from "M G R" movies'. He has treasured a copy of MGR's Photo in his diary which I saw later.
He continues " I didnt let that happen to my children. I educated them in Arya Central School. All Four". I know Arya fee structure
was little above an average person can handle. So it should have been tight for him.

Later I found out the elder, "Sugandhi" is from our batch. I remember the her !!.
She had brownish hair, was slim and was fair.
Do any one else remember her ? She was with us till 10 th class. She stays opposite to "Jayanthi" teacher.

She has some optical instruments , bachelors and is studying masters as correspondence. Great to know we have a diverse crowd
if trace back our school mates. Most, like me has landed up slogging on keyboards.

I saw a glow in his face when he was talking about his second boy. He now works with Indian Airforce. And he took out his diary
and showed the money order, which was his boys first salary. I am sure he can tag is life "successful".

I got my watch back with new glass. And I want every one including me to have that glow in us, long after may be 30 years. Our
life should have meaning.

Its sentimental, I know. I some times get awakened by such thinking's. Cant help. May be my stay away from work prompted me.

Invisible Web: What it is, Why it exists, How to find it, and Its inherent ambiguity ?

The "visible web" is what you see in the results pages from general web search engines. It's also what you see in almost all subject directories. The "invisible web" is what you cannot retrieve in the search results and other links contained in these types of tools.

An Anatomy of Sarcasm ?

This site says lot about how our brain handles this complex communication. The ability to comprehend sarcasm depends upon a carefully orchestrated sequence of complex cognitive skills based in specific parts of the brain. I got really confused with paper and left it in between. May some day I will get time for both reading and understand this complex thing :) and ofcourse better theories would have come by then ;)

The Programmer's Search Engine -

"We're constantly searching the web and indexing the best developer sites. Browse DevSearcher by the categories below or enter a keyword for a specific search." This site seems to be provide a good index for searching code. So if you are a computer programmer do check this out.