→ Audi – "Beauty in Engineering"

Web Application Development with Clojure – Part 3 January 31, 2012

Continuing with previous series of blog posts, in this third part we'll learn how to load some test data using clojure-yaml. After loading the test data, we'll explore how to create a simple template using enlive and render the home page for our Clog - blog. Make sure you checkout Part 1 and Part 2 as well. Read more – ‘Web Application Development with Clojure – Part 3’.

Photo: Muffins with Raisins January 22, 2012

Read more – ‘Photo: Muffins with Raisins’.

My super cool workplace at Lunatech January 19, 2012

In my 10 years of programming career, Lunatech is probably the best company to work with. Herman Miller Aeron: Ultimate Programmer’s Chair Nerf Recon CS-6 with N-Strike Darts: For fun times. 17″ Mac Book Pro with 8GB RAM, SSD running Emacs in Full Screen: Ultimate Programmer’s Computer The Joy of Clojure: The book for Ultimate [...] Read more – ‘My super cool workplace at Lunatech’.

Web Application Development with Clojure – Part 2 January 17, 2012

This post is part of the Web Application Development with Clojure tutorial. You may want to read the previous posts before continuing with this post. Part 1: Project Setup Part 2: Data model definition with Lobos and Korma Part 3: Loading Fixures with clj-yaml and HTML Templating with Enlive Updated: 31st January, 2012 – Renamed [...] Read more – ‘Web Application Development with Clojure – Part 2’.

→ The Rise of the New Groupthink January 15, 2012

To harness the energy that fuels both these drives, we need to move beyond the New Groupthink and embrace a more nuanced approach to creativity and learning. Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private spaces when they want to be alone. Our schools should teach children to [...] Read more – ‘→ The Rise of the New Groupthink’.

Photo: Veggies January 12, 2012

Introduction

JMX or Java Management eXtensions gives you the ability to manage programs remotely. I've been working on JMX in one of the SOA application. I would like to share how my first program in JMX has been written and deployed onto JBoss. The MBeans are also know as Platform MBeans (MBeans - Management Beans). You can use JMX to remotely invoke the function on an object. In layman terms, JMX MBeans can be used as "Remote Control" for the "Object that implements the MBean". Using the MBean the object's operations can be invoked remotely. The JBoss application server has been constructed over a microkernel that uses JMX specification. Every service JBoss provides is an MBean or collection of MBeans. Different kinds of MBeans and notifications are not covered in this article. This article just explains two examples: The plain MBean (HelloWorld), and creating and deploying MBean in the JBoss as an SAR (Service Archive). Read more – ‘JMX HelloWorld’.

"People are Idiots" – (Also Quark Exec Bio Page changes suddenly) October 6, 2005

I started reading "The Dilbert Principle". The first essay proposes the obvious fact: "People are idiots. Life is just too complicated to be smart at all times". Everyone in this world learns lessons, at the expense of his or other's experiences. But the most important thing is being "learned" all the time. As Scott says: "Idiocy is a condition we slip into many times a day". As I was reading the book, I find 100% real world examples of the idiocy at work place. One particular part I thoroughly enjoyed was "Ten great lies of management". Personally I experienced these lies: "I have an open-door policy", a.ka. you can walk into my cabin anytime, and talk to me. I fell for this lie, and walked into the MD's room. And the response I got: "What do you think of yourself? How the hell you can think you can directly walk into the Managing Director's room". I thought he had a Open-Door policy. "You could earn money under the new plan", a.k.a we'll give you X.S.O.Ps for your performance. You can replace the X with A-Z and even greek letters. Personally I think real-good-programmers care a heck about their financial position. They want to make good software, and make the world a better place to live. They dont look for "X-SOP"s.

