Mind spills

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[pauldatta]

Remember that Ruby is designed for giving maximum power to professional programmers. It is not designed to give armies of morons an opportunity to create some kind of reliable code (what Java is for).

http://blog.jayfields.com/2006/12/ruby-constant-values.html

[pauldatta]

Hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned about systems—about the world—from taking things apart, seeing how they work and using this knowledge to create new and interesting thing - Zuck

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/02/zuckerberg-hacker/

[pauldatta]

MIUI ROM App Force Close Issue Fix

This fix will only work if you know what your doing. You need to have a rooted phone but then again if you are on MIUI (or any custom ROM) you will know what the below means.

I use the MIUI ROM from Galnet (http://galnetmiui.co.uk/landing/ics-builds/) ICS builds for my Samsung Galaxy S I9000. I noticed last night that a lot of my applications started force closing on their own. I looked at the force close error stacktrace and observed that all errors were caused by an SQLiteDiskIOException which means the applications were force closing simply because there were no space on the phone for them to store cache data.

This was insane as I had recently factory reset and flashed this ROM and had only a few essential applications installed instead of the usual 250 or so I had when I was on Darky ROM 10.2.2 EE.

The Fix -

I opened my terminal and ran this - du -dl /data/data | sort -n

I then realized that this was too geeky and used this instead - Disk Usage - a lovely app that shows you your disk space in a nice graphical interactive way.

I believe you can find more details on these issues with a search. According to some post, and I agree that this is not a permanent fix, it has to be rectified at the MIUI rom level.

\data and folders within this - this is where the user apps and related stuff are stored. this is where most of the rom storage is allocated.

\data\data - stores the apps configuration and run time data such as setting, lib, database For some reason (MIUI ROM Configuration I suppose), there is another folder, \datadata which stores the actual app data. Since \datadata is not under \data, it has limited storage space assigned. The \data\data is only a link to the \datadata folder, hence it has the same storage limitation. Hence, by moving \datadata to \data\data, you set \data\data to contain the actual app data. It also inherited the allowable storage from \data. The app starts to force close because it runs out of space in \data\data to store the app data.

The end :) Please use FileExpert to make the above changes or use App Cache Cleaner to clear cache occasionally.

I know MIUI sim-linked the the /data/data folder to /datadata to improve performance or something. Will dig into this later. Clearing cache solves the problem. Please also uninstall Adobe Air (sorry Adobe) as it takes up a lot of cache (28MB) for no reason and I know I'm never going to use it as Flash is dead.

[pauldatta]

Conspiracy Theory: Google, Gmail and the iPhone

Some background -

Google released a native Gmail app for the iOS platform - iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.(Read the links for more info)

The theory -

People have been using iOS devices for over five years now. They have grown to love the iPhone and have faithfully accepted its flaws and upgraded whenever required. The iPhone is a stunning device and this is not a rant against it or its platform. This is simply an observation I made while pondering over why Google did what it did.

The Gmail native application for the iOS platform was flawed. If you look at this link you will see that a lot has been made of it. It did manage to get onto the store passing through all of Apple's "security and scanning" so to speak which means it did work properly at some point in time.

Why would Google release something that doesnt work - or atleast does but doesnt - you see, push notifications, the most hyped feature, something that the iOS platform is anyway lame at, didn't work. It was slow, didn't support attachments etc

When key things, things that matter stop working, I think its strategy.

Getting to the point -

Google was smart. They released an app that could have been released some 4 years ago on a platform they have been slowly trying to infiltrate. The problems or bugs the Gmail app demonstrated got a lot of people talking. Lots of important klout filled popular people (Scoble etc) tweeted and blogged and facebooked and huddled on how buggy the app was and how it didnt do anything right. Fail right?

That was the point.

You see, now all iOS users will realize that in order to have a good Google experience with Gmail and Youtube one needs to use Android.

What everyone is doing right now by dishing at the Gmail native app for iOS is simply reinstating this claim. The iOS platform cannot and will never ever be the best place to do anything Google!

Google did this with their first native IOS app - Search - but people didnt make a big deal of all its bugs.

Everyone uses Gmail and everyone has said all the right things about its native iOS app. YES, the bugs are the right things. The kind of hype its getting is exactly what Google needs - to show the world that while they may be nice to release native iOS apps of their services, what the user misses in terms of experience can only be found on an Android device.

Way to go Google. Now take weeks to push updates on that app. Its doomed anyway.

