Verminous ego stench .........

I don't know why we(including me......) inanely always do things anticipating something, yes every one anticipates for good things to happen for their course of action. But in some cases this anticipation is different , sometimes you try to flaunt in doing things as if some one watching and you actions are mended in such a way to impress people around you. Every time you write a mail , talk to people or do some thing you want to impress people around you. But I feel that you should do things naturally but not to impress any one....the root cause of all this is ego of people . I too was a victim of it but I think I have realised some thing about it and these day I listen to people and value what they say............its ok if you are a wise man and can take great decisions but you should'nt make others feel low or jeer at people at sloppiness, but every one can slowly get things accomplished and I feel that touting may not always converge to a right solution.............and sooner or the later every one will realise this.
BTW the book I'am studying this week is "If tomorrow comes" , really a good one by sheldon makes us feel how a sapped, anguish and vindictive mind with a sedative torso feels. It was a story of a dejected lover tracy withney who tries to endure with a slender hope to seek vengeance.
TGIT (Thank God Its Thursday)
V@msi

Fervent gaming hermit....

Hmm.....finally I have moved into this reclusive world of FPS games, had spent around 90% of this weekend time quaking.....just fragged sarge 20 - 7 in a nightmare, in a map with no railguns only rocket launchers, plasma guns and shot guns (machine guns ofcourse :)) . I like this rocket launcher (although I was succumb to the rockets launched without a lot of span between walls and myself)...I almost fragged very accurately with this rocket launcher. My dodging skills are improving with every game, I felt the best way to dodge is to hold all the three keys 'w' ,'a' and 'd' which will make you move forward and press 'space' during aim and leave the keys 'a' and 'w' while shooting, this seems to be a very useful tactic of dodging, surely you can frag a human with this dodging, there are some really good players here like 'KeYmaker' and 'Devil' they fragged me couple of times. Its really great fun when you have a bunch of bacchanalian quake freaks at work places, good that I also I have 'Geforce Go' on a LCD which makes gaming more exotic.

Don't be afraid of making mistakes.......

Yep....I was depressed last week. But I'am starting a new life now, honestly I'am concentraring on my guitar in all my solitude they(guitar skills) seem to be improving, I feel good finally I learned to play "happy birthday......" for that special occassion next month. All this inspiration came from watching "Million dollar baby" again.......Mr.Scrape's words to danger seem to show me some light...."Any one can loose one fight....." , "Sometimes to deliver a good punch is to step back...." . And also thanks to call from karun, karun called me from canada and reminded me about st.laurel street in montreal, and about the good times we had, I really felt excited to receive his call (he will be in india soon). Sometimes this kind of suprise calls make you feel happy, and you feel something new....one more thing is I started playing cricket, people are really happy about my batting....seem's like I have'nt ever thought about my cricketing skills after a long break from club cricket during highschool...during those days I used to spend many hours to get my timing right, but was not quite getting it....but today after a long break and zero practice I'am batting like I'am in a great touch......some times when you try to work too hard on anything you don't seem to get it right (probably I'am too afraid of making mistakes during those old cricket days to get selected into the team), but when you have removed that thing of being afraid of making mistakes (because right now I dont care wether I'am in the corporate team or not) you seem to do things naturally and you get it right.......may be its a pathological example on how one should remove fear of screwing up something......... \/ /-\ /\/\ _\"" |

Transmeta lessons.......

Really feel sorry about this high technology microprocessor designer. But I really appreciate their nerve to compute against titans like INTEL and AMD. I feel that monopoly is bad and it reduces innovation and checks conceiving new products. Transmeta's low-power combat against is definitely a dud, I feel that transmeta should have invested more in research to overcome the 'underpower citics' rather then demonstrating a mere obeisance, may be transmeta management failed to notice the infliction points the company has being going through, intel on the other hand have been leveraing on grove's pedagogy(Only the Paranoids survive) of identifying these infliction points and thus bashed transmeta. Intel was the first one today to get a dual-core chip out, amd followed later, but I don't why transmeta never thought about dual-cores. This indicates Intel's astute ability to pick up infliction points, but transmeta I feel should conceive something really creative to get back and start running.

I feel it as a small practical reminder about how one should always keep track of the infliction points, at any instance there are millions and millions of people competing with you and a slight negligence might create a infliction point with negative slope............ Think big to conceive a marvel.

Podcasting with itunes...

