A Logical Explanation

Travian – online strategy game.

2008-12-23T08:42:00.001-08:00

I recently started exploring Travian. Its a online strategy game, or one could only version of Age of empires and Caesar. Though it is not as graphical or musical as the desktop versions but it has all the other features like the resources, buildings, army, wars. Begin an online portal, there can be hundreds if not more player playing at the same time.

In travian the player start as a chief of a village. Almost all the villages are same, they have some resource where you can extract wood, clay, iron and crop. The village center has some building area where we can build new buildings like, granary, barracks, palace etc Typical strategy game stuff. In the travian world you have neighboring villages which is owned by fellow players. You can interact with these players and trade resources. One can also form alliances. And the feature list goes on and on.

Travian is served in many sub domains so that the no of players can be distributed. They also have different servers for different countries. Eg. s1.travian.com, s2.travian.com , s1.travian.us, s1.travian.ca etc.

My village is in s2.travian.com. Its called NicoBar (The land of Nicos.). My nickname kmanicka.

Moving To Wordpress

2008-11-11T22:42:00.001-08:00

After a long stint with blogger i have decided to move to the Wordpress. Blogger is great for a starter but as we grow we see its limitations.

Wordpress has more flexibility compared to blogger and being open source it has lots of plugins and templates available. Plus the support community is prety large which can help us resolve our day to day problems.

I have choosen BlueHost for hosting the blog. The blog is called Digital Derby.

I will be cross posting to this blog and the new blog for a while. And once the new blog is fully set up, I will leave this blog as is.

www.digitalderby.com

The best blog editing tool so far

2008-10-24T10:09:00.001-07:00

Just downloaded the new Windows Live Blog Writer. Am not a big Microsoft fan but this shows why Microsoft is so good when it comes to User Interface. The design is sleek and its loaded with features.

The one feature which really got me was the preview pane. I have been using lots of other Blog editing tools but none of them had this. The preview pane actually shows how the blog will look when its posted not just a simple mockup.

The other feature like inserting links, pictures, videos etc are common among all the blog editors. But windows takes it a step further by providing a plug-in framework. Using this framework developers can provide custom built insert options. Whole galary of plug-in have already been created and they are all pretty useful.

One Plug-in which I have been looking was the Code formatter, And here it is in all its glory.

   1:  class MyClass {

   2:      public static main(String[] args) {

   3:          System.out.println("Hello world");

   4:      }

   5:  }

UPDATE : Looks like my blogger theam doesn't like the code generated by the code formatter plugin. It looked nice in Windows Blog writer.

Looking forward to more useful plugins which can enrich the blogging experience. I remember the days when I used to edit the blogs on blogger website. :(. It was one of the biggest turn off during my initial blogging days.

And here is the screen shot of the preview pane.

Comments not working in iTheam Blogger Template

2008-10-23T11:16:00.001-07:00

Looks like blogger has released a new feature, where in users can comment on a blog from the same page. They will not be redirected to a separate blogger style page. Full story here.

This is really a great feature. This will make the user experience uniform across the whole blog. The comments section can now gel with the post.

I had actually searched a lot for a blogger templates which has this feature. This feature is readily available in all the Wordpress templates.

Unfortunately this has broken the Commenting feature in the iTheam blogger template I use :(.

To fix the issue I had to change "Comment Form Placement" setting to "Pop-up Window" which enables the old style commenting.

Blogger Dashboard -> {Blog Name} -> Settings -> comments -> Comment Form Placement.

Will try / search for a better fix till then "Old is Gold".

How to create a Windows Service.

2008-10-22T05:05:00.001-07:00

While working on one of my projects .. I wanted to run background thread in windows. Its pretty simple in linux/unix kind of env.. just append "&" to the command.

To do the same thing in windows.. i had to use a windows service. The article has detailed steps to do the job.

I was testing the example provided in the article. The try to start Notepad as a service. When i started the service i was expecting to see the notepad window. But nothing like that happened. Not sure why.

To test it I created a simple php script which writes to a file.

<?php

$filename = "c:\\temp1.txt";
$fh = fopen($filename, 'w') or die(" Fatal ERROR can't open file");

while(true) {
fwrite($fh,"hi \n");
sleep(100);
}
fclose($fh);

?>

And in the "Application" key of the registery provided the following command

php test.php

Now when I started the command saw the logs in c:\temp.txt file.

Using Gdata apis in Appengine

2008-10-11T06:05:00.001-07:00

I started digging into Googles appengine recently. Its a great service provided by Google. Now developers like us dont have to worry about the servers.. deployment and other stuff. If we have an Idea we can jump in and start working on it.

As my first project on appengine, am trying to develop a simple which fetches videos from youtube and displays in a page. Its pretty basic.

Nice articles describing it can be found here.

Found a small issue in this article. There is a small hack we need to do to use the Python gdata apis in appengine. This article talks more about it.

