Azcarya!

Magical Behavior of Microsft Products

2009-07-23T09:55:00.001+05:30

Today morning I received one of those another forwarded mails telling me of all those crazy magical things that Microsoft products do, and which no one from Microsoft including Bill Gates (as claimed in the email) is able to explain.

Without wasting a minute let's take a look at the magic and the magic behind it ;)

Magic #1: An Indian found that nobody can create a FOLDER anywhere on the Computer which can be named as "CON". This is something funny and inexplicable. At Microsoft the whole Team, couldn't answer why this happened! TRY IT NOW, IT WILL NOT CREATE A "CON" FOLDER
Magic Behind: First, why do every Indian has to proclaim that it was discovered by an Indian? Is it some sort of egoistic game we all are playing in this world?

Leave it, anyways, the reason one cannot create a folder called CON is because CON is a special redirect for CONsole (meaning Monitor output, in general). You can use CON along with pipes to redirect the output streams to monitor, say in case it was going to a printer. Hence, the observed behavior. It is analogous to something like you won't use the variable *sin* in a trigonometric equation, or you can't use an *if* as a variable in a programming language.

Magic #2: For those of you using Windows, do the following:
1) Open an empty notepad file
2) Type "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes)
3) Save it as whatever you want.
4) Close it, and re-open it.
Noticed the weird bug? No one can explain!
Magic Behind: This is simply an encoding issue. When notepad opens a file it tries to identify the file type encoding, and because of a bug where the characters form a particular pattern make notepad believe it is Chinese, it seems to us as if everything disappeared. Save the file in UTF-8/16 and everyhting would work fine. Open the file in Wordpad/Notepad++ etc and you can see the original text. For more details read the following Wikipedia page: Bush hid the facts

Magic #3: Again this is something funny and can't be explained. At Microsoft the whole Team, including Bill Gates, couldn't answer why this happened! It was discovered by another Indian. Try it out yourself. Open Microsoft Word and type =rand (200, 99) And then press ENTER And see the magic.

Magic Behind: Oh gosh... another Indian thing. I am upset.

On a serious note, this is nether a bug nor an easter egg in Microsoft word. This is a feature developed specifically on the request of users. This is a functionality that Microsoft provides. Don't believe me, well, read this Microsoft Support page. rand(p,l) is a special command you issue to Word to insert sample text in the localized language of the OS. This helps content editors, localization testers, and others a lot.

If only people could stop boasting about things done by Indians. I am proud to be an Indian, but not the one's as these.

Synergy - One keyboard/mouse for multiple computers

2009-05-21T15:56:00.002+05:30

Many of us use multiple computers at work, most probably, a laptop and the desktop. And most of the time we find ourselves wondering as to why the cursor isn't moving with the mouse, only to realize that we were using the wrong keyboard/mouse combination. Sounds familiar, huh? I have been irritated by this a lot in the past, and recently, I discovered this magical tool which left me cursing as to why I didn't discover it earlier.

Synergy, an open source tool that seems to be doing magic. In its own words,

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

Yes, it really does that. In reality, as soon as I configured this tool, this is the first post I am making using the other screen and smiling :) Configuration in super easy - it was over under 2 minutes and now I have the pleasure of cleaning up my office desk of all those useless wires. I can now only have multiple screens with a single pair of keyboard and mouse and work seamlessly. How easy, isn't it?

Another major power of the tool is to bring the universal clipboard into existence. You want to copy from one computer to another, simply, copy from the screen of the first, move keyboard to second, and paste. Voilla - its simpler than buying an ice-cream. Enjoy!!!

Are you left gasping for more? Here it comes... Screensaver's on all computers are in sync. They start at the same time and end at the same time. Amazing - yes atleast for me.

In anticipation that some fellow world citizen might easy his/her pain with this tool. Hail Synergy, Hail the power of Open-Source!!!

New York Times launches Times Reader 2.0

2009-05-15T09:45:00.000+05:30

New York Times released a Times Reader which makes reading online newspaper fun and exciting. Times Reader enables a user to read New York Times without a web browser. This might not look like a big change considering the fact that NYT is already available on web via a browser, but, the sparkling difference is the compelling and commanding interface. And yes, for those who might not have picked it up, Times Reader is a desktop application. Yes, it is !!!

Times Reader makes reading news worthy as the interface is built specifically for the purpose. Again there is no need to wait for page refreshes to get updates, Times Reader would itself refresh the contents continually, without any user input. It keeps displaying the last updated time in the top right corner, can browse through pages, and user clicks for details on a story take them directly with a nice transition effect, creating that Wow effect.

Here is what I saw on my first run,

Try it and let the world know of your opinion.

Unlike its predecessor, Times Reader 2.0 is built over Adobe AIR technology which enables it over Windows, Macintosh and your favorite flavor of Linux, as opposed to the earlier WPF version that was restricted to Windows.

I wish something similar is developed by the 'Times of India', for they already have an e-paper edition which kind of sucks. Rise India, leverage technology to show prowess to the world.

Power of Civil Engineering

2009-02-01T10:32:00.000+05:30

The power to observe, perceive and act has elevated man into a class of his own. This god gifted ability has led him to cause change within and around himself.

Change - as they say is the only thing that is permanent. This unquenched thirst for change is the sole spark that drives one to create the world around into a home fit for coexistence of all.

