I idolize Scott Hanselman, and I've already mentioned this before. Ramesh Sringeri asks a good question... "Is being a 501 developer, bad?"

The question seems obvious to a terminology that is highly restrictive of the definition of the phenomena it is trying to explain. Perhaps there should be another term for this trend exhibited by many people across various sections; not limited to developers alone. I have worked (still am) with some people who surprise me by the very fact that they possess an ability; almost like Data from Star Trek: TNG, that they can shut off at 5:01. How do they do it? It's a question bearing the same equivalence to me as does Scott Hanselman sleep?

My great friend Raj Shekhar  in B'lore always kept saying "I have a life outside work". He always came late and almost always was "out o' the door" the moment the clock stuck 6:30. Yeah, no 9 to 5 for us. But that's the case here in India in case you didn't knew! But did it mean he was shut down until he entered the office the next morning? Never! Even while I'm returning home from work, dodging the traffic, the stray cows & dogs (although much less than; say 2 years ago) over the 1 hour drive on my mobike I'm still juggling ideas & thoughts about something work related (not always exciting) every now and then tossing them among the hundreds of other thoughts in my brain every few minutes. But I've worked with many people and converse with some friends who amaze me with their ability to shut down while on or off the work. And I'm not talking about people who have lost their enthusiasm of the workplace, sure that happens; and is probably the number one reason of the shutdown syndrome. But that's not the way the human brain works, it juggles thoughts around at incredible speeds & numbers when awake. So are they lying? Do they think about things relating to work at a subliminal level?

At the time of writing this post TV viewers in India are awaiting with great anticipation & excitement the exploding conclusion to Heroes in Chapter 23 - "How To Stop An Exploding Man" due to telecast in 1 hour. Among the little nuggets they will learn today the most trivial yet interesting will be the first name of Mr. Bennet when he tells Peter to call him Noah.

As I am about to race down home to watch the season finale on Star World, I must admit watching it for the 3rd time with the only excuse that this will be the first time it will be on TV I was asked by a friend, who I just handed over my copy of The Incredibles; what is it that I find so magnetic about super hero themes. To answer his question I simply answered:  watch The Incredibles and instead of the metaphorical super powered characters  bound by law to hide their true selves think it in the context of marriage & how many people including yourself (he's married) think of it as a bounding force that makes you feel as if you lost your true identity. And the moment you make that connection with Mr. Incredible perhaps not in entirety, but you will at least to some degree; understand why I am a sucker for Super Heroes.

I believe so. It is funny in a way, and I could go on and say to all the Apple fans / Steve Jobs worshipers - "in your face suckers!" (Security flaw hits Safari (Windows) only hours after release).

But I'm not going to say anything or do anything of that sort, there's no reason for me to! Because I (and I'm not the only one who) believe that there is a direct relation between the popularity of a software and the number of security vulnerabilities that are discovered for that piece of software. May be it has to do with increased surface area to attack/defend considering which side you are or even a standing spectator. And if you are a spectator it would serve you best if you are informed!

I was actually quite excited to download Safari for Windows, as the majority of the clients I deal with are photographers or in the photo publication industry (and they have the pre-conceived notion that Macs are better suited for working with photos) I am for once happy, no more running between my desk to the lone Mac in the boss' cabin while working on a fix or during deployment/testing. Maybe someone (read Raj Shekhar) will disagree and will probably cite some Open Source app (FreeBSD perhaps) and perhaps he or anyone else would probably be right in that context. But so am I.

Ego isn't the only thing common among programmers...

I just took a Programmer Personality Test based on the Myers-Briggs Personality Test on Doolwind's Game Coding Site after I read about it on Mads Kristensen's blog.

I have a DHTB (DHTL would be the correct acronym) personality. It's interesting to see an attempt to understanding and classifying programmer personalities. So kudos to the creator(s) of this test.

Here's the test result of my test for record purposes... since there is no option to save/publish on the site itself.

Test Results

Your programmer personality type is:
DHTB

You're a Doer.
You are very quick at getting tasks done. You believe the outcome is the most important part of a task and the faster you can reach that outcome the better. After all, time is money.
You like coding at a High level.
The world is made up of objects and components, you should create your programs in the same way.
You work best in a Team.
A good group is better than the sum of it's parts. The only thing better than a genius programmer is a cohesive group of genius programmers.
You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.

