Life should be easy

I believe that the basic stuff should always be easy to do so that one can concentrate on advanced stuff. But look at even the basic stuff of life, you move around in night and you catch cold, you eat a little extra and you get fat. Just maintaining a healthy body is the toughest task of the world. Add to it the little hobbies you want to pursue and see how much effort one has to put in each.
I remember at one of those corporate sessions, I was asked what I would I change if I was god. I said, I would give people the ability to pursue what they want, freed from all the unwanted responsibilities of their life.
Most people don't even know what they want to pursue in life and which way their life is going. But I don't blame them. The complexity of life is not easy to handle.

Spot the messenger

I absolutely hate MSN messenger, and I use it only because of friends and office colleagues. I am just waiting for the day when msn and yahoo collaboration is complete so that I wouldn't have to use the stupid msn messenger.
Why do I hate it so much? As an example, today when I booted my PC, I saw this:

But I hadn't launched the messenger yet. How come I got logged on to msn without my knowing? Clicking on the popup, I got:


Trying spotting the messenger now in the taskbar/system tray. There is no icon of messenger. I didn't launch it. But still I am logged onto msn, the chat window is open. Knowing the looks (and checking the version), I know its Windows Messenger 4.7 that comes pre-installed with XP. The question is, first, why doesn't this Windows Messenger gets uninstalled when I installed MSN messenger 7.0? Why does MS windows keeps 2 copies of the same program. Second, if it will not uninstall automatically, why its there a manual way of uninstalling it. I have tried using "Add/Remove Windows Component" and what not, but the fact is, it will not uninstall itself, it will log you on without your knowing as soon as you get connected to internet thereby wasting your bandwidth and invading your privacy, and it will make you and your PC susceptible to chat and advertisement attacks.

This is the exact reason why I hate it (and why I haven't upgraded to msn messenger 7.5). So I found this great tool to remove Windows Messenger (though it still have msn messenger 7.0 installed due to friends/colleagues) .

BTW, http://messenger.msn.com doesn't work on firefox due to poor conformity to web standards.

Firefox 1.5 review

Okay, I installed Firefox 1.5, looks good and most of my extensions worked as well. And the ones that don't work, it is showing them as disabled so that I don't lose track of them. There is also an find update option on each extension so that if a future release of the extension is compatible with it, it would be downloaded and installed. I also found this useful link to tweak Gcache extension to work with it.

First impressions, I didn't find much difference between the older version and this. The options screen has changed and it has this really cool setting of "Force links that open windows to open in new tabs". I always find it annoying when clicking on a link opens up a new Firefox window. I liked the way opera had everything contained in itself. Now firefox supports the same feature.

Other than this there is nothing tangible that I can point out, and I still have to figure out some of the extensions stuff, but the web surfing just seems cooler ;-)

Update: Jus tnoticed that upgrading made it lose the search engines that I added. Also, there is no direct way of deleting those search engines (there is an extension though, but I am feeling lazy to google right now)

My Firefox Extensions

This is my last post using Firefox 1.0.x. Firefox 1.5 is out and I will waste no time to install it. Only thing I am skeptical about is whether all the extensions I use will work. So I am listing all the extensions here for now. I'll update the post to add descriptions of each extension later.

1. Flashgot - recommended. I use it with Free Download Manager.
2. Disable Targets for Downloads
3. GreaseMonkey
4. View Rendered Source Chart
5. View Formatted Source
6. Google toolbar for Firefox - recommended.
7. Tamper Data.
8. StumbleUpon
9. Gcache.
10. BookmarksHome
11. SessionSaver - heavily recommended.
12. Yahoo Toolbar
13. ScrapBook - recommended for offline users.
14. FasterFox
15. BugMeNot
16. Web Developer
17. FlagFox.
18. Adblock Plus

I have added recommended to extensions that I simply can't live without. This list and descriptions are likely to change though. Firefox 1.5, here I come.

Honesty and Pragmatism

As a child, we are taught to be honest, starting with all those stories of how a child admitted his mistake and was not punished ... Then as you grow up, you get to know how all this is termed foolish by the pragmatic world. Then you come to know that had the child not admitted his mistake, he would have anyways not got punished. You understand its better to give Rs. 50 to the traffic cop to avoid challan. And I am not talking being 'fraudi' here, just pragmatic.

