But yeah, I’m more active on twitter and Posterous…

Twitter rocks!!! So does Posterous!

And I’m desperately waiting for the native S60 based WordPress client…  That would help me put up thoughts here more often! Read Ewan’s account about the client here…

As they say, the most important feature in your product is Shipping it!  I love “The Cult of Done Manifesto“.  A truckload of thanks to Swaroop C H for blogging about it!  Its soooo much simpler to understand and adapt to.  It makes a truckload of sense, and more importantly, it fits me and my attitude towards things – It works if YOU work it. Shit happens, Forget / fuck it / move on!

I love the Nokia N900!!! I cant wait for the next generation Maemo / MeeGo / <whatever Mooo-thingy its called> class devices to hit the road! I absolutely absolutely DID NOT like the Samsung Galaxy.  Nice to see the traction android is pulling on, but sorry, it still doesnt cut it for me!  And no, Snapdragon isnt close to a statement in terms of validating performance! ARM is GOD!

And in other stuff, the iPad is in more instances than none, being mistaken for a sanitary product… I’m having trouble convincing people at home that its a computing technological device!!!  And in a very very long time, I admit, I love the look and feel of the 17″ Macbook Pro.  Saw it at fossiloflife‘s place.  I just love the curves on it

And just so to mention, I’m listening to Laila O Laila as I type in this line

Ciao folks… Have a good one

Laila O Lailaaaaa

I was recently coding up a web app using PHP and MySql and, I set out to find a wrapper class that provides good and fast CRUD functionality for MySql.

What I found, I ought to share! This post is tribute to an amazing PHP, MySql wrapper class that I have come to use and love over sometime now. The code is by a developer on a website called ricocheting.  The php mysql wrapper code can be downloaded from here.

I really appreciate that the code is fully documented in terms of functionality provided and also has strict type checking (strip slashes, escaping data, et. al.) and error reporting on sql queries. A nice addon to the script is that it allows to force open multiple database connections to the same database from the same source.

I am not going to take time into rewriting all that wonderful help documentation the developer has produced on his website. So, go ahead and check it out there.

The code has been released under the GPL license so, all you code-monks are free to tweak and boost it! Do let me know if someone comes up with a similar / updated / more functional code-chunk for this purpose.

Chao…

When you’re with a private hosting provider migrating between providers is a common scenario that occurs on reasons of cost, reliability, performance, demand and so on…  Moving files across these providers is a breeze… FTP from one place to another…

The question that arises is, how do you move that huge mysql database??? I’ll walk you through two regular techniques that are generally used to move databases… And then the third technique that uses the BigDump tool…

All the three techniques require you to take a dump of the mysql database of your application(s) using phpmydmin / mysql CLI. Download the resultant .sql or .sql.gz (Compressed zip file) and keep it ready to move…

1. phpMyAdmin: Everyone knows this… and everyone that uses a private host has used it atleast one time…  Once you’ve created your new database at the new host, open up phpMyAdmin and navigate to the newly created database.  Click on the SQL link and click browse in the window that pops up.  Select the .sql or .sql.gz file and select Import.  The job is done!  The problem with this technique however is that it is limited by the memory limit imposed on PHP by the server.  Most cases, this is around 7-8MB.

2. mySQL CLI: This is the next advanced method of sql import.  This is from the commandline (SSH) on the server.  It is extremely simple and ready to go if you have shell access to your space on your server. The technique goes like this.  Upload the .gz file via ftp onto your new site and login to your server via SSH using putty or equivalent tools and navigate to the location.

1. Unzip the .gz file if you’ve used compression.
   you@host~ tar -xvf database.sql.gz
2. Dump the sql into your preselected database like so:
   you@host~ mysql -h mysqlhosturl.com -u yourmysqlusername -p yourmysqlpasswd -p yourdbname < databasedump.sql

3. The BigDump technique: The first technique works, as mentioned, works for very small database backups and restores. The second technique works when you’ve got shell access to your hosting space. The third technique works when your sql file is too large for phpMyAdmin and you do not have Shell access to your hosting space.

