Month: May 2003

Have been posting regularly to the . This is my this weeks entry for the theme Red. Red Henna painted hands, Red glass bangles, Red Sari are essential wear for any woman in a traditional North Indian Wedding. Click here for larger version

This weeks choice was a tough one for me, the other pictures that I considered were this, this and this

Things have been rather hectic on the work front – thankfully all projects proceeding as expected, very stress free 🙂

Our Cable Internet Network is under DDOS with UDP Flooding, looks like a few winduhs machines are infected with the likes of wintroo OR whatever, the IPs are obviously spoofed as well – my cable guy is totally clueless as to what is happening and keeps asking me what to do…

Duh! When I tell him I cannot help more than this as I myself don’t know much he gets this hurt look on his face as if I am withholding his favorite candy from him…

Have shifted Aasim to writing using his left hand. Poor boy always used to write all the strokes the wrong way with his right hand but with left hand his strokes are proper but he needs practice. Maybe he is just wired like his dad.

It promises to be another very hot day, I have been following a nest of a Red Vented Bulbul for a past few days, though I never fancy my camera as one to take bird photographs but here are 9 pictures taken around our home of other birds, was lucky enough to shoot a Paradise Flycatcher. Will put the Bulbul series once it is done

This week has been one of the fastest week of the year.

Most importantly I feel that I have successfully extracted myself from the quagmire of my “late quarter life crisis” which I have been wallowing in for past few months. Thanks to Swati who gave me the rather melodramatic mantra “You can’t be a maverick all your life you have to graduate one day and become Top Gun”.

Plus I realized that I was being ungrateful to myself and my dear ones by belittling what has been achieved. This was shoved down my throat by a rather rude awakening to the fact as to how easy it was to lose everything I had.

I have had my “So you were the one” moment(s) and right now don’t know what *Top Gun* really means BUT I do intend to find out by late mid life ;0)

In other mundane things I am abandoning work on the LJ Stats projects, just be aware that depressingly large number of people view your journal – Non believers look here.

Learning PHP is easy anyone can do it over a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. That was one of the primary goal of creating PHP and has been very successfully achieved. Today everyone and their cousin twice removed can write PHP. Combine that with sites like sourceforge and freshmeat and you have got phenomenal amount of code which is very poorly written.

Now set these coders in a poor job scenario and you have a crowded fish market with PHP projects being bid at less than $1 an hour without any understanding of what they are in for!

Contrary to what most readers will expect the client is the last person to understand the difference. Another disturbing factor which came to light was a popular notion among neo DotCommers that if you get your technology cheap your success is assured!

However as expected this situation could not last forever, the dynamics of market forces had to take over. Cracks are showing up in software designed 6 month ago as the site becomes popular. Increasing numbers of projects are never being delivered and then there is a category of programmers and clients who are sensible and re-outsourcing to more experienced PHP programmers before too late.

My condolences to the gurus who could not survive this shake out, planning your cash flow would have helped. As for the stupid a** h**** who perished – good riddance

Rather than crib about Monday I am relishing the sweet after taste of a wonderful weekend. Saturday was amazing – for the first time I did something I never did before. Despite being in-station I did not go to office! Not even once did I step across to see whats on in the lab or to check mail. Read only the personal mails and slept for 4 hours in the afternoon.

After about ages I got hooked on to a game for my own sake, Golden Sun played on Gameboy Emulator (small download using Kazaa, Emulators available for Linux as well as Windoze).

I wouldn’t have started had I known that it would be so addictive. Basically I was looking for something to pass an hour… and I stay away from the regular RPGs because they demand too much involvement and time. I was expecting a very tame and predictable game but the storyline and puzzles just kept me captivated for hours, am already having withdrawal symptoms… Do check out the cute graphics in the screen shots section and the fantastic wallpapers.

Sunday just passed – playing, lazing around, Aaloo parathas for lunch and Chicken Sandwich + Ice Cream for dinner.

