Accidental prime minister
Now thats an interesting title, 'Accidental Prime minister'. In fact, every time I think about my roots, family, life in India etc, I am quite humbled over and again to remember than its Prime minister is not a rich and cunning businessman or a military general, but a technocrat with an Oxford degree and absolutely-no-interest-in-power attitude to his credit.
Internationally, India and its new found wealth of highly skilled, English speaking and highly motivated work force may not be making much noise outside the evening pub sessions of average western middleclass, its definitely not doing what Indian administration was hoping it would, well, not at least.
The US administration is rarely commended for making correct decisions. With out breaking the tradition they have, over and again, committed the same mistakes, which later grow larger and hunt them back. Recently, post 9-11, the US administration had a choice to make, a tough choice of course, to base their anti-Taliban operations in India or Pakistan.
The USA and Pakistan has a long history or working together. When Russians invaded Afghanistan (reasons being Central Asian oil reserves, Illegal drugs trade, Islamic militancy, and increasing American presence in the region), American administration sought the support of Pakistan to train and fund Afghani rebels to fight the Russians out of Afghanistan. With the weakest possible constitution and a military dictator, Pakistan was an easy ally for America, than India. Also in the past, when India and Pakistan locked horns over various border disputes, Pakistan used its influence and American gun ships were repositioned in Bay of Bengal, ready for strike against India. Afraid of its own safety from one of the super powers, India had no choice but to join the Russians, in return India also won much-required arms and equipment, which kept South East Asia stable for a while more.
However, cold war is not history, the mighty post perestroika USSR is a group of countries and is no more a threat to USA or neither a great ally to India. China has grown ever more powerful and have started looking down at India.
Indian administration was deservedly worried when the American trained Taliban militia drove Russians out of Afghanistan, and established an Islamic state. The Taliban training camps now started churning out Kashmiri militants, now even more powerfully since they have a model Islamic state to look up to – Afghanistan.
Plot thickens when Al-Quida invents itself a haven in Afghanistan. Kabul had everything any terrorist organisation would ever want – plenty of strong and trained men who would do anything for Islam and food, already isolated by rest of the world, their actions will get little attention from rest of the world. Pakistan’s northern fundamentalist tribes provided them a buffer, from what is already weakened Pakistan administration, which was going through series of military coupes. Ten years of insurgency and cross-border terrorism to Indian side of Kashmir, ethnic cleansing to wipe out every single Hindu pundits off the valley, and setting up an Islamic state-like system was all to follow.
There are no words to explain the events of 9-11, and the America was waking up to the fact that their strategies are not always working – that they knowingly or inadvertently developed Taliban, and now that they have grown out of America’s control. Now with the support of the every single nation in this planet, there was America’s second chance to make a right decision. To go with India or Pakistan?
Pakistan on one hand is controlled by Prez. Parvez Musharaf, who came to power by a military coupe, displacing a democratically elected government, and full of anti-west, extremist-Islamic fundamentalists and on the other hand is India, the world’s largest democracy on its 50th successful year, a secular state, headed by a technocrat as its president, developing itself and posting double growth figures and being a model to other developing nations.
Mr. Bush chose to go with Pakistan. Rest is history.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Amma visits Ireland, 2004
Last weekend one of the world's foremost humanitarian and spiritual leader, Mata Amritanandamayi, affectionately known as Amma, (means Mother) visited Ireland for the first time. The visit invoked much interest in all walks of life, and despite the catholic nature of Irish society, they were not a bit apprehensive about this Hindu spiritual leader who wouldn't preach any particular religion, but love and compasion. More than 10,000 folked in to Amma's open arms for their tender and caring from Amma, many had to wait in queues upto six hours!
Here's a list of articles appeared over the weekend about Amma's
Ireland visit. Some of the websites require registration (free) to access the
page. This list is not exhaustive.
Sunday Independent: Thousands turn up to get a hug
Online.ie : Thousands wait for hours to meet 'hugging saint'
InishTimes: Huge Inishowen contingent set to meet 'Amma' in Dublin
Waterford Today: World renowned humanitarian and spiritual leader visits Ireland
IOL: Thousands wait for hours to meet 'hugging saint'
Belfast Telegraph: Sea of calm as 10,000 queue to be healed by a huggable saint
Irish Times: 'Hugging saint' embraces up to 10,000 at RDS over two days
Irish Times: Hugging Saint gets to grips with Irish
Sunday Independent: The lady who tries to embraces the world
RTE Nationwide (video) : Nationwide videoclip
This was also the most busiest weekend ever for me, I'll try to post them in detail, as I do not want to forget something this special, where I worked meters away from such a great spirit who’s continuously uplifting lives and spirits of millions on this planet!
