enginerd

My reading has taken a complete backseat. I dont know why, but I don't even feel like picking up the newspaper these days. Somehow, The Times of India Mumbai Edition, which is far better than the one we are used to back home, hasn't yet been able to produce an article that would have seemed eye-ctching, let alone interesting. An exception was an article this Sunday on the Royals of Gwalior- the Scindias. The article began with a comparison with the Kennedys, the ups, the downs and the misfortune attached. The article touched all aspects, the political associations of the familys, the family feuds, the silence between the mother and son, the era during emergency. It had nothing new that you wouldn't have known about and yet was written in such a flowing style that it was a worthy read.

Here's a wonderful resource for Struts application development using Websphere Studio v5 .

Just a quick update on my work here. We just got done with the requirement specifications and system design of the new learning management system that we're working on. We should begin coding the application tomorrow, provided I am able to design the UI for the other two products that the organization is currently developing. High on exhaustion, low on motivation and dragging myself along in three projects. Life as an intern is fun for sure.

Just as I begin writing this post I realize what I have entered in the title. Too much of java and obsession with coding standards can lead to this. Now since I feel I have the onus to be less of a sloth, I'll write about anything that comes on to my mind. So Lara Croft is about to get a make over of some sorts . The reason for this, they say, is that the last game was a completely bombed affair. It may have bombed, but it certainly made all the noises. Now lets see if ths new Lara can again be the phenomenon that she was once. What changes would I like? I really dont care. I haven't really played Lara Croft all that much. The only time I laid hands on the game was when they bundled a small demo with some computer magazine and that was years ago, when I was just a kid dazzled by the wonderful things Microsoft Paint could do.

I've been ignoring my blogging a bit more than I would actually approve of. Can't help it, though. Been chatting my way to glory ever since I got hooked on to this Yahoo Messenger thingy!

Alright people. No need to send me all those threat mails. I will be regular from now on in updating my blog and replying to your emails and comments. Life is cruising along wonderfully here. The internship is real fun. Getting the flavour of some great technologies, and learning a lot from the guys around. They are a wonderful bunch of guys, co-operative and very smart. Tomorrow, I begin work on the latest project- development of an online learning management system. And I am not yet decided whether to use Turbine for it or not. Anyways, I'll be posting the progress here from time to time. And yes, the new Yahoo Messenger Beta is real cool!

It's day three of my internship and if you all have been wondering why there hasn't been a post here for so long now, it's been because I've been keeping extremely busy ever since I set foot here. I'll continue posting here but I'll also write about my internship endeavours on my Internship Blog.

It's been a while since I posted here, nearly a week actually. Can't say that I had nothing interesting to post but seriously, as I sit here in front of my PC, nearly exhausted afer all the work faculty loads you with even during vacations, I can't think of anything to write. Sometimes I wonder if they could make self replicating blogs for such times , just like robots.

Dana Blankenhorn on the seven million accounts that Microsoft has But I very seldom come across a Spaces address in my RSS feeds. What are these 7 million people doing with their MSN blogs? If no one reads a blog, how can you sell ads against it? Now, I feel he's missing a very important point here. Just because not many Spaces figure in subscribed RSS Feeds of people the world over doesn't mean that no one visits these Spaces. Spaces is not actually a pure "Public Blogging" service. What Spaces provides is more of a private Internet space to its members enabling them to express their thoughts, share images and other stuff within their circle of family and friends who are the people frequenting the Space. Thus the audience set of a Space becomes the people you know. You perhaps won't find any Space that is hugely popular garnering millions of hits, but with seven million Spaces out on the Net today, it IS a huge audience base.

Web are you is a networked emoticon device to let people back home know if your mood at work/school is happy, sad or upset. How does it work? From Mauricio Melo : Ideally there are two devices even though one device can work fine. You set one up at home somewhere where it can be seen by any of your family members and plug it to your home network. Set the other one at your office location and plug it to your office LAN. At any given time during the day, press one of the icons and your home device will reflect your current mood state sharing it with your other significant or a family member. If there is only one home device, it can be accessed through a regular webpage or cell phone.

May 5th, 2005. 05.05.05 The date won't read so again for a 1000 years!! .

Firefox downloads have touched 50 million . Yes, 7 zeros following 5 . The world is on fire! The Inexorable climb to the top!

This is hilarious! A hacker was led into erasing his own hard drive! So we have a dangerous hacker bitchchecker and the one being hacked and we have Elch. From Total Illusions Elch: You're a real computer expert bitchchecker: shut up i hack you Elch: ok, i'm quiet, hope you don't show us how good a hacker you are ^^ bitchchecker> tell me your network number man then you're dead Elch: Eh, it's 129.0.0.1 Elch: or maybe 127.0.0.1 Elch: yes exactly that's it: 127.0.0.1 I'm waiting for you great attack bitchchecker: in five minutes your hard drive is deleted Elch: Now I'm frightened bitchchecker: shut up you'll be gone bitchchecker: i have a program where i enter your ip and you're dead bitchchecker: say goodbye Elch: to whom? bitchchecker: to you man bitchchecker: buy buy Elch: I'm shivering thinking about such great Hack0rs like you * bitchchecker (~java@euirc-61a2169c.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#) That's one real smart hacker!

Backpack - the personal information manager from 37signals is finally out. I had been actually waiting for this ever since I read about it here. So what does it do? On first impression, it lets you do all sorts of thing like managing to-do lists, ideas, notes with files and pictures. But there's something new here: the concept of a page . A page is just another leaf like in your notebook. Add your to-do lists, notes, even relevant images and files on it. So your backpack can become a collection of multiple pages on different topics with complete information about those topics in the form of notes, lists, links, images and files. These pages then can be shared and also updated via email. In many ways resembling a wiki. However, I feel there should've been a WYSIWYG editor atleast. Right now Backpack allows Textile reference . I am not too sure if it'll be all that handy but I'll try it for a while with the "free"version, which unfortunately does not get you ac