Post#7 Drop Down Menu

I've been thinking about what to take on next. Of the various options available I took on creating a Drop Down Menu. It took me a while. One of the things I'm really bad at is UI design. Not for the tags etc. but the colors. I truly appreciate the challenge of a great UI. Mint.com has a great. UI. It takes a lot of creativity to design a great Drop Down Menu. It might look deceptively simple, but it's not. And it's not the JavaScript. It's the interface.

I did not want a Hover drop down menu which a lot of sites sport. In fact many a sites have completely done away with it. They show simple Tabbed menu. You click and get to where you wish to go. But lately, in the last 3 years I've seen a lot of sites create monster menu. In fact I love it in some sites. Hence I decided to go with it.

It's tough to use that much real estate effectively. I soon realised. I tried to create a help on the features but it too small for effective help and too big for showing just a couple of links.

Also the color scheme is tough to nail. I spent 2 days just playing with the palate. Finally I came up with some hideous colors.

Another challenge is usability. The main hover menu may be on the right but the sub menu options are on the left. When I moved the cursor across the menu itself changed as soon as the mouse moved over the adjoining tab.

One of the options I tried is to leave some blank space at the top do that when you move the mouse you do not go over the neighbouring tab. It made the menu look so empty, it sucked.

I finally created a small timer function to circumvent the issue. Now the menu would change only if your mouse stays over the link for more than 500ms.

I liked the idea that implemented something that does not ruin the experience. No empty spaces needed.

I'm done with Drop Down stuff. So from tomorrow it's back to the transaction processing. I'll start with Label Creation and then move to user registration

Post#6 Completing Rules and Split

Finally I finished the first cut implementation of the Rules, Split Section. Its basic development. Lots of alternate scenarios and validations are missing. But its largely done. Now you could
- Create a new rule based on a given transaction. Currently its based on "contains".
- You could classify individual transactions(single or multiple). Ignore them from calculation, Assign Labels and or apply Categories.
- You could Split a Transaction into multiple ones.
- You Could create new Labels
All of this using JQgrid. It was fun and a lot of learning.

At times I was surprised at how I was able to diagnose a problem. This is veteran me. For example, realizing that the reason the function is not called is because I create these tags dynamically and these are not registered with jQuery. There were a few others, I'm forgetting now. But essentially, these were things that were not obvious. Good job me!

This probably brings me to completing about 10% of the overall functionality. I'm not sure what I should take up next. Probably, reporting. Thats an important piece. Let me look around for any charting tools I could use. Learn a new thing again :)

I tried accessing the site from one of my other home. It worked fine. I tried viewing it on my iPhone, Ah it sucks :(. Its slow. I think I'll need to remodel it so that it can be viewed properly on a smartphone.
That of-course will take till end of 2013.

One more thing I wish to do. I wish to do a Function Point Analysis of the app to size it. I have my company standards to estimate. Lets see what its worth.

There Goes My Back Again

Is it age or is it some kind of weakness in my back. This is the second time this year my back has given up on me. It happened in April and now again. It's the exact same location as before.

The first time it happened in 2007 My doctor told me to reduce weight and exercise. I did both and yet. Still planning to go to office. Hope it does not worsen. Last time I was laid up for 2 days.

IPhone revival

So after living with a paralysed iPhone for about a month I finally got it fixed. What a relief!
Essentially it's the sweat from my weekends running that brought about the disaster.
First the home button went. Then came the silent killer. The speakerphone died. No ringing and no speaker.

Then came the eerie voice control app. The phone automatically went into the voice control mode randomly arbitrarily anytime of the day or night. It would pick up ambient sounds and decide who to call. A couple of times, once at around 10:00pm it decided to call one of my women office colleague. It was embarrassing.

I read up the net and found out that putting the phone in a rice sack can help. It would dry up the moisture. I did that and it helped. The home button started working but only for sometime. In a few hours it went bad to bad old habits.

