Where should I take my kids this winter break?

If you are a parent of 2nd grader, you probably also looked around to decide where to take kids this winter break. I decided to say NO to theme parks this time. We had visited a couple of times to local science museum so I was looking for something refreshing and interesting for whole family. Our schools emphasize on Language and Arts until 3rd grade, giving parents more responsibility of introducing math and science to kids through participatory play. I am having hard time motivating my 7 yr old to the innovative and creative sciences so we drove to Lawrence Hall of Science museum at Berkeley last week. I must say that this place is a must go if you like to stimulate your thought and sharpen your science trivia skills. Take a look at these.

• what could go wrong on a Mars mission?
• how do you spot a microfossil?
• how well can you read a face in space?
• how does food taste in space?
• how is water recycled from toilet?

and many more... you will be able to watch interactive videos that answer these questions. The museum has plenty of science games for both pre schoolers and older kids. In fact, museum offers classes and workshops on weekdays and weekends for all ages 2 and above. These classes and workshops appear to be designed to introduce different aspects of science through play. My favorite is the interactive planetarium

where audience is encouraged to participate in questions and answers. The planetarium shows are priced at $4 each and if you are short on time, you should decide which one is best for your family. Since we had more adults than kids in our team, museum folks suggested that we choose "Red Planet Mars" show. If you have more kids in your party, you might choose "A sky full of stars".

We were simply amazed, how much we learnt about Mars and other exploratory scientific experiments that are going on in space and biology area. Please do not forget to visit their website before you decide to visit with your kids.

Finally, I would like to mention about the opportunity to visit Tech Museum at San Jose with your family FREE on second Sunday of every months.  Wish you all a very happy new year and happy exploring Maths and science !!

DB2 Performance Management for a Smarter Planet

This video shows, how tuning a db2 database system can really lower the power consumption of the server and improve the business productivity. A must watch video for DB2 developers and DBAs:

Why DBAs are in high demand?

A DBA (Database Administrator) is a vital resource for any company that needs to setup, manage and operate data efficiently. A DBA ensures that data is backed up and  restored regularly, authorized properly and made available 24x7 to the users. Some DBAs specialize in performance tuning and data security and others grow in their own organization to management positions.
So what makes these DBAs most wanted? DBA role requires more than simple database management skills. A DBA needs to have a thorough understanding of the database internals such as indexing, optimization, understanding plan, problem determination and patience. Some of these skills can only be aquired with years of working experiences in multiple projects.
A simple job search on simply hired website showed up hundreds of results for DB2 DBA in almost every metro area ranging from no experience to 15 years. Average DB2 DBA Salary is $81,000 and can vary greatly based on location and expertise.
This developer works article will guide you if you want to earn a DB2 DBA certification and become an DB2 DBA. If you are not motivated yet, please read the CNN report on 10 promising jobs for 2009.
Good luck !!

Wine & Innovation for Everyone !!

The recession and aggressive competition have driven down prices of a lot of things including high-end wines and innovative consumer electronic products. Total sales of wine is going to rise this year by 2.1% (according to market research group), however wines above $25 is getting a big hit. This is not so good news for wineries but it is creating a level playing field for wine loving consumers who otherwise could not afford high-end wines. The price for these fancy wines are going to remain cheap next year.

Take a look at some of the innovative consumer products. The top brand 40" LCD TV was selling for $1700 just a couple of years ago. This Thnaksgiving, 40" SONY Bravia 1080P TV was selling for $700

LCD TV, GPS and Flash Camcorder remained HOT this year but prices are much affordable. A 4.3 Garmin Nuvi with tons of features is selling at TigerDirect for $115. Some TomTom models were sold for $70 around Thanksgiving. This is a huge drop for something which is a life saver when you are on road. I consider these portable GPS systems the most innovative consumer product because unlike other data communication products, they don't require us to subscribe to any service contract.

