This was a blow by the way, a major blow. I was at HEC when i had first learnt that Google's Android is being used by HTC to launch a mobile handset in USA. Ever since, I had wanted to lay my hands on one. Now HTC has brought Magic to India with Airtel and they are going to charge more than 30000/- for it. This is so awful. The same mistake was committed by iphone people who priced it way high above the normal price and then later were found unable to comment on the low sales. I mean this kind of price is too high. There are idiots who love to buy these handsets to display their affluence, but for most of the people this is unreachable and once their interest dwindles in the product, nothing can shake it off the shelves, nothing.
I hope better sense prevails and they bring down the price. I read another report which said that close to 18 different models will be entering Indian market, all of them using Android, by this year end. I guess the prices will stabilise then.
On another note,I stumbled across gameboy emulator for mac. Great !!! so you can download the gameboy game on your mac and use this emulator to run it. I downloaded kigb and one game from internet and it worked, though the screen size was very small and it lost a lot of resolution when i stretched the window to a reasonable size. but hey, it worked didn't it? great job!!!
With the weekend almost here, the only thing I want to see is 6 PM on the clock so that I can pack and leave for home. 2 days of bliss and rest beckon me !!!! I hope I can catch up somewhat on Android this weekend.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Beer, Wolverine, Perian and other stuff
Days are just slipping by me !!!! it is already nigh about end of July and there are still a lot of pending issues to complete. You must have gone thru this phase, lots of small, niggling items that need your attention, almost crying to get your attention and you just simply don't have either the patience or time to address them. I have got almost 15 such items on my plate and I need at least 2 full days to complete them. Am targeting this weekend (there goes my quiet time...)
Last Friday, after almost willfully forcing myself to abstain from alcohol, I went to a hotel with Sachin and had 4 beers. Great Beer !!! Taste was exquisite. Original idea was to down a quick one and go home but after 3 hours and 4 beers, I still wanted more :-) Thankfully had the sense to stop and to drive carefully home. made it safe that night although had some motorists honking madly at me on the Ashram flyover. must have done something crazy although can't remember it now :-)
On Saturday, played a Wolverine game MRD escape and wow, that game is addicting!!!! My son and i have almost completed the game and we had a lot of fun out of it. That made me think about quality time to be spent with children. I mean, honestly, is playing an online game with your son a good way to spend time? The only rationalization I can proffer is that we both had tonnes of fun and I guess that part is important too.
On Sunday, I downloaded a pirated version of a new movie (won't tell you which one) from a brand new site (won't tell you about it either LOL). I ran into a problem immediately. It was an avi file and quick time won't run it citing lack of some codec and realplayer will run it but won't play sound. So, I started looking for ways to make it run. I downloaded xvid codec for quicktime. Video started running, but no sound. Downloaded audio codec for quicktime, but no luck. Then I ran into www.perian.org. Wow !!! great job and that too done as open source. I don't know why but I have lot of trust in these open source software. It is my dearest wish to somehow contribute to open source with something, I will find a way to do that. And after I installed everything, well, the movie started playing with proper sound and all. The quality of movie sucks but what else was to be expected. I still have to watch the movie though :-)
Delhi had lots of rain on Monday 27th of July. It was enough to flood the roads, break apart the roads, fell down the trees and create traffic snarls. I was stuck for about an hour before I could find my way home. A 1/2 an hour journey turned into 1 and 1/2 hour nightmare :-(
On Tuesday morning, saw news report that there was a huge huge jam near Ashram flyover and I immeditely dropped any plan to drive to office. Did e-commuting. When Kush came from school, he was pleasantly surprised to see me home so we had an impromptu pillow fight before he was sent to take a bath. Well, he didn't disturb me much in my work, he is a nice obedient kid :-)
There is a timer ticking for me. I can't say much right now, but the winds of change are blowing and clarion calls have been sounded. I will come back to this in another post.
