potty thoughts

2007-05-26T16:22:00.000+05:30

No Pandora outside US?!
visiting Pandora redirects me to this stupid page..
WTF?

2007-04-29T23:19:00.000+05:30

soooo hate to be branded.. X-(
nope.. 'm not a .net expert.. spendin an year around a technology does not conjure an expert.. not if I choose not to.. coz I've always believed in concepts over concrete details.. I'd gladly be branded ignorant over gettin nailed over expertise.. so, please don't stamp .net on me just coz I wasn't given a chance elsewhere..

2007-04-07T18:02:00.000+05:30

never felt so sick of XML as when workin with Biztalk.. n that probably is the least of the annoyances!!

or probably 'tis just my current project..

2007-03-17T02:18:00.000+05:30

TiddlyWiki

http://www.tiddlywiki.com/

not often do I fall for an application.. but this one made it to my list on the first site ;)
it's a quick wiki, very usable and damn too easy to deploy..
almost puts xcopy deployment to shame :D

here's what u need to do..

download the html page (using a link that appears on the homepage)..
run it inna browser of ur choice..

oh well, that's all u need to do.. u can start using it straightaway, unless u don't like the way it looks n wanna do some plastic surgery, which btw u can easily achieve since all the source is in the page that u've downloaded :)

took me less than 5 minutes to get the whole thing and ftp it over to Pandela (a decent free hosting that I use).. another minute to open it from the hosted location and use it :)

haven't seen anything simpler :)

2007-01-28T22:23:00.000+05:30

haf bin tagged..
by Mr. Gawde.. so here's five of the lesser known (n mostly useless) facts abt me.. oh, they're safe to read.. none of the 'll have to kill ya if I told ya types here ;)

[Fact 5]
first time I ever bunked a class (intentionally) was in my XI standard.. probably Kasaiah's class with an excuse to fill up KVPY application.. until then I was the innocent, nice kid who's regular to classes and maintained notes n all that :D.. then I figured out bunking is okay as long as you can think up a nice excuse (/lame excuse depending on whom u're tackling).. after that nobody has seen me regularly in any class (not even my favourite subjects).. (of course, no notes either :D )

[Fact 4]
ppl find me difficult to handle when angry, mostly coz it comes wit an amplified careless attitude (which definitely begins to look enuf damaging to them) :D.. my general anger pattern consists of either/all of: a cold stare, extremely logical arguments that can make them plead guilty/uncomfortable at least, a tone that creates a sort of uncomfortable silence around, a glimpse of the upcoming damage which leaves them guessin if I really meant it or I was just threatening.. well, I end up regrettin most of the times.. but the good thing's that there aren't many things that make me angry..

[Fact 3]
one of my dream (or rather a wild wish) is to be able to command ANY machine (small/large/whatever) on the planet to my wish.. but well, I kno that's not very realistic.. moreover I never work towards realizin my dreams, so the planet continues to be as safe as it ever was ;)

[Fact 2]
I was the last student to speak in our XII farewell party.. not that I was too shy.. but nobody was given a chance to talk after me.. my speech presented a few facts to the juniors like how teachers get mean and nonsense, and how they keep discouraging students while they shud be encouraging them, and a few indirect suggestions as to why they don't really need a teacher n can learn a subject all by themselves.. all these while I was holdin back my temptation to give real-life examples (with real names :D ).. while some teachers took it in a good spirit, most others (includin a bald principle) found it hard to digest, and reminded us (while tryin to keep a straight face) that we're seriously runnin out of time :D

[Fact 1]
by the end of 5th sem, I was able to access any server in the college, xcept one Unix box which was almost always switched off (n probably wasn't important).. never got root.. but had write access to most configurations and databases.. i.e. enuf to wreak havoc if I'd wished.. (I didn't coz I generally don't like to get nasty, but prefer to make sure that I have the option open if I want to :D..)
nah.. it wasn't hacking.. only that the stupid admins thought security by obscurity is the way to go, which means you just have to see thru the first layer and know what to look for and where..
I crafted my own 6th sem internal marks ;) I kno what u're thinkin.. that's not nasty/mean/bad ethics coz I dint need marks in 6th sem and I just pushed it up by around 10-20 marks (overall), just for testin :D

and well, the bonus fact:
I do feel a lil bad sayin this, but I dunno most of my 'B' section classmates (I was in 'A' section).. I kno a few n recognize a few others, but they're mostly hostellites..

and another bonus fact:
I've been in 'A' section all my student life, beginning since when I was a kid till end of college :D

2006-12-25T22:55:00.000+05:30

Giveaway of the Day..
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/
this' a place where you can actually have that licensed software for free! and no strings attached.. :)
these guys really give you a licensed software free everyday!

now that is a cool idea.. and a really cool marketing strategy.. :)
hats off to the guys who thought about and actually pulled it off..

though it's not free as in freedom, but sure as in 'free beer' ;) oh yeah, that makes it only second to GNU.. but hey, I, for one, surely wouldn't mind a free beer :) particularly somethin as good as this one :)
(psst.. only metaphorically, coz I don't like beer :D )

there's a sister project called Game Giveaway of the Day.. but dint like it much.. they seem to giveaway quite a lot of the games I wouldn't wanna play :(

they've announced that they'd soon be givin out some of the popular titles for free! I sure am excited! :)

2006-12-17T23:45:00.000+05:30

why's product development sexier?
coz of the kick you get when you see someone (apart from yourself of course ;) ) finding it useful and actually liking it :)
'tis about a plugin I wrote for IntelliJ..
[http://plugins.intellij.net/plugin/?id=1126]
someone liked it enuf to visit the page and rate it as well :) [I never told them to.. I don't even kno them.. honest!]
hmm.. feels good :)
guess 'tis motivation enuf to improve the plugin (n work on others I was too lazy to start on :D )

2006-12-16T22:07:00.000+05:30

got a problem? find the reset button..
huh! I hate that.. why does it always have to be so?!

was downloading XNA Game Studio Express n found this instruction quite amusing..

1.1.3. Run Visual C# 2005 Express Edition at Least Once Before Installing XNA Game Studio Express

You should run Visual C# 2005 Express Edition at least once before installing XNA Game Studio Express. Otherwise, features of XNA Game Studio Express may be missing from the user interface. For example, the XNA Game Studio Xbox 360 item in Tools | Options dialog may be missing. If you encounter this issue, we recommend that you do the following:

Uninstall XNA Game Studio Express.
Run Visual C# 2005 Express Edition.
Exit Visual C# 2005 Express Edition.
Reinstall XNA Game Studio Express.

