You are here: Home » Blog

FREE SCBCD 5.0 Beta Certification Exam from Sun

Published Nov 13, 2006 | In Certifications

Sun Microsystems is introducing a new beta exam called Sun Certified Business Component Developer (SCBCD) 5.0 exam.

It is a beta exam which means you need not pay anything for it and is totally free. The only requirement to receive the Welcome Kit is that you should have already cleared the Sun Certified Programmer exam (any edition).

SCBCD is for developers who are responsible for designing and implementing applications using Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0. If you are one then don’t hesitate and the registration begins from November 24th. More details about the exam can be got from Sun’s training site. The objectives of SCBCD exam can be found in the Exam Objectives page.

Important dates to remember

Beta Dates: December 8, 2006 – January 2, 2007
Registration Start Date: November 24, 2006

Since I have already completed SCJP, I am going to take this exam. Any one else interested? 😉

Update: If you are looking for some study material then check out the SCBCD study material by Mikalai. Thanks Mikalai.

Posted in Certifications | Tagged , , , | 16 Comments

Bloglines Notifier – My First Google Gadget

Published Nov 4, 2006 | In API's/Mashup

Bloglines Notifier Google GadgetI didn’t have much to do last weekend and so I thought of giving a try to Google Gadget and ended up developing my first Google Gadget – Bloglines Notifier. As the name implies it will notify you the count of unread items in your Bloglines account. (Nothing special just a trivial one 😉 )

You need to enter your Bloglines account email id and it will retrieve the unread count using the Bloglines API and display it in the Gadget screen. The count will be automatically refreshed according to the interval set in the Gadget settings. Since Bloglines doesn’t need you to be authenticated before retrieving the unread count you don’t need to enter your Bloglines account password.

The Google Gadget API is very simple to start with but at the same time very powerful if you need to do complex or advanced things. If you are interested grab the Google Gadget API Developers Guide and get started. It’s actually that simple.

The full source code of this Gadget is available here and if you are interested you can add it to your personalized page by clicking this button. Add to Google

Now I can have one icon less in my system tray. 😉 BTW if you guys have a nice idea for a Gadget, let me know I shall give a try.

Resources Used

Posted in API's/Mashup | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

iPod Easter Egg – Create your own Screen saver for iPod

Published Oct 20, 2006 | In Apple/Mac/iDevices

Well a new Easter Egg has been discovered for iPods, which lets you to create your own screen saver for 5G iPods.

All you have to do is to create a new folder with name ‘Demo Mode‘ in your iPod and rename any existing video file as ‘Demo‘ and that’s it. Next time when you charge your iPod this new video file will be your screen saver.

If you are not able to follow the above steps, then there is also a pictorial tutorial available.

I have seen a couple of Easter Eggs in software’s and this one is pretty neat. What is your favorite Easter egg?

Posted in Apple/Mac/iDevices | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

XHTML Strict validation or target attribute?

Published Oct 15, 2006 | In Web Programming

Recently I found that some of my pages were not of valid XHTML Strict doctype and the culprit is the target attribute in my tag which I used to open external pages in new window.

With a little bit of googling I found that I was not the only one who is facing this issue. In addition to that I also found lot of hacks and JavaScript scripts to make the links open in a new window without using the target attribute. Notable among them are this Sitepoint article and the recent one by Roger.

Time to decide, whether I have to the remove target attribute or use these JavaScript hacks or make my XHTML documents as transitional doctype. I am certainly not interested to use the JavaScript hacks but at the same time don’t want to go back to transitional doctype also.

Since this is my personal site I had the liberty to choose what ever I wanted and I have decided to leave it as it is. But my decision would have been different (or would have taken more time) if it was one of my client’s pages. So here after all my pages will have the XHTML Strict doctype and also the target attribute. After all rules are meant to be broken right 😉 what do you guys say?

Posted in Web Programming | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Select random rows from a table in SQL

Published Oct 6, 2006 | In Database Programming

A friend of mine recently asked me how to select random rows from a table using a SQL query which let me to find a solution. If you are wondering why we need to select rows randomly from a table, consider a simple example of an online quiz which needs to display the questions in a random order for each person who is going to take the exam.

After a bit of research and googling I found the answer and then thought of sharing it here so that I can refer it at a later point of time and at the same time it may be useful for others who are searching for a similar solution.