BigDump works by what is called staggered import of SQL. It breaks down and batches SQL imports into the database, thus maintaining the memory limits of PHP and also getting the job done via a simple web interface.

Getting it to work is very simple.  The script has only 4 parameters you need to configure: the mysql host, username, password and database name.  Once the info is keyed in, upload the BigDump.php (download) to the folder where your big sql file is. Chances are that its already in a .gz file.

Using your browser, open up www.yourserverpath.com/bigdump.php.  It automatically detects sql and .gz files placed in the current directory.  Just hit start import and you’re good to go…
A screenshot is attached below:

There. That does the post… I felt the need to post about the tool as it helped me out of a very cheeky solution yesterday.  And for the beta the developer calls it to be (Version 0.30 beta), the tool is amzingly stable. And it works like an absolute charm.

The developer website is here.

Till the next post…

Chao…

Thus spake Dhempe and here I quote:

Many of us have cameras on our phones, and we click photos! But, its a very messy job to put them in a place where others can see it and also to share with friends. The mobile phone is a blackhole for its own content!

And that statement is filled with such profound truth!

Many of us, or if I may, a whole LOT of us have phones that are quite capable of generating content (Images, videos, voice recordings, etc) and we definitely do generate enough content to fill storehouses with our happy / romantic / funny / cheesey/ whatever memories for lifetimes together. Heck, this is what the mobile phone revolution is coming around to do…

For us geeks, connectivity, socializing and sharing is as basic and habitual an act as is having food.  We feel the necessity to share and connect and as a result, find and utilize services to enable this! Photos go on twitpic / flickr, Videos go on Qik / youtube, Shouts / screams go on blogs / facebook / twitter… we have no end to destinations!

But, a lot of content does not make it online / publicly (atleast within friends) available.  Infact, most of this content doesnt even make it outside of the mobile devices!  And, mind you, the memory on the mobile is limited.  And the main use of this memory, again mind you, is Ringtones and MP3 music!  The photos and videos captured thus take a backseat and much of this content is to true sadness, deleted to make way for more MP3 and ringtones! And hence the reference to a black hole in the title of my post!

• In reasoning as to why people don’t share their photos or videos, the first answer that pops up is: “They dont have a computer!” And this is a very valid point across the lengtrh and breadth of this nation.  Access to a computer is not everyone’s daily possibility.  But with cost of mobiles going down, they do have access to multimedia devices!
• Another reason, a lot of people do not have GPRS active on their devices. Reason, it doesnt make sense…  No, GPRS doesnt yet make sense for a guy working as a driver.  A mobile phone with a camera does. Why? 1. He can afford it. 2. He can flaunt it! Simple!
• The third reason I can think of is the software problems that is associated with sharing content.  Getting your Nokia phone (Cited Nokia because its the most common / prevalent brand in INDIA) connected to the PC with PC suite isnt really an easy job.  Sometimes, you need to make use of imaginary numbers like eleventeen and the likes!!!  For the blindfolded usability and seamlessness nokia gives its phones, the software it bundles with it is not quite the works!!!
• The fourth and final reason I can think of: There is only so much of sharing you can do via bluetooth with your friends and there’s only so much of showing it to friends that you can do…. Believe me, give it a try, you’ll know!

So, four reasons why content doesnt get out of the mobile!

What if a user could as and when he / she could and wanted, move and materialize the media he / she created to make place for more memories to be stored? This, my friends, is a very interesting challenge and hence an interesting prospect for a service!

We are over 400 million mobile users in India alone.  I am really in a fix in figuring out a solution to get this content out of their mobiles and shared across with their friends and with the world!

The way out:

• One solution I can think of is the Kiosk model.  A shop / vending machine where people could go and get their photos printed / and mailed for cheap using Bluetooth to transfer their content. Or better, transfer the photo, punch in the address where it needs to be delivered and presto, the photo + address travels via IP to the centre closest to the destination and gets printed and posted from there!
• Another amazing service I can think of with the kiosk model is one where the videos captured using the mobile can be transferred to CD’s. Come to talk of it, a CD costs you 8 Rs.

