Lets Define Friend Relation (Unstructured Thoughts)

Guys lets try and define relations today.

Throughout our life we are guided by relations and how a certain relation will pan out for you is more less pre-defined.

When we enter this world we are handed over a bag full of relations and most of our life, till we die and enter valhalla and enjoy the afterlife, these relations stay with us.

But what is a relation?

Is it a standard or mandate which dictates what are going to be our rules of engagement with other person. For example with parents its guidance and love, with nephews it competition and fight and so on. Is it that each relation comes with its own set of Do's and Don'ts which we keep on following religiously.

If it's so what are the rules of engagement with new people. People who does not fall in any predefined relationship catalogue.

A simple answer to this question could be we call them "Friends". This is a most abused word in human relationship as far as i know. We have so many categories of friends that we don't even know what it actually means. We have school friends, casual friends, Good friends, Best friends, More than Friends and god forbid what not.

I do not agree with these norms and that where my issue starts.

I am a firm believer of a fact that throughout our life based on our interactions with people dynamics between us keep on changing. Thus you cannot contain a relation in its strict form guarded by mandate written in ink.

Concentrating only on relation called "Friends", its the purest form of no expectation attached relation. When you are trying to know a person without having any expectation or obligation of placing him/her in a predefined container thats when you have a Friend Relation with someone.

We can also say it's the starting stage of any new relation which after few interactions takes a definite shape and is deemed ready for categorization.

Said that does this means every "Friend Relation"needs to get a name at some stage in its lifecycle.

I would again differ. The beauty of this relation is it can work as a placeholder for any relation without displacing the original relation from your life.

I have seen people eager to categorize their Friend Relation soon and if they are not able to find a place for it or if  the place they want it to be in is already occupied the life comes to a stop.

People need to understand we as human are not without faults. If in our jobs a single person cannot perform all the responsibilities alligned to his role than how can a single relation can provide emotional, physical, financial support which comes as a mandate attached with that relation.

If that's so and if in our jobs we solve this issue by asking for core competency in single person but rest can be performed by extended team why can't we do that in relation.

I know its bit far fetched but its practical. Am also not saying we should start neglecting our existing relations and start finding solace in new ones. What am trying to say we should not be afraid of sharing the non core functions of a relation with our extending team which happens to be our friends.

 To sum it up what i would say is Friends are the chosen ones which we get in our life to steer us from the harms and unseen conditions. They are the only people who wont judge you even if you have said or asked them the most irrational, illogical going nuts question , advice or favor.

A little Sad Story - Teaser

It was D's first day on Job. A fresh MBA graduate ready to change the world with fresh ideas and Strong faith in himself. Things could not have been better. He was campus recruited and was among the few who have been given opportunity to work for an organisation which was responsible for preparing his nation for changes happening around the globe and positioning the nation as a leader looked up and respected by rest of the world. Vision of organisation was in complete sync with the vision of government and nation. 

D has always been entrepreneurial. New thoughts, business ideas were second nature to him. This was the golden opportunity which he had been searching for his entire professional career. 

Nobody could stop him now. 

D has never felt so happy.

With Spring in his stride D reported to his Manager M on first day. 

M assigned D his first big task, the only task for the day. D's first step towards realising his dream of giving shape to his ideas.

D was to make 100 copies of a document for a seminar planned for next day.

Upgraded vista to XP

Ya am serious and in full senses. I have just upgraded my dell inspiron which i have been using for last 2 years from windows vista to XP. Also i know i have used term upgrade even though XP came much before vista .

but these words come right from the bottom of my heart. Am actually feeling good on getting rid of vista from my machine.

Though i miss some of the cool features of the vista like quick search , sparky UI, good icons and all but still when it comes to performance XP is still a killer.

I used vista for 2 years and there was no day when i dint get blue screen error on my machine. Ok i understand that dell machine gets heated up and then crashes down but it only added to the number of blue screens . Since last week i have seen no error as such.

And what to talk about the speed on my laptop. When i had vista i can power on the machine go out had a good dinner or a long call with my friends and still the system would be just booting up. With XP its a matter of seconds.

Not to mention the ribbon death in vista when it is not able to find out the type of media file. That thing was driving me crazy.

Now migrating back to XP was not that easy. I had to get used to the basic fonts which xp used. The form factor is entirely different for xp and vista , and for people shifting back to XP from vista its really challenging too.

But i have found out solutions for it too, and now my xp looks even better then vista.

There are many free tools available in market which can make your xp look even better then vista and also function better then it. Your XP feels like window 7 in functionality and it still is light weighted like XP.

The features which i missed in xp most was the quick search tab. In vista you click on start menu type down the application you want and voila its in front of you. You dont have to search for it.

This i really wanted but xp does not have it. I searched a lot for it and finally found a software which does it better then vista.

"vista statup menu" does the magic for me. it is same as quick search of vista but looks better the it with many more options.

The second utility which added glitter to my xp was "winFlip". It shows all the apps in cool 3d flip style. You can also customize it to use the which key combination you want. Also you can make it work on mouse gestures. Its

a very kool app.

The next in line which i had been looking for long is "Deskspace". I really wanted to have multiple desktops on my machine without slowing it down and without switching to ubuntu.

