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