Perpetually Perplexed

My cousin was very little - may be two years old. When ever he saw something he would tell his mother - we also should get this.  We never really grow out of this. We see something which our neighbors have, our relatives have. We should have them. It could be as small as a new design in steel spoon or as big as a car.  If we are unable to afford that item, our anger turns towards our spouses for not having enough money. Then it turns towards the owner of the said item.  If the person who has it is below us - then we will be outraged. How dare he/she buy such a thing? Where does he get the money for it?  I hear many of you saying that you are not so mean minded. In fact you believe in charity - you give out stuff to people, to your domestic help (the items which are too old or out of fashion for you). But tell me frankly, do you feel happy when your colleague or your spouse's colleague buys that new car you were dreaming of buying? Do you really feel "happy f...

MemoryPro - the game is lame. That is what you will say. I know. It has primitive user interface. Has no action. OK. I am talking about my first android game app. The one before Shataka. The game intends to test your memory and improve it. Who are the audience? I am not sure. Elderly? Kids and youth certainly will not like this game. Not women either. To start with there was word and number games. Later I added patterns - which has colors and sound. So I found that I want to play that. In this version, I am getting rid of words and numbers completely. Instead I am adding face memory and Simon. I added and then deleted zigsaw puzzle. I think, there is no point in patching up an app which nobody wants to play. Instead I can devote my time to some other new apps. But an ocean is made of many many insignificant , lame drops. Right? OK. Time to use analyze. Not psycho analysis. My part time counseling course did not teach me that. (What ever it had taught - few buzz words , I have...

When I start developing /updating an app, I devote all my waking hours to that app - except when I am eating or I am watching TV or I am cooking. No, the high light here is one app. I devote my time to one app. Only after I release that app, I can move on to next app. So that's what was happening, when unfortunately admob decided it no longer shows ads in my app. I was worried, angry and upset. Nothing new in that. Then I thought, let me update the app with new ad id and publish it again. But when updating, I need to resolve bugs (and introduce new ones). And why not add more features. Like material design. Don't smirk saying material is almost 2 years old. None of my apps still had that feature. So came material design and recycler view instead of list view. Then came long list of new papers. Adding them, testing them, changing the names to regional language and back to English. In the mean while I tried admob with new adid. Not working still. I tried adding other...

What will you do if you know for certain that some one is accessing your computer, but unable to find out who and unable to stop them? If you do not know what their intentions are, or what they are going to do next? You feel helpless. Even more so when you are introvert and you do not have contacts outside. You feel miserable and you feel very very angry, at the world and at yourself. I first thought it is our bsnl telephone and internet that is at fault. My internet would stop working without reason so frequently. And error would be authentication problem with ISP. I tried taking all kinds of precautions. I also wrote many mails to bsnl. I gave written complaints to them about internet and phone. See, by then my phone would always have a background noise, some times too loud - and it was not instrument fault. Nothing helped the situations. Even today, my landline is bugged. Many a times I am unable to make some calls using landline and the calls work if I use mobile.   ...

We are all chauvinistic about our mother tongue. It does not matter that we do not watch TV shows from that language, do not read from our language, do not speak in that language outside our homes. But we are chauvinistic. So I decided our other brethren and sistern (!)  will feel same and decided to add paper names in their own languages. No, I do not know how to write all 13 official languages of India. Nor can I read them. But apna google hai na. Using its input tool for transliteration, I did write all paper names in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarathi etc. Next stage was testing. Not a very pleasant stage for any app. For this app, testing was horrendous (too strong?) I am supposed to click on paper name and view the paper on mobile screen. But when I do not know what is the name and what paper is shown on screen, what do I test for. All I can see is kaake kaalu gubbi kaalu (feet of crow and sparrow ). I would rather have my app not cool than have an app which shows wro...

The book is Ignorance by Milan Kundera. And the subject of the book is nostalgia. algia comes from algos which means pain. So this nostalgia can be many times as bad as real physical pain. You are away from your home, from your people. You remember only happy memories and think that those days at home were so good. Yearning to go back, but knowing too well that you can not, and little bit consoled by this, you are in really strange situation. But one thing you do not apprehend is, the home is not what it was earlier. Place will be changed, people too have changed and so have you. The source of your nostalgia is no longer present. The story revolves around a woman who has emigrated to France from Yugoslavia because of communist misrule there. Now the country has given up communism, as other countries in the 90s decade. So it is safer to return. She recollects a poet who has quoted that he will wrap his sadness around himself and go to sleep for 300 years. I am not an emigre. I ...

ಅವಳು ಬಲ್ಲಳು ಅರಿಯು ಯಾರೆಂದು ಬಲ್ಲಲವಳು ಚಕ್ರವ್ಯೂಹವೆಂದು ಹಿಂದೆ ಖಡ್ಗ ಹಿಡಿದು ನಿಂತಿಹರೆಂದು ಸುತ್ತಲಿಹರೆಲ್ಲ ಶತ್ರುಗಳು ಮಿತ್ರರಾ ಆಪ್ತರೆಲ್ಲಿ ಬರೀ ಭ್ರಮೆ ಹೊರಬರಲು ಅಸಾಧ್ಯ ಬರದಿರಲು ಅಂತ್ಯ ಕುಗ್ಗಿ ಕುಬ್ಜವಾಗಿ ಮಾಯವಾಗುವಳವಳು ಆದರಲ್ಲೇ ಇರುವುದು ಅವಳ ನರಕ ಮರು ದಿನ ಮತ್ತೆಲ್ಲ ಮರೆತು ಮರೀಚಿಕೆಯ ಹುಡುಕಿ ಹೊರಟವಳ ಹುಚ್ಚಿಗೇನು ಹೇಳಲಿ

The latest mode of attack seems to be ad networks. I am not talking about attack by our country. I am talking about attack in my life - real or perceived. I have one news app which has considerable downloads. And I used to get some ad revenue from that app. Some reward for all the effort I am putting. Till August. In august suddenly admob network by google decided to stop sending ads to my app. Writing multiple mails to them did not help. OK. Like any other frustrated person, I decided to leave google and use some other ad sdk. But funnily enough, after adding sdk and testing the ads for a day, this network too started showing an error in the dash board saying my app url is wrong. I am unable to fix that. So the attacker - hacker wants me to develop more magnanimity. He wants me to learn about nishkama karma - work without expecting any returns. So be it. So be it.