as i see it

Time to run

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:07:00 +0000

This January I will be running the Dream Run at the Mumbai Marathon for Rang De, a cause I have been supporting for some time now.

Rang De is social initiative that supports rural entrepreneurs across India by providing them with low cost loans for their businesses. Typically they run eateries, cottage industries, vegetable shops and so on. Since otherwise, their only access to capital is the local moneylender, it is anyone's guess on how their life shapes up after that.

Rang De is an innovative attempt to break this cycle of poverty. Through the online portal, individuals can make social investments by lending small sums of money to entrepreneurs of their choice. I invite you to www.rangde.org to understand more about how it works.

For the past year i have been an active volunteer with RangDe and have been involved in various activities from fund raising, publicity to some field work interacting with borrowers and field partners. In this time I have personally seen the difference Rang De is making in the rural landscape and am now a firm supporter of the cause.

Here are two ways in which you can support my initiative

1 Become a social investor on rangde. Invest any amount starting from just Rs 100. Instructions here http://bit.ly/dXxGfa .

Understand rangde this way and understand how investing is so much more effective than charity. You receive the money you invest back in a year.

2 Raise a pledge as small or large as you please. Heres my online giving page http://bit.ly/fQ2ZxY.
Since this is a donation, the money will not be returned to you, but will be invested and reinvested over and over to fund needy entrepreneurs.

Here's a list of people who've support my initiative so far. Will keep this list updated.

Kavita Gaitonde

Anil Puliyeril

Uday Shenoy

Vilas Shelar

Makarand Pundalik

Rajarshi Chanda

Vrushali Kulkarni

Leena Patki Saha

Pushpa Gaitonde

Thanks a lot everybody for the great response.

Amount raised so far

Pledges worth Rs 17500

Social Investements worth Rs 17000.

(Some people have prefered to keep info about their investments private, so thats not counted)

Rang De Conclave '10

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:38:00 +0000

I attended the Rang De Conclave '10 at Mahabalipuram, Chennai over the weekend. The conclave is the time of the year when the entire Rang De ecosystem consisting of the Rang De team, field partners & volunteers from across India come together to evaluate their plans, learn from each other and plan ahead.

The conclave featured presentations from the field partners about their work and the challenges they face. As Rang De has continued to grow over the years, it has made a conscious effort to be selective in the organisations it supports. It now partners organisations that genuinely believe in Rang De principles of honesty, transparency and a commitment to reach out to communities needing access to low cost micro credit.

As they all presented their way of reaching out and supporting the rural population, they realized that they had a lot to learn from each other. Each had a unique story to bring to the table. As the discussion veered to the current microcredit crisis in India, we concluded that there was definitely a need to regulate microcredit in India but an effort must be taken not to stifle genuine efforts in the process.

As an individual, getting an opportunity to interact with individuals from these organisations and understand their working models was a great learning experience for me.

The event also for the first time got together the Rang De Volunteer Chapters across India to a brainstorming session to identify our role in the Rang De story and how we were an important link as Rang De plans to reach out to the masses and bring in a culture of social investing.

The Rang De team followed up the discussions by showcasing the road map it has planned for the entire team for the coming years. The Rang De team has a long way to go to achieve its dream of "Making affordable micro credit a reality", but is definitely geared up for it !

The Colour of Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:38:00 +0000

"Its time for scheduling a field trip", was the subject of the mail, that made me quickly drop my work and take notice . It was Diksha from the Rang De Chennai office, planning the an evaluation field trips to one of the Rang De field partners. I always look forward to Rang De field trips as an opportunity to interact with small entrepreneurs bringing about a change in rural India, their unending enthusiasm and the difference a small social investment can make.

It was my second field trip with Rang De , this time to Pusad where the Rang De field partner SAGRAS is based. After a long and delayed train journey 7 of us fieldtrippers reached Akola on friday afternoon, only to take on another bumpy but enjoyable bus ride to Pusad. As we reached the SAGRAS office late evening, 7 hours later than we were expected, we were surprised to find their entire team patiently waiting to welcome us. Over a cup of tea the entire team introduced themselves and gave us all the latest updates on their work and the various projects they work on.

Early next morning we were all excited as we set off to visit each of the borrowers individually. We would enquire about their business, get updates on how the loan was utilized and also get their feedback on the entire loan process. Each of the borrowers has an interesting story to tell.

As we saw the working of a cycle shop, I couldn't stop doing some calculations in my mind. With a loan of a mere 3000 Rs, the woman bought two new cycles that she now rents out, getting a fixed income of 50 a day. And i don't think twice before spending 3000 Rs on a single dinner at a fancy restaurant !

The next lady we met runs a tailoring business. She had not only expanded her business with the loan but now manages to support her daughter in doing a diploma is fashion technology. And you'd think only people in cities dream big !!

