Reading…

Well, this isn’t a tech post. So if you have time to waste then go on…
Anyways, recently have been reading a lot of books, at at present i am reading , chetan bhagat’s “3 mistakes of my life”. Well i have not finished the book, but as i turn to every page , it becomes more and more interesting. The book is very simple,  does not at all bore you and makes you glued to your chair. I should mention here that, i have also finished with the awesome book, five point someone (FPS) and one night @ call centre both written by chetan bhagat.
I dnt know what makes me write this post, But what i know is all the three books are very true and feel realistic when you see around you, your environment, the people living and how they react to problems in their life.
OK before i shut down, it would be great if any one could suggest some good books to read.
thanks

Database Normalisation

We had DBMS subject in our semester V and i remember most of us has failed in it..Lol..The basic reason that we failed as i see was lack of knowledge in the subject plus no practical examples. Anyways this post is not about that.
Since almost 2 years past and i still did not have a clear concept of what is Data Normalisation, i went through many forums and wiki and learned about it, which i would like summarize and share it here..

What is Normalisation ?
In simple words it is a process to design a relational database, such that we minimize duplications of entries (information) in the database. Also during Normalisation, we need to take care that we exclude the delete, update and insert anomalies.

What are these anomaly?
Delete Anomaly : Consider a Student table with Id, name, course and fees as the fields..If we want to delete the name, then it is not possible, we have to delete the entire student record. And this is not ideal or feasible.

Insert Anomaly: Now in the same student table if we have to enter student record without any name available, the table cannot handle the data. This is assuming that the name column needs some value.

Update Anomaly : Now in update anamoly, if we do not able to update the student table successfully, this may lead to inconsistent state.

Thus we have normalisation to avoid all this anamoly.

PS: This is what i have understood and put up in my own words. If any suggestions or improvements over this article will be highly appreciated. Thanks.

The next time i will try to post about 1NF, 2NF and 3NF.

Windows XP genuine Notification

Hi, It was today that a friend of mine came to my place with his laptop with this problem. Every time he would start his computer, he would get this error, “Your copy of windows is not genuine” “You may be a victim of software counterfeiting” and some more notifications. Well yes you guessed it, he has a pirated windows software. And he has kept his automatic updates on. So when updating or may be installing windows media player 11 or IE 7, microsoft web site might have detected it as not genuine. This notification would pop up every time  he would start his Laptop.

He asked me for an advice and the first thing i said was to format the PC. Hey but wait..there are far more better and very easy methods…i found them through my best and favorite friend Google..

Ok the easiest way to remove this bugging notification would be this which i found it over here

1. Reboot Windows in safe mode (hold the f8 key while booting and you will get the option to boot in safe mode) and then:

2. Open Registry Editor (regedit.exe) from “Run” and search for wgalogon folder
and delete it. You should backup up the registry beforehand, in case
somethiong goes wrong.

3. In your windows directory search for files wga* and delete them.

Ok this three steps, and you are done with this stupid error.

Programing, Coding – MY LESSONS.

I have been working on a plugin for wordpress past 4 days now. No, i did not code it from scratch, but i had to use a plugin LCA management for a client blog. But this plugin was not compatible with the WordPress 2.7 version. Now since i had not worked with wordpress plugin API, it was a challenge for me. With lot of referances and lot of google digging and a very few mods here and there, i finally managed to make the plugin work.

So to sum up all in all, this is what i learned from my research and hard work.(My lesson for me—lifetime… )

Look at the code and try to find out what is happening where.
As in my case , since it was pure php and mysql, i used a lot of echo everywhere to find out what is happening.

Go step by step. Start from beginning and go to the End. Do not assume things happening in the code. Everything in a code has to be systematic and so watch each and every line of code in steps.

Digging for help through google is the best. Use it properly and use very appropriate keywords.

Here in this net world there are a lot of people who are kind enough to share their knowledge with us. So go out there, look for forums and search in there..if you don’t find any, then post your problem. There will be someone sitting at the other end of the globe ready to help you.

The most important. Do not loose patience, if you don’t get success it does’nt mean your code will not work. It means you need to look for each and every corner. More hard work = success guaranteed.

thanks a lot..bye..TC

PS : all the coders may feel free to contribute in here.

programming basics..My point of view

I have been dirtying my Hand a little bit with programming, mostly php and mysql and little bit of CSS. This article is basically about my experiance and you may not find it appropriate or true. But since i have experianced and learnt something , here i would like to share it.

Since i am working with PHP and mysql these days, i find it very easy to search some tutorials over the Net. Hence to say the fact , google is now my best friend. It is very easy to get articles and snippets which are contribute by the programmers world wide. We can use them for free so why not use it?

