Word of the Wise – 2

IE7 Beta 2….When IE7 Beta 1 was out, I was very excited. I was nothing but let down when I saw the things it had to offer. The interface was sucky. It crashed too many times. Took up lots of memory etc etc. Internet Explorer 6 had been my favorite browser for a long time and I really wanted to see more in IE. Mozilla is very good no doubt and flock is amazing too. Somehow, I still stuck to the good ol’ IE 6. So, Its IE 7 Beta 2 time now and I decided to try it out. My first impression was like wow!! Its got a beautiful interface. Tabbed browsing. Takes up more memory than IE 6 but my AMD Sempron w/ 1 gig RAM doesnt seem to mind its presence at all. Ofcourse, its got the much awaited RSS syndication, an impressive screenshot viewer and a phishing filter (i don’t wish to understand all this fuss abt phishing shit, it jus sounds cool). There is a cool zoom functionality as well but I am not too impressed with it. Overall I am quite contented with the performance and I recommend IE 7 Beta 2 to anyone who wants to try out a new, cool-looking and feature-packed browser.

MSN seem to have finally woken up from the brain death suffered from too much money and attention and they are coming up with pretty good stuff. Suddenly all MSN pages have become very simple and I give it to you MSN, they look cool. What I wanted to say is about http://favorites.live.com. Its basically like http://del.icio.us. Comes with a search functionality, which is pretty good. I could import my IE favorites to live.com. There is one thing missing though. Favorites.live.com doesn’t seem to have a feature using which I can synch my IE favorites. It will be good if someone comes up with a plug-in for this. There is no delete-all feature too. While I want my favorites to be on the web, I don’t want to add them twice. MSN can get some clues from flock here.

Much abt IE. The weekend was jus awesome. Had a ball!!!

technorati tags: Internet Explorer, IE, MSN

God’s Debris

Came across this book recently. Its an excellent work. A must read….

 http://images.ucomics.com/images/pdfs/sadams/godsdebris.pdf

Word of the Wise

Well, It has been a long time since anything here…Anyways no excuses, I am jus a lazy bum. In anycase, this post is not about my laziness and definitely not about my bum, which I am sure you are not interested in.

It has been quite sometime since I had met with my friends and out of the blue we jus planned to go watch this movie called ‘Paramasivan’. We went in like 3 bikes and ofcourse thalai took a different route and I lost way. When we reached the theatre eventually the show had started and we would miss 15 minutes if we were to go in then. Suddenly we realised that the most significant person of ‘da gang’ is missing. Thalai!!! Apparently, he had gone to park his bike (was quite hilarious coz he walked like a block away to park his bike when the whole world had used the pavement to park). So finally when we decided to watch the movie it was like 45 minutes late. We went in, ofcourse we din miss much, it was heroine’s family intro song and ya I don wanna talk abt it anymore. About the movie, to say it in Sun TV style, Paramasivan, PeeSivan (no offence ).

I am jus thinking about the other latest movie I watched. ‘Schindler’s List’. There has been very few movies at the end of which I had found myself wiping those little droplets I hide cautiously from the rest of the World. I am no altruist. Infact I am more hedonic and tend to call myself an objectivist, blah blah. Yet, I really was moved. Instantly, I remembered this quote from Spartacus (not the kubrick version, the one with rohana mitra in it), I love Humanity its jus the people I cant stand. It was a spiritual experience watching the movie. Not always you say something like I am glad I watched the movie.

