Gardening

I was around 4, when we moved to our newly built house. These such similar conversations or fights or whatever, even happens now in our house.

Mom : I always shouted, asking you to leave some extra space in the front of the house !
Dad : I actually wanted more space to be left behind in the backyard.
Mom : See, we can't even park two vehicles next to each other comfortably, then how can we park a car, probably in the future. Nobody hears to me in this house. Huh !

These such conversations, might not end in such a smooth manner at times though. But yeah, as we have some what of a free space at the backyard, we wanted to maintain a garden. Out of greediness, we planted all those trees and plants; like coconut, mango, papaya, lemon, pomegranate, some two varieties of guava (one is called china-guava, it will be very small and reddish, i love that one) etc etc. And all those roses, different types of jasmines, henna etc. (I still remember fighting with my sis, as i did some ugly mehendi in her hand and spoiled it)

And out of those 5 coconut trees, we got each one of them assigned by dad to me, my sis, bro and mom. Its our responsibility to take care of them. And there always used to be competition between me and my sis, in watering or manuring.. But one person who doesn't even care about these is my bro. We have got rounds for watering every evening, though i don't much remember seeing my bro in the backyard.

Before the rainy season starts, we used to grow vegetables every year. Dad used to do some magic with the soil, prepares well spaced areas individually for different kinds of plants. And one nice evening, we all used to sow seeds (for brinjal, pumpkin, tomato, ladies-finger, gourds etc etc). I used to wake up early for some next 3 or 4 days, to check if the seeds which i have sowed has grown up. It was all fun to watch them grow, and giving vegetables. Gardening was the only good hobby for me during my childhood, as i won't get out of house much, for playing games, etc (Though i did, i hardly remember those memories, than these). And as years rolled on, and as each of us moved to various places for studies and things, we stopped doing all those nice gardening things.

And, why all of sudden I got back to those old memories. Its probably because, a week back I came to know that there was a Nursery Mela happening near Eat Street, over here in Hyd. Though my roomies showed some interest initially, they weren't able to accompany me. Is it because of that, or that I didn't want to kill too many lives, I just got a single rose plant in a pot. And here is the first [and the only one so far :(] rose of it.

[I got it uploaded using http://m.flickr.com/ ;)]

I should probably try getting few more added to the balcony in our apartment. Wouldn't it be nice and peaceful to see them growing up, before you go for work every morning ?

My everyday sites list.

The flash movie didn't get loaded ? Click here

Oh no, I am sad. Anyways here is the same list in text format.
5. iGoogle
4. IBNLive
3. Reddit
2. Bloglines
1. Orkut

PS : I basically wanted to try and create a sample flash using the Flex framework. ;)

The Orkut Doodle

Orkut, one of the popular community sites has always been close to our hearts. Is it because the indian traffic has been constantly increasing, I am not sure but came across this doodle today, linked to their official blog post explaining how Orkut is celebrating our Independence day.

And here is that doodle, which will be removed tomorrow and so just thought of archiving it here :)

200 Secrets.

Quite sometimes back, when i started blogging, and i was in a kind-of a bad state, i remember writing a post about Meaning of Life. I am not very sure whether that post was a crap or made any sense at all to people .

Though things in my life has changed a quite better from those final days of my College, and particularly for the last one year or so [new people, better environment, etc], I still feel that i am not upto anything good or great. I feel, i am not putting any of my efforts at all for some greater good or for achieving something. :(

At times saying, Life is boring, Life has become a routine, looking at my everyday work and if weekend starts, going for movies and tasting various restaurants around, worrying frequently with friends about not having gal friends.. Is this all that i can do or i can worry about ?

Ahem ahem.. Coming to the point for which i started typing this post.
I got this nice stuff from my best, which i wanted to share with everyone.
Please do try reading this one.

The Top 200 Secrets of Success and the Pillars of Self-Mastery
- By Robin S Sharma

And let me see, if i can find any change in the way i look at things and doing stuffs.

