When do you say a user interface is well designed?

JACK is the name of the guy who has been using the windows machine for the past 5 years to send and receive mails. He uses windows to prepare few documents using MS Word and MS Excel to maintain his expenses. He has been using the windows machine for past couple of years. Yes offcourse he uses the windows machine for gaming as well.

JACK had a girl friend by name BOX who was using a Mac book pro. She had brought the apple product recently and this was her first exposure to the world of computers also her first notebook. She started using the mac book pro and she was learning to use it quickly. She had a problem in installing one of the softwares that she needed. So, she went to JACK for the help.

JACK started using BOX’s laptop: keep in mind it was a mac book pro.

He got frustrated using the mac book as soon as he started. “I hate these mac books, they have clunky user interface,” he says. Though he was able to help BOX he was unhappy and frustrated. There was nothing surprising in Jack getting frustrated as he was a windows user but the comment about the clunky user interfaces on mac is completely wrong. Mac has the best user experience and when compared to windows. To be precise windows were busy copying from mac os and developing additional features on top of the mac features.

JACK was frustrated mainly because of the following reasons.

• Jack wanted to close the window in the mac book and when he used the Alt+F4 it increased the media volume. Jack wanted to open an application by double clicking on the icon on the desktop so he tried closing the active window which was covering the icon using Alt+F4 and double clicked immediately which accidently opened the help options on the toolbar menu as the active window was not closed. A small frustration.
• Jack was trying to resize the window on the mac book as he wasnted to see two windows at the same time. In windows resizing of the window is done by holding the right edge of the window. When he tried doing the same on the mac the window actually moved from its current position. Another tiny frustration.
• While JACK was still busy fixing BOX’s problem on the mac he was repeatedely getting popup messages. He was trying to dismiss the popup by hitting the enter key or the space bar. Both the keys did not work even after hitting the keys harder. It wasn’t that the keys were not working mac just dint understand the command. He had to use the mouse or the touch pad to dismiss the popup box each time. This is unlike in windows where he could dismiss the popups hitting the space bar or the enter key.

Another small frustration. But, boy does it add up. These things add up; these are the things that make us unhappy on a day-to-day basis. Even though they seem to petty to dwell on(considering the people who are starving in africa) nonetheless they change our moods.

JACK dint have control of the mac environment which made him uphappy and frustrated. To make people happy, you have to make them feel like they are in control of the environment. To do this, you need to make the interfaces behave the way the user expects to behave.

 

So the manthra for designing an excellent user interface is by making sure that the user is in control of the environment.

Birthday celebrations with my friends

Though I spent my birthday with the same set of friends, year after year, the element of surprise would always be there. Not once I was able to guess where I could find these guys.

Year 2006 was a memorable birthday. It had been at least 15 years since I cut my previous birthday cake.
It was first time for couple of reasons.

• I cut the birthday cake with my friends.
• All 8 {Amit alias Thimma, Deepthi alias Rambo, Harsha alias Dolly, Karthik alias Mache, Priya alias Putti, Santosh alias TT, Shubha alias Telgi and ofcourse myself alias Dingri – Alphabetical order } of us meet each other and what went on to become “Galeej Gang”

Venue was at Pizzahut at Banashankari 3rd stage. Mache with his creativity came up with a poem which I can never forget to this date. Also, the gang presented me a sun glasses as a gift which was really unusual because we never used to share gifts for birthdays. ….. I doubt if they were trying to prove something to the new people in the gang hehehe . By the way it was a home made cake with my favorite chocolate (Gems) as toppings in the cake….

Year 2007 was early surprise. All the boyz spoke to my brother in the evening and they had come down to my house at 12 in the mid-night and they were speaking to me over the phone while they made their way to my bedroom. While I was opening my birthday gift which was a Ferrari Enzo (had to assemble – which I love to do always) my brother knocked the door for them and he wished me. Out from the dark they started screaming and hitting me on my back.
After the initial shock they barged into the room and assembled the car for me . (I did re-assemble the car later). They took me to the ground floor and there was a nice “Chocolate Fantasy Cake” from Coffee Day waiting for me. Once I cut the cake they microwaved the cake and I had a tasty chocolate face pack, not once or twice it was four times….. All thanks to Mr.Dolly . Thimma, Mache and Dolly were part of this surprise