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/XNA/gse/readme/default.aspx#ID2EWC]

'm not alien to such instructions n keep seein them quite very often, with quite a lot of the products that I use.. if it screws up, find a way to reset.. but huh, why?! when'll these people understand?

this instruction in particular is way too odd.. somethin fundamentally wrong.. is VC# Express Edition architecture so flaky? or were the XNA developers way too lazy to provide a utility instead to register XNA Game Studio with VC# Express? let alone fix the bug..

I'd xpect Microsoft to have all the best guys around.. nothing personal, but did noone there ever feel that such an instruction would look bad on MS?!

2006-12-16T14:31:00.000+05:30

Mercora - Music Search
another nice net radio :) - http://www.mercora.com

I still prefer Pandora's slick interface over this one.. but Mercora gives me what I've always missed in Pandora - searching for and listening to specific tunes :)

Mercora gives you a nice interface too :) but not as slick.. and it has a Mercora Music Matrix, which's a blogthing you can put up on your blog.. haven't explored it completely..

there sure are other music search services like SingingFish.. but I happen to prefer Mercora..

one big downer for Mercora is that it requires you to install an extra plugin which plays Mercora music on the browser.. (they want to prevent you from downloading songs :P ).. but proabably that's still kinda okay since 'tis not that heavy..

if only somone could combine Pandora and Mercora :) that'd be great..
but even now, Pandora to discover music n Mercora for specific tunes is probably okay :)

[psst.. do u think it's a coincidence that both the music services I like have rhyming names?! Pandora, Mercora.. and even the same string lengths! hmm..]

2006-12-15T00:03:00.000+05:30

am I too fanatical?!
k.. you were supposed to say no ;)
well, the context revolves around Eclipse n IntelliJ.. and when it comes to choosing between the two, well, honestly I don't really see a choice over there :D it's just IntelliJ, IntelliJ, IntelliJ and that's about it :P

happened to stumble across this entry which tries to tell you the 10 reasons why Eclipse is better. alright dude, I'll give you all that.. but honestly, you've never used IntelliJ for pro development.. I'll avoid counter-commenting over each of your points (though it's way too tempting not to :D )..

but here's why I prefer IntelliJ over ANY other IDE on the planet (across all the languages).. all the other IDEs help me write code, but IntelliJ helps me solve problems.. IntelliJ knows what I'm thinking.. and that really makes a big difference.. with IntelliJ, my focus almost completely is taken off the nitty-gritties of code which I definitely don't have to be bothered about..

coming to Eclipse, oh I definitely don't hate it.. and honestly, I respect it over many other IDEs (xcept IntellliJ of course ;) ).. but given that, it's nothing more than an IDE.. sure it's free.. and has a very xtensible plugin architecture and everything.. but it loses because of that very point.. it's so generic that it complicates building anything specific around it..

the fundamental differentiator from my point of view is usability.. I think Eclipse has serious usability issues and it's usability sucks big time! alright, it uses SWT, but that only makes it kinda blend with other applications.. from nowhere do I see Eclipse looking pretty because of SWT! alright, I kno I might be a lil biased on that bit.. n that's xactly why it's my point of view (which's fairly twisted btw :D )..

and ah! the open architecture! can't wrap up without mentioning that.. ever tried writing an Eclipse plugin? I did.. long back.. and I gave up.. sure, there's a LOT of documentation around for Eclipse.. and very little for IntelliJ OpenAPI.. but still, I found myself writing an IntelliJ plugin without much (read: any) hassle (ignore the fact that there was a T-shirt for incentive ;) ).. oh, the Eclipse API isn't really bad, but 've said it earlier, it tries to be too generic.. too many details to pay attention to for a small task.. and too much documentation to read thru..

with IntelliJ, you won't find much documentation.. and that does become a major pain in the ass at times.. despite that, OpenAPI is pefectly usable, coz most of the things in there make perfect sense.. definitely OpenAPI isn't the best around.. I've got a 100 improvements to suggest and others'd have a lot more.. but with Eclipse, I just haven't got the time and energy it takes to explore and use it's API to do anything practical..

k.. all these mainly have to do with the power that IntelliJ gives me.. it's code browsing features are simply the best I've seen for Java.. my favourites: Ctrl+N and Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N, Ctrl+H, Ctrl+Alt+H.. with IntelliJ, I'm up for tampering around the most unfamiliar codebases in an instant :)

oh and since it's my blog, I thought I shud mention my IntelliJ plugin.. 'tis called Jump To Usage (alright, 'tis a silly name).. quite a trivial plugin.. but nicely fits into my style of coding :D

2006-12-11T22:17:00.000+05:30

ironic..
just thinking about my next project.. and hey, howcome I dint notice it earlier?!

funny, but the fact's that I'm gonna go in as a consultant to a company that rejected me in my campus interview! and they pay my company a lot more than what they'd have otherwise paid me! :))
what's even more ironic is that my job over there's supposed to be helping out their people with XP and Coding practices, and probably refactor out their code to make it look pretty n more manageable ;)

r u wondering what's so ironic about it? well, the only reason they had for not taking me was my aggregate, coz I cant remember an interview that I dint do well.. and in fact they bagged a good number of our toppers..

hmm.. so, r u thinkin the same that I'm? LOL!!! :))
so, now they're okay with having a low aggregate to help their toppers?! oh well, probably they forgot to ask my company for my aggregate ;)

ha ha.. really can't stop laughing when I think of that.. :))

sometimes, life can be soooooooo mean, soooooooooo ironic.. ;)

UPDATE:
well, maybe someone heard me ;).. the plan's changed (for good) ;)

2006-12-10T20:51:00.000+05:30

computing..
Heroine: Computer, show me the files with details about <blah blah blah>..
Computer: Beginning search thru One million <whatever-silly-number-after-that> files now..
Heroine: (smiles) Cancel search..

some flick I can't remember.. it's inna spacecraft and the miss is tryin to get some confidential info from the craft supercomputer.. the supercomputer of course understands natural language ;) (n divulges any kinda details to anybody who asks for it without any kinda authorization :P )
watched it when I was in college, n the thing that impressed me was the file count thrown by the computer.. it sure was impressive then..

today I'm backin up my data, n find that my recent Workspace alone has over 98000 files! n it's just supposed to be holdin my mini projects/stuff related to them!

yeah, sure my laptop's a lot better than what their conceived supercomputer then was.. but damn! what pisses me off is that it still can't understand natural language! ;) well, my point isn't to compare my laptop wit a supercomputer.. neither to complain about it's understanding capabilities :D

it's just that I always wonder why doesn't computing quality increase wit increase in computing power.. I've seen CPUs with 3 digit LEDs on them to indicate speed in MHz with a generally shorted MSD to show a decently high number! :)
it was just around my XI std. that people thought a 400 MHz Pentium III was impressive.. and a color monitor was a luxury :P

around my III sem, Sidda's Celeron of about 1GHz was better than most.. and when I bought my P4 HT with 2+GHz @ around my 5th sem, none of the systems I knew came closer! :) well, that was the closest one could go to having two processors on a desktop..
around my XI std. a dual processor machine would've been a dedicated server to be touched by the privileged few! but today I run a laptop with dual core, which's as good as two physical processors! and Intel's Quadro's about to be out!

well, it's been about 8 years, and after so many leaps in raw computing power, the softwares that I use everyday don't even come close to what I've come to expect from those of this generation.. the way I manage my data isn't drastically different, n I still feel the pain of searching thru it.. I'm still using the same kind of UI, same kind of software but only with minor visual improvements, and I've to bear with the reasoning that all my computing power goes into getting those minor visual improvements!

