My Space

You disappointed us, Tharoor.

2010-05-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

When you became an honorable MP, many of us rejoiced, not because we thought that you will modernize the way democracy is implemented in this country. But we thought you will do better with your background. We thought a person like you with an elite background will try to strike a chord with the poorest of poor people in this country for whom democracy is still a sham. And, all you did is "mentoring" a bunch of filthy rich people to procure an IPL team. Do you really got any experience in running a sport body? If not, what kind of mentoring is this? Having personal calls with the politicians is not really mentoring. Have you ever thought why politicians like you need to "mentor?" Answer is simple. We are following a system that is not all transparent. If you are cricket-lover, you should had been a whistle-blower for that.

People say when you have a bad time, your mind goes wrong. That's what exactly happened when you stated that your intention was to make Keralites proud. You made us disappointed. Good that you stepped down. We are ready to wait for the "Tharoor" we dreamed of. And, we are sure many of them will emerge to take the center stage of Indian politics (in future that’s not so near).

Getting the aperture right

2009-09-21T04:07:00.000-07:00

Getting the aperture right is very important to capture the right picture. The aperture controls the depth-of-field of a photograph. To put it down simple, see the following picture:

You can see the spider and, to certain extent, the web. Nothing beyond the spider is visible. This photograph has a shallow depth of field. Got it? The aperture that I used for this is F5.6. It's called a high aperture. (I will explain why it is called so later.)

Now look at this one:

You can see a hut. Behind that there are trees, and beyond, you will see the clouds that are far away. This is called high depth-of-field. This picture has low aperture. The aperture that I used was F18.

Now, let me explain you what an aperture technically is. Aperture is an opening through which light falls into the digital sensors when you "click" a photo. If you use a bigger opening, more light falls into the sensors. Technically, the number in which aperture size is defined is the focal length of the lens divided by the diameter of the opening. Assume that you are using a 50 mm lens. If your aperture is F5.6, it means the diameter of aperture is 50mm divided by 5.6. That is 8.9 mm.
If the aperture is F18, the diameter of aperture becomes 2.8 mm (50/18). Means higher the number, lesser the light falls into the digital sensors.

Yes, it's a bit confusing. But you don't need to know this when you capture a photo. Every lens will be associated with a high and low aperture. The photographs you have seen are taken using a Canon 50 mm lens. The aperture can vary from a minimum of F5.6to maximum of F21. You need to know when a high or a low aperture is used.

The Children of Heaven

2009-09-09T03:52:00.000-07:00

Last week, I watched an Iranian movie - The Children of Heaven. I loved it. I like movies and books with children as the main characters. In children's world, there is a logic for everything. I think as we grow, we tend to lose this logic.

The movie is about two kids. Ali, the eight-year-old protagonist, lost the shoes of his sister while bringing them back from a shoe repairing shop. Kids know that their father does not have enough money to buy another shoe and they start managing going school with a single pair of Ali's shoes. (They both attend school at different timings). Movie is all about of Ali's struggle in getting a pair of shoe for his sister.

I love Iranian films that use children as main characters to tell a good story. And, they are very successful in communicating what they want to tell.

All about photography

2009-08-07T02:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks a lot, Ree.
Guys (& galls), see the pioneer woman.

Me and financial markets

2009-07-30T03:02:00.000-07:00

In 2000, when I was trying to open a savings bank account with one of the nationalized banks, I was told to submit many details, that made me to think that the intention is to make me not opening the account. When I got my first job, I could easily open an account with a multi-national bank. I have been an ardent fan of liberalization from then onwards. But, nine years afterwards, the melt down of global financial leaders made me to have a re-think. Do governments need to regulate the way financial markets function? Are the financial markets capable enough to manage themselves? Are all of us exploited by the market because of our lack of knowledge?

I found an article about Joseph Stiglitz, an American Economist and Nobel Laureate, interesting. Read more about him here.

Control your expenses; it’s recession

2009-07-22T02:51:00.000-07:00

thesimpledollar: I recently visited this blog. You also get a guide on personal finance management for free. (It’s titled as Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance
On Just One Page.) Though all the points explained by Trent Hamm are not applicable to Indian readers, it’s a good read.

