Ahmedabad trip
Just checking base from Ahmedabad.
I am still awake at this off hour. I came to Ahmedabad for the first time. Infact I am visting Gujarat for the first time in my life !
I have come here to attend Jashan’s sister’s marriage. Yes, the same Jashan Parikh who has contributed a lot on this site’s Photos section :D.
We (all bhatara guys from JIIT) are staying in an awesome room in an apartment on the 9th floor in a posh area in Ahmedabad. And I must say that I am feeling nostalgic. This is the way we used to live in our hostel :).
We have 2 laptops with bluetooth and my state of the art Reliance Mobile with RConnect facility. Since 4 other guys have gone to have tea at 2 am in the morning (god knows why), and the other 3 are sleeping, I am blogging ! What a great way to kill time.
I like Ahmedabad. More than the place, I like the people here. Basically, after living in Delhi, you will find that you like people from anywhere else in the country. Last time I went to Punjab for the first time and fell in love with the place and the people there :).
Gujarati food is marvellous. I have had a lot of dishes since I came in here. I am in love with their “kadhi“. Also, their marriages are a lot better than marriages in the north. No ho halla, no DJ. Just plain classical instrumental (mostly Santoor) in the background and the marriage ceremony is performed with grace. Also, I haven’t seen the complete family getting involved in such functions anywhere else. Basically, what they show in “Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi” about Gujaratis is all true. Although that soap sucks.
I love technology. Right now I am sitting near the balcony, wirelessly connected to the internet over a bluetooth connection to my phone which is getting charged simultaneously and is lying around 10 meters away on a bed.
Anshuman Johri is trying to call me. Even after telling him that I am connected through a weak and low speed connection to the internet, he is insisting that we atleast give it a try. Hence, I have to sign off.
Some more content with pics from the marriage later…
Jive ’06
Just wanted to tell everyone that I attended 2Â awesome evening shows at the Jive 2006 – the annual Techno-Cultural festival of JIIT, Noida.
I heard Silk Route and Tantrik day before yesterday and Moksha yesterday night. Silk Route gave a solid performance. The campus was spellbound with Dooba Dooba and Junoon’s Dosti. I do not ever listen to Rock, hence, I will not comment on Moksha :).
This was the best fest ever at JIIT.
With a state of the art Student Activity Center and the Jaypee Business School coming up, the Jaypee Institute of Information Technology is going to be a hot destination for students and the industry :).
Processes
For a long time I have been wondering what processes are and why are they so important. Well, a few days back, I found the answer!
You have a problem. You find out the solution to that problem. You cannot apply the solution and just solve the problem! That’s process 😉
No offense.
Ojax
So, finally Google did it. We have AJAX based orkut.
The Profile tabs (social, professional and personal), the scrapbook etc. in orkut are now AJAX based. This means that it would be more fast, more interactive and **probably** we will get more “No donut for you” messages.
Well, lets drop the last part and we have a new web2.0 contender! orkut is undoubtly Google’s biggest success after {ofcourse} its search engine and the Gmail.
Everybody is found orkutting now-a-days. Be it office, school or college. similar to “Google”, the noun “orkut” has also graduated to be a verb. God knows how many grammatical mistakes Google is gonna make! But I guess the world can live with some of these mistakes 😉
With scrap becoming the *in* thing, we see people excited to exchange scraps even if they sit next in the office! They find it more exciting to scrap than to call or IM or email. Despite the fact that the scraps are visible to everyone, people like to use them for conversations. Now this is what I call **social networking**.
All in all, orkut has come out to be a clear winner in this social networking thing.
Looking forward to more such grammatical mistakes…
Microsoft sucks
Recently I started working on a .Net project. I had heard a lot about Visual Studio and had seen most of its ads. The difference is obvious. Let me tell you how the difference is obvious.
Previously I had worked on Java projects. So Eclipse is what I used. Being a Microsoft product, my expectations out of Visual Studio were a bit stretched out. I was thinking that it would provide me with options that would let me have dinner with Aditi at 8 and what not ;).
But when I started using it, the word that came to my mind was “nightmare”. Yes, I understand that for a new person, it takes time to get used to an IDE. But I could master Eclipse in 2 days flat. And here, its over a month and it still is a bad dream.
Small and pretty useful things like Organizing imports, Search results tree, adding try catch automatically, generating getters and setters etc. are missing! ! ! ! ! ! WTF? When I started using it, a single word came to my mind for its developers: “maniacs”. I do not think its at all a developer friendly IDE. Most of my time is spent in doing some configuration to get it working instead of coding the business logic of my application. If you keep it open for 3 – 4 days continuously, it behaves as if one has sprayed pepper in its eyes. Hangs, misbehaves and what not!
Recenltly, I noticed another stupid thing. There was a circular dependency in 2 of my projects in a solution. So, it was not building them (despite configuring the build order). So, I commented out the dependee lines in one of the projects. And then it happened. Something that can be expected from only a M$ product. It was showing errors in the commented lines!
CAUTION: Java developers, stick to Eclipse. Its undoubtedly the best IDE in the world. .Net developers, try Eclipse and M$, yes, the difference is obvious!
Krrish
I always cribbed about the special effects being used in Bollywood movies. I mean whatever they did just didn’t even came close to the special effects in the Hollywood movies. But my perception is changing now.