Finally I decided it was time to visit the doctors. I took the phone to Maple the authorised apple store. They said they don't open the phone. They simply replace a faulty one with a new one. Essentially for Rs13,500 they would swap my phone for a brand new iPhone 4. The offer was tempting but then I decided to visit a local repair shop. The guy immediately caught on and confirmed it was water damage. In fact he said it looks more like sweat than water. The charging plate had corroded. He changed the home button, speakerphone circuit and the charging plate all for Rs 1500. Ain't that something!
So finally after a wait of about 1 hr I for my phone back. All like new.
I'm writing this post on my all rejuvenated iPhone. Yooohooo!

Post#5 Managing Transactions through JQGrid etc

The JQGrid integration was tough, but I could get most of it. There are still some niggles but largely the data is coming up fine.
The big challenge is around usability. Once the user lands on the transactions page and views the transactions / some classified based on prior rules, some not, it becomes cumbersome.
There are so many things he can do with this data. For example,
- He could filter on Unclassified Transactions
- He could then multiple actions

• Ignore Txn
• Assign one or multiple labels to the transactions
• Classify Txns
• Create new rules and Labels and then apply them on transactions.
• Split any transaction

The transaction page is the gateway. How do I get all of these on a single page or weave them into navigation without confusing the user or pissing him off.
I'm working on the actions bar at the top, but its not coming out nicely.

I've learned about mouseover menus, buttons with images. All great stuff. Now, how to make it stick together....

I plan to finish this usecase by the end of this week. I'm taking couple of days off and that should certainly help.

After that its reports. That will be interesting too, I'm sure...

In terms of consistency of design and implementation, I think I need to make 2-3 passes before I can make this production ready. Hope I'm good with year end tgt.

Post#4 Completing Transactions Upload

Just about done. Great Experience. Learnt about jquery, uploadify and a few finer points in spring. I still need to establish spring observation i.e. if in the middle of a navigation, you switch urls from restricted access to open and back, you may lose some variables you put in session. Not sure, but I think that's happening. I'll check that out. Also, could not post to restricted access url from uploadify. Will have to check on that too.

The trouble is when I'm are up against a timetable, I do not have time to validate learnings. Thats bad. This is as much a product as a learning opportunity. I've to learn to balance the two.

So now I move into the terrain of jqgrid. From what I've seen, its a great product. I'll have to learn to use it effectively. Another month or so...

On a side note, my iPhone miseries continue. Its constantly going to voice control and dialing out to various people. Its embarrassing. I've put in a passcode. That's taking care of dialing out part for now. But its also coming in the way of working. Yesterday, I was on a skype call and it kept dropping due to voice activation. Bad iPhone...

Post#3 Making Incremental Progress

I could finally achieve closure on Accounts Set Up use case last week. It was grueling. For a long time jqueryui combobox did not work on ie 8. I tried various ways moving things around but it would not. Finally I gave up.

There was a lot of development that happened on that page. I split it up into common code vs use case specific. After moving them into their respective files, I tested again, to double check everything was okay, and lo! it worked in ie8. Don't ask me how but it did.

I've since moved on to the next use case. Upload Transactions. This was the most fun when I implemented it the first time. There is a free utility called uploadify. An awesome piece of work. They help you with uploading files. In the past my biggest challenge has been identifying the size of the file being uploaded beforehand. HTML does not allow for it. Hence you end up uploading a 1 mb document, and then the server reports that the size is too big.That's dumb and it also a wasteful use of server resources. Uploadify uses flash to read the size of the file and warns you if the file is bigger than allowed limit.


I did struggle a bit with configuring Uploadify but the documentation is good. The product is still evolving. I had 2.4 version from last December which I upgraded to the current 3.1 version and it solved my problem. 5 stars to Uploadify. They have made a real contribution to the user experience. I'd like to donate money to them. If I ever go live with this, I'll pay up.


