Surplus Thoughts

Championing the open internet cause

2012-01-18T12:13:00.000+05:30

Wikipedia support for anti-SOPA crusaders. A blackout page for 24 hours. Real nice design ;-) The shadow effect used beautifully. And it should have its due impact. (Now only if the Wikipedia donation appeal ads were that classy ;-).

Read more on SOPA here and here .

Single window GIMP

2012-01-18T11:57:00.000+05:30

A snapshot preview of portable Gimp 2.7.3 (PreRelease Dev version). Ah single window - it rocks.
Tried out some operations - text tool seems to be crashing. But I can't wait to get the release version.
Kudos to the Gimp & Portable Apps Team ! Great work.

Dont be gung-ho on the notion of "Free"

2012-01-12T09:30:00.000+05:30

With the immense amount of traction in the open source fraternity and the availability of free tools for almost any task - its become a standard notion nowadays that software should be a free commodity.

My two cents - Though I believe strongly in open sourcing certain solutions - I also believe that open-source need not necessarily translate to free as in "free beer". Like any other commodity, building software also requires effort & expenditure and there is nothing wrong if someone wants to charge for their hard work. Of course passionate folks would want to distribute it for free in the interest of serving the community at large - its a great thing to do. However that should not mean that someone doing the same work somewhere else doesn't have a right to charge for their labor of love.

What prompted this chain of thought was a contradiction in terms of two opinions on the subject of photo sharing. It started with "This Photo is Not Free" where John Mueller puts up a passionate pitch against using his photo for just credit. Responses were bound to come in and they did - "This Photo is Free" from a passionate contributor to Wikimedia Commons.

Many of my friends in the photo community have complained about their snaps being used without their knowledge and as a result they have ended up watermarking them. Its a losing game though.If you feel your snap deserves to be sold or copyrighted don't put it up online. Watermarked or not - they will be airbrushed and used anyway. Else take the other approach - be magnanimous and put it out for all under a creative license.

Quote of the Day

2012-01-10T14:07:00.001+05:30

Welcoming 2012

2012-01-02T22:05:00.001+05:30

Traffic woes of a developing nation

2011-08-13T09:54:00.000+05:30

With the current state of infrastructure in our metros, its really puzzling whether we should bracket ourselves in the underdeveloped, developed or developing nation category. Take the state of roads. For the last 10 years roads in our country (atleast in metros) are in various states of construction. While new roadways, flyovers crop up, the existing ones are pothole ridden to a state of utter despair.

While i was in Mumbai last month - this state of utter chaos on roads made me wonder whether the taxpayers (mine) money is being utilized effectively. Having navigated NCR-Delhi's arterial roads yesterday, it was absolutely exasperating.Such a sheer waste of time.

Original Image Source Article

I wonder how the government can expect citizens to be productive with such pathetic infrastructure services. While there were serpentine queues of angry cars yelling honking and even bumper grazing - not a single traffic policeman was seen to be around or controlling the situation ( I must admit - in Mumbai atleast i saw the traffic police trying their best to facilitate the traffic mess due to flyover building etc). But in our capital city traffic management seems to be in a state of utter mess.

Citizens should really stand with the Anna's of today to ensure that the government is accountable to these services it offers to its citizens who have duly elected them to govern the nation and steer it towards the path of growth rather than remain complacent about these growing irregularities.

Removing SanDisk drive software

2011-07-21T12:33:00.000+05:30

I got a SanDisk 16 Gb drive (courtesy gift from a friend) sometime back and its has been of great help to lug along applications, backup archives and portable OS'es. I have a bootable version of Ubuntu loaded on the same for those days when the Laptop refuses to boot decently into Windows and I need quick access to files.

One of the things that irked me is the U3 software thats supplied with these drives. In the span of 2 years I have hardly ever used this feature. I carry portable versions of most applications on the drive and hence donot need this application at all. The U3 CD drive also loads up on every new windows machine.

Yesterday came across this godsend tool to remove U3 application from the drive and save up on some additional space (Howsoever meagre it may be). Anyone who needs to do the same can download the tool from SanDisk Site here (http://u3.sandisk.com/launchpadremoval.htm). Just need to run the tool with your USB plugged in (and please ensure that you have backed up data on your USB drive beforehand).

So simple ...

An interesting curio

2011-07-01T16:46:00.000+05:30

Lamps are a commonplace item in every Kerala household. Brass lamps are often the preferred choice of gifts due to their utility in religious aspects of every household. There are various types of lamps in day to day usage like the commonplace Nila Vilakku, the Lakshmi Vilakku, the Kuthu Vilakku and so on.

Last weekend a brass lamp seller passed by and presented some exotic looking lamps. Just as we were about to shoo him off as yet another salesman - he presented a unique looking artifact that could be opened like a lotus flower. I was amazed by the skill that had gone into building this piece of work and I bought one from him.Though he called it as an Aama Vilakku and also at times as a Vastu Vilakku am not sure what exactly is the terminology for this artifact.

Folks who can identify with it .. please let me know the name of this interesting artifact.

WiFi in BMTC buses

2011-05-12T19:12:00.000+05:30

One of the good things about Bangalore airport is the abundance of buses right outside the arrival terminal to most locations at convenient schedules. In fact I hardly find a need to engage one of the cabbie's lining up outside the arrival terminal. The buses are state-of-the-art volvo rides, air-conditioned and rightly priced as well. Every hour you'll find a ride to your destination or a place close by. And yesterday I had a pleasant surprise when i boarded the bus. Behind each of the seats is a touch-sensitive panel with WIFI enabled web surfing. Bangalore already has its place as a techie zone in India. So not a puzzling addition to the list.

The devices are approx 7 inch iPad like clones with an Android operating system and touch sensitive display. Details on the device point to an Indian Firm (EAFT) which seems to have implemented the concept. Nice idea though and good set of features provided. Even an audio jack is provided so that one can catch up with their favorite tracks. The complete ensemble is mounted on seat mount made of some tough leather.

With WiFi being the blame target for every information based crime nowadays, the WiFi feed is well protected via a WPA2 sort of authentication. Also its tied to an authentication system which asks for your mobile details and sms'es you an authentication password to access WiFi.

Most of the device is fairly thin-client and services are linked to web based offerings - like Google Books, YouTube Videos, Google Maps etc. However before any service starts is a 10 second mandatory advertisement window of sorts thats a bummer. There ain't any such thing as a free ride ;-)

I tried checking if I could access the WiFi signal from my mobile device but sadly couldn't get the network key for the same. Anyway I guessed - with advertisements making the bulk of device services, they wouldn't make that available on third-party devices that easily. I say - "that easily" cause once you get the network key - nothings stopping you ;-).

A good idea - though in the Indian context one needs to see how much these devices can handle abuse and wear n tear. Already I could see a few seats with defective pieces. Lets hope that the idea lives on and becomes a common thing on future rides everywhere in India.

It's Mother's day

2011-05-08T17:54:00.000+05:30

And today is Mother's day.

While I strongly believe that every day is a testimony to their affection, unmatched love and selfless devotion, its helps to have a day to remind us mortals of their significance in our lives.

For me - Of all the loving recollections, the immediate image that comes to mind is that of her praying before the gods that be for all of us, to pardon our sins (if any) and ensure our well-being. I don't recollect even myself ever being so passionate before the Gods for say - even my own matters.

On writing & breaks

2011-04-11T12:09:00.003+05:30

Its easier to start a blog and drop in the first 10 posts - but finding conscious subjects to write on & keeping up the pace is the most challenging aspect. This is one area one needs to consider early on when doing anything. How you'd plan to attack boredom and fatigue once you are into your chosen activity path.

The fallacy with blogging is that if you take a break, you suddenly find it more & more difficult to identify a subject to write on. Hence the need to keep continuing at a constant rhythm - to never get stuck in the inertia of rest.

For the last few months, it wasn't a dearth of subjects to scribble upon - but a general lethargy of sorts. Part driven by some events but mostly driven by boredom. However - picking up from this state is a small victory in itself. So raising a toast to a good start. And thanks to all the friends who still visit and drop in an occasional comment.

A sad beginning to Spring

2011-02-09T11:00:00.001+05:30

Cruising canal-side in Kumarakom

2010-11-25T18:17:00.000+05:30

Ah - an interesting weekend it was! Managed to sneak some time off for an impromptu visit to Kumarakom – the famed backwaters of Kerala. Since it was a quick visit – the only thing we managed was to spend time in one of the lovely houseboats cruising through the backwaters.

A couple of snaps from the experience (quality should be pardoned as the ever faithful camera is breathing its last moments).

Murphy’s law is upheld again
If something had to go wrong it did – and the first houseboat – a nice one with two rooms and a nice view choked n spluttered on startup refusing to budge an inch. There were numerous attempts till the next 1 hour to repair the motor but to no avail. Finally we got another boat – which everyone felt wasn’t as good as the first one.

Getting started
One of the smaller houseboats. Ours was a tad bit bigger than this one.

Starting things with the much needed boost ;-)
There are many folks who’ll beg to differ here – but if you are in Kerala and with a bunch of mallus – nothing can boost the spirits like fresh toddy. The emphasis on freshness is important. One of us had friends in the right places to arrange for the perfectly mature toddy. There was a minor goof-up with me having forgotten the toddy bottles in the other boat – but once they were delivered by canal canoes – all my crimes were excused.

Anatomy of a house-boat (Kettu-Vallam)
Like many other things in Kerala, the boats are a symbolism of usage of natural resources in construction. Bamboo sticks steam-rolled(probably) and neatly arched into place with coir ropes provide the structural décor. Layered into it is thatchwork providing a well-ventilated, yet functional and aesthetic covering.

The basic essentials
Some of the basic essentials on the boat …. the tow rope, the main oar and of course – the anchor

And yes - the penultimate essential – A well-stocked kitchen
For the gastronomically inclined, there is no reason to worry as the boats are stocked with self-sufficient kitchen and cooking utensils .

Chugging along the narrow canals
The backwaters are a stream of canals that extend into the main-land. Traversing these canals will lead you into the sea where the backwaters meet sea-water. It’s along these canal banks that one finds life so very blended into the backwater ecosystem.

Resorts by the wayside
One can spend time at any of the lovely resorts dotting the backwaters. They provide everything from indoor swimming pools to rejuvenative ayurvedic programmes to motorboat rides.

Picture perfect house-boats
The combination of palm trees swaying by the banks and idyllic houseboats with their canopies is a sight to behold.

One of the things you’ll love doing is take a pillow and rest against the window sills, just sipping in the scenery as it sways by. You’ll notice house-boats coming and going across and realize that each house-boat is a bit different and surprisingly seems to have an identity of its own.

Psst – in between watching the waves & birds (flying above ;-)), suddenly a waft of spice comes across and I run into the kitchen to find fish curry being cooked “nadan” style. Click..click.

Holiday leisure
Kumarakom thrives on tourism and rightly so.. Away from the hustle-bustle of daily work, who doesn’t want to take some time off and enjoy the light sea breeze, the thrill of sipping coffee watching the trees and birds on the horizon while the boat moves at its own slow pace on undulating waters. Down below – A couple gets up and gladly poses for me on the decks.

Parked for lunch
Though we had our sumptuous feasting on ”maracheeni kappa”, “karimeen polichahthu” and other delicacies – we were still damn hungry by the time the clock stuck 1:30 pm. The boat driver and guide as if by intuition cruised lightly towards the nearby jetty & parked there for lunch @ a “Thattukada” (hotel).

After lunch – time for some snapping
So while the others were enjoying an afternoon siesta under the shade of a palm tree ( sounds risky doesn’t it ;-)), I tried to see if the camera could still deliver the goodies like before. A capture of one of the smaller canoe-boats resting.

What I would really enjoy however is to be out there & cruise away for about 2 hours on a boat like this.

Noon time scenery
After lunch we got back on the return trail, and the noon sun threw up some more picturesque goodies on the horizon.

A church by the river side…

Chinese fishing nets

The climate takes a turn on our return
On our way back, it seemed the rain-gods decided to unleash fury on the seas. A candid capture of our boatsmen still manning the steering

These are just a sprinkling of snaps captured in between fun-n-frolic on the boat. Pictures do not necessarily do justice to an experience that in my view needs to be enjoyed rather than spoken or written about. So if you get the time, do take a break and have a leisure trip here.

Quotes

2010-11-15T13:34:00.007+05:30

" This is how I did it Antoine,

I never saved anything for the swim back ! " - Gattaca

The curious case of Load Balancers

2010-10-07T23:38:00.001+05:30

For one of our enterprise applications we had a very interesting learning that goes on to explain why architecture is more of experience (60%) than just theory (40%).

The system had a couple of functionally decoupled application areas. From the outset the design/development team had planned the component deployment keeping scalability in mind. It was with this perspective that they had also introduced Load Balancers in the architecture. Now came the classical problem - the team that advocated usage of Load Balancers and their fitment in the architecture had never played around with em in the first place. However after interactions with the hardware and networking teams this was the architecture finalised.

LB001 was supposed to be the entry point into the application and the cluster of web servers would then map out to different functional areas as per URL mapping. Apart from this the web servers also had a secondary task - to add on a layer of single sign on authentication tokens. For each application functional area, a second layer of load balancer's (LB002-LB004) were envisaged to provide application load balancing. So far so good. LB001 was configured for round-robin scheduling ( sessions could go through any of the web servers) and the others were sticky-session based ( i.e once a session took a path, that path would be taken for the remainder of that session).

The system was deployed and interestingly there were no problems until the user load started increasing 6 months later. That is when application servers started reporting memory and resource constraint based failures. All preliminary investigations pointed towards load being distributed unevenly across the servers. The development team felt this should not happen as the load balancer's were in place and should be functioning as expected. The networking team blamed the development team and they in turn blamed the former till it was decided to sit together, simulate and crack the issue.

The issue was really interesting. When LB001 forwards load-balanced incoming network packets its rewrites them so that components further down in the architecture see the packets coming from LB001. i.e the actual external IP address is lost. What happens then at LB002, LB003 & LB004 is that they assume all the packets are coming from LB001. And since they are configured for sticky session (on IP), all requests are passed on to only one application server. That means effective the load balancers were just passing on all the buck to only a single server and weren't doing any balancing at all ! Such a simple point we overlooked in the design !.

Well there are various ways to fix this one. In our case we changed the sticky session config to work on cookies instead of IP addresses. It worked for us. Another option might be to rewrite header source IP at the web server level ( Usually the actual IP can be found in one of the HTTP headers and this can be used for the rewrite).

Snapshots - Revisiting Nature Macros

2010-10-02T01:20:00.002+05:30

Droplet Catcher / (c) gnlogic

Spreading Out / (c) gnlogic

Ganeshotsav 2010

2010-09-17T23:35:00.000+05:30

Ganeshotsav has always been an attraction in Pune. The 10 day festival starting on Ananth Chaturdashi is a mammoth festive event in Maharashtra thanks to efforts from leaders like Lokmanya Tilak in the past.

The festival celebrations in Pune have always enthralled the masses due to the right mix of religous fervour and social awakening. Various mandals dotting every nook and corner of the city put up giant Ganesha Pandals, performing aarti with the accompaniment of religous hymns and songs. Later the pandals would also showcase skits from religious epics, social messages, drama etc. Then came the era of electronic wizardry and all Ganesh pandals were replete with amazing lighting demonstrations and coloured light patterns swinging to the tune of music. Crowds all over on the roads and choc-a-bloc traffic was the norm then. During college days - we (bunch of friends) used to throng out all night visiting one pandal after another to offer our darshan & also to see what was new and innovative.

Things seem to have changed lately. The blasts in Mumbai and heightened security during religious events seem to have dampened the Punekar's enthusiasm for wandering out and visiting the famous Ganesha mandals. Also noise pollution curbs and energy conservation initiatives have also put a limit to mandal events. This year - similar to last year - I could notice a significant lower number of crowds and a general lack of excitement as before. Thankfully the festive spirit still counts in people's hearts. That's what matters most - isn't it ?

Bit by bit about Bits-n-Bytes

2010-08-18T12:57:00.000+05:30

> We have entered the password but its still not getting through !!

> Me : Be Calm, It will work, Try a different password - well here it goes - spelling out - Alpha, Delta, Alpha ...

> Its still not working !

> Me : Let me analyse. Whats the message its showing on screen ?

> Nothing - its still showing the Login prompt. Its not accepting the password !

> Me : How do you know its not accepting the password .

> Well - instead of the password - its showing stars !!

> Me : Oh thats okai - you are proceeding correctly. Just enter the password and click on the "Go" button.

If the first few lines gave you an impression that this was some hack session in progress, the last two lines should dispel that myth. Introducing technology to the uninitiated can be fun, interesting while at the same time exasperating and not to mention pretty demotivating (for both sides) at times. And speak of acres of patience required !. This one was a telephonic session after I gave my parents the first dose of how to use a computer and put in a mandate that they had to start using it.

It started out as something that had been at the back of my mind for quite some time. Back home, my parents were immersed in their own little world of contentment. This included the usual temple visits, activities in the garden and rubber fields, partaking in village events, visiting relatives and all. The only window to changes taking place in various aspects of modern life was through television news and occasional tidbits from us. Why - even the mobile phone was a late entry in our household with mother initially making up a thousand excuses on why one should not use the device. However about two months back, I managed to sit with her and drill down the basics of making a call, using sms and all that. And I'm convinced that she has got the gist ( use the "green" button to make the call and the "red" one to terminate it ).

Next in line was an awareness of computers. I had a laptop lying at home gathering dust (since I now use the one provided by my employer). So after the mobile shiksha - I focused on making them aware of the basics of computers. Easier said than done. Father would rather toil away in the fields than sit in front of it and mother was of the opinion that the screen emitted radiation and what not - preferring instead to make tea for us !. (yeah - if you happen to visit our house - u'll be treated to multiple rounds of tea and home-brewed coffee )

However I still persisted and the initiative seems to have got onto a good start. The biggest problem is the enthusiasm factor. You really cannot be interested in learning something if you haven't got the enthusiasm for it. The trick then is to find that aspect which enthuses acceptance. The second problem is that modern technology by itself sounds very intimidating. It has to be souped down in a simple to digest manner. Don't rush headfirst into explaining the nuts and bolts of Word before they can learn how to control the mouse squiggle across the screen and focus on icons etc. Simple games like Solitaire or Mine-sweeper might be the key to familiarize folks with the environment before you push further into utility computing.

Well. the endeavor is still in progress and will keep posting interesting aspects and lessons learnt from this. Someday who knows - its might manifest in the form of a simple curriculum to boot-strap elders into the tech world.

Touchphone Woes

2010-08-09T11:16:00.000+05:30

It was a moment of glee when I picked up my first touchphone mobile. Ah - at that moment there were a thousand plans working overtime in my mind on how I would best utilize the device.

In all anticipation I went all-out to have the gizmo (won't name it - though you have a clue) with the maximum features. So there's WiFi, GPS, keypad, Bluetooth .. blah blah all the stuff that was considered leading edge. For once, I threw economics of rationality out of the window. Played a blind ear to some of my like-minded friends who chanted the mantra - "A phone is that - just a device - to talk and converse".

Well, it should be added that till this one, I'd been a devoted admirer of low budget phones. The E398 & LG KP-199 that I had before this one were little wonders in their own way. The former was perhaps the most moddable phone around ( anyone visiting http://www.e398mod.com/ would understand the addiction ). The latter was a low budget pocket powerhouse that would remain charged all through the week.