Last weekend one of the world's foremost humanitarian and spiritual leader, Mata Amritanandamayi, affectionately known as Amma, (means Mother) visited Ireland for the first time. The visit invoked much interest in all walks of life, and despite the catholic nature of Irish society, they were not a bit apprehensive about this Hindu spiritual leader who wouldn't preach any particular religion, but love and compasion. More than 10,000 folked in to Amma's open arms for their tender and caring from Amma, many had to wait in queues upto six hours!
Here's a list of articles appeared over the weekend about Amma's
Ireland visit. Some of the websites require registration (free) to access the
page. This list is not exhaustive.
Sunday Independent: Thousands turn up to get a hug
Online.ie : Thousands wait for hours to meet 'hugging saint'
InishTimes: Huge Inishowen contingent set to meet 'Amma' in Dublin
Waterford Today: World renowned humanitarian and spiritual leader visits Ireland
IOL: Thousands wait for hours to meet 'hugging saint'
Belfast Telegraph: Sea of calm as 10,000 queue to be healed by a huggable saint
Irish Times: 'Hugging saint' embraces up to 10,000 at RDS over two days
Irish Times: Hugging Saint gets to grips with Irish
Sunday Independent: The lady who tries to embraces the world
RTE Nationwide (video) : Nationwide videoclip
This was also the most busiest weekend ever for me, I'll try to post them in detail, as I do not want to forget something this special, where I worked meters away from such a great spirit who’s continuously uplifting lives and spirits of millions on this planet!
ITER, is an international collaboration of schientsts and engineers from China, Europe, Japan, Korea, Russia and United States, working towards making fusion a possible solution for our energy situation.
Responding to the loss in production during the war in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and rest of the OPEC increased their oil production, but all of that was taken up by Asian giants like China etc. End result is the inevitable increase of oil prices in United States and rest of the world. The USA in particular, has been enjoying a very low oil price for a long time, and roads and big cars have become synonymous to Americanism. However, the changing world order, war in Iraq and possible terrorist attacks and retaliatory pre-emptive actions as promised by George Bush, and emerging third world nations like China and India, with their rapidly increasing high standard of life, the plot is thickening for a show down. Sooner or later, as living standards increase in China, India and such countries with huge population, the oil demand is going to rise much faster than it used to in the last decade, and this would sooner than later prove existing resources inadequate. Fusion could be the answer.
European Union has realised that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks and have put forward itself as a possible location for first experimental fusion reactor. Fusion has been coming up in the media now and then for last fourty or so years as the magic technology, where humans can control the star power, but the world is still waiting for the magic that will change their lives for ever. Good on EU for their initiative!
Responding to the loss in production during the war in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and rest of the OPEC increased their oil production, but all of that was taken up by Asian giants like China etc. End result is the inevitable increase of oil prices in United States and rest of the world. The USA in particular, has been enjoying a very low oil price for a long time, and roads and big cars have become synonymous to Americanism. However, the changing world order, war in Iraq and possible terrorist attacks and retaliatory pre-emptive actions as promised by George Bush, and emerging third world nations like China and India, with their rapidly increasing high standard of life, the plot is thickening for a show down. Sooner or later, as living standards increase in China, India and such countries with huge population, the oil demand is going to rise much faster than it used to in the last decade, and this would sooner than later prove existing resources inadequate. Fusion could be the answer.
European Union has realised that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks and have put forward itself as a possible location for first experimental fusion reactor. Fusion has been coming up in the media now and then for last fourty or so years as the magic technology, where humans can control the star power, but the world is still waiting for the magic that will change their lives for ever. Good on EU for their initiative!
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
ye'r blockin me bleedin' sun, ye..!!!
... alrighh?? nai, go on, thats enouf!! Leave me in peace ye intrusive flightless little human thingee ye, alrigh, dats it, feck off, yeah, see ya, yeah, bye, bye!
