M G Harish

Devote to vote!

2009-04-20T13:46:00.003+05:30

I had never been as busy in my life so far, as I am now. Work has occupied me so much that I can't even follow my favourite blogs regularly. Coming to the tidings,

marriages are happening,
recession is at its peek, and
Karmayuddh has started.

This year has been a period of marriages. A few of my classmates had got married in 2007. Interestingly, 2008 didn't witness any of my classmates tying the knot. Now, 2009 has already seen many marriages, with more to come. I wish the very best to all of them in their married lives.

I need not tell anything about recession. We are hearing about cost cutting and firing all around. Many of my friends have lost jobs due to economic slowdown for none of their faults. But life isn't cool always. We've to learn lessons from every part of our lives and move on.

Karmayuddh that I mentioned refers to two events. One being the Indian Premier League Twenty-20 cricket series and the other, and more important, being the Lok-Sabha General Elections.

We shall not abstain and shall make sure that only elite candidates lead our constituencies. After all, it is not a bad idea to spend one day in five years to decide the future of the nation, and hence ourselves.

Happy Voting!

People and their Priorities

2009-02-01T14:15:00.007+05:30

I recently started another blog, exclusively dedicated to technology and computer related topics. It is TechnoTweak.com. If you have liked the technology related stuff I've written here in this blog, you are welcome to take a look onto my new blog and also subscribe to TechoTweak feeds.

I had no intention of writing this post till I received this comment from Shubha. When I contemplated on that sentence, I found it very true. She has nicely put all my thoughts in one simple sentence. People change when their priorities change.

A few days ago, I watched Dasvidaniya in which the protagonist changes drastically when he gets diagnosed with stomach cancer. He completely changes his attitude. He keeps a list of things to be done before he dies, and eventually achieves them. A fine example to show that the people change when their priorities change, and these priorities change when something in their life changes.

I have seen some of my friends staying invisible while chatting. When asked about it, a common reason I get is that they are busy and don't want to be disturbed by some people. Crap & cowardice! It defeats the very purpose of chatting. When work is of utmost priority, one can put the busy status. But putting busy status on and chatting freely is a no-no. If used unnecessarily, it becomes another instance of the Tola-bantale-tola (For non-Kannada readers: It's the same tale in which a shepherd shouts about the arrival of a tiger when there wasn't any, just to make fun of the villagers and eventually becomes prey to a tiger because no villager come to rescue him when there was a real tiger) and people keep pinging you even when you have put busy status because, by then, they would have known how busy you would be.

If a person is pinging you when you are busy, ask him to ping later. Even then, if that person is adament and stupid enough to bug you and you are so keen on avoiding that person permanently, there is an option for that: block. Block the person who bugs you and he will never see you online. Invisibility cloak is good for Harry Potter, not for we muggles.

Coming back to the main point about priorities, ask yourself a question: do priorities in life change abruptly? Generally, according to me, no. Even if they do, such priority works are of short duration, which don't have any long term effects. So, is it really worth and necessity to change ourselves for the sake of those small parts of life?

Share your thoughts on this and also your opinions about the new blog TechnoTweak.

Random thoughts... about 2008

2008-12-28T03:42:00.005+05:30

I have seen people who write in their Orkut profiles, "I'm cool" or "I'm hot". I've even seen some guy who has written both. I am neither hot guy, nor cool. My body temperature remains normal at 37°C, unless I'm sick. And I am still trying to understand the meaning of hot and cool. Guys (and girls, if there are any), help me out here!

When I stay alone, I think. Not that I don't when I'm with others, but I believe solitude is the time when I get time to introspect, think about myself. It's the time when I laugh at myself for my foolishness. It's the time when I realize my mistakes. It's the time I repent for my mischievous behaviours and misdeeds.

People change. Not because Barack Obama has asked for it, but they change for a reason. They change when they grow. They change when they get good marks in classes. They change when they get awards. They change when they get good jobs. People change when they get new friends. And they change, abruptly, when they get girlfriends. They change when they marry. Amidst all these changes, people remain friends.

About two and a half years back I, along with Suri, started blogging. Then, it was just like a collection of some interesting and funny mails which I was getting. After a couple of posts, I found it useless and I stopped blogging. But Suri was very serious about it. He was literally going through all sorts of websites, from Technorati to hit-counters, from problogger to pre-blogger. Every night (yes, not day. Courtesy: BSNL Sancharnet) we used to chat hours together. That's the time people started calling me Goobe (owl). I still wonder how Suri escaped from that title. He used to talk about blogging, blogging and blogging. Eventually he was able to pull me into it. So I restarted blogging in 2007, wishing everyone a happy new year. I started writing posts at the rate of one per day. Suri read it. After continuing it for two weeks, I started showing my laziness and procrastination. The frequency of my posts started decreasing.

In spite of all this, my blog has more than 75 feed readers and has recently crossed 50000 hits. Not an award-winning achievement, but I think it is quite decent for a blogger like me, who posts once in three months. I thank all my readers, friends and those who have supported and backed me during times, good and bad.

2008 has been a year when I started working as an engineer (well, although I joined in 2007, we just had training), something which I dreamt right from my childhood. Apart from that, this year has been a year of ups & downs, just like every other year. I'm sure 2009 will also be like that. But we have forget the bad, cherish the good, and move on.

I wish you a very happy new year.

