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I’m excited to announce that I’ll be joining Bezurk as a Ruby on Rails Developer starting the middle of June. The startup is providing some extremely interesting services in the online travel booking space with tons of potential for growth.

Bezurk is currently continuing to recruit Rails developers to join the team. You’ll be working in a great location, interacting with smart people and challenged with building easy to use web applications that help people plan their holidays .

From Tim Bray, Sun’s Project Blackbox is a fully virtualized datacenter housed in a shipping container.

Makes people think again about the term “Mobile Storage”, doesn’t it?

I had the pleasure of attending e27, which is modelled after Valley un-conferences like FooCamp and BarCamp. The atmosphere was mostly casual although more than a few attendees were in formal getup. A consequence of holding it on a weekday, I suppose. Otherwise, everyone were relaxed and jazzed about being there. Bjorn and Justin were also great hosts who were simply bursting with enthusiasm. The scheduled demos were very interesting but the Q&A sessions sometimes rambled on without a clear purpose.

In all, I’ll say that this was a success and I will be looking forward to the next one.

As has been reported by numerous news agencies and blogs, Bill Gates is relinquishing his position as Chief Software Architect of Microsoft Corp and taking on a part time role within the company. The reason for his departure is so that he can spend more time on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Ray Ozzie will move into Gate’s previous role as CSA while Steve “Where’s my chair?” Ballmer will now be the man at the top of the hierarchy.

Bill Gates has been the subject of ridicule, discussion, admiration even among the IT professional populace for as long as I can remember. The reports on the questionable practices that have been at the heart of the Justice Department’s investigations into MS has portrayed Gates as a unscruplous businessman who will stop at nothing to eliminate competition. This is a direct result of Bill Gates being synonymous with Microsoft. As the co-founder and public face of the mega-corporation, he’s simply the man people love to hate.

It’s all too easy to forget that the Gates Foundation has done a tremendous amount of philantrophic work and helped numerous people. Joel Spolsky has an excellent post on his experience with working for Bill. Gates is the rare type who possesses both technical insight and management acumen which would probably account for Microsoft’s exponential growth in the late 80s and 90s. With Google on the scene, will Ballmer be even able to maintain the company’s edge, let alone inspire innovation?

Rajesh Setty has made available a free eBook called “When you can’t earn an MBA” that was inspired by an article from Seth Godin.

To some people, having an MBA among their professional accreditations make the difference between being stuck on a career plateau or creating opportunities for progressing to the next level. I’m currently doing my undergraduate degree and while I do believe that learning in a structured environment provides a more focused way of absorbing knowledge, failing to apply it in a practical manner means that the I’m not maximising the full value of what I had learnt.

It’s the same for postgraduate studies, having an MBA does not automagically turn someone into a Seth Godin, or a Martin Fowler.

The MacBook Pro.

I haven’t been living in a cave the last couple of years but I finally got see the 1st season of BBC’s The Office on DVD. And it is BRILLIANT!! I never realised that awkward pauses could be used to such hilarious effect. Rick Gervais’ David Brent is an absolute riot as the smarmy/clueless/loathesome boss who tries to enliven up his employees’ days with cringe-worthy jokes/corny antics.

I just love the scenes where Brent attempts to show that he’s sensitive to racial/gender/whatever issues with his droning monologues and ends up putting his foot in his mouth. MacKenzie Crook’s Gareth Keenan also gives an entirely believeable turn as the colleague you’ll love to hate. His anal-retentive and self-important behaviour reminds me that there’s always an oversupply of people like that in places I work in.

I’ll definitely be getting the second season but it almost seems a crying shame that the series ends at that. Comedy doesn’t get any funnier than this.

Seth Godin has a post about reaching your ‘Big Max’ after you’re reached a personal peak. I think the biggest problem with getting to the Big Max is the sharp decline that comes right before you hit the jackpot. And that terrifies people, myself included.

My personal fear is what if I don’t get past point C? Then what?