Category: General

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays & a great New Year 2021!

At the outset, let me hope you and yours are at a very safe distance from the COVID 19 chaos. Perhaps for the first time in the last several years, we may own a diary that might have similar entries for almost the entire year to which we bid farewell in another fortnight. Largely confined to the comforts of home, exploring the world that’s within us than the one outside, most of us have had to go through several first of its kind emotions and life experiences, which hopefully will stay as a unique hallmark to the Year 2020.

It’s folly to imagine a celestial rearrangement on the wake of a New Year that’d put the invisible creature that grounded us for the year in its entirety out of action. Several hundred thousands of our brave fellow beings across the globe have put their life on the line in serving those who were infected; many others have worked hard round the clock to help produce a remedy to this unprecedented pandemic situation. Their Herculean efforts shall yield positive results sooner, enabling us to set our social life in motion again. That’s our biggest hope for the New Year 2021!

In the ‘half-filled glass’ scheme of things, this might be one of those rare New Year occasions, when our personal goals take a backseat on our New Year resolution list, giving way to the welfare of humanity at large!

The festive season, like every year, brings with it an opportunity to remind oneself of the beautiful treasures in life, the prominent of which to me is your glorious company and strong influence in my life. I stay eternally grateful for that. Thank you!

Exercising all precautions to stand against the spread of CORONA virus, as we step into the holiday season, here’s wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas, happy holidays and a great New Year 2021!

–R Rajesh

Joyous Season, memorable holidays and an amazing Year 2020!

In the month of September this year, during the early hours on a Friday, at a busy Coimbatore – Salem highway, the chauffer who was driving us from Kochi to Bangalore collapsed, losing complete control of his vehicle.  Being in a “self-driving car” non-powered by any Artificial Intelligence was first of its kind experience for me and hopefully, one off its kind too. For almost a minute the car traced zigzag on the highway, occasionally hitting the road divider and eventually crashing on to it. Like every other event in my life, I owe it to God that I’m alive to strike a conversation with you on yet another festive season.

That one minute, which seemed an eternity had me staring at a blurred line that separated life and death. Post the event, for several days at stretch I couldn’t help but reflect on the aforesaid incident from various angles, only to realise that being alive is one’s greatest fortune and if that’s amid goodness of other fellow beings, it’s indeed a generous bonus. With no second thought, let me say, human relations are what matters to me the most, perhaps more than ever before.

When our driver regained his consciousness almost immediately after the incident, he recounted how he gently took his foot off the accelerator when his vision went blurry, bringing the speed of his car down substantially. Off the top of my head, I fail to find a Year before Twenty Nineteen that brought me enormous material gains. But had the driver unconsciously put his foot down on the gas pedal, the outcome on that eventful Friday in September 2019 would have been entirely different, and all my material achievements some meaningless affairs. I’m all the more convinced that the most valuable wealth that I’m in possession of is one-hop access to kind hearted individuals like you, instrumental in shaping my blissful destiny. Thank you!

We are a few days shy of another brand New Year, but I wouldn’t spend a minute drafting resolutions that I hardly follow through, instead would gratefully remind myself of the richness of your company; also celebrate the fact that I continue to exist to live life.

When I turned off the phone alarm at 4:00 in the morning, the screen displayed the day and date as Friday, 13 September. I stay away from all sorts of superstitions, still my mind suggested something terrible was to happen, and so it did! Since then I’ve learned it’s a far better option to make positive suggestions to the subjective mind and expect only favourable events to unfold and so it will. The New Year 2020 sounds so cool; let’s all put together some positive mental images of life events that’ll bring glory, peace, harmony and joy in everyone’s life in the coming year.

As always, with immense gratitude, here’s wishing you & your loved ones a joyous season, memorable holidays and an amazing Year 2020!

–R Rajesh

SEASON’S GREETINGS, HAPPY HOLIDAYS, MERRY CHRISTMAS & A GRAND YEAR 2019

I’m blessed to have known you. Can’t thank you enough for coming by this space to lend me your ears for a few moments, perhaps not the first time, if we’ve known each other for over a year. It has become a habit to scribble away a few thoughts at the fag end of the Year, which if there was an option, I would have preferred it to be a face-to-face, heart-to-heart dialogue. The retrospective mood that most of us get into at this time of the year, and the hopes we raise for a more promising future spanning next twelve months, I reckon, makes this juncture the most suitable one to touch base, renew and strengthen our link.

Historically, my New Year resolutions never yielded me six pack abs, fattened savings or sought-after skills on the CV. The knowledge and importance of a reasonable fitness regime, prudent spending and new life skill acquisitions don’t get granted any special powers on the first of January every year to be able to promptly translate into actions. We can give a shot at any noble goal at any part of the year. So of course, I’m not really building my hopes around a new calendar that’ll soon find its place on my wall, and will continue to stay open to everything that life has in offer, be it in Winter, Spring, Summer or Autumn.

But there’s something about the chilly weather, the street side illuminations, the Christmas Carols and Caravans that reminds me of all the good things that ever happened to me in my life. Without a doubt, the one that I cherish the most are the contacts that I happened to make with good-hearted souls like you, the fun we had, and the lessons learned from it. To the unseen force that made it all happen, I stay eternally grateful. 

So, with another year almost behind us, and a new one beckoning, just when we all take a relatively long pause to take stock of bygone events, realign future goals, recharge our batteries, reconnect with the wonderful humans surrounding us, I don’t want to miss an opportunity to repeat like a parrot that our relationship matters to me hell of a lot and that I wouldn’t have been what I’m today but for your kindness and affection. New Year resolutions hardly worked for me in the past but reconnecting with you have always made me happy. I feel tremendously thankful for your company and look forward to another great year that’ll put me in close contact with many more guiding souls like you.

Here’s wishing you from the bottom of my heart, Season’s Greetings, Happy & Memorable Holidays, a very Merry Christmas & a Grand New Year 2019!

Season’s Greetings & New Year 2018 Wishes

Thank you for stopping by. Spare me a few minutes, if you will, perhaps one last time this Calendar Year. Likely, the title of this essay has given it away on what to expect in this write up. It’s definitely that, but not just that.

