Wonderful..great..marvelous...

Copyright : Maciek Duczynski
Photo Found at : http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4920356

Such a wonderful image, I can easily say, I havent seen anything like this before. Absolutely great effort. I envy you, the photographer, both in skill (that you did so good) and in luck (that you had the chance to travel to such beautiful place - in Norway somewhere)...

great effort indeed.

Wind energy

There is some renewed interest on my part in wind and related non conventional energy. Thanks to a brother of a friend whom I met last month only, I know a bit more about wind mills and the economy around it.

One thing that has come around is that its a entrepreneurial venture best suited for someone who has relatively deeper pockets. Relating to the sheer volatility and the size of investment required for this business, it becomes a hard to get for a normal first generation entrepreneur.

For example, in India, a typical windmill costs around 1.5 crores to set up. Though government provides decent subsidy on taxes and depreciation benefits to make it relatively viable, you still need about 25-30% of the initial investment to be put in. Further, the amount financed by banks needs a separate kind of guarantee, just because the asset is relatively immovable. You know, they cant just get the windmill out of its root and sell it to claim their money, in case the business defaults on the loan.

Further than that, there are open questions on the stability of the returns from the windmill. Though there are devices measuring the wind speed and therein judge the potential of a place to produce wind energy. These devices are put in place by a govt body and data is recorded to be sold to the companies in the business for generating wind energy.

However, there is no certainty that this data will come around. Remember, its a huge investment going to be based on the data produced by these measuring devices.

Some basic economics around windmills in india are found here -

@Agriculture Information

Connecting to an Oracle Server...which way is faster...

I've never came across this question as such, because its sort of given that you connect to a server any-which way the administrators define the policy. The tuning perspectives came in only afterwards.

However, in a recent situation, I had to connect to a remote server from my client system and was wondering whether I should connect using tnsnames.ora or should I use the basic authentication mechanism, using the complete connect string.

I thought that the tnsnames.ora would incur some latency in connections. On the other hand, connecting directly without using any such files is like doing a telnet to the server on a given port.

Also, I have seen that if you attempt to connect using the complete connect string from the tnsnames.ora file, it also works.

Since I was not clear myself, I did post this question on oracle forums. And a gentleman, Billy Verreynne took out some time to help explain the concept. Many thanks to him.

As it stands, the basic methodology of connection is same in both cases. However, if you happen to have a huge tnsnames.ora file, it would be an overhead to parse the file and get the connect string for the service name you attempted to connect to. But it would only make a difference, if your client connection process go into hundreds then it might make any noticeable degradation. Basically, client would have to parse the huge tnsnames file few hundred times per second.. then it might make a difference.

Billy also suggested that if you switch the server mode from dedicated to shared, it would help.

So, for my conclusions, its the same if you connect through tnsnames or through a native connect string.

@Bangalore...

Well, in the intervening absent period, quite a few things have taken place. A new city has been added to my list of "worked at" locations, Bangalore. Yeah, the so called silicon valley of india.

I have taken up a job in the city here and moved with family. Its an interesting place, lot more cosmopolitan than the image it carries, much better climate for adults (why ?) and worse than expected organization.

As I said, its interesting, as in mixed feelings. The culture is truly cosmo, probably second only to Bombay (Mumbai ??). The kind of mix of people you see here is hard to find anywhere else. All sorts of indians are available and in quantity. :) And then there are those handful of foreigners, presumably offshored by their parent companies for different roles. Just try to venture out on a weekend evening around central Bangalore, the kind of mix visible is very interesting.

The climate is great for us adults. Its always a balanced temperature range, you'd be hard pressed to find an occasion to take your sweaters out. And even worse, my air-conditioner is yet to see the light of the opened box. no need of one. Why I keep itererating about weather being nice for adults, is that because its really bad for kids. the kind of temperature variations that the city goes through even a single day (between 20 and 28) is perhaps too much for the body of the children. They fall sick every now and then, and only after a few months does their bodies get used to it. Its not really nice seeing your kid getting fever or some other thing every now and then.

And, the city is developing beyond its managers expectations. There is no planning whatsoever to be seen for a sustained, planned development of the city. Whereever you see, there is a mix of different kind of buildings. Every other plot has turned into an apartment complex, however small, or spared of any amenities. Roads are so narrow, they cant even think of handling the total load of the vehicles of the city. There is a perennial traffic jam on the main arteries of the city. You have to figure out an alternate route which would avoid the main roads and lead you to your office or some other destination. Using the main roads, its impossible to commute, since you'd always be late.

So, the city has its plus and minus and of course I have only seen so much of it, probably 10-15% and I already complaining, you see, typical human psychology.. complain at every chance you get... :)

Having said all the above, life is not that bad as it might sound after the problems I enumerated.

Been long time...

It has been some really long time since I was active on blogging...Frankly, life has started taking its due on me, and there are lots more things to do/take care besides me, myself and technology :)

I'm a family guy now (some proof of that is this -> http://baby.sraghav.in), and therefore with all aspirations in place, wishes as they have been there, its rather difficult to find time. I dont mean this as an excuse, I dont, but thats what has been going on.

Till now, I have attempted a return to blogging on technology and his blog, I intend not to forget this one, which fondly houses one of my best attempts at writings.

Well, as much as I dislike opining, there are only a handful of people (including family and the best of the friends) who would continuously like to have me brag about me, myself and family...

So, here I am, attempting my return to writing days, with relatively lower frequency for sure, but hoping for a steady stream of posts. I also intend to broaden the scope of content this time around... The idea is to post about my experiences (as always), but also include things around me, us...all of us.. so to say...

Its a wide world, and we all come across different things every other moment. Part of those experiences is considered important by a section of world and becomes news. The rest just passes onto oblivion. Perhaps we can capture some of that. Also, the chosen news items are not always the favourites, and then there are interpretations. Lets attempt that too... In short, lets start commenting on whatever we can lay hands on, rather, I can lay my hands on.

See how it goes on...

And he walked...and I missed it... :(

He walked today... on 13th February 2010, the saturday, at the age of 1 year 2 months and 26 days, our son, Krishna walked on his own...

A day to be remembered forever, and with happiness...

However, being very selfish and lonely, I have to say, it happened when I was not there. And besides having almost all the gadgetory required to capture such moments, we missed to capture it. We couldnt take any photographs, no video, nothing. Basically nothing to remember that moment by.

But sad as that might sound on my missing it, its great news that he did walk. And, in front of that news, nothing else matters... He walked.. he walked.. he is gonna walk ..........

He's gone away ....

for the first time since he was born, my son and I would be separated by a 3 week period. It sounds tiny, but its been two days only, and I am already missing him... :(

He has already started saying "pa pa" and "ma ma" and it feels great. She tries to get him to utter those words on phone, but hardly succeeds.

I wonder how easy it is for others to cope with such separations ?