I fail to understand why teach stuff which one has to unlearn anyways? Why should a parent teach something to his kid which neither he follows nor would he want his kid to follow in future?

Sites that should go ajax

Ajax is the latest buzzword in web based applications and after watching the wonder applications created out of it, I fully understand why. I still remember when I first saw google suggest and gmail, I had long discussions with my tech friends trying to figure out how they did it.
While there are lots of products getting developed on this from Web based IM clients to Complete Web Based Office suites, I have a few sites in mind that would be ideal candidates for getting re-designed using ajax.

1. Live Cricket Score sites - Site gets refreshed after every ball being bowled and millions hitting the site and refreshing their browser trying to view the latest score. The kind of load these sites handle can be guessed by the fact that corporate internet connection is much slower on the cricket match day and companies like infosys have an intranet site to display the score (even that overloads) ... My point is ... If its just the score and a 1 line commentary that is updating every min, why refresh the whole browser and fetch non-changing information? If the request that currently fetched 100 kb from the server is made to fetch only 30 kb, the load would be much less.


2. Admin Consoles of Application Servers like Weblogic - Such console provide lots of thick client type functionality and also refresh the browser a lot for showing the current status of various stuff. All those refreshes can be avoided and the interface would be much more better


3. Siebel type applications - Avoid all that java stuff. Clean interface is the key

As and when I get more ideas, I would be posting it here. As of now, try Meebo, a web based IM client.

Indian official entry to Oscar is Paheli

I just couldn't believe my ears. When I wrote this post, not in my dreams had I thought that Black would not even be nominated for the coveted oscar. Anyone and his dog knows that paheli cannot win the oscar.
I really don't know what happens in those closed doors and I really cannot claim myself as an art critique but I certainly can call myself heart-broken as a Big B masterpiece goes down the drain.

Firefox extension: Session Saver

It was december 2004 when I first said that "Firefox Rocks". And its still rocking. In this same post, I mentioned the need of "saving the last open windows on exit" feature that I so much loved in Opera. Finally there is an extension that does exactly what I want.

SessionSaver restores your browser -exactly- as you left it, every startup, every time. Not even a crash will phase it.

Though still in early phases, works pretty well. Make sure to install from the forum link that is given at the end of the page. Only issue is that I had to disable LiveHttpHeaders extension. I don't use that extension anyways.

Alonso is the new F1 champion

Ya I know I am always late in announcing news ... but the era of Michael Schumacher seems to come to an end. Alonso has become the youngest driver ever to become the F1 champion despite late but stiff competition from Raikkonen.
I wonder what Ashin would say on this.

Being Vulnerable

The game of bridge has this concept of vulnerability ... As soon as you win a game, you become vulnerable, so stakes for winning and losing the next game increase, i.e. you get more points if you win a subsequent game and you lose much more if you lose.
Life is more of an opposite ... here stakes go high when you lose something ... One big loss and you lose lots of confidence and every single subsequent loss, however small it might be, makes you lose even more confidence ... And then it starts reflecting in other stuff that is not related to the original loss.
I was taught in a soft skill training that emotions arising due to one issue shouldn't be taken out on something unrelated ... we may make ourselves strong enough to do that ... But though there may not be a direct impact, it certainly leaves me vulnerable.

iPod nano launched

Its amazing how fast things change ... Apple launched iPod nano today which is iPod mini + colour screen + photo storage + even smaller and slimmer + same price.

These guys have even removed the link to iPod mini from the website. I don't feel that proud anymore.

Proud owner of an iPod Mini

Ok .. late again in posting .. but VP engineering was on visit last week and he gifted a sleek iPod mini to every developer here. Thanks Bob :-)

Now I know why this is one of the most popular gadget in the planet. The design is sleek and sexy, the UI is amazingly intuitive and simple. And its integration with a computer using iTunes is amazingly cool ... I am impressed

3 years of software engineering

ok I am pretty late. Its 3 years and 11 days now :-). Seems only yesterday when I wrote this post.
Professionally, this year has been an excellent one and I have been able to achieve a few things that I had planned at the start of my career but seemed distant last year.
Personally, a different story. But let me tell that some other day.

