Demystified the other road

Yesterday I went through the 'other road'. It was thrilling experience to go through it as I had created such a curiosity and hype in me. The other road had a big electrical transformer!

New place

I felt working from home causing some side effects. Wanted to have a office setup and worked towards it. Got it done after running around for office space, net, electrical equipments were challengeful tasks of their own. In spite of things going smooth, running around was stressful.

Felt wonderful once things were set and to relax comfortably.

Medical file

Branded, hi-fi, multi-functional corporate hospitals use file system. It is the physical file cover which holds all the patient records, results, observations. If a patient request for a treatment, his/her file is retrieved from the record storage room and passed to concerned dept. Depending on many factors, this process of moving the file takes a happy 30mins to 60mins. Sometimes the staff have a happy hours of playing 'treasure hunt' in order to trace the file.

The patient need to wait in a lengthy queue in the dept for some doctor to analyze. Then n number of tests are expected. Each test will be greeted by a lengthy queue again .. no, ur relative cannot reserve a seat for you in the next test room. If the number of tests tend towards one, then there is a hope for getting treated on the same day.

The big, posh hospitals that charge $$$ follow a different process. They create a five star environment for their A-class patients and take care well.

However, the branded hospital handling middle and lower group of people adapt the same process of file system we saw earlier. I was puzzled to notice the same process in these hospitals. The real surprise was that, why is that a hospital never learn from the bottle necks observed in another hospital system? Atleast the later hospitals could have written smart software to handle the crowd and manage better. Why they didn't?

Suddenly it struck! .. the sales guys!!

This could have been the conversation between the hospital management and sales guys from a software company.

HM: we would like to have an efficient system that would smoothen the process. It should help us keep track of records and refer back easily in a secure manner.
SG: Sure, sir. We will be able to do that. It would take 8 months to develop (and hospital wil have test it), and cost approx 2 million rupees. On the other hand, we have an industry tested solution, which costs 0.3M and can be installed within 2 weeks.
HM: oh, I guess we will go for your solution.



Such primitive system not only punishes the patients who are in the last rung of the ladder; but also the staff, the doctors and the management. Instead of having a smooth process and channeling the crowd thru time management, the current system opens the gate for chaos.

Overcoming Monday blues

It is Sunday early morning. I feel energetic and fresh. Going through the task list for Sunday, which will have special assignments like riding to scenic places.

I feel if we don't laze on Sunday, we will have a fresh Monday morning. See Sunday as any other day, Monday will also be like any other day.

System crash

Ever heard about a person fainting immediately after passing urine? You would hear water flushing and a thud sound of the person falling down. This case has a funny medical name too .. Micturition syncope

Till now I thought only windows os does things like this.

optimal teeth

Is the material by which our teeth are made is the right choice? They seem to corrode easily. Doesn't seem to regrow as it ought to have. Are there any alternative that nature could have tried out?

Could the corrosiveness be aggravated due to modern eating habits?

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.

Our view of the surroundings

Other day a pizza delivery scooter entered my street. Being a blind street with just four houses, we rarely get outside vehicles. The pizza guy couldn't see the blindness as the street is too slope and the other side is an open field instead of a wall. He had to reach the end and take a U. Definitely he would have been cursing whoever designed the layout. It is haphazard, we can expect it in such hilly area.

I was wondering what kind of feelings, expression, frustration he would have had about this street. This is his first time in this street, may be in this area too. He might have registered this mistake and try out other paths. Or he might have been too time stressed with his pizza delivery and he may not have observed the street into his internal system.

While thinking about this, I recollected the first time I was in this street. It was different. I was very much relaxed. Being new to the town, I was curious to learn the surroundings, people, buildings etc. We saw the house from outside. I observed the neighborhood. It looked fresh, calm and nice.

After staying here for months, the views and the feelings about the house, street had changed. What a difference can acclimatization can bring in!

gwtExt panel to fill the page

While using gwtExt tools, I wanted the panel to occupy the entire screen. Found that Viewport is the component to use. However I didnt see the required effect in spite of using the Viewport as per the guide. I just got a small, shrinked panel as it used to be. After couple of trial and error, the culprit turned out to be an auto-height method called by the main panel. Commenting this statement cured the problem.

// panel.setAutoHeight(true);

Phone sex

Let us learn kamasutra positions throuh mobile.

Circles and squares

Most convenient structure for nature is to spin out a circle. The spherical planets, stars, galaxies, and tubular-cylindrical body cells, and the beautiful circular pot-holes .. the list is end less. What makes these forms prominent? Two things comes to mind: one is fluid dynamics which forms the pebble, pot-holes, to certain extend the moon and the planets. Second means is the central attraction force. This is the force that bring the atoms into spherical, a planet, star also as spherical.

My wife pointed out a natural square structure. When the body cells are tightly placed in a tissue or somewhere, they tend to form cubical and called cubic cells. There are rare incidents of such sharp shapes. Other area I could think of is, the cliffs and edges formed in mountain ranges when the mountains torn off due to violent quakes or other means.


When it comes to artificial shapes, man made structures are predominantly squares. The house we live, the computer screen, newspaper, this blog template .. goes on. The circular pattern is adapted either out of absolute necessity (wheel, motor coil) or for aesthetic reason (like a big arch in the hall, curvy furniture,)

Looks like it is easy for human to work with squares than circles. There are exception to this rule, like home made dosa :-)

Beauty and the reaction

What is beauty? Sure, we all have many definitions. Why do we react in certain manner towards something beautiful, as per our defn?

There is some kind of appreciation, excitement in our mind, upliftment of our mood. We also get an inclination to possess the object of beauty. Or leave out a sigh if we understand the object is beyond our current reach. What is this need for possessing? Is it owner's pride to show-off or some kind of attachment with the beauty?

As said in Selfish Gene, could beauty imply sound health? May be we opt or try to pick like wise. If that be true, our evolution path should take us to more and more beautiful surroundings, beautiful people, beautiful experience and events. Of course, that will happen only when we stop our self destructive operations.

Burn the IIT

Here is a view contradicting the Save the IIT post.

There will be a divide between the rich and the poor, one in power and commoners, the performers and non-performers. The performers join together to form a group and enhance their productivity. They start benefiting out of such a network. The more successful it is, more it attracts the outsiders. Pressure builds up on to the closed system and slowly they will have to join in more people. This starts diluting the system and this particular branded group will loose its charm and name.

Probably the core performers or similar set of people will start again from scratch and get into a new brand name. This will last till the next burst.

In a way, it is good for the performing good themselves. This mechanism provides a good cleansing means. A stagnant group will become stale and that itself will lead to destruction. Anything that can start fresh and build with new ideas will be more sophisticated and useful to the society as a whole.

