Where's my shotgun?

From the Times of India, Pune : Friday, April 22. 2005 : Page 11


Putting horsepower out of misery

Miami: Fed up with his troublesome car, a Florida man fired five rounds from a semi automatic pistol into the hood of the 1994 Chrysler LeBaron.

"I'm putting my car out of it misery," 64 year old John McGivney said after the incident outside an apartment building in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea, according to a police report that listed the car as "deceased".

McGivney surrendered to the police, was jailed on a firearms charge on friday and released on bond a day later. He told them the car had been giving him trouble for years.

"I think every guy in the universe has wanted to it," the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Wednesday quoted McGivney as saying.

"It was worth every damn minute in that jail."

What will you VmWare today?

Another day, another great thing learnt: VmWare (with the trademark sign)

This software is one of the most powerful utilities that a driver writer could ever hope for.
It allows me to run an operating system (the guest OS) while I am running another operating system (the host OS).

ON THE SAME PC AT THE SAME TIME!

Whoa! At first all I thought was "What an immensely stupid way of draining PC resources"...
But as always, I keep learning new things. And why someone went through all the trouble to create those new things.


So why would you use VmWare(TM) ? - Remember to put the (TM) there : Its a trademark. That makes it illegal to use frivolously. And if I forget, then pretend that its there. That way, I can conveniently keep forgetting and save up on the typing time.


Back to the question. Why VmWare?
Lets suppose that you are creating a cross platform utility thats supposed to work on Win NT, 2K, XP, 2K3. Maybe some *NIX also FreeBSD, Linux, etc.


Would you really want to buy all the hardware for each and every one of these os's?

So you'd do dual boots. Maybe triple boots. Or more! How much disk space do you want to waste today?
And furthermore, once installed, removing the OS isnt possible without formatting that partition... And in case you're trying to put something else there? then removing that partition.

What about irrecoverable system crashes???

Oh gods what a pain!


Enter VmWare! No more pain! New OS installation thinks that it has the entire partition to itself. In reality, it just has a single file on the host OS behaving like a sinlge HDD! VmWare fools the guest os into thinking that everything is fine and dandy...

So when you want to remove it... Delete the directory containing all the "HDD" for that OS. As simple as that!

If you crash it? No problemmo! Either re-install... Or if you've read the manual, then go back in time to an instant snapshot!


I'll have more when I learn more!

Its always an exhilerating experience to learn somthing new.

For me the method always follows the following general steps:
1. I hear about the subject. There is curiosity about this topic. So I go out looking for some way to get information about it.
2. I find out books. Buy them whenever possible. Start reading books and get a overview of what I am trying to learn.
3. I then try to get a valid setup on my PC to do some real work - getting my hands dirty.
4. While reading the literature, I keep trying small things here and there to figure out what the book is saying.
5. Then there is a stage where I am completely bored of reading the book and go about actually creating a small app that uses whatever knowledge I have.
6. Now that I have written a very basic (barely one step above a "Hello World") sort of program, I am mightily pleased with myself. I know that this is just too basec to be contented, but I am giving some form of visible results.
7. Continue reading and learning. This is the part of the learning process that is the longest and the most boring ...
8. Eventually I start realizing that the literature that I am reading isnt giving every sigle nook and cranny of the topic. How do I find this out? Because of mistakes that I make while trying my hand out at creating apps based on that technology.
9. I have completed the books. now comes the stage where I am itching to use this new found technology on some real world examples. Getting an idea is hard!
10. I start actually creating valid examples - fully written by myself. No Wizards, nothing... Now I realize that there are some things that arent quite clear in my mind... "<such-and-such thing should be there... I would have implemented it myself if I were the designer.. why isnt it there. what is the logic behind this being there or not being there".. I look it up and find it!
11. Here is where I start reading someone else's examples and see defferences in coding styles and design ideas. (Here is where I am right now - Reading someone else's FS code) I start realizing even more ideas that should be there and realize the obviousness of their existance. It is at this point that I start realizing that I am being able to think like the original creators of the technology. I am mightily pleased now, because the creators of the technology usually are GURUs!
12. Then I start getting independant ideas which quite nicely extend existing technologies... And here is where I stay till I reach guru status myself! :-D

Whoa.. I just documented and overview of my learning process.

Ok this is a re-trial of the gaim blogger. This nifty little thing allows me to type my blog into the GAIM window. It then posts the text into a new blog each time. This means that I have to be fairly careful with the usual "pressing-enter-to-send-message" habit... It would result in too many unnecessarily fragmented blogs.
I can press enter to go to a new line. This should show up correctly at the blogspot end also. I am yet to figure out how to put a title to my post. There doesn't seem to be any visible interface to do this. Maybe its some form of HTML tag. I don't know. What I do know is that I am already mightily impressed by this plugin.... I intend to use it to its fullest!

This plugin will basically allow me to NOT use a web browser to blog. I don't even have to open Firefox to click on the BlogHere link. I almost always have GAIM running. All I have to do therefore is to sign in into my blogger account and start typing as if I were typing to a real person. Hehe maybe thats what the creators intended... "Chat with your diary!"

Anyway, there is one thing I am wondering about though... Blogger.com probably doesn't have a maximum test limit. But I don't know about gaim. Is there any limit other than the size of your hard disk? I would suppose not. Their text window seems to be a typical rich edit box. Which means that it has no limits.

Hmmm.. More impressive by the minute.

Will post some more with results as I use it more often.

File systems are vast

I am learning about File Systems in general nowadays, as part of my work here at Calsoft. Its huge. I am going to have to re-read this at least 4-5 times before it sinks in completely. I think I should buy the Rajeev Nagar book, and not rely on the office copy.

I remember that once upon a time, I was completely flummoxed by WDM. Before that, I remember being flummoxed by MFC. Before that I remember being flummoxed by Win32 programming in general. Before that I was flummoxed by C++... And before that C.

Before that?
Before C I _knew_ assembly. I wasnt flummoxed. :D

Everything after assembly, I have learnt entirely on my own. no teachers, no guides, just books - and a hell lot of coding.

Its getting more and more tough as I learn newer things... There just isnt enough time to do it... My grasping power is constantly being put to the test and I am not being able to practice out what I learn.

Plus there is always the ongoing problems with money and health and sleep and free time.

I believe its time for me to go home now.