Tatkal Train Ticket Reservation Tips

Tatkal train ticket reservation is a ray of hope for millions of Indians who prefer to commute by trains over other forms of travel even if they have to pay extra because the original reserved ticket quota has run out. The IRCTC website is possibly the best known site in India as it helps travellers avoid the long queues at the train reservation centers. It is also probably the most hated site as getting the more premium Tatkal ticket is a harrowing experience.

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Update (13-Mar-2012): In an Economic Times interview, the Head of  IRCTC, Rakesh Kumar Tandon informs that of the 8 lakh people who log on simultaneously between 8 am 8.10am, only 50,000 manage to get tickets! He attributes one customer-centric reason for the delay in completion of the Tatkal transaction to berth preference. It takes time for the system to find a particular berth. Going by this hint, a Lower berth is probably most preferred while going by experience, Side Upper is least preferred. So you could try your luck by choosing a Side Upper berth preference.

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Some of these tips to book a Tatkal train ticket online maybe too obvious for experienced folks so don't write to tell me. If you like them, tell your friends. None of these tips guarantee confirmed availability as they are numerous factors involved that matter (like season, day of the week, route etc), these may just improve your chances. Here are the tips that I usually offer to my relatives who are not Internet power-users -

• Many cities have multiple stations and IRCTC will get you results for all stations for that city. If the original station codes don't match, you will have to subsequently fill another form to specify the exact FROM & TO stations which is a waste of precious seconds during the first half-hour of Tatkal booking.
• Keep alternative station codes ready. Don't wait for the autocompletion feature to fill-in the FROM & TO fields. 
• There MAY be a greater probability of getting Tatkal tickets on long distance trains as they will cost more than those which run between major cities and they are less known as they don't run on all days of the week. 
• Keep long words like your name and bank details saved in Notepad/text editor so that you can quickly copy-paste. Youngsters are generally quick with the keyboard (due to the long hours they spend on the computer) so you could get a power user to assist you in case typing isn't your strongest skill. It may help to have multiple people around while booking in order to take quick decisions & also to sanity check the data that is being entered. For instance, mis-typing the gender in the hurry could lead you to do some explaining to the TTE or a visit to the reservation office to get it corrected.
• Use a modern browser (not IE6 or older versions of other popular browsers) as they load pages relatively faster.
• Your IRCTC "session" may time out if you leave the site unused for a long time. If you anticipate the reservation exercise to take a lot of time, use Opera browser's native auto-refresh feature or use this bookmarklet in IE, Firefox, Safari & Chrome to automatically refresh a webpage at specified intervals.
• Get the fastest Internet service possible (3G USB) & browse from a decent laptop. That way you can avoid any disruption due to an unfortunate powercut or a landline Internet service issue. If you perform a dry-run before the actual exercise, some elements of the IRCTC site like images maybe cached and may improve speed slightly.
• Rather than take a single direct train, you can use 90di.com to look for multiple trains in the same route. You have to compromise on comfort & cost but at least you may be able to get confirmed tickets.
• Every second counts, so keep yourself distraction free & busy till you have finished all options.
• Each user is currently permitted to book only 10 tickets in a month. So if you book a lot of tickets, make sure you are not crossing the monthly limit before you start the Tatkal ticket booking adventure. In such a case, you can be prepared with credentials of another userid.

A scenario that I foresee for the future in case IRCTC doesn't tackle the "Service Unavailable" issue (which typically comes up between 8-8:20 AM) is that desperate train ticket seekers will stand in queues with their smartphones at ticket reservation counters to try their luck both online & offline.

If you end up without confirmed Tatkal tickets at the end of the fateful first hour of booking, take consolation in the fact that you are one among thousands that had the same luck. Instead of despairing, consider this as a learning experience & a practice session for a future encounter with IRCTC.

If you have any practical tips, feel free to share them through the comments section below.

Also see:
IRCTC Alternatives
Make the most of IRCTC
Travel Planning & Reservation Tips using Online Tools
Indian Railways RAC and Waitlists concepts explained

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Notes from Pluralsight course "Introduction to Visual Studio 2010 - Part 2"

Introduction to Visual Studio 2010 - Part 2  importantly covers IntelliTrace & Extensions. Some interesting facts about VS from the video course -

• You can debug a release build. Release folder can contain .pdb. PDB – Program Debug Database
• Deploy Release version of build. Depending on the third party libraries you are using, their licensing terms  may not allow you to deploy the Debug version.
• Build > Clean Solution throws away all the products of a prior Build. This will mean that the next build will be full build.
• Rather than doing a Clean Solution & then Build Solution, you can directly do a Rebuild Solution
• Look at Locals window after a breakpoint is hit for variable values. Use Watch window for specific variables
• DataTip dimensions can be modified  