Code for Factorial, without Recursion

2008-12-03T18:48:00.010+05:30

After having been declared to be an impregnable procrastinator by all my close-circle friends, after being connoted to update it by those who I didn't even know were reading my blog and after being told "Enough is enough, now update it buddy" by a few friends, I am in the same situation as the Indian government after the Mumbai attacks. I have no other go than updating it, at least for the sake of hushing them up till the next terror attack near my house. So here I go...

As you might already be knowing, I prefer calling programming an art to calling it a process. That's the reason I enjoy it.

Coming to the point, my friend cum colleague was trying to write a program for generating Pascal Triangle. I decided to play along and wrote a code. In the process, I wrote a function to calculate factorial for a number in an unusual way, without recursion.

Generally an incremental loop is used from 2 to N. But I used decrementing loop and here is the outcome (Code written in C programming language):

unsigned int fact(unsigned int n)
{
unsigned int f=n;

while(n---2)
f*=n;
return f;
}

Main thing I wanted to convey in this code is the while loop, which uses the unusual "--" & "-" operator pair.

It works similar to this loop:

for(f=n;n>=2;n--)
f=f*n;

Not a great piece of code, but I found it to be a little interesting. Hence the post.

Reviews - A Wednesday and Rock On!!

2008-09-21T20:40:00.009+05:30

I never thought I would be writing a movie review in my blog. But after watching these two movies, Rock On!! and A Wednesday, (particularly the latter) I can't refrain myself from commenting on them. They are so good that you would regret if you don't watch them.

Rock On!! is all about a music band called Magik. Four men with a common aim join their hands together to realize their dreams. But, being amiss on a small issue, they depart. How they reunite and how one can lose his felicity is the gist of the story. It reflects everyone's life because of its flash-backs which push everyone to his vernal days.

A wednesday, on the other side, is completely different. No hero, no heroine and no songs. Not a typical bollywood movie at all. However, it catches attention right from first scene to the last with its tight storyline and outstanding acting by every single artist. Naseeruddin Shah steals the show with his natural performance. This terrorism-based story revolves around Naseeruddin Shah, who calls Anupam Kher (police officer) with specific demands. It's a small movie (by bollywood standards, with only a runtime of around 95 minutes) but with a big impact. It reflects the minds of the Indians and despises the corrupted Indian administration system.

I don't want to spoil your interest by telling more about these movies. On a scale of 5, I would provide a rating of 3.5 to Rock On!! and 4.5 to A wednesday.

Face Recognition - Ultimate feature of Picasa

2008-09-09T21:59:00.009+05:30

A picture speaks thousand words. The internet is becoming full of images. Google seems to have found future in the cutting edge face recognition for the images. It has introduced face recognition for the photos uploaded by the users. If you have not explored this feature, I say, the right time is NOW! I am balled over in the first attempt itself!!

Select New Features at the top right.
Select See name tags in action.
Click Get started with name tags.
Click Try It in the right pane.
Click Start Processing photos.

Wait for some time. Picasa will scan all your photos and index all the faces found. It starts asking you the name of the person in the photos. The best thing is that it selects a bunch of photos, and all of them will be of the same person and its Suggestion is just marvellous. Most of the times, you don't even have to think before selecting the first suggestion. I can't explain the greatness of this feature in words here. Just use it and experience!!

PS: Google has already rolled out a hidden feature of face recognition in its image search. When you search for an image, say Sachin, the url of the image will be something like http://images.google.com/images?q=sachin. You can add &imgtype=face at the end of the URL, i.e., http://images.google.com/images?q=sachin&imgtype=face to find only images containing face.

Serial Bomb Blasts in Bangalore?

2008-07-25T14:52:00.001+05:30

Bangalore was considered to be a safe place so far. But with the serial bomb blasts in Madiwala and surrounding places, I doubt it can continue to be so. News is spreading and details are not known.

Top reason to adopt Firefox

2008-05-24T22:25:00.003+05:30

We have been hearing, right from its introduction, that Firefox is the most secure browser. But many of us haven't bothered to know why is is deemed so. I am not going to explain about all those features which make it safer than other browsers, say Internet Explorer. I just thought I would share an experience which happened today, which can be considered to be the top reason to adopt Mozilla Firefox.

I got a mail from an unknown email id, pointing me to a blog. When I clicked that link, it redirected me to another site, http://www.posokei.com and to my surprise, a message popped up from the address bar, with title Suspecting Web Forgery.

It also provided a brief detail about the site and why that site has been classified as a phishing site. This means that the user is made fully aware of the site before he proceeds to browse it. Prevention is better than cure. Is it not be best reason to use firefox?

You can read about phishing protection in Firefox here

Google introduces Hindi translation

2008-05-06T11:53:00.003+05:30

It has was a long wait, but well deserved. So far we were not able to dynamically translate text to any Indian language. Google has finally done it by introducing translation for Hindi. You can now translate any text or web page from English to Hindi or from Hindi to English. We can expect translation to and from other Indian languages also soon.

Although it is not perfect, I'm sure it will improve quickly. Be sure to improve the translation if you find a better word/sentence when you are using it!

Earlier introduced transliteration tool, which supported dynamic transliteration to Indian languages like Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, which reduced the popularity of software based transliteration tools like Baraha.

I hope to see the translation expanded to include other languages also.

Free Linux or Paid Windows? - Time for a change

2008-05-03T10:19:00.002+05:30

Ask anyone who has used Linux operating system for a while and you'll receive all but positive responses about Microsoft Windows. Some people even tell that they hate to use Winodws. Why is it so? Are they crazy to think Linux is more user-friendly than Windows? But wait, since they have used both Linux and Windows for long enough to be able to compare them, there must be something true about it, right?

