The Badshah of quzzing!

Aaj Tak is going for a public issue and they suddenly realized that the brand has emerged mightier than the TV Today insignia, so their typical "B&W Hindi archaic movie ishtyle" stupid advertisements were back to tell the viewers that Aaj Tak is an offshoot of TV Today and not the other way round. I was really taken aback that for one they actually succeeded in roping in one of my idols Siddartha Basu (frankly I am not aware if the opposite happened because the channel is shown as one of his clients at Siddartha's website).

Talking of Suddarth, people of my age-group who were into quizzing have been ardent fans of Basu since his Quiz-time days at Doordarshan (DD). For me it was a magic phenomenon as it flamed my interest in quizzing, I hosted two shows of my own at Schools and won laurels in several. I was really awestruck by the professional packaging of his shows. He was the pioneer to introduce IITian gizmos into quiz scoring.

For those of you who don't know, Siddartha had a background in English theatre. He played the spoilt child of a millionaire in a DD TV serial called "Purvai" (though, must confess, his hindi diction was pathetic). He also produced many TV plays, of note was "Kauwa chala hans ki chaal" in which I first noticed Raghuvir Yadav. But his and his company Synergy Communication's primary focus has been quizzing and they certainly are badshah of the format. Offcourse KBC was the pinnacle of their achievement where they were able to coax-in BigB to play the host and the rest is, as they say, history.

In 1994-95 I was at Delhi to appear for a competitive exam and decided to meet Siddartha personally with my friend Shreekumar who was then teaching at Father Agnel's Polytechnic. We somehow got his telephone number and called him up on an afternoon. Anita, his wife, picked up but alas he had just gone to sleep. Then I was occupied for the day and the idea slipped off my mind. I could only call him up from the Nizammuddin station while I was heading home. To my surprise he came on the phone promptly (now that I think of it I realise that those were the days he was easily accessible). Synergy wasn't born then perhaps and he told about his shows for DD. When I asked about his theatre activities he said that it continues side by side. "Thanks for calling" he said in his typical style as we concluded the conversation. But those who have met or talked with a celebrity they adore can very well guage how I felt at that moment. Unfortunately with Mastermind on I haven't really followed his career, but Siddartha still remains one of my idols.

Sometimes you have to be evil!

Many times the most innocuous aspects of programming create lot of trouble. Take the innocent Properties file. These avatars of Hashtable are collections of key-value pairs, frequently used by applications for their need for external resources and configuration settings. Now pointers such as these tell you that reading the Properties file using java io is evil, owing to the fact that it warrants absolute file names and that in turn poses hinders application portability. So we have the recommended ways to use the ResourceBundle class or classpath resources. Nothing wrong with this!

Or so I thought, till I had to work on a web-interface to create, modify and delete Properties files. I realized that when loading a Properties file using the Classloader and ResourceBundle and after I modify my files and store() the values, the changes won't reflect to the user. The same old properties were displayed despite the fact that some of them had been changed. The reason it seems was the fact that the classloader somehow cached the Properties. While this would be termed most efficient and desirable when reading the properties, this perhaps wouldn't be so in an Property File Editor application like mine.

In a nutshell what I ultimately had to do was to take the evil route and use java.io to load the files, as below:

//Do not load the properties file as Resource stream or ResourceBundle
//if caching is not acceptable
//InputStream in = loader.getResourceAsStream(name);

//Load it using direct I/O, obviously we need the file "path" here, which can be
//retrieved using the ServletContext
in = new FileInputStream(path);

//rest is usual
if (in != null) {
Properties objProps = new Properties();
objProps.load(in);
}

Since this is a web-application I am fetching the relative file-path of the Properties file (situated along with other classes in a package structure) using the ServletContext (getRealPath()), this works well in Tomcat, I am not sure if this approach works for all containers.

First Steps!

Mitali just rang me up to inform that Tanmay has taken his first bold steps by himself. Pray, there is no looking back for him. May God bless him!

A dependable friend!

Jivha thanked Bhutan for its military action against the insurgents including the ULFA outfits. As I commented on his blog, diplomatically we can read more than a "friendly" gesture here. Indian stature for SAARC countries resembles very much the American stature in the UN. India is the "local dada" here, reason why Pakistan is acting sheepishly off late to make the next summit, that its is hosting, a success. Nitin however gives another dimension to this news that Bhutan mainly did it in its own self interest rather than the "Indian pressure".

While on the topic, I like many things about Bhutan. Though running under a monarchy the country has a democratic setup. The king has worked very hard to keep its culture intact by taking such measures as blocking access to satellite TV, a medium which even in my opinion is the culprit of culture-erosion. This fact resonates with Nitin's thoughts that "to maintain its own Bhutanese identity the Indian insurgents are considered by the king as a potential threat to Bhutan's way of life". Moreover, the Bhutanese prince recently left his studies mid-way to join the royal army, so they are in high-spirits.

India has had a strategic alliance with armies of Nepal and Bhutan, so if done the right way may be the insurgency can be controlled. A firm initial step is better in such cases to prevent a Kashmir like scenario. Attribute it to the "help factor" or otherwise, Bhutan indeed has been India's "dependable friend". Wish we had such a relation with Pakistan and Bangladesh too!

What is Real development?

By 2020 India will be a developed nation. Good for us, if the prophecy comes true. But then, what would be the state of the economy (or "new economy" as the term goes), education and employment then? One never notices murky media raise such issues, actually only a handful of people talk about it publicly. Surendra Mohan, a socialist thinker, in one of his recent columns quoted scientist Dr.Randhawa saying that the incidents of violence erupting out of the unemployment issues will not remain isolated incidents but would be rampant all across if the unemployment situation is not brought under control. Reasons behind this thought are indeed scary: despite of haughty talks of development, Bharat-Udaya and all, the employment opportunities are actually diminishing. The ILO had reported that the unemployment rate in 2002 was 3.4%, a considerable increase in previous 5 years. 7 lacs posts have been cut down even in the organized sector since. Statistics apart, the situation is grave.

Dwindling employment problems have roots in our fascination for automation and technology. Logic put forth is: we would lag behind the rest of the world especially US and European countries, if we do not embrace foreign technology and investments. Bullshit! The concealed rationale behind this thinking is the greed to earn more profits and leverage exports. Why shy away from the fact that we cannot certainly increase our exports in developed nations, because however cheap our labour might be, these nations will keep on creating hitches in the name of quality, child-labour and what not. Instead of this fascination, why not encourage exports to the developing nations? Why not promote the Small Scale Industries (SSI) sector? Why not work towards removing the red tape and poor government policies that plague the growth of SSIs?

The problem is indeed burgeoning. Every year 1 to 1.25 crores of unemployed youth enter the foray. On the contrast only 5-10 lacs jobs are created for them. I am no expert on economics but feel that the disparity can perhaps be leveled only when we create jobs at local level, create more opportunities in farming and SSI. Lest we do this the feuds for jobs would not remain confined to Assam and Bihar.

Whither Development!

Renowned sociologist and scientist Prof.Yashpal was in town few days back. He is one of the few people who have the straight-forwardness to oppose the education and examination system in India. "Education is not about cramming, you cannot learn science by mugging equations, you have to touch it to get the feel", said the Professor. An amazing point that emerges out of the views of many Indian sociologists is about the pseudo development notion that we have here and the ironies that it exposes. We have built highways in the name of development having failed connecting the villages. What is in 2020 we really become a developed nation, as projected? Will every village have a school and roads to reach that by then? Will people striving for employment not torch Bihar and Assam then? Such questions have difficult answers. I will be posting some views of another socialist thinker on this in a coming post.

Ulcerative Collitis: Need Information

Fellow bloggers and readers, though I avoid posting very personal posts here this one is an exception. My mother has been suffering from Stomach ulcer (Ulerative Collitis) since almost 1.5 years. Recently she was advised to undergo surgery (ileopouch anastomosis). If you know any body who has undergone such a surgery kindly let me know the pros and cons of this surgery. One who has undergone this operation would be in the best position to explain the post operation problems if any. Would be grateful for your help. Please pass on this information.

indian Googlee

Search engine giant Google is all set to open its first offshore R&D facility at Bangalore in 2004. Keeping aside the hype about more and more offshore opportunities does that actually translate to better perks for the Indian techies. Forget it! Apparently the Google Indian initiative is guided by cost-cutting concerns (thought the company denies this) and the visa-problems that it has been facing to rope-in more Indian talent.

