For the geeky-minded you will notice that the site is now completely AJAX powered with a jQuery flavor. The ability to switch themes highlights a nice design principle of seperation of presentation (UI) from the model (data). This design allows me to plug-in new themes in future. I'm also working on a version which uses the silverlight plugin. To achieve this, I'm building a basic HTML renderer for silverlight but that might take a while. Developing this gave me a greater appreciation for the work that goes into developing a browser rendering engine.

It might not be even close to the historic event that unfolds tomorrow, but atleast it is a good milestone. Now if only I can overcome the writer's block and write something intelligent!

Over the past few years i have turned into a basketball fanatic. I guess some of the reasons would be

• Hard to keep up with cricket with the timezones playing havoc
• I started School in Cleveland a year after LeBron James had his great rookie year and hasn't looked back taking Cleveland Basketball to new heights. (To say that i'm a fan is an understatement!)
• The Cleveland Cavaliers have a genuine shot at the championship ring this year
• It is an easy sport to pick up and loads for fun, besides any excercise that gets my bum off the couch is good

This year i've been following the excellent start the Cavs have been having to their season. My most hated team is the Boston Celtics. Not only did they beat my second favorite team "The Lakers" in last year's finals after inching past my Cavs in the conference semis, but they are the single biggest impeding force standing in the Cavalier's path. Besides isn't mandatory to hate teams from Boston (Red Sox, Celtics, Pats). Boston as a sporting town has had a lions share of victories and it is about time they started to share the wealth.

I have great appreciation of Kevin Garnett's (KG) skills as a basketball player, but his demeanour (especially on the court) leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The constant swearing, grimmances don't make for pretty viewing. This coupled with "Drama Queen" Paul Pierce and his antics make me hate the Celtics even more. I was wathing a highlights video the other day and managed to capture and freeze a frame that shows a rather scary looking KG on the side lines.

For now i'll take pride in the Cavs 25-4 start to the season and pray that the good form continues whilst quietly wishing ill for the Celtics so that i won't have to see expressions like the one above. Go Cavs!

There are a lot of movies to see this holiday and Oscar season. My highest recommendation is to go see Slumdog Millionaire. The story of a young boy’s tragic life which accidentally prepares him for the questions on a game show is a brilliant underdog story filled with director artistry that you seldom see in any film. Because the movie deals with a boy growing up in the worst parts of India the movie teaches the audience valuable cultural lessons and insights at the same time entertaining us.

Another great movie that i watched was Gran Torino. I haven't seen many Clint Eastwood movies but from what i've heard and read online, this was one of his best performances. I would not argue with that. Although the story line is fairly thin,Eastwood makes the film work mainly on the basis of his screen image.

Revolving around the story of Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood), a retired Ford employee and decorated Korean War vet, the movie explores themes of loss, coming to terms, friendship, and ultimately, sacrifice and redemption. Words like "masterpiece" or phrases like "tour de force" seem cliched and misleading, so it is hard to summon up a definitive word to describe the themes and feelings that Gran Torino evokes. One thing for sure, it was poignant enough to leave an impact on me.

It has been a while since i read any book which wasn't a selp-help book or a technical one, so it was a refreshing change when i got buried in a novel over the holidays. This was a book that was recommended to me by a dear friend who is a big fan of the author and i would whole heartedly agree that Five Point Someone is a fun read.

Five Point Someone is a story about three friends in IIT who are unable to cope.The book starts with a disclaimer, "This is not a book to teach you how to get into IIT or even how to live in college. In fact, it describes how screwed up things can get if you don't think straight."

Three hostelmates - Alok, Hari and Ryan get off to a bad start in IIT - they screw up the first class quiz. And while they try to make amends, things only get worse. It takes them a while to realize: If you try and screw with the IIT system, it comes back to double screw you. Before they know it, they are at the lowest echelons of IIT society. They have a five-point-something GPA out of ten, ranking near the end of their class. This GPA is a tattoo that will remain with them, and come in the way of anything else that matters - their friendship, their future, their love life. While the world expects IITians to conquer the world, these guys are struggling to survive.

Will they make it? Do underperformers have a right to live? Can they show that they are not just a five-point-somebody but a five-point-someone?

