travelling thru L-Space till Ook! and brainf***..
idlin at this time of night, nothin else to do.. not feelin sleepy either.. why not do somethin interestin?
there's Pyramids lyin beside me.. reminds me of L-Space.. so I utter L-Space to google n it reveals some places to start with.. first hit - http://www.ie.lspace.org/.. has a lotta stuff.. beginnin frm about Terry Pratchett till his fan-club, some games based on discworld series etc..

I decide to explore his Books & Writings.. which proved to be a very time-complex operation btw ;) coz it has a lotta stuff too.. moreover, it happens to be interesting as well :) not a frequently found combination.. now a quick list of very interesting stuff found over there wud be like this:

• The Annotated Pratchett File 9.0 - nice compilation of annotations in Terry Pratchett's books.. sorted by book title etc..
• The Pratchett Quote File 6.0 - one-liners, catchy phrases etc.. sorted by book title..
• The Discworld Who's Who
• Death Lists - list of people who've died on Discworld.. sorted by book title.. definitely funny [ROTFL] my recommended link [if you'd take it ;) ]..

and there're two short stories as well - Theatre of Cruelty, Death and What Comes Next.. couldn't read thru em.. in fact I'd already been so long there that I Chipmarked the page n decided to move on, making a mental note to come back later..

deciding not to go over anymore places suggested by google, I move on to Wikipedia to hear its version on L-Space.. the line about the librarian over there pulls me into the page about (formerly) Dr. Horace - librarian of L-Space ;) an interesting personality (?!) of course ;)

someone on the page says, s/he's unsure if the librarian can program in Ook!
now why should a librarian of Discworld know "Ook!"?! strange, I thought.. it's already late enuf, but I decide to find out the connection anyways.. but finally, finding the connection wasn't a waste.. the connection is very funny.. find it out urself ;) but all I can say is that the name of the language comes from the primary vocabulary of the librarian [LOL]

the language itself is very interesting ;) the grammar comprises of only three words: Ook. , Ook? and Ook! :) the complete grammar is a set of 8 operators which basically are the set of complete permutations of the basic 3 keywords taken in pairs :))
a very simple language isnt it? if u're not yet convinced with the language, here I quote a lil description of the same found on Wikipedia Ook! page:

One advantage of Ook! over other computer languages is that its programs can be easily read aloud without significant loss of intelligibility. Spoken Ook! is also relevant to linguistics as the simplest and purest example of a tonal language.

the page has a link to an Ook! interpreter written in perl to ease the learning curve ;)

the page also says that Ook! has been derived from brainfuck¹.. turns out, this's the most compact language anyone wud ever find ;) (anyone being just me ;) ) any programming enthusiast shud definitely check it out.. or at least be aware of it ;)
it so happens that brainfuck too has a parent language called P'' (pronounced Pee prime prime)..

huh.. seems like the links'd link on forever.. it's too late already.. so I stop here.. but I've decided to learn Ook! (and brainf*ck if possible) [ROTFL]

---

¹ brainfuck is an esoteric computer programming language noted for its extreme minimalism. It was designed to challenge and amuse(?!) programmers, and is not suitable for practical use. Its name has been variously euphemized, as in brainf*ck, since its name contains the word fuck. The name of the language is generally not capitalized, despite the fact that it is a proper noun.

trolls n internet trolls..
either the english vocabulary is growing @ a very fast pace or my vocabulary is very poor :D
stumbled upon this definition for a troll @ wikipedia..

In Internet terminology, a troll is a person who posts inflammatory messages on the internet, such as on online discussion forums, to disrupt discussion or to upset its participants. "Troll" can also mean the inflammatory message itself posted by a troll or be a verb meaning to post such messages. "Trolling" (the gerund) is also commonly used to describe the activity

as u can tell, it wasnt the troll I was lookin for. but still, not somethin useless.
lookup wikipedia to read more on it..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll

here's some more on why they're trolls:

When you try to reason with a troll, he wins. When you insult a troll, he wins. When you scream at a troll, he wins. The only thing that trolls can't handle is being ignored.

a reasonable description of a troll, isnt it? ;)

Pandora - discover music
this one's a nice music service.. similar to any other radio station.. but works differently..
give it a song/artist to start off frm n it plays other songs similar in musical qualities to that song/similar to the typical style of that artist..
go to http://www.pandora.com n discover it urself..

this reminds me of moodlogic.. moodlogic does a similar thing, but it sorts music based on ur mood n plays songs based on ur current mood.. only difference here being other ppl have already sorted out n grouped songs based on their type, so u don't have to categorize songs as in moodlogic..

the homepage says it belongs to a bigger project called Music Genome Project. sounds impressive.. even the songs it plays seem to hold its claim.. they're very similar to the intitial song.. if u can start wit a song typical to some mood, u can use it just like moodlogic..

one thing I dont like is that it's a radio.. :( i.e. I can't go back n play a song that's already played :( apart frm that, this service is really good..

I had an idea for an application which'd automatically analyze a song n categorize it under various labels.. then there needn't be any human intervention while rating music.. but it'd be a very complex application.. involving all sorts of intelligence.. DSP to start wit.. that'd b more like teachin computer to listen n analyze (enjoy?!) music.. that's the major reason why I've deferred startin on it.. other reason is the time factor.. but wud like to start it off some day..

n btw, I guess it's been written using Open Laszlo, but dunno for sure.. just guessin.. coz even I'm plannin to use Open Laszlo for my personal site n for a site being designed for my school..

bluffmaster - a nice hindi movie after a long time..
just watched bluffmaster.. my rating? well abt 4.5/5 :)
going by the entertainment factor, it rocks.. nice music, nice performance, nice dialogues, nice storyline, good comedy.. couldn't find any mistakes as such :O 'll hav to watch it again to fish out the mistakes..
was it coz I watched a hindi movie after a long time? dont think so.. but it's been abt 2 months since I watched a hindi movie..
it's after a long time that I liked a hindi movie.. last one I liked was Parineeta.

who's the best performer? of course Nana Patekar :) [just a stupid rhyme if u dint notice :D]
well, really he's done really good.. beginning from takin over the show as Mr Chunavala, till being Mr. Story Writer @ the end.. he's awesome.. I liked him the best @ the last scene..
he looks so different from his introductory role!

sad thing is the lousy Times of India ppl gave it a rating of 2/5! was the guy drunk when he was watchin the movie?! perhps he was.. coz my brother was tellin me he saw a 3.5/5 rating for Garam Masala - watching which would be a suicidal attempt if u ask me :D.. seems like that guy has a habit of drunken watching :))

time wounds all heels ;)
u think I misspelt somthin?! ;) nope.. that's exactly what I wanted to write..
dont u think that shud've been somethin like: Time heals all wounds? so do I.. or am I missin somethin?! ;)

I found this on a carry bag from LandMark..
brought two books today frm there n they gave it in a polythene bag.. it had some interesting trivia on it.. I was readin thru them n found this :D
here's a snap of the line on the bag, n of the bag itself..

