Blogging with scribefire

Recently i was going through some blogs which were mentioning about various online blog sites being available. I wanted to try out one of these and ended up with Scribefire.

My previous blogging experience was with Windows Livewriter. It was a good tool to compile my blogs offline and publish them with any date i wanted to and was a nice experience.

I was also fascinated to try out one of the suggested online blogging tool and ended up choosing scribefire. Well for very obvious reasons like the reviews and comments i read for the blog saying scribefire is WYSIWYG (well well for those of you like me who have encountered this acronym for the first time let me explain this as "What You See Is What You Get").

Well this is my first blog using scribefire. I am no pro in mentioning how good this blog editor is and stuff. But I can definitely say onething this is amazing. Why cause this is an in browser editor, so you want to start blogging you dont have to hunt for where the application is present, it gives you what tools you need to add any of the attachments you want to add to make your blog look jazzy and stuff like that. Also it allows you to add multiple blogs to your account so that you can publish to multiple blogs at the same time ( i have still not tried this setting).

It allows you to add ads to your site very easily and allows you to choose where you want to add them. On the whole i really like my first experience and hope to use it further.

I just now tried to add a photo and it does not look like its working. na...

I would be experimenting with one more browser before picking my favorite blog editor. Hope to write soon..Technorati Tags: scribefire, blogeditor

weekend blog

hmm.. boring, jobless, confused weekend. did not know what i wnated to do. Yesterday had some nice time. My frnds from IIT, my hostel mates said we should meet and we decided to have a coffee at Cafe Coffee day 75 kms from my place. i took bike from my friend Arun and met my friends near the BTM signal. From there we started our ride to the CCD, to which i had already been on couple of occassion both at night time.

It was different to go this time during evening time. I just finished my lunch when my friends said we would go there. We started by around 4 and were there by 6 kinda thing. Traffic was heavy and we had some trouble in the beginning. But it was nice. We had a general discussion on how things were got to know my frnd Bhaiya was shifting from his current company to Target.

In this time of uncertainity my frnd has taken a bold day to shift. Well well i wish him good luck.. We started from CCD back at 6 :15 kinda. I had by the way while going up touched 100 kmph couple of times. It was fun to reach 100 kmph when i was alone on the bike. It was apache and i was looking to go beyond 100 kmph but quite did not have the nerve. Well anyways, the trip up was nice.

WHile coming down it was nearly night and the lights from the fellow bikes were quite disturbing. I did kinda 50 kms without a break in kinda 1 hour. on the whole it was nice. From bangalore to touch the mysore road now it has become quite troublesome. There is road repair going on becoz of which while coming down and going up we had some trouble

After coming back, my friends asked me to suggest a place to eat and we ended up having dinner at Wangs kitchen. This is another chinese restaurant i had visited that i think i never get bored of. The other one being the one near marathali.

After having dinner, while en route we decided to pay visit to my newly married frnds place Chintu. He was having some nice drinks and footer was on between Liverpool vs Hull, and we had some nice fun..

After reaching home i was watching Scarface which i started in the afternoon. Al paccino was good like always. later started watching how i met your mother. 4 episodes of this series straight was good. Barney was good like always.

Wel thats how my saturday ended anyways..

Indian Media

Indian media was infamous for the kind of reporting they do. I mean they would report loss of dog of a politician as breaking news. It would be famous for this kind of reporting. But in the recent terrorist attack on Mumbai the way the media, especially NDTV, Times Now, CNN-IBN handled the reporting was too commendable.

When we make fun of the media when it is not doing good, we should also praise when they handle it well. There is a war going now in my room so i am not being able to concentrate on the blog will complete it later.

Hyderabad Shooting

Hm...

While the world is worried about the Mumbai blasts, and rightly so, in Hyderabad today police go to arrest a well known accused. Will Indian police ever learn?? i mean in Mumbai last week, exactly one week before, terrorists turned up with AK series while our constables were not even equipped with automatics, and today they go without any weapons and what do they end up with, injuries. I mean is it not common sense that these people whom the police were going to arrest at least would carry country made pistols??

I mean is this common sense not so common?? Go to any police station to report loss of bike and Police would be giving tips on how to keep things safe. They would tell how to be safe on roads and all. So what were these guys doing when going to apprehend a well known criminal known to be having good contacts with terrorists, going without any protection if not any weapons?? When would we be learning from our mistakes? Will we ever learn from the mistakes already committed?

Look at what the media of AP is projecting this news as, trying to make it an issue among religions. It is implicitly known that some parts of hyderabad city have too many anti-social elements and it is not going to be easy visiting those places and maintaining law and order in those places. Instead if the government were really serious about arresting the anti-social elements, they should start weeding any person not a citizen of India. I mean I am sure there are people living there without visa in these areas.

Weeding operations in Hyderabad should start. But will the Governement be able to do it now?? I mean elections just round the corner will the government be able to take such a bold step??

Is anybody listening? I do not think so.

Mumbai BLASTS

Mumbai Terrorists Attack (26 Nov 2008) blasts:

Taj Hotel which has been an icon of Mumbai for the last 100 years has been attacked. Attack on Parliament has still not made the Policy makers learn anything. They have still not made any stringent laws for the sake of security to India.

The ACT which was introduced POTA after the Parliament attack was withdrawn. What was this done for? Would repealing POTA change the terrorists? Before repealing POTA UPA GOVT has not thought of anything. They repealed this ACT without thinking of any other alternative ACT. The only aim they had was to strike at the funding of the terrorists organizations. But should they not have thought of some ACT which should have replaced this before repealing it?

