தமிழில் ஒரு தினத்தின் நேரத்தை காலை,மதியானம், சாயங்காலம், இரவு என்று சொல்லுகிறார்கள்.. இதில் காலை என்பதன் பொருள் எனக்கு தெரியவில்லை… தங்களுக்கு தெரிந்தால் சொல்லலாம்!! மற்றவைக்கு என் தமிழ் மூளை சொல்ல பொருள்

மதியானம் : மத்திய வானம்!! சூரியன் “மத்திய வானத்தில்” இருக்கும் நேரம்!!  காலப்போக்கில் திரிந்து மதியானம் என்று ஆகி இருக்கலாம்!!
சாயங்காலம் : சாயும் காலம்!! சூரியன் “சாயும் காலம்”!!!
இரவு : தமிழில் “இரவு” என்றல் கடன் வாங்கு என்று பொருள்.. (நிறைய பேருக்கு நினைவு இருக்கலாம்) நிலவு சூரியனிடத்தில் ஒளியை கடன் வாங்கி நமக்கு தருகிறது!! ஒரு வேளை இதையே தமிழர்கள் இரவு என சொல்லி இருக்கலாம்

ஏதோ எனக்கு தெரிந்த ஒரு சில வார்த்தைகள் இப்போது!!!. வேறு சில வார்த்தைகள் பின்னர்

இப்படி யோசிக்கும் போது எனக்கு தோன்றும் ஒரு எண்ணம் “வாழ்க தமிழ்!!”

நெஜம்மா!!!

The gang: Sankar, Sanjeev, Sriram, Murugan (new member to our gang) and Obviously Me. We daily go for tea. Sometimes talk.. Sometimes, play foosball.. Don’t ask whether we really spend 1 hour for tea!!! (Did I reveal something that is not supposed to be???)

Attempt 1: Towards the end of last year, In our tea time, we were discussing about going somewhere. And we said we’ll go to Goa. We talked abt it for sometime and some more time and then, we decided not to talk about it anymore. (As it was just in talks!!!)

Attemp 2: A couple of months back, we decided to go to Dharmasthala. We decided and fixed on a date. But on that day, Me and Sriram had some bugs to fix and Sanjeev had to go somewhere. And, we proved the world that we cannot implement a plan.

Attempt 3: This time Murugan joined our gang. This time, again, we discussed about a trip and decided on Dharmasthala. But, based on previous experiences, we decided to collect money from all in advance. Term & Condition (Usually Terms & Conditions. As we are intelligent [Told you that this is real in first line itself.], we identified the factor that will not allow any drop outs. ) Money will be collected in advance. It is NON-REFUNDABLE. And Murugan booked a Tempo Traveller immediately. And we decided on a date and we started on that day.

The trip:

Friday night:
I went to Sankar’s house that evening so that we’ll have one less place to stop and as I am the only bachelor in the gang. The cab left bangalore by 11 and then started fun.. We were watching movies in the bus and some of our guys did a night out.. Watched back to back movies and didn’t sleep through out!! I slept. (Advantage of being a bachelor ).

Saturday:
We went to Dharmasthala temple on Saturday Morning. Had a good Dharshan of god. Then came back and had rest for sometime. In the evening we went to the Bahubali temple nearby. On return, we only the guys went for a night walk. We sat near the old car museum. Talked for a while and came back to room and slept. Nothing eventful.

Sunday:
We started around 8:30 – 9:00 in the morning to Kokke Subrahmanya temple. (On the way home). There also we god a good dharshan. Had cucumber with chilli powder.. (After a looong time) and decided to leave around 12:30. So that we’ll reach Bangalore by 8 or 9 at night and will be able to go to office next day.