Ohh...that sounds 'leet right. Yes indeed it is. Thankgod no need of any external podcatchers, since every thing would be integrated in itunes itself. You just need to sync up your ipod by just connecting and you get all your favourite radio shows.
BTW the following are radiostations I'have been listening all my downtime
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ITConversations-EverythingMP3
http://www.hackermedia.net/wp-rss2.php
http://www.binrev.com/radio/podcast/
http://daily-horoscope.libsyn.com/rss/

Its podcasting revolution.....

Hey guys.....wondering whats new in scintillating world of gizmo's? make a guess no its not "Ipod U2" or "Ipod Shuffle" It's not a gadget but something related to them yes its Podcasting!!. Podcasting is real fun, so what excatly is this podcasting? . hmmm..... I guess most of you have already been using RSS feeds (adding them to firefox livefeed toolbar) :-? , podcasting is akin to RSS syndication, actually normal RSS feeds get you only the text content from where ever you have subscribed the feed, now just imagine a feed which will play audio when ever you select it, rather than reading the feed you are now listening to the feed, sounds great!! right? this is excatly what is podcasting. In a little geeky terms podcasting is similar to tunnelling (protocol tunnelling) where you add (embedd) 'protocol2' in the carrier 'protocol1' as a payload, so the multimedia content is being added as the payload in RSS (Really simple syndication protocol) 2.0 protocol for syndicating audio content from the publisher. So lets come to the bottomline "how can I get podcasting work". 1. Get a podcatcher I use doppler. 2. Configure podcatcher to integrate with mediaplayer or itunes, I use itunes and every live audio feed you add to the doppler makes it a playlist. 3. Sync up the playlist to your Ipod or any other MP3 player. 4. Enjoy podcasting (Podcasting is fun!) You can also setup podcasting and make your blog audioblog. So get started with the pocasting revolution.....keep checking for my upcoming podcast. Cheers! Vamsi

Love you momma!!

mom, originally uploaded by vamsi.

Hmmm......have been thinking about too many things these days, finally I got some time to write about momma.

I just shut my mind up for few minutes and start thinking about momma feeling a little nostalgic. Momma made me realise that "success is going from failure to failure with out loss of enthusiasm", without her motivation, I would'nt have accomplished any thing till now. In fact every day is a mothers day for me.......I love you momma!!!

Wishing all of you a happy mothers day

Solace for the weekend.....

Feel's like I had found an oasis in scorching heat.....just heard from JMMA (Journal for Mathematical Modelling and Algorithms) www.kluweronline.com/issn/1570-1166 . That they have accepted a work which I had done at the school related to polygon enclosure algorithms titled "Optimal algorithms for some polygon enclosure problems for VLSI Physical Design". No Idea in which month they will publish it but just finished off a final LaTeX version of it. I remember I submitted this around Nov-2003 and they had screened it now really loooong time right? (Ref No:100335). I almost forgot about this submission was having no hopes on this but suddently it comes back at right time helping my confidence. Really speaking after school I did'nt do much research. But I always use to tell my friends that I'am still working on that "external memory algorithms project" but could really never finish it off. May I got really complacent these days....but "Its never tooo late to get it back!!!"

Corporate victimization of enthusiasm.......

I guess you should have been hearing things like "Employee centered company" , "Employee * company". This is just to exploit the energy of the young kids in the company get the work done at a very cheap price. Ultimately bussiness is just making money yes thats true. But the way the current corporate culture is evolving these days in india especially of the outsource buzz word is really pathetic. The managers who take the initiative of settting up shops in india for corporates tend to be extremely selfish...selfish and selfish, this is not silicon valley attitude of "Win...Win" in the managers. Yes I'am currently a victim of this and I really had a feel of this selfishness, I dont know any where else but atleast in indian corporates (MNC's) this is what every one crib about...I felt really demotivated about these vices in the corporate culture of india. I feel that there is no use of doing things proactively taking up responsibilty and showing an effective commitment towards in getting things done ultimately. I have learnt a lesson that you should just do what ever is enough and nothing more. Live your life do what you think is good and what you think is right. Dont become an work addict at the corporate there are better places where you can prove your self and prove not just to the corporate to the complete world, write opensource software make opensource software run efficiently fix bugs in them do research and what not you can do any thing what ever you like.... So the bottom line is "Never count on anyone except your self!"

IPOD Mini on the go......

28-03-05_0844, originally uploaded by vamsi.