If you want to compare Microsoft Windows Vista and Ubuntu, a flavour of Linux see this video:

See the difference? People who admired the graphics and visualization abilities of Windows Vista when it entered the market, are now blaming it for using huge resources. When Linux can do it in a better way for free with much less system resources, why pay Microsoft for doing it pathetically? Whenever we hear about Linux, we hear that it is more secure, powerful, server-class operating system. Moreover, Linux is completely free. No need of purchasing, applying the key, activating blah-blah. Then why is it not as popular as Windows? The only reason I can think of might be due to its installation, which is not as straight forward as that of Windows. But believe me, it is not very hard to learn. One more thing: as a Vista user, I hereby declare that VISTA SUCKS!

A good news, if you are willing to switch to Linux: Ubuntu gives FREE CDs. No shipping charges also. All you need to do is to register yourself and request for it!

Google English? Unexecuted Google's April Fool Prank?

2008-04-11T18:21:00.003+05:30

Observe this image carefully (click to enlarge if you don't see enough details)

You can note a few points here:

Address of the page is www.orkut.com, not www.google.com.
Google logo has "English" as its subscript.

Now a little bit of flashback. About two weeks ago, on March 27th at 5:59 PM to be exact, I opened Orkut. But to my surprise, Google opened instead of Orkut! I tried refreshing for about two three minutes and the same thing happened again and again. I immediately captured a screenshot, which is what you just saw above. Orkut came back to normalcy soon after that.

Google is well known for April Fool pranks. It might have been one of their ideas, which was taken back. But I don't have any information on anything called Google English, so I can't say much about it.

UPDATE: I've been able to find that the mentioned webpage is having the IP Address 64.233.169.104. I will try to get more information about this.

Airtel Customer (Don't) Care: As useless as ever

2008-03-28T14:38:00.002+05:30

When does a person get frustrated to the core? Probably when he badly needs some help and no one around is ready to assist. Airtel Customer Care is one such call centre which is determined enough to put you in such a hopeless situation.

I do have reason to be spilling my anguish here about Airtel's customer care service. There are many incidents which clearly indicate that Airtel is much interested in cheating its customers.

Incident #1: Connection not deactivated
My friend, who had an Airtel corporate connection in Bangalore, got transferred to Hyderabad. Since he didn't need this postpaid connection any more, he filled an application to cancel the connection and asked me get it deactivated. I went to their office (none of their executives, who come running to give you a new connection, would come to take the disconnection form) around January 20th and gave the application form. They took the application along with the outstanding amount and stated that the connection will be deactivated within two working days. However, after about 20 days, a bill was sent for that connection. When I called the customer care, they told that the application itself hasn't been received! So I gave the bill number of the outstanding amount which I had payed and also told details about the office where I had given the application. They also gave a complaint number and assured the same thing: the connection will be deactivated within two working days. Then again, as usual, I got the bill for the month of February in March. I called the customer care again and censured them about the issue. Again the ready reply came: it will surely be deactivated within 48 hours. I am still waiting for the disconnection of that SIM.

Incident #2: Security Deposit not returned
Another colleague of my friend, who was also transferred to Hyderabad, had given an application to deactivate. But the Airtel people didn't deactivate it and in the next month, they deducted security deposit of Rs. 300/- and deactivated. As he is not insane to come to Bangalore by spending more than Rs. 300/- to get Rs. 300/- back, the money will permanently be with Airtel.

Incident #3: SIM Deactivated because of failed address verification
Airtel address verifiers are not Pizza boys to always find the correct address within half an hour. But don't be under the impression that they will try their level best to find the place. Airtel will simply deactivate your SIM giving failed address verification as the reason. If you call customer care you'll get the ready answer again: Sorry for inconvenience sir. Our person will come today evening and verify your address. This happened with my colleague just three days back and after calling customer care and getting the before said answer every day, today the concerned person came to our office, and gave the report as house address is verified. He told that the SIM will be reactivated by today evening, but you know, I have my doubts!

This is not the end of the list. There are many more similar experiences. According to Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), Airtel is having maximum subscriber base in Karnataka. If it's customer care service is so useless here itself, I can't help but feel sorry for the Airtel customers in other places.

One more point to be noted is, it is not only Airtel which follows such a nasty purview with the customers. Apparently Hutch (now Vodafone) and other operators also do the same thing. Sometimes I feel as though having a mobile phone itself is a sin. What is the need of these helplines if they can't even resolve even simplest of the requests raised by the user, let alone extreme technical issues. In my opinion, such call centres should be referred as Customer Don't Cares instead of Customer Cares. They seem to know that the best service is no service. What do you think?

Bannerghatta National Park

2008-03-12T09:49:00.010+05:30

Staying at home during weekends is one of the things I hate the most. I meet friends or go for shopping or jaunt around various places in and around Bengalooru (Bangalore). Incidentally, it happens that my roommate and friends are also like-minded, which makes us explore many different places around Bengalooru. Bannerghatta National Park is the first place we chose to mark the beginning of our expedition. Situated at a distance of 22 km from Bengalooru and covering about 25,000 acres of hilly region, Bannerghatta National Park is an important National Park in India one must not fail to visit if you visit Karnataka.

