Little things I do.

Spectacular Fall

2009-10-12T00:12:00.006+05:30

I had seen fall foliage only in movies before. It looked awesome, but it looks better in real. If you don't believe it, allow me to show you some pictures taken by me. (Note that these are taken by an amateur photographer with a point and shoot camera):

Phishing – how easy(hard) is it to detect?

2009-06-14T01:51:00.002+05:30

I thought phishing was yesterday’s phenomenon. But lately I’ve been getting a lot of emails trying to “phish” me. And to be honest, I fell for it the first time and ended up giving my eBay account username and password. Haven’t seen any damage as the consequence of that so far, hopefully won’t - in the future.

So, how easy or hard is it to detect the fraudulent emails trying to sell you Viagra or Rolex watches or asking your hotmail password or asking eBay item description etc. If you spend 15 seconds flat looking at the email, I say it’s as obvious as an elephant in the room. I’ll take the example of email I just got. Here’s the email:

Here’s what the actual emails I normally get from eBay looks like:

So what did I mean by you can detect it in 15 seconds? Here’s what:

I don’t have any item unpaid (no brainer). Although this might not be so obvious if you buy a lot of items and don’t pay immediately.
I don’t use eBay UK.
I don’t use the email address I got that email on, on eBay.
The fake email doesn’t contain my eBay username, real name, not even my email id. It was sent to my university’s group emails.
The link given in the fake email goes to this link: http://c5gi-bay.ucoz.co.uk/ShowBayDispute/Unpaid-item/index.htm (I’m not sure if this link is still up or not), which obviously is not an eBay url, although it looks like one. By the way, as you might have guessed, the page at this link looks exactly the same as the actual eBay login page.
The buttons like ‘Register’ and other links on that page don’t work. Only thing that works is the ‘Login’ button. You know why.
The actual email contains links to a lot of things (like user agreement, fraud protection, ip addresses if required etc). But the fake email contains only one link which directs me to the login page. So either the person who’s trying to “phish” me is too lazy or (s)he doesn’t want me to waste time looking around and wants me to give my password and id as soon as I see the email.

Although, that seems like a lot of things to notice, you don’t have to notice all of them to smell something’s wrong. One or two should suffice. That’s my two cents for today. Have a nice summer!

How long will we have to bear with the retro-designed Nepali sites?

2008-12-31T23:30:00.008+05:30

Disclaimer: I haven't done any extensive research while writing this. There are some well designed Nepali sites, no denial about that. But in this post I've taken two news sites viz. ekantipur.com and nepalnews.com (which incidentally are the top two Nepalese sites I visit) and written what I don't like about them and their designs. Needless to say, I can't expect everyone to agree to my opinions, more so when I'm talking about something as abstract as design and aesthetics.

To me the sites I’m talking about have oh-so-90s look. Hence the term retro-designed. Haven’t Nepalese web designers heard about the Web 2.0 yet? or is it the companies that are hiring the crap designers and programmers to build their sites?

Firstly, ekantipur.com - the official site of Nepal's no. 1 media house, Kantipur Publications. This is how the site looks like currently, as of 28 Dec, 2008 (clicking on the picture should take you to the large res version of the screenshot – this applies to other images too):

First of all, as soon as I visit this site, I notice that it’s using the serif font to display the main news. General rule of thumb says that you should use the sans-serif fonts for the sites. Personally I find that to be true, too.
Look at the inconsistent size, family, weight of fonts all over the place. All you can say is the designer is doing a horrible job.
If you haven’t noticed, the ekantipur site recently changed the main page theme slightly. But it seems like they just changed the index page. As soon as you go one link deep, you get the same old layout.
Why the hell is that NEW below the main logo blinking? Doesn’t that blinking distract you? And where is the content after NEW? What’s NEW? (update: the hidden content seems to have been fixed now).
The part of the page not visible in this screen is even awful, really awful.
The ekantipur.com logo isn’t clickable. We generally expect that to be clickable and take us to the home page.
Why aren’t they using the favicon? I think favicon these days is a big visible clue about the site we’re visiting. When I visit the site without one, that’s the first thing I notice.
The title of the homepage is ekantipur.com. What? Doesn’t that sound like the name of the site itself? and all lower-cased? Thank god the title wasn’t ‘Untitled Document’.
The site's still using kantipuronline.com to host all its contents. ekantipur.com is just a frame that gets the content from former. I don't see a point doing that. (thanks to Basu for reminding me this).

