Arvind At Work

Petrol costs are once again at high in India. There is 10% increase in price of petrol. So average consumer is very conscious about using petrol efficiently. Here are few tips that one of my friend sent to me -

Some tips for filling petrol and diesel:-

Only buy or fill up your car or bike during early morning, when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks underground. . The colder the ground, the more dense the fuel. When it gets warmer, petrol expands. So, buying in the afternoon or in the evening, your liter is not exactly a liter. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature play an important role. 1 degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.

Another most important tip is to fill up when your tank is HALF FULL. The reason for this is, the more fuel you have in your tank the less is the air occupying its empty space. Petrol evaporates faster than you can imagine.

Another useful information is to avoid filling up if there is a fuel truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy. Most likely, the petrol/diesel is being stirred up as the fuel is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.

This simple tips will give you most value of your money.

Search for the file php.ini. There are lot of php.ini files. I was not sure which one to choose. So I opened all of them in my edit plus editor.

Look for the string -

;extension=php_curl.dll

Uncomment this line and restart apache. Curl should be installed.

I am technical guy. I work well with technical stuff. Having more than 5 years of work experience in making web softwares.

Sooner or later you will feel the need of good management skills.

You need to manage -

1. Your team.

2. Projects.

3. Tasks sub tasks and sub sub tasks.

4. Release.

5. Finance.

6. Family and vacations.

Being a technical person is no excuse to be bad at management. I know the time when I could do well only if I were better manager. But things have changed a lot. I am working on becoming a good manager now. I have made a good progress.

Here are few things that have changed -

1. Feedback - give feedback as close to the event as possible. If your team member is writing some bad code. Say it as soon as notice. Remember not to blame the person. You can something like -

“I saw your last commit. It broke the code.” And let the person explain. You may discover some other issues.

2. Raise and escalate issues. If something is not working for you - if UI resource is not allocated to your project - Say it. Be vocal and clear. Say your project is suffering. Don’t save it for appropriate time. This is one thing I learned the hard way. If you are not vocal enough to your seniors you are going to suffer and those around you will think you are nuts. Why the hell you did not raise this issue earlier? I made myself a fool by doing this. Also people may make you feel guilty.
3. Cry. Only crying baby gets the milk. This I learned from my 4 months old daughter. If she is lying in the bed and playing with her toys everyone is free and does not notice. But when she starts to cry everyone goes to her to ask what do you want and she is very persistent in asking for milk. She cries till she gets the milk. . If you want raise - cry. If you want cab - cry. Ask persistently.

4. You are paid for the work you do. Make no mistake about it. Identify and make it clear what your pay expects from you. Don’t wait for your manager to come to you and set the priorities and goals for you. Instead make your own goals and priorities that fit into larger picture of your organization and send them to your manager for feedback. He will do the rest for you.

After all we all are learning.

Good tutorial on emacs for beginners-

http://www.linuxhelp.net/guides/emacs/

I like understanding the underline database first for any application. I don’t have full grasp yet. But here is brief summary of database. Help me complete this summary. You can give your suggestions by posting comments on this post.

1. access - aid, mask, type, status - not sure what this table does.

2. authmap - aid, uid, authname, module - name suggests it is type of mapping.

3. blocks - this table is used to store blocks.
module - name of the module e.g. views, og, menu, comment, node etc.
delta - not sure
theme - name of the theme for the block.
status - 0,1 not sure but I guess it is used to tell if the block is active or not.
weight - denote the order of display.
region - left, right, center etc. used to tell the position where it will render.
custom - not sure
throttle - throttle it under high load
visibility - name suggests it is visible or not
pages - pages setting to tell on which page it will appear
title - title of the module

4. blocks_roles - used to map block with roles settings.
module - name of the module
delta - ?
rid - role id - some access permissions will be saved here

5. boxes - obsolete now.
bid -
body -
info -
format -

6. cache - used to store some cached data.
cid - id e.g. variables
data - blob
expire - when it will expire
created - timestamp
headers - ?

7. cache_content - caches the content data
cid
data
expire
created
headers

8. cache_filters - ?
cid
data
expire
created
headers

9. cache_menu - holds menu settings
cid
data
expire
created
headers

10. cache_page - caches the pages
cid
data
expire
created
headers

11. cache_views - may be used for caching the views. Used for views.
cid
data
expire
created
headers

12. comments - used to store comments.
cid = unique comment id
pid = parent id
nid = node id on which the comment is made
uid = user who has put the comment
subject = title or subject
comment = body of comment
hostname
timestamp
score = ?
status = may be something like published
format = ?
thread = used to manage thread need to find out
users = ?
name = name of the user who posted the comment
mail = ?
homepage =?

13. history - keeps track of user’s activities. Used for online users I guess.
uid
nid
timestamp

14. node - to store piece of content
nid = incremental node id
vid = version control id
type = type of the content e.g. blog, article
title
uid = author id
status = published etc
created
changed
comment = comment’s settings
promote = to show on homepage or not
moderate = ?
sticky = used to order by field

15. node_access = access permissions associated with the node.
nid
gid = ?
realm = ?
grant_view = view permissions
grant_update
grant_delete

16. node_revisions = used to store version of the node.
nid
vid
uid
title
body
teaser
log
timestamp
format

17. node_type = I guess this table is used for CCK.
type
name
module
description
help
has_title
title_label
has_body
body_label
min_word_count
custom
modified
locked
orig_type

18. filters - not sure what this table does?

