Tushar Pokle: Archive

How to upgrade nodejs on your no.de smartmachine

So you have a brand new Joyent no.de smartmachine, with a really old version of nodejs? Here’s how to upgrade it to a newer version of nodejs. Upgrade packages Ensure that you have the latest compiler, etc. pkgin update pkgin upgrade Build nodejs Refer to https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Installation for the details. Here’s how I compiled it on my smartmachine: ssh...

Dec 1st

Nov 29th

A tasty finish (or a start!)

After reading the essay titled ‘Just say “No” to the Pet Project’ in The Developer’s code, I’ve decided it’s now or never! I just have to constrain my pet project, and launch! Otherwise it’ll never see the light of any smiling faces. So there you go - I will bring you TastyFinish.com early 2012. Here’s an extract from The Developer’s...

Nov 19th

Proprietary Legacy doublespeak

You know you’ve been had when a vendor starts telling you to stop using proprietary software, and use their open software instead. You know you’ve been had when they call your existing working living breathing system a legacy so they can sell you their unproven flash in the pan technology. Not withstanding the fact that you did adopt their previous flash in the pan technology that is...

Oct 9th

Oct 6th

JS1k, 1k Javascript demo contest →

You can learn so much about Javascript by just viewing the source of these demos

Aug 6th

Man vs Ocean

I just watched Bear Grylls of Man vs Wild launch off a remote Hawaiian island on a handmade bamboo raft straight into a couple of tiger sharks. Wow! This episode was much more real for me than any other. I’ve been stranded while windsurfing for hours at a time with my energy sapped away by the elements and so I know how tough it is to just be out there with the winds, the waves and the creatures...

Jul 11th

Jul 9th

Hello new world

I’m getting a lot of satisfaction from my work these days. It’s a great feeling coding in the zone.

Jun 22nd

Functional + NoSQL == *HOT*

Dave Thomas was in town stirring up all the geeks with his talk titled “Why Real Developers Embrace Functional Programming and NoSQL Data”. I had a great time meeting some old friends, and hearing Dave cut through the crowd with the sharp tongue that he has. His central message was to never stop learning. We’ve become a monoculture of object oriented programmers living in a...

May 28th

Software art is engineering?

Dr. Ivar Jacobson the god father of software components has lofty goals. He admitted being embarrassed by them last year, but now he’s quite proud and loud about them. He was in Melbourne today talking about his latest meta-methodology SEMAT (Software Engineering Method and Theory). I’m one of those ‘computer programming is an art, so don’t sully it with engineering’...

Apr 14th

Oh Data! Where are you?

Here’s an interesting idea for distributed computing when you have large amounts of data spread across numerous machines - move your code around (as ruby/scala/what-have-you continuations) instead of moving your data around. It’s a research language called swarm: http://blog.locut.us/main/2008/10/6/swarm-a-true-distributed-programming-lang… ...

Mar 15th

Shuffling energy

I got up this morning and rearranged some energy to affect the world. That’s what I do for a living according to Ron Burk -

Feb 28th

Ever wondered how mechanical computers worked?

I remember playing with gears as a kid and discovering some of their mathematical properties. But I never went as far as using cams to compute trignometric functions! Watch these videos to learn how they used plain old gears and shafts to compute the trajectory of a projectile, and many other computations that the navy required. Part 1 - Part 2 -

Feb 13th

Stuff someone learned working at Microsoft

I found this an interesting read. Mostly because it resonates with my own experience - http://www.sriramkrishnan.com/blog/2009/12/stuff-ive-learned-at-microsoft.html

Dec 12th

It's a different world out here

Here’s something new I learnt yesterday about the middle east - every house has a little indicator stuck on the ceiling pointing towards Mecca. My Emirates flight had a Mecca locator up on the projector every so often. Many people carry a Mecca locator GPS device on them. Every one is quite aware of the direction to Mecca as their primary direction. All that orientation means that more...

