Good to be back

It always feels good to be back, indeed great. Weekends are satiated with activities which makes me crave for weekdays. Didnt know when I over charged my clock, time seems to be running really fast.

Took time to click few thing around, here they are
http://www.flickr.com/photos/b-factor/sets/72157627543380470/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/b-factor/sets/72157627543288596/

My First Chrome Extension

Developed my first Chrome Extension and submitted to Chrome Gallery.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bfcpbjicbalkonjedgogipelaagampkf?hl=en

Quick Notes
An editor to make quick notes while browsing
Features:

• Make quick notes while browsing instead of opening the notepad from your computer.
• If you want to make a note of something you are reading, select that text, right click and select “Copy selection to Notes”. That text will automatically be appended to the existing text.
• The notes will be persisted across your browser session until you decide to manually clear the contents by using the “Clear” button on the bottom of the quick notes popup.

New Feature: Email the content which you have saved.
Features roadmap:

• Export your notes to a file in your computer.
• Share your notes through facebook or twitter.

Yosemite : Heaven on earth

http://www.flickr.com/photos/b-factor/sets/72157625268804665/

 

HTML5 Session Storage : Key things to consider

Session Storage is a new feature in HTML 5 under Client Storage. Even before the advent of this feature developers were using client side storage before with various techniques. Cookies were the first, foremost and most famous technique which is being used across all the sites(almost). Cookies has its own limitation like increased HTTP call weight, storage size limitation(4 KB). To overcome these, HTML 5 has come up with a feature called Client Storage.

HTML5 supports three types of Client Storage options

1. Session Storage
2. Local Storage
3. Database Storage

Each of the above has its own pros and cons. Considering Browser compatibilities, ease of development and quick ability to adapt in mind, I would recommend Session Storage.

What is Session Storage?

• Session Storage is a simple map constructed with Key value pairs
• It is global object in JavaScript, to be more specific it is a sub-object of window
• The Object perishes once the Window is closed(Window  instance)
• Session Storage can store megabytes of values, the exact size depends on the browser implementation. For IE8 it is 10 MB

How to use Session Storage?

As we understand that session storage is a simple Map, we can direct set and get values in this object as we do with maps. It is a better practice to create an instance of session storage for usage. Here is the snippet

var dataStore = window.sessionStorage;

This will create a dataStore object which would be our session storage object, now the object is ready for use

Setting a value:

dataStore.setItem(‘key’,'value’);

Getting a value:

dataStore.getItem(‘key’);

Removing a value:

dataStore.removeItem(‘key’)

Clearing the entire object:

dataStore.clear();

Getting the Length:

dataStore.length;

KEY and VALUE are pure String literals in this case

Key things to consider during implementation:

1. Always remember that both KEY and VALUE are STRING literals, even if you set TRUE as value, it will be considered as a string, same with 1 or 0
2. As of now only Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE8 & above supports Session Storage.
3. It is strongly recommended that you escape the value before setting it in the storage, like dataStore.setItem(‘key’,escape(‘value’)) and while fetching the value, unescape the same unescape(dataStore.getItem(‘key’)). This is to handle special characters, esp for IE
4. One more key thing to keep in mind is even though sessionStorage can store upto 10MB, it is always better to handle break over scenarios. If the quota exceeds, the browser will throw the following error ,’Uncaught Error: QUOTA_EXCEEDED_ERR: DOM Exception 22‘.Browsers are expected to handle it themselves, but at this point atleast Chrome doesnt. I created a small wrapper around the set which would add a try/catch and I cleared the object on error, it needn’t be the same in call cases, if you desire a specific handling technique, you can do that in the catch. It goes like this

   try {
   dataStore.setItem(‘key’,escape(‘value’));
   }
   catch(e){
   if(e.code == 22){
   dataStore.clear();
   }
   }

Have fun!

 

The name is Sun-tv-kanth

I was no different from kids who sang ‘Superstaru yaarunu keta’ more than ‘Twinkle twinkle little star’ during their kinder garden days and I was no different from any kollywood fan who has Rajni in his high esteem and always answered RAJNI for the question, ‘Who is your fav actor’.  Rajni inspired me more with his personal life than with his career, I like him for his simplicity, his spiritual thoughts and way of living.  ’Baba’ is one of my favorite Rajni film, I would prefer watching that than ‘Shivaji-The Boss’.