--EDITED--
well, I guess that's something to showcase my own ignorance :D
shud've googled bfore postin the post.. googlin afterwards returned some results.. seems like there's some meaning to it.. :D
'll google some more to find somethin.. but if u kno what it means, drop a comment :)

--EDIT2--
stumbled on a phrase thesaurus [http://www.phrases.org.uk/] (sadly, a paid service) while lookin for this..
here's a line frm there:
"Time heals all wounds. And time wounds all heels. It is more satisfying to get on with your life and, with the passage of time, see the bad guy get what's coming to him."
seems like heels in this context is referring to bad ppl! first time that I saw it bein used like that!

if I get a wish-ring...
suppose I get a wish ring.. say it's just like in the old stories where a stupid hero gets a stupid ring which fulfils only 3 wishes.. what'd the hero wish for?
maybe wealth, women, n a kingdom?
or maybe screw up the scenario by wishin for something which backfires..
like say, one wish being I want to be the richest on the planet.. n another wish bein I dont want anyone else to see this wealth coz they might steal it :)) :P

but what wud I wish for?!
hmm.. lemme think..
first wish wud b very spl.. somethin big which I can't get easily myself..
now I'm left wit just two wishes! I hav so much to ask for! can't get evrythin in 2-3 wishes.. n there's this probability of wishes which backfire! risky isnt it?
or probably, it's not :->.. probably I can get all that I want with a single wish-ring without the fear of screwin up somethin ;)

I'd ask for a clone of the ring which'd fulfil 3 more wishes :)) [LOL]
or better still, a ring better than this one which'd fulfil all my wishes ;)

now why dint any of our old heroes get this idea? they're all stupid arent they? :))
or probably they stopped manufacturing these rings as smarter ppl wer born :))

google pageranking explained
I'm not quoting it here.. go look it up from http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/.. not sure how much of it is correct.. but the calculations for sure seem interesting :)
goin to take a closer look now.. probably I can apply some of that knowledge to get a higher pagerank :)
what wud I do wit a higher pagerank?! well.. nothin much.. but still I wanna get a higher pagerank just for the kicks of it ;)

a bug I'd love to get back..
people go sentimental over a lot of things. here I'm, setimental over a bug :D
found this bug about 4 months back (or before?) in my Nokia 1100 (which I've lost btw).. don't exactly remember when I found this bug, but this's how..

it's about 2AM and I was about to go to bed.. dont remember the day.. someone pings me thru YM coz I was logged into YM thru my cell phone.. I send a reply n I get back a response.. then I send a reply and hit Send.. after a while I get another response.. to see it I pick up my phone n see that it said "Delivered to <HER NAME>"! it disappeared just before I could make sure what I saw..
I say to myself, maybe I saw somethin else.. I write my reply again n hit send.. then a while later, I see the same delivery report again!
Nokia 1100 has this feature where u can ask it to show u delivery reports for the messages u send. it says "Delivered to <RECIPIENT>" whenever the msg is delivered.. I had kept the delivery reports on since long.. one thing I'd seen wit delivery reports was tht at times the message is sent but the delivery report is a lil delayed..

I say to myself, 'was this an old delivery report? can't be.. coz it's been around 2 months since I've sent her any message.. delivery report can't be delayed for 2 months!'
'or did I choose her no. by mistake while replyin? nope.. coz I choose to reply to the msg I had recieved, which came frm a Yahoo! server.. that can't be mapped to her no!'

just to confirm, I go to my Sent msgs folder n see the status of the msgs.. all of em say Pending, while they shud've said Delivered after I get their corresponding delivery report.. have they not been delivered? I ask the person across, r u gettin my msgs? n I get the reply, yes..
so the msgs were bein delivered properly..
or is it that the same msg is bein copied over to both of em?! can't be.. never heard of such a feature..
finally I came to the conclusion that I'm hallucinating :D.. or probably it's just coz it's too late n I shud go to bed.. so I said bye n went to bed.. but was still worried if she really got all those msgs n what wud she think if she did..

felt a lil relieved next day coz she dint complain anythin abt recievin any stupid msgs.. I thought I really was hallucinating :D
dint notice the bug next day.. but the next day evening, my brother was sendin an SMS to find cricket score n he asks me "why does it say Delivered to ....?"
hmm?! hmm! k.. I wasn't hallucinating after all! I say I dunno.. n while we're wondering if the msg was delivered to 8888, we get the cricket score, confirming that it was actually delivered to 8888..
then why did it say it was delivered to her?!

from then I started to closely observe the delivery reports n found that for abt every 8-10 msgs I send, one gives this delivery report.. in fact there wer a few days when it used to happen continuously for more than 5 msgs in a row! (abt 20 in a row bein the max I could notice :D ) initially I thought it's some stupid bug in 1100 which's pickin up some random no. out of my address book while showin the delivery report.. but no.. it was always her name!

I dunno how it was happening.. was it because my phone was filled with SMSes sent to/recieved from her? or was it somethin else?
how I wish Nokia had made their software open source.. I'd really like to go thru tht code n find out what was exactly happening.. in fact, even tho I knew I wudn't get, I searched for the source code everywhere.. beginnin from google to p2p n/ws etc... n as xpected, I couldn't get it :(

but in any case, I just loved that bug :) it gave the phone a very customized feel, as if it were specifically made for me ;) it makes me miss that phone a lot :(
I was very pissed off when someone flicked that phone :(( it's not a phone one wud usually miss.. but with somethin like this, anyone wud..
the fact is that I always avoided gettin a new phone while I had this phone, mainly coz of this bug n the msgs tht wer in the phone.. I never wanted to giv up this phone. there wer a lot of stupid msgs in it.. records of my stupidity, I'd say :D.. neverthless, records which I'd hav loved to preserve..
but neways, now tht I've lost it, I can't do anythin.. I really wished my new phone had that bug.. I kno that's stupid, but I even tried switchin on delivery reports on the new one for abt a week, but nothin happened :(
I really miss that phone sometimes..

[ab]using google for a proxy :)
just happened to stumble on the this article which tells u how to use google translator as a proxy :)
the funda is simple.. someimes ur network admin might block some sites (for whatever the reason it might be).. now if u wanna access the site, u can ask google to do it for u ;)
use google translator n translate from whatever the language the site is in to the same language.. mostly it's english to english..
use the following url to do it: http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=[ur site].. google translator happily translates the page from english to english n shows it :) it works coz almost never does anyone block google :) (unless it's a strictly internal n/w)

of course google translator was never meant to be used like this :D but well, it has happened as with any other popular service.. as far as I can remember, GMail was the first google service to be [ab]used like this with the GMail File System..
this probably isn't even abusing the service.. it's just that the service is good.. this's just a creative use of the service :)
neways, there might just be one problem with this.. this isn't a proxy as such n so ur IP is visible outside.. but that mightn't matter.. does it?
read the complete story here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/h/4807

worst profile on orkut - revisited ;)
here's another bakra for my worst profile on orkut prank.. :))
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=13763674503768952888
a while ago he scrapped in my scrapbook sayin

hey check out d worst profile on orkut
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=12449017491267623086

n I guessed that shud be my profile, coz the URL is proper, n I guessed it right! :) dunno frm whose scrapbook did he fall for the prank.. it's been over a month since I scrapped it n now I'm gettin the second bakra?! sad..
but definitely the guy must've been really pissed off coz he's been scrappin the same on evryone's scrapbook :)) just clicked over one of his friends' scrapbook n as I guessed it, same scrap was there.. pity that guy :P
only if he'd googled before gettin furious ;) he'd have got my previous blog entry on the worst profile link n understood that itz a prank..
neways, this guy's givin me free publicity, n I hav no intentions of stoppin him ;) a lil bit of attention wont hurt, I guess ;)
n who knows, my profile might actually become popular as the worst profile on orkut! ;)

ah! the poor web server.. it's depressed coz it failed to serve you ;)
who said 404 pages have to be the same old boring "The page you requested wasn't found" ones? well, the ability to send customised error pages for each of the (numerous) HTTP error codes has been there since long.. but I rarely see any bothering to use em..
here's one that uses it in a pretty creative way..
checkout http://www.uvis.nl/404err.php.. u'll discover that even (oops! I dint mean even ;) ) web servers have hearts of their own n cry when they can't serve ur request :)) here's a web server that tells u a long (and sentimental) story for why it couldn't serve u the page u requested, and blah blah.. it's funny for sure..
here's a snip off the server's story...

