User:	shrinath
Date:	2009-12-25 21:57
Subject:	BRUCE AND THE SPIDER
Security:	Public

BRUCE AND THE SPIDER

by: Bernard Barton (1784-1849)

For Scotland's and for freedom's right
The Bruce his part has played;--
In five successive fields of fight
Been conquered and dismayed:
Once more against the English host
His band he led, and once more lost
The meed for which he fought;
And now from battle, faint and worn,
The homeless fugitive, forlorn,
A hut's lone shelter sought.

And cheerless was that resting-place
For him who claimed a throne;--
His canopy, devoid of grace,
The rude, rough beams alone;
The heather couch his only bed--
Yet well I ween had slumber fled
From couch of eider down!
Through darksome night till dawn of day,
Absorbed in wakeful thought he lay
Of Scotland and her crown.

The sun rose brightly, and its gleam
Fell on that hapless bed,
And tinged with light each shapeless beam
Which roofed the lowly shed;
When, looking up with wistful eye,
The Bruce beheld a spider try
His filmy thread to fling
From beam to beam of that rude cot--
And well the insect's toilsome lot
Taught Scotland's future king.

Six times the gossamery thread
The wary spider threw;--
In vain the filmy line was sped,
For powerless or untrue
Each aim appeared, and back recoiled
The patient insect, six times foiled,
And yet unconquered still;
And soon the Bruce, with eager eye,
Saw him prepare once more to try
His courage, strength, and skill.

One effort more, his seventh and last!--
The hero hailed the sign!--
And on the wished-for beam hung fast
That slender silken line!
Slight as it was, his spirit caught
The more than omen; for his thought
The lesson well could trace,
Which even "he who runs may read,"
That Perseverance gains its meed,
And Patience wins the race.

(source http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/bruce_and_the_spider.html)

	User:	peeyush
	Date:	2009-12-25 21:02
	Subject:	Merry Christmas
	Security:	Public

Merry Christmas, originally uploaded by peeyush.

Season's greeting to everyone. Merry Christmas :)

	User:	peeyush
	Date:	2009-12-22 23:13
	Subject:	Me on twitter, courtesy swapn
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	calm

After searching for all sorts of userids and failing not getting either of them, me finally opted for number thing (http://twitter.com/05101978)

Swapnil got me on twitter. She started by asking me why I don't tweet. She explained me what microblogging is and then encouraged me saying that my randomizing status messages will do very well on twitter. In other words, the one liner series of LJ which turned into google chat status message thingy is now shifting to twitter thingy.

I hope my Twitter account doesn't meet fate of my 'murdered' accounts of Orkut, facebook and linkedln :)

	User:	peeyush
	Date:	2009-12-20 20:28
	Subject:	The big picture
	Security:	Public

The closer you are to a picture, the better you are able to see about the minutest details of a small portion. But you won't be able to see the whole of it. For that, you will need to move a little bit away from the picture. The bigger the picture is the farther you have to be from it. Same thing happens with our life. We rarely realize the importance of certain time event till we move a little farther in time. Then we look back at it, start realizing why that seemingly bad thing turned out to be better with time and feel happy for it.

	User:	srini_vas
	Date:	2009-12-19 23:27
	Subject:	The beastly beauty
	Security:	Public

	User:	code_martial
	Date:	2009-12-17 18:06
	Subject:	Remote Model Designs for Web Apps
	Security:	Public

I've been involved with writing back-ends and (limited) front-ends for multiple web-apps over the course of my career and one pattern that I observed at the last 3 of my 4 workplaces was that the application started as a single unit running on a webserver but the model sooner or later got ripped out and deployed in a separate layer over the network.

There were different reasons for the model to be broken out. In one case, our team was the provider of some data (ratings and reviews) and all the data management logic. It soon stopped making sense and being feasible to package our code and get it deployed on rapidly growing client base. So we started offering it as a webservice. In the second instance, we had a website to display our data as part of the end-user experience but soon realised that there was demand for the data itself via the b2b channel, so we again created a webservice. In the third case, it was driven by a need to scale up and modularise a pretty large and complex web application that we had, and the first step was to decouple the data management from the application UI.

wsloader was a product of this observation. Having done this thrice over, I wanted to make the process as painless as possible -- even have it as the starting point in fresh application development.

This blog post is essentially just to discuss whether the repetition of this pattern has been a coincidence with me or is it a recurring pattern in the larger development ecosystem.

If it is a larger pattern, does it make sense to recognise an end-to-end development pattern wherein some toolkits or frameworks establish and automate the conventions in providing data services and some other toolkits establish the convention in usage of these services to build the UI -- whether it be for direct end-user interaction via different platforms (web, mobile web, etc.) or for integration into other applications or systems.