Note: In fairness, I should have contacted ISPCA (www.ispca.ie) about this poor bird. It was way too tired to fly or even to walk, it looked as if it was lost and had a rough night in the cold November night. My excuse would be that I was too busy working for a charity event all weekend, which has helped change lives of hundreds of thousands of poor people in India, and have brought millions solace in both physical and spiritual aspects of life. Yup, I hear you saying, "you were too busy working for a charity organisation, you failed to help a poor bird!!", Well wait till I tell you about the busiest 51 hours of my life! ;)
Note: In fairness, I should have contacted ISPCA (www.ispca.ie) about this poor bird. It was way too tired to fly or even to walk, it looked as if it was lost and had a rough night in the cold November night. My excuse would be that I was too busy working for a charity event all weekend, which has helped change lives of hundreds of thousands of poor people in India, and have brought millions solace in both physical and spiritual aspects of life. Yup, I hear you saying, "you were too busy working for a charity organisation, you failed to help a poor bird!!", Well wait till I tell you about the busiest 51 hours of my life! ;)
do yer gig and..
.. and get the feck outa me way, said the pigeon, shaking her head in disgust! I was only a few inches away from her and clicking away from all directions!
howya doin??!
Meet Miss. Pg O'Dubliner, Dublin, Co. Dublin: Sunday morning, Miss Pg looked very pale and tired, yet she managed to exchange the usual niceties as I walked past her. And minutes later when I approached her with my camera, she must have noticed the greed of an opportunist in my eyes, but she didn't seem to care a wee bit about me invading her private space! A very well behaving model, someone commented over my shoulder.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
BBC NEWS | Technology | Firefox browser takes on Microsoft: "A campaign co-ordinated by the Spread Firefox website attempted to raise the $50,000 needed for a full page advert in the New York Times.
The campaign set itself a target of recruiting 10,000 volunteers. Ten days in to the campaign 25,000 people had signed up and now about $250,000 has been raised."
Well, thats the 'in your face' reply if anyone out there thinks OpenSource is a fad or a buble that isn't practical, or wouldn't sustain. As long as the output is appealing to John Average, even if his middlename is not Geek or Nerd, there's a lot of good in this world to give the evil $oftware firms a run for their money.
Well done, everyone! :)
The campaign set itself a target of recruiting 10,000 volunteers. Ten days in to the campaign 25,000 people had signed up and now about $250,000 has been raised."
Well, thats the 'in your face' reply if anyone out there thinks OpenSource is a fad or a buble that isn't practical, or wouldn't sustain. As long as the output is appealing to John Average, even if his middlename is not Geek or Nerd, there's a lot of good in this world to give the evil $oftware firms a run for their money.
Well done, everyone! :)
BBC NEWS - Mobile phones take over in India
Excellent! The India Inc. is picking up momentum! They used to say, TamilNadu is where beggars carry cellphones (joke on rich people's poor taste of fashion), but now, well, that joke isn't a joke any more, is it? :)
Excellent! The India Inc. is picking up momentum! They used to say, TamilNadu is where beggars carry cellphones (joke on rich people's poor taste of fashion), but now, well, that joke isn't a joke any more, is it? :)
Friday, November 05, 2004
Being poor is cool!
.. if everyone around are innocent!! Its interesting , isn't it a bit like asking the poorest of the poor for gifts!? From the St. Patrics day parade in Dublin, March 2004.
A home at the end of the Galaxy!
Well, at the end of Eurasian continent anyway. This is one of the houses in the western end of Ireland, this may not be the "West-est" home, its really cool and I wouldn't mind living there, even if that means 24x7 milking cows and feeding pigs!
The foreigner!
This is some type of Orchid, and looks good in a flowerpot, each flower, if I can call it that, lasts months!
Err, no, its not that. Its not Nature's way of giving us 'the middle finger'. :p
Err, no, its not that. Its not Nature's way of giving us 'the middle finger'. :p
Chembarathi mutates!!
This one belongs to the same family as the earlier one, but it just grows a lot bigger. This flower averages between 10 to 12 inches in diameter!! So big, I couldn't fit it in one frame! (only kidding! ;) )
Chembarathi
At the ristk of exposing my lack of general knowledge, this is 'Chembarathi' in Malayalam, don't know its scietific name though. Its one of the most common flowers you will see round the year (except a few wet monsoon months) in Kerala.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Fly
This is the best I could do, with the default zoom of a Sony DSC P717, without using any additional lenses
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
The War of Coding Standards!