God being the master sculptor has provided all the sources and amenities but in cocooned state. The power to reach out, to metamorphose the resources into useful, fruitful and healthful objects has been bestowed upon only a privileged few.

The air we breathe, the water we drink, the roads we drive on, the bridges we cross, the home we all so love, the life we live, the environment we value is all indebted to those pioneers and fore runners who have exhausted their all for changing just mere existence to living.

Today the life we live is due to the dream that an engineer had seen. The dream to create fire, to make a wheel, to build a house, to cultivate a field, to raise a family is all an engineers vision.

What he dares to dream is unheard of, what he imagines and hopes to achieve is beyond ones wildest imaginations. The engineer who builds a wheel for transport, needs a road for plying. The one who invents electricity, needs transmission setup. He who casts metals for mankind needs a refinery to be set up. From telephone signals to Information Technology laying and setting is a prerequisite.

The water we use for our fields, the electricity harnessed by dams, the bridges bridging our gap, the solid foundations upon which you make your home, the mighty walls that withstand the nuclear reactions, the laying of cables over and below the mother earth, are all conceived by none but one and that one is none but a CIVIL ENGINEER.

Remember, all seven wonders of the world, are civil engineering marvels.

PS: This is in response to an IT Manager's question on me being a Civil Engineer by choice.

Url based Tile name Controller

2008-10-18T22:27:00.009+05:30

Tiles, a framework that is used extensively for templating in Java based web applications. Spring Framework, a dependency injection container that makes configuration easier. There are several controllers available in the Spring framework which makes mapping static JSP/JSF pages directly to the URI's without writing boiler plate code. But in most of the cases, we use Tiles for a templating. What to do in such a case? There is no single controller that would help us map URI's to a tilename. Here is what I came up... A simple controller that would directly map a URI to a tilename and forward the request out.

A typical usage example is as under,

<bean name="urlTilenameController" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.UrlTilenameViewController" >  
<property name="indexTile" value=".homePage" />  
<property name="toLowercase" value="true" />  
<property name="stripAfterLastDot" value="true" />  
<property name="insertStartingDot" value="true" />
</bean>

The parameters should be self explanatory. In case you would like to know more on this, feel free to contact me.

Hope this helps. Keep Walking!

package org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc;

import java.io.File;

import javax.servlet.ServletContext;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;

import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;

/**
 * TODO: type comment.
 *
 * @author Sandeep on Sep 25, 2008 @ 9:29:54 PM
 *
 */
public class UrlTilenameViewController extends AbstractUrlViewController  {
    
    private static final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(UrlTilenameViewController.class);
    
    private String indexTile;
    
    private boolean toLowercase;
    
    private boolean stripAfterLastDot;
    
    private boolean insertStartingDot;

    /**
     * @param request
     * @return
     * @see org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.AbstractUrlViewController#getViewNameForRequest(javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest)
     */
    @Override
    protected String getViewNameForRequest(HttpServletRequest request) {
        String uri = extractOperableUrl(request);
        String tileName = getViewNameForUrlPath(uri);
        
        if(log.isDebugEnabled()) {
            log.debug("uri " + uri + " converted to tilename " + tileName);
        }
        
        return tileName;
    }

    protected String extractOperableUrl(HttpServletRequest request) {
        String uri = request.getRequestURI();
        ServletContext context = request.getSession().getServletContext();
        File rootFile = new File(context.getRealPath ("/"));
        String rootContext = rootFile.getName() + "/";
        
        if(log.isDebugEnabled()) {
            log.debug("Request uri received is " + uri + " in the application context " + rootContext);
        }
        
        if(uri.startsWith("/")) {
            uri = uri.substring(1);
        }
        if(uri.startsWith(rootContext)) {
            uri = uri.substring(rootContext.length());
        }
        
        return uri;
    }
    
    protected String getViewNameForUrlPath(String uri) {
        if(uri == null || "".equals(uri)) {
            return this.indexTile;
        }
        uri = uri.replaceAll("/", ".");
        if(this.toLowercase) {
            uri = uri.toLowerCase();
        }
        if(this.stripAfterLastDot) {
            int index = uri.lastIndexOf(".");
            if(index != -1) {
                uri = uri.substring(0, index);
            }
        }
        if(this.insertStartingDot) {
            uri = "." + uri;
        }
        return uri;
    }

    /** Returns the indexTile.
     * @return the indexTile.
     */
    public String getIndexTile() {
        return indexTile;
    }

    /** Sets the indexTile to the specified value.
     * @param indexTile indexTile to set.
     */
    public void setIndexTile(String indexTile) {
        this.indexTile = indexTile;
    }

    /** Returns the toLowercase.
     * @return the toLowercase.
     */
    public boolean isToLowercase() {
        return toLowercase;
    }

    /** Sets the toLowercase to the specified value.
     * @param toLowercase toLowercase to set.
     */
    public void setToLowercase(boolean toLowercase) {
        this.toLowercase = toLowercase;
    }

    /** Returns the stripAfterLastDot.
     * @return the stripAfterLastDot.
     */
    public boolean isStripAfterLastDot() {
        return stripAfterLastDot;
    }

    /** Sets the stripAfterLastDot to the specified value.
     * @param stripAfterLastDot stripAfterLastDot to set.
     */
    public void setStripAfterLastDot(boolean stripAfterLastDot) {
        this.stripAfterLastDot = stripAfterLastDot;
    }

    /** Returns the insertStartingDot.
     * @return the insertStartingDot.
     */
    public boolean isInsertStartingDot() {
        return insertStartingDot;
    }

    /** Sets the insertStartingDot to the specified value.
     * @param insertStartingDot insertStartingDot to set.
     */
    public void setInsertStartingDot(boolean insertStartingDot) {
        this.insertStartingDot = insertStartingDot;
    }
}

Google Chrome!

