No more invincible. But, still the numero uno team by miles

I guess just reading the title would have given you an idea about what this post is about. Its about the australian cricket team and its position in the pecking order of the worlds cricketing team, post ashes 2005.

First a few sentences on the current ashes tour. I opine that most players of both teams have been playing in what I would like to call 'God mode'. 'God mode' is NOT playing like Bradman. Playing like Bradman is actually quite boring. The result is all too obvious and this is the exact opposite of what makes sports such a sensation. It is the brand of cricket that you get to see when highly talented players play very good cricket with lots of grit, determination and endurance against an opposition that is hell bent on preventing what the player has set out to do. Some examples would be:

a.) Steve Waughs innings against South Africa in the 1999 world cup.

b.) Laxmans innings against Australia in the all too famous Calcutta test match

c.) Sachins innings against Australia in the Sharjah ODIs

and so on...

The list is endless. Now in this ashes series we have seen some sterling performances by both the teams. Really riveting cricket played on good sporting conditions by highly motivated players. This is as good as it gets. This is certainly the best series that I have ever watched, even better than the famous Aussie tour of India. This is what I call cricket in 'God mode'.

Coming to the point. Though the aussies are 2-1 down they still are the best team in the world by miles. Yes, England are playing great cricket and are leading the series but they came perilously close to being 3-0 down and remember this is their home ground. Just 2 runs in the second test and just 3 tail enders in the fourth separated victory from defeat. As one commentator had put it, 'England have learned how not to loose'. True, but what makes champions is knowing how to win. That is what this Australian team specializes in. They will not and will never ever give up without a fight, without giving thier opponents a real scare. The fight that they put up on the fourth day is probably the stuff cricketing legends are made of. Shane Warne and Brett Lee were spitting fire. If only McGrath were around, England would have needed another 2 years to get a sniff of ashes. Such fighting spirit, a total refusal to accept defeat is what makes champions. That is what makes them the numero uno team in world cricket.

Obviously they are no more the invincibles. No more the unbeatable team. No more the team that every captain feared to play against. They are no more the undispute number one. No more the unparalleled warriors under the ruthless captianship of Waugh. But, they are still the worlds best team. On current form, Sri Lanka and England are good challengers to them. But they are still miles away from dethroning the aussies from the post of the worlds best cirketing team. As for the ashes, let England beware. They are not safe and let them not rejoice. For the aussies will probably need only one session to turn Englands ecstasy into agony. This australian team is dangerous. They are at their destructive best when they are cornered. Beware England.

As a cricket enthusiast, I am not exactly an ardent fan of the australian team. I did root for England to win. The aussies hardly have any supporters outside of australia. But as an individual, I love the way they go about their business. The passion they have for their work is worth emulating by anyone and in any business. Just like champions eveywhere.

In my formative years in school, I used to learn chess from one Mr.Murali Mohan. The phrase that he repeated often to us,

"Nee thothalum parava illa, opponent jaikarthukulla avan kannu, mooku, kathulernthu ratham varanum".

Now, that resembles the spirit of this australian cricket team. I am gonna attempt to imbibe that spirit in me. Lesseee...

Honesty, Integrity et al.

"Honesty is the first chapter in the Book of wisdom" - so said Thomas Jefferson. Obviously a huge majority of men and women in India have not crossed the first chapter in the Book of Wisdom. With honesty and probity in public life hitting abominally low levels with every passing day, the future does look bleak. But there is hope. There still are individuals who hold to integrity and honesty no matter what. Occasionally you do get to see instances of such integrity and honesty that really makes your day. Sometimes it goes well beyond making your day to making a great impact on your character. I am gonna relate a small incident that had a defining impact on my views of honesty.

This is not something that happened recently. This happened about 12 years ago (dont remember exactly when it happened but it was around that time). It was a nice summer afternoon in Chennai and I was in my summer vacation. So my mom decided that she'll take me to her office so that I can meet her colleagues. She works for the Department of School Education.

