Night Dreaming (by Sudar)

One big advantage in having a unique name is that people can google and find you. Well, that’s what has happened now. One of my friends at school, (with whom I lost contact) found me after 7 long years through a Google search about Linux which let him to this blog post of mine. Thanks Google and Linux.

So I have found one more reason to blog, to help my old buddies find me through Google search

Tags: Google, Linux

Windows XP gave me a crazy error message. My fingers automatically pressed the print screen button and here is the screenshot (Click on the thumbnail to open the full version) .

This message appeared after a brief period of inactivity and once I pressed ok my system back to action.

Well, I guess someone at Microsoft have forgotten to check a variable is null or not :). A simple Google search revealed that I am not the first one to get an error in an error message

Tags: Error, Fun, Windows/.NET, XP

Frequent readers of my blog would have noticed that I am not very active these days, especially for the past one month.

Many things have happened in the past one to two weeks which have made me to realize that nothing is permanent in this world and how powerless we are in controlling the things which happen around us. I have read the quote “The only thing that is constant in this world is change” so many times but it is only now that I have experienced and realized the exact meaning of this phase.

I don’t usually write about personal things which happen in my life so those who are close to me (in the physical world) would know what I am talking about. This past week (and the thing which happened) has changed the priorities in my life. The things which appeared to be of high priority have gone down the list and some have left the list all together. It is only when you pass through the phase of immense sadness; you realize the importance of life.
Well, what ever happened is happened and it’s time for me to realize that life has to go on. And I guess I am recovering and will be in a position to overcome it.
What ever happens, Life has to go on…

Tags: personal

Every now and then I used get a call from a new number in my mobile. When I pick it up the person on the other side of the line, usually greet me with my name and ask me whether I am interested in getting a credit card or personal loan. Only then I can realize that it is a telemarketing call from a bank. I usually say no and the person at the other end ends the call. But some guys get really creative and will start the conversation by saying that I have been chosen by there XXXX bank from a lucky draw (which I know about only now) and have been awarded a free credit card or a new account. Sometimes they even know my personal information like my full name, where I work, my full address, my mobile number, sometimes even my official desk number, my salary and sometimes even my age.

I usually stop them by saying that I am a student and don’t have a monthly salary and they will promptly say that the offer is only for a person who works and earns a decent salary. This can be an amusement if I am in a good mood or free at that time but can get really irritating if I am in a meeting with my clients or was in a very bad mood.

I do know that as per RBI regulation, every bank should have a mandatory ‘Do Not Disturb Me‘ page on their website. But I was too lazy to go to every bank’s site and find the page. But just now I found that Vadivel has done it and here are the links for the top banks. Thanks a ton Vadivel. At least now these banks will leave me alone.

• ICICI Bank - http://www.inuonline.com/dnc/donotcall.asp
• Citibank - http://www.online.citibank.co.in/portal/cbol/CLS02L06.htm
• Deutsche bank - http://www.deutschebank.co.in/1078.html
• Standard Chartered Bank - https://play.standardchartered.com/smail/in/IN15/index.html
• HDFC Bank - https://www.hdfcbank.com/applications/misc/dnc/dnc.htm
• ABN Amro Bank - http://mail.abnamrobank.co.in/do_not_call_service_contact_from_home_1.asp

Update (26-Feb-2007): Few more

• Airtel - http://www.airtel.in/dont.htm
• Hutch -http://hutch.in/bottom/dnd.asp

Tags: Banks, Chennai, Telemarketing

One of the things which shocked me when I came out of my hiding period is the sudden disappearance of Performancing Metrics. As you have guessed by now, I was using it here to have an understanding of how my users use my site.

Performancing was recently acquired by PayPerPost and they couldn’t get the deal right with Metrics. This has made them to stop the hosting of Metrics service and have decided to release the code as open source, which may take some time. So the net result is that now I am left without a Stats package

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not here to criticize or accuse Performancing or PayPerPost. Metrics was a great product and I was one among the thousands of happy customers they had. It was totally free and was completely invisible on the page, since you don’t need to display a graphics or a back link on your site. They were not deleting the old data (as most stats services do) and the stats were also private. But what concerns me is that I have lost all the valuable stats data which was recorded till now by the service. Worst still, according to the comment by Nick, there is no way for me to export the stats data out of the system.

Now the question which has popped up in my mind is “How safe is my data?” with the other (web 2.0) websites. So just for a wild imagination, what happens if Google gets dissolved or bought up like Performancing or goes bankrupt (Just imagine). My (digital) life may come to a standstill without access to my email (gmail) and schedules (Calendar). And what if the same fate happens to Yahoo, I will loose all my bookmarks (del.icio.us), my old emails (Yahoo Mail), my photos (flickr and Yahoo photos) etc. Well, it gets too shocking. Isn’t it? Worst still what happens if they say, pay $XXX to get access to your data?