Late nights have been hurting my exercise routine. For the last 2 days, I've been sleeping late and getting up all groggy in the morning. Yesterday night, Tomcat crashed. Its the second time. Fortunately, this time before reinstalling it, I took back up of web.xml, server.xml and context.xml. Saved me the effort of re-configuring the data source. 


Weekend looks busy. I have a late night birthday party to attend. Tomorrow, I have to take my daughter and her friends to their weekly class. On Sunday, I'll try running 18 kms. That will screw up the rest of the day for sure. So going slow. But making progress....

iPhone Disaster

When I run I sweat.... A lot!. I have an arm band to hold my iPhone and I wear it during my weekly long runs. Today however, was a bad day. Somehow the sweat leaked in and my iphone conked off.  Whatever I did it would not come up. I felt horrible. I had damaged the phone. I had bought it last year in may, and since have absolutely loved it. This was a disaster. I was not prepared. This was not happening to me.

I frantically searched for a solution. I read up on the net. There were some really useful tips. Based on a few of these, I wrapped up the phone in paper napkin and put it inside the rice jar. The article said it sucks out the moisture. And it did. After 4 hours when I pressed the power button, it sprang back to life. I was relieved ecstatic only to find out that the home button did not work. Ouch!

Some more frantic searching. After a while I found the solution. I went to settings->general->accessibility->assistive touch and turned on the feature. Its amazing how it saved the day for me. The home button is gone for good, but the phone still works. Its a little inconvenient to get to home, but its bearable. Hope I can keep it safe for another year before I upgrade. Hope iPhone 5 will be out by then. I have the perfect excuse to upgrade. I just need to keep this going till then.

Running Adjustments

Since last Jan's debacle when I missed the 2hr mark by 30 seconds, I've been working on things.
The Gear
- I bought a pair of new shoes one size bigger than my natural size.
- On my visit to Amsterdam, I came across an ACSICS store and bought myself a Hydration Backpack.
I had seen someone running with similar product back in my Thane Marathon. When you are trying to shave 30 secs off the clock, you tend to go overboard. I'm thinking, if I did not stop to hydrate myself during the run, I might have saved about 4 minutes. But then to carry 1 liter water along may slow me down. I do not know how it will finally pan out but then I'm making all efforts :).
- Yesterday I bought 3 pack Dri-Fit socks from the Nike showroom. My run was ruined by blisters on both my feet. I could not walk properly for 2 days after the event. I read up on the net. Cotton socks are the worst offenders when it comes to long runs. They absorb the sweat and become soggy. At the same time your feet swell up after running for an hour or so. Add the two and you have a perfect concoction for blisters.
I typically start feeling the friction after 8-9 kms of running. Thats about 45 mins into the run. Today, I ran wearing the new pair of dri-fit socks and honestly I did not feel any discomfort for the whole 16 kms. When I removed the socks, I saw that the blisters were there but then at least they did not hurt.


Training
Last year this time I was off the track. I was nursing a knee injury. The doctor said I should stop running. Instead
- I gave myself a 4 month break and started training only around September. That helped.
- I did not run on the road except a couple of runs in December.
- I did not attempt to run fast. I realized I get the pain if I tried to run @12 kmph.
- I also trained on elliptical for stamina.
This year has been a little better so far. No knee injury yet. Though I must say I did feel the discomfort  today when I ran 16 km for the first time this season.
In terms of running @12kmph(5 min /km) the best I did was 5 kms in 25 min back in 2010. Last year was a washout due to knee injury. This season I've been trying to ramp up. Earlier this week, I went up to 6 kms in 30 min. Now that's the benchmark I set for myself. I had a similar run way back in April. But right after, I had one of the worst flu infections. Since then, I've been trying to get there but could not. Last week, I tried eating a couple of bananas before the run and that did the trick. Bananas are a great source of instant energy. I believe I'm going to carry one on my run this time.


