Finally Sysadmins managed to block my blog in labs too...

http://192.168.36.200/~sandeep_kr/cgi-bin/FuckProxy/showPage.cgi/http/sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/
PS: Use the above link to view my blog for the time being.

I guess the title says it all...

Sysadmins blocked my blog! - but failed at that too!!

http://192.168.36.200/~sandeep_kr/cgi-bin/FuckProxy/showPage.cgi/http/sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/2006/12/sysadmins-blocked-my-blog-but-failed-at.html
PS: IIITians plz use above link or FuckProxy to view it.

I highlighted a couple of truths about the sysadmins and they blocked my blog.
But how could a linux newbie who doesn't even know commands like ls; who searches for notepad on a linux system; who tries to use a mysterious command called unblock whose working only he knows; who creates 100 accounts manually; who sends mails like this; could ever successfully accomplish a task as tough as blocking a website?

Yes. You guessed it right. They couldn't even block my blog completely. Its blocked for Wireless LAN(in hostels to be precise) but unblocked in labs. So this once again exposes the sheer inability of IIIT's so called 'system administrators'.

But think how low they could go? I never wrote any abusing words about them. I only wrote truth(to the best of my knowledge). I just tried to expose the problem that we iiitians are facing. And look at what they have done...

I think I have to be careful in future. What if they do something with my students id? What if they send fake mails from my id to my girlfriend(s)? Well... I don't have any :(
What if they delete all my projects on 200 and 205? Well... I have already made backups... and I am pretty sure that when they delete something from 200/205, they will definitely forget to delete it from the respective backup servers.

PS: Best of luck to all my seniors for the placement season.
PS2: I am suffering from using-well-too-many-times syndrome.

How about a projector without a canvas and on the battered corner of your room?

How about a projector which does not need a white canvas or a flat surface to project on?

I was reading about my BTP(Smart Camera - Projector Systems), and then found this cool application of it. No need to roll down a big white canvas anymore for a theater experience. Just select any part of your wall, or just a curtain, a table cloth or just anything. The surface need not be even flat..., you can even choose corners of your room as a screen..... To know what I am talking about see the pics below:-

A scruffy corner(yes a corner of a wall!):-

Output of a normal projector(notice the effect of choosing a corner as your viewing screen):-

Geometry-Corrected output by the smart camera-projector system:

Geo+color corrected output by smart camera-projector system:


For more read this or this research paper(pdf).
Here a few more cool pics:-
Projection on a natural stone wall inside a castle vault (click to get a larger view):-

Projection on a checkered curtain:-


Its cool!!

LOL at sysadmins

Yesterday, when Wireless LAN was down, the following mail was sent to the students mailing list by help@iiit.ac.in for helping us out of the problem:-

dear student,

wlan is not working due to some technical problem. In your
browser
setting (mozilla) you select direct internet connection setting it will work.

thanks
sysadmin

Do I need to say anything more?

GOD help us...........

Performancing For Firefox : Review and How to install

PS: Since IIIT Network does not seem to be coming back to normal, contrary to what is claimed here, so you can help me by trying out this.

Hey, right now I am blogging straight away from my browser using Performancing For Firefox or PFF in short.

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.

Get the PFF extension from here. Blogger beta users should install the latest version(1.3.5 Beta 3) from here or you will have troubles. Learn to set it up from here. Remember that Blogger beta users should give their google username(e.g. bla@gmail.com) and password when asked.

Now lets have a look at the features. This is the list of features that I got from performancing's home page.

Features

• Full WYSIWYG and source editing
• Save as Notes
• Add all your various blog accounts
• Technorati Support
• Delicious integration
• Trackback support
• Draft support
• Ping support
• Image upload and FTP
• Metrics stats

In order to copy the above features I just used another cool feature thats not mentioned in the above list. Just selected the feature list and did drag-n-drop. And it got placed here with all the formatting! Now lets see whether its also possible to drag-n-drop images.



O.. Yes. It works. Now I got to see whether it will get posted to blogger nicely or not. That I could only see after I post. So wait.[EDIT: Seems like it does not get uploaded. This is the only thing of blogger that PFF is unable to support.]

Now lets label it using the categories tab on right hand side and see whether its converted to blogger beta labels(after I post).[EDIT: Yes]
Also provides technorati tagging. No need of any bookmarklet now.

The bookmarks tab aka del.icio.us integration seems useless. It just provides link to all your bookmarks, which you can directly see in browser also. Ya... One use is that you can automatically bookmark all your post. Check the checkbox on option on right hand side for that.

Lets also try the trackback support. Lets put a link to my shaastra seo contest blog to check it. It is great boon to blogger users as blogger does not sends trackback pings.(EDIT: Does not seem to work, may be I missed something :( )

The pinging(not the trackback one) support is also cool. Blogger pings only weblogs.com. PFF allows you to ping more than 20 services using Ping-O-Matic, PingoAt.