2008-09-04T11:30:00.004+05:30

As with any other computer geek, I was amongst the downloader's of the new Google Open Source Browser, Chrome! Downloading and installing it was a breeze, just a couple of minutes. Upon the first start, as with Mozilla Firefox, it asked whether to import data from the current Internet Explorer. Hehe, I don't know why all browsers target IE as their arch-rival.

The first instant liking was its icon and the comic strip that accompanied the Google Chrome launch. For those of you, who didn't had a chance to go through the making of Chrome, here it is. The strip actually explains the theory why the concept of a new browser originated. And they explain really well, keeping the reader tied and wanting for more.

Anyways, Chrome looks much like the Mozilla Firefox and takes its base from it (I think). The icons, the loading style, the address bar etc. match very closely with FireFox 3.0 But the best part was the reading pane area - its so much large. The tab bar has been merged with the window title bar, and with just the address bar beneath, the whole of the rest screen is available to the user for working.

At first look, you notice that the tab window has shifted to the title bar. Nice idea - why do we need a title bar in an application when we have the whole application on screen, and in-focus. Cool! The animations while opening new tabs, resizing windows, and closing tabs just adds more funk and UI-appeal to Chrome! Must say, Google has the best UI and Usability analysts.

A new tab displays some of the most frequently sites as tiles alongwith the last snapshot, which is ultra-cool. In a fraction of second I could locate my favorite site and a click brought me to it. Amazing!

Another sparkling feature, is the introduction of application short-cuts. I tried that with GMail, and yes, it looks amazing. You have a window with GMail running, without anything else except the title bar, like a desktop application. Ummm.... is Google planning to venture into bringing everything to the desktop ;) Well, that would be a boon for all users from countries where the broadband penetration is still a dream.

The popup blocker displays a notification as a hovering window on the bottom right, and the connection information comes as notifications on bottom left, fulfilling the task bar's functionality. Infact, this adds to the beauty of Chrome, adding more space, and removing information which a normal internet user is least bothered of.

Two features introduced in Chrome, would instantly draw a huge fans base amongst the developers. One is the 'View Source Code' - just right click on any page and it shows you the source code of the page. So, whats new? Well, the source code is syntax highlighted, color-coded and line numbered. Also, you have an option to view the source code of an inline frame, which I haven't seen in IE, FF or Safari, except with usage of plugins. I personally am not very comfortable using plugins!

Another is the introduction of Javascript Console. At first look, it seems like a normal console, but upon exploring further its almost a FireBug in place. Whats more is the concept where you can actually see the files being downloaded for a page in a timeline, and optimize your code accordingly. Is this a competition to YSlow! ;)

Yet, there were a few disappointments. While opening MS Exchange 2000, I could not view my inbox, the frame had the whole source code, but I guess there is a problem with the rendering engine. Second, the browser crashes if the internet connection breaks and you try and close it down. But, with the current version as 0.2 and Chrome in beta, its a long journey ahead. I am sure by the time Chrome comes of age, it would be a mature and robust browser taking on IE one-on-one, and is gonna change and shape the future of web.

Keep Walking, Chrome!/p>

Presentations: Spring Framework

2008-08-04T13:26:00.004+05:30

I have just finished updating the Spring Presentations for Version 2.5 and am happy to announce that they are now available in the public domain. You may know more and download the presentations from here. There are two presentations covering the Basics and the Enterprise Service Abstractions.

An online preview would be available shortly.

Hope this helps!

Windows Vista and its damn updates!

2008-08-04T09:16:00.002+05:30

For millions of users like me, Windows comes as the default operating system which we get familiar and acquainted with. To use it on your computer becomes more of a standard than a choice, for computer manufacturers don't offer much systems on other OS platforms, and Apple tends to be too costlier.

On the same lines when I was looking for a laptop last year, I settled for a DELL machine with Windows Vista Home Premium pre-loaded. But today, I realize what a big mistake I made. Don't worry - not on the part of choosing DELL, but picking up Windows Vista.

Today morning, Windows downloaded and installed an update and then forced me to restart my computer, without any choice, when I did not wanted to. Then it took almost 15 minutes to shut down. At restart it showed me those ugly screens of loading registry entries and files. The screen displayed Installing updates 1 of 3 (0% complete), and then it took another 70 minutes to see the login screen. Once iI authenticated my credentials it took another 15 minutes to load. Now this was frustrating, even after seeing the desktop I could not start any application, and even shut down again. I had already lost 100 minutes of my time, because Windows had installed some silly update which may be I didn't need.

When my patience left, I did a force shutdown and then a cold start. But to add insult to injury, things remained the same. Another 40 minutes, and I had to cold start my system in safe mode. Thank God, it was not slow this time and in couple of minutes I was to the admin console. Upon looking up for updates that were installed recently, I found the culprit.

Windows Desktop Search 4.0 installed on 4 August 2008. Damn hell, why did Microsoft installed a search system by default on my machine. I don't need and I hate desktop search softwares for the reason that they make the performance of the machines pathetic. It took me no time to click on the Uninstall button and then restart. Adding weird faces to the injury and insult, it has already been 90 minutes and my system still waits at the screen Configuring updates: 3 of 3 (0% complete).

