joe@lark:~$ _

The state of our educational system

2012-02-15T19:44:00.000+05:30

Spare the rod and spoil the child..

A teacher was stabbed to death in the classroom of a private school here on Thursday, allegedly by a 15-year-old student who was upset at being repeatedly reprimanded by her for not doing well in studies. [read..]

I am so fcking glad and grateful to my parents and teachers for having used the rod whenever it was necessary. With stupid schemes like the "compulsory passing" system, the government is just worsening the situation.

spam spam spam.. :-/

2012-02-07T12:19:00.000+05:30

So now, we have bots that read the content, understand and generate spam that looks almost real. Grrr....

Dennis Ritchie lost in 'Reality Distortion Field'

2011-10-13T08:31:00.000+05:30

Dennis Ritchie (dmr), the man who created the C programming language, and co-invented UNIX, passed away last weekend.

So sad that even slashdot is yet to report on it (as of 13-10-2011, 08:30 IST).

Once the world has forgotten Mr.Jobs, dmr's contribution to computing will still be remembered.

RIP sir.

Emacs keybindings in GNOME Evolution 3.x

2011-10-12T17:16:00.004+05:30

The old way wouldnt work with the GNOME Evolution 3.x that comes in Debian Wheezy. So, after a little digging around GtkHTML's sources, here..:

Run 'gconf-editor'.
Browse to "/desktop/gnome/interface/can_change_accels" and enable it.
Browse to "/desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_key_theme" and set it to "Emacs".
Start Evolution and open a new message. Hover your mouse over the 'menu items' whose key-bindings interfere with the normal Emacs world bindings (e.g: Print, Copy, Search, ...) and press "Del". This will 'unbind' those shortcuts from those menus. Close Evolution.
Download this and put it in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css
Open a terminal and run:
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme "Emacs" $ chmod u-w ~/.gnome2/accels/evolution
Enjoy "Ctrl+N", "Ctrl+P".. etc in the composer.

Update 1: blogger.com stripped the tags in the gtk.css content posted here. So, linked it to a file hosted elsewhere.

Python's "private name mangling" uncoolness

2011-04-27T07:11:00.005+05:30

This:


def __h0la():
    print("H0la")

class Foo:
    def blah(self):
        __h0la()

f = Foo()
f.blah()

throws:

joe@lark:~/sandbox/python$ python pvt.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "pvt.py", line 10, in 
    f.blah()
  File "pvt.py", line 7, in blah
    __h0la()
NameError: global name '_Foo__h0la' is not defined

And this explains the behaviour:

Private name mangling: When an identifier that textually occurs in a class definition begins with two or more underscore characters and does not end in two or more underscores, it is considered a private name of that class. Private names are..

The word "TEXTUALLY", is important here. Basically if there is an "__X" occurring within a class definition, immaterial of it referring to something else out side the class, it is 'name mangled'.

I dont know about you, but my stomach does not feel THAT good. :-/

That piece of shit called "an iPod"..

2011-04-16T16:12:00.000+05:30

So, I promised some music to a friend who does not have access to a computer. I had assumed that copying the music onto her iPod should be the easiest way to do it. It turned out to be NOT. Sigh!

To start with, the "iPod Touch 4Gen" wont work with "rhythmbox, gtkpod, libgpod and family", yet. Apparently, Apple is trying every trick they know to keep third-party applications from talking to their device.

Resorted to installing iTunes for windows on a Virtualbox environment. iTunes insisted on downloading album art and junk when it is importing the music. For some reason, it was taking too much time. And to top it, the application was getting unresponsive for every album art it was trying download/analyse/whatever. Hoping to stop iTunes from wasting time, I disabled the network connection. iTunes still spent the same time "analyzing album art" :-/ This time, the CPU was peaking in full load and the application was still unresponsive. Figured that, the only way I can get this done with is, to let iTunes do its shit in its own sweet fcking time. And so, I let it be.

Finally when iTunes was done with its crap, I plug the iPod in and everything was detected fine. The iPod already has 4GB+ music on it and iTunes shows it. But, iTunes refused to add new music to it. iTunes insists that it will delete all the existing music and copy the new music into the device. WTF. Adding new files into the device and updating a database, is not rocket-science.