I definitely don't agree with Vista's ridiculous system requirements after having seen what it gives me.. oh I love Vista and it's quite jazzy UI.. but I just hate what it shamelessly demands of me for those minor touches..

I've heard stories of people who finished an entire machine simulator without a single error, that too in octal! hmm.. well, can't remember a story more impressive than that.. what happened to computer engineering?!

there're not many softwares that come close to doing what's expected of them.. two that I like the most: IntelliJ coz it knows what and how to do what I want to do.. it thinks the way I think :)
Mathematica for it's.. well, I dunno why I like it.. but I think it's a pure display of arrogance ;) [just my personal opinion] and probably that's why I like it.. or probably it's the kind of backing that Mathematica enjoys..

there're a few more that I like but can't remember, and probably a few more that're good but 've never used.. but the sad thing's that they're so very numbered.. :(

2006-12-02T22:47:00.000+05:30

does everythin happen for good?!
that's bloody hard to believe in.. call it an attitude problem, but honestly, 'tis like tracing the silverline of the darkest cloud onna pitch dark night..

2006-11-28T23:18:00.000+05:30

loooooong time, no b..
..log
haven't written in a looong time.. sometimes busy, sometimes decidin against writin some things.. huh! anonymity is such a bloody privilege.. and a fickle mind doesn't help either.. write somethin, and it feels silly tomoro :(

but well, guess I'm back.. even if it's for a short while ;)

2006-07-23T20:32:00.000+05:30

the Oracle
[DISCLAIMER: this's got nothin to do with Oracle the corporation or the product.. nor is this a How to on horoscopes or numerology or anythin such.. so hit the back button now if googlin gave u a wrong(?) result :D]

remember the Oracle from The Matrix? how hard do u think it could b to build one like her?
theoretically, it shud be quite simple ;)

well, here's an idea.. scraped directly off the Adaptive Signal Processing theory.. now just for those who dunno, it talks abt making blocks which dynamically adapt to a particular pattern of input and output..
here's a lil block diagram.. might not help much without a lil explanation :D [skip till next image if you're not interested in Adptive Signal Processing theory (or, if u're allergic to any badly explained theory for that matter ;) )]

the idea is that you have an input signal and you do some processing on it to get an output signal.. you want the output to be like something, which's your desired signal.. but the processing block deviates the output signal from the desired one while processing.. the difference between the output and the desired is the error signal.. now don't tell me that you're thinkin of directly sending the desired signal to the output, coz it doesn't exist :D.. if it did, then we'd have been spared of a subject :))

k.. the simplest case would be to add the error signal back to the input n you'll get the desired signal at the output.. simple math isn't it? but it aint so straightforward coz the processing system needn't be linear, or rather needn't be like the one producing the desired one.. so it's passed back to the processing system after being passed thru an adaptive algorithm which, I suppose, accounts for the nonlinearity..

[for more details on the subject refer to the Adaptive Signal Processing book by Bernard Widrow and Samuel D. Stearns.. Or try googling]

simple enuf? k.. here're some applications of such an adaptive system.. Oracle wud be the one in fourth quadrant..

the Oracle is supposed to predict a system.. which's basically telling what's comin up before it happens :)
but to achieve it with an adaptive system, I need a desired signal.. and as you might guess, I don't have one, coz if I did, I wouldn't be writin all this (don't argue abt the horoscopes plz :D).. so I start off with some seed input, which I expect to come out as is after a while.. that's like sayin I'll tell you today what's gonna happen tomoro, n you'll tell the same back to me tomoro..

what's a good seed input? how bout the good old sayin that tomoro's weather's gonna b the same as today's.. of course with 70% accuracy, which's no good.. so I slightly change my input..

I'll tell the Adaptive Filter, both what happened yesterday and what happened today.. the job of the Adaptive Filter is to adapt itself to give me today given yesterday.. sounds more like lookup doesnt it? I guess, it's okay for it to be a lookup to start with.. it'd later evolve towards pattern recognition.. (or simply towards an efficient way to lookup a humongous hash table :D) finally it shud end up learning enuf to be the smart oracle which tells you exactly what's gonna happen tomoro (or the next minute if u wish :D) by doing what could be called a dumb n brainless job of matching today against a looooooooooottttttt of yesterdays :D

theoretically, it's a possiblity since you keep accumulating a lot of yesterday's.. so many of them that your today shud match at least one of the yesterdays.. and once it matches, your tomoro shud be the next day of the matched yesterday..

hmm.. how bout a lil zap of reality? there's one major hurdle that I can think of.. representation of the information.. how'd you tell to the system what happened today? NLP? Audio? Video? it'd be a lil hard to process any of those, at least for now considering the current (pathetic?) situation of software where things like Voice Recognition are still considered among the cutting edge technologies and technical luxuries after all these years of software evolution..
and the next hurdle, which's kinda tied-in to the problem of representing the information.. the programming language of choice.. can't think of any for now which'd allow me to build such a system easily without by itself being an obstacle to my thinking.. Ruby? Prolog? or somethin else.. haven't tried Prolog yet.. hope it has some way to express this kinda information n also allow me to infer things based on that without makin me worry too much abt variable types and such silly issues..

this reminds me of Smith, according to whom we shud already have the right kinda programming language.. but well, he doesn't exist and his existence would've proved that he's right.. so let's wait till we see either a Smith or an Oracle :D..