If only I could get a chance to speak to the Windows Development Team, I would take the opportunity to let them know that their thinking of doing everything on their own creates life's miserable for users like me.

I already have lost more than 180 minutes (3 hours) of my time due to this and still counting.... :(

Readers, if you could point me to a link where I can file this as a bug, please do let me know, I am more than eager to kick their a**.

Blogger and My Blog List widget

2008-07-14T00:44:00.002+05:30

A friend of mine was trying to add my blog using the recently released, My Blog List widget, in Blogger. But, an error was being thrown saying no feeds could be detected for the blog. When I gotta know of this I was surprised and a bit upset. One, for my blog could not be added to a blog roll and second, I would not be getting more visitors, doh!

Another worry was to analyze the cause behind it. as I tried it myself and with a few hits and trials, I came to the conclusion that FeedBurner is the culprit here. When you are redirecting all your feed viewers to FeedBurner using the Blogger's internal setting, the blog feeds are not discovered by the widget. I am not sure what causes this to happen. But, there is a workaround for all,

Just use the complete blogger feed URL for such blogs. For example, if you are looking to add this blog to your list, instead of saying http://azcarya.blogspot.com say, http://poetinside.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default. Just add /feeds/posts/default to the end of all Blogger blogs and you should be able to get it through.

Hope this helps.
Keep Walking!

Greeting Grammar!

2008-07-14T00:21:00.002+05:30

Do you feel there is something wrong is saying, "Hi Sandeep". If you DO NOT I would suggest you to read this particular post by Bob, Greeting Grammar, which is definitely an eye opener. Its an amazing post which reminds me of my grade school classes. Gosh, if only I had paid some heed to my teachers. :)

Keep Walking, friends!

Tyranny of a Developer!

2008-07-04T09:34:00.008+05:30

Being a software developer introduces you to many new concepts - importantly, of using and harness the technology yourself to the maximum. Slowly as you start picking up things you start using the same in your daily chores, for example, using mails to communicate often. When you are looking up for that song on your disk, you want the power of Google to do that for you. Recovering accidental deletions of files makes you think if you could have your own private repository with all files being safe. And the list goes on.

I am not left untouched by these thoughts in my own quest. With much of my life being spent in programming, I always look out to develop tools and utilities which help me in my daily chores. But, as the needs grow those don't, reason me being lazy enough. In the last couple of months, I started development of these on a serious basis. To start with I got myself a repository, configured all damn things, put across the build servers and all the other things ones does except development.

Now being ready for development, I started investing time in reading and development to make life easier. My luck didn't last long - I now stand at the point where in I use many systems for development and review of code pieces. I can view files in my repository, discuss them with people, find silly bugs and some blunders. Fixing these blunders is easy, but getting code back into the repository isn't. Why? For I am not with my laptop which has the complete repository checked out. This makes me go back to square one - a need for a web based way to check in files into a repository.

Can I have some luck here on would I have to go back adding this in my wish list? I use Subversion as my repository, as if who doesn't. Perforce guys, sorry you are too costly! ;) A little Google and I could find many a links to all sorts of web based subversion clients, bringing a big smile on my face. I thought I had found a solution. One by one, I kept clicking on the results, browsing to the features page, and checking if somewhere the word, 'commit', or 'check-in' or 'write' was written. To my bad luck, from one to second, second to third, third to n-th, none of them seemed to support web based modification of files.

I kept scrolling through results in anticipation that somewhere down there could be a link which might surprise me. Many a pages down under, I found Nirvana - I found what I was looking for - a web based tool which has write access. YooHoo!!!! I was so excited reading the features list and trying it out, that I am here writing this post. Check the great work from Polarion, the SVNWebClient. A powerful utility for those developers who believe in the Google way, 'Release Early, Release Often'. Check in your files on the move, and keep walking. The best part - its 100% pure Java implementation, which allows me to set it up on my existing servers.

Another good read-only browser worth mentioning is Sventon. Though it does not have the write capabilities, still it have many features of Fisheye, which makes it a right candidate to mention.

For all those developers harness the power of technology and surely, Keep Walking!

Hope this helps!

Google Movies!

2008-04-24T23:53:00.001+05:30

Here is another interesting service from Google. Want to know, which movie is being showed in which theater at what time? Just enter your city name and watch all the movie shows with current timings on your screen.

You taking it as a joke, try yourself http://www.google.co.in/movies

Happy Googling into movies!

History of Orkut & chain-Emails!

2008-04-09T10:00:00.004+05:30

Chain Emails - Ones that you keep receiving all through the day and wonder why don't they just land up in the SPAM folder. This morning I received one another: About the Birth of Orkut! I am sure most of you must have read this email for the number of times it has been forwarded is quite large. For those of you, who haven't, lets ponder over the contents first,

A guy lost his girlfriend in a train accident....but the gal's name nowhere appeared in the dead list. This guy grew up n became IT technical architect in his late 20?s, achievement in itself!!. He hired developers from the whole globe and plan to make a software where he could search for his gf through the web..Things went as planned...n he found her, after losing millions of dollars and 3 long years!! It was time to shut down the search operation, when the CEO of Google had a word with this guy n took over this application, This Software made a whopping 1 billion dollars profit in its first year, which we today know as ORKUT .