Blogs dramatized!

Ye duniya ek rangmanch hai Babu-moshai! (the world is a theatre, my dear bong). How can our blogs be less theatrical then! Alok pointed to this ingenious site that adds that quintessential spice of melodrama to your blog. Just type your URL here and your blog is hilariously converted to a Hollywood screenplay, instantly. Samples? Look how Alok's blog and mine fare, in their dramatic avatar.

Bharteeya Blog Mela, 39th edition!

This has been the first ever Blog-Mela hosted by Null Pointer, and though the number of nominations haven't been spectacular, they haven't been discouraging either. Now that I hosted it I can empathise how difficult it is to select a handful of entries from a maze of good posts. My thanks to Melodrama, Ravages, Aadisht, Aashish and someone who would remain nameless, for the nice nominations. So fellow bloggers (or IndiBloggers, as they say now a days), countrymen, Indians lend me your attention. I present to you the Dash-ratnas of the 39th Bharteeya Blog mela. Enjoy!

---

"I found out about his aversion to other people's nails when we were having machchi baath at my favorite Bengali-Israeli-Japanese eatery. I was just remarking how long my nails had gotten and how they need chopping, and S runs to the bathroom! Of course, he always makes it a point to find out where the bathroom is whenever we go to a new place.", this and more in a hilarious parody on Indian Blogger's nail cutting frenzy, at this post of the one and only, Kingsley.

In his lotus-notes from Nairobi, Ashok Hariharan presents this interesting anecdote on his enounters with Law Enforcement guys. Amazing parallel between the Kenyan "Comatose Cop" and our Pandu hawaldar! Only our thullas are more straight-forward to go for your wallet at the first go.

A new blogger on my radar, Aadisht has a lengthy post that explains why the American Chocolate is "crappy", well..no it actually highlights the "third-world mentality", err.. its a review of Bill Bryson's book, or is it..oh I am so hopelessly (yawn) dumb at reading long posts. If you happen to read it here, in entirety i.e, do mail me a summary, will you? (Hey Aadisht, do forgive the punn, it was all in funn.) Now to some serious stuff, so throw that grin off your face, you may now twitch your eyebrows a little, take a deep breath and tune your mood, ok now your are ready,

A proud Bihari that he is, Ranjan is aggrieved that provincial affiliation insetad of merit is being considered to judge his community. In his post titled "See my shoes? Want to be in them?" Ranjan remarks on the recent spats in Assam and Mumbai and hopes that the contempt in Bihari jokes does not become a stereotype. On the same subject, Prasenjeet thinks that the onus falls on the community as acoording to him, "to this day, the people of Bihar haven't risen against the democratically elected tyrants who have denied them entry into the 21st century".

Aashish performs a psephological postmortem of the recent Assembly elections and opines that despite the technological advances it has seen, the Indian electoral process will remain "complicated" and "infinitely fascinating". On a similar note Chakra presents the good, the bad (and not the ugly) of something that has made his life "so interesting".

Om Malik has an interesting post on his chat with venture capitalist Jacques F. Vallee. Contrary to the growing view that the Blogging will bite the dust, a point I wrote on recently, Jacques beleives that being an extension of the computer conferencing concept, weblogs will save the Internet.

Outsourcing is a sensitive issue for US techies and Arnab is understandably shaken by the use of phrase "does not use overseas labor" by the owners of waypath project. While a company might be based at US and there is nothing wrong in being proud of that, keeping in mind that funding and clients for many such projects do not come from US alone, it makes business sense to mind one's language, seems to be his point.

Lastly, one of my own posts, concludes that even after 19 years, the ground realities fo the Gas victims at Bhopal have not changed at all, as the settlement money, thanks to the burocratic red tape, is being pocketed by the middlemen.

---

Thanks Madhoo for giving me the opportunity to host the mela. Watch out for the announcement about the next mela on her blog!

Charge the spammers?

A funny yet apt disclaimer for comment spammers I ecnetly noticed on a blog:

Any advertisements or commercial endevours placed in the comments or sent via email addresses on this site (either mine or other commenters) will be charged at a rate of US$250 per time, payable within 30 days. Placing any such advertising or commercial message is an acceptance of this charge. If you don't like it, use the little x in the top right of your browser.

39th Bharteeya Blog Mela

Ladies and Gentlemen! It's my privilege to host the weekly celebration of Bharteeya Blog Mela this week. And here is a formal invitation:

Translated, that means: nominations for the 39th mela are open and may be submitted using the comments area for this post. If you go by rules, they have been quoted by last host Yazad here. You can nominate posts (including your own) made between December 2 and 8, 2003. The mela will be hosted here on Tuesday, December 9, 2003. Looking forward to your nominations!

Sanyasin is CM, CM is Sanyasi

The magic of Ballot has unfolded in Madhya Pradesh. The sansyasin (or sadhwi, whatever) Uma Bharti is destined to become the next Chief Minister of my home-state Madhya Pradesh and the defeated CM Digvijay Singh (incidently called Diggi "Raja") will take a political Sanyas, if words must be kept. What an irony! The confident-till-yesterday Diggi raja didn't had to say "he failed to read the public pulse".

While the saffron brigade must be evidently happy, let me remind the sadhwi behen a few things. Now that you are here I want the promises to be kept, I want a chaak-chaukas prabandh of all amenities in the state (hope Umaji you haven't already had a bout of amnesia) including Roads and Electricity (I don't care how you do it), and yes I want the stupid Professional Tax to be withdrawn immediatley. That's what I voted you for! Wipe that pasina off your face, when you win an election on issues such as development (and not your favorite issue) there is a lot more burden of work to do. So while you are famous for dashing off to Maihar Devi and Vaishnodevi at one go and go to sleep at 9PM sharp, lady: we are expecting some work here. Less pravachan, more output, please.

Rewrite the song Remo!

Remo Fernandes, the famous pop-singer from Goa has once sung this famous satirical song on the state of telephones in Goa:

Graham Bell, Graham Bell,
You're dead and its just as well;
But if you saw the phones in Goa.
You'd jump into the well.

Years later, it seems Remo will have to rewrite his lyrics as the BBC reports that Graham Bell did not invent the Telephone. Scottish-born US scientist Alexander Graham Bell is credited with making the first transmission of speech from one point to another by electrical means in 1876. Based on "evidence "contained in files from the archives of the Science Museum in London" the report says that the "Telephon", developed by German research scientist Philipp Reis, could transmit and receive speech and was perhaps the first telephone. The successful tests on a German device manufactured in 1863 were reportedly covered up to maintain Bell's reputation.

Trip to mela & other things

• Cool, it is my lucky day today? I think for the first time my post has made it to the mela, don't know whether on merit, or the folly of posting multiple comments at the nomination post that brought me to limelight. The plain vanilla flavour can be savored at Yazad's here. Thanks buddy :)


• The pre and exit poll surveys have predicted that sadhwi Uma Bharti will be the next CM of Madhya Pradesh state. If that happens, she would unarguably be another Mahila Mastaan to occupy the seat of power after behen Mayawati. Off topic, new blogger Sukanya, who is experimenting with cooking and living in France, has a good Bangla glossary, growing by the day. So if you wondered who a Mahila Mastaan is, click here.

Bhopal: The struggle goes on

It's been 19 years since the Lethal Methyl Isocyanate gas from Union Carbide (now Dow Chemicals) struck disaster at Bhopal, the worst ever industrial havoc in the history of mankind. Images such as the one here had shook the whole world as more than 20 thousand peopel have lost their lives and more than a lakh suffer from the after-effects of the poisen. I remember that most of the area of new Govindpura where we lived then was unaffected but most of the old Bhopal was. It was a panicky morning the following day. The adjoining main road near our BHEL colony house was brimming with people fleeing with whatever little they could gather with them, on trucks, tractors and what not. My father had meanwhile managed to get some bread and butter from the grocery and we were planning to leave too when the radio started reassuring people that the danger has been partially averted. And while the then CM Arjun Singh was said to be on the spot while the containers were neutralized later at Carbide factory, a similar exodus occurred on that day too. I was too young then to decipher the ground situations. 19 years hence the realities have not really changed.