Geeky Gift

A elderly person going to meet a relative is likely to carry sweets with him. A boy going to meet a girl is likely to carry chocolates. What would a geek carry when going to meet another geeky friend.
The other day, A friend of mine got me 2 uncommon mp3s in a flash drive :)

24 hrs of non-internet bewilderness

Due to heavy rains (37 inches) in mumbai in the past 24 hrs, most of the mumbai based ISPs were unable to provide internet services yesterday.
Sitting in office for the whole day without internet can be frustating to a software engineer. It is days like this when you get to know how much connectivity and networking the internet has bought in our lives. Bill Payments, Bank transactions, giving and taking tech/non-tech consultancy to friends, and college style timepass in case one is getting bored :-).

I have not yet been able to write a post on the merits/de-merits of messenger and my take on it getting banned in software companies, but just to think how many phone calls it saves me everyday and how it non-intrusively works as a phone, voice mail, sms service alongwith capabilities of virtual meetings, discussions ... non-intrusive being the keyword, it certainly brings lots of buisness value to a software company.
Just to counter the point that messenger decreases employee productivity, think how much productivity is lost when you are in a meeting and the phone rings every minute. Cause phones are intrusive, there is no way out but to pick them even if they are low priority.
Of course there are downsides, but that is analogous to the dialogue by Om Puri in Maachis "maachis ki tili, khana bhi paka sakti hai aur ghar bhi jala sakti hai"

internet in its full form is a necessity in today's world and some company cannot simply take it away from an employee on security/bandwidth or "employee productivity" concerns.

Firefox market share up to 10%

Triumph of the Open Source :) ... While most open source software has been confined to the geeks till now, this killer app is actually reaching the masses. After all, its not everyday that a M$ product loses its 10% market share to an opensource freeware.

Good Trip, New Place

The vacations are over. It had been a long time since I last went for an outing. These have been pretty good vacations in that respect.

Its seriously amazing to see the what all people can do for religion here. 12 km uphill and another 12 km back, >24hrs continuous, no sleep and people > 60 yrs doing all this stuff that even young trekkers will think once before stepping into. Anyways, it was lot of fun with beautiful landscapes to view enroute and full satisfaction of getting mata's darshan.

To complete the change, I joined the new office today. Its pretty interesting working in a place like this, with employees number in single digit. Its a completely different experience and I feel that life is going to change a lot in next few months.

Time for Change

Its time for another career move. I remember more than an year ago when I was looking for a change, I had this huge discussion with a HR manager who thought that I do not really like to stick with a company for long. At that time, looking for a 3rd change in 2 years, I really couldn't blame her for thinking like that. My arguement at that point of time was that getting into the industry in a time when US and India were facing their biggest slump, I really didn't have much choice but to stick with whatever I had.

Today, getting prepared for my 4th change, my track record can still make any HR manager raise the same questions. However, I have hopes that the kind of profile I have been looking for all these years is finally coming along.
I have never been more optimistic and I hope things go as I want this time.

Tomorrow would be my last day in this office and then I would be off the technical world for a week. A 16km up the hill trip to Vaishno Devi awaits me next weekend and a new office after that.

Copy -> Brain -> Paste

People say that all that software engineers do is "Copy Paste". Here's a real life example why the Brain component is important.
I once wrote a code to get some data and cache it to make second time retrieval faster. Here's what the code for retrieval looked like that I wrote:

public ShowDetail getShowDesc(String territoryId,String showId) {
HashMap cmap = (HashMap)cache.get("somekey");
if(cmap==null) {
cmap = new HashMap();
}
ShowDetail showDesc = (ShowDetail) cmap.get(showId);
if(showDesc == null) {
logger.debug(showId+" not found in Cache ... Getting from Webservice");
showDesc = pwm.getShowDetail(territoryId,showId);
if(showDesc != null) {
cmap.put(showId,showDesc);
cache.put("somekey",cmap);
}
}
return showDesc;
}

