Thought of the day

Few things(other than beer) are like beer, the more you have it, the more you want it...

Standard Disclaimer: I don't drink!

Evan Almighty and the funda :D

So i was watching this movie (Evan Almighty) on HBO tonight and it had this message towards the last half of the movie. I'm not going into reviews or comments on whether the movie was good or bad, but this message touched me. Here it goes:

If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does He give them the opportunity to be patient?

If they prayed for courage, does God give them courage, or does He give them the opportunity to be courageous?

If someone prayed for their family to be closer, you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings? Or does he give them opportunities to love each other?

Link 1: http://www.asksaiful.com/2007/12/29/heres-your-opportunity/
Link 2: http://www.idea-sandbox.com/blog/2008/05/evan-almighty-life-and-business-lesson-in-opportunity/

Dilli 6

I loved the first half but the second half was equally horrible. It could have been a great movie atleast that is the impression i had until the intermission. But in the very beginning after the intermission, it started showing off that director was lost. Here is a short list summary on the movie.

Things i liked about the movie:

1. Sonam Kapoor's natural performance and her presence in the movie


2. An attempt to mix Ram Leela with the movie plot.


3. Portray of the new age middle class girl's ambitions to do something in her life and challenges she faces from the family and others in the society (cyrus's character!!??)


4. Portray of indian life from an NRI's view: closeness and disputes in big indian families, small but beautiful things that make indian life (you will hear them mostly from Ali, Rishi Kapoor but can as well feel them in the first half)


5. collage of indian and american scenes in one of the songs (in the second half). it was too colorful but interesting.


6. Awesome music.


7. vijay raaz and divya dutta's acting

5 things i hated about the movie:

1. 99% of the second half


2. too much of preaching


3. too much of noise


4. abhishek bachchan trying too hard to explain the mirror and the message of the faqir; i could see that i was loosing the charm instantly for the movie after this scene.


5. poor handling of pre-climax and climax (specially the riots related scenes and the ones in which bachchan father and son are talking to each other, why did we need that scene???)

Thought of the Day

Good things happen, cherish them before they are gone because nothing lasts forever; but hey, that's the case with bad things too...

Open Hack 2009 concludes

Wow.. what an event!!! I had amazing last two days. Thanks to all who joined us at the event. The excitement that all the participants showed was awesome. One hacker came to me and i could see his desperation. He was ready to pay "any" amount of money right way for a live windows hosting, all he wanted was an immediate activation. I hope atleast one of my suggested providers were able to help him. There were people hacking on maps, local, BOSS, fireeagle, messenger and what not. Few students even had a hardware hack using a h/w called Sun Spot (aah, is the name right?). Free food, tea/coffee, cold drinks, beer and redbulls.. awesome was the only word in air! Most of the hackers were up whole night to get their ideas up and running, what a tempo!

It was really special one for me too. More so because i had few of my "very good" friends hacking on their ideas as well and we all had an awesome time. Last two days passed without any knowledge(we slept a little at odd hours) and now i can only long for more of that excitement and fun. Thank you Y!, we rock and i'm looking forward to the next blast...

See list of the hacks that were developed for this hackday (within 24 hr hackathon!!!).
See pics

How it changed?

Here i am sitting in my office @ night…
Thinking hard about life
How it changed from a maverick college life to strict professional life…...

How tiny pocket money changed to huge monthly paychecks
but then why it gives lesss happiness….

How a few local denim jeans changed to new branded wardrobe
but then why there are less people to use them

How a single plate of samosa changed to a full Pizza or burger
But then why there is less hunger…..

Here i am sitting in my office @ night…
Thinking hard about life
How it changed…..

How a bike always in reserve changed to bike always on
but then why there are less places to go on……

How a small coffee shop changed to cafe coffee day
but then why its feels like shop is far away…..

How a limited prepaid card changed to postpaid package
but then why there are less calls & more messages……

Here i am sitting in my office @ night…
Thinking hard about life
How it changed…..

How a general class journey changed to Flight journey
But then why there are less vacations for enjoyment….

How a old assembled desktop changed to new branded laptop
but then why there is less time to put it on……….

How a small bunch of friends changed to office mate
But then why we always feel lonely n miss those college frnz.….

Here i am sitting in my office @ night…
Thinking hard about life
How it changed….. How it changed……..

[PS: This is a forwarded mail and sorry i'm not aware of the source]

Up and running on a new rootshell.be a/c

So few of my friends are planning to attend Y! India hack day scheduled on 14-15th Feb 2009. They just requested a free rootshell.be a/c and thanks to the guys there, they had a free a/c to play with within few hours (Thanks to Xavier and his team at rootshell.be again).

We hit a small problem while hosting our application there. First of all the files we created were not having the right access permissions. Second, rootshell has default configurations to append a little tracking scripts from google to every page that is served from its servers. Now we had problem with this because YAP (Y! application platform) tries to validate a domain by fetching a static file uploaded with some specific content onto the target server. We were getting screwed here because of that small tracking script. This is how we resolved the two issues.

1. All files in ${HOME}/html folder were given 755 permissions so that apache could read and execute them (umm well most of their stuff is going to be dynamic, so uhh you know...).


2. We added a .htaccess file in ${HOME}/html folder to change some of the default settings. The portion that helped us get rid of the tracking script is as follows:
   
   LayoutMerge Off
   LayoutDefaultHandlers Off
   


3. Provide 755 permission to .htaccess file as well so that apache can read it. Else it will be throwing "403 forbidden" errors

But, this is just part of the .htaccess configuration. If you are writing a .htaccess file, it is recommended that you search on Y! Search for tutorials on what all you should take care of. That's all for now. Will keep updating as we go on.

BTW everybody is invited to the Y! India hack day. There are limited seats and final participation will be by confirmed invitation only. So what are you waiting for, go book your seat before they are gone... :-)