My recommended new year resolutions

Happy New Year 2008 !!!!

A new year is always a good time to set your new goals for next year or coming years. today I’ve written out my resolutions for 2008. some of them were in my last year resolutions, but life is not easy as we think, we always slip in some schedules and plans which we made in past. but still we can hold it tight with us and focus on how to stay on top of our game.

hopefully, these would be my recommended new year resolutions. if there is anybody who can accompany me, i would be happier to share my efforts with you.

Let it be start from the professional side...

Learn a programming language

Learning a new programming language not only gives you more things to put on your portfolio, it also broadens your knowledge and makes you look differently at things and how you’re doing them right now or have done in the past.No matter what language you pick up, there’s only one decent way to really learn it: by putting it to practical use. one more thing to say, it was one of my last year's resolution, but i failed to achieve it in 100% as i planned or wished. i hope this time i will win the game!

Start your own personal/hobby project

Even if it’s just for fun, put your knowledge to some regular use other than your every day work. That way you can learn new techniques, try out new frameworks and tools, and add something to show in your portfolio. You could also become an active member of an open source projects. personally i feel the mozilla is a good place to be in. but still there are a million opportunities in the open source arena.

Read at least 2 books

I'm very bad in that. i will sleep whenever i open the book. its very hard for me to complete a single page in a stretch. But reading is a crucial part of expanding your knowledge. The Pragmatic Programmer’s golden rule is to read one book on technical topics regularly. but be flexible with your own work schedule and daily life

Get away from your computer !!!

Many people has a concept that sitting all the time in front of your console will boost up your productivity and enrich your work life. find some time to spend with your family and friends, your children( don't tell me you are married...you can spend time with your relatives / neighbors children :) ). Even though work’s fun and all, there’s also that world outside. With other people, sun, and lots of things to see. Three dimensions, just waiting to be explored, plan for a weekend trip to near by places, or a trekking, enjoy your holidays and weekends.

Be Romantic !!!

Give a boost to your love life, be romantic, spend some sweet moments with your lover or spouse. i feels now a days we are lacking of openness, thus the problems also. especially among the people working in IT and IT related fields. running behind the money and meet the schedules makes break ups in relationships and family life. so make sure you will not make a chance. if you are married one, plan some trips with your spouse, and if you are still a bachelor like me, find out your lover( This is the time, i feels the google is not enough...still i'm in search..)



well...these are my resolutions...lemme think if anything to be added in to it...will update then!

Good bye to spams in phpBB forum

I was miserably searching for the ways to stop the spammers and automated bots in my phpBB forum - www.indianitforum.com. spammers were hitting our forum by posting a dozen of junks daily. phpBB is having a reasonable good captcha, but it was broken by the intelligent spam bots. my search ends in a simple yet logical solution. the bots are smart enough to break any captchas - but still they are machines ( Thanks to you god, for not giving them the intelligence ) and they can't really THINK! - so the only way to stop them is to ask something that can be answered by a genuine human. and finally it worked....i added a simple question like whats the sum of x + y ? and i tweaked the php code to verify the result and allow the person to register. a million thanks to 'Marshalrusty' for giving the hints on the tweaks. i'm happy to help you on regard of this, if you want any...

phpBB gold release countdown started!

I like phpBB as millions of others, It is the most powerful and user friendly open source forum framework i had ever seen..
i'm running the Indian IT Forum http://www.indianitforum.com in phpBB 2.0.22 version

and now they are about to release their gold version, and i came to know about this when i checked their site now.. as part of it, they pull down the shutters, and simply placed a counter...check it now...a rare scene!!!

look at the snap of their counter, which i had taken from my machine...

Make sure that you are not buying a stolen laptop...

You got any offers like some brand new laptops for sale ( without the warranty ) ? if so , please read on before buying that. i got this mail from Mr.santhosh pillai, business manager, Focuz computers, have a look at it.