Some of the best innovations we saw, came in latest laptops. My favorite is Lenovo Ideapad with Intel Core 2 Duo processor which is different than Dual Core processor. Core2 Duo is designed from ground up to be fast while not consuming as much power as its predecessors.  The Ideapad laptop can be built with many CPU options from Core2 Duo family (they differ with L2 cache) and other innovative features such as Lenovo's Veriface technology(lets you use your face as password) and built-in webcam and dolby audio. All these for unbelievable price of $529. one thing is sure...2009 will be remembered as the year of innovations that benefit everyone.

Future of Manufacturing at the atomic level - Molecular Nanotechnology

What a great introduction to such a complex subject !

This $5 Monopoly Deal Card game Rocks !!

Our family enjoyed playing regular monolpoly board game together for years, when I saw this card game on amazon for $5, I had little expectation, but ordered after reading some reviews anyway.  I must say, this game rocks for many reasons:

• It comes in a small pack, just like a set of playing cards.
• This game is more fun playing than the traditional board game.
• This game is designed to keep you engaged throughout, some folks claimed its addictive.

A very good family game to have on go, Go get one for your car too... I just saw the target ad for just $4. Wow.. amazon is beaten again. Last week, Wii price was beaten by buy.com.
AMAZON - wake up! Don't make us read your review and buy somewhere else !

Holiday appreciation for the year around service

Holidays season is at its peak, and we sometime miss the opportunity to appreciate those who did the job year around without fail, rain or shine. Our letter carrier (USPS mail man), news paper carrier or your cleaning crew. I always wondered what should be the appropriate tip amount for these folks until I found this Kiplinger article - Holiday Tipping Tip Sheet.  This article links to another one on What you need to know about Holiday Tipping !
Hope this post will help you appreciate their service at this holiday season !

Power of mentoring

January is celebrated as National Mentoring month. I am writing this blog to remind myself the power of mentoring in my life. I am a big believer of mentoring programs. If you are a working professionals, chances are your company has an official mentoring program, many corporations do. But if your company does not have one, do not be discouraged. You can find one. For those of you who are new to this concept, mentoring is a structured and trusting relationship between two people called mentor and mentee, where mentor offers guide, support and encouragement to develop character and competence of a mentee.
If your job is related to innovation and change, mentoring plays a greater role in succeeding at workplace. I recognized the value of mentoring early in my career and based on my experience, here are 3 reasons, you must have a mentor:
1. You need to get out of your comfort zone 
We learn and grow and become comfortable with the daily routine and slowly develop our own comfort zone.  We get stuck at same place and its not easy to come out. But in order to improve personal life or climb the corporate ladder, we need to break our comfort zone and come out. You will need support and guidance of a mentor to be able to come out of comfort zone and excel in the new job.

2. You need to re-energize yourself periodically

Mentoring relationship is a trusted one and when you share your emotions out of personal or professional events, you get fresh ideas and opinions which will re-energize you to do things differently.

3. You need different perspective

You need different perspective on your thoughts and ideas to succeed. A good mentor always facilitate informations(coaching and advice) so that mentee can make informed decision.

So the big question is how do you find a mentor? Here are few tips:

• If you are a working professional, look for someone accomplished outside your department or organization. Tell him your objective and request, if he can be your mentor.
• Join professional network group like Linkedin and expand your network, you will find an ideal mentor very soon.
• You can google and find some mentoring network organizations such as IMNO
• Ask your manager or supervisor if he can help you find a mentor.
• When you find one, make sure you meet/talk regularly

Happy mentoring !!

Find any IBMer's contact address

Social media plays a very important role in connecting with people. Very often, we hear news about how facebook or myspace helped find a lost brother reunite with his family. Linkedin has helped me reconnect with a bunch of my old friends. If you work in technology field, chances are one of your friends / family members works for IBM. IBM operates in 178 countries (no kidding) and employs 398, 455 people
If you know last name of your buddy and looking for his/her contact email and phone#, IBM provides a public directory on it's website. Take a look at the IBM Employee Directory.
It will not display information if employee has choosen NOT to make information public.
Happy searching !

