Victor blogs

3 must have apps on your windows mobile phone

2009-01-25T07:36:00.003+05:30

If you are a windows mobile phone user, I'd recommend the following apps.

1) Fring - A swiss army knife for your IM and call needs.
2) IRIS Browser - A Webkit based browser from WM. Far advanced than IE from first impressions.
3) Google maps - Simply great, if you have a GPS embedded on your phone.

I upgraded my Samsung BlackJack 2 to WM 6.1 today and installed these apps , I love the phone once again :)

Why nature photography rocks

2008-10-21T00:47:00.005+05:30

Just a passing thought.. Landscape photography is so much better because you don't need anyone's 'permission' to shoot a picture. Go to a beach you cannot touch your camera b'coz its infested with kids running in their undies. Go to a public park you have kids again in baseball attires .. so don't even think of touching your camera.

I just wonder if people are so conscious about their privacy what happens to all the videos that get taken when one goes to a office / grocer/ bank or gas station. I guess they are just being touchy for the sake of it. RANT.

Harbor seals at danger in La Jolla, California

2008-09-21T00:00:00.023+05:30

Casa Beach, also known as the Children's Pool, is a tiny beach in La Jolla, California that is famous for its colony of harbor seals that rest and give birth there. Unfortunately, there is a recent move to dredge the beach and make it into a “bathing pool” thereby leading to the habitat loss of harbor seals that live there. The approximately 200 strong harbor seal colony at this site is the only one of its kind in Southern California. This beach is a rookery where pups are born on the beach every year. If this dredging plan goes ahead we will no more see the seals on the beach.

The threats that these seals face are multi pronged. Local fishermen feel that the seals feeding on the fish affect their catch, and there are instances where these fishermen kill the seals. In addition to this, there are reports of hobby hunters who derive pleasure in killing or maiming the seals.

Finally we have some wealthy and influential local residents who do not like the seals being there for reasons such as the odor caused by the excretion, higher traffic because of the people coming to see the seals and they would like to have the luxury their own private sun bathe beach
without the crowds.

Uncertain times ahead: Harbor seals resting at Casa Beach, La Jolla California.

I happened to speak with Marjanne Alam a member of a group called APRL(Animal Protection and Rescue League) who was doing a night‐watch to try prevent and document any harassment of these helpless creatures. In what she describes as a ‘scandalous’ turn of event, the concerned authorities have approved dredging of the beach immediately, not even waiting for the permits to be issued by the local governmental, military and environmental authorities.

A voice for the voiceless: Marjanne explains the plight of seals.

Marjanne who works for the United Nations Environmental program says that there is a blatant disregard for the habitat of these creatures. She cites the example of how the kelp forests in the seas are under severe threat as a result of unchecked otter and sea urchin populations, which was in turn caused by the killing of sea lions.

Marjanne also narrated incidents to me, which describe pressure tactics and harassment by the civic authorities towards APRL volunteers, because the people who oppose the seals being at the cove are rich and influential. The most evident example of this is the fact that two lifeguards were placed under restraint order because of their involvement in harassment of ARPL volunteers.

The problem here is that despite of having a federal law that prohibits interfering with the habitat, the city of San Diego has favored the opening up of this tiny strip of sand beach to human use, whereby jeopardizing the home of these seals which are very shy in nature. This move apparently is in contradiction with the federal law.

Harbor seals must haul‐out (come out of the water onto dry land) each day in order to survive. Between 30% and 40% of their time is spent in this way. Harbor seals spend their entire lives along the same stretch of coastline. If the proposed drudging plan goes ahead we will see the habitat loss of these helpless animals, and in the near future we would also see how the eco‐system gets affected.

As a parting thought we need to understand that we need respect for the environment that we live in. The present day that we live in is not inherited by us, but our children lease it to us.

Build contract first web services using CXF+JAXWS+JAXB & Spring

2008-09-09T09:30:00.011+05:30

Today at work, I had to port a spring web services based application into using CXF. I found that the documentation of apache CXF is scattered all over the place and so I decided to write this one place stop to get one running . We will develop a 'complex' webservice that takes in the first name and last name of a person and returns it in the format lastname, firstname

Assumptions

1) You are familiar with the basics of Maven.
2) The steps outlined will have a affinity to use Eclipse as the IDE.
3) You will need JDK 1.5 or higher coz we will be using annotations.