One of the most important thing is that it provides more space to the editor window than what is provided by blogger. Also writing offline is much faster than editing in blogger's editor. May be thats why I could write such a long post :) [EDIT: One thing that I missed is editing of a posted blog. They claim somewhere that you can do that. But I couldn't.]

Technorati Tags: blogger, blogging, blogspot, firefox, Performancing, Review, technical

Ain't it cool?

Warning : This is a crap post ... so read it at your own risk....

Hey... I have edited my template and gave it a totally new look. The new blackish template looks fcuking cool to me. Hover your mouse at the bookmarking buttons at the bottom of each post. Such a nice effect. But I haven't seen any comments saying its good. Isn't it cool? Or is it that exams' tension is stopping people from reading blogs and dropping comments. Or is wireless LAN not working? Or is net not working? Or is slow net keeping people from reading blogs ?

Or is it the thing that I fear the most... its fcuking bad? No No. Please don't say that. I made it during the exams. Devoted(or wasted?) so much time on it during exams. Hey, I know my template is worthy of appreciation. At least its not copied. I mean I edited an existing template on blogspot to get to this. This is the original template:-



And here is current template(just for the sake of future reference):-



I call this "Black Beauty".
Some of you might prefer the original one. But then thats one of the standard 30 templates that blogspot offers. And you will find hundreds of users using those same 30 templates. Having your own distinct template makes you feel happy.

PS: Nowadays I am posting so much crap ;) So from now on I will put a warning on every post :)
PS1: Firefox has updated its list of recommended addons (extensions).

Image Storage

I created this page just for the purpose of storing images on blogspot.
Just now I created my own template for blogspot and needed to store my images somewhere. Storing them on iiit's server would mean increased load on our server, apart from the fact that it is fucking slow. So this is the post that will contain all special images that I need for blog. Just using those images in this post will allow me to store them on blogspot. I want this page to be the central repository of all my *special* blog images. Images appearing just on one post don't count as special images.

feed-icon32x32.png:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/feed-icon32x32.png

headbotborder.gif:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/headbotborder.gif

outerwrap.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/outerwrap.gif

technorati.png
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/technorati.png

diamond.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/diamond.gif

commentbug.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/commentbug.gif

fav-normal.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-normal.gif

fav-hover.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-hover.gif

fav-reddit.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-reddit.gif

fav-digg.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-digg.gif

fav-netscape.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-netscape.gif

fav-delicious.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-delicious.gif

Shaatsra SEO Contest Results

So here are the results of the contest in which I wasted almost one month.

1. Atrieecs http://atrieecs.seo.iitm.ac.in
2. Saarang http://saarang.seo.iitm.ac.in
   
3. Priya Venkateshan http://priyaven.seo.iitm.ac.in

Yes, my contest blog is not there. So sad!!
But I am sure I am fourth. And I am sure I would have been second or third only if Google hadn't banned by blog. It banned my blog just when it reached the top. You are so bad google bot. You didn't ban when others were spamming. And you banned all when my splog(spam blog) came at top. So bad!!! You are partial google...

PS: Made my own blackish template. Its fcuking cool!!
PS1: Blogger offers so less templates. I don't know why I am not shifting to wordpress.

Technorati: blogging, contests, google, SEO, Shaastra

IIIT's Network blogs out its woes!

IIIT's Network after being sucking for so long could not stop itself from blogging. Well, blogging is the new buzz and how could the ultra savvy techie iiitians' network remain behind? Confused? Well.. it seems like some iiitian after getting frustrated over the condition of IIIT internet, started an anon blog, thats quite good to read.

PS: The blog claims the network is back to normal and will be better very soon. Lets hope its true.
PS1: IIIT's Network back to normal => one of my almost finished project(beta already released) is now useless :(
PS2: IIIT Blogroll seems to have gone weird. It shows refreshed 20 mins back and still doesn't show the post posted 4 hours back. Heard smr is adding some new features. Waiting eagerly for the new features! One of them is really cool.... don't want to spoil the surprise.
PS3: IIIT Blogroll has gone even more weird now. Its now even refusing to publish my blog. [UPDATE: Its published now after about 3 days. ]

Technorati: iiit, network, blogging

Server Room Tragedy: #11

Well.... tragedies are happening so frequently that I don't even have time to report them. This tragedy happened before I reported the last tragedy... but I didn't had time yesterday to report it.

Well this time the server room staff knowingly or unknowingly changed some configurations that blocked SAS. Those who don't know, SAS stands for Simple Authentication Service. Its purpose is "One person One password". That is, you can use your 200 password for all IIIT portals. It is used in almost all IIIT portals- Mess Portal, Movie Club, ISAS Portal, Student Information Portal, News portal, TV Portal, Election Portal, and tens of other portals that students make as a part of their projects.

