Jan 06 2010

Is it time to relook at Facebook again?

Category: .live and learn,.personal,.securityAmit Bahree @ 11:52 pm

I still don’t get Facebook – despite being on it. If I want to talk to someone I will call them, email them, text them, meet them, have dinner with them – get the picture?

I am quite worried about the security and privacy elements of it – or rather the lack of it. Those who know me well (anyone?) :-) know I was not always this paranoid but after attending a few Security courses – I cannot bury my head in the sand anymore.

The main issue I have is the commercialisation of the information and it will just get more as Facebook heads to compete with Google – it is my information after all and I don’t feel comfortable sharing so much of it – even after locking it down and setting the various privacy settings. It is very easy to exploit. Take the example where Facebook changed the settings where Google by default would be indexing a lot of this information. And it is you and I as users who had to login and explicitly change a setting to stop it from doing that. Furthermore, despite all the security measures that Facebook might have in place (and they don’t mention how internally within the company walls is the information protected) all it takes is one disgruntled employee (or soon-to-be-ex-employee) to take it all and walk out the door!

The secondary issue I have is the fact that more and more of the information, friends, contacts, etc is marketing and spam (a lot of what we see on Twitter as well). I personally am (thankfully) seeing much less spam on emails these days; but on the flip side I see a dramatic uptick of spam on social site. Not sure if this is because our email spam filters are finally smart enough to work, or perhaps the spammers found the social networking sites to be richer pickings?

It is good to know that there are others out there with the same concern and with some sites such as Suicide Machine allow you to “all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alterego” [sic]. Of course, all has not been peachy for Suicide Machine at the same time. :-)

If you are thinking like me and really giving it a go then suggest you seek some help as well to make it easier.

The irony of all of this however is that I will be posting this it to my Facebook wall and also tweeting it.

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Nov 22 2009

Goodbye Community Server; Hello WordPress

Category: .personalAmit Bahree @ 5:25 pm

After thinking about it for a long time and then wanting to do it for probably an even longer time, I have finally moved this blog to WordPress from Community Server. Overall the move was mostly painless and did not have to write any code to move the posts and tags over which was excellent. I would have loved to write some code to do that, but I don’t have much bandwidth these days so anything I could use (as a user) without writing code or customizing is just great.

I will post the details on how I did the move in a few days. I know there are many others out there wanting to move from Community Server to WordPress and as part of the move I took some screenshots so watch out for that.

I also had to move hosting providers as the place where this blog was earliest hosted is a Microsoft only shop and they did not offer PHP and MySQL. So there might be a few things still breaking or missing. For example, I still need to figure out how to redirect the url from the old url (/weblog/amit) to the new one (/blog/amit). I think WordPress has a built in option and there is also a plug in available. Of course, there is also the .htaccess file which I can use. Let me know if you have any recommendations on which is the best way to go about this based on your experience?

So far am quite pleased with WordPress and happy with the move. :)

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Jun 20 2009

My New Mobile

Category: .personalAmit Bahree @ 11:40 pm

image

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Apr 25 2009

Follow me on Twitter

Category: .personalAmit Bahree @ 8:28 pm

Interestingly I am more active on Twitter over the last 2-3 weeks than here; I guess that might be because it is easier to dump a quick thought – which I suppose one can do here but kind of “seems out of place” (yeah, weird!).

Another contributing factor is I have been extremely busy – both on work front and also on the personal front (between relatives visiting and my assignments does not leave me any time).

Also, I finally got around to building a new MCE – so whatever little free time I had went in that – life was very interesting the few days we were “in between” MCE’s the old one was disconnected and the new one was not up and running yet (that’s a story for another time).

Lastly, the fact I want to move away from CS 2007 to WordPress has also somewhat been at the back of my mind; the more I post, the more data I will need to move and the more headache.

I should get more active here soon (once I get some time), until then follow the tweets.

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Feb 10 2009

I am Scrobbling

Category: .personalAmit Bahree @ 3:18 pm

I love music – not only it enriches my life and helps me relax (especially when I am cooking), but I can think clearly and much quickly (for reasons I cannot frankly explain). So, finally I am scrobbling on last.fm – feel free to reach out to me there.

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Jul 04 2008

RIP – Sam Manekshaw

Category: .personalAmit Bahree @ 4:13 pm

I recently got to know that Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw passed away and the ripe age of 94; I am especially sad to hear that – I cannot explain it – might by my army roots. I think fellow Army brats might get it. May he rest in peace!

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Jun 25 2008

Who would want to be king?

Category: .personalAmit Bahree @ 11:21 pm

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemies eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing:
"Now the old king is dead, long live the king!"

One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt, and pillars of sand

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword, my shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
Once you go there was never, never an honest word
That was when I ruled the world

It was the wicked and wild win
Blew down the doors to let me in
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn't believe what I'd become

Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string (Ooooh)
Ah, who would ever want to be king?

