Mindful Musings

Today was one of those really strange days. I woke up with a bitter disdain for thesis. I knew that I had a bunch of personal errands to run and that was going to be my first priority. I have not gotten my brakes replaced since I bought my Honda a couple of years ago (it was a few years old back then and I still have the original shoes) The age of my brakes really bother me and the last I had them inspected was about a year ago when it was half shaved off. I figure I still have some time to go but brakes are a matter of being safe rather than sorry. Anyways, I had a coupon to get my oil replaced from Midas for $16 and I could have gotten my brakes looked at for free while I was there. However, I get most of my repair work done from an import car mechanics’ at Waterville and I am due for a 60,000 mile service for my car. In addition to that, I get my oil changed from a Valvoline at Perrysburg and I always use a synthetic blend which they carry (goes to 6000 miles instead of 3000). So rather than save a few bucks and get cheap oil and get fleeced by Midas, I decided to go to Perrysburg and get my oil change there. I will have to set up and appointment with Chris at Waterville Imports and get my service done sometime in the next few weeks. I will have to get a rental for the day (which is fine by me and Chris arranges for that as well) and I will ask them to replace the brakes if they are close to completely wearing out. The loss of a few millimeters of brake shoes is worth me having to go through this hassle again. I visited Doug (my old boss from Direct Computer) while I was at Perrysburg and we chatted for a while. Luckey had a good time playing with his son. Ever since I got back from our little excursion, I have been trying to get back into work and tweaking my crawler. I switch back and forth between my thesis and my code to keep my mind from falling asleep. Judging from the amount of productivity I have acheived today, tomorrow will be a busy day!

I needed to relax a little tonight and so I wrote a small crawler that checks the weblogs.com updated list for wordpress blogs and adds it to a database (among other information I will have fun with later :)) Here is the link to the latest count. It is small now, but wait for a few days (might be an erronous count because of the way get_meta_tags() works in php and really dissappointing, but I tried)!
It is broken for now, the time limit on David’s xml files makes debugging a little hard.

Do you think there would be any interest in a pre-hacked, pre-packaged version of WordPress (just like this blog) with this template thrown in? Would there be any interest in having me setup a WordPress blog (pre-hacked and packaged of course) for someone to just blog with and not worry about the code (or the setup on their server)? Would Matt and other WordPress devs be pissed at me?

.. should be a sport! I heard of this guy on NPR The HomeLess Blogger. I dont know whether to praise his versatility or criticize his dawdle! However, blogging is a wonderful form of entertainment for most of us and much like any other form of entertainment, we should have co-ed naked blogging! YEAH! How about a mountain climber blogging from atop the Alps on his cell phone or a guy writing an entry from the depths of the Bermuda Triangle? Thats enteratining blogs right there! Step aside Howard Dean, sir!
Know of any Extreme Bloggers?
PS: You notice my catch phrase is now “Co-Ed Naked Blogging”

What does a guy wear for an interview? I foresee a nice dress shirt of a sombre and respectable color, well pressed and groomed of course. A matching tie (preferably chosen by a significant other, as is in my case) and dark dress slacks which are neat and again, pressed. Shiny shoes are not a must, but raggety shoes are unacceptable, no matter how dressy they may be. My questions are raised at this point. Where does this accessorizing end? How does a guy look formal and respectable without looking too preppy or like a slob? In these winter months, is a regular winter jacket too taboo? Should we have to go the extra mile to obtain a dress overcoat? Is the suit a necessity? It is important to stress at some point that we are talking of programmers (though not for the “right out of college with shiny eyes” kind of position) being interviewed. I have had many interviews in the past 5 years where my choices have varied tremendously (I was naive, single and way too cocky back then) and my past experience does not count any more.

30 2% clark04.com 10 0.7% joe2004.com

At this point, I dont know what to think of these people. They are obviously simply accessing my blog (with some program or spider of course) to get their links some attention through referrer linkage (spamming in other words). It makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time!

PS: Some of these might be implemented already, please leave me some comments if you have figured them out already!