My newfound "hobby " in WPF/E effortlessly landed me to Charles Petzold's website. Notice the hobby is in italics so don't expect me to know a great deal about it, the highlight on hobby is to reflect that it would see me months before I am any good at it. I got really excited to learn about Charles Petzold's Applications = Code + Markup. Although it says Pro Developers in the title, it's definitely in my must read books list (which is very very short ).

While I was lurking at Charles' website, I encountered "It Just Works" in his blog. This has to be the funniest thing he has posted in his blog.

Here are the funny bits -

Perhaps if my mother used lots of various Mac applications and stuck in lots of external devices, the machine would "just work" quite well. But she basically only uses email, so perhaps that's the problem.

On Apple's home page, the most important information they deemed necessary to convey to me was that I needed QuickTime 7 to view even more of those insufferable TV ads where that smug goateed glazy-eyed dork tries to make closed architecture and a complete disregard for backward compatibility seem cool.

To a longtime Windows user, an upgrade from OS X 10.2 to OS X 10.4 seems the equivalent of a free downloadable Service Pack. In the Apple world, however, upgrading from 10.2 to 10.4 costs $129, which is actually more money than we spent for the printer we were trying to install, and would involve a DVD sent through the mails.

I then went to the HP site to see if they had any helpful information — I think I wanted something that said "Don't mind our obsessive-compulsive listing of various OS X versions. Of course, OS X 10.2 will 'just work' just fine" — but once again I discovered a site that shouts a big "Screw You, You Pathetic Loser" to anybody who accesses it with a dial-up.

The HP site actually crashed the iMac. The pointed-finger cursor remained pointed no matter what I pointed it at, nothing on the keyboard worked, the on-off switch didn't work, and we had to resort to turning it off by the power strip.

Here is a fine example of what I mean when I say tech journalists in mainstream media need to know what they are really saying. You can have the greatest security in the world but it is no match against human stupidity.

The year 2006 has gone by, and a new year is here bringing new hopes & aspirations. Perhaps I am like billion others who feel the year slipped away rather quickly than expected, but this subjective perception of time does happen when you're in a retro mode. Anyways, I would want to reflect upon what this past year has been like for me.

Let's start on an optimistic note: things I am proud of or  happy about.

I knew from the start of the year that if I ever had a chance to be able to work on .net this was it. It was now or never, as I realized I had reached a point in my career where I had already been working with PHP for a considerable amount of time and still didn't felt that "connected" to it. Don't get me wrong, I am pretty good at it! (Modest way of saying: I kick ass ). But I am a person who believes in always doing things with passion, which I am afraid I haven't felt much; over the past 3 years. It's not about mindless egoistic babble over language or platform superiority, its simply about personal choice. In short I am happy with whatever little work I have done in .net over the year.

I am also very happy that I gained a great friend over this past year. I have to admit that after the loss of my best friend in the 2nd half of 2005 I had suddenly become very cut-off from my other friends and found myself to be very lonesome for a significant amount of time. I was separated from all of my close friends by geography, and there was nothing any of us could do about it. I am proud to have found a really good friend in Amit at the time it mattered most. After my brief social blackout from the chickenpox I acquired (courtesy my younger brother) during summer, I saw a couple of my much close friends and learning a good thing or 2 really boosted my self esteem. And I gotta tell you again, unless it's eradicated like small pox, get yourself infected or better yet vaccinated from chickenpox before you or your kids (cause I think this advice is more apt for them than you) are 10-12 years old. Because getting chickenpox at an age when your physical appearance matters the most; is gonna play a real party pooper!

I have never heard Meja after her hit "It's all about money" (not counting "Private Emotion" with Ricky Martin) but her solo hit is ironically quite insightful considering it's a pop song and the fact she would fit into the 1-hit wonder category. The last year wasn't as bad as I would always rant about. I am funding my brother's MBA education. That is one thing to be proud of, I think!

Well if that's an introspective of what was good about the last year, here's what I wish would have been better. I wish I could have done much more work on .net, I wish I could have been more productive, I wish I had patched up or at least made one appearance with some of my estranged friends. I wish I had less episodes of migraine than the year before that. O and lastly - I know every one would agree with me on this - "I wish I had more money" than last year.