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword, and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

Ooooh Ooooh Ooooh Ooooh Ooooh
(repeat with chorus)

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword, my shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world
Oooooooh Oooooooh Oooooooh

{Kudos, if you figured it out – it is not that difficult and btw I love it and think  there are so many different levels to it and see some elements of this in everyday life}

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Sep 28 2007

Time to boycott Apple?

Category: .personalAmit Bahree @ 9:08 pm

If I bought an expensive gadget, I own it and can do anything with it (as long as it is legal of course). So if an update deliberately bricks the gadget how is not bullying? Also is it legal (obviously I am no lawyer). Phht … and people say Microsoft acts life a bully! I think it might be time to boycott Apple and take my business elsewhere.

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Jun 23 2007

Catching up with an old friend

Category: .personalAmit Bahree @ 9:59 am

It has been so long that I can't remember when I last spoke with my dear old friend Govind. We use to work together back in Seattle. He is one guy who I have a lot of respect for and when he talks, you shutup and listen (yes I know that is very difficult for me to do). It is interesting the twists life throws at one and how everyone adapts and changes. It is difficult to imagine him now and how his priorities and what he is passionate about has shifted – one won't even fathom the idea in your wildest dream.

I don't even know why am I surprised about change – after all the only constant is change. Maybe I'll learn someday – though don't hold your breath.

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May 11 2007

Dominus Illuminatio Mea

Category: .personalAmit Bahree @ 12:03 am

What? Is that even English? I'll get to answering it in a second.

Not sure how many of you know, but for a very long time I have been wanting to do a Masters and also dabble in the world of Academia Research. I have done some commercial research in the past which I thoroughly enjoyed but never done any Academia research – well not yet anyway's. 

After procrastinating on this for a long time, and with many other factors which I'd rather not get into here, finally the time came and I just had to try and pick this up again. After all I had been postponing this for over a decade and it was about time I got around to it!

I finally took the plunge a few months ago and started doing my research on various universities and options and in the end settled down on Oxford. I went to their open day a few months ago, and decided it was an excellent opportunity for me in one of the top schools in the world! After applying to them and going thru the interview process, etc. I was glad to have been accepted by the school into their part-time masters program. Needless to say those who know me were flabbergasted and wondered, how the heck did *I* (of all the people get in)! Wink.

I am going to be joining the Software Engineering Programme at Oxford and will be starting soon and am quite excited about the whole thing – sort of like a kid in a candy store – or me in Fry's is probably the better analogy (sorry if you don't get that last part – you need to have been hanging out with me for that Wink). This is a part time program – which means I will continue to work full time. Also it will give me an opportunity to plug in to some of the research going on at Oxford and it would be up to me (or so I believe) on how deep I want to get involved with the research. Irrespective in addition to Avanade, this would be dominating most of my time outside of work and you can get bet you will see some posts related to this over the next few months. Another way to sum it up would be – I won't have a life for the next 2-3 years.

But joking aside, Oxford topped Guardian's league table for the third time in a year – and is the number one university in the UK in overall ranking. And the fact it increased it's lead over Cambridge was just icing on the cake. Big Smile The whole Oxford vs. Cambridge is new to me as well and I am surely going to have more details on that later.

Getting back to the title of this post, Dominus Illuminatio Mea roughly translated to "the Lord is my light" and is the Legend in the Coat of Arms of the University of Oxford. If you see the image carefully you can see the words in the book which has a few leather straps on the left. The arms were adopted around the year 1400 AD and you can read about their significance and origin here. The University has a long rich history – full of tradition, much of which is new to me and over the next few weeks I would surely be posting some of the things I find new and interesting.

Update: Changed some minor sentence construction.

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Jan 17 2007

Go Karting

Category: .personalAmit Bahree @ 8:53 pm

We had a team event from work yesterday and went Go Karting – which was the first time for me! It has been something I have been wanting to do for a while but never got around to for one reason or another. It was a lot of fun – we did three rounds of about 15 minutes each with about 10 minutes break in between each session. And other than our team there was no one else there for some reason so we had the whole place to ourselves – which made it quite easy and flexible.

My first go was quite crap and I was the second slowest in the whole group – but given it was my first time ever Go Karting it I was still lots of fun. At the end of it I think I did pretty well and dropped 4 seconds on my fastest lap! Hand in hand with that is the number of laps I did also went up. Below are my statistics (fastest laps only) for the three run:

  1. # of Laps – 17; Fastest Lap: 38.30 seconds
  2. # of Laps – 19; Fastest Lap: 35.26 seconds
  3. # of Laps – 22; Fastest Lap: 34.30 seconds

If you have never done go karting, I would highly recommend it. I can’t wait for the next time around. Big Smile

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Nov 13 2006

Is he dead?

Category: .personalAmit Bahree @ 7:31 pm

Nope, you ain’t that lucky – I am alive and kicking and just have been quite busy lately (or for a change as some of you might say). Between starting a new project and traveling (with very limited access to emails and the Internet), getting the final chapters and code samples for the book out the door and have friends and relatives over from abroad, does not leave me any time for blogging.

I do have a few things saved “offline” and should be posting the same soon.

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