Category: Live Journal Entries

Is that how “The magic of Palm” will translate into Hindi? I am already tickled pink thinking what will happen if a Hindi movie was made where everyone uses a Palm pilot!!!

In the very least the Palm will transform itself into a combination of Phaser, Communicator and Teleporter. Then when the hero and heroine beam each other bellet daux it will be heard in 40 piece orchestra surround sound … … The possibilities are endless even to begin witting them here.

Well the fact is I already feel naked without my Palm, It was the same with the mobile phone more than 3.5 years ago and I am sure it will be same with the Notebook, Don’t be so shocked! I don’t own a notebook/laptop. I heard (read read) the Atul’s old IBM will soon repaired – , , do you any of know how many people are in the queue for that 😉

Nagpur Traffic Police aping the metros have installed countdown watches at prominent crossings which give time in seconds till the light changes to green and vice versa – A good concept BUT it has the Nagpur janata jostling each others vehicles for the best “pole positions” and the jack rabbits running past in the last 2 secs … …

Talk about good intentions

Both are offline HTML readers for Palm, AvantGo (https://www.avantgo.com) is commercial and you have some things like channels which you subscribe to …
AvantGo has the advantage of having the basics of Forms – where values are stored and submitted to the web server on the next sync – this is the feature which makes things like PocketLJ – the Palm based client for Live Journal work !!

But I prefer to use Plucker (https://plucker.gnu-designs.com) the reasons may be very specific to my case – I use web clippings for reading FreshMeat and Linux Today both of which I read when I am at the clinic. Plucker offers a very nice feature which allows me to copy the URL which I have tapped BUT is not on my palm to a memo – this can be edited and used from the PC for further reading. AvantGo just offers an irritating error box in the same situation. AvantGo also imposes limits on download – I have never been able to get the complete daily Freshmeat page using AvantGo. Besides using plucker I can also use sites which are on my local network (now why would I want to do that 😉

Plucker also has a better looking UI, and last but not the least it is Open source

Also in my re-search into the world of palm computing I found two very good resources php-pdb (https://php-pdb.sourceforge.net) – a set of modules which allow you to read and write Palm docs and databases, now palm enabling my PHP apps is child’s play, and also the specs for the various file formats used by Palm, forgot the URL ;-(

Despite what friend achitnis wrote on his website and the thread which was at kalyan‘s journal, I picked up a copy of PCQ from the vendor cause emblazoned across the cover was the word “LINUX” in bright red!!

The mag has 145 pages out of which about 60 are ads + product reviews + letters to editor – OK! they need to earn money somehow, times are tough!!

BUT what really turned me off was the misleading title page – It talked about “the Desktop Linux GUI” – What I really found inside was few pages about KDE (no mention of GNOME or any other WM) to top it all the KDE version they are talking about is OLD!! most probably even older than what they had distributed with the PCQ 7.1 CD

I fail to understand what has gone wrong at PCQ – when I started writing, writing for PCQ was a dream come true but now it is sheer disillusionment.

I hope someone takes the things to task and restores the mag to its past glory

Advice : “Never let an employee think that he is indespensible”
Fact: “No one is indespensible”

That said – it is still early in the day – looks like will be one of those burning midnight oil, grinding fingertips to knuckles on the keyboard kind of a day.

Had taken Swati to “Dr Shailesh Pitale”, My school and college buddy – now an endocrinologist, returned recently after a long training and job stint in USA and UK. Looks like Swati may finally have diabetes, well not so bad a news we expected this since Aasim was born and we know it can be held in control for atleast next 10-15 years by lifestyle modification (read no medicines needed)

Talked for almost an hour with Shailesh and his wife Uma (also a doctor) – basically bitched about Nagpur people “Aapana Nagpur aaisach hai!!”

Yeah! men also bitch 😉

The heat is on!!

Nagpur is getting hotter – the daily evening walks will have to be taken even later now …

The day passed in a whirlwind of activity – with me having to code and troubleshoot for three projects simultaneously.

Am too sleepy even to think what all I did – roughly around 1800 lines of code … …

Wish these two Jr Programmers show some signs of gray matter real soon

Wife Swati succeeded 😉

Rest of the afternoon passed watching bits and pieces of Sai Paranjape’s (?) classic “Chasme Baddoor” and reading Ringworld – fascinating but not really gripping as Asimov and neither does it have the social scenarios like Arthur C Clarke.

Did not realize when I succumbed to the embrace of Morpheus, got up, resisted the temptation of sitting for a session of coding. By 18:00 even Swati was feeling bored – once again we cursed ourselves for being such workaholics. Had what we refer to as a board meeting, basically taking stock of things and projects at hand.

Things are not so bad BUT some of them have definitely stretched beyond profitability, mismanagement!! No not really just the mistake of treating clients as friends … …

Some day I must sit and write a “Brief Management guide for Geeks!” Something similar on the lines of my “Little woman’s brief guide to life”, hmmm… …. Time to revisit that thing as well. BTW if you are a father of a young girl it is strongly recommended that you don’t read this, but if you are a young girl and need a jump start go ahead …. Seek and ye shall find !!!

Time to see which movie is on the Cable

TANJ!! 4:30 am and the overhead tank manages to overflow splattering water right outside the bedroom window. Didn’t look like a good beginning to a Sunday I intended to enjoy peacefully.

BUT then thanks to PWD the water pressure must have eased and I was able to sleep till 9:00 am – which is almost as late as I can sleep into the day.

Lunch was a rather enjoyable (and unhealthy) mix of Chicken Quicke, Chicken Curry Buns and Kava Fruit pastries … Should not count calories on a Sunday afternoon.

Updated the PHPlib Manual with the latest changes from core team member Layne.

Have found a good task manager, Shadow Plan2.1 for my Palm, the best thing is that it stores the data as XML – this makes it very amiable to be used with PHP for publishing to the web, lets see when I get time to write the code ….

Swati says time to give me a bath – guess time to get a dog ;o)

Looking forward to a peaceful Sunday. Was a week full of late nights, basically due to my latest toy Palm M505!
I have got most of the the things as per my preferences except for an Indian news channel on AvantGo. Guess I will make one for myself – PHP + www.samachar.com!

I really like the way this site (I would like to call it WEB App) has shaped-up. Last I saw was when friend Atul had referred me to it – he wanted a clone !? or some such thing – For the curious, that project never happened – The hottest idea then was this thing has a desktop client!!

But that is not why I am writing this note – I am considering upgrading to a paid account! No not really because of the added functionality offered BUT because these folks have done a really great job, I am sure wife Swati will spare US$25 😉