How to keep me up-to-date with the latest technologies?

This is a million dollar question for most of the programmers. Programmers often live in virtual language specific world including myself and when we asked to go to another world, we get annoyed. When we spend years discovering a world and hear about a better one, it’s not a good feeling.

When I talk about keeping me up-to-date with the current technologies, I have to touch a subject called “programming paradigm”. It was interesting listening to Dr Evens’s lecture on “Programming Paradigms” and the stories about how computer languages evolved by time; was very fascinating. Let’s look at the definition of paradigm first, with the help of Google.

Paradigm: "A philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated; broadly: a philosophical or theoretical framework of any kind"

I have to tell something off topic here, in Virtusa we had an internal seminar organized by our training team and one of the highly experienced trainers, JJ, talked about Paradigm shift and how important that we/companies should cope with it. It has been a while since I attended the seminar and as I remember it, it’s one of the essential and fun things to learn that  the Swiss watchmakers had the paradigm that a watch was a mechanical device, i.e., to be a watch it had to have springs, gears, moving second, minute, and hour hands, etc. The end result was that this research was abandoned because it was not a “real” watch. However, they did put the research on display and when the Japanese companies like Seiko saw it their paradigm was “time keeping device” and they grabbed the digital watch concept and ran with it. The end result was that because of their inability to make a paradigm shift from a watch being a “mechanical device” to a “timekeeping electronic device” the Swiss watch industry almost collapsed because of the Japanese were able to make this paradigm shift. In the seminar then JJ went on to discuss how it is important for a business to know what paradigms it has, to understand them, and, most importantly, be constantly on the lookout for technologies or innovations that can cause a paradigm shift. Why? Because if you miss it you can be out of business.

Coming back to “Programming Paradigms”, first will look at the main paradigms in software industry especially on PP. The first thing I studied in Uni was about the History and the generations of Computer Programming Languages. If we were to skim through the main chapters, we can look through the main four generations with the help of Google. I’m at the moment working using a 4th generation Programming Language  - BPM Workflow manager , PRPC, which uses Java and Oracle in the core engine and enable users to code by just using flows and web based visual controls. Everything else are done in the background from Hibernate-like table class mapping to external system integration.

The first generation program language(1GL) is pure machine code, that is just ones and zeros. Programmers have to design their code by hand then transfer it to a computer by using a punch card, punch tape or flicking switches. There is no need to translate the code and it will run straight away. Code can be fast and efficient and can make use of specific processor features such as special registers, however, code cannot be ported to other systems and has to be rewritten and difficult to edit and update.

Second-generation programming languages(2GL) are a way of describing Assembly code. I have absolutely no idea how this works. Google says that it is done by using code resembling. Assembly code has similar benefits to writing in machine code, it is a one to one relationship after all. This means that assembly code is often used when writing low level fast code for specific hardware. Until recently machine code was used to program things such as mobile phones, but with the speed and performance of languages such as C being very close to Assembly, and with C's ability to talk to processor registers, Assembly's use is declining. Code can be fast, efficient,make use of specific processor features such as special registers and it is closer to plain English, it is easier to read and write when compared to machine code. Here also the code cannot be ported to other systems and has to be rewritten
For example:
ADD 12,8

Even though Assembly code is easier to read than machine code, it is still not straightforward to perform loops and conditionals and writing large programs can be a slow process creating a mish-mash of goto statements and jumps. Third-generation programming languages(3GL) brought many programmer-friendly features to code such as loops, conditionals, classes etc. This means that one line of third generation code can produce many lines of object (machine) code, saving a lot of time when writing programs.
Imperative languages - code is executed line by line, in a programmer defined sequence. Third generation (High Level Languages) codes are imperative. Imperative means that code is executed line by line, in sequence.
For example:
dim x as integer
x = 3
dim y as integer
y = 5
x = x + y
console.writeline(x)
Would output: 8

Third generation languages(3GL) can be platform independent, meaning that code written for one system will work on another. To convert a 3rd generation program into object code requires a Compiler or an Interpreter, Hardware independence, can be easily ported to other systems and processors and programmer friendly, one line of 3rd gen is the equivalent of many lines of 1st and 2nd gen, However, the code produced might not make the best use of processor specific features unlike 1st and 2nd gen.