Well leaving this aside, there were recently many blasts in India. Despite these blasts GOVT has not thought of what to be done if another major attack were to happen. If the TAJ attack happened without any prior background on the blasts Indian GOVT could still be absolved. But despite these blasts the present Indian GOVT did not take any serious actions. That is the most disgusting thing.

When the world over every country is investing in increasing the funding in information gathering, Indian GOVT was against investing in increasing the bench strength of RAW, (Research and Analysis Wing) the primary information gathering organization of India. Will the next elected GOVT atleast think of investing in RAW and IB?

Maharastra and AP state GOVT have decided to create commando groups similar to NSG's to tackle situations similar to TAJ attack. But is prevention not better than cure? Should they not think about investing in how to prevent this attacks first? Corruption is the primary reason why many terrorists could obtain documents certifiying them to be Indians very easily. Should not the coming GOVT's take this seriously? But i believe taking this seriously would only create too much red tape and affect the common man from getting their documents tougher and thus finally increase corruption.

Anyways all i wanted to write about is "Prevention is better than cure" and hence any GOVT should think about first on how to prevent these terrorists act. But it should also concentrate of capable of handling these situations gracefully. NSG has definitely handled the TAJ attack very gracefully. Causing little damage to hostages and making sure to bring climax to the incident very swiftly was done very well by these brave Indian heroes.

I salute to all those involved in this rescue mission. Politicians are the only ones to blame here. But then without voting i cannot complain right? I will do my job this coming elections and i hope all those reading this blog will also do the same. VOTE !!!! Exercise your right to elect the right GOVT.

Andhra Politics

Hmm.. Elections everywhere, US just completed its presidential elections. Six states are going to elections in India in the next 2 months. AP would be going to elections too in the coming year. Change seems to be on cards everywhere.

Will it be Chiranjeevi or Chandrabbu or Congress?? Though the possibility that Congress might come initially looked bleak, in the last 3 months it has substantially increased the advertisements for the government policies and also been trying to do something about the image it has in the masses.

Except for the teachers strike, YSR does not seem to have put even one wrong foot. The hike he gave to the State Govt Employees was extraordinary 24%, allowing people to be corrupt in the Govt offices though might mean most people would not vote, but atleast the Govt employees who are the primary Polling booth incharges would not go against him. Chandrababu due to his strict and clean policy did not so endear himself to the Govt officials which was his most undone in the previous elections. YSR has definitely learnt his mistake. But willl the public learn theirs??

Will they be able to see beyond the Mask of YSR and realise where the real interests of the congress lie? Like everywhere will the elections be driven by the caste politics agains? Mayawati used a mixed bag of candidates to get elected, but it ws still based on caste politics. It would need some awakening for the voters to wake from their slumber. i mean, we do not use the RTI act we are content with what little we get and are not ready to be the change the we want to see.

How many of us complain governement is not working properly, we need to give bribes to get our work done and etc.. etc. But have we tried to help any1 going out of our way? Have we tried not to give bribe but instead use our rightful right to get work done? No we would never do that. But we want to see things go in a good direction. Anyways, how many of us have even registered ourselves as voters and used the voter id card? I bet very few. Even i have not used my right to vote yet. But i am going to certainly use it in the coming elections.

Anyways i started by writing on the politics of AP. Chiranjeevi seems to be a good candidate for the post of CM, but lacks experience. He is trying to use his popularity in youth to his benefit, which is absolutely fine, but should not forget to win he would also need battle veterans.

Chandrababu is promising all sorts of promises. Free electricity, 10np interest loans to women, liquor ban.. and all such stuff, but where would money for all this come? Has he really thought of the promises he is making in pure financial perspective? Would all these be even possible? I pity the finance min of State if he is going to become the CM and plans to fulfill his promises.

Congress in state is in worst shape. YSR has done nothing to help the state. All the projects which have no great use for him have not been completed, and no one in the ranks of the party loook like they are thinking of the common man.

Hopefully the people of AP will use their right to vote and elect the best candidate fielded in the elections of his/her constituency. For all those who have not registered as VOTERS, please do register today. You may even use jaagore for registering as voters. Please register yourself as voters and exercise your right to vote.

Elections time....

Elections time again. Elections in US have just finished and the result though a predictable one was still a shocking one. A black getting elected as the President of a country which is known to distinguish humans based on its race, will always be a shock.

I am not accusing US of not giving equal opportunities to all, but not all people of all races are equal is still a fact when it comes to US. In the last 176 years there was not a single black elected to the highest post is a testimony to this fact. Specially a country filled with citizens who are Xenophobic and not in favor of any other religion other than Christianity is also surprising to elect a Muslim as its military commander in chief. Whatever the surprises, Obama is a good orator, young and had great education. It would be interesting to see how he would move at the office as the head of Worlds most influential country. Coming at a time, where the economy is in recession is really a testing for any player. Obama will have to do something really specially to pull this off. He has his hands full with all the economy recession and stuff. Brining the Country out of this crisis would probably make him as famous as a JFK or Abe Lincoln. But will he be able to do it?

Will US of A move from being purely capitalistic economy to a pseudo Capitalistic and a masked Socialistic economy? Will US of A under Obama, nationalize the banks ala Indian way and thus shielding the banks from market fluctuations?

We just have to wait and see

Sachin 40th Century

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar (April 24, 1973-)

A century due now for the last 7 test matches.  Hmm against Australia Sachin always reserves something special and when it comes to Nagpur, he has already 3 centuries before this being his 4th. When the match started without Gambhir India was really worried on how would we start of. Thanks to the way, pitch has been prepared runs were flowing very freely from the bats of Indians. Also the pitch looks like there is something for spin bowlers. The debutante bowler Jason Krejza, has to be given enough credit for getting Sewhag out. Full credit to the bowler to get him out even though he was going for a lots of runs.

