Musings

How to be a program manager

2009-03-09T21:09:00.001-04:00

A great blog post by Joel Spolsky on "How to be a program manager".

Application Provisioning in the Cloud

2009-02-23T14:01:00.001-05:00

Interesting article i ran into about applications in the cloud.

Video Contest: I'm Linux

2008-12-25T00:22:00.004-05:00

The Linux Foundation, a Non-Profit Organization, is sponsoring a Video Competition to create a commercial for Linux on the lines of "I'm a Mac'" and "I'm a PC" as done by Apple and Microsoft respectively. Linux is owned by its community and its only fitting that the community should participate in its promotion on Television, hence this Video contest. The winner gets no cash but a an all expense trip (airfare and hotel for 3 days) to Tokyo, Japan to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium in October 2009.

There are some basic guidelines:
- Keep the video under a minute
- Comply with their ToS
- Watch your language and keep it clean
- Make it original and interesting

For more details check out their website and more importantly, get busy.

PEP 8

2008-12-25T00:19:00.002-05:00

Ran into PEP 8 (Python Style Guide) written by Guido. It was nice to realize that i follow majority of his recommendations. At the same time i learned some new things which i had never thought of.

Good read!

Snip Snip Time

2008-11-27T12:51:00.001-05:00

In the current tough economic conditions (I am kind of getting sick and tired of hearing this phrase) downsizing is preeminent. The stories of how someone had to change city, state or country to find another job have become commonplace.

During the last bubble burst a lot of first-time CEOs and Managers were entrusted with the task of guiding the companies through similar times and not all of them were successful at it. In fact in almost all cases the complete downsizing process was deemed ruthless. This was a problem not just for the first time leaders but even for seasoned campaigners.

This time good advice is more forthcoming. People who were burnt or involved in those times are giving out advice freely. One such interesting post i came across was by Guy Kawasaki. I recommend reading it even if you are not at the downsizing stage.

iPhone Firmware 2.2

2008-11-26T13:35:00.001-05:00

Its strange but since I have installed the 2.2 firmware the cell phone signal strength has improved slightly. Prior to this update the max i ever got was 2 bars but now its almost always 3 bars.

This is strange as i always thought that the signal strength received was a function of power transmitted by the cell phone towers and antenna design. The iPhone antenna surely hasn't changed and i haven't read/heard of ATT putting up new towers around my apartment so its got to be the firmware update.

The developers at Apple must have really messed up the 'check signal strength and then make calls' part of code or maybe they just add some artificial gain to improve the signal strength representation with each release. Either way currently i will accept anything that will improve my iPhone calling experience.

I also noticed that now apps are updated in place unlike earlier where the new version was downloaded in a different location and then moved to the current. Subtle but slick.

-------------------

Oh on a side note, still no sign of my replacement USB power adapter.
Hurray to Apple support.

How to send a courier Apple style

2008-11-15T11:39:00.002-05:00

Trips to the Apple Store - 1
Calls to Apple Support - 2
Alleged couriers sent by Apple - 4
Days since first attempt - 35
Minutes spend on hold - 50
Amount of frustration - Infinite

...... still no sign of my replacement for the iPhone 3G power adapter.

The Me Meme

2008-11-02T00:18:00.002-04:00

Take a picture of yourself right now.

Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
(used my iPhone to take the snap)

Post that picture with NO editing.

Post these instructions with your picture.

iPhone App: Mocha VNC

2008-10-24T00:45:00.003-04:00

Mocha VNC Lite is (as the name suggests) a VNC viewer for the iPhone. I installed the Lite version to try out the experience and i have to say its really cool. The performance is awesome and the clarity is just astonishing. Maybe its just me but i never expected this app to behave this well. You are required to install either TightVNC or RealVNC server on Windows based machine (I used TightVNC on my Win XP laptop) and voila you are set. They have a custom vnc server for Mac.

The need for such an application is still questionable but for now i am just having fun with it.

Note: The Lite version does not support Ctr-Alt-Del combination so i cannot lock/unlock my computer which is a smart move by the developers mainly because without this ability the application is unsafe to use say with your work computer.

TiPB claims that the Jaadu VNC app is much better than Mocha so check it out. Unfortunately it does not have a Lite version and it costs around 24 bucks, quite steep.

Snaps from India

2008-10-17T15:35:00.002-04:00

Beautiful snaps from India. If you plan to visit India make sure you cover all these places.

My first paid iPhone Application : Subway Shuffle

2008-10-09T21:48:00.003-04:00

I recently moved over to the Dark Side. I ditched my old trusted Palm Treo 680 for a new and shiny iPhone 3G about 2 months ago. Truth be told it was just too hard to resist the temptation. I totally love the device and don't hesitate to express my obsession openly much to the frustration of my friends and colleagues.

Listing the things i like about it would be impractical (since it will be a long list) so instead let me list the things i don't like about it:

1. The battery life sucks although its slightly better since the 2.1 update.
2. If i install a lot of applications without syncing it with iTunes the iPhone starts to hang and the UI gets really sluggish. This is quite irritating since i am on the road a lot and sometimes its weeks before i get my hands on my personal laptop.
3. The Exchange support is great but there are still some features like flagging emails, directly dialing numbers listed in calender notes, etc which i miss from the Goods Messaging service on my Palm Treo.
4. The App Store policies are too stringent. There are tons of cool applications which are not allowed by Apple for strange reasons but can be installed if you jail break the iPhone (and i don't wish to go that route).
5. Can't download new podcasts directly to the iPhone. (Apple please bring back Podcaster)
6. Cannot use my iPhone as a modem.

I guess you gotto lose some to gain some. I hope Apple addresses these issue soon.

I have so far downloaded and deleted tons of applications most of which were free. The one application i really enjoyed and eventually ended up buying is the Subway Shuffle by Aubrey's Puzzles. Initially i played the Lite version which allows you to solve 6 puzzles of varing complexity but the game is so addictive that i was compelled to spend the $2.99 for the paid version.

Who took my domain name?

2008-10-09T19:08:00.004-04:00

My attempt to register a domain based on my name (afulay) went for a toss when i discovered that it had already been taken. The site afulay.com is written in Arabic and had references to Morocco. Onto another combination now.