Last Friday, after almost willfully forcing myself to abstain from alcohol, I went to a hotel with Sachin and had 4 beers. Great Beer !!! Taste was exquisite. Original idea was to down a quick one and go home but after 3 hours and 4 beers, I still wanted more :-) Thankfully had the sense to stop and to drive carefully home. made it safe that night although had some motorists honking madly at me on the Ashram flyover. must have done something crazy although can't remember it now :-)
On Saturday, played a Wolverine game MRD escape and wow, that game is addicting!!!! My son and i have almost completed the game and we had a lot of fun out of it. That made me think about quality time to be spent with children. I mean, honestly, is playing an online game with your son a good way to spend time? The only rationalization I can proffer is that we both had tonnes of fun and I guess that part is important too.
On Sunday, I downloaded a pirated version of a new movie (won't tell you which one) from a brand new site (won't tell you about it either LOL). I ran into a problem immediately. It was an avi file and quick time won't run it citing lack of some codec and realplayer will run it but won't play sound. So, I started looking for ways to make it run. I downloaded xvid codec for quicktime. Video started running, but no sound. Downloaded audio codec for quicktime, but no luck. Then I ran into www.perian.org. Wow !!! great job and that too done as open source. I don't know why but I have lot of trust in these open source software. It is my dearest wish to somehow contribute to open source with something, I will find a way to do that. And after I installed everything, well, the movie started playing with proper sound and all. The quality of movie sucks but what else was to be expected. I still have to watch the movie though :-)
Delhi had lots of rain on Monday 27th of July. It was enough to flood the roads, break apart the roads, fell down the trees and create traffic snarls. I was stuck for about an hour before I could find my way home. A 1/2 an hour journey turned into 1 and 1/2 hour nightmare :-(
On Tuesday morning, saw news report that there was a huge huge jam near Ashram flyover and I immeditely dropped any plan to drive to office. Did e-commuting. When Kush came from school, he was pleasantly surprised to see me home so we had an impromptu pillow fight before he was sent to take a bath. Well, he didn't disturb me much in my work, he is a nice obedient kid :-)
There is a timer ticking for me. I can't say much right now, but the winds of change are blowing and clarion calls have been sounded. I will come back to this in another post.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Wine, Darwine and Windows games
Some time back I had installed wine to help me run some windows exe. At that point of time I had downloaded a game (exe, what else) which Kush much enjoys playing online. Unfortunately it never ran using wine giving some errors but for most of the part remaining silent, very silent. And I became busy with making Mediclik run on my Mac. Mediclik runs well using Safari or Firefox, but calendar widget never worked. So, I went around scrounging for a tool which would help me install IE. I found one. It is called ie4osx and when I tried installing it it demanded Darwine. So even when I had Wine, I installed Darwine and ie4osx installed IE6 on my Mac. Using this IE6, I was able to run Mediclik and test the calendar widget (worked very well). Thanks to ie4osx team !!!!
With the Darwine came the WineHelper which supposedly ran the windows exe. And I remembered the half done job of making game.exe run on mac. So the fun began.
Test with Darwine. Gave error that some library can't be loaded, Flash can't be loaded. I installed a Flash10b.ocx using Winetricks, but still the same problem.
I used Wine and well we moved on to one more step. I could see the game window, but the game won't launch.
I kept searching over the net, but drew a blank. At this point of time I almost gave up.
Just to test if the setup is all right, I installed another game and tried running it with Wine. It did. But Darwine gave problem again. But anyways, at least I can run some game. I had read a refrain repeatedly on the net that there are some games or apps which won't run with Wine or Darwine. So maybe the first game falls in that category.
Maybe if I get some time, I will see if I can make Darwine run the first game. The errors are understandable there :-) I never said solvable, did I :-)
With the Darwine came the WineHelper which supposedly ran the windows exe. And I remembered the half done job of making game.exe run on mac. So the fun began.
Test with Darwine. Gave error that some library can't be loaded, Flash can't be loaded. I installed a Flash10b.ocx using Winetricks, but still the same problem.
I used Wine and well we moved on to one more step. I could see the game window, but the game won't launch.
I kept searching over the net, but drew a blank. At this point of time I almost gave up.
Just to test if the setup is all right, I installed another game and tried running it with Wine. It did. But Darwine gave problem again. But anyways, at least I can run some game. I had read a refrain repeatedly on the net that there are some games or apps which won't run with Wine or Darwine. So maybe the first game falls in that category.
