No one going to India or Pakistan

I recently heard this most interesting racial incident from my friend (South Indian). He works for a company based out of Green Bay WI, as a software consultant. The other day he went for pee-pee. He was almost done and was waiting for the last drops to fall off from his wee-wee. His Pakistani colleague walked in for pee-pee and looking at my friend quipped that "I am going to India". My friend was little confused and thought that this Pakistani is indeed going to India for business trip or something. He innocently asked the other guy when he was going to India. Pakistani guy replied pointing at his act of pee-pee-ing that "Now ..". That was outrageous. Wasn't it? Later that Pakistani guy explained my friend that he got similar comments from lots of his India friends and he didn't meant to offend Indians. Well it is certainly border line racial comment, in fact way cross the border line for me. But based on current situation in our countries, my fellow Pakistani and Indian friends, no one would like to go to India or Pakistan.

And also I stumbled upon this racial slur database. Better to know these slurs when we are living in cosmopolitan city as Chicago. I mean, so that we don't use it even accidentally.

Cursor Focus on OA page

Initial Cursor Focus is a highly under rated requirement in OA framework and mostly it is put on the back burner during design/coding. And there is no clear documentation for this feature and may be OA dev guide avoided it because we need to use Java Script for it; which is considered sacrilegious in OAF. We designed and deployed around 50 pages to production and realized the importance of cursor focus only when the users started whining about it. Hey, but they had a valid case, some times they open a page and scans a lot number immediately. But if the focus was on URL browser field, it will take them to different page. And worse, some users started complaining about carpal tunnel symptoms due to excessive usage of mouse. So when we started fixing the pages for initial cursor focus we found ourselves in a difficult situation for some pages like the one which have tab region or one with table region.

Simple messageText field.

Initial cursor focus on single row region is simple and straightforward.

String id = "myId"; // ID of the field
OABodyBean bB = (OABodyBean)pageContext.getRootWebBean();
bB.setInitialFocusId(id);

Tab region

We need to find the current active tab and then focus on the field for that tab.

OABodyBean bB = (OABodyBean)pageContext.getRootWebBean();
OASubTabLayoutBean tBean = (OASubTabLayoutBean)webBean.findIndexedChildRecursive("tabRegionId");
    if(tBean != null)
    {
      int tabIndex = tBean.getSelectedIndex(pageContext);
       if(tabIndex == 0)
         bB.setInitialFocusId("id1");
       else if (tabIndex == 1)
         bB.setInitialFocusId("id2");

Table region

This is tricky and there is no direct OA supported way of doing this. OA framework (UIX) suffixes N: to the table field id while creating the final HTML page. Based on this fact following javascript function will do the trick.

 // id is ID of your bean
 // rowIndex is the row number you want to focus.
 function setTableFocus(id,rowIndex)
 {
   for (i = 0; i< 100 ; i++)
   {
    var bean = document.getElementById('N' + i+ ':' + id + ':' + rowIndex);
    if(bean != null)
    {
       bean.focus();
       break;
    }
   }
 }

 
   OABodyBean bB = (OABodyBean)pageContext.getRootWebBean();
   pageContext.putJavaScriptFunction("focusTag",);
   bB.setOnLoad("setTableFocus('" + id + "'," + 1 + ")");  // focus on first row.

We created an utility class to handle all these scenarios. FocusMap.java. Read javadoc for its usage.

Sunday Night Cricket

Cricket and Election are the two most popular past time of India and when these two collide the world is ready to move heaven and earth to limit the damage. The previous sentence is a pastiche of news bytes I read from various sites which sums up the current situation of IPL. The money and glamor that IPL brings is much debated and scorned topic. But what is mind boggling is organizers insistence on keeping the same time slot as previous year so that viewers can watch it. Or so that media house can get maximum viewership and maximum advertising revenue. IPL is no doubt turning into a media staged event like American Football. In NFL, media has managed to create an aura of staged event and induced addiction so that viewers tune in not for the actual football match but for the program that is aired on particular time. And the extreme of that is Super Bowl where some people watch it just for Super Bowl ads and half time shows. Indian channels' obsession of filling in screen real estate with ads and 5th ball advertisement break has already pi**ed off many viewers. As IPL is drifting more towards Sunday Night Cricket mode, I wont be surprised to see when Punjabs' Brett Lee charges in full speed to bowl and suddenly umpire pops his left hand out, stops him and says "Sorry mate ..we are not on air yet ...you have to do it again ..".

Sagar Alias Jacky

I learned from my sister today that Mohanlals' much awaited Sagar Alias Jacky will be released this Thursday. Last time I was this eager and excited for a movie was for Rajnis' Sivaji. Hype and expectations usually doesn't bodes well for a movie. But Sivaji was an exception and I hope the same for SAJ. I came to know about SAJ when I saw the huge poster near Srikumar theatre in Trivandrum last December. Then I thought SAJ would a

Retake

An embellished modern retake of Iruthapatham Nutandu; in the same line as Don and Billa. See, no one would have complained such a venture, obvious I may add, because Irupataham Nutandu was easily the best candidate for such a much over-due remake from Malayalam stream.

Return/Revenge

A sequel with maybe Sekharan Kuttis' illegal son seeking revenge, more corrupt and cunning political characters, Lal surrounded with dozen obsequious croonies, winding dialogues while camera rotate around Lal. Boy! it would have been a train wreck which might even make Chenkol a better sequel.

Reloaded

Something like main characters are carried over with a new backdrop and supporting casts. Indian audience seems to have stomach for such super hero flicks as they made Lage Raho a bigger hit than MBBS.

And the promoters are not leaving any stones unturned to make it point that it is indeed reloaded. Yes Sagar Alias Jacky - Reloaded.

My expectations from the movie are

• Intro of Mohanlal. It must pull even the most skeptical of Lal fan out of his seat and scream. It should set the tune for the rest of movie and catapult me (an imbecile) to the new world of J.A.C.K.Y and stay me put there for the rest of movie.

• Indelible and goose pimple moments. If you will, I must add like the one from Irupatham Nootandu

• In the lift with Ambika were Lal non chalantly delivers the dialogue "Sagar alias Jacky" and walks away with signature background music.

• In customs' uniform after busting Sekharankuttys' cheap trick. "Eda nayinte moneay ...Sekharan kutty nee onnu orapicho nee ee nasraniyeye kanda divasam muthal ninte andhyam arambichu kazhinju ..now you start your count down COUNT DOWN





• Bust up with police after parking car in no parking zone (in front of AGs' office).

• Mario Puzzo style twists and a better climax. I was impressed with turn of events in the last scene of Big B and no doubt Neerad is from the staple of RGB.

I am planning to travel to Dallas to watch the movie first week. Fingers crossed. Hoping to be back with a rave review.

Watch full movie: Irupatham Nutandu.

Trailers: