Nerd Tests 2.0
Thursday Mar 20, 2008
Just took the NerdTests 2.0 at www.nerdtests.com. Here are my results:
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Random Musings
Test Posting
Wednesday Mar 19, 2008
Just cranking up the blog writing engine....
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ScribeFire Blog Editor
Monday Mar 03, 2008
I've started using the ScribeFire blog editor (formerly called Performancing for Firefox). ScribeFire is an extension to Firefox and works great (or at least it should if this post works!)
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Happy Birthday!!
Wednesday Apr 26, 2006
Today is my daughter's (and her friend's) birthday. Both kids are 7 today and instead of the customary birthday party (cakes, candles, etc) our friends decided to take them to an animal park called "Taman Safari" near Jakarta. Apparently, "Taman" means "Park" in Bahasa. So, Taman Safari loosely translates to "Safari Park".
So, after about a 1-hour ride, we found ourselves on the approach road to Taman Safari. The ride uphill was dotted with a number of shops selling exquisite wooden furniture. Indonesia seems to abound with an awesome variety of carved furniture of every shape, form and size. The carving is intricate and frankly not that expensive. And the wood ranges from local wood to teak and mahogany. Not to mention the intricate weaving of cane and rattan.
Sorry for that digression from the main theme, readers. Now back to Taman Safari.
As we approached the park, our host stopped the car and we were surrounded by about 5 - 6 boys who were trying to sell us bunches of carrots. I was hungry (according to my wife, I'm always hungry while on vacation) but not hungry enough to eat 6 - 7 bunches of about 10 carrots each. While I tried to figure out what was going on, our host informed us that the safari was a drive-through and that many of the herbivorous animals could be fed carrots from your car window. That revelation totally excited our daughter who had never fed a "wild" animal before.
After entering the park, we started driving through the "herbivore" area. Within a few minutes, we encountered a herd of Zebra who were attracted by the carrots being thrust out of the windows of our car. We also sighted Wildebeest, spotted deer, Llamas all of whom were diligently fed by the two birthday girls in the car. Having exhausted the carrots, we continued on to the "carnivore" drive-through. The entry to the carnivore area is marked with signs of "Do not Stop" and road signs of tigers mauling tyres (apparently, that has happened many times before). Obviously you're not allowed to have your car windows open during the drive either.
Pretty soon we saw a pride of lions at close quarters followed by asian tigers, white tigers, etc all at reasonably close range. The children cycled through feelings of awe, fear and amusement as they observed these big cats up close.
The drive ended at a large parking lot which was surrounded by the park's cafeteria, the bird area, pony rides, etc. Lunch was a simple affair - all the vegetarians had Cap Cai (pronounced "Chap Chaai") which is a Chinese dish consisting of steamed rice and stir-fried vegetables in a garlicky sauce. The "carnivores" ate whatever suited their fancy. Interestingly, there's a lot of chicken ("Ayam" in Bahasa) being consumed in Indonesia despite the global fears of the bird flu. People here feel that cooking the chicken (or eggs) kills the H5N1 virus. Given the incredibly large quantity of chicken being consumed and the relatively low bird flu fatality rate in Indonesia, makes me feel that they're probably correct.
After lunch we drove up to a big amphitheatre where there was a "Wild Wild Wild West" show being enacted. It was modelled after a similar show at Universal Studios, Hollywood and involved cowboys, Indians (the native Americans, that is) and a lot of bravado and machismo that's typical of any Asian production. Of course, given that the entire show was cast with native Indonesians, it got my funny bone going. Also, it did not help that the dialogue was in Bahasa, but some of the slapstick humour helped my daughter have fun.
The other highlight of the trip was the photographs that the children took with live animals like a tiger, orangutan, leopard, etc.
We returned home late in the evening really tired, but very happy that both the kids had great fun on their birthday.
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Lazing around in Jakarta
Wednesday Apr 26, 2006
We've been in Jakarta for two days now (Apr 25 and 26). It's been great to actually do nothing except sleep, eat and sleep again. From tomorrow, the sightseeing race begins. More details tomorrow onwards.
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We're in Indonesia
Tuesday Apr 25, 2006
About 2 weeks ago, we decided to go to Indonesia. We will be staying with our friends in Jakarta. Their daughter is our daughter's best friend in school. And interestingly, both the girls share the same birth date (right down to the year). And, their names mean the same thing - the early morning Sun (in Sanskrit and Bahasa respectively).
So, to make a long story short, we hopped on a Singapore airlines flight on Monday April 24 to Singapore and onwards to Jakarta. Our daughter, is really kicked about going to Indonesia and spending time with her best friend. The flights were uneventful and, thankfully, empty. It gave us a chance to spread out and take short naps (as best as you can on 4 hour and 1.5 hour flights respectively).
We reached Jakarta at about 10:30AM on Tuesday April 25. Getting a visa is easy - Indonesia has a 30-day "visa-on-arrival" programme for citizens of most countries, and India is on that list. It was simple to get the visa. There's a counter in the arrival concourse where you submit your passport and filled up disembarkation card. You pay USD 25.00 for a 30-day visa and the friendly people at the counter stamped the visa on our passports. Total time taken: 5 minutes! After that, you go to immigration, collect your baggage and go through customs before exiting.