In 2 years.

How much changes can you see in persons in 2 years ?
Here are 2 snaps, of me and my roomies.. Check that out.. :)

2 years before



A recent snap

Top 10 keywords bringing users to my Blogspace

After a long time, I logged into Google analytics where i have created an account for tracking my blog space. And i was surprised to see its new version, with damn cool features like interactive flash charts, generate reports etc. User interaction design has been made perfect, allowing to filter the period for viewing the reports, allowing to drill down into the flash charts for finer details. For eg. To get to know the Visitors traffic, you can keep on digging from World-> Asia-> South Asia-> India-> South India-> ..

I just wanted to look at the keywords traffic from search engines, thats bringing people to my blog. So here is a screen shot of the same. :)

A Storm coming..

I got this pic, somewhere from a reddit link.
And i was just kept on looking at it, May be it resembled to some extent the state currently i am with. I feel like exploding now, but i should calm down and think deeply to plan what should i do next.. Lets wait and see..

Should i be the storm or Should i be the one who runs away seeing the storm coming ?? I am afraid, i dont know !!

OotP - First day first show

We made it for the first day first show, of the much awaited 5th film in the HP series, and that too in IMAX 3D. Fully packed magical treat running for around 2 hrs 20 mins, the movie has got such a momentum, and blind cuts in story line, which every ardent fan of harry potter wud feel about. I am not sure, how non harry fans would appreciate the movie, due to the pace in which the movie goes.

Umbridge rocks, Luna rocks, the 20 mins of explosive finale in 3D is not extremely awesome or something, but it was good. Sirius have been given more scenes with some touchy dialogues too to make all of us feel when he dies in the end. And I liked the Grawp scenes too, and when ever Ron and Hermoine are in the scene, the director made sure that they do silly things, being possessive on each other, etc etc building a strong base for Ron-Hermoine love affairs in the 7th book. It would have been nice if some few more minutes are spent on the final action scenes in the Ministry, though the wizards duel was awesome.

The Order rocks !!!

Expecto Patronum

Check out this link for an exclusive clip from the much awaited 5th film of the Harry Potter series. I just enjoyed watching the clip, where in Harry teaches the DA members, how to conjure a patronus. Its sooo cool :-)

And after the premiere in Tokyo, there has been reviews stating the movie to be the darkest and the best so far. And i just can't wait to watch it.

Some of the reviews after Tokyo premiere:

• Telegraph
• The Guardian

UPDATE : Here is another exclusive clip of the Escape of Bella from Azkaban which surfaced online.

Whats coming next ?

From my childhood days i have this [bad or whatever] practice of just checking the Calendar for 'What is coming next ?? Which makes me feel happy/better/something !!'. May be many others might also be doing the same.. Does that mean, that we are failing to live and enjoy each and every moment.. Might be, but thats not always possible rite.. [When your boss is sitting next asking u to do something, when u r attending an interview, when u r writing a board exam...etc etc.. am just trying to go backwards in time.. :D]

Ok.. Thats all set aside, but what sort of this 'Whats next?' thing that used to make me drive and push my present time.. Well, it kept on varying from time to time.. During school days, i just wait for the forthcoming quarterly, half-yearly or summer holidays there by pushing hard my hectic working days :P.. When it came to my college days, as i was away from my home, whenever i was able to note/plan in my calendar for my next trip to my hometown, i will just try push those in between days.. :)

But as the days are passing, my preferences/type of 'Whats next?' might be changing, though my attitude as such of 'Whats next?' can't be removed ?? Is it good to remove that mentality ?? I have got no idea.. But i used to love the quote, 'Enjoy every moments of life' :) Though am failing to do the same.

And BTW, why am i making such a post now.
May be, am nearing some event in my Calendar.. :)

Thala rocks in AP too..