This hack is failing in gdata-python api 1.2.1 With the new gdata api instead of doing

gdata.service.http_request_handler = gdata.urlfetch

We should do this

client = gdata.youtube.service.YouTubeService()
urlfetch.run_on_appengine(client)

Lost a day figuring this out. :(

days of java are numbered

2008-10-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

Are the days of Java and c numbered?

We are seeing a new wave of websites which are offering online application development and hosting.. the prominent being zoho creater. Here is a list of other such services..

New blogger Template

2008-09-12T08:43:00.001-07:00

After a lot of struggle I was able to set a new blogger template.. the blog has a new Look now.. This template is called the Itheme. The best thing I like about this blog is that the sidebar can be adjusted at run time.

I tried to customize this template and create a template with 2 side bars but failed miserable. Am still trying. Once it is done I will share it.

Test

2008-09-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

Test

The story of square wattermellons

2008-03-15T08:39:00.001-07:00

One of my friends recently sent me a email forward about the Square Japanese watermelon. You can read the full story here. That is creativity at its best. The farmers have thought about a problem and solved it so nicely.

Lets take the story from another angle. Lets say we are the watermelon and the society is the farmer. The society has created certain rules and regulation. We follow those rules for the greater benefit of the society. Sometimes it can be uncomfortable. (Think of the watermelon). But then to gain something we need to lose something.

What do you collect?

2008-03-15T08:22:00.001-07:00

Recently read a book by David Baldacci called “The Collectors”. Really a superb book. The story is very intriguing and one can’t keep the book down before completing it.

Some good things I learned from this book. In story all the characters’ are collecting something. Some collecting book, some cars, other money (something we all do). That makes one think. Are we all collecting something. Like the smiles of our friends, blessings of our elders, love of our beloved. Some of us collect praises of others and there are others who collect goodwill.

Can we somehow classify all these things one is collecting. A simple classification from my perspective. Things that give us happiness and things that give us sorrow. One should always try to collect the first and avoid the second. But first we have to identify which of the things we are collecting gives us what.

I think the same thing holds good for folks like us writing the blogs. We are also collecting something. What am I trying to collect right now… comment from the readers of this blog. Ha ha ha.

I have been reading lot of books recently, and wanted to keep track of which once I have completed and which I wanted to read. So I added a Facebook application called “iRead”. In this application one can write reviews about the books and share them with friends. Good to go through what our friends have to say rather than ending up with a lousy book.

I don't have words

2008-03-13T03:58:00.001-07:00

Read this post by Jeffrey Walker recently.

http://radiowalker.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/cancer-20-the-killer-app/

Don’t have any words to explain what am thinking right now.

Patience

2008-03-11T11:28:00.001-07:00

Guns n Roses : Patience.

Making a framework or finding one

2008-03-07T09:35:00.001-08:00

I used to work in Oracle Corporation India for a product called Enterprise Manager. I was very new to the industry and didn’t know much. It was a hard time during the initial days. The product was huge. There was so much code some in java, some in plsql others in perl and god know what else. When I was given a bug (a software defect) to be solved i used to take ages to find what's wrong leave alone solving it :-).

Then one day I asked my manager to help. He solved them in minutes. I mean just like that. One thing I noted was that he was using lots of scripts and shortcuts which he had developed earlier. Thats when it hit me. I left all my work and started making my own framework of scripts. It took me about a week to create the skeleton. Then about a month or so to fine tune it. But once it was ready I was on booster. Give me any damn bug I was able to solve it. Later I was able to take up enhancements and projects also. It was great fun.

Though the framework was doing good but it required frequent changes. With my work load increasing I was not able to keep up. So I started searching again. This time I found that there are lots of open-source frameworks for solving these problems. Some of these frameworks were so SIMPLE, i felt foolish. Why didn’t I find them earlier. And wasted so much time creating one. I tried these frameworks. They were good. But by the time I could put them to proper use I moved out of oracle. Another company another framework.

I noted something else too during my stay at oracle. There were some bugs which were really not solvable. I tried all possible permutations and combinations but no use. :-(… They caused me ample frustration. Some of these bug were lying in my queue for about 6–7 months. At last I decided to leave them and work on other which I could at least solve at that time. But these problems always stayed in my head. Probably the guy who replaced me would solved them.

Do you use any framework in your daily life?

Did you make them yourself or did you use an existing one?

Can your framework solve all the problems in the field?

If not how did you cope up with the unsolvable ones?

AddThis

2008-03-05T09:32:00.001-08:00

http://www.addthis.com/

Hope you have heard about social bookmarking sites like http://del.icio.us/. There are many other sites which provide the same service. AddThis aggregates all this sites into one cool button.

Something about social bookmarking. The problem is more and more pages are being added to the Internet day by day. Some of them are genuine and other are spams. Its getting really hard to find the right information we need. Thats where social bookmarking come in. Here one can bookmark a site he / she likes. These bookmarks can be shared with the friends. Its much better to see a site already bookmarked by someone.. rather then google it. :-)

I use Del.icio.us. My bookmarks http://del.icio.us/kmanicka. I have also installed a firefox plugin which makes it lot easier to maintain these bookmarks.https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3615

SiteMeter

2008-03-05T09:18:00.001-08:00

http://www.sitemeter.com

This site can be used to keep track of the visitors to your website. It has lots of cool feature. The one i liked most is the world view of the visitors.