I would really like to be able to find (and add to my favorite reader) RSS feeds through Google. Considering the amount of stuff that Google stores about each link, auto-discovering RSS feeds and adding them to each link that is displayed on a search results page should be trivial. I have read about some work that was being done at Google with RSS feed searches and adding syndicated sites to news.google.com. However, that was some time ago and I have yet to hear anything contructive of it. RSS, in my opinion, really brings out the content and leaves riff raff aside. I really miss FeedDemon! (which supports autodiscovery and Blog This! using XMLRPC, from inside the program interface) Yahoo is headed in just the right direction with their RSS aggregator.

I would really like to be able to use Froogle to my advantage. That site needs some serious work to be a true competitor. No e-compare site is complete without personalization and reviews (albeit from external sources) and Froogle lacks both reviews as well as any personalization. I would like to head to Froogle the next time I need DVD+Rs but dealtime.com does a much better job.

Google should support some sort of web service through XMLRPC or REST (or some other protocol). I am aware of Google APIs that can be embedded within a webpage to search the the site but I am not aware of any web services offered through Google. That would be really useful. I guess all of this could be implemented through the google.com url, but web services would be cleaner (much like waypath, only different!). Froogle would be a nice candidate for XMLRPC as well.

I would also like to be able to run searches which return unique results. I wish I could type “show only one result from a domain” I understand that this would break down real quick because websites exist in folders everywhere, but the concept can be really useful and I miss it dearly. This would also make internet statistics easy to gather and would actually be dependable.

Stemming from this idea, I would actually like to be able to search meta tags through Google (or through any other search engine for that matter). I understand that Google pays very little attention to meta tags, but I would, at times, like to know what lurks in those bloated tags and find sites with only a certain set of tags (again very useful in data collection and collation) I really want to know how many people use Frontpage to design their site, for example.

I know I thought of a couple more. I will post them as and when I think of them. Do you know of any of these that are available already? Can you think of anything else you wish of Google?

Matt was offering me an Orkut invite on IRC but our conversation somehow got lost. Would anyone care to send me an invite? Thanks in advance! ( I really still do not understand how their homepage says that you can “Click here to join” and then says “By invite only” after you click the link!! )

To help grow the number of skins for the default WP template, I’m sponsoring a CSS Style Competition!

Get those creative juices flowing and send in your contributions. I can’t wait to see what you all come up with.

I highly encourage you all to blog about this (use the link above) to help get the word out. Thanks!

– From the WordPress Forums

Friday morning was a definite 9 in the level of bewilderment and complete disgust at the University of Toledo. I found out, in the third week of the semester mind you, that my position as a TA and webmaster for the EECS Department had been terminated as of Thursday evening (after having been confirmed in writing three weeks prior). They simply took away my funding without any official reason. On further enquiry into this fiasco, I find out that this was not personal or related to my performance at all. They needed to cut some funds and decided that 4 semesters were too long to hang around for a graduate degree in computer science (though my undergrad was in physics and I was only funded for one semester prior to this one! I had paid my way through the four undergrad CS courses I was forced to take) and that they were going to cut my assistantship. (Knock on wood) I still have my tuition waiver and I was offered a part time position as webmaster by the chair of the department. I will take the position in spite of being disgruntled about the whole situation because some money is better than none and it will get my out of the house. All the more reason to get the frick out of this God-Awful-Place (ha! GAP) and get my ass into gear.
Needless to say, I have been listless, a little worried (though I am financially quite secure from my own savings and with a lot of help from my wonderful parents) and just cannot concentrate on what is really important, my thesis. I have been chugging away at it all this weekend though not producing as much as I would have liked to. I am hoping to have the literature review and the introduction done by the end of this upcoming week. The reason I had not posted this yet was twofold. I have not spoken with my parents about this (I will discuss it tonight before they read this) and I did not want them to be rudely surprised by the entry. The second reason is that I was still deciding whether to take the temporary position or not. I obviously have made up my mind.