Year 2008 was a huge surprise. It was a week day and the chances of everyone getting together for hosting a birthday for me would be a dream. So, it was almost end of day’s work and I was supposed to return back home around 8:30. I got a call from Telgi that I had to pick up some stuff from her house. While I was sitting in the living room waiting for Telgi to come home, aunty took food to the room which was closed and when I asked her who was inside she told me that it was telgi’s cousins sitting inside doing something in comp which she had no clue about. I felt something fishy was happening and all of a sudden these guys come out of the room saying they wanted water to drink and couldn’t wait inside the room for any longer. Kothigalu…

If this was not sufficient, they brought a watermelon and asked me cut it as they dint find time to get a cake for me…(wasn’t this cool ) After this they brought in “Lichee Cake” from Sweet Chariot and it was all over my face again as usual. Only thing that was different was I had the watermelon on top of my head.

Miss you all………. (No comments please)

Paraskevidekatriaphobia

I read an article on one of the online newspapers and this word caught my attention. This was the longest word that I ever put an effort to spell. This the phobia about people who have irrational fear of Friday 13th. Some people claim that if one has the ability to pronounce this word would have got over their irrational fears.

Friday may be considered unlucky because Christ is thought to have been crucified on a Friday, which was execution day among the Romans. Yet, Christians don’t call it Bad Friday. Friday was also Hangman’s Day in Britain. Some even think that Friday was the day God threw Adam and Eve out of the garden of Eden, which is unlikely since the concept of Friday hadn’t been invented yet.

The irrational fear of things associated with the number thirteen is known as Triskaidekaphobia. Some think that thirteen is an unlucky number because there were thirteen people at the Last Supper. Some think thirteen owes its bad reputation to Loki, the Norse god of evil, who started a riot when he crashed a banquet at Valhalla attended by twelve gods. However, the number 13 was considered a lucky number in ancient Egypt and China more…

If this kind of phobia is coined as irrational fear, I have couple of them.

I get really scared if someone close to me addresses me as “Varun”  ( Can I call this Firstnamephobia….. LOL )  Though it is my name I am used to be called with my nick name within my close circle of friends and family.

Also, I think I have Ringophobia (this word will be in oxford dictionary in the future…hehehehe because I am the only one having this phobia!!!!) i.e if I have the same ring tone set in my cell phone over a period of time…. I get scared when I listen to the same tone again and again….

So, think for a while and figure out if you have any kind of irrational fear?????

Enjoy madi with your phobias….. ROFL

Google I/O – Keynote presentation Day 1 – Android Phone

Had been planning for this trip from the time the dates of Google i/o conference was announced.

In the midst of exams my attention drew towards this conference. I craved to attend this conference where the worlds best developers were coming under single roof to discuss about the future.

The metamorphosis brought into the world of Web by Google is astounding. “Google It” has become common phrase for most of the people around the world. You have everything at your disposal now. What started as a PH.D. research projects by Larry Page and  Sergey Brin at Stanford University turned out to be one of the worlds biggest companies. (Someone to challenge Microsoft finally!!!)

Google I/O being held in San Fransisco I had to book my flight tickets at the earliest and being a student I got $350 discount on the registration (Wasn’t that cool??) for conference. Booked my flight on SouthWest airlines and I was all set to fly to SFO and stay in my friends apartment.

It was my second time at the SFO airport and it looked familiar. Karthik (my friend during engineering also my college at Caritor) was waiting for us (supreeth and me) at the airport with 3 day public transport passes and huge bundle of maps of SFO and places for us to visit during our stay. He hadn’t changed a bit and he was as usual a very organized person.

Weather changes like the colors of chameleon at SFO and it was bright and sunny when I was traveling in the BART (connects near by cities to San Fransisco city). By the time we reached the apartment the wind was blowing at 15 miles/hr and I had to use my jacket to cover my ears. The apartment was huge to accommodate 15 people for San Diego students standard.

27th Morning

Building outside the underground station

Getting up early in the morning was pain in the butt, had a good shower and ate couple of cookies and headed towards Mascone Center where all the action was set to happen. It was love at first sight (SFO) as soon as I came out from the underground station the bright sun rays reflecting from an old European architecture building and flowers around the building made the place majestic. The old cable train and their tracks right next to the building looked like they were chauffeuring people to heaven.

Old cable car...

