Tete-a-Tete with Dr. James "Java" Gosling

This was such a dream come true in my life when I had this excellent oppurtunity to sit with the "Father of Java" and have lunch with him. It was none other than Dr. James Gosling who blessed the Sun India Engineering Centre with his august presence on the 19th of May 2004. I had this once in a lifetime oppurtunity to interact with him on that day, share his views about Java, get an autograph on a book written by him and finally crack some jokes on a dessert of vanilla ice cream.

The next day (20th of May 2004), I once again has an exclusive oppurtunity to interview him for the newsletter (I am glad I took up the editorial post for the Sun newsletter). Sitting in a S-class Benz Car with him and sailing through the morning traffic of Bangalore saw us through the entire part of the interview. The two days of spending those invaluable time with him is an indelible milestone in my life - some thing that makes me proud of Java, Sun and myself (for being part of this).


Me with Dr.James Gosling

Say no to Plastic

I was in Ooty a couple of weeks back and I was surprised to see sign boards all over the place saying "NO TO PLASTIC BAGS". It was quite pleasing to see that all the people in this town are quite conscious about using plastic bags which has made quite a difference to the whole place.

Though many of us know that plastic bags are an environmental hazard, non biodegradable, how many of us actually refrain from using them? I was thinking about this a while back and decided not to accept plastic bags from shops anymore. Also, I strongly feel that supermarket chains like FoodWorld, Monday2Sunday,etc should encourage usage of paper bags as against plastic bags. If big chains like these discourage plastic usage, it will create more awareness amongst us and make us conscious about our actions.

Let us try and do a bit to save our environment - SAY NO TO PLASTIC!

On a nice sojourn

Took off on Friday 23rd and went on a two day trip to Ooty (a hill station) with my parents. We left Coimbatore on Friday morning at 11 am and reached Ooty at 2 in the afternoon. Our visit coincided with the Rain God's visit that afternoon. Incessant rains forced us to stay indoors till 6 in the evening. After that we took a nice saunter and visited Charring Cross. Did some window shopping and called it a day. The next day we hired a cab and visisted the Dodabedda peak, Pykara Dam, Boat house, Brindavan Gardens, Rose Garden and a few picturesque valleys. This took us till almost 3 in the afternoon. We took a lot of snaps and had a real good time visiting these places. The best part of course, being the weather. It was so much of a relief to get out of the heat wave that grasped most part of the South and to enjoy the chilly winds of the Western Ghats. After bidding good bye to our relatives, we started our descend to Cbe the same evening and reached "Home sweet home" by 8 pm on Saturday evening. Sunday was a quiet day and we spent most of the time indoors except for a few hours to see the doctor and buy a pair of shoes for Madhu (my brother). Caught the bus at 10 pm and headed straight to Bangalore. The weekend was truly rejuvenating and it was a much needed break!!

A new feather to the old bird

Today we had our ground floor inauguration at SUN IEC amidst all pompous. Mark and Vijay did the formalities and this is truly a historic milestone in IEC's achievements. With hi-tech labs, sun standard cubicles and beautiful conference rooms, the place looks really a s/w engineer's haven. So much for the lucky chaps to work in this new place, while I enjoy my little nook on the 6th floor.

Treat in the "Gramin" style

Yesterday, our gang went to Gramin to celebarate the occasion of Athu getting her H1B this year. We had a good time squeezing each other in the rat hole place, but the food (an authentic North Indian sytle) was really good and that simmerred our frustations a wee bit.
Though the place was qutie claustrophobic, people were pouring in all the time. So much to please the taste buds, that people preferred to hang on till they got their little nook. JB and Athu had to put up with some curd spilling on them, thanks to the waiters, but that did not let our fun be washed away. Quite a fun evening it was overall.

To do or not to do

In feb 2000, Rob Pike published a white paper "System Software Research is Irrelevant". This is more than a truth now and people who have realised this are silently admitting to the statement. Today, we are all concerned/bothered about creating new applications with existring technology or coming up with a technology that is actually an amalagamation of existing technologies. Where has all the thinking gone in coming up with a new OS with a new architecture..not a Windows based or a unix based one..something which is different??
does all this make any sense???