The lush green farms. The dense forest-like trees. The hazy clouds. The cool and cold breeze. The wet soil. The सौंधी odour. It’s back to be in self again.

I seem to have found the lost touch.

Tomorrow it will be trainings once again. It will be consulting, product development, biz plan - all the nasty stuff again. But right now, I stop writing.

Let me enjoy the real life!

We are in train en-route to hometown. Just crossed Secunderabad - where “The train does not halt presently” - but still stopped because of change of engine. And we hope something similar at Jhansi. Let’s see how and what happens.

The next halt is in Nagpur at 5:20pm. And it seems to be in total control of time - at least as of now.

What a journey! Across the countryside. With all windows open - Hey! We’re in the Sleeper Class and not A.C. Gotcha!

There is already a curfew in Shivajinagar because of Hindu-Muslim riots. Don’t really know when these people with learn. As if they don’t have any other work.

There we - Ashish and myself - need to leave for Lucknow tonight. Couldn’t get a ticket in Ktka Express. Got in Sampark Kranti. Have to get down at Jhansi. And the best part is - the train does not stop at Jhansi!

So, there is a lot of action already waiting for me.

JavaScript is a fantastic language to work with. I will, personally, prefer to work with runtime dynamic language like JavaScript than compile-time feature constrained languages like C++ or Java (well, C# is still far richer than C++ and Java).

However, working with JavaScript is not - quote-unquote - trivial noting that majority of the developers start with C/C++ or languages evolved from them.

I’m not here to talk about JavaScript, but 4-Sutras that I’ve developed that one should keep in mind while working with JavaScript.

These sutras are:

1. All data-types are infinitely flexible.
2. All objects are infinitely extensible.
3. Objects are associative arrays.
4. It’s all about functions.

Let me explain them in some detail…

In JavaScript, we can provide more functionality to any data-types, including the predefined ones through the prototype object. Infact, there exists a JavaScript library with this very name. For example, we need to add a function insertAt to the Array object. Here’s how we can accomplish the task.

Array.prototype.insertAt = function(item, index)
{
  if(index >= 0 && index < this.length)
  {
    this.splice(index, 0, item);
  }
}

And then, I can do:

var a = new Array();
a.push('one');
a.insertAt('two', 0);

alert('Item at index 0 = ' + a[0]);

So, what I meant in “flexible data-types” is that we can add (infact, remove and change as well, at will) the functionality to any data-type (native JavaScript object) irrespective of whether the code for the type is available or not. Isn’t it great?

Coming to the next point - properties / methods associated with any object (instance) is totally configurable. Assume that we have a reference obj to which we want to associate two properties - exx and vayee - and one method checkPoint, we can add that!

Note that this is different from the flexibility of the data-type. Here, only obj will have these properties, any other object obj2 will not have these properties and methods.

var obj = new Object();
bj.exx = "Value x";
bj.vayee = "Value y";

obj.checkPoint = function()
{
  if(this.exx && this.vayee)
  {
    return true;
  }
  return false;
}

What do you gain out of this? Well, this extensibility allows you to grow your objects - at runtime, on demand. And that’s one of the features that I love in JavaScript.

Everybody loves OOAD because it helps us relate programming to our real life - objects with attributes and functionalities. However, it fails to address one key issue - objects in real life grow. They grow as themselves not requiring a child. However, this is absent in almost all languages barring JavaScript and Smalltalk.

btw, do you remember Smalltalk? The world’s first object oriented language. But somewhere, C and C++ grew more popular and we really lost the fun and power of Smalltalk. Sad.

So, I am assuming that you’ve understood what I mean when I say that all objects are infinitely extensible.

Let me proceed to the next item. It may or may not be classified as a sutra, because it’s a very basic feature of JavaScript. However, we tend to forget about it while working with JavaScript. So, I thought about making it a sutra so that it’s not forgotten.