Update:
Bummer fulay.com is taken too. :(

The Trick to Problem Solving

2008-10-06T20:23:00.003-04:00

When a problem presents a disjunction, you need to list all its possibilities (define Solution Space) and reason from each of them.

- quoted from the book How would you move Mt Fuji.

Christian Invasion in India

2008-09-27T11:08:00.002-04:00

For years the world has blamed the Islamic groups for spreading terrorism and forcing atrocities on innocent people. No doubt this is true. We all know about the Al-Qaeda, Saddam's Regime, the ISI and many more but this blog post is not about them.

For once i want to focus on the Christian Missionaries and other groups which cloaked under their message of spreading peace and education is really forcibly converting the poor and innocent villagers of India. This video i came across comes from a Scandinavian woman who investigated the immoral tactics of the various Christian Missionaries in Western India.

The alarming aspect of this video is that these conversions are taking place in one of the most economically and industrially advanced regions of the country. Such conversions are rampant in the eastern part of India, the collection of 7 states (also known as the 7 Sisters) which were very evident during my short stint in the eastern parts of the country.

The pattern is quite simple. The Missionaries would start by setting up a school in the one of the poorest regions of the state. They provide the children with free food and medical attention which attracts other people to the church. Soon they start luring more people by unfairly comparing Hindu practices and Gods with the Christian religion and if this does not work by promising them money or free facilities. The people are eventually brain washed and forced to denounce their religion and country.

Despite the amount of money and efforts invested by the Indian government in the Eastern regions the people are still largely under the influence of the Christian Missionaries. The people their refuse to call themselves Indians and detest other Indians. This was quite evident during my brief stay in the region. More than once when we stopped on streets to ask for directions the local people turned away totally ignoring us. Some times when the person did respond we were told to either speak in English or their local language and not Hindi (Our National language). This is extremely sad and disappointing as this happens to be one of the more beautiful regions of the country with a rich culture and heritage.

All these incidents make me wonder if this is a passive form of terrorism. Terrorism to me is a way of forcing an ideological change, they may be enforced with either use of violence as most Islamic militant groups do or could be a covert operation by providing false hopes and biased comparisons of cultures as done by Christian Missionaries. I guess this is for every individual to decide for himself.

How to connect your ipod nano to your laptop

2008-08-18T15:46:00.002-04:00

First insert the USB connector in to the laptop and then connect the ipod jack to your ipod nano. When ever i reverse this process my ipod nano hangs and has to be reset. To reset press the center and menu key together for a few seconds.

Python Exceptions >>> raise

2008-08-04T16:55:00.002-04:00

A neat trick i found in the python tutorial:

If you need to determine whether an exception was raised but don't intend to handle it, a simpler form of the raise statement allows you to re-raise the exception:

>>> try:
...     raise NameError, 'HiThere'
... except NameError:
...     print 'An exception flew by!'
...     raise
...
An exception flew by!
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "", line 2, in ?
NameError: HiThere

For more read the Errors and Exceptions section

Desi Spiderman

2008-06-06T02:08:00.003-04:00

Indian Spiderman spoof: http://www.makkadman.com/

Windows Services Management via VBScript

2008-05-03T21:15:00.004-04:00

If you have ever used any Unix/Linux based systems you know that windows does not even come close to providing as reliable service management as its counterparts. I have been burnt by the stuck services issue so many times that it was natural for me to look for alternate mechanisms.

VB script is a scripting language developed by Microsoft and is a limited variation of Visual Basic programming language. To me its a much better and more powerful alternative to Batch Scripting.

Being new to VBScript i had to spend some time initially to grasp the basics but when i did it was quite easy. Here is a simple VBscript to manage windows services. You just need to modify the number of services to manage and their names and the script lets you bulk start/stop, check status and individually control each service. Thankfully since i have used this script i have not experienced the stuck services issue and i am strongly inclined to believe that most services start/stop issues may be caused by bugs in the GUI based Windows Services Manager (this is just speculation and i have no conclusive evidence to prove it).

Execute the following from your command prompt to run this script:
cscript [path to script]

The script:

============================================================

dim input
dim strComputer
dim svrList

rem Main Body

input = 0
do
    input = getInput()

    processInput(input)
loop until input=5

rem Supporting Functions

function processInput(input)

    if input = "5" then
        s_quit()

    else
        strComputer = "."

        ' Modify this array size to add or remove services. The length of this array should be
        ' exactly same as the number of services.
        ' Note: If you want to initialize this array to hold 4 services, set its size to 3. The array
        ' like most has a zero based index i.e. 0 to 3.
        dim myservices(3)

       ' specify the actual service names here
        myservices(0)="<service-mgmt1>"
        myservices(1)="<service-mgmt2>"
        myservices(2)="<service-mgmt3>"
        myservices(3)="<service-mgmt4>"

        'get service object
        Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

        'debug statement
        'wscript.echo cstr(ubound(myservices))

        k = 0
        svrList = ""
        for each service in myservices
            svrList = svrList & "Name='" & service & "'"

            ' do not end the services string with an 'or' this causes the query to fail
            if k < ubound(myservices) then
                svrList = svrList & " or "
            end if

            k = k+1
        next

        'debug statement
        'wscript.echo svrList

        Set colServiceList = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_Service where " & svrList)

        ' debug statement
        'for each s in colServiceList
        '    WScript.Echo s.name
        'next

        select case input

            case "1"
                staggard_start(colServiceList)
            case "2"
                startSrv(colServiceList)
            case "3"
                stopSrv(colServiceList)
            case "4"
                statusSrv(colServiceList)
            case else
                Wscript.echo "Invalid Input!"
                's_quit()

        end select

    end if
end function

rem Quit Script
function s_quit()
    WScript.Echo "bye!"
    WScript.Quit
end function

rem Fetch script option
function getInput()
    WScript.echo
    WScript.echo "Select one of the options below:"
    WScript.echo "1 - Staggard Start"
    WScript.echo "2 - Start services"
    WScript.echo "3 - Stop service"
    WScript.echo "4 - Service status"
    WScript.echo "5 - Exit"
    getInput = textInput("Input = > ")
end function

rem Fetch user input
function textInput(prompt)
    WScript.StdOut.Write prompt
    textInput = WScript.StdIn.ReadLine
    rem WScript.StdOut.WriteLine username
end function

rem Staggard Start services
function staggard_start(serviceObjs)