Highlights from the book for me included the time when Hari has 3 shots of vodka to quell his fear of the Viva-Voce format of examinations. This experiment which inevitably ended with the professor smelling his alcohol laden breath and throwing him out of the class. Also the courting incidents between Hari and Neha were fun to read.

I'm glad someone wrote a book about IIT which removes the covers off to reveal the mostly unknown underbelly of the IIT system. I liked the book for the casual writing style of Chetan Bhagat and look forward to reading his other books as well. In reality, i guess i was able to connect to the characters in the book and could see myself as part Hari, part Alok and can relate to the decisions, mistakes they made on their journeys through adolocense and education.

At long last, i've decided to come out of hiberation and back to the blogosphere. Co-workers and friends alike have chided me for not blogging and the state of my website and i had to resort to lame excuses.

The blogosphere has come a long way since it becomes popular and almost everybody and their grandmoms have blogs which make it less of a novelty each passing day. Often I step back and wonder if there is too much information that is online. The recent historic election campaign turned us into news junkies. But how many blogs does the world need? In a presidential election dominated by the Internet where for the young chunk, the internet was their major source of information.

The opportunity for us to express ourselves is wonderful. Having to read all of those opinions isn't. Back when i first began my site (2004) there were more people reading blogs than writing them. It isn't quite the same anymore. And even if most blogs are skippable, there are one, two or couple dozen worth checking a couple of times - or maybe three or four times - a day just to make sure you aren't missing anything.

Capitalizing on the information overload, then there are sites that are supposed to help you sort the wheat from the chaff on all the other sides. They filter stores, aggregate ones that they think you should read and use some sofisticated computer algorithms to do their sorting. Other such sites rely on the readers to do the heavy lifting. So if sixty-three percent recomment a story about how twilight is a movie for the teenage soul, you better read it. Or that article about a Russian blogger who says that Obama might make Sarah Palin Secretary of State.

How many blogs does the world need when it already has a blog gridlock? The great thing about blogs, in my view, is that they share the same voice of e-mail. It is a new literary form that combines the best of immediacy of talking with reflectiveness of writing. But like everything else, too much of a good thing can be bad.

I wonder if i have reached the point with blogs and websites where i fire up my blog reader actively hoping there isn't anything interesting in there because then i'll have to take the time to read it!

I had blogged earlier about the ESRI Dev Summit at Palm Springs, CA. Palm springs is hailed as "Americas Desert Playground" and a refuge for Hollywood's brightest stars. Palm Springs offers miles of palm-lined canyons, cascading waterfalls, desert flora, and big horn sheep. The city blends a rich heritage - steeped in Indian, Mexican and Western cultures - with world-class entertainment and a sophisticated business district.

Palm Springs is referred to as "The Golf Capital of the World," with more than 100 championship courses. The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway is one of the biggest attractions in Southern California and is a way of getting from the floor of the Coachella Valley to near the top of San Jacinto. One of the interesting sights that i got to see right in front of my eyes was a Dust Devil. A dust devil or whirlwind is a rotating updraft, ranging from small (half a meter wide and a few meters tall) to large (over 10 meters wide and over 1000 meters tall). In the southwestern United States, dust devils can be known as dancing devils. Navajo refer to them as chiindii, a ghost or spirit of a Navajo, if a chiindii spins clockwise it is said to be a good spirit, if it spins counterclockwise it is a bad spirit.

Every weekend, the local cricket enthusiasts (mostly Indians and Pakistanis) get together to play cricket in a baseball field at Lawton, CA. A thrilling match played out on my second week. Incredibly, one of the blokes (Gaurav) managed to tape the exciting climax to the match. The situation was as follows. After amassing a huge 103 in 12 overs, everything seemed like smooth sailing (typically 75 is a good score on this ground) for the defending team (my team) until Manjunath (the batsman in the video) unleashed a series of big hits to make the unimaginable target seem possible. Going into the last over (which i was privileged to bowl) they needed ten runs to win. The following ensued.

This video captures the remainder of the match.

Watch the video before you read furthur!!!

