VIM Tip

While I've lots of stuff to post, I couldn't resist when I stumbled upon this SEXY Vim tip! I just couldn't wait to share this with you all. I know, this might be pretty naive for a seasoned Vi* user, but still just in case you don't have this! Just place this in your .vimrc.

" Get me the function name!
map _F ma[[k"xyy`a:echo @x

Ok, do you want me to explain it piece-meal... here it goes...
1. map _F
This will map key combination '_' followe by 'F' to whatever follows.
2. ma
Record/mark your current cursour location in the file into 'a'.
3. [[
Takes you to the start of the current function.
4. k
Move one line up.
5. "xyy
Read/yank current line into register 'x'
6. `a
Get back to where your cursour originally was, i.e. marked as 'a'
7. :echo @x
Echo the contents of reg 'x', which happens to be the function name!
BINGO!
This is the actual source of this tip!


Happy Vi*'ing!

Note: This won't work if you define your functions in a little different way!!!
In that case use [[ to go to start of the function, read the name and press '' (two single quotes) to return to previous cursour location.

Meditation is a MUST

I know everyone is just VERY busy. How the hell does one spare time for meditation? Besides, what good is it in this highly competative and stressful world? If you are faced with the same dilema ... here's how Sri Sri Ravishankar, founder of Art Of Living responds. I found a reference to this on one of Art of Living sites.

Question: Meditation calms the mind. It feels good. But in our daily life we have to handle paying bills, parking tickets and other mundane things. How can we do this with the same calm mind without getting irritated or perturbed?

Sri Sri: You take a shower in the morning to clean your body. After that you do all the daily activities. You don't have to keep on taking a shower throughout the day. It is like that. You meditate and calm your mind, then go on with other activities. It is not easy to keep yourself undisturbed but it will happen as you keep doing the practices regularly. Then it will become easy.

My Radio's off

That's SICK!!! Working without music is BORING like hell! I usually play radio to aid me concentrate. No no no no NOT radio mirchi! I said I play radio for MUSIC and not for NOISE. These days people know of radio ONLY because of that GOD DAMNED cheap-boring-stinking radio channel. I listen to good old Vividh Bharati. Music also serves as a means to cut me off of all the ambient noises around me! I think the problem is mainly becasue just behind the place where I kept my small walky 2 new PCs have come up. They seem to be causing a lot of electromangetic disturbance, which interferes with already weak radio signals in my cubicle :'-( Don't believe me, trying tuning your small walky keeping it near your monitor or PC cabinet. Any ideas how I can work around this problem??? Be the provider of a fix to this blessed! No, PLEASE don't give me options like MP3, Internet Radio, Cassette, get antenna blah blah.

Met Sushmita Sen

Hello Buddies, back after a LONG time! Was sick last week and so had to cover up for the sick leaves! Am back to normal, I guess ;-) A couple of days back I met Sushmita Sen! Yes the former Miss Universe, 1994! She was staying at resort at an hour's drive from Pune. My sister had contacts with the person in-charge of the resort who asked her if she was interested in seeing her personally! She jumped to her feet and asked me (along with other cousins) to join in. I, of course, was too reluctant to spend my Sunday leisure time waiting to see any celebrity (of course unless she were Angelina Jolie or Charlize Theron). But I joined and I tell you, a few hours' wait was worth it. She's a VERY soft spoken person and shows no ego. And GOD DAMN ... she looks so SSSSSSSWEET!!! Here's one snap that I want to share with you guys!

Envy me ...

My New PC

It has been ages that I haven't posted anything on blog. That's mainly because I was caught up into critical bugs (and am still struggling with one). Well, I don't wanna talk about that right now. The other secondary reason is that I got a new PC @ home and whatever time I could spare, I spent in making it more usable everyday, and today I've got it to the point that I can post thro my new PC with net connected over IrDA link to my mobile phone [Nokia 6610i], acting as a modem, which transfers data over GPRS! Yes, as exotic as it sounds, it was a REAL PITA to get all these links working right! Especially when you have M$FT Windoze XP to install your drivers on with absolutely no manual to RTFM! 2/3, Sleepless nights, a few unending-always-on-hold calls to Airtel customer care, digging net like hell, and BINGO! Things started working! Needless to say, I bothered a buddy or two as well! Phew! Finally I'm done (I cross my fingers and think so!)

Just to show-off ;-) I've posted the snap of my new PC here. I have tried to get a configuration that will survive at least 5+years of my computing needs!

1. Intel Pentium -4 2.80 GHz, 800MHz FSB, 1MB L2 Cache, LGA775.
2. Intel D915GAV Motherboard
(Something striking about this mobo is that its has got built-in 5.1 Intel High Definition Audio system, implying on-board support for DTS, Dolby, etc. Grantsdale, as this mobo is called, features multi-tasking audio ports, implying that it can sense whether you have plugged in a mic, speaker, or something else and switch to appropriate functionality without human intervention. Features GMA900 onboard graphics subsystem. Also has PIC-X slots. And hell lotta technical innovations)
3. 17" Samsung LCD/TFT Monitor (710N) [CRTs suck!!!]
4. 120 GB Seagate SATA HDD [Barracuda 7200.7 SATA - ST3120026AS]
5. 1GB (512x2) DDR 400MHz RAM
6. Creative Inspire 5200 (5.1) 6-speaker system
7. Sony CD-RW/DVD-RW (Sony DRU-710A) [review 1, review 2]

Yes, you read it right! It's DVD RW, remember ... about meeting 5 years of computing needs!!! Items 6 & 7 weren't planned for when I started researching about the PC. They did add to my total cost significantly, but I don't repent putting in extra money. Inspire 5200 rocks my room at mere volume of 5! I spent significant amount of time shortlisting each of the components. I almost stopped reading my novels after I started taking brochures/manuals/reviews back home to go through the nights!