Now, nepalnews.com. This site has been around since 90s. Sometimes I wonder why isn’t this site offline yet. Most of the content, with the design itself, is way dated. Here’s how it looks now (as of 28 Dec, 2008 ):

Okay, this site has informative title, favicon, uses sans-serif fonts. But that’s about the good things about it.
The design of this site hasn’t been changed in years. Web has evolved so much in the past decade and you don’t bother even to change layout in a decade?? Something’s not right. Here’s how this site looked on July 2, 2005:

and it looked something like this on Oct 2, 2003 (some images including the logo couldn’t be fetched for this date, if we could get them, I’m sure it looked exactly the same as above):
More than half the content in the front page are advertisements, that too picture ads. That becomes worse due to the fact that most of the ads are either awfully designed or blinking or both.
The fonts size are same all over the place. In a news site, we expect some news to be given importance over others. All the news can’t have same importance. Indicate that somehow!
As I said earlier, some of the contents is just left there. I can see the CA polls result at the top of the site. I don’t care about that anymore, do you? I watched all the results live on TV for god’s sake. Move that to archive or something. Hey I even see the SLC 2062 results there, haha.
The nepalnews.com logo - can you make it better? I suppose you can. At least I can.
Why do they try to cramp everything in one page? The home page has too many contents about too many things.
There’s a page counter at the bottom saying it was visited a zillion or something times. I don’t care how many times a page was visited, just give me a better site. I don’t believe that anyway. All this reminds me of is the Geocities pages in early 2000, that used to have all kind of colorful counters.

So that was my rant about how and why I don’t like these sites and at the same time keep on visiting them for the news, tens of times daily. And today I don’t know why, I visited Kantipur FM site and thought man, this site needs a mention too. So here’s the honorary mention:

All I can say about this site is ‘crap’, you’ll know why when you visit the site. Hey did you notice luckily my city Nepalgunj popped up on that incessantly flashy flash animation. And btw, if you don’t know that already, you can now finally listen to the Kantipur FM live online.

After all that, if you’re wondering what I consider to be a well designed news site, here’s what I think is an example of good design – bbc.com. no-nonsense, simple, informative, clear, customizable. That’s what Web 2.0 is about, I guess.

Update on Oct 12, 2009 -

eKantipur.com and Nepalnews.com have since changed their layout. eKantipur does look a lot more professional and cleaner now, whereas Nepalnews.com basically looks the same.

Is Feminism stereotyped?

2008-12-23T17:50:00.002+05:30

‘Are you a feminist?’ she asked.

The temperature was in minuses outside and was raining. What could be the better time than that to enjoy the sip of hot coffee, isn’t it? I was holding a cup of black coffee and sitting on a table. I don’t know why I sit on the table instead of a chair or why I sleep on a sofa instead of a bed, just don’t know. Anyways, that question certainly didn’t dissolve well in my coffee cup. So I asked back ‘What?’

‘Are you a feminist?’ she didn’t bother to paraphrase her question. As much I love the yes-no questions in the exams, I hate them in real life. I think these types of questions are kind of confrontational sometimes. So I tried to evade ‘I don’t know.’

‘Come on, say yes or no. How can you not know that? You are a grad student, for god’s sake.’

‘Okaay, I think I’m not.’ had to give in.

‘So you’re an androcentrist.’

‘What? Hell no. I do believe in gender equality.’ I retorted.

The next thing I knew, she was reading the first line from the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism aloud. It said ‘Feminism is a belief in the right of women to have political, social, and economic equality with men’. I had nothing at all to dissent about on that definition of feminism. Jeez, So I have been a feminist all my life and didn’t even know that?

Now I had to explain why didn’t I like to call myself a feminist despite agreeing with the notion of feminism. I said I don’t think anyone today would think that men are superior; women shouldn’t be treated equally be it socially, politically or economically. So then virtually everyone’s a feminist. But she gave an example saying there are people, and a lot, who do think (might not be blatant, though) that women shouldn’t be treated on par with men. One of the examples was - the politicians in Nepal trying to elude the topic of women’s rights to hereditary property. Now the bill regarding that has been passed, it still isn’t as simple as - if there are two children, one girl and one boy, in a family then 50% property is boy child’s and rest 50% is of girl child’s. And yes, that was true. It was a valid point. So the conclusion, not everyone’s a feminist.

Now back to the point, why don’t I like calling myself a feminist? While trying to answer that question, I realized that I never knew the dictionary meaning of ‘feminism’. All I had on my mind was an image of a stereotypical feminist. I don’t know what you think, but whenever I think of a typical feminist I think of a woman climbing on top of the Prithvi Narayan Shah’s statue in front of Singh Durbar and chanting the slogan ‘we need 50% quota for women’ - her left hand clutching the statue’s crown preventing her from falling and right hand holding a red flag. I know that’s exaggerated, but hope you got the point. And I certainly can’t imagine myself doing that in the foreseeable future.

So I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t my fault. The feminism has definitely been stereotyped and the stereotyped definition doesn’t exactly match that in the dictionary. And it’s not the dictionary definition that most of us relate it to.

With that I sighed and took a sip of coffee. Holy crap, it was so cold already. ‘Can you make me another cup of coffee?’ I requested.

‘No I can’t. Can’t you make coffee for you by yourself?’