2006-07-01T22:32:00.000+05:30

oh.. I lost a Scorpio :D..
u're given 15 days to secure a simple application n there's a Scorpio for gettin it right.. what'd u do? start on it from day 1? well, not if u're me :D..
guess a Scorpio wasn't enough to motivate me.. or probably I was being overconfident :D.. the problem was quite easy too.. easy enough to make me overconfident..
so, due to various (silly, nonsensical) reasons, I started on it at abt 5 hours prior to submission deadline :D.. at abt 6:30 PM on a Monday with the deadline being midnight that day.. as u can tell, I couldn't finish it :D.. submitted the solution with a lot of obvious security bugs.. I shud've realized that nobody gives a Scorpio for a task that can be done in 5 hrs ;)..

it's been well over a month since the results are out.. but havent been able to write abt this since then.. I broke my leg (now don't ask me how'd that prevent me from bloggin ;) ) followed by my shoulder.. my shoulder's still to get an okay from the doctor.. neways, now that I decided to write somthin, this was the most logical entry to make.. n this' also for the ppl who bugged me for the final results :P ..

generally, the contest was quite easy.. probably coz this was the first time.. spend two hrs online and u clear the first two stages.. spend another two-three days and u can easily get thru the final stage (now, I really mean this part.. it's not my overconfidence again :D ).. the application to fix for the final stage was quite easy.. not much of a hassle to fix it.. the best part of the contest's that the prizes are accumulative :) .. still dunno who got the Scorpio.. but I got an 80G xternal HDD (for bein in top 100), a voucher to get a Microsoft Security Certification (for top 500), a book on Secure Code Writing (for top 1000) and a junk CD containing nothing that I could find useful (for top 5000) :D..

2006-05-02T00:04:00.000+05:30

hurray! I cleared Stage II.. =D>
was eagerly waitin till midnight just to know the results.. and.. .. ..

I made it thru the Stage II of Microsoft Security Shootout! :) =D>

I'm too damn happy to be among the top 100.. dunno how to express it :D
eagerly waitin for the Stage III code to arrive..

2006-04-23T19:59:00.000+05:30

the Microsoft Security Shootout..
(cough, cough.. clear throat) hey all, I made it through the Stage-I :) =D>
the contest started abt a month back.. and the results for stage 1 were out on yesterday.. find the contest here -> http://www.microsoft.com/india/security/securityshootout/
actually, it doesn't feel that great.. coz the quiz wasn't that hard.. n coz 999 others too have made it through this round.. moreover, I wonder how many did actually take part.. coz I dozed off while answering the questions n the contest timed out :D.. so I ended up answering only abt half the questions, n still I'm cleared thru?! huh..
neways, Stage-II's gonna be difficult coz just 100 contestants can continue after that.. wish I could clear that as well :D

2006-04-19T23:14:00.000+05:30

wish I could..
lose all responsibilities..
lose my past..
lose all contacts..
lose evrythin..
escape somewhere far far away..
n start afresh.. start from scratch.. start all over again..

uh.. the bloody thought is so damn tempting..
but can't give in to it.. not yet.. gotta wait..

2006-04-02T21:25:00.000+05:30

my bike.. finallyyy..
yoohoo! after waiting thru a whole damned month, I got my bike..
an Avenger.. blue one..
it bloody took a whole damned month for me to get it! booked it on 1st March and recieved it on 31st.. and I had no other options coz these guys (Khivraj Bajaj) are the bloody only authorized dealers in Bangalore for Avenger! that was the worst part.. but after getting the bike, I just love it :)

first realization about the bike, well, it is really as heavy as it looks :D a massive 285 Kgs! whoops! too heavy.. for me that is ;)..

next realization, it's gear system is real weird! 1N2345 in order.. i.e. for first gear, you push forward and for others, you push backwards.. takes a while to get adjusted, coz the other bikes have all gears in one direction.. i.e. N12345 or 54321N..

and the next one, I'm gonna learn riding on this bike!

the final realization, which happens to be a resultant of the previous ones, is that (at least) for a while, I may really be feelin like God¹ while ridin it ;) .. until I get comfortable with the bike :D..

and as long as I continue feelin like God while ridin it, my mom wont certify me okay to ride it out.. :( (in fact, I rode it out on a road with scanty traffic, but had to stop arguin wit my mom after that :D )

¹ well, er.. it's somethin like this.. for God, it's his road, n other ppl (usually) make way for him to ride.. generally ppl don't wanna mess up with him, now that they're given so many options between messin up and not messin up with him ;)
in that sense, one can also attribute the word Road King to my bike while I'm ridin it (at least till I begin to control it, instead of the other way around, which's the case now) ;) I ride at my best when I have the whole road for myself :D

2006-03-30T18:17:00.000+05:30

The Martin Fowler event
we (ThoughtWorks India) are conducting a seminar @ Bangalore and Hyderabad titled "Agile Development for Fun and Profit" under the ThoughtWorks Master Class Series..
main feature of the event being the talk by Martin Fowler (which's the most interesting part of the event for me, but that is, provided I get to attend the event :( )..
entry by invitation only..
interested? go to http://events.thoughtworks.co.in/ and register for the event..

2006-03-11T23:54:00.000+05:30

mathworld

mathworld - one place for all (well, almost ;) ) mathematical questions..
nice place to brush up ur mathematical concepts/learn new ones..

checkout the Recreational Mathematics section.. quite interesting..
evrything's been sorted, cross-linked n maintained well.. what more? well, u can search the entire site n it works pretty well! (not a usually found combination ;) )..

2006-03-06T00:09:00.000+05:30

why are there any rules?
"Look, that's why there's rules understand? So that you think before you break 'em.."
- Lu Tze to Lobsang (his apprentice)
in the Thief of Time - Terry Pratchet

2006-02-20T23:16:00.000+05:30

a Microsoft Technology Roadshow
been to a Microsoft Technology Roadshow last Friday (20-02-2006).. despite Venki's suggestion that there won't be much to learn, I took a day off to attend this one.. but I really do regret that decision.. a whole damned day wasted! left the hall feeling ridiculous about the whole damned session..

what went wrong? well, maybe I should rephrase that to be 'was there anythin that went right?'.. can't remember a thing that was right, but with exception of the food, which was more sensible than that in the Visual Studio 2005 Launch Tour..

there were two parallel tracks.. one for the web developer and the other for the mobility developer.. I chose to attend the mobility track coz I xpected to learn somethin form the session.. there were 3 presentations wholly.. two before lunch and one after that.. first two basically covered Symbian vs .NET for developin mobile apps.. some general awareness stuff..

