Manimaran M

The Independence Day outing on Bikes

This month quota for travel came along on the Indian Independence Day (August 15th, 2004). Along with my friends namely Gautham, Jimson, Viju, Madhavi and Bharath, we decided to go to Siddarabetta and nearby hills of the Eastern Ghats near Tumkur (95 Km from Bangalore). We wanted to do some bouldering, cave exploration and bike riding. It was a Bajaj Team (2 Pulsars and a Caliber 115). I got to test the limit of my bike, the Caliber 115 to reach just about 85 KMPH speed. Very good National Highway just facilitated our ride. On the way, just stopped over to climb a good looking rock face and also did very minimal bouldering on top of that hill.

The cave exploration at Siddarabetta was in itself very exciting along with good lunch within one of the caves.

Not much time was left and we decided against visiting other nearby hills (Madhugiri, etc...).

The highlight was riding the last 50 KM stretch on the National Highway cruising at an average of 75 KMPH. Jimson's pulsar was also tested to the limits of 120 KMPH (with the hefty Bharath as the pillion)

One of the group snap can be found in my galleries.

got to program now.....

Why not read a book for your collegues!

I have now originally copied an idea from Rick. The idea is on how to make myself read a book. Rick started by writing out snippets (in his own words) from a book he was reading. Not just writing it for himself, he was sending them as mails to the collegues.

It so happened that for sometime such mails stopped which prompted me to mail him to ask about the proceedings. He said he shall continue doing it. Which makes him read the book.

I have also started to do something like that now. I am reading the “Essential .NET - The CLR” by Don Box. And not just that. In our internal forum, a new forum has been dedicated to this purpose. (email becomes cumbersome due to maintainance problems).

Advantages:

1. I get to read the book as collegues expect something every day.
2. I also get to summarize what I have read (best method to retain knowledge is to share it).
3. Collegues also get to read the book at a glance.

got to code now.....

My First Ever Talk for the Academia

On 19th June 2004, gave a talk at the Christ College, Bangalore on the occasion of Corporate Connexion. The topic I chose to talk was “.NET-An Overview”.

I had never expected such an event to happen at Christ College. Always wanted to be part of this beautiful campus as a student. Great college with great people around.

Initially, did not know what to talk on. Had no idea about how much the academia is updated with .NET. So, decided to present a very basic talk. The intension was to instill the basics. Clarify all the jargons surrounding .NET technology. Also to give a clear picture on how the various components of .NET fit into the development infrastructure.

Found a paper in ASP.NET starter kit precisely doing that stuff. So, prepared a ppt on the basis of that paper.

I knew that there is no point just going on telling about .NET without involving J2EE. So, wherever possible, gave the parallel. Later found that the audience were comfortable with J2EE because they have it as part of their curriculum. This method indeed work out very well with most of the questions revolved around comparing J2EE and .NET

Some of the questions asked were:

• What are the job prospects for .NET over J2EE
• What is UIPAB
• What is a Web Service
• What is the compilation and execution procedure of a CSharp program
• Since, Fortran and other 3rd party languages are essentially non-object oriented, are their .NET counter parts object oriented
• What is IL
• What is JIT compilation
• What is MVC
• What is Struts Framework
• What is DataSet and how is it used

Some of the information I wanted to share and did not (due to various reasons):

• CLI
• Managed Code vs UnManaged Code
• PInvoke
• Open Source Tools for .NET development (SharpDevelop, Web Matrix, Mono, NUnit, Maverick.NET, CruiseControl.NET, NAnt etc...)
• CTS

In general, the talk was good and was good feeling to talk to students. I've infact learnt most of .NET by virtue of teaching others about it.

The funniest part was the students addressing me as "Sir". Not that I do not know the intentions. So, did not hesistate to accept the addressing. I think they were more comfortable with that way of addressing rather than using my name.

The presentation is available for download here

Realization of the importance of regular failures! (off-topic)

Once upon a time, failures was a way of my life. Most of the small experiments done by me during primary school went for a toss. Such experiments were a result of not proper planning and being very serious about the whole stuff. Then, such small failures became so common that, I never even was afraid of a failure.