This leaves me with lot of questions and also with some shock. But back to the original problem, now I have to look out for a new Metrics/Stats package. I am not able to decide whether I have to go for a 3rd party package (like Feedburner, Google Analytics etc) or install my own copy in my server (like Mint, Analog, Awstats etc). Guys do you have any recommendations?

Tags: Metrics, PayPerPost, Performancing, stats

Well, yet another year has come and it’s time to take a second look at your life and make some resolutions. (and whether I really follow them throughout the year is another major questions anyways )

And here are some of my New Year resolutions (some of them are in my to-do list for quite some time now) and lets hope that I keep them up

• My reading habit has gone down very much, so first resolution - Read at least a book every month (novels don’t count).
• Learn a new language (or technology) - 2004 in was PHP, 2005 made me to (re)learn JavaScript for AJAX, 2006 it was Python and 2007 it is going to be Ruby.
• Redesign this site for May 1st CSS Reboot.
• Start (or at least take part in) an open source project - it’s time to give back something to the community.
• Try to do some freelance work - Does anybody need a WordPress consultant?
• Buy Apple iPhone - (How about a PayPal donate button here for you guys to donate ha ha )

So guys, what are your resolutions?

Tags: css, iPhone, Reboot, Ruby

Hi guys, I AM BACK

I am perfectly alright now and seeing the computer screen with my own eyes without the help of my specs or contact lens. It’s really a great feeling since I was wearing the specs for the past 17 years and the contact lens for the past 8 years.

My heartful thanks to Yuvi, Vadivel, Aswin, David and all the my readers who showed their support by either sending me an email or posting a comment in my previous post or calling me up to find out about my health. It’s really a nice feeling to know that there is some one to really care about you. :-).

So guys, you could see this blog getting updated frequently as it used to be. But I am yet to catch up with my email and if you have sent me an email, please bear with me and I will send you a reply as soon as possible.

And wish you guys a happy and prosperous 2007.

Tags: 2007, Contact, lens

Well guys, I am going to be under the covers for the next couple of weeks. I am having a surgery in my eyes tomorrow and so will be off from computer and internet (may be) for another 2-3 weeks.

I have been advised by doctors not to look at a computer screen for at least 2 weeks. So there will not be any update on this blog and also if you are sending me an email, don’t be expecting an immediate reply now. I will be reading it only after I come back. So bear with me till then.

Mean while I will ask Yuvi to keep you guys updated about my condition. I will probably ask him to post the updates as comments for this blog entry. So keep checking it

And if you want to contact me during this period either leave a comment in this blog entry or send me an email. You can get my email address from my contacts page.

I still don’t know how I am going to kill time in the coming weeks. I have collected a bunch of books to read during this time. I guess my black little cuttie will also be of some help.

I am going to miss you guys and meet you all after 3 weeks. And in the words of Arnold, I WILL BE BACK

Tags: Arnold, surgery

At last I found time to install the latest version of the major browsers (Firefox 2.0, IE 7.0 and Opera 9.02). I know I am missing Safari but I am on PC and am not talking about MAC here.

Well you may ask me why all three, but being a web developer you need to test your web pages not in your favorite browser alone but in all browsers (in major browsers at least)

Firefox was my favorite browser for at least a year now and have been using only that for my browsing. I have all my bookmarks in that. But after seeing IE 7 I have decided to use it as well. (Ok Yuvi, I could see a spark in your eyes. ) But now the real question is where should I store my bookmarks? I am not yet ready to dump Firefox totally so I need to share my bookmarks across both of them.

So right now I have two problems with my bookmarks:

First, I need a solution so that I can share my bookmarks with IE and Firefox (and with Opera if possible). Let me be clear here, I specifically don’t want to use a web based (social) book marking service like del.icio.us. What I need is a simple solution/software which runs in my local system and syncs my bookmarks with the different browser.

Second, once I find a solution to sync my bookmarks in my personal computer I then need to keep it sync with my work computer (Am I expecting too much?). I need something like Google Browser Sync, but I will be happy if I could store them in my own server instead of their servers.

So guys if you have a solution / suggestion / software to my above two problems then do let me know. I am still googling and if I come up with a solution I will share it here.

Tags: Bookmarks, Firefox, IE7, Opera

Update:(15-Aug-2006) Well, it seems that the Bcc filed is displayed only if you are the sender of the message. The confusion is because in Gmail even the sent mails are displayed in Inbox itself for conversation view. Thanks Rajiv for pointing it out.

Recently, one of my friends brought up to my notice that in Gmail even the Bcc field gets displayed. My initial reaction was “No it’s not possible!”. Then I tried to test it by sending myself a mail and to my surprise, even the Bcc field got displayed.

Here is the screen shot.

I tried Googling around but couldn’t get a satisfying answer. So can anyone throw some light on this and let me know whether it is a feature or a bug or am doing something wrong.

PS: Yuvi, can you gather any information about my browsing activities from this screenshot as you did for Aswin?

Tags: bcc, Gmail