Ourvie.ws

It was early 2000. The recession was months away, the markets were at all time highs and techies were generally a happy bunch.

We had just done a major release and were waiting for fresh work from our client. Waiting is never an easy task, especially when one has had a busy phase just before that. IE and Outlook kept me engaged on otherwise boring days.

On one such day, I remember getting a mail from Vijay asking me to check out a new language called Ruby. Being a programming language junkie and having nothing else to do, I downloaded and tried writing a few basic programs. It felt different and programming was fun again. In the coming months, I wrote automated test solutions with Ruby and cut down the time it took us (and our client) to test our releases.

Years passed. I occasionally visited the ruby language website. Always left with a tinge of sadness, sad at the lack of popularity of this wonderful language among the programming masses.

Sometime last year, things started changing. Came by way of a strange name => rails. Been following the buzz for a while now. Extremely happy for ruby for it deserves the attention.

Finally got tired of being just an observer. Took the plunge a few days back and whipped up a small bookmarking tool. Put in a bit of AJAX as well to be buzzword compliant ;)

Will be doing more if time and work permits.

Flickr integration is over

I am now aggregating my flickr pictures on tamizhan.com. Overnight, my plugin runs and grabs any new picture I post at flickr.

The sync is an one time static import i.e if I change the title of an existing photo in my flickr account, the change will not get reflected here. I thought of making it dynamic but that would mean checking every photo every night for changes, which has huge bandwidth implications as my flickr account grows (which it should in the coming year).

These fun projects are a welcome diversion, especially since I am having a hectic time at office.

Anyways, next on my plate is AJAXification. Probably followed by a grease monkey user script. That space is looking more and more interesting with every passing day.