Post #32 Login on Mobile Screen

As covered in my last post, I was to work on the mobile interface. And I did. Eversince, iOS7 came up, it broke my app. And ruined my phone's performance(I have cribbed earlier too. Never miss a chance).
How did it break my app? Well, till iOS6, I could log onto my app from regular safari session and then save the expense recording url at a shortcut on the screen. The shortcut had access to session / rememberMe cookie and whenever I accessed my site from the shortcut, I got a valid session and I could use it just fine. Since iOS7, however, the shortcuts do not share anything with the safari browser. Though its still safari, they work in their own silos. I think its good from security pov.

Even this was fine, but then there is additional restrictions. Suppose I tried to save the secure(logged in) URL as shortcut, the browser will try to access it first. As this browser instance now working in its own silo, it would redirect me to the log in page. As log in is an HTTP 302 redirect, the top URL changes to log in page URL and it becomes the shortcut URL. Whatever I did I could not get the expense recorder saved as a shortcut.

So I had to do it. Create a small log in screen for the mobile. It took about 2 days. I spent a good time setting up my dev env on the VIAO. Once it was done, I could get productive. I need to learn to use WebStorm better. Its good in the sense it points out if Sencha javascript is broken, but I'm not using even 5% of its power. Learnt a lot about cross site browsing. Finally, the shortcut is working and now the thing looks more professional...

That's it for 2013. My first Amazon bill is likely to be Rs. 4000. An expensive hobby it is. 

Post #31 New Changes and a Sticker Shock

So finally, my website is live for more than a year now. That's great news... or is it? There is still only one user and the free tier of Amazon pricing has run out. Dec will be the first full billing month and it seems, I'm going to run up a bill of $70 on a t1-micro instance. That's steep largely due to rupee depreciation. @45 it was only about Rs. 3000 per month which now looks like almost Rs.4500.

Anyhow, the site continues to evolve. I just completed couple of more updates.
- Moved away from sub-category based piechart to just category based one. Even with that, there are more than a dozen categories that clutter the chart, but its more discernible now.
- On click of the pie chart, I'm now loading the transactions that make up the pie chart.

That's a good feature as many a times looking at the distribution, I wonder, why the numbers appear inflated and then I had to navigate away to another page to see and validate them. It works better now.

There is another one I need to fix to make it compatible with iOS7. It works in browser but does not work as a shortcut.

And then I'm done with 2013.

Rediscovering my Music System

I bought my Jamo and Yamaha pair about 8 years back. After the initial infatuation, the interest was mostly fleeting. Its unwieldy to listen to music on large towers in the living room when others are at home and constantly hankering to lower the volume. Later when I returned from the US, I got myself, a couple of Bose speakers which I then used as surround speakers, but the volume was so low I could hardly ever hear anything.

Then about 2 years back I bought an IOmega drive that allowed me to stream you tube to my TV and it briefly triggered an upsurge in usage. But eventually, that died down too. Then came Apple TV. It was far more convenient to use it for playing songs or even streaming you tube. That was end of last year. It too came and went.

Recently as I was rearranging my stuff after the paint job, I got around to rewiring the speakers and played a few songs in 7 channel stereo mode (provided by Yamaha) and I discovered how well these speakers played together. I must have messed up the wiring somewhere as I could now hear the surround speakers better than earlier. It wasn't as good as I had wished, but they did contribute to overall effect of the music which I found very pleasant. Overall, it was a room filling effect even at lower volume. That goes easy on my family's ears.

For the last couple of days, I'm listening to all my favorite music on the old system and they are sounding more melodious than ever...Its like, I have a new music system. Cool!

Discovering Quikr and Olx

I went on a laptop buying spree back in 2008. I sold off my old (damaged) Toshiba for $180, over Craigslist in the US and was amazed with the kind of response I got. The buyer was genuine and he gave me the price I quoted without much haggling. Later, same year I bought another Toshiba, an ASUS netbook and a VIAO, all within a span of 6 months. Crazy...

5 years later as I was painting the house, I decided to dispose off one of the laptops along with the old Bose sound dock and the WII I bought from the US. I posted the ads in both Quikr and Olx and to my surprise, I got good inquiries for both Bose and the ASUS. I sold off the ASUS the same day and the Bose the very next day. I think I quoted a very low price, as I kept getting these calls, especially for the Bose, asking me whats wrong with it that I'm selling it so cheap.