I had the practice too of preparing a ‘To Do’ list with things ought to be done at the dawn of a New Year and to follow through with for the rest of my life. Most of what’s in it was not too different from the very commonly found New Year resolutions such as to spend smartly, acquire & maintain new life skills, strike an awesome work–life balance and to achieve an envious nearly perfect WHR. It all consistently fell flat, though, well ahead of the Blue Monday of New Year, and thereafter the frictional force of ‘what-the-hell’ effect applying sudden brake on will power, flagging everything in the ‘To Do’ list as “pending”, only to be picked up again afresh and rather unchanged roughly eleven months later. I’ve made up my mind, therefore, not to fall into the trap of imagining that with a change of calendar comes a new order in life. Instead, it’s the very famous five minute rule that I fall back on, every time I’m inspired to do new and noble things in life. Now, that is not to say I hate to reflect on the glory days of life and lessons learned in a dozen months’ time during the fag end of the year and do all that’s possible to stay optimistic for a better year ahead. I love this joyous season and all its celebrations just like most of you, for sure.

While I extend to you my sincere good wishes for all your grand endeavors in the year to come, I realise you are wiser to hit a gymnasium right now if you wish to, and go into the New Year one pound or half less, than having to wait another week, rather adamantly, bringing about an all important change in life only with a new calendar in place.

I asked for your time, prominently, to let you know how grateful I’m for having been able to establish a contact with you, more so for all the great life changing learnings from it. Thank God for setting up a channel for our link and helping it from weakening away over time. At minimum, I feel so humbled by the the immense generosity, kindness and affection showered on me by you and many others on occasions innumerable. Going into the New Year, having you around just a call away, I believe, is the greatest asset I happen to be blessed with. The occasions such as New Year is just a convenient excuse for me to reach out to tell you how much our relationship means to me, and how grateful I feel for the same. Thank you so much for being there, especially on occasions when it mattered.

I’d be failing in my duty if I take this note to conclusion without extending you my best wishes for a great holiday season and a New Year to follow. I mean it from my heart when I say, I almost always include you in my prayers and here’s wishing you & your loved ones cherishing holiday memories, a great festive season, and a fantabulous Year 2018.

 

 

 

 

–R Rajesh

Season’s Greetings and Advance New Year 2017 Wishes

Either we know each other fairly well, so you were ushered here to read what I’ve written, or maybe you got dropped here quite accidentally, browsing away the World Wide Web. Either way, grateful for coming by.

For more than a decade, I’ve diligently followed the ritual of publishing here a note, just around this time of the year when we’ve at hand a brand new calendar waiting to occupy our desk. It’s astonishing how fast time flies, as memories of scribing something similar a year ago is still so vivid. Life wasn’t in anyway stagnant between then and now and so do I presume it was for you too. Changes I’ve had in my life over the last dozen months are of scale so massive that a pause beckons to reflect, more so to digest it.Glad, we get a ‘new beginning’ once every twelve months (or at least we believe so).

It’s that time of the year when we feed ourselves with a double dose of optimism and may have in possession a long list of resolutions that we so hope to get right finally. Personally, I’ve almost always failed to live upto my own agenda crafted on occasions as similar as this, so it’s common sense not to anticipate a perfect life transformation, just because I’ll soon have a new blank diary to journal life’s events. As such it’s hard to envisage flying cars and celestial rearrangements featuring on the opening page of my new diary, therefore I’d prefer to believe that life’s not going to be too different next year too. I do pray for the wisdom to remain open to learn from all lessons that life has in offer.

Nothing inspires me more than the human endeavours and all the hard work that goes into it. So be assured, I’ll continue to root for you for every noble goal that you have aimed to conquer. All the same, I do expect that if you desire to learn to swim, you’d jump into a pool NOW (under supervision) than wait for the New Year Celebrations to conclude. As always, wishing you the best!

I’m happy to know you and thankful to learn from you. I thank God constantly for every single opportunity that has come on my way, prominently the ones that connected us. And occasions such as New Year are excuses for me to get back talking to you and to sincerely thank you for being there for me. I know the New Year 2017 is still some days away. I did have a choice to wait until I grab my new diary to reach out to you for expressing my gratitude or to follow the dictates of my heart of doing it right”Here & Now”. Well, that was easy. As they say, “For Good things, delay not,” not certainly till the dawn of a New Year. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for everything you’ve done for me, and here’s wishing you Wonderful Holidays, Very Merry X’mas and a Happy & Prosperous New Year 2017!

New Year Wishes – Year 2016

When the clock hands sweep two more rounds, our life takes a turn, or at least that’s what some of us believe. Not this year alone, but for several years that have gone by, many of us perhaps anticipated a complete make over once every dozen months. Three weeks into changing our calendars, a good number of us tore apart a list of life changing activities , quite seriously drafted over a New Year Eve, on every New Year Eve maybe,  one that’s not too different from what we may have in possession today. Agreed, all of it is past and is way behind us, but with a fresh start in place we might be brimming with confidence, backed up by an unprecedented optimism to run through a brand new set of resolutions that’ll keep our waistline in check, maintain a steady spend pattern, polish CV with new impressive skill sets, and last but not the least, strike a balance in life. May it be so!

A research says that a goal set on Monday or similar “temporal landmarks” is pursued more seriously than otherwise. While I don’t know of a data that talks the same way of a goal set on a New Year, I wish you achieve all of that you’ve in your mind in the year to come. Personally, I continue to believe that to gain something in life, we ought to set a goal, develop strong will, work hard, maintain enthusiasm, persevere and be grateful. For that, we can take a call ‘Here and Now’, not necessarily only on a New Year Eve.  Well, that makes my New Year look Black & White, devoid of any thrilling action. But when the world is taking a pause to reflect on the glory days of life in the past twelve months, laugh away the mistakes made, overcome the pain of losses, and look forward to offer a warm welcome to a New Year, let me stop by you to say , “Thank you”, for whatever role you played in my life, not just in the year that’s passing by, but for ever and a day, in making me what I’m today or putting me where I stand.