But, for some time now (after getting into the software industry), not many opportunities arose for me to be a failure except for the first project which I had worked upon which was a near failure (thanks to inexperience, it was not a complete failure).

I am famous for not completing what has been started. Nowadays, I am not even consious of this fact (which is even more bad). This resulted in averting most of the challenges. This has been so deep rooted now that I don't take up topics which are challenging to me for presentations and talks.

I was recently invited to be part of a discussion in an academic institution and immediately chose to present a topic on “Basics of .NET” rather than the more challenging topic like “How .NET and J2EE stack up?”

Being a .NET developer and not having much exposure to J2EE, presenting the second topic is more challenging to me than the former one.

More over, just lost a bet with my collegeues. That has made me broken. Just realized that, if failure is not tasted for a long period of time, small failures like these can cause a lot of pain. As a matter of fact, I've not even failed in any of my interviews yet. I guess, it is time to get more challenging than to be comfortable doing the stuff that i've mastered over time.

Currently, thinking of some intermediate topic for the discussion, that can deliver the basics of .NET.....

Height of .NETing! (1892 meters Above Mean Sea Level)

It's been week and the memories of trekking to a height of 1892m AMSL are still hovering in my mind.

It was just 3 months since the escape to the jungles, the nature invited another visit to the peaks, valleys, jungles, water falls, wild. The timing was not very perfect as my presence would have really helped the team to go ahead with the product release smoothly. Despite the tight schedule, made myself way out of this noisy Bangalore to the bliss of the Western Ghats.

This trek was to the KudreMukh (The peak that looks like the Face of a Horse) in the Western Ghats of Karnataka.

The Western Ghats greeted us with leech bites and steep climbing. All of a sudden, we had the perfect location for lunch and found ourselves surrounded by cloud hidden peaks.

The habbit of not looking up into the skies had not left me. I was just looking at the forest down and when suddenly looked up by chance, could not resist the view of a huge peak slowly being uncovered by the clouds. Felt how small humans are amidst the nature.

Upon reaching the peak (The KudreMukh) thought of .NET was still lurking behind me. In the silence of 3 minutes at the peak, felt the need for a laptop and wondered how good a program can be written at that silence and height. Just missed a laptop.

So, thats the highest point I've ever been as a .NETian. (1892 meters above mean sea level)

Would be interested in knowing if any .NETian has trekked above this.

Boss goes blogging!

Yes! Thats right! My boss goes blogging. He seems to be interested in “Manage-ment”. Currently hooked on to the mBlog. (http://mblog.com/management_musings) Soon may find a perfect “management blog engine” like how “DotNetJunkies” is for .NETians.

The Daily Pattern - General work culture related blog entry

This week began very boring, without any focus and always busy thinking of doing new things rather than solving the problems at hand.

This has happened quite some times for me and has put me into a very bad shape.

This time though, I thought about a mechanism to satisfy myself and others.

I normally keep some work for the next day morning. I found out that this was the culprit. So, decided not to plan for tomorrow. Everyday morning I shall get up without any pressure to reach office in time and start as planned yesterday. Instead, reach office and then spend a cool 30 minutes looking into the “This Week” notes and preparing “This Day” notes.

Now comes the interesting part. Do not start off with the first task at hand. Instead, read a technical book (thats what interests me in morning. Novel's are for evening) for 30 minutes - 45 minutes.

Check official mails and get on to the first task at hand. Normally, I keep one task for rest of the time till lunch hour.

After lunch, play a game of carrom till end of lunch break and get on to read blogs. Start the next task or continue the pending task from then on.

This pattern has really worked out very well for me and my company supports such a people-driven environment.

Things are getting to feel great and the problems also get solved in much more efficient way.

Currently reading “applying UML and Patterns”,Craig larman.

Although, have read the beginning chapters earlier, upon reading the chapter 2 (UP) I am feeling as though our team has naturally fallen into such a precise process.  The description of the process correctly fits into the daily work what happens in our team. Some of the +'s being, “ye-but”, weekly iteration, iterations not producing prototypes instead working system, rapid feedback from client, constant refactoring etc...

Feels great that any process that keeps people in front does survive without regard to what that process is called. Good that our team has not fallen pray to the “people for process” scenario.

