Pair programming as a culture : my jijutsu vs yours

At Clearsenses, I enforce pair programming as a loose practice for all the verticals that I lead. I saw this recent article about the lead programmers of the Samba project talking about how effective pair programming is for them. And of course, a whole bunch of reddit comments dissing them. The nature of the programmer [...]

The essence of scrum ?

I read this somewhere: For mid-size software projects (10-30 person weeks) I would recommend a scrum-like approach, where you collect the main requirements at the beginning, decompose these requirements into manageable pieces, attach estimates/prices to those pieces and decide together with the customer what should be done in the first 2 weeks. After 2 weeks [...]

SandGorgon’s law of outsourcing analogies

ahh.. seems I originated a new law. In response to this article’s comment which states: “Who fixes a bug by making something dependent on the dll/exe company name? Stupid…How are those outsourced indians working for you now Oracle and Sun!!!!” I postulate thusly As an online discussion about PROGRAMMING grows longer, the probability of a [...]

Zune (or iTunes) on Linux – the definitive guide

A lot of people come to me moaning about their inability to cross the pearly Gates (or Windows.. ’tis all the same) into Linux heaven because they will miss the enchanting tones of their Zune or iTunes. And just for the record, the Zune 30GB is a player with better sound quality than the iPod [...]

ATI IXP AD1981B (Thinkpad R51e) sound on Jaunty

This was tough.. so here’s a quick list: Your sound preferences should look like this: Your alsamixer should look like this Install the following sudo apt-get install asoundconf-gtk gstreamer0.10-alsa libasound2-plugins libesd-alsa0 sudo apt-get install gnome-alsamixer sudo apt-get install bum Your boot-up-manager should look like this (notice the unchecked PulseAudio) die.. pulse.. die!! Reboot and enjoy

IPV6 as an election manifesto

I have been wanting to write this post for sometime – primarily to educate our upcoming political leaders on what is needed to realize their dream (real or concocted) for a highly connected India. Recently, there have been posts by people like Sudheendra Kulkarni (of the BJP – surprisingly the Congress has no opinions) about [...]

A Business case for Infosys to deploy its “bench” towards FOSS

This is an open letter to several of India’s IT offshoring companies, who are suffering the problem of too much idle manpower to utilize this lean period to contribute towards Free and Open Source Software and in the process gather free PR and Marketing, as well as expose their employees to excellent mentorship. Dear Project [...]

Motherf*****s

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/nov/27mumterror-pall-of-gloom-at-karkare-home.htm

To get a wife, you need to rip a rib

And that’s what I found out these past three years, ever since that fateful day at the kickboxing gym. Was it very Christian of me, to adhere so strictly to the Book of Genesis? It sure did hurt … A wise man (or a seriously drunk one) once told me, “parents know a lot.. but [...]

Build an el-cheapo hi-def portable audio system

So what do you use to listen to “music” ?  Any music-player with its supplied earbuds, right.. in which you play your 192 kbps mp3s. Let’s take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes. First.. dump mp3s. Period. FLAC, ALAC (if you are too closely tied to iPod + iTunes), WMA [...]