Rajan's View

A simple curry Here is a simple curry recipe for the busy week days. There are no particular vegetables or ingredients that you need for this recipe, just put together any set of vegetables or spices that you may have. Contributed by Rajan Manickavasagam . Published 27. Nov 2011 Ingredients 2 diced potatoes 2   diced  carrots 1 cup of green peas 1 sliced green beans 2 sliced green chillies 1 teaspoon of ginger garlic paste 1 sliced onion 4 tablespoon vegetable oil 1 handful of coriander leaves 1 clove 1 cardamom 1  teaspoon of cumin seeds 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric powder 1/2 teaspoon of chilli powder 1 cup of fresh single cream 1-2 teaspoon of salt (or to taste) Instructions Heat the oil in pan. Add cumin seeds, green chillies and onions and saute them. Once the onions are golden brown, add the ginger garlic paste and the remaining spices. Add the turmeric and chilli powder to the pan. Add...

Surprise, I am writing this post on a Friday. It all started post lunch in the office with someone singing as they were working. Suddenly, the question of someone's age came up. And, then someone else was nominated the 'Daddy' of the group, by virtue of being the oldest! A few quips and laughs and people were quickly back to work. It's just once of those 'Friday' moments in work places all over the world. It's certainly something you don't see on a Monday. While I prefer a quiet work atmosphere, office banter keeps the spirits going and helps people bond. And, probably it will be good if every day were a 'Friday'. Nevertheless, happy weekend.

​As promised, here are the results of the database shoot out between MongoDB and SQL Server. Before we get into the results, a few things worth noting. The objective of the performance test is a simple use case - search data based on some keys. I have a few self imposed principles to ensure that the test is fair and square - Use the standard configuration for the databases so that it's a fair comparison. Exactly the same data loaded into both the databases, including creating the same kind of indexes too. Exactly the same queries and parameters used for both the databases. Exactly the same client used to execute the queries against both the databases. The same kind of OS and underlying hardware (CPU, RAM etc). There are 3 separate database servers that have been used here. They are - Server 1 - Windows 2008 R2 (64 bit) physical server running MongoDB (64 bit). Server 2 - Windows 2008 R2 (64 bit) virtual server running MongoDB (64 bit). Server 3 - Windows 2008 R2 (...

I started looking at various NOSQL databases like Hbase, CouchDB and MongoDB. I finally settled on MongoDB, mainly because it was easy to setup in Windows. The name Mongo is derived from 'humongous', interesting name! For more details, you can refer - http://www.mongodb.org . As it says on the website, it is very easy to setup and highly scalable. Here are my first set of statistics - Time to download the software (64 bit edition) - 2 minutes Time to setup the database - 2 minutes Time to get the database up and running - 1 minute And, this is where I found the database to be refreshing. It is quick, even to setup, leave alone processing of data! Overall, I found these to be key features of this database - Light foorprint. Easy to setup either single or replicated instances and to administer. Schema-free data storage. In other words, there is no need to define any data structure. Incredibly quick for reads and writes. Map Reduce (with Javascript). Very ...

Several people and organizations have cited the growing size and consumption of data in the current digital age. I have deliberately used the word 'digital' instead of 'internet'. There is growing convergence of internet, media (video, audio) and devices. One can today, browse a newspaper on a Smart TV and conversely view a movie on a phone or tablet. There is of course the 'social' chatter on sites such as Facebook, Flickr and Twitter to name a few. The implication of all this is of course transmission and storage of data. I am going to cover the latter aspect in this series of articles. I have worked on various RDBMS starting from databases like SQL Server, Oracle and right up to DB2 and Teradata. I have always been curious about how data and it's application. So, I have been researching on some of the technologies that power large scale data. A key component has been the rising use 'NOSQL' databases. The NO - doesn't stand for No as in Dr...