Fourth-generation languages(4GL) are designed to reduce programming effort and the time it takes to develop software, resulting in a reduction in the cost of software development. They are not always successful in this task, sometimes resulting in inelegant and hard to maintain code. Languages have been designed with a specific purpose in mind and this might include languages to query databases (SQL), languages to make reports (Oracle Reports) and languages to construct user interface (XUL). An example of 4th generation programming type is the declarative language. An example of a Structured Query Language (SQL) to select criminal details from a database. Declarative languages - describe what computation should be performed and not how to perform it. Not imperative!
For example: EXTRACT ALL CUSTOMERS WHERE "PREVIOUS PURCHASES" TOTAL MORE THAN $1000

It gets more interesting than that, now we have a 5th generation concept and which is called 5GL. Fifth-Generation Programming Language (5GL) is a programming language based around solving problems using constraints given to the program, rather than using an algorithm written by a programmer. Most constraint-based and logic programming languages and some declarative languages are fifth-generation languages. Fifth-generation languages are used mainly in artificial intelligence research. Prolog, OPS5, and Mercury are the best known fifth-generation languages.

Let’s look at the big picture, the big-bang of languages:

big-bang of languages

Thanks: http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~bernardy/pp/Lectures.html#sec-1

These paradigm-shifts happen so fast in our industry more than in any other industry. Not only software or programming languages, but also hardware. When I was developing websites half a decade ago, I only had to worry about computers and screen resolutions. Now, we have mobiles, tablets, computers, many other screen dimensions and device capabilities to worry about. Devices and its capabilities are getting sophisticated every day and software industry also growing very fast trying to serve the devices well.

We, programmers, could learn a concept or programming language or a design pattern today and it might well be discarded tomorrow. If you disagree with me, ask about what happened to me have studied Macromedia/Adobe Flash. Those days I was crazy happy making websites using flash , now I don't even have flash installed in my computer.

So, how do we deal with this problem? To be honest, there are more than one questions associated with this question. Before we try to answer this question, we should ask some questions ourselves to get the context right. For example, what I exactly want to do? We could just say, I'm a programmer, but we can't be just coding in every programming language or be doing everything out there falls in the software programming category.  I believe, to succeed in our industry, it's vital that we should be specific about what we want to do while having the firm understanding of the fundamental concepts. We should choose very specific areas of our profession and should get certified and should know everything possible in that specific area. Choosing very specific areas to excel and succeed has its risk, yet I don't think there is anything we could do about it. We should just be willing to take the changes as we grow. As I already mentioned a million times in my blog, I'm now working in BPM steam using Pega tool and I know it's a big risk, if there would be a better Business Process Manger out there in the market tomorrow. So,outside my work hours, I try to keep me aware of the other things happening out there in the dark.

Also, I think, it's important that we should be absolutely clear that agile is turning into a mainstream methodology, and soon only a few extinct mammoths will do waterfall. Agile has won the race. Microsoft is now working to improve agile methodology support many of its products, they also do iterative development for many of their products. IBM has launched Jazz agile platform. Pega supports mainly that.

Software is not like any other product it is often compared to. It is fundamentally different from a car or a house.  Every project is different, even if only the team is different, so there is less predictability. The industry is small, fast-moving, and there is no complete well-known set of templates and methodologies that guarantee timely delivery of a wide variety of tasks – simply because many of the best methodologies, practices, and platforms and tools are a work in progress.

So, I think, including myself, we should just stop worrying about keeping us on the edge and just keeping doing what we love doing and not to ignore the major changes. To me, It's very important to be in every race than winning a race and backing off for the next one. I see successful people in the industry, they still only know BASIC or PASCAL language.

I could give you some pointers that I think might be useful for you. In the classical sense, if you like to keep you up-to-date on your industry, you should find ways to stay informed. Many of us work in changing competitive environments. If we don't keep up with news and trends, we can miss key opportunities and can be caught unawares. That's why, for some of us, it's important to keep-in-touch with news and trends in our industries. Although keeping up with industry news may seem to be just one more thing to add to your To-Do List, there are several important benefits. First, you'll make better decisions, and you'll spot threats and opportunities early on, which can give you a competitive edge.

So how do we stay informed to keep us up-to-date..?

