When Life Gives You Lemons…forget the lemons, and get yourself some Blueberry Cheesecake!

Tuesday was full of travel decisions and blunders. The seemingly quiet morning turned into a frantic dash to arrive at college on time for the first lecture. I’ve never managed to make intelligent decisions when it comes to deciding what mode of transport I should take to be at my destination on time. I’ve largely ignored any valuable information anyone has ever given me about travel routes and options. I don’t know why. My head just blanks out on that sort of information. When Tuesday began just like any other college-day, I wasn’t expecting the trouble that was headed my way. I left about a minute late from home, and thanks to one unhelpful rickshaw-driver who refused to take me to the bus-stop, missed the bus at the usual bus-stop and watched the bus whiz by me as I was just about to get off the rickshaw that I had managed to catch later. I wasn’t late at the bus-stop by much; just a few seconds. I was in the mood for adventure. I asked the rickshaw-driver to “chase that bus”.

This wasn’t the first time I had travelled by rickshaw to catch a bus to college. The 255 holds some kind of special importance to me since I’ve been travelling by it since the first day of college. Even the bus conductor has come to know me well by now. If I had to explain why I travel such a long distance by bus, I’d be labelled as a crazy nut-case, so I won’t try to explain myself   Anyway, the chase began…

Unfortunately, it wasn’t as exciting as I had initially hoped. The rickshaw-driver turned out to be an ethical guy who refused to move up to a higher gear. I helplessly watched other vehicles go by while my rickshaw limped with high hopes to catch up with the 255 travelling at warp-speed. The 255 driver is a notorious guy known for skipping bus-stops, and I used to like that about the bus since that’s what helped the bus skip some heavy traffic at Bandra (West) before the highway. I tried convincing the driver to speed up, but he wouldn’t budge. He didn’t know of a gear higher than the 2nd, which, because of his older-model rickshaw, was only barely faster than the 1st. I did some mistakes too. I could’ve asked him to take the short-cut at D.N. Nagar knowing that the bus would lose some time at the stops before D.N. Nagar, but I didn’t. The bus was in my sight so I thought I could catch it. We ended up chasing after the bus till Juhu, at which point we managed to get just ahead of the bus. It was going to be a close call − getting off the rickshaw and catching the bus moments after, but I thought the conductor would ask the bus driver to stop once he saw me. I was wrong. Before I could even spot the conductor and wave to him, the conductor had rung the bell instructing the driver to skip the stop. It was gone. My rickshaw driver could probably see it on my face − how important this bus was for me. He stood there at the bus-stop looking at me as if to say, “c’mon, I’ll help you catch it ahead”. I gave him a dejected look to suggest that it wasn’t worth it.

After all, it was as if there was an important exam to appear for; just my personal goal of being on time in college everyday. I’ve managed to be in college before 9 AM on almost all days. Getting to college on time is actually easier than getting myself out of bed on time. That should explain why I’m either on time, or absent.

Following this thrilling but disappointing chase, the bus that arrived later on the Juhu bus-stop opposite Reliance World was the 241. I spotted “Wadala Depot” written on the sign-board from a distance and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was written in the same style it’s written on the 255, and I was hoping against hope that it was the 255. Once it arrived, I had a decision to make − to take or not to take

Taking the 241 meant figuring out a way to get to college from Wadala depot − something I had never done. That didn’t seem impossible, so I took it. Once I got on, I asked the conductor if the bus would stop at Sion Circle or King Circle or some other landmark that could help me figure out how to get to college. He said the bus would go through Dadar TT. My initial response to that was, “You can’t get to Wadala via Dadar TT! Are you nuts?!”, but then, to appear as if I knew what he’s talking about, I asked him for a ticket to Wadala depot.

The route the 241 took seemed like roads I had travelled on before, probably by bus no. 38, but I wasn’t sure. Finally, once Plaza and other streets arrived, it occurred to me that I had walked to college from Dadar once. I considered getting off at the Plaza since most people seemed to be doing that, but I knew that the road was long. Instead, I got off at Wadala Depot.

