Monthly Archives: July 2008

Read

‘In Xanadu’ by William Dalrymple – Short Review

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I recently read a book called ‘In Xanadu’. Its by William Dalrymple and is one of his early works. WD now is a very famous author and has written the popular ones like ‘The last Mughal’, ‘The city of Djinns’ etc. I was given this book by a friend and I think I was really lucky because otherwise I dont see myself picking this book from books-shelfs and reading it.

‘In Xanadu’ is a travelogue of WD and his friend where he tries to re-trace the route which was taken by Marco Polo (an old merchant and traveler) on his visit to Xanadu. WD was in college and he managed to get just enough funds to sponsor this trip as a educational trip. Marco was going to Xanadu to meet the great emperor Kublai Khan who controlled most of west and east Asia, Xanadu is now in Mongolia. The idea was to get pally with Khan and sort of use his friendship and power to influence control over muslims.

The journey starts with Jerusalem and ends at Xanadu and it takes you to Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Karakoram, China and finally Xanadu. Its all real account and young WD expressed it so well that you feel like doing the journey with him. Its a modern book and you would be able to empathize with lots of things. The narration is splendid and journey is one hell mix of adventure and fun.

I wont spill too many beans here but anyone who loves travel writing must read this. Its also a great source of history and once you read this, you would come out as a more learned and traveled person. Its not too thick and should not take many months to finish.

I am currently reading ‘India in Slow Motion’ by Mark Tully and would try to write a short review once I am done.

437

Story of finding 437

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It was early 2002 and I had just moved back to Delhi from Chandigarh to start working with “Legato Systems”. At that time, Avinash had rented a two room apartment in Malviya Nagar, a typical rail bogey apartment with no windows. Once I was back, we were pretty sure that we would want to move back to Noida so we started looking for a accommodation, aka house hunting.

Typically we would gather a list from our resources and would call them up or visit the landlords on Saturday/Sunday and then would weigh the decision to take/not-take on certain factors like rent per month, location of the flat, how far it is from bus stop, independence in terms of acces, state of the flat and so on.

Ravi was still not working and the rent was initially shared between me and Avinash, the two so called earners. We had decided to take something which is not more then 6K a month, at that price one would get a very decent 3 bed-room apartment, enough for three of us (or even four, if Tewari joins us).

Avinash met Brajesh (I hope I have the name correct) first and he was sort of impressed with the flat as well as with the person. Brajesh came out as a frank, not so old, modern thinker guy who would be easy to get with. This flat was a duplex and we have never stayed in one so there was this novelty factor as well. It was fairly bug with a room, kitchen and lounge on level 1 and two bed rooms on level 2. The only hitch was the rent which was 7500. It was not really beyond what we could afford but was much more then what two bachelors will spend. Normally a 3 bed-roomer would have as many 5 bachelors living together, squaring rent at the end of the month.

So we thought and discussed and decided that the house deserves Rs 7K for sure. That leaves Rs 500 and we attributed that Rs 500 to the land lords, we somehow thought that they deserve an extra Rs 500 :)

and we moved in.

Tech

‘Code Coverage’ – How does it help in testing ?

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The million dollar question which every Manager asks to testing teams is that ‘Whether they have executed all the test cases ? “. If you are a software test practitioner, you would be feeling really frustrated. How on earth, can you ever execute all the ‘Test Cases’ for a particular feature.

Well, there is no silver bullet but there is a way which you can use to get a good enough answer for the above question. Its called ‘Code Coverage’ analysis.

How does it work
There are certain software tools in the market which can be used to do ‘Code Coverage’. One of the popular software is ‘Bullseye’. The process is simple. While building binaries for your software program, configure ‘Bullseye’ with the IDE. When binaries are made, bullseye inserts some of its own signatures. This is called ‘Instrumentation’ of the code.

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Travel, Trivia

Fill Passport form online

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My passport is expiring, been 10 years and I needed to renew it. About 2 year back, I had really harrowing time dealing with things at Ghaziabad Regional Passport Office, getting things done. So I was expecting something similar but it seems that I had my share of passport office pains. So, while talking to a colleague, I came to know that one can now fill the passport form online. Wow. I still could not believe it but it worked for me, at least so far. So I thought that I would share this so that it might be helpful for other people.

The process is simple. Go to http://passport.nic.in. Not all passport offices have this facility so find out whether your passport office is covered or not. As of now 36 office are covered under this. Click here to see the complete list.

Fill the form. Choose ‘Cash’ as the option for fees. After you are done filling, you would be asked to choose a time for appointment. They do not give me many choices but its still much better then the past when you need to be in queue. After you are done, you would notice that a PDF filled form is opened in the browser. Take a print. Check it again to see if there are un-filled sections. Take supporting documents.

Go to passport office on the day/time as per your appointment and ask for the queue of ‘online’. Submit and you are done.

Eat

‘Sake’ – Rice wine from Japan

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“Sake” means alcohol in Japanese and is pronounced as ‘Sa-ki’ or ‘Sa-kei’. In Urdu, Saki is someone who is your host for alcohol, a cup bearer. How on earth these two are linked only God can tell but in this post I would briefly trudge upon ‘Sake’.

‘Sake’ in day-to-day parlance is mostly used for the ‘Rice Wine’ but in reality ‘Sake’ could be used for any alcoholic beverage. Sake is produced by multiple fermentation of rice, which is more similar to how beer is produced.

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