If we have known each other for some years now, you know well of my ritual to reach over to you on this very occasion, largely to let you know that you are in my thoughts, strong as ever before, and that I stay grateful to you for being there for me. I’ve always held my faith onto the invisible architect, who I believe, carefully constructs moments after moments in our life, even that of connecting us through Channels that, at times, appear so very strange. It’s foolish not to say “Thank God” in a note that has gratefulness painted all over it.

And if life is made up of many moments, why not spend some of it on the last day of this year in Fun and Celebration. Like you, I hardly fancy a New Year sans difficult events. All the same, I hope we can all pump in enough positivity to as much of moments as we can in the coming year for a flourishing life. So before you get busy with the fireworks tonight, here’s wishing you, your friends & family, from the bottom of my heart, a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous Year 2016.

Wishing a Grand Year 2015

In essence, this is a Thank You note! Just that to do so, I’m leveraging strategic part of the Calendar Year. Like the previous years, I say again that I don’t nurture any expectation to see my life going down a new road full of roses & only roses just coz starting tomorrow I’d have a new calendar to look at. Most of us know life incessantly offers varying flavours of experience, be it the first month of an Year or the last one; it hardly makes a difference. I hesitate to believe that we ought to wait to flip through a dozen months on our calendar to adminster a positive change in life. As they say it can be “Here and Now” not necessarily post a New Year Party hangover.

Well, then that begs an explanation of why I’m doing what I’m doing now: (i) historically, I’ve shown up at this time of the year, every year, to reinforce our connection and I continue to love doing that (ii) all of us tend to be in a reflective mood around this period, taking stock of all moments in the last twelve months that would have made our Mom feel proud, some otherwise, as well to beg forgiveness for the mistakes committed, also to thank God for giving strength to accept life’s event with a sense of equanimity. As much as I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to you on a daily basis, it might seem a rather weird act, so it’s perhaps best done at a juncture as this one, when we all of us seem to stay in such thoughtful mood.

So, thank you to have chosen to connect with me one way or the other, more so for maintaining it. Thank God for making that happen. I want you to know that I’ve been hugely benefitted by the company you offered, by the kind help rendered on occasions innumerable. Packaged alongside this expression of gratitude is also my best wishes to you for a grand Year 2015, add to it my prayers for a balanced life.

Rock the Year 2014 Farewell party, and have a marvelous Year 2015!

Seasons Greetings & New Year 2014 wishes

I’m a bit early than usual. The intent of course is not to get it done with, but to express myself, before you all get busy with the holiday actions & New Year Celebrations. I’ve never been so fond of New Year hype, because like many of you, I’d think that the positive changes in life can be brought about anytime and not necessarily as a part of New Year resolution. Plus, to tag a Year as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ seems folly, as there never was a major shift in the regular pattern of life everytime I changed my calenders. Life may continue to throw surprises, some pleasant, some not so.

Perhaps a slab of one dozen month is a reasonable checkpoint at which one could engage in self reflection on the progress made thus far. In that sense, let’s hope we use this occasion to celebrate the joy in life, leave behind all miserable moments, all the same carrying the learning from it into a fresh set of another twelve months. Personally, the year that’s bidding farewell to us in a handful of days time did make me look a miserable man at times. That’s just one view though. Through a different coloured glass, I realize how profound a learning experience all of them happened to be. My hope is to use all such learning to translate life’s events into positive experiences.

All personal musings aside, I’m here to tell you how grateful I’m for your company. Being connected with you through a channel set up by someone unseen is to me one of my true assets. Thank you for being there and I want you to know that you stand the reason for my smile on situations innumerable. Along with my wishes to you for only happiness in the year to come, my prayers for wisdom to take life as it comes and look at its events with great equanimity. Wish you pleasant holidays and a promising Year 2014!

New Year Wishes 2013 – In Advance

In a couple of days, I’ll make another attempt to be good, stay good. Sounds familiar? Also familiar maybe this space on the Web, where I scribble away my thoughts for you to read, roughly this time of the year, every year. Can’t thank you enough to spare me some time at a juncture when in all likelihood you may be quite busy preparing to see off CY 2012 and merrily welcome New Year 2013. Whatever may be your mode of celebration, here’s wishing you a joyous experience.

Personally, I don’t expect to see drastic changes to any attributes of my lifestyle, just because a cycle of twelve months is coming to a conclusion in two days time and a new one arriving. And I don’t believe in waiting to flip over one dozen page of a calendar before jotting down a list of life changing items to be performed, and then stare at it later with a sigh of disappointment for not having made a sustained effort to achieve it and to strike each one out as ‘Job done’. Neither do I believe that the spacing of inevitable events in different phases of life, some of which we may like and some we dislike, has any business with the twelve month cycles. Agreed, some things in life will change for sure: like the daily dairy that I maintain. It’ll carry a fresh smell and every single entry in there, I hope, shall carry a positive intent. It’s foolish of me, though, to even imagine that I’ll only have happy episodes to scribe in there. New year or not, pattern of events in life shall remain much the same, with possibly no escape from the dualities of existence. Pray, we develop enough inner strength to accept all events in life with great composure.

In retrospection, I’m thankful for all good things happened in the last twelve months, glad to have met many a wonderful people, fortunate to have learned a number of useful lessons, sorry to have made some mistakes, happy to have moved on, regret to have lost few connections and grateful for all opportunities. I wish the coming twelve months brings me in company of many new faces, while I’ll make all efforts to make sure the familiar ones stay closer to my heart.

Lastly, the blah-blah above was not the real intention of writing this note, but to make sure I don’t miss an occasion as this to show up and express my deep felt gratitude to YOU for being there for me and helping me stay positive, one way or the other. Thank you!

Here’s wishing you and your family a very happy and prosperous Year 2013!