Also i think it would be very foolish to sit down and start all over from scratch, building a code, when you know it is already available over the internet. It is just a point of modifying the Code and making it more efficiant to suit your needs.

Now that we know, our best friend provides all the tutorials and codes, it is not true to say that we can entirely depend on Google. We should also be familiar with the programming syntaxand know how the code flows and how it functions. so we do also require some debugging skills.

For example 3 days back i was trying to modify a wordpress plugin and i did not know where to start with and i could not understand some parts of the code. since this was php , i tried to echo everything i could to learn what was happening where…finally i managed to clear my doubts and understand the flow..

As for i am concerned, this was very important lesson for me. I learned a lot and lot and i am still learning. This post may not be so useful and most of the programmers will know this, but i think it is worth mentioning it here..

Keep coding , happy Coding..
Oh and before i forget, wish you all a very happy new year 2009. Thanks

Simple MySql query, and a silly mistake

I have been working with PHP and mysql past 6 months now and love the language..very easy and get a hell lotta help from all the programmers around the world. Ok this post isn’t any tutorials about php..this is about a small silly mistake which i made writing a mysql query. I tried very hard to find what the error could be , but after a day of research i found out where i was wrong..

I had made a table with 5 columns. My first query was to insert some data in the table
i did the usual connection to mysql database. And then proceeded with the usual query of insert.

However the query everytime threw and error which was this

Error in mysql_query: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘table_name (col1,col2) Values (‘val1′ , ‘ at line 1

Well i tried to search for a solution and i found this beautiful easy to use Mysql manual here. And found this article

If you specify no column list for INSERT ... VALUES or INSERT
... SELECT, values for all columns in the table must be provided in the
VALUES() list or by the SELECT. If you don’t know the order of
the columns in the table, use DESCRIBE tbl_name to find out.

Well all must have got what the problem was..Yes as i have specified earlier, i had a table with 5 columns and i was just trying to insert 2 values in two columns. Since i had not specified the remaining columns, the query threw an error..
After reading the manul i realised that for INSERT query you need to insert values to all columns however if you wish to not insert any value in some other column then you may specify a blank space in the query corresponding to the error…

then the query would look like this

$query = INSERT into `table_name` (col1 , col2, col3, col4, col5) VALUES (‘val1′,’val2′,’ ‘,’ ‘,’ ‘);

Sometimes a simple problem can take ages to find a solution..I learned from this that you need to know the basics more thouraghly to become an expert..

twitter

I am a big fan of twitter and have been using it past 2 months…love to follow all the geeks around..they are selfless and always there to help..

well everyone must have read and written about how helpful twitter is and how helpful the tweeple (people who use twitter) are…

There are a lots of clients for twitter. I was using twitterfox, for my firefox browser , but lately i came across this gadget for gmail..called as TwitterGadget is basically useful for all those die hard gmail users..

I found about this gadget from one of the tweeple i was following..Ok before  i go any further , for those who dont know , gmail has a feature where we can add outside applications to our gmail account..Just go to settings and gadgets and there you’ll have to provide the link..so as i was saying, i tried twitterGadget and in no time got through it..

what i Feel

this gadget is awesome, got all the features a tweeple would want, and very well organised..since i like to gmail and use gtalk for chatting , having this gadget next to my inbox is very convinient..

All those who wanna try it on their Gmail can copy this URL in their gmail gadget setting : http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml.

Also do check out this gadget here.

A screenshot of my gmail twitter gadget

thanks

my hands on Photoshop

hey guys…just other day i requested ketan (k-1o) to design me my name logo..

and immediately later he spend almost 3 hours at a stretch and designed me this awesome looking image. I am uploading  it here…Oh, did i forget to mention that K10 is an animator and a graphic designer..you can check his blog here.

designed by k10

okk..now as the title of this post goes i also tried my hands on photoshop..i had some other image in mind and after a lot of clicks and undo’s and redo’s and a lot of trouble i settled with this image..i took almost 2 hours to do this simple thing..so here goes my image.

by idrish

let me say that it was so much fun to do this…i also checked some photoshop tutorials on internet but they were’nt so much clear for a beginer. i will try to get some more designs for you guys…(ya ya i know after looking at my design you will advice me to settle with coding..and never try my hands on photoshop or paint.. hehe ).  But i will do this again…c ya later.

thanks

NOKIA 6233…rockz…

i recently have got a new cell phone..

nokia 6233, and i shud be thankfull to ma sis who insisted in buying that cell…it really rockz…its got many good features with lotssa good music playing functionalities…

it also has a fm radio and a two megapoxel camera..

the looks and all other stuff which a teenager would want is present in this phone..

i am using the gprs facility from this phone and connectivity is really fast…

full 10 outta 10 for this phone..

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