"We don't shoot the messenger", a.k.a Be open and talk to me about your issues.I fell for this too, and I questioned about the dangerously alarming level of technical competency pervasive at all levels. I got a Question in response to my Question :"What do you mean by technical competency?". Positively hilarious. I still think about my heart beat rate when I talked about it, becuase at the corner of my heart I was having fear that am I competent enough to question like this? But I got the answer: I was damn "right". I promised to myself, that I will keep my "learned" state of my lessons, and make sure that the very moment the idiocy gets into my mind to that level, I'll voluntarily take retirement from programming.

In other observations, from the Quark website the name of the executive suddenly disappeared from the executive bios page. Here are the links for the old Page and the brand brand new page.

Old	New

High morale boost for me and ofcourse another lesson to learn as well. Thanks. Read more – ‘"People are Idiots" – (Also Quark Exec Bio Page changes suddenly)’.

The Dilbert Principle October 5, 2005

A cubicle's eye view of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace afflictions Read more – ‘The Dilbert Principle’.

Orchid Square – Naivadyam October 4, 2005

Today in the evening I went to Naivadyam at Orchid square, Sushant Lok. I'd a Navraatri special south indian thali. The ambience of the restaurant was very good, back ground with karnatic voilin music and all the serving people dressed in south indian dhoti. The food was very good. It reminded me of the restaurant called Kuchipudi in Hyderabad. The "rasam" (soup) was really good. I'd a good look around here today. Now I'm starting to like gurgaon more. I'm searching for a good house in Sushant lok, its very good place to stay and near to all the malls and good eating joints. And almost similar to Chandigarh. I hope I'll be able to get a house by the end of this week. Its a little heavy on the pocket, but I'm not going to live forever. So I would like to stay at a good place.

Read more – ‘Orchid Square – Naivadyam’.

Google and Sun – The Web 2.0 Office ?

Just a week ago, I was discussing with my colleague at Quark about the Web 2.0 and how the new product ideas can replace the entire Desktops/Laptops with network. We were even imagining creating a good product. Even before we finalized and started out with the product, Google and Sun stole my idea :) Here are the links for the next gen Web Office. I can Imagine how its going to be. But atleast I find my idea to be valuable and going to see my dream product very soon from google. Now I need to think for another idea in my quest to take over the world. I think sun's long wait to overtake Microsoft is over. I'm also waiting for the Web 2.0 conference. Let me see what else will come out after that.

Internet is buzzing about the new product to be launched by the Google/Sun or how they are going to collaborate and re-invent the world wide web. Google and Sun bring StarOffice to Web Google and Sun to join forces in secret project to be announced ...
But Motley Fool has another opinion : Google finally goofs up. They feel that collaborating with Sun and competing against Microsoft Office which has nearly 10 times userbase, is simply "fool"ish. On second thoughts, I'm also feeling like, why google selected StarOffice, instead of leveraging the OpenOffice ? Is this decision influenced by the people who transitioned from Sun to Google? But the ultimate question is "Is Microsoft ready with the answer?". Let us see.

Induction – Injection

Why is "induction" in almost every company is painful like "injection" ? The basic problem with any group of people is resistance to change. No one likes changes and likes to change. But change is inevitable. The biggest problem with a group when a new person comes in, is to provide a way for smoother integration with themselves. All my "induction" experiences have been painful, because they apparently don't like the idea of some one else coming in and taking charge.

When a new person joins a team, who should take the responsibily of providing a smoother integration with the team ? I guess its the responsibiliy of the team lead to make sure that the new guy jells in properly with the others, otherwise, he will feel insecure and deserted, staring at the monitor all the time. Even the most out-speaking guy can also find it difficult to directly interact with a new Team of people. But sometimes, the one who joins should be more pro-active and get in touch with every one so that they can undestand that he's not a "threat". Why humans hate to change? because every one feels insecure when something changes, and thinks that "change" is a "threat". For a team the "fear of change" is a "threat" not the change itself. Wherever you go you find same kind of people, reluctant to accept the new guy into team. I understand that it takes time. Let me see what more I can learn. If you were to start a company how would you resolve the induction problem so that the new guy can integrate seamlessly and effortlessly with the team he supposed to join? Read more – ‘Induction – Injection’.