Post your comments if you have different views.

Save the IIT

Today the court had agreed for quota in creamy colleges. There are pros and cons.

To me, it looks like this is not the way to bring social equality. For eg, let us say we want to bridge the gap between rich and poor, one yard stick could be to see that poor are able to enjoy the luxury of five star hotels. If a politician sees an opportunity in this whole deal, and he forces the hotel to open the door for the poor ... he may put hundreds of poor in the building but it is a short term benefit for all (except for the politician). It is a degradation to the hotel. In long run, the poor are going to end up in similar poor-ness state like they were before, just that now they are inside the building.

Here the point is not against getting the poor inside the hotel. It is about the process. Instead it has to be cultivated at the root level. See that there are abundance, prosperity, skill usage etc so that people can climb up on their own to excel. That would be a way to bring people up and match with the rich. A tedious, abstract, theoretical process, but that is the way to go.

Coming back to quota for education, it is nothing different from the above scenario. Weaker strata needs more infra structure to build their basic knowledge. Upon stepping onto the fundamental level, they will have to climb up and compete with all others. The purpose of creamy college is to provide environment to nurture supreme intelligence. That ought to be honored.

Check out Burn the IIT.

A day in the hotel

I got this from the comments section of http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/article3681312.ece

“WHILE WE were docked in Monaco, a guest left her hat in a taxi. She had no idea which taxi she had used. All she knew was that the driver had been listening to a football match on the radio. I contacted the radio station and asked them to make an appeal, in the hope that the driver was still listening. He was - and the hat was returned.” Gabor Szarvas, chief concierge, Crystal Cruises

Compare two properties files

I had two properties files and the parameter names were almost same in those two files. I had to go through them to find difference in the values. Searching for any utility didnt get a positive result. So, implemented the following logic.

Load both the file data into a hash map

(the param will be the key; we will end up having two hash maps)

for loop into sorted keys of first map

{

if (key exist in second map)
{

if
(firstMap.valueof(key) == secondMap.valueof(key))

{

key = firstMap.valueof(key) in both maps

}
else

{

key differs in the maps with firstMap.valueof(key)

and secondMap.valueof(key)

}

}

else

{

key exist only in first map

}

}

for loop into sorted keys of second map

{

if (key not exist in first map)

{

key exist only in second map

}

}

Food on-demand

This idea occurred while having lunch in a restaurant. What if I want a dish made out of a particular recipe? It would be nice if a restaurant promotes that idea. Food on-demand could work like this :

• I go to their website and place a recipe. I could give a url to a recipe or type in my own recipe.
• Restaurant reviews it and does a feasibility study. Return back to the requester with the cost estimate, date of availability etc
• Both the parties decide on a suitable date and time, may be an advance is paid to the restaurant for planning the work
• The person happily munches on the meal he wanted to have (probably the recipe out of his/her childhood memory). Optionally the person can leave a comment on the dish and level of satisfying his/her expectations.

Here is my list of items I would like to get it done in that way :

• There are so many tasty dishes made out of plantain flower. My wife avoids them due to the complexity involved in preparing them. Very rarely we get in restaurants. If we have 'On-demand food', I could pass a recipe like this.
• In Foster city area, I had tasted a potato pizza. (I think the restaurant name is Lake View). They did not use the potato wedges. Instead cut them into small cubes and slightly fried. It was very nice. From then on, whenever I have to order, I use to check for that pizza; unlucky me .. never ate that again. Few times, I tried convincing pizza restaurants to try that toppings and none dare to. They wanted to follow the direction they know.
• There are many dishes I had in my childhood. Today I don't have them, may be I don't get those materials around. Or I don't know where to get. Food on demand would address them.

Why did cave men draw?

Upon pondering about cave painting, questions arises on the purpose of such paintings.

Did they want to show case their bravery and valor?
Were they preparing a draft plan for their upcoming hunting season?
Or a dad teaching archery at the board room?
Just a bored guy scribbled something on the wall?
May be a lady showing off her man's capability ..
an encrypted message for the future gen???

Interesting thou.

LIC, wake up

Why are public service sucks? Is it for all or specially designed torture technics for me alone?
I had a loan from lic. After facing difficulty in managing the EMI and payment, I decided to close the loan. With lot of effort, I managed to pay lump sum in two batches. After that they mentioned that a request to close the loan ought to be raised and they would tell me the final settlement. I did the same and paid the last payment of 2k+. Relaxed a bit of closing a hefty loan. Next month came a surprise from lic; they were trying to use the cheques to collect further money. Upon failing to encash, they started adding up penalties.

Sick folks. Will definitely consider settling the issue thru consumer court.

Unidentifiable error

Came across an interesting error while starting with script.aculo.us A test code was working fine. I moved the same script to the real project code. Then the script started throwing error, 'undefined object'. Spent lot of time in comparing the test code and actual one. Couldn't find any issue.

Then placed few alert statements and narrowed down the issue by applying divide n conquer. What caught was this function :
function $(id){return document.getElementById(id)}

Seems like scriptaculous.js is using prototype.js and the later is defining a function with the same signature as above. After going thru the function defined in prototype.js, I found that to be sophisticated and served my requirement too. I commented my definition and the page flies through without error.

Moral : don't duplicate function names, it is going to be lot difficult to debug.

Languages and dialects

I was wondering why we have so many languages in the world. Some ancient, dead and few started recently, growing; some have written form and some dont ..

It is understandable if different languages spurn out at isolated geographical locations. However we see that many languages and dialects co-exist at a close region. One possibility could be that the people migrated and carried their language to an area where people had their own language.

There seems to be more to the story. Looks like socio-economic-political motives might have driven people to create languages. For eg, in a business environment, it is a great advantage for the salesperson to use some secret code words to discuss in front of the customer. Also, a language and a dialect could establish an identity of the customer and hence favor discounts.

Around the world, we are politically charged by emotions. We create artificial borders. These emotions are mainly based on faith or language.

In order to demark the dividing factors among human being, I would love to drop all languages and adapt a single universal language. When people start seeing language as a tool to communicate and not an emotional toy, then we may achieve this idealistic world.

Ladies finger fry

Here is my recipe for preparing deep fried ladies finger.



My wife had cut the vegetable, onions. She started with the initial ceremony of frying mustard and cummin seed in oil. Added onion and stirred them for some time. Once the onion turns light golden color, she put the pieces of ladies finger into the pan. She kept stirring and added little bit of salt, chili powder and garam masala. After mixing these, she stopped at this point.



I took over the control. Kept stirring further. Added some more garam masala for extra taste. While I was stirring this, my wife started shouting that I am spoiling the vegetable. You need to focus on the stove and the preparation. The vegetable and onion combination will become red (just like her face). Go little more so that it is light brownish green and tastes slightly crispy.