It was also a week of depressing workload. Any software developer would know how it is to just endlessly debug to keep those bugs off your back (No offence PMs, I love you all) . I learnt a lot of lessons but.
1. Never ever set to code without knowing what exactly you are doing, in other words yes you can learn as you code but for pete’s sake make sure you have a bloody foundation on what you are coding in.
2. Create as many screenshots as you can and make sure the clients approve those screens before you code them. Change of elements or functionalities are a pain in the ass.
3. Clients, may the love of God be with them, are fickle minded creatures. And they think programs are materialised from thin air using a magic wand.
4. Spend time in design and make sure your design is robust. When you have written some 5k lines of code, thinking about changing the design is like fishing for a flea in an Elepahant’s ass
5. Try to write a program that automatically blocks any addresses ending with .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com or wotever.
6. Have a proper schedule. If you are not able to meet a deadline, you are better off working the next day instead of working the whole night and turning in a mediocre work.
7. You need atleast 3 people in a development team. If your company cannot afford more than one developer on a project, atleast make sure you make one of your co-developers understand your design and get feedback. Even if you don’t get any feedback you will get a different perspective yourself. DONOT try this on your girlfriend, the consequences might be fatal.

There is more to be written….Will continue later in the day…

technorati tags: Software, Paramasivan, Schindler’s List, Lessons

Haiku – Translation

I know my translation sucks, bear with me.

In English : http://australia.poetryinternational.org/cwolk/view/25630 – Jane Gibian

outside the temple
buying a white bird
to set free

கோவிலுக்கு வெளியே
வெண்புறா ஒன்று வாங்குகிறேன்
பாவம் சுதந்திரமாய் பறக்கட்டும்!

crowded streets at dusk
a single shirt dances
on the rooftop

மாலை நேரக் கூட்டத்தைப்
பார்த்துக் குதியாட்டம் போடுகிறது
மாடியில் தனியாத் தொங்கும் சட்டை ஒன்று!

easy silence
taking the bunch of keys
warm from your hand

இயல்பான அமைதி
உன் கையிலிருக்கும் சாவிக்கொத்தின்
கதகதப்பு!

just over there
both ends
of the rainbow

வானவில்லின் இரு முனைகள்
அதோ!

Thanks for the link, Siddarth [anubudan].

technorati tags: Poems, Haiku, tamil, தமிழ்

Putfile.com, Singapore and Capital Punishment

http://www.putfile.com/putfile-goodbye-to-singapore.php

If you are wondering what putfile.com does, they host images and videos for free on net!!!

Well, talking about the issue, Singapore Dailys were buzzing with this news sometime back. As a resident of Singapore and part of a university community, no one i knew really gave a shit about Singapore’s decision to hang him. I really appreciate Singapore for not budging to pressure and the decision to enforce what they think is good for their country. If ‘Sovereignty’ means ‘supreme authority within a country’, Singapore as a sovereign nation has every right to castigate someone that commits a crime on Singapore soil that is identified as a high-risk threat to Singapore. Singapore, has always been very clear about drug trafficking and the punishment meted out. So, I guess the question of whether Singapore should have gone ahead and hanged that guy is inapplicable here. It is perfectly acceptable if Singapore thinks drug-trafficking is as serious as killing Australian tourists.

I would like to say, for the record, I think Capital punishment is something that has to be abolished and more humane approaches should be adopted towards punishing, detaining and reforming criminals.

The point here is, Singapore is not the only country with capital punishment. China executes Criminals and India hangs them. And what about severing arms and legs?? If putfile.com, really wants to fight against this ‘barbaric punishment’, they should stop service to India and Saudi Arabia. This is not even double standards. This is sheer stupidity. I wouldn’t have considered registering my disgust, had Putfile.com decided to stop service to Singapore without putting forward this issue as its rationale/ motivator. After all, Singapore has the highest percentage of death punishments in the World. Will they do the same to other countries with hanging as the capital-punishment as well? Why didn’t putfile.com block India or even register a grunt over this issue. If you are fighting against capital punishment, do it fairly. Hope this not a marketing strategy. It stinks.

technorati tags: putfile.com, Singapore

Test

Here is a small intro about myself. I am Prabhu, a software consultant by profession. I live in Singapore and I am passionate about Poems, Philosophy, Music and English. Have a nice time checking this blog out. Feel free to leave comments.