    WScript.Echo "staggard start :: 1 - start; 2 - stop; 3 - ignore; q - quit"
    flag = "0"

    do
        For each serviceObj in serviceObjs

            flag = textInput(serviceObj.name & " -> ")

            select case flag

                case "1"
                    errReturn = serviceObj.StartService()
                    'WScript.Echo errReturn
                    WScript.Sleep 15000

                    if errReturn=0 then
                        WScript.Echo " ...started service"
                    else
                        WScript.Echo " ...failed to start service/running already"
                    end if

                case "2"
                    errReturn = serviceObj.StopService()
                    'WScript.Echo errReturn
                    WScript.Sleep 15000

                    if errReturn=0 then
                        WScript.Echo " ...stopped service"
                    else
                        WScript.Echo " ...failed to stop/not-running service"
                    end if

                case "q"
                    's_quit()
                    exit do

                case else
                   WScript.Echo " ...ignored"

            end select
        Next
    loop

end function

rem Start services
function startSrv(serviceObjs)

dim tempObj
WScript.Echo "starting services ..."
    For each serviceObj in serviceObjs

        errReturn = serviceObj.StartService()
        'WScript.Echo errReturn
        WScript.Sleep 15000

        if errReturn=0 then
            WScript.Echo "started service - " & serviceObj.name
        else
            WScript.Echo "failed to start/running already service - " & serviceObj.name
        end if

    Next

end function

rem Stop services
function stopSrv(serviceObjs)

WScript.Echo "stopping services ..."
    For each serviceObj in serviceObjs
        errReturn = serviceObj.StopService()
        'WScript.Echo errReturn
        WScript.Sleep 15000

        if errReturn=0 then
            WScript.Echo "stopped service - " & serviceObj.name
        else
            WScript.Echo "failed to stop/not-running service - " & serviceObj.name
        end if

    next

end function

rem Service status
function statusSrv(serviceObjs)

WScript.Echo "Service Status"
    For each serviceObj in serviceObjs
        WScript.Echo "Name: " & serviceObj.name
        WScript.Echo "State:" & serviceObj.State
    next

end function

===========================================================

Hope this script helps you alleviate some of your windows services woes.

Disclaimer: I am not a VBScript developer. If you find any bad coding practices please do let me know and i will be more than happy to fix my script. Also the exception handling could be done in a much better fashion.

The Border Gavaskar Trophy fiasco

2008-01-12T15:49:00.000-05:00

If you are not a cricket fan or haven't been following the Australia-India Series in Australia you have missed a lot of action, both on the field and off the field. It all started when the umpires started giving out incorrect decisions (not just the field umpires but the 3rd umpire too) then the Australians decided not to walk even when they were clearly out and then on the field started appealing for non-existent catches. As the test progressed it just got worse as they accused Harbhajan of being racist and finally on the last day they bowled india out thanks to another set of bad umpiring decisions. Eventually they did equal that record of 16 unbeaten test winning streak.

This is an overtly dramatic video but the only which covered most of the incorrect umpiring decisions.

This not just created an outrage in India but also Australia where some of the prominent critics slammed Ponting for his unsportsmanlike behaviour. After the BCCI and the Indian Officials complained about bad umpiring standards, the ICC finally relented and decided to replace Bucknor.

The question to ask here is what is the point of winning if no one is enjoying it and that to at who's expense. Australia's victory today was Cricket's loss. Cricket has been called as a Gentleman's game but what the Australians did (along with the umpires) puts a big blemish on game and its history. It destroys the spirit in which the game has been played all these years.

Anyways I hope everything goes back to normal and ICC implements some stern rules to avoid such scenarios in future. As a cricket fan my only wish is to see some really good quality games.

Bitter sweet revenge: India beat Australia in the 3rd test thus setting up an interesting contest at Adelaide.

up up and away!!

2008-01-12T15:34:00.000-05:00

Troy Widgery, a champion sky diver, survivor of a plane crash and now the founder of the 'Go Fast' sports and beverage company is taking his Jetsons fantasy quite seriously. His company has been working on building prototypes of Jetpacks. They currently have prototypes that last 32 and 45 sec which is truly quite impressive. Check out this report on cnn money.

Zune reversed

2007-12-16T13:13:00.001-05:00

The zune and ipod war continues. This one's from FSJ.

My online video channel

2007-12-05T02:01:00.001-05:00

WorldTV has come up with this concept of creating an online channel. The basic idea is to let you bookmark all your favourite online videos hosted on sites like youtube, google videos, et al and then organize them in a sequence so that they can be watched continuously like a tv channel.

This seems like a cool idea and there are multiple ways to put it to good use:
1. bookmark all your favourite videos in one location
2. create specific subject channels on say physics, wildlife, etc
3. concatenate a multi-part online lecture series into one continuous session
.
.

Although its hard to imagine people to abandon their television sets and watch online videos instead. Also these guys do not support live streaming and they depend on other sites to actually host the videos.

Final consensus: Even though it seems like a half baked idea for now it has a lot of potential. Speaking of potential here is my modest attempt at creating a new channel. Its obviously about cricket and more so about one of the greatest batsman of all times, Sachin Tendulkar. Enjoy!!

scobleizer ... i am hooked

2007-12-05T01:24:00.001-05:00

It all started when i bought my ipod nano over the thanksgiving weekend. To sync my ipod i had to download iTunes. Since i had iTunes i started playing around with podcasts and thats when i came across this podcast which had Robert Scoble as a guest speaker. I think it was that crazy laugh of his that got me interested at first, i mean why would you invite someone with that horrendous laugh on your show except for maybe comic relief. Anyways a few searches later i was a little wiser and even more interested. His blog scobleizer is quite interesting where he covers a lot of new tech stuff often in video format which he records with that phone of his. In short i love his stuff and more so his energy, in fact i look forward to his blogs everyday.

Predictions for 2008

2007-12-02T23:02:00.001-05:00

Interesting interview i came across.

