Taboo

I came across this nice add-on for firefox when causally browsing through the firefox add-on library. This add-on lets you mark a page that you want to read later by click of a button. And when you want to get to it, you again just press a button in the toolbar. This add-on is extremely useful for me as I normally am in the habit of keeping stuff for reading later (which isn't a good habit at all I know). I have been using session saver to achieve this for me all this while. The result was that at one point, I would have about 20-30 tabs open..resulting in poor firefox startup performance. And I would ultimately simply close the unread tabs without second thought! Used to bookmark several pages, but in the interest of keeping the bookmarks organized, I used to spend a few minutes to figure out where the page belonged !

With taboo, this is so much simpler and faster now ! I am yet to explore more of its functionalities though. For more information, check here

IBM System x (tm) Technical Conference

My proposal for a talk on "Enterprise Realtime" has been selected for one of IBM's technical conferences !! This conference is in July in Bangalore itself. Looking forward to a nice lab session :)

Rendevouz with Paul McKenney

Paul McKenney needs no introduction. However, to mention briefly, he is the inventor and one of the implementors of Read-Cope-Update (RCU) synchronization mechanism, that is extensively used in the Linux kernel. Besides, he is a master inventor at IBM.

I had this wonderful opportunity to interact with him when he visited India in the second week of May. I had a total of 2 hours of 1-1 session with him...and to describe it briefly, it was simply wonderful!!

He has a wonderful personality. In spite of being where he is, he manages to come down to the level of his peers and involve everyone in the conversation. But his most striking characteristic is that he makes you THINK!! You have to be on your guard lest you be caught unawares ;-) Well, am just kidding, exaggerating.

For the technical discussions I had with him, he presented me with so many perspectives that I had not even thought off. Quite a lot to take from him! On the non-technical side, asked him about how he manages to be so productive. Quick came the response (which as expected is profound) -"Fluency and Effective Energy Management". Neat concept! Common sense, but a technique we fail to inculcate in us!


One thing I have to mention is that the discussion with him was extremely motivating...and the good thing is, to date it inspires me! I am just hoping it continues to stay with me in the years to come! Thanks Paul :-) If you reading the blog, sorry didn't take your permission to write about this...hope you have no complains ;-)

Movies..are they so important?

For folks who have known me for a long time, also know that I am not too much into movies, rather I must say that I am not all into movies :-) Not that I don't like watching movies, its more to do with me not being used to watching them! Its something that was not part of my up-bringing.

Why am I writing about this? Well, so Ozzy and Uttaran (my colleagues) were discussing movie as part of our usual afternoon \_/7 time. Both do not know me very well..and like everyone else beginning to know me, they too were quite shocked to find that I don't watch movies. They looked at me as though I was an alien and didn't belong there at all...not that their reaction surprised me (as am quite accustomed to such looks), but just made me ponder a bit. Hell broke lose when I told them that I have been to a theatre only about 3-4 times :-D. Are movies considered to be the most important source of entertainment these days? Are they such an integral part of our teenage lives ? Why am I looked at with such skepticism of even being a fun-loving person? I wouldn't want to believe it is true, but so far I have not met anyone (except one) who has made me feel otherwise ;-)

Ozzy, Uttaran, am not pointing anything at you guys! You guys are simply superb !! Just this question kept bugging me :-)

Me is still alive !!

Hola !! Its been a loooooong time since I blogged! Well, nothing new...this is how my blogging habbits have been from the beginning..*sigh* So, I found this nice add-on to Friefox, Scribe Fire (was reading Cheezo's blog the other day when I came across it). So just by pressing F8 key, I now get this nice neat editor where in I can put in the contents of the blog! No need to acutally go to the blog link, and then after lot of clicks, get to entering the blog! So hopefully, now I should be more regular ;-)

Been quite tied up for the past couple of months. In April, got to know that I have to go to Portland, Oregon for a week-long team meeting. Just preparing for the trip kept me busy throughout...first realized that my passport was expiring in May and for getting a VISA, the mimimum validity of the passport should be 6 months. And getting the passport renewed is not too easy, especially, if you are applying under Tatkal. Reason, you need some million documentary proofs, attested by gazetted officers (God alone knows where to find them unless you already know someone who is willing to certify your existance as a fine citizen of India). Gosh, that was a tensioning week, trying to get all the docs in place !! Finally, got passport within 3 days of application (which was surprising).

Now comes the VISA application process. Not that difficult, but time consuming..again preparing the right documents, obtaining invite letter in the *required* format can become a pain. So the invite letter I had from my US manager was apparently not in the right format..had to get it re-sent to me !!! I had to get a photo clicked for the VISA form. And I was appalled to find out that too was not in the *required* format...issue was, one of my ears happened to be covered by my hair !!!!! God bless, the VISA desk refused to take it..