This software made that easy.

There were many more softwares included in making my xp have all the good functionalities of vista and win 7 minus there crib points.

Here is how my xp looks now.

Changes in life

Life is a funny and very unpredictable movie.

when you least expect for something to happen sometime it happens with a bang.

Something like this happened to me on 6th of feb.

I by mistake got married (i swear i dint intended to).

And to top that up i married my own girlfriend with whom i have been for last over 15 years i guess.

Now i think you might be able to comprehend why i say life is a very unpredictable movie.

Now when am coming out of the first wave of awe , am trying to observe (read it as criticize) what all have changed in my life.

First and foremost what have changed is my my sleeping place and bed.

Earlier i used to sleep on a bed next to my mom. That was so soothing . Now i have a whole room for myself oh sorry for me and my spouse and also a whole big bed. It looks good but i do miss sleeping near my mom.

Second thing which has changed is only one of us either me or my wife is allowed to sleep in night.

sounds crazy but it is. Issue is am a big snorer. My mom says when me and papa are sleeping in house , its seems like someone has started engine of Boeing plane.

Now my wife she is very quite sleeper and also a light sleeper. So my snoring disturbs her sleep .Which in turn forces her to kick me so that i stop snoring . Now this thing breaks my sleep.

So you can understand , its either none of us or just one of us who gets to sleep in night.

Third and a bit less irritating thing which has changed is the attitude and questions of people.

Every other person am meeting is trying to have same funny line. How do u feel after marriage.

Common man i feel the same as you all guys felt.

Am seeing a good mail which has beautiful ladies and suddenly my colleague will say. Hey dude you are not allowed to look at them any more.

Now that insane.

This my till now stock of things which has changed , leaving things like not allowed to mess up my place at home anymore, no more late night dvds and other small things.

The only best thing which i can think has changed is i have her with me. She makes up for all the things which am missing. Her one smile is enough for me.

Lets see what else does this movie has in store.

chow for now

Welcome me back

I am awed and am loss of words today.

First of all let me apologize to all my readers. Am really sorry but i really dint knew that someone was following me this close.

As you all might have guessed by now how lazy i am in keeping a routine , so for last so many days (in fact months) i have not written any new post.

Today just my chance i happened to stumble upon my blog page , and man do i have got people.

There were umpteen number of comments written by people telling me how much they love my blog. There were comments on my older posts telling me how my post have helped them out or they have enjoyed reading it.

I again say sorry to all of you. From now onwards i will try to be more regular in my posts :).

Just one request from my side. Please don't put anonymous comments . I would really like to know all my readers.

Thanks to all of you pals.

Am back...

Taking break from any habit be it daily office routine, daily food habits on anything feels good.

I took break from blogging and am back now with new enthusiasm.

Am still working on the same sms project and have learned quite a few new things on it.

Like j2me polish do not support conversion of normal canvas to blackberry canvas.

The commands does not work on it.

Also we can define structure of jar package. A new technique for optimisation namely ROMisation and much more.

On other tracks i have started given serious thought to my waistline. It is trying to break all previous records.

In same line of thoughts i have started commuting from metro.

This is my small contribution towards nature and my tummy. (seriously).

Metro has its own charm. Everyday seeing different faces, sometime same faces with different expressions. Seeing your surroundings with new outlook its all new , different and amazingly refreshing.

I now walk daily from metro drop point to my office and same way back. I really feel ported back to the time when i was in college and walking was daily routine. I feel fresh after each walk, so i will suggest to all of you that one should walk. Even five minutes of walk make tremendous changes in your outlook towards your surroundings.

One thing which am still doing and will love to do it till i can is reading.

I read the lost symbol by dan brown and was taken down by it. I found it loosely written in comparision to Da vinci code, but still a good work. He should now try his hands in different kind of writing.

I also finished the twilight series by Stephnie meyer, and if i happen to meet this lady i will like to ask her just one question. " Why do u always take the reader to extremes of emotion/adreline high and then just pushes him over the cliff".

Anyways, the new thing is i will try to update my blog daily now. Am thinking of starting a new thread here named as "What dex found today ?" .

Lets see how it evolves with time, for now , let me have my cup of clean blood :)

Memory optimisation for low end devices

So far so good. feels great to be back again.

For last few days my life was in turnmoil. Project deliveries , documentation , new project details blah blah blah.

In midst all these i got request from my client that the application was not being supported by low end devices due to memory constraints.

For those who are unaware , i had been working on a mobile application , over j2me platform , which is basically sms base servce application. It has around 50 different flows along with good UI and other flashy things in it which hogs on to memory like anything.

Now my client wants all these features to be there , and also he wants the application to work smoothly on devices with memory as low as 200KB.

So this way my journey started towards memory optimisation of the application which i myself made.

Now as you all know every developer likes his application like his own kid. So it becomes really difficult to find fault in it.

Anyways this started my voyage towards optimising my kid.

I searched web and got a lot of things and tried all of them. some helped some dint. The final outcome was that application was still throwing out of memory error on low end devices.

Then i thought lets give our code a closer look.

And that was an eye opener, there were a lot of things which needed to be done and couldnt have been possibly told by anyone.
Not going deep in to here is my own memory optimisation tips for those who want to try it out.