Firefox memory leak

2007-11-01T14:04:00.001-04:00

I am a big fan of Firefox, in fact i use IE just for LiveMeeting, Siebel on Demand and the outlook webmail. I haven't even bothered upgrading to IE 7. As for Firefox i use it so extensively that i keep a browser window alive for days together. I have a peculiar habit, whenever i come across a good link i open it in a new tab and keep it open till i am done reading it. This overtime causes my browser to hold 10-20 tabs and i have to use the 'hibernation' feature in WinXP to preserve it.

Firefox starts quite smartly with a minimal memory consumption of 40-50 mb but as you open more tabs and persist them for a couple of days it grows at a healthy rate often, in my case, reaching levels of 1 GB. This was a big disappointment for me. Win XP if not shutdown at regular intervals gets slower and suffers distinctly noticeable performance degradation. By not shutting down my laptop for a few days i was already making my laptop slower but now i also had to deal with the growing memory consumption of Firefox. With a little investigation i came across this article which explains the reason for this memory surge.

The article does make a lot of sense and now i understand the reason for the memory surge, in fact i changed the value of browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers from -1 to 3 and the memory utilization hasn't crossed 125MB since. This feature for me falls into the bracket of 'self-destructing' features. They have a typical life-cycle, it starts of with a good idea and noble intentions but then when it actually gets in the hands of real customers it just explodes in their face. I remember this firefox plugin which came out a few years ago called 'fasterfox'. It was designed simply to improve page loading which was achieved by pre-fetching links and specific content types like html, pictures, etc. Initially it received a lot of attention from all reviewers and it featured in the "top 10 plugins for firefox" articles but soon people realized the impact of this plugin as it started bringing down servers due to aggressive prefetching beyond specifications. Eventually a year later from its introduction fasterfox was featured in the worst firefox plugin articles. (A side effect of this plugin was that it scared the hell out of all IT departments and to date many of them in large companies do not support or allow the use of firefox).

The "Back-Forward cache" feature also falls in the same bucket as fasterfox. Its a very useful feature and if used in a controlled manner can be quite effective but by setting this cache size to an unrealistic '8' and allowing firefox to consume as much as 4 GB of memory, the firefox developers have shot themselves in the foot. Now, besides the many useful and cool features of firefox the most discussed topic is its memory leak. Instead had they started off by setting the cache size to an optimal level nobody would have ever run into this issue, in fact only advanced users would have ever bothered to customize this value.

This said firefox does have some genuine memory utilization issues e.g. if you open 10 tabs the memory utilization shoots up but when you close these tabs the memory is not released completely until you restart the browser window. I guess this is some bug with their garbage collection. Firefox is no way perfect but still they could have made their life a little easier by not introducing these 'self-destructing' features.

Despite all these problems i still love Firefox and nothing in this world would make me switch to any other browser, Safari included. :)

Harry Potter's Magical Portraits

2007-07-05T18:29:00.001-04:00

Of all the magical things I read about in the Harry Potter series, the one which impressed me the most is the magical portrait. The characters in the portrait could interact with living observers, speak, perform magic, open doors, visit characters in other portrait. They could capture life in the true sense.

Off course we are a few centuries away from developing a technology like that but for the moment converting our still and boring 2D pictures into 3D sounds interesting enough. These guys create 3D models out of 2D pictures by inducing the perception of depth by bending the 2D images at specified angles so that the vertical and horizontal surfaces can be differentiated.

Be sure to sign up for the beta release.

one stop API lookup

2007-07-05T15:31:00.001-04:00

gotAPI.com :: documentation search engine is a one stop API reference and its lightening fast.

What type are you?

2007-06-30T22:59:00.000-04:00

Question: Have you ever got into an argument or witnessed one over how to solve a particular problem.
Answer: Yes, a million times!!!

This excellent blog tries to explain the reasons between such conflicts. It defines two distinct personalities on the basis of techniques used to devise solutions to problems viz. Incrementalists and Completionists.

In my professional career so far i have seen numerous examples of both the types and i have also experienced the conflicts between the two considering i am an incrementalist myself.

Steve Jobs

2007-06-25T06:29:00.000-04:00

I must confess I am a big fan of Steve Jobs. Although i don't own a single product made by Apple (yes thats true no macs, no ipods and certainly no iphone) but i totally worship the man. Time and time again he has been criticized for being a salesman, a showman and for his skills of persuasion also dubbed as Reality distortion field. The question here is, which CEO/leader isn't? Look at Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, et al. All these guys are supremely confident about their products and its this confidence which has got them to where they are.

The key to his success is his fighting spirit which is substantiated by his rise despite hitting rock bottom after he was fired from Apple(his own founded company). I guess his background too has contributed to his nature, i mean being put up for adoption just a week after birth by your own blood mother is not the most pleasing thought. This itself would have broken a lot of wills.

His technical capabilities have been under the scanner too. So often i hear people say "Bill Gates at least wrote DOS what did Steve Jobs do?". The way i like to see it is, Apple as a company is still going strong and year after year they churn out quality products (they do have bad days like the safari edition for windows but everyone makes mistakes ;)) The point being, Apple has given us great products and they all have been under the leadership of Steve Jobs, so lets give him some credit for it.

There is an interesting post by Seth Godin on Jobs, look it up. I also like his concept of a 'rifter', makes a lot of sense.

Dual Monitor setup

2007-06-01T23:37:00.000-04:00

My background in electronics and lack of cash during my engineering days taught me very important lessons -- never waste hardware and always utilize hardware to the fullest. In fact i am big fan of the google strategy, use cheap and low end hardware but write intelligent software to compensate for the hardware/network deficiencies.

So when i saw this discarded 17th inch CRT monitor lying around in the office (everyone in our office has an LCD monitor along with a docking station, kbd, mouse, etc or they prefer to work on laptops directly) i just couldn't stand it.

My earlier setup comprised of a docking station connected to an LCD monitor using the VGA connector. A little investigation revealed that the LCD monitor also had a DVI-D connector. Since all my hardware is from Dell the docking station too had a supporting DVI-D connector. With the prerequisites validated i sneaked into my IT admins office and dug through heaps of cables to find the correct DVI-D cable to complete the loop. Trust me this was the only challenging task in the whole process. During my search i found all possible conversion connectors but the cable i needed was brilliantly hidden in the furtherest corner of a drawer. Now armed with the cable i connected my LCD monitor to the docking station via the DVI and the CRT monitor via the VGA and voila(!!) my dual monitor setup was ready.