Ah, it is an wonderful dish. If you can get it right, your wife would envy about your culinary skills.

When matrimonial sites go down

We know that the successful matrimonial sites are minting money through all means. What happens to sites that are not so successful? Still they manage to pull enough traffic to their site. May be the same type of users may not login. The sites are creative to utilize their resources and spin off a totally new pages that amuses the new customers. What resources they have and how do they use? They got a bunch of photos from matrimonial profiles. Since the site doesn't need them anymore, they allow users to vote on those photos! Sample this

Seller's view

When the customers' needs are like this, salesperson perspective are very much aligned. While I was living in the city, I thought of preserving the cloth from insects and dampness. Had to buy some naphthalene for placing in the closet. The near by general store was handy and I approached the shopkeeper. He was in his twenties. He was not the owner, should be a relative of the owner.

I asked him for the naphthalene balls and he showed some local branded one. The white balls were neatly arranged in a plastic sheet and tightly wrapped. A piece of paper announced the local brand name. He was trying to push this piece to me. However, I wanted to compare the price of this packed one and loosely kept naphthalenes. They were placed inside a bottle and he had to weigh any amount I would like to get. That was 50% cheaper than the packed one. I am sure he will get a better deal by selling the packed one than the loose one.

He was trying his sales pitch for the packed one. He commented on the quality, intactness etc. However, I was not convinced that I should spend more money for providing better repellents for the insects. Finally I asked him to weigh the loose ones. He did that, put them into a small paper bag. He liked the smell of the naphthalene. While handling the bag to me, he asked, "what is the purpose of these?"!!!

Gadget for the railways

There is a nice neon board displayed inside the train compartments. The location of the train is constantly displayed. It is very useful to know the approaching station, the distance and the time etc.

It would be nice to extend this facility. How about having a personal alarm when desired station approaches? Like, we set our mobile phone with the city code. The display board keeps sending mobile recognizable signals for each approaching stations. If the station code is same as the one I had set in my mobile, my mobile will wake me with an alarm.

This system needs a download to install in the mobile and the announcement signal to reach the mobiles.

Just a thought occurred in between the sleeps.

Mil and dil

Had a chance to know a little bit about the mil and dil equilibrium. My wife prepared potato curry and while having it, she asked what is the better way of preparing the dish. As I know only my mom's way of making it, I suggested my wife to check with my mom.

Ah .. that was the trigger for 30 mins rainfall. All the incidents, events, discussions, dialogs that happened from prior marriage upto now .. that is about 2 yrs of packed drama replayed again at our living room. My wife gave her interpretation of the whole sequence and also as a complimentary, highlighted what could have been others' motive in the game.

That was quite an experience. Not that everything was bad in the 30 mins time. I gained something value. First is patience. And the other is a discovery of a hot button that shouldn't be pressed.

Bad dreams

It was a lazy, fine Sunday morning. One could feel the freshness, the slow change in color & hue, the chirping of the birds, silence of the morning. It was a nice morning, except for a bad dream I had minutes ago. Still didn't come out the dream+sleep state. I looked at my wife who was still at sleep and about to get up. Slowly I woke her up.

It is our habit of narrating each other's dream. I started telling about the dream where I was chased by a man. While running, I saw my wife shopping on the road side. I pulled her and started running with her.

While talking about this dream, suddenly my wife's face turned pale. She was frightened to the core. I asked her if she is fine; she still couldn't speak. I got a glass of water for her (rare moments). After sipping it she slowly gained herself and with a shaky voice asked, if that was a fruit stall where she was standing by. It was a shock for me! Yes, indeed it was. The dream was etched into my mind and quite clear to play back.

Now she continued the narration. We both ran couple of streets and found ourself surrounded by goons. Yeap, just like movie style. They were pulling out weapons and that is the time I woke up. My wife also got the same dream and woke up at the same point.

What a coincidence! Can there be a meaning to it? Is this a prophecy? To be on a safer side, we thought of not going out for few days, particularly towards the market area. Even then we couldn't come out of spooky incident. Googling gave few cases reported by people but none was authenticate.

Luckily we have a neighbor who is a psychoanalyst. She is our family friend and we move along well. We checked when she will be free and thought of talking out with her. Once we met, we both explained our experience and sounded our concern with such freaky dream. We could see a smile coming out of her. She apologized for what she was trying out. As part of her research, she was working on a alpha ray generator. The project aims at studying the ray's influence on dream. Seems like she can play a particular frequency through the player she has and expect people to react within the range. As the concept is still under study, she didn't reveal more. I asked about the side-effects and health hazards. So far no complains ...

While coming back, I requested her to play some romantic frequencies here after.

PS: this is my first attempt on a short story :-)

Refined RGB color grouping logic

As I mentioned earlier, I had to group colors. I wrote a simple logic where I put zeros in the last n number bits of each color pigment of each color pixel. This gave the required result, but gave distorted colors.
In the quest of minimizing the distorting, I arrived at a better calculation. The line of thought is:

• if we want to group colors together, we will have to mask the LSB bits of each color
• Masking can be either making those choosing last n bits as all zeros or all ones
• choosing either one of the above would lead to distortion
• Instead of fixing the bits towards 0s or 1s, I tried to find a uniform number that could be placed at the last n bit.
• This involves scanning all the red pigment of all the pixels. Add the last n bit values from these pixels and find average. Trim this average number to n bit size and paste this n bit at the end of all red pigment for all the pixel colors. Do this for green and blue as well.

After trying this approach, I got a better colors that were grouped together.

grouping the RGB colors

As I mentioned in the image handling utility, ChitraDeepam, I had to club colors together. The need arised due to the vast color range listed out of the given image; whereas the user was expecting to see few basic colors strikingly visible to human eye.

I was thinking about comparing the individual pigment of a particular color, (pigments => red, green, blue), and deciding which band of basic color it, (the given color), will fit into. However this was a complicated logic as we will end up into infinite comparison and may end up where we started.

A simpler logic occurred to me of masking the LSBs (least significant bits). User can have control over how many LSBs to mask. If I make those bits as zero, (for 3 of the pigment in each pixel color) then I am reducing the set of colors. This masking results in distortion of colors. As we are loosing few bits of data, we move from accurate image colors towards inaccurate colors.

Here is the code:

public Color trimColor(Color color, int accuracy)
{
// find the mask to be applied on color
int trimBar = (0xff << accuracy) & 0xff;

int red = color.getRed() & trimBar;
int green = color.getGreen() & trimBar;
int blue = color.getBlue() & trimBar;

return new Color(red, green, blue);
}

I am looking out for reducing the distortion and still achieving the color grouping. A friend had suggested to check with image processing utilities and libs. Seems like there are lots of possibilities for these minor features to have exists for ages. Let me go through.


