Switching to FireFox

So alas, I shifted to using FireFox from using Internet Explorer(IE). The reason
for the shifts are manifold. Well I started using Linux desktop, and well
firefox was the default browser in the distro I was using, and it wasn't
so bad I thought :-) So I got used to using firefox, and contrary to what
some so called "experts" claim, you don't have to be a geek to use firefox.

On my windows machine, I upgraded to IE7, and I saw that IE7 had support
for multiple tabs. Wow I thought, now that would make IE better. But
discovered later, that organizing favourites in IE is a nightmare now. I
have a pretty big list of favourites, and when I want to add a link to a
deeply nested directory, IE7 makes that a nightmare. Another good
feature that IE cannot handle well is increasing font size by pressing
"Ctrl +" keys. IE increases the horizontal screen size, when you try to
do so, due to which you get a horizontal scroll bar, which is quite
annoying sometimes. FireFox doesn't increase the size horizontally
and handles that pretty well.

Another feature is while browsing sites which present security
certificates. Firefox allows you to accept certificates permanently, so
that you aren't asked again for accepting certificates everytime
you browse the same site again. IE instead makes it harder, even
if you accept a certificate, and it doesn't understands the
certificate, or rather the certificate is not from some trusted authority,
it would keep on telling you that the site is untrusted and do you
really want to access that page. Also the button for saying "yes" is
red in color, and is pretty non-obvious. Adding to IE's pain points.

I like apps which consume less memory, and if you use the Multi
tab feature in IE, IE starts to hog a lot of memory, which makes
the system slow.
And if you browse through a zillion sites in half an hour, right-click
stops working in IE and sometimes even in Windows, and bizzare
things starts to happen, unless you restart IE.

With all these annoying features in IE7, I thought I better switch to
Firefox, and stop this "feature discovering" exercise on IE :-)

Also Firefox comes with a lot of cool extensions, to make browsing a
lot of fun. So goodbye IE and welcome to FireFox !

Software Documentation

While working on any software project, while talking with people the first question that most people ask is where is the documentation, or manual. Most of the people expect good documents of the software to be there, so that they can spoon feed. However while working on UNIX, which follows the philosphy of "code is the documentation", such a question really sounds stupid sometimes. Particularly in this age of google. When my team members asks me this question, it peeves me sometimes. There is a good reason for that. Most people hate to document their work, but at the same time expect documents to be ready for them. They fail to realize that they are part of the problem. However common sense is not so common :-)

The need for documentation => But good documentation is a vital component of software engineering. I make it a habit to document much of the stuff I do, that helps me, when I want to look at those topics again, and even while preparing my status reports. I heard this is a part of personal software engineering :-)

Today's Scenario => Apart from the manual's, in todays world, the online forums/mailing lists are a big boon, and they act as good pieces of documentations. Many queries, which a book simply cannot take care of are easily answered on a mailing list. In fact most of the time, the queries are already asked and answered by some expert on some forum or mailing list.

Enthusiasm the key to achieve success

Maintaining one's enthusiasm is one of the most
difficult thing for a human being. There is a famous
quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

So true. Enthusiasm is one of the most important
quality that one needs to achieve success in life.
However it is not only enthusiasm, I would like to
prepend it with the word "unlimited". Having
unlimited enthusiasm is important. Many times,
we don't start a venture simply because we don't
have enough enthusiasm. So ensure that you
have enough(well unlimited) enthusiasm in you
so that you can achieve your goal.

Is google cheating ?

Recently saw that he serach results provided by google,
have "sponsored links" at the top. These links are
being marked in a different color. But the color usually
used is very faint, and it is not so obvious at first time,
whether the link is an ad or not.

Earlier google used to put the ads in a column, on the
right side of the page, they still do, but it seems to
generate more ad revenue, google, is now putting
them at the top of the search results. Today they
are putting 2 results, some day later, they will
increase it. Think of it, by default 10 results are
displayed. 2 ads for 10 is about 15%. And you thought
google was ethical ?