Some coincidence

This one's real silly, but somehow I just couldnt resist writing about it.

Was on my way to work today when I enter the tube and the person sitting in the corner seat right in front of me was wearing the same shoes. Its been a while since I bought these shoes but haven't really wanted to wear them. And now that have started wearing them, didnt really expect them to have lasted that long to be seeing them on someone else's feet. But a strange coincidence, especially when you know that these shoes weren't too many in stock when I went to buy them and they end up on another pair of feet sitting right next to the one I was sitting on in the tube. 

Oh well, coincidence or destiny call it whatever you will.

IMG onError Attribute

There always is a lot of talk going on about jQuery and similar such frameworks. There have been loads of exciting things that can be done with them as well. But I still sometimes remain unsure about some of the things that are done with jQuery which can instead be done by simple Javascript? Maybe this isn't supported by all browsers or something but am not really sure.

There's a jQuery plugin to display an alternative image when the current image we are looking up results in an error.

Am not so sure if what am going to suggest is the right way of doing it, but probably one of the ways of doing it I assume.

For the IMG Tag in HTML, you do have an onError attribute where you can specify that if the image didnt load, then load another existing image. 

So for example, if your looking at:

<img class="thumbnail" width="75" height="50" src="sourceImage" alt="Alt Text to display"  onerror="this.src='defaultExistingImage'" />

 
And in this case sourceImage is referring to an image that doesnt exist, the browser invokes the onError event using which you could specify the source for the image to a default one.

Sounds simple, and its been tested on a wide variety of browsers when I looked up the net. So the newer ones including the standard IE6/7,Firefox and Chrome do support it.

Now am not sure why use jQuery when you can do something as simple as this?

Experimenting with Pizzas

Back in Bangalore, whenever you want to eat pizzas it always seems to be an expensive affair, even considering that you would want to have a personal pan pizza for just one person. In Pizza Hut a normal Pan Pizza wouldnt cost you anything less than a 100 bucks. This might get you a Personal Pan Pizza, Garlic Bread and of course a regular glass of Coke.


And now that we are here in the UK, it gives us a good opportunity to experiment with Pizzas. A normal Pizza here works out much cheaper than back in Bangalore. There are the expensive brand of Pizzas from Pizza Hut, Pizza Express and the likes but if you walk into a normal superstore like ASDA and Sainsburys, you get their most basic options at around just for a £ or a little more. Seema picked up a pack of 2 pizzas from ASDA this tuesday and we decided to try something new.


Usually all I do while preparing a pizza is top it up with some cheese and then put some corn over it. But yesterday since it was special(being our first Engagement Anniversary together, I decided to make something special) I decided to try something different.


To prepare the pizza I took a slice of cheese and cut it into 2 pieces and then sliced them into smaller pieces so I could spread them across the pizza. I put about 3.5 slices of cheese onto the pizza after cutting them into smaller pieces. If you wouldnt want to put in the effort my suggestion use grated mozarella, or any other cheese of your liking.


And since Seema wanted to have the pizza topped with pasta(something her mom makes) I decided to try something new again.


I grated some carrot and spread it across the top of the pizza. Then I boiled the pasta with some salt water and let it drain. Once done, add some butter into a pan and then add tomato ketchup to it. Once done, add a little bit of water for it to boil. Make sure you do not add too much of water else the sauce would become too very watery and you would take that much more time to make it. I made this mistake and it took me a while to get the water to evaporate. Add a slice of cheese into the sauce and once it melts add in some herb mix based upon your taste.


You can add in some spices as well if you like. I did add in some red chilli powder, some mango powder and a pinch of salt. Once this mixes well add in the pasta and then some corn and peas.


Keep on a low flame for about 5-10 minutes. Once the pasta sauce has thickened and you can see the sauce staying on the pasta, take this off the gas and add over the pizza. Since am not a fan of pasta with pizza I would have done this without the pasta. So you can skip the step of adding pasta if you like, or probably skip the whole process if your too lazy and just add some peas and corn over the pizza instead.


Preheat oven to 180 degrees C, and keep the pizza in for about 30 mins. Once the sides turn slightly brown, with the cheese beginning to char at the edges your pizza is ready. Return to the oven if you think the pizza is not as yet cooked, but the best indication is when the cheese begins to turn brown at the edges.


That's it remove from the oven, serve hot with tomato ketchup(we love ketchup and can have loads of it).


Hope you enjoy your pizza.

