We can now literally watch grass grow!

Get inspired By Steve Jobs!

• Stay Hungry! Stay Foolish!
  
• Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

• "A" players like to work with "A" players, they just didn't like working with "C" players.

• If you need slides, it shows you don't know what you are talking about.

Sadhguru @ ISB, Hyderabad

How To Make Wealth!

தமிழ் இலக்கிய நூலகம்

தமிழ் இணையப் பல்கலைகழகம் நூலகம் 


Free Tamil eBooks

Nice Photo Gallery

Vladimir Gramagin's Gallery

One of my colleague's photo gallery. Good attempts.

Easy Online Media Conversion

Online Media Conversion

Steve Jobs [February 24, 1955 - October 5, 2011]

"The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely."

— Bill Gates, Founder Microsoft

"From the earliest days of Google, whenever Larry and I sought inspiration for vision and leadership, we needed to look no farther than Cupertino. Steve, your passion for excellence is felt by anyone who has ever touched an Apple product (including the macbook I am writing this on right now). And I have witnessed it in person the few times we have met. On behalf of all of us at Google and more broadly in technology, you will be missed very much. My condolences to family, friends, and colleagues at Apple."

— Sergey Brin, Co-Founder Google

"I am very, very sad to hear the news about Steve. He was a great man with incredible achievements and amazing brilliance. He always seemed to be able to say in very few words what you actually should have been thinking before you thought it. His focus on the user experience above all else has always been an inspiration to me. He was very kind to reach out to me as I became CEO of Google and spend time offering his advice and knowledge even though he was not at all well. My thoughts are with his family and the whole Apple family."

— Larry Page, Co-Founder Google

"Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you."

— Mark Zuckerberg, Founder FaceBook

"He was dubbed a megalomaniac, but Steve Jobs often gambled on young, largely inexperienced talent to take Apple forward; Jony Ive and his team prove that such faith was spot on."

— Sir James Dyson, innovator and entrepreneur

"I got one of the first Macs, and my relationship with computers fundamentally changed. In both of his incarnations at Apple, he was a visionary. He provided tools. His victories were based on imagination and courage."

— Roger Ebert, Pulitzer-prize winning film critic

"No words can adequately express our sadness at Steve's death or our gratitude for the opportunity to work with him. We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much."

— Tim Cook, CEO of Apple

"Tonight our City -- a city that has always had such respect and admiration for creative genius -- joins with people around the planet in remembering a great man and keeping Laurene and the rest of the Jobs family in our thoughts and prayers."

— Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City

"Steve Jobs was an extraordinary visionary, our very dear friend and the guiding light of the Pixar family. He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what anyone ever imagined. Steve took a chance on us and believed in our crazy dream of making computer animated films; the one thing he always said was to simply 'make it great.' He is why Pixar turned out the way we did and his strength, integrity and love of life has made us all better people. He will forever be a part of Pixar's DNA. Our hearts go out to his wife Laurene and their children during this incredibly difficult time."

— John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer, and Ed Catmull, President, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios

"The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Steve's wife Laurene, his family, and all those who loved him."

— Barack Obama, President US

"Steve Jobs was an iconic entrepreneur and businessman whose impact on technology was felt beyond Silicon Valley. He will be remembered for the innovation he brought to market and the inspiration he brought to the world."

— Meg Whitman, President and CEO, HP

"Steve was my hero growing up. He not only gave me a lot of personal advice and encouragement, he showed all of us how innovation can change lives.I will miss him dearly, as will the world."

— Jerry Yang, Founder Yahoo

"Steve was such an 'original,' with a thoroughly creative, imaginative mind that defined an era. Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started. With his passing the world has lost a rare original, Disney has lost a member of our family, and I have lost a great friend."

— Bob Iger, CEO of Disney

"I want to express my deepest condolences at the passing of Steve Jobs, one of the founders of our industry and a true visionary. My heart goes out to his family, everyone at Apple and everyone who has been touched by his work."

— Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft.

What was documented on books over years!

Google Books - Data Visualization

Julian Day Calendar

Leap years: (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, ...) Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 1 1 32 61 92 122 153 183 214 245 275 306 336 2 2 33 62 93 123 154 184 215 246 276 307 337 3 3 34 63 94 124 155 185 216 247 277 308 338 4 4 35 64 95 125 156 186 217 248 278 309 339 5 5 36 65 96 126 157 187 218 249 279 310 340 6 6 37 66 97 127 158 188 219 250 280 311 341 7 7 38 67 98 128 159 189 220 251 281 312 342 8 8 39 68 99 129 160 190 221 252 282 313 343 9 9 40 69 100 130 161 191 222 253 283 314 344 10 10 41 70 101 131 162 192 223 254 284 315 345 11 11 42 71 102 132 163 193 224 255 285 316 346 12 12 43 72 103 133 164 194 225 256 286 317 347 13 13 44 73 104 134 165 195 226 257 287 318 348 14 14 45 74 105 135 166 196 227 258 288 319 349 15 15 46 75 106 136 167 197 228 259 289 320 350 16 16 47 76 107 137 168 198 229 260 290 321 351 17 17 48 77 108 138 169 199 230 261 291 322 352 18 18 49 78 109 139 170 200 231 262 292 323 353 19 19 50 79 110 140 171 201 232 263 293 324 354 20 20 51 80 111 141 172 202 233 264 294 325 355 21 21 52 81 112 142 173 203 234 265 295 326 356 22 22 53 82 113 143 174 204 235 266 296 327 357 23 23 54 83 114 144 175 205 236 267 297 328 358 24 24 55 84 115 145 176 206 237 268 298 329 359 25 25 56 85 116 146 177 207 238 269 299 330 360 26 26 57 86 117 147 178 208 239 270 300 331 361 27 27 58 87 118 148 179 209 240 271 301 332 362 28 28 59 88 119 149 180 210 241 272 302 333 363 29 29 60 89 120 150 181 211 242 273 303 334 364 30 30 90 121 151 182 212 243 274 304 335 365 31 31 91 152 213 244 305 366

Regular years: (2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, ...) Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 1 1 32 60 91 121 152 182 213 244 274 305 335 2 2 33 61 92 122 153 183 214 245 275 306 336 3 3 34 62 93 123 154 184 215 246 276 307 337 4 4 35 63 94 124 155 185 216 247 277 308 338 5 5 36 64 95 125 156 186 217 248 278 309 339 6 6 37 65 96 126 157 187 218 249 279 310 340 7 7 38 66 97 127 158 188 219 250 280 311 341 8 8 39 67 98 128 159 189 220 251 281 312 342 9 9 40 68 99 129 160 190 221 252 282 313 343 10 10 41 69 100 130 161 191 222 253 283 314 344 11 11 42 70 101 131 162 192 223 254 284 315 345 12 12 43 71 102 132 163 193 224 255 285 316 346 13 13 44 72 103 133 164 194 225 256 286 317 347 14 14 45 73 104 134 165 195 226 257 287 318 348 15 15 46 74 105 135 166 196 227 258 288 319 349 16 16 47 75 106 136 167 197 228 259 289 320 350 17 17 48 76 107 137 168 198 229 260 290 321 351 18 18 49 77 108 138 169 199 230 261 291 322 352 19 19 50 78 109 139 170 200 231 262 292 323 353 20 20 51 79 110 140 171 201 232 263 293 324 354 21 21 52 80 111 141 172 202 233 264 294 325 355 22 22 53 81 112 142 173 203 234 265 295 326 356 23 23 54 82 113 143 174 204 235 266 296 327 357 24 24 55 83 114 144 175 205 236 267 297 328 358 25 25 56 84 115 145 176 206 237 268 298 329 359 26 26 57 85 116 146 177 207 238 269 299 330 360 27 27 58 86 117 147 178 208 239 270 300 331 361 28 28 59 87 118 148 179 209 240 271 301 332 362 29 29 88 119 149 180 210 241 272 302 333 363 30 30 89 120 150 181 211 242 273 303 334 364 31 31 90 151 212 243 304 365

How to defect Oracle locked objects?