New Year Wishes – Year 2012

Dear friend,

Ha, finally it’s concluding. Pardon me for starting this one on a very personal note. I’ve been wanting to spend a day harking back on some big changes in my life, both professional and personal. And I think there isn’t a better day than today to do so, when the whole world would bring down the curtain on a twelve month long period and welcome the arrival of another dozen months, filled with immense potential to fulfill all resolutions that’d open up today. I am not a big fan of New Year Celebrations, coz just like you, I know it’s only a calendar on the wall that gets replaced. All other things in life, almost, seems to stay the same. But this time around I was in need of a checkpoint to reflect and digest on some wondrous events in life that unfolded in the last several months. And so I am happy that an eventful Year 2011 is finally giving way to its successor.

I have had the taste of joy and sorrow, successes and failures, gains and losses, and many other dualities of existence in the year that’s passing by. Tell me if you know someone who had a different pattern in their life. It’d be foolish of me to expect the coming year to offer me only roses all the way, but I would certainly wish to have a life filled with many positive moments in the New Year that’s marching in. I wish and hope the same for you as well.

In the Year 2011 that’s to become history in a few hours from now, if I’ve hit the Losada Line most part of the year, that’s solely because of some wonderful human relationships. I don’t believe I’ve any better asset than the people who have connected with me through one channel or the other. And so the main reason to show up, just like every year on this day, is to express my deep felt gratitude to you for being there for me and for helping me stay positive, one way or the other. Thank you .

Also, I wish you good luck with the list of resolutions that you’ve prepared for yourself in the coming year and pray you don’t fall prey to the events that’d fall on January 16 2012, Monday.

Wishing you a good Year 2012 ahead…

Taming Sakila

Just under two months ago I decided to embark on a journey through the Certification roadmap of the Worlds most Popular Open Source Database. They say, Certification isn’t a substitute for real world experience. Who says it is? But it certainly has the element to motivate someone to go after a new technology, just the way it occurred to me. This morning, the journey that I’ve mentioned above completed rather satisfactorily, leaving me in possession all possible titles from the MySQL Certification roadmap viz CMDEV, CMDBA and CMCDBA. I’m happy is an understatement.

My entry into the world of database has nothing to do with any recent announcement from Sun, but does have a connection with an announcement from our CEO, published well over a year ago. Since then, MySQL came up in all serious conversations at Sun and that perhaps is one main factor that encouraged me to go after a technology with such a massive installation base. I regret to have taken some time before finally going for it, but the learning curve was extremely smooth and exciting.

In general, I spend a lot of time reading books (not necessarily technical) and there are some books (read technical) that I value more than others which includes Practical Unix and Internet Security, Learning Perl, Mastering Regular Expressions, Perl Cookbook to name a few. The book MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide easily falls into the aforesaid category for its simplicity, clarity and richness in content. Thanks to Safari Books Online, I could thoroughly utilize an online copy of MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide to prepare for MySQL 5.0 DBA and Developer Exams. To make it curt, this one is strongly recommended.

A similar material is available for candidates preparing for the Certified MySQL 5.1 Cluster DBA exam and its details are available here.

So if any of you feel it’s time for you to tame Sakila and then show up for a test to prove you have done so, please make use of the resources as mentioned above, or find a training program at a suitable time and location, read the faqs, create a VUE ID* , register for an exam and GO FOR IT with no second thoughts. Oh yeah…don’t forget to check out these sample Questions before the test. Good luck!

*Beginning on July 31st, 2009 MySQL Exams will no longer be delivered by Pearson VUE. For more details click here.

Solaris Cluster 3.2 Training at Hyderabad

As I write this note, I am sitting at Hyderabad airport awaiting the boarding call for my flight to Bangalore. The flight is delayed by more than two hours. That leaves me with ample time to introduce my new friends, whom I met for Solaris Cluster 3.2 training (ES 345) here in Hyderabad They are all from Big Blue:

I’m tempted to remind all that there exist a certification exam for Solaris Cluster, the details of which can be found here.
Good weekend to all.

New Year Wishes!

Today being the last day of Year 2008, one would be pardoned to spend some portion of this day in recollections about the year that’s passing by and for setting dreams and goal for the year that’s coming by. It’s not for the first time that we’d indulge in an exercise of this nature. Several New Years have come and gone, several resolutions made, several of them met, many ones broken. Life’s giving us one more opportunity to correct our mistakes, celebrate yet another New Year, revise our goal to set it to a noble and the highest one, for which we shall always be thankful to the invisible power who has brought us all together in this third planet from Sun.

I’m certain, when we examine moments from our past (read Year 2008), we would have some that would bring smile on our face, some that would bring tears in our eyes, some that would disappoint us, some very frustrating moments and a few really promising ones. The very excitement in life lies perhaps in getting the taste of an equal measure of all dualities of existence. Naturally, it isn’t wise to expect or hope for favourable events alone in the Year 2009 that we are about to welcome. We’d however wish that we get a fresh beginning for things that went awfully wrong in the past, gain a fresh momentum for our journey towards the desired destiny and a touch of freshness in our hope for a well balanced existence, devoid of terrible incidents as the ones that we witnessed in recent past. A New Year, without doubt, is one right occasion to produce such strong wishes and prayers.

Personally, I have had my share of success, failures, disappointments, excitements, joy and sorrow in the year that we are about to bid farewell to. But when I look back, the moments spent with my relatives, friends, colleagues,my training participants and all loved ones are the prominent memories that my mind generously throws up at me. To them, who have taken immense interest in me, I owe a lot and with a great sense of gratitude and affection, here is wishing them all a very happy, peaceful and prosperous Year 2009!

Longing for Some Good News!

Pick up any daily, seek a good news and the search fails. If it was the global economic slowdown that showed up everywhere until last two days, its about the Mumbai shoot-out now. While very few understood the economic slowdown, no one would ever know a ‘reason’ for terror in Mumbai. it’s sad, it’s horrifying, it’s shattering.

Even the men who did this wouldn’t know why they did this; acts of this nature would ever have any reason?? Even to call it insane is an insult to the language, for anyone who possess some human element wouldn’t even think of anything of this sort!!

My heartfelt prayers for all those who died, my sincerest condolences to all those who lost their loved ones and my wishes for every single soul toiling hard to bring Mumbai back to normality. Is there anything else I can do here? Unfortunately not.