Deciding to go to Bannerghatta, we aggregated some information about it. We learnt that Bannerghtta National Park remains closed on Tuesday. One can go either by BMTC buses or by private vehicle. Since there are a lot of buses at regular intervals to Bannerghatta from Majestic, BMTC is preferable. On a fine Saturday morning of 24th November 2007, we left home at 8 in the morning and reached Bannerghatta at about 10:15. We had to stand in a queue to get tickets for the safari and the zoo. Since we had gone during weekends, we had to pay a little extra for the tickets.

We started off with the safari. Meshed vehicles of the forest department do a good job of taking you to various parts of the Bannerghatta Biological Park (BBP) amidst a myriad of wild animals like lions, tigers etc. roaming freely in the dense forest terrain. You might even get a feeling of being inside a bone in zoo and all the animals coming and visiting you from outside. Those 45 minutes were truly memorable!

After finishing our safari, we proceeded to the zoo where many other not-so-wild animals and birds are kept. It was an exhaustive collection. Later we moved to aquarium. Maintenance of the aquarium is good. Delighted by the diverse and colourful birds and fishes, we went ahead to the Reptile Park.

We had no idea that there are so many types of reptiles! I didn't know the names of most of the reptiles except snakes and crocodiles etc. We came to know why Bannerghatta is so famous for its Reptile Park. We literally got exhausted by the end of it.

It was already past 2 O'clock in the afternoon and it was time for lunch. So we thought of having food. There are shops and hotels just outside the National Park. We had a nice lunch. Our visit wasn't over since we hadn't visited the Butterfly Park yet.

We took tickets to the Butterfly Park. Butterfly Park is is a kind of unique zoo I have ever seen. It's the first of its kind in India. It's a doom shaped closed space in which various class of butterflies are maintained. Informative paintings are drawn on the walls of museum adjacent to the park. You can learn almost everything about the butterflies in that museum. If you are still curious, you can even watch a video show which gives more in-depth information about these idyllic species.

There are many other places if you want to trek. But we were really, really exhausted. So we decided to come back. All in all, it was an unforgettable outing. If you are bored of the intricacies of the city life and if you badly need to experience the diversity in flora and fauna of the nature without traveling too far, then Bannerghatta is the right place you should consider going to.

UPDATE:
My friends have asked for a few more details, which I thought are worth mentioning here (Some points are already mentioned in the article, but I've listed them here again for the sake of completeness):

BMTC bus service to Bannerghatta is very good. BMTC also provides Volvo (A/C) buses.
You need to pay a nominal fee if you want to take photographs in the Bannerghatta National Park as well as in the Butterfly Park.
Entrance and photography tickets are separate for the Zoo/Safari and the Butterfly Park.
Entrance fees are a more on weekends and holidays.
You get chats and cold drinks inside the zoo as well as outside the entrance.
On Tuesdays, Bannerghatta National Park remains closed.

How to stop or reduce Spam Emails

2008-02-28T13:50:00.004+05:30

One can be as happy as he wants. But the same statement may not apply to Internet users, thanks to spam emails. Although there is no foolproof way to stop spams, we can reduce the amount of spams by being a bit careful.

The first thing before attacking is to understand the enemy and its strength. What is spam? We may call it junk mail, spam or whatever else you fancy, its property remains to be the same: it's unsolicited and it's useless. Most often than not, spams get generated from bots, viruses and automated mailing lists. In the rare cases, they are also caused my human users which, quite often, happen to be the most irritating kind of spam generators. It is observed that around 80% of the email messages exchanged are spams!. How disgusting!!

Take, for example, an incident which happened recently. One of my friends sent a mail to a large number of recepients. But one of those recepients was not an intended person. That person used Reply All and asked my friend to remove him from his mailing list. Well, you can guess what happened. All of us got the reply email which was intended only for my friend. Thankfully the chapter ended there itself. To get a hint of what can happen in such cases, see how to look stupid.

What is the solution for this? It's simple: We have to be in the right mind and know when to use Reply and when to use Reply All. As a rule of thumb, we should NEVER use Reply All unless we are 100% sure about what we are doing.

Instead of relying on others, another way to prevent such incidents is to be cautious enough not to disclose the email addresses to the recepients at all. It can be easily done by adding the addresses to BCC (Blind Courtesy Copy or Blind Carbon Copy) field instead of TO or CC fields. Unfortunately BCC field ranks top among the most obscure and unused standard feature of email!

The features discussed above are only for mails generated by humans. What about those spam emails which get generated by malwares and bots? Such spam emails are mainly the means for advertising products. More the number of recepients, more the number of customers. But how do they get the email ids? It's directly or indirectly by ourselves. We may have inadverently given our email ids to some website or it might have gone there by one of our friends. We need to be extra careful if we want to be at a distance from spams.

Also it is a good idea to remove the sender's information while forwarding an email to others. It not only protects your privacy, but also prevents any potential spammer to use the email addresses in the body of the mail to be used for unsolicited mailings.

Virtually there is no way to stop such emails if you are already receiving them. Precaution is better than cure is the mantra to be followed here. When we give out our email ids to some third party web sites, we need to be extra careful. Never give your email id to any unknown public mailing lists. You never know who shares your email id with spammers!

Another way to detect and filtering out spams is to give plus or minus addressing. You can use different tags for different mailing lists and if you start receiving spams, you can come to know who shared your email address with the spammers. Read more about spam control by plus addressing technique here.

