Beginners (Bad)Luck

Today I went back to the place where I used to work previously and met some of my old colleagues, who have helped me shape my career so far. After going there, I started thinking about my past. I went into flash back mode and started thinking about the very first program I wrote there. I was a new programmer with very little knowledge of C++ (I still don’t think, am very good at it.). I do promise to stay away from technical jargons (as much as I can) this time.

The task assigned to us was to convert a RAW image into BMP format. Task wasn’t very hard. My team lead would say “It’s nothing great“. It’s so funny that whenever he said “it’s nothing great” meant I had to spend at-least a day trying to figure out how to fix the issue. To be honest, it’s just that he was very good with coding and I was nowhere near his league.

So back to our story, I and my close friend X(I will not name him till he gives me permission to use his name) started working on it. We decided to try our luck with Google and as luck would have it, we hit BMP wiki page. Read about the header stuff and spoke to our senior Mr. Y (everybody were our seniors in those days. Good old days, we had no responsibilities.). He gave us the green signal and we started working on converting the RAW image to BMP. We worked for hours and had no results to show for it. As the image below shows, we were literally scratching our heads.

Completely Confused

So we went back to Mr. Y, he saw our code and asked us to create a C structure and fill it with the values he gave and write it to a file. Desperate as we were, we tried it too, with no positive results. We were confused and desperate to finish the work. We were still thinking about what to do, when one senior Test Engineer (Team Lead) Ashithraj passed by and we started conversation.

Ashithraj : It’s late aren’t you guys going home.
Me : Got a problem trying to figure out how to do it.
Ashithraj : What are you guys working on?
X : Trying to convert Raw image into BMP format.
Ashithraj : It’s a headache.
Me : I know, we have been struggling to do it.
X to Ashithraj : How do you know it’s hard.
Ashithraj : I had to do it too. I had the code but recently I lost it.
(I was cursing our rotten luck and Ashithraj started to speak again).
Ashithraj ; I didn’t write the code. I search for it in Google and found it. You can try it too. But don’t tell anybody I told you to search for it in Google.
(We were listening to him like he was giving a pravachan(Sermon) to us)

We thanked him and finally we could see a ray of light at the end a long dark tunnel. We could clearly see a path which would take us to our salvation our goal. Converting RAW image to BMP, it was our friendly Internet search engine GOOGLE.

Road to salvation

We started working with extra energy. I don’t know where it came from. I didn’t care either. We started searching for source code to convert RAW image to BMP and finally got a piece of code, Our ticket to salvation and decided to call it quits for the day. We never knew that things were changing for the worst.

THE NEXT DAY

We started compiling the code. I was working on a Macintosh machine and my friend on Windows XP. I tried to compile the code on Macintosh and got errors which I had never seen before. It was expected, I was still relatively new to Macintosh (The problem was I have never seen those errors again on Macintosh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

My friend X wasn’t doing any better. He was struggling too, he was getting different errors. We thought it was because of the fact that we were using two different compiler. I started working with him on fixing these errors on his machine. We spend hours trying to fix these errors and we had some numerically positive result to show for it. Our error count increased from 45 odd too 300 or more.

It was almost afternoon now and the only progress we had made was to increase the error count. We were now lost and confused.

So finally we decided to approach our Team Lead, who re-directed us to Mr. Y, who promptly came to help us. He looked at all the errors Visual Studio was showing up and looked up at my friend X with an expression I believed was surprise. Let me warn you am not very good at reading facial expressions.

(He took one look at the code and started talking)
Y : Did you write this?
X : Yes.
Y : So you need my help to fix these errors.
(I was thinking : Why on hell will we call you otherwise?)
X : Yes
Y : I can’t help you.
X : Please, I need your help.
(I had never seen my friend X speak so respectfully)
Y : Do you know win 32?
(I was tired of this interrogation, How thick can Mr. Y be? We didn’t know C++ correctly, The only time we would know win 32 will be in our dreams.)
X : No
Y : In that case I can’t help you.
(By now few people were listening to this conversation including our Team Lead. I could see all our efforts going down a drain but X managed to keep his emotions under control and ask.)
X : Why?
Y : Unfortunately for both of us, Your code is written in win 32 and I don’t know win 32 either and it also means you have downloaded the source code.

Next thing I knew, entire floor was laughing and few people were walking towards us to get first hand information about the “funny incident” (I didn’t find it funny). My friend X, was embarrassed but he managed to laugh. I was laughing too( Sorry X).