The guy's name is ORKUT BUYUKKOTEN. Yes its named after him only. Today he is paid a hefty sum by Google for the things we do like scrapping. He is expected to b the richest person by 2009. ORKUT BUYUKKOTEN today has 13 assistants to monitor his scrapbook & 8 to monitor his friends-list. He gets around 20,000 friend-requests a day & about 85,000 scraps!!!

Some other Cool Facts abt this guy:
* He gets $12 from Google when every person registers to this website.
* He also gets $10 when you add somebody as a friend.
* He gets $8 when your friend's friend adds you as a friend & gets $6 if anybody adds you as friend in the resulting chain.
* He gets $5 when you scrap somebody & $4 when somebody scraps you.
* He also gets $200 for each photograph you upload on Orkut.
* He gets $2.5 when you add your friend in the crush-list or in the hot-list.
* He gets $2 when you become somebody's fan.
* He gets $1.5 when somebody else becomes your fan.
* He even gets $1 every time you logout of Orkut.
* He gets $0.5 every time you just change your profile-photograph.
* He also gets $0.5 every time you read your friend's scrap-book & $0.5 every time you view your friend's friend-list.

Well, coming to the point, it was not this email that made me write this post, but the person and his background. I got this email from a J2EE developer with say 3+ years of experience. A person from the industry trusting such rubbish is really insane. A word with him and he was trying to convince me that we could do such a thing and earn millions and the next he was almost ready to leave his job. Foolish!

It is not about making choices, but about making informed choices. What is the point in studying so much if we start believing in such stuff, the origination of which lies in a totally-unoccupied mind.

Orkut was developed by a Turkish software developer, Orkut Buyukkokten, working with Google as a 20% project. What's a 20% project? Google has a policy where-in every developer is allowed 20% of a week's time to work on something of his own, the time which he can utilize for personal development. When Orkut stabilized internally it was released by the person as an independent entity. A few months down the line with the growing support Google took it over and provided the kind of infrastructure it needed. The terms of the deal (between Google and Orkut) were not disclosed as any other Google deal. The person is still with Google, and wrote the very first post for Orkut Blog.

Wanna feel the power of Google 20% - here we go - Orkut, Reader, Charts, Adsense, News, and our very favourite GMail. Google 20% is more of an attitude which the organization exhibits than a rule! I wish for a day when my employer would allow the same ;)

Exam Time!

2008-04-06T08:00:00.000+05:30

Last weekend, I appeared for the SCWCD exam. Before you guys start making any guesses let me make the air clear, I had to appear, I didn't wanted to. Last year I had bought a coupon for the exam on heavy discount. With the baniya mentality, I had thought of selling it to some one else making a premium over it. But guess what, I ran out of luck. Part due to my laziness, part due to my luck, I didn't find any buyer. And the 31st March deadline lay approaching. I had no other option but to appear myself, lest suffer a loss of a few grands.

Now choice of exam center. I started calling each and every mentioned Prometric center to book a date. But, the way we Indians tend to leverage advantage over others limited options, is what I stood in front of. Every center was ready to give a date, but as soon as I told them that coupon was expiring on 31st Mar, they declined. A few offered me the weekday slot. I wanted weekend so as not to fail ;) It seemed I was to loose money, which was my biggest worry. My MOM was after me reiterating that this was to happen when you do things at the 11th hour. Well with a lot of luck wishes from my friends, I finally managed to find a center and book a slot. This time I played smart, I didn't mention about the expiry date. :)

A week before the exam I pondered over the syllabus and was surprised to find that I didn't knew 80% of the stuff. Why? Because that was all theoretical things we tend to forget over time. A crash revision course was needed. To add more to my suffering it was UAT and release time, shit, which gave me little time to study. With the advent of IDE's (Integrated Development Environments) and Intellisense, a lot is taken off developer's shoulders. This makes them more vulnerable to these certification exams.

A free mock exam website came to help. The website contains many links to free Java certification exams. The only thing I could do was start giving them. What is best with these exams is you can submit the whole exam at the very first question, and then browsing answers for review ;) A trick that saved me a lot of time and generated my reading material. I somehow managed to study 50% of the questions provided, and indeed, it proved really helpful.

The day arrived. I just wanted to save my money. I prayed to the almighty to help me keep up to my reputation of being a baniya. Two hours and I was through the test and a round of revision too. I was sure that I would pass and not flunk. God blessed me and I really did pass. Alas! the exam time was over! Paise bach gaye!

I feel the test question required more of mugging than application. Under the agreement I cannot reveal the questions per se, but what I can advise others is that leave the IDE for a month and code everything by hand, specially the deployment descriptor and other config files. The deployment descriptor structure is something that can make you look like a first-grade student even with several years of development experience. And yes, got through the mock-exams, will surely add to your success and save you lots of time ;)

If you need any help on the certification, feel free to reach me.

Hope this helps and Best of luck to all aspirants.

(In)Significance of a DOT/Plus

2008-03-06T20:22:00.004+05:30

I had been using GMail for over two and half years now. But, still there are many tricks that you need to learn. It was one such day today, when I came to know the power (or insignificance) of a DOT in the GMail email address. May be I will take an example to start with. My email address happens to be sandy (dot) pec (at) gmail (dot) com. Preventing spammers gain access to email address is so tough ;)

Now guess what would happen if some one was to send an email to sandypec (at) gmail (dot) com. Logically and with any other email service, the email would be sent to some one with that address and not to me. Right! WRONG! This is where GMail makes a difference. GMail does not recognizes DOT in email addresses before the AT '@' symbol. This mean that email addresses like sandypec, sandy.pec, san.dy.pec, s.a.n.d.y.p.e.c are all one and the same. Yes, they are! So an email sent to an address, which after stripping all DOTS, leads to 'sandypec' as the address part, would always be delivered to me.

