The SArangapANi Temple at Kumbakonam (Thiru Kudanthai) ranks high in the hierarchy of Srivaishnava temples. It is one of the Pancharanga kshetrams – the five Ranganatha temples along the banks of the Kaveri river.

The temple complex is imposing from the outside, and unique with regards to its innermost prakaaram – the sanctum sanctorum, which is in the form of a chariot. Lord Sarangapani is also known as ArAvamudhan. Nammaazhwar, in a verse that is synonymous with the temple itself, refers to the Lord as ஆரா அமுதே (ArA = immeasurable; amudham = nectar).

Another verse that people immediately recall when thinking about the temple is from the Thiru Chanda Viruththam by Thirumazhisai Aazhwar. The verse also explains the unique posture of the Lord. He is referred to as uththAna sAyee. In some temples (Srirangam, for example), Lord Narayana can be found in the reclining position. In Kudanthai, the posture is as if the Lord is just getting up from the reclining position. Here is the verse, and even as I type it, I can recall my grandfather reciting it:

நடந்த கால்கள் நொந்தவோ? நடுங்கும் ஞாலம் ஏனமாய்
இடந்த மெய் குலுங்கவோ? விலங்கு மால் வரைச்சுரம்
கடந்த கால் பரந்த காவிரிக் கரைக் குடந்தையுள்
கிடந்தவாறு எழுந்திருந்து பேசு வாழி கேசனே!

Thirumazhisai Aazhwaar looks at Lord Sarangapani, then in the reclining position, and asks Him, “Lord, do You feel pain in Your legs?” He adds, “Do You, the One, when in Varaha avatara, who supported the earth when it was unstable (நடுங்கும் ஞாலம்) feel tired now?”

“You are here in Kudanthai, on the fertile banks of the River Cauvery, which itself has crossed rough terrain, mountains and barren lands (விலங்கு மால் வரைச்சுரம்) on its way. Why don’t You rise just a little (கிடந்தவாறு எழுந்திருந்து) and talk to me, O Lord?”

Legend has it that, as Thirumazhisai Aazhwaar completed singing this verse, the Lord got up just a little to acknowledge him. Hence the uththAna sayanam.

 

If you are a Java developer looking for a powerful IDE that can get you started in no time, you should look no further than NetBeans.

Why?

  • NetBeans is free and open-source. A lot of people list preference with open-source software just because it is free. But beyond just the cost, there is a lot more to open-source software that is exciting and inviting. It means that a community of developers from across the world are pouring in their ideas with the sole intention of creating great software. Plus think of how much testing they can get done from folks who download their betas.
  • NetBeans helps you hit the ground running. A month or so ago, I was giving an overview of Struts to my cousin. He wanted a short demo using Eclipse. However, we couldn’t configure Eclipse for Struts even after some concerted efforts at doing so. The plugins we found were found wanting. NetBeans made the task much easier, with its in-built support for Struts (and a host of other popular frameworks.) There is also support for GUI design, Java EE, PHP, Ruby, C++, the whole works; but yeah, you get the point.
  • NetBeans comes as a full package. NetBeans comes pre-built with GlassFish and Apache Tomcat servers, and JavaDB. So, you don’t need to spend time trying to setup servers and databases just to get a simple Web application up and running. You can throw in MySQL into the mix as well.
  • NetBeans is from Sun Microsystems. The Java guys. They are behind NetBeans. This is reassuring because whether you are a big business trying to adopt a new IDE for your development team or a developer who wants a full-featured IDE, you can trust a name like Sun to have a roadmap for the IDE. Plus they would be able to align IDE development to the developments in the language as well. One might have to mention MySQL again, as it is now a Sun product.
  • NetBeans has a rich set of plugins. You betcha!

So go ahead and give NetBeans, which turns 10 this week, a shot. You are sure to recommend it to all your friends!

P.S.: If you have been using NetBeans for a while, Sun Microsystems is offering a free beta of the Sun Certified Specialist NetBeans IDE exam. Here are the SCSN exam details.

 

A few months ago, I had posted the links to Suryan FM’s live stream.

A few readers have commented that the stream no longer works. This is true. I checked Suriyan FM’s website, and I see that their live online stream is “under process“. So it is possible that the folks at Sun Network are working on this, and that they might resume live streaming in the future.

Previously Aahaa FM 91.9 Chennai had live streaming on its website. They still do, but now you have to register on the site (free) and be logged in to get the stream. The website is http://www.aahaafm.com

 

Finally, the Alaska Governor does appear on Saturday Night Live. Here’s the video.

 

… is America’s Sasikala.

 

George W. Bush said in an interview once that Nigeria was a continent. And we all had a good laugh. Now Sarah Palin, hell-bent on proving that Dubya is an intellectual, says that New Hampshire is in the Northwest!