In almost two decades of victim's struggle for the justice people have been left hopeless with hundreds loosing their life every year owing to eye, lung and heart problems. The case of the gas victims has been one of callous delays and wrangling between Indian and US courts over damages and medical care. Media reports say that after 1992 the government had stopped registering death cases owing to the gas-leak. There are a staggering 50 thousand cases pending with Rs.1500 crores of relief money languishing under the greedy eyes of the bankrupt state government. A local newspaper has recently said a very valid thing about our "East India company mentality". The kins of WTC disaster have reportedly been compensated with amounts exceeding Rs.8 crores per casualty within the time span of a year, on the contrary there is the case of Bhopal disaster where the victims have been fighting for meager compensation amounts of Rs.1 lacs or less. In the light of global consumerism and open markets it seems the commercial concerns override those for human feelings. The central government is bothering about investments from big corporations and bowing under the pressures of the centres of money and power at the US for their own selfish motives while the state government wants to pocket the whole settlement amount using the middlemen and burocratic red tape.

I can only hope that such a disaster should never ever happen again. This TOI report, that says that "..with growing public awareness, corporates otherwise indifferent to damage caused to the environment and human lives (are) now taking corrective measures." adds some strength to my belief.

Identity Crisis

The Indian states of Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh (MP), NCT of Delhi and Rajasthan are going for assembly polls tomorrow. Funnily, the MP Election commission has specified 16 ways to identify a voter. The list includes Ration card, Student ID card, The IT PAN card, Passprot, Driving license, Blue card for people below poverty line and so on, apart from the expected Voter Identity card.

This is the typical Indian irony that despite of the Election commission's emphasis on the Voter ID card since T.N.Seshan's time to ensure fair elections, very few states have seriously implemented the idea for its entire population. With 16 means of identity it can be very well judged how the electoral officers are going to ensure the "fairness" in the poll. Why can't we have a single ID number, a single means of identity for an indian citizen akin to the Social Security number in the US and european countries. A number that can be used to track a citizen for every job whether for health services, tax purposes, education or voting.

India boasts of progerss in the IT sector and e-governance. We have reached the age of saying ta-ta to the manual voting system with the entire election being held using voting machines. But when can we really see a single smart-card for every Indian citizen that prevents him and the administration from all hassles, remains to be seen.

Is Blog-revolution over?

An interesting but debatable point has been raised by John C. Dvorak. Dvorak feels that the so-called Blogging Revolution has bitten the dust and that Blogging can't become the future of journalism as predicted due to two reasons:

• Massive abandonment of blogs with the writers getting bored or too tired to cope up with regular writing


• "Big Media" co-opting the blogosphere that would undermine the potential and originality of blogging

John's observatoopns are based upon a whitepaper study by Perseus that reveals that of an estimated 4.12 million blogs, created on Blog-City, BlogSpot, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Pitas, TypePad, Weblogger and Xangaan, an alarming 66% have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned. The report makes a nice conclusive simile:

An iceberg is constantly dissolving into sea water, and the majority of blogs started are dissolving into static, abandoned web pages. Right now, though, this iceberg is moving so quickly into arctic waters that it is gaining mass faster than it is losing it. The key is that an iceberg is never what it appears, and so it is with today’s blogging community.

I think that the first point, while holding true, could hardly harm blogging keeping in mind that the growth rate of blogs is faster than the attrition rate. And what about the blogs that pay for the hosting, abandoning free blog-service might be easy but these are committed bloggers. The disturbing point could infact be the second one, faux blogs authored by professional writers and corporations and pretending like blog; the blogquivalent of paid editorials or advertorials. Imagine somebody deciding whether the post is as per guidelines or not before you post something on your blog, or worse still somebody telling you what to write on. But will they affect the real blogs? As long as genuine bloggers are there I think both can co-exist.

Blogs of Earth

It was a pleasant surprise to find a blog with an Indian name by a foreigner. While the author Awacante has evidently stopped blogging today on one of his other blog only he has a blog (infact a travelogue) called Namaste (Hello in Hindi). The author had visited India in 2000, perhaps as a volunteer to the Missionaries of Charity at Calcutta, and was inspired enough to chose an Indian name for his blog. In one of his posts titled the "Sikhs" he wonders why most of the Sikh names end with a "Singh" and provides an interesting pointer to various types of turbans. His blogs has interesting accounts of how he was charged 5 times more (Rs.85 for a trip between Paharganj and Cannaught place) by the auto-rickshaw guys at Delhi and how he learnt to behave like Indians and managed to pay the right fare of Rs.15. Recognizing the tea-craziness of India the author says his consumption of tea has also increased dramatically. I also came across this nice site (though I could read very little of it) on India Indojuku by a Japanese, the catch line says "Hum dharti ke niwasi aapka swagat karte hain" (we the residents of this earth welcome you). What a nice way to emphasize the feeling of universal brother hood!

Scrollbar for Lefties?

Rajesh was intrigued to find the scroll bar on the left of his screen for Google Arabic search and I agree with his observation. Now I am no UI design expert but for languages that are written from right to left is it imperative that the readers are left-handed (no pun intended) too? Also notice how the left/right arrow keys behave on the page. The reasons for the text alignment has been explained but any rationale for the scrollbars?

Awareness is cure

There are very few bloggers who write keeping the reader in mind. Still very few will gather the courage to write about their shortcomings, agonies and disease for others to benefit from their experience or offer advice to. During my day's surfing I often come across many blogs listed at the Blog Portal or through the blogrolls of other blogs, some of them I could never visit again, and a few strike a chord instantly. Atul U. Nulkar's journal Heavenly Abode is one of them. In posts titled The Diabetes Chronicle Atul has provided a moving account of his discovery of the disease and how he came to terms with living with it. My father is diabetic too and it hurts to see him take the insulin injections to cope up with the disease. When I read about it in an issue of India Today I was surprised to know that the deadly disease can hit at any age. The example of MTV VJ Gaurav scared the hell out of me, I could suddenly relate to why the guy looked thinner and thinner by the day. Though I am an acknowledged hypochondriac, I have this feeling in my mind that given the family history I will sooner or later get the disease, but the later the better. Being aware is the key to fight diabetes successfully.

Kudos TOI

Seldom do you find the virtues of restrain and responsibility amongst news media amidst the cut-throat competition that exists now a days. Mediaah reports that Times Of India's Pune team had uneartherd the CAT entrance test paper leak the previous evening but chose to exercise restraint and help the police nab the culprits. I think this is one of the finest examples of ethical journalism. Reminds me of the picture of a drowning woman at sea that was published by TOI many years ago that had cause some furore; good to see that they have set some good behest that others may, hoepfully, emulate.

FM Radio takes a dramatic step

If you were tired of watching those rona-dhona and saas-bahu soaps on the Indian tele there is no immediate respite because Star's Radio City is soon going to air radio-versions of few of its long-running soaps like Saans and Kyonki Saas bhi kabhi bahu thi. Radio is not cognitive and the Vividh-Bharati's Hawa Mahal listeners may readily vouch that it is more potent a medium when it comes to drama. While FM radio has been doing well being a novel medium the players are still concerned by government's sky-high license fee plus there are several restrictions like the channels cannot air news based programs. The soaps would surely need some rework and adaptation but it surely would be an interesting event to watch err..listen.

Walking straight in muddled waters

Seasons change, people change, mentalities change but these politicians, they never ever change. Come election times and you can see a wide array of gimmicks from them. They talk talk and talk but you can be sure that they won't talk any sense. Take Madhya Pradesh (MP). BJPhas been vociferous in blaming the Chief Minister (CM) for the power crisis, yet it has never declared any concrete plan as to how the party would improve the dismal situation if it comes to power. Taking the janata as utter fools, Digvijay Singh, the CM has shamelessly promised free power for farmers while BJP is planning pay-for-what-you-actually-used and bill-waivers for electricity subscribers, steps which would bring the already dissolute MP Electricity Board to shambles. Congress manifesto has designs to make the state "self-sufficient in terms of energy" but when? The CM uncannily states, by 2007.

TV savvy politicians are a sought after commodity now a days and many have been challenging others for TV debates. Unlike America such debates are untrodden territories for Indian politicians. Funny side is, while you would expect a debate to be organized between equals, here each one is demanding a debate with a seemingly weaker contender. BJP is very keen to ask Congress's Prime-ministerial candidate Sonia Gandhi on a TV-debate with eloquent Atalji. What makes them confident is perhaps the fact that Sonia still reads from prepared speeches and was an ordinary housewife till recently. She would presumably be shattered to pieces without the backing of advisers and ghostwriters. However, when it comes to their own candidate Uma Bharti, contending for the post of CM of Madhya Pradesh, having a debate with Diggi raja, every one in the camp becomes numb. For Digvijay they will only stage the suitable-boy Arun Jaitly, an advocate by profession with considerable TV-presence and known for his gift of gab. Now, is there something called eligibility or are the NDTV guys just dying for TRP?

Whatever the election commission may say or preach, the only eligibility for fighting an election in India is Money-power (that being equivalent to muscle power) or descent. You cannot dream of ensuring that civilized, good and educated people will ever contest elections. Coming to the point of personalities, Sonia might be educated but she is not Indian (BJP has strong objections to that but wouldn't Atalji have congratulated and felt proud of Bobby Jindal had he won at Louisiana, considering his Indian roots. Hypocrisy galore!). I agree that Sonia is not fluent in Hindi but she can speak better Hindi than our ex-PM Devegowda might even dream about. Devegowda has been on records saying he would master Hindi in 4 months, ask him now and he may faint speaking Namaste. More deviations? Uma Bharti is a so-called sanyasin, but owns gold-ornaments worth Rs.5 lacs and fosters ambition for a power-position. Digvijay is an Engineer while Uma is a 6th grader (this is also an issue in the print campaigns). NDTV rejected this comparison recently saying education alone cannot promise you an honest politician. I am not talking about honesty here, but will a less-educated Minister (and Uma is vying for the post of CM) be able to do justice to the post. Wouldn't he/she only remain a signing authority dancing on the tunes of the beurocrats. Doesn't education improve decision-making?

One cannot find the right-mix of best qualities in a candidate. A leader might be ripe but wicked, might be educated but naive, might be poor but discernment. How do the common man know? The Election Commission ( EC) must do more work to ensure that the minimum of the right-mix exist in any candidate. I agree that everyone has a positive or a negative side, but individuals can hardly be trusted in elections, unless they come with an ISI certificate. I would certainly vote with the party in mind not the candidate; so perhaps the point is also that EC must technically consider the capabilities of the party before it starts with their candidates.

The spammer Chief-minister

Well these are election times and the other day I was wondering whether the political parties are considering email as a medium of canvassing. Today I received a spam from, as it is signed, Narendra Modi the Gujarat CM, as many of you also might have received. The mail has possibly been distributed using private mailers and is targetted at the NRI or NRGs (non-resident Gujaratis) for "making the Uttarayan and Kite Festival an internationally known icon of Gujarat". Excerpts from the mail:

As in case of Navratri Festival, we are planning to build up this Kite Festival during Uttarayan as an international event. We want to use the occasion of Pravasi Bharatiya Divas oqganized by Government of India and FICCI to invite the Mon Resident Indians and more specifically the Non Resident Gujaratis to Gujarat. We are planning a 3-day programme between 12th and 14th January, 2004. On 12th January, we will have a Convention of NRIs/NRGs for sharing of views and exchange of ideas and technologies. On 13th January, we are planning tourist circuits so that the visitors could be taken to various tourist places and developmental projects of the State for a first hand exposure. On 14th January, the guests will get a feel of the Uttarayan and Kite Festival when the blue sky is full of kites of different colours and sizes.

Towards harmony with Hibernate

Never thought that leaping into Hibernate¹ could be a bit tricky at this time. First there aren't many good step-by-step guide to using Hibernate and secondly all the available ones, perhaps, don't hold good for Hibernate ver 2.01, though it was released almost 6 months back. Now the porting guidelines say that it isn't much of a work but a Hibernate newbie may beg to differ. As I said it is a bit tricky. Thanks to the post of Matt that helped me on this. Basically the code portion to use Hibernate would change as follows (hey, I am just a beginner on this so I might have said something stupid):

Earlier (assuming a database entity Player with a bean of similar name for persistance) :

Datastore dStore = Hibernate.createDatastore();

dStore .storeClass(Person.class);

SessionFactory sfactory = ds.buildSessionFactory();

now:

Configuration cfg = new Configuration();

cfg .addClass(Person.class);

SessionFactory sfactory = cfg.buildSessionFactory();

Now my application is hosted on Websphere Application Server (WAS) and connects to Oracle8 using JNDI datasource. I was able to talk to Oracle using Hibernate employing URL based connetion but when it came to using JNDI datasoure I was stuck. Posts at the Hibernate forum came with the usual replies and did not help much (may be my questions weren't good enough). As a matter of fact, I was getting the following error:

net.sf.hibernate.HibernateException: Could not find datasource: com.ibm.ejs.cm.JDBC1PhaseRF

The soloution had nothing to do with Hibernate. Infact WAS was getting confused by the javax.sql classes that came with the library jdbc2_0-stdext.jar. This jar arrives with the Hibernate distribution and collided with WAS's own settings. Once I removed this jar, the problem vanished and I could connect to Oracle using Hibernate. The related thread is here. I have managed this far but I know it will take sometime before I could be in perfect harmony with Hibernate.

Quick Resources:

• Nick Heudecker's article ( covers Hibernate 2.0.1)


• Glen Smith's Hitchhiker's Guide to Hibernate


• Hibernate - External Documentation List

1: Hibernate is an open-source object/relational persistence framework and query service for Java.

JavaRanch Journal ~ November Issue

The November issue of the Javaranch journal is here. The newsletter also featues a review of Whizlab's SCBCD exam simulator.

Yahoo Groups available again

Seems like the blanket ban on Yahoo Groups imposed by the boneheaded Indian beaurocrats has been lifted. Yahoo groups websites are now again available. Hope they do not repeat their stupidity.

Is a Certification worth it?

Thomas informs that according to the Sun Wireless Developer Newsletter a new certification exam Sun Certified Mobile Application Developer for J2ME, Version 1.0 is coming up. While this may be some good news for developers, it makes me wonder whether taking a certification exam is worthwhile at all. In a previous post Thomas had raised a similar point.

I am of the opinion that the preparation process for such exams if extended over a good time period does help a lot in building strong understanding however from the job point of view I have hardly seen it making any impact on prospective employers, atleast here in India. Employers here still expect less experienced programmers, certified or not, to pass their tailor-made Java tests, more-or-less lifted from Marcus Green's exams, before they even interview them. If you have 3+ years exposure to java, may be they would not opt for the test but still your certification does not makes any difference to them. Infact, only a few of Employers would even specify it as a criterion in their job advertisements. This has been my experience, may be others would differ.

A factor that has been preventing me from taking another certification test after the SCJP is the fact that it would blow a big hole in my pocket. By Indian standards a certification fee exceeding Rs.7000/- amounts to 15-25% of the programmers monthly take home, for his US counterpart it might not be more than 2.5%. I agree that the high fee may be a gesture to discourage less serious programmers but if Sun has confidence over its tests, that I hope are designed and set by the best, then the less gifted can still be separated from the genuine ones by the final scores. If the test become affordable maybe I would plan for my SCWCD and this upcoming SCMAD.

Enough of showcasing technologies

I recently watched an episode of Bhoomi on Doordarshan National network. Bhoomi is a series on environment produced by Siddhartha Kak of Cinema Vision India and promoted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Siddhartha is better known for his long-running and immensely popular cultural magazine programme "Surabhi". My kudos to the producers for a very nice work done here. One of the segments in this Bhoomi episode very validly raised the issue of Safe Drinking water. Indeed the scarcity of fresh-water is a global phenomenon and the matter is expected to worsen in the future with the ever increasing demand. In my own area the resources of water are the few ponds which in turn depend on the mercy of the Monsoon. And despite this growing scarcity very few people actually seem to understand the significance of replenishing the resources.

Today we boast of having appropriate technologies, including nuclear and related technologies then why aren't these used for proper management of fresh water resources. I keep on hearing about such technologies but none of them seem to have been actually applied till date. One particular approach, that the Bhoomi programme talked about, is the desalination of sea-water. Many countries including the Gulf nations have been using this increasingly to tap the oceans. Our own Bhabha Atomic Rreserach Centre (BARC) has been working on this since the early seventies and has perfected these indigenous technologies for providing fresh water from seawater in the water-scarce coastal areas and in salinity-affected inland areas. Government too feels elated while talking about it. But has any one ever seen any concrete projects implementing them.

