Road to Coorg

Finally ! Got some of the photos uploaded. More at Katty's Page.

Ok, let me first introduce the entity's in the following picture. Standing from the left is a tall tree ( I do not know it's name), then there is a small tree ( this one's called praveer), followed by your's truly and then vipul. The thing sitting is called katty (gourav to some).
Hokay, this was the first leak break that we took on our way from Bangalore to Coorg. On the Mysore Road, just before it, from srirangapatnam, we took a right for a bumpy ride leading us to coorg. First site of tree and wala, here we stop. Just before this, we stopped at a Place called Kamath ( sometimes I wonder whether I know more udupi's or more kamath's and I am not talking about people here) Anyway that was our sandwich/tea break where we switched wheels. vipul took over them while I got down to do what I do best - plan ;). I was worried we will miss the right turn near srirangapatnam. which we did, and took a U turn to find in relief that the right turn was still there. We took it and celebrated that with another stop on a road side chai shop where the tea (again ? how much tea do you guys drink !) and that leads us to the photo below.

Lost in translation would be the words here as I have skipped putting the I zillion photos that we took between the one above and the one that follows. We changed wheels again and the 2nd tree that we met in the first picture took it over. As you can guess there was not enough room for it in the driver's seat and hence the driver's seat was moved backwards to the delight of person sitting behind him (read me).

So we continue with praveer on wheel and the rest of us on edge. Take a cocunut break, pose with cocunuts for yapp ( yet another photograph photograph) . The road to coorg from here on was pretty much of a nomenclature. The roadside was really beautiful. We passed a garden where beetle leaves were grown and then finally made it to coorg and to our "hotel". The quotes surrounding the hotel should say all that needs to be spoken about it. Hence I would not dwell on it any more. We took the keys and moved on to our first spot - the abbi falls

It was a short walk from where we are standing above and where we are fishing below. There was a bridge which took us over to the other side. We christened it shatrughan jhoola, as it appeared to be younger brother of laxman jhoola.

The feet that took me all across the treacherous terrain - yes , I still can take pictures of my feet without my tummy blocking the way.

After a relaxing time under the falls water, we were headed towards to somwarpeth and this time not only the surroundings were great, the road was terrific ( as best they can be in ghats ). The "turns" and "corners" could easily rival some on the formula 1 curcuit :D. we did stick to the racing line and never crossed the pit speed.

k, the photo that you see below is completely fake. I appear to be calm and relaxed and having fun. Truth is that it was just after a long trudge in sun from talacauvery base to the highest point in coorg. the least people can do is put some beach chairs and overhead umberellas there ! it was HOT.

long time since I climbed anywhere ! A machan at nisarga dhamajourney back home. My energy level was following the same graph as the graph which can be drawn against the number of words over each photographs now. I look verrrrrrrrry different without specs ... should I go for contact lenses ?

A hell of a time I had !

Agnipath - The Poem

Vruksh ho bade bhale,
ho ghane ho bhale,
Ek Patra chhah bhi mang mat, mang mat, mang mat,
Agnipath, Agnipath Agnipath;

Tu na thamega kabhi tu na mudega kabhi tu na rukega kabhi,
Kar shapath, Kar shapath, Kar shapath,
Agnipath, Agnipath, Agnipath.
Ye Mahan Drushya hain,
Chal raha Manushya hain,
Ashru, Sweth, Rakta se Latpat Latpat Latpat..
Agnipath, Agnipath, Agnipath.

Guess the poem needs no introduction - I heard it first in the movie Agnipath

Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman - Super Blooper

Caught a scene from "Raju Ban Gaya gentleman" sometime back ...

Scene : SRK has just entered the interview room with Three panelist and a geeky looking computer operator.
Problem : SRK has diploma in civil engineering and is required to prove his brains as claimed by him "Degree se akal nahi milti "
Argument : There is an uptown posh project undertaken by the firm where the interview is being held - Project manager of which is present in the panel. SRK throws some crap about not using RCC and hence saving around 5 crores.

BLOOPER : Not only the argument which he presented was gibberish, the event that follows is hilarious.... The panel leader asks the computer geek if the computer confirms to the claims made by SRK. The geek eagerly presses few buttons and there is a huge amount of text that scrolls the screen and then comes back to the command prompt. The operator says, "Eureka, he is right". The command that is typed by our dude was none other than the dos equivalent of "ls". The scrolling text was the directory listing.

PS : only thing that was cool about the scene was the colors on the computer terminal .. my fav green on black.

Monday to Friday of Music

Monday no clues , all red with the (monday) blues

Tuesday am on a Dock, friday's far, hence the alternative rock

Wednesdays nowhere in the week, time to settle and for some heavy metal

Thursday's punky, makes me jumpy, I listen to that chap, doing gangsta rap

Friday's jazz, I pull up my sock and listen to the rock


Important Note : Saturday, Sunday I am in trance

Geoffrey's Bangalore

From left to right : Me, Jon, Rajeshwar, Ambar and Rob

No Kidding

Australia batting first - 434 for 4 in 50 overs

South Africa - 438 for 8 in 49.5 overs

South Africa Win by 1 wicket with 1 ball to spare !

Test Driven Development

Test Driven Development is a technique for writing the test cases first and then doing incremental coding for each case. This has to be coupled with regression testing after each module for a test case is written. An automated testing environment is a desired requirement for this paradigm.

Inadvertently , we might have done this in past for one or more of our projects. I have done something similar in one of my projects without following the regression testing rule exhaustively.

The way it works - several iterations of the following steps:

• Write a test case for a small feature: use the requirement and the use cases to write test cases.
• Make sure that the test case fails (you haven't written the code for this feature) : There might be a "bug" in your program which gives you this "feature". This requirement basically means "start with a clean slate".
• Write the code necessary to pass the current test case.
• Refractor code - making sure that the code for the new feature fits in the design or the other parts of the code are adjusted to make it the simplest design.
• Regressing testing - run all the test cases written so far

Advantages

• Due to regression testing requirement , the modules are written in a modular way which can be tested individually and hence aids object oriented design.
• Takes out a huge amount of time from a manual regression testing process
• Coding is always done an incremental fashion which makes a loosely coupled system
• Testing for each feature is NOT done as an afterthought
• The initial test case document provides a good document for system capabilities

Limitations and challenges :

• A sound automated testing environment is required to ensure regression testing - hence additional effort required initially. (JUnit is an example of automated testing infrastructure for java and boost test for c++).
• Distributed objects in an environment - can write "mock" objects to support this
• A test driven environment is as good as the test cases, since they are the key design driver.

References :
http://www.objectmentor.com/writeUps/TestDrivenDevelopment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_driven_development