Update: check the refined approach.

Programming in local language

A professor at medical college requested me to write a small image processing application. He wanted to analyze any image and identify various color concentration and different ratios. I pitched in a java code that would read the bmp file and go thru pixel colors, count the rgb values etc.

Since the apps is a home-made, free-lanced small utility, I had lots of flexibility in scribbling to my heart's content. While doing so, I wanted to have convenient names for the classes and variables. I started using Indian words in coining class names.

I had to handle each color element and count their occurrences, manipulate the colors etc. The holder for such activities was named Varna which is color in Samskritam. The opposite color fetching function is from this class.
All colors from the image was extracted into a big double dimensional array. The huge volume of such colors prompted me to label it as VarnaSagar, ocean of colors.
A portion of image was handled at a time. So, I had to have some container which fetched colors from the VarnaSagar and processed them. The name for such small container is VarnaKalasam, pot of colors.
Even the screens were not spared. Image displaying modules and panels were termed Chitram, means a picture. The controls that open up the image is called by Darshan .. something to show up or see.



Would you like to guess the utility name? It is ChitraDeepam. Deepam is shine or light or glow. In our context, ChitraDeepam is a tool that illuminates more info about any chitram or image.


It was a nice experience to go thru in writing this utility. Using familiar names or related words made a lot of difference. It improved the way we conceptualize the problem domain. It also shows how powerful over native languages play even at a computer language level.

I remember few concepts I couldn't understand mainly because of the name. For eg, facet is one such topic. I never took time to understand the meaning of this word. Due to that I couldn't fully understand the topic, thou I attempted reading it couple of times. If I had known the meaning of the word, probably I might have been able to understand faster.

Anyway, here is the screen shot of the tool I wrote.

Customer needs

It was sunny morning. I was gazing at the empty road and watching petti activity happening at the small shop across the road. A tempo with tender coconut was unloading the coconuts into the shop. A driver and a teen age boy were handling the stuff and the shopkeeper was over-looking the download.

As the coconut looked fresh and nice, I thought of having one. Went to the shop, checked the price, and picked up a good one. Asked the boy if this one was tender and juicy, he affirmed. Sure, it was nice to drink.

The guys were done with their work and about to leave. The boy asked the shopkeeper, "Do you have Pepsi?"

Opposite color in the RGB palette

Recently I was working with a simple java code handling some colors. I had to display all the colors available in an image. I displayed the colors in the background and mentioned the color number as foreground. So, I got a beautiful rainbow of colors. The issue I faced is, to find the right foreground color for each item. I cannot fix a single color as the visibility will be affected when the background and foreground colors are same or similar.

Here I came across an interesting idea from the net, where the individual r,g,b components are bit-wise operated. Each of these three component numbers (ranging from 0 to 255) are toggled bitwise. A new color is formed and that will be complimentary to the original color.

This is what I wrote :


public static Color findOppositeColor(Color color)
{
if (color == null) return null;
int red = color.getRed();
red = findOppositeNumber(red);
int green = color.getGreen();
green = findOppositeNumber(green);
int blue = color.getBlue();
blue = findOppositeNumber(blue);
return new Color(red, green, blue);
}

public static int findOppositeNumber(int num)
{
// toggle the msb
return (num ^ 0x80) & 0xff;
}

Note: earlier I thought xoring all the bits is required, however I found that color #808080 failed to find the true opposite color as the xoring 0xff would return #7f7f7f, which is next color. Hence I had changed the logic to toggle only the most-significant-bit.

wisdom tooth

Yesterday I got one of the wisdom teeth extracted. This brought curious questions, what is the purpose of these teeth? why is it so late? and most often pulled away due to rouge behaviour.

Searching net didn't give enough info compared to the info available about extraction. A relevant article is at ask yahoo. This talks about a nice concept of wisdom tooth pushing other teeth in order to compensate the space of any lost tooth.

Good that I am looking at these pages after the extraction :-)

java chart

I got an urge to try out a data chart in my apps. After figuring the chart lib available in my ide is not that useful, I searched for the open source stuff. Downloaded jFreeChart and went thru the bundle. Didn't know where to start. Then I came to know that the user guide should be bought. Couldn't understand the open-sourceness of this project ..

... and then moved on to jChart. First thing I checked is the user guide and if they are charging for any of the free stuff. This is decent and easy to use. Compared to jFreeChart, jFreeChart has rich features and many more chart presentation. However, for a trial attempt, jChart is sufficient .. particularly if u r not going to make any extra bucks for putting a chart in the page.

Day light saving scheme

I wish we have a better electrical switching controls. During the day time, the electrical switches connecting to the bulbs and tubes should be disabled; ie switching on will not result in a dull glow of the light against the bright sunlight. There is a high chance people forget to switch off as the light is not visible enough. So, with this new control, these unwanted lights will not be turned on. This will happen only during day time. Of course, there will be methods to by pass this blockage.

The need of such instrument came out an angel at our home. Which ever room my wife enters, the angel switches on the lights in a subconscious manner. While my wife leaves the room, you guessed it, the light remains on. While discussing this phenomena with my wife, she told about the angel. Since then I am thinking about the day light control switch to save electricity.

Body atlas

I saw this video from Discovery Health in a vcd. The title is Body Atlas - The Human Design.

Very interesting to see the functioning of our body. Each organ has a function and they interact among themselves to produce marvellous effects. The inside story at an microscopic level to macro level is a tour of its own.

Quite informative study. Would suggest folks to have a look.

Village life

GA invited us to his native home. We went in the evening and enjoyed the scenic route on the way. Had to take a cut from the busy road into a single lane road amidst of paddy field. Upon reaching near his home, GA greeted us and showed the house. His parents and brother live here. They had two water wells and grooves, fields. The atmosphere was very nice. Calm, away from the city buzz.

This is something many have in mind, particularly the city dwellers. Most want to own a farm house, spend quite hours and be close to the nature. Hardly few of us get a chance to do so. Even who does, not sure how many can enjoy to the fullest without feeling the boredom.

Thanks to GA for inviting us to a different heaven, less experienced by many of us.

The selfish Gene

Very interesting book by Richard Dawkins. The book throws a different perception about world and life. The way genetic materials behave, think, plan etc are amazing concept. The scientific findings are given in a layman format. Analogies like functioning of computers, science fiction stories etc help a lot in understanding complicate topics.