At 98-0 with Sewhag in such a form and pitch doing nothing we were expecting a bigger total. But thats where Truth is stranger than fiction comes into picture. I mean we were reduced 116-3 with Dravid going in an unDravid fashion (if i could coin undravid word) and Sewhag going in a bad case too we were not expecting to reach 260 odd without losing another wicket. But VVS Laxman, has always reserved something for Australia and Sachin was in sublime form. They both helped India reach 260 without any further damage. Then came another mistake.

We lost Lakshman, right when Indians were thinking there could nothing which can go wrong. Then came a phase of 40 runs during which Sachin scored his 40th Century, setting the bar higher for maximum number of centuries but soon Ricky might take this record anytime.

But while the GOD is still playing, as his devotee I truly hope this record remains with him.

The match showed this GOD is mortal. At one time before the dropping of the catch by Mitchel Johnson he was scoring very freely. But from there it looked like Sachin  was struggling. There were holes in his defense. But probably, to ensure there are not any further damages probably, he was playing cautiously. Do not know what Ponting want to achieve, but he goes to Krejza and Krejza bowls a short one which Sachin fires to the boundary line to score his 40th century.

I was so overjoyed i wanted to distribute chocolates to celebrate this occasion. But then I wanted to have more, decided I would celebrate God's 50th Century by distributing Chocolates and sweets.

GOD waiting for your 50th century. Score this quickly all your devotees are waiting for such that occasion.

hyd function.

Well i do not exactly know when was my last blog but here i come to make one more entry. I have been struggling to make regular entries but somehow just cannot keep them coming. Anyways, this blog is about a recent function that happened in our family. My maternal uncle's wife is pregnant and is about to deliver. there is a function which is performed to welcome the baby. This is called as "Sreemantham" in telugu. well this is purely a function aimed at ladies and gents have little role in it. But since my uncle was the one conducting this function i also became a coordinator. We rented a A/C function hall devised some games to keep the audience interested and had other plans. Now in the morning, i happened to get a bit over enthusiastic and tried to do a pull up. I had jumped and caught hold of a railing, but it was made of cardboard. I realised it only after touching and by this time i was in air and could do nothing. Due to my weight the railing gave off and i fell straight landing on my legs. Though i was unhurt i was worried at how the finishing of the room was spoilt. This was just the beginning of the day.

Later i found that i had actually strained my back and that it was hurting me badly. I had went to buy some apples and they turned out to be bad very bad. All this and then during conducting games due to my negligence, one of my sister fell flat on the ground. I have absolutely no clue on what went wrong. Everything that i was trying to do was going wrong.

I promised myself at the end of the day that next time i do something i will do it with the double the consciousness than what i had been doing with right now. Hopefully i will recover frm my back pain soon.. Hasta pronto

A Wednesday!!!!

Hmm..

Well i have not blogged for nearly a whole month now. The reason being various one being the computer in the room is not working and i am very undecided with my life now being the other. Well life is a big word i should rather say with my career. Well the title and the summary here are not in the same context. Its like going to a comedy movie and watching a thriller one. Well i would now rather speak about the Wednesday than about anything else.

Well recently some nice movies are being released in Hindi. I have not watched so many good movies coming at the same time. Mumbai mere jaan was one such movie and now we have A Wednesday. Both these movies are not the routine movies churned out by our Bollywood. They do not try to give any message. They just try to show something different and try to project what a common man wants to think.

Mumbai mere jaan was about the bomb blasts in the train which happened on July11Th. The incident really rocked the lives of many people. It was different in many senses. One being that travelling in trains have become so much more of an adventure now if not for anything else. But anyways people still travel in trains if not for not being scared for the sake of the convenience it offers. One stray incident could not alter much but yeah people have really started thinking. Well anyways humans as we are despite knowing the perils we just cannot live in isolation. Having preformed prejudices does not take us anywhere. Anyways, mumbai mere jaan just wanted to show how the blasts changed different people's opinion.

Now Wednesday was way too different. The movie was about what if the common man kills the master minds behind these things instead of waiting for the judiciary to take its course. Well that is what most might think after watching the movie. But i believe it is only half true. It is mostly about what the common man thinks. It does not matter what religion he belongs to but it matters that the lives of innocent people is what is being taken by these so called ideologists who are just mad and cannot distinguish between the right and the wrong. All they care is they would do anything and go to any extent to make the world believe they are right. It does not matter what happens to the innocent by standers. All that matters to them is they can make people scared of them and use force to make people believe they are right.

Well i am not saying capital punishment is the right solution but we should have some laws which allow them from not moving in this world so easily and harm the innocent people. I just hope someone coming to the power is listening and can take some strict measures to ensure innocent people are not killed. That too watching this movie on a day on which Delhi blasts occurred just makes me wish that much more. I really loved this movie and it just tops the list of the best movie i have ever watched in Hindi, making Wednesday my favorite day of the week all the more.

{PS: Its an emotional outburst and pardon me if it does not have a flow and it was just going all over the place}

Another release

At last,

Guys, for the past one and half week i was eager to this day. At last the post release i was working got released, though it was not as smoot sailign as i would have wanted it to be. Anyways the hard work paid off and the version has been released successfully. I also got an extra mile award for this release for the amount of work i put in.

But i believe this extra mile award is just a management funda and every one on the team will get this at some point. Anyways keeping with the tradition i would be sharing this for a booze treat probably with my colleagues.

