Boondocks Arena

A Trip to Golden Temple Vellore

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:23:00 -0400

Location:

No one knows about this place much but this is one of the beautiful temples i have visited. It is very charismatic and beautiful. A wonderful place to go over a small trip.

Journey:

We left Banglaore, Indiranagar near about 10 in the morning. Started over with a delight and after having a sound sleep friday night. Took the domlur flyover and kicked our journey towards hosur road via koramangala. The new flyover bypassing the whole big traffic line of Electronic City added fun to the journey. With in minutes we were out of bangalore. The road is sweet. Took the Atibble road (NH7) and continued on the Chennai Highway. Reached Hosur and headed to Krishnagiri. This was my third journey on the chennai highway and it is always fun to drive on those wide roads which i generally find back in delhi. After driving on conjusted roads of bangalore it feels so comfortable and joyful driving on the wide roads of chennai. The road is beautiful. In total you will find four toll gates ( if you are using the fly over of Electronic City ). Once you reach the fourth toll gate at Pallikonda, driving two kilometeres further ahead you will find a board inidcating Sripuram Golden temple. On the way you will find many boards pointing out to other temples but wait till u see the Sripuram board. We reached the temple in three hours somewhere around 1.
There is a place to park the car in the temple. So dont park your car outside on the road. I initially parked my car outside and left my shoes in the car, had to walk on the burning road and that was not good. Take the car in the temple, dont leave your shoes in the car. There are counters to keep your shoes. Leave other things like camera, purse, and other valueables in the car or you can even leave them at the counter for valuable things. Different counters for different items and all at nominal price.
Once we were done with the parking and other work. Went to take the tickets. A thing which i saw in most of South Indian temples, there are charges for different types of rows. The one with the higher cost takes u to the God in the fastest time.
We selected the 1001 ticket which had a Pooja for us sitting in front of the God with Pujari giving swarn Pushp and prasaad at the end. Other options were a 520 ticket which has something deleted from the package or go a 250 one which is not present always.
The aangan of temple is beautiful. It is constucted in the shape of a star. So walking u will go in a zig zagg manner. Construction is nice, temple is neat and clean. Every turn u will find milk and drinks being served to you, paying a nominal amount.
Reached the temple, it looks very beautiful, full of gold. It looks like a Raja’s Mahal. And around 6 the lights of the temple are turned on. The temple is surrounded with water and at night the reflection of temple in water makes it more beautiful. With only 30 minutes of walk we reached the temple. Pujari asked the names of all the family members and did puja for 15 minutes. Came out, had lunch in the restaraunt in side the temple.
Finishing everything , headed to yelagiri which was around 80 Kms from the temple. Over a good experience.

PORT FOURCHON, LA - MAY 28: U.S. President Barack Obama picks up...

Sun, 30 May 2010 02:01:35 -0400

PORT FOURCHON, LA - MAY 28: U.S. President Barack Obama picks up balls of tar while touring the beach May 28, 2010 in Port Fourchon, Louisiana. The oil spill resulting from the Deepwater Horizon disaster now officially ranks as the worst in U.S. history. (via Photo from Getty Images).

Customer Care Numbers

Sat, 08 May 2010 04:17:00 -0400

HDFC Bank Credit Cards, Bangalore :- 080-66224332

Pizza Hut, Bangalore :- 080-39883988

Dominos, Bangalore :- 080-44448888

HDFC Bank Phone Banking :- 080-6600 3333

ISBT Shimla :- 0177-2658765

ISBT Chandigarh, Himachal Roadways :- 0172-2722625

Buffalo Theory

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:14:00 -0500

“Buffalo Theory:-

A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That’s why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”

shekhar: “Be you. Find you. Be happy with that.”

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 08:37:44 -0500

shekhar:

“Be you. Find you. Be happy with that.”