1 balls, 2 runs :- Plenty of mind games going out here. First the bowler pulls up in his run-up stride and warns the non-striker of backing up too far. The bowler repeats the same thing (pulling out of his bowling stride) to build the frustration of the batsman. Finally the ball is bowled, it is on a length and seams in a touch to beat the batsman's attempted forward prod. Quite obviously (going by the type of stroke played), the batsmen were clearly looking for a tip and scamper single to tie the game (safety first approach). The batsman is comprehensively beaten (plumb lbw infact) and the dot ball means that the bowler has won the game for his team.

The defending team has won (by 1 run) and the bowler and everyone are ecstatic with the thrilling victory. Don't forget to miss the celebration dance (similar to the Indian cricket team).

Bjarne Stroustrup had this to say about it (in an interview from a long while ago):

Incredibly over-hyped. I'm unhappy about the degree of intellectual dishonesty surrounding its advertising. It is probably a nice platform for running small self-contained systems, but it is being proclaimed as the solution to every problem and for every programmer. It is not. No language and no system is. Even the platform independence issue is not as clear-cut as it seems.As the Java libraries are extended to deal with more application areas, these libraries themselves become a platform. As vendors add new facilities, portability to machines using facilities from competing vendors' portability becomes compromised.

Java is hyped as "Write once, run anywhere" but in my opinion, Java is failing miserably. It's true to the axiom of "write once, debug everywhere". Anytime you have a software stack, you always have support issues. JREs on Windows is one software stack and JREs on Linux, Unix, and MACs are three more software stacks requiring support. I find that Java does cross platform fine for basic web apps and simple file driven programs. But if you are developing for specialized embedded systems used by alien proctologists, then you better not sell your soul to the java environment.

Yes, java will be taught in universities 10 years from now and more importantly in the marketing classes and so you will still have fanboys with MBA degrees (but don't have a clue about programming languages) plug java as the panacea for software development. But a growing trend these days is that .Net and C# (its favorite child compared to the bastardized step child also referred to as VB) are penetrating the hallways of universities. With slicker and extremely impressive development tools for the .Net platform coming out, the days ahead look promising.

Note here, that I am not talking about the language differences between java and other languages since that argument is mute. But the focus is that enterprises who do not wish to sell their soul to Micro$oft (but inadvertently end up selling a large portion of their soul a vendor such as IBM, WebSphere, BEA, etc all on the context of staying vendor neutral and not getting into vendor lock-in) and opt for entire java stacks thinking that it gives them the most flexibility are actually fooling themselves. The problem is that java hasn't been able to reach the platform independence that it claimed (and everyone hoped) it would. The problem is caused by vendor (IBM, BEA etc) interests creeping into the framework libraries which compromise the platform independence goal.

One of the key points that Mark made was that neither java nor .Net are going away, but he also emphasized on how .Net has caught up with java which was once said to dominate large scale implementations (enterprise level) and how the vendor interference was hurting java badly, whilst allowing .Net to grow. He predicted a very rosy future for .Net and .Net developers which was music to my ears.

All is not lost for java developers. Atleast they are better off then developers working for non-software companies where a programmer is viewed as an expensive typist and people often associate programmers at the level of plumbers.

Highly paid, widely traveled, extremely sensitive, dressed in indecent clothing, claustrophobic work culture, maddening traffic manners and artificial socializing characterize youth of today in a world that is frustratingly filled with Page 3 parties. As the culture bridge between the maverick West and the once traditional East narrows, it is worthwhile measuring if the right balance is being achieved and are the youth being smart in choosing the best of both worlds. A reality check is needed on whether the changes in the youth's conceptions are correct.

Culture is probably one thing that restrains the mind from straying and falling prey to thoughts which seemingly rational and interesting ultimately lead to mayhem. The misconception that getting Westernised is synchronous with improvement has housed itself in the minds of the youth. While in some cultures, it is not absurd to end up in bed with someone you just danced with at a party and believe that you are thinking and acting rationally. Hopefully our culture can stay away from such impressions.

Media is probably the biggest culprit and facilitator in glorifying sensation, thereby diverting the attention of the youth from the ground realities. Bangalore Times is one newspaper media that comes to mind right off the bat. The youth today are falling prey to the worst of values that are unfortunately glamorized by a section of the media ultimately succumbing to a culture whose birth was uncalled for.