Without Java, You Can’t Get to All Parts of Internet

It’s the UK Watchdog who says what’s on my title, resulting in an ad ban of the iPhone in UK. What has iPhone got to do with Java? Well, nothing. That’s precisely why Apple’s claim of “You never know which part of the internet you’ll need … which is why all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone,” in an advertisement was found to be misleading, for Java, that powers quite a number of websites, is missing in iPhone! Want to hear more about it from press? Read this

Celebrate the Independence Day

On a telephonic conversation with my parents, a week back or so, when I conveyed to them about my journey to Delhi for a training on the week of India Independence Day, I could feel a pause and then a sigh of anxiety on the other end. They had every reason to be anxious, especially after a series of unfortunate events like serial bomb blasts, unfolding itself in some of the well-known places in India. Some one else advised, before I set out my journey to Delhi this week, to try and keep myself away from all crowded locations on the day, when India would celebrate its 62nd Independence Day. As an Indian, it isn’t encouraging, having to celebrate the country’s freedom with a mind that’s not completely free from fear. And it’s unfortunate that the situation is such as above and that many wouldn’t know whom to point the finger at for such a sorry state of affairs.

Having said all these, it’s no doubt a matter of pride, remembering India to be the motherland of some great visionaries, whose inspiring words are reasons for solace and hope for all of us. And with our country finding its way to the list of Gold Medal Winners in the worlds biggest stage for sports, one would only be hopeful to see such fabulous stories of human achievements repeating itself for our Nation and that all of us would continue to strive for such perfect accomplishments in our respective fields that includes but not limited to Arts, Agriculture, Science, Sports, Spirituality and Technology, placing India among the top contributors to the world in all aspects mentioned above. Wouldn’t that be a reason to feel proud of our Nation and hold its flag flying high? Well and truly yes and so be it.

On a day as this, it isn’t sufficient to look forward to a promising future, but would also be appropriate to sit in retrospection, remembering the heroic deeds of thousands of Freedom fighters, paying them tribute at least in thoughts. Honestly, I have never been able to feel with my heart any amount of pain while reading about the freedom struggle in India! Their pain, their struggles, only they knew. People like me who is living in an era much forward to the pre-independence period cannot even touch one dimension of the pain that the freedom fighters went through to gain Independence. The magnitude of sufferings of many Indians during the course of fight for freedom is indeed hard to imagine. All I can say is, I’d be gasping for breath if I walk a few kilometers at stretch, I’d be wanting for food if I starve for a day, leave alone marching 240 miles on foot, fasting for weeks and that too not for any selfish reasons, but for the sake of generations to follow, which is you and me. It’s very clear, they weren’t ordinary men, who fought for our freedom, but brave souls, who lived and died for a noble cause. It’s their victory that we celebrate today, saluting them mentally for all the heart-throbbing chapters that they wrote in the Indian History

Lastly, before I leave this space, I would wish to mutter under my breath, the words of Gurudev, which I feel is no less significant in an era that we live in. In fact, it is more appropriate to utter this prayer in this present age:

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake”

Let’s all Celebrate the India Independence Day with a heart full of gratitude and respect towards all those who devoted their entire life for the freedom struggle and with a pledge as neatly expressed by one of my mentors in his reply to my Independence Day wishes, “Every citizen of this nation, I believe, should think and work on those lines to take this great nation to its cherished destination devoid of poverty, unemployment and other evils afflicting society.” Jai Hind.

8.8.08

The number “8” is considered lucky by people in China. No wonder then, that the world’s largest event in sports, hosted in Beijing this time, begins on 8.8.08, today. Spanning just over a fortnight, with approximately Ten thousand five hundred athletes participating in about 302 events in 28 different sports, it would be absolute fun to spend some time watching this great event. But in an age of participation it isn’t sufficient to spend time viewing the same, but would be great to be a part and parcel of it, for we all know these events only show up once in four years. After-all, the spirit of participation is one of the well-known motto of Olympics.

I feel proud to share with you the fact that Sun has enabled a way to help you participate in Beijing Olympics 2008, using MyPicks Beijing 2008, a new social networking game for Facebook, allowing fans of 2008 Beijing Summer Games to compete online. The press release about it is here. So start picking your winners in here.

Sun’s association with Beijing Olympics 2008 does not end with a Facebook application. “NBC Universal selected Sun to provide the technology platform for its official website NBCOlympics.com. The site is supported by several Sun Servers, allowing delivery of digital content to viewers including live streaming of events, video archives of completed events, blogs and more.” Enjoy 2,200 hours of live streaming broadband video coverage of 25 different sports. Read the press release about it here or get into the action, straightaway, by clicking here. Enjoy a rocking Olympics!

1/2 a Day Out in Kolkata

It was 9:15 A.M., when my flight took off from Bangalore in the direction of Kolkata on 26th July 2008, Saturday. I was excited because I hadn’t been to Kolkata before, and I was looking forward for this journey. Flight landed in Kolkata exactly at 11:45 A.M., on the same day of course

Before I forget: my company sent me there. I had two talks to deliver: one at St.Xavier’s College at Park Street and the second one at The Park Hotel, not so far from Xavier’s. Both of it went well, except for an unnecessary argument with one of the Professors from a college in Kolkata during the event number two. It all concluded at around 9:30 P.M. on the very same day.

I held with me a ticket for a 2:00 P.M. flight from Kolkata to Bangalore the next day. That meant, after a sleep, I had just about half a day to wander around a city, totally new to me. It was to happen that way.

Got up very early on 27th July, picked up my friend Kapil and headed towards Kalighat. The place was fully crowded. We observed, with great interest, the various offerings of devotees to Kaali, one of the principal deities of Bengal. Much time wasn’t spent there. The next destination was the famous Victoria Memorial.