I was sitting on a small table in a corner of a room writing something. I heard someone walking into the room. I looked up and noticed that there was the priest of some church standing there. He was having a small bundle in his hand. I had no idea what it contained. I stopped doing my work and started observing him. He walked straight to the woman sitting on the table next to mine and introduced himself. Then he started discussing with the women on how he has started a primary school for the under prvileged children of his village and how some things are getting delayed because of the delay in getting some papers from the government. The women told him that she had nothing to do about the delay and that she could not reveal the current status of his application. She then explained to him some other procedures etc and was explaining to him the possible sources of delay and what he may do to get things done fast.

"Thanks for all the info madam. I have a small gift for you here and he opened the packet that he was carrying." It contained bundles of 100 rupee notes.

The woman was very surprised by this and was totally taken aback. "Sir, you are a priest in a church. You are a religious leader of the christian community. You advice people of your faith not to do sins. Also you pardon people when they realize their sins come for forgiveness. Being such a person, is it right on your part to ask me to commit a sin."

The priest didnt know what to say. He was visibly moved and there were a couple of tear drops in his eyes. He spoke after a few seconds. "Mam, please forgive me for this. The person who was doing the same job before you used to accept money from everyone to pass the documents. So I assumed the same about you. I am very sorry. May jesus bless you and your family."

"Thanks for your blessings. It is blessings of people like you that we need."

The priest left after this and I continued with my work.

PS:

1.) I have modified a few minor things slightly for the sake of narrative convinience.

2.) Incidentally, the woman that I had mentioned above has a son named Parthasarathy.

The One legged Mendicant

'Endrendrum punnagai, Mudiv illa punnagai... dheem dheem thanana dheem thanana vaaname yellaiyo...' - I was humming this beautiful song from Alaipayuthey as I was cruising along in my land cruiser with my sweet heart on the magnificent roads of Chennai. The destination: Saravana Bhavan - a gourmets delight.

Yah, dreams are always great. Probably I should dream even better the next time. Coming back to earth, i was actually driving my TVS victor on the rickety (but better than Bangalore) roads of Chennai to Saravana Bhavan in the scorching sun for my lunch. Saravana Bhavan is not exactly a gourmets delight, but it does offer tasty and healthy food at middle class affordable rates. I was parking my bike on the road when I saw three people leaving the hotel. The first two had their bikes parked to the left of where I was parking my bike and the third had her scooty parked to my right. The third being a beautiful lass was naturally the focus of my attention.

At this moment, in came this one legged mendicant and asked the first guy for alms. He kind of acted as if this 70 odd mendicant did not exist and didnt even bother to say no. This pissed me off a bit. But of course, you cant quite blame that guy. When you are constantly looking at such people wherever you go, your senses are numbed and you stop feeling for them. After spending some time standing in front of him, the mendicant moved on to the second person. This was a pot bellied middle aged man who promptly gave him something and left the place. The mendicant thanked him before he left.

Me being a kind hearted, soft natured, good souled Samaritan along the lines of Buddha, Jesus and the Mahatma decided to give something to this mendicant. Of course I never encourage begging and have prevented many friends of mine from giving money to beggars but I make an exception when the concerned person is very old. So, I was actually waiting for this chap to come over to me and ask me so that I can give him something and display my generosity to the world. But, much to my consternation he simply crossed me without bothering to even look at me once and went straight to the lass who merily giggling into her nokia 3310. Somehow this affected me. I was not able to fathom why a beggar wouldnt want to get money from me. Do I look like a pathetic miser? With these thoughts I went into the hotel.

The aroma of the food made me forget this and I happily devoured the food. After a sumptuous meal, I walked out of Saravana Bhavan. By this time, I had completely forgotten the mendicant and the whole of my brain was trying to analyze that core dumped issue that was giving me sleepless nights at work. But the moment I came out of the hotel, I saw this mendicant and the core dumped issue vanished from my brain. I tried hard not to look at him or think about him and made a brisk walk towards my bike but before I could start my bike and leave the place he came to me and asked me to give him some money in his own inimitable style. I was totally nonplussed now. Did that meal from Saravana Bhavan make me loose that Uncle Scrooge looks. I couldnt understand. I just gave him 1 rupee and left that place. A lot of the bikes there were parked in a haphazard fashion. Cursing the people who had parked their bikes like that on the road, I slowly removed my bike out of that mess. But by this time, my curiosity had gotten the better of me. I wanted to know why he ignored me the first time and then asked me the second time. Was it just an act of a mad old man or did he have some reason for doing so. I wanted to know that. So I called him and asked him to come near me.