I was late to the first presentation, but dint really miss a thing.. that guy was explaining about some features like a Windows CE mobile (Tablet PC etc..) being able to sync up with a Microsoft Exchange Server and some cool features like getting notifications about ur mails etc.. as n when ur Exchange Server receives em.. honestly, that's not the coolest tech I'd like to hear abt.. it's fairly standard, so please don't bug me explainin how it works.. show me an actual application demonstrating how to use that thing.. anyone with half-a-brain could use the net n find out how it works.. it's definitely not worth a presentation.. in fact, anyone wit half-a-brain could also find sample apps on the net, but then that's where I'd like to see the differene.. I usually xpect to learn some tips/tricks form the demos they'd give on stage.. somethin like that's not available elsewhere, or at least the approach, coz it's pretty difficult to find a thing that's missing from the net n present it here :D

next presentation was a lil interesting, but got a lil annoying later.. it was the usual Microsoft vs the-best-rival-to-Microsoft-technology thing.. in fact, even the previous one was Symbian vs .NET, but let's leave it there.. this one was J2ME vs .NET.. hmm.. it's not that I hate .NET/Micrsoft.. in fact my current project is an ASP.NET app.. but then, there should be limits to where you draw the comparison.. the competitors were J2ME with the JTWI standard (which endorses MIDP 2.0 with CLDC 1.0) vs .NET CF.. hmm.. for me, not very sensible.. I dont wanna elongate this entry getting down to details.. but in short, there were some valid points.. but the whole thing was a futile attempt, justifying the existence of .NET CF for mobiles and tryin to convince us of it's superiority over J2ME/JTWI..

I was tired already.. they were so boring.. I'm a dev guys and I came here coz u labelled it a Technology Roadshow with a track for the Mobility Developer.. show me some code! I can read the reviews and get to kno more abt the features n evrythin.. but don't waste my precious time shootin bullshit at me.. I'm here xpectin somethin more technical.. not for ur product review..

I thought I shud leave, but before leavin I thought I shud xpress my opinions to one of the presenters.. I told pretty much the same to him (well, same words wrapped around with some politeness that is :D ).. he said the initial presentations were to create awareness.. the one after lunch would have some code to demonstrate.. so I decided to stay for the latter part..

but this one happened to be a worser bullshit.. it was called the storage side story.. the demo was xtremely frustrating.. at least for me.. he gave some intro abt the SQL Server CE, during which I had a nice nap :D.. for the demo, he created a new Mobile application.. imported a Northwind DB, SQL CE version.. dragged and dropped a table from there to the form, which became a DataGrid.. huh.. who was the demo for? for a 10 year old kid?

well, I'm not much xperienced when it comes to Mobile app development.. but the others in the room seemed to be from the stream.. when I feel the demo was bullshit, do u think the demo was worth anythin for an xperienced pro?! still, I held on to my patience, tellin myself that there'll be somethin worth learnin comin up.. that this demo was just for the complete novices.. convincin myself that the demo was intended to start off simple.. then the presenter came to the last slide, givin some links, includin one for the great demo that was just shown!

for the lack of stronger words, I'd just say that I was simply pissed off! a leave wasted for no reason at all! this happened to me even in the VS.NET 2005 Launch Tour.. I xpected somethin big, n all I got were some nonsense presentations.. their explanation for that was that it was merely an awareness event.. well, granted.. but what abt this Technology Roadshow?

I've decided never to attend another Microsoft Technology Roadshow again.. neways, my only request to the event organizers is to brand their events properly and make their intent very clear.. if you'd please call your marketing events as just that, instead of branding them Technology Roadshows, I'd be glad to stay away from those, n you'd be helpin many like me.. well, thanx in advance if any of u happens to consider my request..

2006-02-15T21:40:00.000+05:30

what would an hour of idle time yield?
read on, but only if you could find nothin better to do :D

You Are 32% Abnormal

You are at low risk for being a psychopath. It is unlikely that you have no soul.

You are at medium risk for having a borderline personality. It is somewhat likely that you are a chaotic mess.

You are at low risk for having a narcissistic personality. It is unlikely that you are in love with your own reflection.

You are at medium risk for having a social phobia. It is somewhat likely that you feel most comfortable in your mom's basement.

You are at medium risk for obsessive compulsive disorder. It is somewhat likely that you are addicted to hand sanitizer.

How Abnormal Are You?

The Movie Of Your Life Is A Cult Classic

Quirky, offbeat, and even a little campy - your life appeals to a select few.
But if someone's obsessed with you, look out! Your fans are downright freaky.

Your best movie matches: Office Space, Showgirls, The Big Lebowski

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

Your Birthdate: December 23

You're not good at any one thing, and that's the problem.
You're good at so much - you never know what to do.
Change is in your blood, and you don't stick to much for long.
You are destined for a life of travel and fun.

Your strength: Your likeability

Your weakness: You never feel satisfied

Your power color: Bright yellow

Your power symbol: Asterisk

Your power month: May

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

What Your Face Says

At first glance, people see you as strong willed and stubborn.

Overall, your true self is passive and thoughtful.

With friends, you seem logical, detached, and a bit manipulative.

In love, you seem intelligent and a bit intimidating.

In stressful situations, you seem selfish and moody.

What Do People Think Of Your Face?

How You Are In Love

You fall in love quickly and easily. And very often.

You tend to take more than give in relationships.

You tend to get very attached when you're with someone. You want to see your love all the time.

You're secretly hoping your partner will change for you.

You stay in love for a long time, even if you aren't loved back. When you fall, you fall hard.

How Are You In Love?

Your Love Life Secrets Are

Looking back on your life, you will only have one true love.

You're a little scarred from your past relationships, but who isn't?

You prefer a quirky, unique person to be your lover. You're easy going about who you're with, as long as they love you back.

In fights, you are able to walk away and calm down. You are able to weather the storm.

A break-up usually comes as a shock to you. You always think things are going well.

Your Love Life Secrets, Revealed

You Are Homer Simpson

You're just an ordinary, all-American working Joe...

With a special fondness for pork rinds and donuts.

You will be remembered for: your little "isms" and philosophies on life

Your life philosophy: "Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals ... except the weasel."

The Simpsons Personality Test

2006-02-14T22:08:00.000+05:30

a lil Photoshop'ing
here's some modern art I did when I was a kid ;)..
hmm.. can't believe it? neither do I :D
this isn't some painting, but just some scrap made out of remaining water colours after the actual painting was done.. if I remember correctly, the actual painting was for some assignment, possibly for the infamous Mr. Sharanappa (a.k.a. ... well, u wouldn't wanna kno)

somehow, my mom chose to preserve this one.. she says it looks nice..
neways, just wanted a subject to play around with Photoshop.. so here're the results..

This one's after the original painting (?) was brough into Photoshop, smoothened out and made a lil nicer.. all other images are after applying some filters over this one..

After Chrome Filter..

Added some Texture..

Some filter called a Graphic Pen Filter.. the name doesn't make much sense tho..

Another one called the Note Paper Filter..