Football at 2nd Byte

Its been awhile after I went for my first session of company football when I write this, but then I decided to write it before I have a very vague memory of this. Its almost been a week now, and I went for my second session of football just yesterday bringing back the memories of last week.

I know I was a bit nervous when I went to play football for the first time here, since I would be playing with people I didnt know or had interacted very little with! It all started when I was having a chat with Kevin when I went to grab a cup of coffee upstairs. Kev said he would put me down for football that day, and I came down and spoke to Sam later in the day asking him if he could ride me down to Charterhouse(I still dont know what it is, even though someone mentioned a Charterhouse School yesterday. It seemed to be more like a resort than anything else). Sam was fine with giving me a ride down to Charterhouse and Gary was kind enough to offer me a ride as well. He said Paul would be ready by 6 and then we would all go together.

So well I finally managed to hitch a ride from here to Charterhouse and Sam said he would give me a ride home on the way back. Alright, I managed to get there but I didnt have anything to change into or rather sports clothes to change into. Sam was kind enough to give me a pair of shorts and trainers to borrow for the game.

The teams were set with Rich and Paul discussing the teams. Rich, Paul, Gary, Andrew Whitehair, and someone from another company on one side. On our side we had Andrew Soutar, Sam, Alex, someone from another company and me. Am not sure who won because I lost a track of who scored how many goals.

All in all it seemed to be a good experience with me coming back to staying fit and healthy if I do this on a regular basis considering that am getting old now

Farmville Tips and Tricks

This one has been due a long time but never did really find the time to sit down and complete this. Anyways now that I did find the time to complete it here goes.

I guess we all know about Farmville on FB, and I particularly am addicted to it. This section was dedicated to most of the Farmville fans and its basically some tips on how to play the game. These are tips that I end up using when playing the game, and maybe be wrong sometimes but generally works.

Have tried to gather everything in one place and its all free so you dont end up spending your money on silly sites who just end up trying to make money out of the whole affair!

Alright here goes:

Tip #1

How to save time on Farmville?
Notice that every time you harvest crops, trees and animals your farmer actually walks upto the corresponding object to harvest them. To ensure that you save time while using Farmville, the best way is to make your farmer go stationary. And how do you do that. Similar to fencing in the animals on Farmville so they cant move around.


The first time Farmville loads your farmer would be placed in the centre of your farm. You can buy the cheapest and smallest decoration object or use something lying around in your gifts to use as a barricade. Either buy a stack of hay/hale and place them around your farmer. Some people use different colors of hay/hale to make it look good. You could try your own different combinations if you like. Another option is to place the decoration items available to you as gifts like a scarecrow, any topiary or anything like that. The whole idea is to keep him/her stationary right in the center of the farm. What wouldnt work would be if you made your farmer walk to one of those fences in your farm and then barricaded him anywhere else except the center, the next time you login your farmer would always get reset to the center of the field. Even if you plow the center of the field your farmer would still get reset to the center.

However when you place something else in the center of the farm, what happens?

Tip #2

Free Gifts?
Farmville states that you can give away free gifts once a day but if you try gifting something in the morning to a friend, you should be able to gift again in the evening, usually about a 12 hours gap.

Tip #3

Fuel
Do you use a Tractor, Harvester or a Seeder?
 
And for those of you who hate Farmville, there's something for you too and in case you want to leave your comments feel free. Ever seen the one on I dont care about your Farm, Park, Zoo, etc. There's also this one on youtube which says Farmville should be banned.

IE 6 Fix

A Perfect Sunday

It seemed to be a perfect lazy Sunday, when I got up. It was almost 9:30 a.m. the time I got up. It took me sometime to realise, that it was a Sunday, and that I had a football match today at 11 a.m. What made it even more worse, was the fact that Mom was to attend a function of one of her best friends in JP Nagar, and I was to drop her in JP Nagar before going for the match!!! :( The match was being held in Acharya Path Shaala College, very close to office, that is in Jayanagar.

By the time I got ready, and was ready to leave for the match, it was almost 10:45. And I still had to drop Mom in JP Nagar. Mom came up with a suggestion, that I drop her at the shop, and then maybe I could carry on from there. Mom would then take a drop from Dad, or maybe pull Dad along to attend the function with her.

I reached the ground around 11:15 a.m. and realise that Sanal still hadnt reached. My other team members had already arrived, and guess we were the only ones who were late! I gave Sanal a call, and he was near Papdiwaala's so decided to pick him up from there!

We reach the ground and Sumit schedules the match for us, which was to start after another 40 minutes. The current match had just started.