BARC project personnel were very confident in telling that the technology is now very cheap, 4-5 paise per litre and that many states are considering using it.
What the heck! The country is already haing enough water scarcity, why not go ahead with these projects. Are these meant to be "show-cased" only. I wonder what is taking the State governments so long to implement these proven, indegenous and abobe-all, affordable technologies and that had been there since the last two decades. Are they waiting for the problem to become acute.

In view of the ensuing Local Assembly elections I think the communities setting agenda should put this point at the top, namely: What are the plans of the State government to provide Safe Drinking Water to all, be it for the agricultural, industrial or domestic use? It is hightime we decide and do not let the crores of rupees invested on such projects. Enough of technology showcases, the government must now bring the benefits of such efforts to common man instead of leaving them languish inside sarkari files and accolades.

The malicious Banana

Jivha pointed to this unfledged clique in the Indi-blogosphere jeering the Bhartiya Blog Mela. It's called the Bhartiya Blog Kela. Now before I even start please note that I do not have anything for or against the Blog Mela but this is pretty hilarious . The guy apparently "had enough of sanctimonious debates on the social relevance of the mela". Wow, Wow..now this guy sure takes things seriously. The "social relevance", I never really thought about how my blog is changing the world around me, or may be I don't have that electron microscope to have a good look at the impact they are making on our "society". Hey anonymous, if you started this anti-mela, or "kela" as you call it, grizzling on the "politics" of nominations, ch...ch..too bad. But if your aim is to have fun or look at the lighter side of Indian blogging, then the effort is noteworthy. Reading through the first phase of nominations it seems the guy has got a bit of sense of humour, alas the bile predominates.

I think having such a blog is not bad either. This might help us bloggers retrospect. Moreover, people have been making fun since long for example the Razzies for the worst hollywood movies and performers are handed out the day before the Oscars (hey..now I am not equating the mela with oscars or anything like that). If the blog can go on with malice towards one and all, it could be quite popular. I think Vin , in his comment at the blog, summed it up very aptly:

When experience of reading blogs get jittery, complex, negative, uninspiring, loose, too personal, too serious, too paradoxical, too melodramatic, too politically correct / incorrect, (in short) too many issues to handle for a page hits-savvy Indian, a kela is born.

Meandering ways

Life has meandering ways. You never know which way would lead to what destination, atleast that's what Googling often lets you decipher. Savour these recent funny search strings that lead people to this blog.

• housewives looking for fun in Navi Mumbai


• pressures and pains extra marital affairs


• labour politics inside zara


• hindi movies +love scenes


• aishwarya b***s


• how many ruppes in a crore

The Quest for unknown

If there is one blog that comes any closer to my range of thoughts, its perhaps Charu's Peek in to my mind. One reason might be that we both belong to the same 70's generation. Many of her posts, like this one, echo my own thoughts. Her recent post "What about job satisfaction" prompted me to jot this down. Like Charu's my father has been a public sector employee with all those notions of job-security, timely promotions, free medical aid, subsidised residence and meals, all that might be perceived a luxury today.

In 1995 I was rejected at the interview for the same organisation (BHEL), despite of clearing the supposedly difficult written test and that somehow put in my mind that my father could have tried to get me selected. My father on the other hand was furious (and he still laments for that) that I did not try for other coveted government jobs well in time (age-limit for government jobs in India is mostly 28-30 years). He would quote many of my friends and teachers who thought I could very well make it to the IAS. Retrospecting on the events I can only say that lack of determination was one factor and another was that I did not wish to go and study again for those exams. It's an irony that destiny led me to eat my words, appear in a test, qualify and go back to schools to join a full-time course and attain a PG qualification related to Software Technology.

So sequences of events are the guiding factor in ones life whether he is able to lay hands on the coziness of a secured job and, still important than that, to derive job-satisfaction. For me this factor had been an alluring one, looming around but difficult to pocket. In last ten years among half a dozen jobs I have been looking for this, it often comes stays awhile and then flies away as swiftly as it came. Last week when I went home, I and my father were sitting together and he just patted on my back and stroked my hair and said "you are not taking care of yourself". I could understand his thoughts, as my father he could well empathise with me, he thinks the job is taking its toll on me.

Who knows, may be he is right! May be not the job but the quest for that missing gratification is taking the toll. I might be more confident, more clear about my capabilities today, what I am unsure about is where I should head to to achieve what I want. Today my search is more for financial security rather than career. After my kid is here I do not want to be nomadic anymore. But the fact is, the search would perhaps not end any sooner. Because to be very frank, I am not even sure what I am looking for!

Castor and the Namespace bug

While working with a new version of Castor I recently encountered a strange error during unmarshalling (creating Java object out of corresponding XML schema). The error was as follows:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: The prefix 'xml' is reserved (XML 1.0 Specification) and cannot be declared.

Luckily, some Googling brought me to this thread which explains the probable reasons for this "bug". As it suggested (and it works since I incorporated it) we need to set the namespaces property to true in the castor.properties file as follows (caveat: needs to be done with Xerces 2.5 only):

org.exolab.castor.parser.namespaces=true

Following is a quote from the said thread, which is infact a reply from Keith Visco, the Castor XML project lead, that throws light on the cause of the bug:

The issue seems to be with newer versions of Xerces. The older version that ships with Castor works fine. For some reason, when the newer
version of Xerces encounters an "xml" prefixed attribute, such as "xml:lang" it tries to automatically start a prefix mapping for "xml". Which, in my opinion, is technically incorrect. They shouldn't be doing that. According to the w3c, the "xml" prefix should never be declared.

The reason it started appearing in the new Castor (0.9.5.2), was because of a switch to SAX 2 by default during unmarshalling. I found a simple workaround (tested with Xerces 2.5) , at first I thought about disabling namespace processing in Xerces, but then realized that it's already disabled by default by Castor...so I have no idea why they call #startPrefixMapping when namespace processing has been disabled. But in any event...explicitly enabling namespace processing seems to fix the problem:

Holly-Bolly ke bahane

Watching the closing credit title of a Hollywood movie makes me appreciate their dedication to the art. All people who put in their effort seem to get the due credit; so one is not surprised to see the credit for the "Teenager at the disco" or "The fifth waiter" or the "lady at street corner". Many of the credit titles are very funny and many very artistic. On the contrast the Bollywood¹ flicks seem to concentrate on the opening credit and by the time the movie reaches finale, by which time half of the janata² already gallops for the exit gates, the director himself seem to loose his interest in his movie (so typical of David Dhawan). What you get at the end of the movie is just a replay of a happy-go-lucky song from the movie with the credits running insipidly along side acknowleding the efforts put in by the film financer, friendly-neighbourhood banker and the superstar who did that 2-second obliging sequence. You can't even expect the decency from the producers to express their gratitude for the numerous technicians who put in their effort including those stuntmen who are at far greater risk doing stunts here compared to their Hollywood counterparts, who apart from the insurance factor get the advantage of all the safety-precautions technology can provide while performing a stunt.

To me this is a display of the typical Indian mindset, first: we embark on a work but we do not finish it with the same vigour, we even go the extent of losing interest by the end. Second: we don't give a damn about people who helped us in our work, all our glory is due to us, we tend to forget those on whose shoulders we stand. Thirdly: only our life is important and other's a thing to waste. Isn't this ethos visible in all walks of Indian life? We tell our illetrate chowkidaar³ to change our broken fuse fearing we would get an electrical shock if we did it on our own, we tell our 8 year old girl-servent to babysit and carry our baby all day long, we savor all the delicacies on the festivities with our well-fed neighbours forgetting the safai-wala who cleaned your house to sparkles for the occassion. This may sound melodramatic but we just need to peep inside our own proverbial girehbaan.

1 The common term for the Indian Hindi film industry 2 Hindi for public 3 Hindi for watchman 4 Urdu for collar

Much ado about CAFEBABE

I was going through the documentation of BCEL and started wondering how come the magic-number in the Java class file 0xCAFEBABE looks so meaningful. While the original purpose for specifying the begining four bytes of Java class files is to assist in segregating prbable class files from non class files the the choice lets one ponder on whether it was just inadvertant or an easter egg. Googleing on the origin of the word lead me to some interesting discussions of the past in Java circles.