Objects internally are implemented as associative arrays, or whatever alternate name you want to use. The effect is that you can use any object in two ways, as given below:

var obj = new Object();
//Assigning as a property
obj.x = "Ex";

//Assigning as an associative array
obj['x'] = "Ex";

//Similarly, assining a function
obj.fn = function()
{
  alert('Hello, World!');
}

//And calling it
obj['fn']();

The two ways to work with properties, as given above, are identical. So, don’t worry if you do not know the name of the method or property at design time. Just store it in a variable and access it using the format given above!

Voila! So easy! And damn powerful! Isn’t it?

And finally, never forget about functions. JavaScript is all about functions - to start with and till the end!

The attributes associated with JavaScript functions are:

1. Functions are the ways to create data-types: Encapsulation
2. Functions can be nested, any level deep: Some kind of private functions?
3. Functions can be used as simple functions as well as constructors
4. Instance functions (associated with any object) can be called with any context, so that the value of this can be changed on the fly! Voila!

And there’s a lot more magic that you can do with functions in JavaScript.

And then I get a comment from the Curl Team. Have a look at the comment here.

I still have not evaluated Curl but to get started with, looks interesting. So, at this point in time - I just mention about it that there exists something called Curl.

Whether it is suitable or not, or can it scale up to the requirements — I still have to evaluate.

Web 2.0 and RIA, today, are more or less established philosophies.

However, what I think is that the world is heavily divided on which framework / toolkit to go for. Most of the web revolves around JavaScript & Ajax and/or Flash & ActionScript. Slowly and gradually, Silverlight & WPF/JavaScript seems to be making inroad on the development front - not quite sure how fast.

So, I thought let me try to compile a few frameworks (partial list inspired from the one at Wikipedia):

• Dojo Toolkit available at http://dojotoolkit.org. It is supported by IBM, Sun, AOL, BEA and SitePen among others.
• Google Web Toolkit available at http://code.google.com/webtoolkit. It is supported and developed by Google.
• ExtJs available at http://extjs.com. Infact, the team married GWT and created GWT-Ext available at http://gwt-ext.com.
• Yahoo! UI available at http://developer.yahoo.com/yui. It is supported by Yahoo!
• jQuery available at http://www.jquery.com.
• Adobe Flex at http://www.adobe.com/products/flex.
• Microsoft Silverlight available at http://www.silverlight.net.

Barring Adobe Flex, all other frameworks use a common technology - JavaScript and Ajax.

However, some toolkits like Dojo uses / used Flash for offline storage. Some of them are moving to Google Gears for offline store.

And at the moment, I have to rush to the market… will build on this in my subsequent articles.

Well, this question is based on my perspective - “An indiviual cannot go long”.

Or, as we call in Hindi, “Akela Chana Bhaand Naheen Phod Sakta (अकेला चना भाड़ नहीं फोड़ सकता)”

Given below are my justifications, based on my experiences.

Let’s try to look at the activities in a smart trainer’s life:

• Know / Learn, in depth, about the subject to provide training on.
• Have / Get practical knowledge to be able to provide effective training. Otherwise, it remains a pure theoretical “teaching” rather than practical “training”
• Prepare effective case-studies, that more real-world than theoretical. The training should comprise of some “best practices”.
• Be prepared to answer queries from the “related areas” rather than only “the subject / topics”
• At times, sit with the team undergoing training to analyze their project and provide best approach for implementing solution to business problem.
  Trainer should understand the business problem as opposed to only technical problem since unless a technology solves the business / human problem, the technology or solution is of no use!
• Ensure that he is on the cutting edge of the technology, lest he becomes obsolete.
• Prepare the literate to be handed over to the audience.

However, if the trainer is an individual he will need to, additionally, work on the following:

• Negotiate price.
• Check his availability and giving immediate commitment, which he / she may not want to do.
• At times, run around places at the client premises to get his payments. The payment cycle can be from around 10 days to 60 days.
  Which means that the trainer cannot work with the companies where the payment cycle is long lest he has enough buffer with himself.
• Look at taxes, especially TDS
• Ensure that the tax is not deducted for reimbursements. Ensure that Debit Note is taken care of appropriately.
• Participate in regular “vendor meets” organized by the clients.
• Prepare the literate to be handed over to the audience. Here, the physical delivery - may be a book or a CD/DVD etc.