Life with background music

Gurgaon seems to be a good place to live. The best thing is the FM radio, which I can listen anywhere using my mobile phone. Seems like life suddenly got background music. Yesterday, I went to bikanerwaala at Vaatika. I'd a south indian platter and American Banana Split. South Indian Platter was good - Two Idlis, Two Vada, One Masala Dosa, One Oninon Uttappam. The best thing is the south indian food tasted like really "south indian" :) The ambience was also good. Today evening I'm going to search for room with help of a localite. (Dev, thanks for your help, incase I find it difficult, will certainly bother you!).

I'm going to stay till weekend at the Sushant Lok, after that I need to shift to my rented accommodation. I've lost the habit of living in cities. When some one at work telling me that a good houses will be available at 15Kms from the office, I was feeling like "Oh my God!". But back when I was in Hyd I used to travel 22Kms by city bus. Chandigarh spoiled my living-in-a-city skill. Once I settle down, I need to re-evaluate and re-schedule my goals. I got call from Xerox saying that they'll match my other offers in CTC. I really wanted to be at Xerox since they have much interesting and technically challenging projects. But it was too late.

Read more – ‘Life with background music’.

Live From Gurgaon October 3, 2005

I came yesterday in the evening to Gurgaon. It was hard to leave chandigarh. I'll be missing the place and environment. I started in the afternoon by bus to Gurgaon, reached by 8pm in the evening. I've got accommodation at The Nest at Sushant Lok. Once I reached the guest house, it didn't seem to me that I was missing chandigarh. Sushant lok is a good place, kind of colony. Looking very good. In the morning I enquired about house for rent, it seems I cannot get any good house for Rs.5-6K. Need to pull up till 8K. That's heavy, but I prefer being in a good location. Let me see where I end up. Today I reached office at 9:30 in the morning, finished the formalities of joining and all. And got the computer with net connection by 11:30am. Hmm .. at Quark it took 15 days for getting a computer. Need to find out what exactly my work is, since not being allocated to the PM yet. I think it will be done by today evening. More later. Read more – ‘Live From Gurgaon’.

Last Day at Quark September 29, 2005

Effective EOB today, I'm no longer with Quark. I'm going to join Nagarro Software Pvt Ltd, as Associate Technical Leader. Everything else will be the same! Read more – ‘Last Day at Quark’.

Open Source Download Manager

Tired of using Ad-supported bloated download managers? Try TrueDownloader. Its a GPL'd Open Source Download Manager. You can download the VB/VC++ source code as well from the same site. I got rid of DAP (Download Accelerator Pro). Its supported by ads and very slow. TrueDownloader is way faster and better and simpler.
Read more – ‘Open Source Download Manager’.

NetBeans 5.0 Beta September 28, 2005

NetBeans Java IDE 5.0 beta is released . New Features include:

Comprehensive support for developing IDE Module Plugins and rich client applications based on the NetBeans Platform.
New intuitive GUI builder Matisse.
New and redesigned CVS support.
Weblogic 9 and JBoss 4 support.
Editor enhancements.

Checkout the full feature list here. I'm currently downloading the beta, more on the IDE features, once I start using it.

Passion for programming

The fundamental quality of any programmer is passion and care about his/her craft. Unless you have passion for the code you are writing you can’t build the best possible software. Take challenges; try something new, every week, if not everyday. Passion drives you to be the best. What we lack is commitment and passion to build the world class product. Most of the tools we use everyday are built by a team which has less than 5 members. Compare yourself with world. There are so many ways for this now a days, participate in a coding competition. Take programming challenges at websites. As a software company, we don’t need people who can swim better, or who can keep the ball on the ping pong table. We need people who can write fastest algorithms. We need people who are smart and get the things done. We don’t need just “smart” people. They’re carried away by the overwhelming enthusiasm in 20 things and try to do all of them. We don’t need people who get things done. They complete the work without finding a “smarter” way to do it. We need focused, passionate programmers. I don’t deny the importance of play. But play is something that comes after work. If you enjoy playing ping-pong more than writing a new program in Java, you better find a better place for yourself. Organize coding competitions and algorithm challenges and design competitions. Create schedule for code wars.

