If you are wondering what happened after March 2005, well, Null Pointer moved to its own home. Please do follow me there.

Friday, November 28, 2003

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.


Thursday, November 27, 2003

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!


Wednesday, November 26, 2003

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?

Tuesday, November 25, 2003

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.



Monday, November 24, 2003

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.


Friday, November 21, 2003

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.


Thursday, November 20, 2003

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.


Monday, November 17, 2003

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:



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

Friday, November 14, 2003

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.

Thursday, November 13, 2003

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.

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

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.

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

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.




Friday, November 07, 2003

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.

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

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


Monday, November 03, 2003

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!

Saturday, November 01, 2003

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:

World's first Hindi blogzine

I feel elated in presenting Nirantar , World's first Hindi blogzine. It has been the result of untiring efforts of so many Hindi blogger...