These are two solutions off the top of my mind…

The whole idea that I’m trying to propagate here is to take the complexity of the software / sharing service bit of the scenario away from the hands of the user.  This effectively reduces complexity for the layman with the multimedia mobile and effectively encourages him to share the content he / she creates on the mobile with friends and hence further encourage him to generate more content and so on and so forth!

I’d really love to hear more from you all on how the black hole scenario can be averted! Sharing services are many and aplenty!

The success of a service is, in our Indian scenario, not just in holding existing users to itself, but in getting those new users from outside the regular spectrum to come in, take a look, get enthusiastic and get enabled!

Would love to have comments and discussions on this topic!

Chao!

1. Build your code – Cross compile it for ARMV5 / ARM-GCCE Release
2. Make your sis installer (unsigned)
3. Upload the SIS to symbiansigned.com using the Symbian Online Signed program
4. Click on the confirmation link in your email
5. Wait for your app to be signed by symbian and recieve the email
6. Download the app
7. Install and test (mostly only to realise that you have made the mistake of not installing theCActiveScheduler::Add(this) in your ConstructL.

The process works… nevertheless, its very very very cumbersome and timeconsuming.  And the debug that you are left with is plain text-statements that you write to a log file and dump it onto the filesystem.  While this method may be good enough for some small apps using the in-built emulator, testing GSM activity and live testing of the application is not quite possible or comfortable there.

There is however, another really good way to debug your app and step thru code and read symbian variable values right from the comfort zone of your PC. Say hello to ODD or On-Device-Debug.

On-Device Debugging has been a prominent feature of Symbian IDE’s right since the Metrowerks CodeWarrior days! Yes, its been there… but back then, prior to Symbian OS 9.0 / S60 3.0, it was used more for JTAG based debugging.

Now, with Carbide, virtually any app can be set to debug mode and tested with ODD. And in this post, I will show you how:

Requirements:

1. Carbide 2.0 – The eclipse based IDE is at v2.0. Its free and is absolutely amazing to use. Next best thing since notepad for writing symbian code!!!
2. S60v3/S60v5 device – For the purpose of this article and impending demo, I am using a Nokia 6210 navigator but any S60v3/S60v5 device should work. (Ideally this is the case but I do not have non-Nokia S60V3/S60v5 devices to test and confirm it…
3. USB cable / Bluetooth – The code you want to test runs on the device… and you need something to transfer data between the PC and the device… So BT / USB data cable it will be.

SETUP:

And the Steps for getting your ODD setup in place:

First, install Nokia PC suite on your PC.  This dude is important as PC suite contains the basic connectivity drivers for your device.  Without that, your phone wouldnt be able to connect to the PC.

Next up, Fire up carbide. The On-Device debug mode is needed to be setup from the help menu. So… head over to Help -> On-Device Connections.You will be presented with a menu like so:Select between Bluetooth and USB for connecting to your device. The other 2 connectivity methods Serial and TRK2.x are, well, not covered in this tutorial. But just a heads up, Serial connection is when you have a serial cable connecting your device to a physical COM port (so 1990′s) and the TRK2.x is for the TRK debugger which uses the elusive and exhorbitantly costly impossible-to-buy-for-a-indi-dev JTAG cable. So, there… We use either Bluetooth or USB 2.0 cable options to connect with our device. In my case here, its USB.

TRK:

Click on next and head over directly to the install remote agents tab.  This will let us install the TRK client onto the devices. This is a sis file that is tailored for every single S60 version since 3.0.  Lets talk a little bit about the TRK client here.  This app is basically what helps you pause your code and step through when the code is executing on the device.Select the Application TRK 3.x.x Installer. and click on the install button and fire up the PC Suite installer, proceed to install it.  I would prefer you install the TRK app on the phone memory rather than the mass memory or memory card.

We do not need the Carbide Profiler 2.0 installers. But, Just for FYI sakes, they are apps used to profile processor performance and load.  I seriously do not know what purpose it exactly serves. If you do know, do help me by dropping in a comment

Connection:

Once you are done with the installation, fire up the TRK application on the device. Select Options -> Settings and select USB / Bluetooth as your connection method is.  In my case here, its USB.