Is that all? Not quite. One of the most common mistakes done by many people is to use their email addresses in their signatures. You may think that is going to make you more famous in the online world. But remember, for one genuine email you get by displaying your email id there, you start receiving hundreds of spams. Never ever make the mistake of putting email id in web pages, forums or social networking sites. Also, remember never to give away your friends' email ids to sites which ask you to invite them to join it. You may think you are being courteous to your friends by giving their email ids but, in reality, you are making them victims of spam emails.

Last but not the least, as a rule of thumb, don't forward any email message if it explicitly asks you to do so! Stopping spams may not be in our hands, but reducing them really is!

Additional Rules in Cricket

2008-01-07T15:17:00.000+05:30

My friend got a mail like this:

After watching the test match, I feel some rules have to be incorporated by ICC to give the other teams a perfect clarification:

Ricky Ponting - (THE TRULY GENUINE CRICKETER OF THE CRICKET ERA AND WHOSE INTEGRITY SHOULD NOT BE DOUBTED) should be considered as the FOURTH UMPIRE. As per the new rules, FOURTH UMPIRE decision is final and will over ride any decisions taken by any other umpires. ON-FIELD umpires can seek the assistance of RICKY PONTING even if he is not on the field. This rule is to be made, so that every team should understand the importance of the FOURTH UMPIRE.

While AUSTRALIAN TEAM is bowling, If the ball flies anywhere close to the AUSTRALIAN FIELDER(WITHIN 5 metre distance), the batsman is to be considered OUT irrelevant of whether the catch was taken cleanly or grassed. Any decision for further clarification should be sought from the FOURTH UMPIRE. This is made to ensure that the cricket is played with SPORTIVE SPIRIT by all the teams.

While BATTING, AUSTRALIAN players will wait for the ON-FIELD UMPIRE decisions only (even if the catch goes to the FIFTH SLIP as the ball might not have touched the bat). Each AUSTRALIAN batsman has to be out FOUR TIMES (minimum) before he can return to the pavilion. In case of THE CRICKETER WITH INTEGRITY, this can be higher.

UMPIRES should consider a huge bonus if an AUSTRALIAN player scores a century. Any wrong decisions can be ignored as they will be paid huge bonus and will receive the backing of the AUSTRALIAN team and board.

All AUSTRALIAN players are eligible to keep commenting about all players on the field and the OPPONENT TEAM should never comment as they will be spoiling the spirit of the AUSTRALIAN team. Any comments made in any other language are to be considered as RACIALISM only.

MATCH REFEREE decisions will be taken purely on the AUSTRALIAN TEAM advices only. Player views from the other teams decisions will not be considered for hearing. MATCH REFEREES are to be given huge bonus if this rule is implemented.

NO VISITING TEAM should plan to win in AUSTRALIA. This is to ensure that the sportive spirit of CRICKET is maintained.

THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE: If any bowler gets RICKY PONTING - "THE UNDISPUTED CRICKETER WITH INTEGTIRY IN THE GAME OF CRICKET" more than twice in a series, he will be banned for the REST OF THE SERIES. This is to ensure that the best batsman/Captain will be played to break records and create history in the game of CRICKET.

These rules will clarify better to the all the teams VISITING AUSTRALIA.

Now it is upto you decide whether these rules are to be incorporated or not

Relations - Last or Lost?

2007-12-10T00:47:00.000+05:30

"There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't".

Robert Benchley must be really witty to quote such a statement. When it comes to relations, there are two kinds of people: those who really understand the relations and those who get involved in such relations just as a time pass activity. In the former, the relations last, while in the latter, they are lost.

I remember a statement told by our teacher. A person tells his/her spouse: "Your children and my children are playing with our children". Do you think it's just a joke? When we understand this sentence properly and think deeply upon this matter, it becomes obvious that it is perfectly applicable, especially in Western countries. But the relation need not only be marriage. It can as well be any other relation, such as friendship.

Coming back to the categories, I am sure, we all have seen both kinds of people. The people whom we met right in our childhood days, who still make us feel "Oh! Life is so beautiful" whenever think of them. We don't have to be with them forever to get such a feeling. It's just their presence in our minds that make us comfortable, even in the most critical situations.

Let us not forget the other category. When they were in our life, no doubt they made that part of the life lively. But now? Do they really remember those days or was it just a time pass activity? Did they really mean it? People whom we met, with whom we interacted for quite a long time, with whom we shared everything - if they don't want to share a single moment with us now, then what are we supposed to understand?

It is not the absence of a friend that annoys, but it is the silence. As someone has said, making 100 friends each lasting for an year is not a great thing. But it is really appreciable to make even one friend who lasts for 100 years... What do you say?

A formidable process: Indian Postal Service

2007-11-22T19:09:00.001+05:30

Last week, as a part of our general training, we were being introduced to Software Engineering, wherein we came across the three most important things which render a project successful. They are: people, process and technology. The instructor gave an example of how a formidable process can make the entire organization superior. He took an example of the Indian Postal Service (officially known as India Post), which, in spite of a lot of difficulties, has been giving a promising service for over 150 years. I think that example is extremely thought provoking, and that is the reason I'm jotting down this article.

Let us quickly review the conditions under which the Indian Postal Service is working:

Letters can be sent to any place in India, from Ladakh to Kanyakumari, from East to West, from metros to remote villages and delivery is ensured.
With 20+ official languages and 24 languages being spoken by more than a million people, the diversity itself is a serious problem for India Post. But there is no rule that instructs people to write address in a particular language; you can write a letter to Uttar Pradesh writing address in Kannada, and still it reaches.
Address in any part of India (excepting a few regions) is messed up, with "near" and "Opp." taking most of the address lines and sometimes only name and city is mentioned (Yes, it's hard to believe, but I am not exaggerating. It happened with my father, in which only the surname and city was mentioned in the address). As against this, for the postal services of other countries, door number/street is compulsory.
Most people sending letters will not know the PIN (Postal Index Number) of the destination or they won't write it. Even worse, they sometimes write wrong PINs, but the people in the Post Offices are generous enough to correct the PINs and send it to the correct recipient. Contracting this, postal services in many other countries require PIN or ZIP codes specified, or the post will not be delivered.

Had we ever thought about all these? This is not a era when someone discusses why a postal card or an inland letter is not reaching properly. With telephones and mobile phones becoming a necessity and the Internet being the medium of fast communication, no one bothers about the snail mail. Also, when it comes to the public services, India is considered to be a close competitor for the last position. But, as I said, the example of the Indian Postal Service instantly changed my mindset and made me think and rethink.

Apart from all those constraints mentioned before, the number of posts undelivered is just about 5 per million. Very close to Six Sigma quality. And all this happens with no written rule. Such a quality service is possible only due to a formidable process and equally eminent people working in India Post who adhere to this process. There are a very few other such systems in the world, which always provide their 100%, yet remain unnoticed... Shouldn't we be proud of such systems?

Shortcut to Success?!

2007-10-30T08:53:00.000+05:30

Well, it has been quite a while since I posted an article in this blog. That's due to the change in my dwelling place as well as my entry into the corporate world. Now I'm residing in the beautiful garden city, Bengaluru (Bangalore). I'm not going to write more about that now, but let me discuss an issue in which the current generation is getting attracted towards: finding shortcuts to success.

What is the most sought thing today? Probably, for most of us, it's money and nothing else. A more important issue regarding this matter is that everyone wants money, but without or minimal effort. But is it achievable?

There have been a lot of organizations which offer a huge money for a small investment, and there are a lot more people who go for them. With the advancement of the Internet and the means of online payments, it is growing even more rapidly nowadays. From offline firms like Amway to the online communities like agloco, from the antiquated firms like AllAdvantage to the emerging ones like eBiz and GISH, each of these firms has its own claims as to how the customer is able to earn a lumpsome amount. They promise to make you a millionaire in a year or two, but none of them has succeeded in this regard till now. Has anyone seen a person who is competing for a place in top 100 in the Forbes magazine just by participating in such organizations and making people members?

I'm not here to accuse these firms as frauds or to compell people not to join them. Each one has the right to do what he/she wants to do. Then why am I writing this article? I just want to share my yesterday's experience here.

My friend called me up requesting me to come to ITPL yesterday evening. He didn't tell any reason, but still I made sure that I went there. It was only after I met him that I came to know that he had called me to give a presentation about GISH, and now, I know that it has turned out to be a very good reason for me to write this article.

It was all about joining this organization by investing some amount initially and then urging others to be a part of it too. For every pair of members that you make, they give you 1000 bucks. And if you are able to have a certain fixed number of customers downline in a prescribed time period, you are eligible for some extra privileges by GISH. But that's not what matters here. An interesting figure he told was that even if you do only one pair of members in a month and consider the same rate of logins by those members and their downlines also, you'll end up with 2¹²=4096 members at the last level in one year. So it's not a big deal to have a large number of people down the line. Seems interesting right? Just think, can you continue with the same growth rate for the next couple of years?? You'll have to have 2³⁰ pairs, which means 68,719,476,736 people. Current population of the world is just 10% of that. Where on the Earth do we find those many homosapiens then? Do we have count and include ancestors too and make them members?? There is no shortcut to success. Hard work can only fetch you what you want.

I forgot to mention, the presentation started with the expansion of GISH: Goals, Income, Savings and Happiness. According to the presentor, achieving Goals brings you Income, which when Saved, will give you Happiness. But does money alone ever bring happiness? Every insightful word or adage or Shloka tells that money is the cause of all the sorrows of man. As Adi Shankaracharya has described in Bhajagovindam:

अर्थमनर्थं भावय नित्यं
नास्ति ततः सुखलेशः सत्यम् |
पुत्रादपि धनभाजां भीतिः
सर्वत्रैषा विहिता रीतिः ||

arthamanartham bhaavaya nityam
naasti tataH sukhaleshaH satyam ||
putraadapi dhanabhaajaam bheetiH
sarvatraiShaa vihitaa reetiH ||

Meaning:

Wealth is problem - think deeply on this
There is no true happiness from that
A rich man is afraid even of his own sons
This is true everywhere and forever

Now tell me, do you still think that you can become rich overnight? And even if you do, does that bring you happiness? It is up to you to think and decide what you want to go. Whichever path you take, I wish you all the best!

What do you think of yourselves, MindTree Minds?

2007-10-03T02:15:00.000+05:30

They were humble, elegant and more social than they are now. They had never shown this frog-in-the-well attitude until that fateful (?) day they got recruited to an Indian multinational company called MindTree. I'm talking about my own classmates and friends who got entitled MindTree Minds when they got selected.

I have been observing this attitude not only in my classmates, but also in friends in other colleges and juniors too. There are a few exceptions, nevertheless. But I stress, only a few are still the same as they were before. What makes me post it here? Because the so called MindTree Minds:

act as if MindTree is the only IT company in the world.
don't generally combine with people other than MindTree recruitees as they used to be.
show off that they are recruited to MindTree.
talk about the company all the time.
think that they are superior to others, while the truth is that some of them got selected by sheer luck.

