IBM Cloud offering

Just tested the new IBM's public cloud offering. Its simple and easy to use. One can provision instances of applications, images or storage as per need.

Just provisioned two rational applications:

Rational Application Developer &

Rational Team concert

See the snapshot:



Check it out for yourself:

https://www-180.ibm.com/cloud/enterprise/beta/dashboard

IPL - Season 3

I have been following the matches this season closely - so far. Not sure if I can keep watching with the same zeal and enthusiasm, simply because of the overdose of cricket that IPL manages to feed us with every year. This is only season 3 and I am already bored of IPL. Just like one of those soap - Friends, Scrubs, Grey's anatomy where one gets sick of watching the same stereotypical characters again and again, IPL offers nothing new or exciting. Unless one is an ardent fan of a player, and loves to watch their style of play, there seems nothing else that would keep people hooked for the entire event. Personally I like a few players, and would love them to perform well in this tournament but besides that there is nothing in it for me.

It can server as a good selection bed for selectors in BCCI to form the next T20 or one day team, and equally it serves as a level field for potential youngsters who want to make their mark in the international cricket. It does serve as a big revenue earner for the chairman and all stakeholders, but I think they can do better by cutting down on number of games. The initial 20 or so matches have very little impact on the chances of a team to go to semis, and personally if I am told that after 20 or so matches the semifinal spots are still up for grabs by any team, and will be decided in the next 15 or so matches, why should I even bother to watch or worse even pay for watching the first 20 matches. It is just silly and appears like in a country where cricket is counted and followed as a religion, it is misuse of the sentiments people have for this game.

Wake up people, - skip the first 20 matches, and enjoy to your heart the last few matches, for that's where the real EQ(Entertainment quotient) is.

Reporting options with Java

Jasper reporting is the most widely used open source reporting tool with Java. The feature packed library needs a report file as input, the format of which is jrxml, which is nothing but an xml file. in good old early days people used to manually handcraft the content and look & feel of the report by editing the raw xml. However now there are various report designers available, one of which is maintained by Jaspersoft itself. It is called iReport and is very intuitive and easy to use. It spits report in various formats - pdf, xml, html, jxml, and can easily serve as input to the jasper api's within you java app.


There are competing reporting tools available, most notable is the BIRT (Business intelligence Reporting Tool) from Eclipse. Its a eclipse plugin, and has good documentation and backed by excellent development team. However the drawback is that it is not as lightweight as probably just adding a few jar files from jasper, and would mandate the use of eclipse. Building web application using BIRT would also result in bloated war file and therefore is not a good option if one is looking for quick, easy deployment and portability. Having said that,. I haven't explored BIRT yet, but have requested a team member to do so, after which we can more objectively compare the two reporting options.

Unlearn!

Sometimes the knowledge of 'what not to do' can take one leaps and bound towards success. Agreed that knowing 'what to do' is very important but one must not underrate the need to 'not do something'. People often tend to get comfy in their respective work - be it, mundane office job, the project at hand, the websites visited etc etc. But one must pause occasionally and understand that by doing so are they going anywhere. Hence the need to unlean what one may have learnt so thoroughly that it has gone in their subconscious, and which they continue doing again and again.

Explore a different route to office, try lunching with new bunch of people, explore the science you were never interested in, explore new websites and therefore new content, watch different genre of movie. Doing so is going to expand a person - and when unlearning becomes a habit - learning has no bounds :)

Google buzz

Its kinda creepy what google can really do considering they have vast majority of your email transactions and blah!!. For starters they have suggested my followers and people whom I follow in their new age product - Buzz. That to me is just the tip of an iceberg.

Consider just a few things like purchase confirmations, air ticket itineraries, and google alerts that one may never bother to delete (google generously has provided 1GB of space). If based on a simple frequency count, they can come up with boat load of profiles, imagine what they can draw based on the other stuff they have about all of us, and who knows they must already be approached by marketing geniuses to tap on to each profiles datanome (analogy from genome). Mapping a person's datanome to draw the behavioral traits and what if analysis could be really interesting. Did someone say SciFi exists only in movies!, and that we are miles away from being ruled by machines! thing again.