The requested document is utterly inexistent.
No such page here.
Even tried multi.
Nothing helped.
I'm really depressed about this.
Even more so now that Douglas Adams is dead.
You see, I'm just a web server...
-- here I am, brain the size of the universe,_
trying to serve you a simple web page,
and then it doesn't even exist!
Where does that leave me?!
I mean, I don't even know you.
How should I know what you wanted from me?_

(it continues...)

no wonder if this's the most visited page on the site ;)
what wud u do wit the page? I mean wud u go back, just to see the phunny 404 page? I did..

code4bill using linux?!
Code4Bill is a coding contest for indian students.. u can take look @ http://www.code4bill.com for more details..
but the interesting thing that came to my notice is on this page: http://www.microsoft.com/india/code4bill/Eligibility.aspx
@ the bottom of "Who is it meant for" page, there's a tip for participants, which's:

A Tip: You will need to have working knowledge of C/C++ : GCC or CL compilers

[well, I kno GCC doesn't hav to mean linux.. but on windows if u wanna use GCC, it's either MingW or CygWin, which again feels very linuxish to me ;)]

I'm surprised ;)

--UPDATED--
not that it's bad.. look @ my comments for this post..

automatic proxy configuration
always thought that the Automatic Proxy Configuration script in IE nd other browsers was somethin complex.. but never really bothered about it, coz I never had to use it before.. I used to think that it's a shell script.. now that I got a hub, I can share my net conn b/w my laptop and home sys.. the only way I could find was to use a proxy at my home sys and use it from my laptop to connect to net..
but now came the horror of configuring a proxy every day at home and removin it @ office! I'd have to configure it every day at home and reset it @ the office, coz it's a direct conn @ office.. then I remembered abt this Automatic Proxy Configuration script and thought abt explorin it. after a lil googlin it turns out that it's a plain javascript function which returns a string which's the proxy url! it's damn simple.. here goes my script

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
var proxyHost="172.16.10.71";
var httpProxyPort="808";
var ftpProxyPort="2121";
var sslProxyPort="808";
var gopherProxyPort="808";
var socksProxyPort="1080";
var telnetProxyPort="23";
var newsProxyPort="119";

if (url.substring(0, 5) == "http:") {
return "PROXY "+proxyHost+":"+httpProxyPort
 +"; SOCKS "+proxyHost+":"
 +socksProxyPort+"; DIRECT";
}
if (url.substring(0, 4) == "ftp:") {
return "PROXY "+proxyHost+":"+ftpProxyPort
 +"; SOCKS "+proxyHost+":"
 +socksProxyPort+"; DIRECT";
}
if (url.substring(0, 7) == "gopher:") {
return "PROXY "+proxyHost+":"+gopherProxyPort
 +"; SOCKS "+proxyHost+":"
 +socksProxyPort+"; DIRECT";
}
if (url.substring(0, 6) == "https:") {
return "PROXY "+proxyHost+":"+sslProxyPort
 +"; SOCKS "+proxyHost+":"
 +socksProxyPort+"; DIRECT";
}
if (url.substring(0, 6) == "telnet:") {
return "PROXY "+proxyHost+":"+telnetProxyPort
 +"; SOCKS "+proxyHost+":"
 +socksProxyPort+"; DIRECT";
}
if (url.substring(0, 6) == "news:") {
return "PROXY "+proxyHost+":"+newsProxyPort
 +"; SOCKS "+proxyHost+":"
 +socksProxyPort+"; DIRECT";
}
return "PROXY "+proxyHost+":"+httpProxyPort
+"; SOCKS "+proxyHost+":"
+socksProxyPort+"; DIRECT";
}

well, I kno that's an ugly piece of code :D but couldn't get much time to tweak it.. moreover I don't even kno if the autoconfiguration script can have any other functions for me to cleanupthe code..
my home system is the proxy which gets the priority.. whenever it goes down, my laptop attempts a direct connection.. this's just perfect for me :)
this script works with both IE and Firefox.. not sure if there's anythin browser specific even here
oh! btw I forgot to add the links.. consult these for further details:
http://wp.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/demo/proxy-live.html
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/ie/reskit/6/part6/c26ie6rk.mspx

I'm not a g33k.. but, if you say so..
take this test n find out how geeky u're..


and this one for ur nerdieness..

mutt.in - 'guest's are 'welcome' ;)
just a while ago sent a request for a mutt.in account.. it's a free shell account service..
and just as I'm scribbling this enty, I even got a reply with my account details! :) that's real nice.. I was expectin a delay of at least a day..
this service is being run by Anand Avati.. my senior @ SJCE.. (well, no exactly MY senior, coz I was in E&C while he's from CS.. but still......)
here's the screen that appears on the mutt.in page..
[not sure how this'd appear on my blog tho.. deinitely 'd look weird.. but am postin this neways]

--EDITED--
removed the mutt.in screen coz it looks REAL UGLY on my page.. it screws up the entire layout :(
well, it doesn't screw up the layout, but the text overflows across the page.. I don't like to put it in a box just to preserve my layout..

songs that make me wish I could play music...
ones which make me feel like playing piano..
Rob D - Clubbed To Death (The Matrix Soundtrack) [I just love piano in this one]
MLTR - Naked like the moon

ones which make me feel like playin guitar
Sixpence none the richer - There She Goes
Eagles - Hotel California
Guns 'n Roses - Sweet Child
[and some Linkin Park stuff - Numb, Breakin the habit...]

one that makes me feel like playin violin
The Corrs - Toss The Feathers

somehow, I'm beginnin to prefer learnin violin over guitar.. it's just that violin is so much more expressive than guitar.
earlier it was the other way around :) I had a chance to learn violin then, but discarded it coz I was interested in guitar. the institute where I tried didn't have guitar coz they taught only classical.. but now I think I made a mistake in discarding that opportunnity :(

what the...
well, here's one of the (very) few appliations that manage to impress me.. one of the few applications that, I think, are intelligent.. checkout WhatTheFont.. give it an image with some characters and it'll tell u the font that's used..
that's awesome.. coz I think it takes a decent amount of Computer Science to come up with such an application..
there's AI.. there's neural networks.. there's heuristics.. there's image processing.. there're algorithms.. and quite a few other stuff that make this application tick.. moreover, the results are pretty impressive.. I was amazed by the quality of the results.. give it a try.. I'm sure u'll b impressed as well :)

link of this week..
this time, its Woogle..
give it some words and it gives their pictorial rep..
it's fun to play with.. give it an entire paragraph n see it..
but sometimes the images it returns are kind of stupid, and at times, obscene.. :( [in fact, sometimes is actually most of the times]
it's not a great application, coz every word has been statically mapped onto an image..
it'd have been better if it were context sensitive..
[after seeing this, I'm thinkin of writin a similar app using google images to make it a lil more dynamic n context sensitive ;) ]
a lil creative use of the application would've been for cryptography, only if it provided a means for reverse lookup (which btw isn't very hard to do).. send a bunch of pictures and ask the recipient to decrypt the message from Woogle :)

now a picture is no more worth a thousand words ;) every picture is just a word.. ha ha..

Just Like Heaven.. a nice movie


I liked it..
more info @ imdb

another forward..
thought this one's worth quoting.. this's hilarious :)) I won't ask u to read the entire thing.. but give it a start (n I kno u'll definitely go till the end)..