Recently bought an IPOD mini for just
$199 . I felt this to be really great no hassles of batteries, no hassles of space (4GB). I really feel like throwing my samsung YEPP-90S (64 MB) mp3 player.


The great thing about IPOD's is their integration with audible ( click here). I could really play all my audiobooks in audible format without converting them into mp3's. Yes now I turned out into an audible freak listening tons of audio books in my down time.....guys wondering why I have photo of mine rather than an IPOD mini here??......keep guessing

Turned into a RSS Freak

I found this to be really intresting it saves my time by not visiting the websities for news and other tech stuff and most wonderful part of it is the integration with Firefox, yes I'am talking about teh Live Bookmarks a great feature in firefox which integrates a RSS Feed reader in firefox....Suddenly I realized that I wanted RSS feed for every thing I even wrote to timesofindia to provide a rss feed on their site..yes I have become an RSS freak now my firefox toolbar is filled with 18 RSS Feeds right from BBC News, Devx Tech updates, CNET News.com, Wired ..........to ESR's blog.
:-p Vamsi

There is no AI only RI (Real Intelligence)

On Intelligence
Originally uploaded by vamsi.

I have been studying "On Intelligence" these days I could'nt stop myself reading. I really liked the way Jeff tried to put this new Memory prediction framework. Wondering if this guy has any thing to do with stefen hawking? NOWAY.


Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself.
Hawkins develops a powerful theory of how the human brain works, explaining why computers are not intelligent and how, based on this new theory, we can finally build intelligent machines.

The brain is not a computer, but a memory system that stores experiences in a way that reflects the true structure of the world, remembering sequences of events and their nested relationships and making predictions based on those memories. It is this memory-prediction system that forms the basis of intelligence, perception, creativity, and even consciousness.

The Aviator........

Hughes
Originally uploaded by vamsi.

"I am by nature a perfectionist, and I seem to have trouble allowing anything to go through in a half-perfect condition. So if I made any mistake it was in working too hard and in doing too much of it with my own hands."
-- Howard Hughes describing his way of working and the mistakes made in building the "Spruce Goose."

How to avoid BROKEN PIPE errors in code (SIGPIPE)

Recently I had to struggle a lot to fix a issue generating BROKEN PIPE on a AMD64 platform, this code works on EMT64 and other 32-bit platforms but fails on AMD64. The bottom line is be really careful when you do use a fflush.

void *stream = (FILE *)......;
............
............
//To make sure the data is written to disk (HA)
if(!fflush((FILE *)stream)){
   printf("Flush failed due to %d error refer error.h\n",errno);
}
//This is really very dangerous code if you dont have a signal handler
//written for SIGPIPE (either you write a sig handler for SIGPIPE) or
//use the following code//

/*Safe Code*/
if(!fsync(fileno((FILE *)stream)))){
  printf("Sync failed due to %d error refer error.h\n",errno);
}

I found the standards guide on context of libc functions really useful
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/xsh_chap02_05.html
Hope you will not go through the same pain....
Vamsi

Symbol referencing errors for static variable in C++

Are you stuck with static symbol referencing errors in ur code??
What could be wrong in the following definition of a c++ class to find out how many instances of MyClass are created??

class MyClass{
 private:
   static int __instance_count;
 public:
    MyClass(){
         __instance_count++;
    }
    int getInstances(){
      return __instance_count;
    }
};
main(){
....
}

When complied with g++ says that __instance_count is not defined...this can be resolved by defining __instance_count outside the class definition,as follows.

int MyClass::__instance_count;

Why do we need this seperate definiton of static variables?

04 to 05 with a 4-5 puzzle....

01-01-05_1857
Originally uploaded by vamsi.

I have seen people circulating this 04 to 05 puzzle to check how difficult 2005 will be compared to 2004. It's crazy but timepass. Get the square
here cut it into 5 pieces and solve it.....finally keep track of how much time you took to solve this and this will be proportional to the hard times you will have to face in 2005....how about people who solved this already :)) not problems at all in 2005??

L-TREE a new datastructure for efficient hierarchy representation in a database.....