So what is it - you may ask - that I found problematic with my touchscreen phone. Well - the fact is that this one as well a couple of other "touchies" that I evaluate at airport counters have the same problem - superficial features and no real meat beneath that glamour of touch. Here are a few points

1) The touch interface is no doubt slick-looking but then you can't control the font size, the widget placement options (which seem to always keep dragging here and there) and worst of all - while scrolling through the phonebook you have a real chance of adding RSI to your list of ailments. Somehow the thumb is the most overworked appendage when it comes to touchscreen's.

2) The biggest loss is for the one's who are addicted to gaming - believe me you'll lose out on a lot of favourite games. Forget RPG variants - fine control of player movements is often a problem and you'll be best off playing games like "bursting bubbles" or "Tetris". (Disclaimer - I'm not considering the iPhone in this league of touchphones - have seen some pretty amazing games on that console).

3) Taking notes, reading ebooks - somehow reading ebooks was big on my wannabe list of items but haven't yet found a reader that allows me to effortlessly do that - i.e without twiddling thumbs everytime I need to scan the page from left to right and back. Reflowing PDF might help but my current reader doesn't do that.

Also the manufacturer has designed the J2ME application container such that it only allows apps to be installed OTA(Over The Air). So lots of workarounds needed to get an application jar onto the phone. Hope that a "mod" comes out soon to alleviate this crucial limitation.

Somehow I still yearn for the old E398 and the flexibility it afforded in every aspect.

CityScapes - Dubai

2010-06-17T13:18:00.000+05:30

Forgot to post off this one. This is what happens when you leave things undone for later.

So while it was travel chaos in most of the airports around Europe and US in the month of April, I touched base in a new city with the afternoon sun shining up a bit too harsh than it usually does in India at this time.

If you ask me what weird connection exists between an unpronounceable volcano ( Eyjafjallajökul ) exploding and a modern city like Dubai, you'll realise it first-hand when you stand in the Dubai Airport immigration queue for what seemed like ages. It seemed passengers from the whole of Europe and American continents were stranded in Dubai. Just right before me in the queue were a Danish couple expressing romantic antics and enjoying their bit of travel adventure. They looked absolutely dishevelled and down to rags (probably fashion) but nonetheless still looked happy.

It took me around 2 hours to clear the immigration hassles and drive down to Bur Dubai where I was put up. The next three days were spent in enjoying the Arabian architectural marvels and of course gorging over cheap delicacies in the various Mallu outlets all over the place. It helped that every second person I met seemed to be a Mallu - so communication wasn't a problem at all.

I'd been for a technical training but again due to the volcano disrupted travel plans, the trainer ended up serving the training over the web. That meant more time for sight-seeing rather than work.

Architecture is something that defines Dubai ( I've not been to other places with such architectural landmarks). Whether it be the Al Burj or the Jumeria hotel or the Artificial Ski within Emirates Mall, its the best and classiest in its category.

People seem to be pretty friendly too and I managed to strike a chord with a couple of Moroccan friends in office.

And again it brings to mind a fact which I often remind friends when they express remarks about various places - "Judge a place only after you have personally visited it".

If I have to recap my 5 days in Dubai - I'd sum it up as primarily a tourist destination . Of course it has its due share in the UAE financial empire but it still remains the most progressive and modern of all the emirate states.

Making the most of a bookstore

2010-05-03T10:46:00.004+05:30

Captured a little bookworm at Landmark last weekend. Unmindful of people walking here and there confused about which book to pick up (including my humble self), she was determined to complete reading her favorite "TinTin" series.

Actually makes sense as these comics come along at a pretty prohibitive price and you won't even find em in town libraries. Now, isn't that one smart kiddie !

That also reminds me of a friend who was such a comic book buff (even I'm to some extent - but then he had no defined extents) . Together we used to scourge the book corner right outside Churchgate station looking for best value deals. His love for comics cut across characters - Phantom, Mandrake, TinTin and even the Indian variants like Chacha Choudhary, Naagraj, Bhokaal etc. Sometimes we would find him laughing all by himself in the company of his beloved comics. That was damn puzzling considering the fact that he held an MBA degree and worked in an MNC Bank as a loan recovery manager. For us it was tough to picture how the same guy dealt ruthlessly with clients in office. We even codenamed him "TinTin" considering his affection for the comic strips.

Book - Making Breakthrough Innovation Happen

2010-04-17T11:16:00.003+05:30

Have been doing very less of reading nowadays. I had made it a recent policy to ignore any books that even remotely fits into the "self-help" bandwagon. Simply put and condensed, I have a one-liner for folks addicted to such books - "Keep that book away and get into the real thing - action!".

Anyway, one of my seniors picked up an extra copy of this book during a sales meet. Since then it had been resting on my bookshelf for a month and during a recent trip to Pune, I picked it along for an overnight reading.

And its real good. Especially so if you are an Indian. You will shake your head in agreement when the author starts of with describing earlier Indian entrepreneurial ventures as mostly "Jugaad" based. I love that term. Such an apt description of how we do things. We tweak them to suit our requirements and ignore the larger issues of what benefits may come our way if we were to put that little bit extra, if we were to think of the bigger and larger picture.

The author then cross-analyzes a case study of 11 such Indian ventures that have thought out of the box, acted daringly different and in the process created value for themselves and steered the industry towards new dimensions unheard of before. And all this was achieved in our country- while fighting the same existing system of dogmatic beliefs, chalta-hai attitude etc.

Give it a read when you can. It will challenge some of the existing thinking patterns within you.

Cityscapes - Pune

2010-04-12T10:04:00.004+05:30

Every city has its own unique identity of cultures, patterns, eccentricities etc. Last week, was in Pune for some personal work and decided to capture some of the the more familiar sightings in the city. Some things that we once always identified with Pune.

Neera ( pronounced Nira ) - the ubiquitous Puneri thirst-quencher. Now available at 10 bucks per phull glass.

Amrut-tulya chai - Pune needs to apply for a patent here.Its the Puneri equivalent of tea brewn with passion, devotion and some age-old peshwa formula.

Puneri Misal- Misal is a dish that seems to change flavour from place to place. You'll always find it on the Puneri menu. And some claim that the Puneri misal is the best.

Masked entities - The fairer ones in Pune consider it a sacrosanct practice never to be seen without their headgear. The plausible explanation is pollution but there seem to be better motives ;-).

Of course, these should not be taken as a representative picture of the city. Pune nowadays has a vibrant and youthful crowd. Enter any of the malls like Central etc and you'll see what I mean. I'll be chipping in with more captures on subsequent visits.

Captured with a mobile, these are not dot on quality but just random idyllic travel captures.

Capturing the summer rains

2010-03-30T09:49:00.001+05:30

As a photography nut, capturing the Indian rain in all elegance is something that I haven't yet done properly. Have found the task is challenging in two aspects - (A) the actual capture of rain as we see it on the streets and (B) capturing the intensity and varied nature of the rains.

(A) is difficult as a two-dimensional snap of the rains often gets washed out in auto-exposure trickeries. What the photographer then has to resort to is subjective captures like showing rain-drops hitting a puddle on the street or showing people drenched in the rains.

(B) is also difficult as rains come down in various moods. Some come lashing down with intermittent thunderstorms while others fall more delicately just drenching the area around.

Yesterday while at my hometown, unexpectedly the rains stuck. It was much deserved considering the sweltering summer heat. And in accordance with Murphy, I didn't have my camera around. So the best I could manage is a mobile snap of the rains.

In hindsight, this snap seems to be better reflective of the rains than the ones captured with my digital camera.

A summer splash

2010-03-29T01:54:00.000+05:30

Last month was a hectic one. Not in terms of the actual work but more in terms of juggling the multiple task-list items without screwing up all of em.

So, naturally it was a welcome break to take a day off and be back home for the village festivities. And what better way to beat the summer heat and chill out than take a splash in the nearby river. So here's a rare pic of yours truly trying out some aqua-aerobics and enjoying it too.

One good feature of mobile cameras is that they are there when you need em most. That explains why I've not been posting much of snaps nowadays. Till the time I zero down on a decent DSLR, I've decided to go snapping the mobile way. That above snap is one such capture. Though not crystal-clear, it captures the essence of the moment. Many more to come in this space.

Appreciating the omnipresent pieces of technology

2010-01-27T20:22:00.000+05:30

A queer thing I realized lately is that - more and more of technology focus today is towards electronic and software based innovations. In between the hype surrounding the launch of the next Apple device or the newest open source toolkit, we (or should be "I" rather) miss out the real innovations going on in other areas.

As an example - the other day when I almost missed my flight. Thankfully the sweet lady ( yeah she was ;-)) at the IA checkin counter agreed to put me through - though not before giving a 30-second sermon on the ill-effects of arriving late for boarding. I was dismayed that she didn't observe me panting for breath after running all the way from the highway where the cab had dropped me prematurely.

I was allocated the first seat in the economy wing on an Airbus 319. After getting comfy and pulling the seat belt, I noticed that there was no tray which you can pull out from the front seat while having lunch. A digression here - contrary to everyone's experiences, I love the food served on home carrier IA (Indian Airlines). The food is delicious and not just some vegetables cut raw and served in the name of lower calories - you know, the health-freak sort of food. So naturally for that particular flight - food and thus the required tray was primary on my mind and I was wondering whether I'd have to finally have food with the food-tray on my lap.

It was somewhere while reading through the traveller magazines that I noticed the left side-arm of the seat and a spring loaded flap cover . Curiously I opened it to find an assortment of mechanisms inside. I tugged it lightly and the whole mechanism seemed to be pretty solid built (like those hydraulic pipes on the earthmover trucks). Pulled it harder and wow - like a robotic arm the whole mechanism slid out - another tug and it turns left by 180 degrees - there slides out another internal slider which expands to become a tray base and the whole thing turned into a pretty robust tray holder in a matter of seconds. Push and slide it back and neatly folds into the designated seat-arm slot. What a conveniently designed piece of machinery ! Blending aesthetics and functionality into minimal space !.

I was reminded of the "Transformers" movie in which cars transform into robots in a sequence of slick steps. Now the curious chap that I can be at times, I spent the rest of the flight trying to study how the contraption actually worked, all those springs that clicked and expanded at the right time and all those levers that provided the perfect touch sensitive operation. I must mention - I didn't get much anywhere in my R&D save for the first sliding mechanism. Would have carried on - when I saw my neighborly gentleman getting worried about my progress. Probably flight safety was on top of his mind and he didn't much appreciate me counting the springs and levers, 30,000 feet above sea level.

Then I sat thinking how much effort, testing and collaboration might have been required to design that sleek folding seat tray. Who might be the fellow who designed it. Similarly for the iris diaphragm in camera shutters and slide-out doors on Volvo buses. These are innovative pieces of engineering which we have taken granted. Each is a piece of technology that deserves as much applause as the new age algorithm for counting needle's in a haystack.

Starting out - 2010

2010-01-24T23:45:00.004+05:30

Ah - the first post for 2010! Really the year has started on a very tight schedule. Wouldn't use the word "tight" considering the number of activities stacked up but mostly considering the way they have been stacked up and the way I've been handling them. That's another reason this post comes pretty late in Jan.

For starters I picked up a new gadget (a mobile) towards the end of 2009. The Samsung Corby GT B5310 is a good mobile on the surface. Its got a fine assortment of features with a touchscreen but scratch beneath the surface and it has yet not managed to appease the tech freak in me. It seems to have everything from a touchscreen to WIFI to GPS. However the depth of feature implementation has been sadly lacking. For eg - even with a GPS unit and a 3 MP camera, it provides no support for "Geotagging". Samsung engineers should have accounted for this "not too tough to implement" feature. Another sad feature is the incompatibility with most of my favourite Java games. The touch screen and J2ME implementation seem locked up some way making it tougher to work with old J2ME apps. Whatever, I'm hopefully expecting a firmware update to add some features.

On the blog front, tried to revamp the blog look with a new template - but then in between work chores ended up deleting a nicely framed template and so had to do with a simple look for 2010. Anyway intend to work on a new template once am a bit free.

And regarding the resolutions - well some of last year's still carry on ;-) and I'd better stick to finishing em off rather than raising some new ones.

Innovative licensing

2009-12-28T12:31:00.004+05:30

What has software licensing got to do with the Environment ?

Puzzling - ain't it. However it seems that the theme of environment consciousness has found its way into software licensing as well. But before that I must admit that I paid a small price for not reading software license agreements in detail before installing them. An amusing experience it was today.

About a month back or so I'd installed the popular Spell-check and Thesaurus application WordWeb onto my laptop. Version 5.52 to be more precise. As much as possible I avoid trialware and shareware preferring portable and freeware applications. WordWeb seemed to be in the latter category.

Today when I booted up the laptop, prompt came a choice box from the WordWeb application. It specified that to continue using the freeware version I got to answer a choice question. Now - I didn't take a screenshot of that window but it went something like this

How many flight trips do you take in a year ?
A - None
B - One in a year
C - Two or more in a year

I was in a zingy morning mood with no intention to delve deeper into the puzzle - so I clicked on option C ( and indeed the answer was true - I have flown quite a sizeable number of times this year ).

However the next screen was what widened my eyes. The message was as below...

It also pointed me to the license agreement that I had accepted while installing the software. (As if we all read em ;-)). Anyway the point is that the buggers expired my free license for taking more than 2 flights a year !!.

Now I don't blame the company. They got a really good product and ideally speaking - people ought to pay to use such a good piece of software. But I found the whole idea of terminating your free access due to flying hours a bit too modern for my taste.

Or probably that's the way things gonna to be in the future. How good if the government similarly gave me a tax break because I don't own a vehicle thus contributing to a cleaner environment ;-).

Nice turn of events

2009-12-08T20:30:00.000+05:30

Had been wanting to do it for quite some time - roll up my sleeves and get back to good old programming tasks.

There is something really good about programming that I haven't yet found when doing anything else. The mind is streamlined and focused on a particular task. It might be that nagging bit of code that's just not behaving the way you want but that keeps your mind riveted to the task and makes you think in more ways than one - the optimization of the code, the cleanliness of the code, the elegance of the algorithm used and so on.

So just a day back, for a client-specific presentation deck we needed some Alfresco snapshots and for the same I ended up installing and configuring Alfresco and its WCM pack. Well didn't write any code but still it felt nice to burn some grey cells figuring out why MySql wasn't booting up properly or what connector was missing in the startup sequence. I finally nailed it around midnight and got the required screenshots.

The interesting part is that it seems to have put me back in the groove, installing and experimenting with utilities and code. Nice development and I gotta ensure that it continues in full swing and doesn't fizz out like other initatives.

An interesting spoof

2009-11-23T20:57:00.006+05:30

We have heard of the Nigerian lottery e-scams, Spamming etc. We usually assume that only lesser knowledgeable mortals might fall prey to such schemes. But times have improved and so have the scamsters. One really needs to be alert while dealing with any financial transaction online.

Recently, I logged into my mail account to find an interesting mail. Usually all such mails get the deserved treatment - "Send to Trash". But then this one interested me. Here is a screenshot of the supposed mail.

Thankfully it seemed to have originated from a bank that I have no account with. And it claimed to need my account login to rectify some online account flushing problem. So cleverly worded. Not a hint of asking for a password or login-id but indirectly commanding you to follow the link so that the problem can be resolved. Even asking you to use Firefox 2.0.0.11. Thats classic ! Enough to even bait the unthinking open source evangelist ;-).

This mail reflects genuineness & exudes confidence in the way its drafted. It even has the corporate feel to it. What if I really had an account with the said bank ? Anyway I followed the url to analyze how the spoof site functioned. Sadly the Login URL seemed to hit a dead link. However I'm amazed ! It would have definitely garnered a few target victims before someone discovered the spoof.

The art of phising on the web really seems to be in good form and we must caution everybody against performing e-transactions without first checking the details. Modern browsers have sort of features enabled to prevent such attacks. Still its better to be wiser and more updated in the first place.

Is the design justified ?

2009-11-17T19:13:00.008+05:30

This post is not about software design as such. But then design principles and concepts are general. So what holds true for software design must be the same as for any other system design. Especially the KISS(Keep it simple stupid) principle.

I was on the Pune-Satara Road and I remembered the road as it was when newly constructed. Wide lanes on both sides and very much a delight to be on. Anyone who has been to "City Pride" cinema in those days will recollect that approach road. Of course there were nasty traffic jams in the evenings but then that's an accepted fact about Pune and its thin bylanes.

However in that particular stretch of the road, nowadays the lanes are laid out in a surprising pattern. And it stretches all the way to Katraj in the same fashion. Something like this

To catch the ever elusive and crowded PMT bus, you need to cross over to the inner Mass Transit Line. On many occasions I've found old people waiting for ages to move over to the bus stop. Cause if they hurry - an attempt to catch the bus might in fact bring them closer to God. Although, the way the PMT buses rattle and battle for road space - God is just a call away. Many times I've seen veteran citizens dilly dallying on the speed lanes and having to listen to curses from speeding motorists. That brings me to the unsolved query - why was the road designed like this in the first place. Whats good about this design ? Obviously the planners would have been conscious enough of citizen troubles in boarding the bus. Yet why did they stick with this design ?

Why didn't they simply design it like this.

Even the transit lines are defined and public amenities are on the most easily accessible lane. I've been trying to think at all possible reason why simplicity has been sacrificed here. I would have blamed PMC for this design but then I've seen the same road design in certain other parts of the country too. So there must definitely be something advantageous about the design that I'm missing out on.

A little guilt at times.

2009-11-12T10:21:00.008+05:30

Clutching the prepaid slip in my hand I eased into the Omni Van. It was a thoroughly battered one. The driver enquired & I blurted out "Udyog Vihar - Phase 2". He shouted out the same to the security manning the airport prepaid parking and off we zoomed onto the arterial road connecting Delhi and Gurgaon, with the night winter air in Delhi chilling me to the core. It was around 12.50 pm midnight.

The journey was remarkably silent and I was in one of those happy moods - associated with travelling. Halfway through - the driver guy turned to me with a wide grin and remarked - "Aapko Udyog Vihar hi jaana hai ya DLF Phase 2 jaana hai". I was typing an SMS and blurted out "Udyog Vihar Phase 2" - quite unsure myself. He said "Wahan pe koi phase vagire nahi hota. Sirf Udyog Vihar hota hai". I said whatever - "Mujhe Phase 2 jaana hai". He then started arguing that I had paid only for Udyog Vihar and threatened to take me back to the airport.

Even I lost my cool and we had a heated debate on the topic. I even went to the extent of comparing cabwallah's in Dilli - against their (supposedly) good natured and fairer counterparts in Mumbai. This actually irked him a bit more and our verbal tussle continued. Finally he said - "Theek hai. Aapko Tees,Chalees rupaiye extra dena hoga". I flatly refused and we kept re-arguing on the topic.

Our arguments died down somewhere after the Gurgaon Toll Naka. Still he was murmuring something incoherently. Probably was amused at why I was fighting defiantly over 30-40 bucks. I was silent wondering why I did not counter the initial outburst with a bit more restraint. Probably he might also have been right about what he did but the image in my mind - of the taxiwallahs taking people for a ride - took precedence over simple rational logic. "Restraint.. puttar.. restraint" - I reminded myself.