Most probably(just my guess), they tried to make the 200 more secure by blocking unused ports and in the process blocked port 61237, that was being used by SAS. Well, the shocking thing is not that they blocked it (because they did it by mistake), but that they could not unblock it back themselves. Devansh sir, had to help them for such a simple task. System administrators don't know how to unblock a port. LOL. (DISCLAIMER: This para makes sense only if what I guess is correct.)

Those who missed the last tragedy(10th), here is the link:-
http://sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/2006/11/server-room-tragedy-10.html
Links to previous nine tragedies (reported by Nirnimesh sir) is also available at the above page.

PS: If you have a screenshot supporting the last tragedy(10th), please mail me. I need to put that on the last post as a proof.
PS1: Feel free to bug/flame/spam sysadmins at http://students.iiit.ac.in/sysadmins/suggession.htm . Its your right to ask them questions on what is happening. Why is net down... etc. etc.

Technorati: server room tragedy, iiit, SAS

Server Room Tragedy: #10

Server Room Tragedy series was started by nirnimesh sir. But now he is out of campus and no one is reporting the blunders that are still being done by the server room staff. We need to highlight the problems(apart from several other things) that the stupid server room staff is creating. So I thought I might report the latest tragedy in the same series. I hope there is no copyright issue :) Links to the previous 9 tragedies are at the end of the post.

Well... 200 was hacked!!! Yes! On monday evening(30th Oct. 2006), students logging into 200 were greeted with the message :-
"You have no profile. Permission Denied."
The prompt was changed by the hacker to "I don't have a name".
Running pine would ask you "who are you?"

[UPDATE: If someone has a screenshot supporting this, please mail me. I would like to put that here as a proof.]

As far as I know, this was the first time in the history of IIIT that 200 was hacked... Not stupid hacking... but someone could actually hack into the system and change so many things that only the root user could.

The server room staff responded by blocking telnet and ftp on 200. They didnt give any reason or explanation. With no student sysadmin, the student community doesn't even know what actually happened, how was it hacked. So we can't even say whether blocking telnet and ftp is the right move.

I bet they(server room staff) don't even know how it happened. They just blocked ftp and telnet to show that "They are doing something". Someone must have told them that ftp and telnet are insecure and then they just blindly blocked these services.

Here are the links to previous 9 server room tragedies reported by nirnimesh sir:-
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/04/server-room-tragedy-1.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/04/server-room-tragedy-2.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/05/server-room-tragedy-3.html(hilarious as well :P)
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/05/server-room-tragedy-4.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/06/server-room-tragedy-5.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/06/server-room-tragedy-6.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/06/server-room-tragedy-7.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/07/server-room-tragedy-8.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/07/server-room-tragedy-9.html

PS: Feel free to bug/flame/spam sysadmins at http://students.iiit.ac.in/sysadmins/suggession.htm .

Technorati: server room tragedy, iiit

Omkara Song Video Spoof by IITD Guys

Its quite good. Watch it.

Technorati: personal, life, bakwas, video

So its true - Google is intelligent and it penalises you if you try to be oversmart

Google has blocked almost all the sites that were participating in the Shaastra Google SEO Event, including mine :( Now if you search for the keywords Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire on google, you will find blogs that have just one or two posts, blogs that have been started but never taken care of, and blogs that are not at all participating in this contest!!
Yes ... a big blow to all those who have been trying so hard for over a month now. Here is a screenshot from my google webmaster page that clearly shows that google has removed all my pages from its index:-

You can also see it was last indexed on 19th Oct,2006. That was when my page achieved the top spot. You can still see the cached page here. But now, its banned......... :(

My dream of SANDEEPs winning this contest is shattered :(
Now I understand. Google, you are intelligent.
Ohh... I forgot to mention why has it been banned. It is banned because of Keyword Spamming. One-tenth(not sure) of the words on my blog were just the keywords. With such a high keyword ratio, how can it go undetected by the search engine giant Google? I knew that Google penalises you for keyword spamming. But I had to do this because the contest had not left much options.
1. You had to host your blog in their domain and you were not allowed to use keywords in your domain name.
2. There was not any control over the template other than choosing another template.
3. This also means no control on meta tags like keywords, description, etc.
4. And many may suggest getting links was a good option. But PR does not changes so quickly. Also it takes time before you come out of the google sandbox. This contest had only allowed you one and half months and now only 4 days are left. Till now, no blog participating in this contest has a PR greater than zero.