‘Of course, I can’ I said getting up. ‘Damn it, I forgot I was talking to a feminist’ I murmured.

[First published on Facebook Notes on 22 December 2008]
[Then published on The Himalayan Times on 25 December 2008]

No, this blog hasn't been deserted !!

2008-12-13T22:35:00.000+05:30

Guys, if you by any chance happened to stop by this blog and thought 'Holy crap, one more no-more-active blog?', then you're not being illogical. After all some random posts (or you may call them something else, if you like) here and there and not a single post or no activity whatsoever on the blog for last 2 months...well, if I were you I'd think the same.
But I haven't deserted this blog just yet. Actually I've been very busy with my studies lately. First semester in US, I gotta be, isn't it? But you know that's just an excuse, because if I can watch 3 freaking hour long movie, watch same damn video clip of Russel Peters over and over again in Youtube (although I have the whole DVD torrent downloaded right on my computer), comment on Facebook just for the sake of it, then can't I write a blog entry? Oh well, you got me. I'm too lazy to write anything or in general, too lazy to do anything useful.
And you're seeing this post now just because I should have been doing something more useful than this. I have final exams tomorrow and no, I haven't studied anything yet.
Damn, it ain't easy being a grad student.

All (well... almost) the great people in one place.

2008-10-24T10:38:00.006+05:30

I had got this picture in one forwarded email. Don't know who created it (If anyone knows the creator, please tell me - I'll accredit it). But it's a great picture. Almost everyone in the history of humankind that changed the path of history at one place, amazing.
And by the way, you could test your 'ability to recognize people' using this picture. I can recognize most of 'em :).

An excerpt that touched my heart.

2008-09-30T07:45:00.016+05:30

Do you ever feel very emotional after reading a single paragraph. Well, not often. I often feel like that when I'm reading a novel and the movies. But this one paragraph was simply awesome. The emotions may have been compounded because I'm away from my home and I have a brother, I don't know. I read this text on CodingHorror, where author is excited about being a father and says "I'm looking forward to stocking our unborn child's mind with all my insane, crazy ideas."
And this is the excerpt from Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, describing a road trip he took with his younger brother after the death of his parents:

His brain is my laboratory, my depository. Into it I can stuff the books I choose, the television shows, the movies, my opinion about elected officials, historical events, neighbors, passersby. He is my twenty-four-hour classroom, my captive audience, forced to ingest everything I deem worthwhile. He is a lucky, lucky boy! And no one can stop me. He is mine, and you cannot stop me, cannot stop us. Try to stop us, you pu**y! You can't stop us from singing, and you can't stop us from making fart sounds, from putting our hands out the window to test the aerodynamics of different hand formations, from wiping the contents of our noses under the front of our seats.

We cannot be stopped from looking with pity upon all the world's sorry inhabitants, they unblessed by our charms, unchallenged by our trials, unscarred and thus weak, gelatinous. You cannot stop me from telling Toph to make comments about and faces at the people in the next lane.

It's unfair. The matchups, Us. v. Them (or you) are unfair. We are dangerous. We are daring and immortal. Fog whips up from under the cliffs and billows over the highway. Blue breaks from beyond the fog and sun suddenly screams from the blue.

I'm going to read this book as soon as I have some time to spare.

Procrastination, and rebuttals

2008-09-17T01:05:00.011+05:30

We all are victims of procrastination, some more often than others, and usually long before we know actually there is a word called "procrastination". When I knew the existence of that word, I realized that I wasn't the only one doing it.
By now I know that postponing things for future is never a good idea and it always backfires.
Today I got an email which had all the 'excuses' leading to the procrastinating listed out. This email is specific about delays in dissertation writing, but the 'excuses' match to what we normally use. The email also lists out the rebuttal to those 'excuses', but I'll read and try to implement them later.
Anyways, here's the copy of email which I think is by Gina Hiatt and from http://academicladder.com/.

Ten Ways of Thinking that Lead to Writing Procrastination -and Rebuttals to Those Thoughts

* I need to warm up first by writing some email.
** Rebuttal: You can warm up by starting the work slowly, making a list of what you will do, reading over your notes or writing from yesterday.

* I'm not in a good mood and I don't write well when I'm not in a good mood - I'll do it later when I feel better.
** Rebuttal: Nothing will make you feel as good as getting something done. The main reason for your bad mood is that you don't really want to do this task, so getting it out of the way will feel great.

* Life is so hard - I can't believe I have to do this unpleasant task. I'll even it out by doing something more fun first.
** Rebuttal: Yes, life is hard, and it's terrible that you have to do this task. That's why you will reward yourself after you do the task. Otherwise you're applying backwards conditioning, which doesn't work. And don't forget to plan enough fun and relaxation time into your schedule.

* I'll definitely do it, in a minute or so
* Rebuttal: Set a timer, or that minute could last 2 hours. When the timer goes off, do the task. Even better, do it now!

