Technology to use for my personal manager

Well after a break of almost 1 1/2 yrs I am back on the track that i had left. No points for guessing that I have not moved an inch forward towards developing my personal manager. Ofcourse, as usual, a lot of thoughts have been going on in my in this last year and a half towards taking that first step. One important decision to be taken is finalizing the technology to use to develop it. Only requirement is that it has to be Web Based tool. Simple, isn't it?
The answer is a BIG NO. I have been doing a lot of reading on the various web frameworks that are available but the more I read the more confused I am on taking that decison. I will put down the top 3 requirements from the would-be framework
1. Rapid development
2. Rich user interface
3. Open Source with good support in the form of newsgroups and forums

The various options that I had considered were

• JSF, Struts2 and Hibernate: Promising technologies and a wide coverage. When it comes to JSF, deciding on the library to use is a difficult choice. With plenty of vendors offering components it becomes really difficult to choose one from the other. The other concern here is rapid development. None of the java web frameworks are designed for rapid development. Its time consuming to setup a small prototype and get it up and running.
• Grails: Very impressive in the context of rapid development. Built in support for integration with Java. Looks like a direct replica of Ruby On Rails. Underneath it uses spring and hibernate, so another plus point. Even though its damn fast to build a prototype and get and end to end application up and running with a minimal amount of code, I am not sure about the effort required to develop a production quality application.
• JSF, Spring and Hibernate: Spring instead of Struts. Have not done much of research on Spring.
• 3'rd Party UI libraries: There are quite a handful of RIA libraries available and choosing the one suited for my application is a tough task. It should be easy to use, small footprint and good support

Well thats it for now. Hopefully I will conclude on some technology soon and move ahead

Need for a personal manager

Being into software, i get the feeling that to manage my stuff better i need a software. The "stuff" to a large extent is money. I just refuse to grab a paper and a pencil and track down my expenses, my assets, my debts ........ It's an insult to my software engineering capabilities if i have to use basic tools to manage my basic stuff. I mean, going back to the kirana wala days and noting down every rupee that one has spent is not my idea of management. My ego hurts. The thought of a software to manage my stuff has been doing the round since the time i started using the keyboard. But then I never found the time to go beyond dreaming and having endless discussions with my friends, who by now have started treating that as a joke. Talking about time, that is also another thing that i want to keep track of and manage, BUT USING A SOFTWARE.
So my endevaour to build a tool begins. Lets see if i actually do something about it.

Where to ...

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading" - Lao Tzu

Change is the motivation that keeps me going at times. The change might be very insignificant, it might also be an old wine in a new bottle. But that does not matter. Phychologically it has hit me and that gives me something to look forward to. It acts as a steroid, but in the end I am sure i will end up doing the same thing. The only difference is that i will be heading towards the pit with more energy and enthusiasm.

Happy New year

Just for the sake of posting something this year :-)

Rise nd shine

It's one of those rare moments in my life when I am up and alive waiting for the sun to rise. I am not an early riser, prefer to stay up late and wake up at my own sweet time. I am more used to leaving office at this time (6.30 A.M). But this is one of those sunshine days, and i am sure i can count them on my fingers, that i am staring at the monitor in my office.
I woke up sometime between 4.30 and 5.00 in the morning mainly due to some arbit thoughts about policy dowload, vpn and firewall creating havoc and disturbing my much desired and cherished sleep. After twisting and turning in the bed restlessly toying with the idea of switching on the comp and pouring down my thoughts into some dark corner of my hard disk, i finally managed to get up. But then i did not have the heart to wake up my near and dear ones who were, to my envy, blissfully in an another world. So just freshened up and zipped to office. Zipped according to Pune standards would be 50 kmph. The less said abt the roads the better it is.
Let me go back to that one hour of restlessness where my thoughts were too random and desultory. Ofcourse, it was triggered off due to some thing related to my work but then it raced off to subjects ranging from philosophy to technology. Even in that state of psychic inebriation i was sane enough to realize that i was just meandering on thoughts which made no sense and would fade away the moment i wake up from my slumber (I still was hoping to fall asleep and wake up after a good 4 hours). But the will to capture these thoughts proved to be really strong and so i am in the office trying to complete the jigsaw puzzle. The final image would still be a puzzle which depicts the radomness of my rambling, but nonetheless it would be compete according to me.
The subject that i skimmed through were interesting. I would love to dedicate an entire post to them sometime soon, but as of now i will just give them a title and a preface so that i can track it down later and do more justice to it
1. Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds (inspired by u-know-who). Will touch upon love, loyalty, marriage, lust .....
2. Advancements in technology: Thought capturing device - This idea has been doing the rounds for quite some time and is born out of my laziness to capture them in paper or any physical-effort-required mechanism. I badly need a device that will store all my thoughts so that i can refer to them for future use. That would have avoided this early morning trip to the office
3. The Donkey and the Guitar. Sounds like the most idiotic title but that's what came to my mind. Basically it signifies the reality and the dream.

Well, that's all for now. Let me get back to my routine now.

Procrastination. My favourite "past" time

"Procrastination is an accumulation of motivation".
I don't recollect the wise person who said those words. It's blatant plagiarism on my part to use these words out here. But then what's the purpose of a quote if it does not reach the masses.
By now i have accumulated so much of motivation that it has become a burden. Just want to shed some motivational baggage off my shoulders. Everyday morn i wake up with a feeling of todays-gonna-be-the-most-accomplishing-day kind of spirit. As i write this i know that I am just a dreamer. Ironic, i am being very punctual in writing this blog. Well, you might argue that posting twice with sincere dedication does not make one a man who honors time. But its a good start.
Let me prioritize the tasks that i need to postpone.

What's in my head...

I don't really know what i was thinking when I picked up this title. Thinking... when did i start doing that.
Was in search of a dart board to shoot my thoughts at and well, what better place to begin than this. It feels so strange to paint ur thoughts the way it is and put it on display. Opening ur heart, mind to someone whom, maybe, u will never get to meet or know. But strange are the actions of people. Shut urself from people u want to be with and open up to a zillion crazy surfers who care a f*&^ about u.