Adorable Hyderabad...... A Travelogue!

On Wheels...

The sight of the barren land was boring to see through the Hyderabad bound Deccan Express but that's all I could see through the train window until the train reached Secunderabad. It was a well built industrial city nearer to Hyderabad. When the train crossed Secunderabad, the beautiful city of Hyderabad unfolded before us with its dazzling beauty on the emerging lights of the day's sun. People exercising around and the gorgeous Hussainnagarsagar lake with the Buddha in the middle made us awe-struck!! There were many commercial outlets by the lake's side including water theme park, food court, verandas and many more...

The Autos!

Have you ever seen an auto driver in Chennai charge you on a meter basis? You wouldn but it would be the period of your grandfathers! But the auto drivers in Hyderabad are really good natured that they drive their autos around the city with their meters set in. I was really surprised to see an auto man asking me to pay him as shown by the meter. This is what that makes Hyderabad a beautiful city compared to Chennai although its bigger than Hyderabad. They are very friendly too. when you climb into their auto they get you to the exact location even if they aren't aware of that place, they ask the address from the passers-by and take you exactly there!!

Road Rules...

The second most fascinating aspect was the discipline among the four Wheeler drivers. They were having their seat belts fastened always when they are driving and following the lane rules perfectly. No rash driving. Next, the city roads were very very neat , not even a speck of dust on the road!! Chennai people have to learn a lot from them. On the whole , the city was very beautiful and adorable. Its a perfect destination for tourists. There are also innumerable shops selling embroidery articles, that range from shawls, bags and other gift articles.

Charming Charminar!

Now, I would like to say about the beauty of Charminar. Its a gateway standing in the center of the city. It has artwork embedded on it and there are two staircases, one to alight the gateway and another to descend down. Its a massive structure and has streets around its periphery selling all fancy articles. Many Muslims throng to this place as a majority. The guava that's being sold at this gateway's entrance is simply sweet!!!

Cuisine:

The food habits of people here differs completely from those of the Tamilians. One thing I observed was that they drink a lot of tea. They probably hate Parotas I think but prefer lot of Chappathhis. The side dish that they have for these dishes is very rich in protein and people here seem to have a passion for food, the Hyderabad briyani deserves a special mention here!! Non vegetarian food is predominant here. The vadas that they serve here are slightly larger than ours and tastier too!

The Language....

I know Tamil and English, written and spoken, but Hindhi, I can comprehend what people are saying to some extent and speak at a normal pace. People here speak hindhi and telugu predominantly and nobody wanna speak English!!! I felt extremely difficult speaking in hindhi to auto drivers who had no knowledge of English except for 40 rupees, 50 rupees and so on......!!! Its good for people visiting hyderabad to get well versed in Hindhi.

Finally.. about the people..

The people of Hyderabad are very friendly. Ready to help you anywhere anytime. They are very good in their hospitality and also stick to moral ways in whatever they do. This keeps the city going at good pace i think. My request for all my friends would be to pay a visit to this beautiful city and admire the "InCreDiblE IndiA"..........Adieu@

Think Different.......

Thinking has been man's gift bestowed upon on him by God. Inventions rolled out of this great human brain once he started thinking rationally. Further inventions improved the quality of life and also his own intelligence. But, who were these people who have made these remarkable events happen? Were they those "who take things for granted", were they "who study religiously and industriously?, were they "who never break the rules and follow the line laid in front of them?". No!! Not at all!!

History bears witness to those great inventions. Inventors were always those who thought "different". They normally questioned the occurence, rather accept them as they were. They thought of a better alternative that usually looked awkward at first. When the first computer was developed, it was everyone's ridicule who saw such a huge machine doing basic arithmetic. But, today is the day where machines challenge men with their own intelligence.

Bill Gates, the owner of the Operating System giant that probably covers the whole of this earth, was fired from his school for setting up a program in one of those early network machines that ultimately crashed the network. What Gates did then was a little mischievous act of getting into those machines and exploring a bit. Later he with his friend succeeded in fitting a memory into a desktop computer which marked the era of today's PCs. Conventional methods will never yield a fascinating solution because the method by itself isnt fascinating.

"You laugh at me because I am different, I laugh at you because you are all the same!!" said Bernard Shaw. The fear of facing a ridicule haunts everyone who starts on with a new idea. What he must realize is those who ridiculed him are the ones who will be praising him when he succeeds. Thinking different allows you to stand distinctly in a crowd. Peopl eagerly await a person's action who thinks differently out of their curiosity. Its often confusing for many when they see mischievous people shine better compared to those all time studious ones in many fields. The real reason is the mischievous ones always hate going by the rules whenever they are given a task which is their usual habit. This even reflects in their jobs that ultimately leads to the evolution of a new idea. Its also true that studious ones too are mischievous many a times which according to me is a good combination.

