toondoo.com rocks

A new website toondoo released today. This is meant for creating cartoon strips. This website really rocks. A cool fun site which children will love, and believe me even the adults will love this. It has various different options which allows you to create a toon of your taste. They give you a large set of characters apart from which you can upload images of your choice into it. I just gave it a quick try and resulted with the following, a very simple one in fact.



This is released by the Jambav team of the AdventNet.

SCJP Cleared

Well, it feels good to have cleared the SCJP after 15 days of preparation. These 15 days were really one of the strangest patch of days I have experienced. I stayed in the office not going home. Did not meet any of my friends. Just talked to couple of my friends over phone. I haven't been like this before.

The work in office during this period was also very high than ever before. So working till 9.30/10.30 pm and then preparing for the exam till mid night was the schedule which I was following. The days passed stressfully. I didn't get the confidence of clearing the exam at any point of time because the I knew 15 days of preparation will definitely not be sufficient. But I wanted to clear the exam at any cost so kept working hard in the available period of time leaving back all other worries.

As a final part of the preparation I just wanted to write some mock tests, which were available in my friends place. So I went there the day before the exam and wrote some three exams all of which I failed, this totally brought down my morale. I was almost sure that I am never going to clear the exam that moment. But, on the day of exam I went to the testing center keeping in mind to do the fundamentals correctly and not to worry about the tough ones. I sticked to this which helped me to get through.

Thanks to all my friends who backed me when ever I was feeling the pressure.

Few Tips (From my experience):

1. Prepare for the exam for a minimum of 3 month with good concentration.
2. Revise all the portions at least twice.
3. Take up mock tests 10 days before appearing for the exam, so that you will be able to find the sections where you are week and you will have time to revising it once more.
4. Use the study material for the SCJP 5.0 by Kathy Sierra & Bert Bates. Also study the important APIs from Java docs.
5. Take the test cool head, don't panic.

All the best - for all who take up the exam.

Tada - Raw nature !!!

This trip was just an unofficial one with few of my colleagues. We were six in number started from Chennai at 6 in the morning in a cab. We halted near Puzhal lake to have a view. This place took all of by surprise. I didn't expect such a big lake any where near Chennai. Later came to know that, this is one of the main source of water for Chennai.

We reached Tada by nearly 11. The cab driver left us at the point beyond which we can move only by walk. The place was really superb. Nature lovers will definitely find this place as a treat for their eyes. A mix of a light forest, cool stream & rocky hill. There was no definite path to reach the falls, just we will have to walk through the stream or in between the trees. We were not able to reach the main falls as we were running out of time. Also we heard from some people that reaching the falls would be challenging & swimming knowledge is a must. Except myself and another guy the others were not good swimmers, so we decided against proceeding towards the falls. But on the way to the falls there are many puddles which will give us enough enjoyment. Few sample snaps have been posted below. So if you are in Chennai and will like to spend a weekend in a totally different way (Without pollution, noise and all the other disturbance the city provides), this would be one of the best choice available.



One good thing about Tada (that I liked) is, it is still a place where the tourist dept. are yet to set their foot. So this place is just a raw nature with no customization.

Adorned in new Robes

Now the Indian team has some thing different to wear after using the same old patterned Jersy for more than 4 long years. This is a welcome move, the present jersy is really good but I have personally developed a boredom towards it. The color of the new jersy is called as Powder Blue, which is less blue than the present one.

And also there is some innovation in the material used. Nike has patented material which is used, which is claimed to be 15 percent lighter than the previous one. So this will assist the players to perform better.

Hope this change brings change in fortunes for the Indian Team.