(from DailyKos)

 

(Warning: Lotsa brackets, like this one.)

Back in 2001-02 (ah, the good ol’ days), when the stock markets recoiled after the dotcom bust and thousands of people found themselves out of a job in Silicon Valley, thousands of miles across the face of the earth, the impact was felt in Chennai. The great Indian IT boom 1.0 had ended, and this was the period before v2.0 commenced (the period when folks were recruited in hordes; the “Trespassers will be recruited” days).

At the turn of the century millennium, every Ram, Shyam and Hari was enrolled in a computer-training course. It didn’t matter what you did, what degree you were pursuing, what your life’s ambitions were etc. All that mattered was to enroll in the nearest NIIT or SSI centre (or something not that far off, if there were “incentives”).

These institutes were unbelievably good at marketing. They tapped into the general “Whatever you learn today is going to worthless tomorrow” belief. And added, “… but you must learn it from us nevertheless.” The ads in newspapers, and there were more ads than news content on most pages, teemed with TLAs and FLAs. TLA stands for Three Letter Acronym (which incidentally is a three letter abbreviation). So, if COM was the hot topic in 1999, it was DCOM in 2000, CORBA in 2001 and Coldfusion in 2002.

It didn’t matter what these meant; the rule was to be abstruse, condescending and inviting all at the same time.

But Java changed all that. Everyone’s son and daughter and neigbhor was learning Java. Soon, however, Java, as it was used in conversations, did not directly refer to the programming language that Sun Microsystems came out with. It morphed into more of a folk term.

People felt comfortable using the term Java. (Like you bring a girl home, and your mom frowns; but you tell her that her name is Gayatri, and frown turns to contented smile.) I guess the Tamil mind felt that C was too small a name for a serious programming language. C++ should have fit the bill, but for some reason, it escaped them. Maybe the additional “+” was off-putting. But somehow Java became the chosen term. It was what people on the street threw in the midst of a conversation to prove that they were also buzzword-compliant.

(Perhaps the crowing glory of the language came when the comedian Vivek included the language in his now-famous ettu pulli kolam dialogue – remember “atomic energy coupled with cosmic energy”?)

So, in 2002, I walk into the neighborhood saloon. (Didn’t I say, good ol’ days?) It is Sunday morning, so there is a crowd, so I’m forced to wait in line and read Dhina Thanthi.

(Have you seen the folks reading Dhina Thanthi in a saloon? They are the unluckiest of the most unfortunate. They cannot get to lay their hands on the magazines; those are all taken; nobody is interested in the papers, and those with the papers are doing their best to peer into the magazine in the hands of the person sitting next to them, while actually giving an impression of reading the paper. They should be extra careful not to be caught in the act. Yenda indha maanamketta pozhappu?)

The person sitting next to me is an elderly gentleman. He also has a paper in hand, and is evidently not interested in it. So he turns to me and asks, “So what do you do?”

I tell him I study engineering. Like everyone else does, I don’t add.

He: “Computer engineering?”

I: “No, electronics.”

He: “Nalladhu dhaan. Java down aayiduchunga!” (literally “That’s good. Java is down”; what he meant was “Java is out of demand.”)

I: “Oh!” (I’m thinking if he understands fully what he is saying.)

He: “Yes, my daughter studied Java. She is unable to find a job now.”

I: “Sorry to hear that”, and the conversation peters out.

Friends, Chennai-vasis, now that we are in another downturn, do you hear stuff like this these days on the road, in the bus, in the saloon?

 

John McCain reminds me of our actor Ajith Kumar. And Vijay too. In a rally today, McCain, who is down by between 5 and 11 points in national polls, said that he might be down, but he was going to fight. He said that Senator Obama might me measuring the drapes to the White House. And added, “My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them.” As if, to do badly in the debates, to get Sarah Palin to prove her stupidity on national television, to spew fear-mongering, spite-inducing empty rhetoric, to be bashed by all sections of the media (including Hitchens, Kristol and co.) and to run a pretty dysfunctional campaign was all part of a calculated strategy (or tactic, whatever).

After doling out flop after mega-flop, our heroes still consider themselves the future of Tamil cinema (vidiveLLi), and make statements about each other. “Yes, my last movie didn’t go very well. So what? The other camp thinks they are better? We’ve got them just where we want them.” Damn, what about the effing producer, and worse, the audience that has to endure the crap.

Pastor Arnie

And then there is this pastor, Arnold Conrad, who delivers this address at a McCain rally

“There are millions of people around this world praying to their god — whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah — that his [McCain’s] opponent wins, for a variety of reasons,” said Arnold Conrad, former pastor of Grave Evangelical Free Church. “And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name in all that happens between now and Election Day.”