• Book reading
• Blogging
• Brooding over .NET

That the 3 B's for me right now.

Wanted one and Purchased one! A DigiCam (DG Cam as Rick likes it!)

Year 2004 has started in a perfect manner as I wanted. I've been doing regular visits outside Bangalore since January with a frequency of One Trip every 30 Days.

January - Trek to Bisle,Karnataka (5 Days in forest)

February - Trip to Srirangam, Tamil Nadu (2 Days)

March - Trip to Coorg, Karnataka (2 Days)

The trend doesn't seem to stop. I've already got plans to visit Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu for 3 Days in first week of April.

Also, expecting to visit Horanadu (Western Ghats), Karnataka in May.

Mostly another trek in June.

What's a bit disappointing for me is that I've been going around such amazing places without owning a still camera. Though the void was filled by other's cameras, It is nothing like owning a camera and taking lots of pictures of my choice.

Now that I've expected nearly 3 trips in next 3 months, I thought of purchasing a camera. First choice was to own a Digital Camera (In fact, I've been postponing the purchase just to buy a DigiCam). Purchasing a normal camera was not even in my thoughts. I just want to keep taking photographs with much concentration rather than worrying about the later expense part of it.

The first thing I wanted to do after my coorg trip was to own a DigiCam. After lots of thought, decided to take advise from my friend Rick. In fact, the DigiCam was almost bought by him. He did all the research on my behalf. More over he has got a DigiCam and knows the basics of a DigiCam.

At some point of time, there was a thinking to go ahead and buy a Sony Handicam. Later dropped the plan. Also, an option to buy a normal camera with some exclusive features was there.

Finally landed upon buying a Kodak DigiCam (cx6200) which I think is the least priced digital camera model in India.

It is a 2.0 MPixel, 3X Digital Zoom with 8 MB internal memory. Has a slot for MMC. See http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=9/19/32/1055&pq-locale=en_US

It took me just 24 hours to decide upon the model but took 4 days to show it to my parents. Was a bit held back by the timing of the purchase. But, then everything went ok. It was recieved very well.

The most funniest part is that I have a pretty old PC which currently has no USB port. So have to spend about Rs 200 for either a USB-Serial connecter or a USB PCI card.

Also pending is the purchase of 64MB MMC costing nearly Rs.2100. Got to buy one before my Kanchipuram trip.

Bangalore has finally got rain. There we loud thunders and some lightning Unfortunately It did not rain that much. But, anything is a bliss to beat the summer heat. Time to leave and aim to reach home before another pour.

Hoooodi Babaaaa.......

Visit to SriRangam,Tamil Nadu, India

Although I am an South Indian, It was amazing to visit the Ranganathan (Lord Vishnu) Temple at Srirangam, Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu, India.

I remember being to this temple 5 years ago and that time I had been as a normal devotee. Now, though, I was accompanied by a friend of mine (Prakash) who has lived in the temple surroundings (called Agraharam) for nearly 5 years.

First, Srirangam is an island formed by Cauvery River (diverges into two and merges again at some point). The Residential area surrounding the temple is called the Agraharam.

The temple has 4 major walls with a big entrance (Gopuram) in each of the wall. The gopurams face exactly in East, West, North and South directions. The main gopuram is an amazing piece of architecture. Stands very tall.

Immediately outside these walls start the Agraharam (residence of Pundits/Poojaris). Each residence normally has a small door and width of the door facing wall is not much. But the length of the house is nearly 10 to 15 times longer than the breadth. A common water well is shared between adjacent houses (some where near the middle of the length of the house).

After the first ring of residences, start another wall parallel to the ones surrounding the temple. Each of these walls also have a small gopuram(entrance). This alternating wall and agraharam continues for 5 more rounds (total 6 squares). I heard that Madurai Meenakshi temple has a similar design with 8 such squares.

The temple as such is so spaced out that if not for my friend I would have definately got lost. I guess a walk to the temple everyday morning and evening would be a substitute for all the kinds of exercises here in Bangalore.

There were so many details provided by my friend that I felt bad about my poor knowledge on Indian Mythology and Hindu Religion.

This was the first time I've been amazed by the Temples in India.

Feeling great to continue blogging after a long break.