1. Try to seprate out all the memory allocation operations in your application

2. Check before doing any memory operation for any hogged up memories in application

3. Always make variables null if they are not intended to be use, even if they are loal variables.

4. Before doing any major memory allocation work do call system.gc(). It seems idiotic but it surely helps.

5. Dont ever do memory operations in one big chunk. sub divide memory operations in to sub modules. It helps in cleaning memroy and allocationg memory for further modules.

6. Try to use minimum number of for loops they take more memory.

7. All systems prints should be commented out before production release, they also tend to increase memory.

8. For image resources make images as png 24 and keep color combn as low as possible.

9. While deleting recordstore if you are using connection database then dont run null query, simply nullify the recordstore.

So by doing all this i got what i wanted to do.

Blackberry lets me down one more time :(

After my push registry incidence with blackberry , i thought that was my last mishap with blackberry and there will not be anymore just wait and see scenerio .

Yet once again the demon of blackberry has haunted me. And this time it has outdone itself.

What i was trying was to see whether i can add localisation concept in my one of the small application.

I made a phrase book which has around 25 phrases in english and i was thinking of using localisation concept and translating these 25 phrases into all readily available languages.

For my first draft i target Hindi,Herbrew,Arabic and Albanian language.

Also as i was making this project in j2me i had no issue with porting it on blackberry. Polish was there for me.
Anyways when i started developing this one lame project( initially i thought it will be one day work) , i first tried to put the translations in a txt file , and then had a hearty laugh on myself. Text file wont understand a thing about hindi as that font is not readable by it.

So , i said to myself " no issue dex, lets try the unicode thing". That is make a file in unicode format and read it that way. So when i read that file in UTF 8 format the system does not try to apply its mind and render it the way it is.

Voila it worked on my symbian device( I have one N72 and nokia 5000).

So here i thought all done in one day i can simply make a build for blackberry and give it a look.

And then my whole world of programming got cursed.

None of my UTF file worked on blackberry. My code seem to read them properly but when i displayed the contents, it was showing everythin in blocks.

Initially my guess was that blackberry was having issue in reading UTF file, but when i digged internet a bit on this issue , i came to know it was not the UTF it was the RIM who was putting curses on me one after another.

The issue here was unavailbility of different languages font.

Even if we enter any text in UTF format, to display it the device needs to have that specific font.

I dont know how but the lowest device on nokia seems to be having all the fonts which i was targetting but Blackberry dint even have the basic fonts except the languages it said it supprted which were all english based.

So here again am doomed and am thinking what can i do. I looked for UTF renderer for blackberry but found nothing. I looked for font installer and found nothing.

Am still on it but am not hoping alot . May be blackberry should start thnking in global perspective if they are hoping and are actually trying to get their devices to the masses.

Lets see what happens.

Push registry for sms in blackberry using midlet

I had been working around a requirement from my client and it was quite a nightmare. The codebase am working on is in j2me.
Now he wanted to port all the functionality of the code to the blackberry also.

Blackberry inherently does not executes jar/jad files. It first converts them in to cod file using its inbuilt converter RAPC and then executes them.

Now one of the functionality of my project was push registry.

The scenerio was as follows. When you start your midlet on any mobile it used to register a port for sms listening and sending . also it used to register it to AMS so that if application is not running and any sms comes on to that port then AMS can invoke my application and i will get that sms also. Till now everything was good. Everything was working fine.

I ported each and everything and it was not a big deal. But when the push registry scenerio came my world came down crashing on to me.

The code started issuing the following exception:

CLASSNOTFOUNDEXCEPTION: midlet not in current suite.

i started digging around on web for it and came to know that while registering the connection if the midlet name is not found then the following exception is thrown. Its been documented in the connector class. Also it needed the "MIDlet-1" parameter in the jad and manifest which contains the port to be registered, the name of the midlet and the filter.

So i thought may be that parameter is not passed , but when i checked in the executable it was there and was properly handled.

Now i dont know what to do.

Problem also lies in the concept of push registry . Blackberry does not have any concept called push registry, its been introduced only by j2me. So if i have to use it i have to write a midlet for blackberry. And in it , it was not working.

I searched on net all over and found so many ppl trying to work around this limitation of Blackberry but none of them have been able to.

So for whole three days i looked around and finally came to a conclusion that it cant be done in Blackberry.
We thought that we might have to shelve the blackberry from going into production as push registry was one of our key feature.

Then i got a idea . (Man am always full of ideas. )
Yesterday when i was looking for some more way arounds to solve this issue,(actually i was reading a book called "Vlad Taltos" by Steven Brust. Man am hooked onto fantasy reading , thanks to Ankit solanki. May Veera bless him. So when i finished the book ...) i thought of using a approach which no one have thought.

What if i dont ever close my application. That is when we exit from application we needed to close the port on which we were listening the sms. Now what push registry used to do was it used to keep the port status in its log. so when ever any sms came on to that port it will start the application , open and register that port again for application. But what if i never close that port?

Now issue was i have done something like this before. But i have seen that if we dont close the port and try to exit and then restart the app sometimes we will never get that port registered again.