May of you would think of it as a bug or a limitation of GMail, where-in it is not able to assign addresses to people. NO! It is an advantage, a boon for users like you and me. Now I can configure multiple email addresses all in one email box. So, say I have one primary address as 'sandy.pec', I can use 'sandypec' while registering for some online community and then redirect all emails coming to 'sandypec' as the address into a folder, aka tags using filters (and of course, auto archive). Similarly you can register 'san.dy.pec' as another email address for those register-only forums, and redirect all emails to trash :)

Well, this seems a bit difficult to use dots to achieve this functionality. How can one remember what email address has he/she configured or not? There is a solution to this too. GMail has another bug or to say feature, where-in it strips down all characters after a PLUS '+' symbol in an email address. So an address like 'sandypec+online' is stripped down to 'sandypec' and delivered to my mail box 'sandy.pec'. Isn't this cool. So now I can have email addresses like 'sandypec+mobilebill' for registering email bills, 'sandypec+banking' for bank registeration, 'sandypec+trash' for emails whose destination should be trash, 'sandypec+forums' for all technical forums and groups.

This should help an average user keep his mails sorted and box clean. Wow! A nice thought-of feature from Google.

TIP: Configure all emails to go into trash box if there is no DOT in the email address. Reason - Well, spammers would also read this, and know that in case of GMail addresses, they can strip down DOTS and PLUS to make their email reach inbox. In case of 'sandypec' they will never ever know where to place the DOT or a PLUS to make it to inbox. For it's you and me who know that I am 'sandy.pec'

Hope this helps.
Sandy

GMail, Outlook 2007 and IMAP

2008-02-23T12:15:00.002+05:30

Since I had bought my laptop, I had not been able to find time to configure my emails on to my email client. Every time I had to use the web mail client and it was a pain for it gets slow, specially when you just need to review your old mails. Finally today I took the plunge and started to configure my GMail account in Outlook 2007. It was a breeze setting up specially with the help of tutorial available on Google here.

The tricky part was to move the Outlook .pst file to a different drive from the default location. Anyone who has had worked with Windows with long would know how pain is to backup data from C drive in case of failures. Using the default procedure listed in Outlook help, I moved the PST to a new location. As I started the client again, it created a new PST in a default location, leaving me wondering as to where did I go wrong while working through the procedure. Well, may be, I tried again with the same problem.

Google is the only way when you get stuck up - a simple search led to me experts-exchange.com, a site that pretends to contain all results, but I guess is useless for it forces you to shell out money for simple answers. I am surprised as to why does Google indexes this site even. A browse through more results, a few more user experiences cursing Microsoft for making simple things so tough, and I was on my way to believe that this was not possible with IMAP accounts. I was almost planning to shift to POP account of GMail, as with POP accounts you just need to click 'Change Folder location...' option and move your PST. I called up one of my friends and then we started to dig a solution for it. Here is what I did, to achieve a very complex simple task.

1. Open Outlook - Configure your GMail account as detailed here. Stop Outlook.

2. Open Control Panel -> Choose Mails -> Click on Data files.

3. Select the Account name and check for the location of the PST file. Leave the window open.

4. Open the folder containing the PST. Move the PST to the desired location.

5. Do NOT rename the file - if you do Outlook creates a new file in the default location again.

5. Switch to the Data Files window (as opened in Step 2) and double click on the PST file location.

6. Outlook displays an error window, Ignore the error, and point to the new location. Close the windows.

7. Outlook may create a new PST in the default location again, delete it, in such a case.

8. Restart Outlook.

Hope this helps.

Cross-linking error in Google Code API

2008-02-20T23:15:00.003+05:30

A discovery I just happened to make - there is a bug (cross-linking error) in the Google Code API documentation. Check out the page,

http://code.google.com/apis/feedburner/

The links to the Awareness API and the Management API are swapped. The link to the awareness API takes you to the Management API reference at http://code.google.com/apis/feedburner/api_reference.html and the link to the Management API takes you to the Awareness API page at http://code.google.com/apis/feedburner/awareness_api.html

hehehe... I really find it interesting to discover such errors with official documentation.

Foliage PowerPoint Template

2008-02-16T21:30:00.002+05:30

I have just completed a PowerPoint theme based on the Foliage theme for Wordpress. It has the same color scheme and matching bullet style. The theme is available in formats for MS Office 97-2003 & MS Office 2007 versions. You may read more about the theme here. Download the theme from here. The following slideshow shows some of the snaps from a presentation I am currently working on,

If you like the theme or have words to say, drop in a line or two on the blog or use the project page here.

If you use the theme to build a presentation in the public domain, and would like to have it showcased, please drop in a comment to this article or provide feedback on the project page at Google Code.

Yahoo! & Jerry

2008-02-11T22:10:00.001+05:30

We all hear about Yahoo! - the center of attraction for ground-searching Microsoft in the world of web. The post is not about what is going on these days, or how things would change in the near future.