I don't know what they think of themselves. Are their minds rotten to the core to be unable to understand the simple fact that they may not be in Mindtree forever? The sooner these vain mindtree minds understand the reality and come out of this dangerous egocentric syndrome, the better. As MindTree tag-line itself says, a tree is known by the fruit it bears. Mind it and get a life, folks!

Your honest opinions are welcome.

Free SMS for Karnataka Spice Customers!!

2007-09-27T23:52:00.001+05:30

With all the Cell phone operators increasing the charges for SMS, it has been a difficult time for the students and those who rely upon SMS for the communication most of the times. Spice, Airtel, Hutch all have increased their tariffs to 5 paise or above. But a week ago, my friend RJP sent me a message telling a trick to get free SMS. This works only for Spice customers in the Karnataka circle.

Change your message centre number in the message settings from default number to ~~+919810051913~~ ~~+919840011055~~ ~~+919810051873~~.

A few notes about this trick.

It works only for Karnataka Customers.
All messages are completely free.
~~This works only for Spice numbers which start from 9964.~~
You can't recharge your mobile by sending SMS with this message centre. You have to revert to your old message centre, recharge and then put this number back on.
The specified message centre is Broadway II Gateway number.
Even interstate messages are also free.

Just enjoy the free messages as long as Spice finds this out and corrects this bug. I owe you a lot RJP :)

Wonder at the Wanderers!!!

2007-09-25T15:33:00.000+05:30

First things first. Congratulations India for winning the first ever Twenty-20 Cricket World Cup. Congratulation Pakistan, for posing a spectacular final at the Wanderers stadium, Johannesburg.

It had all the ingredients to be a tooth-and-nail fight, a treat to watch out for anyone, even remotely connected with cricket, in and around the Subcontinent - a dream contest between the traditional rivals.

Let's set aside the result for a while and look how it fired up every one in the contending countries, especially in India. Even the fussiest roads were cool and calm as country-yards, even the money minded IT companies, which want its workers to work on Saturdays too, had allowed its officials to call it a day a bit early. And, everyone, no matter interested in cricket or not, watched at least a part of the match. After all, that's how it works in a country where cricket is a religion!

Now to the result of the match. Who in this world has imagined that the team India would win? A team which had no veterans playing, which had no regular coach, which had just got a new captain to lead the team and which had a bunch of novel players half of which hadn't played even a single international T20 game. What a wonder! But that's cricket for you! Anything can happen until the last ball is bowled. India somehow clinched the cup, but the real winner was the game, as Sunil Gavaskar told after the match.

The aftermath? Celebrations in India at least for a week, a warm and grand welcome and pouring cash prizes from each corner of the country for the players forgetting the past performances, and what not? The players can sigh a breathe of relief after what happened in the World Cup earlier this year.

Foot ball to start with, then hockey and now Cricket!! Can this be a CHAK DE INDIA magic?!

A final punch: Forget cricket, former President APJ Abdul Kalam's dream has come true. India has become a strong power in 2020!

One-liner ABS Function using Binary Operators

2007-09-24T00:05:00.000+05:30

A few days ago, my friend TJ, who always keeps finding innovative programming challenges, asked a question: "Can you implement abs() function without using any relational operators in C?". But he also insisted to do it without using if, for, while etc., any control and loop structures for that matter.

I immediately came up with this:

abs_x = sqrt(x*x);

But he is not a guy to get contented with such an answer. He told that sqrt() internally uses relational operators in its implementation. Well, true. The sqrt() function that is included in math.h uses series expansion methods, which use if() statement in one or the other way. So I had no choice but to find some other way. After struggling a lot, I came up with this which uses only binary operators and arithmetic operators:

abs_x = (x^((((x&(1 << (sizeof(int)*8-1))) >> (sizeof(int)*8-1)&1)*-1)) + (((x&(1 << (sizeof(int)*8-1))) >> (sizeof(int)*8-1))&1);

The sizeof() opeator is necessary only to generalize the expression for any size (16 bit or 32 bit) of the integers. Otherwise a smaller version of the same would suffice.

For 32 bit integers:

abs_x = (x^((((x&(1<<31))>>31)&1)*-1))+(((x&(1<<31))>>31)&1);

abs_x = (x^((((x&0x10000000)>>31)&1)*-1))+(((x&0x10000000)>>31)&1);

For 16 bit integers:

abs_x = (x^((((x&(1<<15))>>15)&1)*-1))+(((x&(1<<15))>>15)&1);

abs_x = (x^((((x&0x1000)>>15)&1)*-1))+(((x&0x1000)>>15)&1);

Does it seem complicated? As we know, in C, numbers are represented in Two's Complement method. In 2's complement method of representation, the most significant bit represents the sign of the number. This bit will be 0 if the number is positive and 1 if it is negative.

The idea is to first check the most significant bit of the number. If it is 1 we need to negate the number. To negate a number, we should find the one's complement the number and add 1. That is what is done in the above expression!!

Do you think it's a great piece of one-liner code? It would have been, if it was impossible to simplify it further like swapping code posted before. Yes! It can further be reduced! Look at this code:

abs_x = x*(-2*(((x&(1<<(sizeof(int)*8-1)))>>(sizeof(int)*8-1))&1)+1);

For specific length, it looks like (for 32 bit integer):

abs_x = x*(-2*(((x&(1<<31))>>31)&1)+1);

All this code does is to multiply the original number with -1 if it is negative and with 1 if it is positive! Short and sweet one-liner, isn't it? But I can't say it's the shortest like I did in my earlier post. Feel free to express your opinions!