Now, my simple question - “How much of this can an individual do effectively ?”

Once he starts running around to collect the payments, his precious training time is gone. Also, once he receives the payment after running around, he may be simply too tired physically to check up with the latest in the world.

At least two people are required. One to focus on the first set of activities, and the other for the latter set.

That’s how we - Yashwanth C and Gaurav Vaish - started Edujini.
I’ll find time to write something on the “history of Edujini” later on…

Edujini Labs is going to sponsor this project. Check the posting on Eduzine here.

In fact, a mail to the Dojo Team has already been sent about the intimation of the same.

Have a look at the “Hello, World!” on the early-stage DWT.

I have, so far, written a couple of core-classes in Java mainly to abstract out the interaction with JavaScriptObject.

My next target was to directly jump on to dijit, and start creating the UI. And then I realized that it uses mixins. And now I am left wondering what’s the best way to handle mixins.

For the new comers, JavaScript allows single inheritance but Dojo (and other libraries) make use of mixins to pseudo-inherit methods and properties from other objects by copying them to the sub-object.

In Java, this can be achieved only by making use of interfaces. The other possibility is to introduce a class between the parent and the child class that encapsulates the mixin objects.

I think the latter is a better approach. Simply expose the object or may be create delegate methods.

Let me think over it… what’s the best way to marry Java and JavaScript.

Associated Press reports, “Muskogee, Okla., teen ready for mayoral challenge”. It reads:

The University of Oklahoma freshman is moving out of a dorm and back in with his parents as he gets ready to be sworn in next week as mayor of this 38,000-person city made famous by the Merle Haggard song “Okie From Muskogee.”

However, my favourite is:

As mayor, his first priorities are the creation of an independent ethics commission to monitor elected and appointed city officials. He also wants to establish campaign finance reporting requirements for those running for office.

I cite media as one of the biggest reasons for continuation of Casteism and call for Reservations in the country. I think India is the only country in the world that takes pride in being called backward and people agitating to include themselves in the backward class. What a Shame!

Take the latest incident here, e-Paper from Times of India, May 29^th, 2008, Bangalore Edition or directly this item.

I don’t really understand what is the need of the media to dig into such issues. If the categorization is done on the basis of region, gender, age, educational qualification, economic background etc demographics, probably it makes sense. And they are measurable. What’s cast, btw?
Caste! What a ridicule. And unless media gets responsible, I think we will continue to lose lives and property. What do we gain - I am yet to take a note. Some recent incidents:

• Delhi braces of Gujjar Protest
• City’s borders under siege on Thursday
• Rajasthan seals borders with Haryana, MP
• And probably, the most meaningful of them all - Who’ll pay for damage to public property? We, the taxpayers. Who else. Those agitators anyway don’t pay anything.
• And the most worrysome - Food scarcity looms as no one budges.

Hope there’s some saviour who takes off Caste from the political agenda and from the front page in newspaper, and more importantly, does not call for unnecessary articles like the one I mentioned earlier.

Let’s aim towards making an equal India. Classify, but not divide. Segregate but not exclude.

Is anybody listening out there?

But I did not get time.

What more interests me is the web. And there is Google Web Toolkit to help us write structured JavaScript in Java. Sounds great, isn’t it?

So, what I did was to quickly compile a couple of articles on GWT and post at Eduzine™ here and here.

Enjoy working with Google Web Toolkit, JavaScript and Ajax!

WIA for Windows XP works perfectly fine. And WIA 2.0 is supposed to do the same on Vista.

And then, I hit a hurdle - WIA 2.0 always gives me “0 devices” while using EnumDevices method. Finally, I hit yet another set of documents - Windows Portable Devices (WPD) here.

What the heck! Do I need to rewrite the entire application for Windows Vista? What does Microsoft want? Spend all time and money only to rewrite entire code every time a new version is released from their side?

