Even though Airtel website does not mention that Huawei Edge wireless usb modem plays well with Mac, it does! Well that is a great news for all the mac users in India… The only things that needs to be done is to manually set the wireless configuration… Also, the mac software “Mobile Partner” provided with the usb modem is nice…
Configuration you need to set in “Mobile Partner”
Settings
Lately, upgrading unlocked iPhones firmware is not such a big deal as it used to be (thanks to iPhoneDevTeam)… I have upgraded my unlocked 2G iPhone (Yes I know how all you 3G/3GS owners feel… don’t get me started on that)… I just followed this iClarified link and all it took me was 20 minutes of time… (that too because of all the backups that I need to take)
To take backup of your iPhone…
Contacts : Use iTunes
SMS : Copy the sms.db in /private/var/mobile/Library/SMS to local and restore it back after upgrade*
Notes : Copy the notes.db in /private/var/mobile/Library/Notes to local and restore it back after upgrade*
* You should have installed OpenSSH in your iPhone through Cydia to remote login from a PC and copy these files
I found the following image in one of the Apple’s Interface Builder tutorials for iPhone programming. I have this habit of skimming through the whole page before giving it a concentrated read and after seeing this image, thought “Wow… Something explained here in relation to two poular web frameworks “Struts” and “Springs”… But but, i am in Interface builder tutorial… What is happening here???… “
After reading what they are trying to say in that section, I realized they mean what plain english word means when you say “spring” and “strut”…
But, I felt this as a rare coincidence to see these words together in the least expected spot 
Struts & Springs
Couple of days back when I was travelling back to home from office, I overheard two fellow employees discussing over a programming problem… “If four points in a 2D plane (x,y) is given, how to find whether it forms a rectangle or not?”. Question sounds simple right? Well, how would you program this solution? what will be the algorithm? Just give it a shot.
Check out my implementation below… It did not look this small and simple when I started solving it. Tried calculating angles between edges, tried equating edge lengths, tried rotating the skewed rectangles (special case), tried getting B.Sc. Maths degree first… But, all of these are not really needed for the solution… It is enough if you calculate the centroid and make sure all the 4 points are equi-distant from the centroid. Well, square also satisfies this logic and square is also a rectangle
I guess it is always hard to come up with a simple solution… You have to put lot of effort to think simple!
1 public class RectangleValidator { 2 3 public static boolean validate(Point p1, Point p2, Point p3, Point p4) { 4 // Find the centroid using Euclid's geometric principle 5 Point centroid = new Point(); 6 centroid.x = (p1.x + p2.x + p3.x + p4.x) / 4; 7 centroid.y = (p1.y + p2.y + p3.y + p4.y) / 4; 8 9 // Now check if the centroid is equi-distant from all the corners 10 double dist1 = getLength(p1, centroid); 11 double dist2 = getLength(p2, centroid); 12 double dist3 = getLength(p3, centroid); 13 double dist4 = getLength(p4, centroid); 14 return (dist1 == dist2 && dist2 == dist3 && dist3 == dist4 && dist4 == dist1); 15 } 16 17 private static double getLength(Point p1, Point p2) { 18 // Using pythogoras theorem 19 double xDiff = Math.abs(p1.x - p2.x); 20 double yDiff = Math.abs(p1.y - p2.y); 21 return Math.sqrt((xDiff * xDiff) + (yDiff * yDiff)); 22 } 23 24 public static class Point { 25 Point() { 26 } 27 28 Point(double x, double y) { 29 this.x = x; 30 this.y = y; 31 } 32 33 double x; 34 double y; 35 } 36 37 }
Thanks to Code2HTML
Well well…. It is really a great experience to soak my feet in iPhone programming… But, after 3 hours of playing with Objective-C and Cocoa, I was able to get some very simple and completely useless app to work… It does nothing other than displaying a text on button click… Sounds silly right? Yes i know… But, for a java programmer who had never touched Objective-C and Cocoa, I think this as an achievement!