Another family just managing to make ends meet with their small income distributing milk, has now started a business of making paneer and selling it to the local hotels for a decent profit.

As we went on with these visits we were struck by the optimism of the women folk. Each one had big dreams for their families and their business, and surprisingly educating their kids was the foremost on their agenda. It is only when they get stuck in the cycle of debt and in the fight to make ends meet that they lose track of their priorities. They just need a hand in kick starting their journey, someone who would trust them and guide them.

Mentoring is another area where Rang De's field partner SAGRAS is making a huge difference. At the core of SAGRAS are people who have been working in the area for more than 20 years and have a very good reputation with the local people. Apart from arranging funds for the businesses with help from Rang De, SAGRAS also arranges mentoring sessions that train the women in business basics.

Now thats a real change from all the controversial micro credit firms that have recently been in the spotlight. It great to know that Rang De associates itself with organisations like SAGRAS.

As we started our long journey back home, we had a lot of thoughts to discuss & experiences to share. I seemed to have met more entrepreneurs in a day than in my entire life !

This field trip had once again reminded us how a small gesture from our side can make a world of a difference to someones life. And Rang De was doing the job of connecting us to these deserving folk. Keep it up Rang De.

Adding custom LocatorBuilders to selenium ide

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:17:00 +0000

Background : Selenium is an open source tool for web application testing.
Selenium IDE is a Firefox plugin allows you to record tests in browser and run them from the browser or as a java test ( or any other languages ) using Selenium Remote Control libraries.
You can extend functionality of Selenium IDE by writing Event Handlers, Locator Builders, Command Builders, Custom Format all in JavaScript.
For more about that http://wiki.openqa.org/display/SIDE/Writing+extensions.

More on Locator Builders
Locator Builders decide how HTML elements in a page are identified.
eg id attribute is a default locator builder.
So while recording a test an html element attribute selenium using the id attribute to recognize the element you changed, clicked etc.

Writing a new locator builder

You can instruct selenium to use a custom attribute to identify the elements in your page. Default Locator builders can be found at chrome://selenium-ide/content/locatorBuilders.js

Here's the js code to add a location builder for an attribute myattr

LocatorBuilders.add('myattr', function(e) {
if (e.hasAttribute('myattr')) {
if (e.getAttribute("myattr")) {
return '//' + e.nodeName + '[@myattr=\'' +
e.getAttribute("myattr") + '\']';
}
}
return null;
});

Since there are plenty of existing location builders, you need to specify the order in which they are invoked. This is how its done

LocatorBuilders.order = ['myattr','id', 'link', 'name', 'dom:name',
'xpath:link','xpath:img', 'xpath:attributes', 'xpath:href',
'dom:index', 'xpath:position'];

Complete code: mylocator.js

LocatorBuilders.add('myattr', function(e) {
if (e.hasAttribute('myattr')) {
if (e.getAttribute("myattr")) {
return '//' + e.nodeName + '[@myattr=\'' +
e.getAttribute("myattr") + '\']';
}
}
return null;
});

LocatorBuilders.order = ['myattr','id', 'link', 'name', 'dom:name',
'xpath:link','xpath:img', 'xpath:attributes', 'xpath:href',
'dom:index', 'xpath:position'];

Steps to add the extension code to selenium IDE

Write locator code in a new .js file

Specify the path in "Selenium IDE extensions" field in Selenium IDE > Options and restart selenium IDE

Writing an xml document to a file & indent it

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:40:00 +0000

Heres a simple code snippet in java for writing an xml document created
to an xml file.
Seems quite a common task but had to google quite a bit to get it right ....



Document doc = null; // load your DOM into this document object

TransformerFactory transfactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();

Transformer transformer = transfactory.newTransformer();

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
StreamResult destination = new StreamResult(writer);
DOMSource source = new DOMSource(doc);

transformer.transform(source, destination);

String xmlString = writer.toString();

OutputStream os;

byte buf[] = xmlString.getBytes();
os = new FileOutputStream("output.xml");

for(int i=0;i
 os.write(buf[i]);
}

os.close();
buf = null;

Modifications to the code so that the output xml file is properly indented.


TransformerFactory transfactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();

// code for indenting
transfactory.setAttribute("indent-number", new Integer(2));

Transformer transformer = transfactory.newTransformer();

// code for indenting
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
transformer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "4");

Kandil 2009

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:56:00 +0000

Shantaram Waingankar wrote at 9:26pm on October 19th, 2009 My kandil made from 212 old cd's

Radhika Wagle wrote at 9:28pm on October 19th, 2009 wow!!...HOW!!??

Priyanka Potdar wrote at 10:08pm on October 19th, 2009 WOW!

