Finally Awake

It's been a long time since i made a posting out here, Well it was the winter and I was hibernating you might say. Well I actually was transitioning a whole lot in these past 6 months or so. I can't believe how quickly time flies. To my surprise in my LinkedIn profile I found that I am in my new job for about 6 months now. 

I have been busy though finally I have mustered enough courage to say I can write unit tests pretty well and most important of all I made the choice to transition from C# to Java. As surprising its for people who might read it here and it was something which i thought about carefully before i chose the move. It really came at a time when i was LINQing my way to glory. 

One of the prime reasons being the team i wanted to be part of when I took the offer. (Also more on the effect of interviewers who interviewed me on that very day). When i got the offer my recruiter told me clearly I would be working on services development for iPad and Android. Oh Yes! So you know the reason of my big switch from all these years of C#. I don't miss it though for I am stackoverflow just about everyday and I keep my tabs on those two. Ironically the options I had to choose from were very difficult and other offer which I gave up was services development on .Net 4.0. Both shared the traits of being major healthcare providers here in US. Well I have a more sense of fulfillment right now that my work would impact a whole lot of people directly. 

So that's the story of how I became a Java developer. Transition from Visual studio to Eclipse wasn't that hard because of grad school experience with Java. But Eclipse is not Visual studio because of its glitches but serves the purpose of being an IDE very clearly. I certainly picked up a bunch of key attributes in this hibernation phase to write nifty little unit tests. I didn't realize how much powerful they were primarily because in all my previous companies they had an extensive testing team to backup the developers for testing but in here every developer has to be their own tester which includes unit tests initially followed by Integration tests which are black box tests.

I have written a demo restful web service (which I would post here next time definitely. I promise :D) which I thought could be very useful for anyone to pick it up easily. For I was writing a bit of those when i started out now I am working on a rather different but exciting story for the moment right now. I finally have sometime on my hands to update my blog which seemed to be getting some attention recently. 

Plus next time would be my recent exploits on Kindle Fire and as fate would've it I ended up with 2 iPads as well. One was given to me at my work for testing out the services. Any takers for my old iPad?

Until Next time!!

PS: Yawns... Finally out of slumber well and truly

Duh...iPhone 4s

After the amazing set of releases by Amazon over the course of last week where in I was keeping my fingers crossed for Apple to make its next move. In a way felt let down after the much hyped iPhone 4s announcement despite the fact I knew that there won't be much to expect in that announcement.

It's more than a matter of choice for me currently I am going to jump into the Bandwagon eventually will be ruing this decision here when iPhone 5 is going to come out. As of now I am twitching to order the iPhone 4s because of my lack of a smart device for that matter.

Amazon is the big winner in the week of announcements by throwing in a bunch of marvelous items during the last week press release. Gadget of the month will be iPhone 4s for me.

It's less than 2 weeks for the release of Arkham city and finally D day is heading closer

Rubbing the salt

This one is going to stand on a sad note rather than a tech note. First up is the Mango update which started rolling out when my phone broke couple of days before and it's weighing heavily on my mind.

Second one is the announcement by Jeff Bezos. Everyone kinda knew about Kindle Fire the tablet they were about to release but the surprise factor happened to be the new kindle. Oh boy they took me by surprise. I was looking in depth with the functionalities which each of them are having. So as I could get guess from the names. Anyone interested would find the detailed specs when you visit Amazon's home page today. I like the Kindle touch by the looks of it I am waiting to see the hands on video to see how it looks from Engadget.

 From first impressions and an avid fan of Amazon products I am blown by the new kindle more than Fire. Touch based kindle by the price range would be a huge seller in my perspective and a big money making strategy of Amazon because I paid close to 200 bucks on my old Kindle along with the Smart cover and stuff now that I reflect on it I could get 2 Kindle Touch's right now.

 Well now you know what rubbing a salt feels like. I am looking for any takers for my Veronica. Another smart move I admire is their placement before Apple's big announcement. Ball is your court apple let's see what you come up with. Until next week or I until I find more info on Kindle touch. Cheers!

RIIP Macho Phone!

Yesterday was one of the really worst days which I faced in these past 2 months. Just when i was waiting so eagerly to get hooked up to a Mango update. My Windows Phone died on me, apparently due to the failure of the LCD screen. I didn't think I needed the insurance with that phone primarily because of the fact that I never had a problem with any of the phones I had in a long time. I did realize that with ATT it's much better to have an insurance policy even though if the cost of the product is very cheap.

I loved my Windows Phone. These are the contingency plans I came up with, Order a Samsung Focus from Amazon.com and weather the storm. Something cool crossed my mind which would work out perfectly if it goes well. I wanted to get an iPhone 4 yesterday because I didn't want to be deprived off a smart phone but i realized I could get something better which would be the iPhone 5 which is due to come out soon. Well that would definitely make my phone rather distinctive. I consider this as the heavenly sign primarily because my love for apple products has increased exponentially after the usage of my iPad.

I hope to repair my Windows Phone and solely use it as my crash device for testing my applications. All in all I was able to avert the major damage which I would've faced yesterday.

On a side note. After all the travel in the past 2 months I have finally settled down and I am really raring to start with my new team in my company. Apparently I will be getting to play with a lot of smart devices. I simply can't wait. 