But these classified sites have started to work in India. The guy I sold the laptop to, did check a few things such as the keyboard, sound etc. but could  not check much more as I was outside when I met the buyer. The Bose guy could not even check that. He practically bought it on my word that it works just fine. Cool! so the trust is now building up in India to conduct these transactions.

I got just 1 inquiry for the WII, it seems the console is losing its charm...

Getting the House Painted... Again!

Its been just 3 years. Mr. Sigh, our contractor did a decent job of most of the renovation we did back in 2010, but he botched up the paint job. The paint started peeling hardly a year after. With each passing year it became worse till the entire living room ceiling looked like a horror movie set. The ceilings were especially bad.
So finally, we decided to get it addressed. We asked for quotes and surprise! the local contractor came 10% higher than the Asian Paints guys. Needless to say we went with the Asian Paints. The relationship guy was a professional who inspired confidence. Besides they were giving me a 3 year warranty. I agreed. There was only a minor fine print. The PoP job will be counted extra based on PoP used per actuals. It was only later that the contractor came up with the estimates. It came to 10K. Ha! The subtleties  of fine print.

Then came the schedule. 23 days to paint the house. Hello, its just a 3 BHK. In Mumbai. How can you folks even think of such a schedule? The answer came in the weeks that ensued. The workers, there were always 3-5 of them would stroll in at 10:30 in the morning and then break for lunch @1. They'd take a siesta after then lunch and finally break at 5:30pm. In between, we'd need to serve them tea and biscuits twice a day. Talk of productivity.

In terms of color selection we are certainly getting better, but still not there yet. Our guest bedroom was an unmitigated disaster the last time with screaming blue and yellow. (2 walls each). Also, our master bedroom colors looked great independently, but together had little on screen chemistry.

This time we dabbled with beige (safe) in the guest bedroom and went yellow and white combination in the master bedroom. Its an improvement over the previous choices, but nothing like Shahrukh and Kajol.

After 23 days of stifled living, Asian Paints guys are finally wrapping up tomorrow. I'd rate them average performers. 3/5 star.This time I've let them take their time and hope we don't have to call the warranty clause.

Months 114, 113

The last 2 months have been a continuam. A desperate search for a job and the mind numbing day-to-day. At last the job search has finally come through. I got an offer from a user company. That was last week and I finally resigned from my current position after 11 long years.

Personally, these 11 years have been quite varied. My present company did a lot for me. And I'm grateful for it. However, the relationship went downhill in the last couple of years. The recent changes, i.e. over the last 6 months finally pushed me over the edge. The problem is that when a company is imploding (reducing in size), its very difficult for an individual to grow. For my vertical, the resources reduced by 33% over the last 2 years. If this was in the US, it might have made headlines, but this is India and we don't track these numbers very well.

The new company is no great shakes. Honestly, its a little scary. But I need it to make the move. I'm about 5 years behind in my career and may never be able to catch up. But if I have to even try, it has to be now.

Anyhow, I'm currently on an extended vacation. 2 weeks, entirely in Mumbai. I have a lot of pending stuff that I need to address and I'm taking time off to do it now. I got my household paperwork to sort out. The house needed a repaint and thats happening now.

Most other things are okay

Headline Inflation vs Core Inflation and India's Choice

Most western countries exclude food and fuel inflation when viewing inflation data. It means, they do not calibrate their monetary policies looking at the above two.

India on the other hand includes these in the reported inflation. Its because we think its important to include these. ITs probably because with limited spending power the percentage of income Indians spend on these is significant.

I feel these two are supply side issues. Fuel inflation is imported. The fuel prices are volatile as its exposed to vagaries of exchange rate and oil price fluctuations in the international mkt. Food is largely supply dependent. There is little the RBI policy could do to alter the prices(demand / supply) of these by changing the interest rates. Especially the food prices can be raised by cartels by creating artificial shortfall.

Then why are we continuing to increase the interest rates to rein in inflation? Whats the core inflation in India? I do not understand this. In the process we are killing whatever growth that can be achieved by relentlessly increasing the interest rates.

RBI knows this. Raghuram Rajan certainly knows this. Then why?