Thankfully, the trip to Chennai for the VISA interview went smooth. I entered the US Embassy at around 8:45 in the morning (my interview was scheduled for 11 something). And to my surprise, I was out at 9:30 itself!!
I then had the whole day with me to kill..just spent sometime visiting the tourist sites around there..went to Marina beach in the afternoon..had an interesting incident there, which I shall post later.

Then after that came the actual preparation for the trip in terms of shopping ;-) Thankfully, this didn't have to an extensive one as it was going to be only a week-long stay..and I mostly had all the stuff I needed.

My US trip was cool! Just the thought of having got outside India and setting foot on a foreign land was awesome! Its an experience..my first foreign land was Frankfurt. The journey was long (duh! need I say that) and I slept most of the time :-D Times when I was awake, I could not get myself to do anything usefull..I either read some magazine or watched the movie that they were playing :-) Have uploaded some pics on picasa, will post a link here soon.

After coming back from the trip, been busy catching up with work items...pending tasks, etc. I also started writing an article on RT scheduler..its finally done! And hoping to get it published soon... haven't heard from the editor yet, but keeping my fingers crossed :-SS

So that was a quick summary of what I have been upto...hopefully would be more regular from now onwards !!

Element of the past...

Prior to April, 2008

Grew up seeing this building...seeing the boards...with the dream that one day I will work in IBM. Atlast when my dream came true, the sign was removed from the building! It was a very emotional moment for everyone at home when the IBM office at Golden Towers was vacated. It now bears a very desolate look..

Now

Holi Hai Bhai Holi Hai !!

I simply love this festival of colours! And many thanks to my wonderful and enthusiastic bunch of friends that this holi became special to me :-). I played after ages...last time I played "proper" holi was when I was a kid (when I used to be in Mumbai..oh I miss "Bombay" terribly on all festivals). It has always been rather dull out here in Bangalore. Not even once did we play when we were doing engineering...and even this time around, it seemed unlikely!

Just one year after engineering and the number of my friends who are single has come down quite a bit..and due to this, it has become quite tough to get people together and celebrate festivals. But I was kind of adamant that we celebrate holi...till last night it looked very very very unlikely and lo..at about 10:30 pm we got the entire plan in place and we were all set to have a blast today!

Reached Madhu's place at about 11 am. Aravind, Madhu and I spent 20 minutes shopping for colours, "pichkari", etc. We looked around for water balloons, but didnt find :-( ..but guess we didn't need them afterall...3-4 buckets were more than sufficient. Initially we were 4 of us. It was super duper fun just putting colors on each other, filling up buckets of water, mixing color in it and emptying it out completely on someone...dancing and singing the famous holi songs....pichkari fights..oh, lot of fun! It was especially fun putting colors on Dodo..she kept saying "What dirty colours...I don't like orange..I don't like green...no purple...dirty yello...give me pink..pink and pink..." No wonder people always associate pink with girls..bad Dodo :-D Nevertheless, we put on her all the colors she hated...she kept running to wash her face every 15-20 minutes...hahaha!!

Madhu was shivering like crazy all throughout..we even managed to make him sit on the ground and empty out around 2 buckets of colored water on him...good fun! and then ofcourse, he didn't leave any of us! Tired of just playing with each other, we were waiting for some other bakra..that came in the form of Neo...we waited for him....waited to pounce on him the moment he landed..and that we did...proud to say that in a very uncouth manner we smeared him with all possible colours, poured buckets of water on him and didn't give him a chance to attack us :-D But as always he was a sport!

Finally, it was time to end the celebrations...and the time to start the effort of getting the colors off..which is the toughest part of holi ;-) It took about 30-40 minutes of dedicated effort to get rid of 95% color...5% still remains on me..hoping to get rid of it in the next couple of days...

This celebration culminated with a sumptuous lunch at Pizza Hut, where Deepika joined us. And we then did what we do best..chatting !

It was finally time to say our ta-tas...quite some distance back home, close to 18 km :-) [Call me crazy if you will, travelled that far just to play holi ;-) ]

Will definitely remember this holi for a long time. Now I know one thing for sure, it does not matter how many friends you meet up with, its the quality of the time spent together that matters in the end! Its best not to expect everyone to take part..just have fun with alteast those who have managed to make it!

Holi Hai !! Heres wishing you a Very Happy Holi !! Pics with Dodo and Ara...guys, pl upload them and send the link.

Activities of LinuxChix !!

So LinuxChix is making forays into more and more colleges. The awareness is increasing quite rapidly now..thanks to the effort of sooo many volunteers ! We recently had a session @FOSSkriti @IITK, one at Gnunify 08, Lala Lajpat Rai College (Mumbai), Abida Inamdar College for Women (Pune). More to follow... Join us today and make a difference :-) For more information, herez our wiki.