Plethora

I've been meaning to blog lately, but the problem is exactly that, I don't know what to blog...

I was disconnected for a few hours from the outside world as, again, the curse of the red cellphone descended upon me. Though I must admit, that it was a lot different this time. There were no Prosmetics, no kids in cool gear, nor any motorcycle wala, neither any handguns...

Just a plain old mini-bus and lots of people stuffed in it, and I was one of them.

Though I was the chosen one, to lost my phone yet again...

With this phone goes my companion in long and electricity-less nights, the FM radio. The GPRS, with all the games and ring tones I had downloaded and the hours that I have billed on to Warid people, all go down the drain.

This was the third cell. Maybe I oughta call up the Guinness Records people now...

Why Materazzi earned Zidane's headbutt...

Italy's Marco Materazzi finally disclosed what exactly he said to incur the wrath of Zinedine Zidane during World Cup 2006 Final. During an interview, he told Gazzetta dello Sport:

"When I held Zidane's shirt, he said: 'If you want, I'll give you the jersey later.'"

"I responded that I preferred his sister, it's true," Materazzi said.

"It wasn't something nice, true. But luckily there have been dozens of players who have confirmed that a lot worse things are said on the field."

Seems like Materazzi also has Pakistani leacher tendencies, always referring to other people's sisters and mothers... Any self-respecting man would be proud to execute that headbutt!

Go Zidane!

Source: Yahoo! Sports

Environmentalists Alert!

The people of Karachi who have no semblance of placid natural environment in the city, yet again are being deprived of another natural asset, and nobody is concerned enough to keep a check on this atrocity. Yes, the pond that came into existence under the FTC bridge thanks to the incessant rain, is drying up fast. None of the conservation bodies are interested in this issue, so it becomes our duty to save our city's environment.

Just think of it... This pond offers a fantastic view when you take the turn from FTC towards Kala Pul. In addition to this it will also kill a whole generation of mosquitoes, that we have so lovingly bred on puddles and our blood. So I suggest that we get mobilized over atrocity, and work together to SAVE THE POND!!

Blogger Babes

It turns out Blogger beta isn't a wasted effort at all! For one thing, you get the "dog" (looks to me so) replacing the B of the Blogger. I realized only today that using the beta is a privilege accorded only to a few lucky ones (I didnt notice because privileges are so natural for me *snicker*).

As I said somewhere, it is good for the non-tech people, as it uses those AJAX enabled snippets to arrange layouts according to the user's taste. The general population (who doesn't even have the desire) wouldn't now have to get their hands dirty with HTML and CSS. Adding custom code for statistics is just drag-and-drop, keeping the flow intuitive.

Close to hell for us techies, 'cause you cannot live if you cannot customize; and that's just what Blogger doesn't let us do at the moment.

The better thing is that, with the beta release, Blogger marks the shift to the dynamic web. Wonder why it has taken them so long, all the rest of the services are long established on it.

By dynamism of the web, I mean that you no longer have to publish your blog every time you make a change in the template. Old blogger used to publish pages of your blog to its server, and serve the appropriate pages whenever a request arrived. With the beta, the pages would be created on the fly, no more publishing.

All the bitching was due to the fact that I had recently delved into the Blogger codebase, and had come up with really interesting tricks like customizing the individual pages, recent comment box on the sidebar, intuitive layouts; and then *poof*... Blogger beta strips me of any right to modify my template.

These snippets are available if any of the old Blogger people (or the beta users who haven't switched to layouts) want them for their blogs.

The Craze Beta

What is with everyone coming up with the beta editions of their offerings these days? Starting with Gmail Beta, we get Windows Live Mail Beta, Yahoo! Mail Beta, Yahoo! Photos Beta, Flickr Beta, and now, sweet Blogger goes beta too!

For many services, going beta just means getting AJAX-ified, with little or no improvement in features (Windows Live Mail leads the contest), only getting a face-lift and incorporating oh-those-cool-functions on the page that have nothing whatsoever to do with cutting the round trip time...!