Maybe if I get some time, I will see if I can make Darwine run the first game. The errors are understandable there :-) I never said solvable, did I :-)
Friday, July 24, 2009
Mediclik and License server
after all the hullaballoo about the chat and ireport tool creating problem, I found the problem to be a jar file in the lib folder, which on removal solved the problem. so, Mediclik application is again running beautifully on my Mac. The only thing that doesn't work is the calendar widget. I am using safari and firefox, but can't get it to work. I have seen it work on IE on XP so I know it works. I did a google on it, but the results were disheartening with claims that calendar widget doesn't work on any of the browser on Mac. pathetic state of affairs, if true :-)
so, we are onto the last lap here. Mediclik is almost stable with all the features that we had decided. right now look and feel are being changed and after that comes the hardest bit of it. you see being a startup, Chiasma solutions is very afraid that once someone buys a CD, he/she may hand it over to the freewheelers who will use it but won't pay us. Sort of like software pirates at work !!!!
biggest challenge is how to stop them. the approach we have taken is to make the user register with us online. this will be a one time operation, but has to be done so that we can authenticate it with the side effect that we will also be able to allow only one installation from one CD by uniquely identifying the CD and disabling any other installation from that CD. Now the fact is that the target audience, the small clinics, may not have internet connection. This was my biggest concern but it was decided that the salespersons will have some data card with them that they will use to connect to Internet and help the buyer to authenticate their software version. This to me is a highly flawed strategy which is going to cause umpteen amount of trouble. Imagine a salesman walking some medical clinic guy through the steps needed. What if the data card does not work? What if the salesman is unable to do what he is supposed to do? We have to arrange for their traninings etc. But as of now, this approach has been decided and if it sucks then we got to live with it :-(
now the next part of agenda - install IE8 so that i can run the calendar widget and work on my gaming experience :-)
so, we are onto the last lap here. Mediclik is almost stable with all the features that we had decided. right now look and feel are being changed and after that comes the hardest bit of it. you see being a startup, Chiasma solutions is very afraid that once someone buys a CD, he/she may hand it over to the freewheelers who will use it but won't pay us. Sort of like software pirates at work !!!!
biggest challenge is how to stop them. the approach we have taken is to make the user register with us online. this will be a one time operation, but has to be done so that we can authenticate it with the side effect that we will also be able to allow only one installation from one CD by uniquely identifying the CD and disabling any other installation from that CD. Now the fact is that the target audience, the small clinics, may not have internet connection. This was my biggest concern but it was decided that the salespersons will have some data card with them that they will use to connect to Internet and help the buyer to authenticate their software version. This to me is a highly flawed strategy which is going to cause umpteen amount of trouble. Imagine a salesman walking some medical clinic guy through the steps needed. What if the data card does not work? What if the salesman is unable to do what he is supposed to do? We have to arrange for their traninings etc. But as of now, this approach has been decided and if it sucks then we got to live with it :-(
now the next part of agenda - install IE8 so that i can run the calendar widget and work on my gaming experience :-)
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Mediclik, iReport and chat
Well, well, well, what do we have here?
a tool which runs as a web application on Tomcat, which uses iReport tool to generate pdfs for reports using jrxml and jasper files and which now has support for chatting.
Now, it seems that iReport and Chat won't work together :-(
I think the problem is with the jar files in the lib folder, but this has to be found out...
For chat, 2 new jar files have been added and that complicates thins for iReport. What's the link b/w two? need to find that out.
On Tuesday night, my wife lost her aunt. She was in coma for last 1 and a half months in Apollo and the end was prolonged. First we heard of cardiac seizure which was then rectified. Finally at 11 PM, the inevitable was declared. It still came in as a shock. There were many many things to do after and that took quite some time. Past 2 days have just gone in a blur.
I came to my desk on Thursday and find this seemingly idiotic problem of ensuring that 3 tools run together. Well, life goes on.
a tool which runs as a web application on Tomcat, which uses iReport tool to generate pdfs for reports using jrxml and jasper files and which now has support for chatting.
Now, it seems that iReport and Chat won't work together :-(
I think the problem is with the jar files in the lib folder, but this has to be found out...
For chat, 2 new jar files have been added and that complicates thins for iReport. What's the link b/w two? need to find that out.