Jaideep Mahajan wrote at 10:37pm on October 19th, 2009 wat wrk .....superb

Aaron D'souza (MICA India) wrote at 10:39pm on October 19th, 2009 send me the image in full resolution

Shantaram Waingankar wrote at 11:09pm on October 19th, 2009 i'll take a good pic tomm in hi res nd send it

Anil Raju Puliyeril wrote at 11:56pm on October 19th, 2009 Awesome man. U did some phtotshop editing kya?? Coz the light effect etc seems to be superb...

Shantaram Waingankar wrote at 12:03am on October 20th, 2009 dude .... come over tomorrow if u cant believe it

Anil Raju Puliyeril wrote at 12:13am on October 20th, 2009 Hehe just joking... Too good man just upload sm better pic so that we can relish it even more...

Gayatri Singh wrote at 12:46am on October 20th, 2009 Hey.. That's awesome...& Happy Diwali to u !

Darshan Divecha wrote at 1:21am on October 20th, 2009 same 2 u!

Kunal Modi wrote at 6:29am on October 20th, 2009 finally you used the cds.. great.. Happy New Year..

Kitesh Jain wrote at 2:08pm on October 20th, 2009 awesome man nd happy new year

Soni mami (UShenoy@aol.com) wrote at 5:00 PM on October 24, 2009 neat way of being creative. Loved the creation.

Nikhil Patwardhan wrote at 8:13 PM on October 24, 2009 Nice!! :-) How was Diwali?

Vikram wrote at 8:26 PM on October 24, 2009 Boss - this is quite amazing. very creative!

purnit chhajer wrote at 11:06 PM on October 24, 2009 hey nice wrk yaar...it can be a nice go green venture, wat say?? where r u wrkin now? and happy diwali!!!

Kavita Dabke wrote at 6:49 PM on Sun, Oct 25, 2009 Kandil masta ahe! Khuupach creative idea!

Vrunda Modi wrote

at 5:37 AM on October 26, 2009 I love ur Kandil.=]

Kadambari Raut wrote at 10:52 AM on Mon, Oct 26, 2009 "jr. Edison", awsm kandil.. fantabulous!!!

Vansa wrote at 12:31 AM on Thu, Oct 22, 2009 wow...that's really pretty,Shantaram!!! your kandil

rangde.org

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:57:00 +0000

RangDe.Org Film from rahulchittella on Vimeo.

Startup city Mumbai 09

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:02:00 +0000

Heres an invite to Startup City thats been organised in Mumbai for the first time on 12th of this month. A must attend for all wanna be entrepreneurs especially ones eyeing the Internet/ IT sector.

SiliconIndia

Hello,

wherein there were 4000 attendees and 150 Startups, siliconindia is organizing Startupcity on Saturday September 12, 2009 at Hotel Rangsharda, Bandra (West), Mumbai. It's by far the largest and most exciting event of its kind in Mumbai.

To attend this event, register FREE at http://www.siliconindia.com/startupcity_mumbai/index.php

It is your chance to know the building of cool startups as their founders come and share their journey with us.

Watch live product demonstrations
Get a peek into cutting edge technologies
Lay hands on the best-of-breed solutions
Meet young, energetic, passionate geeks
Experience the culture of innovation in small companies
Visionary Keynotes
In-depth Panel Discussion

TIME: 8.45 AM to 4.30 PM
WHEN: Saturday, September 12, 2009
WHERE: Hotel Rangsharda, Bandra (West), Mumbai

CONFIRMED STARTUPS: Adoroi, Aegis, Ashvatec, Auxano Technologies, Bolohealth.com, Content Syndicate, Colayer, Crederity, Indictrans Technologies, Iken, Jiobindaas, Mapmy India, Mind Technologies, Mobien Technologies, Mobiwik, Naaptol, Nitman Software, Neev Technologies, plugHR, Prescient Technologies, Quantum Pages, Rudraksha Technology, Sampada Software Solutions, Signure Technologies, Soft Script Solutions (Find Guru), Web Bazaar, Virtual Rack, Viral Technologies, VelaiSMS, YoKnowledge.com (Hayagriva Software), YoPedia

Founders of these Startups will pitch their business plans to the investors panel.

Some of the Investors who will be present: Accel Partners, Artiman Ventures, Axon Ventures, Battery Ventures, Bluerun Ventures, Canaan Partners, DFJ, Epiphany Ventures, Greylock, Helion Ventures, IDG, Indian Angel Network, Inventus Capital, Jafco Asia Ventures, Lightspeed, Mercatus Capital, Mumbai Angels, NEA-Indo US Ventures, Nexus India Capital, Ojas Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Reliance Capital, Seeed Fund, Sequioa Capital, Singularity Ventures, UTI Ventures, Venture East, Walden International.

A close-door CEO Conclave will bring CEOs, presidents and company owners together for an invigorating exchange of information, ideas and insights. Leaders of over 300 technology companies (startups, domestic IT companies and multinational companies) will attend this event. The roundtable will facilitate an informal discussion amongst the senior management about the best practices of building technology companies, what works, what doesn?t work, potential pitfalls and other challenges. They delve into candid, solution- seeking discussions focused on CEO-level issues - the challenges and pressures unique to top-level management.