From my brief stay in Bangalore, i see that the Pop Culture is well and truly going strong in India. For the time being i only see the youth spiraling into a culture which is similar to the western US with no shortage of bare midriffs and drug abuse. Hopefully i will be proved wrong.

Everyone in the blogosphere likes to get noticed. Earlier people considered being slashdotted as the ultimate honour of online recognition. Lately with sites such as digg and reddit and other popular web 2.0 news-sites coming to the fore, the focus of bloggers has shifted a bit.

Whether the attention generated when a blog post is dugg is enough to cause a reader to re-visit the site is debatable. I think it's been pretty much proven that any traffic a site gets from digg is fleeting and doesn't translate into long-term traffic however I think there is much more value for the blogger than the initial burst of traffic.

Sure it generates a lot of traffic for the website but if they have a business model that is solely ad-based then having your website dugg would not generate any money for you. I mean, how many digg users would click an ad even if it was relevant? Some of the obvious benefits of building a Digg Culture on your blog include the fact that you get Fresh RSS subscribers and Newsletter subscribers.

Every time a blog gets dugg a leap is noticed in RSS subscriber count. Similarly newsletter subscribers (if you have one) will generally get a bump when you're dugg. On the contrary sometimes The Digg effect can have killed a site in the first six hours.

If you are able to convert your incoming readers from Digg into regular readers you then have a unique opportunity to get repeat appearances on Digg again.

The actual traffic from digg is a nice (but short lived) thing - but the real benefit of being dugg regularly is the increase in traffic from loyal readers (RSS, bookmarks and newsletters) as well as the benefits of new incoming links.

Some ways to improve your chances of being digg-itized.

Style of Writing

While many hundreds of pages get to the top of the digg pile every week and there is quite a variation in their style - many of them do tend to have similarities. They are often lists and are usually easily digestible pieces that appeal to a skeptical yet reasonably knowledgeable audience. I don't know their demographics but I suspect it's largely a young male audience so your writing needs to be appeal to them. This includes code monkeys like me.

Topic of Writing

Digg has recently broadened the topics that it covers, however it's roots are technology based.

Titles and first lines are Important

I find that in most cases that people who submit posts to Digg re-use the same title or atleast something close to it. In many cases they also use the first line or two of the post as the description.

Quality Content

Ultimately Digg users (like most web users) like quality, useful and unique content. They get frustrated with second rate writing, lots of mistakes, recycled stories and sub standard site design.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (often referred to simply as Borat) is a film mockumentary comedy starring the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen as his satirical character Borat, travelling around the United States meeting different people. The plot finds Borat dispatched by the Kazak government to the US in a bid to get to grips with the American culture. Along the way Borat gets distracted from the job at hand when he catches sight of Pamela Anderson on TV.

It's a film where, in between drying your eyes, you'll shake your head in disbelief at the sheer insanity of what's going on in front of you - and perhaps feel a bit uncomfortable about how no-one is spared in the name of comedy. If you're easily offended or sensitive, stick with the re-runs of 'Friends'. While the ending is a huge anticlimax, it's easy to forgive because so much of what's gone before is unforgettable.

The other movie i watched (incompletely) was Man of the Year staring a perennial favorite of mine Robin Williams. Although the critics have been harsh on the money, i enjoyed the movie and the jokes. After watching the movie, I was able to entertain myself with thoughts of what might happen if an actual celebrity were elected president. Would Oprah hire Dr. Phil as Secretary of State, and would Mick Jagger make a good Press Secretary? Don't laugh. Truth is stranger than fiction.

The last movie i saw was Vivaah. I was watching a Hindi Movie in the theatre after a long time and this was only my second ever Hindi Movie in the US (Rang De Basanthi being the other). The movie depicts the old-world charm of an arranged marriage and is depicted well by the lead pair (Shahid Kapur and Amrita Rao) who go through the mellow motions of falling in love similar to the adventure of an unexplored journey. But an unholy fire creates a crisis in the last half-hour. That's when (according to me) the movie comes alive.

On a side note, i just posted the album for my toronto trip early last week.