Recently I watched Krrish. Its a sequel to Koi… Mil Gaya. Both directed by Rakesh Roshan and starring his son Hrithik Roshan in the lead role.
I must say that this is the first Bolywood movie I have seen with special effects comparable to Hollywood movies. The effects are mastered so neatly that you do not notice any flaw in them. Ofcourse the logic behind any hero’s powers in Indian movies is usually hard to digest, but usually the movies used to lack that perfection in the special effects which makes the viewers Wow. This one doesn’t.
The only point is that you must watch it with an open mind. I do not know why people can watch Keanu Reaves, Superman, Spiderman and above all X-Men doing the same kind of things and terming them as Superheroes, and at the same time not even care to watch an effort by a Bollywood director. The problem is that they are rigid. They underestimate everyone including their own country. Why can’t Bollywood do it? I mean is it really hard to believe that given the funds, a Bollywood director capable of making such a movie can, and definitly will make it.
I must say that the movie rocks. I mean the kind of effort put in is awesome and it shows. The songs are great (kudos to Rajsh Roshan) and the special effects are mind blowing.
I recommend this movie to everyone out there.
Experimenting with AJAX
Finally I dirty my hands with AJAX. It was long due. Ever since I saw Gmail and other web 2.0 apps, I had this thing to make something using the upcoming technologies in the WWW. Since last week, I was experimenting and reading about AJAX after coming back from office.
I am glad that I suceeded in my first attmpt. Although I added a very small feature in an app I am developing at my workplace, using the most basic things in the architechture, it did boost up my confidence. Also, it made me come out of that office mode to the college mode where I used to play with such things more often :D.
Now I am gonnna try some advanced concepts of the architechture. But this next step might take some time as I would be busy reading about this cool thing :).
Maybe some day I develop something which comes here.
Frequency
Just finished watching Frequency. It was released in 2000. I liked the movie.
The whole thing goes really slow but is some thriller. Till the end you’d bite up your nails to find out what happens next. The direction is superb. If we discard the bugs on imdb, its all in all a great movie.
The idea being the main character being able to talk to his dad 30 years in the past. He saves him from different deaths he might have had! Sounds really interesting. Its visually interesting too! Trust me, for any technical person (who has studied quantum computing), its really exciting to see a concept in action. The sequence of events is well thought of and keeps you glued to the movie till the end.
I recommend this movie to all the geeks out there.
Bad Outlook
Finally, Google Calendar is here! Now, being a Google fan, I ought to write a review for it and (probably) praise it.
But I will not. Since everybody else is talking about it. Go to any IT news site, its filled with reviews and comments regarding the new kid in the block. I would just give my opinion about it.
I think its a cool utility. Having a calendar online is really something. By integrating Chat in Gmail, they gave us a reason to keep our Gmail windows open throughout the day. Now with this thing in place, they have given us a reason for never closing it!
The interface is intuitive and would be a breeze for any Outlook user. They also have an option for sending mail invitations to guests in an event. Also, use of AJAX has resulted in a really dynamic and neat interface. I wonder if they have done some Phd. in UI :). There is also Gmail integration to detect events being discussed in mail/chat conversations so that they can be scheduled from there only. Now that’s a smart feature :).
I guess that the overall options should be increased and I am sure they are working on it :). Curently its a basic calendar wherein you can schedule events and send invites and alerts. Probably its just the trailer. The real thing is yet to come.
The war is taking up. Google is all set to bang Microsoft with its online bouquet of smart and neat products. No matter how much the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo! try, they are never gonna come close to Google in this race. Try visiting some of the pathetic Yahoo! services like 360. You will know what I mean. Windows Live! is receiving a good response from users but lets see what it has in plate for us.
Till then, start using the state of the art Google Calendar. It would really leave you thinking that its a bad Outlook.
Update:
Google calendar is now integrated with GMail. It can detect events being discussed in mail conversations and give an option towards the right (just above the adsenses) to schedule the event in your calendar! Cool eh? B-)
The third dimension
Recently I watched Space Station 3D at IMAX, Ghaziabad. And it was an awesome experience!
Although the movie is quite old (2002), but it was still able to generate the type of revenues to the multiplex owners as they might have thought while conceiving the theatre.
The movie starts with photogenic scenes of earth being viewed from the Space Station in 3D! Believe me, the view is unparallel. You cannot have any better experience of space whilst sitting here on earth until and unless you are a Trainee astronaut being trained at NASA in their virtual space stations.
The movie has been shot by astronauts only. And that is really appreciable and I must say that the cinematography has been well taken care off. The camera positions are such that you get the best view of the scene.
The movie is all about how different countries are involved in construction of the Space Station 250 miles above us. The conditions in which they build the thing, the challenges they have to face etc. Movie also shows a typical astronaut’s life in the Space station.
The 3D effects in the movie are just awesome. Being projected on an IMAX screen makes it an unparallel audio and visual experience. I am badly waiting for the next movie (Walking on the Moon 3D) to be projected at the IMAX Ghaziabad theatre. Also, there was a trailer of the movie T-Rex which was just WOW. The trailer shows life size dinosaurs roaring right in front of you! They are so close that you can count their teeth! The kids in the theatre went crazy after seeing that trailer.
All in all, IMAX 3D is an experience worth undergoing again and again. I have already seen the movie twice and am planning for the third trip. I am eagerly waiting for the next change in the theatre.
I reccommend this movie to every geek out there (but watch it only in IMAX 3D).