Archive for March, 2008
From complete obscurity to little bit of popularity
When I posted about my first impression and experience with Django, I had no idea what was going to come.
Though this site existed for about 5 years, the traffic was primarily from my friends; and few others looking for FOW, the freeware that I developed as a photo album generator. Not much attention and I didn’t kind of bother about it.
But today was different.
When I posted about Django in the morning, I didn’t expect anything to be different in the traffic. But I was wrong. When I checked on the access log, I saw something strange. The access count was in the range of 100. It was strange because usually I hit 100 in a month, not in a day. So I opened the access log and found that there was a whole lot of traffic from reddit. I opened the referring URL and found that there were sites listed out in some ranking form and my article was swinging somewhere between 8 – 15. (Until today I had no clue about reddit).
Honestly speaking, there are better articles on the net about Django. I am not sure on what basis my article was posted there and who were providing points and how it ended up where it was. Anyway I am completely flattered by all this attention. I found that even Jacob (one of the lead developer) left a comment. All of this is too much for someone who is just starting in the web development area. ‘Thank You’ to those countless strangers who were kind to me.
As I am writing, the count is 2300 and growing! My only concern is that it shouldn’t run into any bandwidth issue. Hope the server is able to handle the load.
Already my friend Francis has been kind enough to host this site. I don’t want to bring any disturbance to his settings.
As the saying goes, every one has their fame of 15 minutes; I had it for a day!
A distant dream comes true with Django
Years back, when every one jumped into Java world, I was content with developing ‘Windows-only’, client-server applications.
Sometime later, I moved into CRM (customer relations management) domain and I stayed with it for years before moving into ERP domain. Though ERP products used web architecture – thereby I learnt little bit of that architecture – I was constrained to the toolset of the product.
During this time, I did attend a Java course and tried moving into it. But the ‘comfort’ of developing within ERP framework made me to stay-put (ok, to tell you the truth, the money part was good). Over the years, ‘web development’ remained a distant dream!
After a decade in CRM/ERP domain, the itching to develop for web was getting more and more day by day. So I decided to try my hands on it. In the beginning it was limited to setting up WordPress, customizing its themes and so on. WordPress’ design was simple, and efficient. Installation is 5 minutes; customizing a theme is simple; so in about 20 minutes, my blog is up and running.
Though web development with WordPress was minimal, it boosted my confidence to get into this world of unknown. Only then I realized that the web development world is so full of languages, frameworks and standards. Not to mention the flame wars between each camps – MSFT vs Open Source, Python Vs PHP, Django Vs Rails. For a long time, I got side-tracked with these flame wars, instead of doing anything useful. I would read for hours how one Python framework is better than the other one; and then watch a presentation on how Rails is the best thing that happened to the web world. After months, I knew a lots of information; but confused more than ever.
As I carried along, I observed that Django developers/users generally didn’t get into a ‘yours-is-bad-ours-is-best’ kind of argument; rather their comments were on the lines of, ‘choose a framework in the language that you already know’. That made a lot of sense to me. As I already knew Python, I decided to try Python frameworks instead of learning Java or Ruby.
Also, in most of the discussions/comments, Django developers provided information; but didn’t criticize the other party. They cleared any misinterpretation; but didn’t start any flame wars. Even when they were attacked with words like ‘they don’t know to write a decent API’, they took it pretty neatly and improved their framework. I liked that attitude and it fitted with my personality.
So I decided to try it out – coming from the corporate world, I wanted to try out a PoC (proof of concept) on Django. One of the users of Django had created a package called, ‘Instant Django’. Download it, unzip into a directory and you are on your way to play with the framework. Fantastic. Impressed at the first shot. I didn’t have to install many applications; tweak with lots of settings; painless development was possible.
Whenever I was stuck, I could log into their irc channel and I should tell you this – these guys are awesome; very knowledgeable but very helpful. You will not get a RTFM from any one of them; they might point out to the documentation; but not in a RTFM manner. Oh, Django documentation is exhaustive and neat. You don’t get lost in the sea of bytes!
So I did my first working web application in Django – a micro-blog kind of application. I show cased it to my colleagues and they loved it. Now I get a ‘here-goes-a-geek’ kind of a look from them, which of course I enjoy. And did I tell you that I could develop that over the weekend! It was a great feeling. My boss said, ‘why don’t you roll that out for our department?’. He even added that, ‘Let me talk to our folks and find out if it is ok to make it an open source’. Wow! cool. I am very happy.
Who can despise the days of little beginning? This might be the start of another exciting phase in my development carrier.
MSFT 2008 product launch
Today I attended the launch of Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, at Rex Theatre, Bangalore.
The whole event was organized and conducted pretty well. The compere was pretty good (I heard that he does some shows in Start Sports). The snacks and the food was good as well.
That was the good part. None of the presentations were on time (both beginning and end) – when people are talking about improving productivity and introducing tools for keeping deadlines, those presentations should ‘walk the talk’!