At times, I really hate to develop any application on Windows.

The only good thing, at least at moment as it seems, is .Net Framework. At least, there I need to do minimal work. I wish it was the same case elsewhere also.

Reached the entry gate of the company premises only to find that the contact person is on leave.

The contact person did not delegate his responsibilities, if at all any, to somebody else.

Upon reaching the training room, there was not a single computer for the audience to lay hands on for the case studies. Hey, you know that it’s an IT Training.

(more…)

I reached the client’s office (office gate to be precise) at around 8:25am. The company premises has about a dozen entrances because of the sheer size of the campus.

After going around a couple of gates, found the correct gate. As what the professionalism says, the security was informed about our (my colleague and mine, who else) arrival. So, no problems in getting the visitor pass.

(more…)

IMHO, every country will first protect its own interest than that of the world. That’s what the “Western World” has been doing for ages.

During the British Territory days, East India Company / British Government always wanted the “Lagaan” irrespective of what was the state of the crops. They cared a damn about the weather. They cared a damn about whether crop was good or something wrong happened.

Now if the countries protect their own interests, what is the harm?

I object to Aiyar’s article making this item as an agenda… an item to even think about.

No, it’s not about customizing how TFS works but looking at the integration points. In short, the TFS SDK.

The following items are the items on my radar immediately:

• Customizing WorkItem Types
• Creating custom fields
• Creating custom UI controls during WorkItem display in Visual Studio
• Creating custom check-in policies
• And making all of them backed by some database?

Well, I have already worked with the first two items - creating custom fields and customizing WorkItem types, predominantly using custom fields and choosing the layout - several times.

Now, I need to master the remaining items.

And yes, it’s mainly for Edujini™, my baby. So, what I promise is that once I am through with my experiments, I will publish them at Eduzine™ and Edujini Downloads™.

I was shocked and surprised to see the number of beggars “deployed” at the junctions / signals. The kids seem to have done well off - at least few things could not be made hidden - but are into beggary.

Looking at one of girls - somewhere in the age of 14-16yrs - my wife’s remark was astonishing, “See, her face looks so fresh. Why can’t she join a retail showroom”. Though it may have been a bit exaggeration because at showrooms / malls, looks is not the only thing. “English” is also the other important thing, at least in Hindustan (Oh yes, it’s better known as India).

Now, is the government and police doing to stop this “child labour”? Well, I read in some magazine / newspaper some time back that few “influential” and “connected” people are involved in the “business of beggary”.

And if that is true, again, God save the Country!

Excerpt: “Briefing the Cabinet on Friday on the terror strikes on Jaipur, national security adviser M K Narayanan painted a grim, if accurate, scenario”.

Now if - National Security Adviser - the top security person in the country expreses his inability to resolve the matters or even get the coordination between various parties involved - the Prime Minister’s Office, State Governments, Research and Analysis Wind (RAW), Intelligence Bureau (IB) - how can you expect the “real men” to do their work effectively.

And added to this are two worse situations:

• Home grown terror is increasing faster. Whatever be the actual groups, they are slowing creating or finding base within India itself. Now, if there’s an insider doing all this work, it becomes impossible for the castle to be safe
• The terror outfits are increasingly finding base along the eastern borders, specially, Bangladesh. I am not quite sure but I feel that ISI and other agencies still have the memories of East Pakistan and how it was freed as Bangladesh by India.

We really have to see how safe and secure we are.

And if the PMO is involved in just saving the face of the government, Gods save the country! I don’t think even armed forces will be able to do it.

The Monday evening, I was severly troubled because of the red-burning-eyes and severe headache caused due to inefficient and insufficient lighting in the training room. As such, I did nothing in the evening but took dinner and went off to a long sleep.

Reaching the venue, I noticed that not all machines were properly configured, yet. We spent another 1hr for the setup - just to ensure that we get going as quickly as possible and do not waste more time.

And by the end of the day, I figured out that we are running late by around 4hrs or so. Really, couldn’t see any hope to recover that time anywhere.