Once you are connected, the TRK app will show the Status as connected like so…

Here, connected means that the cable is connected to the device.  It DOES NOT mean that you are connected to carbide in any way.  Why it is so… I have no idea!

Now, on carbide, switch to the Set Connection Settings tab in the connection properties window.  In the Connection Settings dialog box, click on the drop-down and you should currently see your device assigned to one of the com ports.Select the com port your device is detected in, the TRK version installed on your device and click on initiate testing. A connection successful message would mean that your TRK on the device is detected and you are good to go.  If it fails, its mostly the COM port being selected wrong.  I really have no idea how to fix this, but yeah, a trial and error run with some com ports should work always!

Hit Finish, And we’re good to go do some code-debugging on carbide!!!

To take a look at the remote connections, Hit Window –> Show View –> Other. Expand the Carbide.C++ list, select Remote Connections and click on OK. You will be presented with a list of remote connections you currently have.Debugging:

To start with debugging, open your Symbian C++ project and in build options, select Phone debug (GCCE). Hit the build.Once the build is fine, hit debug. Since we do not have a debug configuration for GCCE Phone debug, carbide will ask us to create a new configuration like so:Select the Application TRK Launch Configuration, and click on next. The remote connection we created earlier is listed and selected automatically. Proceed to the next step where it asks for the SIS file to be installed. Carbide has already filled up the necessary information. We just need to add a few things.

Now, click on the Modify Sis builder settings for build configuration link just below the Sis File dialog box.  This will open a new dialog box where the only things we need to modify are as below:

• Enable the partial Upgrade checkbox. This will help quickstart the debug as the whole sis file is not re-created and signed. Only the delta is sent across to be debugged again…
• Select the configuration and click on Edit. You will notice that the Self Sign sis file option is selected already.

Good, now wind up and head out… Once you hit finish, carbide starts up the debugger and switches to the debug perspective. The application will be packaged, signed, transferred to the device, installed on the C/ E drive that you choose, and started up.  Provided you have already set a breakpoint, the code will execute till that point and you have control to step through then on.So, there you go… On Device Debugging for S60 apps on Carbide.  Have fun coding…

Chao!

Would we survive? As individuals? As communities? As a Nation?

These are some questions I have on why we dont get to  see a lot of “creation of technology” in India.  By creating a wave, I dont mean Tata Nano.  No, that is not technical innovation… The world has Been there, done that! What we achieved with the nano was new business sense… I find it personally impressive.  My question really is: what is stopping us from driving innovation at the snap of our fingers? 1.1 billion people and we still can’t find enough people to roll the wheels???

These questions have been burning in my head for quite sometime and I would love to have a discussion on this… Either here on my blog or on twitter. I’m all eyes and ears

Chao…

Long long ago, quite some time ago, before the whole hosted blogging thingy, I was having one of the thousands of wordpress.com hosted blogs. http://cruisemaniac.wordpress.com was the URL.  Then, BCB2 happened… and all those wonderful people suggested that I could also move to a domain hosted blog and that would look cooler considering that my pseudo-name “Cruisemaniac” was kinda popular at the time (or so they said )

And so, I went about finding who the good webhosts were and how much I would have to shell out for the domain + space and all that… I cornered it down to bluehost for my hosting and when I started the domain booking procedure, i popped in the domain name and poof… it was not available. I had the horror of horrors in finding out that the term “cruisemaniac” and hence, the website cruisemaniac.com was owned by a porn-star… Nope, that would not be me… but then yeah, it was owned by a d*&k-headed porn star (d*&k-headed… so to speak!) So I went out, bought the domain “thecruisemaniac.com“, setup my blog ranted here, and totally forgot about the domain name… Over a period of time, due to strong and unrelenting perseverance, the term cruisemaniac has come to be identified as my identity and not that of the pr0n guy!