* After this bad thing is over in my life (midterms, meeting, in-law visit, etc.) my life will seem easier and I'll be able to do my task on a daily basis. So I'll wait until then.
** Rebuttal: Life is always like this. You can afford to do 15 minutes of work today, can't you? This is the one small act you can do to make your life a little better.

* I just don't feel like it
** Rebuttal: So what? Do it anyway! If you wait until you feel like it, the task will get done in 10 years if you're lucky. They only way to make yourself feel like it is to get started and get into the flow of the work.

* Why do just a little today - I'll do double tomorrow - I work better when I feel pressure anyway.
** Rebuttal: It's a fallacy that you work better under pressure. It's not true, because anxiety reduces creativity and clear thinking. And doing double the next day will backfire. You will feel less like doing it tomorrow because you've decided you must do double the work, and it will seem more overwhelming and less appealing, so you're even more likely to put it off until the next day.

* I can only work in one place (the library, a café, my office) and that place isn't available or I can't get there - so there's no point in working at all.
** Rebuttal: You'd be surprised how much work you can get done no matter where you are. Even if you don't have your laptop with you, you can pull out a scrap of paper and write down a few notes on what you'd like to accomplish in the section you've been working on. Try it!

* I'm not sure how to do this - I don't know how sitting down and writing will enable me to do it -- it's just hopeless so why even start?
** Rebuttal: If you're not clear enough on what to do, writing may be the only way to get you out of this state. If you truly need help from someone else on this problem, you need to write down the questions clearly. The process of writing them down may clarify the issue for you.

* I didn't write well yesterday, so today will be terrible.
** Rebuttal: Often bad writing days are followed by better ones. The reason to write daily is that your brain is still plugging away on it while you're doing other things or sleeping. So you may surprise yourself today!

First Week in US.

2008-08-21T14:56:00.005+05:30

It's been just over a week since I entered US. I just jotted down some of the observations I've made in this time. Some may seem obvious, some not-so-obvious. Anyways, the bulleted list follows:

They drive in the right lane. It might seem obvious, but if you think about it again, it actually isn't. I mean whoever carried the first car all the way from Europe to the US and decided that he'd drive that thing in the opposite side of the road must be crazy. We should thank Americans they didn't make watches rotate in the opposite direction.
They generally drive fast, >60 kph maybe. And there ain't any traffic jams.
They normally stop their vehicle and let you cross the road even if you haven't really started crossing the path.
They follow the traffic rules very strictly (haven't seen a traffic police yet). They have to do so, don't they? Otherwise they'd keep crashing at that speed (as I mentioned earlier).
People are very often overweight. Girls are normally pretty and often hot.
Internet is very fast, >2 Mbps most of the time.
Most of the graduate students are either Chinese or Indian.
The ground floor is called the first floor. It took me years to convince myself that it should be called ground floor not the first floor (as we call it in Nepali), and now I have to start calling it first floor, again!
Residential apartments are generally made up of wood. I heard they are built in factories and just planted all over the place. The wooden houses are warm & kool, but it's awkward to make squeaky sound every time you walk on the floor, especially so when you have to go to the loo at night.
Its generally unsafe to walk alone at night. Its ironic that amidst all the violence and "insecurity" in Nepal, I didn't feel unsafe to walk at night there.
Incoming and outgoing calls/messages are charged and treated equally. It seemed very bizarre to me esp. after I've seen the Indian Virgin Mobile ads where you actually get paid for the "incoming" calls. Here you get messages (useful or not) and puff.. there go your $0.15 in the air.
I have a Korean neighbor in the apartment at the left side of my apartment, Chinese at the right side and some Indians right in front of me. Wherever you go, you'll find people of all color, height, build, accent etc. It seems like a place after hurricane where you'll find things of every type mixed together.

Concluding the Nepasoft chapter.

2008-06-15T10:48:00.013+05:30

Note sent by me bidding adieu to Nepasoft Solutions.

Here's the text:

Au Revoir !

684, Yes six hundred and eighty four days have gone by since my path led me into the precinct of Nepasoft. I still vividly remember Navin dai saying on the very first day '...we'll see how much fire in the belly you have.' I didn't really understand what that meant then. But I took it as an opportunity to challenge myself and I must admit that it wasn't a smooth ride all the way. Now as I feel it's time to rekindle and rejuvenate that fire, I'm parting my ways with Nepasoft Solutions, at least temporarily, to pursue my higher studies at WPI, Worcester, MA.
My incumbency here at Nepasoft has turned my enthusiastic amateurism into heedful maturity. I won't debate whether my days could've been more fruitful or not, because after all it was upto me to turn everything into my way, isn't it? But I'm heartily grateful to each and everyone for everything. Thank you managers, seniors, coevals and juniors for your warm and unreserved guidance, support and help throughout. And thanks to Hari dai as well for greeting me with a smile every morning. And thank you guys for sweating with me in scorching heat to fetch my team a bottle of coke at the end of chungi match ;).
Coincidentally, I have witnessed the historical changes and events fold and unfold in Nepal during this period from the rooftop of Nepasoft, literally. This coincidence also makes my tenure at Nepasoft more special.
Finally, the Earth is round for a reason. We'll end up crossing our paths even if we are headed in the opposite directions. So until we meet again, I'll remain ever reachable at <rabinkarki[at]gmail.com> and if you feel convenient using Facebook, search using that email or my name, if I'm not already in your friends' list. Adieu !