19. OG - comes with organic group module. Interesting module.
nid = id of the group
selective = type of group
description
theme
register = I think it is a flag to show it on register page
directory = show it in listing or not. Guess.
notification = send email alerts or not.
language = en, fr I dont know.
private = checks if it will come in listings

20. og_ancestory = not sure what this table does.
nid = ?
group_nid = id of the group
is_public = I think it is to denote the public status of the group

21. og_uid - maps user to group
nid = ?
og_role = role of the user
is_active
is_admin
uid
mail_type = email alerts settings
created
changed

22. og_uid_global - have global settings. It only has two fields - uid and og_email. I am not getting any idea what it will contain.

Og - Organic groups
OG enables user to create the groups. Group has its own homepage.
There are three type of users in groups -
1. Owner - who created the group.
2. Administrators - who have special permissions for moderating the group.
3. Subscribers - create content for the group.

Block - shows information about the group and lists the posts in the group.

Types of groups -
1. public - normal group.
2. Selective - member need permission to become a member.
3. Private - does not show up in normal group lisiting.

How to create a post -
drupal will ask  you to make one node type to serve as group. Create one. You can name it as OG-group-node. Then make one content type to serve as posts in the group. I created a content type OG-post. Select radion button as standard group post.

Now you can add groups and create posts in it.

Drupal views are one of the best ways to display your data in the form of blocks. You can find very good documentation on the following link -
http://drupal.org/node/54432. It clearly explains each and everything about views.

Definitions of views -

1. Views - some presentation of content. Multiple in block or single. Generally multiple.
2. Page views - single piece of content on a page.
3. Block views - a list of content in block view. Examples - recent updates.
4. List views - simple list of content as un-ordered list.
5. Table view - similar to list view but in tabular format.
6. Teaser view - shows title and teaser.
7. Field - field for view is that gets displayed in a view.
8. Argument - arguments can be supplied to the view from url. These can be used to filter the output.
9. Default argument - if view expects an argument and does not get one following can happen -
i) page not found
ii) ignore the argument part and show all the values
iii) summary and archive style view.
** who decides which behavior it will show? I will put it when I get the answer.
10. Filter - not all content is needed in a view. So it is the criteria to filter out the content.
11. Exposed filter - End user can not use this. It works only on page views.
12. Sort criteria - alphabetic or latest first.
13. Default views - just install them and you can modify them.
** not clear enough.

Basic options - 3 main options to must have in a view -
1. name - no special characters except (_).
2. access - roles check.
3. description - visible in admin screens.

Page views - accessible via url and appears in main content area. Page view settings must be checked for this.
Items related to page views are -
1. URL - url on which view is available. We can provide argument to it.
http://mysite.com/user/arg/track. Here track view will be used to show recent post of the user. It will get the argument ‘arg’ of the user.
2. View type - can choose any type for view.
3. Title - displayed on the page. It can have %1, %2 etc for arguments.
4. User pager - can show results in paginated format.
5. Nodes per page. Title says it all.
6. Provide menu.
7. Provide menu as tab.
8. Make default menu tab.
9. Tab weight.
10. Menu title.
11. Header.
12. Footer.
13. Empty text - if view is empty then this message will be shown.

One good example you can find at -

http://drupal.org/node/161292

Just had a discussion with Nazim.

He is founder of xensoft and my very good friend. He is expertise in drupal.

I am very new to drupal and he gave a very good presentation on drupal. That made a lot of things clear in my mind. A lot of buzzwords now making good sense to me -

1. themes

2. modules

3. query

4. blocks.

I plan to start a learner kit of drupal on this site. Stay connected.

I recently got a big project. That seems to be really big. When looking at the overall scope I was really overwhelmed. All those big MRDs and PRDs look daunting to me.
Then I remembered one thing - break it down.

You dont have to do it in a single day. There is one very good technique to break everything down. Just open an excel sheet and break down all the parts of the projects. Let it free flow.

For example your site requires -

1. Login
2. Register
3. Profiles
4. 3 types of profiles. Break everything into 3 tasks.
5. Message

Break them further. Login requires username/email/password.
Register require - getting data from user, sending him confirmation email, processing confirmation
Profile - edit/add more.

Make unit. I like to take 1/2 day as 1 unit. This keeps me divide my day tasks into first half and second half. So one day becomes 2 units. Some people like 1 day as unit.

Breaking everything down will give you latest action items.

This will also put into action mode.

I have used subversion for my code management. It is very powerful and rich. It helped me to work with the programmers across the globe. I used to have a very distributed team when I was working in peopleaggregator.

It works equally well for windows and linux. There are few basic commands you need to learn though.

Here is a good start.

http://www.arvindatwork.com/index.php/category/subversion/