So, here’s a list of things that you must take care of before / during the training:

• There should be appropriate and sufficient ligthing
• There should be lights focussed at your laptop screen, to say the minimum, lest your eyes get strained
• The screen should be sufficiently large
• The maximum distance between the screen and the participant should be such that he is able to view any content / text / code written at font-size of 14-16.

If not, be prepare to strain yourself and get doomed!

Now, I would be eager to see how the new Bangalore airport fares as comparision to the other ones.

Frankly speaking, I do not have high hopes looking at the pace at which the things I have seen here for the last three years and the will power of the state government for looking into the long term.

Having said that, I still have decent hopes from the Public Private Parternship (PPP, as they call it in short).

So, waiting eagerly for the new airport to open. But yes, will be a little disappointed because of the distance. I will have to plan at least 4-5 hours in advance. Don’t really know if I will get any benefit travelling to Hyderabad. Chennai - I anyway prefer the overnight train. Just lie down and enjoy the sleep.

And I had to leave for the new airport at Hyderabad for my 8:45pm, errr…. 9:45pm flight. Yes, that’s where the fun is!

There were three options for me:

• Take an auto rickshaw all the way to the airport
• Take a taxi all the way to the airport
• Take an auto / taxi to either the old airport or to a place called Mehdipatnam, and catch the AeroExpress bus to the airport.

When I left my hotel room, I had 9:45pm in my mind. And I thought, let’s have fun! Haven’t done adventure trips for a long time now.

So, finalized on the last option.

Left the room at around 5:30pm. Got into the auto rickshaw and reached Mehdipatnam at, surprisingly, around 6 o’clock.

And I was feeling a little hungry. And also noting that the Air Deccan flight, well - the last option left for me, does not serve dinner. Hey, after all it’s a low cost, no-frills carrier. Getting down from the auto, I enquired about the departure place for the bus. And then, I suddenly saw a host of eatouts attracting me to have something in the snacks.

I fed myself with a plate of chicken noodles, and got a water bottle for the way.

Now put yourself in my shoes and imagine that you start walking down to the bus-stop. You start walking down instead of taking another auto because you find that, firstly, the place is only about 1km away and secondly, the rickshaws are charging an earth. Asking few traffic policemen and local people, you are finally nearing the bus-stop.

As you are about to reach the stop - it’s only 50m left, you see the big, blue AeroExpress starting to move. It won’t help screaming or yelling because there’s a lot of traffic and the driver is well seated in the air conditioned bus.

And whoosh! The bus is gone.

You ask the incharge about the next bus. He tells 7 o’clock. And adds, “It will reach the airport in the next one hour.” You start thinking hard, “Should I take an auto from here now.”

You ask, “How much with the auto charge.”

“They charge Rs 300″, he responds.

And you are stunned!

Added to that, you think, “Oh! No. The flight is at 8:45pm and the bus starts at 7pm.” (Go back to the second paragraph, and you now know the catch.)

What do you do now? You say, “Ok. Let’s wait.”

You open the laptop and start writing this blog entry, waiting for the 7pm bus. You anxiously open the mail to confirm the ticket timings. You have won! It’s 9:45 and not 8:45. You are relieved.

And then the shocker. At 6:58, the incharge tells you that there has been technical fault with the scheduled bus. The next will arrive at 7:30pm. He, out of care and worry, enquires you about the time. You respond, “No problem. My flight is at 9:45pm.”

You connect to the internet and post this entry!

He says, “Will wait to be approached by the winning party”.

I don’t really know what he meant. But whatever little or better understanding that I have, what he means to say is, “I cannot win of my own. But I want to be either in power or very close to the power. I want to be either the king (but cannot do it directly since I cannot win) or the king-maker. So, don’t forget me.”

I consider it “A Shame!”.

I wish we had something good.

At the moment, all I can say and urge, specially the young Indians and the large pool of Software Engineers, IT Professionals, BPO Executives and other literates, “Please! Get up. Go out. Vote!”

But what has worried me is the partiality in coverage.