The first step in developing the web service is to get your build system up.

Task 1: Setup the project in Eclipse.

Issue the command


mvn archetype:create -DgroupId=com.cxftest -DartifactId=CXFTest

This creates the basic skeleton of the project. Next, cd in to the cxftest directory and issue the following commands


mkdir src/main/webapp

mkdir src/main/resources

Next run


mvn eclipse:clean eclipse:eclipse -Dwtpversion=1.5

This creates the basic structure of your eclipse project.

Now lets add the dependencies needed by the project


<properties>
        <cxf.version>2.1</cxf.version>
        <spring.version>2.5</spring.version>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
            <artifactId>cxf-rt-core</artifactId>
            <version>${cxf.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
            <artifactId>cxf-rt-frontend-jaxws</artifactId>
            <version>${cxf.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
            <artifactId>cxf-rt-transports-http</artifactId>
            <version>${cxf.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
            <artifactId>cxf-common-utilities</artifactId>
            <version>${cxf.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
            <version>4.4</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

Task 2 :Define the contract

Define the schema / contract for communication.
a) Define the xsd schema for communication; lets call it NameFormat.xsd. This file will define both the input that the system expects as well as the expected output from the system. In other words this XML document defines the contract of the system.



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
    targetNamespace="http://www.cxftest.org" elementFormDefault="qualified">


    <!--  Define the request -->
    <xs:complexType name="FormatRequest">
        <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element name="firstName" type="xs:string" />
            <xs:element name="lastName" type="xs:string" />
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
   
        <!--  Define the response -->
    <xs:complexType name="FormatResponse">
        <xs:sequence>
            <xs:element name="formattedName" type="xs:string" />
        </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
</xs:schema>

Save this file under src/main/resources

Task 3: Automate all the mundane stuff.

Maven pitches in here to save a lot of time here so that we need to only concentrate on building our business logic.

First we need to setup JAXB, to execute the xjc task so that it generates Java classes from the XSD that we defined earlier.

for that add the following code to your POM.xml under the plugins section



    <plugin>
                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                <artifactId>jaxb2-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>xjc</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
               </executions>
               <configuration>
                    <packageName>com.cxftest.model</packageName> <!-- The name of your source package under which the source classes get generated -->
           <schemaDirectory>src/main/resources</schemaDirectory> <!-- The path where you have placed the XSD -->
               </configuration>
           </plugin>

     <plugin>
               <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
               <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
               <configuration>
                   <source>1.5</source>
                   <target>1.5</target>
               </configuration>
           </plugin>

These two plugins will read the XSD and generate the source code of the expected inputs and output objects.

This is how the final POM will look



<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.cxftest</groupId>
    <artifactId>CXFTest</artifactId>
    <packaging>war</packaging>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <name>CXFTest</name>
    <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
    <properties>
        <cxf.version>2.1</cxf.version>
        <spring.version>2.5</spring.version>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
            <artifactId>cxf-rt-core</artifactId>
            <version>${cxf.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
            <artifactId>cxf-rt-frontend-jaxws</artifactId>
            <version>${cxf.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
            <artifactId>cxf-rt-transports-http</artifactId>
            <version>${cxf.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
            <artifactId>cxf-common-utilities</artifactId>
            <version>${cxf.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
            <version>${spring.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
            <version>4.4</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                <artifactId>jaxb2-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>xjc</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
                <configuration>
                    <!--
                        The name of your source package under which the source classes get
                        generated
                    -->
                    <packageName>com.cxftest.model</packageName>
                    <!--
                        The path where you have placed the XSD from which the code needs
                        to generated
                    -->
                    <schemaDirectory>src/main/resources</schemaDirectory>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <source>1.5</source>
                    <target>1.5</target>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
           
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

Task 4: Code the web service.