Technical Knowledge & Experience

No one can deny the importance of technical knowledge in a Software company. I believe there should be Quarterly Technical knowledge review of each and every employee. If you interviewed a guy for his technical knowledge 4 years back, you still think that he’s keeping his knowledge up-to-date? Personally, I believe that a person who has 4 years experience in 3 companies is better than a person who has been sitting in the cubicle in your own company for the last four years. The latter guy is accustomed and happy with what is happening here, he can’t tolerate some one moving his cheese. The person who’s coming from outside has seen the scenarios in 3 companies, and knows what failed them or what made their projects a success. Read more – ‘Lessons for a software company’.

It's Over! September 14, 2005

Here comes the end of my 9 months career at Quark. I'm looking for other jobs now. I'm going to be relieved from Quark on 30th this month. It's been hard during the last three months, after various events happened at Quark, particularly our CEO and HOD's resignations.I'm deeply frustrated for all the reasons, and in the process I learnt so many things, some of them are nothing short of enlightening revelations.

Our reputation precedes us! I've been keeping my "aggressive" image since I can remember, that is since when I was 10 years. The aggressions defines me. I believe every individual has their "unique characteristic" which defines their very existence in this world. And no one can force them to "act/behave" like some one else, since they lose their identity, which is the worst thing to happen to any one. After having 3 months of literally "no work" I prepared to leave. "Reasons might be as many as black berries", but for me its kind of losing touch with technology. Here I take sometime to blow my own trumpet .. please tolerate .. after all its My Blog :-)

My typical daily routine starts with keeping up with technology. I wake up start opera on my Mobile phone, I've internet access from mobile phone. Its a Nokia 3230. And Opera has got a wonderful feature called "news feeds". It fetches all the RSS news feeds from various news sites. (CNet, Slashdot, IDG Tech news, BBC Technews etc. In case you don't know about RSS, come out of the cave! NOW! )I read all the head lines. As Dexter says everyday after waking up "What a good day for science!"(Dexter's Laboratory : Cartoon Network).

Then I start up my laptop and Open Opera and connect to the internet from Mobile phone via Bluetooth. I know that all the geeks out there use Firefox. Why on earth I would use Firefox?

Keyboard Shortcuts: I can't emphasize the importance of the Keyboard shortcuts, especially on a laptop where the touch-pad is ridiculously painful. And in Opera you have shortcut for virtually anything.
Integrated Mail: When you are conscious about your taskbar and want to see less applications running, Opera is the best thing. Your mail is completely integrated. And I use it as POP mail client for my Gmail account, and I never touch the touch pad for all my mail operations (read, unread, reply, forward, attach, send).
News Feeds & News groups: For a geek, you cannot underestimate the importance of news groups. Another wonderful feature of Opera is that it maintains NewsFeeds (RSS/Atom) and news group subscriptions under the mail. And whenever you visit any website that has an RSS feed, small and cute RSS icon is displayed on the addressbar, click it, and it will added to your newsfeeds accounts. Simple, and that's what I call Integrated Internet Experience.

There're hell lot of other features in Opera, that can drop the jaw of the first time user: check www.Opera.com. Okay that's about Opera, So after reading the news/mail on the Laptop. I start for Office, reach there and open Google News, Publish.com, QuarkvsIndesign.com, Slashdot.org and java.sun.com. Then I spend all the day staring at the monitor having nothing to do and waiting for a mail from someone :) This has been typical workday for almost three months. Heck! Read more – ‘It's Over!’.