The most convincing rationale is perhaps at Doug Landauer's blog where he mentions that the term originated in 1989 from the name for an erstwhile C++ compiler CAFE (C++, A Front End) and the suffix BABE came from the cafe product manager Kim Polese's name who was "described" by people as "babe". Another opinion says "0xcafebabe is also the constant value at the start of mach-o files. mach-o is the binary format for native Mac OS X libraries and applications. " Few other interesting comments at artima are worth mentioning here:

.. they presumably had to pick something as their magic number to identify class files, and there's a limit to how many Java or coffee related words you can come up with using just the letters A-F :-)

..my guess is that (a) 32-bit magic numbers are easier to handle and more likely to be unique, and (b) the Java team wanted something with the Java-coffee metaphor, and since there's no 'J' or 'V' in hexadecimal, settled for something with CAFE in it. I guess they figured "CAFE BABE" was sexier than something like "A FAB CAFE" or "CAFE FACE", and definitely didn't like the implications of "CAFE A FAD" (or worse, "A BAD CAFE").

..they *could* have used the number 12648430, if you choose to read the hex zeros as the letter 'O'. That gives you 0xC0FFEE, or 0x00C0FFEE to specify all 32 bits. OO COFFEE? Object Oriented, of course..

My posts on JDJ/Ciol

One of my post made under technology catgeory has been featured by the portal Ciol. The article is available here. Another recent post of mine on Code Analyzers has made been mentioned in Eric's Pulse of 20th October and has been published in the Java Developers Journal Industry journal available here. Thanks Eric :), thanks Ciol.

DateTime and other problems

Bloglet subscribers to my feed may not be getting my posts in their email for about a week now. The problem seems to have surfaced after some changes made in the JRoller RSS feed XML format. Bloglet now throws an error "'String was not recognized as a valid DateTime" for JRoller feeds. Monsur of bloglet wrote in reply to my mail:

Bloglet is rejecting RSS feeds with dates in the following format: "Tue, 21 Oct 2003 24:56:21 -0500". Its probably a good idea to change your date to adhere to the XML-RPC spec, found here. We have registered it as an outstanding issue though.

Incidently I was playing with this taglibrary for parsing RSS XML and I had to make some change to the classes so that the permalink to the posts (guid instead of expected link element) are recognized properly. I am planning to host this JSP at mycgiserver but it seems they do not allow uploading third party jars there. I am planning to use the JSP to generate the "Recent Posts" panel on my blog. Currently this is being generated by Blogstreet however the RSS Panel tool of Blogstreet is not able to understand the permalinks too and generated the links incorrectly. I am unsure how I would be able to use the JSP unless mycgiserver allows custom tag libraries.

An NRI's plea for cleaniness

Through one of my sites on Amitabh Bachchan I keep on receiving occassional feedback. Many of the readers write to me presuming I am in contact with the megastar. Some are ardent fans like me and write essays in his praise. A mail I recently received from one Satpal Mehra, an NRI living in Austria, though it makes the same presumption, is unlike any other fan-letter I ever received. Realising the larger-than-life persona of BigB and the impact he can make, Satpal wrote an emotional letter to him urging him to become a part of this effort to make India clean on the lines of Singapore . Here is the unabridged letter which I reproduce without Satpal's permission, hoping it serves his purpose and that Amitabh, and most importantly us Indians, actually read and absorb it.

AMITJI, INDIA NEEDS YOU

Dear Amitji,

After living over 45 years in europe ( last 35 years in Austria), one becomes more patriotic than when one lives in own country. The words of our President Dr.A.P.J.Abdul Kalam " I HAVE A DREAM " have been haunting and following me like a shadow. His dream is to make India as great and as clean, as any country in the world. His dream is to make India as prosperous and clean as any western country. In the same breath, he had rightly and directly hit Indians and NRIs, who visit or live in Europe, America, Japan and Singapore. In those countries, like in Singapore they behave and even pay a fine for throwing an empty cigarette packet or anything on the road. But as soon as they reach India and instead of setting an example for others, they throw anything on the road. Our president is right, when he means by blaming the government such India born citizens only want to brush away their own responsibility.

Quoting him further - Don't only ask what India & Indian government can do for you, just ask yourself what I can do for India. Apart from our education, national status and pride, we NRIs owe a lot to our Nation. Last month I have started mobilising small groups of NRIs in Europe & America, and friends and relatives in India. We can't help in 100 wrong things, but we have taken up .

Amitji, few months back, I met an old man from Singapore, and he said that in 1945 Singapore was as dirty a city as any other large Asian city. A city counsellor thought of an idea, to put a token fine on people for any kind of littering in public places. Others laughed at him. He said that it was not the fine, which will make people stop littering, but the humiliation of a policeman stopping and telling them, what a wrong thing they were doing. The on-lookers shall be the main factor. He was right In his assessment. Today, Singapore is the cleanest city OF THE WORLD. We have worked out a program, through which retired military & civil officers, as well as active doctors, judges, lawyers, teachers and other people who have eccess to Internet, can build small groups of 2 - 3 persons, and only help to keep 20 to 30 metres of areas ONLY AROUND THEIR OWN PLACES OF RESIDENCES OR WORK: A comprihensive website is being prepared, to explain.

Tamil Nadu has already passed a Law to fine Rs. 100/- anyone for spitting in public places. Other states shall follow the suit. Unless we have some personalities like you, who shall raise their voices against " DIRT, LITTERING & ILLNESSES " our voice shall never reach far enough to eradicate the nasty habit of littering. We shall take the burden of work on our shoulders, but your moral help and guidance shall be our backbone.

Once again, Amitji, I request you to help us to HELP YOUR & OUR BELOVED INDIA.

With a big hope and personal regards,

Sat Pal Mehra

Bush has a blog

Believe it or not President Bush has a Blog too.

Code Analyzers

During my search for Profilers I stumbled upon some good Java code checkers or Code Analyzers and though most of you may be already aware about them would like to share my thoughts on the same. Please feel free to correct me or add your inputs to this.

Talking of Code Review or Analysis I wonder if soembody would even think about going for the wearisome task of manually locating lapses in use of Proper Syntax, code indentation, unused variables/imports, naming convention and Javadoc comments without using any automated tool to do the task. Apart from the task of deciding about what code optimizations need be done or detecting any logical blunder rest can perhaps be safely left to these tools. Moreover more ambitious programmers can even look for these tools to operate in tight integration with their favorite IDEs. Fortunately my favorite Netbeans has many modules already available of which three are my peronal favorites : PMD, Jalopy and Checkstyle, perhaps in that order.

All the three have various plugins available for various IDEs. Jalopy is a code formatter and beautifier and is highly configurable using code snippets though it does not comprehend well line spaceing and tabs for files edited by other IDEs say Kawa or Textpad. Checkstyle is more about code formatting and nit-pickingly looks for white spaces, tabs, position of braces and javadocs and configuration is difficult (as far as I know certainly not configurable thorugh Netbeans GUI). Out of these PMD deserves my high regard, here is a synopsis of what it can detect:

• Unused local variables, parameters and private methods (very useful)


• Empty catch blocks 


• Empty 'if' statements 


• Duplicate import statements 


• Classes which could be Singletons 


• Short/long variable and method names

A lesser known but very powerful code checking tool is FindBugs. Too bad it has no plugin available for Nebeans though. While the conclusions of the tool about unread fields is not very accurate, it detects what many others don't such as:

• Null pointer dereference detector


• Ignored returns from method


• Unclosed I/O streams


• Objecting usage of == or != for String comparison

Here are some other tools:

• SourceMonitor: Provides size and complexity metrics for your source code.


• JLint: A Code verifier


• QStudio also seems pretty good to me. As per their site it is available for download with a year license at no cost.

Using w.bloggar

Arjun had advised me about it and it based on this it seems lowem has taken a plunge too. But can w.bloggar help in posting the same post to two blogs simultaneously? That would be cool. Let me see if it works. As for w.bloggar, well the GUI is cool. Editing Blogger templates would be simpler here. Also facilities like: having your custom toolbar, spell check and formatting support is good.