What is the pastor trying to do here? Is he challenging God? That is too simplistic. What the pastor is really doing is to lead people into thinking that if they vote against McCain, they are voting against the will of God. The implied meaning is that “bad things” will happen to them if they go against God’s will. BS!

When discussing God, some of my atheist friends tell me that the problem with religion is that it can be used to coerce people into doing things blindly. When I disagree with them, I do so only on the surface, as it is true that a man will go to any lengths to achieve his aims, and religion is a sacred cow that can be thrown at others in the process to pull the wool over the doubters’ eyes.

 

Paul Krugman, who writes a bi-weekly column in The Hindu The New York Times, has won the Nobel Prize for Economics. Mr. Krugman is a Professor of Economics at Princeton University.

Mr. Krugman received the award for his work on international trade and economic geography. In particular, the prize committee lauded his work for “having shown the effects of economies of scale on trade patterns and on the location of economic activity.” (NYT)

 

MSNBC has footage of clip that contains the recording of the call Erin McLean made to 9-1-1 right after her husband, Eric, allegedly shot her lover, Sean Powell, dead.

I don’t want to embed the video here, but if you are interested, here is a link to the same. Erin claims that her husband threatened to kill Sean (Sean was a student of Erin’s, and they were having an affair), and had also in the past threated to kill her.

After which, she says: “You know, you can have a beautiful wife and be kind to other people instead of turn life into hell.”

Goodness me! Here is a woman (I don’t want to prejudice you by referring to her as an adulteress), who is panicked (and rightfully so) for she has seen a homicide, and even amidst all this, she is interested in describing herself as “beautiful”, when that is not the focal point of the call! Man!

P.S.: An AP news story claims that she is now living in Texas with another teenage man.

Oct 102008
 

Senator John McCain does one right thing finally, telling a woman in one of his town halls / rallies that Barack Obama is not an Arab.

Somewhere in the backdrop, McCain doesn’t like the campaign that he is running. It is against his nature, and he recognizes it. This moment captures that in all earnest.

 

Yesterday, a friend commented that the economic troubles that the United States is faced with is largely because of the deregulated market in which the Government has very little control. He then went on to claim that China’s economic model, an object of criticism over the past so many years, has proved to be superior to most other models.

I would think that such an argument is rather too simplistic. China has had a long history of Government bailouts of banks. So it is not as if the system is perfect. Far from it. But the control that the Government has on the system makes it easier for the Chinese to make light of such problems.

Extending the control argument into a different sphere, one can say that the Chinese Government controls the media in that country, so, even if there were to be a systemic failure in China, the Government can stage-manage it to create an impression as if all were well.

In countries, like the United States or even India, where the media is not a mouthpiece for the Government (OK, I’m not talking about Fox News), systemic failures are covered in all their gory details. (The downside is that a such coverage deals blow to the public’s confidence, and feeds into fears and causes a vicious cycle of fear-induced-fear.)

Lastly, China is a net exporter. According to Wikipedia, in 2007, China’s exports, of over $1.2 trillion, were $262 billion more than its imports. The US alone accounts for a fifth of these exports. If the economies of the US and Western Europe spiral into a recession, Chinese exports would be hit, thus crippling its economy. That the Chinese are not big domestic consumers doesn’t help at all. Nor does the fact that they like to save their money rather than spend (all of) it.

But yes!

That is not to say that the United States’ model is superior. With a growing external debt, and population that has a negative personal savings rate, the country is a model for how not to be. The public can criticize Washington for its problems, but it wasn’t the politicians who goaded the commoners to spend beyond their means, and wind up with massive credit card debts.

The people worked themselves into the mess, and only they can get themselves out of the hole. This does require massive governmental intervention, but what is more important is an attitudinal change towards personal finances. That said, to point to China, growing economic superpower as it may be, and call its economic model as superior is simplistic and ill-founded.

 

One of the rules of competitive strategy is that if you own a successful platform, the benefits that you can derive from it can be incredible.

One can see that Google is exploiting this successfully with the Chrome browser. Here’s how. In Internet Explorer or Firefox, if you navigate to a page, but the server is down, a 404 error page is displayed. Google Chrome, however, shows an error page that has a link that can retrieve a copy of the page from Google’s cache. (Google’s cache is so well updated that some people joke that even if a majority of web sites were to crash some day, users could still retrieve pages from Google’s cache.)

This, I think, is a significant advantage for users. A 404 page is of no use, but Chrome turns it on its head. Just where are these guys from?

 

If you use Gmail and Firefox, you should give the Better Gmail Firefox plugin a try. It is amazing!

Oct 052008
 

If Sarah Palin were to debate herself, what would you call it?

Crammer v/s Crammer.

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