One misconception about using dual monitors is that everyone presumes a 2x increase in productivity. Now this is highly impossible since you still have the same input devices (kbd/mouse). Realistically i would assume the increase in productivity to be in the range of 1.25x to 1.5x since you just save on the time required to analyze or sort the output (i.e. content displayed on the screen). Also we forget that the brain still processes data at the same rate, additional monitors don't influence our ability to think they just facilitate better visualization.

Ingoing and Outcoming

2007-05-25T13:03:00.000-04:00

Aren't we always on the lookout for new English words. Recently during a team meeting a member blurted out "Ingoing and Outcoming" instead of "outgoing and incoming". Of course we had a good laugh at his expense but then i wondered if we could some how incorporate this in the English language. How would its usage be? After some thought this is what i came up with:

1. Ingoing:

Imagine you are talking to someone about the changes that need to go into a product version, so you ask him, "Hey what are the ingoing changes?".

2. Outcoming:

Imaging you just missed an important meeting to decide the future of a certain feature from a product, you ask a fellow teammate, "So what were the meeting's outcomings?"

Python Presentation by Alex Martelli

2007-05-06T11:17:00.000-04:00

I recently came across an excellent presentation on Python by Alex Martelli. This presentation was part of the Google Tech Talks series on Google Videos. Check it out!

world's smallest countries in the world

2007-05-05T11:10:00.001-04:00

I always knew that Vatican City was the smallest country in the world both population-wise and area-wise but never did i think of the 2nd and 3rd. Recently someone in my office raised this topic which sparked my curiosity, so here it is.

The most interesting entry there is of Monaco. I never knew it was a separate country considering i am a big F1 Grand Prix fan and the race at Monaco is the most exciting of the season. I always thought it to be part of Italy and thats why i used to wonder why Italy hosted 2 races in a season.

Nways time to explore other countries on the list.

Which Programming Lanuguage Are You?

2007-04-29T14:49:00.000-04:00

I took this quiz which claims to determine which programming language your personality matches with. Mine turned out to be Modula-2 (strangely i had never heard of this language ever before).

Which Programming Language are You?

I don't completely agree with this result nor do i agree with some of the descriptions of the other languages but what the heck.....i am killing time anyways.

Python revision - Book review

2007-04-28T10:07:00.001-04:00

Yesterday i found the book 'Learn to Program using Python' by Alan Gauld in the office. Since i had a few hrs to kill i decide to quickly go through the book.

I have been using python for almost a year now but strangely i have never had any sort of formal training and neither have i learnt python in a structured manner. Its mostly been task based which always makes me wonder if my coding style is indeed the correct way to do things. So i was excited about the prospect of reading this book and learning to do things the right way.

So i sat down to read and within an hr i was on page 100 (which is quite significant considering the book has just 270 pages). I realized that my knowledge of "basic" python was quite good, infact what i was really yearning for was indepth understanding of concepts and good practises and the book didn't quite provide this. That said it was wrong on my part to expect such topics from a book meant to be introductory text for python. That said the book in itself i quite good, it has small chapters and simple language and is a must read for early adopters of the language. I wish i knew about this book a year back.

I did come across a few feature i didn't know about, like:

1. dealing with binary streams, esp using struct.pack(...)

2. nested try/except. I had always hated the fact that you cannot use try-except-finally in a single construct but it never occured to me that i could achieve the same by nesting these clauses,eg.

try:
    try:
       ......
    except:
       .......
finally:
       .....

This ineffect gives me the same functionality as,

try:
    ....
except:
    .....
finally:
    ....

NOTE: this is now allowed in python 2.5

3. Another thing i came across (not in this book but i feel this is the right place to record it) is the technique to create a list from another list.

Earlier i used to do the following:

l = [list of objects with method 'id']
k = []
for obj in l:
    k.append(obj.id())

I always thought this was too much code to achieve too little. So after a bit of searching i discovered the following trick:
k = [obj.id() for obj in l]

Now i create new lists in a single line instead of 3, a 3X productivity improvement :D

Back to CODE!!

2007-04-17T00:04:00.001-04:00

    Since i have moved to US my job profile and lifestyle has taken a giant leap. I come from an engineering background where the ultimate fantasy in life is to work on some exciting piece of code. Our sense of adventure is limited to trying out a new design pattern or some new framework. We just love sitting in that dingy corner with our giant LCD screen and a powerful PC and churn out line after line of code which we are not even sure if anyone would use it.

    Then i moved to the realm of professional services. Now suddenly i was out of that dark corner and talking directly to customers (i.e. people who actually use the piece of code). It was a earth shattering experience because now i was actually selling what i wrote. This tiny bit of exposure suddenly opened up a lot of doors and answered some questions that i had always wondered about but never found an answer too.

    The biggest pleasure an engineer/developer can ever get is when someone actually uses a feature he/she developed. This takes us to the next question, how does one develop something useful? The answer is customer feedback and this is possible only through customer interaction, direct customer interaction. Strangely a lot of companies do not believe in this concept. Generally the engineering team is fed inputs by a product manager who is supposed to understand customer needs and then translate them in a language engineers understand. Although this sounds promising but there are a lot of dependencies attached to it, like the ability of the PM to correctly capture requirements and then explain the same to the related engineer. Thats expecting a little too much from one person and even if it does work i don't think its a long term solution. Ideally i would like to

involve the respective developer in the requirement gathering process, this way s/he know exactly whats expected out of him/her.

    Well i had such a chance a few days back. As part of services i had to go to a client site, gather requirements , design a solution for them and implement it to. I think this is one opportunity you would kill for. So currently i am quite excited with the turn of events and looking forward to going BACK TO CODE...............

Windows service stuck in "starting" mode

2007-03-28T11:41:00.001-04:00

I have come across this scenario quite a few times. When you try to start a service some how windows screws up and comes back with an error saying that the service could not be started and the reason for the failure (as expected) is useless. The worst part is that after failure the service still stays in the 'starting' mode for quite some time and there is nothing that you can do to stop it, i mean there is no option to force stop the service.

