Sometime back I was telling all those who cared to listen that the Calendar might be the single most elegant piece of UI improvement that Cleartrip has put in place. Sadly, I guess they are failing to get some other bits in place eg. the confusion between Madras and Chennai (the location selector has Madras whereas the results has Chennai) and the flights on the Calendar not getting reflected on the trip selection bits. The site has become noticeably slow in churning out the results (or is it due to the readability of the inserted advertisement while the results page loads ?). In short, I don’t think I am going to use the site even to check the options of which are the flights available till they get some improvements in place.
Category Archives: My Reading Habits
Some random thoughts on my current reading habits
It really was too good to be true…
I had written earlier about how online shopping does make my book purchases easy. Well, it was too good to be true anyway. I’d pre-ordered (like many others) last book in the Harry Potter series with the fond notion of getting it either on the 21st or on 22nd of July 2007. 22nd July was a Sunday when this year began, so I’d have guessed that the folks at the online bookstore factored that in when promising delivery. Today I get a mail saying “If you are not located in any of in any of the following cities : Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkatta, Ahmedabad ,Cochin, Hyderabad: your book will reach latest by 24 July 2007 . All books were shipped on 21 July , however there is transit time of 2-3 days (excluding Sunday)“. It does suck big time when you cannot watch television since some m0r0n news channels are actually divulging the bits of the story and you are breathlessly awaiting the arrival of a book which now seems to be delayed all the more.
UPDATE: They claim to have been overwhelmed by over 15000 pre-ordered books, but managed to deliver it albeit a day late.
Books and stuff…
Finished reading A Long Way Gone – normally I am a very fast reader, but this book just holds you on to each page and makes you think over what is written. Highly recommended. Currently on the second reading of Strange Pilgrims and All Quiet on the Western Front. This does mean that my “ToRead” book list has become very short with only 3 books read to be gone through. For a month’s worth of reading it has been a nice trot.
Buying books … online
I have had it with buying books at a bookstore especially if that bookstore happens to be a Crossword – their in-store staff simply don’t make the cut. Having no idea about what books they have in stock they invent irrelevant stories to ward off possible purchases. In short I would not recommend buying books from them. The issue with Landmark on the other hand is the perennial hovering of their in-store staff which is annoying and reminds me of the bookstalls of some “large names” when they appear at the Kolkata Book Fair. Much as I like to buy books after I touch them and read the print size the callous approach taken by these two leave me with no other option but to move to online book purchases. On a side note, Landmark scores over Crossword in being prompt to reply to e-mail book requests and transaction related queries but is just about it.
Runa suggested trying out NDTV Shopping for books. I tried them out and they seem to have understood what good service is about. I ordered, purchased and packed a book to be delivered to my mother at Kolkata on Sunday. She’s received it in an excellent packaging on Tuesday (that’s yesterday) evening. I had purchased two books for myself too on Monday however a glitch with the payment gateway (the usual browser related stuff I assume) put the approval in a limbo. I exchanged a couple of mails with the mail address provided and lo behold !! – the order has been cancelled (which I had requested) and the transaction amount refunded. All this without a glitch. The only thing that could be better was the search engine. That is an important part of the shopping cart experience and the current search engine just does not allow too much modification allowing one to figure out the book of choice. Oh !! The prices are nicely below those offered by the brick-n-mortar bookstores.
Update: As someone who suggested so persuasively on IM, kudos to Indiaplaza (formerly Fabmall) for an excellent job.
Some bits from Faiz
Pankaj asks folks to figure out the English of a Faiz gem. Here’s what my trusty Faiz collection gave me:
May I be a sacrifice to your streets, oh fatherland, where
It has become custom that no-one shall go with head lifted
And that any lover who comes out on pilgrimage
Must go with furtive looks, go in fear of body and life;
Applied to the people of heart now there is method of administration
That stones and bricks are locked up, and dogs free
Strange since I was trying to recollect bits of these phrases some days back…
Firefox and Thunderbird : Beyond Browsing and Email
Found this nice book on O’Reilly pitched with just the right mix of content that makes a book good. It is not a great book. What it lacks in punch it makes up in the mix of topics and the ease with which they are writtent. While the initial parts might come out to be a rehash of old known facts for the old timers, the new readers would do well to go through them since they provide an understanding of the whole concept of the Mozilla Project and of course perhaps the two best products (barring Bugzilla) that have come out of that stable.
Very end user oriented – this is not a crash course in getting up and running with Firefox and Thunderbird. Rather, this is a nice stroll through end UseCases that any user of the two applications will have and sure enough there are screenshots a plenty to make them feel at home. The last part of the book deals with writing extensions for the applications. This is a section that really does not fit into the scheme of things. Writing extensions while fun could have been taken either as an online section or as separate book altogether. In short, this is a useful book to have while using the two applications.
An old favorite – lost and found
Few battles in history have been waged with greater ferocity, desperation, bravery, and atrocity than the battle for Berlin at the end of the Second World War. No one can tell a story better than Ryan, and he is at his very best here. In this book Cornelius Ryan brings his masterful powers of description and discerning eye for extraordinary detail to bear with force and elegance. This is a wonderful book, immensely informative, densely packed with facts and figures, and told in a compelling way by a best-selling author who can vividly recount seemingly countless tales of the most ordinary of individuals caught in the unforgiving and often deadly embrace of total war.
I had a copy of Cornelius Ryan’s The Last Battle picked off a street side vendor. That copy was precious since the author had autographed it and presented it to some dear friend. A classmate of mine had nicked it from my shelf (and even went to the extent of keeping it hidden when I was in their house). I found a copy of the book (not my copy) at a bookshop again. Riveting read more from an understanding of the characters involved rather than the historical sweep of events.
O’Reilly Rough Cuts: Get behind the scenes to stay ahead of the curve
O’Reilly Rough Cuts: Get behind the scenes to stay ahead of the curve. Yes somehow O’Reilly has managed to do it again. Providing a service like Rough Cuts is in someways unique. I subscribe to the Safari Service. It is a bit heavy on the pocket but the reason I do is that it is far better than to keep on procuring newer versions of the book the online service appears to be a nicer way of keeping oneself updated. Rough Cuts just manages to take UserDrivenInnovation (if it can be so called) to the next possible level. By ensuring direct feedback to the author as and when the book is being written, it does put in place a process by which a useful book can be shaped up.
The flip side is that it resides on the Internet and of course there is no special India-centric price.The entire process of collaboration and co-operation is Net-centric. And even now in countries like India, the internet is a major pain and a showstopper. This can be measured from the fact all said and done the LUGs are still a medium for ISO distribution. Add to it the fact that folks are not really used to an all pervasive Net-culture of feedback loop. However, things would look brighter and perhaps this will motivate a lot of students to contribute feedback. And perhaps motivate them enough to understand the nuances and begin writing.
Boy oh boy !!
I purchased the CUPS: Common Unix Printing System (digital edition) today and received a file format that is not readable in Linux. How surprising can that be ? A book for Unix/Linux printing systems being distributed in a format that cannot be read with Linux. If only they sent across a PDF… 🙁
No I am not going
Yup. I am not going to foss.in. Clearing up the desk would take a good amount of time. However, we have some fun times lined up and then I plan to blog about eating joints in Pune (finally). So once that happens we will have something to talk about. Bought a whole lot of books and for the first time in line freaked out on clothes shopping.