How many web applications have you built where you have (or wish you had) stuck a UI on top of decoupled data services? Do you think that the thick-server pattern as promoted by frameworks like Django, Rails, etc. is inherently not scalable? If it were a project specification to have remote data services and a decoupled UI layer, what tools would you use to work on that project?

	User:	peeyush
	Date:	2009-12-14 21:41
	Subject:	How much is much?
	Security:	Public

An old friend had told me this - profit in business should equal to that of pinch of salt. Anything more than that can spoil taste, health etc. Yeah, he is right.

Recent time favored us by bringing some good opportunities. As pleasing as it could be, it kept us busy and happy. But then somehow it turned into some sort of pride and ego thing. No, not with the team. But me rather. Suddenly some numbers started looking magical. Me started pressing and stressing for those seemingly magical numbers insisting that we should keep targeting that. Thought that these numbers signify strategical growth. Spending sometime with self made me realize that it wasn't the case. The growth isn't in numbers. It never is. Just like how age doesn't necessarily means one's growth with time.

Funny. Quest for understanding and knowledge lost its path midway with me falling for those sorts of thoughts. One of the reasons for me not to switch to corporate side was to prevent me from becoming slave to such thoughts.

Greed is equally tough nut to crack.

	User:	srini_vas
	Date:	2009-12-13 21:50
	Subject:	Bangalore Midnight Marathon
	Security:	Public

If you want to win something, run 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon.
--- Emil Zatopek (Winner of 5 KM, 10 KM and Marathon in 1952 Olympics and one of the finest distance runners ever)

That was the quote used by the organizers of Bangalore Midnight Marathon happened on 12/13 December starting at 12 mid-night. And, it was indeed an experience. Though not a first Marathon experience for me, running in the chilly Bangalore's winter night was just awesome.

When we came to know about the event from a colleague, Dilip (remember the unborn during the Cyclothon !) and I opted for full marathon. We reached the venue at 8 PM and completed the formalities. With 4 hours to cut and a strict no-no to drinking or eating and with no movies in the near by Forum Value Mall matching the time we have, we spent the time lazily, talking some random stuff and enjoying the rock music payed by some amateurs at the venue. There were a few short runs for corporates, CEOs and women followed by half and full marathon. Marathon started at the stroke of midnight.

We are fully excited and chill didn't bother us much. It was going to be the first full marathon experience for him and a second one for me (by no means, a veteran). As the route has to be kept free of vehicles and properly illuminated, it was not a straight stretch, but a 2.1 KM long one, where we have to do 10 laps (of 4.2 KM each). I did a fundamental mistake by running at his pace (which is around 40 sec/KM faster than mine) and found my left leg and foot unusable in the first lap itself. I recovered by running slowly for a while and continued. For the first four hours, there was a lot of activity in the route. By the time I got into my 7th lap, the route was almost deserted (except for a few slow runners like me and the support staff) with half marathoners and fast marathons long gone. While I was doing my last lap, I told confidently the support staff that I was the last and they can pack-up :-) But, I was saved the credit, as I found 2-3 more going for their last lap, on my way back to the finish line. Dilip was waiting at the finish line, who finished 30 minutes before me. He clocked 5:20, a good feat for a first timer and I, a 5:50.

Our walk to the car park was again a memorable one. Hardly a few hundred meters, we limped and dragged ourselves and even avoided crossing the median, because we have to step on that (which is a few inches high) and step down on the other side :-)

I would love to end it with one more pearl from Emil:

Upon winning: "But it was the finest exhaustion I've ever felt."
--- Emil Zatopek

Of course, read 'finishing' in place of 'winning' :-)

	User:	peeyush
	Date:	2009-12-13 20:07
	Subject:	Archives
	Security:	Public

2007 - http://peeyush.livejournal.com/371525.html, http://peeyush.livejournal.com/371848.html
2005 - http://peeyush.livejournal.com/160948.html, http://peeyush.livejournal.com/161166.html, http://peeyush.livejournal.com/161282.html
2004 - http://peeyush.livejournal.com/59587.html, http://peeyush.livejournal.com/59720.html, http://peeyush.livejournal.com/60040.html

No entries in year 2006 and 2008

	User:	peeyush
	Date:	2009-12-12 23:06
	Subject:	Archives
	Security:	Public

2008 - http://peeyush.livejournal.com/425888.html
2005 - http://peeyush.livejournal.com/160408.html, http://peeyush.livejournal.com/160556.html

No entries in year 2004, 2006 and 2007