I wish I had more time to refine my :"List of Resolutions for 2007". Perhaps I will, a bit; soon.

1. Make the switch in the 1st half of this year. (No don't get a heart attack thinking I will buy me a Mac, when that happens you must know Armageddon is near, just kidding.). It's time to move towards greener pastures. Meaning more money or better career prospects.
2. Every blogger's usually has it: Blog more!
3. Spend time with friends more often. Get in touch with estranged/distant friends and more importantly, stay in touch with them.
4. Be less like Mulder. Be great at what I do, but not share the same trait Fox Mulder shared with David Duchovny, go figure... sorry I won't say more than that.
5. This is pretty vague at the moment, but I will like to bring some form of measurement for it in the future - be more productive.

No! I am not trying to count the reasons. Dear reader, if you came here to find the answer to that, I'm sorry.I'm in the same boat as you are. I just do not understand why?

1. It has no separate DB access layer; it supports only the php & MySQL combination; that too, limited versions (the latest stable version of Joomla doesn't support MySQL 5.x).
2. It is not SEO (Search Engine Optimized; as it's otherwise known to normal people), although some may argue that's not true, but it's not easy at all. And if you have a site with numerous custom components, just forget it.
3. It is severely under-documented. I remember a little above a year ago, we would find sections and sections of the official Mambo documentation with only "TODO". It was utterly agonizing & frustrating experience. Although significant improvements have been made in this area since the Joomla avatar, it doesn't fare as great in terms of structure and content as that of Typo3 & Drupal.
4. But the biggest problem I have faced as a developer working on Mambo/Joomla is the lack of separate data/presentation layers (separate Model & View component/layer). And to add to that there are lots of hardcoded presentation elements in the core code, and seems like it's hard severing the ties to the Mambo past, despite great efforts to modernize the code since Joomla first came out more than a year ago. There have been quite a number of occasions when this fact has bitten me in the butt.

I have led the development of a fairly large website serving thousands of users using Mambo and not Joomla (4.5.x, the development began months before the Joomla team left Miro International for good). Since then I've also had deployed 2 more sites (not nearly as large as the first Mambo project), call it utilizing resources… why let the newly acquired skill of my team mates go to waste. And had it not been the clients' insistence I'm sure I wouldn't have used Mambo.

Seems Joomla is having a makeover starting with version 1.5 with the biggest change in the form of the separation of the logic & presentation layer. But does a minor version increment is justified with such a huge behavioral change?

I saw this picture on Blank Noise Project.

I have to admit that this is smart! But ladies if you're smart enough to come up with such a nifty idea, certainly you should be aware expecting that men won't stare at you is like hoping for the sun to rise from the west. I admit men in this region have to be taught the difference between a glance, an "I'm interested" and "scaring the hell out" or "making the subject sick" look. Beat the crap out of their asses to make them respect women, if that's what needs to be done, I will support you with all my heart and my boots . But you cannot take away thousands of years of biological instinct. However, eyes don't say a bad word, eyes don't make lewd gestures, it is not eyes that molest or rape…

I support Blank Noise Project and its core objectives. However I do not agree with the last action listed on the banner image of their blog and believe it should not be classified as Eve Teasing.

Everyone who knows me; knows of my love for Microsoft, so of course there will be the talk of heavy bias in whatever I am about to say. Yes I am biased, but I am biased towards, not biased against something and I am not prejudicial. Adobe has monopoly over the portable document format they practically invented it. So much for PDF!

What we have here is a monopoly playing around with the law; twisting it to eliminate their competition against a seemingly notorious monopoly who is; but a new entrant to their playground. XPS is an all together different format, I would still need Adobe Reader to open the hundreds of pdf files I already have, and hundreds other I go through in a week. So where is the threat?

Take the following case for example, IE7 provides Live Search as the default engine in the search bar, but someone like me who has personal discontent with Google still uses Google as his primary search engine simply because we all are creatures of habit. And unless Live Search or any other engine comes up with something mind bogglingly cool or unless Google screws it up really badly it can hardly be toppled as the #1 search provider.

So what do you want? Some might say! All I want is Adobe and other players who are monopolies in one segment or the other to play fair! That's all I want.

So much for the first post under my new tag "Justice For All" in true Batman fashion, which I intended for another post but seems this post snatched the 1st place.