Pramu's world

Sri Lanka vs India - Test and ODI series 2010

2010-07-12T17:35:00.000-07:00

Date and Time Match
Tue Jul 13 - Thu Jul 15 Sri Lanka Board President's XI v Indians 04:30 GMT | 10:00 local Colts Cricket Club Ground, Colombo

Sun Jul 18 - Thu Jul 22 1st Test - Sri Lanka v India 04:30 GMT | 10:00 local Galle International Stadium

Mon Jul 26 - Fri Jul 30 2nd Test - Sri Lanka v India 04:30 GMT | 10:00 local Sinhalese Sports Club Ground, Colombo

Tue Aug 3 - Sat Aug 7 3rd Test - Sri Lanka v India 04:30 GMT | 10:00 local P Sara Oval, Colombo

Tue Aug 10 India v New Zealand 09:00 GMT | 14:30 local Rangiri Dambulla International Stadium

Mon Aug 16 Sri Lanka v India 09:00 GMT | 14:30 local Rangiri Dambulla International Stadium

Sun Aug 22 Sri Lanka v India 09:00 GMT | 14:30 local Rangiri Dambulla International Stadium

Wed Aug 25 India v New Zealand 09:00 GMT | 14:30 local Rangiri Dambulla International Stadium

Watching Live Cricket for Free

2010-07-12T17:30:00.000-07:00

If you love watching cricket, and live in a place like the USA, and miss watching live cricket games because they are not shown in free-to-air television, do not despair. There are lot of sites out there that stream live video, all you need to do know how to find them. In most cases, you don't need to install special software.

Live cricket streaming sites

These sites use flash. So if you can view videos in youtube, you are all set to watch live cricket. The following sites are pretty good at updating their site. They have live streams of most cricket matches around the world.

http://webcric.com/ - Pretty good site. This has live links to most international cricket matches around the world.
http://cricketlinks.org/ - Has links to online streaming sites.
http://cricfree.com/ - Another option.
http://www.ustream.tv/discovery/live/sports-cricket - This has the ustreams that stream cricket. Unfortunately, not all will be online.
The final resort is to search in google. I find that using google blog search provides better results. The key is to make the query as specific as possible.

Include the names of the two teams that are playing
Eg. search for "Sri Lanka vs Australia live streaming cricket".

TVU Player

TVU player is a great player for watching live streams. Its awesome to watch cricket as well. I find it much more stable than the flash streaming sites. Especially, when network gets slow around peak times.

First install TVU Player from http://www.tvunetworks.com/.
After installation, open the player and you'll see a sports tab. Click on that. You'll get all the channels that stream sports.
In the search box, search for "Cricket", which should bring up the channels that stream crcket.
Usually, "Teezcricket" Chanel is pretty good, if its online.

Champions Trophy 2009 - Sri Lanka vs England Live Streaming

2009-09-21T23:59:00.000-07:00

Champions Trophy 2009 Schedule

2009-09-20T23:23:00.001-07:00

Sep-2009
Tue 22 12:30 GMT, 14:30 local	1st Match, Group B - South Africa v Sri Lanka SuperSport Park, Centurion

Wed 23 12:30 GMT, 14:30 local	2nd Match, Group A - Pakistan v West Indies New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg

Thu 24 07:30 GMT, 09:30 local	3rd Match, Group B - South Africa v New Zealand SuperSport Park, Centurion

Fri 25 12:30 GMT, 14:30 local	4th Match, Group B - England v Sri Lanka New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg

Sat 26 07:30 GMT, 09:30 local	5th Match, Group A - Australia v West Indies New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg

Sat 26 12:30 GMT, 14:30 local	6th Match, Group A - India v Pakistan SuperSport Park, Centurion

Sun 27 07:30 GMT, 09:30 local	7th Match, Group B - New Zealand v Sri Lanka New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg

Sun 27 12:30 GMT, 14:30 local	8th Match, Group B - South Africa v England SuperSport Park, Centurion

Mon 28 12:30 GMT, 14:30 local	9th Match, Group A - India v Australia SuperSport Park, Centurion

Tue 29 12:30 GMT, 14:30 local	10th Match, Group B - England v New Zealand New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg

Wed 30 07:30 GMT, 09:30 local	11th Match, Group A - Pakistan v Australia SuperSport Park, Centurion

Wed 30 12:30 GMT, 14:30 local	12th Match, Group A - India v West Indies New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg
Oct-2009
Fri 02 12:30 GMT, 14:30 local	1st Semi-Final - A1 v B2 SuperSport Park, Centurion

Sat 03 12:30 GMT, 14:30 local	2nd Semi-Final - B1 v A2 New Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg

Mon 05 12:30 GMT, 14:30 local	Final - TBC v TBC SuperSport Park, Centurio

Sri Lanka India Compaq cup Game 3 Highlights

2009-09-13T16:47:00.000-07:00

India Vs West Indies 3rd ODI Live Video Streaming

2009-07-02T19:45:00.000-07:00

It's been a year of contrasting fortunes for the two teams in the ODI format, and they have much to make up for in tomorrow's contest in St Lucia. India have had a successful 2009 in the 50-over game, with series wins in New Zealand and Sri Lanka. An unassailable lead with a win in St Lucia will boost their chances of wrapping another series away from home, making amends for their debacle in the World Twenty20 and ending their hectic few weeks ahead of a two-month break on a high. West Indies have been disappointing this year, winning four ODIs and losing eight, but have the momentum going into a crunch game with a comprehensive win in Kingston to level the series. However, they are under as much pressure to perform at home. A 2-1 lead, and more so a series win, will do a lot towards easing that burden and leaving them a confident outfit as they take on Bangladesh in their next series.

World Twenty20 Final Sri Lanka Vs Pakistan Live Streaming

2009-06-21T03:22:00.001-07:00

Sri Lanka has been the most consistent team in the tournament. Pakistan have been patchy at the start, but have regrouped well. The final is bound to be cracker of a contest. Will Sri Lanka be able to maintain their spotless record or will Pakistan pull a rabbit out of their hat. Catch the action live here.

World Twenty20 Semi-final Sri Lanka Vs West Indies Live Streaming

2009-06-18T19:58:00.000-07:00

Sri Lanka have a spotless record in this tournament. Their bowling has been their strength. Their batting has always posted competitive scores. West Indies on the other hand, have won 3 and lost 2. They are in the semi-finals and this is the only game that matters. If Sri Lanka are to join Pakistan in the Final, they will have to beat the West Indies powered by Chris Gayle.

Catch the action live;

World cup Twenty20 Super 8 Live Streaming - India V South Africa

2009-06-16T03:15:00.000-07:00

India are out of the tournament. They will be playing for pride. South Africa won't be taking this game lightly. They will be trying to repeat England and bowl a whole lot of bouncers.

Catch the action live;

World cup Twenty20 Super 8 Live Streaming - Sri Lanka V New Zealand

2009-06-15T20:25:00.001-07:00

Both Sri Lanka and New Zealand face a must win game, to keep alive their aspirations of holding the Twenty20 world cup for the first time. Sri Lanka's middle order problems were quite visible in their last game against Ireland. Will they tinker with their line in this crucial game? or will they stick with their winning combination. This will be the first time that New Zealand will experience Mendis. A lot will depend on how they handle the 3Ms, Murali, Malinga and Mendis.

India crash out of the Worldcupt - Catch the highlights (India V England)

2009-06-14T19:09:00.000-07:00

England Innings

India Innings

Catch the highlights of the Sri Lanka V Ireland game

2009-06-14T19:04:00.000-07:00

Sri Lanka Innings

Ireland Innings

World cup Twenty20 Super 8 Live Streaming - India V England

2009-06-14T03:31:00.000-07:00

The tournament has gotten a little more interesting after India's loss to the West Indies. The title holders are yet to get a win under their belt in the super 8. The game against England is their best shot. On paper, India have a much stronger team than England. However, in the game of Twenty20 cricket, one simple mistake can gift the game to the opposing team.