The return:

The fun begins We started and around 1:15 or so, we were on the Mangalore highway!!! Suddenly, our cab stopped. We were seeing fumes from our engine. The driver said that engine became hot and so we have to wait for sometime. We were roaming around the place and spent around half an hour. But the time engine cooled down. Again we started around 2:00. We would not even gone more than a couple of kilometers and again the engine started fuming.. And our driver found that there was a fan cable and that got cut.. We have to change it to go further.. This happened around 2:15 or so.. Then he said, he’ll go to town and get a new cable.. I think the nearest town was round 30-35 kilometers. And it will take around 1 hour to get to the town because of the road (curved) and lot of container vehicles going on…

We were in the middle of highway. That area is a mountain area and so we didn’t had cellphone signal. We didn’t had lunch and as it is around 2:30, everybody started feeling hungry. Suddenly, my brain (though it is a tubelight, sometime it does!!!) started glowing. We had maggi and Sanjeev has brought his small gas cylinder. The reason is, Sanjeev wanted to give the kids some warm food.. He has lot of experience in going wild/trekking . So he had brought it.. Then we started preparing maggi for everybody and had it. Like this we finished lunch around 3:30. Don’t ask how many of us had full lunch

After this, Sanjeev was looking around in his binoculars and found a bird watch tower somewhere. So we decided to go for a small trekking to it. Sanjeev, Me and Sanjeev’s daughter went for the trekking. She is not more than 4 years and she walked through the forest. She really did.. For some places, he carried her. But, most of the places, she walked by herself. The tower was near and we climbed on it. It was old and it was not maintained for a long time. So we could not actually go the shed that was there at the top. We went till the top most step. We spent a few minutes there and came back down around 4:30.

Still the driver was not back.. We used Sankar’s digicam and we took an interview of the Project Managers we had. (Murugan and Sanjeev). I was the compeering and Sankar was the camera man. We just pulled the managers’ legs And towards the end, they have decided to send somebody to the town to see what happened to the driver. Atleast we can call him from a place where we can get signal and ask about the status.. I was asked to go voluntarily to the town as I am the only bachelor (Disadvantage of being one). To my luck the driver came exactly at 5:00 with the new cable.

He tried to fit the cable. But, as it is a new cable it was very tight and as he didn’t had this experience before, he could not fit it. So we tried a bit but nothing happened. We decided to stop other cabs and ask them for help. Meanwhile, there came an oil container lorry. It didn’t even cross our cab and suddenly the joining rod (in the lorry) broke and it stopped there itself. By that time, we had stopped a cab and that driver was helping us to fit the cable. While this was happening, there was a tata indicab and that too broke down It didn’t start for some time. On seeing that, the person who has hired the other cab (the one who was helping us), started hurrying his driver. It was as if he was telling, “Let us get the hell out of this damned place ” And then they left. But, before going, that driver has given our driver a tip on how to fit the cable. And, as the container lorry was stopped in the middle of the road, I did some traffic police job and helped the lorry driver to get his lorry to the side of the road. Meanwhile, the tata indicab too left.

After all these, our driver could fit the cable at 7 and we started leaving. The good thing was, there was no rain and there was enough brightness till the time we left. (No lights there!! Only natural light.)

On the return, we just pulled Sriram’s legs before his wife and other than that the rest of the travel was uneventful. And, yes, we had heavy dinner at night Finally, we reached Bangalore by 1:45 midnight.

So far, this is one of my unforgettable travel

For all the other teams it would have been one final. But for India, it was a series with three finals.. First Australia, then Pakistan and then Srilanka

Australia -> The defending champions and India defeated them. Though the Aussies’ commitment was great, India’s determination to send them home was greater!!

Pakistan -> Even an ordinary match between India & Pakistan will be treated as a World Cup Final. But, this was a knock out game semi-finals in World Cup. Think about the pressure on the teams. Both teams played well. But Pakistan was not up to the mark. They should have accelerated a bit earlier. Even if India had lost the finals, people would not have worried after this as our team have defeated Pakistan. For the first time in our company’s history, they projected this match on big screens and we all enjoyed the Indian innings.

Im gng to cover this a bit in detail.
Srilanka -> The big match at Mumbai. When chasing in a world cup final, even 200 is a big score to get. Srilanka scored a huge 274 with the help of a great century from Jayawardane. India lost two HUGE early wickets. I kind of lost my hope here. But, the way Gambhir and Kohli carried on was remarkable. (Signs for a bright future for Indian Cricket. Anybody there to contradict????) Murali and Malinga were Srilanka’s strike bowlers. Only thing indians wanted was not to loose their wickets to these guys by playing some rash/big shots. They know that they can compensate it with other bowlers. And the plan was really good and the guys executed it well too. With a wonderful catch by Dilshan, Kohli was replaced by the captain. What a man he is!! Started off slowly but steadily. Built the innings with Gambhir and slowly put pressure on Srilanka. Gambhir could have scored a century but with an unnecessary shot, went to pavilion and came Yuvi. When these two were playing, there was a mis-understanding between them and there was a chance of run out. I saw Dhoni’s expression. He was horrified. It was like a person who has done a crime and got caught. Then he steadied and these two guys made sure the world cup reaches India. When the cup reached India, it was tears of happiness all over.