Basically checking if the data exists in cache, if not, getting it from webservice and putting in cache.
Another fella needed to reuse the entire code (translation: copy paste everything). He probably didn't understand the concept of cache, or probably he did understand but didn't want to use it. Whatever be the case, here's the code that finally came out:

public ShowDetail getShowDesc(String territoryId,String showId) {
HashMap cmap = null;
if(cmap==null) {
cmap = new HashMap();
}
ShowDetail showDesc = (ShowDetail) cmap.get(showId);
if(showDesc == null) {
log.debug(showId+" not found in Cache ... Getting from Webservice");
showDesc = pwm.getShowDetail(territoryId,showId);
}
return showDesc;
}

The first 2 lines itself are amusing enough for starters. I used to laugh on such things some time back, but it not funny anymore.

Bunti aur Babli

Yeh world hai na world, isme do tarah ke log hote hai. Ek jo bunti aur babli ek hi baar dekhte hai aur dusre jo bunti aur babli ek se jyada baar dekhte hai. Hum dusro main se hai.

I enjoyed it more the second time. Why ? Because I knew by that time that movie is pure comedy and even the supposedly thrilling sequences are also comedy.
The movie doesn't get boring even for a minute. If I break the movie into infinite parts of infinitesimal frames and rate each frame, each of them will get atleast a "decent" rating.

The weak part? Lack of details. The movie has too many cases due to which each case doesn't get enough details for viewer to understand how exactly they did it. This also made me wonder why do they become so popular by interval that every newspaper is publishing their news. The cases lacks the certain spark to distinguish them from ordinary thugs.
Secondly, the lack of thrills. bunti and babli do not actually live on the edge. Even though Big B himself is behind them, their life is pretty easy most of the time. Wasn't really expected.

However, its being a long long time since I saw "housefull" in the theatres in jaipur and all three bunti, babli and DCP dasrath deserve the credit for their fine performances.

Echoing my thoughts

What is more important? Writing well or conveying thoughts. People who write well get all the laurels but the purpose here is the the latter, hence I would simply point to this post and say that I couldn't agree more.

I remember a question asked to me in an interview when I was a fresher. He asked "Why do you want to be a software engineer?"
I answered "Because I like Computer Science, or mathematics in general. I like it because it has straightforward equations for every scenario, not dependent on physical or environmental factors. Things are much more clear and reliable in that sense."
He responded "That seems untrue as one never knows when a piece of code will break while a building once made lasts for more than 100 years."
My reasoning "Code only behave the way it is written. It cannot behave in any other way depending upon the heat or coolness of the weather or simply because its not in the mood."

My Google

Check this out. Google is offering a personalized page similar to My Yahoo. I don't want to get into the "Google is not a portal" kind of debate right now, but what's most amazing about the site is yet again the "UI".
This has a drag-and-drop portlets functionality. Just add all the portlets you want to view and then just drag and drop wherever you want to place it.

Remembering Gmail's UI, How is it that only Google applications provide these amazing out-of-the-box kind of UI functionality that others are not able to imitate?

Yahoo Messenger 7 Beta launched

The latest beta of yahoo messenger is out and I decided to give it a shot.

I remember trying out the yahoo messenger 6 beta last year when yahoo gave a completely new look and feel to their messenger and added a lot of features. Apart from the stealth setting feature which I found potentially useful, it was a disappointment. Unstable in terms of memory usage, sluggish responses especially when starting (I started it from taskbar, the whole taskbar used to hang for sometime till it started) and when signing out.

This beta however, though boasts of only few new features, is much more better with instant responses. My taskbar doesn't hang anymore, starting and signing out is done in a flash and the overall UI of the application is improved with fonts in the conversation window being better now to say the least. Also, the message archive can also show nicknames instead of yahoo id as per your preference setting.

The biggest USP as claimed for this release is the PC-to-PC Call feature, which is basically similar to the voice chat feature provided earlier, just that instead of the voice chat button, there is now a call button similar to what skype offers. The additional feature here is that one can now also leave offline voice messages. However, Yahoo has made it clear that unlike skype, which offers PC-phone calls, yahoo will stick to PC-PC calls.
Currently all the new features yahoo offers can be used only if both sides has the latest version, which is not the case with me, so with feature testing not possible for me, I would vote thumbs up for the better responsiveness and thumbs above average for better UI.