From there on, I made some amazing (uninformed) decisions and somehow managed to get to the charming buildings of Parsi colony. I thought if I could somehow get there, spotting five gardens would be easy, and it’s a straight road from there on. Parsi colony however turned out to be quite a maze. I ended up going around in a full round circle with the joggers 

After that, I set my sights on the school that’s in the middle of Parsi colony. I knew that I could figure the way to college from there. Did that. Then spotted the way to Five Gardens. Then spotted the VJTI’s hostel entrance. What a relief. Amazingly, I reached college at 8:30, earlier than the time it takes to get there by 255! 

I realized that Wadala was bang 40 mins away from Andheri via Dadar when there’s less traffic.

My travel-troubles for the day didn’t end there. On my way home, thanks to some day-dreaming guy, I wasn’t able to get off on my stop, and ended up getting off much further. But then, my mind began looking for something good in this hectic day. Thankfully, it spotted “Eden” (cakes) as soon as I got off the bus. After that, I knew exactly what I had to do…

The Hunt for the Perfect Jeans

Trust me, it’s terribly hard to find a pair of classic Levi’s Jeans. It’s as if I belong to a lost generation of people whose clothing needs are no longer given attention by the corporate apparel brands. All I wanted was a pair of nothing-fancy, standard-fit, straight, flat, uncut, unworn, simple jeans. What I found was a wide variety of worn-looking jeans, some that had been cut into, some skin-tight and some baggy jeans (that revealed more than what is visually bearable).

Even in T-shirts, I could feel the trend was moving toward body-tight, short-sleeve tees that were meant to highlight the forearms of men who worked out. People are moving towards what is hip rather than what is comfortable. I ask, what happens to those of us who’re blessed with paunches? What do we wear?

I visited 3 malls – Infiniti, MegaMall and (my favourite) Inorbit, in the hope of finding something to my liking. I ended up with a feeling of being ignored. And the new kids on the block have weird taste in clothes; not too far off from their terrible taste in music. Damn those pesky kids.

Girls wearing stuff that they’re not comfortable in is fine; that’s different. They’ve been wearing highly uncomfortable/painful high-heels, and skin-tight, blood-flow hindering apparels and accessories for years. They believe it gives them more power, or a better sense of self, or whatever else they’re looking to kid themselves with. But for guys, the idea of putting on something you’re not comfortable with is plain wrong. Guys who take care of themselves aren’t guys. The word “shabby” defines us. The rise of the so-called metrosexual (“semigay”) male is horrifyingly disturbing for those of us who’re hoping it’s a fleeting phase. If clothing brands began designing clothes according to the wishes of the metrosexual crowd, several generations of old-school men are going to be furious. Of course, you’ll find a section of men who feel comfortable in baggy jeans, but for me, the idea of being so scarily close to being pantless in public is unacceptable. The very thought of it brings nightmares.

Clothing brands are having a profound influence over our product choices. It’s sad and unfortunate, but I believe our purchase-decisions are heavily influenced not by what we like, but rather by what’s hip and out there and what’s available in our favourite stores. People enters stores, pick out what they feel is best for them from among large sets of apparels that don’t really suit them; yet, for the sake of buying something from the store, purchase some or the other item at an over-priced rate and exit. The fashion out there isn’t decided by the people, it’s decided by the brands. Fashion is fed to the masses. And quality for the younger generation is apparently equal to the price they have to pay. Selecting crap out of crap will get you nothing but expensive crap. For me, quality is equal to something that’s comfortable and inline with my taste, a lot of times with very less influence of the price.

It’s hard for me to like something. And once I like something, I use it until it wears out. That’s how I get my money’s worth, and that’s why price has low significance while purchasing. Spotting what I like is extremely easy; it’s like love at first sight. And yet, the tough part is getting what I like. It takes me hours to find something that interests me, but seconds to reject things I don’t like. So most of the time, I end up rejecting hundreds of items quickly, and the one item that I like immediately captures my attention. I see it. I like it. I buy it.