I am still trying to figure out some way to get the service to recover faster but can't seem to find any help, google is not helping me either. So the best solution for the moment is to wait till the service recovers on its own and then restart it or you reboot the OS itself (isn't that the universal fix for any problem on windows. ;))

Linux on Business Desktop

2007-02-17T18:46:00.000-05:00

I have always wanted to setup linux on my Business Desktop but was always scared to do it since there were so many dependencies on Windows systems primarily Outlook Exchange, Microsoft Office, connecting to WLANs and last but not the least .. TIME!

This article talks about similar issues and how this guy got around them. In short a good article to inspire you to take the plunge.

BTW incase you are wondering why one would want to move to Linux don't even bother reading this article.

WL 9 - configure node manager

2007-02-17T10:57:00.000-05:00

Good link on how to configure the Weblogic 9 Node Manager.

python debugging

2007-02-04T11:52:00.000-05:00

python debugging trick

Use the dir() function effectively to debug your python environment.

My first football game: Patriots Vs Chargers

2007-01-15T08:16:00.000-05:00

so i did make it to Boston without much fuss (offcourse ignoring the fact that i missed my connecting flight to Boston from NYC and had to get to LeGuardia on my own and catch the next one) but overall it was fun. Emirates is a good airline with pretty good service.

Anyways i'm not going to go ga-ga about my trip in this blog, infact this blog is gonna be about the game of American football i saw yesterday. Before we start i have a little confession to make, prior to yesterday i had never seen a football game and actually never had cared about one. Now since i am in the USA where football happens to be the most popular sport i thought i might as well get a quick tutorial on it. So we got together at a friends place and he gave me some education about the game. Now time for another confession, once you get the hang of the game it can be very interesting.

So my first game was Patriots Vs Chargers. I being in Boston was supporting New England by default and boy what a game it was. The best part of the game was the 4th quater. The patriots were down 13-21 and from that they equalled the game with the help of a touchdown and 2 bonus points (now thats quite gutsy offcourse they didn't have much choice). The game now was well poised and New England made the first move by scoring a 3, 24-21 in favour of the patriots. Now San Diego on the counter-attack, they make it to 40 yards in quick time. With just 7 secs on the clock its now or never, steps in the Kicker and takes a good looking shot at the ball, it flys high, its going in, oh boy its close and it swings in the air..... and misses by a wisker...its.....out. Oh ......god.........what .........an.......unbelievable......victory for.... the...... patriots!!!!!

I would say an amazing game to start my rendezvous with football. what say??

Reload modules in Python environment

2006-12-22T05:20:00.000-05:00

Problem:
You create a module and run it using the python interpreter. Now you modify this module and try to run it again, surprise surprise, the new changes are not reflected.

What really happens:
The python interpreter loads modules as and when they are used in a script. Once these modules are loaded they are cached in memory for reuse later. Now if you modify a pre-loaded module and try to run it, the interpreter does not bother loading it again as it already has a cached copy.

Solution:
One technique that i have used effectively for (indirectly) reloading the modules is to delete the module object from the cache. This forces the interpreter to reload the module when it executes the script again and you can test your new changes easily.

How its done:
The interpreter caches the module objects in a PyDictionary (a map) called the sys.modules. This map stores the module objects in the following format:
key : the fully qualified class/module name
value : the actual module object

The basic trick here is to delete the required object from this map and your jobs done.

Code:

if "<the fully qualified class/module name>" in sys.modules.keys():
del(sys.modules["<the fully qualified class/module name>"]

line 1 : test if the module exists in the cache
line 2 : actually remove the module from the map based on its key

eg.
Say, you want remove the module "com.test.testfile" from the cache.

if "com.test.testfile" in sys.modules.keys():
del(sys.modules["com.test.testfile"]

Put these lines of code after the import statements or before you make a reference to your changed module, this ensures that the module is reloaded before execution.

There may be better ways of reloading modules but i found this most effective when working with a system which contains a lot of scripts.

bug tracking tool

2006-12-05T12:42:00.000-05:00

right so the last 2 days i have been working on setting up a bug tracking tool for my boss. Some how i knew that one of these days the idea of acting smart was going to backfire. ;) ;) So here was my boss telling me how he was confident that i would help him out with setting up a bug tracking tool for his new project.

nways i got down to the task and did a bit of R&D on the different issue/bug tracking tools and here's what i found:

jira - if you have the cash, the best tool in the market

bugzilla - the king of open source and free tools, its heavily loaded but complex to setup, plus its written in perl

roundup - python based and quite good

But the ones i picked :

mantis - PHP based but simple to work with, its also called the unofficial 'light-weight' bugzilla

JTrac - Java based, not very impressive UI but ideal if your target audience is small. Best part is that its demo version is quite good. It has embedded jetty web-server and HSQLDB at the backend. You can be up and running in minutes, plus maintaining it is quite simple.

i'm sure you guessed what i used to impress my boss. Simple but working is still the flavour of the day. :)

linux memory profiling

2006-11-16T07:36:00.000-05:00

Few useful links are:

The linux how-to.
http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-mm/2003-03/msg00077.html

Tips to optimize linux mem usage.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2770

troubleshooting mem usage. covers various linux commands to find mem usage.
http://rimuhosting.com/howto/memory.jsp

info about 'top'.
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1445

trekking spree over the weekend

2006-11-15T13:59:00.000-05:00

My last weekend was quite an adventurous one.

On sat i went to bhimashankar. This was one place which was on my wish list for quite sometime coz i was under the impression that it was a nice place to go to. I mean so many people had spoken about it that i just wanted to check it out for my self. So on sat i did get there along with 2 of my office mates. It turns out that a lot of things said about bhimashankar is plain hype. The place is average considering its attractions viz. the shiva temple, the adjoining forest with its rich wildlife (although all i could see was hordes of butterflies and monkeys, thats it). Overall a nice place for a one day trip/picnic esp. during rainy seasons as the place would be covered with a thick blanket of green.

On sunday, i went trekking to kothaligad. This place is a long way from pune, infact its close to karjat and takes min 2/3 hrs to reach depending on the vehicle used. Since we took a (slow) bus, it took us, adding up all breaks and stops , approx 4 hrs to get there. But thats where the boring part ends. Getting on top of this fort comprises of one of the most amazing and strenous climbs. It takes on a avg 1-2 hrs to get on top of the fort. Excellent if you are trying to get that tummy in. At the end of the 2 hr climb my limbs were crying hoarse. There is not much to see in the for as such since it was just a storage house for food and water but the whole process of getting there is quite amazing. On the whole it was awesome fun and a welcome change from my routing lifestyle.