HTML Editing and Java Script

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:35:00 -0500

Slicing HTML

Slicing HTML involves playing with the stuff on the HTML Page like “divs”, “select boxes”, “input boxes” and much-much more. To start with, Some simple points :-

Every element is associated with the ID. ID is used to access that object on the HTML page. And document.getElementById(“element_name”) will give you the power to access that element on the page. Now you are just one step away from altering/modifying the HTML page.

document.getElementByTagsName(“div”) will give you all the divs on the page. Again one step away from editing the page. Isnt is simple?

Inner HTML can be used to set the content of the page. The good/bad thing about Inner html is that it over writes what ever content is already associated with that element.

Document Object Model:-

With DOM the page looks like a tree with each element acting as the node of the tree.

For the above tree this is the HTML.

Hey Akshat

Main Properties to consider in the Dom tree are nodeValue, nodeType, firstChild, lastChild, childNodes

Document.getElementByTagsName(“body”)[0].childNodes[1].lastChild points to strong.

Changing the node text:-

var node = document.getElementBId(“story”);

while(node.firstchild) node.removechild(node.firstchild);

node.appendchild(document.createTextNode(“OK Finally”));

Creating a new Element:-

Var paragraph =document.createElement(p) – Just specify the tag name here

paragraph.appendchild(document.createTextNode(“The text in the paragraph”));

document.getElementbyId(“story”).appendchild(paragraph);

How much user Interface matters?

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:50:00 -0500

User Interface. A place where user gets to know about your services. The services that you are offering.

The user interface does matter a lot to the people. Since they make the perception about the website and the product and everything from the user interface. If the user interface looks bad there is no chance that u can do well. It does not mean that if you just have good user interface things will work but make it comfortable for the user. Make him feel he is at a very comfortable place. Getting what he wants.

I would say if you have to design a user interface put your self in the place of the customer and see if you will like the user interface if you land on this website.

Few simple and intuitive tips for good user interface:-

Consistency:- Users adapt to a website. Consistency in the user interface helps them create a mental model of the website. in the mind. For Example links are of blue color, Headings and important things are in green. Make the shape of buttons consistent. And do not try to innovate in a “different” way. Simple intution should solve most of the purpose.
Easy Navigation:- Easy navigation gives the user simple way to hop from pages. Interlinked content, Nice relevant pages shown on the right or bottom, Filters to go back up a level and go deep one level are simple things that we want to fulfill for the user.
Think the users on the website are dumb:- There should be one section which explains how the user can use the website. Putting slides using slide share or videos using You Tube would help the user to understand your product well and prevent him to make any use less assumptions that might build up in his mind other wise.
Write the messages and labels in an effective manner.
Use the colors and theme for the website properly. Too much colors make the users feel annoyed. Too less makes the website boring. So use colors but in a controlled and theme way. Don’t try to make it too flashy always follow the KISS principle. It works for sure.
Humans do mistakes:- Expecting your users to make mistakes is one good way to handle errors that might happen otherwise. Handle all the errors properly.
Proper alignment and Proper structure.

I think most of the things are simple and intutive but simple things do matter alot.

"For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks."

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:04:42 -0500

“For a tree to become tall it must grow tough roots among the rocks.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche quotes

Reblogged:- hiten

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:03:58 -0500

Reblogged:- hiten

Think Big

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 07:57:00 -0500

As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.

"I can because I think I can."

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:46:36 -0500

“I can because I think I can.”

Super Cool Google Chrome with extensions

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:41:00 -0500

Google Google Google Everywhere ! The new google browser makes life so simple that if you use firefox after using chrome it feels so heavy. I have not used Firefox from long. I use firefox sometimes, just for the simple reason firebug works with it. Google Chrome promised it will make web faster, pages will load faster and it is happening perfectly.

Most of the people use firefox and are so called “fire-fox lovers”. Why they use it? One simple reason is an exhaustive list of firefox extensions. But the extensions will not help them survive boss. They have to launch a stable version of it. Firefox’s recent releases have made it even worse. The newer versions had memory leaks, tendancy to crash every now and then.

Google thought to hit first on the points where firefox sucked and then make more and more things over it. “Toppings over the Piza” So first they launched a stable version unlike firefox which crashed a lot. Now they are up with the few extensions. The best thing about the extensions is that You do not have to worry about the browsers performance.