With a sense of loyalty to the technology and the tech community (not to mention the need to be the first in trying things out - izzat ka maamla), I have officially switched to the new Blogger Beta. Switched - 'cause, ummm, beta could be exciting; officially - 'cause Blogger Help says you cannot opt out of the Beta!

So what does this beta has to offer over the old version? For one, the "privileged ones" now have a separate, red carpeted entrance at http://beta.blogger.com. Ordinary mortals should stick to their filthy swamps and keep using the lowly Blogger home page to log in.

The Blogger people have added support for tags - or "labels" as they call them. Der ayed durust ayed is the only thing that comes to mind.

And there is this supposedly cool Layout feature, that help you manage the "template" of your blog. Beware, the "template" word is hushed now, if you're cool, you'll have a layout.

So the layouts help users "drag and drop" widgets, or little snippets (previous posts, profile, description etc) on the page. Intuitive it is, but couldn't achieve its full potential until the "Edit HTML" option starts working. Gives us "power users" that creepy feeling of helplessness!

That means my little blog page has some AJAX elements in it. How I have been dying to have a little Ajax, that would keep my dishes clean... Who said God doesn't listen?!

Oh, and by the way, you'll have to comment by choosing the "Other" or "Anonymous" option on the comments page, your logged in nick wouldn't work here. Of course, what did you think? Its Beta!

Besides that, all the functionality is unchanged. They have tried to spruce up the Dashboard a little, with cramming the various blog-specific options, and the Blogger Buzz posts. Heck, they even forgot to fix the bug that occurs in the Rich Text Editor that it doesnt convert line breaks to hard line breaks :\ So it'd be better to stick to posting via e-mail!

Buss ooper say make-up kiya hai, under the hood its all the same!

Returning to the Craze Beta, I forgot to tell you: Flickr has gone a step ahead, its now Flickr Gamma!

And that gives an excuse for procrastinating office work too. Whenever somebody wants to take you to task, just claim that you've gone beta!

Sm**ing the night away...

Meeting with an important client in the morning, and I have just smoked the night away...

Rings and smoke and despair, acting as a warm blanket over me, taking me in their arms, cajoling me, killing me. Must get around it somehow, the day is already doomed.

Blogger Reds

There seems to be (yet again?) a problem with my Blogger template. It somehow magically decided to just fly away, leaving me with a bunch of useless code. The backup of my customized template was in my puked up PC, which refuses to connect to the LAN.

So I have uploaded a temporary template, a very stripped down version. But hey, it would load faster, isnt it?

Bear with it for a few days. I'll bring up a rocking new template!

Sending mail with System.Web.Mail (.Net 1.1)

If you thought that it was a serious shortcoming that .Net framework 1.1 wasn't able to send email through SMTP servers that used authentication, you are in grave ignorance. On the surface of it, yes, you cannot send an email with the standard System.Web.Mail.MailMessage class; but you can of course play tricks on the Exchange server (yeah, that's what I get out of it that this things works only on an Exchange server) to make it authenticate you.

There is a namespace called http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration that does those funny (and highly interesting) tricks. First we would check how to use a simple SMTP server (no authentication), and then we will use authentication to send a message.

//using System.Web;
//using System.Web.Mail;

//The simple SMTP Server
MailMessage message = new MailMessage();
message.From = "src@someone.com";
message.To = "dest@someother.com";
message.BodyFormat = MailFormat.Html;
message.Subject = "This is a spooky mail!";
message.Body = "Heheh, just kidding!";

SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "your.server.address"
SmtpMail.Send(message);

Now lets check out a server that uses authentication. Microsoft provides the CDOSYS object to achieve just that. You wouldn't think they were so dumb that they didnt incorporate some lousy authentication mechanism! Add the following lines before the SmtpMail lines.

message.Fields[
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver"
] = "your.server.address";
message.Fields[
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport"] = 25;
message.Fields[
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing"] = 2;
message.Fields[
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpauthenticate"] = 1;

//Most of the times the @domain is necessary with the username
message.Fields["http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername"] = "username@domain.com";
message.Fields[
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword"] = "urpassword";

//If only the server uses SSL, in this case, the smtpserverport field would be different too
message.Fields["http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpusessl"] = true;


And that would do just fine. There you go, I just saved your time and money!

