The final year trip…yawn…

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

I’ve been really busy and been feeling lazy additionally, hence the late post. We are finally through with our final year 3 day trip to Munnar, Veegaland and Fort Cochin. Before I begin my tirade, let me quote that am not a cynic but only someone who would prefer atleast moderate organization of stuff before leaving for a trip. I would be completely wrong if I said I didn’t enjoy at all. I mighty enjoyed it mainly because of the company but the trip was ok.

[+/-] Read More...
Posted by Ni at 6:15 PM 0 comments

Why Water Kingdom is the reigning king of most water parks!

Friday, March 27, 2009

I’ve been to Essel group’s Water Kingdom in Mumbai, Black Thunder and more recently GRS in Mysore and Veegaland in Cochin. Closer to home, I’ve been to Manasa in Pilikula few kilometers from Mangalore but that is nowhere in the race for a truly fantastic water park.

  1. Unlike GRS and Veegaland,Water Kingdom has only wet rides and is completely separated from Essel World which has only dry rides. Both, Essel World and Water Kingdom, together are impossible to cover in one day.
  2. Water Kingdom and Essel World together span across 64 acres as against 28 acres of Veegaland and 30 acres of GRS.
  3. The former is very concerned about cleanliness and hygiene. Taking a shower is compulsory before beginning your escapade into the realms of Water Kingdom unlike the other 2 water parks.
  4. At any point of time in Essel world, you can enter Water Kingdom through entrances in the middle and vice versa.
  5. Only nylon clothes are allowed and anybody dressed in anything else is barred from entering the water. So you’ll never see kids bobbing in the water in their school uniforms(eww!) as in Veegaland and GRS!
  6. Essel World is any day, trillion times better than what Veegaland and GRS have to offer in terms of dry rides. GRS scores the worst here as it doesn’t have any thrilling rides for adults, dry or wet! Simulation rides are extremely disappointing and rollercoasters leave you yawning in both GRS and Veegaland.
  7. Water Kingdom has a fantastic loooong Drifting River for lazing about and floating in bliss. I was disappointed that Veegaland didn’t have anything like that. GRS has a fraction of Drifting River, called the Lazy River, which flows past the lawn of a vegetarian restaurant and I swear I saw some of those small kids washing their hands in that!(yuck!!!)
  8. I rate both GRS and Veegaland very poorly when it comes to food. Most South Indian water parks think that providing meals is the ultimate favor they can bestow upon people! Well..it’s not…I eat meals at home, I like to have some other stuff when I eat outside. In Veegaland, even the fried snacks at some other place was sad and cold! Water Kingdom has McDonalds…Beat that!!And Essel World has Dominoes pizza outlet amongst several food kiosks!
  9. Water Kingdom has excellent merchandise and some real quality stuff.
  10. Lockers and changing rooms are quite good in Veegaland and GRS but Water kingdom still scores here too. It’s clean and looks better.
  11. You cannot rent nylon outfits in Veegaland unlike the other two. Not that it matters much, you can wear your jeans and jump into the pool there. No one cares!
  12. The wave pool at Water Kingdom is really huge and beautifully designed and is best left without comparing it with the other 2. (I’m tired of trashing the other parks!)
  13. Aesthetically, Veegaland and GRS cannot ever match up to Water Kingdom’s stature.

Water Kingdom is truly the finest and best I’ve seen so far. It’s a world class park. You can enjoy even if you go alone!!! If there’s one must-visit water park, Water Kingdom should top your list any day! It has spoiled me enough not to appreciate the other parks I’ve visited henceforth! I rate them in the following order

  1. Water Kingdom
  2. Veegaland
  3. GRS
  4. Black Thunder
  5. Manasa. Sorry! not on the list.

essel world park map

 

 

The first 2 maps are that of Essel World and Water Kingdom. Compare them with that of GRS (third map) and Veegaland and see the difference! 

 

 

 

waterkingdommap

grs park map  

veegaland park map

P. S : Now I’ve also been hearing lots about Wonderla in Bangalore, obviously from the ones who have never visited the Essel Group’s park. Looking at its map below, I don’t have any expectations.

wonderla

Posted by Ni at 3:14 PM 10 comments

Text-Speech from a file in C#.Net

Monday, March 2, 2009

I’ve just started doing some programming in C# using the .NET framework since it’s a requirement for my final year project. In this post, I shall show how to read out loud the contents of a file stored in any drive. I’m doing this on Microsoft Vista SP1  so it already has all the speech APIs as the speech SDK 5.3 is already inbuilt in Vista. In case you’re doing it on Windows XP, you’ll probably need to download the speech SDK from Microsoft Downloads site. However, the latest version for download is 5.1 I think, definitely not 5.3.

So, open a C# console application in Visual Studio 2008. I’ve already created a file called text.txt in the drive named X. This can read a text file stored in a pen drive also.

In the Solution Explorer on right hand side, right click References. In the Add Reference, select System.Speech from .NET tab and click ok. Add namespace System.Speech and System.Speech.Synthesis as shown below.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Speech; // required for speech utilities
using System.Speech.Synthesis; // required for speech utilities
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{ 
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
           //Create an instance of class SpeechSynthesizer 
           SpeechSynthesizer cerra = new SpeechSynthesizer();           
          //ReadAllText opens the file, reads all content and closes it. The output of this needs to be converted to string and given to cerra
           cerra.Speak(File.ReadAllText"X:/text.txt").ToString());            
        }       
    }
}


The above can read only text files as of  now. It does not work with DOC files and encoding comes into picture here, so trying to figure that out yet. However, in the next post let us make cerra read out the results of a query from a SQL server database. Till then signing off… Au Revoire.



  
  












Posted by
Ni


at
1:16 AM


3 comments




































Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)











 









Design by Pocket