PS: It seems simultaneous post (Tools > Post to many blogs) is not working properly, atleast for JRoller and Blogger combination. The post is published successfully on Blogger but not on JRoller, however posting individually works in both cases. Another problem: w.bloggar perhaps does not understand the Blogger Title tag. Also a suggestion: Instead of Blog titles the drop down list of all blog accounts in the toolbar should perhaps show the Blog Alias name.

Javaranch newsletter: October Issue

The October issue of Javaranch newsletter is out. It includes a primer on using the Netbeans IDE and a nice deliberation on the Rowset interface implementations of which would be joining the Tiger (JDK1.5) bandwagon. Being deliberating offlate on the code optimization and performance tuning issues myself I also found the pointer to this thread useful.

Company name etymologies

Did you know that Cisco  is not an acronymn but a short name for San Francisco or that the name LG is infact a combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar or that Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from The Lotus Position or Padmasana. You may find a list of company names with explanation of the origin of their names at Wikipedia?

In praise of FeedDemon

Man I love this news aggregator FeedDemon. First of all the GUI is lovely and then the features are exactly what you need: Channel Groups to classify you feeds (and moving channels amongst the group is easy), facility to synchronise your list with an online one or simply use somebody else's subscription list in OPML format, the Group Newspaper with browser integration, auto-discovery and verification of feeds and so on. I must say though I loved Bloglines (being an online tool) but managing the feeds list once it grows beyond 10-15 becomes clumsy there, especially adding a new feed. In my last spell I had tried FeedReader and Blogstreet's Info Aggregator but the hiccup with both was they would not work behind proxy. In the latter case having email links to stories, umm is perhaps not a very pretty idea. For the impatient there is big list of news aggregators here.

I am in a movie?

The stardom has finally arrived. Yes I am in a movie! Don't take my word for it. Have a look here. Though I did not have a clue till now apparently the movie Mumbai Matinee has a 32 year old character called Debashish aka Debu played by Rahul Bose. If only other facts about this character (including his surname and profile and characterisation) were ditto as mine. Alas! I missed fame and glory by inches :(.

Collablog and Pebble

Few of my colleagues and I were thinking to have a sort of collaborative blog on our intranet where we could post our daily Tasks, TBD Lists, Reminders etc, a purpose which can't be called blogging perhaps. I was looking for a free Java blogging tool and recalled Pebble. It's a lightweight, personal blogger written as a web application that can run inside standard J2EE web containers. Pebble uses standard technologies such as JSP, Servlets, filters, JSP custom tags, JSTL and JAXP. The installation on Tomcat is fairly simple. Since the blog is collaborative, we wanted multiple users who could post on the blog, so I created few users in the tomcat-users.xml with role blog-contributor. Incidently Pebble needs JDK1.4x and does not work with JDK1.3.

Though we just started using it there were few suggestions which I sent to Simon Brown, who wrote Pebble:

1. After Login the link to Login probably should become "Logout", infact there is no Logout option in Pebble interface
   
2. Option needed to alter post dates/make the post private
   
3. The blog main page should refresh when we make a post and close the popup window
   
4. After posting we do not get any message that the post has been made (difficult to decipher as the same window remains open).
   
5. Email address field missing in comments form.
   
6. Facility needed to preview the blog (as user would see it) after we make the posts, because all the editing links are visible at top and there is no way we can logout.

To which Simon replied:

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll certainly be implementing some of them. :-) In addition to my website, I'm also using pebble for collaboration on an intranet, mainly for project news and stuff like that. Again, not "blogging", but it's great that I can use the same concepts and software, just by changing the JSPs.

Don't ask me why I did not go for Roller, probably because I wanted a new interface and secondly I was not looking for too many features. BTW we call this blog Collablog, any other suggestion?

Baby steps onto J2ME

Stepping into using J2ME warrants major alteration in mindset for a programmer so far promenading in J2SE. Experienced J2ME programmers may perhaps enlighten me on this but these are opening remarks as I very recently took on developing applications for mobile devices. You have an array of challenges when you compare it to developing applications for PC. The Screen size is restrained, as are the processing ability and memory of these devices. The challenge is to cope up with the limitations and do not let these dejecting facts reach the user, he must feel the richness of the user interface on the mobile as he does on his desktop, leastways closer to that.

As a developer you feel like being asked to deliver a speech in front of a mammoth crowd with no public address system. You have an abridged class library at your disposal, no reflection, and no finalization. Given that majority of the MIDP devices have less than 100K of dynamic memory available the developer has to be constantly vigilant on the memory his algorithms consume.

On the IDE front it is a solace for a Netbeans user that the IDE has lot many modules available for J2ME developers. However I prefer using KToolbar for building and packaging my application with Netbeans as the Java editor owing to the fact that it is required and that Netbeans doesn't understand the directory structure of applications created by KToolbar, causes problems with the package structure (something wrong here? please do drop a comment). However the present arrangement does not bother me, atleast for now.

Hindi for Blog

What is the most appropriate Hindi word for Blog? Alok calls it chittha. How about Roznamchaa or Vrittant?

Israeli attacks: a lesson for India

The recent retaliatory attack on Syrian Islamic Jihad base camps by Israel reveals the true face of America, their doublespeak on the Kashmir issue becoming more poignantly evident. The American hypocrisy lets them pats on the back of Pakistan for its help in fighting terrorism ignoring the terrorist dens right beneath their nose and tells India to exercise restraint, similar is their stand on Syria-Israel confrontation. When it comes to dealing with its own issues there is no stopping the big bully; without any proof of Saddam having WMDs and without caring for UN it attacked Iraq.

Syria has been harboring terrorism the same way as Pakistan providing training facilities, funding and logistical support to terrorist groups such as Hamas. While supporting Israel over the attacks, America has been providing support to terrorist groups and in its attempt to play the role of World Police scolding Syria as it scolds Pakistan now and then. Infact it is open now that when Bill Clinton was trying to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the FBI was secretly funneling money to suspected Hamas figures to see if the militant group would use it for terrorist attacks.

Islamic nations are very worried by the Israeli attack. No wonder that Pakistani Ambassador had called Israel’s attacks a violation of international law. They have their fears and I wish that it came true. Shouldn’t the Israeli attack be cue enough for India to take on the Pakistani training camps in a similar manner? How long can we let the politicians play their diplomatic gimmick of holding olive branches in their hand and urging Pakistan to stop infiltration and terrorist activities while it audaciously continues with its foul game? Let our security forces cross the LOC and raze the enemy once and for all.

The Blog Matrix

Rajeev identified an occupying topic from Bloggercon reportage, elitism in blogging. Infact I was giving this a thought while chatting with a fellow blogger few days back and we both marvelled at the volume of blogging being done by Indians and whether it has any impact on others who don't blog. The fact remains that these handful of blogs and the opinions expressed therein could not be representative of the rest of the population for whom (especially in third world countries) ekeing out their daily bread and butter is more significant a matter than discussing the plight of hungry farmers inside AC drawing rooms sporting an original MF Hussain . If 97% of the US population does not blog the Indian scenario can be very well reckoned. Many of my friends are in software profession and majority of them have not even heard of blogging, I can't expect much of others who are seldom online.

When Indian bloggers, many of whom are top-executives of far-famed companies, B-School grads capable of shelving hefty fees and some others who have the luxury of a reasonabley good Internet connectivity, write or refer to each other's post they hardly do so out of empathy. Majority of posts are self-indulging and would fail to make any impact except gratifying the egoboo urge. Blogging is not technolgy alone, it is supposedly a potent platform for exchange of ideas and potential business tool. But blogging certainly cannot be termed as a revolution unless it widens its reach and really delivers on the business front (ever heard of a blogger being paid for his posts). Until blogging qualifies on its commercial viability its social repurcussions can hardly be felt. Till that time the bloggers would continue to make merry in their tiny indivisualistic Matrix of referrers and syndications.

Bush rivals Vajpayee : On Poetic turf

You may scream, you may laugh,
You might even shudder in dismay,
But Atalji now has a new rival,
As Bush becomes a poet while laura was away.

