Monday, July 26, 2010

Twitter Tools

I love Twitter, but can't seem to be able to cope with the speed at which tools for Twitter mushroom all the time.

Here are a number of Twitter-tools worth trying out:

Twitter based Services

  • MyCleenr
  • Twitoria
  • FriendOrFollow
  • Untweeps
 Desktop Clients
  • Tweetdeck 
  • Twhirl 
  • Digsby

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Absolute URL Paths in Joomla! TinyMCE Editor

To retain absolute URL Paths in Joomla! 1.5 TINYMCE Editor, go into Plugins > TinyMCE and select URLs = Absolute.

Sunday, June 06, 2010

कोशिश करने वालों की - On Perseverence

This is a very famous motivational poem by Harivanshrai Bachchan, shared with me by Parikshit Khopade.


कोशिश करने वालों की
- हरिवंशराय बच्चन

लहरों से डर कर नौका पार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की कभी हार नहीं होती।

नन्हीं चींटी जब दाना लेकर चलती है,
चढ़ती दीवारों पर, सौ बार फिसलती है।
मन का विश्वास रगों में साहस भरता है,
चढ़कर गिरना, गिरकर चढ़ना न अखरता है।
आख़िर उसकी मेहनत बेकार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की कभी हार नहीं होती।

डुबकियां सिंधु में गोताखोर लगाता है,
जा जा कर खाली हाथ लौटकर आता है।
मिलते नहीं सहज ही मोती गहरे पानी में,
बढ़ता दुगना उत्साह इसी हैरानी में।
मुट्ठी उसकी खाली हर बार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की कभी हार नहीं होती।

असफलता एक चुनौती है, इसे स्वीकार करो,
क्या कमी रह गई, देखो और सुधार करो।
जब तक न सफल हो, नींद चैन को त्यागो तुम,
संघर्ष का मैदान छोड़ कर मत भागो तुम।
कुछ किये बिना ही जय जय कार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की कभी हार नहीं होती।

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Australia Mounts Legal Action against Japan for Whaling

Finally, finally, finally, oh Lord finally!

After years of deliberation, Australia has yesterday mounted legal action on Japan, to the delight of ocean conservationists.  Formal proceedings will be lodged against the Japanese government in the International court in Hague next week.

Read about this watershed moment at BBC News.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Unsatisfied with new Google Apps about not being able to HTML/CSS

We are deeply dissatisfied with the new Apps/Writer for its inability to influence style. Previously we used to be able to integrate our company CI using CSS under the Edit menu. This was cumbersome, but still was a (we were hoping) temporary workaround.

It is not possible to create our own templates. The baked versions from Google and other companies are not suitable to us.
Now, we are left with black and white documents, that's a put-off.
We require either one of these features:
  1. Bring HTML/CSS editing back
  2. Give us the ability to create our own templates
Simple scenario.. Our CI theme is dark-blue. How to make all h1, h2, h3 tags in all Writer docs in that color?

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Sea Shepherd does a Homerun in 2009-10 Operation Waltzing Matilda

Sea Shepherd beat all records, and odds, and returned home in flying colors from the 2009-10 Waltzing Matilda campaign this season, having saved 528 whales during this season.

The below table shows the original Japanese Killing Target (JKT) and the dramatically reduced numbers that actually fell prey, thanks to direct-intervention by Sea Shepherd.



 JKT Total Killed Whales Saved
Humpback Whales 50 0 50
Fin Whales 50 1 49
Minke Whales 935 506 429
Totals 1035 507 528

donate_button_paypal_01Still, it is an unspeakable tragedy that over 500 inhabitants of the ocean biosphere have been massacred within a span of 2 months.  Donate today, and help provide the resources to save those lives as well!


We thank Sea Shepherd for cutting down the Japanese Killing Target to less than half this year, and wish them god-speed in their upcoming campaign in the Mediterranien to stop over-fishing of the Bluefin-Tuna.  We pledge to continue our support to this amazing group of conservationists.

For reading more on the results of Operation Waltzing Matilda, read the official Sea Shepherd press release.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Upgrading Debian Etch Machines to Lenny

Step-1

First set your /etc/apt/sources.list to point to Lenny repositories:

deb http://ftp.gb.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.gb.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free




Step-2
Update your local cache and get the latest apt, aptitude and dpkg versions.
# aptitude update
# aptitude install apt dpkg aptitude

Step-3
Perform a full-upgrade, which will finally update your machine from Etch to Lenny.
# aptitude full-upgrade

Apt GPG Key Installation

gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys xyxyxyxyxy
gpg --armor --export xyxyxyxyxy | apt-key add -
apt-get update


Replace the xyxyxyxyxy key with a valid one being required by your system.  It's shown on the error thrown when apt-get update is run.  Ex.


W: GPG error: http://ftp.de.debian.org lenny Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 9AA38DCD55BE302B NO_PUBKEY 4D270DEDB40584E6
 

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Noam Chomsky at University of Stuttgart

Noam Chomsky was in Stuttgart on 24.03 to deliver a lecture on "Phrase Structure Grammar" - don't ask what that it.  I wasn't aware of the technical nature of the lecture hence fought fever and made my way to the Univ. Stuttgart into a lecture-hall of 300, already fully packed some 15 minutes before start.

Can an Eagle that Flies also Swim?

As soon as it was made known the lecture was on Linguistics, I lost hope of taking much back, but Noam's opening example grabbed my attention.  Notice the sentence..

Can an eagle that flies also swim?

This is a perfectly simple sentence at first look, but our implicit knowledge of the eagle's primary ability to fly is note-worthy.  Wouldn't we understand this sentence differently if we knew of a species of eagles that also swam?

Some other provocative thoughts...
  1. Is Aristotle's definition of language - Language is sound with a meaning, accurate?
  2. Is language a property of the individual, or that of a society?  
    • Kids acquire language even before they understand culture
  3. Everything that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood :)
  4. Does such a thing as "language of thought" exist?