This is to inform you that a theft has taken place at Focuz Computers, Ernakulam North showroom. Thieves decamped with 11 notebook computers worth approx. Rs.6Lacs & cash approx. Rs.60,000.00. The serial no. & make of the laptops are mentioned below:-

SL NO	ITEM	SERIAL NO.		Qty
1	HP 2601 TU	S2CE7411YJX S2CE7450HPO		2
2	HP 6516 TX	CNF7392D6N		1
3	HP 1301TX	CNF73554QW		1
4	Compaq 707TU	SCND7452PZK SCND744X3U		2
5	Compaq C702	CND7453HKX		1
6	Compaq C713 TU	CND7352CT4		1
7	Compaq V3611AV	S2CE7392DW2		1
8	Sony VAIO C22	S01-7002116-3		1
9	IBM Lenovo 3000-23Q	IS204823QMA8MBKA		1

We have received information that the material is still in the state & thieves are trying to liquidate it here itself. A police complaint has been filed & legal proceedings have been initiated meanwhile any information regarding the same may be conveyed at this email or mobile no. 098460-61101.

So...please verify the serial number of the laptops before finalizing your deal.

My blog in vacation!

Till Dec-12-2007

Be productive with your routines...

I felt i am getting more lazy to do all the same jobs daily... it reminds me very often when i check my daily mails, or attend any of the project meetings etc.. sat in a meeting and left without knowing exactly what was accomplished...today i'm sharing with you a few tips to improve yourselves in these occasions.

Instead of just “checking” your email (which means reading it without taking action), open your email one at a time and ask yourself, “What action must I take as a result of this email?” Often the email contains one or more requests for actions from your part, such as requests for information (action: look up info and send to Mr. X), requests for you to call someone (action: call Mr. Z and request info), requests for a meeting (action: schedule meeting in calendar). The key is to develop the habit of finding those actions immediately, and either doing them now (if they can be done in a couple of minutes or less) or noting them on your to-do list. Then take action with that email: file, delete, forward, reply. Get it out of your inbox, and move on to the next. Continue processing for actions until inbox is empty.Its like the law of UNIX - Do one thing at a time, and do it well...

When sitting in a meeting, don’t just jot down random notes about what was said (or more likely, doodle cartoons until the meeting ends). Instead, focus on what actions need to be taken. When an action is mentioned, write it down — especially if it’s an action you need to take. Mark it with a star, so you can easily transfer your action notes to your to-do list or calendar immediately after the meeting (and make that a habit too). This way, the meeting wasn’t a waste of time — you’ve got actions to take as a result of it. If people are talking a lot about an issue, but no actions come out of the discussion, make a point to ask: “So what action are we going to take on this? Who is going to do the action and by when?” You may encounter a lot more discussion with no actions, but be persistent. Without action, you just have a lot of hot air. hope it helps...

Wishes from a 1000 hearts....

Wishes from a 1000 hearts reaches you in this new year...imagine, and how it would be?
i witnessed for such an occasion during last week in Technopark. One company organized an event there to wish their clients on this new year...

Today, there is no such difference between a company and its customer as it was there in olden days. where people had lesser interaction with their clients and communications were channelized through a point of contact. now clients requires more smart and dynamic IT companies who can contribute equally to their business both in terms of technology and profit. so they expect each and every resource working with them should be smart enough to understand their business and culture. thats why the top notch IT companies are recruiting people with good technical and communication skills. what they are looking is the ability to take responsibilities as an individual and execute it with less guidance.

But still i feel, only a small percentage of people has acquired these qualities, its one of the major
drawbacks of our academics. they have no freedom to express themselves among the peers or within the campus, if anybody does it, he will be labeled as an odd rebel and he will be screwed up by the moral gurus in campus so called teachers! that will reflect in your internals. what they are expecting is a polite and innocent student who can do all the text book problems and a 40 page assignment within a day...but does it help you to become something in your carrier? marks are important, but there are many other competencies you have to acquire to become a successful professional. here is the importance of institutions like IT finishing schools.

Nobody can park a car closer than this...