Just testing how the stats will work out – you will not see anything in the post per se, but will update soon if the test works out

[update]
Go to https://www.sanisoft.com/pot/phpOpenTracker/docs/examples/simple_report/?page=total&client_id=1 and see the results with a uniqueID for each posts further fine tuning can be done.
[/update]

The week has largely been uneventful though very tense… Nothing to write here about. This is again an Aasim’s Post. Have uploaded 15 more pictures taken by him to his album. These are all taken by him without any assistance other than commenting which picture was OK and which was not. Have introduced him to the macro focus on the camera, once he gets his focusing and composing right will introduce him to light. Needless to say we are very pleased with him.

Have also installed a Game Boy Emulator on his PC o that he can play the Bionicle game. It was amusing to see his frustration at not being able to use the mouse like he does in his other games.

Among other things the gift I had ordered for Swati was finally delivered yesterday – A red Satin sleeping suit with a matching Bikini top… also I have to churn out a 5000 word article on tree structures in SQL and PHP

They should list Monday Morning as a mood in LJ… I am still in yesterday but the time has changed to today how irritating.

But before any more cribs a heart felt thanks once again to all of you who wished us. It was very overwhelming to say the least.

Saturday evening set the mood and it did not look too good from my POV, the gift I had ordered for Swati on line had not been delivered 🙁

Not to be put down Swati had her own plans. She had placed these around the house and I was meant to stumble upon them, but she couldn’t contain herself and told me what I was supposed to do 😀 Nine teeny weeny cards one for each year of our married life – I managed to find them all… …

She also gifted me with this and got this for our home. The mug shots of what I presented her are already on her journal.

The day itself was spent very “cat family” like… being lazy, eating and sleeping. For dinner we went to a new restaurant called “Sarhadi” which serves NW frontier cuisine. Fantastic food – paaye ka shorba, murg purluft, murg angare, gustaba – yum yum yum. Aasim also loved it very much.

Substantial part of my afternoon was spent with Aasim while she cat napped, he astounded me with his acumen on a couple of things so much that I decided that it is time to teach him a new skill. So in the evening I gave him my camera. After about 5 min of instructions on shutter, zoom and focus indicator, here is what he came up with.

Great – BUT now he does not want to draw 🙁

It was summer of 1991, they were young, both of them heartbroken. Her boyfriend had copped the excuse “I love you, but I can’t marry you”, his girlfriend a bit less pathetic said “I love you but I love my dad more”. Oh! yes they were very good friends.

So they would sit through evenings at her place or his, listening to each other cribbing and songs like “Eye of the tiger” or “West Side” playing in the background. They were searching for that elusive “feel alive” feeling. Coincidentally a 15 day hang gliding camp was organized by a local adventure club. Both of them signed up. It involved getting up real early, 4:45am, driving 35km to the launch site, the last 5km of which was dirt road with gravel randomly strewn over it.

He would drive his mobike in the semi darkness, full throttle, not hitting the brakes for anything, supremely confident of his driving skills, she would cling on to the pillion seat trusting him completely. The adrenaline rush was awesome – they would then climb the hillock, sit to catch their breath, watching as the sun came up in all its glory.

On the third day she suggested something. He asked “Why?” she replied “Because I want it…” recklessness evolved into unbridled passion.

From there is took us nearly 2 years to acknowledge we were “In Love” and one more year for us to convince our parents about us being the right choice for each other – Nine years ago on 11th May, me and Swati signed that register in the court which gave us the legal status of husband and wife.

The only sunny spot in an otherwise hazy start to the week is that my article “Doing Distance Calculations in PHP” has been published in php|architect. The editor liked the stuff I wrote so much that my article has been made the showcase (read free download) article, must say a kind editor that one. Before anyone asks me let me clarify that the only trigonometry I understand has been already put in the article.

Hmmm… I must write more often, this is my first published work after nearly 18 months… … Does an LJ count as published work? 😉