When Zee Sports announced Indian Cricket League (ICL) with Kapil Dev, one of the greatest captains of the Indian cricket team and the only one to get the World Cup home, it got a very little coverage in any form of media.

Even in the leading daily, The Times of India, I would find only a couple of paragraphs lying in some corner of the page.

Now come Indian Premier League (IPL), and all forms of media cover it.

Why is that the cricket promoted by Kapil Dev is not worth coverage while the one that resulted in “sale of crickets” is for everything.

In fact, I say, “Wow! Human beings auctioned”. I thought that till now only antiques, animals, buildings etc were auctioned.

So, do these cricketers fall in any of these categories? Or they are just cricketers, playing cricket which, by the standards of India media does not fall in the category of sports.

Whatever be it, I am truly enjoying the fun. I’m enjoying the cricket - I enjoyed ICL and now am enjoying IPL. And then, I enjoy tennis and the recent controveries in it. I enjoy Premier Hockey League (PHL) and the recent controversies in Indian National Hockey. I enjoyed recent interest in Football.

Thanks to Zee Sports for reviving several sports. And thanks to Zee Sports to put up a face against BCCI, which simply fails to be answerable because it considers itself a private authority controlling Indian Cricket. And thanks to Zee Sports’ ICL - because it was only because of ICL that IPL became a reality where human beings were auctioned!

Who does not love controveries? Mirch Masala, eh!

A very simple task… use tabs to change the focus across the panels. I have “tabEnabled = true” and “tabIndex = {appropriate-index}“. Still, a sad state. Now I am worried if the tab really works with Panel.

If you know the solution, please do write in. Well, I don’t even know if anybody is reading me!

At times I wonder and find lucky of the guys who are into software development or otherwise. Lucky that they get and wonder how they get, all the time in the world to update their daily diary.

Over a period of time, life and work tends to become monotonous. But, not surprisingly, that is never a case with a trainer. The moment a trainer fails to update himself, he may be losing the race. Specially so with trainers in IT. Poor guys like me always on the run. I know I have to reinvent myself daily.

During my sleep at night, several changes may have happened to the IT world. I must ensure I do not become obsolete. The moment I become one, I would be a waste — read to be garbage collected. And that’s one of the primary reasons I don’t a time to “update my daily diary”.

Meanwhile, several changes have happened in the company recently. Right from team to structure to tie-ups and joint-ventures. Now, do I sound big? Well, not really.

That’s ok… given that flights are no better than Indian Railways in terms of timings, at least most of them if not all.

Well, the flight landed at 11pm. We were able to depart only by around 11:45pm, for whatever reasons. Landed Hyderabad at 12:40am or so.

And the best part is… there was only one bus carrier to take us to the port from the flight. I think I’ll upload the video that I captured. It’s almost 1am in the morning and what the passengers are expected to do — stand and wait for the pickup vehicle. What a shame!

 I took JetLite (the erstwhile Sahara Airlines) after a couple of years… in emergency and hoping that after being in the Jet stable it would have improved. Not a single sign!!

And then my Mindless Mind©… once again thought of asking Google to show about some interesting things about “Hello, World!”. Well, basically, I was searching for the original code — no, no, not the “Programming in C” by K&R — but the one at Bell Labs, by Kernighan in “Programming in C: A Tutorial”.

I got some really pages, listed below, worth looking into: (more…)

Anyway.. the interesting part of the discussion was how to go about designing and implementing a system to support an average of 200 million hits per day. A big number? Well, if we translate it to lower base, it turns out to be lower than 2500 hits per second.

Of course, you need a cluster - web-server cluster, load-balancer, sticky-sessions (to be avoided completely), distributed database, machine configuration etc etc etc.

The real questions are: (more…)

I think it does make a sense to say that. Especially noting that now I am a married man.

So, I made up a resolution in the new life — arey baba, post-marriage life –  that I will have one post every fortnight. That is, to start with.
Once I regain my original glory of writing diary, I intend to be more general and generous.

… It’s time to get started. What now? Expect another entry pretty soon.