Apple’s architecture of keeping UIComponents (xib files) and the operations (on it) separate is good… I can design application screens (in Interface Builder) and write functions in Objective-C independently and then associate them later. This way, there is a lot of scope for reuse… However, this mapping part is bit tricky… It took me some time to understand Outlets and Actions…
There is a loooooooooooooong way from here to my first useful application “Time Tracker” and I hope I will be able to do it in a month’s time given my busy schedule 
Following sites were very helpful for me in understanding the basics of Objective-C and Cocoa…
When I was creating a simple google widget for our office coffee club, I thought of showing current inventory status with a progress bar. To my surprise, I was not able to google any simple html/javascript code for it. All I found was hefty javascripts which does a zillion things to display just a progress bar. Creating a progress bar should not be that hard… So, I googled harder, but no use.
After a while I decided to create my own and my requirement was not to write too much code (more code means more maintenance work) and should work in any web browser (ofcourse, it should be javascript enabled)
After an hour of work, I had it ready and hooked it in my widget.
Feel free to use it for your ‘Progress bar’ needs
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Insert title here</title>
<style>
.bar {
border-style: solid;
border-color: gray;
border-width: 1px;
}
</style>
<script>
function setPercent(id, percent)
{
var div = document.getElementById(id);
var barImg = div.getElementsByTagName("img");
barImg[0].width = (div.offsetWidth * percent) / 100;
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="setPercent('fir',75);setPercent('sec',11)">
Progress bar with 75% complete
<div class="bar" id="fir" class="progressbar"><img src="bar.jpg"
width="20px" height="20px" /></div>
<br>
Progress bar of size 300 px with 11% complete
<div class="bar" id="sec" class="progressbar" style="width: 300px"><img
src="bar.jpg" width="20px" height="20px" /></div>
</body>
</html>
Logic: Whenever the setPercent() method is called, the javascript will get the right div tag, calculates and sets the width of image inside it based on the current div tags width and percent complete. Simple right?
Ok, you got an iPhone when it was in version 1.1.1 and, when there was a possibility of unlocking it, you did it… But, Apple did not stop there… they kept adding more features to it and dammit, you cannot run automatic updates for it and keep it unlocked… like me, if you were also praying for some great soul to come and rescue your iPhone, good news… our prayers are answered… and that great soul is zibri Ok… enough of my *#@$% let me scrap how I did it so it might help others…
This whole unlocked iPhone upgrading process is so easy even a caveman can do it. Don’t believe me? Check it out…
I was aware that I will lose all the data in my phone. As expected, All the contacts, apps, calendar, notes, music, and every other things I dumped in were lost after the update. iTunes ’sync to computer’ saved my day.
Firmware update steps (For out of the box 1.1.4 iPhones brought recently, I would have started from step 7):
)At last, I was able to try out some of the new iPhone features and looks pretty cool than the you tube video demos. Also, donated some money to zibri (through his blog site) supporting his work….
If you are as game crazy as me, the Title of this post explains the wallpaper’s theme. If not, google is your friend here. The question marks in the title is for a reason. Just look at the wallpaper below and try finding it.
So…did you find it? If not, let me help you… It is not ‘Altaïr’ (hero of the game who is an Assassin) in the above image but it is me Yes… Photoshopped it and created ‘RAYssassin’. Ya ya… I know none will be interested in Rayssassin (instead of Altair) for the iPhone wallpaper but, wanted to post it just for the records
This time it is Vinayaka… Saw this picture in the web and looked like a right candidate for my iPhone. Can also be used with iPod Touch.
A week after getting an iPhone, pre loaded goodies looks boring… So, I started to customize it with the most easiest part… wallpaper… I got this picture from my friend Venky. Color balanced the original image and resized it… tada…. a new wallpaper for my iPhone This can also be used for iPod touch as both have the same screen resolution (240 X 320 pixels)