SELECT a.sid, a.serial#, a.username, c.os_user_name, a.terminal, b.object_id, SUBSTR(b.object_name,1,40) object_name FROM v$session a, dba_objects b, v$locked_object c WHERE a.sid = c.session_id AND b.object_id = c.object_id

Wanna open Delaware Inc?

startuplawyer can help out even outside US. Bit pricey though.

Interesting philosophy for Software Engineers!

Google Flights Search

Recently Google started its trial flights search engine. Currently it allows searches only in US, but in near future its going to be international.
Google Flights Search

Eager to see how well its going to compete with other well known search engine are kayak.com, priceline.com

NASA - 3D Web App

Explore space beauties through NASA web application.

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eyes/

More details can be found at http://mashable.com/2011/09/03/nasa-web-app-3d/

Faster Internet Through OpenDNS/Google Public DNS

Another way to make your internet faster, secure and more manageable. Point your domain naming server to either Open DNS or Google Public DNS.

Open DNS
Google Public DNS

Please take a note of current settings so in case is these changes do not work, you can revert back to original ISP settings.

Note : Only try these changes if you are much familiar with computer systems and networks.

ORM - Anti Pattern

An interesting discussion about why ORM may be an overhead for large projects. ORM Anti Pattern Some of the issues are very evident when you integrate with extensive RDBMS or ERP database system with OO applications.

Best of Steve Jobs's Quotes

“It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.”

---

“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth.”

---

“I’m an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals. As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups. And I remain extremely concerned when I see what’s happening in our country, which is in many ways the luckiest place in the world. We don’t seem to be excited about making our country a better place for our kids.”

---

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

---

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

---

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

---

“I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.”

---

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

---

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Courtesy: [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]

High Performance Websites!

   

• 14 Rules for Faster-Loading Web Sites
• Yahoo Rules 
• Google Rules

Great New York Pictures

City of New York Like YOU'VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE

50 Best websites by Time!

Time magazine recently published best 50 websites for year 2011. 50 Best Websites 2011 Out of these 50 sites, I find below ones are most interesting for day-2-day life.

---

My Top 10 Favorites of Best Websites
Web Site	What For?
8Tracks	Good Mucic collection for streaming. All high quality legal tracks
HowCast	Videos of how to of many things
MyDamnChannel	Lots of interesting short films
BigThink	Experts view on science, future, arts, business and much more
GetHuman	Way to get a real person not a voice menu from Customer Service
Instapaper	A simple tool to save web pages for reading later.
ScienceDaily	Daily Science news
Join Me	share your Windows PC or Mac's desktop with others
ZenHabits	Eye opening life lessons
KhanAcademy	Lots of study materials on all subjects

Browser Test

http://browsershots.org/

Performance Tuning of Large data retrieval in JDBC

OptimizeJava

New website checklist!

http://newsletter.agiliq.com/the-quick-website-launch-checklist
http://newsletter.agiliq.com/the-website-launch-checklist-part-2

Watch creation of Google Maps Live!

http://www.google.com/mapmaker/pulse

Code Katas

David Thomas of Pragmatic Programmer [pragprog] says, "Most of other professional do practice before perform.. Artists, musicians and even physicians.. But programmers do all practice on the job. No wonder how many defects we leave at work"

Practice to become a better programmer.

A set of interesting experiments every programmer should complete to move ahead towards that goal.

Code Kata

First touch of Java 7

Java 7 is here... and there are many improvements. But as a developer, what we can use on day to day use.. 

1. Strings in Switch 

  - Long waited feature. Makes life much simpler in many ways. Till Java 5, the handling was terrible by defining constants integers or characters and we tend to improve with enums on Java 5 and now finally to match with real world identities 

2. Multi catch exceptions

 Another graceful feature. Reduces lot of code duplication.

