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Bowling
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:06:55 -0700
Our team's been faithfully taking a break every once in a while to do something off-work. This week we decided to continue our now fairly regular intra-team bowling competition. We got together and after a quick lunch together, went for a round of bowling at the alley nearby.
One fact that bears mention is - for the sake of bowling, we've split our team into two sub-teams and compete against each other at regular intervals. Scores for each match are tracked on an internal wiki page by the respective team captains. There is a lot of cheering (and booing) while the game is on. I must admit, we tend to take our fun, seriously. Here are a couple of pictures of some folks in action.
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Is your site sticky?
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:02:39 -0700
According to Darren Rowse, blogger extraordinaire,"A sticky website is one where a first time reader arrives and finds it difficult to leave."
As someone who has dabbled in blogging and is trying to figure out how to create a synergistic online community, I found Darren's post fascinating.
Darren Rowse's 21 Ways to Make Your blog or Website Sticky:
Make your invitations to subscribe to your blog prominent
Educate readers about your subscription methods
Good blog design
On site branding
Make your blog personal
When you get a rush of traffic on one particular post...act
Get interactive
Add a 'subscribe to comments' feature to your blog
Respond to comments
Offer alternative ways to subscribe
Promote social media connecting points
Highlight your best content
Create momentum with your content
Consider removing dates on old posts
Give incentive to subscribe
Keep posting frequency up
Create an engaging about page
Add a community area or forum
Social proof
Target readers with specific messages
Sticky content
(See Darren's post for more info.)
I'm particularly interested in people's experience with creating incentive to subscribe.
Can you share successes that you have had with luring people to subscribe?
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Debugging on the AMD64 Platform: Finding Argument Values
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:00:00 -0700
Poonam Bajaj's new article discusses the parameter passing convention used on the AMD64 platform, possible difficulties, and a workaround.
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Back to School
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:57:39 -0700
Back in the day, classmates would disappear from one another's lives on the last day of school; and re-emerge into each others lives the first day of school.
There was a "summer vacation tunnel." It was a solitary journey and you went it alone. Some came out with new braces, a new hair color or having grown 3 inches.
Others completely unchanged.
But it used to be there was a summer abiss. And students would lose touch with their classmates for the summer months.
No more.
Sure, they might not still physically see each other.
But believe you me, kids these days are absolutely connected to each other all year long via the movement of electrons.
They're all on Facebook.
And the hot new hang-out there is
the Sun Microsystems Student Zone
If you're a student (or you've got one in your life) this is your one-stop shop.
Got a
question about careers @ Sun? Want to connect with fellow students?
Want the inside scoop on the latest advancements in innovation? This is
the place!
Check it out!
Mary
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Sun announced OpenSSO Express on July 23, 2008 at OSCON
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:56:02 -0700
At OSCON on July 23, Sun announced it's new release of OpenSSO Express. This is the industry's first enterprise support for open source identity management and web single sign-on software. OpenSSO Express is a comprehensive, enterprise-class support and
indemnification for OpenSSO, the open source code-base from which Sun
Access Manager is derived. Sun is making its Sun Access Manager
offering even more attractive to enterprises by extending support to
also include OpenSSO Express, early access versions of the next Access
Manager release that have been fully tested and certified by the
OpenSSO community.
Daniel Raskin, Sun's senior product line manager, talks with industry
analyst Michael Cote from RedMonk about Sun's new support model for the
open single sign-on solution.Listen Now!
Replay the SW Sales WebinarRead the feature storyRead the press release
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Finally back to blogging!!!
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:49:30 -0700
I'm back here after a while, and I'm writing again!
Last week, I gave a training on XML Schema components in Java CAPS repository based projects, to customer support teams across the globe. As they say in the game of cricket, I am going to begin this second inning of blogging with the online version of this training.
In coming days, I am going to put modified version of this training material suitable to wider audience on my blog. So stay tuned !
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where have all the ...
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:45:54 -0700
Last weekend, I managed to make good on a promise I made to myself long ago (and got my wife to agree to ;-): I took part in a photography workshop. The instructor was Joe Decker (read more about him here). The whole group consisted of six people, including Joe, so we got good advice whenever we asked for it.
We started off in a parking lot just north of Golden Gate Bridge, and worked our way up Conzelman Road and all the way to Fort Barry. The weather was not quite unexpectedly misty, cold and generally miserable, which was ideal for shooting the battlements from WWII which now stand in disrepair. Not surprisingly, we weren't the only people around with photo gear.
