Aditya's Weblog

It is live!! Presentations comes to Adobe Labs

2009-05-27T11:29:00.001+05:30

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/presentations/

Once you are in, be sure to export a PDF or two. Please :)

Flex Builder Tips

2009-01-24T13:43:00.001+05:30

I am mostly writing a few good tips I learned a few days (before I forget). If someone accidentally benefits from this link, then that his/her luck.

1. MXNA told me that asdoc comments in Flex SDK 3.2 onwards are now possible.
 is the syntax.
2. Flex Builder Tip: ctrl+space before type and semicolon in a variable declaration, brings in an import namespace at the top.
3. Flex Builder Tip: Ctrl+shift+p does the trick of going from one '{' (block beginning) to end ('}). That is why I like vim, they solved this ages ago.

I think points 2 and 3 were originally provided by Mike morearty, though I am short of time to try and find related post.

Old ways are best

2009-01-24T11:53:00.001+05:30

http://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20090121

Entertaining reading - Brian Kernighan's article and usefulness of cygwin.

How to do AIR and Web app together in Flex

2009-01-16T14:52:00.001+05:30

David Coletta Architecting A Shared Codebase For Browser And Desktop Final

From: dcoletta,
1 month ago

David Coletta Architecting A Shared Codebase For Browser And Desktop Final

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Learn from our experience in adapting a complex codebase like the application Buzzword to run also as an Adobe AIR application. This session addresses the architectural challenges of developing SWF files to be shared between browser and AIR versions. We’ll cover user interface considerations, such as reconciling a single browser window with multiple AIR windows, and technical issues, like problems with the Singleton pattern when using multiple native windows. Other topics include abstracting code that must call AIR only APIs and packaging code into modules that load over HTTP for browsers and load from the file system under AIR.

SlideShare Link

That Satyam Story

2009-01-11T22:26:00.001+05:30

Just like everyone else, I too spent some time in watching news coverage, reporting, and reading blogs about Satyam saga - some of them apologetic till the last day.

I have been wrong many times before, but this is what I think (or rather my influences make me think):

Rajus have reportedly strong political connections. They should be out in no time. Their personal assets won't be attached/taken over; there would be no/negligible fine. They may be convicted after 5-6 years of trial, but would get bail.
Satyam must have had cash. The whole Indian outsourcing industry couldn't have been booming all these years with 3% (below inflation) returns. This point has been made by a much more intelligent person.
That cash won't be recovered. That cash should have gone into Raju's pockets.
It looks like the auditors (PWC) have been accused before (Global Trust Bank). They won't be punished this time too.

I don't know what would happen to victims of this saga - 53K employees. I hope they do well.

Rsync tips

2008-12-28T19:29:00.001+05:30

I have been using DeltaCopy (a rync GUI wrapper) for quite a while now. It works well.

But rsync and DeltaCopy aren't user-friendly. That, I feel is their biggest undoing.

For example, the retry count in DeltaCopy for a failed backup attempt is 5. That should be 1 (Edit->Modify Retry Configuration menu-item). If it fails once, then it would fail again and again.

Also, they would be better off making -i (itemize changes) and --modify-window=1 (don't write back a file if modify time is < 1 second). The latter option is particularly insidious. Until, I read the rsync FAQ, I didn't know what was the reason that the backup wasn't looking like an incremental one (quick and easy).

Oh, DeltaCopy automatically adds -rlt options to rsync command line which some tips pages refer as well.

I think, DeltaCopy owners lost the enthusiasm in perfecting the product - it works but it could have rocked.

The positive of it

2008-12-27T20:35:00.001+05:30

Ever since the recession has hit the world, I have only heard the bad stories. Folks going out of jobs, houses' valuation going down the drain - doom and gloom.

Amidst all this, there has a been a positive change too.

All those nasty cold calls that one had to put up with at the most inconvenient time; those calls that peddled credit-cards, personal loans are gone now :).

Banks are actually interested in doing a credit-worthiness check!

Contributing to Flex SDK

2008-11-07T15:38:00.001+05:30

This is mostly a personal note. If anyone else gets some benefit, then that's entirely a side-effect I should get no credit for.

This page was good.

http://www.flexpasta.com/index.php/2008/07/12/contributing-to-the-flex-sdk-development/

Caveat: Not all projects in Flex framework have corresponding Flex Builder projects. So, its best to build these using the official instructions which also runs the sanity test-cases.

