Hugh McGuire is the founder of LibriVox.org. LibriVox is a volunteer
project to make great books available to everyone as free audiobooks.
A few weeks back, I listened to an interview of Hugh McGuire (the
interviewer was Jon Udell) and it is quite interesting to see how a
part time project grows into a major project involving so many people.
Hugh mentioned that most of the work for LibriVox is done using forums.
I am downloading books from libriVox and listening them on the weekend
on my ipod.
I was reading the Top Five Scale-Out Pitfalls to Avoid article. I
knew about 4 of the 5 techniques that they mentioned, however, this
one was new to me
Avoid Mixing Hot and Cold Data
Similar to #3 is mixing hot (frequently-changed) and cold (more
static) data, especially when it comes to write activity. Since
database writes are more difficult and expensive to scale, it is
advisable to keep this type of data away from data that does not
change that often. Again, separating the data onto different
databases and/or servers can significantly enhance your
application's performance.
I am at the Delhi airport and the secne here is chaotic. I am
travelling by Spicejet airways and it looks like the whole world is
planning to fly in the same aeroplane. The queue managmnet for
Spicejet is t3h suck - I don't think I will travel with Spicejet again
unless I am in a major financial crunch. A good thing about the
airport though is that there are enough electrical points - if you are
willing to sit on the floor. The seats next to electric plug points
are occupied by fat, sleeping middle aged women .
Before leaving for this Delhi trip I had setup a very nifty mail setup
on my laptop which allows me to read my mail even offline. It
involves dovecot and offlineimap.
Delhi weather is really crappy right now - too damn hot. The people
here are as ill-behaved as ever. I hardly see anyone standing in the
queue or waiting politely for their turn to come.
That is all the update that I have from the Delhi airport.
I have lived in Bangalore for the past two years. Before Bangalore, I
was in Delhi for ten years. I was born in Bihar, and I lived there
for around sixteen years. When someone asks me, "Which place do you
belong to?", I usually answer "Bihar". But it is hard for me to
consider Bihar a home now. I have not been there for around ten years
now. I think I will call Bangalore my home hence forth. I think it
is one city which has rewarded me the most. It is one city that has
not discriminated against me for being a Bihari (all North Indians are
treated equally badly here ).
I was born in Bhagalpur, a small town in Bihar. If you have ever been
to Delhi, you might have noticed that calling someone (or something)
Bihari (i.e. someone from Bihar) is a popular form of dismissing him
or her as mostly illiterate or gaudy or irrelevant. Atanu Dey has a
blog entry that sums up pretty much why Bihar has been left out and
why I have not been to my home for around 10 years now.
Sitting on in the de-briefing meetings, a picture of gradual and
steady decline began forming in my mind. The signs were
apparent. The power failed intermittently. Bihar produces no
electrical power of its own. Somnath informed me that Bihar gets
about 1000 MW of power from outside the state, 700 MW of which is
unaccounted for. Patna consumes 300 MW, a good bit of which appears
to have been used by the Rabri Devi household. It is reported that
when she vacated her official Chief Minister's residence, they had
to remove 53 air conditioners.
Heh. I remember the days when we used to go without power for at least
a week (stealing power cables and selling the copper used to be good
source of income for some people). Enough reminiscing - those days
are behind me now.
.