What's worse than

... getting a big dent in your car because some moron crashes into you?

Getting a big dent in your car because some moron has just learned driving and doesn't know how to park yet and bangs into your car (which is quietly enjoying an afternoon nap in the parking lot) and doesn't even have the courtesy to leave a sorry note.

And what is even worse? When the above moron is not some random stranger, but your coworker.

Item #12, coming right up.

Is it time to unsubscribe from the RI blog?

Habits are hard to let go, but for quite some time I have been noticing that RI forum posts are way more interesting than Jeff's blog. No offence, but there's only so much occult and UFO stuff that one can take. I can't even believe half the things there, anyway. Another nit is Jeff's non-usage of blockquote tags, which makes it very difficult to separate what he says from what he quotes.

(This post was triggered by a post expressing a similar sentiment, albeit for different reasons)

Quote of the day

From an RI Forum post:

... dubya will probably be reborn as a slug, or a worm, and probably stay there for several lifetimes. Good hard work building up the soil will be a starting point for his long journey back to sentience.

Movie Review: Ocean's Thirteen

Maybe it's the geek in me, but any movie that has scenes involving computer messages like 'Transferring file from FBI' (gag) instantly loses two stars, notwithstanding the fact that it boasts of a star cast that includes Al Pacino, Brad Pitt and George Clooney.

There's nothing new in the story -- hi-tech gang targets Casino/Bank/Museum and walks away with a gazillion bucks, with the roll of the dice favouring it in all the -- ahem -- dicey situations. I am also fricken tired of the too-clever dialogue, the main purpose of which is to show how smart and clever the characters are, rather than providing entertainment for the audience.

Here's a plot idea for Oceans' Fourteen (do you think we'll get off that lightly, with only two sequels? Oh no): Willie Banks and Terry Benedict join hands together and start a casino on Mars, spending something like a trillion dollars. The casino also serves as a Swiss Bank (should I say Martian Bank) and houses the bestest and the most famous precious stone in the world. The security of the casino/bank is ensured using unbreakable quantum cryptography, developed by a quadruple Nobel/Fields prize winner. Well, unbreakable for mere mortals, actually, for Ocean and his buddies travel back in time and bring back Schrodinger's cat, whose left pupil has the amazing property of decrypting quantum cryptography beams by diffracting with the above diamond's light rays...

Goodbye, Oracle

Well, today seems to be a day of goodbyes.

About six months ago I had wished that we had opted for PostgreSQL as our database backend instead of Oracle, and I'm happy to say that the wish has been granted. Not exactly granted, because moi had a say in pushing for a move away from Oracle and towards Postgres, but I'm not complaining. Our enterprise app has been migrated to PostgreSQL without any hitches. Hibernate and minimal reliance of Oracle-specific features probably contributed a lot to this.

Having worked with Oracle for practically all my professional career, there is an element of bittersweetness about the whole thing (not to mention an erosion of my Oracle skillsets value), but open source is open source, baby.

Goodbye, SUSE

After a long stint with SUSE (and KDE), it's time to bid adieu. openSUSE 10.2 is probably the most bloated and buggy SUSE version I have used till date (for what it's worth, 9.1 was the most solid and polished distro during its time). I am now running Feisty Fawn; I had downloaded 6.10 a while back, and wonder of wonders, it had an option to upgrade to 7.04.

Two things I'm missing in FF are a) its inability to use a higher resolution than 1024x768 (Update: Turns out there is a simple fix for it), and b) the Ubuntu equivalent of Kinternet (I've heard of something called Modem Lights, plan to look into it). But these are more than made up for by Ubuntu's blazing speed and GNOME's simplicity (I know, I have said dirty things about GNOME in the past, but you reach a point in life when you are tired of all the bells and whistles and want to return to Simplicity (tm). Anyway, there was always the nagging but unstated thought at the back of my mind about not staying true to The Unix Way and taking a liking to something like KDE).

Well, talk about irony. I learn the correct way to capitalise openSUSE after I ditch it for good.

Kodai blogging

The helmet controversy

From a letter to The Hindu:

In a democratic society, the view of a majority of two-wheeler riders ought to be the basis for any rule. I am sure most of the two-wheeler riders are not for the compulsory helmet rule. By not wearing a helmet, one does not cause any harm to anyone else. Why should it be forced on the people?

Since I consider most two-wheeler riders to belong to a life form slightly lower than an amoeba, I'd be willing to agree to this sentiment -- I'm all for it if they want to commit harakiri on the streets of Chennai and voluntarily reduce their population, but for the fact that it is not strictly true that they don't harm anybody else by not wearing a helmet. If a helmet-less jerk gets into an accident, he causes more trouble to the other party if he croaks off in said accident than if he suffers only minor injuries.

Swing mini design pattern

I don't know whether this qualifies as a design pattern, but here goes anyway.

Intent/Motivation
You have a Swing MDI application with the main window managing the lifecycles of the child windows. When the user selects a menu option, the corresponding child window should be displayed. But no action should be taken if the menu is selected when the child window is already displayed. We cannot check for the null value of the child window data member (and spawn a new window) because there is no way for the child window to set itself to null when it is closed.

Applicability
Swing MDI applications where only one instance of a child window should be displayed at any point in time.

