"I am still looking for a job! I don't have any experience!" OR "I am on Bench! What experience can I have??"

This post is mainly for aspiring software engineers or similar. You can read this if you are not of the group I mentioned and apply in your own respective domains.

There were these two big dreaded words that all of us would fear when getting placed through campus requirements. One was "recession" and the other was "bench".

The first word, everyone knows. The second , "bench" is mainly referred to people who are recruited by firms and put in a dormant resource pool. They would remain inactive until a project would turn up and they would be assigned to it. That period of not having any project to work on is infamously referred to as "Being on a Bench".

Then there are other capable people who in our Indian educational system are deemed as average and will not be able to find jobs through campuses because either the campus may not be able to attract  a lot of companies or the candidate did not pursue job opportunities aggressively enough during his penultimate semesters.

There are other reasons like our obsolete Indian "Reservation" System which recruit employees in Govt organizations because they are from, so called "backward" castes. Here the people who have lesser merit are blatantly chosen over candidates with better merit because they belong to "backward" category. But this topic is for another blog.....

As of now ,fortunately I do have a full time job which I enjoy as a coder. After having 2+ years experience in this domain , I see many people sending me many resumes for job referrals.

Though I have never been in this "bench" phase during my entire career. I have some suggestions to give to my younger friends who are either looking for jobs or on "bench".

The main complaint of these 2 sets of people is that they lack "industrial" experience and this will make it harder for them to find jobs as they get older.

Here are some points you can use:

1. Do Your OWN Computer Science Project! Get coding experience!!
   Gone are the days when knowledge was held in silos or within the heads of scary looking lecturers. If you have :
   a. A computer
   b. An internet connection
   at your reach, you can very well teach yourself programming and get some coding experience.
   _===== TO BE CONTINUED =====
   
   

How to reduce body odour without the use of perfumes/deos

Hello all!! This is one short sweet article based on my true experiences over the past 3 years which have worked and will do a great deal in reducing the body odour.

It so happened that I got  a headache with all the perfume/deodrant people in one fine evening -a time by which there would be this concoction of  their bodily fluids and the perfumes emanating such a nauseous aroma that probed me to find alternatives..Remember these are tried and tested methods.

So the tips spill forth:-

1. Avoid eating Onion and Garlic:
   These were two vegetables I liked as a kid. Over time I came to know that these vegetables are not on the list which can be offered to God and so we cannot partake them. (I belong to a Hindu Brahmin community, your views may differ substantially). So the research began with why these cannot be consumed. Of the many subtle and obvious benefits, I will list out the ones that are physical and easily perceived. Once you stop eating onion and garlic not only will your body odour lessen, it also reduces bad breath ,the odour of excreta and urine. I never trusted these words in the beginning. So to give it a try I went without onion and garlic in any of the foods I ate for a week. The difference could be easily made out! Its been almost 3 years without these sulphuric duo and I have stopped craving for it infact any food that has them is a turn off.
   Now you might be  up in arms saying there are health benefits of these two veggies. Dear people, there are substitutes for these two which are less odor-ific that we can do well without. them(like exercise and not eating junk food). Infact there is a certain way to consume garlic. This is something I heard from my Yoga master in the past - a garlic pearl must be swallowed whole with water, the same way you take a tablet. (Also, onion and garlic are not good for your spiritual health.). According my sources, all forms of meat should be avoided to avoid bad odour, but I don't eat meat ,so I have no experience giving it up. If you find avoiding meat  helps - please let me know.
   
2. Trim Arm Pit Hair regularly:
   Our models and celebrities have made this popular enough. But if you are just a regular office goer like me trimming them once a week really helps! Yes, Its  kind of embarrassing to type all this but I must speak what works....
   
   
3. Apply Sandalwood paste.
   Sandalwood has been popular in india since time immemorial. Many temples provide the sandalwood paste to apply as a tilak (or to apply them on your fore arms). Sandalwood paste can be prepared by adding a little water on  a  smooth stone slab (which is called "sani kallu" in kannada) and rubbing a piece of sandal wood on it. Traditionally its applied on the head or fore arms, outer biceps or on the neck. It also has many medicinal benefits. This is a natural "perfume" and is neither  tested on animals nor endorsed by any celebrity. Unfortunately many dimwits in our own country apply them on the pillars or the walls of the temples after being given this paste!
   
4. Prefer cotton T-shirts to formal full-arms.
   If you are lucky enough to work in a place allows you to wear T-shirts than full arms, go for it. T shirts are far better than the thin formal shirts in absorbing sweat. In fact, if you are an HR professional reading this article, you can even save the electricity costs by lowering the AC and encouraging the staff to wear T-shirts. (In winters sweat-shirts do very well, no need of those formal shirts..)
   
   
5. Put on another shirt!.
   A software engineer has to work overtime to meet deadlines and solve an irritating bug or the accounts guy may have to finish the end of month tally? If you know that your day is going to be longer than usual in a single place, have an extra shirt. There will be a time, you start feeling exhausted and feel icky. Wearing a washed shirt not only will keep your odor at bay, it instantly acts as a refresher and you will have new vigor to keep continuing. This is one of the simple life hacks to recharge you instantly.

Eclipse Plugin Development, Deployment, Distribution : Must read for beginners

This tutorial is not about installing eclipse or the various steps that will help you write a sample eclipse plugin project. There are a lot of tutorials on the net that already do that.

Rather this article is an overview of what eclipse plugin development process is going to be. Something I found no author/forums discussed about( or maybe I wasn't  fortunate enough to find it.).