3. Try with resources.
   Whenever we access resources we do with try catch finally block, where we release the resources [closing the connections etc] at finally block. With this feature, there will be no need of such finally blocks. The resources on try will automatically released after the try block resulting in much cleaner code.

There are much more with collections, file API, and concurrency features. Will update soon. 

package org.nava.java7;


import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import static java.lang.System.out;


/**
 *
 * @author nadhimoolam
 */
public class ProjectCoinTest {


    public static void main(String args[]) {
        String condition = "BLue";
        testSwitch(condition);
        tryWithMulti();
        tryWithResources(new File("source"), new File("target"));
    }


    private static void testSwitch(String condition) {
        switch (condition.toLowerCase()) {
            case "blue":
            case "red":
                out.println("The choice is " + condition);
                break;
            default:
                out.println("Default ");
        }


    }


    private static void tryWithMulti() {
        try {
            File f = new File("Is this file exists ");
            throw new FileNotFoundException();
        } catch (NullPointerException | FileNotFoundException e) {
            out.println("It should be either null pointer or file not found " + e);
        } catch (Throwable t) {
            out.println("Its throwable now  " + t);
        } finally {
            out.println("Finally.");
        }
    }


    private static void tryWithResources(File source, File target) {
        try (InputStream fis = new FileInputStream(source);
                OutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(target)) {


            byte[] buf = new byte[8192];


            int i;
            while ((i = fis.read(buf)) != -1) {
                fos.write(buf, 0, i);
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            out.println("Exception on trying the resources..." + e);
        }
    }
}

Body Browser By Google

Google has developed educational demo of human body. Interesting.

bodybrowser

Harry Potter Vs Lord Krishna

Despite so many of my friends insisting on reading/watching Harry Potter movies, I never got any interest for that.

Finally, today I got a chance to hear the overall story of Harry Potter series and quite surprised to see lot of similarities with the story of Lord Krishna's childhood.

I could draw parallel lines on
 - Born in someplace and raised by others
 - One who is chosen to destroy the evil
 - Childhood glories

What else?  Almost for all major turns and twists, there is a similarity.

Did anyone feel the same?

PS: After some hard googling, I found following blog to strengthen my thoughts.

Harry and Krishna

Usability - What every product owner must know!

When it comes to usability of your product, its usually be carried out by subjective opinions of developers, designers and product managers. How highly skilled they are, some of fundamental facts are often missed during those product design discussions.

I recently got a chance to read a book "Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability By Steve Krug". The author reveals lot of so obvious common sense lessons. Few points to ponder yourself. 

• Don’t Make Me Think!
• When it comes to software, people often do not want think too much to accomplish something. For anyone its quite embarrassing to admit as dumb, they wont be interested visit your product next time. The page should be as much self-explanatory as possible [like traffic signs]   
• Your goal should be for each page to be self-evident, so that just by looking at it the average user will know what it is and how to use it.
• We don’t read pages. We scan them.
• Reduce as much words as possible. 
• We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfy.
• The is no single BEST way to accomplish a thing on web. We try to find how to get things done and stick with that even though that's not a best approach. 
• We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through.
• We take lot of guess work. click here and if it does not work, click somewhere else. 
• Users Like mindless choices 
• Create clear visual hierarchy 
• Easy as organized as library. 
• Use Conventions and commonly used vocabulary wherever applicable 
• Use Job instead of employment etc. 
• Breakup pages to clearly defined areas 
• As per the domain. For example, how a cook would arrange the kitchen selves. 
• Make it obvious what is clickable 
• Link or button
• Keep the noise down to dull roar.
• No mess around. Simple
• Omit Needless words 
• Example, Google search button. By looking at it, everyone knows what to do. 
• Happy Talk must die 
• No need for introductions, mission, goal statement, welcome message etc 
• Instructions must die 
• Gone are the days to have help menu, mouse overs etc 
• Page Navigation should be modelled like navigating a mall
• Easy to reach home [Home page] in a click from wherever you are. 
• Design breadcrumbs to explicitly tell user how far he is gone from home page 
• What Home page should consist?
• Site Identity and mission - what is it and why i should be here.
• Site Hierarchy - what i can do here. 
• Search - Single most important thing in home page 
• Teases - promos, upcoming events etc 
• Timely content - any special news NOW 
• Deals  - if any 
• Short-cuts 
• Registration - 
• Show me what I am looking for?
• Show me where to start ?
• Establish credibility and trust 
• Most web design team arguments about usability are waste of time. Instead conduct usability test with targeted audience and get the objective results 