So what i finally did was , instead of exiting the application send it into background.

what u say cheesy na :)

Blackberry has an option of sending an application in background and it can still recieve events.

so what i did was i imported the blackberry application api and sent the application in background when user wanted to exit it. Now a user thinks that app has exited but in reality its sitting in background waiting for the event . And when new sms comes on that port the application now checkes whether its in background or foreground. If foreground it does normal sms handling, but if its in background it brings the app in foreground , do a bit of initialisation and valla... we have push registry working here.

So this was my little adventure with blackberry and midlets.

May the winds of south have mercy on me.

Bulding projects using polish and porting.

For last few months i have been working on a project which has a lot of going in and around.
first of all its a mobile project. Second it targets all the leading mobile devices available around.

The language of code is so called j2me. For the porting purpose j2me polish has been used.

Now it was my first interaction with polish and for first few days or i should say months i was amazed at how polish accomplishes such a tedious task.

Being in to mobile industry for quite some time i know how tedious and complex is the task of supporting n number of devices which have all together different property set.

The properties are not just the screen size or the api sets , but also the underlying OS capabilities, changes in the same OS as there are always some feature packs available. Key pad mapping, UI capabilities mapping, Use of restricted apis and blab blah blah.

It was always a nightmare for me when i had to port any of my application onto all target devices.
But polish seems to do it quite painlessly.

So i thought why not give polish a close look and see how it does that.

what i found out was quite straight and simple.
Polish with the help of ant takes control of complete building process of any j2me application.

The polish people have written their own routines and code fragments which overrides the default building process. Along with that they have also used the brute force.

What i mean by brute force is they have indexed all the important and not so important capabilities and features of mobile and have made a standard around it. Now whenever you are building a build for any device, its capabilities are hand written in one of the files given by polish people.

this file is called devices.xml. This xml has got indexed features of n number of mobile devices and its ever growing. We can add our own blocks also in it.

Now this all seems to good , but at the end what i found out was it all is on good faith. As its open to changes by anyone, anybody can play around with it. Its very easy to change the name of any device or its feature.

Also i found porting to different devices buggy.

The code am working on has to work on blackberry also. Now during the build process itself the polish issues warning like error in jdptask and utiltask. Even if you build its demo project for blackberry you get the same issue. The web is full of issues faced by developers while porting on different devices.

Some how i fixed the jdp error in the polish jar and when i run the blackberry cod on the device it gives refrence member out of range error. Now its something which cannot be resolved by a developer. am still stuck on it and finally have decided to re write the whole code in blackberry ide itself and build blackberry native code.

So for small portings and portings on normal devices polish is good, but for other devices and for complex projects play with it at your own risk. :)

what can we do....wake up india

I dont know why but this bombay blast has affected me in a big way. More then i would have thought. And not just me everywhere around me i see ppl talking about it. There is a kind of sadness ,depression and frustration in there tone which is very hard to ignore.

May be its because everyone is thinking what wrong they have done to be treated like this.

What wrong did the people who died in Taj firing have done to anyone of us to be killed in such a pathetic way. And why am i affected by it. I dint even knew them.

Its the frustration of not being able to do anything which is killing people in there heart. These terrorist are hitting us left right center and we are sitting ducks. No one is sure whether he will survive the following day and moreover the big question which everyone is thinking is why me?
what wrong have i done? what can i do to stop myself from getting killed like like i dont have word for it.

Yesterday one of my fathers friend came to my house and within few minutes mumbai was hot again in my house. He was all for killing all muslims and how they are taking charge of the world .

Its not like he favours hindus more and has got any personal issues with muslims but what he said had a point that all the terrorist activites being organised all around the world are in some way or other related to muslims. I agree with the point but not with the view.

May be the best of the terrorist belong to muslims but we have no right to say that because of this all muslims are destined to be killed.

Its againg the frustration which was coming out as hard words from my uncle's mouth.

I think its high time that we start taking this terrorism issue seriously .

Its bigger then ever. And we need to understand its not religion which is feeding it. Its not one tribe of people who are doing it. It is all of us who are giving stronhold to it.

We guys need to understand the terrorist activities which we are seeing now days are so well organised that none of the leading person who are doing it can be religious fanatic. He has to be a person or a group of people with IQ equivalent to that of Einstien. It seems more like an attempt to crumble the social and commerce structure of our nation.

Our polticians have to think it more in a logical way then the emotions let them drive it. And why polticians they are the people for whom we all have something bad to say. So the ultimate responsibility again comes on to the shoulders of the common man.

Coming back to the orignal question of what we can do , i think i have some answers to it.

First thing applicable to all indians, stop thinking in terms of religion. what u do in ur house could be ur private affair. U worship jeasus or krishna or allah. No one hardly cares. But what u do outside everyone sees it and affects them. So when we are discussing or deciding anything in terms of nation or society please keep ur religion and creed in some bag and lock it.

Second thing which we should all do is practice our rights. Please we are a young nation . We got potiential higher then ever. Guys start practising all ur rights, like right to vote. Please do vote and dont vote because following candidate is from ur religion or ur family has been voting for following party for so long. Think before u act. Vote for a guy who can do good for nation and in turn for you. Keep yourself away from people who do the poltics of vote.