Now code the implementation of the web services. Following the grand tradition of coding to interfaces lets define the interface for the web service as shown below.



package com.cxftest.service;

import javax.jws.WebMethod;
import javax.jws.WebService;

import com.cxftest.model.FormatRequest;
import com.cxftest.model.FormatResponse;


@WebService(targetNamespace="http://www.cxftest.org")
public interface NameFormatterService {
    @WebMethod
    public abstract FormatResponse formatName(FormatRequest request);

}

After this is done, lets Code the implementation of what our web service is supposed to do.


/**
 *
 */
package com.cxftest.service;

import javax.jws.WebMethod;
import javax.jws.WebService;

import com.cxftest.model.FormatRequest;
import com.cxftest.model.FormatResponse;

/**
 * @author jvictor
 *
 */


@WebService (targetNamespace="http://www.cxftest.org",  endpointInterface="com.cxftest.service.NameFormatterService")
public class NameFormatterServiceImpl implements NameFormatterService {
   
    /* (non-Javadoc)
     * @see com.cxftest.service.NameFormatterService#formatName(com.cxftest.model.FormatRequest)
     */
   
    @WebMethod
    public FormatResponse formatName(FormatRequest request){
        FormatResponse response = new FormatResponse();
        response.setFormattedName(request.getLastName() "," request.getFirstName());
        return response;
    }

}

Task 5: Wire up everything

The first thing that we need to do is to declare a servlet in our web.xml and configure it to receive all incoming requests. My web .xml looks like this



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app id="WebApp_9" version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">
    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>classpath:appContext.xml</param-value>
    </context-param>
    <listener>
        <listener-class> org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
        </listener-class>
    </listener>
    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>
             org.apache.cxf.transport.servlet.CXFServlet
        </servlet-class>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

Note the <context-param> and <listener> are being defined in the web.xml, this is how we bootstrap spring.
Also note how an instance of org.apache.cxf.transport.servlet.CXFServlet is used to service all requests.

The final part in the JIGSAW is the spring application context xml definition for spring.



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xmlns:jee="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee" xmlns:jaxws="http://cxf.apache.org/jaxws"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
           http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee-2.5.xsd
           http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-2.5.xsd
           http://cxf.apache.org/jaxws http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/jaxws.xsd"
    default-dependency-check="none" default-lazy-init="false">
   
    <!-- Load the needed resources that are present in the cxf* jars -->
    <import resource="classpath:META-INF/cxf/cxf.xml" />
    <import resource="classpath:META-INF/cxf/cxf-extension-soap.xml" />
    <import resource="classpath:META-INF/cxf/cxf-servlet.xml" />

    <!--  Hook up the web service -->
    <jaxws:endpoint
      id="formatterService"
      implementor="com.cxftest.service.NameFormatterServiceImpl"
      address="/format" />
   
</beans>

Task 6:
Finally run


mvn eclipse:clean eclipse:eclipse -Dwtpversion=1.5
mvn clean compile

Refresh the project and fire up the webservice !

Chula Vista nature centre

2008-09-08T06:19:00.006+05:30

Today I took time off to visit the Chula Vista Nature centre close to San Diego. The nature centre is located just off the San diego bay and the major part of it is comprised of a marsh. There is a shuttle bus that operates every 30 minutes ( I guess). On reaching the parking lot, you will be picked up by the bus. A 2-3 minutes drive through the marsh puts you at the centre where you checkin by buying a ticket.(Adult tickets are 6 $)

It was a 25x2 mile drive , and I guess was not worth it in terms of photographic opportunities. However I did manage to get some snaps of the Great American Bald Eagle. That was the only thing I could find interesting enough to aim the camera at.. Nevertheless I was lucky enough to be there on feeding time to see some pretty "gory" scenes of how the eagle feeds.

In addition to the birds, there is also a small aquarium which keeps sharks and rays , people are welcome to interact and touch the sting rays and learn about their feeding patterns and habitat. Overall I think its a place that kids will like because they can physically interact with sharks and rays.

From what I saw, the centre stresses on habitat loss of animals and plants that are local to California, and they are trying to push the message to save the habitat.

When I boarded the shuttle bus to return, I had this thought echoing in my mind, have we humans infested this planet ? Are we taking away the right of other species to exist ?. Don't animals too have the same right as we do have to live on this planet ? Will be too late to realize this ? The plain truth is that we cannot survive single handedly on this planet.