To attend this event, register FREE at
http://www.siliconindia.com/startupcity_mumbai/index.php

This is undoubtedly the biggest event for startups. There's no better way to get a good sense of the product ecosystem!

Thanks
siliconindia Team

a second glance at regular expressions

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:17:00 +0000

i remember learning all about regular expressions, grammer and the like in college but it was only last week when i looking for a quick method for email parsing and validation that i realised its practical use.

Using a good regex engine and a well-writen regular expression, one can perform all kinds of text-manipulation tasks. Regular expressions can be used to identify for certain conditions or charater sequences in a text file or data stream.

The most common place you'd find regular expressions is email address validation and search - replace functions . A search for " email validation using regular expressions" on google would prove my point.

So what do you need to start using regular expressions ? nothin you dont already have. Regular expressions are supported by most languages and tools in use.

i've used the java.util.regex API in java.

so here's a simple example in java for email validation that should give you an idea of how regular expressions can be used.

public static void main(String[] args){

String email="svwaingankar@gmail.com";

email=email.trim();

// Email Address validation

Pattern p=Pattern.compile("[a-zA-Z]*[0-9]*@[a-zA-Z]*\\.[a-zA-Z]*");

/* If you need a more detailed validation

Pattern p=Pattern.compile("^[a-zA-Z][\\w\\.-]*[a-zA-Z0-9]@[a-zA-Z0-9][\\w\\.-]*[a-zA-Z0-9]\\.[a-zA-Z][a-zA- Z\\.]*[a-zA-Z]$");

Matcher m=p.matcher(email);

boolean result=m.matches();

if (result==true)

System.out.println( email + " is a VALID email address");

else

System.out.println( email + " is an INVALID email address");

}

What it means

[a-zA-Z]*[0-9]*@[a-zA-Z]*\\.[a-zA-Z]*

[a-zA-Z] --- any characted from the union of a to z and A-Z

[a-zA-Z]* --- the * means zero or more occurences

similarly for [0-9]*

\\. --- a dot ( \\ is escape character )

some more examples of character classes ( anything in [] )

[^x] - any character except x

[a-z && [x-z]] - x, or z ie- intersection

predefianed character classes

\d --- any digit

\w --- a word character ( ie [a-zA-Z_0-9])

. --- any character

for a detailed tutorial in check out http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/regex/index.html

Cons : Regular expressions are easier to write than they are to read. so use it only if there arent too many people apart from you maintaining the code.

insert images, html signature or just any html into gmail

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:59:00 +0000

Ever wondered how you can insert images or html into a gmail message ? gmail does not support html like yahoo or Outlook.

there's a simple solution using and website editor like googlepages.com or frontpage ( if you have microsoft office) .

Open up frontpage and paste the html code into the html view tab of the webpage. Then go to the preview tab and just use Ctrl+A to select the contents. Now just paste it into your gmail Compose page and your done.

If you want to insert an image first upload it somplace like picasa and then use this simple html
">

If you want to use googlepages instead of front page the procedure is just the same. Open a new web page. Click edit HTML and paste html. then go back and copy the preview.

Shift to ubuntu series : Try out Ubuntu 8.04 live CD

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:44:00 +0000

The first step in shifting to Ubuntu is trying the live CD version for a while. So here's small guide for first time users. The live CD version means that whenever you want to use Ubuntu you just pop in the CD and reboot the PC, you can then try out Ubuntu without affecting your computer in anyway. All you have to do is shut down, remove CD and restart comp to restore your PC to original condition and use Windows. No installation, no partitioning needed.

Step 1 Download Ubuntu 8.04 from here. download the desktop 8.04 LTS version for your PC configuration. the defaut selections on the page will mostly work for you. This version includes the Ubuntu installation + a live CD version. Next burn the downloaded iso image onto a CD using any CD writing software.
Step 2 Boot the live Ubuntu version throught the CD.
Just pop in the CD and restart your computer. It should now proceed with loading Ubuntu. If not, follow the steps below to ensure the PC boots from the Ubuntu CD and not into Windows.

How to change boot opitions ? ( you need to do this only once)
* Immediatelly on switching on the computer keep pressing the Esc button ( or
Del button on some PC's ). You'll see a boot prompt coming up.
* Look for a list in the prompt called a boot priority / boot order. Edit the list so
that your CD drive is first in the list and then your hard disc.
* Now select option Save Changes and Exit. It should now proceed to load Ubuntu.

Once Ubuntu boots you'll have a screen with options to try out live CD or install Ubuntu.
Select the first option thats "Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer".

Your done with this. Now go ahead with exploring Ubuntu.