Myself: "Ungai kitta oru kelvi. Yaaru kittelam kaasu kepeenga"

Mendicant: "Ellar kittaiyum kepen sami. Yaaru kudupanga yaaru kuduka mattanganu eppudi theriyum"

Myself: "Seri. Appudina yen naan vantha pothu yen kitta kekale aana veliya pogum pothu kaeteenga. Hotel Security yethavathu sonnara"

Mendicant: "Illainga sami. pasiyoda varavanga kitta ketta kuduka maatanga. nalla vayirara saapitutu varavanga kitte ketta kudupanga. athaan"

Myself: ???????????????????

Myself: "Inthanga". and I gave him another 5 rupee coin.

Mendicant: "Sami, athaan yerkanave kuduthuteengale"

Myself: "Ithu tuition fees"

PS:

1.) I do think there is a small lesson here for all budding marketing people. For some this might be very obvious. But for people like me, who dont have an aptitude for marketing, this may provide some valuable lessons.

2.) I am no linguist and my literary skils are not something to be proud about though I can throw around a GRE word or two here and there. So please do bear with any grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Id be happy if you were to take the trouble of pointing out any mistakes that you think need to be corrected. It will help me in improving my writing skills.

Blogs that I read

Thought Id list down some of the blogs that I read regularly and give my comments on them. Heyyyyyy, I can almost see that expression on your face - at this very moment arent you thinking "this bugger says that he is so damn busy with this core dumped issue that has beseiged him but has still got the time to publish four posts in a span of 48 hours. What the heck does he think???"

Well, honestly, I am very busy. I have been working for more than 12 hours a day in the last week but I do get some time during the course of my work. Basically there is a process called make, which builds the binary (for the Windows literate but Linux illiterate, this is something like your EXE). This process needs to be done everytime you do some change to the code and you want to test it. This takes about 15 minutes. So I manage to conceive something and put it here. OK, enough of the crap and let me come to the point.

1.) http://pagalak.blogspot.com

The primary contributor here is Kumar Alagappan (a) Dog, one of my close friends from VIT. Please dont ask me why he got that alias. It is far too hilarious to be described in words. Honestly, you need to be an absolute third rate moron to not name him that after seeing dog do that. hehe... I better stop here. Doggie is coming over to India after his masters at NCSU and I might get castrated for this.

OK, coming to his blog. It is actually a pretty neat one. You can get some serious stuff, some funny stuff and hold your breath, some mega serials too. Yes, this dog has already written the story, screenplay and the dialogues for two mega serials (a T.Rajendar in the making). The first one was in three parts and the second one in four parts. Whilst the protagonist in the second one was an young lad, a middle aged man in the gulf was the protagnoist in the first. IMO, the first one was simply superb. The bugger actually built up a lot of suspense by publishing the three parts over a period of 2.5 months. I guess almost everyone who reads his blog were blown over by that. Enough said, read it yourself. It is titled "Insecurities of a Middle aged Indian Expatriate". Of course there are other blogs too that are worth a read.

2.) http://sleepless-in-iima.blogspot.com/

http://oka356.blogspot.com/

'Oka' is the owner of the above two blogs. The second blog is now defunct (but you can still read the archives) and the first one is very active. I dont know this person and neither does he know me but I got the link to his blog from another friend and from that day I have been checking his blog everyday hoping that there would be a new post available everyday. I just have one sentence to descirbe the posts there. Absolutely, outrageoulsy funny. This guy really writes well and has got a sense of humour which would make the likes of many a bollywood/hollywood/kollywood/"what not" comedian envious. Mind you, this is not a jobless fellow scibbling some crap. He is actually an IIM-A grad in the making. I actually spent a whole working day (I was supposed to be reading Simple Network Management Protocol that day) reading all of the archives in his blog. (Of course I was laughing all day reading this but failed miserably in the SNMP test) This blog is guaranteed to have you in splits.

