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Check out this week's BusinessWorld Issue (dated 4th September, 2006) and find about the company that I am working at: www.onyomo.comtechnorati tags:onyomo, businessworldBlogged with Flock
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I came across a project on SourceForge.net called jsext. These people are trying to build a pure javascript based server side libraries for common tasks such as connecting to databases and other stuff. These libraries will be able to execute as
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native server side modules for SpiderMonkey, the Mozilla Javascript interpreter. The idea behind it is that in most web development projects, javascript is often an integral part on the client end especially these days when Ajax has become quite popular. By making javascript as an option on the server side as well, multiple language development can be cut down and hence maintainability of the software can be increased. Cool! technorati tags:jsext, javascript, server-side, spidermonkey, sourceforgeBlogged with Flock [Less]
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Writely is out of it's self imposed hibernation now. For those of you who haven't heard about it, Writely.com is a web based document editor which was acquired by Google some months ago. Since that time, it has been not been accepting new users. Now
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the wait is over.I first heard about Writely while browsing through the TopCoder forums. Snewman (one of the TopCoder's TopCoder) was the guy working with (owner of?) this company and he was discussing performance optimization problems related to the website. The site has some cool collaboration features such as shared document editing, ability to export as an RSS feed, publishing it to the public or a blog. You can also export the document as a PDF and HTML. Also you can view the revision history of a document and compare between two revisions.Last night the SRM 316 was my comeback to TopCoder competitions after a long time. I solved the 250 but saw it going down to a challenge as I failed to handle a corner case (once again). Better luck next time.The article was written in Writely itself. Keep checking :) [Less]
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A new version of Google Talk has just been released. It supports Photo & File Sharing, Voicemail and Music status sharing features. Cool isn't it? Find more information here at the official Google blog and the official google talk blog.
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Meanwhile TopCoder has a lot of components related to XMPP posted these days. XMPP stands for eXtensible Messaging and Prescence Protocol. It was developed by the Jabber open source chat server/client and is now used by Google Talk as well as many other IM clients. The international coding competition Google Code Jam has been announced and registrations have started. Google has been investing a lot of money in these coding competitions. Recently we saw a Google Code Jam for India, China and Europe. TopCoder organizes these competitions on behalf of Google. It's said that the top contestants usually recieve an open offer to join Google's engineering team. All the best to those who are participating. I think I'll be one of them :) technorati tags:google, code, jam, gcj, google-talk, xmpp, topcoderBlogged with Flock [Less]
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After a lot of promises it looks like Sun is finally going to open source their Java virtual machine. It plans to release the javac and the hotspot client VM as open source software in October. So how does an open source java help? Frankly, I've no
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idea. "Don't fix it if it ain't broke" is a popular quote. The present status of Java goes well with me. Things are straightforward, there's an implicit standard and besides, Sun has been handling Java development quite well. Multiple forks of the JDK may break compatibility and that's one of the major reasons Sun has been refusing to open source java untill now. And this lack of an open source license for Java is the reason that Sun JDK does not ship with any of the major Linux distributions. Although some people have had some frustations with their promises. For example, there's no library support for knowing the free disk space on a disk partition in Java. I'd think that's an important thing. Surprisingly this has been a feature request since 9th June, 1997 and after repeated (unfulfilled) promises, it's going to be implemented in the upcoming mustang release of JDK (version 6.0). It shows as fixed in mustang release in the bug logs of Sun. technorati tags:java, sun, open-sourceBlogged with Flock [Less]
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I've been playing a lot lately with XMLHttpRequest. As a part of one of my tasks, I set out to build an object oriented javascript component which provided a plug in functionality for a HTML element. Specifically I set out to build a decorator (in
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design pattern parlance).I ran into a problem which foxed me for some time until I dig up some old posts in the comp.lang.javascript google group. The problem was something like this:Suppose you create a javascript custom class which takes a UI element and attaches some event handler to it. That event handler is one of the methods of our class. Now the problem was that I was unable to access any of my class's attributes from that event handler function. Every time I tried using the this object to access a attribute, I was getting an undefined value. After some experimentation I found out that within the event handler function this refers to the UI element on which the event was attached. So inside that event handler, we don't have a handle to the current object of the class.function MyDecorator(sourceElement) { this.sourceElement = sourceElement; this.someOtherAttribute = 192123123; this.sourceElement.onmouseover = function() { //do Something with the class's someOtherAttribute. alert(this.someOtherAttribute); //This does not work }}One way out of this problem was a dirty hack. Maintain a global variable to hold the current object. But that can only work when there's only instance of the decorator in the page. The second way was to let the javascript in the page handle the event and pass it on the appropriate decorator object.But in both of the cases the self-contained nature (or encapsulation) of the object-oriented approach is destroyed. This problem surfaced again when I was writing a javascript class to fetch some data from XMLHttpRequest and process it's response inside the class. In this case you can't implement the second approach outlined above and keeping a global reference to the current object seems the only way to go about it. Or else I can keep aside the object oriented stuff and go about it in a function based approach.technorati tags:javascript, event-handling, object-orientedBlogged with Flock [Less]