I’m afraid that soon the younger generation will take over the market and I’ll be left with no option but to wear what’s “hip”. Thankfully, the sporting brands – Adidas/Reebok/Nike/Puma are largely unaffected by the changes in styles, fittings and sizes. The shoulder lengths continue to be where they were years back. That’s what I love about them. They still have that basic, classic feel.

An IT letdown

A few days ago while I was enjoying my long weekend, a friend asked me for a solution to a seemingly simple IT problem. At first, it seemed doable, but later it hit me that it would require a lot more work. It annoyed me that I couldn’t come up with a solution, being the IT guy. Today again, although I was able to help someone with one problem, I couldn’t help assist her with another simple one.

The Problem : “Why can’t I see Applications on Facebook? Where has the chat gone? Where has the toolbar at the bottom gone?”

Suggested Solution : Assuming that Facebook changed it’s code and it’s not pushing out  standards-compliant code, “Try a different browser. Works fine in Opera.”

Real Solution : “Switch back to Facebook from Facebook Lite. See Settings.”

The problem was in understanding the problem. The approach should have been broader.

Sometimes my mind is like a live-wire, electrifying my head and compelling me to do the things I love and blank out everything else. So when I came to know of a senior giving us a seminar on how the recruitment process in VJTI is going to take place, that thought of going for it never really got too much attention. Over a period of 22 years, you’d think I would know to distinguish between right and wrong, what’s good for me and what’s not. Well, some may think I’m not taking things seriously, some others may feel I’m rebelling against any significant change in my life, and some others may believe I refuse to grow up. But in the end, what really matters is what I think, isn’t it? After all, being an adult, I’m supposed to own up for the decisions I make. 

’twas a choice between going to college on a Saturday morning and sleeping till late afternoon. I chose the latter, not purely because I was lazy, but because I needed the rest to work for long hours and implement some of the things I had thought of. Besides, the part of my brain that’s responsible for deciding what’s important from what’s not, gave the event of listening to a senior speak about the placement process a measly score. Apparently, my mind would like to stay unemployed. 

I guess my greatest fear is that I won’t get to express myself in the way I want to once the job-life begins. I’d be forced to do things someone else’s way, out of my comfort zone, doing the things I may not necessarily love. This is the only time I get to do what I love. To put my stuff out there.

In contrast to what people generally have to say about living your college-life (or pre-job life), I disagree with most “experts”. They usually say something along the lines of “Trust me, you need to do this. You won’t understand the importance of doing this until later”. It usually seems like they’re trying to educate us on their regrets, or boat about all the things they did right. One respectable person recently pointed out that participating in extra-curricular activities, competitions, college festivals was critical. To that, my brain said, “This website counts as extra-curricular. The visitors who stumble down here are the judges. This is a gold-mine I’m working with here. I’ve built this from scratch. And it leaves my mark on the world. Google my name and have a look. What could be more critical that making it to Google?”. I agree that my brain constantly tries to find ways to avoid criticism, but I firmly believe that I am my own critic. Criticism is essential for growth. I don’t expect you to believe that I am my harshest critic and you may feel like I’m resisting growth. If you feel that way, that’s when you’ll find me telling you to mind your own business. I live in a shell thanks to my introverted nature, and it’s cosy in here. You are not welcome. At the end of it all, it’s me and my brain that decide what’s good for me. Outside opinions are welcome, but they may not stick.

What works for you may not necessarily work for me. That’s the basis for everything. Live life your way. Own up for mistakes; that’s what life is for — making and learning from mistakes. Have no regrets. I don’t believe people should try to learn from other’s mistakes, at least from ones that aren’t obvious. You just might miss out on some golden moments. 