UPDATE
I guess thinking a lot certainly helps! I was able to find a still shorter one-liner!!

abs_x = x+2*x*(x>>(sizeof(int)*8-1));

Can I say this is the shortest? I still doubt!!

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder

2007-09-03T04:51:00.000+05:30

This is an era where everything is concluded with the result of a contest or a poll. Beauty isn't an exception. Beauty pageant, however, is not only based on the external appearance, but also the wit of the person. Nevertheless, errors happen and wrong persons get through various phases in the contest and, sometimes, even emerge as the winners despite having no brainpower. One such example happened in Miss Teen 2007 contest in USA:

Miss Teen South Carolina 2007, Lauren Caitlin Upton, screwed up her response to the question:

Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?

In case you are unable to follow what Miss Lauren Caitlin Upton said, here it is (What she might have intended to say, is emphasized using bold letters)

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, um, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and uh, I believe that our, I, education like such as uh, South Africa, and uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for us.

In spite of going through this quotation many times, it makes no sense to me! But to err is human, and she has admitted her mistake and also has tried to correct her answer in a recent interview:

Well personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on our map. I don't know anyone else who doesn't. And if the statistics are correct, I believe there should be more emphasis on geography.

Looks a bit cleaner, isn't it? Well, the real irony is that she went on to become the third runner-up in the Miss Teen USA 2007 contest!! As they say, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and the judge must have seen something special in Miss Lauren Caitlin Upton, may be humor, to pick her as Miss Teen South Carolina 2007!

PS: This blog crossed the landmark of 10000 visitors today.

How to use Web Feeds? What is RSS? What is Atom?

2007-08-25T01:56:00.001+05:30

By now, almost every netizen knows the usage of RSS Feeds. Nevertheless, there is a multitude of users who are still ignorant of the concept of Syndication and its advantages. There is nothing arduous about it. Called Really Simple Syndication most of the times, RSS is really really simple to use. You don't have to be a technical hotshot to get wind of the feeds. So why not give it a try?

What is a Web Feed?: It is better to know the answer to this question before moving further. A web feed is, according to Wikipedia, a data format used for serving users frequently updated content. Technically, a web feed is a document (often XML-based) which contains content items with web links to longer versions. News websites and blogs are common sources for web feeds, but feeds are also used to deliver structured information ranging from weather data, search results, top ten lists of hit tunes etc. The two main web feed formats are RSS and Atom.

What is the use of a Web Feed?: Suppose that you have a large number of news sites and blogs, which you like. How often do you check them? May be daily, weekly, monthly or even more than once a day, or at your will. But many a times there won't be any new articles in those sites. Isn't it a waste of time? Yes, and that is where the concept of web feed comes into picture. Instead of visiting each website, you can subscribe to the web feed they provide. Whenever there is a new article to the website, you will be notified by the feed aggregator.

What is a Feed aggregator?: A feed aggregator, also known as feed reader or feed client, is an application which regularly checks the subscribed feeds and collects any newly posted articles. An aggregator can be a software (like latest versions of Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook) installed on your PC or a web application (like Google Reader and BlogLines) that can be accessed anywhere in the world. There is a large number of aggregators available. The choice is yours.

How to subscribe to a Web Feed?: To subscribe to a feed, you've to give the feed URL of the website or the blog you want to subscribe to. For this blog, it is:

http://mgharish.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
or
http://feeds.feedburner.com/mgharish

But what about other websites? To subscribe to a feed, just look around the website for an icon similar to:

and click on that. It is as simple as that! Latest versions of browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari and have built in support for web feeds. Firefox shows the RSS logo in the navigation bar itself, whenever a feed is available for the page you are viewing.

What are RSS and Atom?: RSS and Atom are, as mentioned earlier, two of the most popular web feed formats. Both are similar, with slight differences. Both are based on eXtensible Markup Language, or the XML. But the technical details behind these are unnecessary to subscribe and enjoy feeds.

Nowadays, blogging is becoming second nature to almost every Internet user. You might be having many blogger-friends. You can save a lot of time and stay up to date by subscribing to their web feeds.

Annoying Pop-up: ilead.track.it

2007-08-22T00:51:00.000+05:30

What can be more annoying for a blogger or a web-master than a pop-up that appears out of his web page, without him being aware of it? Nothing, probably. Recently I was experiencing the same problem. Advertisement window of ilead.track.it would pop-up occasionally in my blog, displaying some ads. I haven't put any ads purposefully on my blog so far, and hence, each time it protruded, I kept thinking that it is the result of some other web page I have opened.

Some of you might have experienced this already. A pop-up would show up with address ilead.track.it and display ads which won't facilitate the owner of the web page in any way. What is more disgusting about this irritating ad pop-up is that, it would show up only sometimes, not always and hence making it difficult to track where it originates.

Thanks to Nirmal T V, a fellow blogger, who informed me that the pop-up is caused by WebStats4U traffic tracker. I just had to remove the code pertaining to that tracker to get rid of this annoyance. Thanks to all those who had informed me about this pop-up being displayed in my blog as well.

The webstats4u website doesn't say anything about the resulting pop-up while registering and offers ad-free service for quite some time. It only unveils its true colour when your website has got significant number of visitors. It can really be a pain in the neck if you do not notice it soon. Now that I have removed it, there should be no pop ups arising from my blog.