Anyway somewhere around in DLF Phase 2 we both had a tough time locating the place. I must agree that he did spend some effort in locating the place. As I got out he was looking at me - whether I would part with some amount. In a happier mood, I would have - considering the chilly night air and its impact on human productivity. But then I just ignored him and came over to my room.

And it was there - reading through the newspaper that I could sense a minor guilt pang at the back saying - "Comeon - you should have given him something!".

Shaking a leg

2009-11-03T23:48:00.004+05:30

I've always liked a good dance. Hey - before you get me wrong. I'm not the formal dancing sort. Have hardly any knowledge of what makes a good move or what comprises grace for a dancer. I'll leave that to the professionals. I've just grown up watching various forms of folk dancing ranging from the crude sort of "ganpati dance" or "dahi-handi tapori dance" to the much elegant dandiya moves at the local gatherings. That has infused in me a desire to shake a leg whenever i hear a good rhythm. And of course whenever I am in the mood.

And once i've belted a few drinks to throw away the initial inhibition, shaking a leg has been a favourite with me and I'd often be amongst the last to leave the floor. But as i said before - please don't equate that with quality of dancing. I don't aspire for that. For me its simple - its should make you feel happy, remain within the limits of decency, it shouldn't compel others to stay meters away from you and its should really help you burn some calories.

Coming to the last aspect, it had really been some time since i shook a leg. The most recent had been in 2007 in China, Hangzhou (SOS) where the psychedelic lighting infused the necessary boost in me. And it was nice dancing with the athletic chinese folks who though poor on our variant of "bollywood'ish" and "tapori" dance moves were still good company. Before that, a year back, I'd also had an enjoyable evening at a local discotheque at Grand Bay, Mauritius where the Africans regaled me with their spirited dancing. You need to learn to enjoy dance from them, enjoying every beat of the music, gyrating with precision to the local Mauritian Sega as well as the Lou Bega variety. I joined in only when they started playing some Himesh numbers (Yeah our guy used to rock the island nation then - and where he sang from - whether nose or mouth was immaterial to the local populace).

So it was by sheer luck that today night that I got another chance (whoa - after a gap of two years). A party thrown in by office folks gave that perfect opportunity to let loose a lot of gathered inhibitions. And it felt so so good. As if two years had just melted by and some semblance of that youthful spirit returned back as I threw all caution to the wind and danced like a monkey (Yes - if those moves were recorded by some unassuming tehelka operative - it would seem more like a monkey swinging to music).

I just hope more of these days come by. Makes you feel youthful and so full of life. Only if I could catch hold of some spirited trekking groups to continue the old saga of trekking.

Take a cue

2009-10-22T08:24:00.003+05:30

Seems like its always travel that tickles my thinking cells. Last weekend, on my return travel from Kerala, I was watching the evergreen "Chitram" an the oft-repeated thought came back - Why don't they make movies like that anymore. Malayalam movies in the 8o's and 9o's were always a cut above the commercial potboilers and formula laden flicks. They had genuinely sparkling storylines, fresh humour and realistic drama portrayal. The films were simplistic and every viewer could connect with the characters and movies in general.

For people who have grown up watching Hindi movies, before you can brand all south films as alike and full of kung-fu'ish dishoom dishooms and thunder thighs, you can take a sampling of any three mainstream mallu movies and observe for yourself the carefully scripted plotlines, the simplistic story telling, the realistic portrayal and the commitment to quality in visuals and lighting. Not to mention actors playing their roles dedicatedly and not vying to be heroes/heroines. You won't find a "Sholay" over here - but if you loved those Amol Palekar type light-hearted movies, then they are there in abundance.

Sadly today there seems to be an attitude amongst filmmakers to emulate Hindi and Tamil techniques (song dance razzmatazz). What they miss out here is realism. Doing a 50-50 is gonna ensure that neither audiences are gonna enjoy their movies. The average mallu is a bit intelligent. If Tamil cinema does it, they have mastered it - the choreography, the innovation required in song dance sequences. Malayalam cinema needs to focus on its strengths - good storytelling, good realism. And please stick to the mainstream culture folks. Thats what the Chinese or the Japs do - make movies that portray their culture so very effectively but still deliver brilliant movies. Lets not fall into the trap of dancing, singing in foreign locales.

Putting functionality first

2009-10-20T11:52:00.002+05:30

Read this blog post (http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik/archive/2007/10/09/the-culture-of-art-vs-the-culture-of-engineering.aspx) the other day and couldn’t help but agree with the author.

IT never seems to be satisfied with its never ending quest for better frameworks. Instead of learning to use a framework or system to its fullest potential – we keep building new ones to solve specific problems. Loosely said - instead of trying to solve a problem we try to develop a new framework to solve the problem and wrap the framework around words like scalable, extensible, robust etc. Next time when the problem recurs in a new way – we build a new framework to replace the earlier one.

What is needed for a developer today is the patience to LEARN, SPEND time understanding things in detail and focusing on the problem to be solved – not idealizing the way to solve it. Functionality should be delivered first and Elegance can come later. Indeed that is exactly what we have been contemplating when we missed the schedule for a web based initiative.

The Bucket List

2009-09-30T18:38:00.005+05:30

Some of the movies they showcase on HBO nowadays seem to be real goodies. I sat through "The Bucket List" a couple of days back and its a wonderful movie (well - understand that these things are quite subjective - so better to say that I appreciated it).

I would have flipped the remote button had I not seen Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman sharing on-screen space. Might be something interesting I felt and watched on.. And it was. The plot is lightweight, there'z almost no action but the dialogues are good and often hilarious at times. Two diverse people meet in a hospital room, become friends and try to complete the "bucket list" - a list of tasks that one of them had planned to do before he dies.

The are some superb dialogues interspersed in the movie. Some of them have that "Zen" touch to it. Like when Morgan tells Jack - “The Buddhists believe you keep coming back, moving up or down based on how you lived your life.” And Jack - the atheist says - “See, that’s where they lose me. I mean, what would a snail have to do to move up in the lineup? Lay down a perfect trail of slime?”

Especially I liked the Egyptian test that Morgan narrates to Jack. It seems that ancient Egyptians, after death, were asked two questions before they could enter heaven

Did you have joy while on earth?
Did you bring joy to others in your lifetime on earth?

So very elegant in summing up the gist of what you should have achieved in a lifetime on earth. At a micro level, isn't being able to answer these two questions with a 'yes' - the key to satisfaction and success in anything we do.

Overall nice, quiet movie and since they anyway subtitle movies nowadays, you don't miss the interesting dialogues too.

Vote for scarlett

2009-09-29T22:29:00.007+05:30

During a journey last weekend, the gentlemen sitting by my side got engrossed in an interesting discussion. Well its started from wine tasting but boiled down to the essentials... grapes. They spoke at length on the desirability of green grapes, its cultivation etc. Though I was a mute entity during their discussions.. I'd like to put it here that I totally disagree with them. I've never been a great connoisseur of green grapes. They tend to taste a bit monotonous every time I bite into them. And a bit too acidic for my tastes too.

Well, I can go on and on blaming em but fact is that I'm speaking comparatively. Actually its their colored cousin who steals the topic of merit here. Scarlett grapes (or black grapes) have what I would rightly put - a touch of character and originality. These are the ones with embedded seeds unlike the derived green variety which is seedless.

Just a bite can tell the difference. Scarlett grapes have a distinct flavor that's just the right tinge of 90% sweetness laced with 10 % sourness. And it gets delectably enjoyable as the bite progresses to the center of the grape. Green grapes on the other hand have a drowsy sweet taste. Eat a dozen of em and you experience a lazy feeling seeping through you.

Well - its your take as to which one you prefer. As a tribute to the scarlett ones though, I managed a snap before enjoying them on a sunny afternoon. May their tribe increase.

Short thought - Enterprise IT planning

2009-09-21T16:48:00.004+05:30

The other day, I was supposed to be an active and contributing member on one of the discussions on an enterprise scale project for an XYZ organization. I did attend the meeting except for the fact that I wasn't terribly active over there. The reason - a disconnect between what I envisaged and what was being discussed over there. So all I did was shake my head and murmur a sign of approval at times.

Sometimes it amuses me as to how much folks would pay for a piece of technology that connects two things in a grandiose manner instead of having something simple that connects them equally nicely. The excuse - ability to change, adapt, transform and accommodate future needs is often used to introduce bloat under the garb of planning for tomorrow.

Here I'd like to reinforce that I'm still a "nuts & bolts" guy who hasn't yet go the true halo of Enterprise IT architecture circling around his head. So my blabbering should be taken with utmost caution, especially if the reader happens to mingle amongst the "who's who of who" of the corporate world where SOA's and ESB's and BPM's get discussed & analysed daily.

Still, experience has at time taught me that all the frameworks that rule the roost today are gonna be obsolete tomorrow. It is wiser to build something functional and expect it to operate decently and capable of handling change for the next 5 years rather than spend a fortune investing on the latest integration technology that will seamlessly provide a middleware lasting for the next 20 years.

Sigh .. Its a pleasure nowadays when some sensible technical architect interrupts a long winding discussion with a - "why can't we do it simply like this" and goes on to sketch out a simple architecture instead of the more typical enterprise elephant'ish architecture.

Enjoying Onam 2009

2009-09-04T20:05:00.006+05:30

For the past few days I've been on an enjoying spree. Back in my hometown far removed from the hustle bustle of a metro city. And for no other reason than the fact that its Onam. The time to celebrate, enjoy, eat a lot (no kidding) and visit all near and dear ones. And its about time - For long, I'd really been missing out on a proper family get-together of sorts.

Though the marketing brochures may speak volumes about Onam being a harvest festival and the legend of King Mahabali and so on... Onam for me symbolises just the essence of celebrating life and togetherness.

As I write this entry, sitting on the verandah in my lovely little village town, listening to the crickets chirping in the background - I can hear strains from the loudspeaker blaring commentary about an Onam sports event in progress at the local temple. Folks in colourful attire and enthusiastic little children throng the village temple during this event. Can't help oberving the devout nature of people, even kids. Watch them at the local temple, paying obeisance before the gods and you can see the seriousness on their faces and gauge the depth of their devotion. Faith is a part of their daily lifestyle and blended into everything they do - even work. No wonder - they work so efficiently, whether in the fields, in their classrooms or in their kitchens.

Life is so very simple and uncomplicated over here - no running after goals and targets - no immediate deadlines to hurry about - nothing much to worry about. The pace has remained like this in the past and I wish this village and these people remain as such, unspoilt and beautiful for ages to come.

And I hope I can be here every year at this time of the year, enjoying this essence of simplicity in life.

Thumbs up - Ubuntu Jaunty on the Acer 4530

2009-08-20T15:58:00.007+05:30

In one of my earlier posts, I'd explained how I was able to get Mandriva 2009 working absolutely fine on the Acer 4530. Now Mandriva was the first distro that I found worked flawlessly on this laptop, without needing any tweaking. However there were unresolved areas - like the webcam, wireless and bluetooth. Also I had a tough time getting virtualbox working on that one.

That was till I tested Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 release ( the amd64 version) two weeks back. And it has really blown me with the awesome compatibility. It seems to be custom built for this laptop. Everything works flawlessly (Well not everything - I'm coming to it). This wiki details the supported configuration.

The beautiful thing is that - sound works, bluetooth works, wireless works, even that volume control switch works, webcam works ( there is however an intermittent problem with the Acer 4530 webcam - thats got nothing to do with Ubuntu - some loose cable somewhere). The graphics card (Nvidia GeForce 9100G) doesn't work out of the box with the supplied driver but after a installing the latest driver ( from the Hardware Drivers option), it works superb. No wonder Ubuntu is one of the most popular distros.

The main thing for me - Virtualbox works like a charm. I needed it particularly for handling office documents that don't format properly with OpenOffice.

Of course there are some minor glitches like
1) Bluetooth always remains on during startup
2) Wifi hot-switch & associated LED donot work (like in windows)

A persistent problem I had with Mandriva was the heating (at times the CPU seemed to go into overdrive and if you just placed your hands near the heat vent, could feel the fan at full blast.) Ubuntu Jaunty thankfully doesn't seem to have this problem.

I'll post some screenshots soon. Especially the themes from the bisigi project are great.

(Psst - I also tried out an early alpha release of Karmic Kola, however it couldn't just initiate the graphics system. I understand that its in development phase & bugs might still be ironed out. Holding out eagerly for Karmic with the optimized grub2 boot system).

Way to go Ubuntu developers - you rock ! I'll even rate this one better than Vista.

A time to retrospect

2009-08-18T16:27:00.006+05:30

Phew ... August has just flown by (Okai - technically its still mid August). Somehow there is this nagging thing about August that makes it fly by faster than most other months. And this August has been quite eventful till now. ( some travel mixed with lots of pending stuff, eccentric rainfall, weak health outlook and a lot of other un-inspiring stuff)

Mid-August just set off an alarm somewhere in the back of my head and on closer inspection realised that it comes from here. Had mentally made a note to take a status call in August on where I stand on the resolutions. Well, the outlook as of now looks quite bearish. Line item 2 has been fairly satisfactory but the other two line items haven't met the mark. So, like a good personal coach, its now time to retune things and set up a revised agenda focussing on the deviant items. And track them again mid-september.

Apart from this, there is another item that springs to mind. Its this one. Time to really reduce the information overload (call it white noise) and focus on the classical way (read books - one thing at a time thing).

It should be as simple as that, with 4 more months to go - its time to jet-speed to achieving these simple resolutions. Then there is this project idea (more of this later) with a colleague that really needs to be boot-started the right way. Till now its been more of an "arm-chair" idea. Taking it beyond this stage also accounts in the 4 month goals. That should introduce a bit of team-collaboration in the equation.

Of Netbooks and Disc-Drives

2009-07-20T15:59:00.018+05:30

Netbooks are all the craze nowadays. Small, lightweight and extremely portable, they are slowly replacing notebooks. And getting more powerful with each passing day. They are the best option for folks wanting cheap computing power on the fly. For office documents, surfing the net, lightweight development etc netbooks are ideal. For other areas like graphics work, heavy development, notebooks still rule the roost.

However currently all the major netbooks in the market lack an Optical drive (read DVD drive). Agreeably so, as computing using netbooks is expensive on power and an optical drive might just add to the power handling woes.

Chart sourced from Intel study
Also, considering the current trend for energy efficient devices, Netbooks are considered greener than notebooks.

However people seem to be hell-bent on wanting one. They see all these DVD's and installable CD's floating around and they presume that a netbook without a DVD drive is useless. A friend of mine likes the portability that the netbook offers but feels that its useless for him without a DVD drive.

From my perspective I feel that USB drives (alias pendrive/jumpdrive/keydrive) have almost replaced their optical cousins. Today I can store DVD movies on my USB and watch them using VLC or KMPlayer or a host of other players without hearing that DVD drive scratching and searching in the background.

For LiveCD distributions (that name sincerely needs to be changed to LiveDist or something), I can always burn the ISO to USB using something like Unetbootin. Netbooks come shipped with enough hard-disk memory to store all those archived CD's you had from college days.

The only reason to go disc drives would probably be playing legal audio cd's and archiving data for long-term storage (nothing beats optical storage here). Considering the former, honestly show me a smart samaritan today, who still listens to legal audio CD's - you know the ones that probably contain one movietrack on an entire CD. Lets agree - for anyone less than the connoisseurs, mp3 is here to stay. As regards the latter, you are better off with a cheaper external optical drive, that you can use for data archiving.

And for the ones that still complain that they need an Optical drive, I'd like to question them if they still need a floppy drive ?

(Btw I hear that Asus is planning to introduce a netbook with optical drive. Good news for those who still adore the DVD.)

Always take a backup

2009-07-20T14:13:00.011+05:30

Realized last weekend that technology, however superior cannot accommodate for human laziness and this realization came in a pretty harsh way. Kaboom! went away two partitions on my notebook drive. The partitions I'd meticulously set aside for data, one for personal data and the second one for media stuff (photography archives and the like). Surprisingly, the OS partition remained untouched, the experimental Linux partition remained untouched & only the data partitions were chosen for the wreckage.

After seeing my initial exclamation on loss of data, my colleague blurted out - "Serves you well for all those late night experimentation". Probably he is right but then I know well that experimentation is not the thing to be blamed for. Its the failure to take an adequate backup before I went ahead with the experimentation - that's the culprit here. More so considering that I had a nice 120 GB USB external harddisk gifted by a friend. Thankfully I had some backup snapshot taken about 3 months back - so all is not gone.

For the technically minded who'd like to know how the crash occured, this is my most plausible explanation. This was the partition structure on my disk before.
I was trying to update Mandriva 2009 RC1 to the latest & it seems to have exceeded partition space without any boundary checking. The grub boot-loader got corrupted too not recognizing the XP partition. With a rescue CD, I could still boot into windows and see both my data drives (D & E) but with the dreaded message "Drive not formatted. Format (Y/N)". The MBR seemed to be corrupted.

Next I tried my favorite recovery tools. Started with TestDisk but it didnot list any recoverable files on the data partitions. Then tried some other recovery tools and I have an admission to make here. I ensured that the partitions were untouched while trying out various recovery tools. Some of the recovery tools did succeed in picking up some folders and data but that was more superficial. After checking the recovered files, I found many of the images were garbled and docs were corrupted. About 15% files were properly recovered and the rest had binary corruption. Don't know how these tools keep advertising record recovery figures ;-).

Well I've finally gone ahead, re-partitioned the disk and now trying out Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) . So far the 64-bit edition has installed smoothly on the Acer 4530. Bluetooth and even the Tata Indicom USB works nicely out of the box. Though wireless works, the wifi keyboard switch doesn't seem to work. Well I believe its more a matter of tweaking around.

This incident reinforces the old golden adage "Always take a backup!". Another small learning, a little philosophical one is - "You really don't need all that data". So very true. In fact sometimes I realise that all the data I really need can fit into a 2GB USB drive. So all I need to do for backup is use something simple like synctoy(windows only) and ensure that atleast every weekend the sync is run.

Khari-Kamai on June 5th

2009-07-12T21:19:00.028+05:30

Image reference : Wikimedia Commons

I scribbled this post in June and as usual forgot to post it. At times I pride myself for having this unique ability to conveniently forget things - especially dates (I mean calendar dates ;-). After all, why carry all that numeric baggage in your head when you have all these calendars and widgets nowadays to pop-up alarms and trigger event notifications.

That explains the puzzlement, why on the morning of June 5th I was surprised when I could remember that it was Environment day. But sadly I couldn't remember as to what made me remember in the first place that it was Environment day. It was later in the evening after a sip of hot coffee that my neurons fired away and I remembered the incident that introduced me to environment day for the first time.

The event goes back around two decades in time. Scouts & Guides were a part of the school curriculum then. It was interesting, wearing that outfit which made you look like a mini-soldier and following the code of discipline & activity set by Robert Baden-Powell. During our second year of scouting, we had this activity programme called "Khari-Kamai" which everyone eagerly looked forward to. Literally translated as "Real-Earning", this program's objective was to instill a spirit of earning by working with dignity and self-respect. As a part of this program, students were supposed to work in teams, visit houses, seek some nitty-gritty errands to do and build up a small earning to be pooled in the school charity fund.

