sankara.me

Recently switched to Safari to just try it out. Finding it to be good in terms of speed and rendering of sites. But of course not without irritants.

1. No way to add more search providers – Locking to Google is CRAP! There seem to be workarounds but nothing works for Windows. The preference file is RSA signed. Why the hell would someone do that! Isn't this anti-competitive?! And btw, I love Bing. It's yet to be polluted with SEO junk.
2. No undo closed tab - A problem that I get into very frequently. I'm one of those who close tabs inadvertently. And when the competition has it and as a user I have had a taste of it (including in IE8) why would I want to miss it.
3. No process isolation - One crappy site, one tab hangs and you lose all your work? Oh come on!
4. No recent tab order - Again having had the taste I'm missing this.
5. Address completion is still naive - If you can optimize your algorithm to ignore the beginning "www" why not optimize it a little more search across words.
6. No private browsing. - There, but!! What's the point if Google gets my cookie when I have chosen to browse in private! Why the hell did I turn on Private Browsing? To hide history in my browser but expose it to Google? Come on, guys! That's ridiculous.
7. 280 MB for just 5 tabs in windows is ridiculous. I mean, seriously, not even Intellij Idea requires so much memory.
8. Missing about:config or similar powerful preferences editor.
9. Plug-in support - Same problem as IE. But IE is at least popular enough to have the most essential plug-ins.
10. Clearing private data – Firefox beats everyone else.

I had a chance to visit our college, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, along with Nikhil Verma and Ramanathan. It was quite a memorable experience. To be frank I was pleasantly surprised when my professors were able to identify me after 3.5 years. Had a chance to chat with Ms. Mala, Mrs. MSB, Mrs. Leela, Dr. SSK and Dr. Hemalatha Theyagarajan. A couple of interesting things came up during the discussions

1. Our department is going down in stature mainly because of poor management credited to one single person which most people reading this blog should be aware of already.
2. Interaction between students and industry is at a new low. SSK sir suggested that we, alumni, have regular interaction with students.

I'm keeping aside point (1) for the time being, considering that we'll be getting a new director in a year or so and that there is already steps being taken from within college. Also if point (2) is executed well we'll get the necessary trust and faith of our director to take up the issue.

Regarding point (2), discussions have already began in closed circles. The plan is to host one interaction session every month. One or two people would go down to college and handle it personally. Dr. SSK has promised that necessary facilities would be taken care of. In our opinion, we could very well find 9/18 people per calendar year. Topics for the sessions are not finalised. In all likelihood speakers will be given liberty in choosing the topic of their choice.

Our college could set an example by hosting an interaction session with industry experts every month. It helps students better prepare for the industry. The ever widening gap between academia and industry could be reduced as much as possible. You can help us by volunteering to speak for one of the sessions and forwarding this to your friends who would be willing to do so.

A few snaps taken at college: