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Monthly Archives: December 2009

Booking tatkal tickets on IRCTC the supercool way

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Update : IRCTC has blocked Quick book from 8 AM - 9 AM. This method will not be useful in such a scenario. This article is a short demo to using Firefox's Autofill Forms extension to book tatkal tickets. First step is to go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4775 and install the extension. You'll need to restart Firefox for the extension to take effect. Now that it's done, head to the IRCTC website and login. Now head to the Quick Book page. You can fill in the details.quick book on IRCTC If you do not know the train number, you can get it from the "Plan My Travel" page. Now that you've filled up all the details you want to, right click on one of the form textboxes. Edit : IRCTC has now disabled right clicks. As a workaround you need to paste javascript:void(document.oncontextmenu=null) into your address bar to re-enable the right click. See my post on IRCTC's disabled right click. Click on the "Add complete form as profile" option.add complete form as profile A new window like this will now open up Autofill forms profile You can close the window and reload the QuickBook page. Press the Alt+j key combination to autofill the form. You can reload the page as many times as you want and press Alt+j to autofill. This post is dedicated to my good friend Dhanya. Edit : OK, I'm giving into blackmail from someone crafty and cunning(not my words) :P
@gjoos : i want my name included in that blogpost if you want me to TRY booking tickets for you tomorrow !!! :P
So, Divya chechi.. this post is dedicated to you as well :P Update : Wondering what CKWL means? Check out my blog post on CKWL status on Tatkal railway ticket.
Filed under misc
Dec 31, 2009

CKWL on Tatkal railway ticket

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So the other day I booked a tatkal ticket online from IRCTC. After the usual 500 errors and multiple tries I came to the "Congratulations!" page where they gave me the ticket details. And this is what I found in the ticket's status "CKWL 23". I wondered what the heck it was. Googling did not help. I shot off a mail to the IRCTC customer care and within half an hour I got their reply. Reproducing their reply below -
Dear Customer, Kindly note that CK stands for Tatkal CKWL means Tatkal Wait list Ticket. Thanks & Regards
So there it goes. Official reply from IRCTC. CKWL is the waiting list for the tatkal quota. It's just like the "WL" you get on the normal ticket, except it's on the tatkal quota. No idea what CK stands for though. Although the reply wasn't exactly Shakespeare, I was impressed that they got back to me so soon. It's nice to see the Railways doing good stuff. There's still room to improve though. Have you had a similar experience with IRCTC? Frustrating one? Good one? The comment form is right below :) Update : Found something in the IRCTC site in the ngpay FAQ. It says(in point 9)
Booking can be done against general (GN), ladies (LD) and tatkal (CK) quota berths/seats only.  
. What this means is that GNWL is General Quota Waiting list, LDWL is Ladies Quota Waiting List and CKWL is Tatkal Quota Waiting list. Pretty much any 4 letter acronym ending in WL is some Waiting list quota or another. For instance if you have been wondering what PQWL means in IRCTC, then it is a Pooled Quota Waiting List. If you're looking to improve the time it takes to book tatkal tickets, you can try the Autofill forms extension. Check out my blog post on how to use the Autofill forms addon.
Filed under misc
Dec 9, 2009

Comparison of Google Public DNS and Open DNS response

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Google announced that it’s making 2 DNS servers available publicly. The servers are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 . They’ve also given configuration instructions on their DNS page. I configured my /etc/resolv.conf to refer to Google’s DNS. Before this I ran some quick tests using dig to compare it with OpenDNS.

$ dig @208.67.222.222 gingerjoos.com

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2 <<>> @208.67.222.222 gingerjoos.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 1273
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;gingerjoos.com.                        IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
gingerjoos.com.         14400   IN      A       208.113.199.196

;; Query time: 751 msec
;; SERVER: 208.67.222.222#53(208.67.222.222)
;; WHEN: Fri Dec  4 09:13:58 2009
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 48

$ dig @8.8.8.8 gingerjoos.com

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2 <<>> @8.8.8.8 gingerjoos.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 2594
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;gingerjoos.com.                        IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
gingerjoos.com.         14400   IN      A       208.113.199.196

;; Query time: 616 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Fri Dec  4 09:14:09 2009
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 48

$ dig @8.8.4.4 gingerjoos.com

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2 <<>> @8.8.4.4 gingerjoos.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 34741
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;gingerjoos.com.                        IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
gingerjoos.com.         14321   IN      A       208.113.199.196

;; Query time: 123 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.4.4#53(8.8.4.4)
;; WHEN: Fri Dec  4 09:15:28 2009
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 48

Dig allows you to directly query a DNS server and get its reply. It shows stats from that query – response. The stat we’re interested in is this one

;; Query time: 123 msec

The IP 208.67.222.222 is the address of the OpenDNS server. Let’s try one more query


$ dig @208.67.222.222 mec.ac.in

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2 <<>> @208.67.222.222 mec.ac.in
; (1 server found)
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 44308
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;mec.ac.in.                     IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
mec.ac.in.              604800  IN      A       210.212.232.132

;; Query time: 389 msec
;; SERVER: 208.67.222.222#53(208.67.222.222)
;; WHEN: Sat Dec  5 12:38:57 2009
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 43

$ dig @8.8.8.8 mec.ac.in

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2 <<>> @8.8.8.8 mec.ac.in
; (1 server found)
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 56600
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;mec.ac.in.                     IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
mec.ac.in.              160448  IN      A       210.212.232.131

;; Query time: 121 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Sat Dec  5 12:39:06 2009
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 43

You can try more queries and see for yourself. At least as of now Google DNS seems to be faster.

Filed under technology
Dec 5, 2009

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