And finally, the original crap that I created.. :D

2006-02-14T19:35:00.000+05:30

completion of one great year! =D>
today's the day I complete an year @ ThoughtWorks :).. exactly an year ago, I started as a Thoughtworker with the first official 'Bootcamp' (as it was called ;) ).. I started with so many dreams.. and started very unconfident.. wasn't really sure if I was good enough to be a thoughtworker.. sometimes I thought it's a mere coincidence of events that I got in.. (the year hasn't changed much of it tho :D )

it's great to complete an year because I never thought I'd stay here for an year.. in fact I never thought I'd stay in any company for an year :D.. well, it's coz my words, before being placed in TW were, - "I wouldn't settle down in any company for at least two years, and would change at least 4 companies before I'd settle down in my dream company" :D.. that makes it a company every 6^th month! hmm.. maybe I wasn't being very realistic then.. maybe was just a lil overconfident.. but then, maybe I'd have really done that if I were in any place other than TW :D.. after getting into TW, I stopped even attempting for any other company..

in fact, I feel a lil bad about not attempting for another company.. well, the reason being my egos.. couldn't tolerate it when someone got into some biggie and rejected that offer, but then roamed around bragging that he was the only one capable of gettin thru that.. huh.. I felt I should've at least attempted it, even if it was just to reject the offer.. but well, that's another story

I never really thought I'd make it into TW.. it was my dream company.. don't really know why.. first time I heard about TW was when Manju mentioned it, sometime during my 6^th sem.. (I still wonder how, but he even said I'd definitely make it into TW and suggested me to wait till TW comes to the campus! I dunno his reasoning, but he for sure didn't kno abt TW then..) somehow, over time, TW settled in my mind as my dream company.. the place where I'd settle down (of course after switching 4 companies :D ).. even when I wrote the TW test, I was pretty calm n relaxed.. one reason being the pretty decent offer I had.. but mainly coz I thought I can't make it and would be writing it again in another year.. couldn't really believe myself as I cleared through every stage of the process.. (most surprising part being that I was the only one to clear it :) )

well, honestly it's a great place to be in.. it's the work environment, the people around, friends and (to a certain extent) the work itself that makes TW so fascinating to work for.. the cubicles in my friends' offices seem so repelling.. I really don't kno how (and if) I would ever survive if I happen to get out of this place :D.. of course there might be (and of course there will be) companies where the work environment is so friendly, and the people around so bright.. but at least I haven't been able to find one..

this year has been pretty good.. well, in fact I can't really decide if it was good or bad :D.. this's the year that has left me the most confused.. it's only now that I realize I'm not really sure of whatever I'm doing.. this's the year that has taught me a lot, beyond what I can grasp, both professionally and otherwise.. the year when I've swayed between complete extremes.. from some of my happiest moments till some of the most hurting and embarrassing moments.. from the most hopeless moments till the brightest ones.. (guess the extremes go hand in hand with XP ;) ).. this's the year when I've been the craziest, most insane ;) done acts that're the most stupid and nonsense (which I hope I'd never repeat again :D ).. this's the year that has changed me a lot (another XP thing? ;) guess I blend into the eXtreme Programming model pretty nicely :D )

to sum it all, an experience that I can never forget (even if I wish to)..

2006-02-13T00:54:00.000+05:30

The Mensa test
finally, the much awaited Mensa Test was today (hmm.. that's 12-02-2006, Sunday n not the posting date.. clock ticks past midnight twelve and it's the next day already.. huh!), conducted by Mensa Bangalore..
much to my surprise, there were no mathematical questions! every other IQ test that I've seen gives some mathematical problems.. neither were there any verbal questions! that was quite surprising to me after seeing many other IQ tests..

all the questions were diagrammatic/visual or whatever you call them (there's a term for that but I don't remember).. it's kinda reasonable coz they wanna be fair to everyone.. missing math questions can be attributed to the reason that not everyone could be good at math.. I mean that the Science/Financial stream guys would be more comfortable with math than the Arts stream ppl.. but I couldn't see a reason why there were no verbal tests.. well, there could be one reason.. ppl might not be very good at some language, the language in this case being English.. hmm.. thinking that way, I can even argue that ppl might not be good at solving pictorial sequences coz of some reason.. well, that kinda sounds dumb tho.. neways, that way, the test should've had the verbal and mathematical questions.. doesn't matter if that appears biased.. coz if you really try to be fair, then you'll have to eliminate every other question ;) so I think it'd be better if they follow the standard format..

there were no explicit logical reasoning questions either, but solving the pictorial sequences involved enough logical reasoning to justify not having a dedicated section labelled Logical Reasoning :D

I think I didn't do well in the test.. wasn't much prepared.. but neways, the result'll be out in 6 weeks.. (dunno why they've to take 6 weeks to evaluate, say around 250-300 papers)

I remember reading somewhere that a proper IQ test should assess all your abilities and each one of these tests is for one of those abilities.. so after the test, I left the hall feeling a bit of incompleteness.. neways

2006-02-12T23:48:00.000+05:30

Shift+F6 (F2?) Bangalore -> Bengaluru
hell, I missed out writing my opinions about this.. haven't been very regular with blogging u see :D.. I'm not even sure if it's the right time.. maybe the renaming is already done.. (honestly I'm not sure coz I usually don't go past the comic strips in the newspaper, which're on the second page btw.. :D )

neways, the people in my mind while writing this opinion are the shitheads who've managed to snatch some votes from the stupid voters.. btw, I'm not in the stupid voters list ;) I have never voted till now.. Sidda argues that it's people like me who let the 'bad guys' win by not using our powers.. but well, I've a different opinion.. u can vote for someone if u want him/her to win.. but what if every candidate is just another shithead? would u like to vote for any of them? Sidda again argues that not evryone is bad.. I agree.. but it so happens that there's a good guy Mr X from the party XYZ, whom I'd like to support, but his local representative for my area is just another loser.. or maybe the other way around.. my local representative for the party XYZ is good, but supporting him would mean supporting another loser fighting for a higher position.. a Catch-22 situation? no matter whom do u vote for, u end up being the loser.. the only way to win is to get into the dirt and play games to snatch votes for urself.. in other words, enter the filthy world of politics, even thinking of which makes me sick..

neways, I just went off-track.. that's not what this post is abt.. coming to the renaming, I'm against it.. here's why:
Bangalore isn't just a name that someone could choose to change at his will to satisfy his whims.. more than a name, it's a brand.. and when you rename a well known brand, there are always repercussions..
how's Bangalore a brand? I think I don't have to explain this.. but still.. I've heard that (not so recently), the word Bangalore was added as a verb to some dictionary along with Google, Fed-Ex etc.. Bangalore to mean outsource, with the usage somethin like 'we bangalore'd our work'.. not sure about the authenticity of the news, but it's sensible nevertheless.. my point here is that the word Bangalore is very well known, but Bengaluru isn't..