Step 3 : Restoring your computer. Actually this might not even qualify as a step.
All you have to do is select shutdown option in Ubuntu and remove CD when its done. Its that simple.

Enjoy Ubuntu and once you are familiar you can go ahead with installing Ubuntu on your PC. That'll give you much better performance and let you personalise your Ubuntu and install other interesting software

For total newbie here are few softwares commonly used in Windows and their open source eqiuivalent you can try out in Ubuntu
Open Office Suite for Microsoft Office
Firefox browser for Internet Explorer
GIMP graphic editing s/w for Photoshop
RythmBox music player for Windows Media Player.
Archive manager for WinZip/ WinRar

Also try out interesting games and the file explorer in Ubuntu. Check out the dual desptop feature . You can decluster windows and organise your work into two seperate windows. You can shift windows using the option provided at the bottom right corner of ur desktop. Also try out the Windows+Tab shortcut to switch wondows to get a taste of the awesome UI if Ubuntu 8.04.

about me

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:22:00 +0000

Professionally, I am an amateur web developer, a java freak and an open source source enthusiast. I'm just graduating with a Bachelors degree in
Software Engineering from Mumbai University.
Love exploring new technologies. Expertise in java and j2ee web development. Worked on NetBeans plugin development and some Goolge API's in my final year. Currently exploring the Drupal web application framework and the Grizzly server.

Enjoy making websites and blogs. Love tinkering with Photoshop and Corel Draw and designed innumerable newsletters, magazines, posters etc in college. Great fan of Ubuntu and the raw power it gives me. And ofcourse Ubuntu, NetBeans and Firefox are the first things I install on my PC.

Personally, I enjoy photography, adventure travel, hiking, camping and painting. I have varied interests, from following indian politics to the stock market, and you will find many of my interests being talked about of my blog posts.

I've been exploring the remotest of villages, the beautiful beaches and trekking trails in konkan (the coastal regions of Maharashtra ), and really appreciate its beauty, its people and of course its food. Also trying my hand at some astronomy and bird watching recently.

Commit to the occasional social work that I believe in as something worth the time and effort of any human being.

I worship humour. . i like to be myself...and make a lot of friends...cant live without the net, good food and a phone..

Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na Review : youthful entertainer

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:39:00 +0000

Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na is a simple tale about a group of friends, it focuses on one couple that's in love, but is in a state of denial. Jai (Imran) and Aditi (Genelia) are ‘best friends’ and are extremely possessive of each and long for each other’s company but still wonder why close friends and parents believe that they are in love! So they set out to find themselves a special someone! However they do find their respective ‘special someone’ before they realize that they are in love with each other. Seems a recipe for a perfectly boring Bollwood style love story ? The movie might look like any other love story with some beaten-to-death clichés like the hero mounting on a horse and riding to an airport in the climax to stop his ladylove from leaving for the US. But its never been presented in such as great way – with a perfect dash of humour . Hats off for keeping the story simple and getting a perfect ensemble of characters (including horses) that chip in their bit to the story. Be it Ratna Pathak Shah as the admonishing mother of the protagonist, or Naseerudin Shah as the sword-wielding dead Rajput father who speaks from a photograph. Or be it Paresh Rawal as the typical Mumbai cop . Or be it Arbaaz Khan and Sohail Khan , two macho Rajputs, who ride horses to disco’s and jails. There is something about Genelia D'Souza , the way she smiles and the way she scowls. She has a fine blend of tom boyishness and femininity. She doesn’t have the face of a stunner, but it’s a face you’ll never get bored with. Genelia adds freshness and spontaneity to her scenes. Also, the mischievous look in her eyes conveys sorrow with equal ease. Wish to see more of her in Hindi movies! Imran has an unpretentious, honest face, clear eyes and a voice that is confident and also inhibited. He suits the role of a Rajput who can’t even kill a fly, forget about punching someone or seeing the inside of a jail. The young actors playing the bunch of friends are natural. It’s hard to notice any acting in their performance, its never difficult imitating oneself. Each friend represents a type yet none a stereotype. The music of the film is cheerful and energetic, by A.R. Rahman. Some of the numbers seem silly and amateurish rap ( read pappu cant dance song ) but you gotta see how its amazingly blends into the situation. The “Kabhi Kabhi Aditi Zindagi” is so different from the typical rehman style but still only he could create something like this. Its definitely gonna top the charts this year. So “jaane tu …” is a decent fare that takes me back to my recent collage days, when friends seem to be the be-all and end-all. I’d recommend it for an evening of pure entertainment ( don’t expect anything apart from that) .

Three mistakes of my life - stereotypical but worth a read

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:13:00 +0000

It was fun reading "The 3 mistakes of my life" like other two books of Chetan Bhagat. The feeling was like watching some masala movie..romance, emotions, friendship and finally a happy ending. Starting is quite a bit slow..but keeps your attention untill a dramatic ending.

