Hitler and Cloud Computing woes

February 26, 2010 – 6:48 pm

One more reason why Hitler failed. Its just too funny especially when he wants to update his facebook page.

Enjoy it.

Here is the original video.

By toalakan-web | Posted in Funny Videos, Web, youtube | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Don’t use Default attribute on CF9 ORM persistant object primary key instead use unSavedvalue

February 26, 2010 – 12:38 am

I recently started using the CF9 along with Hibernate ORM and I had trouble saving the the object using the EntitySave Method on a new object with out setting the ForceInsert param to true.

If I don’t set the forceInsert param to true then I would get the below error which was driving me nuts since I wanted to use the EntitySave method and let CF ORM decide to save/update the object.


Exception in Hibernate operation.
Either the updated/deleted row does not exist or the session contained stale data. Root cause :o rg.hibernate.StaleStateException: Batch update returned unexpected row count from update [0]; actual row count: 0; expected: 1

After a lot of time googling and going through my logs I figured out that doing the following would let me use the EntitySave as I wanted.

  1. Adding the Unsavedvalue attribute to the primary key and setting it to my default ID before the object is persisted.
  2. Removing the default attribute also works.

Looks like CF9 internally uses the primary key of the object to determine if the object is persisted or not. But setting the default attribute makes the CF engine to set the value when the object is created.

I was used to setting the default attribute on my properties by practice and even the CFBuilder didn’t highlight this as an invalid attribute on the primary key which all led me to waste almost a day on this silly issue.

Hopefully this would help some one starting  off  with CF9 ORM.

By toalakan-web | Posted in Coldfusion, Hibernate, ORM | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Amazon S3 isn’t for everyone

February 9, 2010 – 10:41 pm

Its always been a pain to maintain a  backup of all photos and personal documents.When I heard about Amazon S3 cloud storage with its cheap pricing structure, I was in heaven finally a place I can store my data for eternity for cheap.

But when I started to move my data to Amazon S3 , the reality struck me hard was that

  1. my so called broadband connection which boasts a 512kbps upstream took me more than an hour to push a 200MB file and I have about 10gb of data.
  2. Most of all I can’t even switch to FIOS internet (Verizon) which has better up stream because they don’t have coverage in my locality.
  3. None of the freeware S3 sync applications like S3Fox, cloudberry and S3 Explorer support bandwidth limiting capability on up stream. So they basically occupy the pipeline until the upload is done annoying my room mate who was  trying to figure what the hell’s happening with the connection for like 2 days.

So until I get a better internet connection or smart app that can push data like torrents clients, I will not be able to use Amazon S3 as my primary back up storage.

Amazon S3 back up or file storage isn’t for people who are stuck in the cable world like me.

By toalakan-web | Posted in Personal, TECH, USA, Web | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

What happens to the Doctorates?

January 19, 2010 – 11:06 pm

Well the news is out the Govt. of India is derecognizing 44 so called deemed universities in India due to lack of infrastructure facilities. Finally some one in the Education department recognized it and blew the whistle.

Although I didn’t study in any of these universities but I have visited some of them during my UG time and they weren’t gr8 even then so I’m gonna assume world didn’t become flat in last 5 years.

An example for the so called deemed university standard is when some universities awarded doctorates to some south indian actors just like a freebie (Google it).

So will these actors return the so call doctorates since these universities are no more universities?

I hope at least from now on people think twice before accepting any kind of doctorates just for the fun of it. I’m sure actors work hard as well but Please don’t mix academics and acting it doesn’t go well keep them separate.

Oscar looks good with A.R.Rahman than with Dr.A.P.J Abdul Kalam. Doesn’t it?

By toalakan-web | Posted in Hollywood, India, My Comments, News | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Irony series

January 7, 2010 – 12:53 am

Well I have always wanted a irony series with news that I have read or instances of my blog posts or anything  that contradicts each other and finally I’m starting it today.

I just want to point out the ironies nothing more than that and probably what I consider as Irony might not be the same for everyone.

Here are 2 slide shows from The Hindu(Chennai edition) online news paper

  1. Showing the newly beautified Marina beach done by the TN govt dated Dec 22 2009.
  2. Other one showing an Oil slick off Chennai dumped illegally by some ship off the coast dated Jan 6 2009.
By toalakan-web | Posted in irony | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

Where is bi.ng and Ap.pl?

December 15, 2009 – 1:06 am

Just read the news that the mighty Google has released its own URL shortener tool http://goo.gl which is available with Google Toolbar and  FeedBurner according to press release.I’m sure the tool will slowly be used by all Google products and may be ship with Android and Chrome OS which would be cool.

Pretty much every IT companies have started their own URL shortener web apps. The next question is when Microsoft(http://bi.ng/) and Apple(http://ap.pl) are going to release their URL shortener tools?

By toalakan-web | Posted in News, Web, browsers | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Windows 7 Vs Kubuntu 9.10 the fight continues..