Now last week i watched quite a number of movies though none in a theater. I had watched Wanted, nice one, Art of the war not at all good, the last one was much better. I had also watched Under suspicion and other movies.

Movies lined for this week Mummy mostly on monday and Felon downloaded today. I had watched snatch at last. The movie had a bad begining and good ending.

My patience was tested well too, i mean i chat with this person almost daily and i tease her a lot. Well she can only tease me one thing which was being me going offline very regularly. But how on earth should i make her understand that if i ever were busy i would just tell it straight. Whenever my computer gets restarted i go offline and by the time i come again she says if you are busy you should say so. Tired off explaining that i was not busy, i said i was and i would chat later. I mean well give me a break, i know i would not like to be teased and you pulled my leg using the same thing for god knows how many times.

Anyways, i understand now why people get pissed off with me. I tease them using the same thign so many times. But it still does not mean i am going to change. i am incorrigble in this matter i believe.

Thats the update for this week. Lets hope i write my next blog sooon too

general rumblings

Dear readers..
Welll i know there are not many, but still when i read this i become my own reader right.. so.. well i took another one month gap looks like to blog agian. Last one month i was workin on the post release of my last project. It was tough and i was going all nuts.. I realise two things as a part of this, one that says all that looks rosy is not rosy. The other being putting too much energy in one day may leave you with a lot less to offer the next day. Instead a calculative and consistent effort would probably be better. I learnt both these lessons the hard way during this time.

I do not know what Snapshots from hell was supposed to thought, but it did teach me one thing, that people should carryon with whatever tasks they have in hand. I mean one day during my previous release i was working on this terrific feature which i liked a lot, Style Size Color feature about which i had already written a blog on. Now i was really frustrated when i came back home and was worried the work on the feature was not going anywhere. Coming back home i read this book and the chapter that i was reading was telling on how the main character peter robinson i believe was having tough time in his college. He was sapped of his total energy and he was sleeping probably for about 10 hours a week. I realised how fortunate i was compared to him. I was getting around 5 hrs of sleep daily and that i did not have to keep this up for not more than one month, i was sure. So this gave me so much more confidence.

My work for the next 15 days was totally different. I was confident i would complete this and that i would do a good job at the end of the day. I should be thankful to my manager who did give me a lot of insights and was the main potent force for my confidence.

Anyways like i told in the begining this post is not about any one point but anything in particular. well so now coming back to the presnt, the feature and the code i was working was too much in a bad shape. it took a lot of regressions and bugs to bring it to the state where it was clean and function well again. I can be sure now that the code was clean anyways now. I have even learnt putting comments these days.

Well anyways thnx to blogspot my blog so far was saved. I will come back to blogging again. Today i was watching trapped and Bandidas movie. I might watch another before sleeping

Boring life

life has really been not going anywhere. For the past couple of months i have not been doing great in personal front. i mean nothing special. Have not visited any place of interest , not done any trekking that i had been planning. Neither have i been to any scenic places. Watching movies is what i have done on good number of occassions. Have watched de taali Ayesa takia starrer. Do not doubt my choice, cause this pick was not mine. I had watched Ready of genelia dsouza and ram. The movie was a good laughing riot. Brahmanandam the telugu actor who entered guinnesss records was good as usually.

Also watched Jaane tu yaa jaane na.. nice movie. Though it is a routine movie story line the acting was different. Presentation was way too different. Comedy scenes came very good. Genelia had a role which wsa probably tailor made. Not so brainy and childish kinda role. Naseerudin shah left his mark in the movie at the end.

The same day was the dream final between Fedex and Nadal. My friend Arun said he could not watch the match so we went to the movie. By the time we returned the match was 2 sets past and Nadal made a dream comeback in the 2nd set down 3 points and winning the set 6-4. In the 3rd set and 4th set he was not so lucky and the set went into tie-breakers.

Style size feature

Hmm my third blog on Style size feature.

In my previous blog i was telling about how the feature was implemented. We have a stylecombination object for each item and styleattribute object which would contain the stylecombination objects in a arraylist. Since we do not how many styleobjects would exist for each attribute i had used arraylist to create the styleattribute. other requirement is to have level for each attribute that is to say, if there is an attribute Red color, at the level 2, then we should know that what is the level or attribute name for the Red color. Hmm using the styleattribute objects we would know how many attributes should be shown on the UI. and using the level we could create the options at the right place.

So when the user has selected an option we can enable disable the rest of the options based on the stylecombinations that each attribute has and finding out the attributes available for each stylecombination object

Style Size continue

Solution:
I took a whole month and more to get me back to blogging again. Well the solution was hard to get at. I mean initial design was to go with a tree diagram and the best solution for that seemed to be a XML structure. The best example for a hirearchial structure starting with a dummy root element and then having child elements to it, such that we have a structure from the first child to the children the combinations possible.

The list of items would be giving the combinations possible. Creating the XML would be the first step, next step would be painting the UI using the XML which would be pretty straightforward. Since we have the xml any selection made can tell at what level it fails. But this would be restrictive to the user since he would have to mke sequential selection instead of starting at any point he might wish to. So this design was not declined and there i was starting all over again

Here i got help from my manager. the new design was to create java objects which would be used to paint the screen. The object design was that instead of like in the XML model where we had only one way of navigation, here we would have objects for each attribute. But all the possible combinations would be made into one object called as StyleCombination. That is say if the item1 has attibutes of Regular super size, Red Color and Small size, the style combination would contain Regular, Red,Small as the object.