I've started clocking 20 kms a week for the last 2 weeks. I think I'll keep that on till October and then increase to 25km or so till end of Dec. Jan will be more about building up the reserves. Hence low on mileage. 

Post#2 Working Through Basics

And I thought that I could just walk over to business use case and crack it. Typical developer mindset. Every developer novice or retired thinks that he can develop the functionality in super fast time. Some really great developers do deliver faster than eye can blink, but a vase majority of them just set themselves up for failure. 


I know this lesson as a manager. I learnt it several years ago. Well its time to revisit that. The developer in me stands chastened by the manager in me. Developer me Hates the Manager and the Manager feels exasperated by simplistic life view of the developer.


Step 1 of getting to Accounts Set Up is to fetch the Master Data. That's about 2% of the use case. Of that getting bank data is 20%. Ha! But just implementing that 20% of 2% is such an education. 


Traversing that path took me through so much learning. I learned about getting multiple rows through Spring NamedParameterJdbcTemplate and RowMapper. The RowMapper gets just 1 row. But used in conjunction with List NamedParameterJdbcTemplate.query(dbCon,Map,RowMapper) it can fetch multiple rows.


While developing the code I researched the net several times. The top 3 sites I've constantly found useful are
StackOverFlow.com trouble shooting and quick ref
CodeRanch.com for trouble shooting and quick ref
mkyong.com For good hands on learning
viralpatel.net Spring MVC concepts  Desis contribute to the world too :)
krams915.blogspot.com Great Learning Experience on spring MVC security
roseindia.net 101 for beginners

In the ancient web development world of servlet and jsps (back when I last coded). This would be a 2 step process. 

Step 1 - You have a controller servlet which works as the traffic cop (authentication and authorization) and then sends it over to the jsp.

Step -2 The jsp would invoke all the pojo's needed and you'd use jsp tags to render the page. All reusable jsp was stitched together using jsp:include. You had to take care of closing the db connections (you could write util classes that addressed the connection leakage issues). And you'd be done.

In this new world everything is encapsulated. The frameworks are Robust but the learning curve is steep.

So 

- I created a controller using @Controller. Added @RequestMapping

- I set up Spring MVC Security and created authorization levels (Took a lot of time)

- I configured the web.xml and server.xml for db connection.

- Updated  dispatcher-servlet with pojo wirings

- Wrote the jsp

Midway I changed some packages and used application refactoring to update references. Well its not foolproof because somehow it forgot to update spring-security.xml and the server refused to start up. Some head banging got it resolved.

So now finally I can see the masterlist of banks! Hurrah! 

Post#1 Sunday Blues

I have been working on Spring and learning Spring MVC to build the site on. I've created the Master Page Template. Choosing the colors is fun and also time consuming. Its like my daughter choosing colors for her coloring app on her ipod Touch. Anything goes. You keep choosing colors and changing them trying to make things better.

I finally settled on Green. Chatak Green :) Ha Ha! White, Green and Gray. With a little sprinkling of Yellow, Red and Orange. No Blue! eh!

The next challenge was to reuse the template across pages. Only the central content will change. How do you achieve this? I wondered off on the web. The age old technique is to use jsp: include. It works. I used it a lot about 10 years ago. But its outdated now. One of the programs I run in office uses Wicket(I just sign team leaves and look at weekly reports) and so I tried reading up a bit. I then meandered to Velocity, Tapestry and finally settled on Apache Tiles. For the simple work I'm doing Tiles is just fine. Its a little old. Wicket is popular and good but then I want to use Spring MVC. So Tiles it is. 

Started on Tiles and set it up on Friday. Worked on it yesterday. Finally I'm done. Its working to my satisfaction. Hurrah! Learnt a new thing and used it.

