Posts in Category: Technology

Everyting Tech

Tempus Fugit

Oh yes it does.. It was just sometime ago that I was going through the whole application process. And now it seems to be that time again.

Work had been hectic the past few weeks. Completed a major task at work so things are better now and seem to be slowing down now.

Got a new MP3 player, a SanDisk Sansa Fuze. It’s flash based and really cool. My colleague thinks it is very cute (yes she is a girl ;) )

I’ll soon be joining a short course called Social Entrepreneurship Outreach Program (SEOP) by a group known as Center for Social Initiatives and Management (CSIM).

Oh and I’ve been reading quite a few books as usual. Quick list of books I’ve read recently:

Oh and I think there were a few more but I don’t remember. I’m sure you can imagine why ;)
These are in the past 4-5 months (except the Watchmen Graphic novel)
More later.. Hopefully..

Change in Hosting

Moved my domain from Dreamhost to Hawkhost. Will be some downtime while the DNS propagation goes through.

Dreamhost had been giving me problems with email, most commonly with Webmail. Also the site faced a fair amount of downtime. Hence the switch. Let’s see how’s Hawkhost

Of flayings and impalings and…

A virus from an infected flash drive infected my system. So I basically spent the last 4 days (including today) trying to clean out my system. Having run at the least about 6 different anti-spyware/malware/ware and 2 Anti Virus applications to scan my system, all of which show the system as clean, the system is still not usable. Any application which connects to the Internet starts using close to 100% of the CPU.

So this brings me to the topic of this post. If I found the author of this virus/spyware (whose name I don’t even know) I have in mind some very enjoyable activities to take part in, enjoyable being for me of course. Due to this infection, I have essentially wasted 4 days of my time when I should have been working. Office can be so boring if the comp is down.

And also thanks to this virus, I called the IT support at work to try and clean it. So this gentleman, brilliantly, manages to lose ALL my open tabs (numbering in the high 80s, low 90s). All gone, collected over a period of months. Oh, did I also mention that he suggested that I use Netscape Navigator. What’s that you ask? It’s the old, discontinued browser which was so crappy near it’s end that even Netscape developers would probably not use it.

Anyway, so apparently the end result is that even was unable to determine the cause of the system freakiness and I have to get the system formatted tomorrow. Which means that I will not be able to take it with me on my trip which further means that I waste another 5 days without managing to do any work which means that someone seriously deserves some nice, slow, delicious torture.

ooh

Ps. And no, I did not wish to bookmark those tabs because I had other uses for them and bookmarking them would mean I forget about them and I did not want to forget about them cos I needed to go back to refer info from them.

It’s been a while

So… I’ve been off the blog for quite a while now. Travel, work and other stuff have kept me away along with a general sense of lethargy related to blogging.

However, I’m trying to get rid of it, re-prioritize my activities and try and do stuff which I enjoy.

Anyway, a belated happy new year. I’ve been on two trips the past 3 month, and two more in the next 4 months. But none of them “travel trips” which is what I want to do. Swetha (who btw, got a Canon Rebel XSi, the 450D) mentioned that I have not mentioned my cam. Well mid-last year, I got a DSLR, a Canon 40D. It is an awesome cam, amazing features and amazing picture quality.
(Du..uh.. Of course it is, that’s why I purchased it ;))

Canon EOS 40D
Image via Wikipedia

Work wise, it’s been boring and frustrating past couple of months. Project mostly at a standstill and progress is sluggish if any. Almost like déjà vu.

My thoughts for 2009:
I think this will be a good year for me. I have positive feelings and expectations from the year. I expect a lot of changes in my life this year, mostly good ones. Hopefully ;)

I’m also participating in the development for a game that I’ve been playing for quite a while (Battlemaster), which is fun..

Well I had move to say but then I forgot.. Sigh..

Footnote: It took me about 1+ week to write this. As I said, had more to say but I forgot. Shit

Barcamp Bangalore 8

Barcamp Bangalore 8 was announced sometime recently. So I headed to the Barcamp Bangalore site to check out the details and was shocked.

The site’s homepage has been changed to something so tacky, and my first reaction was, wtf, it’s so fugly. Ugh.. C’mon guys, do something better than that..

Anyway, Barcamp Bangalore has been announced for March 7th & 8th.. I’m booking my calendar today ;)

Book Review: Javascript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford

The phrase “JavaScriptmaster” and Douglas Crockford are considered synonymous in the web development world. When I heard that Crockford was writing a book on JavaScript, especially a guide to the better features of one of the most maligned (and perhaps abused) but popular languages in the current web development industry, I was sure I wanted to read that book. I opened the book with very high expectations and unsurprisingly, I was not disappointed one bit.

With the recent explosion in the usage of JavaScript, the interest in JavaScript is at an all time high. When Netscape, which created JavaScript, released the specification of the language in the mid-nineties, it was unable to define a robust and complete specification for the language due to pressures of rushing out a production release. As a result, fair chunk of the language is not well thought out which contributes to bad programming style and promotes some bad programming practices. It is not the programmers but the language which causes this. Programming models based on Global variables, JavaScript eval, inconsistencies in variable scope, and confusion regarding how objects are created and handled in JavaScript can all be the sources of programming errors and give rise to bad programming practices.

This book, as its name suggests, focuses on the “Good Parts” of the JavaScript while cautioning the readers against the “Bad Parts” of the language. All the  above mentioned “bad parts” and many other programming constructs are cautioned against in a two-part appendix.

Two other appendices also touch  on JSLint, the powerful JavaScript syntax and program correctness verifier and JSON, the preferred and increasingly popular text data exchange format. These two chapters give a taste and a starter for two very important support tools for JavaScript.

However, the meat of the of the book focuses on the better parts of the JS language. In ten chapters, Crockford explains why features like – JS inheritance model, prototypes, objects, arrays and how the language handles regular expressions – are very useful and make JavaScript a fairly powerful language in its own right. Object Oriented programming in JS, how methods and the prototype chain is handled and can be used to write clean and powerful code are all a must read for advanced JS programmers.

The language of the book is very simple and sprinkled with illustrative source code which makes understanding the concept in discussion easy to understand. That said, this is not a beginners book. This book is aimed at those who have programmed in JS and have a working knowledge of the language. Nevertheless, it is a highly recommended book for anyone looking to get into better and more powerful JavaScript programming.

First Private Space launch to successfully orbit the Earth

SpaceX’s Falcon 1 Launch

A very nice video of the entire launch and flight into orbit by the Falcon 1, the first private launch ship designed by SpaceX. Quite exciting.

Book Review – The Art of Black and White Photography By Torsten Andress Hoffman

When I saw this book up for review, I jumped at the chance immediately. Having a deep interest in Photography, with the new camera, I now have complete control over my photos and their look.

I have always considered Black and white photography the real art form of photography. The  representation of the image that can be represented just by the two colors is simply amazing. It also focuses the viewer to pay attention to the details and the subject rather than the colors which in some cases I have found to be a distraction.

In a sense, for me, Black and White photographs speak more than color photographs. Not to take anything away from color photos for they have their own place (and I take a lot more of them too), I personally favor B&W photos. Below is a review of a very good book dedicated to Black and White Photographs: The Art of Black and White Photography