Yes, it happened today, and mr. vinodh made it, he parked his car this much closer to a pillar...i suspect it as a world record, ( i'm not kidding :) - ).check the snap...sorry for the bad picture clarity, i took it in dark with my mobile cam.

StarUML - a better rational rose - and this world hates monopoly...

Rational Rose was the most accepted UML product from IBM. it became more popular after the integration with some popular development IDEs like Microsoft's visual studio and Borland JBuilder. Rose is simple, powerful and efficient, but the licensing is a bit costly, and i was working with a single license, i.e only one person can access and use it at a time. and they are well enjoyed their monopoly in this area. Microsoft published a UML designer visual modeler with their Visual Studio 6 Tools, but that wasn't a success, only a small percentage of MS guys knows about the tool itself. but that was quite useful ( for class diagrams, sequence diagrams etc..). if you are not a serious UML customer, still you can use MSVM for your needs.

But now, things are getting a new twist. the StarUML
is introduced in to the development community. their latest version StarUML 5.0 is loaded with lots of features which can beat the Rational Rose in every sense. it supports UML 2.0 specification and Model Driven Architecture ( MDA ).Code generation can be done for Java, C++ and C# - and documentation can be generated for all of the Microsoft Office suite programs such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. StarUML is easily extensible through modules using a COM-based plug-in architecture - and by use of templates allowing you a make new code generators. StarUML even imports from Rational Rose.

So the future is for such star performing open source products? IBM is also slipping its hands from their monopoly?. i very much liked this product, and i am planning to take a session on it during the next BarCampKerala event in cochin.

How secure your application is...???

cyber crimes are in its record growth! ...so its an important question, what would be your answer? fairly secure or not at all secure? in the real sense..both are dangerous..why? rather to say, it may depend your application.

It is a must for the products, but the major mistakes which i noticed so far is, developers forget to make the application secure, or they design it in a wrong way!

compliant is a buzzwords in industry now, technology for the sake of the technology makes all the mistakes, remember that technology itself doesn't mitigate any security threats, they may close some holes but still they are leaving some dangerous ones as opened!

i found may ppl implements RSA algorithm in their programs, only because they studied it in their university and it sounds cool.

so my advice is

Plan for the security process from the beginning of the design
define the security goals
treat the security as a feature in your product
always remember the golden law - All external systems are insecure
obscurity - that only makes your security in trouble

too much for today( 5 posts!!!), i think we can discuss on more detail by next time...

A few words on Google's GTalk

GTalk is Google's instant communication program. It's light weighted fast and most popular among chatting freaks now a days. with the introduction of it, many other popular IRC's got less importance among the crowd. because Gtalk is very easy to install and operate.

Actually there are 3 different versions for GTalk,

1. Google Talk Client in Windows , written in C ,C++
2. Google Talk Gadget for all modern browsers that support Flash, and its platform independent, and works with almost all browsers with flash support
3. Google Talk Web Integrated with GMail, for all browsers that support JavaScript

i installed the GTalk client in my machine, and its working good, but over the time i felt some consistency problems with it. it shows wrong status sometimes, and it will change only when i clicked and type something in that window.

GTalk is favourite IRC among the office workers, because thats easy, integrated with orkut, light weight, and even access from a browser, but because of this reason its blocked in many offices and employees are fired by the firewalls.

Today i found a different stuff, a Javascript 2.0 Google Talk.ure JavaScript copy of Google Talk Client from izuz.net. It is considered a lot better that the one embeded with GMail. It uses the same UI of Google Talk Desktop Client, but is provided inside browsers. And it uses HTTP connections not XMPP connections, which means that it is firewall free or Websense free. Firewall or Websense may block you from using Gtalk/MSN by blocking certain ports, but it may never block port 80 or 443 (https port). So you are allowed to use your Gtalk by this pure JavaScript copy of Google Talk. and they recommends mozilla firefox than IE.

Wanna a Cockroach Manjoorian with Chappathi?