Then came the crash. Today morning when I left for the gym, I had left the laptop on. The cleaning lady came and switched off the power. After I returned from gym, I had my bath and then breakfast. It was time now to get cracking on Login Use Case. I settled down at my desk only to find out the battery had drained and the Laptop had switched off. I cursed the maid silently and fired up the laptop only to find an error. Spring was unable to load from the application. Aaagh! I tried refreshing the project, copied spring-mvc in the lib again but nothing. Out of frustration, I uninstalled Tomcat and reinstalled it. That worked. My app came back up.

I worked a bit on the login page and when I tried testing it, the datasource will not be found. When uninstalling Tomcat, the server config files were deleted. Of course I had no backup. Aaagh Again!

I had forgotten how to set up datasource, as I did it way back in december. Anyhow, I spent a good 3 excruciating hours setting up the datasource. Whatever  I did the error won't go. After tearing out a few hair, I finally figured out the in the new datasource name I had one alphabet in Caps while JNDI name I was using in my util class it was not!

A throwback to my developer days. Anyhow its solved now. The login usecase main flow is half done. I'll close it before I move on to business use case Accounts Set up.

Daily Diary

I've been struggling to put together my site for some time now. I made great progress last year in December. I got the conceptual part done. But for the last 6 months, I've struggled and my efforts have sputtered poorly.

The challenge for me is that I'm outdated. I even admit it in my profile :). I've been out of touch with technology for a very long time. The last I worked hands on on Web Technologies for about 6 years ago, that too was a brief stint of about 2 months. It was perhaps 10 years ago I last did anything substantial. And you know what, the world has changed a lot since then.

The last 6 months have been a challenge. I did put together something using, basic jsp just so that I could get the concept tested but that was that. I could cover a lot of business use cases in just 10 days (Xmas Holidays). But since then its been an uphill task. But then its been a great learning journey.

Lets look at the stuff  I'll have to learn to deliver my dream.
- IDE Eclipse.
- css 3
- jQuery
- Ajax
- Spring
- Annotations
- Spring MVC
- My SQL Database
- Apache Tiles (I thought of using Wicket but Tiles is enough for my app)
- json

This weekend I again got some traction. But I'm afraid I'll lose the momentum soon. How do I keep myself motivated? Its easy to lose the way in the daily humdrum. The work sucks! It also sucks life out of me. Long hours and constant pressure leave little time to spare. And yet I've been able to keep up with the gym schedule for 2.5 years now.

It became possible because I refused to take calls in the morning hours. I refused to take my phone to the gym. While one hour of gym is just dandy, working on a project of this scale is different.

Its not like anyone is helping me with either learning or development. I've got to learn and build everything on my own. Ah! Its a pipe dream. But I'll get a working model out by the end of the year. At least thats the plan.


So back to the question, how do I keep myself going? By keeping a daily diary to keep track of this voyage.
I'll write as often as I work on the project. I'll rant about by frustrations, learning, disasters and recoveries progress or the lack of it.

Lets see how it goes... It all begins today 1-July-2012...

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Google just launched its own Tablet. Microsoft did the same couple of weeks ago. That triggered a thought on how things have changed over the last 3 decades.

In the Seventies and Eighties, Apple had a closed ecosystem and Microsoft had an Open System. Look at these as battle of Ideologies. And we know who won the first round. Microsoft made money selling OS and allowing developers to write and sell applications for the OS. Those were the PC days.

Fast forward to 2008. Apple launched iPhone. Google launched Android. MSFT was a late starter and I think they really kicked it off with Mango.

Apple continued with its philosophy of a closed ecosystem. Just that it made its ecosystem self sustaining. With iTunes, AppStore and its array of products, iPhone, MacBook, iPods, iPad and other products it seamlessly integrated the ecosystem.

Google gave away its OS for free. That led to rapid absorption of the OS but very little revenue for google and fragmentation of the OS and offerings. The OS on the phones can't be upgraded like iPhone. There is no unified / well managed market place which validates the application up for sale. In a nutshell Android ecosystem is a mess and Google is not making any money or atleast not as much as it could.