Third start following rules. Even a simple dicipline like not crossing Red lights count.
Remember one thing every single person in this world is role model for someone else in this world. dont let the person down just for your fun.

I know these things sound very trivial and illogical but they can help us in long way.

If we really want that our children should not suffer the way we are we will have to act now.

We are Indians, India is the only religion which we follow.

if we can understand this much i think we will take a big leap in understanding the current issue better and how to solve it. But lets start raising our voices now.

Blast From Past

Its been long since i last updated my blogs. Anyways with mumbai under the biggest terrorist attack india has ever seen i thought this might be the right time to indulge in some wrtitng , just to clear my mind of few things.

We hear ppl keep saying that what u do or give to society it comes back to you. You reap only what u sow and blah blah blah. The point is a man's doing cant go unnoticed. At some point they come back to him and with all the interest accumulated from the date the doing was done.

And the fact is true for any small thing one does or for any big mistake he commits.

I have noticed it myself number of times in my daily life. Every event which is happening in present in my life is kind of a payback for an action done by me in my past.( I think this Jim Butcher guy is getting on me. I have started writing like him now.)

Anyways as i say this was the right time for this post taking from the very recent example of mumbai, if we look in past this was coming. The bomb blasts in jaipur then in C.P(delhi) and many more places in very short span of time in the past were the fore warning kind of things which if we have paid any heed could have led us to stop what happened in mumbai.

I like what all polticians are saying that we should stay calm and united in this time of crisis. And we are indians and we can give life for our nation , then all other countries condeming the attack on democracy in india and all that , but one logical thing is why to let such things happen.

Following the same lines i also fail to understand why these news channel keep flashing the latest resuce activities with video coverage of whats going at the site of panic. God why dont they understand is what they feed is visible to all including the terrorist.

Todays terrorist are not those big beard nomad type of people. They are planners who come equipped with latest technologies. And such feeds from news channel help the terrorist only. NO ONE ELSE.

I have tried conveying this message to some news channels but none of them paid heed to it. May be they pay more attention to TRPs like our polticians pay more attentions to vote then to voters. So much for one india, one thinking.

I really feel bad for those officiers who died in the line of duty ,believing this will do for their country but such nonsense activites from our polticians side and from news channels make the life giving efforts of our officers go in vain.

If we guys really want to help our country and want to stop all this nonsense, i think we have to see these terrorist activites from new perspective.

First thing which we should understand along with our good polticians is that terrorist dont have any religion. They are not hindu muslim or any thing else they are just terrorists.

They are trained to do these activites so its a kind of their job like my job is to make softwares.
The bodies trainging them and controlling these terrorist are the one who are culprits. And mind me these bodies are no small time gangs. They containg people with IQ level of einstien. So we need to target these people and for that we need to stop thinking in terms of religions and India and pakistan , and start thinking in terms of what is good for world and what is not.

There is so less love in world lets try to preserve it. Not spoil it by aimless hate.

sorry forgot to put the links in:

here are the links :

link 1
========

http://nullbit.wordpress.com/2006/01/10/manglik-vs-non-manglik/

link 2
=======

http://www.planetarypositions.com/notes/2006/02/clarifications-on-manglik-dosha.html

link 3
=======

http://astrology.oneindia.in/numerology/marriages.html

link 4
=======

http://www.dragondance.com/numerology.html

link 5
=======
http://www.dragondance.com/numerology2.html

kundli milan : mangalik dosh : facts and myths

Now this is really interesting. In indian culture the life of people is governed by few pieces of paper.
The highest point of ignorance, is you are supposed to marry a person whose kundli matches with you.When a persons kundli matches with other persons kundli , and the families are ok with them getting married , then only the to be bried and groom are allowed to meet each other that too inthe presence of others. The only first time these bride and groom talk to each other as people is after getting married. And if after all this if the marriage does not survives its the sole responsibility of these two people who got married.

To those who arrived late kundlis are the parchment of paper which a pandit makes at the birth of child according to the planetry positions,the date and time of birth. There are some characterstics defined in this kudli along with dosh or the defects like sarpdosh,mangaldosh, kaldosh etc etc.
These points are taken in consideration when someone is getting married or is about take some very important decision.

So much for the indian mythology.

Dont get me wrong. All this which i stated above is vaild and true to an extent. But the only issue with indian society is they take everything on face value and refuses to see the intellectual and the practical side of the ritual and traditions which have been followed till now.

When indian society was under construction if you allow me to say that there were hardly any educated people around. there used to be alot of things which were getting hard for the intellectuals and the informative people to tell to everyone.

so they took the easy way out . They started getting these traditions into the daily practicse of the people without letting them know why they are doing it.

for example prohibition of ladies from going into kitchen when they are in periods.

It was very difficult to tell the ignorant one what the mensuration cycle is why it happens and what precautions have to be taken. It was too complex for them. But along with this it was also important to take care of this situation and control it before it gets out of control. The personal hygiene and proper rest of the woman under going mensuration cycle was the top priorty in the mind of the intellectuals. So they made this tradition so that woman can get some rest also and can have proper hygiene. But with time it became a curse for woman and they started treating periods as very bad thing and still they are not over it.