1. We should find a mentor. I have a few people, I look up to. A great starting point is to find a mentor within the place you work. Not only can mentors help you solve career issues and develop your career, they can provide you with a wealth of insider knowledge, as well as with the insight needed to understand it.
2. Subscribing to some popular magazines those could help us be informed. Our industry may have one or more trade organizations that you can join. These are useful, because they can help to keep you informed with their newsletters and publications, and they provide networking opportunities with meetings and conferences.
3. Seminars and conferences are great for learning about new technologies, new products, and industry trends; and they can provide ample networking opportunities.
4. Having tech friends outside work can be one of the most rewarding ways to stay on top of industry news and trends. We could have a wide pool of people to network with. People directly related to our industry are an obvious choice, but so are industry related people, customers, and people working in related fields.
5. Blogs aren't just for personal journaling anymore. Many bloggers are respected for their high quality work and honest opinion. Whatever I write happens to just be the solutions I find to the problems I face and I know my friend and readers could relate to them.
6. Keep Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and tech forums in your pocket. Yeah I'm saying it's a must that you have a smart phone:)
7. Making Time, Sharing and Using are the last and not definitely least tip I could think of to keep us up-to-date.

What programming language should I choose to excel on and why?

The first software package I ever learned is Microsoft Excel in 1997 at my school, Jaffna Hindu College. Some of our old school union people thought that the young pupil in our school should learn computer. I’m grateful to my school and I should write about my schools in another post. Computer was a very alien idea at that time to me. Probably to most of them in Jaffna. At school they plugged the computers up and showed us as an exhibit first. The Pentium D computers had Windows 95 as I remember. After months they let us touch it and play with it, that we would go in there and with instructions, we would left click on the start and go to programs > accessories and open word pad to type our names. We did this for couple of months once a week for a class period after lunch break on every Friday. It's very exciting, not having electricity at home and to experience this miracle machine for about 40 minutes every week.

In 1998, Thanks to Dugles Devanana, a politician at that time in Jaffna, had an institute opened to study computer called ‘IT Park’ and I joined with my parents support to Study Microsoft Excel. Ever since I clicked on the ‘Start’ button, everything excites me when it comes to computer. Everything’s still an absolute magic and as intact nothing understandable. Then over the cause of last 15 years, I have learnt number of programming languages. The main ones are PHP, Flash Action Scripts, ASP, JAVA and .NET. It’s really a headache to decide as to which one to go for when I start a new project.

I spent my early tech life praising php. It is still a great language for many specific type of web development. Easy to learn, easy to use, free, widely used, most hostings support, simple and sweet. Hosting applications on low budget or deploying /changing the hosting location is extremely easy and I never had any issues deploying. However, PHP is not great at scaling in terms of programming. The main problem with PHP isn't that it's not scalable. The problem is that the majority of PHP coders don't have a clue about OOP, design patterns, coding standards and simply don't know how to write scalable code although it's perfectly feasible in PHP.

For small applications, though, J2EE and .NET can really be overkill. In Java, a lot of time needs to be spent configuring and tuning Hibernate, struts-config, etc, so simple CRUD applications are usually done best in PHP.

So, it would be unfair to compare PHP with Java or .Net. PHP is best to develop simple sites. I think, we should only compare Java and .NET due to the similarity and the capabilities.

Both multi-tiered, similar computing technologies, both support “standards”, both offer different tools & ways to achieve the same goal. A lot of parallelism can be seen. Very difficult to compare and qualify the comparison because each has its own advantages & disadvantages.

So, when I think about Java,

1. Truly platform independent.
2. Free(very much) and Open Source (very little).
3. Loads of libraries and APIs available.
4. According the Java Update Advert, more than 3 billion devices use Java.
5. Very secure and stable, but comparatively slow.
6. True object oriented.
7. Methods are virtual by default and static imports available.
8. Instance-level inner classes and interface for enums.
9. As far as I see, more job opportunities.
10. Many major applications are written in Java. (For example, I’m currently working on Pega BPM suit and it’s extremely sophisticated and purely written in JAVA.)
11. Easy integration to new devices without the need to have windows.