In conclusion, I would like to say this to everyone in any position of responsability in the educational community: Please do not shaft students. We are already poor and completely at the behest of the puny little stipend that you provide. Unlike losing a real job where you might have had some backup or might have a spouse to help out, losing the “$400 every couple of weeks” could mean dropping out of school for a lot of kids. International students are even worse off, but they dont count because they choose to come here. Thankfully, I am not out on the streets yet and will continue to face the stupid, assenine, farcical and riduculous music till I am done.
Heh…..Peace

I wrote a little script to fight comment SPAM much along the lines of Jay Allen’s MTBlacklist filter (but for WordPress). This really simple script is compatible with all versions of WordPress and uses a powerful master blacklist from Reflective Reality. I would really like to get some people to try and install it and see how well it works. So if you are using WordPress and have been receiving some SPAM in your comments, please help me in testing this script. WordPress 1.0+ will even allow you to view the SPAM comments without them ever being displayed on your blog (using moderation) which would mean that if you do receive SPAM and the filter catches it, you will know that the script is working. Here is a link to WPBlacklist.

Too much stress online? Click here for some relaxation.

A couple of hacks to mention. The first adds the ability of a user to update a LiveJournal blog (as tested below) when posting to WordPress. A very simple install.
The second is my version of the famous Phil Ringnalda right click Blog This! (contextual menu) plugin for Mozilla. ALL of the code belongs to and is attributed to Phil or Ted. I moved stuff around and broke it down for people to understand easily and modify to suit their needs. This could also be modified to be used (quite easily actually) for posting to MT or any blog application which support bookmarklets.

Just a confirmation!!

This post is supposed to be reflected in my LiveJournal Blog if everything goes fine. This is implemented using a simple XMLRPC update script added to post.php Look for the source of this script very soon.

You see it on the right. If you would like to add your “interesting” post on there, be my guest. It is a simple text based (no database) linkblog which can be invoked while browsing, with Javascript bookmarklets. I figure there will be very little interest in an RSS feed of my stupid linkblog, so I have not finished writing it. Still working on my thesis proposal, so no real time, yet.

As promised, I was really itching to get some coding done and I finished the upload script to upload stuff to your SprintPCS phone. Here is the link to the page

As you can tell from the hit count, this is a pretty popular tool and there have been some changes/fixes made to the code. I have gotten many requests for the source code for this project.

The price to get the script for your own use is $100 and the source will be encoded before I sent it to you. The source code can be obtained for a higher price. If you want to use this script on your own server, please email me for further instructions. This is not freeware and will not be distributed free of cost.

Now upload ringtones, screensavers, pictures, games etc. to your Sprint PCS, Alltel, AT&T Wireless, Cingular, TMobil and Verizon phones as well. Free Ad supported service. Click here.

Enough said without ruining everyone’s evening. A little prayer for Roxy (all is NOT lost) would be much appreciated by her, and I’m hoping, by God.

Jennifer just cannot seem to have good luck with her dogs. Roxy, the new 14 weeks old Cocker Spaniel puppy, had over 10 seizures in the last 12 hours. She is terribly ill. Jennifer and I took her to the vet this morning and they gave her some valium and are going to watch her during the day. I will have more updates this evening. I am worried that she might have ingested some kind of chemical (house plant, cleaning chemical, some kind of pill Busia dropped) and that is causing her to convulse. The vet thinks that his might be due to an attack of distemper which left her brain linings weakened. She is going to need medication and blood tests (thankfully not too frequently) all her life.
She is in good hands while we are at work and school. The vet has her on an IV and is going to get all the tests he can get done on her. I am praying for her. She is a good puppy.

Went to the Auto Show in Detroit with Jennifer, Linda and John and had a really nice time! There were thousands of people there are I got to see (and touch in some cases) my favourite cars, some of which I had read about but had not seen up close yet. I was not dissappointed in the least. I got a chance to see the 2005 Mustang (which tops my list of favorite cars) and the concept Cobra signed by Shelby himself (which won best of show). There were a myriad of other cars and trucks which drew my attention. Most of these are captured, to the best of my abilities, in my NAIAS 2004 Photo Gallery. The first picture above is the new GT40 in all its glory and the second is the signature of Caroll Shelby on the aluminum alloy block of the concept Ford Shelby Cobra. If you are a car buff you have to love it!