Work Passionately and Earn Trust - Keynote Message at SJSU Graduation 2009

I am writing about this because I am part of this huge event. San Jose State University College of Engineering Graduation ceremony took place at event center today at 9 am. About 600(no official data, heard the announcement) new graduates from all engineering disciplines took walk and collected diploma. 
Willem P. Roelandts ex CEO and Chairman of the Board for chip design company Xilinx was the keynote speaker. He delivered a short speech with very strong message to graduates and future tech leaders - Work passionately and earn trust. He emphasized the value of  Trust and credibility for future leaders because lack of trust demoralizes workers which in turn suppresses innovation. Congratulations to all grads !!

NX vs VNC - which one is better?

It depends on your need ! If you google for NX vs VNC, you will find tons of discussions, and if you are more  confused then you were before, I have a google knol published on this subject. There are some advantages of using  NX over VNC technology:

• NX uses VFB (Virtual Frame Buffer ) where as VNC uses standard X server.
• NX compresses the X11 data to minimize the amount of data transmitted. This makes NX faster over low bandwidth network.
• NX uses SSH protocol to send data using public key cryptography for authentication. 

However NX has one limitation, your desktop can not be shared with your buddy. Everyone gets a fresh session. Give NX a try, I have documented the minimal set of steps in the knol(link above). For developers like me who work on Unix/Linux platforms, remote desktop is not a "nice to have" but a "must have" productivity tools. Let me know what you prefer to use. Have a great evening !!

Multi-core - How is legacy code being enabled for Multi-core CPUs?

Multi-core processors take advantage of advancement in chip manufacturing technology to implement two or more execution cores on a single micro processor. These execution cores essentially are individual processors on a single die. Multi-core processors have evolved from Intel's HT(Hyper threading technology) and according to Intel, multi-core when combined with HT is going to provide powerful optimization and deliver system throughput substantially. The multi-core architecture is very well explained in this Intel Paper.
I have been following the trend in CPU architecture for a long time. We have been using multi-core processor desktops and servers for over a year now. My interest is to know how legacy software applications are leveraging this new architecture for performance. Until recently, I did not hear much about enabling software programs for multi-core, why? I asked one of my friend who is an expert in parallel programming. He told me that there are a couple of reason majority of applications are not being touched. First, parallel programming is NOT easy and second, for now multi-core is limited to dual core in majority of places. Most you can get by enabling application is two fold performance gain on a dual core. This may not be worth overhauling the software, cost can be the problem. He explained that, once 8 and 16 core processor become common, then vendors will be forced to redisgn/rewrite/enable application for multi-core.
So, the next big question is how are the myriad of applications are going to be enabled for multi-core? Are there any tool/libraries available to do that?
I did some research and found out that indeed, a lot of efforts are going in developing standards and tools to enable multi-core programming.

• Intel's Threading Building Block (TBB) is an Open Source Library to enable multi-core parallelism in C++ program. TBB threaded applications automatically scale to fully utilize available cores on the system. TBB documentation including a tutorial and Getting started guide can be found here. The open source binaries for Windows, Linux and other platforms can be downloaded here. 
• The OpenMP API for parallel programming supports C++ and fortran languages. The overview of OpenMP API can be downloaded here. I also found a nice exercise which I am going to try .. 
• Microsoft provides a set of tools for parallel programming and concurrency testing at it's parallel computing portal.

I will keep my eye open and acquire some skills on the subject. Please post any comment / resources related to this here.

Is BPM going to be a hot trend in 2010?

Got the news this morning of IBM aquiring Lombardi Software a BPM (Business process management) software company based in Austin Texas. Jim Sinur of Gartner has been writing about the hottest trends in BPM
in his blogs. The latest aquisition proves that companies are investing on more formalized model to automate and improve their business process. I do not have good knowledge of BPM software but one thing I understand clearly is that every piece of software is being transformed to support and leverage today's collaborative environment and credit goes to success of social media software. For example, Jim in his blog talked about 5 hot trends in BPM which can be summarized below:

• Better work experience for knowledge workers
• Support for collaborative behaviors in the process model
• continuous improvement in business process through agile business rules
• Predictive analysis through modelling

Time to learn BPM ? I am going to use these resources for now...