A visit to Birch aquarium, San Diego

2008-08-17T11:17:00.019+05:30

This is my first in the series of blogs that deal with an issue that is close to my heart, nature. As my first step I decided to visit Birch Aquarium at San Diego. Birch Aquarium lies nestled against the pacific Ocean at La Jolla. The aquarium founded in 1905, is a pioneer in oceanography and states it primary goals as spread awareness about the oceans through creative exhibits, programs, and activities designed to help people use critical thinking, and to make science relevant to their daily lives.

If you ask me I would say that the size of the exhibit area is modest, with maybe 20- 30 tanks in total , but the work that goes behind the scenes is tremendous with data oceanic data collection centres spread over 100 countries and various points in the international waters. In fact there are some robots designed that submerge in the oceans for a months time, collect data, pop up and then relay the data over to satellites collecting and collating them.

The exhibits involve anything from Jelly fishes to Sharks, with explanations including their habitat, the various challenges they are facing to exist and so on.

I found that the visitor population was mainly consisted of kids and families, and the aquarium indeed provides ample opportunity for photography. The best thing I found about the aquarium is that they are eager to share the information that they are collecting and have a lot of interactive programs. Which makes it a highly desirable place for an inquisitive mind.

There is an opportunity to interact with the research scholars and scientists on every third Saturday of the month. I was not aware of this and reached late. I plan to attend the interaction program next month though. (Hopefully)

Overall the staff are very knowledgeable and are patient enough to explain things over and over to each one visiting the place. I plan to visit Birch aquarium in the near future and follow up on this blog series soon.

The real curse that India faces today

2008-07-10T09:32:00.008+05:30

India is once again going through a phase of political volatility on account of the Indo-US nuclear deal. From a neutral stand point the deal is good for both countries in the context of business as well as bilateral ties and energy security for the country in the long term, however there exists one big problem that India faces in going ahead with the deal - The filthy political situation that the country is in.

We have a bunch of opposition parties that have made up their mind that no matter what the govt proposes ; we will oppose it. That is the stand that they take. National interest doesn't matter to them. The final nail on the coffin is a bunch of concrete headed communists who are supporting the govt from 'outside'.

The whole principle of supporting from outside is the most easy way of getting around, wherein they don't want to take any responsibilities but enjoy a clout in everything that the govt has to do. They can stand out and criticize the govt for everything and if needed can distance themselves from anything un-favorable. To be bluntly put its power without responsibility.

This typically reminds me of the state that I come from -'Kerala'. The state has the name 'God's own country' but I would like to rename it to 'God's DISowned country'. For the records this is the state which has 100% literacy, and one of the states with the highest life expectancy. Ironically this is the state that has the highest unemployment, highest suicide rate and highest per-capita alcohol consumption in India.

There is an underlying reason for all this. The state has a communist work force, A work force that is interested in double the wages for no job done.Can you believe that if a truck carrying cement to a construction site comes, the person doing the construction has no authority on whom to hire to unload the materials, and has to pay the laborers who 'watch' the unload of the materials if it is a automated tipper truck?

Any industry that has dared to venture into the state has been brought to its knees by the labo(u)r unions and the strikes that they initiate. Everyone is aware of their rights but not their duties.

The industries cannot be sure that they can even operate for 150 days in a year in the state, everyday there is some reason or the other for a 'strike'/ lockout. You cannot be sure of making it to the airport or railway station because a strike may come up that fast. The basic equation of industries = jobs = money = better living conditions have never seemed to dawn on these people.

The children that grow up in the state are constantly bombarded with these antics right from school, once they enter college there is another face of the communists that are there to feed on the raging hormones of teenagers, called the Students Federation of India, If you are a member of that political party you can be sure of two things , 1) You can beat up anyone and there will be a big bunch of goons to do that and support you. 2) You will get beaten up someday by the someone you beat up earlier or just because someone feels that you deserve a few blows.

This vicious cycle goes on, and the number of lives lost in campuses are far too many to be counted. Is this how we are bringing forth the next generation who have to shape the country ?

Yet another choice that a college student has is- to be a part of a communalist student party called ABVP, the aforesaid rules of the game apply to you if you are in this party too.

