Time and Technology

Well; a blog post after almost 9 months. Its a big time isn't it. Several things happened during this eventful 9 month time-frame. Ups and downs and I was trying hard to make up my mind and to adjust to all odds happening around. I think I finally tamed myself on how to tackle these odds around.

"Never give up" - 3 words

Time is going at a pace which is in no way matching with my thoughts, yet I have to abide. That's the rule.
Technology too is going at a pace; not as fast as time though.

Past 9 months, I was silently watching all the happenings and neither get a chance to express any of my thoughts via blogs. I didn't even express or wrote anything about by Linux powered Nokia N900. What a pity. I feel ashamed :(. And I want to come out of this cage.

As the first yet careful step, The first I did is revamped my blog with the new (well - not sure when google added this) template feature. After an hour hard work, I came up with this decent look for my blog.

A few amazing things which I noted down during this cave age period are

• Google's App inventor for Android - Amazing web app for developing android apps
• Jume - A simple yet powerful social todo online app
• NitDroid - Android port for Nokia Tablets
• Google analytics - A comprehensive analysis tool for your webapp (Even for your blog)
•  Grails - Next gen web Java language I would say

More to come on each topics in next few days. Keep visiting.

Last night in Bangalore

After 6 wonderful years in Bangalore, I'm preparing for my last hours now. Tomorrow will be last day here.

I don't know what to blog at this moment. A lot coming to my mind starting from my very first day when I landed in Bangalore.

Just after my college days, couple of sad days in Chennai after that its like a dream when Lloyd called me and told me to come this tech world, I did not have any second thoughts. I came to Bangalore on a Onam vacation. First day to Office (Integer software solutions), I was nervous, obvious; first job :), met 4-5 mallus too the same day :).

After office hours only I came to know that I am going to stay with my company's CEO only, Ha stunned when i heard that, but when I met my CEO - Prince, I am amazed, em brassed, how can a person can be so enthusiastic, down to earth - yes he is like that only. Lloyd told me that we are taking up a project which cant be imagined by a fresher. A switching software which connects to ATM's, POS terminals etc. And my job was to tame Linux for this project development. I struggled initially, but again Prince took an hour session explaining how to be a successful person in life. Fly like a phoenix bird from turmoils. Lloyd provided my the technical support and Prince the mental support, thats more that enough for a person to survive.

ATM project we executed it, we were able to complete the one in no time. Unfortunately Prince was not able to find a client, thats a sad thing, though the experience we gained out of the project is enormous. Some more name I would like to mention here, Sheru, Jubs, Jeru, Gopz, Peeths... Yes it was a good team, no doubt about it.

After Integer, we; the same team except Gopz and Peeths joined Maintec technologies, I don't have any nice things to share in that company. But again we all the same team, the same commitment, another challenge of creating a Banking software. I decided to look out for a different choice for the first time from there. I worked only for three months and joined new company Fidelity on May-06

Fidelity Investments - Lot of things during the stay for 4 years. Ups and downs. I got lot of exposure, met very talented professionals. Gained a lot of professional knowledge from this company. Its was nice working with Fidelity. But there are some negative thoughts also which I did not want to blog it here. Every year was exciting, but I really enjoyed during my last 2 years working with one of the critical teams (I'm not going to mention the name here, hmmm financial sector, no wonder). During this period I visited Boston. It was one of the dream in my life. I enjoyed the period of 45 days during the stay. One of the things I never forget is my visit to Franklin Street (FSF - Free Software Foundation) HQ.

Yesterday I completed my tenure with Fidelity and relived from the job.

I'll be joining the new company Infosys technologies coming Monday (08-Mar-2010). Yes I'm excited about it. New company, new place. Haa I'll be joining at Kerala (God's own country) Trivandrum campus. One main reason about this excitement is that I can be close to my parents. Hmmm let me see how can I take care of them well.

Stay connected for more updates...

Android experiment with Linux 64

Today I took an initial look into Android in my Linux 64 bit. After some time of initial hiccups with my eclipse IDE (Galileo), I was able to install Android development plug-ins onto eclipse.

Repository to install android is

https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/

After installing I tried creating a new Android project, but my Android preference complained me about my ncurses.so.5 (Unfortunately I have not installed i686 binaries of this library).

$ android-sdk-linux_86/tools/adb version

Rpmfind came to my rescue here in finding the rpm for me. Link to download ncurses.so.5 (32 bit) - This is for FC12

Download and try a yum localinstall

yum localinstall ncurses-libs-5.7-3.20090207.fc12.i686.rpm

After installing adb is giving me version

$ android-sdk-linux_86/tools/adb version
Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.25

Here is a snapshot of downloading android SDK through eclipse

After downloading create a new Android project from eclipse.

I created my first Activity like this

import android.app.Activity;

import android.os.Bundle;

import android.widget.TextView;

public class FirstActivity extends Activity 

{

    /** Called when the activity is first created. */

    @Override

    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) 

    {

        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        TextView tv = new TextView(this);

        tv.setText("Shinus first Android test");

        setContentView(tv);

    }

After this start your emulator (I tried from console prompt)

./emulator -no-audio -avd Test_Console &

Here -no-audio is required otherwise it didn't started fine for me (Fedora 12 64bit). Please be patient. It took almost 2 minutes to see the android mobile desktop.

And Test_Console (Android Virtual Device) can be created using the following command

./android create avd -n Test_Console -t 1

List of Virtual devices can be listed by issuing this command

android list avd

After this I tried deploying the app I created using eclipse first from console. Here is the command to do that

./adb install /home/shinu/workspace/android-space/FirstAndroid/bin/FirstAndroid.apk

Here is the screenshot of my first android app running in FC12 64bit

Happy Android Coding :)

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First blog post with Bilbo Blogger

Today I came across a new kde app which I can post to blogspot. I was searching for such kind of an app for a long time. When i did a yum search on google revealed me this rpm.

yum install bilbo

This will install is wonderfull app in your machine if you are a FC dude :)

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Google and Charity

Year end email from google, the year end gift from google, is something very special this time. Hats off again google.

See Google's Gift

Orkut New

Its very unusual that I visited Orkut on a Sunday eve. Orkut gave me the option try out the new build. I clicked on the the big 'O' with my fingers crossed to see the surprise from google. But I was a bit shocked after seeing the first look which is not at all impressive from gooogle. The UI is not at all impressive saying that I'm not so sure that whether its an issue with my Opera (Non supported by google wave) browser. But this time google did not warned me even that I'm using an untested browser. The UI I feel like below standards. Lot of issues with css rendering, and the font also not looks so great. 

Here is a ksnaphot and gimpify of my orkut homepage

Google has to definitely revisit this design. From an Orkut user perspective there should be lot of improvements needed in this page.