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.
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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); } )()
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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.

Finally blogger adds tag support

Finally blogger acts, but not before it lost a hell lot of customer base. I have seen many iiitians switch to wordpress citing the unavailability of tagging(categorizing) feature. Anyways its good to see the new features. A number of cool features have been added:-
1. Category/tags feature has been introduced with the name labels.
2. No need to republish anymore.
3. Site feed for comments also.
4. Easy to change the layout - drag and drop - too cool - a must try.
5. Blogger can email you whenever you write a new post... can create a kind of archive, just in case u delete ur blog by mistake.
etc.etc.
Also now you have the option to integrate your blog with google accounts.
You may miss the raw HTML template editing. But you can still do most of those editings using HTML/Javascript page elements that the new template provides. And obviously you have to move to the new template to avail these features(including categorization).
The catch : Google adsense is not working as of now :( ... anyways its useless ... generated just $2.5 in around 1 year.
EDIT : I have found a workaround. See this post.
Blogger is quite late ... in nirnimesh's words - working in damage control mode. Still, better late than ever. I also wanted to switch to wordpress, but didn't coz of laziness.

Shifting to Linux....

It may sound weird for a IIITian to shift to linux so late... 3rd year. There are linux bonds in our batch like Bharat Joshi and Nishant Shobhit who are using it from the first day they brought their PCs. But I simply didn't require linux.
Windows has:-
1. Phodu(good) User Interface
2. Easy software installation.(compare it eith rpms, dependencies, yum , etc.)
3. Games : The most important one.
People may disagree with my views.
Also those points mentioned above are not the main reason for me to use windows. The main thing is that I got used to working on windows and coding in linux(mirage) using putty and listening music in the background in the first year. I was also enthusiastic about linux but sadly our poor PC wouldn't support it. Just in 64MB RAM, you can't think of using linux in graphical mode. After working on windows for 1 full semester, I got habituated to putty and I prefer putty over gnome-terminal/kde-terminal. Its 'instant' copy-paste is too good. Since I coded in linux only, I can also say I used to 'be' on windows and work in linux. So getting the best of both worlds :)
In second year I stopped using mirage but still worked on linux on my friends's machine using putty through my windows PC. I never needed linux on my PC except for the kernel installation assignment in OS.
But now the time has come. How can a geek love windows? No, I am not shifting to linux to be called a geek but simply because I need to. Being in CVIT and working on images and videos, I can no longer use my old putty.(Images you can still handle using Xservers but video? no you can't). So saying goodbye to the faithful Windows OS and stepping into a new home - Linux.
Its not that I am totally new to linux. I know how to install rpms, and how to install using source code, etc. But now linux will be my mainstay - coding, browsing, music, movies - except for games, of course.
I have recently installed FC5 on my PC and learnt to use yum. Its extremely helpful. I als0 intalled mplayer, xmms, dc++, etc. As of now everything is fine and I am loving linux.

Disclaimer: Linux lovers, its just my opinion. I never really used linux(except for coding). So I am not comparing linux and windows here. Just writing my experiences.

Technorati: linux, personal, life