New face of Indian Cricket

India never lacked cricket fans. The support for this game is so evident that cricket is considered another religion in India. People can chat long on numerous subject matters related to this game be it a particular match, a favorite cricket player or the history of game. Evidently the support for this game has no limits. Incidents have been reported where a fan died out of heart attack while India was losing, people have argued over minor points related to a match and the argument resulting in bitter fight. People taking sick off the day an exciting match is scheduled is not uncommon. Streets are found deserted and office productivity slumps during such matches. One can go on and on with this 'madness' which is often equated with support for this game.
No wonder that because of such huge fan following BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) is the richest cricket board in the world. But does it stop here. The BCCI's initiative to start IPL (Indian Premier League ) in order to cash in on the huge fan following is applaud able.
Although the credit to come up with an idea of a cricket league could not be attributed to BCCI, as their action was in response to formation of ICL (Indian Cricket League) which came up with the idea of a cricket league. BCCI has till date not given official status to ICL and as soon as the proposal for ICL backed up by the Essar group was launched BCCI came into action and in great hurry came up with the idea of IPL. Its been some time now for the Essar backed ICL on the scenes but they clearly lack a star studded crowd to boast of. ICL has about 5 internation star players compared to about 50 in IPL. One could safely argue now that given the difference in start quality of players and the backing of IPL by major industrialists and film stars, the
popularity of IPL has long overshoot that of ICL, and its just been a week for IPL now.
With money flowing in this game and opportunity for home grown talent to showcase their potential the future for Cricket in India looks ever more promising.

Astrology - Insightful tool

Astrology - not an exact science but tell you so much about yourself that I was simpley amazed. All it requires is a good listener with open mind. So much to listen too, so why not everyone uses it to their advantage. Its a paradox though as according to astrology itself some people will never be interested in listening :).

Cast Away

Today while feeling bored/lonely I decided to look up further into these subjects in order to tackle these or define them more meaningfully. Working around problems had been my ingenuity, and often with great success however not all problems have a so called quick fix solution. One of the fix is that I am writing this post (well, not too bored/lonely so as to open a new blog on the subject), also reading some interesting links:

http://www.thecoughlincompany.com/overcome_loneliness.html
http://www.swamij.com/wake-up.htm

What this grey matter has made me realise is that not to look at every problem in an acute pessimism rather take them as situations. And situations teach.
Imagine this for instance, if you are lonely in a deserted island your situation is like what Tom Hanks had in the movie Cast Away, however is this entirely different from being lonely in a city buzzing with life.
Loneliness is a state of mind, the mind in a deserted island tells you that you have to do everything yourself, even hunt for food and cook it from raw or otherwise you are dead, yes physically dead. On the contrary in a city your mind tells you to reach out for excitement, adventure and friendship otherwise you are emotionally and socially dead.
I have always been a firm believer in the latin phrase 'cogito-ergo-sum' in other words you exist because you think. So if confronted with any of the lonely situation I described above take it as an opportunity to develop and learn new skills and mastermind your own solution to the problem. Learning how to hunt saved Tom Hanks in Cast Away, however learning how to kill the feeling of loneliness can save many lives, and make this society a beautiful place. Today when I think why people commit suicide, or why the go and consult a therapist or why they feel low in love, or friendship or society the one answer that explains all is that they all feel lonely and not loved.
And if this simple explanation of 'feeling lonely is just a state of mind' can come to the rescue of anybody this blog will achieve its purpose.

Driving on Christmas Day ...naa!

Lonely motorway drive (Christmas day) 

Deserted street in Birmingham (Christmas day) 

Its that timeof year again

Santa! I wish I was a kid again 

Comeback

Loads of things happened! good and bad and have sapped me.