Here in, I trace back the journey of Yahoo! as it evolved. From the official Yahoo! history page, I came to know that Yahoo! started as the Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web. The name amused as well as stunned me. Why? Three reasons.

First, This was a startling revelation as I always thought Yahoo! to be somewhat synonymous of its coming to existence. A term coined up revolving around founders, idea or inspirational sources, with a touch of Japanese funk.

Second, Jerry happens to be my favorite cartoon character. Anything that has the farthest linkage to Jerry - the lovely little sweet friend - catches my perfect attention.

Third, my first open-source attempt with my friends is also known as Jerry.

Hope this amazes you too.

Cheers!

A different Captcha for Java developers

2008-02-07T17:45:00.000+05:30

A while ago I was just cruising from one website to another, when I came across MJS - MyJavaServer.com. A website that provides free Java hosting to developers so that they can go ahead and hone their web application skills.

As with any usual website even they wanted me to signup. I am lured to test the service and without delay I clicked on the link. The page it led to attracted me to it. The signup form is not like every other. It includes a Challenge.

SignUp Challenge
It requires you to write a simple Java program related to a web application. As you type in the code, it keeps compiling your code, showing the compilation errors. Once, the code compiles successfully, it runs a set of test cases against your code. If all the test cases pass successfully, then only the signup form is enabled.

It was fun attempting the problem which took around 12 minutes to solve. Hope you would enjoy the same. Take the challenge here. MJS SignUp Challenge

Excel - NetWorkDays custom function

2008-02-06T13:30:00.001+05:30

Business computations always involve the computation of Net-Work days, and if you are using Excel, you immediately find a solution in NetworkDays function. I have myself used it extensively in my computational work. But, for reasons best known to Microsoft, they have kept this function as part of Analysis Toolpack add-in. Well, to makes obviously no difference as the addin is a part of standard Office shipment. But, when you are developing a spreadsheet to be used by many, you are not very sure whether they have the addin installed/active.

Adding a check for its presence is definitely a good idea, but depending on the Analysis ToolPack just for NetworkDays functionality is not worth it, atleast in my purview. Here is the code of a custom function that does the same for you, and in cases, can remove your dependency on ATP.

Public Function MyNetWorkDays(ByVal startDate As Date, ByVal endDate As Date, Optional ByVal holidays As range = Nothing) As Integer
    Dim diff As Integer, weeks As Integer, ed As Integer, sd As Integer, delta As Integer
    Dim swap As Boolean
    swap = False
    MyNetWorkDays = 0: delta = 0
    
    If endDate < startDate Then
        'swap the dates
        Dim temp As Date
        temp = endDate
        endDate = startDate
        startDate = temp
        swap = True
    End If
    
    diff = endDate - startDate
    ed = Weekday(endDate)
    sd = Weekday(startDate)
    weeks = diff \ 7
    
    If ed = sd Then
        If Not (ed = 1 Or ed = 7) Then
            delta = 1
        End If
    ElseIf ed > sd Then
        If ed = 7 Then ed = 6
        If sd = 1 Then sd = 2
        delta = ed - sd + 1
    Else
        delta = 7 - (sd - ed) - 1
    End If
    MyNetWorkDays = (weeks * 5) + delta
    
    ' check for holidays
    If Not holidays Is Nothing Then
        For Each holiday In holidays
            wh = Weekday(holiday)
            If wh = 1 Or wh = 7 Then
            
            Else
                If startDate <= holiday And holiday <= endDate Then
                    MyNetWorkDays = MyNetWorkDays - 1
                End If
            End If
        Next
    End If
    
    If swap Then
        MyNetWorkDays = 0 - MyNetWorkDays
    End If
End Function

Hope this helps.

Excel Workbook/Worksheet protection

2008-02-01T11:15:00.000+05:30

Another find of the day. Security and Microsoft seem to be antonyms. And that too so easy. I had been using Excel for many-many years now, but I discovered these holes only day-before. What a fool I have been :(

In no particular order I would travel through various holes/tricks that can be exploited/used to have your way. :D Infact, I had to resort to dirty methods to gain some insight into understanding something.

There are some cells that contain plain values and no formulas. The cells are locked, rows hidden and sheet protected. To view the cells just copy the rows from one before to one another, open a new workbook, paste. Now unhide all the rows, voilla, you have the values of all the cells.
You have a locked sheet with hidden cells containing formulas that link to the same sheet. Copy the sheet to a new workbook, and you have all the cells unlocked.
You have a protected sheet with locked hidden cells containing formulae that refer to other worksheets. A simple copy-paste won't do the trick. Hack it using VBA. Iterate through the cells, read the formula and just set it somewhere else. So easy :)
To prevent a sheet from being Moved/Copied, protect the workbook with a password. One drawback, copy-paste of individual cell ranges bypasses this security. You may use VBA to copy-protect your worksheet, but again that may render workbook useless in case of High-security environments.
Another way could be to protect the entire workbook, put all your formulae on a different worksheet, hide the worksheet. No one would be able to unhide the sheet. Drawback is they can access this sheet using VBA, copy the cells and get the information needed.
The biggest drawback or hack is VBA. Using the powerful ability you can access information in any cell you desire, its formulae, data, formatting. Reconstruct those with the variations you desire, put them at any other place, and reference. No one will ever know you modified. :)

I guess the biggest security problem is VBA. With the feature ON, you leave your data vulnerable to even mediocre programmers. Its a boon to programmers and a curse to security. Even if you protect your VBA modules, someone else can write the code in another workbook, open both simulataneously, and have his way into your data. I am still to discover something really fool-proof.