Get your fundamentals right from the open source technologies

2009-07-19T22:15:00.000-07:00

The takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle arises a question: Is it the end of open source initiatives? It's is very clear that Sun's open source initiatives failed to generate enthusiasm in investors. However, the story could have been different, if its operating system, Solaris, could catch a major share of Windows market. I am not going to evaluate the future of open source market here. I just want to emphasis the opportunities that open source technologies provide to students. As long as one gets the software for free, the way it generates money is irrelevant (if one's intention is to study a technology). And, if you are comfortable with the technologies such as Java, MySQL, and so on, I will say that, as a programmer, your fundamentals are right. You will not take too long to be comfortable with related-technologies, such as .Net or Oracle.

Let us take SQL as an example. Are you comfortable with the database concept? I am sure you will get plenty of information from Internet on the concepts and query you use in database. And, Sun provides you a wonderful database, MySQL, at free of cost. Let us see how you can use it for studying the way a database works.

I hope you know about NetBeans, a freely available IDE (Integrated Development Environment) from Sun. The latest version of NetBeans is bundled with MySQL. If you have an old version of NetBeans, you could download MySQL and a driver (a .jar file) that will allow you to connect to MySQL from NetBeans. Try using Google; you will get plenty of information. I have not explained those tasks here. I found the following articles helpful: for NetBeans 6.0 and for NetBeans 5.5.

After you install NetBeans and MySQL, do the following:

1. Open NetBeans.
2. Click the Runtime tab.
3. Click Database.
4. Right-click the mysql schema and click Connect.
If you had provided a password while installing MySQL, you need to provide the password.
5. After getting a successful connection, right-click the schema and click Execute a Command.
In the right pane, a page opens where you can execute a command (query).
6. Let us create a database, emp, first.
Execute the following command:

create table emp (name char(50), salary char(8));

(Type the command and select it, then click Run SQL - the first button from the left.)
A message is displayed that the command is executed successfully.

7. Now let us insert a data into the table. Execute the following command.

insert into emp (name,salary) values ('sunil','1000');

8. Let us view what we created by executing the following command:

select * FROM emp;

You can view the table that you created. This link provides a lot of information about SQL commands.

I found this methodology really helpful when someone learns a new technology. There are many open source products. You may hear a lot about the bugs in the products, their incapability to perform a specific task, and so on. But they really can help you to learn.

Connecting to a non-default port using sftp.jar

2009-04-29T23:03:00.000-07:00

I need to write a program in Java to connect to a non-default port, 22, using ftp. I used the sftp.jar that I downloaded from Internet. By default, when I used the following code, my program connected to port 21, instead of 22.

Ftp ftp = new Ftp("domain-name","user-name","password");
ftp.connect();

I found a method in sctp api, setPort(int port), to set it to a non-default port.

Now the code looks like this:

Ftp ftp = new Ftp("domain-name","user-name","password");
ftp.setPort(22);
ftp.connect();

And, this works. :)

Why don’t they crush the empty plastic bottles?

2009-04-28T22:09:00.001-07:00

A good reading: Are plastic bottles dangerous?

Constructors in Java - Part 2

2009-04-27T22:39:00.000-07:00

What's the output of the following program?

class Constructor2
{
Constructor2()
{
System.out.println ("C");
}
}

class Constructor1 extends Constructor2
{
Constructor1()
{
System.out.println ("B");
}
}

public class Constructor extends Constructor1
{
Constructor()
{
System.out.println ("A");
}
public static void main (String args[])
{
Constructor obj1 = new Constructor();
// Creating an object.
}
}

Program will compile, and if it ran, the following will be printed in each line: C B A. When you create an object for the class Constructor, it invokes the default constructor - that's the no-argument constructor. The default constructor, in turn, invokes the default constructor of its parent class, Constructor 1. And, this constructor invokes the default constructor of its parent class, Constructor2.

Constructors in Java - Part 1

2009-04-26T23:41:00.000-07:00

What will be the output of the following program?

public class Constructor
{
Constructor(String name)
// String argument constructor.
{
System.out.println ("Hello Java!!");
}
public static void main (String args[])
{
Constructor obj1 = new Constructor();
// Creating an object.
}
}

Program will not compile, because the class does not have a no-argument constructor. When you create an object for the class, it searches for the no-argument constructor - the default constructor.
However, if you change the code to create the object to
Constructor obj1 = new Constructor("Hello"), the program will compile. Because, you explicitly mention which constructor to be picked up.
Assume that you don't have a string argument constructor. Then, the code will compile, since Java, by default, create a no-argument constructor.