Earlier I had many doubts like the male attraction
This books clears such doubts and open our eyes on many areas. For eg, I had been in the impression that the beautiful feathers, tusks, lion's facial hairs etc are ornamental and luxury. Looks like they have purpose and also used as measuring gauge to check the animal's health. (this is comparable to the by gone practice - while searching for a bride, the groom's side ask if the girl can sing or dance. )

Many of our day to day simple acts have roots till the pre-historic animal rituals. Just to mention few of the fascinating ideas :

• limited resource enable species to slowly evolve and acquire new skills or new equipments


• why do other birds feed cuckoo's baby (at the cost of their own)


• on a general scale, why predominantly males wander off or break out of relationship?


• what is the significance of diamond ring for proposal?

Read the book Selfish Gene to get many more questions answered.

btw, the soldier anecdote is pulled from this book.

Friendly enemies

Happen to catch this anectode while reading about symbotic relations and Prisoner's Dilemma.

From a blog of British officer during one of the world wars:

I was having tea with A company when we heard a lot of shouting and went to investigate. We found our men and the Germans standing on their respective parapets. Suddenly a salvo arrived but did no damage. Naturally both sides got down and our men started swearing at the Germans, when all at once a brave German got on to his parapet and shouted out 'We are very sorry about that; we hope no one was hurt. It is not our fault, it is that damned Prussian artillery.'

Air hostess requirement

Happen to go through an advt from a leading airlines. Apart from the standards, there were few notable points.

• age between 18 to 27
• edu can be HSC & up
• status - single (that is interesting)
• min height - taller than me :-(
• no scars, tattoos etc in visible parts

Acknowledging the proposal

Prompt reply was sent to the proposal for the car:

Dear aspirant of a car,

Your project is well aimed and lists out the motive. However, the proposal lacks certain vital criteria:

• the risk factors
• pros and cons
• budget section is incomplete without sundry costs like registration and there off.
• what about maintenance?

Kindly furnish these details for your proposal to be consider for further actions.

Regards
Balaji

Disclaimer: All the above statements are expressed as per the mood of Balaji at 6.45pm on 6th Feb of 8. These and any of the unsaid statements may change as the time goes on. The receipt and reply of your proposal doesnot gaurentee acceptance of your whims and fancies. Any conflict arising out of this dealing shall be settled at The Court Of Balaji.

A strange proposal

Got an interesting requirement in the mail:

Buying a car for our family

Author: Swarna
Date: 6th Feb 2008

Background:

We have moved to Manipal where we might stay for a few years at least. As it rains continuously in Manipal from the month of June to October, commuting becomes difficult on a two-wheeler in those months. So, hereby I put forward the proposal of buying a car for our family.

Review of literature:
From their time of invention, cars have been a comfortable means of transport compared to two wheelers. Though it is also considered to be a symbol of status and luxury, it is very advantageous to own a car for the following reasons.

1. We can get protection from the fury of the weather, be it the smoldering sun, the chilling winter or a torrential rain. Weather will not be a limiting factor in our moving from place to place. This becomes important in places where the weather conditions are extreme.
2. We can escape the air-pollution in an AC car. It is important from the health point of view, since air-pollution is seemingly becoming one of the important causes for the onset and aggravation of respiratory diseases.(for Bala)
3. The better shock-absorbers in a car are less troublesome for people with spinal problems. Two-wheelers aggravate those problems esp. on bumpy roads (for Swarna)

Choosing the car:
The car we want to buy depends on why we want to buy it. Looking at our current need, i.e, we need a car to get transported during the rains, a basic model would suffice which would have an AC and a power steering.

AC is required because, when it rains, the windows have to be closed and it can get very stuffy without AC. (This comes with an addition of around 30-35000Rs upon the non-AC version)

Power- steering is required for us because it takes lot of effort to steer the car otherwise, and it can be a very tiring experience to drive without that. (This comes with an addition of around 20000Rs)

Now, the next question is, choosing the brand.

Maruti and Hyundai seem to be good in servicing and have a better re-sale value compared to the other brands. Compared to Hyundai, Maruti’s service is better, spares are easily available and cheaper. And also Maruti has some very good , pocket- friendly basic models compared to Hyundai. So, going for Maruti cars is a good choice.

The basic models available in Maruti are

1. Maruti 800
2. Maruti alto

Alto is better than M800 because

• M800 models do not have power steering
• Alto’s body is better built and offers more safety during collisions compared to M800
• Alto’s engine is better and it has 5 gears

All the above advantages and some more features come for a price difference of around 50000. So, weighing the benefits against odds, buying an Alto seems to be more sensible. (power-steering itself would cost around 20000Rs. So the better built and better engine comes for just 30000 Rs extra)

So, now going for a Maruti- Alto with AC and power steering (model LXi) seems to be the best choice.

Used or new?
The next question to be addressed is to buy a new one or used one?
Disadvantages of a new car:

• The moment a new car is driven out of the show room, its value depreciates by 20% and after that whether it is used or not, its value depreciates by 10% every year

Disadvantages of a used car:

• its very difficult to assess the condition of the car properly and correctly value the car
• it is sometimes difficult to get the car of your choice as a second hand in good condition

If there are budget constraints, and the car would be used only sparingly, it is wise to go for a used car with the help of a good mechanic.

If you happen to come across the car of your choice in a good bargain, it is a really good deal (as happens to be case now with us)

So, going for an alto in good condition as second hand is indisputably the best option !

Budget:

Coming to the formidable question of budgeting the project…

A research on buying used cars says that, the car of our choice (alto LXi) in good condition, as a second hand can be bought from 1.7 lakhs to over 2 lakhs depending upon the age of the car.

So, the minimum budget requirement is 1.7 Lakhs. Considering our financial situation, we can keep the maximum to be around 2 Lakhs

Conclusion:

So, I hereby conclude by proposing that we buy a Maruti-alto LXi, preferably a second-hand in good condition, which might require a budget of between 1.7 to 2 Lakhs.

References:

http://www.carwale.com/
http://www.mouthshut.com/
http://www.autocarindia.com/

Under the starry nights

Ever enjoyed sleeping in the terrace? Recently I had the opportunity - to admire at the majestic creation roofed above us. What an wonderful things, just twinkling ignoring the minor specs like us. The weather was pleasant and the atmosphere silent. I was stark naked! Only a thin blanket separated me and the stars. (Thanks to my wife who pulled off my dhoti in order to prevent me from going outside. Who cares about dress code when we enjoy the nature)

Many questions started springing from myself. When there are so many massive stars, planets, (in fact, galaxies and galaxies of stars) laying around, why do we feel space crunch? In fact, we feel scarcity for most of the resources. May be the time and space are separating us from the ready reachability. Other reason could be the way we misuse the resources and suffer. Or the usable resource might be in scarce surrounded by void or waste resources.