Looking forward to more trekking weekends from hence forth.

How to interview?

2006-09-07T06:37:00.000-04:00

    A good article on how to interview new candidates. Its much better that the numerous sites which give you a whole list of questions to ask right from whats 1+1 to what is cross-correlation. The basic idea is that you test a persons ability to solve problems,identify his approach, style of work, his eagerness to be discover new things, is he innovative, is he passionate about what he does, etc and not question him on hard facts which can be searched on the web in seconds.

    This article talks on similar lines. We want to recruit good enterprising personalities and not skill sets which will become obsolete in due time. Its easy to find skill sets but a challenge to find talented people and a bigger challenge is to retain them.

    More on the retaining stuff in a future blog.

firsts

2006-08-29T04:57:00.000-04:00

Firsts...

Computer Game: Spacewar
Registered Domain : symbolics.com

..... more later

Metcalfe's Law

2006-08-17T14:19:00.000-04:00

- Metcalfe's Law is expressed in two general ways:

1) The number of possible cross-connections in a network grow as the square of the number of computers in the network increases.

2) The community value of a network grows as the square of the number of its users increase.

The original statement from Robert M. Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, was apparently (according to one source):

"The power of the network increases exponentially by the number of computers connected to it. Therefore, every computer added to the network both uses it as a resource while adding resources in a spiral of increasing value and choice."

Metcalfe's Law is often cited as an explanation for the rapid growth of the Internet (or perhaps more especially for the World Wide Web on the Internet). Together, with Moore's Law about the rate at which computer power is accelerating, Metcalfe's Law can be used to explain the rising wave of information technology that we are riding into the 21st century.

India IT performance for the yr 05-06

2006-08-17T03:01:00.000-04:00

Indian software and backoffice industry generated $23.6 bln in fiscal 2005-2006 by ZDNet's ZDNet Research -- India's software and backoffice services industry recorded 33% growth in export revenue to $23.6 bln in the year to March 2006. This included $6.3 bln from services like call centres, payroll processing, claims management and high-end financial analytics. Including the domestic market, the sector expanded 31% on year to $29.6 bln. Overall software and services [...]

Life vs. Blogs....v2

2006-08-14T16:00:00.000-04:00

Well if you remember my earlier blog on life vs blogs, i had said that blogs don't let to edit things once blogged. Although this was true for first generation blogs, now days all blogger sites allow editing. I guess they realised that we being humans are so error prone that we always need that second chance. So much for comparison between life and blogs. :-(

Future of Networking: Human Area Network (HAN)

2006-07-24T15:39:00.000-04:00

The biggest challenges with wireless n/wing is that in multi-user scenarios its performance is quite abysmal, in fact the performance is inversely proportional to the no. of users i.e. as the no. of users increases the performance goes down. So how does one counter this limitation? Do we move back to wired commnunication? Didn't we just patronize wireless because wired n/ws are cumbursome to setup and manage plus the sight of zillions of cables is quite overwhelming. Also wired n/wing doesn't sound too well when we talk of 'Ubiquitous computing'.

Okay here's a hint, imagine if we could simulate wired communication with the only difference that the medium (i.e. the cables) is dynamic in its type of material (i.e. wood, water, pads, etc.) or is the user of the n/w itself (i.e. our body). Research is going on towards developing devices which could be connected simply by touching them or keeping them on a table or on a mat. This is the principle behind HAN or Human Area Network. Infact they are all set to launch prototypes. For a through understanding go thought the following site: redtacton

few wi-fi related keywords

2006-07-23T13:41:00.000-04:00

Wi-Fi - Wireless Fidelity (fidelity - accuracy of signal reproduction)

IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

IEEE 802.11 - IEEE standard for Wi-Fi or Wireless LAN (802 - founded in feb, 1980; 11 - 11th working group)

CSMA - Carrier Sense Multiple Access (senses the if the carrier is free for transmission and only then transmits data, reduces effective data rates to ~50% of max. capacity of standard)

Security:

1. WEP - Wired Equivalent Privacy, first attempt at secure wireless n/wing, good against casual snooping

2. WPA - Wi-Fi Protected Access, 2nd generation system to overcome the flaws of WEP

My rendezvous with Wireless technologies

2006-07-23T11:02:00.000-04:00

    I have always been intrigued with wireless networking and luckily my interests have always been well fed by unintentional events. e.g. i recently bought a compaq laptop (my first ever) which had wifi and bluetooth by default. Being a traditional desktop user these technologies were quite foreign to me and like a true rigid being i avoided adopting these technologies. But for how long??? Fortunately peer pressure forced me to take the plunge and this is what i was able to conjure:

   Not very surprisingly the first technology i embraced was 'Bluetooth'. Actually I am not sure why this was my first choice, may be coz blue is my favourate colour or maybe coz its the latest buzzword in mobile phones. I think later was more motivating. Well i got a friend's mobile phone which was bluetooth enabled and setup a quick n/w and transferred data between my laptop and his mobile phone. Its that simple! With this done i took a step forward and checked out all info on the net. Bluetooth is a promising technology but i was quite disappointed by its distance limitation, althought the idea of a cableless desktop is quite cool i.e. using bluetooth or infrared devices to replace the data and control buses in computers. Nways i moved on the Wi-fi.

   Now Wi-Fi was the real thriller. It did not have any distance limitations (offcourse using repeaters) and was more user-friendly or shall i say more networking friendly. What i mean here is, u could actually buy wi-fi components and setup a wireless network at home.
   My first experience with Wi-Fi was when i used my laptop for surfing in a wi-fi zone. The idea of comfortably sitting on a couch, drinking coffee and surfing was a real treat.
   My second experience was more meaningful and satisfying. Basically i wanted to backup a lot of data from my desktop to my laptop. After evaluating a lot of options i was particularly attracted towards the idea of setting up my own wireless n/w at home. So i went out shopping and bought a wireless usb adapter by linksys for my desktop. After struggling with it for 2 days i was finally able to setup an adhoc n/w and voila!!! Although this might have been the most expensive option but it was truly the most awesome one, worth every penny i spent.

