Control and Why?

   Very recently, in fact, today, I realized that I am a bit over divulging. I have a lot of Facebook friends, whom I do not know much about, some of them I know nothing about, not even their name or face. I have only accepted their friend request just because it's a friend request and I couldn't say no. I am no longer friends (either online or offline) with many friends who were near and dear to me once. I am blocked/ignored or  on the restricted list on some users' settings. 

    Even though it hurts that I am unwanted, I couldn't do much if someone thinks I am not wanted and to be honest, I, myself ignore a lot of the people I know. I deliberately avoid eye-contact if they are in my presence or I just never bother. It might hurt less if someone whom you wanted to be friends with is not interested but it surely hurts every time you remember someone who has deliberately cut you off after months/years of friendship. Wait a second here, why am I whining as if I were a teenage girl suffering from identity crisis?
    Returning to the main topic, why online, am I deliberately revealing a lot about myself? Just yesterday I finally hosted my personal website which I was putting off for months and more than ever, I accepted several long-pending requests from people I do not know and sent a lot LinkedIn connect requests. See, I almost never send out friend/connection requests. I just receive them and I nearly never say no. Whatever I post online will be visible and read by many who never really have any business to do with any of it, not to mention the bots and spiders of search-engines continuously looking for sensitive information. 

    Website is one thing. I want to write posts like this and do programming projects which I want to share with everyone. I want to use my personal website as a showcase of my technical skills and expertise. Why am I over revealing myself? Why am I shouting out everything about my personal life in such an needless way? Why couldn't I be someone who will stay mysterious unless otherwise required? Why couldn't I stay unruffled?  Why couldn't I let go of my past or not feel anxious of the future? Why couldn't I stay in the present? Why do I feel I have no control?
     Eight years back, I used to chat pseudonymous with my cousin. It was fun while it lasted. After 6-8 months into it, I revealed myself and it didn't end well. We were teenagers and a budding friendship went down the drain. Within a year, I got an Orkut account and the online legitimacy felt very good. Every day, I used to get a friend request or two from my long-lasting high school friends. It was very exciting. Then I innocently tried to send a friend request to the cousin I just mentioned and she asked "do I know you?". She never talked again. Eventually I signed up with Facebook. There were not even privacy settings a that time and everything was publicly visible. Even after the settings were introduced, I never bothered to change them. Now everything is public.
    After this experience, I can no longer keep myself concealed online and cannot reject a friend request and can never stop lamenting lost friendships. Get offline and have a life.

Project Update 0.1

How’s the project coming along?

I would reply “So far, so good” (with the crossed fingers concealed behind the back). As per the plan, I guess I am doing just fine. Except that the plan is “Literary review” but I have just been doing “literary view”. I mean, I am viewing all the literature out there that I think is related to the project at hand and a lot of it for the first time.

I identified the following as related literature:

1. Morphology – since the project is basically about morphological analysis
2. Java – Oh! I am going to use java to build the whole thing
3. NetBeans platform – Yes, the framework is going to be NetBeans platform
4. Software Engineering – what! I wanted to follow sound SE principles for one, for professional assurance and for two, personal reassurance that I am doing just fine over the entire course.  
5. All other tools for all the steps starting from

·        compiler, IDE,

·        build,

·        version control,

·        unit testing,

·        integration, load and performance testing

·        quality metrics

·        technical documentation

·        issue management

·        continuous integration

Fortunately, no. 5 is just one book at the moment and I shall be learning how to use tools for all the above activities in NetBeans IDE.

Since nothing concrete can be shown as a proof for the knowledge being acquired except for using it during the course of the project, I couldn’t exactly show off anything right now. But, I hope the initial knowledge I gain will be sufficient for coming up with stating the IDE requirements in an unambiguous form for the next step. 

Humble Beginnings

Books get outdated eventually. There’s nothing more frustrating than reading an outdated book. To expound that statement, I would like to start with a little back story.

I was planning to start a programming blog. I started with the name “jStartJava” since I wanted to teach Java specifically focusing on Java GUI and swings. I was no longer a beginner to programming and I am quite adept with several other programming languages. I knew that a day would come when I wanted to talk more about programming languages other than Java. Then I decided on the name “jStartProgramming”, conveying the meaning that the blog would be about programming and it would be a jumpstart to programming rather than an absolute beginners’ guide. I was planning to target the novice programmers who are no longer beginners and naturally I would read a lot of resources already on programming.

I just opened the book “Beginning programming” to get yet another perspective on programming and starting reading the chapter “.NET - the future of online programming”. Even after reading several pages, It was no longer clear on what exactly .NET really meant. The frustration reached pinnacle when I read the sentence:

“The question, “what is .NET?” is difficult to answer in fully simply because .NET is so comprehensive and so forward-looking that it has not been completely defined yet.”

Then I remembered reading the sentence:

“As mentioned earlier, the full .NET implementation will probably not be released until Blackcomb, the version of Windows slated to be released after Windows XP” in the section C# could replace Java.

I could no longer read. I immediately turned to the back side of the cover page to find the copyright information. Proving my worst fears true, the book is indeed written in 2002 and I was reading it in 2013. .NET might have been fully implemented, I don’t exactly know (the whole point I read the chapter 21 detailing .NET immediately after going through the contents of the 400 page book). What I know for sure is the Windows released after Windows XP is Windows Vista and C# didn’t wipe Java completely from the face of the Earth.

My whole point is books undeniably get outdated but an online resource such as a blog can be updated from time to time. I hope my blog serves just that, keeping things interesting and yet up-to-date.