World cup Twenty20 Super 8 Live Flash Streaming - Sri Lanka V Ireland

2009-06-13T16:55:00.000-07:00

Sri Lanka have progressed well in this year's Twenty20 world cup cricket tournament. Ireland have shown that they will not roll over and let the test playing nations trample over them. Sri Lanka, under the astute leadership of Kumar Sangakkara, would not take taking Ireland lightly. They will treat this match as any other and would use this as valuable match practice and to continue their momentum towards their quest of their first world cup Twenty20 title.

Catch the action live;

World cup Twenty20 Super 8 Live Flash Streaming - Sri Lanka V Pakistan

2009-06-12T03:10:00.000-07:00

Pakistan have been Sri Lanka's achilles heel in big tournaments. Will Sri Lankan be able to live up to their favorite tag they gained by excellent cricket in the group stage. Can they handle the pressure of the Super 8 stage? Pakistan are bound to step up to the big occasion. It is bound to be classic game of Twenty20 cricket.

ICC world cup Twenty20 Live Free Streaming (flash)

2009-06-10T02:56:00.000-07:00

Sri Lanka V West Indies
India V Ireland

World cup Twenty20 Super 8 Schedule

2009-06-09T16:39:00.001-07:00

Thu Jun 11	13th Match, Group F - Ireland v New Zealand (D1 v A2) Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Thu Jun 11	14th Match, Group E - England v South Africa (B2 v D2) Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Fri Jun 12	15th Match, Group F - Pakistan v Sri Lanka (B1 v C2) Lord's, London

Fri Jun 12	16th Match, Group E - India v West Indies (A1 v C1) Lord's, London

Sat Jun 13	17th Match, Group E - South Africa v West Indies (C1 v D2) Kennington Oval, London

Sat Jun 13	18th Match, Group F - New Zealand v Pakistan (D1 v B1) Kennington Oval, London

Sun Jun 14	19th Match, Group F - Ireland v Sri Lanka (A2 v C2) Lord's, London

Sun Jun 14	20th Match, Group E - England v India (A1 v B2) Lord's, London

Mon Jun 15	21st Match, Group E - England v West Indies (B2 v C1) Kennington Oval, London

Mon Jun 15	22nd Match, Group F - Ireland v Pakistan (B1 v A2) Kennington Oval, London

Tue Jun 16	23rd Match, Group F - New Zealand v Sri Lanka (D1 v C2) Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Tue Jun 16	24th Match, Group E - India v South Africa (D2 v A1) Trent Bridge, Nottingham

New Zealand vs South Africa Highlights 2009 T20 World Cup

2009-06-09T16:09:00.000-07:00

South Africa's bowlers, led by the unhittable spin of Roelof van der Merwe, pulled an improbable victory out of the jaws of defeat as they successfully defended a meagre target of 129 and snuck home by a solitary run to secure the Group D bragging rights in a scrappy but compelling dead-rubber tussle at Lord's.

South Africa Innings

New Zealand Innings

World cup Twenty20 Super 8 slots - 7 down, 1 to go

2009-06-08T20:09:00.000-07:00

Seven of the eight super8 slots of the World cup Twenty 20 has been decided. The two super8 groups are;

Group E: India, South Africa, West Indies, England

Group F: New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Pakistan/Netherlands

Pakistan have to win their game against Netherlands by atleast 25 runs or chase down their target with 3 overs to spare to qualify.