Anyways many utilities let you make a backdoor entry into protected workbooks/worksheets with just them running in background. It seems there are more holes in the way Excel DOM is implemented. And yes, they work - I tried one with success yesterday :D

Hope this helps.

Dropdown list from ranges on different sheets - Excel

2008-01-31T14:30:00.000+05:30

As the title indicates, the post is all about creating a drop down list in Excel from ranges on different sheets. How is this tricky? Well, first excel allows you to use a single list as a dropdown for cell validation. Second, UNION is not permitted between ranges. Third, a collection can not be used for data validation. Fourth, no custom function/method from VBA can be invoked in the cell validation formula. So this complicates the matter a bit.

I recently had to achieve this, so as to self-audit the entries. This particularly comes in handy when one is trying to link entries across multiple sheets to a single ID.

Say we have two ranges called One and Two which occur in sheets Sheet2 and Sheet3. We want to create a drop down in Sheet1 with all values from the two ranges in cells A1:A10. You would need to create a formula in a surrogate cell (say B2 of Sheet1) as =createdropdown(A1:A10,One,Two). The following code is used to achieve the feat.

Public Function mergeRange(ByVal range1 As Range, ByVal range2 As Range) As Collection
    Dim resultSet As New Collection
    For Each iCell In range1
        If Not IsEmpty(iCell.Value) Then
            resultSet.Add (iCell.Value)
        End If
    Next
    For Each iCell In range2
        If Not IsEmpty(iCell.Value) Then
            resultSet.Add (iCell.Value)
        End If
    Next
    Set mergeRange = resultSet
End Function

Public Function createDropDown(ByVal cells As Range, ByVal range1 As Range, ByVal range2 As Range) As Boolean
    Dim intIndex As Long
    Dim strContent As String
    Dim items As Collection
    Set items = mergeRange(range1, range2)
    'build the string to pass to the dropdown
    For Each Item In items
        strContent = strContent & "," & Item
    Next
    
     'build dropdown
     With cells.Validation
         .Delete
         .Add Type:=xlValidateList, AlertStyle:=xlValidAlertStop, Operator:=xlBetween, Formula1:=strContent
         .IgnoreBlank = True
         .InCellDropdown = True
         .InputTitle = "Select a value"
         .ErrorTitle = "You entered a wrong value!"
         .InputMessage = "Please select an item from the list!"
         .ErrorMessage = "Valid values are from the list only!"
         .ShowInput = True
         .ShowError = True
     End With
    createDropDown = True
End Function

The code is pretty self-explanatory. We use a custom function mergeRange to build a collection of all non-NULL values from the two ranges, and then apply the data validation to cells required using VBA.

It took time to reach the solution with my minimal knowledge of Excel DOM - but it was worth a try.

Hope this helps.

Blogger change breaks Javascript based themes

2008-01-24T23:45:00.000+05:30

A recent Blogger update has broken many Javascript Blogger themes. The issue cropped up because of the way we code our Javascripts. Some of us are finicky enough to make them browser-safe for those old muggy browsers which don't recognize the <script> tag.

<script type='text/javascript'>
<!-- prevent old browsers from rendering this
    alert("Hello World!);
// prevent javascript interpreter from parsing end tag -->
</script>

Now with the new update, what is happening is, Blogger cleans up all the new line breaks from the <script> tag. This makes the whole script as a comment and renders it unfunctional. Hence, the themes break.

<script type='text/javascript'>

</script>

The quick-fix to this problem is to encapsulate all your script inside a CDATA tag. This would solve the problem. Actually this is a problem with the scripts and not with Blogger. They just made their system XML compliant.

<script type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
    alert("Hello World");
//]]>
</script>

The issue was reported by Dave on my Modified Foliage Theme blog. Thanks Dave for reporting it so soon.

Hope this helps.

Matrika India!

2007-12-29T18:30:00.000+05:30

Life is so busy these days, we rarely get time to pursue our dreams. Ideas keep coming in our minds, we keep planning every small detail, then throwing them into corners of our mind.

Same with me, posts lurking in the draft mode, thousands of lines of code waiting to be checked in, many emails to be replied to. Today, as I put finishing touches to one my latest projects, I hope to get more time to pursue things pending.

Now to the project, MATRIKA India! MATRIKA India, is a NGO (Non-Government Organization, for dummies) involved in preservation of traditional birth knowledge. MATRIKA, short for Motherhood and Traditional Resources, Information, Knowledge and Action; stands to spread the traditional knowhow and act as a knowledge repository. You may click here or here to know more about what they do.

The site has been up for the past 8 months or so. Initially it catered to static content, but going forth from here, it would cater better to the users needs. We now have an integrated search, user registration, feedback, and yes, more about the books, literature and video clips to cover the subject. The site has been updated with many more articles, research papers, video clips for you to read, watch and download. We hope that this would help in generating much more interest on the subject.

The challenging part of this project was ASP.NET. This is the first website that I have put together in ASP.NET. Prior to this my whole development world was around Java, or using .NET to develop desktop applications. Putting up an integrated search engine was a challenge, as there are practically no code examples that integrate using a crawler and search engine for a web application. I am more than happy to have been successful with that.

So go check out: MATRIKA India, and drop in a line or two for me to know, as to how we can improve your experience on the website.