What I seriously dont understand is, how do people put up with this piece of crap?

next valentine's ...

2011-03-25T15:56:00.002+05:30

With a little (gender) modification, this would make an awesome valentine's card :)

Philips Spark SA2SPK04K quirks

2011-03-21T18:27:00.003+05:30

It has been quite a while with this stupid music player, and I am compelled to bitch about it.

ID3 tag problems: This player supports ONLY ID3v2.3 with charset "Western ISO-8859-1". I dont think it understands the iconv '//translit' etc., so you'll have to disable them in EasyTag.

Play mode: I listen to whole albums. I hate mixing songs from different albums. I hate it if the songs in an album are not played in "track number order". Oh, I hate create playlists all the more. This player simply does not have any straight forward way to do this. :-/ Eventually, I had to resort to:

- Tag all the songs under one single genre
- On the player choose "play all albums" under "this" genre :-/

Song database update: The player looks only for "filename" changes to build its database. It completely ignores modification time changes :-/ So, every time I fix the tagging, I'll have to move all the music into another folder in order to force the player to update its database.

Living with some dumbass's follies. Sigh!

Dilbert, its not COBOL.. sigh!

2011-03-11T23:01:00.004+05:30

Here is the video (at 1:07).

Asok: Its COBOL.. I learnt about it in school

No Asok, that aint COBOL. :-/ And, "GetMarkScheib'sHeight" is an invalid C/C++ symbol. :-/

P.S 1: An interesting remark by Dr.Edsger Dijsktra: "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense" [link] (thanks to Wikipedia :))

Let the product/company speak for itself, Finacle, Infosys

2011-03-08T07:39:00.006+05:30

Bank of Baroda uses Infosys's Finacle product. No matter what you try, some parts of the application will not work with any browser other than "Microsoft Internet Explorer". And Infosys's professionalism, well..

Lets not get into the numbers (moolah) involved.. mind boggling. Sigh!

The messy burgers are back :)

2011-02-19T23:35:00.005+05:30

Lets face it.. there are not many decent burger joints in Madras.

Five years back, "Eatalica", near Loyola college, used to top my list. After a series of fuck-ups (dry bread, burnt patty, etc.), I gave up on them and flirted around with "Baywatch" at Elliot's beach. "Baywatch" shutdown and vanished for reasons unknown. Thats when I discovered "Gallopin Gooseberry". I LOVED, and still love, that place. But lately, they have been disappointing me too much. I am seriously worried that I might have to give up on them soon :-S

I dont know whether it is "profit maximisation" or whether the customers have become too health conscious, the burgers have been consistently losing weight. Its been ages since I had a nice drippy, juicy, messy burger which did not make me feel like I was on a diet. Finally, "Pupil" at Elliot's beach made it happen. I've always downplayed that place. Today, I decided to give it a shot, and it was simply brilliant. With two solid slabs of beef, held together by the melting cheese and barbecue sauce dripping all around, it was such a beauty to behold. Sigh!

I like the way its laid back. I like that the waiters keep conversation to a minimum. I like that its in the open. I like that its not one of those "fine dining fast food" restaurants (knife and fork for pizza? Pizza Hut.. WTF?).

Keeping up the inspiration..

2011-02-19T18:47:00.002+05:30

Emacs keybindings in GNOME Evolution's composer

2011-02-17T14:35:00.006+05:30

I found myself searching on this, for the third time now. So unbelievably simple, but still not documented anywhere on the Internet. :-/

Run 'gconf-editor'.
Browse to "/desktop/gnome/interface/can_change_accels" and enable it.
Browse to "/desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_key_theme" and set it to "Emacs".
Start Evolution and open a new message.
Hover your mouse over the 'menu items' whose key-bindings interfere with the normal Emacs world bindings (e.g: Print, Copy, Search, ...) and press "Del". This will 'unbind' those shortcuts from those menus.
Enjoy "Ctrl+N", "Ctrl+P".. etc in the composer.
Bless me

Sigh!

PS-1: Lately I noticed that the bindings were getting reset every once in a while, randomly. A "chmod u-w ~/.gnome2/accels/evolution" seems to have fixed the problem.