3.) http://www.theloungers.blogspot.com/

A few people actually post here but the guy who posts most of the stuff is one Mr.Durvasula Karthik (a) DK, honestly a name that evoked feelings of one of the angry rishis in Indian mythology in me the first time I heard it. But, as it often turns out, he is actually a very affable person with a good sense of humour. You can get a variety of stuff in his blog. Some real serious stuff to some not so serious stuff. Not eveyone may like his blog but anyone who reads his blog can certainly appreciate the clarity in his thought and the quality of his english. Obviously, this is one guy who heeded his hearts calling and took up a Masters in Linguistics after a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering. Such actions are not exactly very common in India. If your wavelength matches his, then youd really appreciate some of the stuff that is posted there.

If you have the time, do visit the blogs and read the stuff out there. Your time would certainly be well spent.

Truly Inspirational!!!

This is something that one of my close friends Sriram (a) thala wrote to a few of us some time back. This has already found its way into the blogspots of a few of my other friends too. Just felt that I could add more beauty to mine too by posting it here. This write up contains a few references to our college VIT, but it is quite applicable to everyone.

Hi Guys,

I was just reflecting the other day about times at VIT and life in general and I must say I came up with some very self probing and revealing insights. How many of us remember the times we were at VIT when gangs of people would get together and there would be general talks on how we from VIT would not stand a chance in the big bad world! I must say we have not done badly for ourselves and there's no reason to not be optimistic. Just take a look at the profiles of the people on this group! Now many of us still dont have jobs and are still to earn a penny but IMHO thats not an indication of success. Often times the pursuit of a dream and happiness is more fulfilling than the destination which will always be a step distant but I believe we are all getting there in out own little ways. There is however only one thing that bothers me. I call it the "Comfort Zone Syndrome ". I do believe that many of my friends from VIT are short charging themselves ( as I have done in the past ) by not taking calculated risks. Often a risk must be taken head on. But the Indian and general mentality is to always have a "concrete" backup plan. However, more often than not, this concrete back up plan becomes the comfort zone and the original plan is forgotten. How many of us (either on this forum or friends we can think of)promised ourlseves that we would "eventually" do that thing of ourdreams - and that the job/ temporary occupation / course was just a stop gap / back up plan? Perhaps I am being unrealistic. But its just that I always belived that there were many in VIT who had real potential with the intelligence. And I have tried always to push them on the path they dread - the path of risk. No journey is without risk. What I would request of members of this forum therefore - if you remember a friend from VIT (or indeed from anywhere) who one day told you his dream (perhaps under the influence of alcohol in RiverView :) and if he has forgotten about it - then please do this - fireup a browser and write him a mail. This could change someone's life. Its nice to see some people on this forum whom I have not met in a while. Isnt it surprising that its almost 2 years since we left college! To round off - my only fear for those who have not taken the big plunges yet - will we have the courage to tread the path of fear? Because in time many will have a wife and children ;) Risk taking will definitely not come naturally then if it has not already.

Regards

Sriram

- EOM

Thought Id add a few lines to this myself and spoil the pristine beauty of the above message from thala... but what the heck, its my blog ;)

The main point to note in the above write up is about 'Risk Taking'. If you want a clear cut path before you embark on the journey then you will probably never take the risk. Also, IMHO, if you have a clear cut path before you then it is no risk. You will probably never get it or probably get it very late in your life when it would be too late. All you need is a heart that should always pine for something. With that and trust in your talent in hand, just take the plunge. You will find the path. Remember, its the journey that is the thrill and not the destination. It is great if you reach your destination but even if you dont, you would have lived a very fulfilling life where you relentlessly chased your dreams. Again IMHO, it is zillion times better to fail after trying than not trying at all. OK enough of rhetoric ... go after your dreams...

10 Commandments for LV Programmers


Thou shalt try thy level best to banish ‘Build Array’ & ‘Coercion Dots’ from thy program for they are the incarnation of Satan and will then do their level best to make thy life miserable on the day of delivery.
Obviously these are necessary evils, which thou cannot banish from existence but thou can definitely cleanse thy code of such unnecessary souls. Countless is the number of programmers who have gone insane in attempting to rectify the evil action, namely memory leak, of these evil incarnations. Pray thy god to allow thou to declare the data types correctly lest if thou do not have thy god’s blessings in this regard, thy code will become a breeding ground for ‘Coercion Dots’ and after that even thy god can’t save thou. Always call upon the services of the angelical ‘Replace Array Subset’ instead of invoking the devil incarnate ‘Build Array’. If thou need any help in this thou shalt consult the second prophet from India on the hardships he had to endure in a project due to this sin.

