Alan Kay on OOP

Happened to come across the definition of OOP by Alan Kay. For those who don't know who he is - he was the person who coined the term Object Oriented.
It was actually a mail conversation in which he explains what OOP means to him. Below is a small part of it:

OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I'm not aware of them.

Visit the Site for the complete mail.

A quote of his which is among my favorites is:

I love Bournville

I got this chocolate as gift from one of my friend for birthday and I instantly fell in love with it. I am a chocolate freak, but I hate dark chocolate. But this one was good! Its priced a bit high.
Visit Bournville website to experience a very interesting presentation on how the chocolate is made.
It even has a section on how to savour it!

King of Pop - MJ

His were some of the very few pop songs I used to hear and his stage performances - it was simply brilliant. I was elated and was eagerly looking forward for his comeback tour. I have no word to express the shock and sadness when I heard the news of his demise today morning. RIP MJ.

Policeman in Rain

Heavy rain with strong wind is the worst scenario you can be in when driving a two wheeler in a road where there is enough water stagnant to cover half of your bike's wheel. This time I was forced to drive in such a weather because I had a train to catch! As you can see this is an ideal situation for huge traffic jam as complete pandemonium prevails with everybody trying to reach home ASAP. It would at least take 3 hours in a situation like this to travel a distance of 15 Kms! As I was driving at snail's pace I was in for a surprise. There at a junction with no traffic signal - a policeman was guiding the traffic with only a hat and coat to protect himself ! I don't think any of his superiors would have asked him to do it in such a bad weather. To draw inspirations, sometimes all we have to do is look around.

Plain English Explanation of Big O

I never really understood or tried to understand the Big O during my college days! Recently I spotted a plain English explanation of  this in Stackoverflow.  It is a pretty long but pretty good answer : "Explanation of Big O” .

Information overload

That is what my hard disk would say. Lots of articles, coding snippets, notes, videos, PDFs etcetera etcetera. Once upon a time - long long ago, I used to organise files into appropriate folders. Whatever I did, after sometime I would find myself with files strewn around the hard disk.
I am thinking of testing the following things to solve the problem: MS Onenote, Evernote or a Personal Wiki.

Opera Unite

Opera again differentiates itself from other browsers with a new set of features in Opera Unite. Some cool concepts in this beta version. Do try it out!

Bangalore Rains

It rained and it rains in Bangalore after a long time. Instead of being happy this time I was angry again - because it started right at the time I was about to go home from office. After 30 minutes of wait, it looked like it had stopped. Wasting no time, I was off in my two wheeler. Hardly 2 Kms, and it started raining again with all the force it could muster :(. I was in no mood to stop and take shelter, and decided to drive the rest of 15 Kms in that heavy rain itself! The traffic was lean, and the roads almost empty which is a rare experience in Bangalore. Probably I was the only crazy person to drive a two wheeler in this weather! With no rain coat to protect myself, I was drenched to the skin by the time I was half way through. The helmet was acting as the cap. The few people who had dared to come out in this weather - in their car or in Autorickshaws were giving strange looks at me. But I decided I would enjoy this trip - after all its not every time we become crazy enough to travel in a rain like this. The rain was coming straight into my face, the roads were barley visible, the heavy wind was causing me to shiver in cold - and I was enjoying them. Except for the jump into few potholes on the way, the whole experience was good. Thankfully I was spared with a slight cold the next day.