Jakarta's Soekarno Hatta airport (Airport code: CGK) is beautiful when you look at it from the aircraft. The arrival gates are built in a very traditional style with exquisite tiled roofs. Once you exit the aerobridge, you walk through a rainforest-like area. All in all, very pleasant and upbeat.
Once we exited customs, we were happy to see our friends waiting to receive us. After the mandatory excited yelling, screeching and other high-pitched noises between the two kids, we left for home.
One thing you should know is that it was HOT - really humid and hot. It may seem strange to readers that someone from India can find Jakarta hot, but believe me - you've got to experience this heat and humidity to know what I'm talking about. It's the difference between the heat in sub-tropical India and equatorial Jakarta. The car air conditioner was turned to the maximum, but we were still soaked in perspiration by the time we got down at their home about 1.5 hours after deplaning. We had heard a lot about legendary traffic jams in Jakarta, but so far we had not seen any.
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Diwali's Over
Monday Nov 07, 2005
The Diwali Festival (Festival of Lights) is over and most of us are back to the daily grind. This year, Diwali was a little more muted than usual. The Government had banned fireworks that generated more than a certain amount of noise, and had banned fireworks after 10PM. It helped to keep us all from going batty with the noise, but it still meant a very "subdued" Diwali celebration. I'll try to post some pictures from the Diwali celebration at my Grandfather's house (a family tradition of sorts) later. I'll need to rely on my cousin to transfer the pictures to me.
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Virtual Teams? Dispersed Software Development? Are you *$#@!!&* mad??
Saturday Oct 29, 2005
Over the last 10 years, I've been managing software development teams that have, either by design or by accident, been dispersed globally. I've managed projects in the US where a large part of the work was carried out in India, and the other way around. Often I've had no team locally (the intelligent ones know to keep their distance from me, y'know :-) ) In general, I've just accepted dispersed teams as a matter of routine. I'd never given this much thought until some time ago when I realized that many people actually have a hard time dealing with this dispersion. They're more comfortable to having a team right next to them (I mean that literally) so that they can pop their head over the cubicle wall and get their doubts clarified.
When I was a pre-sales and marketing type (engineering buddies beware - I used to be a Sith lord!) the question I often got asked by prospective customers was "Why should I do this project in India? Do you think the cost savings are adequate enough to justify the pain of managing a remote project?"
I think it's very interesting that the question was composed this way. Don't you? After all, is cost the only driver of creating a globally dispersed team? Can you not think of even one more reason why a globally dispersed team might make sense?
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It's Diwali time again
Friday Oct 28, 2005
The "Festival of Lights", Diwali (or Deepavali) is just around the corner in India. This year Diwali falls on November 1. It's a time for celebration - fireworks, sweets, new clothes, and all the pains that typically occur when a large family gets together in the same place at the same time! I've heard many American friends talk about the horrors of Thanksgiving, many sitcoms have at least one episode with a "Thanksgiving Horror Story" somwhere in the lineup, etc. Diwali is about the same in India.
It's now time for me to set my cynicism aside and wax eloquent on the magic that is Diwali!
I still yearn for the fireworks, the sweets (yes, I have a sweet tooth) and the chance to kick back and relax for a couple of days. And although much worse than secondary cigarette smoke, I still look forward to the smell of burnt sulphur in the air (and the smog) that follow when entire cities light up fireworks outside each household. We're not talking about the carefully orchestrated fireworks shows every Fourth of July; we're talking about every home buying it's own fireworks and lighting them up right outside their doorstep. It's an experience not to be missed (and not for the faint of heart, either).
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And I'm back...
Tuesday Oct 25, 2005
Sorry for the long hiatus folks although looking at the statistics, I don't think any of you was holding your breath :) I've been very busy ensuring that our proxy server (Web Proxy Server, in Sun parlance) was part of the recent Java Enterprise System release. It's a cool product, extremely scalable, very secure, robust and exposes the NSAPI interface to enable developers to extend its capabilities. Look forward for some cool new plugins from my team in the next few months. And while I have your attention, why would you want to run any other proxy server when you can run this awesome proxy server?
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My First Post
Thursday Mar 31, 2005
Well, what do you know... I'm actually blogging. And I'm sure each of you viewing this page really hates me right now because of this stupid test posting 
I've been thinking about something that I've been doing for a while now - Globally Distributed Software Development, i.e. developing software at centres spread around the world. I've worked in the US on projects that were mostly done out of India, and I've worked in India on projects that had a development team in India and other engineering teams spread out over various global locations.
I've had some interesting experiences, a lot of learning and most important, tons of fun getting to know people all over the world.
I thought it would be a good idea to share some of my experiences in this blog and use this blog as a medium to solicit inputs, best practices, pitfalls, etc from all of you in this (hopefully globally dispersed) blogosphere.
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