23 and counting!

Last week I celebrated my 23rd birthday with my family and friends. It was fun having such a wonderful time, being in the center of everybody's attention. Since it was a weekday, the morning was routine, but I had a great time in the evening. Bala and Srinath had come over, they made me cut a cake, but the thing that ill remember is the photo they took of me. It was a front profile, with a sign board saying "I am Madhu, 23 , SINGLE". There was one gift that I had asked of these guys but they disappointed me (although i was not too hopeful of them getting me that). Weekend was more fun. I met with my BMS friends, and school friends. There was lot of catching up done. All said, it was an awesome week! Truly enjoyed it, and all the credit goes to my friends who made me feel great. Thanks a lot guys.

Green Message

We had a video contest in IBM, to mark the Earth Day Celebrations. The theme was to prepare a 1 minute video, which shows how we can make earth a better place to live in. The ideas ranged from personal green behavior to conservation in business (office). I had posted couple of ideas in this contest.

Cousin's Marriage

Its always awesome fun to spend time with family and relatives. The marriage was in my native place (Ramanathapura in Hassan district). This place is on the banks of River Cauvery filled with lots of temples. It was even more pleasing to see everyone in wedding attire, happily moving around, aimlessly, smiling at strangers! I wish the newly weds a happy married life!

Cafe Babe!

I have been working on Java for 2 years now. But I got to know about this kinky side of java couple of days back. Till then, whenever i felt the need to look at a compiled java class i used to use either a Java Decompiler or use javap (disassembler). But 2 days back I used a Hex Editor to view it. And to my shock found the first 32 bits to be 0xcafe 0xbabe. What a genius who wrote java compiler. Relating everything to Coffee, Coffee bars and the beautiful gals who come there. It definitely has to be a man. To my surprise I found that a java interpreter determines whether it is a java class file or not, by looking at first 2 Bytes. So all newbie hackers out there(like me), who want to deal in the world of 0's and 1's can think of this as a humble start!

Accident

I met with a small accident yesterday while coming to work in the morning. It was peak hour traffic. And as usual, there was chaos on the road. I was 50 feet from a intersection which was deadlocked. Some how a goods carrier managed to avoid the deadlock and started to move towards me in the opposite direction. Both of us (me and the goods carrier), where on the wrong sides of the road. We were in a American style of driving. He passed me on my left, and I was watching him all the way through. But suddenly he decided to take a sharp left turn. His carriage part started to scrape my left back door. By the time I realized it and got out of my vehicle he was long gone. The damage to my vehicle was pretty bad. Although there was no dents, the door was pretty badly scratched, and my door handle was broken. I was very disappointed all the way through to the office(which further took 30 mins). But once in the office, I started to think over of what had happened, and realized that it wasn't the goods carrier drivers mistake either. It was just plain bad luck coupled with the congested streets of Bangalore. With the hike in the fuel prices, and worst traffic management system in any metro of the world, working from home would always be a better option. Another problem for the new government to tackle. I'll have to shell out a considerable amount to get my car back to shape. Pretty disappointing day. :-(

Experience with Retroweaver!

Develop With 1.5 And Deploy With 1.4!

For a couple of months now I am using a open source project called Retroweaver. The objective of the Retroweaver is to weave JDK 5.0 compiled java class files to run on a JVM1.4.x. It means that the Retroweaver is a bytecode weaver, that enables us to take advantage of the new Java 1.5 language features, while still retaining total binary compatability with 1.4 virtual machines. Retroweaver operates by transforming Java class files compiled by a 1.5 compiler into version 1.4 class files which can then be run on any 1.4 virtual machine. All the generics, annotation support, Enum, varargs, extended 'for' loops, reflect API's etc. which are all features on Java 1.5+ can be now used in Java 1.4.