So contestants were left with no other option that blatant keyword spamming. All those who have ever been in top 10 had done the same.
However, what surprises me is why they banned all of a sudden. I mean if its not manual banning, then the site should have been banned as soon as google bot detected the spamming. This was been done for more than one and half a month. Google cant be so late in detecting such simple keyword spamming. And if its manual ban, then why at all Google Bangalore sponsored this contest?(see the sponsor on top right of this page)
Well.... Google's ways are mystery.

Technorati: blogging, contests, google, SEO, Shaastra, spam, technical

Who selected the sysadmins?

Well... I have been asking this question for long to all my friends. But today, after being EXTREMELY EXTREMELY HIGHLY HIGHLY FRUSTU over the performance of internet and NO PERFORMANCE of WLAN and DC++, I want to ask this question to the concerned authorities.

I know that Profs like DR. Kamal, Dr. Sangal, Dr. Govindrajulu, Dr. PJN, etc. read blogs. Well.. if you are reading this post, then consider it as your responsibility to defend the selection of the sysadmins
or
Accept the inability of the sysadmins and remove them.

How come someone employ such system adminsitrators who don't even know linux, to monitor / administrate around 10-20 important linux servers in the server room that are the lifelines of IIIT?
I want to know what was the process followed when selecting the sysadmins. I want to know who selected them. Those who selected them, don't they know that all IIIT servers, proxy, etc. are linux systems and only a linux bond can administrate them. Forget linux bond, you have not even selected a linux newbie, you have selected such persons who are not even linux newbies. They simply don't know linux.

Well... Let me go into a little defensive note. I can't prove that they are completely new to linux, but its well established that they are no more than linux newbies. Even a UG1 student (after passing the first semester) knows more than them. If you want proof of this statement then visit:-
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/04/server-room-tragedy-1.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/04/server-room-tragedy-2.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/05/server-room-tragedy-3.html(hilarious as well :P)
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/05/server-room-tragedy-4.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/06/server-room-tragedy-5.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/06/server-room-tragedy-6.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/06/server-room-tragedy-7.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/07/server-room-tragedy-8.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/07/server-room-tragedy-9.html

If you still don't believe, then just go and have a chat with the sysadmins regarding linux. You will soon start believing.

PS1: Yes... I am not doing anything else than weeping about the problems. But the problem is that faculty does not believe that there is anything wrong.(well, not exactly but still they prefer to ignore). So, I think weeping about the problems may ring some bell in faculty's mind.

PS2: Sangal sir, please don't say I have over emphasized the problem as you say about every post in the blogging world.

PS3: Those who are trying to block DC++, please understand that you *MAY* block DC++ but still you can't block all ways of sharing unless you block the whole LAN. If you block DC++, students will resort to some other INEFFICIENT way of sharing resulting in more degradation of LAN performance(if at all its true that DC++ degrades performance). We need sharing and we will do it somehow. Only problem is that it may be an inefficient method as compared to DC++.

PS4: I have nothing personal against the sysadmins. It is all the fault of those who selected windows geeks(not sure) to administer linux servers.

PS5: So long PSs!

Technorati: iiit, life

Finally at top

Yeah... I am at top finally. After weeks of effort, I am top now in google search results for the search string "Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire". Just 3 hours before I was at a meagre 5th position and now I am at top!! Atriiecs has been pushed dwon to second. He he, the wish that I made here in Postscript(PS1) seems to be coming true...

Spamming under my name !!!

There is an entry in iiit blogroll with the name "sandy" that is not mine. That blog is contesting for the google seo contest. Now as soon as I stopped spamming, someone else is doing this under my name!!

UPDATE : That blog has been removed now. so here is the screenshot:-

Read on for the full story.....

For quite long I have been spamming in my splog(spam+blog) Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire. This all I was (and I am) doing for the Google SEO contest being conducted by IITM as a part of its techfest Shaastra.
I also used comment spamming hoping to increase my PR only to find that most blog sites(wordpress, in my case) put the attribute rel="nofollow" in all links posted in comments. That attribute was started/proposed by google and basically means that google won't consider the link with this attribute for page rank purposes.
Then I slowly realised that I should not comment-spam. I also apolozised. Then I realised that I am also spamming blogroll by registering my splog there. It was today only that I asked smr to remove my splog from blogroll. And then....... I was surprised to see a similar splog on blogroll under my name!!

Well its not exactly my name, that guy's name is also sandeep, Sandeep Reddy. [Update: and he is with his friend ad srikanth]. They are students of IITM karshak engg college hyd. He is They are the one who are at top in this contest right from the beginning. Theirs blog is at atrieecs.seo.iitm.ac.in. Everyone else has tasted all positions in google search results, but THIS blog has never budged from the top. Congrats to them for that. But dude! don't spam under my name or under a name that is similar to mine. Anyways, you blog is going to be removed soon as you are not a iiit student. I have mailed smr.