Thou shalt promise on the apple of thy eye that thou will exhaust all other opportunities before deciding to use ‘Globals’ and ‘Locals’.
These words are straight from the mouth of the first prophet from India. He had to face the wrath of the ‘Globals’ and had spent countless sleepless nights in attempting to unravel the evil web they had created around one of his early projects. The evil web will be in various forms like impossibility of debug, too much consumption of memory. Thou shalt reserve a seat for thyself and thy team members in an institute of mental health before declaring ‘Globals’ for this was an option that the first pharaoh himself contemplated after committing the blasphemy of declaring too much globals. So the same fate will befall mortals like thou.

Thou shalt not commit the heinous crime of not knowing thy library for thy brethren for this will scorn thou and thou will have to hang thy head in shame.
Thou should understand thoroughly what thy libraries promise and attempt to use them as often as possible. Libraries are special angels from the almighty and thou shalt use them to produce code that is bug free. Also these angels will greatly assist in reducing the development time and they are angels who are known to all of thy brethren. Thou will be blessed always by thy brethren for using the libraries coz it will make their job easy when they try to debug thy code in thy absence.

Before opening LabVIEW thou shalt understand that ‘Error in’ and ‘Error Out’ are like the dress on thy body. Thou shalt not venture out without thy dress; similarly thou shalt not create even a single VI without ‘Error in’ and ‘Error out’.
If thy dare for even a second to scorn the importance of ‘Error in’ and ‘Error out’ this will be noted down by thy code and they will take their revenge at the most opportune moment and will crash thy party in no time. While thou might think this VI is not going to generate error the devils will be conspiring against thou and hit thou where thou least expect to be hit. They will induce racing conditions in thy code and they will induce it in such a fashion that the racing will NOT occur in thy PC but in thy customers’ PC. So never forget to give ‘Error in’ and ‘Error out’ and never ever forget to wire them, as then the angels will bless thou so that all error conditions will pop out and no racing will occur.

Thou shalt commit right now to thyself not to fall prey to the ultimate weapon of Satan, temptation to use parallel constructs.
Satan managed to tempt Eve to eat the forbidden apple but thou, a warrior of god, shall always watch for this weapon of Satan. If it was the forbidden apple for Eve, it is parallelism for thou. It is very easy to fall prey to the temptation coz it is very easy to do so and seems to provide good answers immediately but remember these are the hallmarks of a good temptation. If thou fall pray to this, it will allow Satan to cause maximum damage to thy structure in the form of racing. This racing will give thou many sleepless nights and painful work days that thou will feel like bashing up thy PC for no fault of its. But relief is available for the discerning. If utilized with extreme circumspection thy can master parallelism in thy code and close all doors to racing, the most tormenting creation of Satan. Listen to the third pharaoh from India on the difficulties he had to endure in a couple of projects in his formative years on account of a mild form of this sin

At the outset thou shall master the art of using ‘Simulation’. Another of god’s creation that will relieve thou of the headache of testing the software with the hardware.
If ever there were a double-edged sword then this would be it. If used carefully can be such a good domestic pet but if thou, in all thy haughtiness, decide to abuse this gentle angel, thou shall face its wrath during testing. It will transform itself into a Jurassic beast and will cause untold harm to thy project estimates. If the fate of countless programmers does not convince thou not to abuse this angel then even thy prayer of repentance in the last moment will fail thou.

Be it an ‘Enumeration’ or a ‘Cluster’, even if it is used only once, thou shall save that as a type definition.
If thou do not adhere to this commandment thou will have to repent it later when thou are forced to change the structure of the cluster or add elements to the ‘Enumeration’. Though might think I will leave this project before any modifications come but thou will have to endure being abused with the choicest expletives from the person who had the misfortune of modifying thy horrible creation. Thou will be labeled a fool if thy fail to use such a simple god provided tool which will prevent survival from becoming hell in the later stages of thy project coz as by then thy LabVIEW application bereft of type definitions would have become so convoluted that it will start resembling the Gordian knot more than a Virtual Instrumentation application and thou art no Alexander.