I was led to this fantastic site by DarkHound It is a site called Worth1000 Galleries. They are presently running an LOTR contest. But the galleries are definitely worth a browse. Most of the pictures are very professionally made and could add a nice flavor to any old blog such as mine! The picture on the left is Copyright of Worth1000.com
PS: this image is also a test of elastic images with an overflow:hidden hack so the image does not spill onto the sidebar in case the window size is reduced. Try making your browsers window smaller!

The new name should have started working already. I would really appreciate it if your links to my blog are updated. The new url is http://www.mindfulmusings.net/weblog/ Sorry for any hassles and thanks!

There are some investments I consider to be good ones. The $30 I would spend at OddPost, I would consider well spent. They tout an email service for 30 bucks a year which incorporates a news reader, full folder functionality and is being upgraded and polished everyday. They give you an email address @ OddPost.com, 50 Megs of webspace and the ability to receive large email atatchments upto 10 megs. The interface (and the application) is compeltely built out of DHTML and XML (I am extremely jealous of their coding prowess), is fast and has SPAM filtering built in. No, you cannot check your Hotmail or Yahoo acount, but you can check upto 6 different POP3 accounts through this. It is like having a Yahoo or Hotmail without the ads and without the hassle of having to keep track of mutiple accounts, like having Outlook Express on the internet. On top of all this, they donate 10% of your fee to a charity of your choice (out of 7 of their choice…) Instead of my rants about how I cannot afford them (among other things), check out the features:

50 megabytes storage space
staggeringly effective spam filtering
news & blog aggregation
not a lick of advertising
desktop-style interface with drag & drop, address auto-completion, right-click menus & shortcut keys
spell checker with customizable dictionary
send & receive large attachments (up to 10 megs)
retrieve mail from up to 6 other accounts
customizable from & reply-to addresses
custom signature
accessible via POP & IMAP
address book import
automatically checks for new messages

After consulting with Jennifer, my inner self and with some of the readers of my blog (and since I cannot afford .com,.net and org) I have decided to buy www.mindfulmusings.net for myself. Yay!

With the recent weather disaster at the Niue Islands, my domain name that ends with a .nu might dissappear. That would really spell dissapointment for me (as Im sure it would be for a lot of other people) I feel really insensitive right now because more than a half thousand people have lost their lives in a huge tsunami and all I can think of is my stupid domain name (the nu at the end of dinki.mine.nu)
However, that does pose a problem in my small world. Search engines such as G ** gle and others have captured my page as the present address and I have no way of fixing that. All the back links point to this domain name. I would lose all the momentum that I have had the good fortune of accumulating. To prevent any future disasters, I am going to have to actually buy a domain name. I am thinking of a couple of options and I would like some input from my readers and friends. Here are the suggestions:
1) www.laughinglizard.org
2) www.mindfulmusings.net or .us or .org
3) www.mindfulmusing.com
4) www.mghosh.net
5) Any others you can think of…

Precept: I apologize for this post. It is not meant to offend anyone, just a bit of sarcasm and humor.