Fortunately for him, this was the end of his problem. Unfortunately my problems had just started. I won’t discuss that since it is a complete technical jargon.

We finally managed to complete our first assignment. We struggled through it, searched for code on web, embarrassed ourselves in front of everyone. At least there was one silver-lining, we were on right track!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GOOGLE IS GREAT. You need source code try Google first, think later. It’s a mantra in which many Software Engineers believe

Google Pac-Man

I have spent most of yesterday and today playing Pac-Man on my system. No I didn’t install it on my machine, I played it on my web-browser. All thanks to Google. Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. To celebrate Pac-Man’s 30th birthday Google put it up on its search page.

Google Pac-man

This playable version of the classic video game was put on Google’s front page on 21 May. Google reworked the game so the layout was arranged around letters forming its name. The Pac-Man game proved so popular that Google has now made it permanently available on its own page.

You can visit the page here.

Full screen

Another interesting change is that “I’m Feeling Lucky” button is replaced by “Insert Coin” button. According to one of the pages of BBC web-site, it has had a major impact on working behaviours of the employees. Read this for more info.

Pac-man was one of the first games I had played on a computer. It was about 15 years back. And playing the game again made me nostalgic and I started thinking about the good time I had playing this game on a computer with black and white monitor. If I remember correctly this game used to fit in a Floppy disk. Well Floppy disk have become extinct, but the game has survived like few other games of that time like Prince of Persia. I would like to thank Google for provided me this moment.

Enjoy this link for as long as possible, I won’t be surprised if they IT Managers block this site. “Make hay while the sun shines”. By the way as of now I hold the record for highest score in and around my cubicle. My score is just 7770!!!!!!!!

Bunking Brothers – the beginning

This is a story of 4 guys and deals primarily with their lives in Engineering College. Reading this wont help you become a better engineer, On the contrary it might ruin your studies and also your career. So read it for fun but don’t try to follow these guys. They were crazy and also lucky to get away with all the stuff they pulled out. In this post, I will be discussing the formation of a group . The group wasn’t famous in college nor very famous in the class. But that was the very fact that helped them skip classes without anybody knowing it. I will get on with the story.

The group consisted of four regular members Vishvesh, Mahesh, Nishanth and Yogesh. There were couple of helpers and one was Charan, he would at times cover up for bunking brothers. Although he never joined the group officially he was part of the gang. Then there was Ashish who would pass on the information about the classes. The group believed that classes were like jail.

For them class rooms were like prison cells

Nishanth alias the leader alias the grandmaster
The leader and founder of the group was Nishanth, He used to bunk classes and nobody would come to know. He was a one man army and clever enough to stay out of trouble. Even when he fell into any trouble he had the wits to bail himself out of it. He was so good that even when he had attendance shortage he escaped without a fine.

Vishvesh alias Bluff Master Joins Nishanth
Vishvesh knew Nishanth for 2 years and it never occurred to both of them that they could form a dream team. Both the guys were different, completely different. While Vishvesh was studies, Nishanth was adventurous. One day Nishanth had to go to Mangalore University(MU) to meet his cousin. It was Friday and college had extended launch break on Fridays, so that Muslim students could go to mosque to offer their prayers. Vishvesh had finished his lunch and was bored because none of his friends were around. So he volunteered to join Nishanth in his trip. So they went to MU. By the time they came back, they were 20 mins late and they decided to skip the class and watch a movie in the hostel. Vishvesh was introduced to the world of Nishanth for the first time. This is where it started. Vishvesh became a regular with Nishanth. He took Nishanth as the grand master and accepted his leadership. Soon they were to be joined my another member, his name was Mahesh.

Mahesh alias Movie Buff joins the group
It was a Thursday, HOD of the Computer Department was supposed to take a class and HOD was teaching management. HOD would very proudly claim that he was teaching the subject without knowing anything about the subject and said it was an art, a very special art to teach without knowing anything about the subject. As far as students were concerned it was loads of BS. So Vishvesh decided to go home instead of attending his lecture( he was supposed to take the lecture for 2 hours) and Vishvesh was promptly joined by Nishanth. When they were on their way out, Mahesh saw them, spoke to them for 5 minutes and they convinced him to join them for the day. Luckily for Mahesh, there was mobile checking in the class instead of a lecture on Management that day( The University under which the Bunking Brothers Studied didn’t allow the Engineering Students to carry Mobile phones to classes). And if students were found with a phone they would have to pay fine a to get it back. Mahesh had a mobile and an iPod in his bag and since he bunked class with the bunking brothers, he saved his mobile and the iPod. Next day on hearing the story of the previous day, he decided to join the gang permanently and Bunking brothers had 3 members. He went on to become one of the most important member of the gang. He was the one who named Nishanth as Grand Master, Vishvesh as Bluff master and Yogesh as sleeping master. The only title which was contestable was the title of Bluff master given to Vishvesh, since Mahesh could out bluff Vishvesh any day !!!