And .NET (C# mainly)

1. No automatic fall-through from one case block to the next.
2. Strongly-typed enums.
3. By reference calls are explicit at caller AND callee.
4. Method overrides are explicit.
5. Supports versioning.
6. Structs (value types).
7. Integrated support for properties and events.
8. Can still use pointers with RAD language.
9. Can share data and use functionality with components written in many different languages.
10. Unsigned integers.
11. High precision decimal number.
12. Complex numbers.
13. Value types.
14. Lifted (nullable) types.
15. Tuples.
16. Pointers.
17. Instance-level inner classes.
18. Statement-level (local) anonymous classes.
19. Enums can implement interfaces.
20. Object initializers & Collection initializers.
21. Explicit interface implementation.
22. Reference (input/output) parameters & Output (output) parameters.
23. Runtime realization.
24. Value/primitive type constraint.
25. Constructor constraint.
26. Primitive/value type support.
27. Method references.
28. Closures.
29. Lambda expressions.
30. Expression trees.
31. Generic query language.
32. Late-bound (dynamic) type.
33. Runtime generics realization.

I feel lucky to have chosen this career path that I often get to have fun coding and doing many fun things, yet there is one thing is really annoying. New immature technologies quickly be able to gain popularity and kill giant technologies or treads. We spend learning a language taking years and by the time we become competent, there would be a new and better programing language getting attention. I have been coding in PHP, Java and in C# the last decade and the fairly new languages ROR and GO makes me nervous.

Just to write this blog post, I was reading about Go lang and Ruby on Rails. As far as I read, it’s a bit tough to write something sensible on Go with my knowledge. I understand that it’s an improved C and not a pure object oriented language, more of procedure language. Google initiated and developing to handle it’s “Big Problems”. I don’t see any big company using other than Google and the online resources and learning materials are limited.

On the other hand, ROR is now becoming extremely popular and I see why. I really want to learn ROR for many good reasons. Ruby is a programming language, and Rails is an application framework that uses Ruby. ROR lives by the principle that "convention over configuration" which is something I'm still struggling to understand. Rails is written in Ruby, which is a language explicitly designed with the goal of increasing programmer happiness. It is very true.

Now about 2 to 3 hours I’m trying different different code techniques on ROR and it’s truly a joy coding. Please check the code below and if you could think of a C# or PHP or java version of it, you will understand what I’m talking about. I guess, you could really have fun coding once you started off with ROR.

describe Bowling do
before(:each) do
@bowling = Bowling.new
endit "should score 0 for gutter game" do
20.times { @bowling.hit(0) }
@bowling.score.should == 0
end
end

So to conclude the first question I had in my previous post, I’m going to say, programing language choice should really be about the project we are going to be working on considering the,

1. Complexity.
2. Scale.
3. Type of project.
4. Resources needed.
5. Performance and security.

However, I would want to make myself really family with .NET to work on medium or large scale projects with enough budget and ROR to work on small and medium size projects with considerably low budget.

.NET to have ROR style of programing would be my dream.

It’s a never ending quest

Today, now, as any other weekend evenings; I’m ly-ing partially arching my back on the warm sand in the beach comfortably. My mind feels clean, must be this gentle breeze coming from sea towards the beach and the moon light. It’s around 7.30 PM now. No sun, but moon is on night shift. Beach side lights complaining moon’s job. Unusually few people for Sunday.

I don’t remember thinking anything when come and sit here, but then as I start to look around, the people walk, talk, lights, dogs, coconut trees, bars, restaurants and hotels; looking at these, little-little ideas/thoughts/judgments/comments start to pop inside my brain. Tomorrow is full moon day, so today; moon’s bright and beautiful lighting up the whole beach and the sea. The people are truly blessed to be here and experience this.

Mostly these chains of thoughts make me paranoid and leave me with a million questions. Why am I here? What am I doing? Who these people are?  What are they doing here? Why some are happy and some are not? Why some are rich and others are not? Why some drink a lot, shout and laugh to a point they bother others? The questions list is usually very big that I get frustrated not being able to answer any and feeling petite.  Most people seem to be comfortable agreeing with whatever the religion they follow to answer these questions somewhat irrationally and blindly. I have a need to make sense when I tell myself something. If I tell myself that I’m here because god created me, I know I will really get angry at myself easily. So, I can’t try to answer myself any of these questions relying solely on religion.

Some of the questions popped in my head are in and around the area where I’m comfortable answering.

1. What programming language should I choose to excel on and why?
2. How to keep me up-to-date with the current technologies?
3. iOS or Android and would I need a tablet?
4. Where I want to settle down?
5. What are the things I badly want to change in my personal life?
6. How I want to change the world?