No doubt, British left a number of beautiful imprints behind in India. Victoria Memorial is just one of it. Being a Sunday, it didn’t open its door for us. So we strolled around the park and took some snaps, occasionally praising all the marvelous pieces of Engineering that came in sight. Figuring out the fact that my friend had a formal training in Photography, I handed over my camera, quite conveniently to him, and requested him to capture everything interesting. Some of it are right below:

From Victoria Memorial, passing through the well known Howrah Bridge we travelled to the Belur Math. Talking about Belur Math, the monastery of Ramakrishna order, there is something in even its name that brings peace and tranquility to mind. Not sure if Shakespeare would agree to it! Probably, it is more appropriate to quote another personality here, who took all the pain, along with several other monastic disciples of Ramakrishna, to construct such an ashram in memory of their beloved Guru: ““The blazing light of universal harmony that will emanate from here will flood the whole world.” I don’t need to tell you how it feels to be in such a place as described above by the great Swami Vivekananda. I enjoyed, immensely, the moments spent at Belur Math facing the river Ganges. Visit to Belur Math wouldn’t go out of my mind soon.

Lastly, we went to Dakshineswar Kali Temple, which is a few minutes drive from Belur Math. The place was heavily crowded and for that reason, we moved out from there in no time.

After all this, I did manage to get to the Kolkata airport one hour before departure. It was a good half a day spent at Kolkata, which I wouldn’t forget for long!

Typing Tutorial in Ubuntu

At my home in Kerala, where my parents live, I use an Ubuntu desktop. My parents have been eager to pick up some computer lessons for long. Last week, while I was at home, they managed to learn quite a few things on using a Computer desktop that includes, but not limited to using an E-mail client, an Internet browser and to some extent an Office Suite as well. One of those things that my father found frustrating was to get used to the Computer keyboard layout. I remember facing the same problem, when I started my career in Computers. With the help of a typing tutorial software that I found then, my typing speed increased to an impressive rate. Thanks to my father’s favourite website, my search to get hold of one such typing tutorial in Ubuntu, fetched me a rather quick result. Tux Typing, which is also a part of Ubuntu repository offers some cool tutorials to help a novice get used to the Computer keyboard layout. Needless to say, my father seems quite motivated by his progress.

Let me also mention here that with the rather uncomplicated and clean User Interface in Ubuntu, the learning curve looks quite smooth. Ask my parents.

Don’t want OOXML, says India, Brazil

Let me set the context here: On 2nd April 2008, ISO approves Microsoft Open Office XML (OOXML) as an ISO/IEC International Standard. India didn’t vote for it, says The ET. Dr. Deepak Phatak writes a lengthy, but stirring note on the OOXML happenings in India. Cut to present, India and Brazil file an appeal against the adoption of MS OOXML as an International Standard. The news is here.

And as all this happened, MS quietly announced its support for the ODF.

Happy New Year 2008 [In Advance]


From: R Rajesh
Date: 28 December 2007 4:55:58 PM GMT+05:30
To:All My Training Participants, Relatives, Friends, Colleagues and Kind Blog Readers
Subject: Happy New Year 2008 [In Advance]

Dear All,

This time of the year, every year for the last few years, a sense of restlessness dominates in me to reach out to my friends, acquaintances and relatives alike to pass on the seasons best greetings. I do remember writing a similar note in the past, around this time last year and I know a few out there who received it, read it and replied to it. Clearly, I am running myself into the risk of repetition.

But then if pattern of events in life – both joyous and grievous – can repeat itself year after year, in spite of all our celebrations at the moment when the New Year would meet the old one, why would I ever hesitate to show up and speak out the same old thoughts.

While we pull ourselves together to flip through a brand new calendar, hoping happiness, peace and prosperity all the way along, this may well be an appropriate occasion to sit back, contemplate on the path trodden during the past dozen months or so, and may be take suitable measures to do the productive things better, put a full stop to all activities that are useful to none, and finally pray and hope for the possession of a stable mind, capable of absorbing all those episodes in life that are generally beyond the control of human beings like you and me.

Personally, I wish to take advantage of this moment of celebrations to stop by each one of you, to let you know how much thankful I am for all your valuable contributions to my triumphs and in all the milestones that I touched. Thank you!

As you read this note, probably there is an extravagant New Year party waiting for you. I wish the enthusiasm, the energy with which we step into one more New Year in our life and this celebration mood that we’re in this moment last throughout the year and make us capable to treat every single day as a New Year, full of positive resolutions.

Happy New Year 2008!

affectionately yours,

–R Rajesh

The Leopard is Arriving

In just under a few hours, the new version of the Mac OS (10.5), popularly known as the Leopard would be launched in the market. I happened to see some of the previews on this new version of the Mac OS X and as expected, this one offers some really really cool features. Some features, however, requires additional accessories like an external hard disk, Apple Remote Control etc.

General requirements and additional requirements for installing Leopard can be found @ the following location:

Click here to view the System Requirements.

The new features of the Mac OS X Leopard can be viewed @ this location.

Canon PowerShot SD1000 Support in Ubuntu 6.06

When my cousin plugged his brand new Canon PowerShot SD1000 on his PC running Dapper Drake, the autoimport failed with the following error:

An error occurred in the io-library (‘Could not claim the USB device’): Could not claim interface 0 (Operation not permitted). Make sure no other program or kernel module (such as sdc2xx, stv680, spca50x) is using the device and you have read/write access to the device.

After googling for a while, the following is what I had to perform on his PC to get the autoimport feature working for him in Ubuntu 6.06.

———————————————————————–
jithu@jithu-desktop:~$ cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 6.10 n l
jithu@jithu-desktop:~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 016: ID 04a9:314f Canon, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
jithu@jithu-desktop:~$ sudo vi /etc/udev/rules.d/45-libgphoto2.rules
###Add the following line at the appropriate location in the above-mentioned file. The numbers 04a9 and 314f are obtained from the lsusb output.
SYSFS{idVendor}==”04a9″, SYSFS{idProduct}==”314f”, MODE=”0660″, GROUP=”plugdev”
jithu@jithu-desktop:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart
———————————————————————–

My hope is that someone out there could save their precious time with this small piece of information.