Just read about the Google Blogger Dynamic Views. It is about changing the look and feel of a blog with new templates. I think blogging just became a whole lot more eye candy! For now the templates are simple and do not offer a lot of customizations, so a lot of my old clutter is gone. I like all the new templates. I have enabled the 'Magazine' template as default on this site now. Of course the readers can modify the layout (on the top left menu) to what they like. For those who are technically inclined, welcome to the world of HTML5. I think in the past few years we have seen a lot of hype around mobile apps, now looks like slowly HTML5 is gaining  momentum. The advantage of course being that you don't have to keep building separate apps for each mobile platform. I tried this site on the iPad, but currently it looks like only the desktop browsers are supported for now. On the mobiles, this site is set for simplified a mobile experience. I have chosen dark theme for...

There has been a flurry of news and coverage on Amazon's new devices and services. We have Amazon entering the tablet market with Kindle Fire, as it has been speculated for quite some time now. It's interesting to see how they are subsidizing the tablet to lock in customers to TV shows and movies from Amazon Prime. It poses a direct threat to the likes of netflix, blinkbox. I suppose watch this space as competition hots up in the online digital media segment. In the long term, going to a multiplex may be as rare as visiting the west end for theatre. One of the features being touted on the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet is the 'Silk' browser. Silk uses the Amazon cloud to speed up the browsing, which is great. It's similar to Opera Mini and SkyFire in that sense. I suppose the key is that there are many websites hosted on Amazon cloud, making the browsing that much faster.  However, on the down side, it raises privacy concerns for the customers. By and large...

This is a belated review about one of the early tablets. It is called Adam. And befitting it's name, it's the world's first tablet which can function both as a tablet and an ebook reader. It runs on Android, no surprises there. The specs of the tablet are good - Tegra2 dual-core 1 Ghz CPU, ULP GPU, 1 GB RAM, Expandable SD and USB slots, GPS, Compass, Bluetooth, Accelerometer, Wifi (3G model available too). There is only one camera but it swivels to face both front and back! The most interesting feature is the 10.1" Pixel Qi screen. This screen is a translfective display. You can notice the difference in the screenshots below. The screen can work in dual mode as a LCD and without backlight (like an ebook reader). Battery life currently lasts for a couple of days, should be more given the screen capabilities. One can use the screen without backlight not just in the Kindle app but even in other apps like Gmail etc. Screen with backlight ON Screen with backl...

In the week gone by, two events happened. One was really a big deal in a lot of different ways, and that's the Microsoft-Skype deal. The other not-so-big deal was from Google, on the launch of the Chromebook. The big deal I personally think more than the money Microsoft is going to pay for Skype, there are other factors in play. 1. Skype is a well established company/product in the VOIP market. It has a few hundred million customers all over the world. As smartphones continue their onslaught all over the world, it is a matter of time before Skype-like services eat into the traditional telecom operators share. 2. Microsoft earlier got into a tie-up with Nokia. With Windows Phone 7 still receiving a lukewarm response compared to the iPhone and Android hype, deals with companies like Skype and Nokia are increasing the chance of Windows succeeding in in the mobile arena. Of course it is going to take time to integrate all the various services and the hardware. 3. While smartph...

The latest version of Ubuntu was out in April 28, following the pattern of Canonical's 6 monthly release cycle. It's called Natty Narwhal. I have been using it for a few weeks and it's natty indeed. The latest edition is very slick when it comes to the user interface. I wasn't too happy with the Unity desktop interface, I am using the GNOME 3 desktop. However, installing GNOME 3 breaks the Unity installation. I would recommend having another desktop manager like KDE. This is where the flexibility and architecture of Linux comes into play, one can do what one wishes! Based on my experience, some of the key features are: - Very simple user interface. Search is now central to the desktop experience (top right in the above screenshot). Hit the "Windows" key and the above menu appears. - The device drivers for for the keyboard, display, bluetooth, wi-fi work out of the box seamlessly (on my Acer 5738z laptop). I am particularly impressed with the trackp...