Interruption — I just watched a bit of “Beautiful People” on CNBC TV18, with Anuradha Sengupta interviewing Ram Gopal Verma. God, she was annoying! She didn’t let him finish his statements. I bet he was annoyed out of his mind. Maybe the folks at CNBC TV18 put her there to do just that; to get as many questions through as possible. Every time “Ramu” was about to say something interesting, she’d interrupt him and ask another question. Boy, would I hate to deal with such a personality in real life, even as a friend. It’s like she’s barely listening and drawing conclusions prematurely even before you finish expressing yourself. She kept saying, “You mean to say…” and blabbered on about what she had gathered from what he said. That is just rude! 

Anyway…

I’m thinking of creating a “Changelog” to document the cutting-edge changes here. I intended to mention the names of the Wordpress plugins I’ve edited so that it could help people, but recently I’ve experienced my fourth interaction with a hacker (this time, from Ukraine). Reported that sucker to StopBadware.org and McAfee’s TrustedSource.org.  That experience also introduced me to a real-world SQL-Injection exploit, that I had only heard of previously.  The exploit looked to take advantage of vulnerabilities in the code of some plugins, namely — wp-cal, fgallery, wp-adserve, wassup, st_newsletter, wordspew, and others. Not something you would learn by attending lectures in college, boy. to_date=-1+group+by+id+union+select+1,2,3,0×6875616B,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12– :P 

Some of the changes that took place IN ONE DAY are as follows —

1. Embedding YouTube videos in Wordpress the jQuery.Flash way
   Adding YouTube videos in Wordpress was kind of a pain since the code generated by YouTube for embedding videos is NOT XHTML-standards-compliant. Validating this page would produce errors. Annoying. Then, I modified a brilliant plugin (that will not be named) to insert a SPAN element with the YouTube video ID, and a small JS code to make jQuery replace the SPAN with jQuery.Flash magic. This method was used long ago on the main website.
2. Clickable Flash Headings
   Gone are the days of system fonts. Behold the new way of display non-default fonts in the web browser without requiring the user to have the font installed. The power of two of the most exciting web technologies combined. jQuery and Flash. Again, a very old feature on my website. The change I made was that the Flash animations are now clickable. I mean, it’s the heading of a post, so it ought to be clickable! I now pass the post URL as a Flash Variable to the movie, which applies the link (getURL) to a rectangle shape for the onRelease event. I was mighty impressed with myself.
3. RSS, better than ever before
   RSS feeds for Facebook are now rendered beautifully. An added feature was the replacement of “You” in FB feeds with my name. Well, not necessarily my name. I modified the Wordpress Feeds plugins to replace “You” with the owner of the blog, presumably having user ID 1 in the Wordpress Database “wp_users” table. The getuserdata(1) function helped out. A bug that later caused trouble was identified and rectified. I was using str_replace() whereas I needed to use the str_ireplace() function, which is case insensitive. More problems followed, but were rectified. Admin options for the widget’s new “Replace You” feature added. 
   
   
   
   View Code
4. Finally fixed the time issue. Who would’ve known that I would actually have to go through documentation to find a solution to this. I was previously using the date() function, which took into account the Daylight Savings time. date_default_timezone_set(‘Asia/Kolkata’) wasn’t working for some mad reason. Tried editing php.ini and setting the date.timezone too. Anyhoo, I needed to use gmdate() Greenwich Time, and that’s what I’m doing now
5. A Facebook Share icon
   
6. Numerous other changes in CSS code

Now I need to get college things into order. UML, WT and other uninteresting crap.

Conan O’Brien in his last stint on The Tonight Show said these wonderful words —

“Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

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When I first tried the Last.fm for Wordpress plugin with this Wordpress 2.8.4 installation, I received the following error :

Warning: gzinflate() [function.gzinflate]: data error in /hermes/web07/b2563/blah/blah/wp/wp-includes/http.php on line 1787

The Wordpress plugin page mentions that the plugin is compatible up to WordPress 2.7.

After checking out the code in the plugin file (/wp/wp-content/plugins/lastfm-for-wordpress/lastfm.php), I was able to determine that there was something wrong with the fetch_rss() function. Using that function caused the above warning to be displayed. Wordpress Function Reference mentions that the function has been deprecated, but it should still work to enable backwards compatibility. The suggestion given on that page was to use the fetch_feed, which seems pretty straightforward. But I chose to do some more digging.