The story : This book contains a story of a guy called Govind Patel who had dreamt of becoming a successful businessman. The book is loosely based on the three mistakes Govind made in his life.
What follows is a mix of cricket, religion, business, love and friendship. Govind sets up a sports shop along with his friends in the temple compound with Omi’s family’s help. The shop prospers as Ishan coaches young boys in cricket and Govind teaches maths to Ishan’s sister Vidya who also captures his heart. Ishan then meets Ali, a child master with a hyper reflex condition that makes him hit each ball for a six ( This is a part i cant digest ) . Ali displays the talent which Ishan never had and Ali’s destiny becomes his own.
Omi’s Bitoo mama , a communal party man bent on converting the young into fighters in the name of Hinduism. Situations come to a head and Ahmedabad burns in riot fires. Omi dies saving Ali and Ishan finds out about Vidya and Govind, a betrayal he does not forgive. These events lead Govind to his death-bed and that is when he writes the email to Bhagat.

The book is quite similar to Chetan Bhagats Five Point Someone with respect to a plethora of aspects. Three young friends, their tryst with destiny, the romantic scenes, the ups and downs, the dark humour, the screw ups.. It’s all there. However, there are a few refreshing aspects to the book- especially the handling of the business mentality, the local Gujarati flavor and the very India style love story.

Lines I loved : Gujarat is the only state in India where people tend to respect you more if you are in businesss than if you are in service (real true!) and 'Gujarat is a dry state.. people here get drunk on food'.

What i cant understand is the importance given to the three mistakes. Does losing money due to bad decisions and unexpected circumstances qualify as a mistake ? especially in case of Gujrati businessmen - who are known for their apetite for risks? And why the huge issue about falling in love with a friends sister as long your sincere with the relationship ?

The story sometimes seems like an illustration of problems that Indians have to live with - Lack of development in smaller towns, sick politicians, religious extremism, lack of sports education/infra-structure in schools etc etc . In some places, simply for the heck of covering many of these problems, creates certain scenarios are created a tad too forcefully. Like Ish's stereotypically grumpy Indian Dad always taunting against his failures, sometimes, simply for the heck of it! or the Ish smashing the guys car- that was little too melodramatic way of portraying his protectiveness towards his sister..

As for the ending, yes it was a bit too melodramatic with half the ppl dying in a RGV movie like scene, but i think that can be spared given the nice plot and a decent pace overall… I like his hinglish writing style a lot.

The reason Chetan Bhagat got so popular in the first place was his refreshing attitude towards writing with a distince indian flavour. Thats what made him a huge hit.

My guess is you'll like it unless your a really seasoned reader of authors like jeffery archer, arthor hailey and so on - from that angle Chetan Bhagat has a lot of catching up to do.
But the plot and the few refreshiong aspects i described above make this book my favourite amongst his 3 offerings.

Finally Its fun filled entertainment and something the indian youth can connect to. worth reading once.

firefox 3 : first look

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:52:00 +0000

The hype surrounding the release of firefox 3 was unbelievable. Was it due to the interest of the open source community or because a browser has now become integral to our everyday lives?

Anyway, I ended up waiting until midnight 27th(IST) for the release. Everybody discussing ff3 and the boring wait for it over gtalk. And the download wasnt a breeze – the Mozilla site seemed to have conked out with the load and I had to wait for ah hour before i could lay my hands on ff3.

Mozilla were gunning for five million downloads in 24 hours to set a Guinness world record and not surprisingly it exceeded expectations, passing the five million mark in just under 14 hours.

I'll go through a few of the interesting improvements and new features that i found. Please bear with me for repeating some the new features as i'd already covered them in my review of ff3 beta edition earlier.

The Awesome bar

The new location bar ( nicknamed The Awesome Bar) is by far the best and most used improvement in ff3. When you start typing into the Awesome Bar, Firefox starts searching through your browsing history and bookmarks. The Awesome bar shows you a dropdown menu of pages, and when you see the page you want, you can just arrow or mouse down and select it. It also conveniently weights the search results to favor frequently-visited pages and pages you visited more recently.

The smart auto-complete function remembers not just pages' addresses but also their titles. Heres an example of how extremely simple it makes my life. If i want to go a blog with a name Amateurs coding i dont need to remember the url http://www.kgmodi.blogspot.com . juist typing "amateur" is enough for firefox to zero in on the site.

Bookmarking - Quicker and Easier

On the far right side of the location bar is a star. One click and the current page is immediately bookmarked, into an unsorted bookmark section. Click again on the star and you can edit the bookmark, where you can add tags. If you type a tag word into the location bar you will get a list of sites from your history and bookmarks that have also been tagged with that same word. try it out.

Streamlined look and the BACK button

Firefox’s skin now automatically matches the general UI of your OS and looks more streamlined with a focus on a larger back button – possibly the most used button for navigation.
Surprisingly this larger back button is missing on my Ubuntu verion of ff3 !