NDTV's dilemma

Hindi has been a weak spot at NDTV, the skipper Pronnoy himself knows very little of it and his turks including Rajdeep Sardesai, Arnab Goswami, Barkha Dutt and Abhhigyan Prakash just manage to speak tuti-phuti Hindi only when in dire need. Yet NDTV was in a dilemma to start a lateral Hindi channel when its deal with Star was over. Many news anchors made hay as they hopped from strong Hindi channels like Aaj Tak and now as you look at the state of NDTV India you can gauge that it is precisely not NDTV Bharat. The channel is for the anglicized urban India with absolutely no sarokar with ground situations. With exposure to programme like Jina Issi Ka Naam hai NDTV has these cinema-based shows where the news anchors are actually behaving like actors (remember the item where the pitch dark presenter is playing a double role, disgusting). And there has been little effort to change the style of anchors as well, Punya Prasun still speaks khadi boli the Aaj Tak way, Pankaj Pachori is still blatantly confused, Abhigyan still has that poor Hindi diction.

And it seems the team of Pronnoy, who had shown Indians how a news presenter should be, needs a lesson or two on news presentation. Take the evening newscasts for example. You may start wondering if something is wrong with Dibang's eyesight, or the studio lights are too piercing or is it the teleprompter that's gone wary. A seasoned professional like him who used to flawlessly deliver news at Aaj Tak seems utterly confused, stammering umpteen times, unable to read from the teleprompter and not having any clue what is ahead when he is stuck somewhere. The headlines are mostly are heftily assembled and utterly jumbled up fragments of Hindi. Even the local Hindi tabloids know how to frame a better crispy sentence. The only solace is, thank god, the news reports.

In the race of news channels while Sahara Samay, despite of having an obvious bias, is picking up well perhaps due to the regional approach and people who know the language. With its nodal centres on the pipeline this would be a force to reckon with.

Cumm-on NDTV, we could appreciate that commercial compulsions can lead you to jump on an unknown terrain. But at least with your reputation I expected a better preparation.

It hit me!

I had only read about the comments spam so far, and noticed how other blogs were seriously affected by these unsolicited comments. But today I noticed atleast 3 such spam comment on two of my earlier posts and removed it. The comments were inserted by Viagra sellers on much older posts (incidently one was titled - An age thing). I was also going through this article that shows ways to fight this pest and hope that freeroller.net will do something about it. Shame on you spammers, may you perish in hell!

Tanmay is 1 year old today

Today is the first birthday of my son Tanmay. It is due to the little angel that I and Mitali were introduced to the joys, pressures, fun and responsibilities of parenting. Tanmay has ushered in a breeze of vitality and energy in our lives, infact he has tought us to relish the meaning of life itself. Today our parents, friends and well-wishers join us in wishing the apple of our eye a very happy birthday. God bless you son!

Band Loyalty

During my recent Mumbai visit I was curious about the listener ship for various FM Radio stations and much to my expectation (hey, I am not generalizing, just my view here) I found that though the listener ship is good, there is nothing like Brand loyalty here. People switch back and forth the stations on their tuner as they would on their TV remote. The most fascinating part is that people switch stations as soon as the RJ takes over or some oldie song would be played. They would happily stay on till the time the stations play the song, even tolerating some of the most stupid radio ads I ever heard, the moment RJs start their tongue wagering it's on to some other station. Ya, the name of the station hardly matters when there are so many players -- there is Red 93.5 FM of India Today Group, Radio City 91 FM of STAR, Radio Mirchi 98.3 FM of the Times Group, Go 92.5 FM of Mid-Day and Win 94.6 of Millennium Broadcasting (I do not know there may be more of them). With all those numbers anyone can go eerie.

The fact that pains me here is the duress on the Radio Jockeys (RJs). Where would the producers allow for creativity in writing scripts for the shows when the slogan of the station becomes less talk, more music. With so many players vying for attention you do not have any option but to keep your act short and crispy. That means less of RJing, just seconds of blah blah and then you are taken over by what sells the music. [Incidentally Radio Mirchi, Indore had offered me a full-time job for RJ after I had cleared their tests and audition, I do not know whether it was a sound decision but I did not accept it as I was looking only for some part-time fun, now that I think of it perhaps I did better, at least I would not have succumbed to this concept of less talk.]

All in all, in the race for revenue, creativity is called for not only in programming but also in campaigning. As a matter of fact, concerns over marketing strategies overpower those over content. Afterall stations have the same pie of advertisers to share, the race is for who manages with the biggest chunk. Talented and genuine RJs in these scenario can only grin and bear. For the rest who anyhow manage the buk-buk just to get their pocket-money (and listening to FM at Indore I can bet there are many such RJs), it was never a matter of concern anyway.

Blogs and Anonimity

Some blogger like Jivha want others to respect his anonimity. I agree with him. As for me I wish people do not co-relate anything that I say on my blog with my job or my employer. A mistake (now stands corrected) was mentioning my current employer in a post (in any case you can view my Resume and know who they are). Now I did not wish to put any disclaimer on my blog, but it goes without saying that my Employer has nothing to do with my opinions and I never sit for a meeting with my superiors to reach a consensus on any post before I make it public.

Another point that often plagues me is my online resume. It has been there on my geocities homepage for years, seldom updated and indexed by many search engines; you type my name and it pops up as the first result. Now, this does not mean that I am always in a job-hopping mood. Recently one of colleague quipped with a gleam in his eyes (as if he had dug-up some dark hidden secret of mine) and a silly grin, "Hey, you put your resume on Google, eh!". First, buddy Google does not host my resume page. Secondly, I am not responsible if my meta-tags work well. Thirdly..SO WHAT! Infact, I am thinking of adding a note to my resume page "Not Available", or should I remove it altogether??

The "Woh" factor

Many of you might have noted the patni factor in the former UP ministerAmarmani Tripathi's case nabbed by CBI for his role in the murder of poetess Madhumita Shukla. Many press-wallahs say Madhumani was the mastermind behind the killing. Unlike the usual Indian wives infested by the woh factor she wasn't the one to do the rona-dhona and be a silent spectator to her swami's misdeeds. Without demeaning the loss of human lives, I have to comment that Madhumita's murder while she was carrying the minister's child is perhaps no less heinous than the injustice that Amarmani did to his wife with this extra-marital affair. Did she have any right for justice or not? As for Madhumita, she had seen rampant examples in our society where people even do not take it as a matter when it comes to illegal marriages. While people like Shabana Azmi have succeeded on religious behest others like Hema Malini had done it in broad daylight in front of dumb press. However, these ladies were already famous when they did that and Madhumita wanted to be rich and famous both. The price of chastity was nothing for that.

For Amarmani it was a vicious circle of lust and revenge; his lust that inspired his wife to seek revenge. Being in politics the backbone was already missing. He would have managed with all this beautifully if only things would not have leaked as they do in several other similar cases in the Indian polity. What happens to him next? May be he would witness decades of trial and die in a jail; may be he would get scot-free and bring another Mulayam to CM-hood; May be he would get another Madhumita.

The bitter part in this story of lust, greed, hatred and ruthlessness that I noticed is the missing human-factor. Madhumita sure had a heart as had Amarmani, they might have loved each other even if for a very short-while. Whatever happened to that? When the CBI arrested the defaced mantri he felt a pain in his chest. If only Amarmani had felt this pain before, when he let Madhumita murdered, with his child.

Mumbai Musings!

For those who still keep track of my blog despite of almost 2 weeks of absentia thanks for watching the space. Last week has been pretty hectic for me as I got the opportunity to visit the Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City (DAKC) the collosal darbar of Reliance Empire,  spread across 140-acres at Navi Mumbai. DAKC houses the National Headquarters, Internet Data Centers, Call Centers, Applications Development Laboratories and the National Network Operations Centre of Reliance Infocomm. If you are there for the first time you are bound to be struck with an awe. 2.2 million sq. ft. of office space spread over 14 buildings where DAKC houses 10,000 people (and we are perhaps not counting the countless consultantas like me who were there on short trips). Monumental!

So you have these access controlled doors, revolving doors, electronic barricades (reminded me of those at Kolkata Metro stations) amidst lush lawns with himalayan fountains, wide clean roads, covered approach roads insides the blocks and cute green Golf-carts to drop you at your work-place. You see the place and you quip,"who says the golden pre-dotcom days have gone". Needless to say for the staff there it might be merriment all the way, sadly (may be owed to my short-sightedness too) very few seemed to be actually working there. Frankly, with gigantic food courts with all assortment of delicacies avilable at your disposal, who would like to.

P.S. Hey! I spotted Ram Jethmalani at the Airport during my return while I was going for the security check. Not that I am any great fan of his but getting an autograph from him wouldn't have been bad either ;)