PS: The guy, Sandeep Reddy, who is at top , is quite a bright student. See his webpage here.
PS1: If not me, someone with a similar name is winning this contest. I would love to see the top two positions going to SANDEEPs.... only problem is , it would have been better if I was the first one and he the second :)

Technorati: google, Shaastra, SEO, blogger, blogging, blogspot, wordpress, contests, iiit, spam

New Look 2

Changed the template once again :)

Technorati: blogger, blogging, blogspot, template

New Look

As you can obviously see, I have changed my template. Does it look better?
Of course, it looks better, atleast to me and that is all that matters. The old template had lots of images which made it very slow to load. This one is much faster to load.
I am planning to make my own template for blogger, which would look like one of those ajax sites. No ajax, but look would be look like that. Its not that only ajax sites could have that look, but normally such looks are present in ajax sites.

Technorati: blogging, template, blogger, blogspot

My take on attendance policy

A hot debate is going on on Karan's blog regarding the attendance policy. Here I am presenting my own views and solutions.

My Views:-
1. 85% is too much. Should be reduced to 70%.
2. Reducing grades should not be the punishment for less attendance. Faculty says you perform bad if u dont attend classes. So we already get punished by getting bad grades. Then why to reduce grade further on top of it.

Note: Faculty says we perform bad if u we dont attend, not I :) There are tens of examples of students who got an A and then their grade is reduced because of less attendance(including me :( ). So, in a way faculty's argument itself is at fault. Either way, its proved that reducing grade is not a solution.

My Solution:-
If at all there has to be a punsihment, then it should be doing some kind of social work for a week or two, like teaching slum kids, etc. Or may be attend Jivan Vidya for a week. Prof. Sangal will agree to it :) There should be an FSIS where we can say to the faculty to change the punishment to doing social work.

Oops!! down to seventh

Pre Script: Nowadays, whatever I am writing here I am also posting it on my Google SEO Contest blog to fill it with little more of some sane content.
PS2: My blog in this post refers to my google seo contest blog.

Ohh no!
Search google for Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire and look for my blog. Done?
What happened? Why did my blog slipped from 2nd to 5th to 3rd and then finally down to 7th? Did my comment spamming using bot really worked against me. Well after working like hell for 3 days and fucking my exams for it, I was surpsrised when one of my comment-spam-target-blog-writer pointed out to me that those links in comments are of no use. Worpress automatically adds the attribute rel="nofollow" to all the links posted on comments. Havoc!!! All my effort gone waste. Thats when I started receiving comments back to my blog all blaming, accusing, threatening me and what not. Well in India, don't expect cyber laws to work. I dont fear the threatenings. But then a mail from one of my comment-spam-target-blog-writer made me realise that its indeed wrong, morally. So I then apolozised for spamming. And I have decided not to resort to such measures in future.

But so far I thought my spams for Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire didnt do any good to me nor did they anything bad to me. Now this sudden change in my position in the search results makes me to think that may be the spam report by some user was really taken seriously by the google. Or its just a periodical shift in position. If yes, then why? What should I do to get it back, say , at top two. Obviously no more spams...

All those who would like to exchange links with me - meaning they should put my link on their blog and I would put theirs on mine - please leave a comment here. I want as many links as possible. Doesn't matter if its from a page with 0 PR. By the way, this blog also has a PR of 0.
Mind you, I am talking about links for my blog here http://sandy007smarty.seo.iitm.ac.in/ and not this blog.

Technorati: blogging, google, contests, wordpress, SEO, spam

eXlinks - explode links

eXlinks stands for exponential links. They say:-

“EXLINKS is the ULTIMATE, EXPONENTIAL LINK-SWAPPING, SITE EXPLODING SYSTEM.”

So go and register for free here. I don’t know whether it will really help or not. Or is it for real or some scam. But after reading about it in various blogs at digg and technorati and after knowing that its from the same people who made Blog Mad, I think it may be for real, but may be a little too hyped.

Anyways spending 5 secs to sign up is not much.

For those who don’t know about Blog Mad, its another cool service aimed at redirecting traffic to your blog through a system of credits. Go to the site to know more.

Now the keywords:- Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire .I will win :)

Technorati: blogging, Autophytes, Invernesshire, Thamesportal, Shaastra, Zalecenia

Best Hacker Ever

Read this IRC chat transcript fully:-
http://www.crisscross.com/forum/Worlds_worst_hacker%25_IRC_t%20ranscript/m_422436/tm.htm
Its really good.

Now a link to my Google SEO site.
Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire to increase its PR (hopefully).

My blog is currently at 3rd position.
Have a look here.