Why do you read my blog?
I read blogs because I am genuinely and deepy interested in the lives of people that I have never met and probably never will. No, Seriously. I read in some blog, that reading blogs is a way for bloggers to seek acceptance in their inconsequential and petty communities. It is a way to troll for hits, a way to vicariously gain satisfaction of knowing that your own blog is popular. Whoring for hits. I read in another blog that blogs are dissolving and wussifying information dissipation and making a farce out of yesterday’s news. Another blog tells of how we should not believe anything that we read in a blog. In all honesty, blogs are a medium, much like any other electronic media. They are elusive, trasitive, without remorse or responsability and are mostly farcical. Some provide useful information but most are just ramblings and should be treated as such. They promote free thought and speech and bring out the best and worst in people. I read blogs because I can. I read about friends and I read about myself. The blogs that I like to read the most are the ones that mention me. I love shameless self promotion and I love being flattered. I dont think there is even one blog (except the Wp Forums) that I read everyday. The information is too stale and I have found that I dont get mentioned everyday in every blog (Darn!), which defeats the purpose of reading them everyday.
I read blogs to satisfy some inner hunger to be as cool and as bitter as Anil Dash or as dashing and debonaire as Mark Pigrim.
Maybe I read blogs to vicariously enjoy the swanky and dangerous lifestyle of Aaron Swartz.
I know I read blogs to grow up to be like Jeremy Zawodny.
I read Philip Greenspun’s Weblog to pick up on subtle political sarcasm that I use profusely in my sparse social interactions.
I read Rylan Sanders’ Blog to look at the picture of George W on his front page.
I read The Agora because I have to learn about politics from somewhere!
I read Typical Girl’s blog because I am jealous of her programming skills. Uh Huh.
I read Warped Thoughts because I wish I could draw like him.
I read Misdirection because I worry about the author.
Steve works for Google now. I so wish I could take my dog to work!!
I read Dan Isaacs blog because….well he went to school with Jeremy! (see above)
I read Toledo Bloggers dot Com because I am from Toledo and it was a good idea, damnit!
I read through Digital Pimpress because her candid lascivious diatribe is fascinating.
Binary Bonsai is just a cool name. (he creates awesome images too!) I dont really read his blog. I am just mentioning him to make him feel better.
I read Carthik’s blog because I wish I could teach college (and he patronizes me).
I read Dennis’ blog because he likes to read mine and his comments are fantastic.
David Chait lists cool gear. I wish I could buy any of his toys.
Xial. What a cool name! Uh-huh.
TechGnome always links to me but uses wrong names every time. He now knows me as Mike.
CheekyGirl always has a nice babe on her template. I visit often to see the babes.
I read Achhoo’s blog because, well, he is Sushubh. I so wish I had his sense of humor.
Mrs Fish was the original inspiration behind this post. Her and Mr Fish can be quite the inspiration to CoupleHood.
Reflective Reality sends a lot of visitors my way, so I patronize him. (and his comments are simply awesome and to the point!)
I never read Mike’s weblog. I just say I do to make them feel better.
I never read Matt’s weblog. I sat say I do to make them feel better.
Sisob is a Gnome developer. I HAVE to be jealous of someone with so much experience with code.
LadyDobry is my girlfriend. Enough said.
I used to read Chris Pirillo’s weblog, till I grew up.
G33K is of the female persuasion. I didnt know that for almost a year!
Biz Stone works for Google. The whole dog-to-work envy again!
Jish is a Bangalir Bachha who is famous. Jealousy creeps up my gullet again.
Ian Murdock is a Linux Opportunist. I like crafty entrepreneurs. Same goes for Greenspun. Only he is not about Linux.
Southern Gal is just so darn wholesome, it makes me all warm and fuzzy like.
Justin is a baseball freak. He loves the doomed (so far this year) Tigers. But then again I like the Indians. Go Figure!
Alex has a serious and straightforward blog. He is a coder (a very good one) and he mentions me in his weekly review.
I read Greg’s weblog because I love the domain name.
Meowie changes themes all the time. Her photography and her kid are awesome! (and she recently moved to the dark side, she knows what I mean)
Nuclear Moose, Craig flatters me a lot, so I read his blog, even the old entries, over and over again.
Dave Barry thinks he is funny. Someone needs to tell him to try harder.

There are a few others that I cannot think of which means that they dint get read since the first time I saw them. I have a little trick up my sleeve. If you want me to read your blog and make some sarcastic comment about it…mention me in it and it will get all giddy and I will then read your blog everytime I am mentioned on it.

Did I say Peace already?

