The poor man's Taj

In these days of recession everyone understands cost-cutting. But is this a new phenomenon?
When Aurangzeb tried to outdo his father, I guess his empire was already in recession. So, is the Bibi-ka-Maqbara a cheaper version of the Taj? Isn't that strange? Usually, if you want to outdo a previous attempt you would do better than the first. But then imitations are never as good as the originals, are they?

Just saw Ellora caves & Kailasha temple

Huge caves. Massive dedication. Whenever I see these Architectural marvels one thought always comed to mind - 'These (God) bhaktas must be crazy (in the devotional sense)'. Without the humungous amount of faith & patience ther is no way you can keep beating you head, oops tools for centuries against sheer rocks. But these monuments to man's will power have stood the test of time.
Enough cliched philosophy...
Soumit was feeling hungry after such a heavy diet of holes in the mountain, so we stopped on the way back for some food.

Ruby Cheatsheet

I was trying to find a good Ruby cheatsheet to help me through the first few days of Ruby on Rails learning. Found this one - http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/QuickRef.html

Create the mood

From http://s-anand.net
Follow your moods
If there's any reality to this, then the best thing to do is to do what you feel like doing. You'll naturally accomplish this faster. That's typically what I do when I'm given any work. I usually wait until I just feel like it. Then it's usually a matter of a few hours before the job is done. Sometimes the mood doesn't quite arrive before the deadline, in which case there's always inspiration.

Brilliant piece of lateral thinking applied to Object Persistence

Just read this article on JavaWorld - Use search engine technology for object persistence.
A brilliant piece of lateral thinking of using a Search Engine to Store Data! It also gives a very short introduction on Lucene. Could be useful - definitely thought provoking.

P.S.: Hey I survived to write another blog entry! Moral of the previous blog entry is that it pays to come clean - EARLY.