This funny article was written by a Dutchman who spent two years in Bangalore, India, as a visiting expert.

Driving in India

For the benefit of every Tom, Dick and Harry visiting India and daring to drive on Indian roads, I am offering a few hints for survival. They are applicable to every place in India except Bihar, where life outside a vehicle is only marginally safer.

Indian road rules broadly operate within the domain of karma where you do your best, and leave the results to your insurance company. The hints are as follows: Do we drive on the left or right of the road? The answer is "both". Basically you start on the left of the road, unless it is occupied. In that case, go to the right, unless that is also occupied. Then proceed by occupying the next available gap, as in chess. Just trust your instincts, ascertain the direction, and proceed. Adherence to road rules leads to much misery and occasional fatality. Most drivers don't drive, but just aim their vehicles in the generally intended direction.

Don't you get discouraged or underestimate yourself except for a belief in reincarnation; the other drivers are not in any better position. Don't stop at pedestrian crossings just because some fool wants to cross the road. You may do so only if you enjoy being bumped in the back.

Pedestrians have been strictly instructed to cross only when traffic is moving slowly or has come to a dead stop because some minister is in town. Still some idiot may try to wade across, but then, let us not talk ill of the dead.

Blowing your horn is not a sign of protest as in some countries. We horn to express joy, resentment, frustration, romance and bare lust (two brisk blasts),or just mobilize a dozing cow in the middle of the bazaar. Keep informative books in the glove compartment. You may read them during traffic jams, while awaiting the chief minister's motorcade, or waiting for the rainwater to recede when over ground traffic meets underground drainage.

Occasionally you might see what looks like a UFO with blinking colored lights and weird sounds emanating from within. This is an illuminated bus, full of happy pilgrims singing bhajans. These pilgrims go at breakneck speed, seeking contact with the Almighty, often meeting with success.

Auto Rickshaw (Baby Taxi): The result of a collision between a rickshaw and an automobile, this three-wheeled vehicle works on an external combustion engine that runs on a mixture of kerosene oil and creosote. This triangular vehicle carries iron rods, gas cylinders or passengers three times its weight and dimension, at an unspecified fare. After careful geometric calculations, children are folded and packed into these auto rickshaws until some children in the periphery are not in contact with the vehicle at all. Then their school bags are pushed into the microscopic gaps all round so those minor collisions with other vehicles on the road cause no permanent damage. Of course, the peripheral children are charged half the fare and also learn Newton's laws of motion enroute to school. Auto-rickshaw drivers follow the road rules depicted in the film Ben Hur, and are licensed to irritate.

Mopeds: The moped looks like an oil tin on wheels and makes noise like an electric shaver. It runs 30 miles on a teaspoon of petrol and travels at break-bottom speed. As the sides of the road are too rough for a ride, the moped drivers tend to drive in the middle of the road; they would rather drive under heavier vehicles instead of around them and are often "mopped" off the tarmac.

Leaning Tower of Passengers: Most bus passengers are given free passes and during rush hours, there is absolute mayhem. There are passengers hanging off other passengers, who in turn hang off the railings and the overloaded bus leans dangerously, defying laws of gravity but obeying laws of surface tension. As drivers get paid for overload (so many Rupees per kg of passenger), no questions are ever asked. Steer clear of these buses by a width of three passengers.

One-way Street: These boards are put up by traffic people to add jest in their otherwise drab lives. Don't stick to the literal meaning and proceed in one direction. In metaphysical terms, it means that you cannot proceed in two directions at once. So drive as you like, in reverse throughout, if you are the fussy type. Least I sound hypercritical, I must add a positive point also. Rash and fast driving in residential areas has been prevented by providing a "speed breaker"; two for each house. This mound, incidentally, covers the water and drainage pipes for that residence and is left untarred for easy identification by the corporation authorities, should they want to recover the pipe for year-end accounting.

Night driving on Indian roads can be an exhilarating experience for those with the mental make up of Genghis Khan. In a way, it is like playing Russian roulette, because you do not know who amongst the drivers is loaded. What looks like premature dawn on the horizon turns out to be a truck attempting a speed record. On encountering it, just pull partly into the field adjoining the road until the phenomenon passes.

Our roads do not have shoulders, but occasional boulders. Do not blink your lights expecting reciprocation. The only dim thing in the truck is the driver, and with the peg of illicit arrack (alcohol) he has had at the last stop, his total cerebral functions add up to little more than a naught. Truck drivers are the James Bonds of India, and are licensed to kill. Often you may encounter a single powerful beam of light about six feet above the ground. This is not a super motorbike, but a truck approaching you with a single light on, usually the left one. It could be the right one, but never get too close to investigate. You may prove your point posthumously.

now wasn't that hilarious? (and a lil thought-provoking as well)

browsable folders and the query string
was pretty confused about the "C=M;O=D" string found appended to most of the browsable folder URLs indexed by Google. but finally figured out a way to make sense out of it..

The query string is used basically to sort the list of files that appear.
C is for the column name on which the list is to be sorted. O defines the sort order..
O can be either A or D for ascending and descending sort respectively..
Not sure about all the values that C can take.. but these ones work:

N - Name i.e. file name
M - Last Modified date
S - Size
D - Description (havent tested this)

not sure if this's web server specific.. but many such URLs I got were from Apache..

google is better than a p2p network..
this's out of my experience.. while searching for some mp3s or softwares, I've found google to be more useful than a p2p network.. at least better than the eDonkey that I use.. I agree that there're a lot of factors involved, but at least for me, it works..

for instance, I was lookin for some audio converter and the first thing I did was to search for it in eDonkey.. it returned me some results and I ask it to download one of em.. it's just abt 3MB.. half an hour later, no progress.. it's still lookin for some peers! damn.. so I thought of googling for it, tho I dint have any hopes that it'd work.. I look for ppl who've left their folders browsable and have this software listed there.. second result returned from google had what I wanted.. I couldn't believe it myself! and the Donkey is still lookin for peers..

I tried this out for a few mp3s and softwares and finally came to this conclusion..

but there are quite a few factors involved for this to be true..
1. if u have a static IP assigned to u, chances are that p2p works better.. else, google is the way to go

2. google doesn't always return what u want.. for the google way to work, somebody must have left their directory, containing the item you want, browsable (which mostly is a case of misconfigured server than an intentionally left open directory).. huh.. don't the odds seem to be very low? but no.. at least in my case, most of the times, I've been able to locate the stuff I want, using google..

3. coming to my factor ;) maybe I've not understood how p2p networks work.. maybe I'd find a way to optimise my p2p search tomorrow.. but at least till then, this holds good :)

btw, my usual search string to find out browsable folders is:
intitle:"Index of" "Last Modified" "C=M;O=D"
append the item u're lookin for to this string and odds are that google will return somethin useful.. "C=M;O=D" is kind of optional coz it's a lil optimisation that I add.. it narrows down the results to only proper browsable directories (yea, there ARE fake browsable directories, just to attract ppl like us and waste our time;) ).. but sometimes it gets rid of some positives, which's bad..