Had a lot of catching up to do with the department webpages that needed to be refreshed or re-done. I also had to create a couple of new class webpages for professors that were really happy with the portal that I had scripted for them. This portal includes a small discussion board, a place to add links to the page dynamically, a small description of the course and a full file management suite for the class. (without the use of a real database, I wrote small XML “databases” for these applications) This quick and dirty CMS works very well and has gotten good reviews so far. There are quie a few other items I need to wrap up before settling down for the semester. There is paperwork that I need to fill out, form a thesis committee, FIND my advisor (he has been AWOL since the last day of classes!) and setup a regular schedule with him to hash out my thesis. I am hoping to work on my introduction and my background work for my thesis for the next couple of weeks while I continue to correspond with SafeXcel to try and get the Smart Card SDK that I need. If I cannot acquire it by the end of January, I will have to move to Plan B. I would really like to get started on some of the framework diagrams while I have some free time on my hands. On a side note, I have been assigned TA of EECS 1530 (Introduction to Programming) I will be grading all assignments and assisting with labs. Working with Dr Heuring is always a blast (knock on wood :))

The SprintPCS programmers are not L33T. The Netfront browser sucks. It crashes on every back page link. I wish I had some way of getting the source so I could chase the stupid bugs. Anyways, the reason for this post is that I have figured out a way (stupid as it may be) to upload pictures, ringtones, screensavers and applications to you sprintpcs phone (with a lot of help from Jim) Basically, everytime you want to upload a file to your SprintPSC phone, you have to send it as a link to a .gcd file instead of a link to the file itself. .gcd files are very simple. They are MIME type emulators much like HTML files which tell the browser to download the file to your phone rather than run it from the source. Here is an example of a .gcd file:

Content-Type: audio/midi
Content-Name: davecrush
Content-Version: 1.0
Content-Vendor: dinki.mine.nu
Content-URL: http://dinki.mine.nu/upload/davecrush.mid
Content-Size: 14039

Here are the MIME types supported by Sprint:

Extension Content-Type
.jpg image/jpeg
.gif image/gif
.png image/png
.mid audio/midi
.qcd audio/vnd.qcel

To make your apache server find the right MIME type for your .gcd files, either enable magic-mime or edit the /etc/mime.types file and add this to the end:
text/x-pcs-gcd gcd

To enable support in IIS, look at this site
Once that is done, simply recreate the .gcd file with your values and send the .gcd as a link to your PCS phone. I am in the process of writing a script for Jennifer which will do just that. It probably wont happen till I am really bored, so stay tuned.
I might also write another blog posting application for J2EE using XMLRPC if I have a few hours to spare (just a learning mechanism)
As for the last night of freedom for the next 5 months (school starts tomorrow), I am going to drink some nice Vodka Twist, eat a nice dinner with Jennifer, talk to my parents and then go to bed.
Cheers!

PS: Here is the link to the page that lets you upload your files to your sprint phone for free!!

ringtones Get your ringtones today.

you are turquoise #40E0D0

Your dominant hues are green and blue. You’re smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people’s conflicts well. Your saturation level is higher than average – You know what you want, but sometimes know not to tell everyone. You value accomplishments and know you can get the job done, so don’t be afraid to run out and make things happen. Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Try them out yourself! The quiz got mine about right. I love greenish blue!

I finally got all of my moblog scripts to work with each other. I now have a WordPress 1.0 Moblog page. I call it Mark’s Moblog. It is a simple WordPress install which downloads new pictures from my email twice every hour and puts them into the blog. (I have a Sprint PCS phone, long story, I hate their customer service) I also have a little moblog preview script which takes the last 5 posts from my moblog and puts it into the end of the menu. I figure that the pictures will take a while to load and thats the reason behind it being at the end of the page. So now, to post a moblog, I take a picture, email it to my blog and wait for it to get posted everywhere! Look for the preview on the sidebar and a permanent menu link to my moblog on the info sidebar. What do you think? Would you like one too? :p

And Happy Birthday Matthew Mullenweg!