However, the contents were relevant and showcased the new and improved functionalities. I was pretty impressed with VS and SQL Server functionalities and the way they were presented in a cohesive fashion. I hope that in the near future, I will be able to test these new features and also to use them in some of the (hobby) projects.
That brings another point – One of the ‘exciting’ feature of Windows Server 2008 was Virtualization (I am glad, I’ve started to utilize VMs and thereby getting on to the latest bandwagon). The least MS could’ve done was to offer VPC images – let it be trial versions – of these products. If Linux (and other products in LAMP stack) got to this place, it was because – at least that is what I feel – millions of smart folks were able to download, test, use and contribute back for its improvement. Now that ‘Express’ editions are anyway available for free download, MS could’ve provided the VPCs, there by letting hundreds, if not thousands, of developers to play with these features. May be MS doesn’t need those ‘heroes’!
Airtel + Twitter = an easy, effective travel blog
I like to travel – smelling new land, tasting native food, seeing new faces, visiting monuments, cuddling with nature and loosing oneself excites me too much to stay comfortable within four walls.
And when I travel, I like to write down what I see and how I feel when I see them. I tried to write at the end of day; didn’t work. I tried carrying a notebook and write down taking short breaks during the trip; didn’t work either. May be if I was BBC reporter or a BootsnAll contributor, it would force me to write; but being a ‘hobby’ traveler, I find it difficult to log when I travel.
I’ve tried to write once back home. I could make some notes, but most often, I forget the ‘little’ details, which means that what I end-up writing is no different from the thousands of other ‘informatory’ articles on the net. So I’ve lived with the guilt so far.
Recently I heard of a popular micro-blogging site, Twitter and immediately registered there. Twitter provides an option to update via mobile – as it is a micro blog, it makes sense to update via mobile – one tend to keep it short.
Soon after that we, as a family, planned to go to Wayanad in Kerala. We were excited about the trip – it is to the beautiful ‘God’s-own-country’; a family trip in years; a needed break for all of us from our hectic work schedule.
Being a family trip, I wanted to spend as much time as possible, with the family rather than sitting and writing travel notes. Thanks to mobility provided by Twitter, I can send short logs to Twitter by way of SMS! So I carried my mobile, though I wasn’t sure if there will be signal – despite Airtel’s ads claiming, the coverage over sea, villages, mountains and forests. Its time to check that claim.
It came as a pleasant surprise that Airtel’s claim was true – except for the short area between Karnataka & Kerala border, there was signal all through our trip – during trekking through forest near the resort, on crossing many rivulets in Kuruva island or when spending hours of quality time with the family in the resort. I kept sending short messages to Twitter without ever knowing if they reach the site – there is no Internet connection in the resort.
I checked on Twitter as soon as I came home. Wow! every single log was in. With Airtel and Twitter, I’ve captured all the ‘little’ details of our trip without spending too much time away from the family. Thank you, Airtel & Twitter.
I don’t know the feasibility of this option for international travelers and also for hard-core back-bag travelers. I am just writing what worked for me. And believe me, I am paid neither by Airtel or Twitter for this.
Getting started with Virtualization
I try to learn new technologies, especially with regards to developing applications. This means that I keep installing (and uninstalling) frameworks, tools, applications and so on. Over a period of time, my box is littered with so many unwanted applications and a messy registry. Sometimes, the only option left to clean the box is to format and re-install! Not a good option.
With prices falling, may be I could just buy another laptop or a desktop. But being in IT, we move – we move from one to job to another, or to a different client project or to a far-off country. So having another laptop, just for this purpose, doesn’t seem a good option either.
As I searched for an alternative, I stumbled on free Virtualization products from VMWare (VMWare Player) and Microsoft (Virtual PC). (There are other free Virtualization products as well – but I limited myself to these two). With them, I can run a PC inside a PC. What a cool idea! I thought to give it a shot.
Downloading and Installing VMWare Player and VPC was easy. Then I downloaded Open Suse /Mono image; fired up VMWare and I was running SuSe box inside of WinXP! Well it is going good so far.
I got a Ubuntu box as well and what came as a pleasant surprise was that I could use the same downloaded VMWare image (albeit an automatic conversion) in Ubuntu as well.
With an initial success, I wanted to install WinXP in a virtual machine. VMWare doesn’t provide options to create new virtual machines (or virtual disks). However VPC does. Installing WinXP in VPC is same as that of any physical box.
So I got both WinXP and Linux in a virtual box.
It is a human tendency to be discontent. I continued to browse for information on Virtualization and found that I could convert a VPC image into a VMWare image (and vice versa). Thus I could run WinXP in Linux using VMWare.
Finally I installed Visual Studio Express editions as well.
I’ve gotten all the needed infrastructure now. I should get to develop some applications.
Helpful Links:
VMWare Converter – to convert VPC or physical machines to VMWare image.
VMToolKit – to convert VMWare image to VPC