If thou categorize inputs as ‘Recommended’ and ‘Required’ then truly thou and thy brethren are blessed else great misfortune will befall thou.
The creators of LabVIEW in all their wisdom had decided to make the inputs ‘Recommended’ by default. Though this might appear innocuous at first look, ask the poor programmer who had to wonder why his data in a ‘LV-2 global’ is getting initialized all of a sudden in the middle of an application before thou decide on the importance of this. If thy god had decided that he would endow thou with the wisdom to use this feature then thou art a truly blessed programmer. If thy god has failed to do so then thou shall try to put this into thy brain coz this is for thy own benefit. If thou decide to ignore this then let thy god help thou.

Thou shalt understand that thou are not creating a piece of art while coding for it to be abstract and thereby pose all sorts of problems to mortals from comprehending thy creation. So thou shalt create code that is clean and well commented.
If thou become too arrogant and claim that thy code is supremely self-documenting and hence does not require commenting, then thou art the biggest fool on earth coz though thou might be the pharaoh of pharaohs in LabVIEW thou brethren might not be the same. So thou shalt make thy code clean and explain all thy intelligent algorithms and the reason for following the data structure that thou have followed. Also remember comments are also part of the software, so when thou changeth the code thou shall changeth the comment. Also thou should not display thy arrogance and comment very simple operations. If thou doeth such things then thou will be scorned to no extent by thou brethren and will be banished from thy company coz thy nuisance value will far exceed thy utility.

Thou should remember coding standards like thou remember thy name. Coz any deviation from it, intentional or not, will coz thy brethren not to understand this and thou should cease to call thyself a programmer.
Thy creativity is better used in solving the problem than in finding new ways of doing simple things for which standards have already been established. While thou might think that thy idea is better than the standard thou successors might not think so. They will not thank thou for thy crime of playing with the sacrosanct standards. On the contrary, they will revile thou. If thou still feel that the standard is the creation of some useless fellow, think again. There have been pharaohs before thou who have created this in all their wisdom. If thou still think thou have to change the standard then thy god help thou in this perilous adventure. Thou have to perform the Herculean task of convincing the living pharaoh of the need of such a misadventure.


Creation of
The third pharaoh of LabVIEW in India

Parthasarathy


By
The third pharaoh of LabVIEW in India
Parthasarathy


PS:

1.) This is heavly inspired by
‘The Ten Commandments for C programmers’ by Henry Spencer
http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/ten-commandments.html
Check that link to get an annotated version of the above

2.) This was written by me less than a year ago while I was working in LabVIEW in Soliton Technologies www.solitontech.com .

3.) LabVIEW is proprietary software of National Instruments. To know more about LabVIEW, check out www.ni.com

Why CORE-DUMPED?????

For the uninitiated, core-dumped is an error that the C/C++ compiler reports when one of the pointers in the code violates the sarcosanct boundaries in the memory. This is actually a very frustrating error and almost all C/C++ programmers would swear that this is a real pain in the arse.

The error statement would simply be "Segmentation fault - core dumped" or "Something else equally bizarre - core dumped". Hardly of any help. Will not contain any details regarding why the error ocurred or where it ocurred. So to come out of it, you really have to dig in deep and try and solve the issue which can be really very frustrating.

Now, this blog got created when I was screaming at the top of my lungs for someone to come and rescue me from the clutches of one such error and hence this got the name core-dumped. The compiler would simply dump the core if there is something in the code that affects things that it reveres - basically boundaries in the memory. Similarly, if there is anything that affects me, then this blog will contain that. So this is basically my core-dump. But it will be better than C/C++ core-dump as this will contain the when, where, what and why...

The title "Manathirku Varuvathellam" means "Whatever that comes to my mind" in my native tongue Tamil. So you can expect posts on diverse topics consisting of but not limited to tech stuff, reviews, links to great websites, attempt at wry humour, my feelings etc...