[P.S. To those whom these lines look like Greek, I must say that this post appears as a record!]

The day

It inches near, slowly but confidently, until it's looming right on our faces.

I know I should be happy, *must* be happy, but I dont know. Our wishes are about to be granted, we are finally going to achieve what we're striving for the last three years, but I don't know. There's a big smile plastered across my face, but I don't know. People think I am the luckiest man on earth, but I don't know.

I wouldnt know it until I learn to overcome my shortcomings. Isnt the first step in problem-solving the identification of the problem? I have taken the first step, I need help through the rest. I dont want to feel I am trying for everything without any rewards. I dont want to be left alone.

I was an introvert, maybe somewhere deep inside I still have the tendencies, but I am trying to come out of it. I cannot be at gregarious the very next moment, it should be a gradual process.

I feel miserable, but I am shedding my skin. I am changing, and I want people to appreciate.

I accept my mistakes, and of those who are related to me. In no way I'd do anything to hurt anyone, nor I'd indirectly encourage any such activity. People have the tendency to misunderstand situations, and things do not always go exactly by our wishes.

Still, I love you, and I dont want you to feel alone.

So girl, welcome, officially, to my life. We are an irresistable team, and we will always be. Thanks for making my life technicolored!

It'll just take some time!

On my player and my lips these days:

Raghav, Lets work it out

So we had another date another fight
you break down, and cry
and you swear that its over
it seems you pack your bags like every night
girl I know inside
we can be so much more
but..
everytime the smallest thing goes wrong you're out the door
you dont wanna deal with this pain anymore
why dont you understand that some things wont come so easy in life
work with me girl, it'll just take some time!

I'm not letting go
yeah girl thats for sure
wont catch me walking out
so okay, lets work it out!

at every single point you turn around
say I've let you down
that I no longer know you
how can you say to me that I've lost my way
when you're walking away

Once again here we go through that old procedure,
you scream that it's over between us
but I don't believe ya, (nah)
what you want an argument? well I aint speakin'
we come too far now, 'n i aint leaving
and if we got a problem let's get on top (of it)
we aint gotta (split), we can conquer (it)
but we gotta quit over reacting
imagine just last night we're romancing
false passion now we be clashing
i dunno what's happened, you go on a tantrum
as a man I'm making the first move,
u know i never do nuthin to blatantly hurt you,
we got a situation to work through
but patience is a virtue, well baby it takes two,
so..

I'm not letting go
yeah girl thats for sure
wont catch me walking out
so okay, lets work it out!


....

Armageddon

Yes, it will be armageddon tomorrow. The final battle between truth and falsehood, the good and the bad, the bad and the ugly, the ugly and the horrifying... Uhh whatever!

Tomorrow is the last paper of my last finals. The course was called Operations Research, something that I hated with a vengeance. Well it isnt only with OR that I have a problem, but with all maths-related courses. No matter what amount of time and effort I put into practice, the final exam NEVER went well. Woh to ALLAH ka shukar hai ke I havent flunked in any of them, managed to save my face (beizzati kharab hotay hotay reh gayee bus), and my grades.

But kismat plays amazing games with our lives. Now it will be a final showdown tomorrow, my chance to have a last laugh facing my nemesis. Pray to God I be successful in my endeavour. This David should slay the Goliath tommorrow!

Wish me luck!

Worldcup funny/ridiculous jerseys award!

I have been busy with my exams, and of course, the world cup. Though I am not getting enough time to follow all the matches, I usually manage to catch some of the interesting ones.
The World cup is in full swing. It is an honour for any player to wear his national colours on a world cup pitch, but hey, what were the designers of the jerseys thinking?
Here are my favourite funny/ridiculous national jerseys of teams that we see in action:

On 7th place is the 'design' of the world cup. I seriously dont have an idea of who ever came up with this design, a white looping out of the neck and burying itself somewhere in the armpits...