December 10, 2009 – 12:49 am

I recently got a new laptop Lenovo ideapad Y550 which was supposed to come with Windows 7 but came with Vista instead but I already decided that I would use Ubuntu 9.10 to avoid all windows nightmare and started using Kubuntu 9.10 (KDE graphic environment of Ubuntu). I can do a whole podcast on the lenovo issue but I have made my peace.

Setting up an running Kubuntu was the easy part since the installation was seemeless and every thing ran out of the box except

  1. Nvidia GT240m graphics card for which I found the drivers from Nvidia site and spend like another 2 days figuring out how to install them during which I crashed the ubuntu when I removed some packages.
  2. My Audio isn’t audible as vista and my HDMI port doesn’t output audio in Kubuntu which works fine in Vista. Looks like a driver problem.

I have searched through out the net for the audio issue and no one seems to have the right answer that would resolve my issue so I’m actually considering moving to Windows 7 even though I haven’t gotten my hands dirty with it.

I pretty much use this laptop as my home entertainment system which would need the HDMI audio function. I still have 3 more weeks before Lenovo sends me Windows 7 disk to figure out the issue. If not then I guess I will be back to Windows world once again until then I will switch between Vista/Kubuntu.

Believe me Ubuntu is a monster once tamed it’s a pretty good dog and I like it a lot.

BTW Vista sucks pretty bad how the hell can I kill a process from task manager? I’m not even sure how people worked with vista.

I’m a novice in the linux world so if any one has better ideas to fix this issue it would be gr8.

By toalakan-web | Posted in My Comments, Personal, TECH, USA | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

We choose where we develop..

November 25, 2009 – 2:45 am

I was always under the impression that my country India was well developed culturally/socially and still developing economically.

Its not more than a year since 26/11/2008 Mumbai attacks happened and already my country(India) government has totally forgotten about it. The Prime minister of India is on whirl wind tour of USA during 26/11 this year and talking about the US – India relationship/climate change/nuclear deal which is good though but not @ the cost of missing out on paying respect to the fallen people on 26/11/2008.

May be

  1. they lost count of days to pay respect for the dead due to bomb blasts or
  2. have a better reason not known to everyone or
  3. didn’t care about it or
  4. technically the head of State is the president who is back there in India or
  5. practically the head of government is back in India :) . you know it

Just think about it would any of the developed countries head of states would have accepted the invitation to vist a foreign country that too on the first anniversary of a bomb blast itself?

Looks like we are trying too hard to develop economically and loosing the social part of it. I do know the PM is taking care of business as a professional weighing on the benefits but still it could have been handled in a better way. Just my thought..

By toalakan-web | Posted in India, Nature, Politics, USA | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

Orkut No Donut for you..You can only add upto 250 favorites

November 1, 2009 – 4:42 pm

Well who ever has used Orkut are aware the blog post title message which shows up when Orkut’s server are too busy to respond.

But this time no donuts for the whole Orkut team since they have set a hard limit of only 250 video links per profile which I hate personally hate and I’m not even a heavy user of Orkut. Here is the message I get when I add a video:

You can only add upto 250 favorites. Please remove some favorites in order to add new ones.

Looks like the Orkut network is going backwards instead of moving forward by implementing this kind of limit.  Considering India being one the major market for India this is a really bad move since Indian music industry is driven by the film industry with each having 5 songs minimum.  Don’t ask me why we need 5 songs in middle of a movie that’s a whole different story.

The reality is every orkut user bookmarks(embeds) all kind of youtube Indian film songs and this limit is going to make the users move to a different network. Wake up Orkut..

Here are some suggestions Orkut might do to improve the videos section which I personally used to like:

  1. Will it be too hard to create a playlist of all videos so we can listen to all of our favorite song.
  2. Has it even considering enabling search for the videos? It makes me wonder if this product is really from Google.
  3. If a youtube video has been disabled can it at least remove them by default instead of occupying my limited video library limit.

Considering all this downfalls of Orkut I do think may be I should join Facebook but I use these social networks to keep in touch with friends which Orkut does it ok for me.

May be I should depend more on my blog running on Wordpress more where I control my app/data than letting them control me what I can and can’t do.

By toalakan-web | Posted in India, USA, Web, youtube | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)

Universal Mobile chargers finally..

October 25, 2009 – 9:59 pm

CNET news reported that the International Telecommunication Union a branch of UN has decided to go for universal mobile phone chargers.

In a world where each mobile phone from same manufacture have different chargers working this is a welcoming sign.

I also hope ITU gets in to and standardize the chargers for all portable devices as well. I’m tired of carrying individual chargers for my mobile, Blue Tooth headset and mp3 player. If we can standardize the laptop chargers that will be awesome too..

The only reason I’m worried is it wont happen soon enough. Since this is something driven by a branch of UN and we all know how long it would take for all countries to accept these protocols. Lets hope all the manufactures fall in line and accept it soon…

At least I’m happy that some where in distant future that there will less chargers lying around in my house.

By toalakan-web | Posted in My Comments, News, TECH, World | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)