So, winding forward to a few weeks back, when I was fooling around on the internet, I remembered the domain name and checked to see what had happened to cruisemaniac.com and to my surprise, it gave me a 404!  Checking the whois info told me that it was not renewed and was going to get released into the freepool in a weeks time.  After discussions with our honourable web-expert Mr. Prashanth, I set a backorder on godaddy for the domain.  Close to a week after that, on a cloudy, cool, monday morning (scenic descriptions eh ), Godaddy confirmed the domain for me! Which is jhakaas!!! With a tweet to w00t for victory, the domain became mine and I have now smoothly migrated the blog from thecruisemaniac.com to cruisemaniac.com and this is where you are currently.

And I hence, proclaim, I AM Cruisemaniac!

So yeah, there goes, the story… A lived-happily-ever-after ending to it

Now that the happy story is done with, there are a few things left to be done: I have always wanted a landing page as I dont like the root of the domain to be where my blog is hosted. The landing page is still under construction and I hope to have it completed by this weekend.  I also neeed a nicer theme for hte blog… Not that I dont like the current one, but I need a more elegant one. If any of you have pointers to some good looking themes, do drop in a comment and I would really appreciate that.

And most importantly, now that the entire website has been moved, if there are any broken links, missing files, do let me know…

Till the next post, chao!

P.S.: I will not take any criticism on the pr0n star sh*&. I have had enough of that already!

P.P.S.: I am Cruisemaniac! I AM ‘THE’ CRUISEMANIAC!

I have used a Nokia 6210 Navigator (S60 FP2 device) for supporting this blog post, but any other S60 3rd edition / 5th edition device would conform to more or less the same process.  Now, here goes…

There are two ways you can start off your setup of MFE on your S60 device:

1. Hunt down the MFE icon hiding somewhere in the Installations / Applicaitons folder and start off the setup process…
2. Start setup from the Messaging app and move forward to install MFE and continue the setup.  We will be looking at this approach in the blog post.

The only difference between the two approaches is that in the first one already has MFE installed on your device and you just go ahead and type in your magic keywords and it just works!  In the second case, you type in the parameters and then it proceeds to install MFE (whose sis file Nokia has happily stored somewhere on your phone) and then apply the magic and get going!!!

So… starting with it…

1. Open the messaging app -> New mailbox.  Select Yes for the question it asks.
   
2. You should now be presented with the E-mail setup wizard.  Start it off… we’re just a few more steps away
   
3. The wizard will then show you a disclaimer.  Just accept it to move to the next step.  It will then check your GPRS (NOT WAP, GPRS = DATA = THE COSTLY WALA CONNEXUN ) connectivity to the internet and then the setup part of your process starts.
   
4. Continuing on… The next set of screens prompts you to enter the Email ID, password.
   
5. At this point, we’re halfway through the process.  The wizard will now show a list of protocols that are “possibly” supported by your email id.  One of them is POP3 / IMAP4 (which is the defacto thingy, but not what we’re interested in) and the other being, Mail For Exchange.  This is shown in the screenshots below:
   
6. Once MFE is selected, you will be presented with dialogues to enter your Windows Username and the Windows Domain Name against which you authenticate yourself in your organization.
   
7. In the next dialog, you have to enter your mail server URL.  This is the URL of the exchange server you have at work.
   
8. At this point, the installation of MFE starts on you system and proceeds to show you the Sync settings menu.
   
9. Pressing the center softkey on the Content synced settings item brings up the detailed settings for your MFE setup that you have done.  Here, you can tweak your Peak, off peak settings, Sync when roaming settings, and all the works…I’ll leave it to the screenshots below to do the explanations…
   
10. Once you are satisfied with the settings changes you have made to the profile, Select Options –> Full resync.  This will clear out any pre-existing sync data and refresh it with the latest data from the exchange server.
    
11. Once the Full sync is done, the MFE profile you just created gets saved and you can see the status of the sync process as it happens.
    
12. After closing the wizard, you must be able to see a Mail for Exchange folder in your Messaging application.  This indicates that you have an MFE profile setup on your phone.  Once the sync is complete from the previous step, you will see a new mail indication on the Home screen as indicated by a small ‘@’ icon in the top right near the battery indicator.
    

    You can haz push corporate emailz!!!

    

13. Another feature that MFE provides is the Company directory lookup.  This is basically the Addressbook feature that Outlook provides when you type the name of the recipient and press Ctrl + K.  The app is named Comp. Dir.
    