Hey don't say that you guys have never came across an LDAP server....hmm...ok its your directory within your organizaion.....since every organizaition is hierarchical in the sense a 'senior manager' has several 'managers' reporting to him and a 'manager' has 'developers' etc.....so all this data is hierarchical. So if I were to give you this problem and make a system which will report queries like 'gimme all the employees under employee X' how would you approach the problem ?....
One quick solution is create a table in the database
CREATE TABLE ORG_DIR (int EMP_ID NOT_NULL,VARCHAR(10) EMP_NAME, int SUP_ID);
To answer that you might query the database like

SELECT T1.EMP_NAME 
FROM ORG_DIR T1, ORG_DIR T2
WHERE T1.SUP_ID == T2.EMP_ID && T2.EMP_ID = &INPUT

Finally you have got a workaround...Unfortunately this kind of workarounds seem to be very inefficient for storing and retriving Structured Hierarchical Data hmm...I know you are thinking about some thing right??? XML :)) Yes its XML. How can I store XML in my database and answer my queries on the Hierarchical data. My Idea is to make HIERARCHY as a datatype itself rather than some thing else. That is just as we have primitive datatype support within a database..ie every column in the database would be of some primitive datatype supported by the database...so The idea is can we make HIERARCHY a datatype.....hey wait a sec just figured out I'am not the only one who thought about it....yes Oleg has alreay added a great Contrib Module for postgresql. Oleg made is generic so that you can persist any label based HIERARCHY...now I have a good Idea in extending L-TREE to support XML....its really great to have such an optimized HIERARCHY representation for structured data...people have been talking about indexing and datastructures for XML Databases but this seems to me as a really good contribution from Oleg..... Vamsi

Useful unix command for finding all the files recusively which contain a string

peemt4:vamsik:(vamsi_aix_ns_port):/vobs/ETG_Repository/src>find . -name "*.c" -exec grep -i "Your Search String" \{\} \; -print

Sound simple but thought it would be useful....

Moving from STL to GTL

GTL
Originally uploaded by vamsi.

Most of the developers building any systems are generally stuck with the problem of implementing graph algorithms. Graph algorithms are really fundamental algorithms and are applied extensively...take the following example's

1. Circuit Partitioning: The stage where the designer had come up with a netlist and technology mapping being done. Now want to partition the circuit so that highly connected blocks stay together.....So when I talk about netlist....there it goes the HYPERGRAPH. The most fundamental netlist representation so to make systems which process these hypergraphs (netlist's) you need to write code in a very generic manner because the partioned hypergraph by the partitioning algorithms will be used by the placement algorithms and it goes on and on.......hmmmm now I recollect the network stack where pointer to the packet is passed across several layers and its done in such a way that to avoid redundancy involved in copying over the stack (process stack not network stack) they use a pointer to some heap space.......similarly in EDA tools where the netlist is taken through several stages(involves verification also) and finally realized into physical geometry, the developers especially EDA tool developers need some generic implementations like STL....its really great TEMPLATE LIBRARY lets you quickly do your tasks and modify only appropriate parts of the algorithms.....but STL has no support of hypergraphs...I mean not even graphs....you need to create your own Graph Container on the existing framework.....so now to avoid this we have got GTL a great libray.....I came across it while helping a friend in implementing KLM circuit partitioning algorithm...I feel that it would be really helpful for may other computer science domains apart from CAD....

Cheers
Vamsi

Trying to start a new life(Genetic Algorithms).....but those old memories(Deterministic Algorithms) still make me feel emotional.........

Joined JGAP to contribute to the opensource community. Genetic algorithms (GA's) are search algorithms that work via the process of natural selection. They begin with a sample set of potential solutions which then evolves toward a set of more optimal solutions. Within the sample set, solutions that are poor tend to die out while better solutions mate and propegate their advantageous traits, thus introducing more solutions into the set that boast greater potential (the total set size remains constant; for each new solution added, an old one is removed). A little random mutation helps guarantee that a set won't stagnate and simply fill up with numerous copies of the same solution. In general, genetic algorithms tend to work better than traditional optimization algorithms because they're less likely to be led astray by local optima. This is because they don't make use of single-point transition rules to move from one single instance in the solution space to another. Instead, GA's take advantage of an entire set of solutions spread throughout the solution space, all of which are experimenting upon many potential optima. However, in order for genetic algorithms to work effectively, a few criteria must be met: * It must be relatively easy to evaluate how "good" a potential solution is relative to other potential solutions. * It must be possible to break a potential solution into discrete parts that can vary independently. These parts become the "genes" in the genetic algorithm. * Finally, genetic algorithms are best suited for situations where a "good" answer will suffice, even if it's not the absolute best answer.