I wonder what all does the Google databses contain.. are there many places where it's crawlers don't reach? sometimes I feel, if you can find the proper question to ask, it can find you the answer you're lookin for..

some animals of the Bannerghatta national park..

the trip started with a miracle.. I happened to be there in time and waiting for others! while evryone (including me) thought I'd be the bottleneck :D well, it's been my right to be late and I hate ppl comin later than me.. coz I hate to wait for others.. ;)

neways, we were abt 11 ppl.. most of em my navodaya frnds and a few others.. and we started a lil later than we thought (this time, not due to me)

it wasn't as exciting as I thought.. but it was good fun.. the best part being the last part where we ended up meeting this unidentified creature which happened to be our guide for the safari.. sidda picked up a fight with it for a window-side seat in the safari vehicle.. pissed off by that, it tries to use it's power to restrict us from talkin loud (shoutin?!) or using our cell phones to take pictures etc..
since there weren't many animals to see, we started to piss off this creature all the way (abt 1 hour ;) ).. finally we end up using our cell phones neways, totally ignoring this creature..

well, partly sidda is to be blamed coz he picked up fight initially.. but this guy was amazingly stupid enough to try n carry it over till the end of safari, till we completely pissed him off :)) it'd hav been more fun with a good camera.. but again, sidda messed it up by forgettin to bring it X-(


and a I said, there weren't many different animals to see out there.. we saw a few in the zoo.. but all we could see in the safari were some 2-3 bears lying around, a few lions caged, 2 elephants and a LOT of tigers.. yea, a lot of tigers.. that was nice.. there were even a few white tigers.. I've got one of em here..

link of the week...

and this goes to...
The Uncyclopedia [applause]
a nice parody of the Wikipedia
oh my, I love parodies..
checkout the articles.. they're real funny ;)
u can go on reading them for hours without getting bored
sometimes I wonder, are these ppl jobless that they write all this,
or is it me who's jobless coz I read them.. :D

splash some colour on em..

successfully changed the color of my GMail and GTalk just a while ago, and here they are.. chekout these links to know how to do that..

http://persistent.info/archives/2004/10/05/gmail-skinning - Theming GMail

http://www.sapiensbryan.com/index.php/google-talk-themes - Theming GTalk

it wasn't a big deal to theme GTalk.. you just edit it's resources and you're done..
but theming GMail displays the power of CSS.. you just edit the local CSS to override the site CSS.. of course it's simpler than theming GTalk.. but that's where it becomes better :) one can very easily write a GMail customiser which churns out a local CSS to customise their GMail LnF.. (in fact I'm plannin to write one ;) )
simplicity rules...

#559/9650 in 1 day :)
joined the google community a day before.. and already I'm the 559th of the 9650 members when sorted by GC$.. I've not understood the GC$ funda yet.. I dont know how I got it.. guess its based on the number of posts.. but there's somethin more to it coz I saw few ppl having -ve GC$ amounts :) (even though their post count was +ve)

wish I could get actual $ in xchange for GC$ [$)]

don't know somethin? jfgit ;)
here are a few google related urls I came across (and dint kno abt :D ) this weekend..
http://www.google.co.in/ig
Google equivalent of my.yahoo or my.msn

http://www.deargoogle.com
not a google site.. but of a fan.. saw him in the google community.. the site is pretty decent.. u can get a lot abt google n its products.. picked up a few cool links like Changing color of ur GMail and themes for GTalk etc.. from here.. basically, it's all google

http://www.fuckinggoogleit.com || http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com
someone asked u a dumb question? point that creature here n it'll get the answer ;)
found even this one from deargoogle.. but it deserves to be mentioned separately ;)

worst profile on orkut... ;)
found this in du's scrapbook.. it said:

hey check out the worst profile on orkut.
http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?2uid=3849827725404266552

now if you click on the link, u'll be surprised to find ur profile being the worst profile on orkut :)) in fact, initially the trap almost got me.. I began wondering since when did I become so popular ;) well, I can't accept my profile to be the worst (coz I've seen worser ;) ). moreover I don't even know the guy who scrapped that.. so I began suspecting it.. the URL seemed to be a lil out of place, tho I couldn't exactly say what it was.. tho 2uid was visible in place of uid I dint realize that to be the problem.. but just to verify my hunch, I created a Harry Potter on orkut, went to du's scrapbook and clicked on the link.. whoo... there comes Harry Potter, having the worst profile on orkut :O [I might say, "difficult times ahead, Harry..." ;)]

well, now that I know it's a (nice) prank, I was curious to find out how it works. the URL was screaming since beginning. inspecting it for a while, I find that it's really passing in some invalid GET parameter, which the page is just ignoring.. ah! so stupid! I was about to fall into THAT?! I'm stupid..

so, this's how orkut pages work: give me a proper parameter, I'll take you there.. give me something I don't understand, I won't crib, but 'll take u to a default page.. so, any URL like this shud take you to your profile page: http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?[somthin invalid]
and of course, to take u to the default page it shud be making use of the current session parameters..

hmm.. my hunch is that there's a bug lurking in there waiting to be xploited ;) I might be wrong, but I definitely sense somethin bad.. it's making use of the current session info to take you to ur page by default.. well, almost everyone does that.. but still.. this one's a lil suspicious.. I dunno.. maybe I'm thinking too far :D maybe it aint a bug really..

in any case, it's a real good candidate to play pranks with ;) u can come up with the worst home page, worst scrap book, worst friends network etc (don't think they'd make much sense tho :D )... or invent an entirely different prank based on these ;) neways, the other URLs which can be used so are:
http://www.orkut.com/Home.aspx?[somthin invalid]
http://www.orkut.com/Scrapbook.aspx?[somthin invalid]
http://www.orkut.com/Friends.aspx?[somthin invalid]
http://www.orkut.com/Communities.aspx?[somthin invalid]
I guess almost (almost, coz I don't think links like News and Media can be used like this) all orkut pages can be included.. but I've not tested em all..

somthing funny happened after this.. after figuring out why it works, I started scrapping it in quite a few scrapbooks. maybe 5-6.. by the time I finished that, I recieved a scrap.. it said somethin like: "u suck... as if your profile rocks... r u jobless [blah blah blah...] go get a life" don't remember it exactly.. I'm surprised, coz I don't even know her /:) and I'm amused coz I got a bakra before I even thought I'd ;) I burst out laughing. turns out she saw it on someone's scrapbook while I was scrapping. but later, when I told her about the prank, she apologised and deleted that scrap.. but it's damn fun to fool ppl, isn't it?

couldn't find out who started it.. but hats off to the guy who started this :)

Just another forward
it's subject line said "Falling in Love!!!!!!! Check out with urself!!!!!".. ah! another forward.. but when I go thru it, I say to myself "what? did ya mean to point at me?!" uh. maybe a coincidence (speakin of which, I tend to encounter just too many of them. 'll blog about that someday ;) ).. but still, every line it said is true, at least in my case.. so it's worth quoting it here.. not that I believe what it says.. but again, it's true...

When you are together with that special someone, you pretend to ignore
that person. But when that special someone is not around, you might look around to find them.
At that moment, you are in love.

Although there is someone else who always makes you laugh,
your eyes and attention might go only to that special someone.
Then, you are in love.

Although that special someone was supposed to have called you long back,
to let you know of their safe arrival,
your phone is quiet.
You are desperately waiting for the call!
At that moment, you are in love.

If you are much more excited for one short e-mail from
that special someone than other many long e-mails,
you are in love.

When you find yourself as one who cannot erase all the
emails or SMS messages in your phone because of one message
from that special someone, you are in love.

When you get a couple of free movie tickets, you would
not hesitate to think of that special someone.
Then, you are in love.

You keep telling yourself, "that special someone is just a friend",but
you realize that you can not avoid that person's special attraction. At that
moment, you are in love.

