Beware of screwy landlords

Check the landlord before renting an apartment .... Especially if it is Robinson Properties(http://www.robinsonrental.com/). Their slogan seems to be 'What property management should be?' where they do not know what property management really should be.I went through apartmentpeople.com when I was looking for an apartment in Evanston back in July. Apartment Peopledid a fairly good job of showing apartments in the rent range I was looking for. Finally I found an apartmentthat I thought would suit my purpose (close to NWU, walking distance from Davis railway station .. and all that). It did not have a laundry but that was ok. My car could take me to the laundry I thought.I signed up a year long lease immediately. This was when I did not know what I was getting into. When I signed up the lease I was ensured of a professional service and care when I needed some for the apartment.I soon moved in to find out that the apartment was not in the best of shapes and had reporteda few maintenance problems immediately.But the problems as simple as fixing the window bug nets were not attended to. Soon I came to realize the problem with the property managers.They were just happy to get rid of the apartment and make money of it.

I discovered a leak in the bathroom ceiling which started with a drip and then culminated to a steady downpour. After the problem was reported a few times in couple of weeks the plumber was sent to fix it..(or sothey said), When I checked again the leak had worsened and after a lot of pestering managed to get a plumberto visit the place and discover the root of the leak. He tore down the ceiling only to make a big hole which stayed foranother 3 days before it was completely fixed. After all this I wanted to get out of the lease(which I thought I had the rightto given the negligence of the landlord). I finally had to pay 2 months rent and forfeit the security deposit(one month rent) to sign out of the lease.

So I would NOT recommend leasing with robinsonrental.com and would also warn all those that might fall into this trap.

Here are some pictures as proof of the substandard treatment of the apartment.

movie list for the buff

primal fear (Edward Norton) Deewanngee in Hindi(Ajay Devgan)
Fight Club (Ed Norton and Brad Pitt)
Snatch (Brad Pitt)
Lock stock and 2 smoking barrels(Jason Statham)
Transporter(Jason Statham)
Trainspotting
Sideways - All about wines
My cousin vinny - Marisa Tomei, Joe Pesci
Coolrunnings
Reservoir Dogs

struts is good

After a while I am back on a Java project. I hate the technology that I work with as it is the worst of the Java world.. it has EJB, struts and Java 1.3(yeah 1.3 we are still in 1999).
But the clean way of doing server side validation in struts has amazed me.
It has such straightforward and clean implementation(with very hard to find documentation). So I thought I should write a small example.

There are a few simple things to do and you are all set

Your form bean should extend ValidatorActionForm.
The form should implement the validate method


public ActionErrors validate(){}

for anything that you want to return a validation error
your code can look like


if(myName==null)
    errors.add("myName", "My Name cannot be null");
return errors

On your jsp you should have a tag to display these errors
<html:error property=\"myName\">
wherever you want to display this particular error message.

If you want to display the error message at the top of the page or display all the error messages regardless of their location
will do the trick

alternatively you can use the applicationResources.properties file to parse the error messages for you To do that add the following in your applicationResources.properties

error.myName = <img src="error.jpg" /><b>MyName is required</b>

and when you add the error do the following

errors.add("myName", "error.myName");

Custom and generic error messages can also be created and displayed.

Struts is so simple.. Boo to all those who hate struts...:P

Reading Now:
The short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson
The world is flat - Thomas L Friedman
Angels and Daemons - Dan Brown

Recently learnt :
Streamlined for Rails from Jake Scruggs at TW (http://streamlined.relevancellc.com/) - Crud is Simple

blogging in MaraaThee

This past weekend I discovered something that would let me type in Marathi or any devnagari script. http://www.baraha.com has the software to type using an english keyboard and to convert the text to the language of your choice.

Here is my first attempt at writing my blog in MaraThi.

मला बरेच दिवस मराठीत लिहाव असे वटायचे. पण बहुतेक वेळा मराठीत टाईप करता येत नसल्यमुळे अडचण व्हायची. आता या बरहामुळे

खूपच सोय झाली आहे. मला आता मुक्तपणे मराठीत लिहित येऊ लागेल. आणि माझ्या मराठी मित्रान्ना पण मी जे लिहितो ते वाचता येइल.

 

आत्ता एवढच पुरे. पुन्हा लिहे पर्यन्त ......

 

तुमचाच

 

सुधिन्द्र

Bangalore Traffic is ridiculous

Went to buy one book and got stuck in traffic for 2 hours. Bangalore traffic is getting worse by the day. Also was confronted by a police for crossing the No Entry sign. Felt really good when I convinced him that I was honestly unaware of the new developments since last night and that I would be more careful. Atleast he was understanding.

Successfully installed Ruby on Rails

+++Ruby on Rails
To start with Ruby on rails download rails and then look at this short tutorial http://manuals.rubyonrails.com/export/html/7
Also look at these videos for installing on windows http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000328.html
Download Mysql jdbc connector from
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/3.1.html
If MySQL installation or configuration fails and you get an Error: 0 or Error:1067 meaning you are not able to start or stop MySQL service
try deleting the service by typing the following at your dos command prompt
C:\> sc delete serviceName e.g C:\>sc delete MySQL
Also when you uninstall MySQL it does not delete the files and directories. Better go and delete them manually. This will also ensure that the next install does not get messed up and you don't see the above errors.

Version Control Systems - Issues

Version control systems(VCS) are developed to record and retrieve version history of any piece of data. But version control systems often restrict the way we develop software.Unknowlingly for us a version control system has become indespensible. VCS becomes very importantin agile as it gives us the flexibility to track changes and deliver the 'last known good solution'to the customer. Going back to a previous revision is as easy changing the date on your desktop calendar.
But proprietary VCS that are often times a package in combination with an issue and project tracking system are often times a pain to work with. Especially their ever complex(generic?) interfaces makethem hard to use. From the developers perspective this is sometimes a lot of pain since integrating the VCS with continuous integration system and also using it with commandline tools(unices or dos) becomes difficult. Though from a customer's point of view a single point solution is an asset that (s)he does notwant to part with.
This leads us into a trap where it becomes hard to develop when complying to customer's requirement of VCS.
To circumvent this problem one can think of an easy solution. I term it VCSFreek.

VCSFreek

VCSFreek is a system that allows you to use your favourite VCS systemduring development and also allows you to comply with your customer's requirements.VCSFreek is a daemon that kees the two VCS systems in sync. VCSFreek works by periodically(user set) checking out files from one VCS and checking it into another.When doing this VCSFreek will make sure it copies/inserts all the informationrequired to maintain sanctity in both VCS systems.

BnB

Dated when BnB was released.....(accurate enough isn't it)

Life is like Bangalore you can explore it or ask for directions - I ask for
directions!

Watched "Bunty aur Babli" with Arthur and Karan today. We were desparate to see
any movie ... no tickets were available in PVR in classic cinemas. So indulged and
bought tickets for Gold class(500/- a piece with a meal included has lazboy
like "recliners" for 30 and the waiters take orders as u see the movie - only
in Bangalore and Delhi). Have not repented yet .. liked the movie and the
theatre...Watched "Bunty aur Babli" again with Rajeev Singh and Vipul Garg. Liked
Amitabh as the police inspector especially when he enters the scene with a
couple of jokes.

Recommended reading
Guns, Germs and Steel - anyone who knows any history should read it

Note to self - Get some research done.. or you can never get that Phd of urs.

Blogging is also an art - You should be able to tell short and sweet stories.