AND THERE IT COMES TO AN END… 2009
In a couple of hours from now, 2009 will be over. Again a new year will begin, but this year would have given me some of the most unforgettable moments of my life. If I had to summarize 2009 in a few words, I would say, it was a dream run for me. It helped me look at reality; it looks like it has possibly shown me a path of where I should be heading. I became fully qualified in this year, ZCE, did try my luck at java as well, and then I was able to get enrolled for my MS. It was all very good. Much of it should be credited to the support of my friends (most of them are ex-colleagues now), so 2009 will be remembered happily for all that.
I tried learning guitar, it was quite happy to see myself playing it well, but due to unexpected (But somehow all my friends guessed it beforehand) distractions, I couldn’t continue with it for too long. My travelling hit an unexpected all time low this year with just 3 or 4 noticeable trips for the whole year; this was a huge drop when compared to earlier years. So If I wasn’t travelling a lot, I wasn’t obviously using my camera lot. I also had some fun at stock market and made some marginal profits out of my money; it did help me learn a lot on financial matters.
I did do a lot of stupid things in 2009, but just like every year, I would not regret for them (he he:) ), it’s a part of the package, which has some pluses and minuses; you don’t really have a choice but to bear with it. Nobody is perfect. I don’t want to be nobody…
So what are my plans for 2010?
- Study … Study… Study… If some of my engineering classmates looked at this… they will roll on the floor and laugh… but I have to do it, not too many choices here
- I should plan some trips and execute them!, travelling is one thing I missed a lot in 2009
- I technically don’t need any more gadgets/electronic devices… So I shouldn’t buy anything else this year, but save money (I was thinking about a Mac Book, an Android Phone, a Nikon D5000 SLR… and one more 23” Wide screen so that I get a dual screen setup at home, at the time of writing this…)
- Find someplace where they conduct Guitar classes during weekends near my residence (have already invested some money on the musical instrument, should try to get at least some ROI)
- I should blog more often, and start contributing lot more tech articles to Clickoffline.com, traffic influx has increased in the recent months.
- Anh! Well… Stock Market… yes
Why did I write this post? — Because of this inspirational article by my friend
Wish you a happy 2010 for all of you !
Stop Press update for geeks: I have just integrated the Picasa Web Albums into WordPress using GData API which is provided as a part of the Zend Framework (Sounds cool right). Checkout the Photography Link on the header, it uses ZF’s GData API to render the images by fetching them from Picasa Web Albums Site. I will blog about this in Clickoffline.com and will try to do some server-side optimizations to improve the blog’s performance.
New Things
Dec 15, 2009 General
Lot of changes happening around here during the last one month, so I couldn’t find enough time to scribble here. Firstly, I have quit Corporater. It was a hard decision to make, but had to call it, I have now moved into a new Chennai based Web Application Services firm. So I am busy with that part during my business hours. The second thing that has kept me busy is the application and documentation part for my masters, I had at last secured the admission for the Work Integrated MS Programme at BITS, Pilani.
This one is an interesting offering from BITS, this as far as I know this is the only available option for anyone who wants to do a working masters in engineering, tech, etc. Since technically these programmes cannot be offered via distance education, BITS has come up with a web-based delivery model which is also integrated to work. Good thing is that you will be able to choose most of the courses that you may wish to take in the degree, this allowed me to plan my degree to match my web development career. And I have to study all these books..
- Unix Network Programming, Volume 1: The Sockets Networking API
- Unix Network Programming, Volume 2: Interprocess Communications
- Advanced Concepts in Operating Systems
- Fundamentals of Database Systems
- Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object- Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development
BITS – WILP Link – http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/dlp-home/
MS (Software Systems) Programme – http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/dlp-home/degrees/collab/collab.html
Crazy life… always studying..:)
Tags: bits, Corporater, life, ms
Theory and Reality of Google Wave
Nov 13, 2009 Fun, Technology
Comparision of Google wave in Theory and Reality
Tags: google wave, reality
Funny Cricket Scorecard Ticker
So what does the Automatic scorecard ticker do when there are are no cricket matches happening and there are no upcoming matches.. ?
It creates its own matches.. see this
undefined vs null
undefined has scored, 909/NULL in 41.2 overs, they might as well cross 1000 in the 50 overs.
lets wait indefinitiely till null gets to bat.
End of an Era: Geocities is shutting down on 26.Oct.2009.
Oct 25, 2009 General, Technology
Most of today’s’ internet users may not know what GeoCities meant to internet. GeoCities was simply a “free” webhosting service, which allowed you to upload your own html files (and they will put their ads on your behalf), they gave you a URL, which looked like http://geocities.com/<username> , and you can share your website with your friends family etc, this was all that they offered, just in lines of an equivalent of what blogspot.com is today.
But this is 90’s, there were no Blogs, no RSS, no Web 2.0, and no Social Networking, (I think there wasn’t any CSS too, but not sure). What GeoCities offered was a comprehensive platform using which you can build your own websites, and it was relatively easy if you knew a bit of HTML and were able to tweak some of their codes. Compare it to today, Geocities at that time, was an equivalent of today’s blogger and WordPress put together.
I am talking nine years ago, just the time when I stepped in to my 11th grade. Computer science at that time was not exactly so dependent on HTML, although it was a period of the internet boom, but general knowledge levels about internet and HTML were not that high. And if you wanted to learn something new and latest, you had to get to a library, get a book and learn it, YouTube and Wikipedia were non-existent. And when it came to books on internet programming (I am not joking,”Internet Programming” at that time was not about PHP or ASP.net, it was about creating static HTML pages) almost all of them referred to GeoCities as a starting point, because the website was simple easy to use, almost anyone can put-up their webpage on the net. Geocities was able to offer the ease of use for creating simple web pages. These days we talk so much on this usability, UX and all these things… they were just not existent then, of course, the sites didn’t look good-by today’s standards (you are allowed to call them awful), but they were cool at that time…
Geocities is of a lot of sentimental value for me, for various reasons, this was where I created my first ever website, first learned what is hacking (finding workarounds to disable those crazy GeoCities ads), first came to know about communities, what impact websites could make, this was at a very early age of my life and this to a lot of extent has had an impact on what I am doing today [doing almost the same things in the n'th iteration .. he he 
].
Yahoo has recently been in a cost-cutting mode, and ideally GeoCities is facing a tough challenge, having lost most of its user base to technologies like Blogger and WordPress. It had to shut shop sometime, time has come now for us to bid farewell to my internet teacher. Let see if i will write some wave or cave, when WordPress/blogger shuts shop in the coming future
Tags: geocities, internet, web technology, yahoo