While you are reading this mail, if someone
appears in your mind,
then u are in love with that person...;))

I wish I could find the creator.. aint it a lil weird when other's feel the same as you?! that reminds me of one of my favourite lines: "Everyone tries to be unique, in exactly the same way" ;)

dead net connection?! huh..
just an hour ago went dead my net connection.. winamp stops screaming and my IE freezes (one thing that it is best at doing ;) ), and my firefox shouts 'BANG, the document contains no data'.. :O I'm puzzled.. wtf happened?! I try loggin in to my gateway only to find it cribbin that my subscription has expired..
what?! already? I dont remember when I got this connection.. but doesn't feel like a month yet.. k.. 'll take care of it tomorrow.. but what to do now? it's mid-night already.. I can't call up my ISP complaining abt this.. and even if I'm crazy enough to do that, they won't recharge it until tomorrow :( ..... well, I have no better work to be accomplished, so why not try to get a few free hours?

fire the scanner and I find a lot of systems on my n/w.. but they don't giv up their hostnames.. crap.. well, I see there are abt 6-7 of them with proper hostnames, me being one of them.. I try the first name as the login with the same password.. bingo! it works.. but shit! he's using the connection.. I don't feel like kickin him out.. so I try the others.. hard luck :( shud I kick him out? doesnt sound like a decent idea.. but well, let that be my last option..

what else can I do? k.. why not try some of the obvious names? k.. my first try - rahul.. (with the same password of course ;) ) and voila! it's a valid one.. but wait.. even that loser has his subscription expired.. k.. next one - raju.. even that's a hit.. man.. I'm too good at guessin.. but wait... even this one's expired.. damn! why does my every hit have to be an expired one?! k.. next guess - nisha.. bad luck.. maybe I'm not that good at guessin :( I was goin good wit boys' names.. maybe the names starting with R r most common.. I was goin good wit them.. next guess - rajesh.. bingo! a perfect hit! a valid account.. 256K Unlimited.. same as mine, so I wont be at a loss :) and probably he's asleep now, coz he has no runnin sessions right now.. cool..

so here I'm, listenin to some nice music, and bloggin abt this :)

thinkin a bit seriously abt this, I'm in now because of the crappy security of my gateway.. if you can get hold of the login name, u're in.. u might be thinkin that the customers are way too stupid to change their passwords.. but nah! coz I'm one of the customers ;) well, the first thing I did on activating my connection was to change my password.. and after a while my net connection goes boom and when I try to login, it says Access Denied. I was puzzled, coz my new password was still afresh in my memory.. it's not even an hour yet! has my memory become so weak?! then I tried logging in with my login and password being same, and I'm connected :O
was I dreaming or did I really change my password?! I change it again and this time write it down just to be sure that I did change it.. and the same thing repeats.. after about 5-6 failed attempts to change my password, I give up.. I tell this to my service provider, but he doesn't seem to understand.. rather he gives me a nice suggestion - 'Sir, don't change ur password, keep it the same as ur login' ..... at first my reaction is 'what?! wtf ?!' then I realize, ah! this' good :) my connection is unlimited.. so I don't have to be bothered about someone misusing it. and in return, I get to use other's account when my account is screwed up ;) but what I had in my mind was the case like when the account gets screwed up due to some problem wit my ISP.. but hey, this turned out to be really good finally.. better than I thought.. now I don't have to hurry up and recharge my subscription :) I can relax, wait till the sunrise (or 2-3 sunrises if I wish ;) ) and then think about recharging :)

lesson to be learnt.. ah! r there any? well, yea.. "u'll find means to get into the n/w only when u're forcefully kicked off the network".. :)) [in other words: 'all paths from a disconnected network lead to a connected network' :)) ]
other than that? well, it's obvious , aint it?

Evolution of a Programmer
chekout this link.. this one's nice :) stumbled across it while lookin for some dev stuff..
http://weblogs.asp.net/israelio/archive/2004/08/31/223443.aspx

alternate links: http://www.icarus.net/johnjo/evolutio.htm
http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/The_Evolution_of_a_Programmer.html

Movies in my To-Watch list
Over the Hedge
over the hedge, it's all food ;) the trailer, I just loved it.. it's funny.. great piece of animation.. expression of every character carefully crafted. environments beautifully made.. it's funny to see Steve Caroll burpin the ABCs :)) can't wait to see it.. but the only problem is, I've to suppress my excitement for now coz itz gonna be a while before I can see it.. releasing May 06 :(

Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire
Releasing Nov 14. The trailer was pretty impressive. based on book and the trailer, seems like the movie's gonna be awesome.. Voldermort er.. sorry, you know who's gonna return in this one taking a proper form. so it's gonna be interesting.. unlike the previous movie (Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban), which was VERY poorly made, I guess this one's gonna rock.. might turn out to be the best in the series.. that's what I feel, but there's every possibility that I might go utterly wrong..

Corpse Bride
[a grave misunderstanding ;) ]
liked the trailer. tho the trailer wasn't all that funny, the concept of a Corpse Bride tickles my funny bones. I'm goin for it.. [particularly coz I love anmation :D] btw I dint know its already out! I dont follow movies much :(

Sin City
[walk down the right back alley in sin city... and you can find anythin]
haven't read the comic.. but glanced over a few pages sometime.. from the trailer, the movie has the same feel as the comic and 's nice. gotta see it.. it's already out.. but guess it's not bein played anywhere right now.. gotta find a VCD or somethin..

Doom
[if it breathes, ... kill it]
I'm plannin to watch this movie for the sole reason that I played the game (it's a different thing that I never got time to finish it.. psst.. in fact it scared the hell out of me.. that was one of the reasons why I dropped it halfway :D ) but otherwise, might not be a good idea to waste time on this movie.. the trailer feels a lot like Resident Evil to me.. xcept that the hunting is on Mars, I dont see much difference b/w them.. both r a lil sci-fi plus insane (I mean insane) action and huge monsters.. I'll give it to doom when it comes to the scary factor of the monsters.. might be a coincidence, but a similarity I couldn't help noticing was the Hell Knight (Doom) looks a lot like the Nemesis (Resident Evil) and the Imp (Doom) looks a lot like one of the huge monsters that appears in Resident Evil (I movie) towards the end of the movie when they're about to leave the underground..

Chicken Little
[some heroes are born great.. others have greatness, dropped upon them :)) ]
the sky is faling and our hero is out to save the planet. . . . . can he make it? I know the answer [provided i know the question;)] it seems interesting tho.. cant quite say the animation is excellent or anythin such, but well, it remains to be seen ;) I've just seen the trailer.. I'm goin for it..

Young, younger, youngest...
yesterday there was a lil discussion about my age.. people seem to find it surprising that I'm still 20.. well, I'm used to it.. wherever I go, beginning from my school till here, I usually end up being the youngest among my batchmates. and that is because I was born on 23rd Dec, 1984 while most of my friends' DOB falls in the range of mid 1982 - mid 1984. so when all my friends are 21-22, I'm always a year younger :)

here's a nice snippet of code that shows my current age.. if you find any bugs, blame the guys (/gals) at http://www.mathcats.com/explore/agecalculator.html.
and if you think the snippet is cool, you can appreciate my code scraping and refactoring skills :)

hover your mouse over this text area (or click on it) to find how just long have I been on this planet (ignoring all 'out of the world' voyages, just out of my noble intention to keep the code simple ;) )

[for some stupid reason, this works only in IE but not in FireFox (while I xpected it to be the other way around :( perhaps I shud giv a lil more time to the script]



[P.S. still lookin to find some code in the post?!]

Take my inn-sewer-ants, this book is worth a read..