On Tuesday night, my wife lost her aunt. She was in coma for last 1 and a half months in Apollo and the end was prolonged. First we heard of cardiac seizure which was then rectified. Finally at 11 PM, the inevitable was declared. It still came in as a shock. There were many many things to do after and that took quite some time. Past 2 days have just gone in a blur.
I came to my desk on Thursday and find this seemingly idiotic problem of ensuring that 3 tools run together. Well, life goes on.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
sweet smell of success !!!!
Finally, after a lot of heart burn and lot of fixing issues, Mediclik ran successfully on my MAC.
here are the detailed steps :-)
1) create a war file using all the source files and jsp pages. make sure that library has all our libs too.
2) deploy the war using Tomcat. there is a lib file for jdt core inside TOMCAT/lib folder. copy that to Tomcat folder in the lib folder. change context.xml to mention reloadable = true. add all the lines for db connectivity.
3) make sure that mysqld is running. i couldn't connect to mysql initially so changed permission on the files and folders being used by mysql.
4) create databases using script
5) click on the link of deployed war file. voila !!!!!
it took me close to 7 days and innumerable hours. but it is there running now.
The next step on the agenda is to make games run using wine. right now if i try a graphics rich game using wine, nothing happens. on the net there is someone who claims that apple implementation of xcode is all broken. So that's the next step :-)
I also want to read all about AppleScript and about Symbian.
Plus one simple game development using J2ME. Target this weekend.
here are the detailed steps :-)
1) create a war file using all the source files and jsp pages. make sure that library has all our libs too.
2) deploy the war using Tomcat. there is a lib file for jdt core inside TOMCAT/lib folder. copy that to Tomcat folder in the lib folder. change context.xml to mention reloadable = true. add all the lines for db connectivity.
3) make sure that mysqld is running. i couldn't connect to mysql initially so changed permission on the files and folders being used by mysql.
4) create databases using script
5) click on the link of deployed war file. voila !!!!!
it took me close to 7 days and innumerable hours. but it is there running now.
The next step on the agenda is to make games run using wine. right now if i try a graphics rich game using wine, nothing happens. on the net there is someone who claims that apple implementation of xcode is all broken. So that's the next step :-)
I also want to read all about AppleScript and about Symbian.
Plus one simple game development using J2ME. Target this weekend.
Monday, July 20, 2009
mediclik won't work on my mac !!!!!!!
if the last week was crazy, this week including the weekend was crazier. i had been testing mediclik, our product, on windows and then suddenly i had this bright idea. Why not bring it to my mac? and so started the whirlwind of installing one application after another. install mysql? check. install tomcat? check. install mysql connector? check. use netbeans to create a war? check. deploy war using tomcat? check. login to application? fail.....
change track. use netbeans to create a war using existing resources. deployed it successfully. login failed again.
check if the db connection is ok. there are no logs so no idea. verified that every service is running properly.
use netbeans to create a new war but moved the folders inside WEB-INF. war created and deployed successfully. this time at least login screen opened properly. wrong login gave error. correct login gave nothing. the screen didn't change.
checked all the classes. realized that some files are not being compiled. error is that it can't recognize json objects. did an internet search for the same. found a good article. did things accordingly. compile failed again.
and so on and so forth. i will find something blocking, check it out on the net, try things and find that things are still not working. gooodddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd!!!!!!!!!!
i must admit that the feeling of dropping everything was sometimes overwhelming, but i have persisted nonetheless.
Apart from this never ending cycle of changes to make mediclik work on my mac, I did find time to chat with Abhishek about starting part time on mobile application development which if successful could lead to a new company and about job scenes in Bangalore. things are bad these days even in the silicon valley of India.
Did read some articles on game development using J2ME but these are simple games and simpler articles. not much to talk about, not much to learn. I am looking for a really good book on J2ME game development.