YouTube's new video player.

2008-06-09T12:48:00.009+05:30

Youtube launched its new video player few weeks (a month or so) back. But despite all my efforts to actually love it, I'm starting to dislike it. I'll tell you why.
It's always difficult to switch from one thing, which we already have been accustomed to, to a new thing. And it becomes more difficult if you find it hard to convince how the new thing is better than the older one.
Here're the screenshots of old and new YouTube players respectively:

As you see, the two players, not the football players :), have different-looking control bars. So far so good. I am not complaining here about that alien-looking control bar instead of ole, bulky but familiar control bar. But my grudging starts as soon as I start using the player. First of all, I miss that back (or restart) button badly. I don't think the bandwidth available in most of the places in Nepal is blazingly fast. So in slower bandwidth, I found it preferable to pause the video somewhere, let it load and then restart the video. The back button was also handy when I opened many videos in different tabs and loaded them simultaneously. It served two tasks, first it paused the video and second, it reset the seek slider to the beginning. And now puff, all of the sudden the button's gone. That's not fair.
Then comes the seek bar itself. In the old player, I never had problem sliding the seek to wherever I liked. But now in the so called new player, I have problem sliding 80% of the time. Maybe it's still in the test phase. Then again the 'beta' tag has already been removed. So it's supposed to work perfectly, isn't it?
And how's that damn volume slider easier to navigate than the older one?? It's too sensitive to the mouse (don't like it) and worse it doesn't go away when I remove the cursor from it (most of the time I have to readjust the slider, just to hide the damn thing). And lastly it covers some part of the video as well. If something was going on there (there are things which are subtle, aren't they), how am I supposed to see that thing while I'm busy playing hide and seek with the slider.
Hey one more button is missing. I don't see the video sizing button. Where is it? Maybe hidden somewhere. I search the whole page, even the text, but can't find it. Finally admit that it's been removed. Why would they do so? To lengthen the seek bar? Not good enough reason. I always used it to check the original video quality. If video was too blur, I could always watch the video in original size.
They say that the new player automatically detects the bandwidth and streams the video accordingly. But couldn't you do that without distorting the UI?
I think it's time I resort to Greasemonkey scripts to get things done the old way.

Update (25 Oct 2008): Youtube's new video player is a lot better than it was at the time of this post.

I had the visa interview on May 9.

2008-05-11T12:35:00.005+05:30

Phew...
It was a long toiling journey to the point. Now as I've got the visa for USA, I have no reasons to regret about that travail.
Well, I got the visa on 9 May, 2008. My interview was scheduled at 8 AM. So amidst all the apprehension and self-assurance that I've got no reasons whatsoever to be denied a visa, I got up around 6 in the morning. By the way, Suresh called me up to wish me luck around quarter to six. Then Wagle dropped me off at the US Embassy at around 7.30. The entrance wasn't open yet, so had to wait for some time. Then after security checks, I entered into the actual interview waiting hall. There weren't too many people in the room at that time, were 7 to be precise, as I was in early. Then we had to give our documents and I-20 to them, then they take the fingerprints before the interview.
After waiting for about 15 mins I heard my name announced "Rabin Karki, Please come to the window no. 5".
So did I.
"Good morning, sir!".
"Good morning. So, Rabin, you've got full scholarship (or assistantship, don't remember exactly) for your study?".
"Yes, sir".
"What will you be studying?"
"Computer Science, sir"
(He wasn't really listening to my answers. Think he had already made up his mind)
"Which university are you going to?"
"Worcester Polytechnic Institute." (fumbled a bit while saying this).
"Never heard of it. Is it a good university?"
"Yes sir." (was ready to explain why and how, didn't need to)
He then passed my documents and the token below the window, which meant I will be issued a visa.
"Please come on Monday, 11 AM."
"Thank you sir."

That was it, finished by 8.30. Turned around, went straight to the room and then to the office.

After getting visa, I was surprised at myself because I didn't feel as much happy as I should have felt. As they say, expectation reduces happiness. As I mentioned already, I was very confident about it, so that must've been the reason for that. On the other hand if I hadn't got the visa, I would've been terribly sad, again for the same reason. So although you can't expect less when you can expect more, try to do so, Coz that will delight you a lot more if you get more than expected.