BrowserID - Single Sign On

Yet another initiative to simplify, centralize, regulate single sign on multiple web sites

This time, its from Mozilla. Lets hope one day we dont need to remember so many user ids and passwords without compromising identity.

 BrowseID

Internet Business Model

If history has taught us anything, it’s that Internet

business models are like buses: If you miss one, all you have to do is wait a little

while and another one will come along. I’m no expert when it comes to making

money on the Web, and even if I were, whatever I had to say would probably be

passé by the time you read 

                                                                        Excerpts from Don't Make Me Think.

ConcurrentTesting - Advanced Testing for Multi-Threaded Applications

IBM has created a tool for testing, debugging, and coverage-measuring of concurrent programs.

Concurrent Testing

Free source code repositories!

• bitbucket.org
• launchpad
• koders
• github

Search indian laws, court judgments, tribunal judgments and law journals

Kanoon

Dec 31, 1969 Glitch!

Smart phone users might have noticed with variety of applications defaulting the date to Dec 31,1969 with current time quite often. I even noticed this on Facebook update date time.

This might not happen quite often on well tested applications but lot on sparsely tested mobile applications.

If you ever wonder why this may happen, we all know on computer, the system time counted from Jan 1, 1970.

Most of the programming languages have a interface to setup the time with number of milliseconds away from this start date [Jan 1, 1970]. if its a positive number it will be greater than the Jan 1,1970 if its a negative number it will be before that date. If its 0 [or more appropriately, less than 1 day = 24*60*60*1000] it falls to Dec 31,1969.

The number datatype mostly defaults to 0 on most of these programming languages. [Example, Java requires number of milliseconds to be setup with long data type which defaults to 0L].

So when anyone uses this mechanism to update the date and any conditions fails to set the date time, it turns out to be default value 0L and thus the underlying system sets as Dec 31,1969.

How to avoid it?

• More Testing
• Understand the default values of data types on your programming languages and its impact. 
• Efficient Error handling 
• Finally, if you are using this way to set the current time, handle it properly. To set the current time, you cannot set 0L, you should either calculate the time or use other sophisticated API to set the current date time

Free text to speech to check your American and British accent

naturalreaders

Start your little business today!

Interesting..

Memcached with Java in Windows

Recently I got a chance to review design of using memcached in our J2EE application. To start with I tried the cache my windows 7 development environment.

Albeit, the cache mechanism has its own limitations, certainly its one of the simplest key-value in memory cache that can scale for large applications. Facebook uses this cache on around 900 dedicated servers to scale up its needs.

The memcached comes with application exe for windows and its very easy to install, start and stop the services.

One can also use telnet to access the server and its cache content.

Java

More info on installation: Memcached for Windows
Integration with Java : Java Integration
Memcached Java Client : spymemcached


I will try to post my sample code soon.

Great domain registration!

NameCheap

Advanced Javascript Tips

Interesting article about lot of unknowns in JavaScript.

Wonder the power of JS!

தமிழ் இணைய புத்தகங்கள்

தமிழ் இணைய புத்தகங்கள்

Why Google search does not handle empty spaces in search input?