Most of the time when I think about these things, I add a note to my “any.DO” app in my iOS, which is awesome BTW, and remind myself everyday to make them a routine or to complete them or make a decision on. Since I don’t have anything nice to write in my blog, I’m thinking of picking some of the things I noted in my “any.DO” relating to the some of the questions I have been asking myself and answer them in future posts. I’m typing this on my iPhone blogger app as I’m listening to some quality Jazz. It’s not something I find easy to do. I’m still struggling to acclimatize to mobile-computing; I’m still more comfortable typing on a computer.

So, I’m going to switch to Microsoft OneNote and note down the things I want to write when I post separate blog entries answering the above questions. Talking about OneNote, if you’re using any iOS devices, please try Microsoft Office OneNote. …….. ahhhhh… Also,  It’s a bit dark here and my camera doesn’t do a good job in low light conditions yet I shot some ok pictures to post along with this blog entry to give you guys a sagacity of what I’m talking about.

I would really appreciate guys, if you could email or comment your answers to the questions I talked about. I badly want to get interactive with the bloggers community and learn art of writing, but so far I couldn’t find an easy way to do that.

I’m doing so many things thinking one day or another these things are going to make sense. Hope I’m right and thank you, if you want to say to me “Hey! Who knows what’s going on? Do what you feel like doing.” Life seems to be a never ending pursuit of answers to so many questions we have and as we experience new many things every day we get the answers and forget the questions.

Discovering - Finding the real me.

Finding the real me is an enlightening experience. I believe knowing ourselves are very important in order to know what we can do with ourselves. I become self-sufficient and do things for myself, for once. I'm no longer needy and become utterly grateful for all the things people have done for me in the past. Finding the real me is a time of harmony because I develop the philosophy or belief system that will carry me throughout the rest of my life. From the day we remember being as a kid till now we have gone through a lot, processed a massive amount of information, judged a lot of incidents/people and dealt with many problems.

How do I know that I found myself or I know me. Well, I don't; as a matter of fact I don't even know how much I know about me or how much more there to know about me. I would make a guess that no body can' t, unless you're a religiously crafty person making others fool, I don't think anybody can.

So, why am I writing about this at this point of time or what made me write about this today. Today, I found myself getting up early, took a wash, eat, cleaned my place, did the washing and many other things without any tired or any frustration as to how many thing there to be done. Today, I'm just keeping myself calm by some miracle and doing everything I had planned one by one without pushing myself much.

When you become more aware of yourself, know about your habits, know things around you better and getting used to dealing with things of similar nature, everything becomes so easy and less challenging. Basically, we become experienced in one routine of life, that routine becomes easy to follow and less challenging.

I feel like I'm so comfortable with my current life-style that things get done on its own. Which is something I don't think takes me in a good direction. I'm one of those people like challenge and like to have goals. I have not reached my goals, but in a narrow sense I neither see any challenges. I feel like I should change some things around to keep me challenged. Could be a new project or new job or something new that should make my head spin:)

Knowing oneself, is kind of a confusing subject to think about. What I really mean by knowing myself is that Now I feel like I know what kind of situations makes me happy, what make me sneeze, what makes me sick, what should I do to make me healthy, how I should plan my Sunday morning to keep me happy. Many other things I was doing so badly and learnt to do better. Just one another example is, recently I met with an accident and I should now be able to deal with a police case without much stress. It feel so much better when you know how to do things.

Now, just to keep this blog post interesting, I'm going to give you some pointers or some of the things you could do and follow to find yourself.