Another irrelevant thought occurred while gazing the stars. The way our perspective change as we gain knowledge about certain things. In olden literature, stars are seen as ornamental - from poetic view. They talk about hero pulling out stars to prepare a necklace for the heroine. However, there is a drift in that view. Recent flim songs and the poets view stars as a place. Hero says he will place the girl in so and so star. She responds with concern of melting out due to the over heat from the stars. Science findings does influence the literature.

Well, it became too cold outside. Dropped the ego and went into the house.

Wrong house

When it comes to getting internet connection, I end up being at the wrong house. The ill luck started being in the midst of the city. Airtel couldnt give a broadband connection because the house I was was slightly away from their network of connections. Had to settle with a slow gprs connection.

Then faced a strange issue when moving to a second tier city. The area counseler was not allowing airtel connection into the ward where I moved in. This ended up with struggling with a substandard connection.

Now in a town, airtel is happy to provide connection to right side of the street and not to the left. Guess where my house is .. yeap, in the left side. Apart from the lefties and righties strangeness, they have provided a line to the house just in front of us (which is in left), but still not to our house. Guess they know me whichever part of the world I go.

Atleast I got other form of connections in earlier cases. But in the town, I am not able to get a landline too. The house in front of us has a landline, house to left and right has. The ground floor house has a connection but not us. They said they have exhausted all the connections!! Now I see them dig the street to find a new point to allot us.

an evening time into the woods

My wife said she was hungry and want to have some evening snacks. Instead of going to traditional joints, I thought of exploring the surroundings. There is a steep road going behind our house. I thought it will lead to some village. We went in that road in the bike. I road was too steep that I was worried about climbing up.

Soon it became scenic. There were many small birds, paddy field etc. We spotted a peacock too. It was a nice environment. As we proceeded, it became more and more dense with trees and cooler. The tar road became mud road. Width of the road was also reducing. At one point we thought the road had ended and we were expecting a cliff. After reaching there, we realized a small bridge connecting other side of a running stream. Quite adventurous ride to cross the narrow bridge.

After a while, we found a temple and few shops near by. Had dosa at one of those village restaurants. Very tasty compared to what we get in the town. The soft drinks were also home made and local branded. Different from our pepsi and coke.

No sooner we left the village spot, we figured the familiar malls and lodges greetings us. We were into the thick and den of the city/town. If we had reached that small restaurant through the main road from the city, we wouldn't have felt the same way as we discovered it from the wood.

The evolution

When I was a kid, I had to go often to near by "pala-sarakku kadai", literarily meaning "multi-material shop". This had the provisionary items, veggies, candies, etc. Massive wooden desk would block you from entering into the shop. All you can do is, stand in the street outside the shop (sometimes along with crowded customers) and try to grab the attention of anyone of the four person serving from inside. Once you get the attention, u shd quickly list out the items you want. The guy would vanish into the dark side of the shop. None of the ordered items will be visible to us. After awhile, he will come out carrying paper bundles. If you had exceeded certain limit in purchase, u will get brown colored free gunny bag to put the bundles. The itemized bill will be a hand scribbled list in a piece of paper. (btw, they do buy old notebooks from you, may be for the billing purpose).

Then things changed. Gunny bags were old fashioned. Paper bundles were barbaric. The in-thing is plastic wrappers and covers. Goods were pre-packed and kept in the showcase. Now the shop is called "Stores". We were allowed inside the shop. The massive desk in the previous shops were bent into a big U-shaped desks and ran in parallel to the show cases. Service folks stood in between the desk and the show case. U could point the items you want and they placed those in the desk. Finally billed with a teleprinter, goods were placed inside a shining, attractive plastic bag with their store name written big.

Today I go to shopping malls and super bazaars. I can reach the goods all by myself. Even if I move without a trolley, someone pushes one into my hand. Now I am able to compare prizes, quality and other factors before buying stuff. After collecting the things, I meet the shopping personal at the billing counter (mostly 'she', as I have option to choose the counter). Thou the things are placed inside plastic bags, they make you feel guilty to do so. Seems like it is no more cool, but cruelty against nature. You are supposed to bring your own bag or buy a bag from them - it is our good old gunny bag, this time it is white.

New home

Currently settling down at the new town. Things are bit different. It is a small town, less populated. Quite calm and nice. My home is in the suburb, not far from the town center; just two turns and within 2km reach. Been a while staying at a walkable distance from the city center :-)

There are less choices to make for various services and restaurants - that is a plus and minus. The town is highly female populated as majority of guys had gone abroad for jobs and this town has medium scale industries promising jobs for girls.

Still waiting for my luggage and articles to arrive. A local lorry strike is holding my stuff from delivery. Hope they will arrive soon in good condition.

Joy of the roadside

Other day I was walking along the street. Found a decent road side food stall. It had around 5 tables to accommodate 20 guests. The hotel was run by a north indian family. I love such joints run by families as we can expect homely food. Whatever money we give in a standard star hotels, we never can get this taste. I guess the quality control and over-hygiene consciousness kills the taste. I believe the hygiene, quality, taste, ambience (if possible), cost should be applied in moderation. Compromising something totally for other factors may not be acceptable by many.

Happen to meet some people how are too conscious about such road side hotels. More than the hygiene part, their social status block their way to enter into such places. They imagine the world is at their back and watch whatever they do (as thou the world has no other job to do). Such ego-maniacal, self centered people will realize what they have been missing when their vanity vanishes ... will they?

how do they rate a magazine article

If we have an article in the web, we can easily find the reader volume. We can attach n number of tools to the page to track the readers and know zillion of info about them. Also we have sophisticated comment section, forums and other means to share idea to know about the topic, people.

On the contrary, how do they rate a particular article in a magazine? How many had read, what age group liked it, do they expect any followup or related articles? Do they do this only based on the snail mail, phone calls they receive? I have been reading articles from childhood and never communicated to the publishers. I guess most of the readers are like me. If that is the case, how can they get a reasonable data?

May be they use the minimal data they get and try to extrapolate for the wider audience.

seeing blank jsf page?

My jsf apps was working fine. I had to include few html tags and guess what .. none of the pages are displayed there after. No error, no display. After debugging and net search, I figured out that the outtext after f:view is the culprit. By removing it, order was restored and citizens lived happily ever after (until they hit upon the next bug).

Dataflow through pages

What is the right way of passing info from one web page to another? When it comes to jsf+adf, things get murky. Upon googling, I stumbled into pageFlowScope. As that was what I looked for, I started using the same. However while accessing the pageFlowScope api from the java code, problems started appearing. First I faced invalid property name exception - this exception, error msg was misleading. Upon tweaking the lib, I got 404.