Haiyan: Reporting Body Count for Disasters

I remember the cold winter morning of 2-Dec-1984 in Bhopal. It was around 7:00 am and I was brushing my teeth, getting ready for school. The radio was on and the "samachar" broke the news of news of some gas leak and reported 24 deaths. I asked my mother, "If a gas cylinder bursts, can it kill 24 people?". She shrugged. I shuddered. We had 2 cylinders at home. I was 11. Well for some weird reason the school bus didn't turn up that day. Like any other day my father drove across the city to the Military Hospital at his usual hour. He still recounts the horrors he saw on the way. We was later to be part of the Army Medical Response team and was honored for this contribution.

As the day wore on, the casualty count built up dramatically. With every bulletin it soared, to 100, 400, 700, 1000. It just kept climbing. It took a week for the horror to sink in. The numbers finally added up to 5000-10000. The official count was of course much lower.

Over the ensuing decades, I've seen this eerie pattern repeat itself again and again. Be it 1999 cyclone in Orrissa, Bhuj earthquake, or 2004 earthquake. I still remember feeling the jolt. I was in Japan and it was morning time. Then the bad news started pouring in and the count started from a 100 or so. I remember this from CNN. It finally stopped at more than 200,000.

I write this as Cyclone Haiyan tears through Philippines. I remember reading about a 100 body bags being requested in an article just yesterday. Today the count stands at 10,000. They are calling the biggest one in the recorded history.

It takes a while to fathom the destruction caused by these disasters. Manmade or natural.

When I heard about Phailin, I feared the same. The count reported was 23. But kudos to administration, they could keep the casualties low to double digits. While we messed up Uttarakhand and the Day Phailin landed, 200 people died in a stampede in MP, we did go a good job of managing a Cat-4 hurricane.

Month 115

The first six months have rolled on. These 6 months have reinforced the notion about my inability to sustain. Very little if any positive has come out. It's been an continuous and dangerous slide down. Ten years seem a distant future. Farther than the last 10 looked on the eve of 2003. As impossible as the monsoon of 1995 during a wet ride home in a packed bus at the Barakhamba road in New Delhi. 

I'd never forget that ride. Moments that are so momentus but you don't realize when actually living them. 

My wife and daughter are away visiting her parents. I'm alone in the house and pensive,brooding??

The US visit is behind me and yet looming large over the future. The foreboding coming true. The ramp downs actually turning into an averlanche. The business wilting away sucking the life out of me.

Yesterday,

I had a night out with my usual mates. Wife is away and the boys came over to enjoy the evening. 

I actually said during our conversation. "The amount of negativity built up inside me is not healthy. " little  can they do to ally or dilute the vitriol or offer solutions.  All they could do is lend me their ears and what good sport they are! I truly value their company. They make life bearable. Help me make it through another week if not more. 

A new thread has started on the job hunt. Just started... Just like several others before that faded into nothing.  It's a demotion. Reporting into two level below where my classmate is.  But maybe that's an escape. Or a new beginning on a lower trajectory or a mirage or a death spiral accelarator.   

Time will tell 

The Myth of Cheaper iPhone 5c

I've already written about it when iPhone 5c was launched and it seems most people have seen through it already.

The point here is different and it comes from my experience of iOS 7 on iPhone 4. Ever since I  upgraded to the new OS my iPhone 4 which till iOS6 was a fairly high end, responsive device, dropped on its knees and started crawling.

As the OS gets better and more powerful, the hardware needs to keep pace with it. It would not make sense strip away features / capabilities from the OS just to force fit an underpowered hardware. And suppose you did that, the moment you fork the OS, the entire Apps ecosystem will get rocked. So far Apple has kept the appstore on a tight leash and if the apps are more mature/stable, its only because there is limited fragmentation. In other words "There can't be a cheaper iPhone".Apple anyways drops the price of the earlier model as soon as the new one is launched. The older model is supported for another 3 years or so and then sunset. That's what they did with iPhone 4 this year.

Its easier for the Andriod to differentiate itself by forking the OS as we already have a spectrum of devices for all budgets. In fact Andriod 4.4 is going to do something similar.

Lets see how it pans out.

Reliance iPhone Scheme

This is an awesome scheme that according to me can do the same magic for Reliance as it did for AT&T 6 years ago.