one more thing I'd like to quote is a simple usability rule.. of course, the primary intent in designing something usable is to make it as user-friendly as possible.. but suppose you've pushed something not so user friendly to the user and the user finally has become comfortable with it (obviously after going through a steep learning curve), it's preferred that you don't change it.. maybe you think your new idea is really mind-blowing which would revolutionize the way user would use your product and make it hell of a lot easier.. but for the user it's just an added confusion and the frustration of unlearning all that on which he's spent so much time to become comortable with.. if it's so for a mind-blowing idea, I don't think I've to be explicit about changing things for reasons which can't even be justified, leave alone the mind-blowing part which simply isn't there :P

one name that comes to my mind when it comes to renaming is Borland.. one of the few companies I like for the quality of their products.. Borland used to be good (and still is good, but I'm speakin of the past here :D ), until Microsoft came into the arena with it's aggressive marketing strategies which took down Borland's products.. QBASIC taking over Turbo-Pascal, Access and FoxPro taking over dBase and Interbase.. well, after that Borland changed it's name to Inprise in Nov 1997, and many think that was disastrous step to take.. Inprise never really caught up.. so much that they chose to revert to Borland in Jan 2001.. That goes with my branding point.. don't try to change a well known brand name.. the cons are far worser than the pros, which in this case are invisible to me, or at least far beyond my comprehension..

finally, let's take up a hypothetical situation to analyse how'd it be to have Bangalore renamed.. let's take someone who doesn't know abt the rename.. now don't say evryone will be kno abt it, coz that'd leave me without companions :D what'd be his reaction when he hears abt Bengaluru? well, a city that kinda sounds like Bangalore, but just another city nevertheless.. similar to New York and Nu Ark (both of em somewhere in US).. but now even though later he might kno that they're the same, first impressions are harder to be overcome.. I mean it takes a little while to digest the change.. it's not something impossible, but pricey for sure..

so what'd be the advantages of this rename? hmm.. as I said, the people who're planning this rename are simply some superior species whose way of thinking just beats me ;) that's why the reasons seem pretty transparent to me (i.e. invisible or in other words, not existing, if you ask me :D ).. but based on what they say, it has something to do with saving our culture.. hmm.. well how'd a rename save my culture?! wonder who comes up with these brilliant ideas.. I've to accept that I can't understand them.. isn't it simply wonderful that a simple renaming saves your culture?! never in the history of mankind have I heard of such a case.. that's the reason I consider them among the superior species..

saviours of the culture.. hmm.. or is that savages hungry for power? playing just another game in their political life, which if succeeded would mean a few thousand more votes for the heroes who saved our culture..

neways, I feel like puking when I think of these filthy barbarians who lack even the most basic of the manners.. people who never seem to have any other rationale behind their actions apart from saving their position.. saving their positions just to dump another lump of the national wealth to their personal accounts..

2006-02-07T22:49:00.000+05:30

DBC - Design by Contract
this one's another idea in Software Engineering.. the basic idea being that any object/routine has to satisfy certain rules at all the times for it to be accepted as working properly.. i.e. you specify the contract for the object/routine which says the conditions just before and after the usage/execution of the object/routine that it must satisfy.. the objects/routines that satisfy the contract ensure that the software does exactly what it's supposed to do.. and in DBC, we start by defining the contract and then we write code to satisfy the contract..

I see some concepts of TDD lurkin in there, only they're a lil better.. in TDD, we start by writing a test that tests the behavour of the object/method once it's in place.. in DBC, we specify the contract which's pretty much the same except that it also ensures the conditions that must prevail before an object comes into existence for the object to satisfy the contract..

I kinda liked the idea.. first impressions are pretty good :) but I'd like a combination of TDD and DBC.. call it whatever ;) but write tests and the contract both and make your code pass them.. of course it's extra effort, but I the quality of the software generated makes it worth the effort..

there are problems that I could see abt this.. say for example, it's not always feasible/easy enough to describe the contract succinctly.. theoretically, one might say that the class/method shouldn't exist if it's purpose can't be defined crisply.. but in practical situations, it's a bit hard to say so :(

but then the same applies even to TDD.. it's not always possible to start off with a good test for the code you're writing.. well, theoretically it's possible, but practically, at times the effort for the test overshoots the effort you put to write the code for you functionality.. but then, that's not the point of TDD right? all these practices that we ('re supposed to) follow are for the code quality and to help us in the long run while modifying the codebase..

neways, the arguments and counter-arguments can always be made.. but I think both are good practices and believe that a combined approach would be far better..

one major problem I see with DBC is that all the material I found has been Eiffel centric :( Eiffel provides certain constructs which make it easy to do DBC.. maybe we can write external tools for other languages.. just like JUnit/NUnit etc.. but I'd prefer a builtin language construct for that.. hope Microsoft guys integrate all these in the next release of C# (a.k.a C# 3.0) :) or maybe we can use the C# attributes to do all these stuff, in a pretty clean way.. but not sure how clean would that be..

follow these links for a nice presentation describing DBC (using Eiffel of course ;) )
http://www.eiffel.com/developers/presentations/
http://www.eiffel.com/developers/presentations/dbc/partone/player.html?slide=
http://www.eiffel.com/developers/presentations/dbc/parttwo/player.html?slide=

2006-02-06T23:44:00.000+05:30

a possible SQL injection victim?
check out this page: http://indiavilas.com/indiainfo/pincodes.asp
I suspect this one's vulnerable to SQL injection.. this has some useful info.. lists all the PIN codes in India..
but well, seems very vulnerable.. I dint try to get any 'confidential' stuff out :D in fact I dont even think there's any ;)
but you can get real nasty wit it.. I suspect you could do some stuff like... well, lemme try to be a lil creative..
hmm.. nope.. a lil correction.. I meant destructive >:)
guess you could ask the DB to drop some tables/databases and I expect it to obey you ;)
I'm not giving any ideas, am I?
n btw, I havent checked it in a long time.. maybe they've fixed it by now coz I informed them about my suspicion.. it's been well over 15 days since I informed them.. but well, if they havent fixed it, then I think the site aint worth its life >:)
my only sentiment against getitng nasty is that it has some valuable data and it hurts to think abt destroying it :D couldn't find a better collection of PIN codes elsewhere..

2006-02-06T23:08:00.000+05:30

My new Diary :) ...
well, back to blogger after quite a long time :D
a lot to write about, but no time :(

here's my new diary.. it's been over a month since the new year n I'm gettin my diary now :D
(lazy as usual ;) )

liked the art on the cover page.. it's nice, isnt it?

(Photo courtesy: my phone :D )

2006-01-15T20:07:00.000+05:30

a thinking machine
found this @ http://turbulence.org/spotlight/thinking/chess.html
a nice chess game.. fun to play..