I just noticed after decade of using Google, that its general search input does not care about empty space input

Google Search for Empty spaces

In a enterprise world lot of emphasis was given for input data sanitation and I guess so many Web developers would have fixed these kinda of issues.

I just wonder about so called "standards" in web development.

Is Google missed QA or doing intentionally?

Other Quality Engineers are fuming about these kinda of issues should think about it?

10 must to do for Software Engineers!

Courtesy : Interesting blog

Recapturing main items

• Have your own domain, run your own web site, host blogs and contribute regularly.
• Install an Apache web server and configure it in a non-trivial way, e.g. to serve multiple domains.
• Install WordPress and have your own blog. Write blog posts regularly. Write well. Good writing is a critical skill to master in this profession.
• Write at least one complete LAMP web app, preferably two — one where P=PHP, the other where P=Python.
• Have your own [physical or virtual] server on the cloud.
• Install VMWare or equivalent in order to boot up your laptop with more than one OS.
• Configure your home DSL router so that you serve a web site or other kind of server from your home machine / laptop to your friends.
• Use a packet sniffer to learn about the network requests your computer does to your favorite game server.
• Make contributions to an open source project.
• Write an app that uses at least one of the popular Web APIs, like Facebook Connect or one of Google’s.
• Use Google AdSense on your web site, and make money just by virtue of attracting traffic.
• Compile a complicated open source project from scratch, like OpenSim or Matterhorn. (Thanks, Sean!)
• Read works of literature and, besides enjoying the ride, pay close attention to how the author tells the story and makes use of words. Your programs should be as carefully written as those works of art! 
• Get yourself involved in a software project where requirements are bound to change halfway through — that’s about 0.01% of homework projects and about 99.99% of real world projects, so find one of the latter kind. Finish the project with patience and the ability to take criticism in a constructive way. 
• Write an application using map-reduce. Run it on Google app-engine or amazon EC2.

Improve programming skills!

SPOJ – Sphere Online Judge – is a problemset archive, online judge and contest hosting service accepting solutions in many languages.

To help and solve other pet projects

DreamCode

Affordable software products and services!

Lots of free and affordable products and services which you might not come across through google.

Site Point Market

Groovy Integration with Ant

Recently I come across a requirement to execute few SQL statements during the build process. Initially we thought of executing a shell/perl script to perform the job. Then we explored the power of dynamic JVM based scripting languages.. and here comes Groovy.

It jells with Ant very well and very good support for SQL operations, including executing a stored procedures. Adding groovy to your project is very simple and straight forward. Also, since groovy is much similar to java, literally there is no learning curve.

Check out the simplified and start grooving for your petty project needs....

<project name="GroovyBuild" basedir="." default="testGroovy">

<property name="jdbc.url" value="jdbc:oracle:thin:@yourdb"/>

<property name="jdbc.username" value="username"/>

<property name="jdbc.password" value="pass"/>

<path id="groovypath">

<pathelement location="C:\lib\groovy-all-1.8.0.jar"/>

<pathelement location="C:\lib\ojdbc14.jar"/>

</path>

<path id="groovypath">...</path>

<taskdef name="groovy" classname="org.codehaus.groovy.ant.Groovy" classpathref="groovypath"/>

<target name="setupDB">

<echo message="Test Groovy Started.."/>

<groovy>

import groovy.sql.Sql
def jdbcUrl = "${properties['jdbc.url']}"
def user = "${properties['jdbc.username']}"
def password = "${properties['jdbc.password']}"

def sql = Sql.newInstance("${jdbcUrl}","${user}","${password}","oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver")

project.addReference("groovy.sqlinstance", sql)

</groovy>

<groovy>...</groovy>

</target>

<target name="setupDB">...</target>

<macrodef name="read">

<sequential>

<groovy>

def sql = project.getReference("groovy.sqlinstance")
println "TestName - Updatetime"
sql.eachRow("select testname,to_char(updatetime) as updatetime from groovy_test order by updatetime") {
println "${it.testname} - ${it.updatetime}"
}