The process of eclipse plugin development is of  three steps as shown in the figure below:

3 Steps of deploying an eclipse project

Plugin Project:

This is the real deal. This project is developed on on the eclipse PDE . PDE is Plugin Development Environment. It's your eclipse with SDK for plugin development. Here you will find tools to create a Plugin project, Feature Project and the UpdateSite Project.
This project will have the actual source code of the plugin you create.
The immediate question for any newbie is "How do I distribute this super-duper plugin to the world?" There are two ways actually. The dirty way and the gentleman way.

• Dirty Way: This way is dirty because its faster to give it to  your pal sitting in the next cubicle. But you wont find world wide adoption that you wished. It creates a jar file that has to be place in a certain directory. Following are the Steps:
  
  
  1. Double Click on your project's plugin.xml ==> Overview Subtab ==> Export Wizard.
     
     
     
     
     
  2. Then you will see a dialog box asking where you want to export . Choose the Directory radio. Enter the directory where your plugin jar needs to go.I have given the location C:\my_plugins\. Let the others be default values.
     
     
     
     
     
  3. Now when we look into the C:\my_plugins\ directory, there will be a plugins folder under which the plugin jar will be present.The following screen shot makes it clear. In my case I have PexTools_SubMenu_1.0.0.3.jar.
     
     
     
     
     
     
  4. Now copy the plugins folder and place it in the dropins folder of your . Meaning, in my case I copy the plugins folder and place it in my C:\eclipse_pde\dropins folder. After restarting eclipse you should be able to view your plugin.
  
  
• Gentleman Way:  The Gentleman Way is to create a Feature Project and then the Update Site Project. So read on to find out.....
  
  
  

Feature project:

• Create a new Feature Project. A single feature project can have multiple plugins. See the screenshots to guide your way.
  In Step 3, choose the plugin(s) you want to be added into this feature project. In my case I choose my plugin PexTools_SubMenu to be added to this feature.
  Once you click on finish you will have a PexTools_Feature project ready. This will be the input to the the next step.
  
  

  

  New Feature Project Step 1

  
  

  

  New Feature Project Step 2

  
  

  

  New Feature Project Step

Update site Project:

• This is the last step. We will create a new Update Site Project. An update site project will have multiple features.
  See the screen shots below to create an Update Site project.
  
  

  

  Update Site Step 1

  
  
  

  

  Update Site Step 2

  
  
• After you click on finish in the screen above,an Update Site Project named PexTools_UpdateSite should have been created. Then open the site.xml and add the feature(s) you want to in this update site. Look at the screenshots below.
  In my case I am adding PexTools_Feature of version 1.0.0.1 into my update site.
  
  

  

  Update Site Step 3: Add feature(s) to your update site.

• After that, click on the build button. This will create the update site artifacts.
  
  

  

  Update Site Step 4: Click on build button

  
  

  

  Update Site Step 5: Update Site Artifacts

Distribution of Update Site XML: 

 Now you are all set to distribute the update site to the world. There are three scenarios here.

1. Distribute it to the world:  You can upload the update site project on to an FTP server or use a code repository like I have done here and provide the update site. See the "Update Site" of the link that I have provided. It just refers to the site.xml of my update site project. This is the URL that people will use when installing new software in their eclipses.


2. Test it locally: This is the first thing you should do even before uploading it to the web. The update site will use the file protocol instead of the http or ftp. In my example the update site looked like this --> file:///C:/workspace/PexTools_UpdateSite/site.xml
   Yeah that's hard to type and error prone. I use this technique to get that string. Just right click on site.xml and select Open With -->FireFox. Just copy the URL from the URL box in the browser and test. 


3. Distribute it as a zip file: If you want the user to download it as a zip file. Then right click on the  update site project , Export as Archive File.  Make Sure You Deselect The .project File Before Clicking On Finish!!. Then you can distribute the zip file to any user who wants your plugin.

One last note, if you make some changes to your Plugin Project,say you fixed a bug, it WONT be immediately reflected in the update site project. For this to happen :

1. You need to increase the version number of your feature project( like from 1.0.0.3 to 1.0.0.4 ), 
2. Then go to the update site project and click on Synchronize and Build/Build All buttons in that sequence. 
3. And again follow one of the above 3 steps. Yeah, even I cringed when i came to know about this.

 

I spent a LOT of time understanding this flow. Hope it makes your life easier...

Please leave a comment below if you liked/hated this post. It will make my day!!

"Gangnam Style" Facts

1. It's sung by Psy. His real name is Park Jae-sang and was born on December 31,977. 


2. Its a Korean song mocking thepeople of the city of Gangnam, who think they are high "class".


3. As of today it holds the "Guiness World Record" for the most liked video on youtube.


4. You know who uploaded the video on youtube? It was Psy himself !!


5. Psy's dancing mantra is "Dress classy , Dance cheesy"


6. It has more than 650 million views on youtube.


7. He is a father of twin girls. According to them their dad does work at "concerts"


8. The video was released keeping in mind the South Korean audience not for the entire world. It ended reaching the number one position in countries like U.K., Australia, Canada,  France, Germany.


9. The video for "Gangnam Style" was filmed in 48 hours.


10. In the elevator scene the man doing the pelvic thrust moves is a famous SouthKorean comedian-Noh Hongchul. He actually came to wish him during the filming and Psy asked him if he could do some moves with him...


11. According to UN secretary general,Ban-Ki-Moon the song is  "a force for world peace"

The Greatest Speech Ever Made

Something  we all need to hear to reamain sane in this insane world.
A speech in the movie "The Great Dictator" in 1940.