Practically when you look at it, most of us used to target friend's houses as we were sure we'd not be shooed away and mostly the work used to be some silly stuff like wiping the dust off TV screens and in return we'd get a 5 or a 10 rupee note. And the policy of give-n-take was often employed. I'd go over to a friend's place for seeking work with the understanding that when he needed work for his khari-kamai he could come over to my place. All such crooked thinking routes were applied to garner more revenue. Also it was a neat way for the guys to visit the houses of some of the cutest girls ;-) and impress em. And never was the work challenging in any way to say so. Compared to the scout drills & rope-knotting activities, this was far more interesting.

We used to stay in a company quarters of sorts. I formed a team with a friend called Mohammed and we used to hunt houses for work during the weekends. That was till Mohammed had a brilliant idea. Why not target the "staff" quarters, he said. At least they'd give something better than a 10 rupee note. Now he had an idea. Staff members were supposed to be officer grade folks and definitely they would tip us better. The only worry was whether they'd shoo us away.

Mohammed was not only brilliant but a daring fellow too. The first door he knocked was in a bungalow apartment usually reserved for the most elite staff. I tiptoed behind him, ready to run away at the slightest blabbering from whoever would open the door, i.e if it did open for us - kids in soiled clothes looking for work ;-).

But the door did open and a well-built man with a stout moustache towered over us. "Whats the matter" - he asked - his voice deep, authorative and resonant. "We want work" - we blabbered simultaneously, the voices hardly coming out.

"What work"- It sounded more like thunder. Panicky, we then showed him our "Khari-Kamai" cards. "Oohh.. this...well come in boys" - there was a big smile and he ushered us in, even gave us some juice to drink. "So... what work would you like to do" - he asked, now pleasantly. "Anything" - we replied - "Clean the fan, tv, fix the faucet, replace the fused bulb - Anything" - we went on. I even volunteered to repair an old tape recorder that didn't seem to work - but Mohammed winked at me to shut up & not be too over-confident.

He smiled and then said "Well today is an interesting day called Nature day. Do you know that?". We didn't need to reply back. The blank look on our faces spoke more. He went on to describe Nature day in great detail, stressing why nature was precious, why it should be nurtured and so on. Then he said "I'll give you some work you guys would be proud of later". He went inside and shortly brought two saplings. "Here" - he said, "Plant these in that chalk marked space in the garden & water it properly". He stood behind us and personally supervised the whole process. Once we were done he handed us a 50 rupee note and said - "You need to come back for the next 5 days after school, water it using that garden hose and check if your sapling is growing properly. Else I'll take this money back from you. Okai". We nodded in unison, quite unsure of that promise, but very happy at this bargain deal. This incident occurred on a June 5th - and I think it was the last job for the "Khari-Kamai" we did. We closed in at around 360 Rupees which we handed over to the school authorities and was (I hope) donated to charity.

Sadly we never went back to check the saplings. But sometime during the end of that year in school, I passed by that place and was happy to find the saplings swaying in the evening breeze. Later during my college days, on a chance encounter, I noticed that one of the saplings wasn't there but the other one had blossomed onto a nice little Gulmohar tree with red-petalled flowers. I don't recollect any of the other jobs we did as a part of "Khari-Kamai", but this one I keep recollecting every time mention of Environment day is made.

Today, I can't help but marvel at the vision of that person, who was aware of the importance of environment consciousness then, cared for this fact and ensured that it was passed on to the next generation by virtue of deed.

TrueZip your way across archives

2009-07-06T19:47:00.014+05:30

Some of the open source projects receive instant success while some sink into oblivion. Brings one to the realization that running an open source project is not just about building the best frameworks but also about marketing and documenting it properly. (the latter is very important. Many developers casually assume that throwing in the Javadoc helps. No! Its really painful to wade through the javadocs unless you have the overview. You need to showcase atleast a "hello world" implementation or a "howto" FAQ for the early adopters)

Ruminations aside, I'd not heard of TrueZip before and would have skipped the page but for the nice one page howto on using it that made me realize that it was the perfect fit for one of the java projects I'd been working on

What was needed was a way to read/delete/modify archive contents (primarily zip). The challenge was that the archive contained multiple files within a directory hierarchy and all that was needed to do was modify one of them. Something like this.

So the target here is trying to read/write to the Config.xml file inside Folder1\Conf.

Java provides handy java.util.zip package for handling zip files but the architecture can be more or less awkward. After traversing the maze of javadocs and googling around, you'd somehow build a decent reader class but writing out modifications is a pain area.

Thats where TrueZip comes in. It acts as a Virtual File System allowing you to read/write your archive(zip) contents just as you would using normal File System classes in Java ( InputStream, Reader, Writer etc).

So for the former example all you need to do for reading and writing is open the corresponding reader/writer to this resource "Archive.zip\Folder1\Conf\config.xml"

Ah so simple. Isn't that what a good framework is supposed to do. Simplify things without building up additional complexity. And TrueZip does that with no extra brouhaha - no xml bloat, nor wiring of dependencies. Just a plain simple library solving a missing feature in the Java distribution. And it comes free under an "Apache2.0" license.

Remote shutter for Nikon 4500

2009-06-28T23:10:00.022+05:30

Remote shutter release is an important capability in photography especially while taking high-speed product shoots or low light / long-shutter exposures. The basic aim is to ensure that the camera remains vibration-free and absolutely stable during the shutter release operation.

One way of accomplishing this is to place the camera on a tripod or on some other stable support and achieve the shutter press capability by using long cord of wire called as a remote release cable. Remote release cables can be mechanical or electrical. Mechanical ones are perfect for older cameras that donot have an electrical shutter release slot. The performance of these are debatable. Electrical ones are better suited as they are completely vibration free. Shown on the left here is a Ricoh CA-1 Remote Release Cable.

One of the grudges I have against my current camera, the otherwise versatile Nikon 4500 is the snail-speed shutter speed. You see a child smiling, and by the time you have changed the aperture and just clicked that shutter button, the child has stopped smiling and is now wondering what the heck are you upto. The same expression is then captured by the sensor. This agonising problem is called shutter-lag. Technically speaking its a delay between the press of the shutter button and the time the actual shot is taken. The momentary but important time when nature flies by, smiles change by and a whole scene changes into something different from what you had observed.

SLR cameras have negligible to virtually no shutter lag. The problem mostly plagues digital compact cameras as they have to use the same sensor for focussing and metering as well as capturing the final image.

Shutter lag was the primary reason I was trying to find a cheap remote shutter release cable for the Nikon 4500. Thats when I chanced upon some forums on photography where a list of software was mentioned that could actually use the existing Nikon 4500 USB cable to send some commands and download card images and so on. People had actually spent time reversing the protocol used by Fujitsu chipset compliant firmware. Primary amongst these include

http://photopc.sourceforge.net/ - Eugene Crosser's application for managing digital camera photos.

http://www.ruwebit.net/article/81 - Snappixx - Nikon Coolpix series control via serial cable. Also available for the PocketPC platform.

http://vyskocil.free.fr/coolcom/ - Coolpix remote control application for Palm devices. Again based on the Sierra protocol.

But the best amongst these that I found was Krinnicam, a remote control software for Nikon Coolpix using the USB protocol. The others mostly use the serial protocol hence requiring a serial cable. However Krinnicam works well with existing usb cable supplied with the Nikon 4500. Krinnicam doesn't seem to be actively developed anymore. However the past versions work well with the Nikon 4500.

Some of the features supported by v2.02 include

Works with the standard UC-E1 (USB) cable or the optional SC-EW3 (serial) cable.
Supports automatic image downloading through USB.
Supports time-lapse photography.
Supports control of most aspects like focus, flash, white-balance and metering.

I tried out Krinnicam on my laptop and it works like a charm. Great tool for indoor and product photographers still using the versatile little Nikon 4500.

Build zooming presentations online

2009-06-28T20:28:00.007+05:30

Since web2.0 came onto the scene, there has been a sea change in the way applications look and behave. Just looking at the myriad of new applications and offerings that are entirely browser based is enough to either perk you up or demoralise you as a programmer (Its the way you look at it).

No wonder that the latest one on the scene just rocks !!. So you believe you are a whizkid in Powerpoint. You believe you can create the slickest and most stylish of presentations. Well then this new service is just for you. Check out Prezi (www.prezi.com) a new way of creating presentations - a zooming editor ( is what they humbly tend to call the service).

The showcase applications are mind-blowing. Just check out say the AIESEC example or any of the other applications on their showcase. You might as well signup and start building your own presentations. The only thing your require is a browser (I recommend Firefox) and of course - some creative skills.

Two cars, poles apart

2009-06-17T14:05:00.011+05:30

News has just trickled in that the Fiat "Grande Punto" has been launched in India. I've always been a fan of the Fiat Palio, a car I admire for its designer styling and versatile engine. Now the Punto comes as a welcome addition to this lineage. The pricing also seems to be just appropriate - 3.99 to 6.5 L across the range of petrol and diesel versions. Enough to counter the Maruti Swifts & Hyundai i10's that currently dot the Indian roads. Its too early to comment on the features but knowing Fiat - it would definitely be some VFM.

Just hardly some weeks back was the Honda "jazz" unveiled. However the pricing sucks. Agreed that the car has a lot of safety features thrown in but that doesn't justify a price of around 7.5 L for a hatchback.
Wake up Honda. You are selling in India - not Japan ! You need to go the Hyundai way to make an inroad in this segment. Or atleast the Fiat way.

App Engine turning reaaaally wicked

2009-05-26T14:20:00.008+05:30

How the hell did I miss this one! Definitely I’m growing older ;-)

Google App Engine now supports Java. (though right now a bit experimental & only for early-adopters)

This is great news for all hobbyist Java developers who were half-way through that “Learn Python” book. Now I have nothing against Python. In fact many of my “Pythonian” friends have convinced me that it is indeed a beautiful language. However my 9.30 pm python learning sessions mostly end up as snoring sessions, and actually I end up sleeping more peacefully than otherwise.

GAE supporting Java is yet another killer combination from the Google stables. Definitely, it will drive GAE adoption much more than ever before.

Driving on Indian roads

2009-05-22T20:29:00.009+05:30

Long time since I read some good humor online. Still recollect that the last good joke I read was the "Sherlock Holmes and Watson camping joke". However some days back, came across this wonderful piece of writing regarding driving on Indian roads. An amazing, hilarious, no-holds-barred description of driving challenges on Indian Roads. Check the link below.

Driving in India

Though I agree with the author here, I also salute the Indian spirit for making the best of the adverse road conditions in India. Probably if we had wider roads, efficient traffic signals and a more pro-active transport system there might be a way to enforce discipline. But right now that's far away. We have more urgent problems to solve than clear the chaos on roads.

The CMS, RM difference

2009-05-22T16:46:00.009+05:30

If you are new to the content management arena, there usually is a period of confusion when you try to compare Records Management Systems vis-a-vis Content Management Systems. This article is a small attempt to clarify the primary difference here and why both have separate objectives but end up fighting for equal space on an enterprise IT budget sheet.

From a technical layman perspective, a content management system (CMS) is a solution for capture, classification, organization, transformation & retrieval of content. Content can be unstructured (ad-hoc document, scanned sheets, Email etc) or structured (website data, user records etc). Lately, since electronic content usage has been exploding it shouldn’t come as a surprise that demand for such systems has increased and will continue so. Essentially speaking, CMS systems came into existence as electronic content began to replace physical paper content.

Even before content management became such a hot topic in the IT industry, behind the scenes, many organizations and governmental agencies already had some electronic systems for managing electronic and physical assets under a science known as “Record Keeping & Archiving”.

So it seems, Content Management (CM) and Records Management (RM) evolved in their own spheres and with the advent of modern electronic classification and capture systems, came face to face and today stand at a threshold where they almost overlap each other in features. To understand the need for existence of each, we need to go down a bit into what they essentially deal with.

CMS systems are basically supposed to manage Content. Similarly RMS (Records management Systems) are supposed to manage Records. So it boils down to the difference between content and a record. Content refers to any information (might be a document, or an image or just a paragraph of text) that is stored in the system and managed with the following main objectives

Needs to be captured/accessed via different systems/interfaces.
Needs to be protected with flexible authorization schemes.
Needs to be transformed and made available in various formats.
Needs to be properly classified for easy retrieval.
Needs to be version-managed & participate in electronic processes.

Well, a record too refers to an information asset (might be a document, or an image or just a paragraph of text) that is stored in the system but here the objectives are a bit different.

Needs to be made available as evidence when required
Needs to be kept for specified periods for regulatory compliance.
Will very infrequently need modification & is mostly immutable.
Needs to follow more stringent access control with mostly only read access granted.
Needs to follow proper disposal mechanisms.

Broadly speaking, whatever is managed as content today might after a period of time be managed as a record. CMS systems need to be designed with the objective of making content as much available and enriched with metadata as possible. The perspective here is to reduce redundancy and ensure that content can participate in transactional processes and be available when required. The goal is to ensure that your CMS serves as your single-stop point for unstructured data, similar as your database is for structured data. With these objectives the CMS also needs to cater to scalability and geographical distribution requirements.

RMS systems need to be designed with the objective of ensuring that compliance requirements required for record keeping systems are met. This includes proper record capture, classification, adherence to retention schedules, disposition rules, efficient notifications and alerts for records reaching their end-of-life and stringent security measures to ensure that records are never tampered with. Some RMS systems also have a feature to keep track of existing physical records as well via some classification and identification schemes for efficient retrieval.

With the advent of regulatory requirements for financial institutions and pharmaceutical companies, it has become imperative for any enterprise to demonstrate high levels of adherence to these policies. So while a CMS is needed to manage the rapidly increasing electronic workload, a RMS is needed to handle audit reporting & compliance. No wonder that IT budget sheets find both these systems jostling for budgets.

The ECM (Enterprise Content Management) arena is already becoming a pot-boiler mix of various buzzwords and sub-areas like KM (Knowledge Management), WCM (Web Content management), DAM (Digital Asset Management) etc. ECM Vendors are leaving no stone unturned to incorporate the whole gamut of features from basic DMS, Imaging to Records Management. Funny fact is that it’s becoming tougher for the end-customer to decide whether he/she needs a CMS with RM features or a RMS with some DM features. The wise customer is the one who realizes that no solution fits all and the better alternative is to leave it to the solution integrator to wire together the pieces and deliver the ECM capability that suits his/her requirement.

A bevy of shots

2009-05-19T08:17:00.047+05:30

Finally last Sunday, summoned the mood to get hold of the camera and capture a couple of snaps. Not great by any measure but good to get back into that creative groove. Didn't have much of patience given the sweltering heat back in the South. However managed to get some closeups of flora around. The usual mix - some good, some crap. Should be better - next time.

Buggya scores one here

2009-05-18T07:59:00.004+05:30

Sometimes its nice to hear outright comments about your personality. And that what "Buggya" did last week. He had been visiting my blog for quite a few months and last week made an interesting comment that indeed made some sense.

Oh first I should introduce "Buggya". Well, tough to describe but then he'z just like most of us. However what differentiates him from us mortals is that Buggya has this tendency to probe deep into finding atleast one fault in anything that you throw at him. I mention the word "atleast". However rest assured that Buggya will exceed your expectations here.

So you tell Buggya that - "The sky is blue today". And Buggya will respond back - "Why do you feel that the sky is blue today". You tell him that its evident from the colour. To which Buggya will ask you to explain the rationale behind identifying the sky as a shade of blue colour rather than any other color. At this very juncture any sane person should back out of this discussion but if you are like me, you'd throw that caution to the wind and launch a lecture on the scattering of light and its impact on the blue wavelength of light spectrum and so on. Buggya simply will listen to all that and in the end dismiss it as crap!. You get the same feeling as in a chess game when you have smartly inched your pawn across all difficulties to the opposite end of the board only to find the white bishop knocking him off at the very end.

So coming to the comment that Buggya made. He said "Your blog doesn't reflect your personality. Your blog puts you across as a very smart-n-ideal guy whereas in actuality you are the normal guy cracking jokes in office & nowhere anything like the blog guy."

Now, usually I don't take Buggya's responses with any amount of seriousness but here Buggya had really spoken with good observation. It indeed appears to be true. I may speak about idealism and my posts may reveal an analytic attitude but then therez a long way to go from where I stand to where the "blog guy" stands. And Buggya's comment just reminded me to bridge that gap. Hmmm - another entry to make in that "TODO" list. Its really becoming longer day-by-day ;-)

Handling Appraisal Blues

2009-05-07T11:03:00.011+05:30

Another of those routine coffee table discussions, and it was probably the caffeine laden spirit that enabled us to talk endlessly on topics without regard to the work slowly piling up downstairs in our email boxes.

The guy sitting next to me was cribbing & raving. He blamed the country, the politicians, the academicians, the lackluster approach to technology, his employer, the endless rot for high-paying salaries, the MNC’s turning us more into maintenance armies and so on. I just emptied the last sip of coffee and waited for the real drama to unfold. And it did. The ranting soon settled down shortly on the core topic – “Appraisals”. He had not received the rating he desired. Instead of a 5, he seemed to have received a 4. And it seemed the end of the world for him.

Why people worry so much about appraisals is the one unsolved puzzle that has mystified me since my times in this industry. After all what major difference does it make to your career, your aspirations, your belief in your capabilities – just because some person (say Tom) sitting on a chair higher than yours decides that you have not made it up to that grade. Agreed that it might impact your salary bottom-line – but why should it affect your confidence and make you feel bad? Also the salary aspect might only get widened by a few minuscule inches. Do you really need to crib and lose your head over that? And surprisingly during the appraisals everyone gets the feeling that he/she has actually done a damn good job that year. Many times I’d like to ask them to regress and re-check if they have actually contributed value. Look at themselves from a third-party viewpoint and do a reality check of whether they deserve to get that extra number. This quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is a good starting point – “We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done”.

Now I’ve never been in the appraiser's (say Tom's) seat myself but I can understand that Tom faces a tough task in front of himself. He has to gauge a person from a narrow set of objectives (usually copied over from last years objectives) and in addition Tom has to ensure that everyone doesn’t receive a 5 because that wouldn’t fit nicely in a bell-curve distribution. Tom is as hapless as you are and is just matching the metrics handed over to him.

Some of my colleagues have narrated interesting anecdotes regarding appraisal discussions. One of them after a particularly bad appraisal blurted out “So if I’m so worthless, why are you keeping me here. Release me from the team”. To which his supervisor panicked and responded “Oh no… don’t get me wrong. You are a great asset and we want to keep you. We have great plans for you”. Reminds me of those Dilbert cartoons.

My personal experiences with appraisals have been moderate. During my first appraisal, my project manager then, a real gem of a person, called me and actually asked me to increase the self-ratings. I was puzzled. He laughed and said that I’d get used to the trick later. Well I haven’t. Even today I prefer to rate myself considering what I could have done and what I ended up doing. Don’t find the need to jack up the numbers because my neighbor does it. Not that I’m anyway scrupulously honest ;-), but the fact is that I don’t care what numbers are conjured up for me by anyone else. All I care for in the end is that I learnt something that year, I applied something fruitfully & I got a fair value back.

A new gadget - The LG KP199

2009-05-04T18:40:00.017+05:30

Calling it a gadget would be a misnomer. It’s just a simple mobile phone that I procured last week. The LG KP199. This time the decision process was albeit easy. Needed a phone with good battery backup, FM Radio, MP3 player, Bluetooth and support for external memory card. This one supports all of these plus the battery backup is amazing. And it came at a lovely price – 4300 INR. Aha that’s value for money. Threw in a 2GB card for an extra 600 INR.