Bidding Gilly Adieu

2008-01-27T10:34:00.002+05:30

I started watching Cricket very late, from the 2003 world cup, to be precise. Until then I didn't understand what the game was about and what people enjoy about it. But surprisingly enough, I have developed very keen interest towards this game in such a short span of time that now I find it addictive to watch. I can watch it all day, even the test matches.
Having given that little background, the team that I've enjoyed the most watching playing is the Australian team. Call me a fan or whatever you like, but whenever there's a match on TV with the Australian team playing, you'll find me glued to the TV. I've shouted in excitement when Australia won the World Cup in 2007, felt very bad when their huge score was chased down by South Africa and have switched off the TV when they were out of the T-20 world cup last year. I have loved and enjoyed the bowling of Shane Warne, McGrath and Bret Lee, batting of Hayden, Ponting, Gilchrist and Clarke and fielding of Symonds, Clarke and Gilchrist. Although my friends who have watched and played the game from their early childhood have already witnessed the departing of many great players during the time, I'm just getting to know the sadness and feeling of gloominess when players I've loved depart.
When Warne and McGrath declared that they were retiring, I felt that the game will never be the same again. Today when I watch test matches, I sorely miss the duo. Now as I hear the sudden announcement of Gilchrist's retirement, I have the same sentiment prevailing in my mind that we're about to lose one of the greatest player in the history of Cricket. Coming to bat at no. 6 late in the order, we always expected that Gilly had something up his sleeve. When the team was collapsing, we thought that he'd bat and handle the situation whereas when the team was well off, we expected that he'd made some quick runs.
You'll find a lot of statistics all over the net that are more than enough to prove that the Gilly is the greatest Wicketkeeper/Batsman of all time. But we didn't watch him from that point of view. We watched him playing because we loved and adored his game and flair not his statistics.

So as Gilchrist bids farewell to the game, we can merely hope that someone who has the ability like his comes on to fill up the huge vacancy left behind by him. But I again say Cricket will never be the same again. There'll be no one who'd stand in the soaring heat with keeping gloves all day taking all sorts of catches and then come with the batting gloves to score the flashing century at the end of the day.
Goodbye Gilly and needless to say we'll badly miss you and the game of Cricket will badly miss you.

Life.

2007-08-04T02:48:00.004+05:30

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. We always nod our imaginary heads in agreement whenever we hear or think of that proverb, but couldn't agree more when I saw this picture. I found this picture somewhere in the internet. I don't know the source or the artist who created it, all I know is the title of this pic, i.e. 'Life', as that was its filename. But my silent admiration to the person who created this.

Displaying openwith dialog for unregistered extensions in VC++

2007-07-31T23:07:00.002+05:30

Our application has the Virtual Channel implementation. That implementation enabled us to open the files from terminal server directly in the client computer. I wrote the client terminal service AddIn dll in pure Visual C++. I had managed to open the files that had the extension registered in the client computer using the ShellExecute() function. This function returned error code SE_ERR_NOASSOC for unregistered extension, and I just displayed the error message saying 'There is no application associated this file type.You're screwed.' or something like that.
But the boss ordered me that there has to be an open with dialog, as the Windows does, for such file types. I searched the web for the solution (I don't remember the author), and after modifying my keywords some dozen times, finally got a solution. It actually implemented ShellExecuteEx() function, and passed 'openas' as the verb. So basically now the ShellExecute function has to be called twice, first with 'open' verb and then if it returns SE_ERR_NOASSOC, then execute it again with 'openas' as the verb. The code implementation looks like the following.


// Shell Action type enum
typedef enum
{
ShellActionDefault,
ShellActionOpen,
ShellActionEdit,
ShellActionOpenAs,
ShellActionProperties
} ShellActionType;

void OpenNewProcess(CHAR* szTempFileName)
{
INT returnValue;
returnValue = (INT)ShellExecute(NULL, //handle to the owner window
TEXT("open"),     //the verb, that specifies the action to be performed.
MultiCharToUniChar(szTempFileName),   //file or obj to perform the specified verb on
NULL,     //parameters, if file is an exe
NULL,     //default directory
SW_SHOWDEFAULT   //how the app is to be displayed.
);


//if errors occur then display the messages.
if(returnValue == SE_ERR_OOM || returnValue == 0)
{
ShowMessageBox("There is not enough memory to complete this operation.");
}
else if(returnValue == SE_ERR_NOASSOC)//if no application is associated with the current extension.
{
OpenProcessEx(szTempFileName, ShellActionOpenAs);
}
else if(returnValue == ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
{
ShowMessageBox(strcat(szTempFileName, " was not found"));
}
}