This's about "The Colour of Magic" by Terry Pratchett. his first in the Discworld series. it's a pretty good read, with his Discworld and it's (lunatic? weird?) inhabitants.. read it about a week back, and became a Pratchett fan with it.. some people said it's not one of the Pratchett's best.. but I liked it, and am waiting to read his best.. and expectations of course are high.. right now I was reading "The Wyrd Sisters" - 6th novel in the Discworld series, but feel like it's not as good as the first one.. But considering that I'm still about halfway (and the fickle mind that I'm), I expect my opinion to change soon..

basically it's fantasy, with lots of humour in the way Pratchett chooses to express certain things.. It gets funny when Pratchett uses certain words in pretty foreign and disconnected way (inn-sewer-ants). And it's funny whenever there's Twoflower - carefree, curious and maybe a Tourist (a.k.a Stupid when translated to the local lingo of the city of Ankh-Morpork) It's funny when Rincewind (a wizard of sorts) is scared, or is baffled by the stupidity of Twoflower (he's a tourist after all) It gets really funny whenever Twoflower's luggage - a box made of Sapient Pearwood - comes into the scene making funny expressions (which in fact are scary for the people inside the story.. it's just that you're safe outside as a reader). and btw, Sapient Pearwood is believed to follow it's master ANYWHERE he goes.. even to death ;)

it's funny to see the Discworld gods playing a dice game (and cheating in that).. so is it to see the frustration of Death and Fate.. I can go on listing (and have half the novel out here, which definitely isn't good).

One of the pretty funny snippets I can remember goes something like this..
Rincewind begins to hear voices in his head.. he thinks "I'm going out of my mind".. and the voice replies, "That's good. It's getting very crowded in here"
Not a particularly funny snippet as such, unless you read it with the flow of the story..

Some snaps taken from my new Samsung X620 phone


Attempt to capture the Sun towards evening.. but not really during sunset


Some photogenic jungle bells


A flower (thought that aint obvious ;) )


One more..


Trying to be a little kanjoos about the resolution here coz I thought interfacing with my PC is hard. But it turned out to be really easy since my laptop had IrDA :). No more worrying about the image size..

And here's why you should avoid digital zoom, if possible..
Two of the otherwise nice snaps spoiled by my excitement to tryout the zoom :D
[psst.. I heard noob photographers tend to use zoom a lot ;) ]

Btw, all these photos were taken during my last visit to my native (which was yesterday ;) [15/10/2005])

my (short term?) laptop
well, last week I got a new laptop from my company. when they first told us of its specs, I thought it was a cheap crap, and good for nothing. but after having it, i feel its not all that bad. in fact its pretty good! [particularly after seeing Napster use a Dell in The Italian Job :)) ] its a Dell Latitude D505. has a 1.8GHz Pentium Mobile, 512MB RAM and a 40G HD. comes with 3 n/w interfaces! one is the regular one. one is IEEE 1394 (FireWire) and the other is Wireless. all Intel chipset, onboard things. tho I had to try a little hard to convince my Whoppix that there's a wireless interface ;)
now that I heard I can no more use this laptop coz I'm movin to client side and I'm not allowed to connect my 'personal' machine to client network. yea, I agree. they're stupid. if I really wanna steal, I can do it anyway, with or without a laptop, and irrespective of the monitors they use. I hate these people when they get paranoid and do things which just don't make sense!
fine.. now that I might have to gie back my laptop (coz I can't use it anyway), I thought of listing out the first things I did on this laptop :)

First song played: Eiffel65 - I'm Blue
First movie played: X-Files
First game installed: Painkiller
First game that failed to run: Painkiller ;)
First game to successfully run: UT2004 (runs pretty smooth)
First linux distro installed: Yoper
First site visited: yahoomail/gmail/orkut
First application (I) installed: IDA Pro 4.8 (or rather copied and ran)
First application to run: Lotus Notes (bad!) / WMP


(I'll add others as and when I remember) ;)

a little navodaya nostalgia
manju's mail on the teacher's day brings back the old memories. all the fun we had, all the stupid stunts we used to do, all the friends, all the enemies, all the teachers ... ah! it was so good... wish I could live that life again

I remember I took rampa's role on teacher's day (being his pet). well, I don't seem to remember his actual name now. but that's what he was called ;) I took the physics class for the XI std guys.. don't remember exactly what. but it had something to do with some springs.. or rather ropes...

it was my first time taking a class.. (so was it for everyone else). if it were some other time, I'd have been very nervous. but moving around the stage everyday during assembly or functions had filled in a little courage in me to face the people.. (yeah. the 'mic set guys' - me, sidda and EP being the third one usually, tho others used to butt in at times ;) )

oh yeah! I remember what I taught them, or rather thought I did ;) it was some part of "Waves and something I can't remember" well, I never studied in XI std. so I don't remember the chapter name. and the funny thing was I was gonna teach them something I've never learned myself! I thought of making the class a little interesting by demonstrating the wave transmission with the ropes example that was there in the book. But couldn't get the proper rope and the class ended up being just some boring mathematics.

I remember that was when I actually understood functions. I never understood what it exactly means by saying something is a function of something. i.e. I never really understood what does it mean by f(x). it was for taking this class that I first attempted to understand it! well, it was good understanding it and explaining all the mathematics to the class.

everything went fine, I came out of the class. I had only one period to take coz I said I become nervous on stage.. (tho they were my juniors) so manja assigned only 1 period for me. someone else took Physics for other classes. finally I asked one of the XI guys (divyananda perhaps) how did he like the class. he said the class was very good. well, I myself never thought it was good coz I dint do the demo with ropes. but well, all is well that ends well isn't it? so I thought its okay id he says he liked it. but well, he continued to say, many of us dint understand much of what you taught, coz the relevant basics haven't been covered in any of the prev classes. uh! what?! i should've asked one of them before I chose a topic to teach. I just chose something I found interesting at that time. I felt so stupid..

all the memories of everyone.. all the events that happened... now it makes me laugh. sometimes I was so stupid! and how we fought over the 'mic set'.

though I always used to do bad comments on navodaya, till about my X std, I like the place. though I never really realized it while I was there, it's a great place to be. (particularly if you become a pet of some teachers ;) )
it is the place that has made me, and all of us who were there, the people who we are now..

should definitely make time to attend the alumni this time..

What is Love?

Definitely not something i can define :( But why did this question pop up now?!
Something reminded me of the day I proposed her... for the second time! The memories of it used to be pretty hurting earlier. Slowly they turned out to be a little embarassing to myself. Coz I felt all that I did was pure nonsense and stupid. Now they seem a little funny. Like preserved records of my craziness. Make me laugh at myself.

The propossal kinda went like this.