So there ends the step-by-step walkthrough for setting up MFE on your S60 devices.

Now comes the interesting part, Troubleshooting.

• If your sync has suddenly stopped working, chances are that your backend has cut you off for a while a.k.a. maintenance.
• Another common issue is the MFE not working after a FOTA upgrade.  This is rectified by deleting your existing MFE profile and creating a new one with the same settings.
• If your MFE setup keeps harping about the server being wrong (step 7 in how-to above), try it with the https://mail.yourmailserver.com url.

I hope this helps someone with regard to setting up MFE.  Until the next post… Chao!

Download Synergy from the sourceforge website here.  Install it and have it running without a reboot.

The configuration for Synergy is very simple.

1. You choose one of your multiple PCs / laptops on your table as your server.
   
2. Next up, you would need to configure the positions of the other PCs with respect to the PC acting as the Synergy Server. Eg: Laptop is to the left of PC.  EeePC to the left of Laptop.  Laptop is Right of EeePC, et al.
   
3. Start off Synergy on the server
4. Hook on the clients to the server by providing either the hostname of the server or the IP address  and voila..
   
5. You can haz one keyboard and one mouse for multiple peeceez!!!
   

With respect to my setup as above, synergy runs on the Ubuntu desktop.  The Keyboard and mouse from the desktop is used by both the laptop and the eeePC.

For the ubuntu fellows, synergy is available in synaptic package manager. Just apt-get it as:

sudo apt-get install synergy

The package manager installs both the synergy server (synergys) and the synergy client (synergyc).  Synergy server needs a configuration file named synergy.conf which needs to be pointed to when starting the synergy server.  A very detailed help document for writing the synergy.conf file and for starting the client and server on ubuntu is here.

Well… thats that about Synergy.  Looks like i covered an app I liked a lot in pretty much good detail… and oh… yeah, you can share the clipboard across PCs… Ctrl+C on ubuntu and Ctrl+V on windowsXP! Kickass!! B-)

AND Oh!, Warning… Long post!!!

Layoffs are happening everywhere… People dont have a jack’s clue of whats happening… Everyone is mouthing the same set of words, more so like hashtags: recession, layoffs, cost-cutting, downsizing, rightsizing, et. al.

But yeah, if we all have to face the truth, we have to… don’t we??? This post is not going to be yet-another-recession-reasoning post. I’m going to more so crib about it and probably try to see what we can do about the stark reality we are facing right now and are going to face for some more time to come. So, here goes:

First off, The recession syndrome:

Every single organization is talking about cost-cutting. This basically means that employees in the hard-hit Information Technology and allied ITES sector need to face one or more of the following:

1. Job cuts. Well, they right-sized… and… you’re out!
2. Lesser Perks. No more Organization sponsored Birthday parties, team lunches, team outings / trips, et. al.
3. No more free coffee / tea / lunch / breakfast / dinner. [More on this later]
4. Lesser number of buses / cabs
5. No more free outgoing calls from the desks / cubicles or reduced free telephone bill limits
6. Frozen salary hikes
7. No salary / virtual salary if your case is a really sad one, like the folks at Satyam!

Now that the cost-cutting-list is made, I have a few questions for the organizations, all of them:

1. What is your meaning of cost-cutting / down-sizing / right-sizing? [Personally, my question would be: Why dont you have left-sizing? Why does it have to go only in the "right" direction?]
2. And yeah, if you’re right-sizing now, were you not of the right-size back then??? How were your profits coming in so beautifully??? Quarter on Quarter on Quarter… Did you also muck up your numbers like Satyam did???
3. Why do you have to do it because someone else is an ass??? Did You not do your job right then?
4. If you were interested in saving some money back then… You wouldnt have to do all this shit right?
5. How do you choose who do down-size? The slave who clocks 20 hours per day at work? Or the doofus who licks-your-a$$ clean irrespective of whether you take a dump or not?
6. How do you weigh these options?
7. What if YOU get thrown out in the process of downsizing?
8. And the most important question of all, What should an employee do to protect himself from getting booted out? [I'm guessing girls are safe from this market effect... They either dont get shown the door or they retire as housewives]

Well, the sad part is, none of the good things happened… and we all live to bear the brunt… I want to go hunt down the management guy who taught me to “Make hay while the sun-shines” and kick him dry! It was in all probability him and his boss that were busy eating the hay. Aaargh!!!