We tracked the building with supreeth’s android phone and the Mascone Center from outside looked small for company like Google. I was taken aback when I saw the building as I could not find any signs of the conference being held. Google maintaining such a low profile for a conference this big confused me. I was greeted by couple of people wearing Google t-shirts (I envied people wearing Google t-shirts) while I was headed towards registration counter. I flashed my Student ID and got my Google badge felt nice wearing that around my neck. We were asked to collect our package from the counter and guess what they gave me a Google T-shirt (yapeeeeeeeeeeee!!!).

With the google T-shit on on the next day...

BreakFast baby.....

When I took the escalator to the next level they were serving coffee, soda and loads of chocolates. There were very few people at this level and it was a shock for me. We thought we would have a great breakfast at the conference and it was disheartening. Then we went to the next level where we saw what we had expected initially. Here were all the developers with majority of them in formals and few with jeans and t-shirts… Breakfast was mouthwatering with all the fresh fruits, bread, cheese, cakes, yogurt, cereals, milk, coffee, tea, chocolates, cup cakes, nuts, dry fruits, soda, fruit juice etc.. Had a heavy breakfast and with a plate of fresh cut fruits in hand I waited near the entrance of the hall where the Keynote presentation was held.

After making our way to the first few rows we found ourselves seats where we could have  a beautiful panoramic view of  Dias and the huge Google I/O projector screens. The show started with an abstract video with a mixture if spanish/italian/cango music in the background humming “I/O – I/O – I/O”. I am still trying to find that song on youtube……

I was expecting Larry Page or Sergey Brin to kick off the show but it was Eric Schmidt CEO of google who gave a short talk about whats in store for the next 2 days and then came my guru Vic Gundotra vice president of engineering who taked about the future of web for most of the session time. Keynote presentation was all about “Its time” for a change. Its time for the Web to change and Vic gave a very good overview of HTML 5.0 and what it can do in the future. Throughout the presentation he indirectly talked about Microsoft who were not supportive towards building a common standards for HTML 5.0. This was the funnies part of the presentation.

At the end of the presentation he held a small white box in hand and was trying to open as if it was  Pandora’s Box. I remember his words really well and I quote “We are going to give away to every conference attendees today. All 4000 of you this box which contains link to SDK documentation and few other surprises including Android Phone“. This was the best that the conference could offer to anyone. Me being a student paying $50 for registration was one heck of a surprise and worth all that I had invested into this conference.

Hey I found the link to entire presentation which has the song I was talking about as well.

Headache………

 

Please stop banging on my head with that sledge hammer….

Does the sledge hammer have spikes on it…. God what on earth did I do to face this. Have I done so many sins that I have to face hell on earth?????????????

This is how I feel when I get a headache. I bet many people have different versions of what they feel when they get one.

Getting up with a bad dream is my nightmare. What a irony?? You are trying to get up early in the morning and start of your day and it’s a NIGHTmare!!!!!!!!!!!! Shouldn’t this be MORNINGmare??? Too many crazy questions haunt me when I have this so called headache. As the poison in the form of questions dissolves into the brain cells my head starts to boil as these questions act as catalyst to the already burning fire inside my head. The fire gets rid of the rotten cells in the brain which is when I feel like someone is using a sledge hammer with spikes on them. As the Fahrenheit inside the brain increases my neck starts to pain like someone (cop probably) who is forcing me to get inside car….Ha finally when the situation is going out of control I decide to pour water on fire (gentle massage) or use fire extinguisher (antibiotic) to get the situations under control…….

As the time elapses and there isn’t anymore catalyst or fuel (dead brain cells) my head starts to feel light and empty. As the smoke and ashes settle down I start to feel even better and feel the fresh breeze of air flowing into my brain through my ears and it’s such a nice feeling……

Thank god for getting me out of it or wait should I thank the fire extinguisher?????

Which one ??? Its your choice to decide…..

My headache has reduced a bit after writing this blog….This is making me to start thinking again…. I got to stop here before questions start pouring in again….

Adios

Slumdog

 

There has been quite a controversy revolving around this movie which made me write this blog. So, what does Slumdog really mean ?

• Slum: Its a squalid part of a city, inhabited by poor people.
• Dog: Lets say man’s best friend.
• Millionaire: Person with lots of money.

The two words of the movie contradict each other. How can a person be in a slum and also millionaire? Wait a second was the director Danny Boyle trying to convey that “Even a slumdog could be a millionaire“. 