Now I tried downloading more libs and upgrading the ide version. That didn't help. After some more search in the net, I found processScope whose documents were exactly same as pageFlowScope. Looks like oracle took pageFlowScope code and doc, did a global search n replace to processScope. Anyway things are working after I moved to processScope.

I have a feeling that when I try to simulate GET behavior in jsf+adf, I will have one more sleepless night. Let me try that too.

A day at the bank

Yesterday I was at the bank to deposit money into an account. While entering the bank I was wondering what kind of issue I am going to face on that day - the reason is most of the time I had ended up like a fool or with a quarrel. Definitely not comfortable with the bank procedures. I thought I need to do a wire transfer as the account was in a distant city. Not able to find any suitable form, I approached the staff. He was quite friendly in guiding; that was a surprise.

After that I got a token from the vending machine hanging at the entrance. Bank has placed costly leather sofa sets in front of the counters. I was waiting for a seat to get empty and swiftly occupied it. Then came the waiting period. My token number is 150 and the running number was 48 ... oh! I did some simple maths to time the process. Out of the 3 or 4 counters, it took 30 minutes to handle 25 tokens. This includes missed tokens whose owners didn't turn up when they were called.

I had to wait for 2 hours. Since the bank was close to college, the customers were quite interesting and I was able to pass time easily. Once in a while I checked the running counter to verify my calculation. Thou there were times the tokens moved too slow, ultimately I was served in 2 hours.

This time my transaction went through without any issue. What a luck! otherwise I might have to wait another 2 hours. After coming out, I was wondering about the time spent there. Definitely the system is far better than what it used to be - that is standing in separate queues and seeing other queues moving fast. One approach could be that the customers get their tokens through phone or net. They also get to know the approx time +/- 30mins to be at the bank. This might save lots of time of customers and the workload, stress of the bank. Not sure about the technicality, feasibility and practicality.

I bought the Monk's Ferrari

The title of the book was catchy and made me to take a look inside (guess that is what author, Ravi Subramanian, expected to happen when he framed this title)

After flipping few pages and reading a chapter, I bought the book. Quite interesting thoughts. Particularly I liked the "work-life balance" topic - a different line of thinking than what is popular trend now. This ought to be interesting for anyone aspiring to climb up the career or establish a corporate empire.

Apart from that, the book is yash (yet another self-help) book. The word Ferrari is sprinkled artificially all over the book; and that was irritating. The last chapter throws some clarity for doing so.

Usually these kind of books drag us to Newyork or SFO, where we are alienated. The Ferrari story line happens at Hyderabadi roads and Mumbai buildings, and so makes us feel at home. Hope we get more books like this.

There is no connection between "Monk who sold his Ferrari" and this book, except the title and few places where author mentions about the earlier book. That was a disappointment for me. I was hoping a dramatic scene where Ravi meets Julian to negotiate the Ferrari and strikes a deal :-)

After watching the sequel of a movie, most likely we feel that the original was better. Same feeling I got with this book compared to "The monk who sold his Ferrari". (Not sure if I can compare). Said apart, this new Ferrari book is worth reading once.

mood-o-meter

Here is an observation I had while watching my mood. When I am in a bad mood, my productivity goes down. Down to the level of loosing MahJongg ! I start playing the game to distract myself from the bad events. While the titles spread in front of me, my mind distracts and wander off into the abyss. Once I loose the focus, the time ticks off. More than that, I find it difficult to match the titles. Sometimes I end up with frustration out the game. The probability of loosing the game is more in such state of mind.

If an interesting game is spoiled with such mood, think about the boring tasks like office work.

The male attraction

While watching discovery or animal planet, it is quite evident that the male species of different animals take the pain of developing skills and/or equipments to attract the female. They own tusk or facial hair or bright colored feathers etc. They have to fight against similar male counter parts who are competing for the same female.

However, there is a drastic difference in case of human beings. Seems like the roles are reversed. We see the amount of effort placed by female to groom up is considerably more than the male counter part. One reason could have been with the male female ratio. In days when war was frequent and dispute were settled over a fight, male population should have been very low, which would have lead to polygynous. In such a world, it made sense for girls to show up bright and beautiful, - not only for finding a guy but to keep him interested after finding.

The modern world is changing. The gender ratio is skewing towards the other side. In India it is very low that already we are seeing the side effects like 'buying the bride', polyandry. May be in the future, guys will get back their natural instinct of shinning up for meeting the girl.

Temple elephants

Had a thought wave about elephants at temples. Was wondering the association. Here is what I got, not sure if this is the right version. In olden days machinery were absent and only muscle power was used to accomplish most of the work. Ploughing, construction, fighting and in many areas, man used animals. Out of the domesticated animals, elephant served the most powerful role due to its jumbo size.

It also made sense to own such a beast at a common ground through common funding. This arrangement works out good for everyone because maintaining an elephant is a costly affair. The benefits out of the elephant was reaped by many.

In those days, temple took the 'common ground' role. Each town had a temple and utilized for many a tasks. Elephant also ended up in the care of the temple and the temple fund.

Other theory could be that the upper-class people required the elephant and instead of they pulling the money from their pocket, they divided the burden among all. In order to hide the dirty task, they popularized the belief that seeing/touching/hearing/smelling elephants are good omen.

Why should we marry?

Watched any action movie with 4 heros? one guy would be a married guy. Other falls in love with the village naughty girl. Third one is the comedian for the movie. The last guy is a bathelor with vigour but aimless. Now these guys join together and bash the evil empire.

The climax! One of the guy should die. That could add more masala to the already stuffy movie. Who shall be the sheap?

How about the guy with the girlfriend? He is the one brought in romantic songs and charm to the movie. Audience wont like the tragic end to him.

Then the married guy? Oh no! what will happen to the widow? We cannot reply that question in the remaining 5 mins and that would give away an incomplete movie.

The movie that kills the comedian will receive a curse. A comedian is seen as a good for nothing guy, but harming him is considered a serious affair. The blame will be placed on the hero (the guy with a gf) for not saving the comedian (who is timid and cant protect himself).

Ok, that leaves with the bachelor. Any objection? Nope. Nobody is waiting for his arrival back at his home. There is no unanswered questions if he dies.

Therefore, it is better to get married; if not atleast get couple of gfs.

Search for an orm

I had to write a small utility that will fetch data from the file system + environment and process them before depositing into a database. I thought of trying an object relational mapping tool to generate java code. That would reduce most of my work.

Avoided heavy weight tools like hibernate, toplink etc. I feel they are suited for complex, multi-tiered applications. I need a simple one.

Upon googling, I got lots of orm available for free. Had to scrutinize each of them and compare pros n cons. Few of them came close. Downloaded them and started checking them.