Its a great shame how a group of individuals can collectively take a wrong
decisions, because of the influence of certain individuals.
Today at work, the coding standards review group decided to always places
braces ( '{' ) in next line in Java code. The reasons that lead to this is
as follows:
1) Its easier to follow.
2) Its more logical, Its easy for a programmer to compare an opening braces
to a closing one, and treat what ever is between them as a block of code.
3) Existing codebase is largely formatted this way.
Why I think its a wrong decision:
1) Neither of these coding styles are particularly different. Its about what
a person is used to, and how flexible he or she is to adapt to changes.
2) The idea of a brace ends another brace is err, not that great! The way to
look at it is to see a statement (if, for etc) starts (ignore the '{') and
then it closes with the '}'
3) Coding Standards are to ensure that the code is maintainable. And many of
us wouldn't be here couple of years down the line, and the new comes with
years of Java experience (or Only Java experience, No C or C++) would be
naturally more comfortable with the Java Coding Standards, which places
braces in the same line.
4) The industry standard. We are coding in Java, not C or C++. Sticking to
the industry standards are always beneficial at one stage or other, and the
industry follows the Java Coding Standard (with braces in the same line).
End of the day, the decision was made by a handful of Senior Developers, who
have spend years coding C or C++ than Java. I have coded C++ years myself,
but I moved on to Java, pure Java in 1998, and have long adopted the Java
Coding Standard. And every new employee here at the workplace is more
comfortable with Java Coding style, and still the decision is totally
eclipsed by Senior Engineers just because they were used to that!
A less-than perfect world!!
decisions, because of the influence of certain individuals.
Today at work, the coding standards review group decided to always places
braces ( '{' ) in next line in Java code. The reasons that lead to this is
as follows:
1) Its easier to follow.
2) Its more logical, Its easy for a programmer to compare an opening braces
to a closing one, and treat what ever is between them as a block of code.
3) Existing codebase is largely formatted this way.
Why I think its a wrong decision:
1) Neither of these coding styles are particularly different. Its about what
a person is used to, and how flexible he or she is to adapt to changes.
2) The idea of a brace ends another brace is err, not that great! The way to
look at it is to see a statement (if, for etc) starts (ignore the '{') and
then it closes with the '}'
3) Coding Standards are to ensure that the code is maintainable. And many of
us wouldn't be here couple of years down the line, and the new comes with
years of Java experience (or Only Java experience, No C or C++) would be
naturally more comfortable with the Java Coding Standards, which places
braces in the same line.
4) The industry standard. We are coding in Java, not C or C++. Sticking to
the industry standards are always beneficial at one stage or other, and the
industry follows the Java Coding Standard (with braces in the same line).
End of the day, the decision was made by a handful of Senior Developers, who
have spend years coding C or C++ than Java. I have coded C++ years myself,
but I moved on to Java, pure Java in 1998, and have long adopted the Java
Coding Standard. And every new employee here at the workplace is more
comfortable with Java Coding style, and still the decision is totally
eclipsed by Senior Engineers just because they were used to that!
A less-than perfect world!!
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
The War of Coding Standards!
Its a great shame how a group of individuals can collectively take a wrong decision, simply because of a influencial individual thinks its right.
Today at work, the Coding Standards Review Group decided to advice braces ( '{' ) placement in the next line, in Java code. The reasons that lead to this is as follows:
1) Its easier to follow.
2) Its more logical, Its easy for a programmer to compare an opening braces to a closing one, and treat what ever is between them as a block of code.
3) Existing codebase is largely formatted this way.
Why I think its a wrong decision:
1) Neither of these coding styles are particularly different. Its about what a person is used to, and how flexible he or she is to adapt to changes.
2) The idea of a brace ends another brace is err, not that great! The way to look at it is to see a statement (if, for etc) starts (ignore the '{') and then it closes with the '}'
3) Coding Standards are to ensure that the code is maintainable. And many of us wouldn't be here couple of years down the line, and the new comes with years of Java experience (or Only Java experience, No C or C++) would be naturally more comfortable with the Java Coding Standards, which places braces in the same line.
4) The industry standard. We are coding in Java, not C or C++. Sticking to the industry standards are always beneficial at one stage or other, and the industry follows the Java Coding Standard (with braces in the same line).