This movie is about a boy who lost his mother during the mumbai riots and grew up under the guidance of his elder brother who was 2 years elder to him. Salim(Elder) and Jamal(Younger) are the most audacious boys I have ever seen. The movie shows the hurdles that these kids face being orphans, without education and how kids get into influence of gangsters for meager money. 

Lets face the fact that this is how people live in the Asia’s largest slum “Dharavi“. The movie shows the lifestyles of the people who live in these areas and way they make money for their living. Few activists and critics were against the movie saying that “It sends out a wrong message to the world“. What the heck ?????

So, will this stop the companies making investment in India ? Will people stop coming to India ? Will there be a war because of this ? Please give me a break…………… And by the way are these activists still fighting for their cause ? Is the case still running ? Who knows ? 

They just wanted some fame at the global level and nothing else. Since, the movie is regarding poor people who play a major role during elections these activists try to get popular through these kind of acts. 

The entire world knows what India is. Our achievements are nothing less when compared to developed countries. We have taken up challenges like any other developed country and proved that we can be the best. Its been only 62 years since we got our independence and we have cities like Mumbai – (This is New York of India), Bangalore – (Silicon Valley of India). All the software companies of the world have invested in Indian markets because it has the potential to give great returns. We have ISRO (NASA of India – We launch satellites of other countries). Common guys no other country has achieved so many things within 62 years of independence. Just think about how much we could have achieved if we had our independence say during the “First war of independence“. 

This movie just shows how people live in these slums and how a slumdog goes onto be millionaire. Ar Rehman got an Oscar for the music and lets relish this moment rather than fighting for a cause which does not prove anything………..

In the defence of director Danny Boyle I think what he has done an excellent job directing this movie. Hats off to this chap…..And AR Rehaman what can I say about this guy he got what he deserved finally……

Banana Snack

Alert: My first recipe posted on line. Hehe

Banana and Orange Tang

I tried this snack yesterday night and it tasted good. Its easy to prepare hardly takes 5 to 6 mins to prepare.

Ingredients

Servers one person

1. Big Banana – 1
2. Choco Chip Cookie or any cookie – 2
3. Tang Orange Juice Powder – 0.5 Tea spoon
4. Milk – 100ml
5. Raisins 5 to 6
6. Any chocolate sauce

Procedure

• First cut the banana into small pieces. 
• Add the tang orange juice powder and milk and mix well.
• Microwave the choco chip cookie for 20 sec.
• Cut the cookie into pieces and add it to the bowl
• Finally add raisins and chocolate sauce.

If you like something crispy in your snack you can add 2 to 3 spoons of cereal. You could also make your snack interesting my adding ice-cream to it. (My choice of flavour would be English Toffee)

Heck with the calories. Just have it and enjoy.

Spring Break…..

When I first heard about “Spring Break” first thing that came to mind was “Why on earth do you need a break in the middle of the semester” ?

Being an international student there are heck a lot of things that you need to know before you step into USA. So what is this spring break all about ????

Spring break is also know as March break or Study week (to get your grads back on track….) or also to get your life back. The dates vary depending on which city you go to school. This is the time when the part goers go bizarre and freak out during the break. Florida being the most popular destination in US.

Why spring break in the first place?

In most parts of United States, United Kingdom and other countries experience harsh winter conditions. As the winter sets in people hardly can have a outdoor life. They would be confined inside to their rooms, offices or cars with their heater on most of the time. Though they get holidays for Thanks Giving and Christmas they can’t enjoy have an outdoor life. Due to these reasons, in cold countries during the month of march before it gets too hot all the schools get 7-10 days off to enjoy the weather conditions and go around the country. I would like to say that this is a way of promoting tourism.

It was a common practice earlier to give a break to all the schools in United States at the same time, which resulted in riots, many drunkards on the streets and it was getting really difficult to manage such lunatic crowds by the authorities. This is the main reason for schools to have spring break on different dates.

Google for the “Top destinations for spring break” if you are planning for one.

Have a safe and happy spring break!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Designing a simple web site

“Web designing is the process by which the electronic media content is conceptualize, modeled, planned and executed with help of various technologies available to us today.”

Designing a web-site would be a pain unless you plan ahead of time. One should have a crystal clear idea about the purpose of the web-site. Once, the purpose of the web-site is concrete then the following steps has be followed.