I call her up. She already kind of knows why I called her since I just sent her a msg asking can I speak to u now? Stupid, isn't it? To ask someone if I can call her? well.. its not a secret that I'm stupid. anyways, she picks up the call and asks me "what?" I'm kinda nervous and dont say anythin for a while. She says dont be nervous. But I already am nervous! can't help it.
K.. I start something like.. you know I love you. She says something like: yea.. but what do you mean by u love me? I definitely didn't expect this, though I shud have. fine.. I say I feel like I can do anything for her but I don't feel the same for anyone else. She asks me: what so you mean by you can do anything for me?"
well.. it's true that I feel like that. but I myself dunno what it is! crap.. so I say, "I dunno. mybe that's not true. but I just feel like that." Such a stupid answer isn't it?
I say I miss her all the time she isn't around. So I cant concentrate on anything and blah blah... She asks me "why? we didn't interact much. its understandable if someone misses a person with whom he interacts regularly. but why do you miss me?" hmm.. I kno she's a lot brainy than I'm. But shud she ask all these questions? well, it's tough to answer many questions, particularly when u r nervous.
I try to explain her how I feel about her. But well, I rarely speak. And if I speak, it's usally some technical stuff that I can easily bluff about. which doesn't use up my brain cycles for thinking. now imagine how horrible I'd be putting into words some feelings that can only be felt by myself! .. that's what happened. she said, I don't understand ur feelings. I'dn't blame her for not understanding. coz I know the connection between my mind and my voice is screwed up ;) As a matter of fact, I can't remember a single instance where I was sucessful at explaining anything to anyone.
So it goes on for a little while. I knew her answer already. A simple NO. I knew I cant take that answer easy. A little sensitive stupid that I'm. I knew the answer, I knew it'd hurt me. but still I dared asking! not to say I'm courageous. but to say that it shows how stupid I was (or am!). K.. so it did end on a bad note :((
But after that I'm left with a lot of questions. The most important being What the hell is love? I still don't know the answer. In fact I began to doubt if it's really love. I even tried to convince myself that its not love but haven't been sucessful in that either :( I kept asking myself the question for about a week hoping to find an answer, but in vain. And I still don't know what's that 'anything' I was ready to do for her. :D
I initially thought I can somehow invoke the genius inside me to find answer for all these questions and get back to her with some good answers. But after two weeks, my brain returns me a NoGeniusFoundException. I shud have expected that too. But well.. finally I gave up trying to find any answers that might be lurking somewhere around.. ;)
I once used to think that Love made me stupid. Well, now I kno stupidity resides in my DNA and so I've learnt that I shud accept that. At least until a few years when all the science fictions become true and I'd be able to mutate myself ;)

Okay, back to the initial question of What is Love. Not that I know the answer. But now that the level of my craziness has come down a notch and that I've a little free time now (its a Saturday after all), I thought why not try again to find the hidden answers lurking around. And I found something that's closer to an answer, but not satisfactory. At least not to me.
Looking back at my past behaviour, and assuming it was really Love, "I'd say it's Love when you like someone for a reason that either doesn't exist or you don't know. It's when you like someone unconditionally and ideally without any expectations."
I say ideally coz I don't think mine was ideal coz I expected her to be in love with me, though I knew very well that me loving someone doesn't neccessarily mean the other way around. Setting expectations on anything does hurt when the expectations go awry. Particularly to someone hypersensitive like me. Or rather a stupid like me who expects everything to go as per his expectations.
Fine.. all of this definition and all the philosophy was assuming I was really in love. I'm trying to convince myself otherwise, but haven't been successful yet, though it's been long since this happened. Well.. 2 months becomes pretty long when things get screwed up to the extent that you're no more in speaking terms with the one you love the most. ;)
K.. what if you find out later that I wasn't in love? Well.. the definition still holds good, but the LHS should be changed to craziness. This definition would then be for craziness and remeber to watchout for these symptoms, or you might end up in a lunatic assylum ;)

K.. will be back here with a more sensible topic (technical I mean) :)

SQL Injection Attacks

This blog is gonna be about SQL injection attacks. I used to think almost everyone knows about this and there's no place where this might work. But recently (today, 19-04-2005) found a stupid site that blew up with SQL injection. So here's something on secure design with SQL.

SQL injection attack as the name says, basically involves injecting SQL snippet into some SQL statement. How to do it?

Well, if u r from VTU Comp. Science u might have done some Database application (or flicked one ) in 5th / 6th sem. Even otherwise, hope u have created/worked with some database application sometime. Most applications have a layer of so called SECURITY () which requires one to login with a userID and password to use the application. It's usual to have at least two categories of users as I've seen -the administrators and the other users. Security checks for the administrators are ususally more than for normal users.
How is the user authenticated? U get the userID into some textbox and get the password in a corresponding password box. Then u compare the (ID, password) pair against a database table with a statement that ususally goes like:
SELECT * FROM authenticated WHERE username =' value in username textbox' AND password = 'password textbox'

Usually usernames are unique, which means the above query returns either One record or None. So if the query successfully returns a record, the user is authenticated, otherwise not. Some people replace the '*' in the SQL to something like username or something else. i.e like:
SELECT credentials FROM authenticated WHERE username = 'value in username textbox' AND password = 'password textbox'
But this doesn't make any difference as long as you don't use the returned data for further authentication. But I've not seen many doing that. So all this was a brief intro to a typical authentication scenario.

Now I'll give u the example of a stupid SECURE page that was supposed to be opened by the ADMINs, but gave access to me even though I didn't know any userID for that.
Today I recieved a link from my friend which had a really good collection of Java e-Books for free download. The link was: http://dimpon.plus.ru/javabooks/ (Probably itz an illegal collection. But I'm not sure). I downloaded some books. Then I thought maybe the site has collection of other books too. But there were no links. So I just tried to explore around the site and landed in the admins section. (It was a very short exploration though). And as u might guess, it required me to know some stupid admin userID and of course the password, which I didn't have.

I thought why not try SQL injection? I never expected it to work anywhere (with the exception of the stupid DB applications submitted as mini projects ). But don't know which stupid did that app, it did work! I put in the login id as [ ' OR TRUE OR ' ] (excluding square brackets) and the same for the password. My expectation was to have the final SQL delivered to the server as:
SELECT FROM WHERE username=' ' OR TRUE OR ' ' AND password=' 'OR TRUE OR ' '
[i.e. the SQL in userID and password boxes is substituted in place of the placeholders in original SQL statements]

This is one of my favourite SQL injections. But it didn't work as expected for a lot of reasons. (Brush up ur SQL knwledge and figure out why ). But the stupid app puked out a much detailed info. It went to a php file (http://dimpon.plus.ru/admin/in.php) which eventually spat out an error message:
Couldn't execute SQL query!SELECT admin_id,is_su FROM admin WHERE login=' ' OR TRUE OR ' ' AND pass=' ' OR TRUE OR ' '

It's usual to have the application put out such detailed error messages when u r developing it (when u ususally run it in the debug mode), but never in a deployed application. Anyone can easily figure out how to proceed from here on. It's so detailed! Lesson to learn, never be verbose about the errors/exceptions ur application throws, at least not with the user.

So I just modified my input. My new login id was 'fool' (without quotes) and my password was:
' or login like '%
(with quotes)
Hence the final SQL constructed should be:
SELECT admin_id,is_su FROM admin WHERE login='fool' AND pass='' or login like '%'
which I know will return all the records. It seems the developer actually expected one login to return a lot of records. That's why he never made a check that only one record should be returned . He could have made my life a little more difficult by making that check, in which case I'd have to guess at least one valid username (thats quite easy too). But he never bothered to. I still don't understand what he did with the admin_id, is_su that he got from the query.

Okay, there was one thing that I felt bad about. The damn page was in some weird language (Couldn't figure out even after using Google Translator), with traces of english somewhere. So it was pretty much useless for me. The structure of the page gave a feeling as if it provided facility to add some users and add some content (wiki kind of thing?). So that's pretty much useless. The only thing I felt good was I cracked this without much efforts.

How to survive SQL injection?
Well, that's actually quite simple. Follow the well known rule. Never trust your user. Never trust user inputs. It can be anything stupid. So just validate user input everytime you get it and particularly before passing it to your SQL.

One solution to this would be checking user input for the existence of non alphanumeric characters. That's the simplest solution, provided you don't allow your user input to have special characters like spaces.

But what if you decide to allow your user to have spaces etc... in his password? Most of the popular sites provide this. (Yahoo!, Google etc...) One solution for this situation wouls be to hex encode the user input as is done with URLs. i.e. replacing spcial characters in the input by their hex value. A space gets replaced by and so on... This is very easy to do and is very effective.

But finally, the manthra to keep your application secure is to never trust the user inputs.

ha! my first entry in Blogger. Nothin better to write right now. 'll be back soon.