2006-01-15T10:03:00.000+05:30

AIGAMUXA
this's a funny (?! maybe not so much for the victim ;) ) god from Africa.. here I quote the lines from the original site:
"
Man-eating monsters from Africa. Don’t panic too much because their eyes are in the soles of their feet. They can’t see you during a chase. They have to stop and lie on their backs with their feet in the air. So just keep running and zig-zag a lot.
"
taken from: http://www.godchecker.com/gotw/016_halloween_nasties.php

2006-01-15T00:06:00.000+05:30

a Chicken Powered Nuclear Bomb ?! ;)
so many elements are recorded in history, for various reasons.. but some of them get into history for weird reasons..
well, the story s abt a nuclear bomb named Blue Peacock, but otherwise known as the Chicken Powered Nuclear Bomb..
apparently, the bomb was a nuclear landmine designed by UK, supposed to be planted at prime locations of Germany during WWII.. but it got it's name because of an interesting proposal made during the design of the bomb.. the designers proposed to have a casing which could house chickens :O and the chicken housing was proposed to keep the internal electronics warm and functioning (using the body heat generated by the chickens!)..

wow! I feel compelled to appreciate the genius behind the idea [LOL]
add to that, this news was revealed to the public on an April 1^st!

checkout the following to read more about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_powered_nuclear_bomb
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=342#more-342
http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_apr2004/Chicken_Nuclear.htm

2006-01-14T23:17:00.000+05:30

damn interesting...
checkout http://www.damninteresting.com/..
true to it's title, I'd say :)

2006-01-09T01:26:00.000+05:30

deemed guilty of ignorance..
well, officially I've been suspended from TopCoder since Friday :(
here's the (tragic?) story..

I created my first account in TopCoder abt an year back.. I never took it seriously n dint compete in anythin.. but I registered for a component development competition n then dint submit the solution since the submission required a lot of documentation n UMLs.. n I HATE WRITING DOCUMENTATION :X k.. later on I discovered that not submitting a solution for a registered competition affects ur reliability rating.. hmm..

recently, for no reason at all (or for one I dont remember/kno, as it usually happens :D) I found TopCoder interesting.. somehow I was pretty confident of winning somethin over there.. now, since there was this reliability rating crap, I decide to start off afresh with a new handle..
TCO 2006 has started n there're a lotta component n algorithm competitions goin on.. I'm more interested in component competitions n this week, I choose 3 components for development, n had a fairly concrete idea for their implementation..

Thursday there was an algorithm competition.. I dont like them because ur score depends on how fast u solve the problem n that for me means writin quick but dirty code.. I dont like writin dirty code, so I usually dont participate.. (moreover there's a lot of competition in them :D ) but this time I decided to participate for the first time n I did.. got a pretty decent rating.. somewhere around 1600 - a green.. not bad for a first attempt, I thought..

next morning, I wakeup happily n go online.. GTalk notifies me of a mail from some Ryan FairFax.. I ignore it coz I dunno him.. I go to TopCoder n try logging in.. damn! it says my account is locked! same for my other handle :( now I check my mail n there's one shoutin - Rules Violation - from Ryan Fairfax - Algorithm competitions manager, TopCoder.. The mail says that acording to the TopCoder Terms of Use, I've been banned forever from TopCoder for cheating in the previous day's competition!

now I see their Terms of Use page tryin to find somethin that makes me a cheater.. n there's somethin! basically, having two handles in TopCoder is illegal! wtf?! that's nonsense isn't it? never heard of another place with such a restriction.. usually if a site has such restriction, they enforce this during registration rather than allowing u to regster n crib later (as it happed here).. moreover how am I supposed to even kno that unless I R_eadT_heirF_uc*inM_anual? how the hell can they expect all their users to read thru that stupid lookin, long list?

neways, the mistake is mine n so I requested that guy to reactivate my account telling him that I dint kno abt the rules.. but he finally agrees to reducing my banishent to suspension but not to forgive my first mistake :(
as of now, I'm suspended from TopCoder for 3 months n I'm not allowed to participate in any major tournaments for an year! that's mindless! (or rather mind-blowing - literally ;) )..
but this wasn't the right time nor the right reason to suspend me! if I intend to cheat, I'll cheat, no matter what.. this time I dint even have the slightest idea of cheating.. that's why both my handles were pointing to the same mail id n had same details too! n that's how I was caught :( I'm not (yet) that stupid to try n cheat using two handles with cloned details.. after all, how tough is it to create a fake identity on the net n become a new person altogether? hardly an hour's job..
worst thing is, I had a pretty good design ready for 3 components.. maybe I'd not hav won any, but it'd hav been a great start.. moreover, this week, I'd hav got a day extra than usual to complete the solution! ah! absolutely the wrong time to get banished :(

neways, considering that they giv u real money if u win, maybe the rule's sensible.. but relying on the users to read thru the manual to kno all the rules - that's definitely stupid..

finally that makes me an outlaw for not R_eadingT_heirF_uc*inM_anual :D

2005-12-30T01:24:00.000+05:30

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 brainfuck ¹.. 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.

2005-12-26T20:43:00.000+05:30

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? ;)

2005-12-26T00:04:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-12-25T22:21:00.000+05:30

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 :))

2005-12-25T21:05:00.000+05:30

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!

2005-12-23T16:00:00.000+05:30

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 :))

2005-12-23T14:49:00.000+05:30

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 ;)

2005-12-23T14:26:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-12-20T23:33:00.000+05:30

[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

2005-12-20T22:28:00.000+05:30

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! ;)

2005-12-18T01:04:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-12-10T12:07:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-12-06T23:20:00.000+05:30

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

2005-11-30T01:21:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-11-30T00:15:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-11-28T23:23:00.000+05:30

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 :(

2005-11-28T22:46:00.000+05:30

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 :)

2005-11-26T20:47:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-11-24T23:13:00.000+05:30

Just Like Heaven.. a nice movie

I liked it..
more info @ imdb

2005-11-24T22:16:00.000+05:30

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)

2005-11-23T23:22:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-11-20T23:58:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-11-20T23:08:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-11-20T08:25:00.000+05:30

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

2005-11-19T20:58:00.000+05:30

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...

2005-11-19T13:07:00.000+05:30

#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$ [$)]

2005-11-19T12:23:00.000+05:30

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 ;)

2005-11-16T22:48:00.000+05:30

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 :)

2005-11-13T23:29:00.000+05:30

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" ;)

2005-11-03T01:17:00.000+05:30

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?

2005-10-31T00:52:00.000+05:30

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

2005-10-30T00:30:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-10-29T14:39:00.000+05:30

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?!]

2005-10-20T22:30:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-10-16T09:07:00.000+05:30

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])

2005-09-09T20:37:00.000+05:30

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) ;)

2005-09-09T19:03:00.000+05:30

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..

2005-07-30T18:11:00.000+05:30

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) :)

2005-06-29T12:26:00.000+05:30

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.

2005-06-28T14:12:00.000+05:30

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