BOOL OpenProcessEx(CHAR* szFileName, ShellActionType actionType)
{
LPCTSTR workdir = NULL;
char* verb;

switch( actionType )
{
case ShellActionDefault:
 verb = NULL;
 break;
case ShellActionOpen:
 verb = "open";
 break;
case ShellActionEdit:
 verb = "edit";
 break;
case ShellActionOpenAs:
 verb = "openas";
 break;
case ShellActionProperties:
 verb = "properties";
 break;
}

SHELLEXECUTEINFO seInfo = { 0 };
seInfo.cbSize = sizeof(SHELLEXECUTEINFO);
seInfo.hwnd = NULL;
seInfo.lpVerb = MultiCharToUniChar(verb);
seInfo.lpFile = MultiCharToUniChar(szFileName);
seInfo.lpParameters = NULL;
seInfo.lpDirectory = workdir;
seInfo.nShow = SW_SHOWDEFAULT;

if( actionType != ShellActionOpenAs )
{
seInfo.fMask |= SEE_MASK_FLAG_NO_UI;
}

if( actionType == ShellActionProperties )
{
seInfo.fMask |= SEE_MASK_INVOKEIDLIST;
}

BOOL result = ShellExecuteEx(&seInfo);
return result;
}
//Converts a sequence of multibyte characters
//to a corresponding sequence of wide characters.
LPCWSTR MultiCharToUniChar(char* mbString)
{
int len = strlen(mbString) + 1;
wchar_t *ucString = new wchar_t[len];
mbstowcs(ucString, mbString, len);
return (LPCWSTR)ucString;
}

Chisapani Trekking

2007-06-26T11:52:00.001+05:30

We guys had gone to Chisapani trekking on 10^th Feb 2007. And had shot this video. I uploaded this video then to YouTube.
Now I thought of putting it in my blog as well. So here it is.

Africa, Hollywood and Blood Diamond.

2007-06-25T10:04:00.001+05:30

Yesterday, I watched the movie called 'Blood Diamond'. Set in the Sierra Leone Civil War in 1999, the film shows a country torn apart by the struggle between government soldiers and rebel forces and features Leonardo DiCaprio as Danny Archer in the leading role. It's a nice movie, very good one in fact. But today I am not writing the review of the film, rather am putting down the impulsive thoughts that came into mind after watching it.
In movie, Danny Archer once says that it is the rich people from the US, esp. the Hollywood celebrities who want a million dollar diamond ring for their engagement, that foster the conflict diamonds. That dialog really struck me and immediately I saw the vicious circle that has engulfed the Africa for many past decades.
Hollywood has been collecting millions of dollars worldwide depicting the wars & woes from around the African continent. Some examples are Black Hawk Down, Hotel Rwanda, Blood diamond itself, The Last King of Scotland, The Constant Gardener and many more. So the tribal and many other forms of bloodiest wars in Africa have been providing Hollywood with many blockbuster stories and will continue to do so.
So that makes Hollywood richer each day & leaves so called Hollywood stars with more money to spare than ever. Then one thing that is likely to get the most of the share of their spendings will be the diamonds & jewelery.
And back in Africa, where most people are still fighting with life just to subsist, some other groups are involved in deadliest, bloodiest & cruelest forms of wars and violence to gain access to the natural resources of Africa, so that they can fund their arms, atrocity and ferocity. So basically they are killing people just to kill more people. And provide Hollywood with more super hit stories.
This is just one perspective of the misery in Africa. Of course, there is one whole political side of the story too, again involving USA.

Office Night Shift.

2007-06-24T06:53:00.001+05:30

It's 6:30 in the morning. Finally, my week long night shift at Nepasoft finished today.
First time ever in my life, I have remained awake the whole nights.
Anyways, it was a new experience.

And btw, I just heard an ad of BBC Mobile News Alerts, and quite liked the one liner in the ad.
It was like 'Now you can find out who won the marathon while running marathon, even if you are still 10 km from the finish line.'
These days the advertisement guys come up with the really creative ideas, don't they?

First Salary/ies

2007-01-29T17:30:00.002+05:30

Got the first official (full) salary on 17 January, 2007, of Poush month. Feeling happy that I am earning on my own. But little resentment as well, because of the amount(less) of the salary.
Below is the salary sheets of the Poush followed by that of Mangsir.
Started working here as a full time developer from Nov 30. So 'present days' in the Mangsir month are only 12 days.