End of the day, the decision was made by a handful of Senior Developers, who have spend years coding C or C++ than Java. I have coded C++ years myself, but I moved on to Java, pure Java in 1998, and have long adopted the Java Coding Standard. And every new employee here at the workplace is more comfortable with Java Coding style, and still the decision is totally eclipsed by Senior Engineers just because they were used to that!
A less-than perfect world!!
Its a great shame how a group of individuals can collectively take a wrong decision, simply because of a influencial individual thinks its right.
Today at work, the Coding Standards Review Group decided to advice braces ( '{' ) placement in the next line, in Java code. The reasons that lead to this is as follows:
1) Its easier to follow.
2) Its more logical, Its easy for a programmer to compare an opening braces to a closing one, and treat what ever is between them as a block of code.
3) Existing codebase is largely formatted this way.
Why I think its a wrong decision:
1) Neither of these coding styles are particularly different. Its about what a person is used to, and how flexible he or she is to adapt to changes.
2) The idea of a brace ends another brace is err, not that great! The way to look at it is to see a statement (if, for etc) starts (ignore the '{') and then it closes with the '}'
3) Coding Standards are to ensure that the code is maintainable. And many of us wouldn't be here couple of years down the line, and the new comes with years of Java experience (or Only Java experience, No C or C++) would be naturally more comfortable with the Java Coding Standards, which places braces in the same line.
4) The industry standard. We are coding in Java, not C or C++. Sticking to the industry standards are always beneficial at one stage or other, and the industry follows the Java Coding Standard (with braces in the same line).
End of the day, the decision was made by a handful of Senior Developers, who have spend years coding C or C++ than Java. I have coded C++ years myself, but I moved on to Java, pure Java in 1998, and have long adopted the Java Coding Standard. And every new employee here at the workplace is more comfortable with Java Coding style, and still the decision is totally eclipsed by Senior Engineers just because they were used to that!
A less-than perfect world!!
Monday, November 01, 2004
The new Intranet project!
I work for a firm with a little more than 100 employees and just like many other IT firms out there, my employer had gone thru a few ups and downs and “right-sizing” measures.
However, things are looking good, the sales team is busy doing demos and Business Analysis are busy analysing, managers busy managing and we programmers are busy coping with the tight deadlines and training new recruits!
Bad news is that no one knew what others where up to! We had a company intranet, but it was scattered on three (or more?) PCs, and lived largely on countless number of hard disks and some even on CDs placed in random machines CD drives, permanently!! A right mess!!
There was some talk about finding a new knowledge management solution and no surprise here HR folks came up with Macromedia Contribute. Cheap, WYSIWYG and easy to use, according to the HR girl, who thinks doing HTML coding requires a PhD in M-Theory or a super IQ which no one in HR could possible have! Well, I have to agree with her on the latter!
I did some research on different collaboration and knowledge base systems, and happened to notice the whole Wiki Paradigm, and realised what we have been missing!
The idea of a wiki was solid, and very clearly exactly suitable to the job at hand, free exchange of information, which is easily searchable and maintainable. Wikipedia, Wiktionary and a few other websites where more than enough to convince me the scalability and reliability of the idea.
However, choosing the right wiki was a pain. There are a whole bunch of them and everyone seems to be extremely opinionated when it comes to their favourite version of wiki. Soon I realised, when some one says they have tried XyzWiki and they think it’s the best, I should read between lines to understand ‘they have only used XyzWiki; and they think it’s the best because they don’t know any other’! I had to do more homework before I recommend a specific wiki.
To test different versions, I considered a whole bunch of wikis, including TWiki, JSPWiki, PHPWiki, MediaWiki etc.
PHPWiki was a song to install and looked very promising with a whole bunch of templates for any look and feel.
JSPWiki didn’t impress me, even though most of our engineers are JSP Pros, I didn’t feel confident enough about its user base or its future growth.
MediaWiki, was impressive, and it was endorsed by every major wiki website (like wikipedia). It was very minimalist though.
TWiki installation was a dog! It took me hours to get my head around it, but once installed, and performance fixed, it was a good-looking, solid wiki.
End of the day, there were a few issues to look at;
1) A bunch of users who were afraid of anything other than MS Word. Convincing them to use a wiki and wiki syntax was like convincing a 4 year old to give up their most favourite toy!