Waiting for Transition September 13, 2005

I've resigned from my recent job. And the relieving is supposed to be on 30th this month. I've got another offer at a small company as Associate Technical Lead. This is the first time I got an offer for a "lead" position. But I've not yet relieved from my current employer. And I've to meet MD today in the evening. I've applied for seperation on last Monday. This is reallu frustrating. The meeting is for 10 minutes. And I've to wait for 5 business days? I find a lesson to be learned here. Let me see whether the meeting will be postponed again or not by today. Let me find out by evening.

Read more – ‘Waiting for Transition’.

Process of Process Creation September 8, 2005

Process that works, and delivers bug-free software meeting every milestone and release dates is still a HolyGrail of the software development. There is no way one can Identify the Common solution for all types of software projects. Here's how my way of Process Creation:

Definition.
Feasibility.
Automation.
Training.
Implementation.

Read more – ‘Process of Process Creation’.

XUL HelloWorld Application

XUL Applications

As described already XUL applications need XUL Runtime, which can be any mozilla browser instance. But for starting XUL Application as a seperate standalone application, we can use XULRunner. Similar to the JRE, xULRunner provides the runtime environment for the XUL application. For development purposes, we can use the XUL App Directory Structure. The deployment/installable package structure will slightly differ from this setup. The deployment will be explained in a later section.

Development Package Structure

The following is the package structure for creating a standalone application. The application.ini will have the initial settings for the application. The chrome folder is the place where all the interface(XUL), and behaviour(JS) is kept. The chrome folder can be delivered as a JAR file as well.


helloworld/
  application.ini
  chrome/
    chrome.manifest
    content/
        helloworld/
           ---  XUL and JavaScript files. ----
    locale/
       en-US/
         helloworld/
           --- DTD files for en-US locale ---
     skin/
       helloworld/
         -- CSS for styles etc. ---
  defaults/
    preferences/
      helloworld-prefs.js

The main folders of a chrome package are content, locale and skin.

Content - Windows and scripts

The content folder contains all the windows defined using XUL and corresponding behaviour files defined in JavaScript files. The main XUL file should have the same name as the application folder, in our case it should be helloworld.xul. Generally scripts are placed in seperate JS files.

Locale - Locale specific files

The mozilla applications support internationalization using locale. You can use locale folder to create different DTD files for different locales. The locale can be switched in the runtime.

Skin - Style sheets, images and other theme specific files

Stylesheets alontg with images can be used for skin of the application, in this way its very easy to make the interface skinnable. It's very useful if you want your application to be customizable look and feel.Previously an RDF format file is used to manifest the contents of the package. But since Firefox 0.9 the format has changed to plain-text file chrome.manifest. Here are the steps to create the HelloWorld application

First download the XULRunner from here
Extract the XULRunner to the hard disk (C:\xulrunner).
Download the helloworld.zip attached with this article. You can even create your own application structure as explained below. But starting with the skeleton pakcage will give you more flexibility.
Extract the helloworld.zip to the hard disk (C:\helloworld).
Run the application using the command c:\xulrunner\xulrunner.exe c:\helloworld\application.ini

Read more – ‘XUL HelloWorld Application’.

Hello World September 7, 2005

Introduction

It is difficult to write a simple hello world program when trying to explain a complex platform like XUL (pronounced ZOOL). XUL is XML based languge. So it inherits all the XML features and benefits. But I'm starting with a small application, which will be modified and upgraded to create complete application. In this part I'll explain creating a small XUL application that will dislay "HelloWorld". There are many ways to do it. But let us start with the easiest way. Every XUL application needs XUL-Runtime to run, just like Java programs need the JRE. We can use Mozilla Firefox, or Mozilla browser as the XUL runtime. The XUL applications can be added to the browser as Extensions. Extensions are generally packaged and delivered to the browser as XPI (Cross Platform Installer). XUL files can also be delivered to the browser using any webserver. But for now, we'll create our own Extension by directly putting the xul application in the installation directory.