Kamikaze style -

Here is the Gmail app on the iPhone -

This is what happens when you use it on a non Android device -

[pauldatta]

How a well designed mobile application and decent internet speeds can alter where one publishes content on the internet

Well to be completely honest, I stopped blogging on Tumblr a few months after I got my first Android phone. The reason behind this was simple - the Tumblr Android application was terrible and could never post a single thing through it on my really slow GPRS connection. I gave this up altogether and began using Facebook, its Android application and mobile site really worked.

I began posting all sorts of really short status updates on Facebook and since people responded nicely to them, I continued to do so. I also posted images from my phone and people liked them which was encouraging. I decided to use Facebook only for friends and family (private).

I thus got interested in mobile photography and began using a service called Picplz- this was new at the time and had a good Android app. It was fun. The Picplz community was new and its users uploaded a lot of good content. Picplz eventually did really well and became the number one photo sharing service on Android.

I then stopped Tweeting - also cause the Twitter Android application stopped working with my really bad GPRS connection.

Then came Google+. Google did one smart thing - they made a really nice, useable, fast Android app for the Google+ service and boy did that make me happy. Google plus became my blogging platform. I began posting all sorts of absurd things. A few people began to "encircle" me - most of them were programmers or IT people from Russia :) (what a surprise).

A summary of how things stand -

Facebook - Used to publish private content only to friends and family. People I've met in real life so to speak.

Google+ - Used as a blog for now. Until it dies or something happens.

Twitter - Used for all sorts of dribble and cross linking.

Picplz - The only photo sharing service I use

Tumblr - ? (Darn!)

That's how life is right now.You see how the presence of a good mobile application that works has completely changed the way I publish content on the internet. I have thus always chosen to go with what works best over what is popular. Since the only piece of technology I own at this moment is my phone, it will continue to dictate terms till something replaces it :)

I have no clue what to do with this blog of mine, I shall let it sit pretty and occasionally use it to post something. I do not know how many people actually read this (or any of the above for that matter), if you do, please leave a comment or contact me on any of the above services.

[pauldatta]

"Wrong" SMS

In India, the chances that you receive phone calls from people dialing in the wrong number. is pretty high. We usually refer to such calls as "Wrong number" which also happens to be the most commonly oftenly used phrase to deal with the nuisance.

"Hello is this _____"

"No wrong number" <slam>

Thats how most of those go, some people are more polite though and actually chat (creepy).

This post is about a "wrong" sms - someone sent me an SMS last night thinking I was someone else. Here is how it went down - (Senders sms are in bold)

Gud ni8 swt drms tak care.

Me: Who is this?

I m L.D.PRAKASH.

(This Google Images search of the above is kinda weird especially if you remove the safe filter and scroll)

Me: Oh Ok :)

U r hari.

Me: Nope, are you certain that can happen? Will this name change cause me to see fame and fortune?

(refer to this garb : http://www.lucky-name-numerology.com/)

U r name hari ah.

Me: Not really. Btw, it must be really difficult for you to keep adding the full stop to the end of every sms don't you think?

Oh i m very very sorry.gud ni8 innimel intha numberuka msg pannathiga

(Now I didn't understand this at all. It sounded apologetic)

Me: Begone Schurke, nur ein Scherz. Ich weiß, passieren Fehler.

Yes I am sure he dint bother with that either.

[pauldatta]

Are your details in the Income Tax department of India's database correct?

We all have PAN cards (Permanent Account Number) in India which we often use as identification proof.

I have one as well. I discovered today that though my name, father's name, photograph and signature on the card are correct, the details in the IT departments database are wrong. i found this out while trying to register on the IT return site as each time I entered my name it checked the database and gave me a validation error -

Please recitfy the following errors(s):

Your first name doesnt match with the data you entered..

This is due to the name being incorrectly entered in the Tax department's database. Their error message had a typo :)

Here is what I did -

Go to the following URL https://onlineservices.tin.nsdl.com/etaxnew/tdsnontds.jsp (This is the site to make online payment to the tax dept.)

Select 'Challan No. /ITNS 280'

Enter your PAN and other mandatory details and click 'Proceed'.

The screen that comes next will ask you to verify if the name corresponds to the PAN no. Here's where you will see some discrepancy that the tax dept. database has regarding your name.

You can file an application to the tax dept to correct your name here - https://tin.tin.nsdl.com/pan/index.html

[pauldatta]

Terminal Feedback

I was sitting at my desk a few moments ago when I decided to mess with my terminal. At times when I feel like taking a break, I begin to fidget with either my phone, the computer at work or people around me.

I asked the terminal - Am I working hard enough? Am I productive?