And everything was for one person. Sachin Tendulkar. The comment from Kohli summarises it all. “He had carried the burden for India on his shoulders for 20 years. It is our time now to carry him on our shoulders!!” What else do you want??

We should not forget the contribution of Gary Kirsten. The coach working on the background. After a forgettable performance in 2007 world cup, he brought the team together and improved them. This guy and Dhoni made India to be at the top of the table in all forms of cricket. ODI/Test/T20.

Proving that INDIA is THE BEST!!! Chak De India!!!

This is Endhiran. The Robot. First of its kind in Tamil Cinema.

Story: Dr. Vaseegaran (Rajni) creates a Robot named Chitti (Rajni) (Happens in the first 5-10 minutes of the movie). And then what happens is the story.

-ves first.. (So that we can end with a positive note )
Things that could have been better:
* Storyline (Kind of predictable).
* Rajni in the action scene on the train.
* Robot’s make up. In some scenes, the face was kind of “plasticky”. Don’t know whether it is intentional as this is a Robot.
That is it with the -ves. (From me).

About the movie:
The first half of the movie is good in setting up the base. A demo (in tiny bits) of what all this Robot can do. With the base being set, the second half has been well built. The abilities of the Robot demonstrated in first half were put into action with the help of great visuals. The first half is full fun, a bit of action some love and it ends with a note of what is coming up next. The second half is something that tamil viewers might have never seen. Basically, a typical tamil movie with some great visuals.

Comedy:
Rajni is very good in comedy. Also, Karunas and Santhanam too has helped in making us laugh.

Dialogues:
“Simple”y superb for a Sci-Fi movie. This is the first full length Sci-Fi movie in tamil and they are able to create it with very minimal computer related terms. People with less education may miss a couple of jokes but that should be ok.

Locations:
“Kadhal Anukkal” and “Kilimanjaro” were shot on amazing locations. If you let me there, I will never come back.

Visuals:
The second half (towards the climax) is simply WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW… (Too much of Os right… Similarly too much of Visual effects. Shankar wanted to put everything he has imagined on screen. So, kind of too much. But taking that out of account, they deserve these many Os.) We’ll think this is it. And something even bigger will come.

Music:
Amazing music. For songs, we have already heard a lot of time. But during action scenes and chase scenes, simply superb.

Director:
Shankar has proved again that he is good. He has just made us see what he has imagined and given a visual treat with the great magician in tamil cinema.

Actors:
Santhanam and Karunas were almost not seen in the 2nd half. Danny a good choice for that character. Reason: For his role, a face well known to tamil audience will not suit. (Im great!! I conveyed what I wanted to say without any spoilers ) Dialogue sync is not so good for him.

Usually in Rajni’s movies, heroines will not be playing a prominent role. Except Padayappa. In the other movies, they will be there in the movie. Even if you removed those characters, you wont miss anything in the movie. But, here Aishwarya Rai plays an integral part of the story and she is there throughout the movie. And, she is still looking good.

Last but not the least: THE BOSS
In Tamil cinema, Rajni has a HUGE (means REALLY HUGE) fan base and even in an ordinary movie, he is like a super hero. (Have a look at the interval scene of Baasha). On screen, when Rajni does some things, it will fall into heroism category. If the same is attempted by ANY OTHER ACTOR, people will not accept it and it will fall into comedy category. Also, he is 2nd actor after MGR who can sing duets in tamil movies even after crossing 60.

