Some good reading stuff and tools for the week

• Eloquent JavaScript - Aimed at the beginner JavaScript programmer, it is a digital book providing a comprehensive introduction to the JavaScript programming language. Apart from a bookful of text, it contains plenty of example programs, and an environment to try them out and play with them.
• The Beginner's 10-Minute Guide to Setting Up Ubuntu
• How to Make Ajax Applications Google-Crawlable
• Do Developers Make Good Testers?
• Microsoft FixIt Center beta fixes Windows 7 and Vista errors automatically
• The Great Car Debate: New, Used or Leased?
• A foreigner’s guide to traditional Indian dining etiquette

Good Reading Stuff

• Beautiful interactive overview of HTML5. Love HTML5 Games? Get Here.
• Checked exceptions are a good thing, learn to use them properly
• Get the original URL of tiny ones
• The self-repairing hard drive
• Test How Your Site Looks on the iPad. Sure, you can switch the user agent, but here is a simpler and more realistic way of doing it.
• Google's Innovation Factory (and how testing adapts)
• Selenium VS WatiJ

Any views on Smart City project by Amrapali?

I am exploring the possibility of purchasing an apartment in or around Delhi. One of my friend has pointed me to Amrapali Group's Smart City project. This project is located in Noida.
While doing my research on Amrapali Group, I could not find anything good or bad about the Group or the projects they have undertaken in the past.
If you have any information to share, plz do so in the comments.

P.S. - The apartment I am considering is 3 BR and is not for investment purpose.

The Best Jobs in America

Best Jobs in America

Anatomy of an open source cloud

M. Tim Jones at developerWorks has written an articles on the building blocks for infrastructure as a service.

The use of the cloud as an abstraction is quite common for the distributed system that is the Internet, but the past few years have seen this abstraction expanded to incorporate highly virtualized and scalable infrastructures that are easily provisioned as a service (either locally or remotely). This article forgoes an in-depth definition of cloud architecture and its benefits.

The article begins with an exploration of the cloud architectures and then moves beyond the building blocks to the more highly integrated solutions.

Link: Anatomy of an open source cloud

Windows Easter Egg: Administration and Configuration Utilities

There is a new Easter Egg found in Windows.

• Create a folder anywhere on the disk.
• Name it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

The folder changes its name and icon to this:

Double clicking this new icon will result in giving shortcut access to the configuration and administration utilities in Windows.

Easter Eggs-Software Surprises[Amazon]

Java EE 6 one-week Online Codecamp

Javapassion.com is conducting a week long codecamp for Java EE6, starting Jan 12. The course is conducted online, and details are available here. Among other things, it covers Java EE6, GlassFish v3, JSF 2.0, EJB 3.1 and Servlet 3.0. The course sessions are scheduled between Jan 12 and Jan 20. If you finish and submit all the homeworks, you receive a certificate.

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Rich Internet applications using ZK

ZK, an open source Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) framework written in Java™ code, lets you write a Web 2.0-enabled, rich Internet application without writing a single line of JavaScript code. Typical Ajax frameworks like Dojo have JavaScript libraries that expose certain API's for making "Ajaxified" calls. ZK, on the other hand, uses a meta-definition based on XML to define the user interface. Translation to HTML code then occurs when this page is requested by the client. This article introduces you to ZK and gives you a real-world example of its use running on Apache Tomcat and connecting to a MySQL database.

developerWorks

Is Your eBook Reader Spying On You?

If you don't want other people to know what you read, you probably shouldn't own an ereader.

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'Twas The Night Before Prod Release

'Twas the night before prod release, when all through the build,
Not a unit test was failing, the developers were thrilled;

The release notes were emailed to users with care,
In hopes that new features, soon would be there;

The BA was nestled all snug in her chair,
With visions of magnitude ready to share;

And I on my QA box, trying not to be stressed,
Had just settled down for a last minute’s test;

When during my test there arose such a clatter,
I opened the error log to see what was the matter;

And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But an unhandled fault, with its wording unclear;

When I showed it to dev, and he gave me a shrug,
I knew in a moment it must be a bug;

More rapid than eagles, dev’s cursing it came,
And he shouted at testers, and called us by name;

“Now, Jacobson! Now, Zacek! Now, Whiteside and Surapaneni!
On, Cagle! On, Addepalli, on Chang and Damidi!

Stop finding bugs in my web service call!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

And then, in a twinkling, I heard from the hall,
The tester who showed me, scripts can’t test it all;

As I rejected the build, and was turning around,
Into my cube, James Bach came with a bound;

He was dressed really plain, in a baseball-like cap,
And he patted my back for exploring my app;

He had a big white board and a little round belly,
That shook when he diagrammed like a bowlful of jelly;

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And he laughed when he saw RST on my shelf;

Then he spoke about testing, going straight to his work,
And attempted traspection, though he seemed like a jerk;

His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dice games, how merry!
He questioned and quizzed me and that part was scary!

He told me of lessons he taught at STARWEST,
Made an SBT charter and then told me to test;

Then I heard him exclaim, ere he walked out of sight
“Happy testing to all! ...just remember I’m right!”

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Gift for Boss - Dilbert Style!