After having seen and shot enough of ruins to last us quite some time, we proceeded to the beach next to Fort Cronkhite; the fog had increased in density, and although we were having a good time in general, it was getting a little damp, esp. close to the ocean with the wind blowing spray and mist right into our faces. Here's a picture which I believe captures the atmosphere of the day:
When and if I find time to properly process the pictures I took, I'll post them on one of my photo pages and drop a link here.
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The Uncertain Pleasures of Too Much Sugar
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:30:00 -0700
I've had a hankering for them for months, and this morning we indulged ? blueberry pancakes with maple syrup. We ate on our deck, looking out at a peaceful Monday morning in Montana. Flathead Lake was quiet and calm, weekend revelers gone, and the Mission Mountains in a soft mist in front of us.
We're sneaking in a long weekend here, against all odds of being able to do so. With my mom's illness, I didn't think I'd be able to make another trip to the lake this summer. But she rallied, Scott persisted, and here we are. The dog is here, too, as Scott, while trying to persuade me that we should do this trip, accused me of making Boo Boo miss her vacation at the lake. Which made me laugh. But I didn't forget. So once I agreed, the die was cast ? the dog was coming, too.
So we drove. Yep, all 1350 miles, doorstop to doorstop. Didn't manage to get out of Los Angeles until 3, meaning we joined that hideous line of traffic that swarms out of the city on Friday afternoons east. We stopped and go'd our way to Las Vegas in a record slow 5.5 hours, then shot straight north up to Cedar City for the night. That left us with 1,000 miles to go on Saturday, which we did in 12 hours, counting stops. (Don't tell the state police in Utah, Idaho and Montana, OK?)
Our reward was a spectacular evening at our summer cabin. The moon rose, big as a melon, over the Missions and cast its silver light in a pathway on the lake. We sat on our dock and watched the night unfold before us. Before we mooched dinner from Scott's sister and brother-in-law, who have the property next door.
With time here short and precious, we're determined to enjoy every minute. So we powered through those pancakes this morning, even though there's nothing very healthy about them, except the blueberries. We've been canoeing, swimming, reading, walking, relaxing.
Scott asked the question, ?Are vacations so great because they are something to look forward to during the stress of work? And is the relaxation sweeter because you're NOT at work?? I guess this is akin to asking, if life was always this good, would we still appreciate it?
That's a difficult question to answer objectively, with a soft Montana breeze swirling around me, my dog curled next to me, and the hardest decision of the day being whether to make burgers or chicken for dinner. So I'm thinking, yeah, we'd still appreciate it. And when we stop, we can always go back to Los Angeles and sit in a massive traffic jam for a few hours.
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JavaZone 2008 in Oslo
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:11:48 -0700
There is a java conference in Oslo on September 17-18. It's name is JavaZone. Me and Karol Harezlak will give a presentation that we named "Future and Present of Java ME development ? Netbeans Mobility IDE". That's cool name that will allow us to talk about everything that we like or nit in Java ME, NetBeans IDE etc. Actually, it is a BOF therefore it should be more fun that a serious session.
Is anybody planning to visit the JavaZone this year? It would be great to meet at the conference or if you are from Oslo then we can meet in a nice place at the downtown
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Roman Numerals and Aspirin
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:08:16 -0700
How many ways can you count and in how many languages? I can do the 1 to 10 counting excercise pretty easily in French, Spanish, English and Latin (Roman Numerals). Also base 10 (decimal), base 16 (hexidecimal), base 8 (octal) and base 2 (binary). A few weeks ago I had the luxury to wait in San Francisco International Airport for a redeye back to Boston that got delayed until 1:00 am PST or 4:00 am EST. Instant headache. I needed some aspirin. So for 3 hours I used Google and searched. I was looking for National Football League's Super Bowl Championships and happened to run into a storage product named XIV by typing in XIV (SuperBowl 14 with Terry Bradshaw) into Google's search engine.
So of course I remember that XIV was some storage technology that IBM acquired a while back. In my opinion it is traditional expensive, enterprise storage.
The base requirement is to protect your data from getting lost or corrupted. So all the numerous data services basically do the same thing for you. In fact some in the storage industry are good at inventing new expensive things that we don't need. Backup to tape and disk, CDP, replication, snapshots, RAID and mirroring. Don't they all basically do the same thing... give you your data back if it gets lost or corrupted? Add in power management, high availability, encryption, compression, de-duplication and on and on and on. Wouldn't it be nice if all these services were already in your file system, then you would not need anything else. However each data service is not the same price.
The same applies to aspirin. There are many aspirin brand names out there but at the end of the day they all do the same thing. However, all aspirin is not the same price. That nice shinny box and strong aspirin brand doesn't make you feel any better than the superstore aspirin. It's a commodity.
Storage is heading the way of aspirin.
Congrats to Michael Phelps and all the world Olympians at the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics.
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