Same is with kundli milan. Earlier when there was not so freedom of intermixing of opposite sex, getting them married and keep that marriage healthy was a very tidious task. So to overcome that a bit of study was done and characterstics were defined for people taking birth under certain conditions. A match of those conditions was a sound formulae for getting married. So it was done for the benefit of people. But with time as the intellects never bothered to tell the scientific reason behind matching these kundlis and the proper way to do it, it also become one of the most followed tradition without any knowledge and now its on the way of becoming a curse for the new indian generation.

There are lots and lots of other traditions which are just followed for the sake of just being dragged. I do so because my forefather used to do so is the common thinking of normal indian. Anyone who tries to rationalise is thought as a rebel and is outcasted.

Am also posting some very useful links here related to indian myths, kunli milan and manglik dosh and facts.

But most important is this picture which am going to put here. Our so called pandits who match kundlis have seem to miss this chapetr while studying all the jyotish and astrology.

Indian Caste System : facts ,myths and reforms : an insight

This is one of the social cause which is very close to my heart. I have always failed to understand why we have caste systems and why we need it. In my earlier days i always use to wonder why some guy coming to my house always sits outside of our main sitting area , or why do he gets served in seperate utensils which used to be kept always seperate not to be use by the family members in future.

Now when i have started understanding the basics of this caste system , I have come to know a shocking truth. This caste system which was made in very early days was for the benifit of the indian society. But just because of few greedy and selfish people it has become an epidemic for indian society.

Before i move forward , i would like to tell that i myself am a brahmin boy by the caste.

Here i will be putting some facts and information gathered from various resources :

"Any religion that refuses to reform with the times will be relegated to oblivion and insignificance. We have classic examples of this natural phenomenon in India itself in Buddhism and Jainism. A simple and clear reform, not affecting the basic nature, is the need of the hour if Hinduism is to find its place as one of the best ways of life in twenty first century."

A clear mismatch exists between the classical four tier Caste system mentioned in the scriptures and the present day Hindu society. We find thousands of castes and sub-castes instead of a clear cut division into four. Across India, we find only the Brahmins having some similarity but other groups are let to choose their Castes according to the political and economic clouts.

For example, in Kerala, no one knows who are the Kshatriyas, Vysyas and Sudras. We have always considered Namboothiris to be the Brahmins in Kerala but there have never been a consensus on the other three castes. Other categories of people like Nairs, Ezhavas, Thiyas, Parayas, Pulayas etc. etc. have been classified under various castes in various times according to different scholars. The situation is very much similar in other states as well.

I strongly feel that we can positively utilize this mismatch between the classical four tier Caste system and the hundreds of castes that exist now. It is possible that we are confused between Gothras and Castes. All these present day categories like Jats, Rajputs, Nairs etc., etc., are essentially Gothras and are akin to the tribes in Africa and Arabia. Even if some scholars feel otherwise, I feel a lot of our problems can be solved if we define it that way. The present day names can continue as such provided they are considered as Gothras (or some other new name) instead of Castes. At one stroke, we can continue with the present naming systems and social groupings but can do away with the Caste problems.

Reform

Since the four tier system is referred in our scriptures at various places and cannot be undone or wished away, all that is required is a different way of looking at the Caste system. I propose a system in which all of us Hindus live through the Sudra, Kshatriya, Vysya and Brahmin Castes as different stages in our lives.

If one goes back to the origins of Caste system, it is nothing but a scientific and systematic structuring of the then society according to the tastes and talents of the people. The hereditary principle which created bad blood in later years is nothing but a clever move on the part of Brahmins to keep the power within their kith and kin. We find this no longer valid and practical. Most children of Brahmin parents do not study scriptures, do not practice rituals and do not live like Brahmins. So how can they continue to ‘enjoy’ and monopolize Brahminhood? Similar is the case with all other castes, as they are classified now.

In the classical definition of Caste System, the different qualities attributed are as follows :

Brahmin – Learned & Spiritual
Kshatriya – Strong & Fighting
Vysya - Intelligent & Creates Wealth
Sudra – Average & Assists all others

Essentially all of us are Sudras at birth and it is evident from the qualities attributed. It is something like starting on a clean slate. The average age of a human being is now 80 years and it is logical to assume that we exhibit Sudra like qualities until one fourth of our lifetime i.e till the age of 20. In the next phase i.e till the age of 40, we are strong, physically active and exhibit qualities of a Kshatriya. This is the period most of us marry and rear children. Strong and fighting qualities are required to protect the family and feed them. In the next phase i.e 41 to 60, we all become worldly wise and participate in one form or other of wealth creation for the family and society, which makes us good Vysayas. And finally, in the last phase, we tend to concentrate on spiritual activities and get ready to depart. We all try to become ideal Brahmins in the age group above 60.

Thus all of us Hindus, irrespective of our Gothras, pass through the four tier Caste system as envisaged in our scriptures and live an ideal life fulfilling all the necessary conditions required at various phases. It is this minor reinterpretation of the Caste system that will bring about drastic changes in the way Hindu society would think. All that we need is disassociating the classical Caste system from the present arrangement we have.