2) Maintainability and future development and growth. Should have matured user base and should be serious about keeping this going for a good while.
3) Performance and security. My company, unfortunately, has a pre-cold war era mindset when it comes to protecting even not-so-sensitive data. My managers wouldn’t sleep too well if every document is well protected, from eyes of the unknown enemy (read competition and cow-boy-contractor-programmers)!!
I brought down my choice into two version of wiki based on the following assumptions:
JSPWiki was out of the picture because it didn’t had a huge user base, it probably would get a lot better in future, but couldn’t guarantee it.
MediaWiki was brilliant, but too simplistic. I couldn’t impress anyone with it, especially the type who is vehemently anti good-logic!
PHPWiki – good, easy to install and over all very effective
TWiki – same as above, and looks business with the default pattern.
I left the decisions to my managers, who as all managers look for pretty pictures and big font.
They decided TWiki is the best bet, as it looks nice, and I agree, I was more inclined towards TWiki than PHPWiki for a number of reasons.
1) TWiki looks impress right out of the box.
2) These two couldn’t be any more different when it comes to installation – TWiki was a pain, where as PHPWiki a breeze! However, TWiki, once installed, is very maintainable with a very straightforward.
3) Network integration for authorisation and authentication was also very easy.
4) PHPWiki looked more internet oriented, with features like discussion forums and polls etc which made it look more like a random internet site and less suitable for a professional business environment. Of course that was before playing around wth the templates, but as with all most of the businesses these days, everyone is under pressure and who had time to verify all possible options!
Conclusion: We now have a good TWiki running in a beefy server, and even the most conservative MS Word addicts are warming up to it. I have given up searching for a good WYSIWYG editor for TWiki as I believe we have learned to live with out it, and the site is now very usable and extremely functional!
Good day! :)
External links:
Wikis
TWiki : http://www.twiki.org
PHPWiki: http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/
JSPWiki: http://www.jspwiki.org/
MediaWiki: http://www.mediawiki.org/
Popular Wiki websites
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Wiktionary: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page
I work for a firm with a little more than 100 employees and just like many other IT firms out there, my employer had gone thru a few ups and downs and “right-sizing” measures.
However, things are looking good, the sales team is busy doing demos and Business Analysis are busy analysing, managers busy managing and we programmers are busy coping with the tight deadlines and training new recruits!
Bad news is that no one knew what others where up to! We had a company intranet, but it was scattered on three (or more?) PCs, and lived largely on countless number of hard disks and some even on CDs placed in random machines CD drives, permanently!! A right mess!!
There was some talk about finding a new knowledge management solution and no surprise here HR folks came up with Macromedia Contribute. Cheap, WYSIWYG and easy to use, according to the HR girl, who thinks doing HTML coding requires a PhD in M-Theory or a super IQ which no one in HR could possible have! Well, I have to agree with her on the latter!
I did some research on different collaboration and knowledge base systems, and happened to notice the whole Wiki Paradigm, and realised what we have been missing!
The idea of a wiki was solid, and very clearly exactly suitable to the job at hand, free exchange of information, which is easily searchable and maintainable. Wikipedia, Wiktionary and a few other websites where more than enough to convince me the scalability and reliability of the idea.
However, choosing the right wiki was a pain. There are a whole bunch of them and everyone seems to be extremely opinionated when it comes to their favourite version of wiki. Soon I realised, when some one says they have tried XyzWiki and they think it’s the best, I should read between lines to understand ‘they have only used XyzWiki; and they think it’s the best because they don’t know any other’! I had to do more homework before I recommend a specific wiki.
To test different versions, I considered a whole bunch of wikis, including TWiki, JSPWiki, PHPWiki, MediaWiki etc.
PHPWiki was a song to install and looked very promising with a whole bunch of templates for any look and feel.
JSPWiki didn’t impress me, even though most of our engineers are JSP Pros, I didn’t feel confident enough about its user base or its future growth.
MediaWiki, was impressive, and it was endorsed by every major wiki website (like wikipedia). It was very minimalist though.
TWiki installation was a dog! It took me hours to get my head around it, but once installed, and performance fixed, it was a good-looking, solid wiki.
End of the day, there were a few issues to look at;
1) A bunch of users who were afraid of anything other than MS Word. Convincing them to use a wiki and wiki syntax was like convincing a 4 year old to give up their most favourite toy!