WG111v2 Support on Ubuntu

A friend of mine took me through the famous Ritchie Street in Chennai, when I told him about my plan to buy a Wireless adapter. This was just over a week back. Let me make a reasonably lengthy story short: I bought a WG111v2 Wireless USB 2.0 Adapter and I did so after confirming from the owner of the shop that it would work fine with the Ubuntu OS. Even after the generous shop owner’s phone calls to the support team at Netgear, positively clarifying my doubts on its support on Ubuntu, I must confess that I was still doubtful if it would function properly on Ubuntu.It was Windows written all over the case, and no mentioning about any other supported OS! The forums that I hit on the web – almost all of them, including the one that you would view if you click here – suggested the installation of NDISwrapper, which I felt was a bit of hassle. Just now I unpacked this device and connected to one my desktops running Fiesty Fawn and know what, it just worked.

Then I tried plugging it in to another desktop running Edgy Eft and the result was no different. So take my word, Netgear WG111v2 54Mbps wireless USB 2.0 Adapter just works, at least in the last two recent releases of the Ubuntu Operating System. Let me know if there is someone out there whose experience was any different than mine.

A request to the Netgear team: Could someone fix the Registration Page on the website as I am being kicked back on to the same page upon clicking the link ‘Activate your Support Contract(s)’. Tried it with different browsers, but to no avail. Am I the one who’s making a mistake or is it a known issue?

TATA Indicom Plug2Surf on Mac OS X

You wouldn’t hit on many Mac OS X users in this part of the world. Naturally, it becomes difficult to figure out an easy Mobile Internet Solution for someone carrying an Apple equipment with Mac OS X running on it. I have been trying to get hold of a Mobile Internet Solution for my Apple laptop and my endeavour to do so has always been discouraged by the Telecom companies, very often giving me a feel that I chose a wrong platform to work with in India. But recently, I saw an advertisement in Television, featuring one of the famous Bollywood actresses and I was quite impressed by the sleek look of the USB Modem by TATA Indicom.

Last evening, I stepped into a TATA Indicom customer service center and picked up this device. Luckily this time, on my enquiry about this device, the Customer Support Representative in there was quite positive about the support of this modem on a machine running Mac OS X. He in fact took the pain of demonstrating it on one of the Apple laptops that we carried to the shop. Apart from changing the network configuration, he did absolutely nothing to get this working on the Mac OS X. No driver installation; plug and play sort of thing. A SIM is inserted to this device. It took just under 24 hours to get this connection activated.

So now I am connected to the Internet using this device. I wouldn’t say it is super fast like a broadband connection. In any case my objective to buy this was only to use while on the move and I am sure it would serve my purpose. But the one review that I read about this connection here is not really impressive. Let me experience this personally and I shall update you on my thoughts.

Y! Messenger 3.0 for Mac ~ Mac OS X – iChat

For a very long time I was using an old version of Yahoo Messenger without really bothering about checking for its newer version. And ever since Jeff introduced me to iChat I thought I wouldn’t find a better chat tool than iChat. I don’t intend to change my opinion here. But a couple of days back I happened to download the Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0b2 and found it quite similar to the iChat bundled with the Mac OS X, including the feature of displaying the iTunes track on the user status. Look at the snapshot below and see it for yourself.

Onam Greetings!


Courtesy : BBC News

Nirmal Shekar, one of my favourite Sport writers once wrote in an article, “Nostalgia, to be sure, is a disease, a disease that not even a double dose of reality can cure. It is as common as cold in many of us who look back to our golden yesterday and then sigh, ‘Ah, nothing is what it used to be.’” And at this very moment I can feel my entire system giving way for that incurable disease to take complete control over me; to drag me to my home town where you would see me celebrate the festival of Onam with great pomp and show. It was sheer fun then, filled with immense joy. But with the passage of time, most of us leaving our home town in pursuit of a decent career, all such celebrations have come to an end. Things do not look the same.

There was always a lot of work involved on this festive day in preparing the delicious food served to the entire family. But today we get everything in packaged format. It was fun to be involved in lot of discussions on a day like Onam, for those were the occasions when all members of the family met at a single location. Hasn’t television taken away a major part of that fun by showing some special programs (most of which are really boring) on a day like Onam, including a couple of three hour movies that generally gets over in exactly double the time frame of the actual movie timing, with lot of advertisements every five minutes or so? Television to a larger extent has been largely responsible for making people look lazy on occasions of this sort. Why blame T.V., blame ourselves for switching it on and keep it switched on from dusk to dawn. Otherwise, there used to preparations for the festival starting as early as 4:00 A.M. Anyway, things have changed and it would be foolish on my part not to accept this change and adapt myself to it.

I have already written a post about the Onam festival here and I wouldn’t want to repeat myself. I wish all of you a Happy Onam. Please celebrate this festival of joy in whichever way you can.

Song of Youth

Today, India celebrates its sixtieth Year of Independence. At this juncture, I would wish to publish here an E-mail that I sent to a few friends of mine on this day in 2003. I wish, my dear readers spare some time to go through this note.

—————————————-
From: R Rajesh
To:
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 2:49 PM
Subject: Song of Youth

Hi All,

In the Epilogue of the book “Ignited Minds,” Dr. A P J Kalam writes:
“I have conveyed the message overleaf (appended below) to nearly 40,000 school children in Chennai, Porbandar, Rajkot, Jamshedpur, Bhubanewsar, Dindigul, Abu Road, Anand, Udaipur and many other places so far. I hope to reach 100,000 young minds before August 2003. When thousands recite this, I see the developed India.”

Song of Youth

Me and My Nation – India

As a young citizen of India,
armed with technology, knowledge and love for my nation,
I realize, small aim is a crime.


I will work and sweat for a great vision,
the vision of transforming India into a developed nation
powered by economic strength with value system.

I am one of the citizens of a billion,
only the vision will ignite the billion souls.
It has entered into me.
the ignited soul compared to any resource,
is the most powerful resource
on the earth, above the earth and under the earth.

I will keep the lamp of knowledge burning
to achieve the vision – Developed India

– Dr A P J Kalam.

Celebrate the Independence Day.

-R Rajesh

—————————————-

iPod in Ubuntu

After a gap, I decided to play around with my Ubuntu installation that I performed some time back. After making appropriate modifications to the settings on Synaptic Packages, I used the apt-get to download some packages and libraries from the repository. One of those packages gtpod allowed me to play my favourite playlist on my iPod in Ubuntu. Of course it’s not really a perfect world like iTunes, but felt excited to get my iPod working in a software other than iTunes.