The features & specifications aside, some of the positives and negatives that I can say about this model are

Plus Points

Damn good battery life. (Easily ignore charging for a week).
Speedy Bluetooth (File transfers are really fast).
Charges through USB (Just connect to your PC/laptop for charging).
Decent looks, Lightweight, Sleek design and form size.
Call Recording.
Scheduled/Manual FM recording (though I may hardly use this feature).
Scheduled Switch On/Switch Off settings.

Minus Points

Average screen (atleast they should have reduced the text fontsize a bit)
VGA camera (okay it’s decent and comes with video recording too but doesn’t satisfy the snapper in me).
Bluetooth keeps asking for permission for all transfers (even after pairing).
Can't set an external ringtone for messages.
Java system if okay but not great
The MP3 player doesn’t recurse through subdirectories. So your huge collection of MP3’s need to be copied flat into the “My Music” folder.
The PC Suite supplied with it is pathetic. It provides nothing but a rudimentary phonebook editor. LG needs to improve the software.

I was wondering how LG managed to pack such an offering in the specified price bracket and then I had the answer. This one seemingly uses the MTK6226 for its CPU. MTK6226 is the chip from Mediatek that provides for onboard audio, video & gprs support with good power optimization. In fact this is what majority of the better-known Chinese phones in the market use as their core baseband engine. Even the source code for Chinese phones using the MTK6226 is available online (if you know where and how to search).

Well for now I feel it will be interesting to attempt writing a better phone suite for the LG KP199. Shouldn’t be a tough proposition. A decent USB sniffing tool and a better understanding of libusb should definitely assist here. Marking it as a project for later.

Anyway, with this acquisition I let go of my old trusty Motorola E398, the sturdy piece with a very active modding community. Hope the KP199 leaves up to its predecessor (atleast in terms of the shocks and jolts suffered ;-).

Attacking the Information Hoarding problem

2009-05-04T13:56:00.010+05:30

Are you constantly motivated by the desire to stay on the edge, try your best to keep in pace with the latest, but find it an increasingly difficult proposition everyday? Then you’ve probably already encountered the information overload problem. So what is Information Overload? Essentially it refers to a state when you are surrounded with too much information and you find it distracting. It becomes difficult to use information effectively because you are unable to focus on applying the relevant information and ignoring the rest. Compounding the problem is when you are hard-pressed for time and want effective decisions to be made with that information.

I was reading up a bit on Grails the other day & chanced to visit this post. I liked that line from Mike – “I’m never surprised by the shear magnitude of stuff I don’t know about”. So very true. In my case this is what starts the ball rolling in the first place. You hear about a new piece of technology or solution and you drill down until you have understood the concept. So far so good but while exploring new concepts, you might land into other new interesting concepts. My usual tendency is to bookmark these side concepts and attack them later. That is infact the best solution as I don’t want to deviate attention from the main problem. However these bookmarked concepts are often forgotten and essentially the understanding of the main problem remains incomplete. This is an addictive problem that I’ll christen as the “Information Hoarding” problem, a subset of the larger Information Overload problem.

Coming to the information hoarding aspect, a realization dawns that no amount of technology solutions will help here. The primary and most plausible solution – the humble “browser bookmark” concept is no use today. My Firefox bookmarks contain more than a 1000 entries and I distinctly remember that I’d bookmarked each one of them with a purpose to visit back and checkout later. But when I look back today - no way I’m gonna check out these bookmarks now. Then there are the RSS feeds designed to deliver information to me instead of I having to go and hunt for it. My feed reader (Omea Reader) shows more than a hundred unread feeds. The subjects are interesting but the thought of reading each one of them itself puts me off.

What’s worse is that the quest to keep up with the information overload problem can turn into an unhealthy habit. No wonder that the last couple of months found me staying up late and skipping on my resolutions and not to mention eating into work schedule at times too. An addiction of sorts which was in ways destroying discipline and important schedules.

So last weekend, I tried contemplating on the problem. Essentially what do we need information for? For solving problems! But today’s technology allows you to collect information at will (Google Search ), so why do you need to collect and categorize it when the whole world out there is doing it for you. You just need to tap into that store when needed. Secondly instead of using & applying information the focus was becoming more of “collect it and save it for later”.

That how I came up with the following rules to abide by

Information is to be applied for a purpose, not just to be bookmarked and marked for later. So avoid the tendency to bookmark.
Process information there-n-then. Don’t mentally save it for later. So read through articles completely and understand them. Don’t leave them for later. If you can’t – don’t fret about it. It just means you really don’t need it that urgently.
Focus more on “Getting thing done (GTD)” than the “How to get things done (HTGTD)” syndrome.
Let the feed reader have not more than 7 feeds in any category.
Remember the Zen rule – “What is more important than information is what we do with that information”

Flip side though - I’d love if someone came up with a firefox addon that allows entering a due date when you bookmark something. And on that date, it can remind you to checkout the bookmark and tick it off .

Remembering the Jackfruit tree

2009-04-24T12:16:00.008+05:30

“Where is that jackfruit tree that stood in the left corner of the field?”
“Which jackfruit tree“, I asked puzzled and a bit amused too. “There wasn’t any as far as I can remember”, I confidently added. But that wouldn’t pacify the old lady. When she met up with my mother a minute later, she fielded the same question and got her answer. “Oh the one that sprawled out in the western corner of the field. It was cut down 5 years back. Remember that tree was planted when he (pointing towards me) was 3 years old.”

The old lady then looked smilingly at me. “Well he didn’t remember it”. I smiled sheepishly trying to put on a normal “So what?” face. She added “These youngsters don’t seem to remember anything else than their bikes & movies”.

It’s been years since that conversation took place but the ground fact remain the same. Visiting my village hometown brings me into a totally different perspective of things – a different world of its own where things that matter may not be the ones that matter to you and vice-versa. And more importantly a differing culture where people take a genuine interest in everything that’s related to the ecosystem. The fact that the jackfruit tree was cut isn’t the thing to focus here. The fact that people do remember trees and shrubs and stuff like that whether in their own backyard or in the village vicinity.

Recently, in the metros people suddenly seem to have woken up to the fact that the environment is precious. So water must be conserved, trees must be protected and pollution must be controlled. Every IT, FMCG & consultancy firm worth its weight in bytes/ideas is now launching environmental awareness campaigns. A nice move definitely. However at this stage it’s more of lip-service and complying with standards to further business and not get left behind. There was one such drive in my stint with one of the respectable IT firms. At a place called “Vetal Tekdi” in Pune. Early morning 7am we assembled in our corporate T-shirts brandishing “Save the World Now” heroic messages. The CEO and a few of the executive staff arrived in their fuel guzzling “inter-cooler turbos”. A few gulmohar saplings were planted with flashbulbs popping & local scribes covering the event. Couple of weeks downs the line, I visited the place on a casual stroll with a friend. I was eager to show him our achievement and was dismayed to find that the saplings had wilted away.

Do I sound pessimistic? Sounds like I do and am sorry for that attitude (still trying to change that ;-). But the fact is that we are light-years away from a genuine care for environmental concerns. The average guy looks at it assuming he’s not a part of the problem but actually part of the team gunning for the solution. And that will never result in a solution. The problem is compounded because the environment is degrading at a rapid pace and our solutions are geared to work at a leisure pace. Watch “Discovery” for a week and every documentary screams out the need for environmental concern and displays frightening simulations of ice-caps melting and eco-balance being disturbed.

“So what does Mr Knowhow propose?” – you may ask. Aha nice question. If I’d have the power to enforce things – my 5 point program would go like this.

Educate the next generation – Yeah, we are beyond education and acceptance of new ideas but let the young minds have compulsory courses and activities educating them on the need & means of preserving and restoring their environment & eco-balance.
Enforce policies to ensure that industries have to replenish for their consumption/degradation of natural resources. For every business, there should be a compulsory ecological contribution and it should be strictly monitored and enforced – something as akin to how aggressively the government monitors income-tax ;-). Development should not be stopped but every development project must mandatorily invest in an equal amount of ecological contribution.
Fund quality research programmes to help engineer programmes to reverse the global ecological trends and depletion of natural balance.
Institute awards for exemplary environmental contributions and use the media more effectively to educate the need for tackling the problem head on.
The most important one – Let us pledge to support these 4 points but at the same time take it as a personal initiative to stop contributing to environmental damage. Let that thought be pinging in the back of the mind when we do anything from “throwing away a chocolate wrapper’ to buying “that second car” to getting away with a shady roadside “P.U.C” test.

Should I or shouldn't I

2009-04-06T11:21:00.035+05:30

The million dollar question that keeps plaguing me (us – if you think likewise too) in most of my decisions. Every decision seems to always get balanced at a perfect 50-50 ratio, turning the decision more into which 50% to vouch for. Surprisingly I’ve analyzed the last couple of decisions I made in 2008 and realized one funny thing. (I’ll save that analysis for the end).

A typical thing goes like this - Should I book that airline ticket or should I consider the 3A train travel alternative. The airline ticket should be affordable – but do I really need it. Won’t it be overkill? The train ticket makes more sense but won’t I have to apply for an extra day of leave? Oh come-on man, the mind says – go ahead book that airline ticket and you’ll reach in time and save for a day’s leave too. But then the other side responds – come on, you really don’t need to book an airline trip for such a frivolous visit not amounting to any significant business gain.

The textbooks & self-help materials preach – “Weigh your decisions objectively and select the best decisions based on pros & cons”. But then isn’t that the crux of the whole game. It seems a Linear Programming puzzle is easier solved than the simplest decisions that can keep bouncing to and fro in your head.

In contrast, some of my friends find decision making such an easy problem. One of them would solve the airline/train conundrum via a precise mathematical formula. Let “A” be the ticket expenditure incurred via airline travel. Let “B” be the expenditure incurred via train travel & Let “C” be the amount lost if you risk a day of unpaid leave. So the equation pseudocode simply becomes.

If (paid leave not granted)
{
If (A < (B + C)) then “Travel by Flight”
Else “Travel by Train”
} else
{
If (A < B) then “Travel by Flight”
Else “Travel by Train”
}

Such an easy equation! And I had to rely on my Gujju friend to explain such layman stuff, break it down into its constituent elements and present it logically. If I’m not satisfied with his solution, he’ll resort to some emotional tricks like labeling me as a “pucca kanjoos” etc… tricks that he knows will stir even the laziest souls to sit up and take a decision. Well usually in such cases, especially in the travel scenario - I have often observed that finally I end up not traveling at all (as by the time the decision has been taken – the flight/train tickets will have been exhausted).

So last Thursday, glancing through the evening newspapers, there was this news regarding some scientists having cracked the decision making process. It seemed from their results on some university students that essentially all humans take their decisions from the heart and not from their minds. That included even the ones who claim to actually take decisions from their minds. Subconsciously it seems that it’s our hearts that take the final call.

Those made me re-think some of my best decisions. It was indeed true. These decisions were mostly impulse driven. I remember buying the Laptop. I’d analyzed so much for months and come to a 50-50 between the Dell Inspiron and the Asus Eee PC. I’d walked into Croma, picked up the Eee PC, asked the salesman a dozen questions regarding its support for different OS’es and heat sink abilities and blah blah. Then just before he was to pack it – my eyes fell on the Acer 4530, a chap sitting silently in the corner with a command prompt screen and no-one even giving it a glance. Went over there – read the specs off the label stickers and happily walked out of the store swinging one. I’d not heard one review of the laptop or even known the model before I went for it. But today when I look back - it has been a splendid buy, best gear for its budget.

So next time whenever you are stuck in the decision making process, remember its not the decision that counts more but making the decision fast and sticking to it. Let your impulse drive you where you can’t be objective and 98% - you won’t fret about it later.

Linux on the Acer 4530 - Choice of Distro

2009-03-31T22:47:00.015+05:30

As I mentioned in my previous post, this article concerns installation of Linux on my personal laptop. I'd been using Vista since I bought the laptop and its only recently that I ran into an issue mandating formatting and reinstallation of the boot drive.

My Acer 4530 laptop goes with the following specs. A more elaborate description can be found on ExpertTester's blog

AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-60 @1900 Mhz
NVIDIA nForce 610M (MCP67-MV) Chipset
1 GB DDR2 SD RAM @ 667 MHz (+ 1GB Free RAM ;-)
160GB SATA Harddisk Drive
802.11b/g Wifi, Inbuilt EDR2.0 Bluetooth
Nvidia 9100M G with 256mb Dedicated memory.
8x DVD RW Double Layer Optical Drive
3USB 2.0, 1 LAN, 1 Modem, one Express/54 slot, 1 VGA out, 1 SD/MMC reader Slot
Webcam with optimized low-light mode

Now when it came to installing Linux, the first choice I was faced with was to choose between the various Linux distros available. For the uninitiated, Linux is essentially a free operating system(OS). The core of the OS called the "Kernel" is developed by an amazing team of dedicated geeks. The latest kernel source can be obtained at www.kernel.org. Various project teams then package the kernel with their choice of shells, drivers, system utilities, desktops & other user applications like games, openoffice, media players etc. Such a complete package serving as a full-fledged Linux OS is called as a "Linux Distribution" (distro for short). Currently there are more than a dozen mainstream popular Linux distros & probably atleast 5 new distros get announced every two months. For details on these distros and comparisons, you can refer to www.DistroWatch.com, LWN.net and www.PolishLinux.org.

I spent a couple of weeks collecting as much information as I could regarding the various distros and finally I had narrowed down to these few contenders.

Ubuntu - Was the first thing everyone else was suggesting and enjoys immense popularity.
OpenSuse 11 - It seemed that a lot of people indeed got the Acer 4530 working nicely with Opensuse.
Fedora 10 - Yet another popular distro - especially considering its Red Hat lineage.
Mandriva 2009 - Easiest for the beginner with nice hardware detection and support.
Gentoo - Sounds great but sadly not for the beginner by any margin.

All these distros come packaged as LiveCD's that allow you to test out the distro without having to actually install it. You can just burn the distro to a CD and boot from the CD to check out the particular Linux flavour. However considering the fact that I'm using a pathetic CDMA modem based connection (avg 6KBps bandwidth), I had to really decide on which distro I'd download and burn as a liveCD.

Another choice you have is that of the GUI desktop you prefer. Most distros come with KDE and GNOME desktops though XFCE is also being considered by some. This is personal taste and I decided to start out with KDE.

Finally after googling around a lot, I decided my distro had to be Mandriva 2009 KDE One edition. I read up a lot from various forums and the options that swung the vote in Mandriva favour (atleast at the time of writing this) were

Graphical no-hassles installer with easy disk partitioning and setup.
Binary Beta driver for Nvidia. I work frequently on images using Gimp and wanted the display to function at native resolution (no scaling).
Support for some proprietary drivers as well. (Okay I'll live, even if I don't have the source).
RPM based packages with auto-update facility.
Graphical control center with neat grouping.

As a beginner, another option you'd be faced with when you go about downloading a distro is the choice of system architecture. Many distros are available with seperate download iso's for the x86_64, i586 and i686 architectures. This thread give a pretty good rundown on which one to go for. Since the Acer 4530 has a 64-bit processor, ideally one should be downloading the x86_64 version for a distro if it is available.

I started uTorrent to download the Mandriva 2009 one edition liveCD and waited patiently for the download to end on my camel-speed connection (ETA 2 days, 4 hrs). After 2 days. I got it burned on a re-writable DVD and I was ready to get booted into the world of Linux.

Next article : Installing the OS and getting the system ready.

Waddling with Penguins - Moving over to Linux

2009-03-30T12:43:00.009+05:30

Since the last 3 weeks I’ve been immersed neck-deep into the wide interesting world of penguins and it has been an exhilarating as well as draining experience. Through a series of Linux articles I intend to pen down my experiences with the penguins and to provide enough information for others who want to try something similar.

Somewhere during the start of March 2009, my Vista login screen froze, the touchpad wouldn’t respond and no amount of restore and safe mode tricks could bring it back to status quo. Now please – no MS bashing here. Those guys have made wonderful software that works stable out of the box for most people. My argument for checking out the penguin was – well anyway I have to format my boot drive and reinstall things again – why not take this opportunity to checkout an alternative OS. And the FOSS buzz coupled with nice looking Linux screenshots prompted me to give it a try.

Though I have been a developer and have taken a pretty much interest in Maurice Bach’s “Design of the UNIX OS”, I can safely be considered a chap who has never done nothing much on a terminal, save for an “ls” or a “cat” or an ftp session. In fact during one of my assignments when I had to migrate encrypted docs from a Perl application in Linux, I actually ended up ftp’ing the whole 30GB of Linux disk on my XP machine and then doing the migration. Anyways what the heck, I’ve seen chaps who work on unix terminals all day still get confused when they enter the exciting and confusing world of Linux distributions (“distros” for short).

A backgrounder - somewhere in early 2008, I had ordered a free copy of Ubuntu desktop CD from Canonical. Was surprised when the CD was actually delivered 4 months later. But the sad fact was - how much ever I tried booting from that, it stopped at the root prompt and provided no UI at all. And I refused to research the matter any further. I have also tried DSL (Damn Small Linux) – which is the first thing I’d recommend complete “noobs” to try out before they take the jump. You don’t need to really install anything. Download the archive, unzip it and click on one of the batch files to actually get full-fledged Linux working right within windows. Perfect for the learners!

But this time I had mentally decided that I was gonna get a nice free Linux OS installed on my laptop – come what may be. I was gonna leverage all the help available on the internet to take a deep dive into the penguin world. And I was gonna cross over and actually use it on a day-to-day basis and finally take a call 6 months later whether I should stick with Linux or Windows.

With that I’ll boot you into the next series of exciting posts on this topic.
Next - Choosing a distro for my laptop

An easter egg gone awry

2009-02-21T01:15:00.009+05:30

Was reading this interesting thread on Stack Overflow the other day. Folks (mainly developers) were commenting on the interesting easter eggs they had incorporated into their codebases, either for fun or to beat boredom or just because an easter egg was a fancy thing then and every developer rolled out one in his/her applications.

That couldn't help bringing a smile back to my face when I was reminded of an interesting midnight support call wayback during my stint with a previous organization.

We had a feature-rich product with a thick client UI which started off with a login screen. This was a product we had taken over from another organization and now all the development and support for the product was done by our team. So we were still discovering and analyzing certain library functionalities in the source code. That was when we found that there was an easter egg hidden in the login module screen - wrapped beneath layers of OOP stuff.

The easter egg worked this way. If the user brought the mouse cursor on a particular hotspot area on the login screen, and clicked over it, a window would popup with a game of bricks and a scoreboard for keeping scores. So far so good - but instead of a ball the bricks game had the head of one of the lead developers from the earlier firm superimposed on it. So it was the head that you had to hit around and keep playing the game to score points.

It was a crazy idea but now that we had the product - what we did was to replace the head with the head of one of our lead developers. No other change as such was done.

The product was released and 2 months had elapsed since then. One fine day, it was 11.2o pm around midnight when I received a frantic call from the support team saying that some serious bug had been uncovered in the software. I pulled myself out of sleep and went to office and from the mails - the first impression I got was that some virus had been shipped in our release. I dropped in a mail to the client asking for a detailed explanation of the virus problem they had been facing.