** For starters the new job has eaten up third of my life in the past six months. Disgusting!!
** Found a new companion in Sony K800i

Its a great phone, so all you pod enthusiasts watch out. This phone rocks your world with new xenon flash and 3.2 MP camera. One can post the images to one's blog instantly. It is GPRS enabled so, one could load navigation software onto it.

If that cannot keep you busy check the MP3 player utility that has ability to collate songs with artists, make playlists etc etc. Wonder I am having time to write all this. Lemme go back and check out some new features.


For fun, here are some pictures take from sony ericsson K800i.



A frosty morning. Bird's eye view from my flat


Where I live .......


How I travel .......

Hindi movies

Must have seen an awful lot of hindi movies in last few days then I have seen in entire year or two. That is something. I must admit they are not all good, but have the effect that leaves me writing about them.
Some points about hindi movies:

a) never watch them alone esp. if you are an indian. That's coz the whole point is to enjoy and have fun, which you can have only in the company of ur friends. Watching a film alone is the most sad thing ever that can happen to you.
b) forget them ASAP. Too far from reality barring a few.
c) fast forward most of the songs! Most of the times they have got no connection with what is going on in the movie. Besides songs are not going to teach you anything. In the 21st century it is a really slow medium of communication. Could be effective though!
d) if it is a comic movie (esp. of david dhawan genre) , put ur brain aside and have a good time.

Last but not the least, bollywood is doing not too bad job. If they stop copying the script from their hollywood counterparts and start producing things more relevant to the societal context I would be a more happy person.

I tried so hard but in the end >>>...

Ever wondered why things go astray! Its because they were meant to go 'that' way and probably for a very good reason. Classical astrology, and an excuse from a lazy person who chooses facility rather than difficult way.
I am not going to dig dep into astrology or its importance, but I am going to talk about lessons one can learn from life experiences.
When the going gets tough the tough gets going. Take some bit of risk in life and wait patiently for rewards. If things don't go your way then probably there's something better in store for you. The idea is not to let yourself loose sight of the end goal.
There are times when you will have to make decisions and accept total responsibility of consequences.
Today was that day. Decsion has been made however conseqences still awaited. The only solace when things go awry is - 'to err is human'. Hope I don;t fall into that cliche today.

Career moves

So what's the big deal. Probabaly nothing before you move and after you have made the move, however it is the transition which really saps you out.
Selection has never been an easy step esp if one is confronted with lot of choices. I was reading a few days ago, what if we are bestowed with the ability to accurately see ourselves far ahead in the future. Would the decision making become easier. Probably no, in fact it would be difficult. In fact one of the best feelings ever I have experienced is when I let myself loose. There has to be something in this ancient yogic gesture of meditation. The experience of being an integral part of nature around you and letting it take the intended course is a great feeling.

Coming back to the point I was making about moving on in one's career, there is nothing such as wrong and right move. The only thing that should be right is the decision to move on. If that is for the right reason, then let yourself loose and enjoy the present. You can always shape the future wherever you go.
I am moving on to a new job, and believe me the reason is good enough. Okey! I am going to let myself loose here.

Life!

When you are awake at 3:45 in the morning and not feeling sleepy there are only a few things that could cause that! Either you are just out of a long relationship, or you are looking into the very cause of your existence!

Here's bouncing some ideas on life

Life is a random event, death is a certainity
Life is full of questions, often scary
Life has different meaning to different people, therefore look into life from other's view point and you will find some asnwers

and the mother of all concept
Life is to give life, teach and preach.

Ah well, enough of teaching and preaching ! I am signing off! bon nui

The first dive!

All things big or small have a humble beginning. So here I am trying to embark on a journey that I do not know at this stage what course it is going to take.
I will start with a few interesting quotes : the latin phrase "cogito ergo sum" meaning " I think therefore I exist". I would say "I think therefore I am what I am" and rightly so, aren't we sum total of our experiencs... Here is a humble attempt to add spice to my experiences, and make them an immortal appetite full of humour, remorse, laughter and fun! Oops did i just said remorse! heaven's sake "its human to err.."