It was yesterday morning, D seemed to be quite happy about something. 'Hey, Prasadz is releasing Sivaji in Tamil', he said. I just took that day's Metro plus, and was just scanning the movies column, when i was able to note that, 'Sivaji (Tamil) Sat, Sun 8:45 am' below a huge row of Sivaji(Tel) with daily around 6 shows or something. But felt quite happy that atleast there are 2 shows, and we planned to go directly to Prasadz before going to office, and D finished of his usual duty of calling people and confirming the show time in minutes this time, and we assumed that the booking is starting that day and there won't be much people in that early hours.

But we were wrong, we din't even halt our bike, and when we decided we should head back to the office, i just shoot this video. Take a look.

M bids adieu !

There are certain personalities, with whom even if you have moved for hardly a week or two you will feel that you have got through with them for years. M, is one of a kind.

The one person, whom i have admired, i have liked, i have wanted to work with, in my company is M. She was in the interactive design team serving for almost every application thats being built, so there won't be a person in our firm without knowing her. And everybody here does like her for the way she interact and work, but she had her own life for paintings, and so she got to start off from here. And today is her last working day in office. :(

I might have worked with her for hardly a month, during the UI revamp phase of our application, and i completely enjoyed the way we worked out things. I learned a lot from her, she inspired me a lot, such that i myself started thinking hard in new user interactive designs and stuffs, and i just loved implementing them too. I liked the way she interacts with us.. Some of her typical phrases, which i like to hear again and again..

• `You monkey !!, What did you do to my files ??' [Even chimpanzee at times]
  
• `Who did this ??!! :)' [ typical phrase when she used to have a look at her interface, she loved our interface more than anything ]
• And the typical sentences that she tries in tamil, `Po laam va.., enna panra nee..'

"You should love and enjoy the work you do to the maximum extent". I felt this only while working with her.. I can't forget the day, when we both were trying to solve a CSS issue in Firefox, spending almost 3 hours.. and hoping it will work, every time we try something different. And at last my team mate came to her cabin, and told casually that she fixed that already.. :)

I will miss those days.. :'(

I love... Firebug

Just wow ! when i looked at this particular extension for Firefox, Firebug for making the web development easier & faster.

I just came to know about this extension from my team mate, and its just amazing to look at the various things that this particular extension provides with respect to

• Fine tuning the CSS
• Correcting the HTML
• Debugging the javascript code (the one big remedy for my development work..)
• Monitoring the time elapsed while rendering

During our development times, we do come across fixing or changing the html/css alignment/rendering issues.. At all those times, we change the css or html and do an ./ant prepare for copying the html/css files to the server, for a helluva times, and my terminal does hang at loads of times even for just an ./ant prepare, which is such an irritating thing for me..
But thanks to Firebug, it does make most of our development work simpler and faster.. Ooooh.. :)

Here is a screen shot for the Net tab (network monitoring) of Firebug, for the Reddit site.

The Movie 5 ( OotP ) [ Character posters ]

I loved these 4 character posters released for the Order of the Phoenix movie. They are really cool. Just wanted to share them here.

Enjoy !! :D

Redditors digging a lot ??

The is the screenshot of Reddit's new submissions as of 11 30 am today morning.
Digg faced problem, because of many story submissions about an encryption key for HD-DVD.
[ Check out: HD-DVD Stories in Digg and also this post from the founder of Digg]

And now, this has caused all the new story submissions in Reddit to be full of Digg's problems/shut down etc etc.. So what does this mean ??

Typical phrases from Bosses

Let me try and make out some top 5 phrases/questions asked by most of their Bosses to their workers in a [sarcastic] manner, and which obviously makes them to feel a bit, though they do/answer to those work/questions.

And these assumptions might not hold good for exceptional bosses. :)

Here we go:
5. "Don't forget to do that, before you leave for the day."
4. "Hope we can finish this functionality by EOD."
3. "Can you please follow up and get this done ASAP."
2. "Could you revert the changes you have made, the previous implementation itself looked better."
1. "Did you get any chance to look into that issue?"