The reply I got had me in splits. It went something like this ... " it seems there is some nasty virus that has been shipped alongwith version 6.5 of the software. It has only attacked one client terminal but it shows what appears to be a bouncing head and suprisingly it bears a striking resemblance to one of your offshore team mates. Ever since that head appeared - our network guys have reported an abnormal increase in network activity and all users have stopped using the client. Please advise on further course of preventive and corrective action".

The next day when the team met - we had a hearty laugh over the whole issue. The fact was communicated to the client who also heaved a sigh of relief and cracked a laugh. Well whatever - that egg was never removed and I bet still continues in the software.

Humming a vintage tune

2009-02-15T12:27:00.008+05:30

The other day having nothing much to do in particular (but drink coffee in plenty), I fired up the laptop and went through a few audio cd's that a friend had lent me about a year back. There were some really amazing Rolling Stones compilations amongst which I almost bumped into a vintage track.

Long back (when digital tapes ruled the days), I had this cassette titled "Disco Beats" that was my sole collection of English Audio. So for anyone coming over my house, I'd play it over and over till they got bored. And there was this one track that I loved everytime. It featured a funky fusion of eclectic disco beats and rock stuff with nice vocal pitching. But down the line as hindi music started getting of age - i don't remember when that cassette was discarded and forgotten too.

Now disco isn't something that catches the fancy of the current generation music-evangelists. Its more of rock, jazz and razzmatazz that the new generation prefers to collect. So when I bumped into track 255 - "Heart Of Glass", it was amazing to hear that old disco track from earlier days. I must say one should hear this track to appreciate the richness of the music. Okai its a bit repetitive - but most of modern music is repetitive too.

So give it an ear on a day when you have nothing much to do and wanna hear a different track for change.

A question of Whiskers

2009-01-30T19:01:00.003+05:30

"You admire a cat for its whiskers. Would you like a cat who has shaved off his whiskers ?". Was just about to catch a wink & this question really caught me off-guard. I hadn't expected him to become so sensitive on the topic.

It was during the overnight bus journey that my colleage introduced himself as a fellow south-indian & went about to a great extent on how his colleagues mocked him for keeping a moustache and laughed at his favourite South Indian stars for dancing around with thick heavy moustaches and scraggy beards.

Though I didn't entirely agree with him, I couldn't disagree too. Agree I didn't because some people really do grow moustaches thicker than their own faces. After all there is some golden ratio and rules of proportion on how things look decent enough.

Then there were some areas that I felt he was justified enough in speaking out against. You don't find Abhishek Bacchan funny because he sports a moustache and beard. In fact you hardly notice that in his movies. You have accepted him that way. Similarly viewers in the southern part of our nation have accepted their stars the same way. Its not their moustaches that matter anymore but their screen presence and acting appeal.

And finally whats wrong if a guy has a moustache. It seems society has this strange notion that young men are not mature enough to sport moustaches but older men must. Girls in their teens seem to drool over men with clean shaven boyish faces but it seems after they marry them they want them to sport a mature look and go for atleast a short moustache. Anyway this clinical obsession with smooth faces is good business for razor companies that can add yet another blade and bring you closer to that "Mach-5" feel while drilling out a hole though your pocket.

Well, I don't recollect when I exactly dozed off during the journey but yeah - I had some really weird & crazy dreams of seeing shaven cats prancing all around !

Anything can change - Nothing is permanent

2009-01-09T20:17:00.004+05:30

The recent fiasco rocking the corporate corridors in India has literally reinforced this. For me - it indeed came as a very big surprise.

Here was a company that I respected immensely. On one of my past projects I'd had the honour of working in close collaboration with Satyam employees and I'd found them to be immensely talented on the technical front as well as blessed with a drive to deliver the best solution on most projects. In fact, the organization and its policies were also better compared to its peers. On the web technology and integration front, I think they almost led the Indian IT bandwagon.

And today its most distressing to hear of such a talent pool suffering silently for no fault of theirs. I still hope and have the belief that Satyam will come out of this crisis and re-establish itself. It should!. The media and stock market pundits should stop pounding this one as a crisis and aggravate things further (though some might argue that there is nothing left to aggravate further). And the employees really need to keep their cool and stop panicking. In fact every IT organization worth its weight in salt knows that Satyam employees are a value proposition but employees should refrain from jumping ship in this moment when the organization most needs them. (I know its easier to say - but keeping faith might help)

Also, the government has to ignore the stock market bickerings and look at helping out the company in its hour of crisis. That does not mean - not acting against the wrong-doers. The law must take its own course but the company, employees & the business value must not suffer as a result. This is also the time when the other Indian corporates should actually demonstrate some solidarity and try to help out in whatever way they can. Right now - all they are doing is sitting on the sidelines and watching a worthy competitor get decimated.

On a personal front, this incident should remind each one of us that in life - nothing comes with a guarantee. So while you need to deliver your best - you should always be mentally prepared for the worst !

Bluetooth Woes

2009-01-06T12:16:00.007+05:30

In recent times, one technology that I feel had the potential but still remains underused is "Bluetooth". If you have both a mobile and a laptop with bluetooth, then you are one step closer to your dream of connected devices remaining in sync at all times. Although right now, all it is largely used for, is for bluetooth headsets

The one thing I feel missing from the equation is lack of proper software to utilize bluetooth technology. My Motorola E398 (yeah I still hang around with that trusty old mobile) supports bluetooth and so does my Acer 4530 (running Vista). Sadly even though vista detects a bluetooth headset profile - I can't get any headset features working on the laptop. I'd have loved if the mobile could blare my collection of MP3's onto the laptop speakers. It might be some driver problem or probably a problem with the Vista bluetooth stack but haven't been able to fix this one so far.

That apart, I've been able to get net connection working and even create a personal network connection with my friend's laptop(which boasts of a broadband connection).

It seems technology growth is actually limiting the extent to which we try out improvising an already existing technology. So while bluetooth was just maturing, "WiFi" came up and stole the bandwagon. And now it seems time is ripe for "WiMax".

Another factor against bluetooth is the high price that some of the bluetooth devices command. Buying a good stereo bluetooth headset in India, that can work with your mobile as well as your laptop, can almost set you back by around 4K. I feel it is not priced right. It has a scope for going much lower.

Anyway I've decided to give a hand downloading some Bluetooth API guides / alternative Bluetooth Stacks and see if I can come up with something interesting.

Looking forward - 2009

2009-01-02T10:37:00.007+05:30

It's usually when the clock chimes midnight that the wishes comes in. But this year, my mobile being down during that slot, it wasn't until next day that the goodwill messages arrived.

A queer thing I've observed is that New Year Wishes have wings. Or to put it more aptly - "guts". I mean, doesn't it take someone guts to wish me - you'll be happy and prosperous and all your dreams will be realised and so on. While the key to all of this rests with me. I can make their wishes come true or fall flat ;-).

Another thing thats synonymous with New Year is "resolutions". Everyone expects you to make them - if not anytime else - atleast at the start of the New Year. So I had a lot of wishes coming in with the customary epilogue - "So what are your resolutions ?". A more reasonable (but unpopular) question I'd be asking is - "How many of 2008 resolutions did you achieve ?"

Well - to be honest, I won't deny, I succumbed to the temptation and did make some resolutions. Unlike previous years - where it was hidden behind wraps - this year I intend to share it & revisit it at times. Broadly they go like this.

Act immediately on whatever planned or thought upon.
Regularity on the blog & journal front.
Tighten control on eating and exercise moderately but regularly.

So there it goes - public and open to scrutiny. You can ping me & check up the status anytime ;-)

[ Psst : Isn't number 3 tough - especially the first clause. Considering that nowadays wherever I look - eatables seem to have become yummier ;-). ]

That apart, 2008 I would regard as a year that taught me the importance of having good friends around & 2009 would be the year I'd look forward to solidify them & share more rapport with others.

So far, so defined - looking forward to face the best that 2009 has to offer !

CMIS - The much needed standard

2008-12-09T18:48:00.014+05:30

Back in 2005, it was during one of my training sessions for Documentum that I first came across this idea and wondered why vendors could not agree to a common standard for content access.

On a training slide, I had referred to DQL as a standard query language for Documentum repositories akin to SQL for databases. Thats was when some smart guy put his hand up and raised the query - "So is DQL too an accepted standard like SQL ?"

There were two reasons that the enormity of the problem didn't dawn on me then - My primary exposure to a Enterprise Content Management(ECM) system then was Documentum & I hardly knew more about say Filenet or Sharepoint. Secondly, coming from a J2EE mindset, I hadn't yet started thinking about ECM systems in the way one starts thinking about databases. But over the years as I worked on projects, I could sense that there was a pressing need for a standard or atleast a standard interface between these systems.

Recently - after reading about the CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) standard for ECM systems, I feel that query raised back in 2005 has been partially answered.

For starters, CMIS is a proposed services standard that will enable information sharing amongst disparate content repositories. Co-drafted by EMC, IBM & Microsoft, it is designed to work well with existing architectures for various ECM systems. At the very least, it will enable content access (read/write) in a standard way.

Considering the current lean towards loosely coupled service interfaces, it should come as no surprise that there will be a heavy emphasis on web services & REST based interaction patterns in the final CMIS standard. More details on CMIS and links to proposed implementations can be found here.

I wonder how security and other aspects will be taken care of - considering the disparity in implementations. Yet let us hope it goes forward and atleast achieves what JDBC did for databases. That will be the first step towards achieving true ECM interoperability.

The Upgrade-via-Update Dilemma

2008-12-03T11:58:00.014+05:30

There is something about modern software apps that I don't appreciate much. In fact the problem starts right at the OS-level. Switch on the machine (its running the latest eye-candy called MS Vista - yeah I do like that OS) and there is a crowd of applications that want to connect to the net and get the latest updates.

It was okay till the time I had an active net connection. Back then I appreciated the feature. Each application trying to update itself to the latest gizmo features added to it. And the OS trying to defend itself from the large community of hackers who are trying to find yet another way to prove what they do best. However ever since I've been devoid of net connectivity, I've realized the problem & pain a badly implemented update mechanism can cause.

Now - let me clarify. Not all applications behave alike. At the OS-level, Vista is good & graceful in the way it handles updates. If you don't wanna update - so be it. It you want the update to be silent - that's welcome too. It provides these as easily configurable options.

However take the case of say "CCleaner". Again, I like this application. It does a damn good job of swiping your PC clean of history. But the update process - it opens up a browser window and you have to explicitly install the new version. That isn't the way modern age apps are supposed to behave. It's also okay if some apps open up a dialog box and displays the update process - as long as they don't force you to interact with it. That is the way "AVG" does it. Pretty slick I must say.

So my rule of thumb for a good behaving app is

1) The update process should be configurable with options
-> update silently
-> update with a silent momentary notification
-> notify but don't update
-> don't update at all

2) As much as possible - the application should avoid pressing for a restart

3) Don't keep popping up fancy colored boxes notifying of pressing updates (its okay for Vista or an AV). Better solution - change the application icon to reflect it.

And finally - Someone should also measure the bandwidth these apps take up for update checks and downloading the updates. That is definitely something I'm gonna figure away before I book my net connection.

An Apple for an Idea

2008-11-26T12:07:00.009+05:30

People at various levels of society have a marked perception shift in their approach to doing everyday things. It seems that at a subconscious level, the way everything we do is a symbolic extension of what we are or where we stand in society's scheme of things. And the way brands are built today - its just capitalizing on this view of things.

Sometimes when I get bored with daily monotony - a visit to the neighborhood supermarket serves to improve the state of things. Not that I set the cash counters ringing with purchases. Nah ! for me - its more of observing people's shopping habits or checking out the newest brands & ideas.

Yesterday I paid my usual honorary visit and was exiting when I observed these two souls sitting on the bench outside the supermarket. The contrast was perfect - one seemed to be the affluent IT worker in some top 10 Indian IT organization - clean-shaved & attired in blue-collar formals. The other one - seemed to be some distant cousin of the neighborhood pan-wallah - long twirling moustache & a scraggy beard. The common thing was that both had come out of the same supermarket but unlike me - they had made some purchase. The former held a neat polythene bag in hand, filled with fruits. To kill time he had an apple in hand & it was evident that he was gonna eat it. The latter had two apples held in one hand - one of which it seemed he would also devour.

What next happened, triggered this entire chain of thought in my at-that-very-moment vacant mind. The blue-collar was trying to do something with the apple - remove that annoying fluorescent sticker - that seemed to be attached to the apple with "fevicol-ka-jod". He kept trying with his neatly trimmed finger-nails but that sticker wouldn't budge. Scraggy Beard on the other hand seemed to be chatting with his cousin on the mobile about how "biziness" was now very slow & so on. He just rotated the apple in his hand, with the sticker facing up, opened his mouth & just bit away about 5% of that apple - with the sticker on it & spat it out on the pavement. Task done - he proceeded to savor the apple. Blue Collar observed this - but probably it was his social standing - he could not do it the simple way. He still kept fidgeting with the sticker.

Isn't this perception shift exactly what advertisers exploit? The social strata difference, the level at which their products can be placed. So using their product subconsciously implies that you are counted in that strata of society.

So if I needed to exploit the situation here and build a business, I'd very soon patent my own "Apple-Sticker-Remover(ASR)". As you guessed right - it would be priced high. I might also add in a royalty mechanism by which mobile companies etc wishing to use ASR technology in their new age mobile devices would have to send me a cheque with lots of trailing zeroes on it.

Well - an apple definitely seems to have potential. If it has inspired Newton to discover the laws of gravity, here it inspires me to think about the ways of business in the modern world.

Budget travel on the Mumbai-Pune stretch

2008-11-11T15:01:00.012+05:30

Last weekend, I was in Mumbai on a visit. During the returning leg, I planned to deviate from the standard travel route (i.e Route A - The Mumbai-Pune expressway) which has become usual boredom for me. So I decided to switch to route B, which goes more like

A]  A.1] Mumbai to Karjat via the crowded Mumbai Local train.
     A.2] Karjat to Khopoli via a less crowded Local train.
     A.3] Stopover at Khopoli to catch up with old buddies.
B] Khopoli to Lonavala via HitchHiking techniques.
C] Lonavala to Pune via the comparatively peaceful Pune Local train.

Someone who is a Mumbai-Pune frequent traveler might express disdain at this poorly charted travel plan. However not me - I've always enjoyed this route. What better way to spend a sleepy Sunday than enjoy the pleasures of traveling on a shoestring budget. Just look at the economic comparison of both routes

Route A - Around Rs 200/- by MSRTC Volvo service
      Around Rs 110/- by MSRTC buses (Red ones).

Route B - 24 + 12 + 14 = Rs 50 /-
      Even after Rickshaw expenses it still hovers around Rs 75 /-

Btw, my preference for the Karjat-Khopoli route is not motivated by economics. It is motivated by component A.3, which allows me to catch up with old buddies over the weekend. Also I like to enjoy the light breeze on the Karjat-Khopoli stretch while I stand beside the train doorway reminiscing about days spent in Khopoli.

The only hitch a traveler may face is in component B. You need to either stand on the old NH4 highway near Khopoli corporation bus-stand or else reach Shilphata in Khopoli via a Rickshaw. Then you can either ask for a lift from numerous vehicles (trucks, cabs, tempos etc) en-route to Lonavala and beyond or you can hop into an MSRTC red bus and then get down at Lonavala bus-stand.

So the next time you wanna do a Mumbai-Pune sojourn and have all the time in the world - do give this route a try.

Fishing Tales - A background

2008-11-05T17:55:00.008+05:30

Fishing & myself have some inherent connection. Not that I've been an ace angler or something even close. In fact I've never hardly caught any fishes other than a few minnows. (Oh and - i'm referring to fishes belonging to the aquatic kingdom here - so no naughty abstractions). Still somehow, the fishing hobby has always held my fancy.

Tracing back, I can recollect - it started with childhood days spent accompanying elders on occasional fishing trips in hometown Kerala. Of course these were once in a year sojourns - usually during school vacations but it was mighty interesting.

Valiyacchan (Father's elder brother) & his sons were pro's at these things. Seeing them around late evenings with some traditional fishing gear tucked behind their backs would be a definite signal that some adventure was in store for the day. During daytime they were the hard-working village folks that toiled on the fields with pride - tilling the fertile earth & raising crops. During evenings they would gather at the village square - pay obeisance at the local temple, indulge in card-games beneath the huge village banyan tree. Their voices could be heard during late-evenings, laced with humor & typical village lingo.

So it wasn't funny that most of their fishing expeditions started late night. Sometimes they would arrive at around midnight. Father would join them from home en-route to the river. Myself - would often be asleep at that time and miss a chance to see the process - only getting to see a share of the catch laid out on plantain leaves in the kitchen in the morning.

The techniques were quite varied too. From eel-fishing using bamboo net-traps to circular net-fishing using tapioca leaves as the bait or bomb fishing, more than catching choicy fish - it was a learning experience.

Very soon - I'll be posting a detailed overview of each technique as a separate post.

Musings on the highway stretch

2008-10-13T14:28:00.008+05:30

I've a feeling this post might get nasty long but I'll try to wind it down as much as possible. A friend's blog post last weekend, prompts me to narrate a similar experience during my Mumbai visit couple of weeks ago. Returning back (as usual I'd caught the Dadar-Pune service quite late), the bus was inching out of the weekend Mumbai traffic. I don't remember exactly when I dozed off.

But I do remember when I woke up - midway on the Lonavala expresshighway. The twists and turns of this stretch never fail to ignite a spark of adventure in me. I often silently remind myself - when I'll own my car (Sedan/SUV should be the right word here ;-)), this'd be one of the places I'd stop by on a long ride. There is something else here that I always look forward too. It comes sooner or later - as you navigate a steep S-turn towards the old tunnel bridge - a construct on the previous NH4 route.

It was around 11.45 pm on my wrist-watch & I eagerly peeped out of the window towards the unfolding valley on the left. And the vista gradually came into view. A thousand twinkling stars. Not above in the sky but beneath on earth. A feeling of nostalgia surged through me as I watched the twinkling lights far down in the township below - the valley where I spent the better part of my childhood & formative years. There nestling in the lap of the Sahyadri mountains, camouflaged in the greenery of Lonavala hills, in a peaceful existence of its own, unmindful of the modernity & urbanism of the twin metros that lie equidistant from it - exists the place called Khopoli.

A thousand thoughts & a zillion pictures flashed through my mind in that instant. Time seemed to float by as the bus navigated that stretch. The valley with its quintessential existence was a reminder of how much I had changed since I was a kid playing down there. Whether for better or worse - I can't tell even now. However I've enjoyed the journey so far. Though the last few years have been pretty rough - I'm sure there are better times just around the horizon. What amazes me is that connecting with some part of yourself (old memories) can bring about a change in the manner you view yourself.

Philosophy aside, I'd love to write something more about Khopoli - as a place. But I'll save that for another post. As the bus moved on. I couldn't help but note that every fleeting visit by this place brings back to mind a silent reminder - to keep dropping in occasionally.

0x5f3759df & a few thoughts

2008-10-07T19:38:00.004+05:30

It was during a recent visit to some game development forums that I chanced upon this piece of code ( from the Doom / Quake codebase - Now that Quake3 v1.32 source has been GPL'ed ). As it is with any piece of Doom/Quake - it was immediately attributed to the legendary John Carmack.