This way we would have to deal with objects and this would not be hirearchial too. So the next challenge was to tell me what are the style combinations that a particular object belonged to. So the ideas was to create a collection object for each attribute. This collection would contain the style combination as the objects. But one problem was to maintain just as many combination objects as there are items. And have the attributes belonging to the combination should refer to the same combination object instead of creating one more. That is the combination object Regular,RedSmall would be created only once and the collection for Regular , red and small would all contain this same object which is quite obvious. This way the memory would not be used much and we know if we have to update or change the property of item1 all we would have to do would be to change the property of the object and it would be reflected for other attributes too.

The way to create only one combination object can be done by overwriting the equals method to tell during comparision that these two objects are the same.

Rest of the painting adn selection was sounding to be very easy since we now have the model ready and the object hirearchy ready. But it did not turn out that esay since we had to include availabilty into picture and use paint listeners too. Rest would come in another blog. thats for today.

GOKARTING!!!!!

Well i had plans on going to do GOKARTING for long but never did. We had a project release party and the initial thoughts were going to some club here Club Kabana, but since they were already booked we did not get to go. It was then decided we would go for gokarting and lunch at patel's inn.

The place contained a decent track and since it was my first one and i do not have anythign to compare with i should say it was decent. Though the helpers and the management could do a lot more good job by being more helpful and interactive. The demeanor was always like the customers there were only to spoil the cars and stuff like that.

Well i was in the first group of people who wanted to go for gokarting. I had loved it and i went for a good ride. the track was very straight and the turns needed minimum braking. But the second time i did go karting i decided to have a bit more fun. I skidded the vehicle at turns and at times i was getting the feelign it might be overturned. That was my only fear. The maximum speed that i reached was probably at 50KMPH, but it was pretty decent i would say.

The resort facilities were quite ok. Badmintion place was very hot and the arena looked short on space. It has least ventilation. The tennis court though looked decent and the swimming pool is not very big. For people who are 6 feet there is notthing to worry. The deepest depth was only for 6 ft. Water was clean and the shape is pretty bad. Food served was good for money. Basketball court is very bad. It could do better to have some space for football and cricket

This place was located in residential area and looks like it attracts good crowd. But the management definitely needs to look into the way the employees serve the crowd. Overall it was not a bad experience.

The return journey was awesome. We had loads of fun.
I want to do one more round of gokarting and this time a better one. This time probably at grips which is on mysore road.

Style/Size

Hi..

Well i have not blogged on anythign technical so far. Well here now i will speak on some feature that i had worked on in my recent project. The problem is very peculiar and is generally specific to apparel industry.

Say an enterprise manufactures a product which comes in combination of different colors and different sizes. So instead of showing all the colors and sizes individually it would make sense for an enterprise to ask the customer to choose the color and size that he wants and show the final piece. My job was to find how to present the user with a UI which helps him in choosing the color and size that he wants. Thus finally selecting the product.

Other constraints that my model supposed to do was to allow the user to select either the size or the color first and based on that show what are available for the selected combination. This model should also be scalable. That is if we take the example of a computer it would be more clear. When purchasing a computer a consumer has to take care of Processor, Compatible Mother Board, Hard Disk, RAM, removable storage devices to be choosen like DVD-RW or DVD-ROM, the OS, and various other choices. Best example in apparel industry for modeling would be gap website. And for Computer industry configuring computers on dell website.

But the fundamental difference between configuring a computer on Dell website and making a purchase by selecting choices in Gap website is that for a computer, the product is not already built. The customer builds it. So we model this using bundles. The components can be sold individually too. But in the case of GAP it is one single product. It cannot be sold in pieces.

I was asked to model for GAP scenario. Where the product is readily being manufactured. And the customer will be shown various options in various categories which he wants to choose to arrive at the final product. One constraint that i had while working was not only should this model be scalable and have n-level's but it should allow the customer to start from any level. Say we are modelling a Polo Shirt with Super Sizes Regular, Tall and colors available as Red, Green, Black and sizes available as S, M, L and XL. Now the user should be shown an UI where he can start of with either selecting size first or color first.
(as an example try to choose a shirt on gap link .)

Now if you see the way things are modelled here, we have choice already made for us and it is a solution based on just one-dimension at any point of time. But my model should be n-level. And i could not make any choices. But i had the choice of not tweaking with the image. The final design did not have requirement for showing the expanded view of the image. So that was not on my cards. But the best part was to differentiate what are the available choices and what are not. The database would not give me data directly like the available colors, supersizes and sizes. It would only give me the items that are available and each item has the attributes which tell me how it is modelled.

So I would not speak on how i have modelled my model yet. I am just leaving the constraints and the way data is available. If you have any doubts on what else is available, i would say assume they are not available. I have given you all the required information which is required for the modelling. Anythign else which you think as required assume it is not available and proceed to solve it. Think about model that you would maintain and how you would retrieve data after you recieve it from the database.

I wil present my solution in after a week.

Sunday

Sunday finally arrived and i came back home early in the morning ( 10 am not early for others but for me it was early by around 2 hours) Coming back first thing i did was complete watching the movie forbidden kingdom. Later helped my uncle prepare the food for lunch.

A school friend of mine had come to attend a conference on behalf of his company and wanted to meet me. I was free and had nothing to do and wanted to meet this guy. I set forum as the rendezvous spot. It was late in the night just before the match between Mumbai Indians, my favorite team vs Deccan chargers was about to start that my frnd made his appearance.

