A family in the train cabin

While traveling in the train, a family got into our cabin. The silence got down. The man came for a send off of his wife, wife's parents. He was getting in and out of the train. Once the train moved, the two kids took turn in getting the attention. Even deciding the dinner time took its own time and discussion. I just reflected if any one of them travelled alone, they would have had dinner without a word and slept by now.

The girl and her mom had lot of things to catch up, hence the light was turned on for a longer time in the night. We had to remind them to switch it off. The small child woke up once in a while and cried with a rhythmic voice. The lady tried to put it back to sleep by threatening in a irritating mood. Her mom tried to pacify the child with an lullabic attempt.

Overall it was a difficult journey.

Drag and Drop class hierarchy

While working with gwt-ext library, I found difficult to understand the available set of classes related to drag and drop functionality. In order to demystify, I took a notes for myself and drew a flow chart. Sharing with others.

Also, if you are looking for useful info on the drag n drop classes, yui seem to have good documents.

Which college to go? None.

Couple of my relatives were sharing their dilemma about the colleges their kids should choose. I suggest them not to send to any college, particularly if the student is talented. Many couldn't digest this suggestion and repel away.

Off late colleges are open at every corner. Businessmen fund these college and their view will be obviously business oriented -- reduce the expense, increase the income. After paying heavy amount as capitation, what we get is poor quality education from incompetent staff.

Is there any alternate? I suggest talented kids to learn skills over net. This is by assuming computer job is what one aims for, which 95% of students aspire towards. The 5% should go to a very good college of their dream fields. Surely those seats will be available without competition and prosperity rate ought to be better.

Will students without world experience, job experience gain technical skills over net? Can they settle comfortably in say, over a year? I feel some kind of collaboration, guidance is needed - which need not be a college. If a college can provide such guidance, it is good.

In such skill acquisition mode for 2 years, I believe the person should be able to solve problems to an extend of matching the expenses to income. With 3+ years, real money should be pumping in. Believe me, there are so much work that needs to be done outside.

Any evidence that this is feasible? Yes, think about the top companies in the country hiring non-computer science students for their software development projects. They see the talented pool to learn things and start working in real projects. They give a 6 month training for them.

If 6 months is all the training one needs, y not we start that when we are out of school?
Many have the secure feeling with having a degree. Correspondence course is the answer.

PS: I went through colleges. My comments above are relevant to the current scenario where colleges focus on minting money in contrast to industry looking for quality engineers.

The other road

While travelling in the bus, I used to see some small village roads bifurcating from the main way. Many times I was curious to know about those unknown roads. Where are they going? Are there interesting things in those roads that I am missing .. like a beautiful scenic spot, or a massive bridge or a village trade show etc. Is that road dry n dull or pleasant n cool? Will there be many passer-by or very few activities?

Is that an old road or introduced in modern days? May be this could be the village road missed by a village boy gone very far, may be attracted by the glamourous city lights (sure the boy wants to come back to this road).

What are the people doing in those villages? Are they missing the village boy or happy with the money he sends?

adding a background grid

Ever wondered how to get a grid background like in some designer tools? Here is a simple way.

Decide on the cell size you want. You may choose 20*30 pixel. Create a image of that size in paint. Draw a line in the last row and last column. You should get a image like this :

Include this image as a background in your canvas. Allow the image to be repeated horizontaly and vertically.

In case of html+css, you may specify as :

.grid
{
background-image:url(../images/bluegrid.JPG) !important;
background-repeat: repeat;
opacity:0.1;
filter:alpha(opacity=10);
}


This should give out the desired result :

mono color picture

Never thought a mono color could give striking effect. Color image always brings multi-color to our mind.

Here is the drawing I did recently.

Who needs newspaper?

With all the stuff net provides us, I started wondering if there is a future for newspaper. Manually someone dropping at 5am, then the paper has to withstand rain, wind, dogs etc and reach my table. I will have to read thru carefully to find articles of interest to me. If I am lucky, I will get one or two.

Wait a minute .. these interesting articles seem to be read earlier! Ya, these are 2 days old in the net. The newspaper guys have conveniently searched in the net and cut n pasted the article into their paper moulding machine. What a cheap trick!

I register to different feeds so that articles of my needs arrive at a particular place easy for me to read. They reach my place as soon as they are written at the creation point. Good classification, searchable options, sharing facilities, preserving them for future use are few points I prefer net way of reading news.

Some people may argue about 'local news'. I feel net is faster n better in that aspect also. There are thousands of social network groups, blogs which actively propagate local happenings. For professional touch of journalism, there are site like citizen matters come in. They cover the local news and keep the readers informed.

Do you think newspaper publication will roll out for long time? May be till rural folks plug in their laptops.

closing ceremony

While strolling in the neighbourhood, a small hardware shop caught my attention. The owner was closing the shop for the day. He had to pick the paint buckets kept in front of the store for display. The buckets ought to be packed inside the small shop. There were other assorted tools and equipments placed outside. His job is to bring them to safe and put down the shutter.

I was thinking about the way I wind up the work. All I have to do is press the shutdown button. At times I complain the machine is too slow while shutting down!

A gaze into future

Looking into the future is always a fun; we had been quite curious to know things will be as the time pass. If we watch early Science fiction movies, we could see what that era expected to happen around 2000+. It is funny to see that and compare with the surroundings now. We had out-pared most of the scientific expectations expressed by those futurists. Some of their imagination never occurred .. (in fact, many are still carried forward). When we think about future, we do have an image of people in bright colored cloth, wearing a electrical wired helmet, also that florescent drink.

Here are few of my thoughts on future:

• Unique identification number for people, at global level
• Tight security, surveillance and low crime rate
• High concentrated urban life style. Mega apartments and narrow path.
• People hardly need to go out as all facilities and work environment are available at their living room.
• Improved medical care but collapses once in a while with massive out burst of unknown illness which claims millions.
• Heavy amount spent on upgrading military, thou war never happens. (Everyone aware of the fatal blow to the planet)
• inferior leadership
  

Let us see if we reach there before hitting a total economic break down or a severe loss of population through political conflicts.