However someone did dig deep into it (http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/8/) to identify who exactly (or approximately) was responsible for this brilliant hack for computing the inverse square root.

float InvSqrt (float x)
{
float xhalf = 0.5f*x;
int i = *(int*)&x;
i = 0x5f3759df - (i>>1);
x = *(float*)&i;
x = x*(1.5f - xhalf*x*x);
return x;
}

Anyway, it is not the history that interests me here. It is the brilliance of the method used in the above snippet. After going through it - especially the 0x5f3759df - (i>>1) part, I feel I should have paid more attention to mathematics in those computer science classes - when they taught the Newton Raphson method (For those who wish to understand what I'm talking about - just googling for 0x5f3759df should throw up enough suitable explanations).

But then - when I try going back in time and visualizing those days more clearly - I realise it was a problem with the educational framework itself . Mathematics in the computer science curriculum was never made to look interesting as such. Computational theory & numerical analysis techniques were never explained with solution domains articulated. Professors stuck to just reading out textbook prose. So everything just remained a formula that students mastered & applied to a few textbook examples. I'm not passing the blame - but this sad state of affairs has lead to a generation of application programmers but not computer scientists.

But now, with open-source and the www, more & more opportunities are there for everyone - who missed the boat. Catch up and reinforce old learned stuff & find innovative applications.

I'll keep posting any more of such interesting snippets that I come across.

Excuses for not buying one

2008-09-24T12:52:00.000+05:30

With DSLR's becoming smaller & more within reach - most of my friends on Flickr have opted for these in favour of their compacts.

Well - for me - I think, I'll still stay put for some time with my existing Nikon4500. Apart from the financial angle & other pending tasks which are primary, I doubt if the DSLR will help improve the art of taking photos. Also I'd been fiddling with a DSLR sometime back (it belonged to a friend) and found it a bit cumbersome to handle. My compact with its twist-body is the most flexible on that note. It can capture headshots, side-snaps, elusive macros etc a- all without needing you to adopt yogic postures. In fact I sometimes desire for these new compacts that keep hitting the marketplace. Very convenient - Sleek enough to slide into your shirt pocket & equally fast when u wanna capture a moment.

On the art aspect - my observation had been that - photography is all about patience, dedication, creative thinking and guts. The last item might suprise many - but I find that important enough. You need to have the guts to take out the camera and shoot a moment without considering the environment. Thats where many of us fizz out. Its damn easy to spend hours trying to get the most creative view of a flower or capture yet another brilliant macro. But its difficult to capture that beggar on the street and his state of apathy with your conscience constantly pricking at you. Conquer that and you'll have snaps that make the world sit-n-admire.

So for now I'll just sit and admire the works in Flickr, until they come up with a lighter. pocketable version of a DSLR.

A browser for applications

2008-09-02T18:21:00.007+05:30

And the Google campaign has confirmed it. The Google browser launch is around the corner. Their much rumored about open-source browser.

A nice introduction to the problems faced by traditional browsers when dealing with modern social and interactive applications is outlined in a nice comic-book format. As is the case with Google, even this introductory comic-book sequence is nicely done and kept simple enough ( Though I felt it was a bit too long ).

Have a look at the introductory spoiler and keep watching for the now anticipated browser download link.

The guy with an appetite

2008-08-28T18:57:00.004+05:30

Food dreams... Mmmm... Since last month, I'd been really craving for some yummy mallu bites. The eclectic taste of sambar with rice & pappadums coupled with memories of having kappa with fish curry came flooding down one fine evening making the impulse almost impossible to resist.

Mumbai was definitely better in this aspect. The fort area had some really nice mallu joints like "Hotel Fountain Plaza", "Deluxe" etc. The latter was my favourite haunt. Saturday lunch in office during those days meant swooping down with friends at "Deluxe" and trying out a combination of everything - from rice plate on plantain leaves to exotic fish fry preparations.

But Pune was/is different. Not much of a choice here. Re-phrasing - not much in my database. "Southern Spice" on Dhole Patil Road is already well-known. I usually pay a weekend visit there to satisy my appetite. But it may not appeal to the budget-consious. I've heard that there are some nice joints near Pimpri but then will have to do some research here ( If someone has done so already - do drop me a note ).

Lightweight smart baby - Olympus E-420

2008-08-28T18:37:00.003+05:30

The Olympus E-420 seems to be the best entry level digital SLR in the market as of todays date. Affordable, light-weight & packed with features that would definitely entice photography enthusiasts still stuck with a compact & wanting to upgrade to an SLR.

I checked out a piece recently and was relieved to find that it came with a live histogram & twin lenses OOTB. A live histogram view is definitely one thing that hobbyists moving from a consumer digicam look forward to. Another good thing is the supplied lens kit that comprises an Olympus Zuiko lens (F3.5-5.6, 14 - 42 mm) & an Olympus Zuiko lens (F2.8, 25 mm).

In the Indian market it retails at a price of around 34K. A nice price considering the excellent value proposition it makes for anyone interested in making a mark in the photography space.

More details here - http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/05/review-olympus.html

Justice or Mercy

2008-08-28T10:47:00.012+05:30

A pal of mine was recently in the city and that made for some company during the last few weekends. Last weekend I decided to accompany him to a church ( I've always been awed by the concept of churches & the aura of tranquility that surrounds them. Had been longing to visit one for long ).

The priest was delivering a sermon on a topic that I found really interesting - "Whether God's retribution is based on Justice or Mercy" ?

Interesting in the sense that people usually believe that God's retribution is justice based. The old adage - "You'll reap the rewards of the deeds you sow" rings a bell here. In fact, if you have been wronged - you silently put the onus on God to punish the guilty.

The priest then went on to explain how God looks upon fellow beings as his creations and never intends to harm them. Justice is something devised by humans for fellow humans. Something that we humans fail to understand is that God wants his creations to co-exist in peace & all his fellow beings to be benevolent and kind. For this to happen, "Mercy" has to be the cornerstone of his actions.

I have a queer feeling that this is one of those topics that might be debated endlessly. Justice is important too. Historically, Plato had included justice as one of the four cardinal virtues ( along with temperance, courage, and wisdom ). However I feel - justice has to go hand in hand with mercy. Both have to be balanced equally. Todays society & media have placed too much onus on justice. Some element of mercy needs to be incorporated in the same too.

Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
- Lao-Tzu

Before the flag unfurls again

2008-08-14T16:34:00.003+05:30

Tommorrow is the Indian Independence day - August 15th 2008. The flag will unfurl with pride. As the strains of Jana-Gana-Mana fill the air it will be a hair-raising moment for many.

Suddenly Indians all around the world recollect their roots, the patriotic fervour rises & chats, live shows, debates abound on television regarding how much India has grown in the past 60 years.

Of course Indians have made tremendous progress. In spite of being ridden with the democratic problem of freedom but no direction we have made progress in various areas. We have advanced in science & technology, in the IT sphere our folks have made a name for themselves, we are seen as a rising knowledge economy, thankfully - we have also won a gold in the olympics & so on it goes.

But has India as a country progressed ? Reports might say - yes, but I beg to differ here. A country's progress for me - does not mean just making material gains or being listed on world index markets. For our country it should reflect in advancements on fronts like basic & primary education, agriculture, research, rural empowerment, improved law & order etc. That sadly is yet to be seen.

Before someone points out that I'm yet another "whiner in the pack", lemme reiterate that atleast our government is now taking steps in the right direction. But sometimes our own framework of democracy stops things from moving on at a rapid pace. Any construction or infrastructure activity in the country meets so many objections that before it starts - the mood fizzes out. Half of the funds meant for rural empowerment hardly reach their targets - everyone knows why. Transparency is urgently needed in various bureaucratic matters. The media needs to stop behaving like a broadcasting station and work more as an arm involved in the country's upliftment - focus on development and social projects - track their status - ensure their completion and so on.

I know that towards the end of today and early morning tommorow one can see street-children selling stamp-sized paper national flags at major traffic junctions. India will have progressed when the condition of these lot improve.

Keep going

2008-08-14T15:08:00.031+05:30

A couple of weeks before, a friend sent across this proverb.

If you're going through hell, keep going.
- Winston Churchill

Liked it immensely for the capability it has, to reassure you to keep up your struggle, even when your are face to face with the most difficult of times.

In retrospect, it reminded me of the Roberto Benigni masterpiece "Life is Beautiful". A must watch movie - though I felt - the initial scenes downplay the enormous message carried foward in the movie. That life is what you make of it, how well you play it - even in the face of stark adversity.

Raising a toast - to Friends

2008-08-14T12:31:00.005+05:30

As I type this one, I'll clarify first that I'm not inspired by the chain-mails or eye-candly imagery that goes around professing the values & virtues of friendship. Neither is it just because "Friendship Day" just went by. My experiences have been rooted in reality. In the past 2 years and especially so in the past 2 months I've realised that the most treasured things of all I had - were some real sincere friends. Friends who have helped me emerge in one piece through the vagaries of life that I'd got stuck into neck-deep.

Its tough to sometimes face the situations that life throws upon you. Even if you try to do the very best in life - it may sometimes deal you a harsh blow. Its really tough to find someone who can trust you and help you out at such times. Circumstances do arise when you are unable to decide if what you stood for was right or wrong. Situations do arise if you are unsure if confiding in someone and seeking professional help is the right way out. It is at such times of distress that you really get sapped down of whatever courage you had. It is then that you need a shoulder to provide you courage & support. And you'll always find - its in such moments that you really identify the most trusted & sincere friends in your life. Not that you didn't know them well earlier. But its during such moments that you realise how lucky you have been in life to have them as your friends.

Today I raise a toast to thank all my sincere friends. For everything that you have helped me sail through. The battle is not over for me as yet but I believe the initial nerve-wracking days are over & today I have some semblance of courage to face things foward.

"I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Live Wire" - An impromptu experimentation

2008-08-13T19:36:00.015+05:30

The preceeding weekend was really interesting on the photography front. A very good friend requested me to do a small portfolio set for him. As is the case nowadays, I'm headlong into a lot of personal stuff. Stuff that keeps me busy both emotionally as well as mentally. At the same time I could not deny that request. Someone had requested me - it didnot happen till now - it was the other way round - I used to pester them to gimme a nice pose.

So I recharged the batteries & lugged along the camera on a Friday. Around noon the friend (I'll call him "Bade") came along & we decided to hop along a number of places and take a series of snaps. That done & we were just driving around the Pune - Mumbai highway when I noticed some huge cable rolls on the other side of the highway. It was drizzling heavily in Pune but the shade of red on those rolls were interesting & also the fact that they had a nice rustic look to it. Perfect photo prop material ! - my mind shouted out.

Bade refused to let himself drench in the rain for a snap. I managed to convince him - showing that I had an umbrella for handling that aspect. Still - not very convinced though - he parked the car, and we cautiously crossed the highway over to the other side - almost drenched in the rains - myself using the umbrella just to shield my camera.

The posing part was interesting too. Though Bade looks like a model - he hadn't got any prior modelling experience/confidence. Way-goers were now interested in what business two clowns were doing in the midst of these rains. Somehow I managed to shout some directions for poses. Bade improvised on it to some extent. I snapped some quick ones in various angles.

Back on the laptop - the rest was some vignetting, dodging and graining using Gimp. And finally when Bade had a look at the finished results - I think it was me who was more satisfied at a task well done.

That is something that happens when you go about taking snaps. The impromptu aspect of a situation sometimes brings about a creative quality that somehow - no amount of planning does.

Getting the foundations right

2008-07-23T21:51:00.007+05:30

I ran into this chain of thought while reminiscing about the previous two years of my career. When I first attended a training session on Documentum ECM. Having prior experience on J2EE & diverse architectures (like Graphtalk) aided the understanding process & I could easily grasp the concept of docbases, the distributed architecture, the interfaces, DFC, WDK and like. It all sounded like logical pieces of a tech puzzle.

What still puzzled me at the back of my mind was the concept of an ECM. And I see the same puzzling look on faces of folks newly inducted into the ECM arena. Especially if they got say some 4 years or less experience building systems using Java & related technologies. In my case, I used to think - Why do these folks need something so grandiose as an ECM. Why can't they put all of it into a database? I know, the consultants here will rip me apart - for this question - but many I asked then couldn't give me a simple explanation themselves. They used to ramble a bit about unstructured content and the fact that its a pain area and so on. But never did they articulate properly as to why current database systems are inadequate, where the challenges in building an ECM lie and so on.

My first ECM project was interesting as well. With a fair understanding of the design, interfaces and products but literally no conceptal understanding of how ECM solved problems, I landed into the murky world. It was an experience I wouldn't forget. It taught me stuff - I'm sure books would never do justice to. I had a techie's view on a subject that enthralls corporate IT departments worldwide & keeps consultant's pockets stuffed with wads of money. The clients wanted to know about proper taxonomy design, migration roadmap, infrastructure sizing, functional design - basically about how their problem areas would be resolved. And here was I, trying to map these to folder structures, dump & load tools, product installation, caching tools - everything nuts & bolts about the product - but not how it helped solve the problem. ( Of course - I still managed to complete that project with integrity ;-).

It was there, slowly & gradually, across months, that basic nirvana dawned on me - why ECM was significant. What I'd got myself into. Why the bigwigs were spending so much on this Enterprise buzz. I then set about exploring the other facets of ECM - not as a product but as an domain. Started with the histories of EDMS'es, explored the various logical designs for ECM systems, why some systems succeeded while others failed, what differentiated the cream from the rest, what industry pundits were predicting, the various streams of ECM and their significance - basically more case-studies etc about how real-life projects implemented & integrated ECM into their folds.

Today, I'm still no expert in the field. The field seems deeper as I dig each day. But yes - I have cleared a lot of those queries nagging behind my mind. Instead of getting awed by complex architectures, today I'd focus more on identifying how that helps solve the problem at hand. It is especially important as Web2.0, Serverside & XML based stuff merge together to throw up an amazing range of technology platforms. One definitely needs to keep abreast of them but always let the simple ideas and foundations behind them guide you.

Outlook interfacing - An alternate way

2008-07-17T16:31:00.022+05:30

Sometimes, even after spending half a decade in the IT field you'll keep encountering interesting technologies that either you didn't know of or didn't care to take seriously. At times, these can neverthless provide some really nifty solutions. It was recently that I got enlightened on one of these. Not that I hadn't heard of it before - but never gave it a second glance.

The problem was a typical one. An automation component I was into - needed to fetch attachments from a designated mailbox according to a mail pattern, download them & initiate a processing batch for the downloaded ones. It was supposed to be run as a scheduled task.

Now, its a simple problem - especially if you have Visual Studio .NET installed and know a bit or so about writing C# code & using the Outlook Object Library. So I rightway started off & had almost got to fetching the mail object & reading the sender name - when I hit a wall ! Outlook complained with a popup saying "A program is trying to access e-mail addresses you have stored in Outlook. Do you want to allow this?". Someone had to approve or deny this request!

That meant my automation component would sit there waiting for someone to approve/deny its access to my mailbox. This was bad for me (Though it was bound to happen as I'd been on the Java side for long & hadn't been in touch with Outlook security model and such). It seems, in view of the proliferating virus scene, Microsoft decided to add this security check whenever some process accesses the Outlook address book. Also there seemed no easy way to skip this one (unless you downloaded some third-party libraries for getting around this limitation. In my scenario that just wasn't possible.)

Some may say - why not use a simple mail rule in outlook, connect it to some VBScript to download the attachments for the target mail items as soon as they arrive. That would be great but then corporate security forbids us from tinkering around with the outlook client. No programmatic extensions, no macros, no scripts running in Outlook !. I was about to give up when one of my last google searches threw up an interesting link "Access outlook using WebDAV". I had heard of WebDAV before. Most ECM systems provide a WebDAV interface for accessing content. But what was this strange connection between Outlook & WebDAV ? Intrigued, I checked on further.

That was how I realised that Outlook is accessible via WebDAV too. Infact that is the underlying access mechanism behind the Microsoft OWA(Outlook Web Access) client. Also, most corporate systems donot disable the WebDAV access as it's essential for proper functioning of Outlook.

I got some nice details here, some excellent samples and advice here & here, then set about the task & finally came up with a simple mail attachment download utility in javascript. Added a functional web interface to it, wrapped it up as an HTA application, configured it to run on schedule, did some 5 - 6 rounds of testing, skipped the documentation for later & patted myself for a job well done ;-).

An adventure of sorts

2008-07-09T14:16:00.007+05:30

Wasn't in the best of moods for this one. But with nothing else to do & boredom staring at me in the face I felt I'd better take up this trip.

That explains how I landed up at Karnala village in Panvel during last weekend. We'd put up at a place called "Shanbhar Vishranti" & planned for an early morning trail of the bird sanctuary as well as a trek atop "funnel hill" (Karnala Fort).

The nature trail was more of a peaceful walk thru the forest woods admist twittering of birds but it was the trek that blew our guts out. What should have been a peaceful 2 hour walk ended up as an ardous 5 hour climb. Mentioning it as just a "climb" would not do justice to it. It was a triathlon of sorts - navigating through the forest, then crawling (clawing describes it better) through slippery grassy meadows & finally rappeling up on slippery vertical rocks (minus any ropes).

Me was amongst the luckier ones who scampered atop initially and reached the safety of the fort bastions. The next in line folks were stranded in between on the slippery rocks. Neither could they summon the courage to move up nor could they take the risk of going back by the same slippery route. Finally we'd to call in some rescue folks to aid us.

As I sit down writing this occurence of last week, my joints still carry a sweet ache. Must say that the entire journey ended up as an experience in itself. Enjoyable & adventurous to the hilt.

So next time you go on a trek - don't forget that map & don't try out too adventurous routes.

Snapping in low light

2008-06-24T09:25:00.021+05:30

Snapping a pic in daylight is very different from snapping one during times when the overall light is very low. I've met many a beginner clicking the shutter during indoor events & enquired with them if they understood some nuances of low light photography. 6 out of 10 times the answer is "Isn't that what the flash is for ?".

During my initial days of photography, I wanted to capture low light snaps in all their glory. However I never really understood the science behind them, the camera shake factor etc and always landed up with images that were either terribly underexposed (darkened) or with flashlight shining on the faces or with too much shake effect.

Later during my tryst with digital, I got some luxury to experiment and come out with some satisfying results. Though I'm still learning, some of the snaps bear a testimony to good groundwork. This one for example is one such snap.

It was taken at the Thazhoor Bhagavathy temple in Vazhamuttom, Pathanamthitta, Kerala. Since childhood, I have been fascinated by temple rituals at my hometown & the aura of faith that prevail such events. And unlike the modernistic outlook in cities, people back home still have that unerring belief in the almighty with genuine & complete devotion.

So during the annual temple festivities, I grabbed the opportunity to snap some memories. This particular snap was challenging enough - particularly considering the situation. Light was pretty low & my digicam (Nikon 4500) suffers from pretty much of shutter lag. Also the event was the "Thullal" procession - almost an action sequence of sorts. I put my camera into shutter priority, set an ISO of 400 & waited patiently amongst the frenzied devotees. I took around 5 snaps. Later analysed them on my laptop and selected one that captured it all. The colors, the motion & more importantly the mood of the moment.

Its not the best low-light snap that I've captured but one that I appreciate for the learning experience it provided.