My frnd was complaining about the number of people he found in forum and how suffocating it was for him spending time in the shoppign mall. We decided to stay outside have our little chat sitting on the slabs provded outside the mall. My frnd had a good history which i was quite aware of. Not many of my other frnds know abt it. While my background was known to many but not many people knw that they all knw it. He was with another of his frnd and me and his frnd started teasing my frnd on a gal which he allegedly had a crush on. Though we all knew for a fact he did not have any crush, but it was fun to tease him. He was sure i do not forget many things and was avoding his other frnd in spilling any beans about him of his training days. He was emo abt the whole thign and i did not want him to feel senti in that mood. After a while i stopped teasing and left him free there.

I learnt while speaking to him that Jayasurya was playing superbly and wanted to leave for room. I had reached home and by that time Jayasurya was out. It was a sorry affair. I should have spent more time with my frnd was what i thought. Finally i watched the match completely and saw Mumbai coming on top. Nadal winning the final of Rome masters which he lost last year to Federrer his opponent this time too.

I had not watched a single match in my life so far which Nadal had one convincingly. He was struggling here too inteh second set, but thanks to his guts he pulled his socks together and finished the third and final set with 6-3. After that i just went to sleep.

Weekend

Hi all..

I am here now to describe my weekend. Friday was an eventful day. Spent time knowing about myself from the perspective of others. I have a chat friend who tells me how much she detests me but by not verbalizing it too much.

Anyways one of my friend suggested me 2 movies to watch. Forbidden Kingdom and Speed racer. I had put both these for downloads. Speed racer next generation downloaded in one night. Friday morning the first thing that i did after waking up was sitting before the computer to watch the movie. It was just one hour 10 mins movie, animation. With no brains to be used fantasy movie. Not bad. Animation was decent the director seemed to have some story not a strong one. But most animation movies are only for animation part. The cars were nice though the logic for being fast cars and good ones not justified well enough.

Overall i think kids will love this movie. Next forbidden kingdom had 2 of my favorite stars. Jackie Chan and Jet Li. I did not look into the star cast before starting to watch the movie. But finally i like the star cast. The movie had some nice fights specially one which was between Jackie and Jet. Do not expect much of a story. This movie is also about fantasy. But much much better than what Myth was. Though this was missing on the Mallika Sherawat factor, but i would sugest u to watch Forbidden kingdom than Myth.

The dvd rip of forbidden kingdom was nice but i found it frustrating as some part of the movie was in Chinese without any subs. I am habituated to watching foreign movies but ones which have subtitles.

Anyways on saturday being alone utterly bored and not knowing what i wanted to do, i picked up on cleaning the house. Our maid rarely cleans our bedroom as most of the time we would be sleeping by the time she comes in the morning and in the afternoon there is no one in the house. So it has not been cleaned for a long time. Well anyways, i had decided to clean it up and so I did. I had also decided to wash bed sheets. Amazingly it turned out such that i was able to do all this stuff in like 3 hours. I thought washign bed sheets would be easy but that was tough too.

After finishing with the household chores, i had decided to go meet up with my college buddies with whom i have not met like 2 months. Just when i decided to go out, it started raining and i thought OHH not again. I mean i wanted to meet these guys but could not find time on any of the weekends and now jsut when i want to it starts raining again. Luckily i was in one of those moods where i wanted to go at any cost. Barely i moved some 100 mts and there was not trace of rain and people were staring at me (i was wearing a raincoat) like a strange object. It is summer and realy amusing when someone wears a raincoat in summer.

I avoid those unnecessary glances reach their place. These guys were swapping their rooms and i thought oh no, i do not want to do some more of the house hold work. Lucky for me they were almost done and did most of their work on their own. They stay in Indira nagar and power was cut off for most part of the day in that area as declared in newspaper earlier.

So I was at my friends place in summer where there was no electricity. They stay in the fifth floor and have a huge ventatilation in their balcony. There was good circulation of air and since we were on the fifth floor the view was also good. Though not having electricity was kinda bored, we got to sit in open air, (not caling it fresh as i do not how i can call the air fresh when i am staying in one of the most congested city and area which was closer to airport and one of the most non green, no plants around) and it was a cool breeze too.

My friend was practicing his guitar while i was just sitting with them thinking on what all i was upto the last weekend and catching up with them on what my various other illustrious people were doing. Since we were all kinda doing a decent job in our professional life and been in job for 2 years, it was common for me to hear about people getting bugged in their family to get married.

I was curious to know what these 2 guys had to say about when they were getting married and what was their future plans. One of them said he was ready for next year. While the other wanted to do a MBA and only then get married. Anyways i also go to know that another batchmate of mine from my college was already married. (He is the second one that i know of). Now that was some news for me. I did not know if sounded good or bad to my ears but i was feeling something.

Me and my guitar frnd went on a bike ride. I did not want to go again to the CCD on the mysore road once again, as i had been there twice already. We went for a good 70km ride without speeding overly. My max speed throughout was jsut around 80kmph. I would have loved to do 100kmph but could not quite bring myself to do that. It was night and the road we were on was not looking very good. My frnd bought a new bike and wanted to make most of the ride. Finally we came back and i spent the night in their apartment, leaving early in the morning on Sunday.

Cottage in tirumala.

Ha

As promised i wanted to write a post on darshan of Padmavati Temple and the trip back to Bangalore. Well so just after we finished our darshan of Lord Venkateswara, we returned to our cottage after a walk of 2 kms from the temple to the start of the steps. That is where we got our cottage. Garudadri is what it is called but in Tirumala you will find signboards only to GNC not to Garudadri. GNC stands for Garudadri Nagar Cottage which i realised later.

Similarly ANC stands for Anjanadri Nagar Cottage. and some others which i do not recall now.