Mom, are we done?

2009-04-20T21:36:00.000-07:00

"It's too warm in the morning."

A traffic jam at Sony World Junction in Bangalore.
A woman carrying a baby and asking for as a charity.

Quick Batch File Compiler

2009-04-20T01:46:00.000-07:00

Quick Batch File Compiler allows you to compile a bat file
and create an exe. You can also add your files to the exe and
add an icon for the exe. Visit for more details.

Masking a command line parameter using Java

2009-04-16T03:09:00.000-07:00

I didn't know that Java does not allow to mask a parameter that you pass through the command line. For example, user enters a password through the command line.
I, however, found a way to accomplish it. Thanks to Google!! In the ariticle, Password Masking in the Java Programming Language, Qusay H. Mahmoud explained how
to accomplish the same using Java. I found this article extremely helpful. There is a small mistake in the article. In the PasswordField.java file, the developer needs to
import java.io package. Thanks a lot, Qusay !!

Taking a black & white photograph

2009-04-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

Have you ever taken a black & white photograph with a digital camera? Some photographs come out really well in black and white. Most of the digital cameras have this option. (If you do not know how to set this option, right time to go through the user guide of your camera !!!)

This is what you do to take a picture in black & white using a Canon PowerShot SD1000.

1. Press FUNC. SET.
2. In the first option, select Manual - the second one from the left.
3. Press FUNC. SET.
4. Press FUNC. SET again to display the options.
5. In the fourth option from the top (OFF), select the 5th option from the left (BW).(This option is enabled only if you select Manual in step 2.)
6. Press FUNC. SET.
7. Shoot it. :)

Follow these steps in a Lumix DMC - FZ 18.

1. Press Menu.
2. In the REC menu, select the fourth option from the top (Color Effect).
3. Set it to [B/W].

WinSCP

2009-04-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

WinSCP is an open source SFTP and FTP client for
Windows. I used WinSCP to connect to a Linux machine.
It provides a graphical user interface that is very
easy to use. You will get more information at www.winscp.net.

The equals() method in Java

2009-04-09T01:46:00.000-07:00

In Java, use the equals() method if you need to compare two strings.
The equals() method compares only the data stored in the strings. Unlike the ==
method, it does not verify whether both the strings are referred by the same object.

For example, see the following program:
==

@author sunil_bhaskaran
public class Equal
{
public static void main (String args[])
{
String x = new String ("Hello");
String y = new String ("Hello");
if ( x == y)
{
System.out.println("Both the strings are equal");
}
else
{
System.out.println("Both the strings are not equal");
}
}
}
==
Output of the program is: Both the strings are not equal.
If you change the statement to if ( x.equals(y)), the output would be: Both the strings are equal.

Connecting to a non-standard port of an ftp server using the CLI (Command Line Interface)

2009-04-08T21:39:00.000-07:00

I was trying to connect to a non-default port of an ftp server.
I was under the impression that the command to accomplish the same is:

open ip-address:port

It never worked. I was sure the issue is very simple, because I was able to connect to the IP address and the non-standard port using Windows client WS_FTP.

I got it after a long search in Internet. The command is:

open ip-address port

It's not a colon, but a space between the IP address and the port.

Installing ftp server on a Linux machine

2009-04-08T03:52:00.000-07:00

I had to install an ftp server on a Linux machine. I tried some rpms downloaded from the Internet. But, many of them failed to install, because of dependent rpms were not present. At last, I could successfully install the ftp server with the following rpm: vsftpd-1.2.1-5.i386.rpm.

This is what I did:

Installed ftp server.
rpm –Uvh vsftpd-1.2.1-5.i386.rpm

Then, restarted the ftp server.
service vsftpd stop
service vsftpd start

Verified whether the ftp server is listening.
netstat -a | grep ftp

The output showed that the ftp server is running.
tcp 0 0 *:ftp *:* LISTEN

One issue that I had to solve after installing ftp server was I could not ftp to the machine as the root user.
I solved the issue by commenting out root from the following files: /etc/vsftpd.ftpusers and /etc/vsftpd.user_list.