I always believe it is better to revolt and change ever so fast than to evolve slowly and painfully. Something I see my idols preach and practice. Be passionate and smart. Everything is very simple on paper, but how many actually change. Themselves or those around. If you are not happy doing what you do, don’t do it. Find what ...

Apache Hadoop is a great framework for scalable computing This blog lists out the steps to build Hadoop source from a checkout from the trunk. I'm working on Mac OS X, so most the steps would apply to *nix users as well, with minor differences.Check out the source  You can checkout the source using the following command:svn checkout http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/hadoop/common/trunk/ hadoop-trunk Use Maven ...

Apache Hadoop is a great framework for scalable computing This blog lists out the steps to build Hadoop source from a checkout from the trunk. I’m working on Mac OS X, so most the steps would apply to *nix users as well, with minor differences. Check out the source  You can checkout the source using the following command: svn ...

Soap UI is a great tool. There are no two words about that. But, they have really bad problems on the mac. I just downloaded 4.0.0 and the UI doesn’t even load to send out a request. Looks like they’ve ignored the Mac, although they have gotten a flashy (totally unnecessary) installer for Mac. The only program I’ve seen who ...

I’m used to splitting panes horizontally and vertically in Ubuntu. So for me, I needed something that does the same for mac. iTerm2 was the answer. It’s a brilliant terminal for Mac that’s extremely smooth. Similar to Terminator for Ubuntu/Linux. What’s best is that it’s the perfect answer for the ‘opening new tab in ...

I’m using this page to keep track of resources in color matching and color theory: http://www.worqx.com/color/index.htm – Comprehensive coverage on color theory http://colortheory.liquisoft.com/ – One page cheat sheet http://www.tutorial9.net/articles/design/simple-practical-color-theory/ – Simple guide, good beginner stuff http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17837 – A simple guide done on a forum http://colorschemedesigner.com/ – Brilliant site to check out

Usability, IMHO, is the single most important factor in making or breaking a product. No matter how good efficient your code is, if it’s not usable, your software will just fail. In this blog, I cover 5 misinterpretations of usability that I’ve come across in real life situations. 1. Usability is in the UI UIs play a major role in ...

I came across this when I was executing the following segment of code. It main checks whether a column family is existent, and if not it creates one. Notice the synchronized block which doesn’t allow multiple threads to execute this. private boolean createCF(String CFName) { BasicColumnFamilyDefinition columnFamilyDefinition = new BasicColumnFamilyDefinition(); columnFamilyDefinition.setColumnType(ColumnType.STANDARD); columnFamilyDefinition.setName(CFName); columnFamilyDefinition.setKeyspaceName(Rece