In trying to find some good games, I was given some SIS files by my bro. Now SIS is a symbian file which can run only on those cellphones which are symbian compliant. Motorola is not. Motorola quit Symbian group as it felt that Symbian group is being hijacked by Nokia. As of now there is no tool which can make SIS file run on Motorola phones. Looks like this is another agenda item on my plate. I am going to read about Symbian now.
change track. use netbeans to create a war using existing resources. deployed it successfully. login failed again.
check if the db connection is ok. there are no logs so no idea. verified that every service is running properly.
use netbeans to create a new war but moved the folders inside WEB-INF. war created and deployed successfully. this time at least login screen opened properly. wrong login gave error. correct login gave nothing. the screen didn't change.
checked all the classes. realized that some files are not being compiled. error is that it can't recognize json objects. did an internet search for the same. found a good article. did things accordingly. compile failed again.
and so on and so forth. i will find something blocking, check it out on the net, try things and find that things are still not working. gooodddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd!!!!!!!!!!
i must admit that the feeling of dropping everything was sometimes overwhelming, but i have persisted nonetheless.
Apart from this never ending cycle of changes to make mediclik work on my mac, I did find time to chat with Abhishek about starting part time on mobile application development which if successful could lead to a new company and about job scenes in Bangalore. things are bad these days even in the silicon valley of India.
Did read some articles on game development using J2ME but these are simple games and simpler articles. not much to talk about, not much to learn. I am looking for a really good book on J2ME game development.
In trying to find some good games, I was given some SIS files by my bro. Now SIS is a symbian file which can run only on those cellphones which are symbian compliant. Motorola is not. Motorola quit Symbian group as it felt that Symbian group is being hijacked by Nokia. As of now there is no tool which can make SIS file run on Motorola phones. Looks like this is another agenda item on my plate. I am going to read about Symbian now.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
J2ME, Macport and Wine
The whole last week was crazy. After I gave up my efforts on realistically getting my hands on some code files for mobile games using Java decompilers, I started concentrating on creative aspect of it. Imagine me developing a brand new game for my son!!!!!!!!!
The idea just kind of kept growing on me until I was unable to shake it off. It just looked like the most important thing to do. So after I started dreaming about it, I knew the time of the idea had come. I looked around on the internet for common tools to develop games. There are games based on Flash, on PHP and finally using Java. Now Java is a language I understand. So more digging on it revealed the names of J2ME. More digging led me to microemulators and other plugins that need to be installed. And so after a long long time and downloading lot of files, I was able to set up the environment, ready for some action. Now as per the 2nd step of the agenda, I am reading a lot about game development constructs, the methods, the design etc etc. So far it has been fun !!!!!
While on J2ME and game development, my son came up with another request. He wanted to run an exe file on Mac. Now it can't run, see. Exe is meant for windows not Mac OSX. But my son wont' listen. So again searched on internet and rammed into MacPorts and Wine. Wow!!! A windows emulator on Mac !!!! After I read a lot about how to install these cool applications, I was able to install MacPorts. But then I needed XCode. So I became member of ADC, downloaded XCode (1gb) and installed it. Right now Wine is being installed. Hopefully by evening I will have it ready so that my son can run his game exe on my Mac. things that you need to do for your son !!!!!!!!!!!
Apart from all these esoteric geeky stuff, I also read Paulo Coelho's The Pilgrimage. It is really really bad. I had loved Paulo's Alchemist, but this book had no believable characters, no great philosphical discussions, nothing working. My advise to you will be to avoid this book. Just reread the Alchemist once again.
The idea just kind of kept growing on me until I was unable to shake it off. It just looked like the most important thing to do. So after I started dreaming about it, I knew the time of the idea had come. I looked around on the internet for common tools to develop games. There are games based on Flash, on PHP and finally using Java. Now Java is a language I understand. So more digging on it revealed the names of J2ME. More digging led me to microemulators and other plugins that need to be installed. And so after a long long time and downloading lot of files, I was able to set up the environment, ready for some action. Now as per the 2nd step of the agenda, I am reading a lot about game development constructs, the methods, the design etc etc. So far it has been fun !!!!!
While on J2ME and game development, my son came up with another request. He wanted to run an exe file on Mac. Now it can't run, see. Exe is meant for windows not Mac OSX. But my son wont' listen. So again searched on internet and rammed into MacPorts and Wine. Wow!!! A windows emulator on Mac !!!! After I read a lot about how to install these cool applications, I was able to install MacPorts. But then I needed XCode. So I became member of ADC, downloaded XCode (1gb) and installed it. Right now Wine is being installed. Hopefully by evening I will have it ready so that my son can run his game exe on my Mac. things that you need to do for your son !!!!!!!!!!!