Sri Lanka V Australia World Cup Twenty20 Highlights Free (Flash)

2009-06-08T19:11:00.001-07:00

Australia Innings

Sri Lanka Innings

India V Bangladesh World Cup Twenty20 Highlights Free (Flash)

2009-06-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

India Innings

Bangladesh Innings

ICC world cup Twenty20 Live Free Streaming (flash)

2009-06-06T05:15:00.000-07:00

Bangladesh v Ireland
Australia v Sri Lanka

Free ICC World T20 (World Cup) Live Streaming

2009-05-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

Watch world T20 (World Cup) Live Streaming Free from England.

Streaming in windows media format.

Schedule of ICC world cup T20 in England.

Date	Match
Fri Jun 5	Group B - England v Netherlands Lord's, London

Sat Jun 6	Group D - New Zealand v Scotland Kennington Oval, London

Sat Jun 6	Group C - Australia v West Indies Kennington Oval, London

Sat Jun 6	Group A - Bangladesh v India Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Sun Jun 7	Group D - Scotland v South Africa Kennington Oval, London

Sun Jun 7	Group B - England v Pakistan Kennington Oval, London

Mon Jun 8	Group A - Bangladesh v Ireland Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Mon Jun 8	Group C - Australia v Sri Lanka Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Tue Jun 9	Group B - Netherlands v Pakistan Lord's, London

Tue Jun 9	Group D - New Zealand v South Africa Lord's, London

Wed Jun 10	Group C - Sri Lanka v West Indies Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Wed Jun 10	Group A - India v Ireland Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Thu Jun 11	Group F - TBC v TBC (D1 v A2) Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Thu Jun 11	Group E - TBC v TBC (B2 v D2) Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Fri Jun 12	Group F - TBC v TBC (B1 v C2) Lord's, London

Fri Jun 12	Group E - TBC v TBC (A1 v C1) Lord's, London

Sat Jun 13	Group E - TBC v TBC (C1 v D2) Kennington Oval, London

Sat Jun 13	Group F - TBC v TBC (D1 v B1) Kennington Oval, London

Sun Jun 14	Group F - TBC v TBC (A2 v C2) Lord's, London

Sun Jun 14	Group E - TBC v TBC (A1 v B2) Lord's, London

Mon Jun 15	Group E - TBC v TBC (B2 v C1) Kennington Oval, London

Mon Jun 15	Group F - TBC v TBC (B1 v A2) Kennington Oval, London

Tue Jun 16	Group F - TBC v TBC (D1 v C2) Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Tue Jun 16	Group E - TBC v TBC (D2 v A1) Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Thu Jun 18	1st Semi-Final - TBC v TBC Trent Bridge, Nottingham

Fri Jun 19	2nd Semi-Final - TBC v TBC Kennington Oval, London

Sun Jun 21	Final - TBC v TBC Lord's, London

Making use of off-peak download cap

2009-05-24T21:50:00.001-07:00

The Australian internet companies have two separate sets of caps for us poor souls: peak and off-peak. I am with TPG and their off-peak period is from 1am to 7am. If you are a person who values their sleep like me, there is no way that I would wake up at 1am to start off my torrent downloads. Fear not, there is a very simple solution. Just use uTorrent's scheduler.

uTorrent has an easy to use scheduler. It is available under Preferences->Scheduler. The "Enable scheduler" tick box has to be clicked to activate the scheduler. The scheduler has 7 rows, one for each day. Each day consists of 24 blocks, representing each hour of the day. In order to limit downloads in the off-peak time (ie between 1am and 7am) simply double click to turn the blocks green for each day between 1am and 7am (see screenshot). A single click will make the block pink, which is for seeding only. I value my cap, so I've limited the upload speed of my torrents (the speed at which others can download my torrents) to 1kB/s. This is set below the scheduler.

Windows Command Prompt (CMD) Replacement

2009-05-24T21:13:00.000-07:00

I am sick and tired of the boring windows command prompt (cmd.exe). It hasn't changed since windows 95 (or longer). Its such an archaic piece of software that Microsoft just hasn't bother updating. My search for a suitable replacement for the windows terminal ended after discovering Console.