Wanna to eat delicious Cockroach Manjoorian with Chappathi? - no need to fly to taiwan for getting it anymore.. here techies in technopark enjoyed it today.. got it as a fwd..i'm putting it here because its a very rare scene..

i masked the location of the restaurant from the image, because we can't simply blame them, because they are preparing for 100's of techies in technopark, and they are having limited facilities also..anyway its better than any other restaurants within technopark campus

Where is DCOM today?

Yesterday, one of my friends asked me about some DCOM stuffs, because they are doing something in it, it was an old product but they have to make some enhancement in that and its pretty much undocumented stuff,

DCOM - i should say it was the most innovative technology from microsoft. but i never think anybody has got a chance to use all of its features. because the concept of binary software components and its inter interoperability across the platforms( theory claims so, but not microsoft)
gave a new momentum to software architecture. the age of OWL and ActiveX seemed to be completely conquered by its COM implementations. but when it comes to the DCOM, ( CORBA was also there in that time...) i suspect, something happened to the microsoft as such. they invested a lot for the DCOM, but that wasn't a success in the market as their ATL COM.

DCOM provides the COM services remotely, usually in a network ( intra/ inter) the location transparency adds more flexibility to the application counterparts. but they completely shifted their business strategies to the .NET market by that time.

but that was a wise investment, they built today's webservice upon this DCOM architecture, a more lighter implementaion in the user perspective...

the concept of webservice, was commercially availed by the passport authentication service by the hotmail/msn network, and still its legacy going on...

My experiments with Windows Vista - experience too.

I Already ready blogged about the nightmare os called 'Vista'. i bought a AMD turion Compaq v3000 series laptop a few months back. i liked every feature of it, other than its operating system - Windows Vista Home Basic. According to them this particular series is designed for vista..ok fine...

but it has only 512 MB Ram, and vista hanged many times in the very first day itself. my display is getting blank if i click in to some messageboxes( * MAD * ).

Finally i decided to switch back to pretty old windows XP. and i managed to get a XP CD, and installed it..then only i came to know that many of its devices are not detected ( sound, Wireless LAN, Ethernet, Card Reader, Display etc..). and its display looked weird and scratchy. i rushed in to HP's web site and searched for XP drivers.. but according to them, this laptop is specially made for windows vista, and the XP drivers are not available, and they are not responsible for any damages caused by our experiments with any other drivers and in that case the warranty will be expire...

again i searched in many other popular forums, and driver repositories, but i got some partial or not soooo sure replies. thus i ended up with my hopeless search for XP drivers..and i restored Vista( what else?) .. then vista started its magics again in my laptops, i was struggled with FTP uploads, Yahoo messenger ( yahoo messenger is not supporting windows Vista, FYI, if it is working fine in your machine, praise the lord, for his miracle), i was frustrated and hopeless. then i decided to upgrade my RAM in to 1 GB, i got a little relief for the copying exercises, but all other things were pretty bad as earlier.

and in the last barcamp event only i met sobhan, he also having the same model, and he managed to get the drivers from somewhere.. thanks god..you saved my soul.. and he was so kind to share those drivers with me..and now i'm much happy with XP and Suse Linux( Using VMWare ). - oh one more thing to add on, in vista they are not supporting the VMWare workstation, and if you tweak and install it once, vista will take additional 10 more minutes to start up after showing some dump and ugly blank screens.

If anybody wants XP drivers for their Compaq v3000 series laptops, please do contact me.

Vista was a total failure. they invested their time and money for inventing an ugly operating system. i would like to call MS UOS - Microsoft Ugliest Operating System ( as MS DOS - Microsoft Dirty Operating System). i'm seeing such a total dump stiff after the release of Windows ME.

Uderline : Microsoft implemented a 'Kill Switch' for Windows Vista, which cease hobbling Windows Vista installations that fail the company's validation processes. by implementing of such a mechanism they are expecting that the entire world will switch in to the genuine version of windows vista.

XP will be discontinued soon, probably by Jan 2008.

In closing i will say this Vista might become a good OS after 2-3 service packs but until then stay away from it. Stick with XP or switch to Linux.