Rs. 2999 for an iPhone 5s with all you can eat Data, Voice and Messages is simply phenomenal and I think this will change the way Reliance comm is seen in the masses. This can turn the tide for reliance and get them the high ARPU.

I'm going to buy reliance comm shares just for this scheme as I think this scheme has the potential of turning around their fortunes.

Post #30 I've got visitors

Just yesterday, I was connected to my site over the database and was stunned to see I had a couple of registrations. I almost freaked out. No one, ever visited my site in the last 1 year. I've been the sole user of the site. In fact I do not even have an "about us" section. 

Not just that they visited, they also registered. But then that's all they did. They never went ahead and set up their accounts. Leave alone uploading their statements etc. 

So I got nervous. I've already figured out a couple of vulnerabilities in my site and I thought I must plug them asap.

So the first thing I decided to secure was the database. Now sql injection is a common malice. What I worry most is someone is going to drop the schema, table or delete records.

Now its not so easy given they don't know the name of my schema etc. But even then, why take a chance. So I decided to create a brand new user just for the application and gave it only select, insert update execute rights. No DDL grants. No delete rights either except on one table as I needed to delete things using the application.

Good learning and finally when I was done, I felt a little more secure. I now need to address a few other such stuff.

Also, I feel I need to improve a few other things on my site to make it a little more intuitive. Currently, I don't think its that easy to navigate.I'd do it in the next week or so. 

Its NY All Over Again

Its been almost a year, I visited NY. The feeling is uncannily the same. Foreboding, glum, cloudy and unsettling.

The earlier account I wrote about last year, actually did finally shut down. Along the way it left my position in the org vulnerable. This time its a different account. I'm just moving in. But the business is shrinking. Its not because of me (Is it?). I'm just moving in now. The client has decided to insource work and reduce contractors. As we play in that space, we're hurting.

Coming here, meeting the customers, listening to them break the news over and over. There are several stakeholders and all are in the same boat.

Know what? I need a change. A new beginning. In a new place. The question is how desperate can I get? And desperation is the key to effort. Effort to move out. To get out of this morass and turn over a new leaf.

Visiting NY is like a reminder that I'm stale and decaying. Nothing against the City. Its Fate!

Post #29 AWS Upgrade

So AWS has been sending me notifications to associate a profile to my instance or some of the logging features would go off later this month.

Finally, I bit the bullet and went through the workflow. It was pretty straight forward. But honestly, I was least prepared for what happened next.

The moment I associated the profile, the current instance got terminated and another instance came up in its place. But the site, went down :(. I wasn't prepared for it and did not know how to respond. So I went through the process of deploying the latest build on the new instance (Beanstalk).

Fortunately that worked and the site came up after deployment. But that was not all. I had to reconfigure the Putty and also the GZIP all over again to get it back to where it was.

So now I'm back to baseline. An interesting day!

Post #28 Bootstrap and AngularJs

Learning to use Bootstrap and AngularJs. Alternative to Ext.js. Ext js has both put in together. It abstracts out the HTML and the CSS completely. AngularJs is like MVC brought to the browser. There are JSP like tags in HTML, Controller, Module, Route, Directives, Models et all. Essentially get everything over to the client. Let the server just provide the data.

I bought license to Webstorm IDE. $50. But a good investment if one really uses it well. I'm not a pro so no ROI for me. But a great productivity tool. I've been using Editplus and with my sloppy habits, debugging Sencha breaks was a real mess.

Though I'm not sure if what usecase I should implement. Budgetometer has gone as far as it could. I could re-write it, but that's no fun.What more can I create. That is of value to me. May be perhaps I can start tracking savings and investments.Chart the cash flows. That may be useful.

Am thinking about it.

Month 116

Falling Short.
I'm consistently falling short of her expectations. That's leading to frustration at both ends. Either the bar is lowered or the whippings will continue.
Nothing is ever overlooked or forgotten. It gets piled up until it bursts and then it gets ugly.
She is the Judge, the Jury and the Executioner...
Where are we headed!