[ The questions mentioned above are in English but they mean the same as the below ]

history |  awk '{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head

The terminal replied -

905 git 199 rake 163 clear 95 cd 63 script/server 57 sudo 40 ll 39 mysql 38 repo 31 history

The above is a list of my most used commands and the number of times I've typed them in. I've passed so to speak :)

Click here if you don't know what a terminal is.

What does your terminal tell you?

Run the command I've mentioned above and ask it the same.

[pauldatta]

Proxy Rants

While figuring things out this morning, I discovered that my proxy administrator redirected every blocked domain to a little quote machine informing me politely that I was trying to do something that he had denied me access to already. Here are some of those -

Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.

-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"

Snow Day -- stay home.

..and before I could copy paste all of those and finish this post he ended up granting me access to that particular site thus denying me even further. I hope we become best friends.

[pauldatta]

Using Google Analytics with Tumblr

Google Analytics is a great free service for measuring traffic on up to five web sites. It can help you learn things like how many users are visiting your blog — and how often, which of your posts are the most popular, which search terms visitors are finding you through, and where in the world your visitors are coming from.

Some blog themes have an option in the Customize area on the Appearance tab for you to simply paste in a Google Analytics ID. If your theme supports that, pasting in the Google Analytics ID and saving are all you need to do to install Google Analytics. If your theme doesn't support that, follow the directions below.

Step 1.  You'll need a Google/Gmail account. If you don't have one yet, it only takes a minute to sign up.

Step 2.  Head to http://www.google.com/analytics/ and log in with your Google account.

Step 3.  Click "Add Website Profile".

Step 4.  Select "Add a Profile for a new domain".

Step 5. In the URL field, enter your tumblelog's URL. This will be something like "pauldatta.tumblr.com". If you're using a custom domain, enter that instead.

Step 6.  Click "Continue".

Step 7.  Highlight and copy the code that appears on the next page.

Step 8.  Open your Tumblr Dashboard in a new window, click the "Customize" link, and click the Info tab.

Step 9.  Paste the Google Analytics code into the "Description" field and click "Save Changes".

Step 10.  Go back to the Google Analytics window and click "Finish".

All done!

Note: If you are using a theme that doesn't include the Description, you will have to put the Google Analytics code into the Custom HTML for your theme. Click the Theme tab instead of the Info tab and then click the Use Custom HTML link at the bottom of the tab. The code can go at the end of the Body area of your Custom HTML.

[kaching]

[pauldatta]

These three-dimensional pencil drawings by Chilean artist Fredo are absolutely mind-blowing! The 17-year-old prodigy draws objects that look like they’re about to jump off the page! In fact, by taking pictures of his art at just the right angle, it’s hard to differentiate what’s real and what’s not. (via Unbelievable 3D Drawings (16 pieces) - My Modern Metropolis)

[via: kaching]

[pauldatta]

Designations

[via an email]

Project Manager

A Person who thinks nine women can deliver a baby in One month.  

Developer

A Person who thinks it will take 18 months to deliver a Baby.

On-site Coordinator

Is one who thinks single woman can deliver nine babies in one month.

Client

Is the one who doesn't know why he wants a baby.

Marketing Manager

Is a person who thinks he can deliver a baby even if no man and woman are available.

Resource Optimization Team

Thinks they don't need a man or woman; they'll produce a child with zero resources.

Documentation Team

Thinks they don't care whether the child is delivered, they'll just document 9 months

Quality Auditor

A person who is never happy with the PROCESS to produce a baby.

Tester

A person who always tells his wife that this is not the Right baby.

HR manager

A person who thinks that a donkey can deliver a human baby in given 9 months

[wisa-wall]

Guess who painted these works of art? Any ideas? The person who painted these pictures wanted to attend the Viennese academy of Fine Arts and become famous as an artist. If he had been accepted by the academy, world history would have been much different.

[pauldatta]

His name was Adolf Hitler.

[via wisawall:]

[pauldatta]

Mobile Photography

I haven't been posting for a while but I really felt like sharing the following links with you -

http://aaronsgross.tumblr.com/archive

http://gnuhaus.tumblr.com/archive

Please look at their images - really amazing.

What is even more amazing is that they have taken all these pictures on their iPhones, slightly low-res, using an application that adds effects once the image is taken. This application works only at a certain resolution so any 2MP and above image is scaled down slightly.

The images speak for themselves. I want to take such pictures. Are you interested?

Working in a cabin doesn't really help here :)

[pauldatta]

It does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop.

Ancient Chinese Guy

[pauldatta]

I love train stations. I took this picture today in Chennai. I wanted to capture what I was thinking.

[pauldatta]

I got up early and walked about a bit, and then went back and began my normal routine