Now mobiles at rock bottom prices

2008-06-17T17:08:00.026+05:30

Last weekend, a colleague showed me his latest acquisition - a cool looking mobile phone with a classy touch screen interface, stylus, sleek looks, nice loud volume, multimedia capability, mp4 enabled, twin cameras, some sort of handwriting recognition, scheduled on-off feature, dual sim, twin batteries supplied and a lot of other niceties. One look an i assumed it might be in the 30K INR price range. So it was a big suprise when he told me that he got it for less than - hold your breath - 3K INR!

Welcome to the amazing world of chinese mobiles. These China-made gadgets rivals the best of brands like Nokia, Motorola etc with features that would put them to shame. And the build quality is not bad either. It can easily last for atleast 2 years. What else does a customer need to ask for ?

Of course I have my apprehensions too. These phones are not rated by the FCC or other international bodies and so their safety rating remains unconfirmed. Also many of them have some of the sub-menus in chinese etc.

I did some googling and came to the conclusion that the chinese have replicated all the best mobiles - the N95, the N75 - why even the iPhone ! and made them available at a fraction of the cost. Some of them also have TV tuner cards, GPS navigation and the like.

Some of the phones feature amazing talktime and standby time. Check this one out which features almost a whopping 1 year of talktime and standby time ! And as I write this the ceiling has been already broken. There are reports of a phone with 2 years of standby time. So virtually almost no need for charging.

Surely the Chinese are on an all conquering spree.

Don't be a "Monkey with the Tool"

2008-06-13T08:14:00.010+05:30

A laptop is supposed to be such a useful thing. And if you are a programmer (or any steps higher in that order), it should mean a lot to you. These were exactly the reasons for grabbing my Compaq Presario V3225AU last year. I envisaged writing trillions of code, churning out the next killer utility application, getting on grasp with the latest technologies, keeping myself more organized etc. Another reason was my developing affection with digital photography & image-editing software like Gimp etc.

However nowadays I find myself succumbing to the "Information Overload" phenomena. Too much information & not sure where to start or how to begin. Of course we all know it starts with "one step at a time" and progresses on that way. That sounds good in theory. But many times when you are surfing or hunting for information, one tends to forget this important rule of thumb for learning anything.

Thats when I put up this wallpaper - a DeviantArt work (not my creation) - to remind myself not to get lost in the myriad treasures of the web or modern information delivery system. And it carries the message perfectly. To stop being a - "A monkey with the tool" !

Keeping the shutter pressed

2008-06-11T23:51:00.020+05:30

Its been quite some time since I last picked up the camera. I got it repaired this March in a bout of inspired activism. Had planned to restart the photography hobby which I almost left after the camera zoom switch broke on my Hangzhou trip. However its June right now and apart from spending around 1.5K fixing up the zoom rocker switch, snapping a mosquito coil design & some silly snaps of cooker-emitting-steam etc, nothing inspiring has happened as yet.

And I don't think that I'm alone here. It so happens that we pick up that spark of photography only to lose it in the pursuit of day-to-day activities. Many of us come to the point when we start losing interest in the hobby of "capturing that moment in time". Of course for the true aficionado, it doesn't matter at all. Come the next rains or come the next visit to the Flickr Explore page & you are driven back to your camera with a renewed zeal.

Sometimes even your past collections can inspire you. Just yesterday I was browsing through the archives (Picasa does an excellent job here) when i spotted some photos that i had never appreciated earlier. But surprisingly they seemed perfect now. A little crop here or a little color correction there and that old snap transforms into something nice. This snap below was picked up in this manner.

So the need for the occasion is some way to keep yourself hooked on to this lovely hobby whether it be behind the shutter or in front of "The Gimp". To keep your creative engines well-oiled and ready for the moments when inspiration & activism strike simultaneously.

Designing a Log reporting tool

2008-06-02T09:47:00.007+05:30

Last week was really interesting in terms of developer productivity. After a long time I managed to get my hands dirty on some interesting coding stuff. Now this idea had been behind my mind all the time but it took some job requirements to really get it moving.

Many of us developers have used logging and at times really found it cumbersome enough to wade through the sea of log files looking for statistics. Especially so in web applications that run on clusters and generate log dumps on multiple machines. This was exactly the requirement at our end and we needed to quickly come up with some tool to parse and extract statistics data from the logs.

The groundwork for this had already been laid by another team that had in place a nice log extraction utility. It could gather logs from multiple machines and extract lines matching particular patterns into a new file. So as the output, you'll have summary files containing all instances of a particular search term.

So far so good. However we needed to extract some statistics from these logs. And therein comes the reporting part. How does one go about creating a report from these output files. I hunted over for some open-source applications on sourceforge that would meet this goal but none seemed to fit our bill. And to top it all - we hadn't yet discussed with our client on how the report needed to be formatted - how the details needed to be segregated and so on. So whatever we'd come up with - it might need to be changed. Reports are always like that. Everyone has different opinions on how they should present the data and so on.

Therein lies a challenge for a developer. Using a strategy that would allow him to change the report format easily to suit the client's requirements. The more i thought about it the more i was convinced that the report needed to be generated in XML and the presentation dynamically built using XSL. So we decided to build a Java utility that'd take the logs generated from the first stage, extract statictics data from it, output this data as XML and then apply the required XSL stylesheet to generate the desired report. So it ended up something like this

The interesting part was that I managed to wrap it up in 2 days flat. It was the XSL styling that took up some time. But it was interesting. I always liked dabbling around in XSL. Especially grouping the data and displaying it by date, by machine etc. Its not yet finished but now I'll let the client put forth his views on it and drive forward the next phase of required changes. I can already envisage requirements for - say a provision to dynamically select report criteria in the HTML page. Hmmm better start brushing up some JQuery selectors ;-).

Hidden Gmail Gems - multiple personal email addresses

2008-05-22T12:41:00.007+05:30

It so happens that recently I’ve been receiving more and more of misdirected information. Some guy with a similar sounding name & put up across another part of the world seems to be a famous physician. Interesting fact is that I get to receive almost all the emails that are directed towards him. So I receive a lot of invitations to parties, snaps of family get-togethers, interesting medical opportunities why - sometimes even discussions on medical terms. A bit in my mind - I’m flattered!

Coming to the analysis part of it, initially I felt it was some clever spammer with his/her own arsenal of tricks. But then one fine day I checked these mails more closely. It was sent to pappupager@gmail.com. However my email address is pappu.pager@gmail.com. So how come I was receiving this mail?

I tried sending a dummy email to pappupager@gmail.com. It landed with a thud right in my Gmail inbox. Surprises! Is this some bug in the Gmail mail agent? After a cursory search on Google, I realised that it’s not a bug – but a mighty interesting feature of Gmail. So I tried sending emails to pa.pp.up.ag.er@gmail.com & pap.pup.ager@gmail.com and whoa – they all came right into my inbox.

Aha beautiful! So how do I make use of this feature? Simple enough – when I signup to say a newsletter from Sun or Better Photography or any other interesting site, I’ll give them the id pap.pupa.ger@gmail.com. To my friends, family and colleagues I’ll be available as pappu.pager@gmail.com. For all financial notifications or bank statements, I’ll use pa.ppu.pa.ger@gmail.com. And then I’ll set up rules in my Gmail account to label and sort the incoming mails – all anyway directed to me. Such a convenience! And just by aligning the dots in my Gmail address. Think of the permutations and combinations of addresses that gives me.

Oh – and regarding my namesake physician across the seven seas. I need to contact him somehow and let him know that though he helped me make an interesting discovery, he needs to inform his contacts about his real email address. Or else he may end up losing a lot of opportunities.

(Psst: If the mail-id pappu.pager@gmail.com belongs to some legitimate user, I’m indeed sorry. Let me know and I’ll update this post. I just fabricated the id out of thin air for explanation purpose.)

DLF IPL - An interesting effort in Indian Cricket

2008-05-21T21:17:00.008+05:30

The DLF IPL cricket tournament is a brilliant effort and just at the right time. I mean why didn't the folks who govern cricket & make the various decisions (read BCCI) think of this in advance. Probably it took the 20-20 back-to-back victories India had, to let them sense the enormous opportunity created.

Anyway, its got em all hooked on to the game. All including women and kids alike - something unthinkable of in Test cricket. They suddenly have opinions on everything from why taking wickets early on matters to errant decisions given by umpires. And the matches are timed perfectly - the 7pm slot - coinciding with the time most folks leave office and arrive at home.

But suprisingly when it comes to the games themselves - established players have put in a dismal act. I mean look at the Royal Challengers struggling when they got such fine players. And as if an act of irony, the ads keep blaring "Jeetenge hum shaan se... ". Comeon folks - take off those ads. Air them next season!. Mumbai Indians though struggled badly in the first half of the game - now they seem to have picked up their spirits. My favourite at the start - the Delhi Daredevils - now seem to be dilly-dallying on the semi-final doorstep.

But that not withstanding, the 20-20 nature of the game makes it more interesting. And younger players like Rohit Sharma, Abhishek Nayar etc have put on a good act. More than not - its thrilling to see Indian players teaming up with their foreign counterparts, learning new tricks and sharpening their prowess. Look at what Shane Warne has done to a mediocre Rajasthan Royals team. Thats worth an MBA case-study in itself.

Hope someone did something magical like this to other Indian sports too.

Btw for those who at times cannot watch their favourite matches on TV because of work pressures (read IT folks), herez a nice link to an online scoreboard.

View latest live DLF IPL Scores

Its provided by The Times of India & suprisingly is better than the other online scoreboards that I could find. Its got a nice refresh script too.

Save the "Oxford of the east"

2008-05-19T16:28:00.007+05:30

Once a lovely city, famed as the pensioners paradise & "Oxford of the east" - Pune has now outgrown that image. At times, when I get stuck in a traffic jam (which is becoming the norm these days), I get the feeling, I'm breathing in a smoke chimney. Not a joke here - nor an exaggeration! Indeed the traffic and pollution scenario in Pune seems to be worsening day by day.

Probably its the heavy influx into the city since the last 2-3 years that has added to the situation. Real estate in Pune has become an attractive option for many Mumbaikars & outsiders. Also the city is rapidly expanding on the IT & industrial front - adding to its fold many citizens and an equal number of vehicles.

Roads in Pune have traditionally been narrow alleys. No wonder then that Pune counts amongst cities in India with the maximum 2-wheeler density. And nowadays you get the feeling that the best vehicle for navigating in and around Pune is a bike. If you doubt that - travel in Pune and check out for yourselves how these two-wheelers zip in and out of traffic with ease. Planning to study in Pune or take up a job in Pune ? Then do plan to bring along that two-wheeler you have at home.

Whats worsening the situation is the time PMC takes to clear infrastructure projects & road-building initiatives in the city. There have been many consultants appointed over these years but its not clear where their reports end up. Take the plight of PMT buses. They seem overloaded and the schedules just seem so erratic. Stand on Pune-Satara Road to catch a bus for Pune station. Usually you'll find 5-6 buses for Shivajinagar coming by consecutively while you desperately wait to get hold of one carrying the Pune station nameboard.

Even now Pune remains a beautiful city. Much of what is lost can be regained. But it remains a lot on the initiative and zeal by authorities & citizens alike. Its not malls and theatres thats needed - the city needs more of breathing spaces.

If its good, it ought to be a Sreeni movie

2008-05-16T15:39:00.015+05:30

Watching a "Sreenivasan" movie in between the countless flicks aired everyday is like finding a fountain in the midst of a desert.

As an actor he can spice up any movie - by just appearing in it. His genre of comedy - a sort of simple-self-slapstick style is something that appeals to every movie-goer. There have been countless occasions when I've gone for the remote but stopped short just because "Sreeni" enters the frame. Then I know - its gonna be something interesting.

As a writer/director, he has scripted such wonderful evergreen movies known for their simplistic and humorous portrayal of the vagaries of life. He never wanders from the theme - but equally important - also ensures that he doesn't bore you monotonously with the theme. His contribution to Malayalam cinema may not be enormous but definitely has been very impactful.

I often think & wish that such creative geniuses like him could extend their creativity beyond the reaches of malayalam cinema - probably give bollywood a taste of good storylines and original scripts. Recently it was to be heard that one of his works "Katha Parayumbol" is gonna be translated into a bollywood potboiler. Nice beginning - definitely more to come from this genius.

A good step towards sealing off phishers

2008-05-13T18:51:00.005+05:30

Recently while logging in to my Flickr account (its via Yahoo ever since that acquisition), I happened to notice their "sign-in seal" link. I'd seen it & ignored it on previous visits but nowadays since my mind is engrossed in the aspects of web security, I got curious about it and decidedly gave it a second look.

And I really liked the concept. Its something akin to the captcha concept for dealing with bot programs. What it does is provide a simple mechanism for avoiding Phishing based attacks. It doesn't entirely prevent such attacks but at least provides one way out.

The way it works is - you need to upload some image to Yahoo - which will then associate that image with your account & display that image whenever you login to your account on that computer. So whenever you visit the yahoo login page on your computer, you will see that image. it assures you that you are visiting the right site indeed. If you chance to open a forged yahoo link - then it will display the standard yahoo login page - thereby raising a thought in your mind regarding the authenticity of that page.

The down side is that - it will work only on your computer - on which you created the sign-in seal. Also, since the image is stored on your computer, an OS upgrade or reformatting might need you to recreate the sign-in seal.

But still its a pretty good way of secure browsing on your home computer / laptop against increasing phishing tricks. Probably Google & other industry giants will also follow suit.

Bracing annoyance at work

2008-05-12T15:33:00.010+05:30

Everyone working as a programmer has their fair share of annoyances. I have mine too. Sometimes its something simple like the design of everyday things that gets to you. At other times its the code editor. Of late I carry a silent grudge whenever I deal with writing or modifying some piece of Java code.

It has nothing to do with Java per se. Java is a great language and has simplified and glorified programming to a great extent. Its relating to this requirement of writing code according to standards. Again I haven't got any grudge against adhering to standards but some standards just irk me at times. For example - take this piece of coding standard - they say its a Sun Coding convention.

That of laying down opening braces "{" on the same line as the related class / method declaration or loop statement. I fail to understand why its a standard in the first place. It goes against visual alignment of code blocks. If mean - if opening & closing braces are aligned on the same column - it makes it far more simpler to discern and understand code blocks.

Lot of developers I've spoken to sympathise with my argument but say that we should do otherwise since its an accepted standard. But then - have the folks who designed this standard - put in some explanation anywhere as to why it is beneficial ?

As of now, my code editor (I use Eclipse) allows me to override this standard and put in mine - the old fashioned way - like it was in C - when i learnt my programming. But I still remain puzzled as to why folks have kept this as a standard.

Of puppies & pastels

2008-05-12T15:33:00.008+05:30

In between the daily hard-hitting by teams in the DLF IPL league matches, Vodafone has let loose the Hutch puppy again. After the Hutch acquisition, the puppy was replaced by dabs of red splashed all over. It was sad to see the Hutch ads go - especially since they were so creative, cute & elegant .

Now the puppy is back and in a nice way. No - they haven't turned it into a red puppy. Instead they have rechristened him as a friend. Its a welcome comeback. There's an overall puppy-feel to the ad with an interesting theme & nice music.

What i liked best about the ad is the colour palette used. Really interesting shades of pastels. Recently I'd been engrossed in understanding colours and effects of pastel shades and this ad really depicted some nice usage of pastels.

On becoming a bookie again

2008-05-08T16:11:00.004+05:30

Jeff Atwood's blog is something that I always look forward to reading. His articles carry an appealing blend of technically interesting & philosophically right stuff. For example, his take on reading books really set me thinking.

An interesting topic. I remember my early academic & programming career when I was crazy for tech books. I'd gather them with zeal, pore over them trying to understand the nuts and bolts of every new technology around the corner. Sometimes I 'd succeed, at other times it would still remain as a curiousity pinging at the back of my mind. I remember buying I.T magazines those days (half of which would be plastered with useless product ads). Yet I'd buy them for the 2 page article on Visual C++ or something else around the corner.

Enter Google and all that changed drastically. Nowadays if i have a curious thought nagging somewhere at the back of my mind - simple thing is to hit google and usually its cleared. Its really helpful - damn useful considering the proliferation of technologies and associated jargon one has to keep constantly updated with.

But it fails to address one part of the knowledge imbibing cycle that books do well. While reading books on any subject, you tend to develop a holistic view of that subject including nitty gritty details that may make or mar your complete understanding of the subject. Its not that way with searching on the web. The latter is more of instant gratification. You quickly get what you want and usually that information alone might be dangerous at times.

Speaking of Atwood's blog, it reminded me of that long pending task - reviving the book reading habit.

A fleeting glimpse of "The Dragon"

2008-05-07T10:38:00.011+05:30

Reading through the newspapers last week, it seemed hosting the Olympic games has now become sort of a PR embarrassment for China. Wherever the torch goes, Tibetans seems to spring up and put up all sorts of protests. Now, their cause might be valid as well - one definitely sympathizes with the cause for freedom for any race - but what puzzles me most is - why this moment to choose for the protest? The Olympic flame is a spirit - ought to be respected by all countries & races.

Now, my view of China comes from the 2 month visit i had to Hangzhou and I'm definitely impressed by what i saw there. Before i went there, I had some limited conceptions of China in mind, images of dragons & Kung-Fu masters and particularly that of an Asian country yet in the "Developing" zone.

What i saw over there (in Hangzhou) actually rocked me. Such a beautiful place. And one in sync with the most modern things in terms of infrastructure and development. The Kung-Fu masters still reign supreme - but only on television. Dragons existed - but only on beautiful silk cloth that can be bargained cheaply on Silk Road. Though modern in outlook - they still manage to hold on to their culture so very strongly. And people (atleast the ones i had an opportunity to meet) were very soft-spoken, polite and helpful. Communication was difficult - at least using English - i had to often resort to dumb-charades.

I also had an opportunity to visit Shanghai which I found awesome but a bit crowded ( but then which metro isn't?). One thing i realized during these visits is that the Chinese respect their art and heritage a lot. (And I like people who have that respect in mind)

It was an enjoyable experience that I'll cherish - whether it be sipping Longjing Tea in the morning, learning to eat using chopsticks, sampling the variety of foodstuff or trying to communicate in English.

I've not one doubt that the Olympics in China will be a dazzling affair. It will showcase the real China to the world - a different China than most of us have in our minds.

2.5 years & counting

2007-05-24T11:47:00.010+05:30

24th August 2005 - that's when I'd drafted the last blog. Phew - almost 2.5 years flew by like anything & I'd been in a slumber of sorts. Life raced by with so many stumbling blocks. 2.5 years back had you asked me - would life be like this ? I'd say - "Mine! No way".

Many lessons learned here. Primary - if you feel you are not going to fit into a round peg, then try not to. Don't try to fit yourself thinking of others, thinking of magnanimity and the belief of human compassion, believing you can set things in order when the time comes.

And as i see it, there are two ways of winning in life.

One - be so loving, considerate, generous & compassionate that anyone who tries to hurt you ends up reforming themselves. You stand as a beacon of virtuosity. At the cost of patience and time you win trust for life.
Second - be a robot for life, insist on living life by a set of robotic unbendable rules. Either you get what you want, or you snatch them. If you lose you try again. If you win you carry no sympathy for the lost one. Whatever - carry absolutely no guilt in mind & always convince yourself that what you did was the just and righteous thing to do.

If you try to fit yourself somewhere in between these two rules, thats the recipe for disaster. Thats where thou shalt keep wondering why life is dealing such a harsh pact with you.