Sunday, February 28, 2010

Floating around the cloud for one day - CloudCamp ,Bangalore

I attended the Bangalore CloudCamp that happened on 28th Feb 2010.In contrast to what I thought about it didn't take much time to find and reach the place (Dayananda Sagar Institutions,Kumaraswamy Layout) and the turn around of large no of attendees was also above my expectation.I saw lot of guys actively looking for what is happening in and around the cloud and how it is going to change the IT atmosphere.This has to be looked into when there are opinions from many corners that cloud is going to be another big hype rather than reality (a cloud without rain !).I assume there were around 200 no of attendees.

Talking about the sessions,it was a meet-up along with Hadoop summit organised by yahoo.being a developer I have the opinion that large conference add less value to the developer than small meet-ups.Organised conferences have a pre-planned set of talks and in that they will try to pour in everything within few minutes of time.It might help to get a broad overview about some topic and will especially help business guys to get a advertisement also.Whereas small meet-ups are developer friendly and you have more freedom and time to spend and space for participation.

Talking in this context the lightning sessions which grabbed most of the morning time was mainly a waste of time for me.But I understand it from the organiser's perspective that they have no choice as to support the sponsors. It all started with the un-conferencing session were some panellists chosen from the audience answered questions from audience and based on interest for a particular topic un-conference sessions were chosen.This was special with active participation of attendees.The un-conferencing sessions were scheduled parallel to the hadoop sessions in the afternoon in three separate classrooms and there was lunch break.

There were 9 un-conference sessions altogether.Let me list down them .

1) Intro to cloud computing
2) Session on Windows azure
3) Data management in cloud
4) Business models on cloud
5) Security in cloud
6) Apache mahout session
7) Google app-engine session
8) SDLC for cloud
9) Databases in cloud

I wanted to understand hadoop and at the same time interested in some un-conferencing sessions also and I have to schedule my time effectively as they are going in parallel.Finally I decided to attend the Apache Mahout session only in un-conference as it felt something interesting for me.Apache mahout is a Machine Learning software built on top of hadoop and lucence .Although I missed some initial hadoop sessions because of this mahout session was worth attending and Robin done a good job by presenting it in more effective way.

When I moved to hadoop after the Mahout session the initial sessions were over and there were not much interesting afterwards as it was more about QA and performance tuning and one session from professor from PSG college on how they used hadoop in their research.I appreciate the collaboration from the industry and academia in this area and have the opinion that that is one of the are India have to improve upon.The event was sponsored by Yahoo and Microsoft and it is great to see the commitment of yahoo in Hadoop open source project and yahoo proved that hadoop is worth and production ready as they are already running hadoop in more than 30000 nodes as the back-end of their web application infrastructure.Bear with me if I am biased being an open source advocate,but Microsoft's participation was targeted for their advertisement rather than interest in community and they tried to utilize it very well.The final panel discussion with industry pioneers had very short and so couldn't raise to the expectation .Even though there were some good thoughts and good participation from audience.

In summary it was a great effort to boost the community around the cloud in India and Prem did a good job in organising this and Dave Nielsen as cool and jovial guy managed sessions very well.Overall it was very particular with active participation of the cloud community in India.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Web resources in Mathematics

Being a mathematics graduate I have a passion for mathematics and I am always fascinated by its beauty.Nevertheless I am interested in history of science and mathematics and computer science in particular and whenever I come to know any related web resource I will bookmark that.I discovered Diigo few months ago and it was the kind of tool I was looking for and I moved all my bookmarks from google to Diigo. In addition to just bookmarking it archives the pages bookmarked and it will be helpful if it gets lost in future(and it is very common).Also it is claimed to be a researcher's tool as it has facility to arrange items and highlight information ,share items with others etc.I suggest every one to try Diigo once.Coming back to mathematics I am listing below some links which will be interesting for any maths lover.

1) Wikipedia mathematics portal
Of cource wikipedia is the number one source for any topic.
2) Planet maths
Planet maths is an encyclopaedia for mathematics.It has article on almost every subject and it is reviewed by members. Each topic is owned by one member and so it will be more authentic and accurate.

3)Wolfram Math world and wolfram alpha online
Math world has rich set of details about almost all the branch of mathematics. Wolfram alpha knowledge engine uses mathematica software which helps you to compute so many mathematical functions online quickly.It is a powerful tool for mathematics students and teachers.
4) MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive is the largest source of information in the web about the history of mathematics and also about mathematicians.
5)cut the knot
contains interesting mathematics puzzles and introduction to mathematics topics and problems
6)Springer encyclopaedia of mathematics
Springer encyclopaedia of mathematics acts as a quick reference for mathematics topics available with an index.
7)MIT open courseware
MIT open courseware from MIT is the largest source of learning materials on any subject .
8)Math forum
The Math Forum is a leading center for mathematics and mathematics education on the Internet.It has a lot of resources and links for learning and teaching mathematics.
9)Internet encyclopedia of philosophy
Internet encyclopedia of philosophy has a section about mathematics and logic which is helpful to understand the foundations and philosophy of mathematics.
10)Prime pages
Prime pages has lot of information about prime number research an interesting field in number theory.
11)Gresham college lectures in mathematics
A lot of interesting lectures in mathematics.I found these very interesting and informative.
12)The Math Open Reference Project
A free interactive math textbook on the web. Initially covering high-school geometry.
13)visualmathlearning.com
Understanding Mathematics through Insight, Concept, and Perception
14)math-atlas.org
Introductory articles on almost all the branches of mathematics.
15)NRICH
NRICH is a team of qualified teachers who are also practitioners in RICH mathematical thinking.NRICH aims to Enrich the experience of the mathematics curriculum for all learners.

I hope these links will be useful for all mathematics lovers seeking for resources and reference in web.