Idle/Random/whatever Thoughts of a Demented/Idle/Whatever Mind

For the past some days I have been cycling to work and overall its been a pleasant experience as yet. I thought I would share some of the learnings with this post. So here it goes in no particular order 1. Make sure your tyres have enough pressure in them. If it gets low, it will become difficult to ride it. 2. Make the seat position such that you can peddle on the full. It gives you more power and also prevents what’s called Biker’s Knee. By instinct we would like it such that our feet reach the ground easily. Never go by that. 3. Cycle fearlessly. Be on the left side of the road as much and possible, but never go to the extreme left. It might land you in trouble. You can surely take minor panga from the faster automobile users. 4. If in places like Bangalore, where you have too much ups and downs, keep trying different alternate routes so that you can take maximum advantage of the slope. 5. Dont wear headphone. You might not find out whats happening on the road. Sometimes I...

Barcamp Bangalore is one of those events which I just wait for. Its a time when I rejuvenate my thought process which is drained thanks to the often hectic work at office. Also this is one place where geeks can feel at home and talk about anything under the sun. Its pretty cool that its not just Tech thats discussed but also other topics close to us, like politics and life. Like most times, the paper wiki was filled completely as soon as it was put up. I actually saw a few people going disappointed with not being able to put up their talk. And like most other times, it started with the intro session for the first timers. This time it was Pradeep BV taking charge and explaining it to the first timers, what barcamp is all about. After that it was realized that one of the four rooms were actually not available for Barcampers. Anyways another great thing that happened was that an Impromptu Sessions paper wiki was put up. Amazingly it too was filled in a matter of minutes, it was put up...

Contd from here (I am sorry but I am really drowning in work right now ) Ok after lunch it was time for another round of sessions. This time there were supposed to be some parallel session. This meant you win some, you loose some. But its fine with barcamps. To make sure people are awake, alive and kicking, Anil, COO, Aditi Technologies, dumped his usual upper level management fundas and let loose a volley of Shayaris, with a twist. I sorry I dont recall any(Ya its been a long time too ) Next in line was Aashish Solanki a.k.a. Net Bramha with an interesting topic, Art and Science of Web Design. It was more of discussion. Some interesting points were Differentiate between structure and skin. Something which is good for you might not be good for others. Getting their requirements is important. An interesting comment from Aashish was "IE is the Labour Pain of Web Development". Why well, most of you time goes in checking if the page is render...

It was time again DCamp or Design Camp Bangalore.  Amit Pande, Sarit, Muthu , Anil Gupta among others worked hard to get this event going. I must tell you that I had an awesome time there. The presentations there were truly awesome. Let give a short summary of the things as they happened at the DCamp, though Vinodhn already has kind of everything on twitter . So heres how the event unfolded for me. I happily landed and Mekhri Circle expecting Aditi's office to be close by. So I begin walking from there towards Cauvery Circle. Cool I was looking for directions and I see someone looking at me from an auto. Oh ok I recognize this guy, hmmm....ok he is Gilberto from Thoughworks. Fine he is going to DCamp but is lost and does not know where is it happening. Ok fine I said, let walk to towards the Aditi Office and let so we walk. A few meters down the road, there is Muthu and Sudhindra at the gate of Aditi. So next thing we do is register and head for the terrace where the event was ha...

Well there has been a lot hoola hoo over the recent releases of Firefox and Opera. But here are certain things that still suck and would like them to be removed. 1. Better plugins and make them such that they dont hang that tab or window. 2. Download accelerator be integrated in the download manager of the browser itself. Hardly makes sense keeping them dumb. 3. Super fast start is not possible for various technical reasons but a preloader program would definitely be kind of must have. 4. Get more screen real estate to the page and make rest of the things like toolbar, menubar and optionally even status bar visible on a need basis like the playbar in video players in full screen mode. 5. Subscribing to an RSS feed to Google Reader or iGoogle is  a dumb two step process now. Google Reader or iGoogle be made two different options. 6. Tabs must have a 3D effect or something really cool. Switching like pages is so yesterday. 7. Make download dialog unobtrusive. Make it so...

5th November(instead of 8th because of Diwali) was celebrated as World Usability Day. Bangalore was not untouched by the phenomenon, though it would rather had been a major thing. But clearly with over 120(My guess) it was not ignorable event. Long time since the usability aspects have been ignored by the technologists. iPhone and iPod have clearly shown the way. They were nothing radical in concept but they infact radically changed the usability part of the respective equipments. I must add here that I was late for the event. But none the less I did have the opportunity to hear Mr MP Ranjan on Designing. His take on the Design for the user and design in various fields. Pretty much the whole talk is online at his blog http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/ . But it was real experience to hear it from the horse's mouth. Next Sarit from HFI presented the findings of usability test of Indian Railways Online reservation site at http://www.irctc.co.in/ . Ironically it was the awarde...