Implementation
Have the main window class implement a callback interface:

public interface CallBackHandler
{
    public void call(int ID);
}

public class MainWindow implements CallBackHandler
{
    //repeat for each child window
    public static final int CHILDWINDOW1 = 1;
    private ChildWindow1 childWindow1;

    public void call(int windowId)
    {
        //repeat for each child window
        if(windowId == CHILDWINDOW1)
        {
            childWindow1 = null;
        }
    }
        ...

The child window constructor is passed the main window reference (but is only bound to the CallBackHandler, though nothing would prevent a ctor defined with a parameter of type MainWindow and accessing MainWindow's (public) members).

        ...
        //code to invoke child window
        if(childWindow1 == null)
        {
            childWindow1 = new ChildWindow1(this);
            childWindow1.show();
            ...
        }

public class ChildWindow1
{
    private CallBackHandler cbh;
    public ChildWindow1(CallBackHandler cbh)
    {
        this.cbh = cbh;
    }
        ...
        //code in listener that handles window closing
        cbh.call(MainWindow.CHILDWINDOW1);
        ...
}

The Ugly Indian Motorist

As promised. The Ugly Indian Motorist:

1. Will not take his hand off the horn even when he can see that there is no fricken way for the car ahead of him to move even an inch.


2. Will think nothing of driving on the right side of the road in order to overtake a vehicle.


3. While performing the aforementioned overtaking maneuver, will end up blocking the opposite traffic. Everybody sits and cools their heels while UIM sheepishly tries to merge back into his own side of the road.


4. Is under the impression that all vehicles with horsepower less than his own will have to give way for him even if they are already struggling to cling on to the margin of the road.


5. Will respond with a blank stare when posed the term "lane discipline".


6. Ditto for "signal" and "speed limit".


7. Most probably does not know how to read.


8. Most probably drives somebody else's vehicle. In other words, is not responsible for its upkeep.


9. Terrorises hapless vehicles in front of him by revving his massive engine while waiting at the signal (the Big Red Light one needs to stop for, I mean).


10. Chuckles to himself when he thinks of the stupid bureaucrats who have planned for zebras to cross the road when we all know that zebras live only in Africa. Duh!


11. Is geeky enough to sport a bumper sticker that says "No place like 127.0.0.1", but still doesn't know that to turn right, one has to stay in the, um, right lane. On second thoughts, Mr UIM's son in the States probably sent the sticker to dad.


12. Does things like this.

You could've knocked me down with a feather

Congress meeting authorises Sonia to decide on chief ministerial candidate.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

No, this is not turning into a literary blog. Came across this news item, that's all.

What's with Indians and queueing?

Let me qualify that; not Indians in general, but the 'educated', young IT professionals.

There is a coffee counter at the cafeteria at work with three sides from which the vendor can serve customers. Always, and I mean always, my beloved coworkers take up positions on these three sides, not caring about niceties like allowing the vendor to serve others who came before them.

I always make it a point to stand in a queue of sorts, taking care that I don't barge in front of somebody already there. People do cut in front of me, of course, but I limit myself to a dirty look at them and questioning their parentage in my mind. But yesterday I decided to confront one of the jerks, and asked him to join the queue behind me. He did give in to my request, but the look of horror and indignation on the faces of his companions almost made me feel as if I had insulted their mothers.

And to think these are the cream of the shining India, who are powering us into the 21st century.

Tomorrow we will turn our attention to another Ugly Indian, the Ugly Indian Motorist.

Don't you guys have any shame?

As usual, the CWC abdicates all decision-making to the uber-extra-constitutional power.

The Soul of a New Machine

The Soul of a New Machine arrived last Saturday. The story of how some of Data General's smart engineers became disillusioned and quit the company after a pet project of theirs got cancelled reminded me of Cringely's latest essay. Just a coincidence, I thought, until I came to this, at the beginning of Chapter 4:

A young computer engineer, known to be one of the most skillful in Westborough's basement, said he had a fantasy about a better job than his. In it, he goes to work as a janitor for a computer company whose designs leave much to be desired. There, at night, disguised by mop and broom, he sneaks into the offices of the company's engineers and corrects the designs on their blackboards and desks.

Hmmm, I could swear that I've heard this story before.

Looks like a lot of folks drew -- ahem -- inspiration from this classic.

Warning

Eating halwa may be injurious to your health.

BJP is a well-wisher of Muslims

Yeah, in the same way that a wolf prays fervently for the well-being of sheep.

The Accountants' Green Belt

From The Undercover Economist:

Other professionals, like doctors, actuaries, accountants and lawyers manage to maintain high wages through other means than unionisation, erecting virtual 'green belts' to make it harder for potential competitors to set up shop. Typical virtual green belts will include very long qualification periods and professional bodies that give their approval only to a certain number of candidates per year.

Add to this the foiled attempt to restrict their members from acquiring additional qualifications:

The Supreme Court has quashed a notification issued by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) imposing restrictions on its members on the use of the diploma or designation of `CFA' awarded by the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI).

Enough is enough

Notwithstanding all the negative things I've said about Kalam, I'm all for giving him a second term. The way things are going, I'll not be surprised if someone from the DMK is nominated for the presidency (or, heaven forfend, someone from -- shudder -- the PMK).

You know you are living in India

... when it's the 21st century and a paper called The Hindu publishes this on its front page:

The caste composition of the Cabinet is: three Brahmins, one Muslim, one Thakur, one Bhumihar, one Vaishya, four Scheduled Castes and eight OBCs.