• Ctrl + Datatip – for a transparent background, useful when you want to see code behind a datatip
• Pin a DataTip to see variable value change dynamically inside it.It can be dragged, unpinned or closed.
• Trivia: Codename of IntelliTrace was Historical Debugging
• IntelliTrace is available in VS Ultimate only  
• Saves a trace file of execution path & values of member variables
• By default has very little performance impact
• IntelliTrace can provide time travel & space travel (you can test a iTrace file on computers other than originating one to analyze "works on my machine" scenarios)
• When you close VS, itrace files are gone so save it elsewhere. You can get the iTrace file's location from Tools > Options | IntelliTrace > Advanced 
• You can open a itrace file within VS. Double click main thread in thread window to replicate scenario & start debugging on a different computer.
• Using traces from other machines lets you share bugs with other developers or avoid "works on my machine"
• Visual Studio Extensions can boost productivity. There are over 2400 extensions for different versions of VS on VisualStudioGallery.com
• Use Tools > Extension Manager to enable/disable/uninstall update
• Productivity Power Tools by Microsoft is a bundle of popular extensions that includes features that go on to become standard features in future VS versions. Some features in Pro Power Tools include -

- Highlight current line
- Auto brace completion
- Ctrl-Click Go To Definition
- Column guides (to check length of each code statement does not go beyond a specific column number)
- Quick Access (Windows Vista/7 like universal Find)

• Productivity Power Tools (1.37MB) are distributed as a file with an extension vsix, a new format in VS2010
• Microsoft All-In-Code Framework is a free, centralized code sample library 
• Microsoft All-In-Code Framework Sample Browser is available from VisualStudioGallery  
• You can select a keyword within your code & select Search Code Sample in context menu to view matching samples from All-In-Code Framework.

Also see - Things I learnt from the Pluralsight course "Introduction to Visual Studio 2010"

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Things I learnt from the Pluralsight course "Introduction to Visual Studio 2010"

Visual Studio is a complex IDE that mostly looks simple on the surface but has a number of invisible features. In the Pluralsight video training course Introduction to Visual Studio 2010 (duration: 4h 37m), Kate Gregory does a walk-through of the useful features of Visual Studio 2010. Many of the tips also apply to VS 2008. My notes -

• You can export & import Visual Studio settings. A whole team can identify best practices & share the same settings. 
• .NET tab in Add Reference lists assemblies stored in the Global Assembly Cache.
• There are 50 VS toolbars! They show up in context. 
• To learn the names of toolbars, right click on a toolbar & the currently opened toolbars are shown in the context menu with a checkbox next to it. Check additional ones that you require to make them show up. The last option of this context menu is Customize. This can be used to add new commands to a specific toolbar. This is one way to control what commands are on each toolbar.
• The keyboard shortcut Shift+Alt+Enter lets you go Full Screen so that you can focus on just your code.
• VS 2010 is multi-monitor aware. Panes can be on a second or third(!) monitor.
•  A code window can be made to float outside of VS 2010!
• Class View is a great way to study other's code. Familiarity with the Class View and Object Browser Icons can help you grasp code faster.
• Besides using Go To Definition (or F12 keyboard shortcut) to jump to the dependent member, you can use the Code Definition Window (View > Code Definition Window) to view dependent code in a docked window without having to navigate back & forth. 
  
• The Call Hierarchy option under the View menu lists dependencies of a member. It shows who calls a specified function & what this function calls.
• Dock the Quick find dialog box to prevent the dialog box from jumping around while you continue searching for keywords. Use the Bookmark All next to the Find Next button to conveniently move between references to the search keyword.
• Use Ctrl+Scroll wheel (on a mouse that has it) to zoom the text in & out. This zoom trick works in browsers too.
• Use the Zoom level dropdown in the status bar of VS 2010 to get a bird's eye view of the "shape" of the code. Once you recognize the blocks of code by their shape, you can jump to the required one with a decreased zoom level.
• Visual Studio can not only resolve namespaces for classes that don't originally have a reference but also intelligently build method stubs (Generate > Method Stub, from the context menu) on request for a custom method that you may have declared but not defined. Like a chess player, VS is busy figuring out your moves while you are typing out your code.
• Using the Help Library Manager (Help > Manage Help Settings), you can choose whether to invoke online help or local help. You can switch between the two whenever you like.

Related:

Simplify your Visual Studio 2010 Toolbar and Free Your Mind

What's new in Visual Studio 2010

Free MSPress eBook on VS 2010

Why are these Visual Studio Settings not enabled by default?

HOW TO build your own Project Template in Visual Studio 2008

What is the difference between "Start" & "Start without Debugging"?

HOW TO achieve XHTML compliance by changing existing HTML code in upper case to lower

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Some lesser known Google tricks

Crowdsourced answers to questions on "Hidden features of  product/service X" on the StackOverflow family of sites, make for interesting reading. I picked a few tips & trivia I didn't know earlier, from a similar thread on Google Search -

1. The calculator feature in Google understands not just numbers but also words. This query would still return the correct answer -
(five plus seven) divided by six

2. Searching for "population germany" will display a chart as the first result -

(Note though that Wolfram Alpha can do more complex mathematical calculations & give more detailed answers for search terms like population germany. )

3. The results for define:camouflage are different from en:en camouflage. The latter returns a dictionary-style definition of camouflage

4. Searching for anagram gives an interesting "did you mean?" suggestion, and a query for ASCII Art also has an unexpected effect.

5. Another poster informs that inserting the letter 'l.' before 'google.com' in the URL of Google or any subdomain and get to the same site, e.g.:
video.l.google.com
mail.l.google.com

This way, you can still watch videos even if your filter blocks video.google.com

6. The Google Labs feature Experimental search makes Google keyboard-friendly.

Related:
Bing + Wolfram | Alpha = Cool
.

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