Technorati: blogging, bakwas, contests, google, SEO, Shaastra, Thamesportal, Zalecenia, Autophytes, Invernesshire,

IIIT LAN Browser

I have made this IIIT LAN Browser which allows someone from outside iiit to access our lan. Right now following domains are considered as part of IIIT LAN:-
192.168.36.200
192.168.36.150
192.168.36.208
192.168.36.250
172.16.*.*
172.17.*.*
I got this idea in summer when I found that daily tens of people, who were at home, would give their 200 password to me and ask me to check their grades on ISAS. So I thought why not make a site which would help such students.
I have been working on it since summer. The basic site was made in summer only. I implemented everything including forms, response headers like user-agent, accept, etc. But after implementing it I found its still not working for ISAS. To my utter dismay, I found that ISAS site used cookies and my LAN Browser just ignored cookies. I tried ... but couldnt do it.
But now, when exams are so near, I had to find something for keeping me away from studying. So started it again and now its work. Yes... now you can check your grades while at home!

[UPDATE : Now its working for diglib as well. There was some bug. Now you can download softwares from diglib for your home pc.]

This site could also be configured to make it as an anonymous proxy site. I would do such things in future. Right now I think I must study.

And finally this link to my blog : Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire to increase its PR.

Technorati: hacks, iiit, summers, technical, utilities, work

Stupid Blogger/Blogspot

Blogger/Blogspot has now reached the limit regarding being stupid and non-professional. As many of you know, shifting to blogger beta has been a nightmare for most of the bloggers. If you don't know read my old posts here, here and here and also go and checkout google's blogger help group at google groups.
I am writing this post because today they did another stupid mistake. They disabled the old feeds url http://sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/atom.xml and instead started feeds on this new url: http://sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full for everyone(atleast all beta users). But before doing this or even after doing this they should have sent a mail notifying us of this, which they didn't. In fact, ideally, they should give us an option whether we want to shift our url or not. Because many people might have subscribed to the old feed and would have no way to know what happened to the old feed. They should additionally display a message at the old feed saying that it has been moved to a new url.
I got to know only when I saw that my new post was not coming on smr's blogroll. Instead my old post was being displayed there.
So, moral of the story, blogger sucks. I think I should move on to wordpress.

Technorati: blogger, blogspot, blogging, feeds

Strategy backfired?

Looks like my last post backfired. I tried to increase the page rank of my contest blog by providing inbound links to it from this blog. But instead *this* blog is coming earlier in the google search results than my contest blog. May be thats because my present blog is old and has relevant things which has already gathered a good page rank over time. So just the appearance of the Shaastra keyword made it come at top.
So now my new strategy is to provide more and more links to several pages of my contest blog so that google bot understands that thats a more important page than this one... thats why there are so many links to it from this page. It was not just one out of million links!
So Mr./Master/Miss/Mrs/Monieur/whatever google bot, do understand my concerns and help me. I am desperate.
And those fellow humans who are still reading this post, can u please leave a comment along with ur blog url if u would agree to get a few spam comments linking to my contest site.
It would be of great help to me.
Another thing is that I risk my blog being deactivated for illegal use of blogspot's resources. Yes... thats the reason the seo contest was put on hold for around 1 month. Earlier the organisers allowed any blog site for the contest. Then wordpress and blogspot deactivated several blogs citing misuse of their resources as the reason. So now organisers have created a ditto copy of wordpress on their own server. And everyone has to register there.
I hope this blog would not be deactivated because I m just blogging about my normal life. The actual contest blog is not this but on iitm's server.

Technorati: blogger, blogspot, blogging, contests, SEO, Shaastra, wordpress

Google SEO contest

Shaastra, IITM's techfest has a Google SEO Contest where you have to make a blog like this that will come at top for a particular string search on goggle. The particular string is "Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire". This is an extremely weird string. Before the contest started you would have got 0 results for this page.
So, the point of writing this blog is not that I feel like blogging but just to provide some precious inbound links to my contest blog at http://sandy007smarty.seo.iitm.ac.in/ so that it improves its page rank. Thats the reason I am giving so many links to it.
Humans, please stop reading ... or u r getting to be surely bored.
Google Bots, you continue scanning and pasrsing this page or else how am I suppose to increase the ranking of my contest blog. So google bots, here are a few more links to my contest blog.
Please, please bring it at top for the search string "Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire".
Hope you counted them as inbound links to my blog and didn't considered it as a spam.
Lets take one more link bot : shaastra autophytes.
A few more links to my blog categories in alphabeticla order:-
Autophytes
Autophytes Invernesshire
Invernesshire
Shaastra
Shaastra Thamesportal
Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshir
Thamesportal
Thamesportal Zalecenia
Zalecenia
Zalecenia Autophytes

Humans, if u r still reading, please drop in your ideas and comments about how can I make my site come at top.