Finally if you believe in non-violence ( in other words - only wanted to get beaten up) you can join the KSU. You can be sure that if you are a member of this party you can get beaten up by SFI as well as ABVP goons, so its a win-win situation for them.

This entire gamut of beating , getting beaten up with the surplus mix of strikes and lockouts results in exodus of educated minds from the state, which is finally left with 'political thinkers', jobless youth, govt employees who have a high sense of entitlement and retired parents whose children are abroad / out of the state earning their living. In fact around 25 % of the states GDP comes from remittances from abroad. The most funniest part is that the same union leaders who go abroad or to other states, work really hard without any complains.

Coming back to the core of the issue, The SFI portrays the image of a rebel , a leftist wing that roots itself on Marxist and Leninist ideologies and opposes anything that comes their way. This is the mindset that the communists who were supporting the central govt took, they have no mature leader who knows how to run a portfolio in the govt, the only qualification they have is that they are communists, and they will oppose anything that they get to know. They effectively managed to stranglehold the govt and thwart many reforms that would've been good for the people in the long run.

Basically they have aged in their views about India and the world around them, but they still believe that they are the young rebels who can set things right. Unfortunately India has gone much farther than they have realized, there is a burgeoning middle class that is enthusiastic about a better tomorrow, a 300 million and daily growing band of people who want to live a better life than what they have today.

The communists have not learned from the lessons the world has taught them. They are not ready to learn the results from communism in Europe / Russia or for that matter even China !. They seem to have forgot the fact that they got 50 odd seats in the parliament due to some miracle and they will never again have that number , specially because of the arrogant, ignorant and anti national stand they have taken. They are talking of buying oil from Iran when the whole world is trying to seek cleaner sources of energy. This typically highlights their ignorance on global issues like climate change and global warming, and also their straight jacketed logic that anything that has the word "USA" is bad.

Anyone sensible understands that BJP is opposing the deal just because of sore grapes syndrome and the greed to get to power asap, it is quite politically 'acceptable' that they being the largest opposition party should create a ruckus for everything. Hence the stand on the issue would not surprise anyone.

While the political drama of getting a 'vote of trust' unfolds in the following weeks, the commies have exposed themselves and stand isolated than ever before, holding on to their obsolete principles that were developed during the time of Karl Marx and Lenin , God save the country from these loonies !

What India needs today is a bi-polar democracy that can complete 5 years in power uninterrupted, that way the country can focus on having a brighter future than worrying how to be in power for another day.

LCD brightness on ubuntu (hardy) partial solution

2008-06-27T10:04:00.004+05:30

I have been trying to fiddle around with ubuntu to try the system to set my LCD brightness to minimum when the machine boots up, so far I've been able to partially fix the problem by adding a script that looks like this into the gnome sessions by adding the command


gksudo /home/jvictor/.bright/set_brightness.sh

This is the content of the script


#!/bin/bash
echo 10 > /proc/acpi/video/GFX0/LCD/brightness

I guess that


#!/bin/bash
echo 10 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness

should also work

Now edit the sudoers file to have an entry


jvictor ALL = (ALL) NOPASSWD: /home/jvictor/.bright/set_brightness.sh

This ensures that the script is run as root without bugging me for a password.

This solution works when I log in after a reboot. However it fails when the system resumes from sleep or hibernate.

I tried putting in scripts in /etc/init.d etc /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d but it does not help the cause, maybe I need to spend a few more hours on this..

IF anyone has any idea on how to get this working it'll be very helpful and I can save a few hours of time !

java.lang.DAMMException

2008-05-14T02:55:00.002+05:30

I had to debug some code at work today and this is the actual content from the log file...

INFO | jvm 1 | 2008/05/13 22:24:22 | ADMIN : Initiating OTSAdmin
INFO | jvm 1 | 2008/05/13 22:24:22 | DAMM EXCEPTION --com.ots.admin.err.OtsException
INFO | jvm 1 | 2008/05/13 22:24:22 | INIT EXCEPTION --com.ots.admin.err.OtsException
INFO | jvm 1 | 2008/05/13 22:24:22 | ADMIN : ERR: SYSTEM ERROR..Shutting Down...for Error

I have nothing more to say ! :)

Vis(hi)ta , mysql and all the crap...

