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?