Advantages

The distinct advantage of such a reinterpretation of the Caste system is the little or minimum changes that will result in the present social symbols. All the present day laws and rules can continue as such if Caste is replaced by Gothra in the statute. For example, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will merge and change to Scheduled Gothras. And they can enjoy the same reservations they are entitled to. The bad name attributed to Hinduism on account of the caste discrimination will vanish in one stroke. All present day names and surnames can continue without any change, but no Gothra will be automatically associated with any one of the four castes. This means nobody is a Brahmin or Kshatriya or Vysya or Sudra throughout his or her life. It all depends on age and qualities. In the long run, the bad blood generated so far would fade out and Hindu society would be much more harmonious and stronger.

Remarks

Success of all this depends on the approval and blessings of the prominent religious leaders and institutions. It would be one of the most popular and progressive decisions anywhere in the world, if one ‘Dharm Sansad’ is called specifically to endorse such a viewpoint and root out causes of caste discrimination once for all from the mind of modern Hindus. It is high time the nationalist and patriotic forces in our country realized the importance of such a reform is equal to that of the Ram temple at Ayodhya, if not more.

programming android

wont be saying much today. this android thing is literally bogging me down in every way. Each day i learn something new in it with breaking at least on coding convention each day. The UI development in it is so fast that you can show anything as a demo to anyone within few hrs of discussion. Also its expandable ,flexible and you can manuever it in any way. The interaction of ui components with in themself is awesome.

The video speaks for itself. i developed it as a demo for my client with in few days.

building j2me project with preprocessor blocks in eclipse

Do i sound bit thrilled , hell i am. I was trying to build my j2me code in eclipse with preprocessor support for last one week and , cant really tell you that i dint left a single stone upturned but still was not able to solve this mystery.
But now the big day is here and i have solved this mystery of the millienium( god i like this stuff).

Anyways am trying to get serious here and will be letting you all people know how i did it.

The thing which i was trying to do was , i had a simple code which you can say i had a helloworld program in j2me build perfectly fine in eclipse using the eclipseme plugin, which itself was using wtk kit which i had got already installed on my machine.

Now what i wanted to do was add some preprocessor tags to it and make conditional several builds for different different condition sets in a single build process.

For all those who are new to preprocessing , you can understand it well if you have done a bit of C programming.

What a preprocessor does is that it analysis your code before building , and in return genrates a code according to the conditions defined in it. lets take a example.

This is my hellowrld.java file .

public class hello extends MIDlet {


protected void destroyApp(boolean arg0) throws MIDletStateChangeException {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

protected void pauseApp() {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

protected void startApp() throws MIDletStateChangeException {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub


System.out.println("BT is supported");
System.out.println("GP is supported");
System.out.println("WMA is supported");
System.out.println("S60 is supported");


}

}

As you can see its a very simple midlet which does nothing , just prints out four statements on your console.

Now what i wanted to make seperate build of this code according to the following conditions.

1. BT and GP supported (BT means bluetooth and GP means GPRS)
2. WMA and S60 supported.

I could have done that with conditional if else block and have the code copy and pasted in them but I also wanted to reduce the jar size. That is i wanted my jar to contain only those things which are required. For that we can use preprocessor tags which processes the code before building and comments out anything which does not matches its prescribed criterias. so i put some preprocessor tags in it, and now my code looks like this.

public class hello extends MIDlet {


protected void destroyApp(boolean arg0) throws MIDletStateChangeException {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

protected void pauseApp() {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

protected void startApp() throws MIDletStateChangeException {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub


//#ifdef BT

System.out.println("BT is supported");
//#else

System.out.println("BT is not supported");
//#endif
//#ifdef GP
System.out.println("GP is supported");

//#else
System.out.println("GP is not supported");
//#endif

//#ifdef WMA

System.out.println("WMA is supported");
//#else

System.out.println("WMA is not supported");
//#endif
//#ifdef S60
System.out.println("S60 is supported");

//#else
System.out.println("S60 is not supported");
//#endif

}

}

the

"//# if" is known as a preprocessor. it gets processed before the code is build and compiled.

//#ifdef BT

System.out.println("BT is supported");
//#else

System.out.println("BT is not supported");
//#endif

This block means that if the BT is defined then build the if block else comment out the if block and build the else block.

Now this BT can be defined in two ways.

We can put a "// # define BT" at the very beginning of the code like this :

//# DEFINE BT
public class hello extends MIDlet {

we can also assign some value to it and it will work. so lets first put it that way only. the code will look like this :

//#define BT
//#define GP
//#define WMA

public class hello extends MIDlet {


protected void destroyApp(boolean arg0) throws MIDletStateChangeException {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

protected void pauseApp() {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

protected void startApp() throws MIDletStateChangeException {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub


//#ifdef BT

System.out.println("BT is supported");
//#else

System.out.println("BT is not supported");
//#endif
//#ifdef GP
System.out.println("GP is supported");

//#else
System.out.println("GP is not supported");
//#endif

//#ifdef WMA

System.out.println("WMA is supported");
//#else

System.out.println("WMA is not supported");
//#endif
//#ifdef S60
System.out.println("S60 is supported");

//#else
System.out.println("S60 is not supported");
//#endif

}

}

and after u have build it if you go to your project folder , you can see the processed code in the ".processed folder". The processed code will look like this :

