Naresh.Jois » Featured Articles http://www.nareshjois.com Home of a professional developer & a aspiring photographer Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:57:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Get yourself a PHP framework http://www.nareshjois.com/2008/12/get-yourself-a-php-framework/ http://www.nareshjois.com/2008/12/get-yourself-a-php-framework/#comments Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:11:11 +0000 naresh http://www.nareshjois.com/?p=238 I started work in PHP way back in 2003, incidentally my first dynamic website for my own purpose which was hosted at naresh.cjb.cc (now lost in space) was also developed using PHP, back then i could not afford my own hosting space and used a free host, this was right after just keeping a html  page as my home for 2 years (which was a copy of .mac feature tour website setup in 2001), it had no database (free host), i used flat files (ini) for posting data because the only thing that i could do was enable write permissions on one directory, ( I’ll try to post this site at the last update in some place – if I get hold of the files), I then went into completely module development and php was only a fun thing till 2005, then I jumped into the contact center bandwagon and setup one in my own city, for outbound we used astguiclient along with asterisk, this worked great but looked bad (i mean really bad) , astguiclient used php , thus php become a primary only after development on this, I was able to collaborate with one more developer and one designer with in a month came up with a great looking version of the astguiclient and vicidial, too bad by then i was out of contact center to pursue better things, but this was made publicly available, then i got into professional php development, I developed numerous websites (and yet i don’t have my own portfolio) , in all this time i had to write the same things again and again, some times i copied lot of code, but it could not always work, it always felt like re inventing the wheel, and i was afraid to try the new and shiny php frameworks because if things did not work out i would end up re doing the whole thing,  But as luck would have it i got a project for developing a website for school which was near my hometown , Jnanadeepa School (currently available at www.jdsj.org), I thought this was the perfect opportunity to try php framework and I did use one “CodeIgnitor“, and i have to say frameworks are basic necessity, it saved my coding by at least 40% , and thought the framework was overkill for the jdsj website, i am sure that from now on what ever work i do will certainly be based on a php framework, i am not going to tell you which framework to use because this is your personal choice, but try one and I sure that you will ever go back, I am certainly going to point you to the page which compares all major frameworks (http://www.phpit.net/demo/framework%20comparison/chart.php), i have used cakephp, zend and codeignitor in different projects and  felt zend and codeignitor were great (cakephp is great – personally i did not feel “IT”), I saved lot of work. So hoping that you save your work time ..

]]> http://www.nareshjois.com/2008/12/get-yourself-a-php-framework/feed/ 2 What different could have been done about Mumbai? http://www.nareshjois.com/2008/11/what-different-could-have-been-done-about-mumbai/ http://www.nareshjois.com/2008/11/what-different-could-have-been-done-about-mumbai/#comments Sat, 29 Nov 2008 09:41:12 +0000 naresh http://www.nareshjois.com/?p=13 The things that have taken place in last 3 days have shook India in a way most of us never imagined, but after all the operations are over we can start to think to think about what had happened ?, What could have been done different ? Let us not think about how terrorists gained access into the hotels, how they were able to get such an amount of ammunition and explosives into the hotels, yes there was an intelligence failure at multiple ends and things could have done to prevent this. But let us try to examine what could been done different at least after we ended up in this situation, Let me base my assumptions based to the press meet conducted by the NSG commandos.
The commandos mentioned that the place was dark and filled with smoke of grenades, thus they couldn’t move easily as they couldn’t see. – I fail to understand how the top operations group of the company went in without night vision goggles and stuff which would help them out in these situations. This would only mean that even the country’s best are ill equipped, we can only imagine the state of other agencies.
They also mentioned that the terrorists were completely aware of the layout of the hotel and they were not which was a disadvantage – Any operation in a closed building would need the operatives to be briefed about the structure. Why were the NSGs not provided with the building plans when they were taking charge? If terrorists were able to get the layout and plans of a building why the NSG couldn’t ? Either the NSGs underestimated the terrorists, or they were briefed very wrong. At least after 12 hours of getting nowhere they could have at least studied the building plan.

The commandos mentioned that they weren’t able to reach the CCTV conrtol room beacuse of smoke and constant attack they were facing – A place like Taj or Oberoi for that matter would have networked CCTV system in place which could be accessed anywhere in the grid, I mean i know my home CCTV system which I got for 2k provides streaming over internet, then image the complexity and availability of the systems that would be in place at places like these, 

And the most important of all, we were told that the operations took so much time because they had to do a floor by floor, room by room sweep which was pain staking – I am sure that India must have at least 4 of 5 spy satellites looking down, couldn’t anyone them have infrared imaging and be repositioned after 24 hours of failure in manual operations. If we don’t have these kind of satellites it shame on us that we can send a satellite to moon and we don’t have something to protect us. We had them and didn’t use them we still dumb. I mean we know that this technology existed 20 years ago.
All these points come to only one conclusion that we were ill equipped for urban combat and the terrorists knew exactly that, when are we going to take preventive actions against knee jerk reactions ?, I mean even hollywood movies show better tactical experience than what we have seen so far (I know movie is a movie  and only good things happen), When can we expect our people to trained at that level. I know that we will return to our own little worlds in a few days, but at least now, let us ask some questions, and let somebody be responsible. We have to do something about all these, try to bring some change, but I certainly don’t think taking arms is the answer. We need some one to on top to think about these things, setup a fedaral agency with proper powers at least in these kind of situations to deal with these matter.

Hoping that this time would something different is going to happen …

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