Final Member – Yogesh alias the Sleeping Master
Months later due to circumstances Bunking brothers were joined by another member Yogesh. The College management had decided to bring in NOC (No Objection Certificate). Students had to have NOC to get attendance in the class and the forms were to send to their homes. Vishvesh and Mahesh decided not to submit the form. Yogesh too decided to join them and decided to not give a NOC. The rule with NOC was simple, attendance would start from the day NOC was submitted to the HOD(Head of the department). So if one would submit it late he would not lose out on attendance. But could skip as many classes as needed. Yogesh went on to break all the records, Vishvesh and Mahesh had established in missing classes. He never came to college after that, despite the fact he stayed in the college hotel which meant he had to walk for less than 5 minutes to reach the college.

Now that the boring part of formation of the group is done, I will get on and try to write some of the exciting misadventures of the brothers. Stay tuned for the sequel of this post, I have tentatively named it “Bunking Brothers – the inspiration”

Night Outs

Night outs refers to being up all through the night. For normal people, it means partying and enjoying. But for few people belonging to a tribe called Software Engineer, it’s an ambiguous statement. I belong to this cursed tribe.

While we love night outs when it refers to partying, but there is another definition which is dreaded by people of our tribe. This refers to working all night long in our offices/cubicles. We avoid speaking about this, since few people in our tribe believe that speaking of evil brings evil luck. I don’t know whether I should believe it, I have faced this evil and have survived to tell the tale. Back then I didn’t speak of this evil and yet had to face it. So am trying my luck this time.

Most of us enjoy this.

I don't drink, so I can't enjoy this

But most of us hate this.

Atleast I don't enjoy working at night

The most embarrassing part of work-related night out is that, when we(my tribe members) say to our friends(outside of our tribe) that we had a night out the previous day(night), they would initially think we had fun and get angry that we enjoyed the previous night and didn’t invite them to join us, but on the contrary it would have been like a trip to hell to us. I hate it when they call this working at night as “Night Out“. It should be called something else, but I can’t come with a good name for it. It’s a kind of punishment meted to hard working people.

On serious note it’s not healthy for an employee and also the employer to allow night outs in workplace. I have listed down few of the pros and cons I could think of.

Pro
1. You can get the work done. This is the only positive thing I can think of.

Cons
1. It’s bad for employees health
2. Brings down employee morale
3. Employee Productivity the next day is low. There are companies which gives the day after the night out off, but most companies don’t. Which is unfair.
4. Productivity at night is low, when compared to morning.
5. Effects employees personal life
6. And in some cases convince him to quit the job.

Looking at the pros and cons, I feel cons out-weigh the pros. Night outs should be avoided as much as possible. I do understand that there are times when this can’t be avoided. But whenever it can be avoided, it should be avoided

Programming Language

It’s been nearly a week since my last post. I won’t say I was busy, it’s just that I was in no mood to write anything. I still am in no mood to write anything worthwhile. Coming back to business, I found this in one of the link my friend had sent. It’s fun reading.




The original poster had found this on a forum. In response to the question “Which programming language should I learn first?” – this is the response of one of the member of the forum to the question.

Depends.

To program in an expressive and powerful language: Python
To get a website up quickly: PHP
To mingle with programmers who call themselves “rockstars”: Ruby.
To really learn to program: C.
To achieve enlightenment: Scheme.
To feel depressed: SQL
To drop a chromosome: Microsoft Visual Basic
To get a guaranteed, mediocre, but well paying job writing financial applications in a cubicle under fluorescent lights: Java.
To do the same thing with certifications and letters after your name: C#
To achieve a magical sense of childlike wonder that you have a hard time differentiating from megalomania: Objective C

I could go on… but I’m not feeling hateful enough today.

I sign off here. Hope you enjoyed reading this.