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Build+and+Test

It would be great if the above page could be cross-linked with the below one:

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Submitting+a+Patch

Short summary:

You can run “ant clean main checkintests” from the root directory, to make sure that everything builds with your changes

Some basic items

2008-10-25T21:46:00.001+05:30

But he wrote them well . I liked two phrases (something I would wish to preserve):

DRY (Don't repeat yourself)
Single truth principle

Diomidis D. Spinellis says it here http://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20081018/index.html

DTH Service

2008-10-25T19:39:00.001+05:30

I tried to see prices from Airtel Digital TV, Tata Sky, Sun DTH, Dish TV (Zee). And it looks like Sun DTH is the most agressive in terms of setting up initial costs for customers. Rs 1000 only. Others look more in the range of Rs. 2000.

But the problem in all of this is that friendly neighborhood cable-wallah doesn't want any setup charges as we already have the connection and he takes less money than what we would shell out with Big ticket players.

So, I don't really get what these big boys are trying to do. Would wait and see.

Why I like Symbian so much

2008-10-23T15:47:00.001+05:30

May be I have used it before, or may be it is something else. But more I try it, more I think that the 'software' is one of the big problems keeping me away from using my mobile.

I wanted to read something on my mobile, so I converted that to RTF. Thinking RTF is a simpler format and so would easier on my small CPU/memory device.

Guess what? Symbian OS based Office app thought nobody uses RTF anymore! And so there is no support :)

Reference:

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_E90-Web_and_Work.php

It is good that competition is happening - Android (LiMo), Win Mo 6.1 and Apple Mac OSX would force them to up their game.

Mobile Phone Specs

2008-10-19T15:44:00.002+05:30

So, I have thinking of buying a newer mobile phone for a long time. I have a Nokia N80. I am okay with it, but I wish I had a phone with MS Exchange ActiveSync support and a wide display screen so I could read on it.

Here is what I could think of:
Spec that must be there:
Price: Rs 15, 000 (great). Max Rs. 25,000 (No use buying an super-expensive electronic item whose price falls rapidly). So, no iPhone 3G for me till Apple does a little price correction.
Microsoft Exchange 2007 support (either Window Mobile 6 or Symbian with ActiveSyncs support or iPhone 3G OS)
FM Radio
Display screen > 3 inch. 3.5 inch great.
CPU > 350 Mhz
100-140 grams weight
QuickOffice/MS Office Mobile
Opera for mobile or Apple Webkit/Safari browser
Java-enabled
Bluetooth/Infrared, Wifi b/g, GPRS/EDGE/3G
GPS/Maps
Qwerty keyboard or touch screen based full-keyboard. No predictive text please.
Camera (quality not very important)

S/w to have:
fring - It encapsulates the Yahoo, GTalk, MSN, Skype, SIP.,
skype for mobile
Gmail client
Adobe Reader for PDFs.

Nice to have:
standard 3.5mm headphone jack
miniUSB chargeable
expandable memory (microSD)

Croma retail has a decent feature list
GSMArena has a nice compare function

An Accessory I really liked
Nokia bluetooth headset

Another phone I liked but its from Nokia, which has a lousy after sales service.
Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic

Why the crisis got worse

2008-10-17T15:38:00.001+05:30

Ajay Shah wrote a nice informative article on the present situation.

Why the crisis got worse

Back to blogger. Bye-bye LJ

2008-08-31T11:43:00.002+05:30

About 2 years ago, I decided to move to LJ as I thought blogger was behaving like orkut - no improvements and a crumbling server infrastructure.

"Bad Bad server. No donut for you."
I have seen this quote from orkut countless times. I mean GOOG is the best in hosted-services space. They have the best apps like gmail. But orkut (and blogger to an extent) were neglected children. It seems both are slowly improving now.

So, I am back to blogger. What else?

2006-05-28T22:58:00.000+05:30

Infosys Bubble

http://shrikant.emergic.org/archives/2006/04/16/the-infosys-bubble/

2006-05-27T12:27:00.000+05:30

How do you test something you have no access of?

For years, hotmail is simply the worst mail site that I have had to bear. It was the worst site that I registered to, and so I have tried to maintain my Id there. Whenever somebody posts to my hotmail account, I send back a message that this account is deprecated, please reply back to all posts on gmail.com

And I thought with new slick mail.live.com with 2 GB storage, I would have some alternative. But then they say "sign up", and then say "thank you for showing interest", we would contact in some weeks. This is the best way to kill interest.

Oh ya, like I am waiting.

2006-05-14T22:48:00.000+05:30

Experience with Social & business N/w sites.