1. Decide on the type of web-site.

    There are basically two types of web-sites.

•  Static Web Sites: Only a human user or a web-master can update or change the contents on the web. The contents on the site does not depend on the user input. Developing a static web pages are really simple and very each to complete. It becomes really challenging if the site grows rapidly and editing the contents would be pain in the butt. Eg: Portfolio web-sites
• Dynamic Web sites: This kind of web pages change depending on the user input or requests made by the end users. One can modify the contents of the site using  scripting languages. Developing dynamic web pages are lot more complex when compared to static pages but these are the kind of sites that  bring revenue to the companies and also promote their products. Eg: Pages that provide company information, on-line  trading, on-line shopping etc.

2. Decide the technologies that you will be needing based in your requirements

    Deciding if its gonna be a static or a dynamic page is pretty easy. Once that has been decided then comes the challenging part. Boom!!!! “Which technology???”.  There are lot of technologies are available to us today. End user is spoiled with so many technologies that he/she would be confused to choose the right technology if they are amateurs. 

    To start with one can use XHTML and CSS for the presentation layer to organizing and displaying the data to the end/users. Javascript for client side validation if there are forms in the web-pages. To play safe LAMP technologies are simple, open source and easy to implement. Not a lot of investment has to be made for putting up these things together and hosting them on a free web-hosting service provider.

    If the application is really big, which provide services such as on-line shopping, on-line trading which are accessed by millions of users at a time, then it is the time for big monsters such as Java Web Services, EJB’s, Microsoft technologies such as .Net framework – C#, Visual Basic etc., to come to action. These technologies provide abstraction to many things such as the transaction management, security, resource pooling etc., by taking assistance of some application servers such as Weblogic, Glassfish, JBoss etc.

3. Design the layout of the web-site

     Using CSS design a layout of your web-site and maintaining consistency through out the web-site is an important accept to be kept in mind. Design the layout by setting “visible borders“

(Eg:

.header {border: 1px solid red;}

.container {border: 1px solid green;})

to the different sections of the website. Use of floats and clearing them is very important when including pictures in the web-site. Once the layout is decided the borders can be removed.

4. Adding the information on the web-site

     With the data that was gathered before the start of designing the website, putting them into the different parts of the web-site would a easy task. Though styling them using CSS is still a challenging task to be conquered.

5. Choosing the colors

     To make the pages of a website visually appealing to new and existing users, first of all a color scheme has to be decided. A consistent use of colors is necessary. The colors can be of matching hues or they may completely differ from one another. Do not use too many colors in a single page. Also, choose the background and foreground text color in contrast. If both the colors are priety much the same then it would be difficult for the user to read the contents of the web-page.

6. Page Navigation

     A web-page must be designed in such way that end user can navigate from one page to another easily. The links and hyperlinks on the website should be so placed that the users can easily look up for their desired pages or information.

7. Web-hosting

     Finally when everything is put-together, its time to find some web-hosting service provider. There are lot of service providers who provide it at some cost or even free services. Deciding on the web-hosting service provider is individuals choice.

 

“Hey I finally finished my first blog. It isn’t bad for a start….Many more to follow… Stick on……”

I love the character Hasini

To start off she is an Enthusiastic, full of vigor, bubbly bubbly, cute, sweet, small, big mouthed girl brought up only by her father. She had lost her mother in her childhood. Though his father was a drunkard he took care of her daughter very well. She is a comical character always bringing a smile in you whenever you see her. Her presence in the room is sufficient to fill the aroma with happiness. She is very infectious with her smile.

She plays with kids in and around her house after college and learns cute pharases and blind believes from the kids. She finds her happiness through the kids she plays with and the one who appreciate for what she is.

She carries herself around most of the time with a nice top and a skirt to college. She is very friendly with everyone who comes across in her life. She hates mathematics and always keeps bunking the classes. She thinks that a girl should never be tortured with so many math problems. She is an angel always in her own world and I just love her because she does what she feels like. For instance she just travels 10 to 15 km just to have a cup of coffee. She is a crazy ice-cream lover looking out for ice cream all alone during the mid nights. 

She loves her boy friend because he just appreciates for what she is and loves her more than anything. Nothing about the boy  because this is about the character of hasini that I am in love with.

Watch the movie when you get time. Nice movie with family values and also about love.