Console is an open source piece of software that is far superior to the Windows terminal. One of the key improvements in Console is that is allows Tabs. I hate having to open up a number of command prompt windows when I have to execute different commands from different locations. Console is fully customizable. While providing functionality to change standard things like the font, background color, mouse behavior, it also has cool features like transparency.

I love to make use of both Windows and Linux functionality. I have cygwin installed on my machine, that brings most of the commands found in the Linux world like grep, find, make etc to the Windows world. However, cygwin doesn't have a decent terminal window. Console can be configured to execute cygwin. Its easy as going to Edit->Setting->Console and setting the shell to \bin\bash.exe and setting the startup directory to the cygwin home directory.

Watch PAL TV on NTSC HD TV

2009-04-30T16:13:00.000-07:00

We moved to Australia from the USA and shipped all our belongings from there including our 42" LCD HD TV. I was under the impression that I would be able to simply buy an external TV tuner that would enable me to watch Aussie TV. Was I ever WRONG!

There are three main analogue television systems throughout the world, PAL, NTSC and SECAM. After the introduction of High Definition TV, the old standards didn't simply go away, they influenced the new HD standards. I found this nice article about why NTSC and PAL still matter in the digital TV world. Basically, the main difference is the frame rate. HD signal based on NTSC (ie. HD in the USA) transmits 30 frame-per-second where as HD signal based on PAL (ie HD in Australia) transmits 25 frame-per-seconds. So, converting a PAL based HD signal to NTSC based HD signal is not trivial, as the missing frames have to be invented.

After painstakingly trying out different a number of set top boxes (external TV tuners) and returning them as they didn't work with my TV, I searched the web for answers. There was very little useful information out there. I decided to experiment. My TV has a PC-in VGA port. I manage to connect my old PC to the TV using a VGA cable and use the TV as a monitor. That's when it occurred to me that there should be external boxes that are capable of turning an ordinary PC monitor into a TV.

I found a couple of units that were capable of turning a PC monitor into a TV without need for a computer. One was Compro VideoMate W800F and AVerTV Hybrid STB9. As none of the major computer retailers in Australia were selling these, I didn't have the luxury of returning any of them. So I was thorough on my research. I finally bit the bullet and bought the Compro VideoMate W800F, which works perfectly with my USA TV.

A happy ending after a lot of hard work. I can now watch live games on my TV that was shipped over from the USA. TVs are very cheap over there in the US. May be, I should consider shipping a a bigger better TV from the USA in the future...

Formatting a large partition in FAT32 with Vista

2009-04-29T16:16:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has imposed an artificial restriction in Windows Vista that prohibits formatting a disk partition of size greater than 32GB in Fat32. This is very annoying to say the least. For people like me, who would like to have the best of both the Windows world and the Linux world, dual boot is a cheap option (in comparison to buying two machines). It is common in dual boot machines to have a common drive formatted in Fat32, that can be shared between the two operating systems.

After a little googling, I found fat32format , a nifty tool that quickly formats a drive in Fat32. Simply download the zip file from here and unzip the contents to some folder on your local drive. Then open up a command prompt as Administrator (find command prompt under Run->All programs->Accessories and right click on command prompt and choose run as administrator). Then go to the directory where the unzipped fat32format.exe file exists and execute fat32format.exe .

Its not all doom and gloom with Vista. It does provide the functionality to resize partitions. This is very useful, if you are trying to install a second OS on an existing machine. To resize a partition, simply go to
Control panel-> Administrative tools -> Computer management
Navigate to the Disk Management under Storage in the left panel. You can simply right click on any of the drives and select "Shrink volume.." to resize a partition.