Very impressive till now. It promises a lot of thing, and most of them do work wonderfully well. Although the concept they use to weave is pretty simple (they mirror all the java class files that are specific to 1.5 and produce 2 jar files. First one is used to weave the 1.5 class files. This runs through all the class files, finds all the instances where 1.5 features/API's are used and replaces by its own API's. Ex: When it finds the statement "import java.lang.annotation.Annotation; ", it replaces it with "import net.sourceforge.retroweaver.java.lang.annotation.Annotation;". The second jar file is the runtime jar file. This contains all the "replica" 1.5 rt.jar files which are not there/modified in 1.4. Pretty simple ah?

Now coming to the other side of the story. Till now I have mentioned all the good features about this product. So let me mention all the negatives about it as well. It is very depressing to see a dormant open source community. I am not sure if many people are actually using this product. Because I myself have encountered many bugs in it, and when I raise these defects, only ONE person always replies (that too delayed response). There are 2 full time developers, no committers that i know of, and no one who keeps a close eye on the forums/mailing list/bug reports. So if you have a bug, you better solve it yourself than wait for them. I have done this a couple of times now, after painfully waiting for 1 month for a reply from them. The other sad part about this product is the code, which is not up to the mark, in the sense that, a 3rd party user can never understand their code( no comments, no java docs).

Overall I am actually not very impressed by this product. Not a product I would recommend any one. There are similar other open source project like the RetroTranslator, which unfortunately faces the same problems. So 2/5 rating for Retroweaver. Don't use it unless you don't have any other alternative.

New era of Petaflop!

Yesterday, the IBM developed "RoadRunner" supercomputer for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, broke a historic barrier: one thousand trillion calculations per second -or one “petaflop.” I was really excited to hear this news, and to know that my company is constantly pushing the barriers of innovation, to make the world a better place to live in.

A test for the new government

Its been a week since the new BJP government took control of my state, Karnataka. Surprisingly they are still in partying mood. The tell-sign indication for this is that, there is absolutely no news about development, the fertilizer shortage problem or the hogenakkal water dispute being tackled. Before the elections I was certainly sure that a BJP government (without coalition) would be the best bet for the future. Now the certainty in my mind is slowly fading away. I think the 3 seats which BJP were short of having a clear majority might just be the turning point for the next 4 years. The individuals who have come in, have absolutely no interest in the well being of the state. If there were to be a 51% majority for BJP, these individual candidates would have been sitting in the parliament back rows, with no body caring for their views. Now that they are in the limelight they are trying to make the maximum use of it. Other day I heard that one of them was demanding the Deputy Chief Minister post. How daring! I was never sure of the commanding authority of our Chief Minister Shri BSY, and now I am not sure he can handle the crisis situations. Hopefully he will prove me and all of the detractors wrong. For BJP to win in the center, its imperative how the BJP led states perform in the next 10 months. This according to me is the best way to canvas their ideology.

Kick start for CAT preparation

Yesterday, I took a Mock CAT test to start my preparation for the Nov'08 CAT exam. As everyone knows, this is probably the most competitive exam (if not in quality at least in the number of people appearing for few thousand seats) in India. I got a lot of suggestions that I should have started the preparation a lot earlier (in Feb itself) and some told me to join coaching classes. But I didn't find both of these advices useful because I have seen people who start preparation very early, lose steam when they near the D-Day. I am also of the feeling that, for such exams, one has to put all the efforts by himself. No use attending a class where they might concentrate on section that we are strong at, and completely waste our time! And also they are pretty expensive for a 4 month training (that too only on weekends). I know people who "waste" 20 precious hours of their weekends listening to some listless lectures. Quite sad! Coming back to my Mock test. It didn't go as expected, but I was not completely off mark either. I definitely have to improve on my verbal and quant skills.

New Beginning!

Form today onwards i am going to start this highly addictive hobby (which is catching up with anyone and everyone who wants to share their thoughts). I'll be posting all the day to day activities in my life (both personal and professional). I'll also be posting interesting facts/articles about my industry (Computer Science).