Maths is simple

Recently one of my friends had this status line on his yahoo messenger
"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is. "
A little googling and I got this Math Quotes site that told me that this comment is from John Louis von Neumann, the guy who gave the Von Neumann architecture.
This is something I can totally relate to, as I guess would most of my engineer friends. Handling a software engineering job is the easier part of life.

A birthday and 2 movies

Going by my recent posting frequency, my life should have been either too boring or too busy to blog. On the contrary, life has been eventful in a good sense since some time with lots of events happening in the last few days.

It all started with a fantastic birthday on 1st, followed by back to back movies on 2nd and the 3rd. I got the maximum no of wishes this time around, from both family and friends (also got maximum no of gifts this time ;-) ). Considering the kind of introvert guy I am, its absolutely amazing to see how much networks I have got just because of the iitian tag. This also makes me notice how networking sites like orkut would become more and more important to lives.

Watched "XXX-2" on 2nd and "Mumbai Express" on 3rd. Movies of completely different genre, Both have a common "lacking great performance by lead actor". Ice Cube in XXX-2 had no sense of dialogue delivery while Kamal Hassan, though no doubt a great actor, do not have that kind of quality when it comes to comedy. His not-so-good hindi is also a big hindrance. I would still give both movies an average rating.

Another interesting incident that happened on 2nd was the lost and found of my mobile phone. I forgot my mobile on the restaurant table only to find half an hour later that it was missing. I had no hopes of getting it back but to my surprise, I got a call another half and hour later from a guy who took it to his home. I have been on a lucky streak after a long long time and I am enjoying it to the fullest.

Gmail shows "Who's Boss"

I was surprised to see when checking my GMail account. Is this another April Fool joke. No this isn't, as it wasn't when google launched Gmail on 1st April last year providing 1 GB of email space, virtually unthinkable at that time. Today, Gmail has increased its storage to more than double.
While other email providers are still fighting over the storage, with yahoo recently announcing to increase its free email storage space to 1 GB (don't remember the link to the article :( ),Gmail has made it such a trivial thing.
Gmail adheres to its philosophy of unlimited storage and proves it yet again. No wonder I am a fan.

Update: Here's the link to Yahoo's Announcement.

"Sanjay Goel" On Google

Well, nothing much to be crazy about, but now I can tell my friends to search my name in google to get to my blog ;-).
Due to some unknown reason, google doesn't cache the individual links on this blog and sometimes even this main page is not cached.
Hence if the search results change later, I have atleast one proof ;-)

Tweaking Firefox

Just came across this link to the mozilla forum which discusses about various firefox tweaks for improving its performance.
If you find it too long and bloated to read, you are not alone, so did I. But hey, here is this really handy utility Firetune, that would do all this for you.
I just ran it and selected the "Fast Computer, Fast Connection" option for my office pc and my firefox is now noticeably faster.
I always like this line "Your favourite application just got better ;)"

Jab main chota bachcha tha

This picture was taken during my first year house day function. Besides me, gullu, singla, sandy, suchit, bansal, nirjhar, makhmoor and dasa are part of it.
I wasn't the smartest of guys at that time, but what's the big deal, neither am I now :D .
Finally I have been able to scan all the college time pictures of which I have been the sole owner till now.

Boy who topped NASA

Just can't stop laughing on this ... it certainly happens only in India ;-) ... The amazing part is that even an Italian newspaper Repubblica.it published this.
btw, this guy anil writes well :-).

Tapestry working now

The Dilbert rss feed is working again ... thank goodness ... Looks like I reached on a conclusion a bit too early, though I thought that 5 days of downtime should be enough for that.

There are a lot of feeds offered by tapestry, but the ones I read are
Dilbert
Peanuts
Wizard of Id
B.C.

All these links will open in a rss aggregator. If you don't have one, try Abilon.

Update: Looks like the above link to abilon is broken right now. This one is working and has better description.