Post #27 Cash - A Label or a Category

Now that I've been using the Site for about 9 months, I understand things a little better. The one niggle I've had for some time now is how to treat cash. All the cash withdrawals are categorized under cash. The actual expense head, such as Paying Salaries, or Fuel etc. are folded under cash. The challenge around this comes when you want to know how much are you spending on lets say, Fuel. There is a Category called Fuel which covers all the Card payments. But when I pay for Fuel through Cash, it falls under Category Cash and sub category Fuel. To get all the Fuel expenses, I need to add expenses under Fuel Category and Cash->Fuel. There is a workaround which allows me to get the right picture. But then its a workaround.

The question is how to treat cash? The solution, treat Cash as a Label and not a Category. To implement this I had to make major changes to my application.

In a real world application this would be a big Change Request. As there are real users who would be impacted. Their data needs to be moved seamlessly. The challenge was to identify a migration strategy. I wrote down the impact areas. Made changes to Dev env and noted each step. And then executed it in prod.

Given I'm the SME, Business and Dev, this should have been an easy job. But no, after all the movements I still faced 2 errors.
- Filters on Cash Transactions. I should have caught it during regression, but did not
- Rules. I completely forgot about that there might be rules around Labeling and these need to be addressed before the movement.
I got both these errors in prod. I fixed them and rewrote a few Rules and Budgets to adjust.

Honestly, if it were a live site with thousands of customers, this change would have been next to impossible to implement.

Note: Along the way had a few run ins with Sencha again. The command line does not recognize the changes made. Its a big headache. The tool is not yet mature.  

iOS7 Has Arrived

iOS7 came last Thursday. I got in the queue 10:30 pm and I kept getting kicked out for about 30 min before I finally got through. 

A couple of good features such as Control center. I can now conserve battery by switching off blue tooth or wifi when not needed. 

The second feature is the task bar. I could now toggle apps and close them in a much better way. 

The search from any of the home page is also good. But sometimes it turns up inadvertantly. 

As I'm still on iPhone 4 the performance of the phone has gone down. It's less responsive. 

The worst part is that it broke my app. And pretty badly too. Because of the private browsing or some other reason it does not send remember me cookie to the server and that breaks my app. Lousy. It worked perfectly with iOS 6. 

The interface itself is flat which does not really very cool. A matter of personal taste. Many a times I do not know which part is clickable.

Overall a mixed bag. If it was not for the performance issues and breaking of my app I'd called it mildly useful. But as it stands today, it's retrograde. 

QE Tapering and how should respond

I'm having a debate with a friend about QE, money supply an it's impact on world economy. It's just an exchange of views between two amateurs. Nothing insightful here. 

Late at night around 3:00 am, I drafted a longish message for him describing QE and associated blah blah. But then it exceeded the SMS permissible length. I saved it in my notes and forgot all about it. 

Today as I opened the notes for something else there it was. I thought its worth posting it here as a record of my thoughts on the happenings of my times. 

"In a demand slump in a liquidity trap the central bank should be credibly irresponsible and create expectation of higher inflation to get out of the slump. Prime minister Abe of Japan made it the Central point of its election  campaign and savagely expanded the Japanese money supply   The yen depreciated from 77 to 100 from oct 12 to mar 13. QE is part of the plan to fight deflation.  Now that the threat is receding there I talk of tapering the QE. The central banker of London has explicitly said that he will think abt tapering only once the unemoyment drops below 7%. Currently it's 7.5. It was always known that easy money in the us can create asset bubbles elsewhere such as the EM and once the tapering starts those will burst.  It's inevitable. It has to go today or tomorrow. Can't help it. The best our RBI can do is to accept it and not choke the economy by raising interest rates just to defend the currency. That will throw us into a recession.  It's already knocking at our doors. The car sales have dropped for 9 months in a row. First time in the history of the nation. It's a tough choice for Raghuram Rajan. I hope he chooses growth despite inflation due to currency depreciation. "

iPhone 5C Why?

Whenever a Smartphone company launches a new flagship model, the previous years Flagship model goes for cheaper. They why did Apple launch its 5C model for $100 less? Its the same spec sheet as iPhone 5 and iPhone 5 would anyway have gone on sale after 5S comes in.

Apple does take its customer bases to be suckers. And we all drool at the steps of the Apple God! Anything goes! They are discontinuing iPhone 5 which makes sense because not many would buy plastic given a choice between 5 and 5C. The only reason why I'd buy 5C is because I wanted a pink iPhone 5.

I believe there is limited mileage in coming out with 5C. Its just an eyewash!