Next at 6th place is the Italian Away jersey. I admit it looks cool on the mannequin, but in action, the V of the neck is a little too-low, drooping like a well-worn V-neck sweater!

Whoever thought of draping Paraguay in their national colours, obviously was sleep-deprived. The jersey looks like a sleeping gown! Well-deserved for 5th place!

At number 4 is the Netherlands with their away shirts. I must say, retro is definitely not in. Seems to me they lifted the design straight out of a Boris Becker tee.

There was stiff competition for the last three places, but their are shirts more ridiculous than the ill-fitting Mexican shirts. How on earth would people feel wearing THAT shirt? The designers obviously forgot testing how the 'thing' would look on their players.

Giving a pretty hard time to the judges was the France Away jersey at No. 2. Though the base design of this jersey is pretty neat, the bold spectrum that runs on the chest makes the jersey looks like an ill-designed Flash presentation. Is it necessary to get so different as to make a mockery of yourself?
And the most funny/ridiculous World Cup jersey award goes to.....

ANGOLA!

The Home jersey bears the colours of the flag of Angola, with black representing the African nations, the red depicting the blood of the Africans that died fighting for their homelands, and the yellow stands for something in their flag. All is well, but who asked you to keep the base colour RED?


So that was the World Cup's most funny/ridiculous jerseys awards, tune in again for another set of awards soon!

Errm...

Though I didnt comment, and never said anything even after you reminding me so many times, but since you know I was tangofying you the whole time means...

You were looking great!

Thanks for yet another great cake :)

The Cake Factory

Check out the new Cake Factory... Konsa pasand aya? Do I want to place an order? Oh I just might, I want to order.. umm... the cake maker! ;) Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks for everything :D

Birthday Boy

Indebted to all my friends and loved ones for making this birthday a really memorable one :) A large part of the day went seeing me loll around but then, what the heck? It was a good day and it always is!

Thanks abba for the excellent dinner
Thanks cb for the gelatos
Thanks to my people for filling a void, oh that was a cellphone :P
How can I forget my friends, I am lucky to have you people around me :)

• - one has promised to bake a cake for me
• - another wouldnt bake one for me, cuz she doesnt know how to 'cook', she put up a picture of the cake for me though
• - yet another one has promised to buy me a Mclaren when she starts earning enough
• - and the last one checks me up if my nose is running :P

And then thanks to the rest who wished me luck, and made my day!

PS: There's still time, if you didnt know it was my birthday, you can still wish me...

Happy Birthday :)

YEEGA DEEGA DEEGA HEEGA DEEGA HOO DEEBA LEEGA HEEGA PEEGA DEEBA HOO JINGA LINGA HINGA PINGA BINGA PINGA BUU IT'S UR BIRTHDAY N I'M CUMING TO U .... :)

...

Into my dreams you came

and across the soft carpet of my reverie you walked

with hobnail boots...

I seriously wouldnt give a f...

Why Blogspot got banned....

I was puzzled at first, but while posting a comment on Evil Dan's blog, it dawned on me just why Blogspot was banned...

Check out the Word Verification Image for proof:


:P

There you go!

Abdullah :)

Vaanya - Taking pictures of herself :P

Something mischievious?

The P&G people had postponed the interviews because we were having our mids. Not that that would've made any difference to me, but some of the more parhakoo peers had protested on the interview schedule. Now the interview is scheduled on May 23, next Tuesday.

I have been offered a place at the University of Essex. Isnt that exciting?!!! The International Officer was wholly impressed by me, as, uh ofcourse, I was at my charming best *winks*

The semester starts in October. Lets see if I take it up or not. And this was one of the main reasons I wasn't interested in P&G, but lets wait and see what comes out of it. I think I am gonna discuss it with the P&G people. Or maybe not.

Oh and did I tell you I am deeply in love with Soha Ali Khan, with her most stylish dresses in Rang De Basanti. I am rarely impressed by actresses, but she scores a large one with me.

*aankhon mein heart wala emoticon*
Go Soha Go!