PS-2: This does not work in GNOME Evolution 3.x. Try this instead..

"A veiled affair" at alliance francaise

2011-02-06T09:34:00.007+05:30

The play, "a veiled affair", was not bad at all. I dropped in coz I was completely jobless and had nothing better to do. But, it turned out to be good fun. Loved "Amora" and "Whiny" :D

All went well until I had to run out just before the ending, for a bladder-blow-out-prevention :-/

Sigh!

Pain of Salvation, Saarang, IIT Madras

2011-01-30T00:13:00.005+05:30

So much energy. So much music. So much awesomeness.. :)

EDIT-1: I had to leave a bit early, before the concert ended. I hear from friends who were there for the entire concert, that the Chennai cops created a fiasco. Apparently; At around 22:30, in the middle of a song, the cops cut off the power, as it was crossing the curfew time. After some antagonism, the show was allowed to continue. Power was cut off abruptly before the last song ended.

EDIT-2: More stories on the fiasco: "A review of Pain of Salvation Live in Chennai 29.01.2011" by Tushar Menon

Pain of Salvation @Landmark, Madras

2011-01-26T01:56:00.002+05:30

Yes.. the Gods finally descended. :) But for the 'over enthusiastic' singalongs, it was an 1+ hour of awesomeness. Waiting for the event at Saarang, IIT-Madras.

humanity, the godly property

2010-12-06T12:07:00.017+05:30

On the way, the silly bike decides to stall at 3k before home. And, the rain was still pouring. Kick. Kick. Kick.. no use. It was already 22:15. Drenched to my bones, the only options were to curse everything possible and start pushing the bike home.

This passing by biker, equally drenched stops and enquires. Attempts his luck at the kick-start. With no results, says, "Hop on, I'll tow you home". And, he tows me all the way home. I thank him and invite him over for a coffee. He replies, "Its alright. Wont you help someone stuck, when you can? Its just that". I was touched. Humanity, still exists. :)

...

2010-12-06T11:58:00.002+05:30

The destination, a dim shimmer, a couple of kilometers away, just a fraction of whats behind. The musical blurb, gradually fading away behind a blend of the heart's rhythm with the lung's harmonics. Witnessing a handful of air rushing in and out. Experiencing life in its rawest form. With no conscious control of the body. A heightened sense of solitude. A perfect disconnect from the world around. Can you really understand.. this conversation with god?

Why?

2010-10-27T01:49:00.000+05:30

My answers to that question, are failing to convince me..
The road ahead is long. The path is painful. I am still walking.

The brownies at fabindia

2010-09-21T08:44:00.000+05:30

Lately, I was accompanying a friend for shopping, and landed at the Fabindia store near Elliots beach. They had this huge bar of 'fudgy chocolate brownie' at their cash counter and I was thinking aloud with skepticism :P This friend, insisted that I try it and made me get one. A bar (190 gms) cost 100 bucks.

The first bite nailed me. It was 'my god' THE best brownie I have ever had. I finished that entire bar, but for one small piece which I had to share :-S, and ran back into the store to get the other last bar they had. It was unbelievably good, and unbelievably CHEAP.

It does not seem like a fabindia product, coz the label does not mention anything related. It just says "Indulgence Fudgy Chocolate Brownies" and no address :-/ Shyte.

FStival 2010, Software Freedom Day at Madurai

2010-09-19T23:20:00.110+05:30

The first time we conducted FStival in 2004, it was largely a TCE event. We had managed to create some noise in a couple of newspapers, and put up pamphlets in the city. However, we had only one visitor from outside the college :) This time, at FStival'10, I was touched to see a gathering of 300+ people, from various colleges and schools, in and around the city. Some had even traveled 100+ KM to attend the event.

FStival is just one facet of the movement in Madurai, centered around TCE.

When we initiated GLUGOT in December 2003, our primary motive was to find a way to conduct GLUG-Madurai meetings regularly in the TCE campus. Today, it has gone beyond that. The commitment and consistent effort put by the students, staff and management of TCE has not only brought awareness in the area, but also, the motivation to involve in the movement. FossConf'09 saw students of TVS Matriculation Higher Secondary School setup stalls on GIMP. The students literally ran behind the visitors, dragged them to their stall and demonstrated the software :) At FStival'10, more schools have expressed interest to involve themselves.