</groovy>

<groovy>...</groovy>

</sequential>

<sequential>...</sequential>

</macrodef>

<macrodef name="read">...</macrodef>

<macrodef name="add">

<sequential>

<groovy>

def name = 'test3'
def sql = project.getReference("groovy.sqlinstance")
try {
sql.execute("insert into groovy_test(testname,updatetime) values(${name},sysdate)")
} catch(Exception e){}

</groovy>

<groovy>...</groovy>

</sequential>

<sequential>...</sequential>

</macrodef>

<macrodef name="add">...</macrodef>

<macrodef name="update">

<sequential>

<groovy>

def sql = project.getReference("groovy.sqlinstance")
try {
sql.execute("update groovy_test set updatetime = sysdate+1 where testname='test1'")
} catch(Exception e){}

</groovy>

<groovy>...</groovy>

</sequential>

<sequential>...</sequential>

</macrodef>

<macrodef name="update">...</macrodef>

<target name="testGroovy" depends="setupDB">

<add/>

<update/>

<read/>

<echo message="Test Groovy Completed successfully.."/>

</target>

<target name="testGroovy" depends="setupDB">...</target>

</project>

<project name="GroovyBuild" basedir="." default="testGroovy">...</project>

Limitations of Javascript in large scale applications

Set of problems are very commonly encounterd while developing a large scale JS applications.

We really need to rely on custom framework until these are incorporated into standard specifications.

A Developer Gripes with Javascript

List of Programming Languages

Ever wonder how many programming languages are in the world? I just come across the wiki and wow...

List of Programming Languages

Joomla : Building new website in a minute!

Joomla is an open source content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available.

They also offer 30-day free hosting of your website in one of the cloud servers. After the trial period you can download and port the content to your desired site.

Joomla

CatchFree - Free Online Apps Reviews

CatchFree is a community driven website that makes it easy to discover and share the best free web apps and avoid those with hidden catches.

CatchFree

பாரதியின் கவிதை தொகுப்பு தமிழில்

Bharathi

HotScripts

Hot Scripts is the net's largest PHP, CGI, Perl, JavaScript and ASP script collection and resource web portal. Its an Internet directory that compiles and distributes Web programming-related resources, geared toward webmasters, developers and programmers looking for enhancing their Web sites and intranets with dynamic development tools.

Hotscripts

Cross browser compatibility - Thoughts

Recently I accomplished a challenging opportunity to make IE6 legacy web application compatible for all modern browsers - Firefox, IE, Safari and Chrome.

Albeit, there were comprehensive rework on CSS, JavaScript, HTML, I wondered about quite a few facts.

• DOM Reserved key words: The variable  location is owned by window in all browsers except IE. You can use that as a local variable :( . Same as the case of few DOM functions such as add, remove etc. Better you should have proper namespaces for all the Java Script functions you write anywhere. That way all we don't accidentally override any of WINDOW variables or DOM functions. 
• FireFox >3.x does not allow controlling resize behavior of child windows. Noway to disable the resize of child window. 
• String prototype method String.trim is not yet available in IE. Use of regular expression s.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g,"") to trim the string is recommended. 
• To provide hand over behavior with style, cursor:hand is IE specific. Use cursor:pointer
• The select box value can be set to empty only by setSelectedIndex = -1; directly settings the values as element.value="" does not work on FireFox 
• Setting the value for check box through DOM API does not trigger the onclick event registered with the checkbox; the event should be manually triggered 
• Accessing the parentElement is IE specific. Use parentNode instead. 
• To set a class to a element through DOM API, use element.className = "className" instead of element.setAttribute("class", "className");
• While using IFRAMEs in a page, you can not use cascading style with respect to the parent level. You need to create a new Style hierarchy with the IFRAME onload event. 
• To reset the window height and widths, following functions can be used to get the height and width of window. This is optimized across all browsers. 


getDocumentHeight = function(){
var D = document;
return Math.max(D.body.scrollHeight,D.documentElement.scrollHeight,
D.body.offsetHeight,D.documentElement.offsetHeight,
D.body.clientHeight,D.documentElement.clientHeight);
}

Similarly you can get the width by replacing all Height with Width in above function.