I was busy over the weekend spending my time at Sun Solution Center labs trying to complete an exercise on Sun Java System Access Manager and Sun Java System Identity Manager. After spending a complete day in there, though I could fix some of my earlier mistakes, I couldn’t complete what I intended to complete. I’m hoping for a miracle today.

Last week I was at Tata Teleservices talking on the New Features of Solaris 10 to a bunch of folks managing a huge Sun set up including an exceptionally large number of High End Servers. In the process I met a number of people whom I am putting up here on my post.


If you have nothing else to do (presumably a reason why you ended up reading this post), let me leave you with a simple exercise: spot the differences in the above photograph.

Have a great week ahead.

Apple PowerBook G4 Dual Boot: Mac OS X 10.4 & Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft)

The piece of information that you are about to read is not new. It’s a complete rewrite of what Rich Burridge has already written about:”How to set up a dual boot configuration on a Power Book with Mac OS X and Ubuntu.” Then why am I scribbling it down all over again? Well, I just followed Rich’s post last night and managed to see through a text book installation of Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) on my 15” PowerBook G4 machine without spoiling the existing installation of Mac OS X 10.4. So my intention here is to bring into everyone’s attention the error-free steps written by Rich Burridge(in case if you have missed it), and may be add a couple of illustrations to it, hoping it would be some amount help to a larger audience. So let’s do it:

Here’s the configuration of my 15” Power Book G4:

Let me repeat what Rich emphasized in his blog loud and clear: Take a back up of your data before you start doing this. Having a back up of your important data is good under all circumstances, leave alone a situation, when you would be resizing a harddisk partition, which has your Mac OS X and all important files, created over a long period of time. So back it up please.

Before booting your machine using the Ubuntu Desktop Edition CD that you could download from this location, disable journaling on your Macintosh HD by logging into Mac OS X, opening a terminal and performing the commands that are displayed in the image below:

Once the above step is performed, boot your machine using the Ubuntu Edgy Eft CD, downloadable from this location and while doing so, hold down the key ‘c’ on your keypad (even before the Apple logo is displayed on the screen). Once Ubuntu is up and running using the Live CD, open a Terminal by going to Applications -> Accessories menu and type the following command:

sudo parted

Now, here is an image of my terminal from Ubuntu Live CD for your reference to see what I did to re-partition my 80 GB Macintosh Harddisk (56 GB was already used by the MacOS X) to have a 20GB partition created for the installation of Ubuntu:

Once the above-mentioned step is performed, double click on the install icon on the Live CD, to install the Ubuntu OS to your harddisk. The installation wizard is quite self-explanatory and when you hit a page in the wizard, which would ask you for the partitioning details, mention to the installer to ‘use the largest contiguous space available.’ Once that’s done, wait for 30 minutes (~) and you would get a PowerBook machine configured to boot either Mac OS X or Ubuntu Edgy Eft.

My parents stay at my native place. If my mother was here last night and had stepped into my room, I am sure she wouldn’t have quite liked the look of my room with so many number of cables and other accessories lying around. I had to clean up the mess before I sat down to write down my experience on setting up my PowerBook G4 for a dual boot. Thanks to Rich Burridge, it was a clean text book installation. But my mouse is behaving so slow in Ubuntu. I am hoping that some kind reader of my blog would help me in sorting that out. Else, I am planning to pick up an external USB mouse.

Thankfully, Rich has not ‘patented’ his blog entry, for if he had done something of that sort, then probably he would taken legal action against me for supplementing his information with my illustrations for the good of all. You know what I am talking about, don’t you?.

One Last Look At An Elegant Batsman in Cricket

Just over an hour ago, the last ‘Super Eight Stage’ game of the ninth edition of the cricket world cup kicked off at Bridgetown. With all the semifinalists of the tournament already decided, this match is inconsequential. Still, this game would be watched by millions of viewers across the world for one main reason that after today, one of the Cricket’s extraordinary batsmen would never take the cricket field again. Brian Charles Lara, one of my favourite cricketers would play International Cricket one last time. After the retirement of Steve Waugh I had stopped watching Cricket to a greater extent. But Lara’s heroic moments always remained very dear to me and I have always enjoyed watching him play Cricket. Perhaps, I watched Cricket in the ‘Post-Steve Waugh’ era only to watch the entertaining Lara. Of course there used to be so many controversies surrounding this great cricketer and he is leaving the West Indies team in a shape that’s certainly not promising. But Brian Lara is one such cricketer whom the entire Cricket loving fans, including the Australian legend Steve Waugh, loved to watch, anytime, always. It is indeed sad that, today, we have reached the dead end of the fascinating journey with Lara rather abruptly.

Memoirs of a Lovely Evening at Little India.

It was in the month of November 2006 that I met Yusuke for the first time. We had landed at Singapore with a common interest of picking up some lessons on Solaris Internals. How much can you know about a person in just five days? May not be much. But at times it takes only a few minutes to develop a good rapport with someone. Else, how could it happen this way that a stranger from the Land Of Rising Sun offer to join for an outing to the streets in Singapore.

And thus on Monday, 20th November ’06 we set out for a journey to Little India in the late evening after our sessions. Some times, even such a short segment in life carry an impression that last quite a long period. So many months have passed, still those memories haven’t faded: walking through the busy streets, jostled by the men and women of all ages, trying to educate each other on the cultural differences between India and Japan, and finally getting into an Indian restaurant to gobble down some food at night.

It’s not that all of a sudden those memories just popped up and I decided to publish in the blogosphere. I’ve already written about that evening in here. The reason why those thoughts came up again is because Yusuke was here in Bangalore last week and I spent an entire Saturday with him moving around in the city. When I was confused about various destinations that I could take him to in Bangalore, he pulled out a Japanese book from his bag which had a map of India and detailed descriptions about top tourist destinations in and around Bangalore and other Indian cities. It is with that kind of preparations that these folks travel! He flew back to Tokyo the same night, but not before evoking in me the good old memories of that lovely evening spent together at Little India.