As he is the Robot here, the director has taken the liberty of giving him additional powers. Watch the movie for the powers. (In tamil we say something like: Ivan Pongalukke vedi vedippan.. Diwali kedaicha viduvaana??? – Literal meaning: He will burst crackers even for Pongal. Think of what he will do for Diwali!!!) Some are typical Rajini’ish and some are enjoyable. (Especially when Aish gets disturbed in her studies.) This story was initially created for Kamal Hassan. Just imagining, how much change would have gone on screen if kamal has done this movie. That movie would have had a different kind of feel in its own way. Coming to the point, Rajni has done well. He is there almost in all the scenes. Some of the dialogue delivery is simply superb. You can see all types of Rajni here. The scientist Rajni (a very ordinary man) is one we have not seen recently. And Chitti is wonderful. And 2.0 is one we are seeing after a very looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time.

Overall: A simple storyline with some great visual effects and Rajni as the backbone.

This is a prequel to Parthiban kanavu. ie. In Parthiban Kanavu, Narasimha Pallava might be around in his 40s. (My guess!!) But Sivakamiyin Sabatham is his 20s-30s. (If I am wrong, Kalki Plz forgive me.)

The story is as follows: Mahendra Varma Pallava is ruling the Pallava kingdom. His son Narasimha Palla has fallen in love with Sivakami, the greatest dancer in that period. Meanwhile, Pulikesi is trying conquer Kanchi and as he could not, he takes Sivakami with him and cause a serious injury to Mahendra Varma pallava. Narasimha Pallava goes to rescue Sivakami. Did he succeed? Did he married Sivakami? Did Pulikesi die? Read the book. Don’t come to conclusions about the answers/climax

In Parthiban Kanavu, Kalki have mentioned about Mahendra Pallava being intelligent. I didn’t get a measure of how much. But, here, there is a situation in which, he invites Pulikesi to Kanchi for a visit. The arrangements he makes were amazing. He sends somebody out of the fort, invites somebody to the fort. Reason behind those actions were amazing. I could understand the reason behind these actions. (And that made be accept his intelligence.) Though, this is being explained later in the story. And there is one more talent he got. But I dont want to reveal it. It might be a spoiler for Parthiban Kanavu.

From the book, I could learn about ancient culture. Like, their bravery, attitude towards war, the kings’ interests in art, to name a few..

How much those kings celebrated Art. Especially the Pallavas.. They started carving statues from rocks. It became my desire to go to mahabalipuram atleast once. Unfortunately, I have never been there.

Also, when the Pallavas go to fight Pulikesi, Kalki has mentioned that, people were wearing new dresses.. decorated their houses.. As if it was a festival.. The most I was expecting was a big cheer from the people to the soldiers.

And about politics, from the words of Mahendra Varma Pallava, Kalki has explained what all the difficulties of being a king. What is the difference between an ordinary person and a ruler. Simply, WOW…

And as this is a love story, there is a chapter in which Narasimha Varma explains his love to Sivakami.. Simply superb..

I have started reading Ponniyin Selvan.. But so far, I think, that Sivakamiyin Selvan is the best.

Sometime back I went to the public library near my house. I saw a few historical novels by an author called Udhayanan. (I liked all the books except one thing that was common. ie. Introducing a character called Udhayanan in all the books.) Historical novels are part of my favorite reads. (I never scored good marks in history and that is a different story ). So I thought let me give it a try and started reading it. It brought back my memories of the days (abt 15 yrs back. Believe me I read those books in my school days.) I read Sandilyan’s books like Kadal Pura and Raja muthirai. As I have lost those books, I thought of buying them and re-read them. Slowly this became a desire and I decided to buy those books the next time I go to my native. Also I have heard about Kalki and his creations like Parthiban Kanavu, Sivakamiyim Sabatham and Ponniyin Selvan. So decided to buy those books too.

Enough of history. Lets first get started with Parthiban kanavu. (Yes!! You guessed it right.. There will be more posts about the other books too.) As said before, this is not a review just my view about the books.

The story is: (As I have mentioned in one of my previous posts, NO SPOILERS. You can go ahead and read.)
Chola empire was flourishing at the time of the great Karikala chola and now it is not at its best now.It is just a small kingdom. King Parthiban is ruling the Chola kingdom and he refuses to pay duty to Narasimha Varma Pallava. As you have guessed right, Narasimha Varma pallava declares a war against him. Before going to war, Parthiban takes his son Vikaraman to a place where he has drawn paintings of the chola flag flying throughout India and even in other countries. But, the face of the king has not yet been painted. Parthiban explains Vikraman that, it is his desire to get back the fame that Chola kingdom has lost and expand the empire. And fulfill the paintings with the face of the king who achieves it. And again as you have guessed, King Parthiban looses his life in the battle. Before he passes away, a saint comes to him and Parthiban requests the saint to help his son achieve his dream.