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Just posting some follow ups to my previous posts: Got hold of this site from the Ubuntu Forums for help in dual booting Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux. Seems I am ready for one more try :) Krugle has gone live opening up for everybody and not just
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the beta testers (there goes my exclusivity) Although Blue Security has closed it's operations but their unique concept has not gone unnoticed. An open source project called Okopipi intends to initiate anti-spam activities through a distributed system (like BitTorrent). Once again we see the power of the community playing an important role. On the other hand, there's still no further word on the Goobuntu project and I am yet to find out whether upgrading to Dapper from the Breezy is still a murky affair. Meanwhile I got my hands into a how-to thread dealing with installing Windows fonts on my Ubuntu Linux. Keep checking. technorati tags:ubuntu, vista, dual-boot, krugle, blue-security, okopipi, community, windows, fontsBlogged with Flock [Less]
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I installed the Beta 2 of Microsoft's Windows Vista on my system a few days ago. Although the visual effects are very very good, but the OS seems to have played havoc on my linux installation. It replaced the GRUB with it's own boot manager (as
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expected) which showed Vista and the older Windows XP as the two operating systems installed on my system. I should tell you that I run three OS: Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux and Vista. I found Vista very un-useful for me because of it's pathetic networking subsystem. I was unable to configure my system as the gateway for the other computer on my LAN. I use a cross-cable to connect two computers directly. Apparently, Vista had problems with this and kept giving a error saying something like "Unable to detect router..." But the troubling fact was that for some reasons the download speeds were just not like what they should be. My max download speed is around 11.6KBPS but on Vista the displayed download speeds started at around 11KBPS and waned to something like 60 Bytes (yeah, bytes!) per second making any kind of downloads impossible. Even more alarming was the fact that with a week of using Vista, I was unable to use gmail even once. Now somebody told me it was a known bug (whoa!). It seems like for Vista, Microsoft has decided to re-write the whole networking stack code, throwing away the years of old but tested code. I've heard that the newer builds of Vista have most of these bugs fixed but it's still buggy enough. And I hate those in-your-face allow/deny security messages that Vista pops up for every action that modifes the system. Coming back to the bootloader part: Vista replaced GRUB. but the troubling part was that I was unable to boot to my Ubuntu even after I re-installed GRUB by going through the Ubuntu Live CD. At last, enough was enough and I formatted the Vista partition installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu and through the GRUB installed by it finally booted to my old Ubuntu installation (phew!). But now even Windows XP doesn't boot, it keeps giving an error saying "Unable to find autochk.exe". Maybe Vista did something very harsh with the MBR :( So it's back to the old Ubuntu Linux for me. technorati tags:grub, windows, vista, ubuntu, bootloader, problems, networkingBlogged with Flock [Less]
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Well, the latest news indicate that Google has confirmed that they are developing a linux distribution based on (my favorite) Ubuntu Linux. The distribution is said to be named Goobuntu. But at the same time, Mark Shuttleworth (the founder of
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Canonical and the person behind Ubuntu) has denied this news. What's not clear at the moment is whether Google is coming into the desktop space through this distro or whether it's merely for internal use and development. We'll just need to wait to find out more about the credibility of this news. Whatever may be the intended use, if Google is indeed developing a distro based on Ubuntu, Ubuntu development will surely gain from this. technorati tags:ubuntu, goobuntu, googleBlogged with Flock [Less]
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Life's a drag, many people say but then it must be the only drag force known to cause incessant motion. Funny, isn't it?Most people go about life in a very routine way, seldom pausing to think differently. In most cases this has to do with the
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incessant flow of events and our reactions towards them. I feel that our reactions and not the events themselves, determine the course of our lives. Agreed that life is ironic and strange. But equally strange is the fact that with each event, God gave each one of us the power to change ourselves and thus, our lives at any moment of time. We may have little control over the events that were destined by God. But for each such event we get some choices. A choice to fret about this change or to take corrective action or to adapt.It's always fascinated me that most people are so scared of change. Maybe this is the bane of self-awareness. If you remove this aspect from the equations, life becomes so much easier. For each event, our instinct guides us to a response to be followed without deliberation and the world becomes free of criticism. The conflict still remains though. Since you don't stop to think, you don't try to estimate the outcomes and the fear of change vanishes from the mind. Animals follow this exact procedure. But then, we don't call our human race an intelligent one for nothing. The ability to be aware about our surroundings, to take deliberate action, to ponder upon the reasons for our existence, to acquire knowledge and to apply it to areas which, at first, do not seem logically related, is what intelligence is all about. This definition is by no means complete and may not even be entirely correct. It's just what I feel.Unfortunately, the need to conform to social standards, to be accepted and appreciated holds back many from accomplishing great things. To break free, you need to see things from a higher level. This is what the bird's eye view is all about. Rising above the crowd and it's noise is no easy task. But it's a task that one must undertake to realise the locked potential in each one of us. I've been trying and I'll continue to try so that one day I may also experience the euphoria that comes along with the higher level. And I believe there's no end to this journey.I have found that the Bird's eye view is a very effective technique to understand newer aspects and plausible reactions that one could never have seen with the perspective one follows in the normal course. It gives more than just a clear view, it enhances our understanding and thus our ability to think differently. The next time you get stuck, take a moment out of the normal and see things through the Bird's eye view. [Less]
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