Part II of the post – What can YOU do?:

First off, I’m no management guru / PM guy, bigshot-whatever. But I still continue with this part of the post because of two reasons:

1. I have seen / am seeing people live through these “harsh times” and more importantly,
2. This is MY goddamn BLOG!!! I have an opinion… Just about like everyone on this planet has an a*&hole!!!

Yeah, getting along… The first thing I would like everyone to realise is thus:

The world has not come to an end! It is not doomsday. Not YET!!!

Its just a market slowdown… Organizations are introspecting on the moves they made… The markets are introspecting about the stuff it traded… Managers are continuing to eat and give the bullshit they always ate and gave!

So yeah, what can be done about this??? Truly, nothing… The industry is working itself around… and it will take time… What can YOU do in the meanwhile??? Lets talk about that now:

Lose the fear: This is a statement that my mom always told me whenever I had a problem. I advocate this to a whole lot of people who are in a state of absolute panic.

Face the stark reality. You are at the bottom of a pit. You cant get any deeper. The quicker you realise this and gain confidence, the better and more easier it is for you to walk out of the trap!

A person who has lost his job has definitely lost quite a lot of things. All plans have definitely gone awry, Financial security is at ground-zero, the future is a huuuuuuge Question mark… but hey, you still have YOU! You still have your friends… You still have a gazillion others in the same scenario.

This statement is from hard-personal-experience:

The moment you lose faith in yourself, you lose the race. Period.

Hunt for a new job: This is the simplest way out of the situation. Simple… Get a new job! If one organization is not doing good, there are others that are… Try to pump up your resume, apply and get hired. [I am not going to do the how-do-you-get-recruited part of the story here. That is out of scope of this blog post. I'll cover it later].

There is always someone who’s in need of a person to share the workload. Look to freelancing, look at startups, look anywhere… But… LOOK! And look some more…

Now IS the time you look at using the internet for doing something other than “Hi, I wnt 2b ur frnd… Plz b my frnd” bullshit on orkut! There is more to the internet than orkut.com!!! Seriously! Websites like linkedin.com, and other useful websites exist for this sole reason!

To prepare your legitimate network that can help you in times of need.

Experiment with your ideas: If you are of the kind that knows has atleast attended one barcamp religiously in his / her life, I think its time you put that knowledge into action. Think of doing something on your own. Work up an idea thats been hitting on you for quite sometime… Team up with friends / colleagues and code it up… and presto… you could be on your way to doing something really good and really useful…

Theres nothing wrong in giving an idea the chance it deserves. You never know what the payback could be. And, you’ve got all the time in the world sitting at home.

Dignity of Labour: This point is specifically for people who are low on resources. Time, cash, anything… How about, we consider you giving up the “I am the fricking king of the world because I’m a techie” label and say you get yourself a job that just about feeds you and keeps you running…

• Something like Job-typing for someone for some cash
• Teaching at a school / college / university
• Working as a network admin, cable guy at an organization
• whatever else fits the bill

I have noticed that Indians are the hardest hit in the economic recession because of this main “thing”… This stigma we all have in our heads… The feeling that we need to be doing only something that fits our levels of respect and self-esteem… Well, here’s what I think…

If you dont have a job… you dont have self-esteem, do you??? What you need is money… not arrogance! If you were worth that much in the first place, you would still have a job!

Now that I’m done with the things I wanted to write about… I’ll end this sober and long post with this one line… err…. paragraph:

The world is not ending… You need to be concerned… not lose your head. You need to be confident and the most important thing of all

Stay Hungry… Stay Foolish…

P.S.: I’m not plain advocating stuff to people who are reading this post… I have been in the same situation… My friends and family are in the same situation… and yes, I have come out of this situation by doing more than one of the things I have listed above there… Comments and suggestions welcome…