//#define BT
//#define GP
//#define WMA

public class hello extends MIDlet {


protected void destroyApp(boolean arg0) throws MIDletStateChangeException {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

protected void pauseApp() {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

protected void startApp() throws MIDletStateChangeException {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub


//#ifdef BT

System.out.println("BT is supported");
//#else
//@
//@ System.out.println("BT is not supported");
//#endif
//#ifdef GP
System.out.println("GP is supported");

//#else
//@ System.out.println("GP is not supported");
//#endif

//#ifdef WMA

System.out.println("WMA is supported");
//#else
//@
//@ System.out.println("WMA is not supported");
//#endif
//#ifdef S60
//@ System.out.println("S60 is supported");
//@
//#else
System.out.println("S60 is not supported");
//#endif

}

}

You can see that in this processed code everyting is commented out which is not needed or has not been defined. The @ symbol lines are never processed so they never goes into the final build and keeps the jar file light . thats the main crux of using preprocessors. If everything goes fine you will be seeing this output on your console :

Running with storage root DefaultGrayPhone
BT is supported
GP is supported
WMA is supported
S60 is not supported
Execution completed.
703621 bytecodes executed
8 thread switches
740 classes in the system (including system classes)
3601 dynamic objects allocated (100244 bytes)
2 garbage collections (86440 bytes collected)

So much for this preprocessors, so finally we have got it running but this happens to be very crude method and if we happen to be defining preprocessors on the go then we are doomed for it.

The better way to do it is using build.xml and antenna. I will be telling you about it in next post.

down with cold

Hi :(
Feels like my whole world is experincing a gear shift as everything seems to be shaky. I have been down with acute coryza or more commonly known as common cold for last two days, and trust me this is the worst disease of the world. Its so bad that till now there is no concrete medication plan for it. In terms of statistics it comes first overcoming AIDS , Cancer and many other deadly dieseases.

Its so bad that everyday it accounts for many man hours lost all over the world .

There is also a whole website dedicated to it in case if someone of you wants to know more about it.

http://www.commoncold.org.

As far as my cold goes i think i will go back home now and can do with a good herbal tea .

hail sneezers,

bbye

UR TOMORROW WITHOUT ME...

I promise u no tomorrow ,

but today will always last.

n' since each day is the same,

there is no longing for the past.

when tomorrow starts without me,

n' i am not there to see,

sun should rise and,

find ur eyes, all filled with

tears for me...

Do not think that we are far apart.

for everytime u think of me,

i am right there in ur heart.

I will be listening to every whisper of urs,

and mine eyes will be filled,

from the tears of urs.

Ur every beat will be felt right inside me,

asif its my heart beating inside o urs.

When tomorrow will start without me,

don't even think u are without me.

coz till now i was walking with u,

but now, i am living inside u.

ur every decision will be backened by me,

and whenever ur heart skips a beat,

it will be me not satisfied with me.

So when tomorrow starts without me,

don't feel lonely without me,

just close ur eyes n' try to feel me,

I WILL BE INSIDE U,

TALKING TO ME. . .

Getting techie :)

So, my worst fear came true. my client removed me from my only project on which i was working giving the reason that he dont see any value add from my part. now can anyone let me know how can you be doing the value add when you are not even allowed breathing space to think something different and when its the client who is the sailor and we are just the working crew who are supposed to know only two words "aye sir".

Anyways so now as am sitting idle i thought of doing something for which i was trying to find out time but was not able to.

I started fiddling around with Android.

Android is a new mobile OS stack launched by Google with its partnership with a new company also named as Android . I hope i have got the facts right here.

Its supposed to be open source and the next best thing which could have happened to the mobile device develpoment.

so, as mobiles are what are giving me bread and butter and google is what i think is my alma meter i thought why not give it a look . and here is what my first impressions says about it.

Android is here to stay. It seems to have everything which me as a developer would like to have in a mobile OS. It is open source if you know what it mean, it treats all the applications no matter whether they are system applications or the third party applications equal. It has got its own security sand box model which will never allow you to do fishy things with the system even on being treated egqual to system applications.

Android seems to have incorporated a lot of things from the wide number of mobile OS available in the market. It has taken all the good things of them , have put some good things of its own , and has still left it open for further improovement.

what else would you want from google. The sdk support from googel itself is great. the only thing which i found quite irritating is the kind of documentation they have done.

As the development for android is done in java, and java is the most widely used language nowdays so everyone is under impression that developing for android would be a cake walk. but its not so. Because on the very first hand they have introduced so many new apis that one get boggled by the way applications are getting created in it. they have also drifted away from the traditional way of coding in java which i found quite complex at first glance but as i started getting hang of it i came to a conclusion that they have done it for the better.

Designing UI is what seems to be the biggest challange for all mobile developers till now , and on this front all points goes to the Android. Their XML layout based approach is going to sweep the market like anything.

Switching of displays is also very easy in it as you just have to change the layout and its done.

The look and feel of UI and the way events are handled in it is awesome . Also its going to give IPHONE a run for its money in the way applicaitons come and go. it seems so seemless.

So this was my first feel of Android not much techie just an overview. will be discussing it more in coming days . here are few pics of what i developed.