Motichoor : Get a Desi Touch

Pretty nice collection of Tshirts from Tantra and Barking Dog. I love the name 'motichoor' though... excellent name for a shopping portal with a desi touch.

Magic Weekend

week·end (wēk'ĕnd')
The end of the week, especially the period from Friday evening through Sunday evening.

mag·ic (măj'ĭk)
A mysterious quality of enchantment.

[definitions from Answers.com]

A weekend becomes a "Magic Weekend" when on Sunday evening while rushing through your laundry in laundromat you have a smile on your face. The smile of satisfaction of having done away with the little "TODO's" that keep piling on.

I have a few "TODO's" piling up in post-its on my screen and have been waiting for a weekend to take care of them but for some reason or the other I keep getting out of my jammies. Lets break down a magic weekend for the uninitiated.

Saturday:
Wakup : 10:30 am ...... well 11:00 actually.
Caffiene Fix : Dunkin Donuts and back by... 12:30 pm.
Reflection time: Time spent staring at the computer screen and then looking at the post its selecting the Post it to hit first .... 2:00 pm.
Let the magic begin: work on the thingie till about 5.00 pm .. this is the time u spend downloading the tools you dont have or researching on the gie's that might hit u later.
Nap time : Behind every great piece of code is a short Nap in front of the TV. 5.00 to ....
Free your mind: go out .. dont get drunk.

Sunday:
Session 1: there is just something about starting to work at 1: 00 am ...
Sleepy time: Goto sleep around 4:00 am after 3-4 hours of intensive coding... by this time you have laid all the ground work of your little project and need only minor tweaks here and there.
Wakey wakey : go easy on urself... its a weekend after all.. get up by 12 -1.00 pm,
Caffiene fix: Get ur caffiene fix by around 2:30
Wrap Up time: By this time you are pretty happy with urself and despite the drousy feeling you have already accomplished abt 80 % of the task at hand. Wrap things up ... lets say by 6.00 pm..
Laundry time: Hit the laundromat by 8:00 with a smile on ur face.

Its been quite some time since I spent a weekend like this. Not that I am complaining but would love to have a weekend like this one in a couple of months... a few thingies can only be done on a weekend. Stuff that I need to take care of One by One

1) Screen Gabber Application for taking screenshots. The little module I use at work is good but I do have to go through the trouble of adding it to my applet.

2) Amazon and Ebay seller Applet. Applet allows the user to keep track of stuff (s)he is selling on an online market place.

3) Complete XML parser on BREW. My firm wont buy the one from Reaxion and the one that I wrote for the application is toooo dam specific to the applet. Requires a bunch of changes here and there to make the changes. Need to convert something like expat into BREW. Should add only about 15 kb to my applet binary.. I can live with that.

4) Porting dynamic UI controls to j2me.

Hopefully will have some time in coming 2 weekends to launch the magic mode.

Note to Self : Get an Extra Umbrella

Its rainy Thursday morning here in Jersey. Its pouring all right. I am sitting at home all ready to go to work but cannot leave the house as I left my Umbrella at the office. Lazy me .. never remember to get the stuff I take to work. Hopefully the rain will ease out in the next half hour or so .....

scanLIFE : My Very own Barcode

Been waiting for this. Barcode scanning has finally arrived in states, well it has been around for some time now but scanning a regular retail barcode required a ugly add on lens that kept getting lost.

With scanLIFE the need for lens is gone. These 2D barcodes scan really well even with the not so perfect camera's on the phones available here. The whole concepts is really great. This is my barcode.. what they call the personel ID code. Scan It!!! and get my Info on your cell phone.

But that's not all... When you scan my barcode and the application makes a lock on the screen it provides you with options.

1) You can call me.
2) You can send me an SMS
3) You can even see my Blog on your phone.

All this, just my simply rotating the phone on the code. How cool is that ????

I see a lot of places where I can place my code ... I guess the recommended place would be Visiting Cards. Will post some action shots when I do get around to exploring the whole system.

Check it out for your self : scanLife.com

P.S : The app that scans the barcodes is FREEEEEEE!!!!!. Who said there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Steps to get your own code.
1) goto the site and fill in your info in the form. Click Here !
2) Once you have filled in your information, Hit the Generate Code button and Walah! you are done.
3) You will recieve an email with your own code as an attachment. For some reason you also recieve a Outlook VCF file.

The email looks something like this.

J2ME Emulators : Impressive

This is an Impressive collection of the emulators etc needed while developing in J2ME. Hats off to guys at ShareMe technologies to take the time out to compile this.

Link : ShareMe Technologies LLC

Jumped out of an AIRPLANE

I finally did it... one more thing out of my todo list. feeeeeelin so happy bout this...:-)

Took a tandem sky dive yesterday from 13500 feet. After about 25 - 30 seconds of freefall gazed at the view of philadelphia and Atlantic city while descending with a parachute. It was AMAZING !!!!... Have a video of it too and will be getting a DVD in 2 to 4 weeks so will be posting the putri falling from the sky in some time.

Had been planning for like 2 months now to go down and try out sky diving but something or the other kept coming up on the weekends but yesterday I had the right group of friends and more importantly they were in the right frame of mind. Jeez I can still remember the view and the force of the wind on my face when I was falling down.

As soon as I got on the ground, everyone around was asking me "Would you do it again ?"... Hell Yeah .. but not in the near future ;-)..

Check out Free Fall Adventures. The place is really nice for first time jump. Will post some pics on this post as soon as they are available.


Next : I am thinking "Bungee Jumping" or maybe "Scuba Diving"

Plenty good Application Names

Nice place to get names for your beta applications.