Oct 21st

Empirical evidence for software metrics

Someone did the leg work and found some real evidence about software metrics: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/nagappan-100609.aspx The results are interesting, but not surprising if you’ve developed software for a while: “Code coverage is not indicative of usage” - Your hot spots need good code coverage, but not your cool spots. TDD projects take 35% more...

Oct 9th

Software Engineering ≠ Computer Science

So why exactly is there a schism between computer science and the rest of the engineering world? It comes down to a fine red line according to this Doctor Dobb’s Journal article: http://www.ddj.com/architect/217701907 -

Jun 5th

Mental plaque

When I tried to get to gmail.com, and Safari wouldn’t go there, I blamed Safari! I did what every self respecting person would do when faced with evidence contrary to everything they believe in. I believed that Gmail’s was a rock, and Safari was a bit mushier.I actually lodged a bug report with Apple. How embarrassing. Then when I read about it in the news today, I had a chuckle and...

May 15th

I'm a salesman

So here’s how it happened: While waiting for my turn with the bank teller I started googling define:teller. Why are they called Tell-ers I pondered. A frail voice from the right asked: What’s that? me: An iPhone I looked at the voice, and it came from an old woman - no younger than 70. frail voice: What does it do? me: ummm… I’m browsing the Internet. It has the Internet. frail...

Apr 29th

Casino race condition

This looks like an expensive race condition at a casino. http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/03/03/Elderly_widow_accuses_casino_of_fraud/UPI-43401236104040/ “On May 3, 2007, Domino, of Galloway Township, N.J., bet $2.25 on a Harrah’s progressive slot machine that flashed she was the winner of $86,000. Casino officials, however, told her she actually won only $20,000 because another...

Mar 3rd

"Onward into the 2nd dimension!"

Something moved my cheese.

Aug 25th

A mystery

Hello, I am your super expensive database. Bow before me. Today I will reprimand you for doing something stupid. I know you didn’t mean it, but I’m going to be rude anyhow cause I have an attitude. All I’m going to tell you is ‘ORA-00942: table or view does not exist’. Don’t bother asking me anything else. Good bye.Oracle is currently at version 11. I’d...

Jul 28th

Kids play at office politics

I’ve always thought that office politics was very similar to kindergarten politics. The entire spectrum of human deceit can be observed in both places. That sounds very bleak I suppose, but the common theme is human behaviour. Kids are just little humans remember? Through the interlinkedness of the interweb, here’s an interesting validation: Why We Banned Legos

Feb 20th

Don't catch this

Inexperienced programmers can teach you a bucket load more than experienced programmers. I was reviewing someone’s code recently when I came across something so nasty that I had to blog about it. Their reasoning was along the lines of - “that code kept throwing NullPointerExceptions, and this was the only way to proceed.” When I asked the inevitable question of “why was...

Aug 12th

Out of memory (not!)

This has got to be the most annoying thing about running Java desktop applications. The dreaded out of memory error. Large applications like Eclipse require more memory than your usual hello world program. Sun in all of its good intentioned malice has decided for you that your desktop applications will be corralled into a limited amount of memory that is determined at the start. Your...

May 12th

How soon we forget!

Digital cameras have changed the photographic environment so much that we’re starting to forget the bad old days of film photography. At the PMA 2007 Photography Exhibition that I visited today, I was playing with a Canon SLR camera attached to a massive telescopic zoom lens. The lens was on show, and the camera was just there to show off the lens.A guy walked up to me and commented: Gee,...

May 5th

Please help me find it!

I’ve been reading a lot of lengthy documents online recently, and I’m finding the user interfaces of web browsers, PDF readers and other such applications to be severely lacking. Don’t even get me started about Zinio Reader.Apple’s Preview is a very good PDF reader, but it fails me when I want to search for words in a PDF document. In the following example, I searched for...

Apr 6th

The cleverest computer program

I woke up one morning with the remnants of a strange computer related dream in my head:The cleverest programmer devised the cleverest program. When he was done, it asked him “How do you know I’m done?” I’m feeling completely lucid as I post this, and I don’t find it the least bit funny :-)

Mar 31st