Aaj Pehlee tarikh hai

Posted on August 1, 2008 by nandanjha

The charm of Pehlee Tarikh is gradually disappearing for me since I get my pay check on last day of a month. Also the money goes to bank and even though the e-mail alert from my bank is a pleasant mail to look at, the old world charm is sort of gone.

One of an old friend reminded me of this im-mortal song by Kishore, the number is called ‘Din Hai Suhaana, Aaj Pehli Tarikh Hai’. And here a link of a site where you can listen this.

http://www.esnips.com/doc/f2358e14-e8a2-4456-a173-f65046065e82/Din-Hai-Suhana-Aaj-Pahli—Kishore-Kumar

I used to get cheque in my first company, that was in 1996. It was a small company being run out of a garage of a large bunglow in ‘New Friends Colony’. Even though from my second job (which was at Newgen Software) the money used to go to Bank but it was always in first week so there used to be a little buzz around this. I think some part of it is also to do with the fact that back then the monthly salary was much more critical for minor day-to-day grocery expenses, now that sort of affects less.

Anyway, enjoy the song and let me know what you feel.

‘In Xanadu’ by William Dalrymple – Short Review

Posted on July 25, 2008 by nandanjha

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.

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

Posted on July 18, 2008 by nandanjha

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.

Continue reading →

Fill Passport form online

Posted on July 10, 2008 by nandanjha

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.

‘Sake’ – Rice wine from Japan

Posted on July 7, 2008 by nandanjha

“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.