2008-04-03T04:19:00.004+05:30

I have been trying to setup my dev: env on my high horse riding windows vista and its just not possible to install mysql on the damn OS.. Either it is MySQL's fault that they dont test the installation on a vista machine OR its M$'s fault that they have this bloody access control that prevents one from using his computer. There are some posts on the mysql forms that suggest you to install some shareware to hack the exe .. but I am not willing to do it.. Whatever it is, it is me the end user who has to go thru the entire frustration !

Pizza place at San Diego

2008-03-15T11:12:00.004+05:30

BJ's Pizza and brewery is a great place to have Chicago style pizzas. The service is good, the pizza is excellent,and the ambiance is also warm, If you ever happen to be there dont forget to wash the pizza down with one of the home brewed beers

A must watch movie.. Taare Zameen par.

2008-03-04T23:43:00.004+05:30

I'm not a movie person in general but catch a movie here and there.. This weekend I happened to watch "Taare Zameen Par", a Hindi movie that tells the story of a boy affected by dyslexia, and the internal struggles he faces. The movie leaves a strong impact on you, making you to think. It presents a real world problem with zero fluff and a clear solution to the problem. IMHO I feel that anyone who is a parent or who is 'planning' to be a parent should watch this movie. Basically the movie takes you back to the days when you were in school , so you are able to relate to the entire story.

The 'hero' a kid who is 8-9 years of age, has done a stunning job and Aamir khan has also done a great job in directing the movie. However I feel that the camera work has not been on par with the brilliant story line & direction. It *could* have been way better.

Overall its one of the movies you will never forget in your life.

Linux shell for windows in 5 easy steps

2008-02-07T13:42:00.002+05:30

A common source of annoyance in windows is that the shell aka cmd sucks. One of the best features I like in Linux is the shell, so I came up with the following way to setup a shell on Vista

1) Get the fonts right

Download all the 6 fonts from here

Copy them into c:\windows\fonts

open terminal, click on left top icon, properties , fonts , choose Raster fonts, select 6 x 13,

select layout enter window size as 80 and height as 20.

make sure the screen buffer size is also 80.

2) Get UNIX command implementations

Get the bundle here, extract it into some directory of your choice and add the /usr/local/wbin to your PATH variable

3) Get BASH

Get the BASH shell for windows from here , and copy bash.exe and bash.dll into the directory where unxutils were extracted.

4) Set your HOME variable to point to you home directory and copy .bashrc into it.

5) Create a shortcut with the following command to be run

cmd.exe /K bash

Thats it ! Enjoy :)

Binil, heres the screenshot :)

My new year resolutions for '08

2008-01-09T21:51:00.000+05:30

Yet another year is here, and I plan to accomplish the following this year

1) Learn a Scripting language , perhaps Ruby

2) Supplement the scripting language knowledge by mastering RoR (is there something called mastery ?)

3) Dont waste time by switching between Operating Systems ( Windows vs Linux).. stick with one :)

4) This is the BIGGEST one... get my tummy flat :).. theres around an inch of fat there...lets see how that goes. P.S (I've already broke the gym schedule yesterday..)

TPTP Eclipse setup

2007-04-08T02:58:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer-: I am no expert in TPTP, and you cannot take me to a court of law if things go haywire.

I decided to write this blog because most of the information around is bit scattered and time consuming to figure out.

This blog *may* help you in setting up your TPTP environment on eclipse.

Install JDK 1.5. ; JDK 1.6 will _NOT_ work

First of all download version 3.2.2 of eclipse.

Using your software update manager, install WTP(1.5.3) and its pre-requisites like GEF EMF etc.

Download Agent controller from
http://archive.eclipse.org/tptp/4.2.0/TPTP-4.2.0-200606190100A/agntctrl.win_ia32-TPTP-4.2.0.zip

Unzip and put it in a folder of your choice

Go into the bin directory within the agent controller

Run the file SetConfig.bat from a command prompt/shell.