Technorati: bakwas, google, Shaastra, Thamesportal, Zalecenia, Autophytes, Invernesshire, SEO, contests, blogging, wordpress

Why is my blog always on top in IIIT Blogroll ?

There is some problem with my feed since I shifted to blogger beta. The blogger beta atom feed was not getting correctly parsed by SMR's IIIT Blogroll. It seems MagpieRSS (the software used by blogroll to parse feeds) is not comfortable with the newer versions of Atom Feeds. So I decided to shift to RSS feed. But Blogger would allow RSS feeds only to paid customers. So I created an account at http://www.feedburner.com/ which takes my atom feed provided by blogger as input and publishes an RSS Feed. And I asked blogroll to subscribe to this feed.
Now my blog feed started getting parsed, but time is not correct. Blogger publishes the time in this format 2006-09-11T01:26:52.069+05:30 , i.e GMT +05:30. Now feedburner keeps the same time but changes to 05:30 to -05:00 . So a blog written at 1:26:52 +5:30 becomes 1:26:52 -5:00.
Now blogroll rightly adds 10:30 minutes to this time to get the IST time which becomes 11:56:52am.
So my blog comes to top and remains there atleast till 11:56am.
The problem is with feedburner(changes +0530 to -0500). Any solutions ??

Technorati: blogger, blogspot, blogging, hacks, iiit, feeds

A good programming problem

There was a really good and tough problem in TCCC 2006 Algo Competition. None of around 600 participants could solve it in the given time.
You can try the problem in the practice arena.
And remember that your solution should not take more than 2 seconds for the worst case.

Technorati: contests, programming, TCCC, TopCoder

Yahoo AddressGuard - Fighting Against Spam with disposable email addresses

Its good to see that Yahoo has found out a new way of preventing us from spam. Lately I was getting a lot of spams in my students account(IIIT students server) as well as yahoo account. Well, I can't do anything about students account (LOL at sysadmins), but yahoo's new AddressGuard concept may help reducing spams.
Though Yahoo is successfully able to filter spams to my bulk folder, still I can't ignore them all as some of my important mails are also labeled as spam and moved to bulk folder... specially mails from my students id.... again I think a fault of sysadmins.
The new concept is : You can create several email ids of the format basename-keyword@yahoo and then use different ones at different places. Messages to all ids will come into your inbox or separate folders as u choose. Once you see a particular email id is the reason for spams, then simply delete it.

Good ... No! My old original email id is still valid and its already been targeted for spams. How do I deal with that? I think Yahoo people must find an answer to that. I was all delighted to see the new service but the problem is still not solved for old users who are already been targeted for spams.
While writing this post, with the help of googling I found out yahoo AddressGuard, in a modified form, already existed for paid users. Also gmail also has something similar - aliases... but their method is not so good. Gmails aliases are of the format gmailid+blabla@gmail.com. So spammers can easily extract the original email id from this alias (string before the plus is the original gmail id). But yahoo's format basename-keyword@yahoo.com is different coz basename has no relations with your original yahoo id.
Read the official thing here. You can get a different perspective about it here and here.

Technorati: technical, spam, yahoo, gmail

My new home page

So now my new home page is up and running at http://students.iiit.ac.in/~sandeep_kr . Its just a copied template copied from Gaurav Garg of stanford. I came across this template when skp came across Gaurav Garg's template and copied it :P I like it as its very simple yet looks good.... and professional.
Right from my second sem, I always wanted to change the stupid home page that I made in first year as a part of ITWS1 assignment. But could never find time for it or I should rather say could never devote time to it even when I had plenty. Now finally its complete and I think looks good enough and should not any require any major change for atleast this year. BTW I am talking as if I did a great job. I just copied :D and to add to that its nowhere near to sites of good website-makers of our college. To know what I am talking abt just have a look at Tarun Nayak's home page. or look at himashu arora's websites(his home page not working, visit this) or those of Devansh Mittal. (sorry if i missed someone). For more astounding works of Tarun Nayak see this page. He is too good!

PS: See my bookmarks. They are exactly same as the bookmarks stored by firefox in my PC. I use winscp's scripting power to scp my firefox's bookmarks.html file to my 200 account 8 times a day.
PS1: Yes, I still work on windows for most of the time. So, I had to use winscp.
PS2: Is their some better method to make my bookmarks public?

Technorati: life, personal, template, bookmarks, firefox

How to get Yahoo Mail Beta

Yahoo Mail Beta is out there for quite sometime. But alas! only for Yahoo UK, Germany and France(as far as I know). But there is trick at this post that allows Yahoo India users(or for that matter any yahoo user) to get Yahoo Mail Beta.
In essence, what you need to do is to switch your yahoo content preference to Yahoo UK or Germany or France , get the beta version and then switch back to your old preference. See the above link for step by step method.
Note : Yahoo Mail Beta does not yet work on IE7.