Dilbert RSS Feed not working

There used to be a tapestry which looks like this. It provided rss feeds to various comics, most notable being Dilbert. But the link is broken since Feb 20. Some google search reveals a Feb 15 post in Boing Boing

In a moment of mindboggling, unreasonable blinkered pig-ignorance, United Syndicate has decided that this somehow constitutes an infringement of its copyright -- that's right, reading an RSS feed of their stuff, using Internet Explorer, violates their copyright. They've nastygrammed the creator of Comics for Media Center and he's shut his project down

Here's another post by Chris

RSS supporters, watch out. The feed you are reading might be next.

Looks like tapestry has also fallen victim to United Media. I am not a happy man today.

Update: this blockquote thing is not working as expected. Will fix it later.

Black

Watched Black over the weekend. This movie certainly is worth the hype that has been created around it. Great storyline, brilliant performances by everyone, the most notable one being from amitabh. Never throughout the movie I felt that amitabh is actually acting out a teacher. Talk about being natural, this is the best one can see.
No bollywood movie in recent times would come even close to it. Infact, I am wondering if this could be the first oscar for bollywood. Apart from the great performances, the movie is based on a christian family and has lots of dialogues in english which the hollywood jury can relate to easily.

Statutory warning: this movie has caused tears in the eyes of many people who I thought were not so sensitive.

Gmail Invites

Just in case you still need a gmail account, go to this site, it has over a million invites available. I don't know why gmail is still not public, when practically anyone can open account in it now.

Tools: Image Viewer

Mirror mirror on the wall,
which is the best image viewer of them all
No two minds about this, its irfanview.

This killer app has everything that a non-graphic professional will ever need in his life. Support for every image format on earth, ability to convert between various image types, resize, resample, crop, batch resize, batch rename, reducing colours (changing to greyscale etc.), scanner support, all this and more packed in a meagre 800 Kb setup. Try opening any large image file, and you will know why this freeware gives any commercial tool like acd see a run for money.

Continuing on my purpose of blog post, I have decided to share information about some of the software tools I use that may be useful to others. This post is the first in this regards, All such posts will have a title starting with "Tools:"

Narain on F1 circuit

I know I am late in announcing this, but that doesn't belittle the feat of this man. This Formula One season would be extra special to me, I wish I could listen to Ashin's comments on this :-)

A lost purpose

So far, most of my posts here have been random ramblings. This makes me think what exactly did I have in mind when I started this blog. Or did I even have anything in mind at all.

The title says it all. I have this philosophy of Preach and Learn (which is slightly different from the learn and preach philosophy). I am usually a very confident guy thinking that everything I say is correct to the fullest extent. So, as per the philosophy, I wanted to share all the knowledge I have. While "Omniscience" is the ultimate goal, the primary purpose of the blog is to share whatever little I know.

However, my confidence has been shaking of late making this blog failing on its purpose. The only posts that I could qualify to an extent in tune with the blog were those few movie reviews I wrote long ago. However, watching just 3 movies in past 3-4 months certainly explains the lack of such reviews of late.

Now, I need to re-group my confidence and wish to give this blog back its lost purpose. I have certain plans, lets see.

Posts that could have been here

This has happened a lot many times* now. I start writing a post, getting lost in between and end up either deleting it or closing the browser by accident.

While I feel sorry about those posts now, this indicate the privacy issues I have been thinking on lately. This blog ,even though it has a limited audience, is a public place and anything I write could be screened by someone to make judgments on my personality. Considering the fact that I am not a good writer, infact never been a writer at any place apart from this, this does makes me feel insecure.
Agreeing with Gullu's Biased Estimator post, I feel that there is a mood associated with blogging. Blogs only reflect this mood of the author and this certainly is not his true identity.

* My blogging frequency is less than 5 posts a month. Hence, if an event happens more than once or twice in 2-3 weeks, that qualifies as a "lot of times" to me.

Love

I have been an observer to lot of love affairs that ended up in a breakup. Everyone seems to convey the message, "Don't get into it or else risk ruining a critical phase of your life". That critical phase when you setup your career, fulfil many personal and professional goals.

I would certainly like to know what was in god's mind when he gave this feeling of love and attraction to humans.

To be on the positive side, it's heartening to see that some of the cases do have a happy ending (actually beginning :) . Once such case is having a happy beginning next month and I wish him happy till the end.