Mahboob's Journal

Got my hands onto Grails coding after nearly a year. I had done a small project using Grails as my spare-time coding but lost the whole thing when I backed it up on a pen drive, went for an OS upgrade and then found that the pen drive was messed up and could not retrieve the stuff.

The Architects group in Kewill Product Development have been evolving a model reference architecture for the next generation products that will offer cutting edge features to our customers. NoSQL databases are one of the key components of the new architecture; though we already use them in our existing product suite, they will have an enhanced role to play in the future. We are going with MongoDB. Having been used to relational databases for most part of my career, the NoSQL flavor is an interesting and welcome change to application development. To get a first hand feel for MongoDB, I wrote a couple of newbie Hello-World programs each for inserting into and fetching data from MongoDB and MySQL.

This is the first post of 2014. I should have done a new year post in January itself. I did not write it then, kept postponing it, and we are in the second half of April. But, better late than never. It went really fast, 2013. On the personal front, I managed to write 30 blog posts, upload four translations on ruwiray.in and release two short films on YouTube. Undoubtedly if there was one thing that distinguished the year, it was my serious foray into short films. At work, amongst other things, I could lead the effort to make the first customer go live on the re-worked warehousing solution 4S eLog, front-ended the technical team in the acquisition due diligence, and after Four Soft became Kewill, transitioned to being the head of Product Development at Kewill India. For 2014, I have modest personal targets. I plan 20 blog posts, 8 translations, and four short films. I did not spend a lot of my spare personal time on coding and I intend to make up for that this year. Let's se...

When I first heard the sound bytes on the Supreme Court's decision on Section 377, the TV channels were reporting that the Hon'ble Court opined that it was not their responsibility to make laws. If homesexuality has to be be made legal, Parliament has to pass the laws. It sounded right.

For the last 8 to 9 years, the word Technology was part of my designation. Though I understand the word from my professional journey perspective, I wish to understand it in more depth. But I guess Technology comes after science. I mean both procedurally and epistemologically. I am not really sure what the heck the previous sentence means exactly, but basically since technology is the application of science, it is correct to get to know the word science first. Hence this post is on science; however it is not to give any new insight about it, but just compile material that people have already said. It's more like high-school notes, for me to read over and over, and stick it in my mind. Also, this is one of those placeholder kind of posts that I would be periodically updating.

As we wind down this calendar year, a rather intriguing news is going around in the Hyderabad media. Apparently, a overzealous police officer Syed Javed made "six couples, who were hanging out in a park outside the fort, do sit-ups. According to police, a patrol team of the Golconda police saw several young couples sitting in a park near the fort. Inspector Javed and his team abused them and made them do sit-ups as a punishment. He also warned them against visiting parks." Maybe this cop is an ultra-conservative, love-starved, sex-starved individual. But this news is not what intrigued me the most.

I like contrarian views and personalities. In fiction, characters that portray something different and defy the routine enliven the story. As a writer, one would like to weave plots around contrarian characters. But those seldom come. In the media you read / see the same viewpoints, the same stories, the same staid positions. There is general dumbing down of readers/viewers. Mundane stuff is played over and over.