I googled the problem to try and figure out what was wrong. The most common solution I found recommended editing the http.php file (/wp/wp-includes/http.php) and altering line 1787. I think it was also accepted as a bug in Wordpress and will be rectified in Wordpress 2.9 (out now). But anyway, one thing I’ve learnt from my previous Wordpress updates — Never alter code in core files. I lost all my “custom modifications” when I upgraded to 2.8. I’ve learnt to write maintainable code the hard way.

It’ll take a few weeks for me to make up my mind to update WP. Until then, the mod should work just fine.

To sum up the mods I’ve made to the original plugin file for it to work with my Wordpress 2.8 installtion -

• Changed fetch_rss() implementation to the new fetch_feed() implementation. Uses the SimplePie and FeedCache functionality for retrieval and parsing and automatic caching, instead of MagpieRSS and RSSCache.
• Commented out MagpieRSS settings variables.
• Removed line 131; wonder what it was there for.

$songs = fetch_rss(‘http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/’.$username.’/recenttracks.rss’);

Download here or See full plugin code.

NO WARRANTY OR SUPPORT PROVIDED. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

CREDIT TO ORIGINAL PLUGIN AUTHOR : Ricardo González

UPDATE: I still see the gzinflate error occasionally.

I’m sure some of these posts make me come off as a super-geek. It’s true to some extent and I can’t deny it, but if you really pay attention, you’ll see that while I appear to be a super-geek, I’m much dumber than the average super-geek. For some mad reason, I find it more sensible to do practical things rather than learn about the theory behind uninteresting subjects. That rebellious cog-wheel in my brain refuses to acknowledge the importance of a syllabus set by some institution. I mean, who are they to decide what interests me, or what I need to learn?. It’s hard for me to cope with college and lectures; to some extent, it’s against my practical-oriented nature, and most of what they teach is uninteresting rubbish.

As a kid, I had a theory (more of an excuse) that the brain has an information holding capacity, and as I read and learned more about things, it diminished my brain’s information holding capacity. My excuse for not studying hard was that it might cause my brain to fill up with too much information and force it to push out other very critical information, such as how to eat food and how to drink water! Of course, no one bought my theory, but everyone found it hilarious. Another theory was that it was bad luck to study after 10 PM. I’ve seldom studied in my school life after 10 PM. Citing a few crazy examples, the theory suggested that my mind was tuned to have dinner at 10 PM while watching TV and go off to sleep at 11-11:30 PM. I used to finish eating dinner pretty quickly and watch TV till 11. Anyway, according to the theory, any change in this routine would have severe effects on the morning after. Again, no one believed me; but I loved coming up with these crazy theories. Looking back, I always have a good laugh at my crazy childhood days. Building tents with bedsheets in my room with lots of soft pillows stacked in them; I’ve always been a fan of a comfortable, cosy life. I’ll do almost anything to get me one of those.

I try very hard to be an average student, and I also try very hard at NOT being an above-average student. It’s a modern theory I came up with in Junior College that’s stuck around for a long time. After the 9th standard, I’ve never showed up in the top 5, and I never wanted to. “The more the grades, the harder it is to enjoy life”.

Things that got done before the Jan 5th deadline -

• Released “FileLister”
• Created a Facebook-app-bar like JS bar.
• Code version control, SVN
• Worked on jQuery Selectable
• “Integrated” Wordpress posts into Joomla! (with AJAX loading)
• Fixed “Last.fm for Wordpress” plugin issues, and released my first ever open-source code. Good to be part of the open-source family.
• Wrote code to list out Wordpress’ recent private post titles
• Integrate Facebook feed into website and blog
• OpenID login for Joomla!
• Windows 7

Things that couldn’t get done -

• Ruby on Rails
• JDBC w/ MySQL
• Facebook Connect

Reason: Motherboard died. Say hello to the new Gigabyte motherboard!

Gigabyte EG-45M-UD2H