To achieve his father’s dream, Vikraman starts with a protest. His uncle deceives him and he gets arrested by the Pallava soldiers. On the way to court, Vikraman sees a girl and falls in love with her. (Yes!!! You guessed it right about who this girl could be.) The pallava king exiles him and send him to an island. Vikraman becomes the king of the island and after three years he comes back to see his mother and the girl. When he comes back, he comes to know that his mother has been kidnapped by the head of the Kapalikas (These guys are known for giving human sacrifices.). With the help of the saint mentioned before, he finds his mother and wins the hand of the girl and did he fulfilled his father’s dream?

A couple of things that I thought that could have been better is: (Could be because of my ignorance about Kalki’s writing style)

In this story, there was room for a BIG suspense. While reading itself, if we could co-relate things, we can easily find out. (I did). So, at the end when the suspense was revealed in the story, it was not a surprise for me.

There were a few situations like Parthiban’s refusal to pay duty, and Vikraman’s argument with Narasimha Pallava about the protest were explained as 3rd person views. ie. Something like, people talking among themselves or somebody narrates to somebody else. If this has been explained directly, the impact would be better.

The good thing was: The bookplay. Back to back events. As this book is small, there was not much details. But in the next book, Sivakamiyin Sabatham, I liked a lot of things. Expect a post soon!!!

In this post, I have mentioned about java.library.path. This is the path where the jvm searches for so/dll files when you do a System.loadLibrary(“LIBRARY”);

When I was writing that post, somewhere I read that we cannot change the “java.library.path” directly. Being an INTELLIGENT programmer, I tried to change the java.library.path property using System.setProperty(“java.library.path”). When I read the property, and got the value that I had set. I thought, those guys where INTELLIGENT. But, when I ran my application I realized that I am actually INTELLIGENT. It was not looking for the libraries that I have given in that property.

Recently, I was googling for an issue and found the following code. This code actually modifies the “java.library.path”.

public static void addDirToJavaLibraryPath(String path)
throws IllegalAccessException, NoSuchFieldException
{
    if (path == null || path.trim().length() == 0)
    {
	return;
    }
    try
    {
	Field field = ClassLoader.class.getDeclaredField("usr_paths");
	field.setAccessible(true);
	String[] paths = (String[]) field.get(null);
	for (int i = 0; i < paths.length; i++)
	{
            // If path is already included
   	    if (path.equals(paths[i]))
	    {
		return;
	    }
	}
        // This is where we change the path
	String[] tmp = new String[paths.length + 1];
	tmp[0] = path;
	System.arraycopy(paths, 0, tmp, 1, paths.length);
	field.set(null, tmp);
    }
    catch (IllegalAccessException e)
    {
	throw e;
    }
    catch (NoSuchFieldException e)
    {
	throw e;
    }
    // The above mentioned change will not be reflected in the property.
    // So, we need to update java.library.path ourselves.
    System.setProperty("java.library.path", path + File.pathSeparator
          + System.getProperty("java.library.path"));
}

Thanks to the person who has actually written the code. I got it from some java forum and copy pasted it here. Typical software engineer. Right??

As I came to know that ubuntu 10.04 got recently released, I decided to install it on my lappy. Initially, I had few doubts. Whether I can go ahead and install it or not. Also, whether it is worth loosing the ability to connect to office VPN.

A few things I noticed in ubuntu:

Boot Speed:
Amazing speed. In OpenSUSE and older versions of ubuntu, it takes around a minute for me to see the login window. With this one, within one minute, I can actually start my work. ie. It just takes around 10-15 seconds MAX (From the grub menu to login screen). And even faster while shutting down. ie. It takes around 3-5 seconds MAX for shutting down.