Apart from all these esoteric geeky stuff, I also read Paulo Coelho's The Pilgrimage. It is really really bad. I had loved Paulo's Alchemist, but this book had no believable characters, no great philosphical discussions, nothing working. My advise to you will be to avoid this book. Just reread the Alchemist once again.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
java decompiler
Well, you see, my son has grown fond of playing games on my motoming and well there are certain games which are freely available but their source code is not. So that I always had jar files with classes, but no java files. And well, my apple of eyes has certain problems with some games "papa, ye nahi chal raha", "papa ye sirf nokia ke liye hai". And to be very honest, I am not the world's best programmer so I can't really churn out code for a brand new game for him. But after working in software companies for 8 years, I have learnt a lot about code reusability and how much easier it is to understand a given piece of code and doing changes on it :-)
Now, with a jar file of classes, I can't do much, can I? So, I started searching for java decompilers freely available on net. I ran into JDEC 2.0 and well I tried it. it gave me mixed success. For all java games fanatics, it is common news that game developer of asteroids has placed the source code freely available. So for the class file of asteroid, JDEC ran swooningly well. But for another game, where the name of file was a.class, it gave an exception "string index out of range" and it kept giving this error for other files that i was interested in. I couldn't decompile any other single file using JDEC, it was that bad. And I kept getting the same error. The error was always in JDEC source code file and to my surprise I found that I have only the class files in JDEC folder. and so guess what, i turned the tool on itself. When JDEC tool finished decompiling the error throwing file, I got a java file but of course I couldn't find the error. The line numbers had been mashed up or something like that so I couldn't locate the error throwing statement and so to bring a long story to end, JDEC has been totally ineffective for me.
And so now I start again. I see that there is another tool called JOD which I will try now. More updates later...
Now, with a jar file of classes, I can't do much, can I? So, I started searching for java decompilers freely available on net. I ran into JDEC 2.0 and well I tried it. it gave me mixed success. For all java games fanatics, it is common news that game developer of asteroids has placed the source code freely available. So for the class file of asteroid, JDEC ran swooningly well. But for another game, where the name of file was a.class, it gave an exception "string index out of range" and it kept giving this error for other files that i was interested in. I couldn't decompile any other single file using JDEC, it was that bad. And I kept getting the same error. The error was always in JDEC source code file and to my surprise I found that I have only the class files in JDEC folder. and so guess what, i turned the tool on itself. When JDEC tool finished decompiling the error throwing file, I got a java file but of course I couldn't find the error. The line numbers had been mashed up or something like that so I couldn't locate the error throwing statement and so to bring a long story to end, JDEC has been totally ineffective for me.
And so now I start again. I see that there is another tool called JOD which I will try now. More updates later...
Friday, July 3, 2009
After a looooooooooooooooong time !!!!!
Well, I am back after a really really long hiatus !!!
Many different events have occurred with my completing HEC diploma, my fruitless efforts to find a job in Europe, my coming back to India, my joining a startup and many many trials and tribulations to settle down.
Well, this post is dedicated to the startup Chiasma Solutions and its flagship product Mediclik. Now when I joined this company, work on Mediclik had been meandering and my first reaction was to admit defeat and focus energy on some new work. However because of some curious turn of events, I was forced to sit back and take a relook at the product.
Mediclik is a web based application designed for small clinics and nursing homes. The key word is small. This product is not meant for big hospitals. Rather it tries to address the real life needs of small to mid sized (50 - 100 patients) nursing homes. Well to cut a long story short, the product is now complete and ready to be showcased to the world. Take a look at the image above and check out for yourself the cool looks !!! This is from one login only. We provide 4 different logins for users from admin to operator to in house pharmacist and doctor. The product looks awesome now :-)
Well my part of the job is to find an audience online, so I studied all the cryptic sounding and really mystifying concepts of SEO. I tried adding mediclik to some online directories (free of course) and well nothing ...
It seems that for any reasonable chance of online success, one has to be ready to shell out big bucks. This is really awful because we are a startup and we really don't have the big bucks to splurge on marketing gimmicks. As of now, we are trying out other avenues too like making cold calls to nearby nursing homes, but the conversion rate is not really taking off.
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