HongKong Visit

2006-07-16T16:55:00.000-07:00

This was my first visit to Hong Kong and I was really pleasantly surprised. Everything was very organized, and very clean. It was almost like a bigger Singapore, but with more high risers. We traveled every where on the sub way (called MTR) it was really easy to get around and cheap. They had a smart card called the Octopus card that made cash handling a real breeze. It could be used in busses, MTRs and even most grocery shops. It saved me from returning home with a pocket full of HK coins that I may never use again.

What amazed us most was the way how in which people were really organized. People always walked on the left "lane" when walking inside the MTR station. The stations had elevators, which had been divided into two lanes with a white line in between. The left lane was for people who were lazy to climb the steps, while the right was for people who were in a hurry.

Our main goal was shopping, which was a bit of a disappointment. Everything was very expensive. We did find a lot of counterfeit clothes, but they weren't as cheap as you would find in Bangkok or Singapore. I had big aspirations of being able to buy some really cool electronic gadgets. However, the mp3 player in particular that I wanted to purchase was almost the same price as what I would get in New Zealand. So I was really disappointed.

I did manage to take some interesting photos while we were there: Link

MP3 players and Hong Kong

2006-06-18T21:26:00.000-07:00

I will be traveling to Hong Kong (HK) in three days and one of my goals is to find a good MP3 player. As per my previous post, I had almost made up my mind to buy a Sandisk Sansa e260. However, the MP3 market has been really active in the recent past, and a few really exciting new players have come out. One example is the iriver clix. Reviewers have been raving about this player, but have also pointed out its lack of storage (only 2GB). So, it almost back to square one for me. I haven't made up a decision yet. I guess I'll just go there and see what's available. Besides, I was told that Sandisk may not be that popular in Hong Kong. We'll just have to wait and see.

Although I have traveled to other Asian countries such as Singapore and Thailand, traveling to a Chinese country would be interesting. The main aim of this trip is to travel to Taiwan, where I will be attending the ITS 2006 conference. I will be presenting a research paper there. The stop over at HK is mainly for shopping and tourism.

Flash-based MP3 players

2006-05-11T23:54:00.000-07:00

This blog seems to be turning out to be dedicated to JavaScript. So I thought of adding something completely different. I've been looking for an MP3 player. More specifically, my requirement is to listen to music during my exercise (mostly). I already have a cheap Chinese MP3 player that I picked up while I was in Singapore, but it's battery is useless. It has an average battery life of about one hour, which is really annoying. So I've been reading reviews on what's available and trying to figure out the best value for money player out there. I of course love gadgets, so the new gadget should be flashy and packed with extra features that I may never use!!

After reading about hard-disk based players and learning about their problems with skipping I decided to focus on a flash memory based player. Another reason for focusing on a flash memory based player is the weight factor. Hard disk players are always heaver and would feel bulky in my pocket. Hopefully, the flash-based players also have a better battery life as they do not have any moving parts.

My research revealed that there are currently three top of the range flash-based players with over 4GB memory: iPod nano, Sandisk e200 series, Samsung YP Z5. Sandisk are the only company to have a 6GB flash player. The iPod is the thinnest player and then the other two are similar in size. The Sandisk is the thickest (slightly). While investigating the different features that each player offered, I realised that the features can be divided into hardware features and software. To me the extra software that the player comes with is irrelevant. I'm sure I will be able to find the necessary converters etc. So features that I've labelled as software are features offered by the player itself.

In terms of hardware features, all three come up with standard features expected from a portable music player. All three have colour screens; the screen of the ipod is smaller (1.5") compared to the others (1.8"). The ipod and samsung player both have very simillar features. The sandisk player has extras like an FM tuner and video playback. Ipod has a few neat extra software features like a calendar, contacts and games.

To me, battery life is paramount. In the end, I decided to go with the Sandisk player, because it had a battery rated 20 hours and was removable. I've heard so many horror stories about ipod batteries. I think most problems are because of its instant-on feature which keeps draining battery life by going into hibernation mode. The iPod can never be completely turned off, it always goes to hibernation mode. The Samsung player has a really good battery, but it doesn't have the extras such as radio and movie playback.