I haven't installed Linux though, as I'm yet to get my hands on the distro I want: Debian Sarge! Well, I can keep writing about new PC and how I went about shortlisting each of the components, but I don't wanna bore you chaps! So I'll cut if off here!

Back from IITB TechFest!

Had been to IITB TechFest this weekend, and had TONS of FUN, courtsey my buddy, Harpreet, how played a GREAT ghost ... oops ... GREAT HOST to me!
I wouldn't give the detailed account right now, so the primary purpose of this post is just to show you the Mercedes McLaren Formula-1 Car that I saw there!!!

1. F1 from a good angle


2. F1 Closeup



3. F1 by my side!




4. F1 as it looks from Front!



5. F1's Full Length




6. Birds view

What a Farm House

Yes, ever since I've returned from my vacation, I have been more than busy and UNABLE to spare time for myself. Though there's definite increase in work load, it's not equivalent to increased time I have been spending at office, pounding arduously at the keyboards! I usually scorn when I don't get timely responses to emails (messages), and now I myself am having a tough time replying on time even a few mails :'-( I believe it has to do more with my efficiency and ... Wait a minute, I know what are you thinking ... I can read your minds ... So, I will take this matter off-line and while I decide what's the @%$#ing ratio of time spend at office and workload, you can read ahead to see how I spent my weekend.

I had taken an off on Friday last weekend. No, not to ditch work and get an extended weekend, but had to attend an important marriage reception out of town. This meant: No football on Saturday and Sunday, Driving nearly for 13+ hours (day and night) in 24 hours between Friday 0700 hrs and Saturday 0700 hrs, Meager Sleep, Driving Fatigue, No movies (damn, I haven't seen movie for pretty long now), No Jacuzzi and No weekend relaxation ; but all the pain was worth (in fact MORE than worth) the Farm House we had been to attend that function. It was MORE than palatial and adjective AMAZING would ONLY belittle the beauty of the house. To give you an idea of its MAMMOTH size, the size of living room alone is more than 50,000 sq.ft.!!! What ... This sounds less!!! Well, the owner, Godawat Family, is now building another bungalow in the same premises having a living room of the size more than 35,000 sq.ft.! And mind you ... this is a farm house, so there HAS to be LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of landscaping surrounding all of these gigantic bungalows!!! Now you can get an idea of how PALATIAL this might have been. We were an hour too early for the function and so had ample opportunity to have a nice look around the farm house, which took more than 2 hours. Living room was full of costly Swarovski Crystal items, landscape with LOTs of water falls, beautifully planted coconut trees, uncountable variety of flowers, very well maintained lawns and of course a BIG swimming pool too! I was repenting not taking my Digi-Cam out there with me :-( The function was very well managed, but the food was no where close to the standard of the function, despite mind numbing variety (Gujarati, Rajasthani, Continental, Chinese, Maharashtrian & Punjabi, etc). Then there was a live band playing pleasant music, mimicry, etc. on a BIG stage built there. We left the place at about 0030 hrs in the night after sipping a one of the variedly flavoured coffee and I was so much charged with energy that my eyes didn't have a slightest trace of sleep in them! Seeing all this, we only uttered one statement:

"How different is the palace of an emperor!"

Phew! Hacked the makefile

Being a U*nix programmer, one has to, at some time or the other in his life, play around with makefiles. Writing one isn't a big deal, plenty of tutorials available to get you started. But hacking and tweaking one 800+ lines worth of makefile without a single line of @$%#ing God Damned comment is a nightmare! I would compare it with walking with a small LED in your hand through a dense jungle on a dreadful moonless night! It was the length of the file with apparently many targets that made the task involving, and not the structure, which I later figured out (after 2 days of gruelling dives in and out of the file) was pretty simple. Time for a moral now:

Moral:
If anything that you write (code/makefile/script ...) is going to be read/tweaked by someone else (esp. with you NOT around), then PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE in GOD's name put a comment out there explaining the flow and structure!

I bet your colleagues will bless you for that! Feeling much better now, the work isn't done though.

The Life of a Programmer

I start my day by sitting on a chair,
Giving my monitor a hard, cold stare,
By evening I m done with another coding,
Oh! this has become a routine so boring.

Like all, I entered this field with great hope,
Jobs were many and there was plenty of scope,

Dreams of joining the likes of Gates,
And a chance to make money in the states.

Thus, I entered the world of bytes,
Only to realize that reality bites,
B'coz a programmer's life, isn't all that cozy,
The bed of software, isn't all that rosy.

Seeing the monitor all day n night,
Have taken the power of my eyesight,

Working holidays, busy weekends,
No time for family, no time for friends,

My job steals most of my time,
Helplessly, I watch this crime.

When I should be out - having fun,
I m telling a comp, what's to be done.

GOD, to thee I pray,
If there be one - show me the way

Well, I'm not a poet, and yes you guessed it right, this is not my creation! Got it, as a typical software engg., in a forwarded email*. Though not completely true, some of lines are really as bitter as roasted coffee bean! And hence thought of sharing with you. I bet those who are working in this field would understand this poem a little better.
(* Note: This is not a verbatim copy of original poem, I chopped off a few lines)