Add-On Manager Improvements

The addon manager provides a list of recommended add-ons. You can also search for new ones and find more complete add-on descriptions with ratings. installation is pretty simple.

improved Zoom

The new zoom is much better. The entire page zooms in and out, with the graphics, interactive elements, text, and layout all remaining in proportion to one another unlike earlier versions where zooming haphazardly overlaps various elements as you zoom.
Firefox 3 also seems to remembers the zoom setting the site for your next visit.

non intusive password manager

Firefox 3's password manager is much more polite about offering to remember Web passwords. It asks you if you'd like to save your password in an unobtrusive strip atop the browser window, not a pop-up dialog.

online app's support

In the past you’d click on an email address in a Web site and your computer’s default email application would open up to send a message to the linked address—even if you never email through the program ( read Microsoft Outlook ). Now you can choose a Web mail clients (like Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo! Mail) to launch when you click on that email address.

Reality check , Is firefox good enough to beat ie ?
Internet Explorer, for better or for worse, still enjoys a significant advantage in market share, but data show this advantage eroding. According to study that judged the market share by the traffic at a particular Web site, Firefox gained almost 8 percent over Internet Explorer for the month of May, year over year, moving from just over 26 percent of all visitors to 33 percent. Internet Explorer lost a total of 9 percent to other browsers in that time frame.
And there's Apple's Safari,another competitior that gained almost 3 percent.

Three years in development, over 15,000 bug fixes and feature improvements, remarkable performance gains, multiple OS integration—you could say the several hundred engineers working on Firefox have been busy. And their work has paid off.
a big thumbs up to firefox 3

I'll be reviewing a few good addon's for firefox 3 soon. so keep checking.
and also comment on your experience with firefox 3.

wallpaper 1

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:21:00 +0000

Heres a wall paper i designed in photoshop. Actually cant say i designed it but more like accidently created it while fiddling with some interesting tools in photoshop. hoping to come up soon with many more.

Code for freedom

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:34:00 +0000

This was one heck of a competition.
2 months...lots of not stop exploring and experimenting and countless sleepless nights.

CFF was organised by SUN, open to students across India, and included contributing towards any of their open source technologies like NetBeans, Open Solaris, Glassfish etc.

We'd heard about the CFF competition long time back but got down to work seriously only in dec. The three of us ( dats kunal, anil and myself) got down to trying to figure out what to contribute. Believe me this part was harder than making the plugins itself.

So we started with a scratchpad and a whiteboard. And later came to develop plugins for many interesting API's like blogger,picasa nd yahoo messenger
We ended up spending our days pouring over our PC's , getting together at one of our places. Getting stuck regularly, getting bugged with the snail speed's that NetBeans ran and ofcourse the thought of the approaching exams but never giving up.

Finally it was feb and we submitted 6 plugins for netbeans + 3 tutorials for the netbeans wiki page.
Whew !! that was a lot, had never thought we'd be submitting even one
And then when few weeks later we heard that we won and got an iPod each , there was nothing that could stop me from jumping up n down ( made nilay n rohit wonder if i'd gone mad).
This was just gr8.... being 3 out of the 10 students across india to get the prize felt just gr8.

And ofcourse a iPod id always welcome !!

Firefox 3 Beta 2 arrives

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:01:00 +0000

Firefox recently came out with the beta 2 of its much awaited Firefox 3 browser. It has been the hot topic for discussions and target for rigorous testing. I have been playing around with this beta version for the past few days and am genuinly impressed with the improvements. So here's some of the interesting features and improvements that i came across.

The most interesting improvement is the completely overhauled Download Manager with buttons to show the location of the downloaded files on your hard drive as well as a button to get the url it was downloaded from.

This is a feature i find real useful, since more than once i've found myself having to go back to searching the web for links to the downloaded stuff when a friend asks for it.

You can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection (this was desperately missed in firefox 2 ).

Virus scanning of completed downloads is a part of the enhanced security features in this firefox version.

A sleek new search bar in the download window makes this download manager unbeatable !!

This latest beta really does a good job of remembering surfing habits and quickly getting you to just the page you wanted. The Location bar auto-complete feature has also been further refined and now works on page titles, addresses and tags, underlining the matching elements. It actually seems to accurately associate other relevant sites you've visited and presents them as options.
The recently visited pages list actually allows you to jump to specific pages in a website say inbox of gmail or compose of gmail ( instead of just navigating to gmail.com ).

Tags, star button and the improved bookmarks toolbar together form another killer feature.

You simply star some pages and access the stared pages through the Places button on the navigation bar. The starring of pages is also useful while selecting a page from the suggested pages in the address bar.

Taggin support is also supported. SO you can easily associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic simply by clicking the star in the address bar and filling up the cool looking form.