Dev. Team Vs QA

Its hightime that i am making such a post.. I will try to make generic views and points (assuming things are being the same in most of the IT firms) about this very common Dev Vs QA `issue'.. :)

These are the general mistakes/wrong attitude that Testers and Developers do/have, and which is the main cause for most of the problems between them. Here we go :

Testers used to

• raise issues/bugs which don't even come under the specs/requirement.
• not feel/understand about the exact `User Base' of the application they are testing.
• somehow want to increase the counts of the bugs/issues they raise, and so they do raise some stupid silly issues. And this can take out the good impression on QA in the Developers mind, which can affect at times, when the testers raise genuine high priority bugs.
• face problems, due to improper communication with the Developers.

Developers used to

• think great of the work they do, take upper hand over the testers, and don't respond properly to the Testers.
• say stupid excuses to the Testers for the issues they raised, rather than looking deep into the issue and fixing that.
• get annoyed about the questions/clarifications, specs and requirements that they need to convey to the Testers.
• obviously get annoyed, when too many bugs are raised in the code part that they did. [ its a very natural feeling in every developers mind ]

So, who won this war between the Dev and QA. Nobody won, though the Product they both working on can lose atlast. Yeah, the fact is that all these resources from both Dev Team and QA Team are working towards a bug-free, efficient Product. So, if they start think about their Product's efficiency/performance and forgetting all their ego and stuffs.. There won't be people shouting !! Isn't it ?

Enjoy coding & testing. :)
Till next post,
CIAO.

Boredom !!!

Being a software professional, I have heard many people in my field saying that they are feeling bored about their daily routine work and doing some mundane things.. I would ask one thing to them,

You are brushing your teeth everyday, you are taking bath everyday !! Are you feeling bored about that ? Nope !!

So, what is that feeling thats making us to report like this ? I don't know. IT is the field in which we can use our creativity/innovation et.al. to make even our routine work more fun and enjoyable.. You won't be getting bored on anything which you love and do.. Isn't it ? You can shift projects/companies.. etc etc too

Have we ever thought how our parents/others have moved/killed their time in their [government] offices sitting amidst some large group of files, papers, ledgers etc etc.. Ooof, how hard their life would have been.. But what is our (s/w professionals) environment..

• A nice air cooled atmosphere
• A computer with 24x7 internet connection in office
• A computer/A Laptop/Blackberry in home
  
• And we are online all the time in our messengers etc etc
• Apart from recreating in social networking sites
• Listening to music, watching videos and working
• Having soft drinks/cold coffee/tea etc etc in the middle

Wow, So even after being given with all these we feel that we are bored in our life & work.. :) Yeah at time even i do feel like that.. So what will i be doing at all those times..

• Go to my next cabin person place, Sit, Chat ?!! ;)
• Go to cafeteria, and play a game of fuz ball !!
• Go to motta maadi, and do a vetti chat !!
• Torture somebody in the intranet chat :P
• Starting/appending to some hot/long running mail threads
  
• Above all, writing such a crappy post and torturing u all ;-)

So there are ways through which you can kill your boredom moments, make fun out of those.. and keep enjoying.. :) Keep yourself extremely busy, so that you won't even care or spend time to worry or think about anything else..

Okie.. Okie.. Am stopping here.. :P
Till next post,
CIAO.

PS: I am making this post on an extremely busy day.. I can't further explain about how busy i am, since thats something confidential.. :P

The Movie 5 (OotP) [ Trailer ]

International Trailer


Theatrical Trailer


Its awesome, but the sound track isn't that good when compared to the Teaser Trailer. And am not sure whether this will become the best of the HP series movies. But my expectations are building higher because of the fact that, the last 20 minutes of the movie is gonna be in 3D in IMAX screens.. Ooooh, I just can't wait.. :)

Till next post,
CIAO.

Java !!

Till next post,

CIAO.