To memorise is Human, to document is Divine

I was working to compile and execute fastDNAml a really smart Bio-App. Something that me and Prem ( a colleague and a friend ) had done before, and I assumed that the steps were too simple to write down "Come on, any fool can remember these steps", I remember saying. I generally desist making such grandiose statements because I know saying such things is just tempting fate. And, Fate is one lady you do not want to tempt ( yeah, I have learnt it the hard way). Getting back to what I was saying, all I had to do was to compile this simple app and run it with some test data. I kept getting silly errors, saying " could not connect to child proc", "unable to find xxx", each of which I distinctly remember solving the first time around. As it turns out I am a fool, a big one in fact. It was a deja vu as I ploughed through each and every hurdle and finally got it to run. If only I had documented I wouldn't spent half a day, yes HALF a day trying to get it to run again. Hence the saying "To memorise is Human, to document is Divine".

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Performancing 1.3 on Firefox 2.0 dont like Beta Blogger ?

I had the same problem. I did download Firefox 2.0 as soon as it was made available.I got Performancing 1.3 to go along with it, to start blogging of course. Unfortunately, Blogger didnt seem to be picking up my blog. After hours of googling and trying to add the account on performancing I could not log in to Blogger at all!
                          I finally found a way out. Here are the steps.
Step 1: Click on the 'Launch Account Wizard' button. This will open a wizard. ( duh!)
Step 2: Click on the 'Manually Configure' button. Click Next.
Step 3: When the wizard asks you 'Which Bloggin service you want to add?' Select 'Custom Blog' from the drop down. Click Next.
Step 4: Select the Blog system type to be 'Blogger API' and give 'http://beta.blogger.com/api/RPC2' as the Server URL. Click Next.
Step 5: Give your google account credentials.
Step 6: Select the blogs.
Step 7: Enjoy posting!

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I dont like that Blogger is messing with my customised template.

PESIT

I have been involved with Sun's University relations initiative for a few months now. The present project involves evangelizing Sun's technologies in colleges so as to capture the mindshare of students.
PESIT, a premier institute in Bangalore, was among the firsts to be chosen for the project. The talks mainly revolved around the Solaris OS, the Java platform and the Netbeans IDE. I was itching to give a talk on Java and volunteered for the 'Java Fundamentals', ' OOPS concepts' and 'Extended topics'. Jaya Hangal, a senior developer, picked myself and another colleague, Mahipal, to talk about Java fundamentals at PESIT.
                         PESIT is situated on the outskirts of Bangalore so there was another hurdle I had to pull myself out of the bed and get going by 8 ( on a Saturday it is tough, any self respecting man wil vouch for this). Since Mahipal is an alumni of Pesit we had no trouble getting there.
                    All our dreams of being the guest speakers came crashing when the guard refused to let us in unless we produced an ID card. Thankfully we managed to convince him that we were indeed speakers from Sun Microsystems. After a quick breakfast we landed at the Computer Science Dept of Pesit and we met Dr. Kris kumar the HoD.
              Mahipal and myself walked the students through the basics of Java and OO concepts. The students showed a lot of interest and posed good questions. The really good ones were awarded with a bar of chocolate. Then came the lab sessions. We found Belinix, a distro of Open Solaris operating system, was installed on all machines. We helped them complete five small programs that used the Java language. The five programs touched upon various fundamental I/O operations and the collections framework. Atishay lent us a hand in completing the lab session.
                         I found that a couple of final year students interested in developing a J2ME app the can be used to do some nifty tasks with a computer, with the ability to receive streaming media from the computer. Helped them out by introducing them to my friend(/classmate) who had done a similar project for his graduation. Me, Atishay, Mr Nithin and the Folks at PESIT.

Mahipal, Atishay, Mr.Nithin and the Folks @ PESIT

Solaris Nevada OS

I got myself a generous helping of Solaris Nevada (build 46) OS and like they say in the McDonald's ad "I am loving it". In case you have no clue what Nevada is, go here. I was suprised with the nice Look and feel it offers, compared to the older releases it is a relief. Whats more I was able to attach my camera to it and download pics. Cool!
Now, I am not an advanced user (like the majority of the people), and the small things like the ease of use is what matters (first impressions are lasting, remember). It is good to see that the Solaris folks are addressing usability issues while adding  advanced features, cause time and again Apple has proved that usability is the key to good business. Kudos, to the design folks.  OSDir has some screenshots for you to see here.  Look here for one of them.

I have been very busy. The amount is work flowing is almost torrential!
BTW I decided to start my blog at blogs.sun.com. link

As Rajup puts it a Bookworms diet in reverse chronological order

C. Rajagopalachari's Mahabharatha
Gregory David Robert's Shantharam
Kiran Nagarkar's Ravan and Eddie (Again)

(Good) Movies watched recently:
Dor
Motorcycle Diaries ( Che Guavera's memoirs )
Billy Elliot
East is East


Need to watch
Girish Kasravalli's Nayi Neralu

Are you a nerd ?

Found this video that defines nerds, good fun!

Bandh!

Today is Karnataka Bandh, called by Karnataka activists on the issue of Belgaum. It is a peaceful bandh alright. I am safely in office now, that is an achievement considering all the chaos that was kicked up during the Dr. Raj's death. I saw the police, stationed at important junctions, all along my way from HSR Layout to my office in Shanthinagar. The good thing about the bandh is that all the traffic signals are off. I never stopped in any. Hi five for that!
I dropped a man from Audogodi to the Langford road junction, the good deed for today.

Thanks Bangalore for keeping it peaceful.

Idiocy of the Crowds?

We have seen a surge in community effort to acheive general good. Linux is a shining example of this phenomenon. So many developers who have never met each other, have conspired to make a nice OS. Dave Freedman talks about the negative aspects of collabration. Link . I do agree with him, I have experienced it myself.

As far back as 1972, in his now classic book, Victims of Groupthink, Yale psychology researcher Irving Janis theorizes that groups often breed a false confidence that leads to unsound decisions none of the individuals in the group would have made on their own. In the 1990s, research by Purdue psychology researcher Kip Williams shed light on "social loafing"--that is, the tendency of people in groups simply to not try as hard as individuals. In fact, the notion that individuals outthink and outdecide groups is so well established among experts that they don't bother to study it anymore. Instead, the hot question among psychologists and organizational behaviorists is why the rest of us persist in keeping this wrong-headed notion alive. "We've been trying to find out what seduces us into thinking teams are so wonderful," says Natalie Allen, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario who has studied what she calls "the romance of teams."

Many times I have found myself surrounded by people who know squat about even the basic computer concepts, and want to design next-gen software. Now, the conclusion of this article seems right. Dave Freedman for president!

It's not time to swear off meetings and group efforts, online or otherwise. But it makes sense to be more selective about how we enlist them.

Which sports car are you ?

I'm a Chevrolet Corvette!

You're a classic - powerful, athletic, and competitive. You're all about winning the race and getting the job done. While you have a practical everyday side, you get wild when anyone pushes your pedal. You hate to lose, but you hardly ever do.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.