Insights and Explorations

Hey Peeps, Writing here again after a long time. So these are the things I have found on the Internet recently :

I found this awesome Recipe site by an auntyji Nisha Madhulika(http://nishamadhulika.com/).Her recipes are clear and easy to make. She has a very popular youtube channel about it : Nisha Madhulika’s youtube channel

Muzei app is an android live wallpaper app. The app comes with a collection of artwork wallpapers. The best thing is that it changes the wallpaper at fixed intervals. Also, there are add-ins in play store for getting Flikr, Unsplash, Backdrops and other wallpapers in the app.Muzei app on Google play store

These are some stack overflow community blogs : Superuser blog :http://blog.superuser.com/, Programmers blog : http://programmers.blogoverflow.com/.Also, Stack Overflow has many chat rooms which are listed here :http://chat.stackoverflow.com/

Today on the day of Diwali, I set out to my cousin's home in an Ola cab. The driver got confused and we deviated from the usual way. But not everyday you get lost and get to see Bangalore which is more bare than packed with buildings and other structures.

s/w product

The company develops a product or app on its own.

The same product is used by multiple clients.

Once the software is written, it doesn’t cost much to deliver it to customers

The same product is shipped/deployed with changes and enhancements.

It is riskier in the sense if there isn't  a demand for the product.

More margin in terms of money.

s/w services

The company develops a product or service for a specific need after getting the requirements.

The service is for a specific client.

Work is required every time for a specific service.

The services are tailored according to the needs of the customer.

It isn't that much riskier.

Less margin.

Cloud Services

According to NIST,Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient , on-demand n/w access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources(e.g. networks, servers, storage, apps and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

Service models

1.SaaS ( software as a service) : Application or app services  execute in the cloud using the interconnectivity of the Internet.Vendor s/w is delivered as a service.

         e.g. Google docs, Office 365

    2.PaaS (Platform as a service) : Virtualized access for app running and developing – no maintenance of OS , server ,

          h/w i .e. OS, databases   , servers

         e.g. Windows Azure, google app engine

 3. IaaS(Infrastructure as a service): Able to  provide from single server up to entire data centres.

            i.e.  CPU , memory, n/w , storage , sys s/w etc.  

I suddenly remembered the good CS blogs I used to follow and stopped due to information overload. But then the beautiful and simlple and uncluttered Diigo reader inspired me to follow them back. So, I subscribed to some I remembered from before and some I discovered today :

http://matt-welsh.blogspot.in/

http://compscigail.blogspot.in/ ( This one is close to my heart since the author is a woman that too with interests in CS education)

http://mybiasedcoin.blogspot.in/

http://blog.prof.so/

http://swaroopch.com/posts/ 

http://blog.regehr.org/

http://lemire.me/blog/

http://matt.might.net/articles/

And through HN I found this github open source data science curriculum:

Today I spent most of the time online filling the form for Teach for India fellowship. 

Also, since I have an exam for Internet and multimedia technology(IMT) , I was searching for an explanation for TCP/IP prortocol suite.I found this awesome page : TCP/IP Fundamentals and now , I have to check out the site "the geek stuff " further when I get time.

And from quora :

Today , I was studying for my 7th sem exams for the subject Parallel processing and Computing . I had to understand pipelining. These pages , I found helpful :

Pipelining

In-a-CPU-what-is-the-benefit-of-having-many-pipeline-stages

This, I found on google homepage : Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory

Right now , I am reading the book "Kafka on the shore" by Haruki Murakami. It's such an enigmatic book with surprising turns. It engages and at the same time puzzles. Truth be told , it gives me chills since I read it alone at night! I don't know how the ending will turn out but I am enjoying reading it.

On Internet today(I read or found) :

6 simple things i do everyday to be consistently happy(buffer blog)

How to help anyone on twitter(medium)

So, I found these helpful things online:

Hola unblocker : A chrome extension to unblock the sites which are not available in your country.

         link : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hola-unblocker/gkojfkhlekighikafcpjkiklfbnlmeio/related

X - Ray Goggles : a web development tool to help us to inspect the code behind any website. Great tool for newbies in web development.It even has a bookmarklet which when installed , lets us see the code of any website.

        link : http://hackasaurus.org/en-US/goggles/

Spreeder : It is a website which helps us to hone our speed reading skills. 

Last week on Saturday and Sunday ( 17th and 18th Sept), I attended a workshop on cloud computing at my college. These are the main points from the workshop :

 What is cloud computing?

According to NIST,Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient , on-demand n/w access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources(e.g. networks, servers, storage, apps and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

   Cloud computing is the 5th generation computing after :

     1.  Personal computer.

     2.       Client –server computer

     3.       Web

     4.       Mainframe

   Web 1.0 : read only

Web 2.0 : dynamism

Cloud is sometimes  said as 3.0

   Evolution of cloud computing:

      1.  Grid Computing

      2.  Utility

      3.  SaaS

      4.   Cloud computing

  Cloud service providers:

      1. Google

      2.  Amazon

      3.   IBM

  Why cloud computing?

      1. Economical

      2   Apps can be accessed from anywhere , anytime

      3. Faster, simpler , cheaper to use cloud apps.

      4.   No upfront capital required for servers and storage.

      5.    No ongoing operational expenses for running data centre.

    Cloud is composed of (3-4-5 principles):

  Ø  5  essential characteristics

  Ø  4 deployment models

  Ø  3 service modells

   5 Essential Characteristics

        1. On – demand self service : Without involving the service provider

        2.  Broad n/w access : Acess through.standard web browser

        3.  Resource pooling : Share resources and costs.

        4.   Rapid Elasticity : Leverage capacity as needed.

        5.    Measured service: Pay only for used resources.

  3 Service models

        1. SaaS ( software as a service) : Application or app services                      execute in the cloud using the interconnectivity of the Internet.                Vendor s/w is delivered as a service.

          e.g. Google docs, Office 365

        2.  PaaS (Platform as a service) : Virtualized access for app                         running and developing – no maintenance of OS , server ,

           h/w i .e. OS, databases   , servers

          e.g. Windows Azure, google app engine

        3.  IaaS(Infrastructure as a service): Able to  provide from single                   server up to entire data centres.

             e.g. : CPU , memory, n/w , storage , sys s/w etc. Dropbox

  4 Deployment models

        1. Private cloud

        2. Public cloud

        3.  Community cloud

        4.  Hybrid cloud

  Key terms associated to cloud computing:

          1.Virtualization: Virtualization is typically defined as the ability to                                        run more than one application or operating                                              system in an isolated and secure environment                                      on a single physical system.

          2. Hypervisor : A low- level program required to provide system                                        resource access to virtual machines. Also called                                      virtual machine monitor(VMM) .e.g. Vmware Player

              types: native and hosted.

           3. Clustering

           4. Big data : Big data usually includes data sets with sizes beyond the                               ability of commonly used software tools                                                         to capture, curate, manage, and  process the data within                                 a tolerable elapsed time.

           5.  Hadoop : It changes big data’s unstructured data back into                                     structured data to proess in db.

I am only a few pages into it to still form an opinion about it but within its starting pages I got introduced an awesome concept of teaching programming using visible program execution. It means that the programmer can see real time update of output in relation to the statement of the programming executing at present.

Since, I am always interested in things concerning CS and education , it caught my eye.R G Dromey has even written a technical report on it, titled "Before Programming - On Teaching Introductory Computing".

When I searched more on this topic, I found this great and detailed article on it, http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/