        

Project Lombok

• Do you have lot of POJO in your project and need to write getters/setters?
• Do you want clean POJOs with default hashCode and Equals implementations?
• Do you expect a cleaner way to express your POJO? 

Here is an attempt for all these expectations.

Project Lombok

Protect your email address with reCAPTCHA and Google mailhide

Many spammers crawl the web looking for email addresses. When they see an email address on a web page, they send spam to the address. Mailhide allows you to safely post your email address on the web. Mailhide takes an address such as jsmith@example.com and turns it into jsm...@example.com. In order to reveal the address, a user must click on the "..." and solve a reCAPTCHA. If you use the Mailhide version of your email address, spammers won't be able to find your real email address and you'll get less spam.

reCaptcha

More about mailhide

Loading And Blocking JavaScript

LAB JS

Dynamic Implementation for Interface

Legacy class implements my interface and everytime I change my interface, i had to change the legacy class as well to provide a default implementation and to get rid of my compilation issues

I want a default implementation to be applied to this legacy class whenever I add new methods to my interface.

And, I still want the legacy class to be a child of my interface

How do I get around this problem.?

File sharing made easy

There are many file sharing utilities available free of cost, however most of them rely on uploading the content to server and dowloading from the server.

But a new online tool Sendoid solves the problem without any need for intermediate servers. Ya, its Peer to Peer communication.

Its just works in simple way.

1. Sender select a file to share in sendoid.com
2. Sendoid creates a link to your local file
3. You send the link to receiver
4. Receiver access the link to initiate the file download
5. Sender and Receiver remain online until the sharing completes

You can also achieve unlimited file size by downloading their desktop app.

Explore at

Sendoid

ThinkVitamin

It offers wide variety of online classes and tutorials for web designers and developers.


ThinkVitamin

Powerful alternative to Java Date API

Java Date API is inherently so buggy. If you are looking at the source code, you will really regret how you can rely on that.

If you really want to work with Dates extensively, consider using Joda Time API. Its free and wonderful.

Joda Time

Serializing Java MimeMessage

Why doesn't the MimeMessage class implement Serializable so that I can serialize a message to disk and read it back later?

The JavaMail API was designed to layer on top of existing email systems, using existing message formats. The ability to use Java serialization was neither essential nor useful for such implementations, and thus was not considered a goal of the JavaMail API.

The hard part about serializing a Message is retaining the pointers to the Folder, Store and Session. If you only want to save the content of the message, and not the object itself, the writeTo method of a message gives your everything you need. If you want to create an entire email system based on serialized messages, you should be able to subclass Message et. al and implement Serializable in your subclass.

If you want to serialize other objects of your own that reference MimeMessages, the writeObject method of your object can use the writeTo method of MimeMessage, and the readObject method of your object can use the MimeMessage constructore that takes an InputStream. Your class will need to provide a Session when constructing the MimeMessage.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

Google Code Playground

Google has come up with a wonderful web platform to play around all google services.

Play around when you got time.

Google Code Playground

Dell Laptop : Ubuntu 10.x Wireless Disabled : Quick Fix

I face this quite often in my ubuntu 10.x on Dell laptop, though I am not really sure why it happens. After troubleshooting so many steps, I figured out a quick fix.

First verify whether your connection is hard blocked or soft blocked.


$ rfkill list
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes
1: dell-bluetooth: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes
2: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no

Soft blocks, you can enable the wireless through right-click on top panel task bar.

If its hard blocked as its shown above , following command did trick for me 

$ sudo rmmod -f dell-laptop

Anyone knows why it happens? 

Happy New Year 2011

Wish you all happy new year 2011.

I wish I can learn and share many more things this year.

Let this year be another creative adventure for all of us!