Now the process for checkout was pretty easy. But let me give you some details about cottages in GNC or ANC or similar cotttages which have the rent as 50/- per day. These cottages have an attached bathroom thankfully but for electrical points from where we could draw current to recharge your mobiles are not available in the rooms. So if you are running out of battery in your mobile and thought you could rest that night in peace while your mobile safely recharing in the room, you are in for some surprise. The plug points are only available outside the room and that too not necessarily just outside your room.

The architecture of these cottages is such that 3 cottages in the groundfloor are given the same number with the alphabets ,"A","B","C" attached and similarly 3 more on the first floor. i have not seen a single cottage with alphabet "A" appended having the plug point outside their cottage. So you will have to wait outside your cottage while ur mobile or other electrical appliances which need powersupply using the power so that you dont regret losing them while being unattended to.

But the upside of this all is people who do not have cottage can also get their mobile/electrical appliances get power supply without actually needing a cottage. There are like 3 to 4 plug points so that is not a problem.

Now about the cottages, instead of a movable cot all you have is a slab with tiles on the border and fixed. The quality of the mattresses though is now pretty good. You can also get blankets for free but for a fixed deposit of 150/- per blanket from the cottage enquiry room. Bedsheets would not be offerred though. There is not limit for the number of blankets which u can borrow i believe. Only two pillows are offered which come with the cottage. So people who need pillow beware.

So thats about the cottage and the stuff. Now about breakfast one can have it anywhere in those road side canteens which sometimes offer good food. But if you really are looking for a heavy breakfast you have to cover some distance. You will find hotel sapthagiri near the Shopping Complex which is usualy very rush or can go upto Sandeep Restaurant. the prices of the restaurant are damn cheap compared to hotels of the same kind in Tirupathi or any other city. Though they might not have all the variety that is offered in the menu. For people ordering Dosas beware, they would be cold and especially masala dosa. The curry is added after Doas is prepared not while preparing it.

Fruit juices were offered at 20/- per glass which i found to be very expensive. Anyways the service is usually slow. Order for idly which are small, it is served in sambar and ghee. It tastes real good.

So after having a good breakfast from Sandeep Restaurant we came back to checkout from the cottage. To checkout you wil first have to go to the shed from where you collected your key, return the key and he would give you the directions to where and how you can collect your refund of 200/- from. The directions are really helpful and he will ask you in which language you want these directions to be given in. Also he would ask for tips for maitaining the room clean though i do not know how much of the responsibilty he holds for that. Anyways anything between 10 to 20 should be good.

After getting the directions the first stop would be in the enquiry room where the system wil be updated that the room has been checked out from. Here also you might have to pay some money as tips as the guy sitting there would shamelessly ask for it. Sometimes he might be rude if you say you do not have any change. Next stop would be to the refund counter. Since we stayed in GNC, there is a Vijaya bank counter being run just after the Petrol bunk being run by Indian Oil. The processs here is simple just give the reciept and you would be paid your refund money. No tips to be given here. So usually the accomadation cost including these tips would go upto 100/-.

Day 2 Darshan

Day 1 ended with my frnds visiting the "Kalyana Katta" place where they had their heads shaved and me taking rest. We had our darshan at 3:30 am in the morning as the reporting time and darshan time as 4:00 am. But none of us had any sleep and I was sure we could reach the place at 5:00 am and stil have darshan.

I had my alarm at 3:40 am but got up only at 4:30 took care of my morning ablutions and was ready by 4;40 am. My frnds were all ready too by 5:00 am. Aditya was sceptical that we might miss the darshan but i was sure that we could still have darshan and that the line would now be leading to the temple without us waiting in those waiting halls. Arun was saying we might have to wait in the waiting halls as he always remembered waiting in those halls whenever he went for darshan.

We reached the queue which is opposite the Vijaya Bank by 5:30 am taking a morning walk leaving our cell phones and footwear in the room itself as we did not want any unnecessary stoppages near the temple. The queue was quite big and Aditya now was happy that we would have the darshan for sure.

The queue proceeded without much ado. But the notable thing missing was the security arrangements. The finger prints which were taken while issuing the tickets were not cross veririfed because of which any one else who could have stolen or got hold of the ticket could have the darshan instead. Also another notable thing missing was the collection of the tickets which was not done and a person could have second darshan if he were quick enough.

Now about the darshan. I had not visited the temple from January 2007 and I found that many things changed. The temple roof from inside was now decorated with a gold plating. This cannot be just described but should be seen with one's own eyes. Also the well in the temple was now decorated with gold plate. This has been renamed to "Bangaru Bavi" english translation "Golden Well".

For AAD, before the lord and the devotee there only one gate would be there as separation. But probably because of the rush of or could be because some repairs were being undertaken, the darshan ended in the place from where devotee could see the lord. Butdevotees were given a clean view by making sure no person would be obstructing the view of the devotee. Usually "theertam" holy water would be given to the devotees taking the AAD darshan, but that was also missing.

Notable things for AAD, temple would at any cost be closed at 7:00 am in the mornign on Saturday. Hence people who have AAD tickets will have to make sure they are in the line by 6:00 am in the morning so that they can have the darshan by 7:00 am.

This is my first time where i have seen people taking the free prasadam and wasting it.

