Vijay Krishna's Notes http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com Most of my notes as a student of computer software and everything around it. posterous.com Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:25:15 -0700 Results: their means and value http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/results-their-means-and-value http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/results-their-means-and-value Well, i know that this is an age old topic to write on and definitely not something i should be writing about now, especially after passing out of college with every thing intact. But, why i still write on this has two simple reasons, a) the bigger exams of life (and not the metaphorical ones) will begin after college gets over and b) age old results have a habit of coming back into our lives time and again and biting us in the ass. The university results of my junior batch came out today. And to say the least it was carnage. Failure has a bad of showing us things, true things nonetheless and today was no different. The tension before the results, the shock while reviewing it and the dismay after the story sinks in. Most people deal with it when they think of the ways to fix it. But keep this in mind, once its broken you cannot fix it. All you can do is to get another chance at it, but the failure will last.  It never goes. While this might seem like a pessimists account of things, but trust me this is more of a compendium of real situations and troubles. I have seen the sorry state with which people are rejected in job interviews, just because they had one failed paper in this academic records, even though he cleared it. I have then seen those people covering up such unfavorings, which work against them, even in places where such things do not matter. I have seen people passing out of college only to come back  and clear a few papers which could not be cleared with the stipulated time. I have seen people shattered because their graduation marks came back to haunt them when it came to getting an interview call from the best management institutes of the country. And all of this i have seen happening again and again and again, for nearly five years now. All this has led to a very incorrect conception amongst most people. The misconception is that, marks are more important than anything else. How wrong could the world be! Sorry folks. Marks or results are only a barometer by which you estimates as to how good you are or can be when it comes to on ground work. The real deal that most employees or schools are looking for is that substance. Just because you do not have the results to show it, does not mean that you do not have it at all. It gets a little tougher for you to prove your abilities and substance. In fact a lot tougher, and maybe that is why marks and results at school and college become so very important.  Now because of this exact factor, people will do anything to meet the end of good marks at any cost and in any manner. They, then do not take more the difficult and rewarding path of reforming their substance and hence getting the right marks. But rather look at getting the results with or without the substance. The whole process of so called all-round development comes from that path. When you go through difficult situations and surpass them, you undergo major changes at a very basic level. You start seeing things clearly. You are likely to understand situations better. And you will surely start appreciating the other side of story. All this goes amiss, when you start looking at short cuts to getting results. Maybe that is why people now need separate courses in personality development and the likes. It is not magic you know. It is diligence, faith and pure persistence. And yes, it is tough. So for those who brag about graduation, specifically engineering,  being so very simple and breeze-like, know this: you have either not done your graduation properly or, you are the next genius.

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Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:38:24 -0700 My favorite Class in College http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/my-favorite-class-in-college http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/my-favorite-class-in-college I am a Computer Engineer. And i love my subjects. Having said that, i never really enjoyed any class in college when it was to do with computers to be very honest. I like doing practical work. Thats my nature. You can not change it. So that probably restricted me from doing a lot of work in class as such. And practicals would be taken care of in the hostel rooms rather than the practical laboratories. Again, fact of life, i hate working on someone else's time frame, a time frame mind you. Give me a deadline, and the work will be delivered. Do not give me schedules. And for the better part of my engineering it work rather well. But, i am not going to talk about the classes i did not attend or the ones which i did not enjoy. I am here to talk about the one set of classes i did enjoy. In my first year where everyone is taught the basics of all forms and tools of engineering, i was introduced to Engineering Graphics, as one such generic tool of engineering. Never really understood why, but was thankful to God, for having such a subject. "Why", you ask? Simply because, there were no theory classes to it. All work was practical. All work was on ground. There was little drama and more substance. And there was true learning and thinking. I liked the fact that the lecturer was tough on us. it was a difficult subject and people failed in it all the time. That always kept me on the edge of my seat in those classes. I had always liked, rather loved geometry. But what i liked even more was 3D graphics. Having such interests really helped my EGR cause. The whole idea of perspective and angles together always kept me interested. Never was there a dull moment in class. Never was there a calculation error like that in maths. The line and curves would settle into a perfect symphony of drawings which would simply have to turn out right if the basics were taken care of. The best part of it all was that we were always using the fundamentals of angles, geometry, a pinch of math and physics. But challenges like in any other subject was there in this as well. One had to get a complete grip and control over the pencil. It was art and logic combined. Art! Yes, that too. You see, i was never good at free hand drawing. Despite that, to have actually done well and enjoy this was a greater high than anything else. The fact that i had complete control over the kind of pressure i was applying with the pencil on the paper, to come out with the exact shade of gray, as desired, was always an encouraging fact. It also helped that it was the first subject in which i actually scored above 40 in my midterms (more like scored at all :D ). My favorite class in college was Engineering Graphics, not because i was good at it. But because, i learnt a lot, enjoyed working with the pencil and scale even more and was allowed to do so by my instructor.

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Fri, 25 Feb 2011 18:28:59 -0800 Content Management http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/content-management http://vijaykrishna.posterous.com/content-management This is probably the most difficult thing to do in a typical website. No wonder there are so many successful Content Management Systems in place. No wonder Narayanan Murthy stressed on data, as a very important part of any system. It is no wonder, that when it comes to developing world class websites most of us fail. It is not due to a lack of quality software or poor aesthetics. The underlying reason why any website fails in today's world of information is simply due to poor or no content management, or a lack of high quality content all together. I have been heavily involved in the development of a new website for my college. Right from the very beginning it was the content of this site that took top priority. We wanted to focus on getting quality content in place for an undergraduate institute. It was with this reason that we chose to work with content management systems, chose to integrate databases with a predefined schema while not involving ourselves in those details right from the word go. All we wanted to achieve was to get a proper structure in place for the content and then to get the appropriate content for that structure from the correct resources. That itself took us nearly an year, given that we had exams and coursework to deal with, and after some time i had to go pick up a job. There are a lot of details that go into an activity of such magnitude, ie coming out with good quality content in good volumes for an institute which has been there for about 17 years now. Right from its historical inception to its recent achievements, its a tough ask. And that is just the easy bit. Once you have acquired that you really need to keep updating that information quite regularly. These are some of the issues we faced in figuring out the content: 1. We could never quite come to a common ground on the tab order until 3 days ago. Same goes with the case of the side links. There was a lot of debate on which links should go in the side bar and main menu tab as well. Careful planning and a lot of debate is required. 2. A thorough research is required for history. There is no way around it. 3. The usual typos and grammaticals will always haunt you no matter what. But becasue the content changes with great frequency, you really do not have the time to correct it all that much. So what ever goes up has to be as error free as possible. 4. Choosing the right kind fo pictures is the most difficult thing to do. Most websites have images that they pick up from the Google Image search. It is important to have custom images just like custom text and data. It indicates authenticity. 5. Prioritizing of content which largely is related to the tab ordering in point one. But the problem goes a little but deeper than that. A lot of content within a single page requires to be gone about with some priority. This will take you back to the essay writing classes you probably struggled with during school. But trust me, if you set out to make a world class website, it will come back to that exact struggle. These were just a few basic issues anyone would face while developing content for such a project. Hope this helps. I feel that the content is more important than the feature set of the site itself. "Why?" you ask. Simply because, the presenting the content well is the very purpose of existence for the feature set, and not the other way round.

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