PS: The new interface is phodu - specially the drag and drop feature . Try it, its better than gmail.

Technorati: hacks, technical, yahoo

Technorati Tags Bookmarklet adapted for blogspot and blogger

Inspired by Rakesh's Bookmarklet (originally Lorelle's), I came up with a technorati bookmarklet for blogspot and blogger.com users.
Technorati tags bookmarklet is a Firefox bookmarklet to tag ur blog posts. First created by Lorelle and later modified by freehogg and then again modified by Rakesh. Veterans can see the modified code below and newbies first read "How to create bookmarklet" and "How to use it" further down.
-----
javascript: ( function() { /* Technorati Tag Book Marklet 0.3 Created First By: Lorrell <http://lorelle.wordpress.com > for wordpress. Last Modified By: Rakesh <http://rakeshkumar.wordpress.com > for wordpress. Adapted for Blogspot By : Turbo <http://sandy007smarty.blogspot.com > */ var a=''; var t=prompt('Enter Tags separated by commas',''); if(!t) return; var tr=t.split(','); a+='<p><img id="technorati_img" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/technorati.gif" alt="Technorati" /><strong>Technorati: </strong>'; for(var i=0;i<tr.length;i++) { tr[i]=tr[i].replace(/^\s+/,""); tr[i]=tr[i].replace(/\s+$/,""); var tag_text=tr[i]; tr[i]=tr[i].replace(/\s+/g,"+"); if(i > 0){ a+=', '; } a+='<a href='+unescape('%22')+'http://www.technorati.com/tag/'+tr[i]+unescape('%22')+' rel='+unescape('%22')+'tag'+unescape('%22')+'>'+tag_text+'</a>'; } a+='</p>'; prompt('Copy this html code, Press OK, Then Paste into your blog entry:',a); } )()
-----
Its character by character same as Rakesh's version, except for the image url. I changed the url to a blogspot url to make it a blogspot bookmarklet in true sense. That is, blogspot won't have to go to wordPress for that image. Although I have not tried, Rakesh's original version should also work without any problems, unless blogspot specifically blocks wordpress urls (which it does not do now atleast).
Following FAQs have been shamelessly copied from Rakesh's post :-
FAQs
Q1. How to create bookmarklet?
Ans: Copy the above script and paste it to Firefox’s address bar. Drag and drop it to bookmarks toolbar. Right click on it, go to properties and verify the location.
The location should contain the above script. Change the name to something related like “Technorati Bookmarklet”.

Q2. How to use it?
Ans: Just click on the bookmark. A dialogue box will open. Enter your tags in it, seperated by commas. (spaces are allowed within tags). It generates
the html code for tags. Copy and paste it in your blog post.

Q3. Why Technorati Tags?
Ans: A simpler explantion is that it adds meaning to the information that you are providing (i.e. your post). Tags work both ways, it helps sites like Technorati
to organize the contents properly and on the other hands it increases your reach to a broader audience.

Q4. But blogspot already has labels?
Ans: Yes, a recent feature. Those who still use old templates don't have the labels feature. Also its simply good to have technorati tags. Isn't it?

Technorati: firefox, technorati, tags, bookmarklet, blogger, blogspot, hacks, technical

Enabling Adsense in the new blogger/blogspot templates

Those who are wondering what is this fuss about new blogger, read my previous post or visit this.
Those who have already added the javascript code and still their adsense is not working, read from step 6. Others see all steps.
1. At the dashboard(the page that opens when you login) , click on settings :-
2. Then go to template tab. If you have not yet moved to a new template(beta template) , do it now as mentioned here .
By default, page elements tab is open.
3. Now click on "add a element" link.

4. A popup will open up showing various kind of page elements. Select the one named "HTML/Javascript".

5. You will be presented with a form. Don't write anything in the title text box because anything that you write here will appear above the adsense thing and will look very bad. In content box paste your adsense code.
[UPDATE(27 Sept, 2006): Blogspot has removed the bug with javascript. So step 6 is no longer required. Continue from step 7.]
6. Now you need to understand a fact about javascript. Most of the javascript codes are included inside comments(HTML comments) so that javascript incompatible browsers are not confused. For example :-
<script type="text/javascript"><!--
Some javascript code
//--></script>
What you need to do is to just remove the red things(comments) in above code. Remove only "<--" and "//-->" and not the matter in between them.
7. Click on save changes button
8. Done!!!
Note that this thing will create problems in javascript incompatible browsers. But then you need adsense, so thats the way.
Also note that step 6 above is required because beta blogger seems to have some bug. Once that bug is removed no need to do step 6. FYI, as of now, step 6 is required for any javascript code whether it is of adsense or not.