Developers - They know 'everything'!

Sure to give you a hearty laugh. This is something that we see so very often in IT service shops!

Dream Destination for 'Belly' Lovers

My curiosity for aviation reached a higher level when on my recent first trip to US, I was luckily on board a British Airways Boeing 747-400 Jumbo Jet.

Photo Courtesy -  www.airplane-pictures.net/

At first glance from the gate where I was about to board, I thought it was just another aircraft and seemed bigger just because I was so close. Once inside, looking at the stairs to the upper deck, I realized what seemed big was actually THE ROYALLY MIGHTY one. Having seated, I had to turn my neck a whole 120 degrees to get a complete view of the humongous wing span.

The Jumbo Jet is one of the fastest commercial carrier and is known for its long haul and large passenger carrying capacity.

Ok, now coming to the actual topic of this post... well, a video is worth 100 thousand words, and I will let this St. Maarten Caribbean Airport's video tell you where I want to head sometime in my life to have a dekko of the 'bellies'.

It could be either the bellies in the air, or the ones on the shore that could make the trip a real exciting one!
:-)

There is so much to slog...

There is so much to slog,
No time to even update this blog.

Time seems to be flying each day,
And I keep moving ahead, come what may.

Friends and colleagues advice me to rest,
And probably spend some quality time in my nest.

They do care for my well being,
But I know this slog is just for the time being.

With almost 16 hours a day spent at work last week,
This slog is not for the meek.

This slog should result in a release soon,
Else I run the risk of being termed a prune! :)

There is so much to slog...

Spouse code-review :)

Heard of code reviews in the form of peer review, manager review, architect review, but I recently leveraged and probably innovated a better form of it.

I was at home, trying to resolve a critical issue at midnight. It did need some algorithmic changes and, with my tired mind, I knew I would blow up at least a couple of scenarios.
So, faced with this situation, I just looped in my ever cooperative wifey (she does follow this blog, so you know I have to use nice words :P).

Sitting down with her, she understood the scenario in a jiffy. And then we went through the loops covering almost all possible scenarios and voila, I had indeed missed a more than a couple of scenarios.
With no existing unit-tests sadly in place for this code, the review certainly helped. We spent about 40 minutes on this, and we had put together an flawless piece of code.

Thanks wifey, you were the technical savior that night!

Must I say now, code review begins at home?

Don't fear the code, fear the licensing terms!

I was trying to modify some open source Javascript library today, when I realized that even if I modify and make it work as per my needs, that is only half the job well-done.

The product which uses the library might not be still shippable because of the library's licensing terms. And eventually, all the smart work done to modify the library would be just SHIFT-DELETED down a small recycle bin  :(

Just something to beware of when one takes up ambitious things like library modification.

On the lines of a popular bollywood dialogue, I'd say - "Code se darr nahi lagta sir, License se lagta hai..." :)

Toilet water put to good use by Google!

Yes, that's true, they use it for cooling the heat generated by their data centers.
Came across this interesting piece of information as I was browsing through some of my routine reads.

Of course, the objective might be to save money, but still that deed must be doing quite some good to save the natural resource.

May be I will not use regular water for my car's battery and wash-wipe system anymore, instead will ask the service guys to pour some toilet water... !!

Source: Arstechnica

Engineering habits die hard!

Been a little less than a decade since I graduated as a Bachelor of Engineering (actually, I feel old when I make that statement :-)). 
Coming to the point, some habits which got cultivated during those days out of either tight schedule or lackadaisical attitude during the beginning of semesters still have themselves clinged to me. 


There are at least a couple of them which I can relate to...
Firstly, procrastinating things right till the time either it's too late or till it's right there on the edge of the cliff. I still do not submit my reimbursement proofs or don't pay my utility bills till it's the last day or even a day later :P. 
Probably, it goes well with the habit of having to submit assignments on the last day during semesters. I remember we were so occupied during the whole semester with either assignments or fun, that the only time to study was during the 15-21 days before the semester actually commenced.


Secondly, the habit of staying awake late nights - No engineer true to his salt would say he/she hasn't stayed up late nights during the 4 years :-) 
Having just killed time with friends or having professors kill us over assignments and submissions during the whole semester, there was no other option but to burn the midnight oil.
I can still never ever get up early, and would hate it really if someone makes me get up before the sun is at 30 degrees to the horizon! On the other hand, I can stay awake the whole night and beat someone hands down at that :-) (wow, what a proud feeling!) :P


And then of course there are a host of other good habits that engineering has helped inculcate too, will keep them for another post.


Cheers to the habits and folks with whom I spent some of the best years of my life!