You can simply drag an drop a tab onto the navigation bar to create a link to the page.

The Places bookmark organiser provides a quick getway to a neat classification of your surfing habits like recently visited. recently starred/ most starred etc links.

Some other features that make life simpler include

Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.

Zooming support : simply hold cntrl button and scroll to zoom in/out.

Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection. and ofcourse improved speed / and memory efficiency (my firefox with 5 tabs open occupies just 60mb mem ) Firefox also promises even better looks and finishing in the final stable version, a big upgrade on the firefox 2 classy look ( still maintained in this beta version ).

So, my verdict is a big thumbs up to this version.

For people interested in the official release notes check out
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0b1/releasenotes/

To download this beta version
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Pictures That Changed The Whole World ?

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:54:00 +0000

a gr8 link , chk this out
Pictures That Changed The Whole World ?

Hamilton arrives..... and how !!!

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 08:33:00 +0000

Lewis Hamilton, in only his sixth formula one race, won the Canadian grand prix this weekend and sparked spontaneous pit-lane celebrations that went beyond his McLaren-Mercedes team.

Hamilton, the first driver to start an F1 career in such a formidable manner, scrambled out of his silver and red car, thrusting his arms in the air. He then jumped to the ground, trotted to a barrier and jumped across to dive into the midst of his crew, hugging everyone in sight.

The 22-year-old Stevenage-born driver, who had already set a rookie record by winning podium positions in his first five races, led from start to finish to open up an eight-point lead in the drivers' championship.

So has F1 found schumi's successor ??

lots more to come this year ..........

PS : my bets for the championship are still on massa, hamilton or no hamilton.

I am India

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:11:00 +0000

heres an awesome video from bharatbala ( remember maa tughe salaam ? )

lion vs croc...... must watch

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 08:55:00 +0000

hey,
here's my first video post.
its an awesome video of a fight between lions and guess what buffalo's with a crocodile thrown in for free.
real gr8 video and real rare, though ofcourse the video's taken by a amateur so not natgeo quality
but really worth a watch.

Lion VS Crocodile And Buffalo - For more funny movies, click here

joost invites

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 07:09:00 +0000

so thers a hitch in joost i forgot abt ....u need an invite to download it.......
and lots of people have been asking for invites ( dats gr8 since atleast i know ppl r reading my blog)...........

so anybody who needs an invite just enter your email id as a comment

PS: akash and nikhil i've sent you the invites, enjoy

joost is here

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Mon, 28 May 2007 10:30:00 +0000

Joost is yet another web shattering service following the likes os youtube , kazaa n stuff.
Joost is sorta p2p platform that gets streaming television on your comp.For those that don't know, Joost is a new web venture that puts on demand video on the web. The service is free, and paid for by advertising that is interspersed within the shows you watch. I'd rather have Joost be free with ads than have to pay for it. The grand plan for Joost seems very cool. On Demand television without paying the cable company. The channels are specific to the content on them. For example, there is a Green Day channel, an Indy Car channel, and a Gaming channel. Currently there are about 25 channels to choose from (in india ) The interface is simple and clean and easy to navigate. In addition to the standard channel flipping methods you can also search for shows by name or type. Joost allows for full screen viewing or putting it in a window so I can easily watch have shows going while I do other stuff on my computer. The full screen is nice for putting it on my TV.
The worst fear in such video app's id the struttring of video. But i was amazed at the quality even on my average mtnl connection. just a few hickups once in a while ( mind you , u still need broadband & 512mb ram)

so thats all for now go ahead and enjoy.

Kabul express - not perfect but a brilliant attempt in uncharted territory

noreply@blogger.com (shashank ( shantaram )) — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 02:48:00 +0000

Kabul Express is a tale showing the current scenario of Afghanistan post-9/11, post Pakistan abandoning them.Its first of the kind in Bollywood, a travalogue set in the barren and war torn lands of Afghanistan
John Abraham plays a journalist and Arshad Warsi is his cameraman. They land up in Afghanistan fas rookies looking for a story and end up being taken hostage -- along with their Afghan driver and an American journalist -- by an escaping Pakistani Colonel who was a Taliban member.
Each visual depicts the tragedy of a spectacle called Afghanistan accompanied by a killer line by Arshad. John really doesn't have much to do or say in the film and is treated purely as eye-candy as lso the firangi journalist. Of course, the hero of the show is Mr Taliban with his nice guy-bad reputation image.
The movie names American excesses and Pakistani betrayal as the reason for every ruin you see in the film.The most interesting conversation takes place on the run -- when Coke-Pepsi, Madhuri Dixit, Kashmir and America are all tied
up.
A must see movie......and wonderful to watch on the big screen........
The wonderful story with a perfect sprinkling of sarcastic humour throughout is what makes it a winner..........
bollywood bollywood movie review movie review