MSFT, the less said the better. No takers, No Revenue, little prospect.

Form 1980s to date Apple has stuck to its ideology. It didn't click then, but today its made Apple the most valued company in the world, a title MSFT held in the 90s.

No one can stop an idea whose time has come. Thank You Steve Jobs for sticking with what you believed in. This world is a better place because of you.

IRCTC Then and Now

I read an article on the bottlenecks IRCTC faces during peak time, 8:00 am everyday, on ET. They have always struggled to keep up with the demand. They have always played catch up. Today they are struggling to meet 13,000 requests per minute. But if you look back, they have come a really long way.

I was hooked on to IRCTC early. I became a member in 2002. During the lat 10 years I have struggled with reservations countless times and have cursed them over and over. I believe when you are constantly playing catch-up you never get any recognition. That's the curse you must live with till you break free and get ahead. Only someone who has an old reference point and is tracking the trajectory can appreciate the challenges.

Here is a mail I got from irctc way back in 2004.

So from 100,000 bookings a month to 350,000 a day. Its almost a 100 times gain over 7.5 years.  Not that bad Hmm!

Print - Close Window

Subject:	Update for IRCTC Customers
From:	irctcpromotions@irctc.co.in (irctcpromotions@irctc.co.in)
To:
Date:	Friday, December 17, 2004 5:33 PM

Dear Registered User,  I bring you warm greetings and best wishes for the New Year 2005 fromwww.irctc.co.in During the past year your website www.irctc.co.in has crossed many exciting milestones like the One Million Registered Users mark, one lakh tickets per month (several times), and recorded some of the biggest ever turnovers in the history of e-commerce in India. We also received recognitions for our efforts from a number of organisactions including the PC Quest user's Choice Award for IT Application with Maxium social impact and Dataquest Award for the Pathbreaking IT Application of 2003-2004. Also during the year we have launched Mobile Reservation Services and Mobile PNR alert services with major cellular operators. These include M/s Airtel , Hutch and Reliance while others like MTNL, IDEA, Tata Indicom and BSNL are in the process of making applications for these services including Speech recognition (Voice), GPRS & CDMA. We are shortly launching an SMS based booking application on our very own short code 7245. We have integrated with American Express Credit Card payment gateway and Syndicate Bank, Union Bank of India, ABN Amro, Federal Bank etc. for payment options, so that now you have all the 3 credit card payment gateways and 14 banks for Internet Banking direct debit option. We have also integrated with ITZ Cash for a cash card option for those Customers who prefer cash cards. We have been continuously trying to improve the user experience on our site. Over the year we have more than doubled our Internet bandwidth, streamlined and uncluttered the "Plan my travel", process, added useful options like 100 most popular stations, 100 most popular trains, preferred passenger lists etc. We have enhanced Customer support staff strength and telephone / e-mail handling processes to stick to our basic moto of answering every mail within 6 hours and every phone call query to the complete satisfaction of the Customer. And now to take your convenience of booking to a new unprecedented level, from Jan 1st 2005, bookings will be available on the Internet from 4 AM to 11:30 PM on all days including Sundays. As usual we have been continuously running a number of special promotions - our own, as well as with other major corporates. Currently these include : 1. IRCTC's weekly 'fare back' scheme 2. Special gifts / lucky draws from Baazee.com, SBI Internet Banking 3. Discounted hotel rooms all over the country from Budgethotels.com and Kuoni group's Resnet 4. Special promos from ICICI Prudential, ICICI Cards , Citibank Cards, SBI Cardsand 5. Easy monthly installments option from Citibank Payment Gateway. As you know www.irctc.co.in offers unmatched opportunities for promotions / advertising which are currently extremely popular with several categories of products and services. IRCTC is also lining up a number of new products and services for you in the new Year. As we go into Jan 2005 which promises to be even more exciting and fulfilling for you and therefore for us, we wish to reaffirm our total commitment to you and your satisfaction in the days to come. With warm regards J.Vinayan, Jt.GM(Opns) www.irctc.co.in PS : Please note that www.irctc.co.in has no agents, franchises or distributors anywhere. Our services are solely meant for personal use of individual customers and not for resale/agency work or commercial exploitiation in any manner.