I see this as a BIG step forward. But, there is still a long way to go, and a lot of ground to cover. I am waiting to see that day when FStival will travel from one school/college to another in Madurai, year after year.

My sincere appreciation to all the people involved, for making this work.

PS 1: The name 'FStival' was coined by 'sap'

'Software effort estimation', whats your trick?

2010-09-10T17:45:00.000+05:30

I am not an expert at it. No, not at all.

I do the 'work break-down structure', a rough design and ask myself the question: "How many days will I take if I do this task?", for each task. Supposing I come with 'J' hours, I take it that any other random Joe will take 'J * 1.5' hours for that task. On the entire estimate, I add a 10% slack. This has worked well in most cases. In cases where the estimation was out of sync with the actual, I identify and mentally take a note on the deviation, so that I dont repeat the mistake. This is quite a PITA process BTW.

Supposing I estimate and quote 'X' hours on a project. The client almost always negotiates and eats up the 10% slack. At times, clients get back claiming that, 'X' hours is unreasonable and that it should have been 'X/5' hours. In some cases, the client genuinely does not know the work involved and is surprised that it could cost so much. In most other cases, some incompetent-nut without knowing the work involved, gives an unrealistic estimate, which the client takes for comparison.

This time, I have been thoroughly annoyed by the way I was questioned. I responded saying that, the estimate holds and that the cost just went up by 30%.

Another music player

2010-09-03T16:10:00.000+05:30

So, on one forgetful day, I had forgetfully drowned my Sansa Clip music player. I cursed myself enough for it. I really hoped that it would come back to life, but it did not. And then started, those nightmarish days of driving without music. My blood pressure kept going high. There was a constant cloud of frustration around me. Even the doctor mentioned that my life-expectancy dropped by 30%. The pay-cheque was playing hardball, so had to wait for a while before I can fix all this.

But then, when I started visiting the stores, it was even worse. Ritchie street (the electronic market in Madras) fellows even claimed that Sandisk buried their loss making 'portable music player' division. And I, this desperate fool trying to locate that Sansa Clip+, was a source of good humor for these guys. Shyte.

Many people have suggested a dozen other players to me. The most famous one being the iPod. :) God. In this day and age, a simple small portable player, with separate volume keys, separate 'next, forward, pause/play' buttons, with a sturdy clip, with a simple text interface to show what is playing (no major jing-bang), with support for OggVorbis, which can play albums as albums, seems impossible to find.

Then, I cut my requirements a bit and decided to pick one of the best that is out there. And, to find a way to live with it. Sigh. So, now.. its a Phillips Spark. It is not bad. It is not great. I can live with it. It has its own set of quirks which makes me swear a dozen times a day.. but definitely better than having nothing.

I lurve Madras :)

2010-08-31T01:38:00.001+05:30

Coz here;