Next post will be journey to Padmavati Temple and journey back to bangalore

Missing pieces on Day one

Hi Friends,

Notable things missing on day one when we went to visit Talakona were:
1) Visit to Srinivasamangapuram. (Place where the idol looks similar to the one in Tirumala)
2) The "tati munjalu" (telugu) i would update this to english once i get what it is called in English

This temple is on the same way which one has to take to reach Talakona. The idol here is supposed to be similar to the one in Tirumala and the Lord here is known as Kalyana Venkateswara. The temple is small but receives quite a number of devotees. Our time of visit was 6 pm, and at this time there would be offering of "Naivedyam" ( offering of food) to the Lord . Darshan is stopped till around 6:45 pm. We had a good darshan and coming back of which we were offered the prasadam. The prasadam here is called as "Katta Pongali"(telugu). It is salty in taste made of rice. I was never a great fan of this one until I ate this prasadam. It was really very tasty. I could not resist but go back into the line to have a second round of prasadam!

Now coming to the "Tati Munjalu", I used to eat these fruits during summer vacation whenever I visited my either of Grandparents house. Since I no longer visit those places, its been a long time since I had these. The ones which are tender are the best ones to eat. After crossing the temple and while going towards Talakona, there would a railway crossing just after which one will find vendors selling them. The vendor here was very polite and one who treated his customers extremely well. Me and another frnd of mine had the fruit to our stomach full. Also we had good cocount water too.


This place was closer to an Enginerring college by Dr. Mohan Babu. The college name being called Vidyaniketan I guess. Students from the college were coming out after their exams and I found a lady who was realy attractive. The time we spent here was worth spending i thought. :).

Tirupati Journey

Another attempt to start blogging. It has been a long time since I wanted to start blogging again. Create a place for myself online to share my thoughts. Anyways I start my blogging here with a journey to the holy shrine which holds a real special place in my heart like it holds for millions others like me.

My friend's friend has been thinking of paying a visit to Tirumala for last 2 months, and I was also planning to visit this holy place with my friends for more than six months. Anyways, we decide to go to but have been trying real hard to find the means by which we would be going.

It is absolutely necessary for me and my friends to see the Lord Almighty and we have absolutely no intention of coming back without having darshan of the idol. We had an option of taking a private transporter package tour, which would cost 1500 bucks, but i had no trust whatsoever that we could have the darshan without which it would not be worth it. Other would be to catch a bus but tickets for which can only be bought at inflated prices and service which cannot be guaranteed. Finally we decided to hire a car. Indica, our travel agent being one with whom we worked a couple of times before.

Since we do not make any plans before, it was all decided on friday at 5 pm that we would leave in the next 3 hours. It was my idea to start early, but finally we started at 10 pm.

Camera!! none of us had one and we called up a frnd of us and finally got his camera. Without which the trip would be a bit dry. Finally, we start at 10 pm, and i suggest to our driver that we should be reaching Tirupati by 2 am in the morning. My friends and the driver suggest that it would not be possible. Thanks to the bangalore traffic, we reach the highway, at about an hour later. We have quite an eventless thankfully, journey and we reach Tirupati at 3 in the morning. Not bad I think. Since from night 12 to 3 vehicles are not allowed on the Ghat road. Our only chance was to somehow obtain the Arjitha Seva ticket for AAD like it is fondly called (Archana Anthara Darshanam) since there are 1500 available usually. We had to make a call whether we should either be reaching the top and get the ticket on the hill top or from Srinivasam.

We decide it would be better to sit in the queue or rather sleep (as it later turned out to be ) from Srinivasam at Tirupati rather than reach top. We get the information that we might possibly get accomadation on the hill top if we take tickets from Srinivasam. So our wait continued upto 8 in the mornign when the distribution of tickets started.

We 4 split into 2 groups as there were 2 queues and we were not sure which was the right one to stand in. It later turned out that it does not really matter. A family in the queue which was just ahead of us "X" started a quarell in the queue, which is quite common, since the family ahead brought their other family members just half an hour earlier. Finally this family "X" wins and this family also brings us ahead. I am happy to see this, but finally we find that even if we reached at 8 that day and standed in queue or in fact at 10 in the morning we still could have had the tickets. ALso about the accommadation. Only few rooms wil be released and it is upto luck who gets them. We had a brother and sister in the line and my frnd decided we would let them ahead of us and it turned out they were the last ones to get the accomadation in that release.

We decide we absolutely need a room that day. go into the town find some nice places.. the ones on the other side of the railway gate, accomadation being of the range from 450 to 750. But we decide against as we did not want to spend so much when we would hardly stay there.

Finally we come back to Srinivasam, and find that few other rooms have been released and unforutnately we miss the queue again. We complete our daily chores, take a bath and come back down to have our lunch. We find that rooms are again been given. We are lucky this time and get the acco now.

We go to talakona, which is 65 Kms from Srinivasam. The stage is set in a forest which supposedly also have tigers and other animals, though the only animal we found was the most commonly seen Human ancestor. a monkey.. The only waterfall here was one which was very thin in its flow and me and my frnds mock it when we see it for the first time. Later we reach the waterfall place and find that this fall was some good 30-40 mts above us. We are tired but I insist tht we go to the top anyways. We reach there and one drench in this waterfall we think it was really worth climbing to the top. I really liked this spot. we had a good laugh.

The best time would be when u just have finished a normal lunch, walking after heavy lunch is not good,start at 2, reach at around 3 or 4 and spend time upto 5. After 5 u r not allowed to stay there. 50/- for car, 10/- for camera and 2/- per head are the charges there.

We reach tirupati back, decide to go straight ahead to Tirumala. The security not being very tight as the place where security check happens and where the people start to the top is far away and any culprit can get goods in between this place. We reach Tirumala, have dinner at Mayura, name prsently changed to Venkatadri becoz of which we had trouble finding this restaurant.

My frnds head back to get their heads shaved while i stayed at the room after roaming for some half an hour.

Next journey continued in the next blog.