Appscale featured in www.startups.in

Two days back appscale has been featured in startups.in. Though I'm not very sure how significant it means to be featured in such a site. But being appscale's first such publicity, it has certainly created a bit of excitement to me.

A smart spam!

In general before trashing the spam mails I waste some of my time looking at those! Few days back I got this rather different kind of spam. Perhaps the spammer had picked sentences randomly from various articles. And at the end it resulted in a total non-sense. Being a great fan of Sukumar Ray, I have some fascination for non-sense world. I am not sure whether the spammer tried to show his creativity or just to annoy people by this spam. But I have found this funny. Most of the sentences has some meaning (some time they are quite powerful, I think). But when you try to integrate the whole thing it just becomes a stupid mess! Any way here I post the whole message. Happy reading!

Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:44:31 +0200
From: Charlotte Obrien <flha@fwacgroup.com>
To: sahid...
Subject: ecosystem counterpart


Later on, remote scripting was taken to newer heights by other talented programmers, and eventually, AJAX was the result. Learn to edit HTML code by hand.
Specify image WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes for faster loading in the browser.
We all know we have to have a website, but are we using this venue to its greatest advantage? The human voice penetrates the clutter and embeds itself in your prospect's consciousness.
We all know we have to have a website, but are we using this venue to its greatest advantage?
You may not have the resources or budget to do them all now, but you can build your site up over time.
Email, print, check from your mobile phone, subscribe via RSS, and share with others.
The human voice penetrates the clutter and embeds itself in your prospect's consciousness.
The layout of a CMS is highly recognizable, but also limited by the standard boxes and format that you can choose from.
Disable Session State if not using sessions.
Each character adds to the size of the web page and to the load time.
The human voice penetrates the clutter and embeds itself in your prospect's consciousness. What I was shocked to find when viewing this link, was that basically our entire website was duplicated on this site.
But it's more likely that one tiny ad simply isn't enough to build sales. People want it short, quick, and precise. A CMS requires knowledge, constant upgrades because of new editions of the CMS that come to the market and in order to use the latest features you need to upgrade.
Does Your Website Have A Purpose?
Some of the code runs on the front end, some runs on the back end, and some runs somewhere in between. Think of it as a work in progress.
Use SQL Server or another professional level database over Access. How could this happen when you didn't change a thing? There are situations in which you rather would not use one. Combine images and use image maps instead of segmenting images, remembering that each image loaded is a connection between the web browser and the web server. They believe a website is a marketing silver bullet.
If Sessions are not used in your application, remove these two methods since they will be compiled and executed even when empty. Our ability to retain information is severely compromised by a new world order of constant contact.
IsPostBack to prevent code from being needlessly executed.
Each character adds to the size of the web page and to the load time. Once these are found and flagged, they are investigated for any infringement.
Use comments sparingly.
Use SQL Server or another professional level database over Access. How could this happen when you didn't change a thing? There are situations in which you rather would not use one. Combine images and use image maps instead of segmenting images, remembering that each image loaded is a connection between the web browser and the web server. They believe a website is a marketing silver bullet.
If Sessions are not used in your application, remove these two methods since they will be compiled and executed even when empty. Our ability to retain information is severely compromised by a new world order of constant contact.
IsPostBack to prevent code from being needlessly executed.
Each character adds to the size of the web page and to the load time. Once these are found and flagged, they are investigated for any infringement.

Back from Mud and Laziness

So me back in daily life of programming, software, internet! Two weeks of leave went more quickly than I would have thought. To my wonder I was able to make my desperate attempt of not going nowhere near to this web-world a success. I am amused how I restrained myself from not visiting any cyber cafe these days. I was literally doing nothing (if you don't count meeting your family, relatives, friends as doing something). I spent 7 days in my childhood village. Being monsoon time, it was all muddy there. After years of time I had to walk barefoot, lifting my pants till my knees. It was interesting to re-experience a known but lost experience. But now being back in business, I feel rusty.

Some embarrassing dumbness...

For last few days I am hooked up in the classical Programming Pearls. It's an amazing read. The author makes you feel programming so easy. Just now I have finished column 7 titled as The Back of the Envelope. After learning about various back of the envelope techniques given by the author I was reminded some of my estimations, where it reflected my sheer intelligence, really! After some hesitation, I was able to convince myself that it's okay to express some of my dumbness to the world. So here I go, bear with me.

Most embarrassing was while estimating how far is Kolkata from Chennai. I don't know exactly how I came up with the figure of 600 km! Later when I booked my ticket to my home town, I found the distance is 1662 km. OMG! It's almost 3 times than what I thought! And now after reading the book I apply the techniques, which makes lot more sense. On average Chennai Mail travels around 30 hours to reach Kolkata with average speed of 50 km, which makes the distance 1500 km. Lot better in deed, but [sigh...] too late. Another one happened in a beautiful night when, after a good dinner, I thought it'll be wonderful to spend some time in Besant Nagar beach beside the sea under the dreamy light of moon. I asked my friend let us go. He wondered and asked how far is it? [He was new in Chennai, that time] I was pretty convinced that it can't take more than 15 minutes. My calculation was... We walk 1 km/ 7 mins and Beach is hardly 2 km away from our room. To my wonder when we saw the water of Bay of Bengal, we had already walked for 40 mins. Okay I don't dare to find any excuse behind this, may be both of my assumptions (speed and distance) went terribly wrong :(. Yet on another occasion I turned out to be too dumb in this estimation business. While starting coding for our product my boss asked me "So sahid, what do you think? How much time will it take to finish this?" May be being over-enthusiastic, my confident response was "It should be complete within 4 months". And to my wonder it took more than a year for us to shape up our HRWorks.

If I dig deep may be some more will come out, but I don't really want to let that happen. In between why don't you try to estimate how much water flows out of the Ganga (if not Mississippi) per day. Don't expect me to guess. I've just finished the column. Answer is on my lip, "As much as flows in".

Looking back at my identity...

Today was a bad day for me. I got a call from one of my childhood friend. Not from him actually, but from his mobile. Strangely the caller was a police from our local police station inquiring some details. He had been shot to death yesterday night while illegally supplying cattles to neghourhood country, Bangladesh! No doubt, he was doing crime. But I feel sad for this whole incidence. Few days back when he called me, I didn't talk to him giving excuse of my busy schedule. Thought of calling him later. But I'm too late. This whole thing has made me feel sorry for myself, for my beautiful village, my wonderful early days friends. If my father wouldn't have been bit richer who knows I could also have similar fate. Many of my early friends are literally struggling to survive, few doing crime by illegally supplying Indian goods to Bangladesh, few serving foods in restaurants, few cooking in hotels, few plowing in firm lands... and here I'm expressing myself in Internet! I feel really odd when I go back to my village. Why this much contrast? Had they got enough opportunities, couldn't they have been leading a better life? No one is there perhaps to listen. We can only expect tomorrow world will be a better place.

Let Allah bless his soul. Amen.