Pre-requisites

First we need to have the Mozilla Browser or Firefox, in case you don't have any one of them, please download from Mozilla Site. Once the browser is installed your are ready to start developing Mozilla applications! Unfortunately, there's no IDE for developing XUL/JS applications. But you can expect a very good IDE, very soon. Anyway, once you install Firefox/Mozilla browser, let us start creating a very small XUL file.

HelloWorld.xul

Just fire up any plain editor (Emacs, Vi or even Notepad), and type the following code.


<?xml version="1.0"?>
<window xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"> 
<box align="center">
<button label="say hello" onclick="alert('Hello XUL');" />
</box> 
</window>

Now save it as HelloWorld.xul. That's it your first HelloWorld application is now ready. The meaning of the different tags will be explained very soon. But for now, just save the file and start your browser(Mozilla/Firefox). And File -> Open and select your HelloWorld.xul. You can see your applcation running in the browser.

Now save it as HelloWorld.xul. That's it your first HelloWorld application is now ready. The meaning of the different tags will be explained very soon. But for now, just save the file and start your browser(Mozilla/Firefox). And File -> Open and select your HelloWorld.xul. You can see your applcation running in the browser.

Links

Mozilla
Mozilla Developer Wiki
XUL Planet
Read more – ‘Hello World’.

XUL tutorial August 30, 2005

Mozilla platform provides framework and components to develop crossplatform rich client applications. Mozilla platform contains various technology implementations like AJAx, CSS, HTML, DOM,JavaScript, XML, RDF, RSS, XUL, XSLT and XML. Read more – ‘XUL tutorial’.

Google Talk: Can't Talk

Google Talk was announced last week. Its an instant messaging program similar to Yahoo Messenger. I always admired Google a lot, and loved their products .. except for Google Desktop. I'll come back to that later.

Talking about Google Talk, I can say only this "It doesn't work". I still can't figure out reason. First I tried at my work place which uses Windows Internet Acceleration Server. My Yahoo! messenger works without any problems. I tried to key in the proxy values under the settings, but still didn't work, Just gives me an error "Can't authenticate to server". I thought proxy might be the reason.

Read more – ‘Google Talk: Can't Talk’.

Articles & Tutorials August 29, 2005

Articles and Tutorials on Java and Open Source technologies. Read more – ‘Articles & Tutorials’.

Quote August 24, 2005

To achieve the impossible; it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought. Read more – ‘Quote’.

Quote

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding. - Albert Einstein Read more – ‘Quote’.

Welcome!

Okay, Here is my all new website, powered by Drupal. After experimenting with various content managements systems, I've finally settled for Drupal. The installation was not a pain becuase of fantastico provided by my website host. Its was just a couple of clicks and the site was up and running. First I learnt how to create new content and tried to understand the website design from Drupal's point of view. Before finalizing on Drupal, I tried working with geeklog, phpWCMS, Mambo, Moveable Type, Xoops and WordPress. But I found that ease of installing new themes and modules in Drupalis far easier than most of the other content management systems. I wanted a CMS that will allow me to post articles, lets me manage Image galleries and also to create my personal blog. Drupal has got all the features I wanted with easy-to-install plugins/modules. The other limitation with CMSs I found is that when I create blocks to be placed onto various pages, they can contain only limited amount of HTML. But Drupal's blocks have complete HTML capability apart from PHP input as well. So here it is finally, my website on Drupal. More content to follow soon. Read more – ‘Welcome!’.

Quote

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won. Read more – ‘Quote’.

Quote

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. Read more – ‘Quote’.

New Laptop July 26, 2005

I finally purchased the iBall laptop. After extensive market research for features/price/performance, I bought the Emperor High end model. The configuration of the laptop is :

1.7GHz Pentium M Centrino Processor.
1 GB DDR RAM.
80 GB Harddisk.
DVD Plus Writer.
ATI Mobility Radeon 256bMB Graphics Card.
15.4" Wide WXGA Screen - Resolution upto 1680 X 1050.


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