Now, only if I can buy a Sandisk sansa e260 or e270 in New Zealand!!

Syntax highlighting using Javascript

2006-05-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

I've been looking around for a web-based source code editor. My search was for an editor embedded in a web page which would allow the modification of code stored in a server. This does not mean an editor for editing web-technology related source files. Searching the web mostly resulted in editors for JavaScript, html etc.

Currently About:Edit is a very good source code editor. It is commercial product that provides a lot of features including syntax highlighting. Its impossible to hide the source code of JavaScript apps, so my inquisitiveness got the better of me. I had a look at their source code. The code is very complicated and they have tried very very hard to make it as obfuscated as possible.

I came across some guy who had a post on their blog (I can’t acknowledge the source as I've lost it), a nice proof-of-concept of using JavaScript for syntax highlighting a static page. His idea was simple; use regular expressions to search for keywords in a document and then replace them with formatted text. Here’s an example,

var keywordPattern = /\band|not|null|equalp|match\b/g;

var text = document.getElementById("constraints").innerHTML;
document.getElementById("constraints").innerHTML = 
 text.replace(keywordPattern, function(text) {
         return "" + text + ""
        });

The code looks for a set of keywords (and, not etc) and adds a span tag around it. It works like a charm.

This is no solution to my intial problem of an code editor. However, it does provide a nice way of displaying code.

Object and their methods in Javascript

2006-04-05T00:46:00.000-07:00

I've been looking around to find a really nice way of defining classes and their methods in JavaScript. I am aware that there are numerous libraries out that have defined their own syntax for defining classes and their methods etc. However, my quest was to find a solution that did not require any extra libraries.

I'll explain it with an example;


function Student(name){
 
   this.name = name; 
 
   /*toString method of student class */
   Student.prototype.toString = function (){
        return "My name is " + this.name;
   }
}

The example outlines a very basic "Student" class that has a 'name' property and a 'toString' method. Since properties and functions are both objects in Javasctip we can define a class using the function keyword. It basically involves defining a constructor for the class. Since the "Student" class takes in 'name' as an argument, the "Student" class can be instantiated as;


studentObj = new Student("Bob");

The "Student" class also contains a method called 'toString'. The method is assigned to Student.prototype to ensure that there is only a single copy of the method for each instance. I found an About.com artitle, which suggested that this.prototype.toString = function() {} is the right syntax. However, it does not work with Firefox. Firefox complains about prototype not having any properties.

Once an instance has been created its methods or properties can be accessed by using the '.' (dot) operator.


studentObj.toString();

Objects in JavaScript makes it easier to reuse JavaScript code. As a lot of interface code is written in JavaScript, using an object oriented programming style would be advantages in the long-run.

On a side note; I discovered the proper way to check whether the a variable is null in JavaScript.

if(!someVariable) instead of if(someVariable!=null)

Javascript Syntax Validation

2006-04-04T20:28:00.000-07:00

I am real fan of AJAX (not the cleaning product - I think my wife is a fan of that!). The really annoying thing about producing an AJAX front end for a web application is the lack of good free tools for Javascript. I recently stumbled upon the Web tool project (WTP) of the Eclipse foundation, who's goal is to produce a plugin for Eclipse (the greatest editor) to handle all AJAX languages like HTML, Javascript, CSS etc. Although the WTP plugin adds syntax highlighting functionality for Javascript, it does not perform any of the useful features that Eclipse has been synonymous for Java like Syntax checking, highlighting variable occurrences etc.

I searched on the web for a syntax checker for Javascript. I know that Firefox has a plugin which outlines syntax errors while running the script. However, I wanted to eradicate syntax errors before running a script, because there are other errors to worry about when running a script.

I came across Javascript Lint, which has a really neat utility for checking for Javascript syntax errors. It also provide a downloadable little app that can check the syntax of scripts as a command line utility or even as a right click option in the windows file explorer.