Next copy the path to this (bin) folder, and add it to your PATH variable.(doubt if this is really needed)

Start the application called RAServer.exe

Run eclipse.

Create a new JBOSS runtime if it does not exist,

In the VM arguments for the server add this to the end of the existing argument list

-XrunpiAgent:server=enabled

Apply the changes

Start the server

Go to Run > profile > Attach -Java process

Double click it to create a new configuration

Select localhost:10002 (and test the connection, make sure you get a success).

Go to the agents tab(If you dont find, make sure RAServer.exe is running and you have JBoss also working)

There should be one agent on the left side.

Add it to the list of selected agents.

Go to the monitor tab and select the ones you need.(I use Memory & Execution time)

Click Apply , Profile

This should open the profile perspective

Right click on the node that says and select the option start monitoring.. that should set you up and running.

Now you can access your application and see how things are going.

Dont forget to change the filters to monitor classes relevant to your environment

Oracle XE | HTTP login issue | workaround

2007-01-06T14:16:00.000+05:30

When i tried out Oracle XE Edgy eft, I found that there seems to be a bug in the linux install (.deb) file that doesnt allow you to login to the http interface after installation.. if you select some other port than 8080.. to over come this you need to run this small script ..

SQL> begin
2 dbms_xdb.sethttpport('9090');
3 end;
4 /

This was needed for me coz most of my java appservers worked on 8080 and i was too lazy to change all of them :)

Spring MVC or Webwork ?

2006-06-11T16:40:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer::
To start with, I'm new to both of these frameworks and am looking at both of them with a fresh pair of eyes. And these are the first impressions I get when I look at both these frameworks. I dont have anything against or for the developers of both these frameworks.

It all started with a session that I attended at Thoughtworks on 'Spring Experiences'. Eventhough I'd heard of the name 'webwork' a trillion times, I never bothered to look at it bcoz of the 'pre-notion' :- Why another MVC framework ?

I'm on the way of developing an open-src j2ee based elementary school information mgmt system. Now this needs to be a web-app and nothing more than that. I dont expect and foresee other EJB clients / Web Services clients /PDAs accessing this app b'coz its completely going to be on the administrative side of a school; only used by the admin, office staff and (rarely) prinicipal of the school. This is the 'domain' and scope of the problem at hand.

Initially I planned to do this using Spring MVC+ Hibernate + MySQL. However when I started to use Spring MVC it didnt look very sweet to me because of two reasons

1) Lack of books that cover Spring MVC; Maybe this is because of the fact that Spring is 'vast' and each area that it covers needs a separate book I guess...and also due to the time & 'space' constraints imposed on authors.

2) I did not find Spring MVCs view part that elegant, specially the bind tag.

At this juncture I was fortunate enough to attend a session on Spring MVC at TW India where some of thier developers explained the 'experiences' they had with Spring and which was very much in tally with my 'experience' too.

At the end of the session there came in a discussion where webwork was discussed for a couple of minutes.. I thought 'Ok let me see what this is all about.." I picked up the book "Webwork in Action" and started off rightaway, I must admit that this is one of the best books I've read anywhere in the past 6 months. The presentation is excellent and has the look and feel of a step -by - step tutorial that starts simple and moves to more complex topics, and shows how easily WW handles it.

(In fact I'd almost lost hope on these kind of books after reading some recent books on popular IOC based frameworks. WW-I-A is definitely a welcome change to it and I would highly recommend having a copy of it..)

4 hrs down I was left thinking "should I use Spring MVC for my project ?" WW is essentialy quick to pick up if you know Struts and is undoubtedly one of the best successors to Struts.

The tag libraries are pretty easy to follow.

Looks easier than struts

In general it looks like WW has learned from the pitfalls / grey areas of struts and corrected them.

I also just glanced thru the topics that were illustrating use of IOC in WW. Ivent wrote code usings WW's IOC implementation so I am **not** qualified enough to comment on it at this point of time.

In overall webwork looks a bit more 'friendly and familiar' to me than S-MVC when we have a web-app and nothing more than that in hand.

So here I am thinking of replacing Spring MVC to adopt WW. I need to complete the book b4 I make a final decision, but I must say:- 'now' WW looks closer to adopt than Spring MVC.