CPU Fan Utilization:
When I was using OpenSUSE 11.2 on my lappy, after an hour or so, the machine will become hot. It cannot be called a laptop anymore. It has to be called as a boiler . But, after moving to ubuntu, the maximum heat I felt was a slight warmth and no more. I tried installing vmware and another linux OS on top of that. It became hot. Then I realized, my ubuntu was kool and the other OS could not handle the heat

Auto completion in bash:
I tried enabling auto-completion in bash. I thought it will just help me complete typing the parameters for a command. Then I came to know that, it can even complete the path on the remote machine when I do an scp. The following is the setup I have: For doing my unit testing, I copy files from my machine to my test machine through scp. I have written a script that does the copy. For scp keep quite (not prompt for password), I have stored my public key in my test machine’s “~/.ssh/authorized_keys” file. (The public key was generated using ssh-keygen utility.) So that, whenever I connect to my test machine, it doesn’t ask for password. When I was trying to copy a file from my machine, I accidentally pressed tab and got it completed. (This might not be ubuntu specific. But, I found it on ubuntu).

Mounting Windows shares through smb.
When I access windows shares, it mounts it as a folder inside ~/.gvfs. When you write any files there, it will be written on the remote machine. A few months back, I have tried the same (on older version of ubuntu). I tried to launch a terminal on a mounted windows share. All I got was my home directory. Nice improvement.

Verdict: I didn’t repent moving to ubuntu

My issue:
I had to execute an SQL query and print the resultset. I was starting the implementation and I wanted to see the output of the query. We usually work on two machines. One for dev and another for test. So, I ran my program on my test machine and connected to that process through eclipse (Remote Debugging). I got a NullPointerException in the code when I started traversing through the resultset.

Code is something like this: (Dont look at the syntax)
Statement stmt = conn.CreateConnection();
ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery(“My SQL Query here.”);
while(rs.next()) {
I print the values here.
}

When I the ran the code, I got a NullPointerException in the while loop. ie. rs.next(). But, rs it NOT null. So, I tried invoking some other methods in rs. ie. rs.first(), rs.findColumn() and all. Result was either a NullPointerException or ResultSet already closed exception. I could not figure out what is going wrong. That exception was thrown from inside the ResultSet Object. As the jdbc driver I used is not open source, I could not look into it. I spent almost a day on this issue. Wasted some network bandwidth.. Pinged somebody.. tortured somebody.. disturbed somebody.. No help!!!

After some time, by mistake, I executed the code and I forgot to launch the debugger. To my surprise, my code went through like charm. Suddenly I remembered reading (while utilizing the network bandwidth) that the resultset might be garbage collected.

My guess: For some reason, my resultset got garbage collected when I was debugging. But when I ran the code, it worked fine.

If you know the exact answer, please leave a comment. You will be blessed in this life and next

As I have worked mainly with VMware (Not company.. Just the product ), my examples will be mostly (or everything ???) based on that..

How will you create a VM now..
Create a new VM in VMware Workstation, Insert a DVD/CD, install OS on the newly created VM and start using it.

A few questions:

• What if you want to distribute this VM to somebody else?
• What if you want to install your product on top of this VM and distribute it?
• How will you support the customer for their OS related issues?

The answer is SUSESTUDIO. (I am NOT advertising here. ) Novell has come up with an innovative idea of creating virtual machines online using susestudio. You can select the packages you want to have in your distribution, (Obviously it will be a derivative of SuSE.), you can add some build time scripts, startup scripts, include your files. Susestudio will install the packages and build the VM for you and it will be ready to use immediately after you download it . Also, You can create your own repository and include it in studio and ask it to get the packages from there.

Advantages:

• Novell provides support for the OS you have created.
• (The one I liked most) susestudio exposes web based APIs. So, you can make web calls to do the above mentioned steps.. Like, uploading your own files (overlay files), start/stop/remove builds and whatever you will require to automate your build process.(Yes.. I have automated my build script.)
• Help.. In case you got any issues/doubts, you can login to IRC, find somebody and ask for help. Support is really amazing there…(Again Yes.. I have got a lot of support from studio developers.)

In studio, they provide a tab based interface. Like, Base OS selection, Software selection, Configuration, Build. To use the studio, you dont need any expertise. You can just click through and at the end create a build and you have your own linux distribution.

Links u need:
API Documentation
API Key (You need to authenticate with this key to make the web calls. Also, this will prevent others to tamper with your appliance).

Isn’t it kool? Leave your experiences with studio as comments.

Hope there will be more posts on Virtualization