• MIT Open Courseware on Optimization Methods in Management Science
• IBM Redbook: BPM Solution Implementation Guide

The City of Entertainment - as they say!

I couldn't believe my Nikon D40x camera can take night shot like this .. take a look, the picture was taken from the walk over bridge near Excalibur on the Las Vegas strip:

Optibike - why is it so expensive?

When I looked at the "Optibike" at Academy of Sciences San Francisco Museum last month, I could not believe my eyes; very rugged looking electric bike but for whopping $5000 and more. Five thousand and more for an electric bike??  The first thing came to my mind is that why anything unconventional is so hyped and over priced in this country. I took a couple of photographs to remind myself to do more research later. When I googled it, I found many hardcore fans justifying the cost, not sure if they were justifying their decision to invest $8K (most of the models come around $8K with accessories and extra battery) on a bike. The bike was invented and created by the famous moto racer Jim Turner in his Colorado garage. Company on its website blog explains why it does not make a cheap electric bike. It says "If you want a cheaper electric bike- there are plenty out there.   You will not find them at Optibike,     Someone had to take the lead and build a real bike for people that demand the best- and for those people there is Optibike."

Anyway, I am not a bike fan and certainly not a fan of electric bike. However I have ridden many mopeds and scooters in India during my college days. In fact I used to own a dealership in my home town which used to be the authorized dealer for automatic drive moped called "Avanti Garelli" originally manufactured by Kelvinator India. The automotive division of Kelvinator was later aquired by Monto Motors, thanks to google, I found them. In early 90s, these mopeds were priced Five thousand seven hundred Indian Rupees (little more than $100) and note that it was not an ordinary moped, Kelvinator had collaboration with Garelli of Italy who were original designer of these mopeds. I couldn't find the current price of Monto Mopeds (still named Avanti..) but my guess is that it won't be more than 15000 Indian Rupees ($300) even now. However I understand that these mopeds run on gasoline and optibike is an electric bike, I am talking about apple and oranges, but the point I am trying to make is if something so green and useful for majority of daily city commuters, why are they beyond our reach. After all, what does it have - a fast charging Lithium Ion batteries, some smart circuitries, rugged and reliable gear train. Do these features justify the cost of the bike? The price of LCD television came down 80% in just 3 years, why are these technologies so over priced? I plan to go, schedule a test drive and find out the answer myself some day. Until then, let me know what you think about it...

Best things in life aren't things

I came across this blog while I was looking at SunLight Foundation Labs and it's projects on Open governance. A must read story in my opinion:

http://sivers.org/trust

Become a more productive software developer

One of my friends asked me this Friday, what Linux flavor he should try to install on his secondary laptop (he never used Linux on his laptop for regular work) and my instant answer was Ubuntu. I have been using Ubuntu for last 4 years and I have persuaded at least 10 folks so far to install and use on their home PC. None of them are unhappy or have any regret that they did.
Anyway, most of home usage is limited to internet use and Firefox rules as far as browser is concerned. I am Chrome (google's new browser)  fan and I used this hack to install chrome on my home ubuntu desktop.
If you installing Ubuntu on your Laptop for primary use and make your living by developing software programs, You can try out a lot of nice tools and utilities that come with Linux. I wrote a knol a while ago and here is the link, in case you are interested.. Become a more productive software developer Long live Ubuntu !!

How are you using your PS3?

Some of my friends have recently bought PS3 and others are talking about how fantastic the console is not only for gamers but for any gadget lovers. I know none of my friends are hardcore gamers and if they are buying it for non-gaming use then I must know what they are buying for. Well, some got excuses to replace the DVD player with Blue Ray and since PS3 comes with Blue Ray player, it makes logical sense to buy PS3 instead if price is right. However, price of standalone BDP is following the regular trend of going south, but being able to use PS3 as a very powerful Linux system is what distinguishes it from other gaming console. 

As you know, PS3 features CELL processors designed and manufactured jointly by IBM, Sony and Toshiba. CELL processor makes PS3 a computing powerhouse, Read the CELL architecture explained by Nicholas Blachford. You can also read the CELL story at IBM Research Innovation that matters website. 