Subash Ko Poem

2006-10-11T11:43:00.001+05:30

समग्रमा पुल्चोक !
-सुबास घिमिरे उर्फ पण्डित
[खाना र खाजा]
सम्झिँदैमा अघाइने, पुल्चोकको मेसको खाना
होस्टेल नपुग्दै भोक लाग्छ, चाहे खाइयोस् डेढ माना ।
class जान हतार भए'नि, बाहिर लानै पर्छ थाली
झुक्किई छोडे भन्छन यो, हैन तेरो ससुराली¹ ।
खाजा खान'नि त्यै क्याफे, बस्नै पाउनु ठूलो कुरा
खाजा माग्यो बालै छैन, गफ गर्न सबै छुरा ।
अण्डा चाउचाउ फ्राइ र सुप, दिनै पिच्छे कति खानु
चर्को घाममा राँगो खान, पाटनढोका कसरी जानु ।
क्याम्पस हाम्रो भोका हामी, क्यै त पहल गर्नैपर्छ
हैन भने खाजा खान ताजमहल² झर्नै पर्छ ।

[सरहरु]
पढाउने preparation छैन भने, थर्काइ हिरो बन्दिए भो
viva लिन अल्छि लागे, objective test भन्दिए भो ।
photocopy दिन्छन् site टिपाउँछन्, मात्र छ course टार्नु
CIT मा खाली डमरु आउँछ, site ले मात्र के गर्नु ?
बुझाए लेखाउन्नन् लेखाए बुझाउन्नन्, क्लास् भित्रै निद्रा लाग्छ
student तान्ने कला छैन, attendance मा marks राख्छ ।
confidently लेखाए भने, बुक सारे भन्ने जाने हुन्छ
teacher मात्रै हैन अब यिनलाई, 'ज्युँदा manual' भने हुन्छ ।

[हामी (student) हरु]
भरसक class bunk गर्छन्, लिए साथमा एक पाना मात्र
देखिन्छन् २० तर attendance मा absent २/४ मात्र ।
वल्लो बेन्च - पल्लो बेन्च, खाली miss call हानी बस्छन्
अल्छि लागे ब्याग बोकी teacher कै सामु टाप कस्छन् ।
class नलिने पनि ल्याब आउँछन्, शायद teacher ले पेलेर हो कि
एउटै report सबैले सार्छन्, भन्छन् मन मिलेर हो कि ।
कि त assessment सार्छन्, कि त assessment मा सार्छन्
set फरक दिए पनि, साटेर एउटै पार्छन् पार्छन् ।
average भन्दा कराउँछन्, best of two त गर्नै पर्छ
average गरे teacher लाई 'नि, कसैको १३ नकट्ने डर छ ।
सुनिन्थ्यो फलानो batch, exam सारी india tour गयो अरे
सुन्छु यसपाली final पनि, best of two भयो अरे ।
सोल्टिहरु पढ्न छाडि, secondary चीजमै झुलिसके
पुल्चोक छिर्दा बोकेका सपना, शायद धेरैले भुलिसके ।
नपत्याए - चल्छ यसरी, झारो टारे झैं मात्र गरेर
भनी तिमी कुनै बिन्दासलाई, seriously सोधि हेर ।
भन्छ - पढ्नु त पर्ने रैछ, समय हुँदा ख्यालै भएन
certificate आखिर पाइहालिन्छ, knowledge नभए बालै भएन।

1. यो प्रसङ्गको बारेमा कवि सँग सोध्न सक्नुहुन्छ ।
2. campus अगाडिको छाप्रो ।

(farewell मा बाचित कविता)
सुवास घिमिरेको सौजन्यमा रविनको blog मा प्रकाशित ।

Farewell cum Dashain ko Subhakamana

2006-09-22T19:10:00.001+05:30

Still reminiscing the memories of the farewell 'party' two days back. lots to mention about the party. but as most of the happenings have already been published in the friends' blog, it'll be wiser to avoid the redundancy and write down the parts that have been missed elsewhere or at least which i think so.
Well, the it all began with a piece of wood (or it seemed so to me) handed over by TYT
(We didn't have the assessment of IS that day, did we?) & **.

Not much fun in the farewell party thenafter. Guys danced and sang.
Then we gathered around the CIT and the real fun started. Got a bottle of beer for each of us. Emptied whole bottle of beer for the first time. Ali Ali Jham Jham feel va thyo.
Ani ketaharu hard khayera jhyap huna thalyo. Especially Wagley was worth watching.
Madal thataiyo. Bihan haat dukhirathyo. Ketaharu ajhai tehi thhe. Ma ta 11.30 tira aayera hostel ma suten.
Ke Ke bhayo bhandaithe, tyo detail chahi ketaharu sangai sodhnuparchha.

PS: going home tomorrow.
Happy Dashain to all. See ya after the Dashain.

Free Download Manager

2006-09-21T18:11:00.001+05:30

I got an link urging to support FDM, so here I am doing so and providing its download link.

Free Download Manager

Fantastic Cartoons!

2006-08-03T10:30:00.001+05:30

i saw these cartoons on rajesh kc's site.
i think these are simply fantastic ones. so i couldn't resist to post these on the blog.

First ever post on a Blog!

2006-07-30T20:33:00.001+05:30

This is the first ever post on a blog.
Today, i created this blog.
Hopefully, i will use this to express and record my thoughts.
Not much to say now.

Today after almost a year(19 May '07) after creating my blog, I don't think I have done that.
Again hopefully I'll do that in the future, hopefully.