The roads are shitty, immaterial of how much taxes you pay.
The rain water drain system, 'clogs' the water better than it 'drains'.
Morons behind you think you can fly over the traffic ahead of you, and keep insisting so by honking constantly.
Arseholes love driving in the wrong direction, blocking the oncoming traffic.
Public transport buses do not understand the concept of a multi-lane road where they've to pull over to the left most lane to stop at a bus-stop. They 'shit' people in the middle of the roads like buffaloes.
'Educated' four-wheelers 'in suit' cannot see that the signal has turned from green to orange and that it will soon turn to red. They strongly believe that its your mistake cos you stopped at the signal. They even threaten that they'll sue your for it.
Idiots in bikes and even cars and (OMG) even buses and (OMG OMG) even those creepy crawly double long buses, think their braking distance is less than 2 feet at 60+KMpH.
Everybody's watches are 5 seconds ahead. When the traffic signal countdown says 5, they want to be in the middle of the road.
Traffic cops understand very clearly that, an office going fellow who is not wearing a helmet CAN pay fines (unbilled/unaccounted of-course), unlike the semi-clad doofus driving triples at 80KMpHm winding through bumper-to-bumper traffic. He is not violating any rules BTW. You, who wanted to feel that air rush past your hair and face, definitely violated a dozen rules.
Our master traffic-planners spend 300+ crores on an overhead bridge that causes more pain than gain. To the extent, people prefer to take the three feet wide subway.
Dynasty members name every alternate street by their names. We have atleast a dozen "Kalaignar Karunanidhi Street"s in the city (sorry, village) apart from the 'nagars', 'avenues', 'boulevards', 'parks', 'streams', 'sub-ways', 'over-ways', 'public toilets', etc. in the same name.
An auto-rickshaw driver will laugh on your face for asking him to turn on the meter.
Cycles are only for the health-conscious and fitness-freaks. Kids get their own scooters/bikes to go to school. Getting a license to drive, though, is difficult. One got to be 18+.
Parents drop their kids at school in their cars every morning, creating a traffic jam in front of every big school. Sending kids to school in a school bus is for the under-privileged/below-poverty-line people you see.
Smoking, in government run Tasmac bars is cool, while in privately run pubs its against the law.
Non-AC maruthi 800 cars have spoilers, alloys, external-speakers, external-woofers, turbo-sound mufflers, nitro boosts and the works.
Mini skirts on silver screen are greeted with applause while the same on the street are greeted with rotten eggs.
If you ask a girl out for coffee, she thinks you want to sleep with her.
Asking a girl out is looked upon as a bigger sin than doing the usual road-side-romeo thing (you know, the whistle, the comments, the stare, the tongue out, the public shag, etc..).
Women stare, and stARE, and STARE, but when you walk up to talk.. they turn 90+ degrees away and treat you like shit.
Tees/Jeans not having glittery drawings, fake-fade that look like tiger stripes, fasteners hanging all around, multiple colors, etc. are not in fashion anymore.
People dress up to go to a coffee-shop.
A western fast-food joint is treated like a fine-dining restaurant.
You could be given a butter-knife to cut a steak.
You can have five espressos in a row and each of them taste different. Once, the waitress at Adyar Coffee Day, gave me a large-cappuccino cup filled to the brim, claiming it was 'two shots' of espresso.
People prove that they have faith in their respective religions by blaring their silly religious songs on loud speaker in the entire locality. Some insecure-fools go to the extent of even screaming prayers on loud speaker.
You would pay for a penthouse and live in a hut.
One asks for a 'scotch'. Not a Glen Morangie, not a Black Label, but a 'scotch'.
People think they can mix better than the original composer and screw around with the Equalizer like they know something.
Smart people pay for the dumb-asses, by way of taxes. ('survival of the fittest'? whats that?). But that does not make the smart-people the master of the dumb-asses. Its the reverse actually.
Every moron who finishes a dumb computer course in NIIT thinks he can program.
It is cooler, to have a tattoo that you have no idea about, than one that you know and feel about.
There are people who think humping the air 90% of the time is better dancing than jiving (oh, I have two left feet BTW).
Indian toddy is illegal, Western toddy is illegal, 'Indian made western toddy' IS legal :)
A 'chroot' is not considered as an 'indigenous inidian cigar'.
An uneducated 'genius' can give gyan to an educated 'fool'.
People shit in the beach, eat in the beach, make love in the beach.

Oh, no no.., dont get me wrong. I really do love this village.. er. city. BTW. Sigh!

EHLO, RETR, DATA ....

2010-07-11T04:38:00.000+05:30

Saw the mention of 'EHLO' in a friend's blog, on an unrelated post. Took me back to the last couple of years at Karunya.

I remember how I used to read and reply to so many emails by 'telnet'ing into pop.gmx.net:110, and reading using RETR. It used to be so slow coz half the college is sitting there chatting/browsing/*. And I was too paranoid to pull email down onto to that box, which happened to be the college's secondary DNS server :P And all this in the middle of a lab session from some corner in the college :D

Hmm. Things have changed so much. These days kids carry laptops. They dont have to fight for shell accounts. They dont have to nose around the college network to find a way to the IRC channel. I dont think they even care. Shyte.