I have tried quite a few sites to claim to know somethin about the social sites by now. I have tried orkut.com, linkedin.com, rec-all.com, ryze.com, nitalumni.com etc.

On thursay/friday something unexpected happened. A fellow school mate whom I have not spoken since school days (ok, I talked once after coming out of college), contacted me. I gave in and accepted her invitation. And voila, people I thought I would never talk to in life again suddenly got in touch :).

2006-04-15T20:46:00.000+05:30

Google Calender is profiled here:-

Techcrunch

2006-04-15T20:37:00.000+05:30

Tale of 2 Murthys

Infosys comes out with a bonus issue on its silver anniversery. Just over a year ago, they had made a similar issue. Also, T Mohandas Pai leaves CFO post.

In my previous organisation there was no retirement age. How could there when all the hotshots were over 70. One leg in grave and another in office ...

Cynical me thinks that Infy's founders are pretty smart in advertising for their organisation. I have watched a lot of episodes of N R Narayan Murthy on his austere life and ethics to know that. There is no better way to publicise Infy than this.

Yet I really like the gentleman, his values and what he has done. If there is any biography I would ever 'buy' and read, it would be his and Sudha's.

P.S. (Disloyal) investor me has been obsessed with Infy's stock and has not traded much in them ever. Looking at the kind of individuals who manage it, it has been a cool decision

2006-04-15T15:36:00.000+05:30

One who goes out of the door sure comes back!!!

This blog is being revived.

2005-10-01T22:43:00.000+05:30

Time to move on

I have decided to shift to the following address.

Live Journal

2005-09-11T16:40:00.000+05:30

Cooler gone :(

Ashish Bhateja has finally come back from US. Most people would be happy once their former roomies come back -- for it means phokut ki chocolates. Personally I have lost that craze as the last 2 people who came back with chocolates, got back with bitter ones :)).

But this guy would stay alone, meaning 'our' cooler is gone. On a happier note, our flat had become a store house with 4 coolers and tons of other stuff dumped there. Atleast some khachra out of that would go now.

2005-09-11T11:12:00.000+05:30

Infosys Phenomenon

One year ago, my friend and I had gone to meet a school teacher. Mrs Lalwani was a hard tough talking teacher who had thrown dusters at erring students at her time as missiles.

Unfortunately she never managed to hit the erring child, it was always somebody else who had to be rushed to dispensary. So we (passouts of MMS ...err not Multi Media Message of DPS RKP fame, but Mira Model School) were never corrected. But she was as persistent as ever.

On asking how we were doing and other pleasentries, she asked what we were doing. My friend was then working in HCL BPO and me in CSC. And she asked me why I didn't try for HCL?

And two days ago, Ashish and I were having dinner at a thakela tabela in Sec 12/22 Noida, when a gentleman sat himself opposite us. He worked in Haldiram's. Meina bhi tarif kar di haldiram ki...and Ashish ended up asking why the hell is a gujju working in Noida, when so many industries are there in his backyard.

He told us everybody from his parents to neighbors respect him, and tell strangers this lad works in HALDIRAM. And he told us that if we get a chance to work in Infosys, would we understand :).

2005-08-18T06:48:00.000+05:30

Happy Birthday Aditya!!

May GOD bless you with all the happiness you seek in this world, spritualistic(I don't know if this qualifies in your context) as well as materialistic(I'm pretty sure here). Enjoy the blessed day and now you are one year more near to break your virgin status ;-).

I wish you many happy returns of the blessed day. Amen!

2005-08-03T16:01:00.000+05:30

Eyes wide shut?

I am living without my specs since past week. My last one broke into two pieces and am too lazy to get a new one that early.

So, our team had to give a demo to big bosses on the limping features. It was very nerve-racking. One night before the demo none of my 2 features were running. They simply crashed (which is not to say they wouldnt crash now ;)).

And as we had learned in college, everything completes at the last moment. I learnt only this, what else could teachers who didnt know how to shut down a PC or send their own mails teach.

I wont put more than this, reason:
Mark Jen

Other juntas demo was rock solid. And since it was technical, and nothing irrelevant happened, I am not going to describe it.

My presentation:
At demo time, the conference display was very from our laptop, and I couldnt see anything that I was typing. Luckily I had remembered exactly where where each folder is, and what number an option is :), so I gave the demo. Instead of doing OK, I cancelled :), and the feature still worked.

Sometimes, I selected the wrong file (its number was rather wrong), or a wrong feature popped up.