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Photo: Muffins with Raisins January 22, 2012

Read more – ‘Photo: Muffins with Raisins’.

Photo: Veggies January 12, 2012

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’.

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’.

Google Talk: Can't Talk August 30, 2005

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’.


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