I got a request via email to reveal about the naming conventions I used for my gadgets. Well I have this obsession of naming my device after a girl (based on literary references and some of my favorite names) . My iPods were Megan & Cilla. My Kindle is Veronica. My 360 is an Agnes. I still haven't christened my iPad cause I am finding to choose between 2 very beautiful names. By the looks of it I should create a list of new names.  I should probably post it on my Personal blog too but I think this blog makes it a suitable avenue to divulge it.

As for things I am looking forward too, Arkham city is hardly 3 weeks away i can't wait to get my hands on the Collector's Edition

More next time...

Food for thought

I had this question on an interview where I was asked to solve this problem on C#. Reverse a string :) well my eyes were gleaming when i heard the question, best part being asking me to do it in all possible ways I could think off to answer it immediately. I was happy with the number of answers I could do it in that short tenure of time but  I realized how knowing a framework in detail could streamline the thought process very quickly. I am going to list my answer in this post so that someone might bump on it on the rare instance and find it useful.

class Reverse
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Enter Input String:");
            string stringToBeReversed = Console.ReadLine();
            string reversedString = ReverseTheString(stringToBeReversed);
            Console.WriteLine("Reversed String is: " + reversedString);
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
 
        private static string ReverseTheString(string stringToBeReversed)
        {
            //Nifty one ain't it?
   char[] chArray= stringToBeReversed.ToCharArray();
   Array.Reverse(chArray);
   return new String(chArray);
  
        }
   
   private static string ReverseTheString1(string stringToBeReversed)
        {
            // interviewers love one liners don't they?? :)
   
   return(new String(stringToBeReversed.Reverse().ToArray()));
  
        }
   
   private static string ReverseTheString2(string stringToBeReversed)
   {
            //Old fashioned way how could i ever miss the one with good'ol for loop
   string sOutput = String.Empty;
   char[] chArray = stringToBeReversed.ToCharArray();
   
   for (int i = chArray.Length - 1; i > -1; i--)
   {
   sOutput += chArray[i];
   } 
   return sOutput;
   }
  
  private static string ReverseTheString3(string stringToBeReversed)
        {
            //Old fashioned way with string Builder upgrade
            StringBuilder sOutput = new StringBuilder();
            char[] chArray = stringToBeReversed.ToCharArray();

            for (int i = chArray.Length - 1; i > -1; i--)
            {
                sOutput.Append(chArray[i]);
            }
            return sOutput.ToString(); ;

        }

  
  private static string ReverseTheString4(string stringToBeReversed)
   {
         //one with recursion
   if (stringToBeReversed.Length == 1)
   return stringToBeReversed;
   else
   return stringToBeReversed[stringToBeReversed.Length - 1] + ReverseTheString4(stringToBeReversed.Substring(0, stringToBeReversed.Length - 1));
  }
  
  private static string ReverseTheString5(string stringToBeReversed)
        {
            //one with LINQ :)
            var reversedValue = stringToBeReversed.ToCharArray()
                         .Select(ch => ch.ToString())
                         .Aggregate<string>((xs, x) => x + xs);

            return reversedValue.ToString();
        }
  
   
    }

It's a real simple piece of code I posted it here since I felt the urge to write something since it's been a while I posted something on here. I am currently working on a top secret venture currently and once I form a working prototype I would definitely post it here. Hope someone finds my little post amusing.

Until Next time!!

Epic Fail

I wanted to install Mango Tools SDK onto my laptop to start tweaking a new app I had been prototyping for quite some time now on Windows Phone 7, alas there was one major hindrance. My laptop was running Windows Vista Home Premium and for mango be installed needed a SP1. I let my windows update to download the SP1 and tried installing it which happened to be the beginning of the end.

SP1 corrupted my HDD with an error message and I was lucky to note it in the middle of the night when I saw the light on my laptop persisting than normal. I force reset it and boom windows wouldn't started. it was of no concern to me since I had the same situation umpteen times. I used safe mode now I got the prompts for the drivers being loaded and I was watching the sequence eagerly when i got the message CRC DLLs cannot be loaded then I realized what the service pack installation had gotten me into.

I realized I had no way to boot again into my current windows version and finally decided to reset my lappie to factory settings. I had my external HDD handy and manually copied all files to my Backup using DOS copy  commands. Huh took me the entire Saturday night to make a backup and I regret missing my Dev Environment currently. 

Moral of the Story: Its better to upgrade to Windows 7 rather than installing Windows Vista SP1

Halotopia

I have three posts on drafts which needs my approval, Life has been a little hard for the past few weeks needless to say! I have been following E3 Expo with some curiosity because of the rumor mills which were grinding some info about upcoming Halo 4. Rumor hills had been churning that for quite sometime at-least for the past  2 years. I was full of skepticism filled with a glimmer of slight hope.

Alas heaven gates opened this was the result.

It almost knocked me out of my chair when i saw Master Chief coming out of cryogenic sleep, I know it's going to be just one year long of wait left ahead of me. The wait has been made worth it because of another video preview which made my jaws drop in awe.

Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition, Like its mentioned in the video "Campaign of the Decade" remastered so i can try it on my new Xbox :) so looking forward to playing the "Attack on the Control Tower" level when it comes out on legendary mode!

I can only pity PS3 fans who won't be getting this bonanza :) :)

Counting down for the holidays !!!