I don’t remember watching Rajni’s interview before, he never use to give interview to media and that made him more sough after, I think he has never given one before atleast after 90s. For this Diwali it happened, Sun Tv telecasted Rajni’s interview. The last thing that can anyone can expect is Vijay Sarathy interviewing the Super Star, cant they find a better person? he is not even as old as his experience, leaving that apart, he doesn’t even know what to ask, I hope that he was not asked to compile the questions. Vijay Sarathy is good enough to ask people visiting tourist places about their favorite movie/actor/song and not to ask Superstar about anything. Superstar’s aura and charisma tied me to the couch inspite of Vijay sarathy’s stupid rather silly questions, I never knew that the interview is about boasting Enthiran, every question asked/answered was in Enthiran’s context.

Vijay Sarathy requested Rajni to tell a story, Rajni thou hesitated at first, started narrating the story in his own amazing style, it went really well. For those who haven’t heard Rajni’s stories, it always ends with a message, which will have a huge impact and this story is no exception, the message  thou not spiritual as I expected, had a very strong impact util he started molding it around the producer and director. It was so needless and looked like he was asked to boast about Kalanithimaran. I thought Sun Pictures bought Enthiran, but looks like they seem to have bought the star itself.

One more thing that made me sigh is Rajni’s words ‘Award ka padam parom, reward ku thaane panrom’ – No Comments on this. They say with power comes responsibility, so should it with stardom. One more thing is that, I couldn’t claim this as a tamil interview, Rajni was talking in English most of times, then I remembered( he can talk english, walk english, laugh english).

Still he has that supreme simplicity, hope he doesn’t lose that. I read a press article, which says that Rajni is currently paving his way to politics with Sun TV and Kalanithi after kalaignar’s period, not sure about the fidelity thou.

Hitherto a proud Rajni fan,

Apart

Apart

Originally uploaded by Bala Arjunan

U walked into my life and tore me apart

—

For rest of the photos visit

http://www.flickr.com/photos/b-factor/sets/72157624525739620/

Raavanan Movie review

Raavanan, I couldn’t categorize this movie into a genre  it doesn’t fit in one, it is well blended with all sorts. The first thing that would astonish you is the cinematography, every color, pov, depth and what not? though the opening boat scene was poorly CGIed, the climax was amazingly done. As you sail through the movie, if you will start feeling yourself in Raavanan’s shoes, ofcouse the title suggests everyone that the creator is going to shed some clean light on Raavan’s character and few grey shades on Ram, atleast I went with this assumption and I was not wrong

Though the movie title card says that the story is fictional, you cannot stop co-relating, if you know Ramayanam, then you can never escape. Thou the plot is loosely adapted, most of the scenes are fully inherited, I would quote from Ramayanam instead to avoid spoilers,

1. Hanuman’s meeting with Sita and their conversation
2. Soorpanakha’s nose incident
3. Vibhishenan’s character and depiction
4. Raavan view of Sita and his actions towards her
5. Sita’s devotion to Dev and her prayers to Lord
6. Kumbarkarnan takes side of Vibhishenan at the end
7. Hanuman’s activities during his introduction scene and at the court scene when he was sent as a ambassador to Raavanan’s court, esp the dialogues
8. Raavanan appreciating Ram’s handsomeness and smartness.
9. Hanuman saving Lakshmanan.

Things that are purposely made fictional to make the movie look distinct from Ramayanan

1. Thou Raghini’s ring was shown obviously twice, she doesnt hand over that to Gnanaprakasam as a token, even though he explicitly asks for one.
2. In Ramayanam, Raavanan kills Soorpanakha’s husband, but Veera doesn’t do that, he just chops off the character’s hands and sends him to Dev.
3. Singarasu’s character has been highlighted more than the real Kumbakarnan’s
4. Sakkarai’s killing by Dev, to prove Dev as a cold hearted policemen.

Director has depicted Ram with grey shades and Lakshmanan with double grey shades, office Hemanth doesnt fit Lakshman’s role, but to certain extent he does, the way Gnanaprakasam saves Hemanth is a good metaphor.

The chemistry between Veera and Raghini was carefully painted with zero flaw, the way Veera feels for Raghini and vice versa, Maniratnam has managed to keep her character clean. Though the film is incomplete is few areas, where the director would have given more explanations or reasoning, I feel it is better to have it left incomplete, this way it makes more sense or atleast has avoided more complexity. The romance between Dev and Raghini actually sucks, may be it is intended, Prithiviraj fits well in the cop role, he doesn’t shine involving scenes with Ash, he looks naive in romance. About Aishwarya, she looks good, but too much make up and it strips of the beauty from few scenes, but her performance is impressive.

Wouldn’t say it is a typical Maniratnam’s movie, but it is a masterpiece by itself. A must watch.