Javascript Lint uses Firefoxe's Javascript engine to check for syntax errors. I came across this article which seems to say that the Firefox JS engine was very strict. However, my experiences with it have been ok so far.

Using awk to calculate the total times by parsing a log file

2006-04-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

I came across a problem that I imaged would be very common to anyone trying to run an experiment with a software product: 'Analysing a log file and calculating a the total time a user has been performing a certain task'. A number of solutions exist, one of which is to export the whole log to a spreadsheet app like Excel and calculate the differences of time using a simple formula. However, using spreadsheets can be very tedious. The Linux shell command, Awk allows the creation of small scripts that completely automates the whole process. For windows users like me, cygwin is freely available (www.cygwin.com).

Here's the script that I used;


BEGIN {total = 0}
/.*system_login/ { sprintf("date +%%s -d '%s %s'", $1, $2) | 
                               getline tmstamp1;}
/.*system_logout/ { sprintf("date +%%s -d '%s %s'", $1, $2) | 
                               getline tmstamp2;
          print (user " " $1 " " tmstamp2 - tmstamp1);
          total += tmstamp2 - tmstamp1;
}
END{print (user " total " total);}

The awk language is a bit cryptic but nothing to be afraid of. The main idea of awk is it searches for a patter and performs a command on the found line. Each command is formatted /search pattern/action/. More information available at http://www.vectorsite.net/tsawk.html. So the second line of the script decodes, search for occurrences of "system_login" (with any thing in front) and perform the date extraction command that follows.

An awk script has a begin part, a body part and an end part. The being part is executed prior to anything else, so initialisation goes there and ending is just before the script quits. The body is where the actual logic is performed.

I've used the shell "date" command to convert a date to a value in seconds. However, you can't simply go result = system("date ...") (system can be used to execute a shell command within awk). It only returns result of command 1 or 0. So the command has to executed using sprintf and piped to getline.

Since I had a log file under the name log.dat in a directory created that corresponds their login name, I had to loop through all the directories using a for loop;


for i in *; do awk -f process-times.awk user=$i $i/log.dat ; done

Compacting email folders in thunderbird

2006-03-30T20:24:00.000-08:00

My email client, thunderbird, was extremely slow last night and I thought it may be because I had too many emails in my inbox. 'Fair enough' I thought and started deleting some of them. Thunderbird started behaving very strangely and labeling some of my old emails as 'unread' and being extremely unresponsive. This spurred my inquisitiveness and I tried to figure out what was going on but looking at the files that contained my emails. Thunderbird creates a file for each email 'folder', which contains a text file containing all emails. It also contains an msf file for each email 'folder' that keeps track of only headers (basically a list of pointers to emails in email file).

Although I kept deleting emails from thunderbird, it didn't seem to be affecting the size of the email file. I came across this 'compact' feature in thunderbird and tried it. However, no luck! No change to the size of my email file. I decided to consult my the oracle, "Google". It told found me an article of some one who had a similar problem or not deleting emails from the email file although they were deleted. That led me to a page at Mozilla (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders) which explained that Thunderbird actually kept the deleted emails labelled as deleted. It also had a description of how to 'compact' a folder if the 'compact' option does not work. It told me to delete the msf file and restart thunderbird. Thunderbird then rebuild the msf file and I was managed to use the compact folder option to get rid of all the crap that was already deleted.

Why in the world do we need emails to be labeled as deleted in the inbox while the trash folder also contains a copy? I realized that thunderbird actually has an option that can be set to automatically compact folders if it gets beyond a certain point. Why can't this be automatically enabled? I think what put me off more what the message that asked "Do you want to compact the folder and save space?". My hard disk is about 80Gbs. Why would I need to save a few Kbs? But then again, what I didn't know was that if the email file gets beyond a certain point, the whole mail client starts playing up!!

Moral of the story, compact your email folders regularly. Or set the option which performs it automatically.