The fact that PS3 uses open platform, people are using it for playing blue ray movie discs, playing games, streaming videos and pictures and best of all installing Linux to make it a full-fledged computing system.

In fact most Linux vendors Fedora, Ubuntu and Suse have dedicated website for instructions to install their OS on PS3. 

The story that sounded most interesting was the making of PS3 Gravity Grid.  PS3 Gravity Grid is a cluster of 16 PS3 console put together by UMass Researchers for their supercomputing project. Read the story and consider converting your PS3 as a Linux system with Ubuntu on it. Are you ready my friends?

It's Real my friend ....

When industry stalwarts like IBM, Microsoft and others talked about Cloud computing a couple years ago, it caught everybody's attention. Then we heard Free software advocates downplaying the whole idea of cloud. I read Richard Stallman - creator of GNU stating cloud as another trap to lock into proprietary systems in an interview with Guardian in Sept 2008. I am a big fan of GNU tools and I respect his point of views, but I was not convinced with his idea of "keeping information in your own hand". We (individuals and businesses) kept information in our own hands for a long time and later realized that these information provide no values until acted upon, shared and analyzed. In other words, internet really enabled us to use the information and make money from it.  Larry Ellison in Oracle World 2009 spoke about cloud and said "computer industry is more fashion-driven than women's fashion and cloud computing is simply the latest fashion."  


It is important to know that Cloud computing is not a new fashion concept, in fact the term dates back to 1960 when John Mccarthy an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist who received the Turing Award in 1971 said that  "computation may someday be organized as a public utility". In fact, Marc Andreessen, was one of the first to attempt to commercialize cloud computing with an Infrastructure as a Service model with his company Loudcloud. It later sold the infrastructure business to EDS in 2002 and became Opsware which was acquired by HP in July 2007 for $1.6 billion. 
As an Infrastructure architect, I understand the relevance and benefits of cloud computing and I think, even if its a new name for some  of the existing distributed computing technologies, every business small, medium or large are looking at ways to reduce cost using cloud computing technologies. Here are some facts:

• Amazon EC2 saw the unprecedented growth in public and private cloud. Guy Rosen tracks the growth of EC2 take a look at the stunning data about EC2 here. 
• EC2 runs IBM Technologies now.
• IBM is offering CloudBurst 

Comments/suggestions are welcome.

World's first Camera with Projector

As soon as I saw this, I said to myself, why it took so long for these companies to come up on such a cool idea. This is a real innovation for consumers in a digital camera in my opinion in last couple of years. We have seen mega pixels increasing lately, but who cares, if you are not a professional photographer and do not print poster of your photos. For regular users like me, I think Nikon did a fantastic job of offering something which is very useful. You can show off your skills immediately to anyone and you don't need a computer. This camera is specially going to be a big hit in countries where majority of population do not have computers at home.
Nikon unveiled this 12.1 Mega pixel camera in August of this year and I think it recently started selling here in USA. The model is s1000pj and it comes with remote and an easy to use stand. It projects up to 40 inches in size and at a maximum distance of 2 meters. Amazon has only 8 reviews but they are solid 5 star. This one is definitely going to be in my wish list.

You won it, now earn it !

Our president received Nobel peace prize at Oslo Norway yesterday, he was greeted by Greenpeace activists with a banner which says.."You won it, now earn it." I thought, it was a very powerful message from people from both side..those who believed that getting elected as US president for him itself was such a world event that shadows everything and those who thought it was too early to award him the most prestigious award without any measurable result for world peace.
Politicians are so lucky in this regard. We elect them and award them with title and responsibility and they get time to prove themselves and earn it. Common people are not so lucky. As an employee, we have to work day and night to earn a promotion or reward at work and when we do get it, we have to work even harder to protect it. We have to watch what our president does for peace in the world and how he earns the reward !
Best wishes to him !

Learn DB2 - easy way !