LESSON LEARNT: 90% of the times we refuse to embrace a new technology because of our Laziness and not because of its demerits, so get up and get going!!

Italians won!!

2006-07-12T14:43:00.000-04:00

I know this is a bit late but THE ITALIANS WON THE WORLD CUP!!!!!!!!!! HURRAHHHHHH.......... and the Germans came 3rd HHUUUUURRRAAAAAAHHHHHHH !!!!

FIFA WC 06

2006-07-07T16:09:00.000-04:00

ok i know its been a long time since my last blog but u can't blame me for it. Blame the WC. Its been one of the best tournaments so far and if you saw the Germany Vs Italy game, phew..... can't imagine i have to wait another 4 yrs for this event to take place again. Nways there is still the final to be played and i got my eyes and heart set on the Azzuries. Go Italy go......

Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming

2006-05-27T06:37:00.000-04:00

A must read for all programmers!!!!

what the #$%# is wrong with the formatting??

2006-05-14T06:38:00.000-04:00

one thing that i would want to change now is the formatting of my previous post but i just can't....... ;)

Life vs. Blogs

2006-05-14T06:32:00.000-04:00

It’s unfair. What you blog cannot be unblogged. Although technically this is a miniscule task to solve I wonder why all blogger sites insist on not providing the delete or modify feature. I guess this is got something to do with the human attitude of wanting to go back and change things once they are done.

To think of it, blogging is almost like life, once done it cannot be changed!! There are so many things in life that you want to go back and change, may be for good or worse but you just can’t. Probably blogs try to emulate the same. They insist that what’s been posted once cannot be modified. This actually can be a good tool for introspection. People do a lot of things on the spur of the moment, right or wrong but at that moment they do things rashly, without thought and it’s only later when the moments long gone and the situation is way beyond control that they try to re-evaluate the implications of their actions.

So let’s try to use this tool to improve ourselves, let’s always try to understand the repercussions of all our actions and let’s work towards getting things right the first time around. Life doesn’t give you a second chance so easily, neither do blogs.

its 'marriage' and not 'marraige' or 'marrige'

2006-05-07T13:32:00.000-04:00

NOTE to Self:

1. Never write ur blogs when ur frustrated

2. Type slowly

3. Improve your spellings

4. Stop using copy-paste; they just propagate the error u made the first time

.... and lastly.....

5. Use spell check, that’s what it is designed for..... ;)

Marraiges

2006-05-07T13:02:00.000-04:00

    Today I had to attend a usual cliched marrige. When i got there i was, not so surprisingly, suffering the usual predicament: unknown people, mom introducing me to infinte amount of old people who could barely recognise me but were hyperexcited nonetheless, etc. One strange thing about the entire setup was the mass quantity of Nehru topi clad men, a little snooping around and it was revieled to me that the girl's dad was local politician. Hmmmm.... that explains!!! No wonder immediately after the garlands were exchanged these guys made a run to the food section and picked prime seats in the pangat . Losers!!!

    Nways, even though i hate politicians more than marraiges this is not the time or place to discuss them. Ok to continue my story, so i went on to the stage met the couple, cracked my usual jokes about newly married couples, et al. Down from there, i made a run for the food section ;) (hey thats the only interesting thing to do in such occasions). The plan was to have a quick lunch and get out of the place but plans are meant to be thwarted and thats what my mom did. She met a few other ladies she knew and they decided to chat till eternity.

    Finally after hours of prompting and making funny noises and faces my mom took the hint. Thankfuly after that we had a quick lunch, congratulated the parents, the couples and other hordes of people how directly or indirectly influenced the marraige and made a run.......

    A not so interesting expedition finally came to an end after 3 hrs...
    Long live the tradition of marraiges.....

testing performancing plugin for firefox

2006-05-03T03:12:00.000-04:00

Although i have been using a different plugin all this while for updating blogs even this plugin seems to be good enough. Actually the UI is much better.

Need to finalize on either one of these.

Mobile data card

2006-05-01T14:23:00.000-04:00

Today i got my Reliance Mobile Data card, another beauty of the wireless world. Frankly i used to get terribly frust when the lights used to go out in the afternoon on weekends. I mean whats the use of a laptop if you cannot browse the internet just because you don't have electricity to power your modem!!

Well now i can actually have some undisturbed browsing time, lights or nolights!!! Thenga to the MSEB!!

quick relook

2006-04-27T13:16:00.000-04:00

testing my resolve!! again!!

i am back!!

2006-04-27T12:58:00.000-04:00

ok so i am back!!!! Almost after a year!!! Yiiiiippppppppppyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!

I always knew that i was bad at writing down things, infact i am outright lazy, just can't motivate myself to sit and write stuff and my first attemp at writing blogs just proves that. Nways now i am back with renewed vigor and pledge to update my blog everyday (atleast i hope ;)).

So what brings me back to blog writing and makes me so confident that i will be able to update my blogs regularly. Well the difference is firefox and its amazing blogger plugin. I am totaly in love with firefox - the flexibility and customizability it provides through its numerous plugins is just fabulous. The latest addition to the my collection of plugins is the blogger extension "Deepest Sender". Although it has a wierd name but its quite awesome, the fact that i don't need to go to the website just makes my task easier. The integrated blogger tool is made just for lazy bums like me.

N'ways lets keep our fingers crossed and HAPPY BLOGGIN!!!

Extending utilities of java

2005-05-20T10:40:00.000-04:00

This is a good article although the auther doesn't seem to know much about the eclipse movement. With Eclipse all you need is the desire to code in java, the rest of the modalities are well taken care off.

N'ways enjoy the article!

The Java Extension Mechanism by Thomas Künneth -- Java has a huge collection of classes, but many projects need to call upon code outside of core Java, which leads to the question of where to store and how to load this code. Thomas Kunneth shows how Java's Extension Mechanism allows you to make new code available to all Java applications.

My first blog

2005-05-18T10:40:00.000-04:00

Well since this is my first blog i won't write much but just reflect over what i have just done (well if you are wondering about what i have just done, then -- MORON YOU JUST CREATED YOUR OWN BLOG!!!!!)