According to me Engineering education provides you with the necessary tools for building newer applications rather than simply repeat them. Ofcourse, there are those exams that demand reproducing whats in the text books, there are those periods between the commencement of the semester and these exams where the mind can be used resourcefully to think on a new idea. It need not be a great revolution in his/her field but can be a smaller module that when added to the existing system will greatly improve the performance. Innovation is the key to progress of technology or else it will become stagnant without any development for which thinking different is the key ingredient.

So, put on your thinking caps on...would you like to be one among the equals or first among them??? clearly the choice is urs...... happy thinking@

Hurray! Hurray!..... Blu-ray!!!

Every one of us knows about DVD which is expanded as "Digital Versatile Disk". There are two standard formats for the manufacture of DVDs till now. They are the HD-DVD format and the other one is The Blu-ray format. These two formats are incompatible and are arch-rivals of each other. However both these formats have increased the DVD storage capacity from 4.7GB to 20GB-25GB.

Sony and Philips were the giant manufacturers of DVD using Blu-ray standards. Toshiba and Hitachi used HD-DVD standard. The real problem arose when Hollywood released their movies on DVDs that had multiple standards like Fox, Warner and Sony for Blu-ray and Paramount and Universal for HD DVD. This lead to the purchase of different DVD players for different standards. In a reamarkable turn of events, Toshiba has decided to exit from HD DVD business leavin Blu-ray as the only single standard available for DVDs.

Toshiba withdrew mainly because Warner Brothers one of their major supporters have decided not to use HD DVD standards and business giants like WalMart and NetFix have adopted to Blu-ray standard. Technology wise, HD DVDs are easier to produce but their storage capacity is 15 to 20 GB versus 23 to 25GB for Blu-ray.

Due to this diversification in standards people started downloading movies from the internet rather buy DVDs that had two different standards that necessitated purchase of many DVD players. This problem of downloading pirated movies over the internet has come to an end with this single DVD standard. Indian CD and DVD manufacturing giant Moser Baer is very happy and sure of increasing its capacity of production since the format is standardised. The current disk production is 3.2 billion per year which Moser Baer is sure to increase. In all, its Blu-ray's time to rake in the profits!!!! Hurray Hurray Blu-ray!

Coffee With JAVA-Part One

Here I am to start a series of sessions on JAVA, the programming language of the future! In this first session we will see the most fascinating feature of JAVA the "Applets". Applets are applications that are transported across the Internet, accessed from a Web Server and installed automatically on a client system and run as a web document. The really good aspect of applets is that they access only a limited part of the client's memory and thus reduces the risk of virus attacks and ensures data integrity.

A SAMPLE JAVA APPLET

import java.awt.*;
import java.applet.*;
"angle brackets"applet code="App1" width="200" height="60""angle brackets"
public class App1 extends Applet{
public void paint(Graphics g){
g.drawString("My First Applet",20,20);
}
}

The Explanation for this code is given below:

• The "awt" class in JAVA called as Abstract Windows Toolkit must be imported. JAVA applets communicate with the user using awt tools only not using the conventional console input and output methods.
• The "Applet" class must be imported for every applet in JAVA and the applet class must be an extension of the Applet main class.
• The paint() method belongs to the "awt" class in JAVA and takes a graphics device context as an argument. It is defined in awt and must be overridden in the extended class.
• Inside the "App1" class you have another method "drawString()" which is the member of "Graphics" class. It takes three arguements, the text to be displayed, the x and y coordinates on the screen.
• The JAVA browser window starts at (0,0) on the left top of the window as the origin.
• The HTML code at the top specifies the size of the window, in the place of "angle brackets" type "<".

Compiling and Running the JAVA applet:

• Run "cmd" from your start menu. The DOS interface opens. Using "cd" command move to the appropriate folder where your JAVA compiler is stored. Usually its better to copy the JAVA compiler so that it has the path C:>\jdk1.3\bin>.

• Type edit filename.java at this instant, in our case, App1.java and type the program shown above in the editor window that opens.
• Save the program and you will be at the command prompt again.
• To compile and run:C:>\jdk1.3\bin>appletviewer App1.java.
• The output looks like this

Features:

• Applets do not have main() method.
• Applets must be run only under java compatible browsers
• I/O consoles dont work with Applets.

...............The Aroma will continue.