1. Go to a place where there is no body. Sit there relaxed and loose yourself thinking about the current problems you have. Go through every detail of the problems you have. Just think about them unconsciously while you enjoy the peaceful surrounding where you're without anybody near to you. Do this at least an hour then automatically you will see some ideas/solutions to your problems popping in  your head. Think of the solutions you get consciously and choose the right ones to make-happen. Whenever I have problems or whenever I find myself alone peacefully, I do this.
2. It's also a good idea to practice to have a checklist checked in your head all the time. It really helps keep me focused. Whether it's a short term goal or a long term one, just add it to the list in your head and keep them checked all the time.
3. Write down all the major goals somewhere you can see everyday, big and clear. So you would be able to remember the things you have to do and you could keep track of the time as well. If there is anything I learnt in my university, it would be time, I got second class upper degree where I should have got first class because I gave an individual project a day late. So, time is very important for success guys and Now I'm very happy that I'm getting much better at completing things on time. 
4. Another thing is that when you want to do something or get something big done, start with a clean state of mind. Recently, I'm lucky to work on some interesting defects at work and every time when I start looking at a problem with a clean and clear state of mind, I find myself with a fairly good solution that fixes the problem without breaking anything else.
5. One of the biggest problems I'm trying to overcome is that I have this need to be accepted by all or liked/loved by all. I think, this is coming from the human need to be a hero. This is one of the biggest problem for most of our guys. I want to settle down on something once I'm OK with what I'm doing. Nowadays I keep remind myself that I don't need to be loved by everyone all the time. If I'm not quite sure then I seek help from some few people I trust. Not everyone is a saint and we don't have to seek approval from everyone for everything we do and I'm continuing to fail to understand this. Hopefully, I'll get better at understanding this when I meet more bad people:)
6. I feel that not depending on anyone for some crucial things in life is one of my strengths. This is purely because of my childhood in Jaffna. If you're born and brought up in Jaffna, you'll get this character automatically, you don't even have to try.
7. Help. I really only want to help the ones those who really need it. I hate to help the lazy ones. Also, I try not to disturb others to help. Some people say seeking help is as equally good as helping others. They must be right.

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others" - Mahathama Ghandi.  

8. One thing I learn from the accident I met with in this January is that we should expect everything all the time and we should kinda be ready for it, if possible. Starting with taking an umbrella before rain till having some money in the bank saved thinking in case if I loose my job. This is something I couldn't make happen in my life. I'm trying so hard, but mostly there is a bad word interrupts - ignorance.
9. Questing everything and Enjoying solitude are the two best characteristics of mine, however, I don't see  how that helps in Sri Lanka. I have heard people say those are good qualities though:)

That's all I got for today out of the excitement of discovering myself:) 

One more important thing, as I have mentioned earlier, I met with an accident recently and a lawyer truly helped me get through some of the problems in the process of claiming the insurance money. She takes part in an organization called "Business and Professional Women Sri Lanka" that helps people. I would appreciate, if you guys could help them raise money. Please visit: http://www.bpwsrilanka.lk/projects.html

My last post on blog.activj.net

This is going to be my last post on blog.activj.net and I'll be blogging on one of the blogging CMSs or on blogger.com as no longer Google will support my blog integration. That means, No longer I can synch my blog.activj.net with Google's blogger server. I have been doing this for a long time for lotz of reasons. Mainly, I thought having my blog with google will drive web-traffic to my website. I'm really sad that I can no longer do this, but I guess everything has a good reason to happen. I'm sure I'll find an alternative way.

Other than this, as most of you already know, I lost my last job and I'm looking for a good job. I think I mentioned this in my last post as well. And, now I'm in a nice new place where I can do a lot in my PC (Ah, by the way, I'm a PC guy - Not MAC :p). Besides the fact that I lost my job, last week was pretty good and busy... doing what?...mmm .. Doing some CSS corrections to my website. My web home page was acting funny on Google Chrome browser, now It's fixed. That was a CSS issue. And some of the problems with Adsense Ad placement is fixed.

Again Java's come handy after Google's app-engine allows everyone to start develop apps on appspot using Java. I don't really know anything about python, so I was worried when they introduce app-engine only works with pythan. I tried creating an app, works fine. So far I couldn't come up with any good ideas I can use Google app engine to my website. Whole new world of opportunities are opening up on cloud computing, but I don't really know where to start. Now my twitter is synched with all the other accounts I have, like google buzz, youtube, orkut, myspace, hi5, facebook, picasa, MSN, Yahoo and other da da ta ta daaaa.. And everything synchs perfectly.

Now all the social networking sites are chained nicely. My twitter account updates google buzz, Google buzz updates my GTalk status then that goes to my SIP clients. Everything happens nicely. So, now it's just matter of updating something on my ChromeBrid - That updates everywhere.

Summer, wonderful world to look at, happy part of the year, I'm just chillin applying for jobs doing some serious learning & meeting and talking to my friends. Check my new blog soon, till then a good bye to all of you.

2010 - Need an R & D Job - மாட்டு பொங்கல் வாழ்த்துக்கள்

Allo all & Allo 2010. 'Allo' is tamil version of Hallo. 2009 was good; actually It was great.

Let me list my

2009 achievements.