Check out the world map of cricket madi.

http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s44cricketmadi&r=79

With the internet the world has become a very small place. :-)

Reality Check the 5 questions

2008-02-29T10:03:00.001-08:00

I have registered Dr Mani’s mailing list who blog at http://guydz.com/moneypowerwisdom/

His blogs and mailing list are a great source of wisdom and inspiration.

In one of his recent emails Dr. Mani suggested 5 questions we can ask ourselves when we feel low or frustrated. I tried them and it really worked. These are the 5 questions, hope it works for you too.

* What do I want to achieve with my work?

* How much money do I need for this?

* Do I need big numbers to reach this target?

* Is what I'm doing taking me towards my goal?

* Am I happy doing what I now do?

My answers ..

1) that, that and that.. (its a secret)

2) not much.. a million will do.

3) I guess 1 followed by 3 zeros in the box which says readers at the top right.

4) am not sure of that yet

5) but ya am happy really happy. I think thats what matters most.

It's The Journey That's Important... By John McLeod

widgetbox

2008-02-29T09:20:00.001-08:00

http://www.widgetbox.com/

This websites provides a framework to make and share widgets.

A widget is a small application which can be embedded in any html page.

In my earlier cricket madi website, i had used 2 widgets .. Yahoo’s cricket scores widgets and a chat widget.

Similarly combining more widgets like the we can make cool applications. Widgetbox has a large gallery of widgets for public use.

Once we have made a widget in widget box.. we can easily share it in social networking sites like facebook, orkut etc… or blogging sites blogger etc.

WidgetBox have also introduced a new term called blidget (or at least I haven’’t heard of it till now). Blidget are blog feeds as widgets. Another feature that they provide is building facebook application.

I will try these sometime later.

Google Adsense

2008-02-27T05:00:00.001-08:00

I don’t have to say much about this. Looks like the world has gone crazy about it. Writing this post just for the sake of completeness.

Google Adsense is a Ad Service. A website publisher can register to this service and show ads in his website. If a visitor clicks on the ad the publisher get some money.

Google takes the burden of going through the website and showing relevant ads which the user is most likely to click.

GooglePages

2008-02-27T04:44:00.001-08:00

GooglePages is a free Website Hosting service provided by Google…

One can easily create there websites using the Google Page Creator. Its a online tool and has lots of templates to choose from.

We can also upload other files to the googlepages server.

I created the CricketMadi.com files locally and uploaded them.

Apart from the ease of use I found some shortcoming in the site.. The website name the extra googlepages.com looks bad. I think I read somewhere that we can buy our own domain name and redirect it to this site but haven’t tried it myself.

Another issue is the upload feature. It allows for only one file to be uploaded at a time. I guess it is because of the fear of Spam. But google should think of making it better.

Blogging is addictive

2008-02-27T04:24:00.001-08:00

Blogging is addictive.. So Don’t start blogging if you are not planing to stay long.

Not much to write so thought of writing what i do best. making websites ha ha ha..

Next few post will be related to websites and Internet services I used to make my first serious website.. http://cricketmadi.googlepages.com/index.html

You might have seen that i am adding this link again and again. :-). I have a feeling that this might increase my page ranking in google.

If you start chasing it.. it will start chasing you.

Not my cup of tea

2008-02-25T10:21:00.001-08:00

The blogging market is really overcrowded these days. Tried hard but not able to do much. Its not my cup of Tea I guess. I will concentrate on what I know best.. Making websites :-).

Check this out… http://cricketmadi.googlepages.com/index.html

Cricket in college TV room

2008-02-24T08:24:00.001-08:00

Australia v India 2007/08 season

Played at Sydney Cricket Ground on 24 February 2008 - day/night (50-over match)

Result Australia won by 18 runs

Today we were watching this cricket match online. India tried hard but lost the match.

I remember when in college we used to watch the match in our hostel tv rooms. There used to be 100 guys in front of the a small tv. Every ball was scrutinized. Run rates analyzed, Expert comments given on all aspects of game. Event the umpire was not spared :-)

Thought of putting together a small webpage with a cricket widget and a chat widget to create the same atmosphere.

you can check it out here.

I have created a chat room called college_ka_tv_room. Join me during the next match.

Next Match: India v Sri Lanka at Hobart - Feb 26, 2008
Match scheduled to begin at 10:00 local time (23:00 GMT)

Alladin and Gini

2008-02-20T10:44:00.001-08:00

Heard the story of Alladin and Gini. Now think.. think hard.

Think you are Alladin and you are rubbing the lamp.

Now find your princess. She will help you when the evil uncle captures your Gini.

Testing BlogJet

2008-02-20T09:37:00.001-08:00

I have installed an interesting application - BlogJet. It's a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools). Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com

"Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination." -- Albert Einstein