One worked fine for the sample they gave but failed to work against my db. Another had inadequate doc that I didnt know the step after downloading. Third expected me to write the java code and that tool will map to the db - this is not what I want.

Finally I got the tool I wanted. sql2java - available in sourceforge. Had to tweak the generated code a bit but finally got something to work. In this two days of usage, so far it is smooth.

Emotional blackmail

Why do some people try to get their whims and fancies satisfied through all sought of crooked ways? The height of them is kith and kin who blackmail their relatives that they will commit suicide. I see genuine suicide as a impulsive one provoked by a spark of a moment or a reaction to an event in the near past. Another type of genuineness I would accept is a person depressed over a period of time and after lot of contemplation decides to end his/her life. In both these categories, most often the thinking process is internal and people around get the news as a surprise.

On the other hand, there are people who manipulate the weakness of relatives. They threaten that they will commit suicide. This suicidal attempt is broadcasted and advertised in a major manner. Right from the district collector to the vegetable vendor, everyone knows the date, time, venue of the attempt. That is how the tv channels try to capture such events. By then, they try to encash their popularity and demand whatever they want. Usually it is a kind of domination at the home front. In order to strength their side, they 'attempt' the suicide - they take low quality tablets or choose a shallow building or mix water to kerosene. In either manner, their goal is get grab attention and control the surrounding.

These people dont have a clue on what others will go thru - during such adventurous drama or in case of successive operation. They are too selfish to think about others.

Well, in my opinion, suicide seekers should be encouraged to do so. We will be freeing up lot of resources hogged by the pessimistic stupids.

Second impressions

Happen to talk to couple of friends who are divorsed and searching for a re-marriage.
Seems like their market is slightly different than the freshers.

Here are some code of conduct in this world.

• If asked about the failure of previous marriage, invariably everyone blames their ex.
• Who initiated the divorce? Seems like you get extra point if you initiated and moved out of the marriage. So, most likely you will hear the answer that they initiated. However, if a girl says that her ex was cheating on her, then the answer would be that the man started the divorce process - this answer will create more sympathy for the girl.
• Why do you want to marry again? Here are few answers:
  • I am not for it. Just for the social pressure.
  • This time I am going to make sure I dont do the same mistakes
• During their first dating, they will check if this person shares the same negative qualities of their ex.

Slim inbox

My inbox has single digit emails! I try to maintain it below five. I keep the mails that are relevant to my immediate work. So, only two or three mails end up in this category. There are couple of todo items or to be read mails. They stay in the box.

Daily morning I receive around 30 to 40 mails (unsubscribed from unwanted lists). Before reading those mails, I will scan the titles and pick the mails which I dont have to read. That would shrink my new mail list about 15. Out of these 15 mails, 10 would be general info which I would have to scan through and delete. Some of these scanable mails are pretty nice - by reading the subject, I know that I can delete it; so I will delete and start reading, I read till the mail is visible.

The remaining 5 mails might be addressing me to influence my day work. Most of these mails ought to be digested and followed as per the guidelines. One or two might have to be preserved for reference. If I have to preserve them, I will see if I can delete mails from the previous day's stagnant mails (less than 10). Some mails ought to be retained for future requirement, and hence they deserve to be placed in a separate folder.

Having few mails make work simple. Reduces lots of unnecessary searches. If at all searches are to be done, it will be only in the trash :-)

Rotatable heater

As I installed a heater recently, all I can think is about heater. A thought came in the morning while thinking about solar heaters. Instead of fixing the base of such heater, how about allowing the base to rotate.

Think sun flower. If the base can orient itself towards the sun, the sensors will receive maximum sun rays. So, the motor in the base will be receiving feedback from the heat or light from the top layer; this feedback will determine the angle of rotation. At night time, the platform should be turned towards east.

Ya, I should have googled to find if this is already implemented. At times, it is nice to think that we are the first to think about something :-)

Setting an instant heater

After some market research, I narrow down on an instant heater. This is against the normal storage heater what we find in most of the bathrooms.

Instant heater has advantage like providing hot water at the instant instead of requiring to switch on some time before. Also, the water is heated on a need basis opposed to traditional way of heating bulk water even if the need is less.

Also, the instant stuff is very cheap compared to storage heater.
However, the disadvantage is high voltage consumption. Guess this consumption will be compensated to the less amount of heater usage on an overall calculation.

After getting the heater, I was able to assemble the set by myself. Had connected the plug to live, earth, neutral as per the guidance from an electrician. However, the fuse went off when I tried to switch it on. Then the electrician had to come to fix the fuse. Seems like the electrical socket connection in the wall was faulty. After changing the line, the heater worked smooth.

No hassle still then, we are getting hot water at will (not our will, but the EB dept's will).

upgraded the toolkit

Remember, I put my earlier toolkit for sale ... I struck a deal with GA for the same. He is interested in buying it.

Once that is in, I collected requirement details for the toolkit I want to buy. Felt a drill is needed. The drivers were not sufficient.

While shopping for the kit, I found the box with all the tools I was looking for. However the quality was not up to mark. Since I was not impressed, I moved on to buying pieces separately. With this approach, I got good quality equipments. Thou the cost escalated more than the package deal, I was happy to get what I wanted.

The truth

Are we live with a falsehood in this society? Do we pretend and suppress our true feelings, expressions? I think so. At times, I used to think why we have to pretend ourself? Why do we need to maintain a status, dignity, a pseudo-hierarchy ... How about a world without these virtual demarcations and rituals?

While thinking on the other side, that pretension is what we struggled to gain. I feel civilization itself mean to lead a life away from nature, away from being in the true form. Even now we find such ideology - a person from a village who express his/her inner feelings in public is labeled uncivilized.

May be these civilization process is what brought human to the current state.
This leads to the point that falsehood is growth or evolution. hmm .. interesting thought, need to workout further.

disparity

while catching the flight from my city, I called the local taxi guy. This is the taxi we regularly engage as he charges nominally. After dropping at the airport, he happily accepted the 100 bucks I gave.

After getting down from the flight, I moved towards the exit. A placard with my name welcomed me. The man in clean white suite was holding it. He gave a nice, warming smile and took me to a nice car. We had a good discussion about general things. At the drop point, he gave me the bill/receipt. The car agency had swiped 850 bucks from my credit card and I need to formalize it by a signature.

I dont complain about the cost or service etc. I am thinking aloud about the way corporate world function. When a corporate need to fix a solution, it has to pay heavily, right from electricity, phone bills, real estate, construction, printing etc. If such corporate has to survive in such transactions, these amount will have to paid by the customer or buyer.
Wondering what will it be if we strip down many of the pseudo-cost-escalation. We might have better efficient place with less stressful environment.