In Oracle we have to use the sys_guid() function. The query will look like

SELECT col1, col2 FROM tblname ORDER BY SYS_GUID()

In SQL Server the query would look like

SELECT col1, col2 FROM tblname ORDER BY NEWID()

In MySQL the query would look like (Thanks Aswin)

SELECT col1, col2 FROM tblname ORDER BY RAND()

If any of you know how to do this in other databases or have a better solution than this, leave it the comments so that I can mention them here.

Posted in Database Programming | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Integrated Akismet with my About page

Published Oct 1, 2006 | In WordPress

With my recent re-design I added the new about page, where my users can ask me questions. Instead of getting questions from users I started to get spam from spam bots and I had to manually clear them every night. Last week I was so frustrated that I thought of even taking it down.

But then I realized that I had faced the same problem some time back and immediately Akismet came to my mind. I quickly went to the website to looked at the API and thought of integrating it with my about page script.

I was about to build a wrapper for the APIs, but something with in me made me to use Google and within few moments I found that it was already done by Andrew and Paul. I downloaded the code integrated it with my script and within a few minutes my about page became immune to spam. Wow! Now I could go to bed 10 minutes earlier everyday thanks to Akismet.

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , | 4 Comments

getElementsByTagName and the sort order of the result array

Published Sep 16, 2006 | In Web Programming

I was just wondering how the result array of the getElementsByTagName function will be sorted. Will it be elements of the array be sorted in the order in which they appear in the document or is it completely random? And how does it behave in different browsers?

Can anyone shed more lights on this or provide me some pointers?

Self Note (by my evil twin): Sudar, you have become lazier these days. If you are not getting a response take the pain to test it across different browses by yourself!!

Posted in Web Programming | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

One month with Python

Published Sep 10, 2006 | In Python

It’s been a month since I started playing with Python and I was able to tame it and now it has become a good pet. 😉

Many guys asked me what my favorite IDE for Python is after seeing my crush for IDE’s and my interest with Python.

Well, initially I was using the default IDLE which came with Python distribution and after getting a hold of the syntax I started using PyDEV, a plugin for Eclipse. PyDEV lets you to use all the features of Eclipse for developing both Python and Jython programs.

If you are looking for a decent, free IDE for Python then PyDEV will surely suit your needs.

I have solved some exercise problems from books I have used to learn Python and will try to post them here after refining them a bit.

Any one else playing with Python?

Posted in Python | Tagged , | 5 Comments

The photographer within me

Published Sep 9, 2006 | In Photography

Finally I have decided to listen to the cry of the photographer within me and made him happy by buying this silver beauty. Yes, at last I bought a new Olympus FE-190 last week.

FE 190

So hereafter in addition to the usual rants you would occasionally get to see some good (stupid) snaps.

Let’s see what the photographer within me comes up with …

PS: If you are interested here is the my cam’s specification

  • 6.0 Megapixel
  • 3x Optical and 4x Digital Zoom
  • 2.5″ (6.4cm) Color LCD
  • 22MB internal memory

Posted in Photography | Tagged , | 13 Comments

My First two weeks with Python

Published Aug 27, 2006 | In Python

After getting lot of recommendations I have started with Python and here are my thought on it after fiddling with it for the past two weeks.

With in a couple of hours into Python it became evident to me that I have taken the right decision. It’s really very powerful and also you write very minimal but robust code when compared with other languages. Python has the right balance between syntax easiness and powerfulness. Like Java the designers of Python have designed it such a way so that it discourages bad coding but at the same time have not made it too bulky in syntax.

The following are some of the features which I like in Python, presented in no particular order

  • No statement delimiter – not even braces to represent block of code, just plain indentations.
  • Very very powerful built-in library – It has almost all the features that you want.
  • Built in support for complex data types like list and dictionary.
  • Short hand multiple assignment statements.
  • Powerful introspection
  • List comprehensions

and the list goes on…

I have already finished reading Swaroop’s Byte of Python and am currently half way through Mark’s Dive into Python.

If you are a beginner to Python that Byte of Python is an excellent book and once you get a hang of the syntax you can read Dive into Python which teaches you the advanced concepts.

Posted in Python | Tagged , , | 3 Comments