Spammers hasn't any rules? Even google got spammed today!

Look at the spam message posted in Google's android home page today


It was very unfortunate to see some spam posts in google's page itslef. i am a regular visitor of their android site. and today i saw a community created by some of the naughty spams, and its listed in their android home page.

It seems spammers hasn't any rules, they can enter anywhere without permissions( open doors?).
one of my forums powered by phpBB 2.0.22 is attacked by a couple of spams now a days. they can even break up the most modern captchas also. ( how brilliant they are.... )

Spamming is considered as one of the criminal offenses in most of the countries. but still thousands of spam boats as well as human spammers are active and they are posting millions of spam messages across the internet. they are paid for what they are doing. in my opinion, rather than tracing out the spammers, punish the people behind these spammers.

SMS turned 15 today - Happy Birthday !!!

SMS - Short Message Service. the most popular text message sending service available in GSM mobile phones turned its sweet 15 year today!

That first message, which read "Merry Christmas," was sent by Neil Papworth, an engineer at AirWide solutions, via the vodafone network to a colleague at the mobile operator who was enjoying the festivities of a staff Christmas party.

That first message sent back in 1992 was just the tip of the iceberg. It wasn't until the following year that phone-to-phone texting was born, thanks to an engineering student at Nokia being the first to type an SMS on a GSM phone

So Happy Birthday and long live Sweet Messaging Service....

The power of scripts

Today, i've got a strange(???) problem, like i have to make a new repository in our backup server, which should looks exactly like another folder tree in same machine, but my requirement is more specific, i don't want to copy the entire folder structure including its sub folders, i.e i need only the top level folders. At first i thought to write a C program for that, but it may take a few hours to write and test. so i decided to experiment with some VBscript. as i am using it for first time, i felt an odd feeling by seeing its syntax. but truly said, its the most powerful stuff for doing such kind of tasks. see my first ever script - to copy the top level folder structure of a repository.


' Get the source folder, subfolders

'create the folder structure in destination as in the src folder
'No subfolders support
'Authour : renjith.sreeATgmail.com
'

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")

srcFolderPath = InputBox("Enter the source folder","Select a folder","", 100, 100)

If srcFolderPath = "" Then
WScript.Echo "Invalid source folder, quiting..."
WScript.Quit()
End If

destFolderPath = InputBox("Enter the destination folder","Select a folder","", 100, 100)

If destFolderPath = "" Then
WScript.Echo "Invalid destination folder, quiting..."
WScript.Quit()
End If

' dest folder

set destFolder = objShell.NameSpace(destFolderPath)

Set srcFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(srcFolderPath)
Set colSubfolders = srcFolder.Subfolders

For Each objSubfolder in colSubfolders
destFolder.NewFolder (objSubfolder.Name)
Next

WScript.Echo "Folder creation completed."

undefined reference to `__gxx_personality_v0' !!!!

Stunned by this error message when i tried to compile a simple c++ test program under UNIX.
> gcc -o out atol.cpp
/tmp/cci91B6Q.o(.eh_frame+0x11): undefined reference to `__gxx_personality_v0'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

actually i spend a half an hour to rectify this, but later only i found it as a programmers blooper ( shame on me ! )

Even if the gcc and g++ are from the GNU's compiler collection, there is a significant difference between them, at least for the context for using them.

The mistake was i tried to compile and link the a .cpp file by using the 'gcc' compiler. but the programs using the c++ object files should always be linked with g++ in order to supply the c++ libraries. My mistake was i tried to link the c++ object files to be linked with c libraries, and thus it showed 'Undefined reference'.

These undefined reference to the internal library functions like - __gxx_personality_v0.
when you see such an error, it is because you tried to link the C++ object files with gcc.

But there is another question, why the gcc worked in the first place?
It is like that - actually gcc will compile the c++ file, when it found a .cpp extension. but it cannot successfully link the generated object file(s)

These are very small things, but its enough to take away a good chunk of our time.