2) Maintainability and future development and growth. Should have matured user base and should be serious about keeping this going for a good while.
3) Performance and security. My company, unfortunately, has a pre-cold war era mindset when it comes to protecting even not-so-sensitive data. My managers wouldn’t sleep too well if every document is well protected, from eyes of the unknown enemy (read competition and cow-boy-contractor-programmers)!!
I brought down my choice into two version of wiki based on the following assumptions:
JSPWiki was out of the picture because it didn’t had a huge user base, it probably would get a lot better in future, but couldn’t guarantee it.
MediaWiki was brilliant, but too simplistic. I couldn’t impress anyone with it, especially the type who is vehemently anti good-logic!
PHPWiki – good, easy to install and over all very effective
TWiki – same as above, and looks business with the default pattern.
I left the decisions to my managers, who as all managers look for pretty pictures and big font.
They decided TWiki is the best bet, as it looks nice, and I agree, I was more inclined towards TWiki than PHPWiki for a number of reasons.
1) TWiki looks impress right out of the box.
2) These two couldn’t be any more different when it comes to installation – TWiki was a pain, where as PHPWiki a breeze! However, TWiki, once installed, is very maintainable with a very straightforward.
3) Network integration for authorisation and authentication was also very easy.
4) PHPWiki looked more internet oriented, with features like discussion forums and polls etc which made it look more like a random internet site and less suitable for a professional business environment. Of course that was before playing around wth the templates, but as with all most of the businesses these days, everyone is under pressure and who had time to verify all possible options!
Conclusion: We now have a good TWiki running in a beefy server, and even the most conservative MS Word addicts are warming up to it. I have given up searching for a good WYSIWYG editor for TWiki as I believe we have learned to live with out it, and the site is now very usable and extremely functional!
Good day! :)
External links:
Wikis
TWiki : http://www.twiki.org
PHPWiki: http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/
JSPWiki: http://www.jspwiki.org/
MediaWiki: http://www.mediawiki.org/
Popular Wiki websites
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Wiktionary: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page
Ladies Finger (Okra) flower
Now this one! This is one is not just pretty, its the Okra flower, well, Okra (aka ladies finger, the vegetable thats brilliant to make curry and othet stuff) grows on this plant!
Green on Green!
I reached home, kicked my shoes off to a corner and sat down in my favourite chair, lift my head to breath the fresh Keralan village air and guess what I get to see! :)
Oh, I love Kerala!
Oh, I love Kerala!
Cochin International Airport
Cochin International Airport is Kerala's newest pair of wings, and its been great help to expat mallus like myself! Its small, but facilities are comparable or even better to an average European airport (Dublin, for example) and very well maintained and full of very professional and honest (a very rare bread of people in Indian airports)!
Thems, London.
Flying is boring, if you don't have your camera with you! I missed a brilliant chance to take a good snap of London Eye (three second away from this exposure) because of a patch of cloud!
Well, as they say, you win some and you lose some!
Well, as they say, you win some and you lose some!
Rosebeg beach!
I rode 'Black Beauty', a 12 year old mass of mussles here for an hour! Some life these Rosebegans have!
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Lovely Kerry: Blessed(read rich) people who can afford to own those yatches and boats on a lovely West of LittleGreenMenCountry!
Kerry trip was fab! Weather was brilliant (unusual for that part of Ireland, especially since it was raining everywhere else), and the the place is amazing! I am not new to West of Ireland, but this was nothing like what I was used to, around Westport and north.
Highlight of the visit, apart from all the quality time relaxing and enjoying the scenary were a visit to the american styled Steak house in Kilkenny (the amount of food served kinda helped me understad why one in three Americans are obese!), an hour of house riding in the beautiful Rosebeg beach, and a drive through the long and winding roads across Killarney national park.
Altogether, a weekend (+1 day) well spent!
I'll try to post a few photos.
Highlight of the visit, apart from all the quality time relaxing and enjoying the scenary were a visit to the american styled Steak house in Kilkenny (the amount of food served kinda helped me understad why one in three Americans are obese!), an hour of house riding in the beautiful Rosebeg beach, and a drive through the long and winding roads across Killarney national park.
Altogether, a weekend (+1 day) well spent!
I'll try to post a few photos.
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