When ever u install a new extension You dont have to restart the browser unlike firefox !

Few good ones extensions to start with are Developer Mini which helps you the basic development stuff,Compose that allows you to compose the emails faster, Search allows you to search into any of the search engine Wikipedia or Yahoo or Google. Few other ones are Google Task for Chrome, Chrome IE Tab, Delicious for bookmarking.. Explore Google chrome extensions

Now lets see what firefox does to survive the competition. I think the firefox users are going to drop !

Google Launches Google Dictionary

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:19:00 -0500

Google is up with Google Dictionary. I wonder what will happen to all the companies who are in the dictionary space. Dictionary.com, Answers.com, Word Web. They will all mostly die in some time.They will not survive the competition because Google has provided all new simple interface with multi lingual support. You search for a phrase you also get images relevant to it. The product is no doubt awesome !

Google is spreading its branches in all the directions. Google is there in health, Google is there in search, Google is there in Videos, Google is there in online document sharing( Etherpad ), Google is there on mars, Google is there on moon. Google is there in what ever you think of today. They have products like analytics, ad planner which tells them trends of most of the companies. The traffic, The Page Views, The E-commerce and what not. They have huge data. So it becomes simple for them to do what ever they think of today.

Now Lets see how things change when they launch the new chrome OS. How viral it becomes that time will tell. But doing all this one day will come when Internet will mean “Google only”. And they will put a board for other companies “Entry Restricted, Trespassers will be prosecuted.” lolz..!

"Control Your life, Dont let life control You !"

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:20:40 -0500

“Control Your life, Dont let life control You !”

Awesome !

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:18:22 -0500

Awesome !

"Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence."

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:55:40 -0500

“Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.”

- Murphy’s Laws !

Internet,"We" and "Free"

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:43:14 -0500

People still look for things on Internet for free. We still are not adapted and we don’t want to buy any services from internet by even paying a little amount. When we google something we do append the word “free” to it. When we need a software we look for trial versions of it. When we want to listen to songs we download the pirated versions and even watching movies we want to see them for free.

The same thing happened with our portal www.healthcaremagic.com. Whenever we turned the knob of free consultation with a doctor. The number of people coming to chat grew enormously. Out of so many people landing on our web site every second guy took a consultation. The very next day we turned the knob off and made it mandatory for users to pay and consult, the number of conversions that happened showed a great fall. One thing i realized out of it. ”how much painful it would be for people who are running businesses and trying to make money by giving free services for trial”.

Well we cant change anything. The other way to see around it is why do we look for free stuff.? Since we think it is not worth paying for it.? Or we have developed a habit of free. It is engraved in our mind, Internet means free? The answer to this is “I will buy it from Internet if i see a great value for money in it as a customer” If i am paying an amount x i should at least get x amount of benefit out of it plus something more.”

Lets take an example of any product X. As a consumer. I will search over internet. I will find out all the options. Then i will finalize one website. I will for sure go till the payment page, if there are some options to try out discounts I might do that also but when I come to the final step, many questions start revolving in my mind.

1. Is the guy charging the money to me, going to give me a good service.?
2. Can i still find a better alternative ?
3. Is this web site a spam / cheat ?

and so many other stuff. And with in seconds i will click on the cross button at the top. If you try to notice all the questions that will come to the mind. They will revolve around “trust and value for money”. As a consumer i am looking for trust. As a consumer i want to see the clear cut picture of benefits i get out of buying this product. So i can say the crux of selling something online is trust and value for money. Using badges, showing symbols like customer satisfaction, giving them chance to ask for money back if they don like the service, Writing lines telling we will make sure you get the best service, giving each customer a personalized feel are some things which will help. So the gist is, trying to build a cozy environment for people, so that they don’t hesitate to buy things from you.

A nice capture !

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:43:10 -0500

A nice capture !

"Follow your heart !"

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:43:00 -0500

“Follow your heart !”