DB2 is IBM's flagship database software, DB2 Express C is the free version for application developers to use the industry leading database at no cost. IBM Data Studio is the application development tool which let you develop data driven application in very familiar eclipse environment. I am a long time DB2 developer and have had experience working with latest version of Data Studio recently. We created a enterprise grade web application that accesses huge number of DITA documents stored natively in DB2 pureXML and allowed user to search and navigate using facets and also custom assemble  the topics they are interested in. You will be amazed, how quickly you can connect to your backend database and develop an enterprise ready application using Data Studio and DB2. 
Download both DB2 and Data Studio ebook for free:

FREE Book- Getting Started with DB2 Express-C and exercises

FREE ebook - Getting started with IBM Data Studio for DB2

Are we Reusing enough?

Living in San Franciso bay area, we have all rights to claim to be some of the most environment friendly citizens on the planet -  Stricter smog tests for cars, most spare the air days, heavy taxes for cleaner gasoline. Is that enough, what are we doing ourself to protect and conserve the natural resources. Are we recycling / reducing / reusing enough?
I personally find very difficult to balance it with consumerism here. Look at these and decide for yourself:

1. Post office is delivering tons of junk mails for advertisers. Runs on tax payer's money, earns tons of money from advertisers and again dumps all those garbage to tax payers to clean. No body is there to ask them, why and I have no idea, how to make them stop delivering those unsolicited advertising to my mailbox. They have a point: "We deliver a first class mail for you from coast to coast for 44 cents" Hmm.. we (ultimately planet earth) is paying a heavy price for their ill designed business practices. And I know that earth will not split if they stop delivering mail for 44 cents. Internet has enabled us to make better choices for the sake of trees where these paper come from. 
2. When my daughter brings her backup from school, I see no less than 10 colorful printed flyers a day in her backup given by her teacher at school. They all are targeted for buying, auctioning, advertisement for private lessons and other business advertisements. Some of them suggest that you send your kid with money tomorrow so that they can have an opportunity to buy things themselves. Think about this for a second. Public schools run on tax payer's money and most specifically to the tax payers who live in that area. If the school administration wants to turn the school into an advertising house, why do they need public money. After all a company like google can run just with advertising revenue, why not our schools. Kids should be taught to reduce paper junks, reuse and recycle. Opposite is happening. See what we can do to stop this?
3. When we moved to our new townhouse this spring, somehow we convinced ourself that we will soon need a new refrigerator. Time passed by quickly while second kid was growing up fast and we could not find time to shop for a new refrigerator. The Thanksgiving brought a new wave of consumerism and  we started scanning ads posted on bfads.net I spent hrs and hrs researching the make and model and rushed through many stores on black friday to later found out that the models on heavily discounted prices were sold out quickly even if they had very poor reviews. I decided to give my shop refrigerator decision another thought. Opened the refrigerator door and looked at the model we have...

• not more than 7 yrs old top of the line maytag 
• vegetables were getting freezer burn because temperature was not setup correctly
• daily slider was not fitting properly, because some plastic was broken 
• was not cleaned for a long time
• water filter was not replaced for a while

guess what we did, cleaned inside out, got a super glue from home depot for $2.49 and glued the plastics, bought a puriclean filter from ebay for $30 (still waiting to arrive) adjusted the temperature and here we are.
Saved $1600, well that what the black friday sale price  for the samsung 25 cubic feet french door at best buy. Lesson 101 of Reusing.. Forget Consumerism .. save Thanksgiving !
Bye for now..

iphone hacks

I am amazed, how little I knew about my iPhone - well for me, my iPhone was just a phone until I picked up an Orielly book on iPhone hacks.

Here is a couple of things I liked and tried on my iPhone:

• making a shortcut for your phone# at home screen for quick dial, sounds like no big deal, but saves few finger taps and easy to setup. just point your safari browser to .tel.qlnk.net -> cancel when prompted -> save as a home link
• Gcast - create your podcast from iPhone; a blog with downloadable mp3 just by making a phone call, see gcast.com you will find out

I am going to be trying out few more interesting hacks and post here. enjoy..