Note from the past

About 4 years ago, as I was wondering over the recovery, I had concluded that the world will be a poorer place. Today I read an article in Economictimes that brought back the memories....

Growing Indian Economy... or Shrinking??

Its a paradox. I was on Cnn Money website, looking at the world's largest economies and India did not figure in the top 10. I was wondering how is that possible where most of the top countries are going through a sluggish growth or recession (England, Spain).
Upon checking their timeline, I figured that India was 9th in the pecking order in 2010. I was thinking of a plausible reason for this when it struck me. Its due to Rupee Depreciation.
It may sound strange. We had around 10% inflation and 7%+ growth on top of that makes nominal growth add upto 17%+, and yet... Hmm. I checked out Wiki . Per IMF we shrunk by 6% between 2010 and 2011. The  Rupee depreciated around 17-18% between 2010 and 2011(against dollar). But if I go by above maths, it should have depreciated around 23% for the GDP to fall by 6% in dollar terms.
So these numbers are a bit misleading. However in the CIA world fact book India seems to be $1.8. Can 2 authentic data sources be 10-12% apart? Possible.

Recovering from Flu

I get cough and cold every 3 months but it seldom gets in the way of my daily life. Ever since I've started green tea the frequency and severity of these bouts has reduced significantly. This time however it's hit me hard. It's the 4th day and fever has relentlessly beaten me down. I've finally decided to visit a local practitioner. Dr. Allan Costillo, a true gentleman and an effective doc. I'm sitting at his clinic with about a dozen other patients from all walks of life. Essentially he is a poor man's doctor. He has been around it seems for centuries. He has seen generations grow up in front of him. 6 years ago when I first visited him he used to charge Rs. 40 per visit. It's gone upto 60 now. He always embellishes his proscriptions with multi colored supplements. No one really knows what they really are. They go by their color. Blue one twice a day, orange one once at night and so on. He drives a canary yellow zen since I first visited him and still does. That's how you know that the doc is in. He has renovated his clinic and it looks quite nice. The old world charm has given way to modernity. God Bless him and his patients! Amin!

China Home Market

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/07/why-chinas-housing-market-will-slow-not-collapse/?iid=EL
CNN Money article. The same logic applies to India and thats why we may not have a hard landing in the home market.

Almost Forgot

I did achieve the milestone I was hoping for. Way back in 2009 when I stared the weight loss exercises that then became a penchant for running I had hoped some day, I'd cover 21 kms(Half Marathon) in less than 2 hours. After 2 years of setting that aim(almost a wishful thinking), I finally did  it last Sunday. 01:58:30. It was on the treadmill. I have given up running on roads. as my knees hurt. But what the heck. I did finish it with more than a minute to spare.Now will I be able to repeat it in Mumbai Marathon????

2012 as I see it

Here are a few predictions for 2012. Its good to have it this way. I can check in a year to see how it went.

I feel 

- By end of Dec 2012 inflation will be less than 3%. 

- The RBI would cut the rate ferociously to stimulate dismal, dismal growth.

- Rupee will remain weak. This could have stoked inflation but its already so low its unlikely to impact inflation much. It could touch 58-60.

- Our BOP situation would remain scary

- Stock market will remain weak. It might crash to 12000 or less as Euro will collapse.

- Euro will fail. Whatever the politicians do, they can't resolve Euro. Its gotta go

- India will win a few medals at London 

- Sachin will score his 100 of 100.

- I will finish half marathon in less than 2 hours. Or will I ;-)

- I'll host expense analyzer on the web. 

- Property prices will correct. I mean go down