1. Jeyaram. BSc (Hon) [ Not a normal person anymore ]
2. Found a Job as soon as I graduated.
3. Met trillions of new people.
4. France VISA - [ Never wanna talk about ]
5. Labelled myself as a true Google fan. I love Google.
   The only thing makes me high, Checking Google's new product launches.
6. Completed my JAVA api - SMPSI fully (Tested 1000 times, Documentation is ready)
7. 3 "ACTIV" projects to fill my pocket.
8. Normal cook to Great cook.
9. Revamping THEACTIV.COM with Shiya _/||\_ & Ratha ( Pending )
10. Learned a bit of Flash AS3 and ASP.NET.
11. Earned some good friends at Platt halls. ( My uni hostel )
12. And many more small ones.... I mean, regular size ones

So what 2010 brought me? So what am I up to? Now, I need to find a Job somewhere in R & D even If I don't get paid much. I need a Job where I can think out of the box and use my creativity and do something amazing. I know I can do amazing things, but I need a better platform., I mean a better Job which allows me to be creative, allows me practise my own way of doing things and so on and so forth.. If I like or excited about anything, I can learn whatever it is quickly. That's why I always say my mates, I would pay Google, If I can get a Job in Google.:p It's a metaphor, Obviously I can't pay Google, but you know what I mean.

My lecturer told me "You can't get an R & D Job with out PhD". He must be wrong.. He is Jealous ...

I though of posting something on my blog on the first day of 2010, but I was deep inside my bed mattress. Then woke up on the 6th and made a test HD youtube video using my mobile. Check it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb9MMbekfFE

Now I'm trying to establish a habbit of updating my Twitter, Picasa, Youtube & blog regularly. So, In 2086, in my 100s, I can look back and say "Fellows! That was me."

I wish you a best மாட்டு பொங்கல் & my deepest sympathy to all those who suffer in Haiti. What can I possibly do to help my fellow Haitians?

Days pass by so fast

Now it's almost four months from my last post. Time passes so fast and I don't know how I get busy without doing anything. Organizing my time and finishing things as I plan is simply a pain, and In many occasions it doesn't work. I schedule things then something very important comes in and I reschedule everything all over again.

I wanted to update my website or post a new blog entry on every Sundays, but it didn't work. Always, something is there to puts this plan on hold. Last week, I had to do my laundry. Always something is there to put something else on hold. We do batch process. We process a very big queue of thing from the day we are born till the day we die weather we like it or not. I know, .... my dump philosophy, but I don't care, I like to look at things on a broad timespan. ERRRRRRR stop.. ok

Last week I happened to meet one of my favourite lecturers and got a chance to talk to him about a 15 minutes. We talked about all sort of things and finally he told me "You need to relax jeyaram., move things a bit slow. Think more. Do less". He's absolutely right. I start to do things immediately without thinking much. Actually, I'm scared of being late, so I start immediately which make the scenario worse. For an instance; If I want to design something, I start designing it without imaging/picturising in my mind how the end design going to be. I can take bit more time to think about it and finalize the design in my mind and put my thoughts quickly into the actual design and get it done, rather than designing it without thinking in the beginning, and get everything messed up.

Always this was the case in my life. When I start playing football, I just hit the ball the way I want, the way it's easy for me. Just hit, no matter where my team mate is or no matter where the goalpost is, just hit. Then I figured it out, always have a rough idea of where your team mates are, and take the ball, stop it, control it and pass it on to one of your team mates.

I learn things every sec. Things keep getting better and better. My mates around me helps me a lot to figure things out ; grow. I love the whole thing. As big cinema stars say, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone behind the scene, but there is no scene here though. Some make scene, some are real; I just like the real part and just like to ignore the scene part.

I hate when people ain't real. I hate people pretend to like you. The most annoying thing in this "English" western world is, you say "Hi, hello, how are you, you all-right, I'm fine.... " whether you like the person/situation or not. As many of you know, in Tamil or in any other Asian languages we rarely say, "Please". Once I went to a swim pool and asked the entrance ticket issuing lady "Two Adult-Swim-tickets". Then she got a bit angry and she was like "Please...." and waiting for me to repeat it. Then I said again the whole thing " Two Adult-Swim-Tickets Please..", humbly. Then she was happy...

All just drama. I want to just let go of all the pointless drama and the people. I just need real people and real things all around me and Of cause, I'm real , I'm real to everyone and I offer real things, not the fake ones.

Hopefully, I will post something interesting next week. I'm gonna listen to some new good songs and sleep.