Turbine Musings

She can keep your heart guessing, but she's yours if she stays.

2011-11-29T13:25:00.001+05:30

She can keep your heart guessing, but she's yours if she stays.
- From the song "To love a woman"

Do you want challenging projects at job?

2011-11-28T19:12:00.000+05:30

This post written back in Feb 2008 remained unpublished till now. Here it goes...

My idea of a perfect job: Lay back and relax in chair in an air conditioned room, and keep getting your salary at the end of the month. Yes, get paid for doing nothing :) Too bad it does not happen in real life :(

Why does one want a challenging job? I don't know. If job is a challenge then it would bring a lot of tensions. You don't know how to do it but you are expected to finish it on time. How is that fun? That is a hopeless situation! I would want a job that requires you to do very little. And you get enough spare time to do challenging tasks that *you* really want to do, and not so called challenging tasks specified by your boss. Like participating in a coding contest. Like spending a week in a Topcoder marathon match. Or making a software that you really want to make. Things that you like to do will become boring when it is forced (by your boss) .

Or in other words, take a job where you do what you like and it won't feel like work.

a recently taken pic

2009-01-10T23:21:00.001+05:30

Ever wondered why firefox extension install makes you wait for a few seconds?

2009-01-07T11:16:00.002+05:30

I was quite surprised to know the reason behind it. The reason for the delay is to prevent a very intelligent attack. Read about the attack here: http://www.squarefree.com/2004/07/01/race-conditions-in-security-dialogs/

BTW, the attack is quite cool. I am impressed!

My first Skydive!

2008-10-28T14:01:00.005+05:30

13000 feet, 60 seconds of freefall and 5 minutes of parachute fall!

Spent a fortune for it :( But the experience is totally worth it.

So finally after a lot of searching I could find this cheap skydiving centre which was like in the middle of nowhere! That is why it was half as expensive as compared to those in San Francisco (SFO) and still offered a jump from 13,000 feet which is much more than the 9000 feet that you could have done in SFO. This was the place for real skydivers! So, next time you are in california, don't go to SFO but Parachute Center at Acampo. This is their website:-

http://www.parachutecenter.com/

So I drove to Acampo (about 2 hrs from MountainView) . And I can't stop boasting that I drove! This is another thing that I learned here in US. I can now easily drive on US highways at the speed of 110mph (177kmph) :) You get tickets for driving so fast... Normally one should not cross 85mph. ok, enough of boasting!

We reached this place, paid money at the counter and then had to sign zillion times on a paper stating that not even the sweeper's distant uncle's uncle is responsible if something happens! Then we watched a video that explained the basics of how to jump, what pose to make during jumping, free fall and parachute fall, etc. etc. Then I met my instrucutor and my cameraman. The cameraman dives just at the same time as you and shoots your video in air! My instructor was a Japanese and I had a hard time getting his accent. After a lot of effort he explained me how to keep my legs and arms during the jump. The he put the harness on me and I was all set.

The plane landed in front of us. Such a small plane and some 15-16 of us entered it. It had just two planks of wood and we all set on after another on it like you sit on a bike. It was all cramped. After a few minutes of flying the plane became completely stable and we knew its the time.. My cameraman asked me for the last time "Are you scared?". I said "Not at all!". I was at the back of the plane and had to jump last. One after another everyone jumped. There was no time to think to get scared or nervous. Within 2 minutes all 15 of us jumped. We just moved to the edge of the plane, and before I could think my instructor and I had already jumped. We rolled a few times in air and then the instructor was able to get us balanced. We were falling freely... The feeling is awesome. But didn't get much to realise its awesomness. All the time during the freefall, the cameraman was just below me and shooting and I was involved in making poses for the camera :) Like showing thumbs up and shouting at the top of my voice :)

Then the cameraman dived away and we opened our parachute with a hard jhatka. Then slowly we descended down for over 5 minutes. We made several turns in the air by manevouring the parachute. We could see farms all around. I also did some random talk with the instructor. And then we landed.

An experience of a lifetime...

My first self-cooked dinner!

2008-09-16T23:44:00.000+05:30

Today my roommate and I moved our lazy asses and cooked some dinner. And we completed it in a record time of 1 hour 15 minutes on our small electric stove. The menu included jeera rice, dal, mashed potatoes and panner butter masala (PBM) :D And mind you, we even made the paneer from the milk ourselves.

Here is the pic:-

And it was quite tasty given that it was our first time. Actually, I have helped my mother several times in making rice and dal, but that was more of a mechanical process where my mom would keep guiding me with the amounts of rice, waters, etc. that I needed to add and the number of whistles of the pressure cooker I needed to wait for. Today we were on our own :)

We read the recipe for PBM on net and then found out we didn't have tomoatoes and a few spices. We added some tomato sauce to compensate for the tomotaoes :P A nice looking gravy came out of that. And it tasted just fine!

Add Topcoder SRM Events to your calendar

2008-07-27T14:55:00.002+05:30

If you don't participate in Topcoder SRMs or you don't know what Topcoder is, then this post is not for you.

Many times I miss SRMs because I simply forget to see the topcoder event calendar. If you use google calendar, use the add by url option and this to your google calendar:-
http://sprawdzaczka.ii.uni.wroc.pl/~embe/tccal.ics

Update: This calendar is no longer maintained. There is new one here that works:-
http://topcoder-calendar.appspot.com/

Other calendar softwares that support ics/iCal format(most of them do) can also use, obviously.

Now no excuse for missing SRMs :)

Thanks to embe for creating this.

IIIT Lan Browser updated for Firefox 3

2008-06-13T00:44:00.003+05:30

ILB(IIIT Lan Browser) is now compatible with Firefox 3. Download now. Automatic updates have been disabled. To have automatic update functionality, download from mozilla website, when 1.2 becomes publicly available there, after gettin reviewed (which could take a month).

List of FTP Servers in IIIT?

2007-04-28T01:07:00.000+05:30

PS: Blog is blocked. Use students.iiit.ac.in/~sandeep_kr/cgi-bin/FuckProxy/ .

So how many FTP servers do we have? 15? 20? 30?
...
...
...
...

Well... there are at least 110 that I know of. Some of which are useless :-)

ftp://172.16.2.19
ftp://172.16.2.29
ftp://172.16.3.5
ftp://172.16.3.19
ftp://172.16.3.20
ftp://172.16.3.24
ftp://172.16.4.45
ftp://172.16.4.48
ftp://172.16.4.62
ftp://172.16.5.5
ftp://172.16.5.15
ftp://172.16.5.20
ftp://172.16.5.25
ftp://172.16.5.28
ftp://172.16.5.31
ftp://172.16.5.81
ftp://172.16.7.28
ftp://172.16.7.38
ftp://172.16.8.77
ftp://172.16.8.79
ftp://172.16.8.172
ftp://172.16.8.173
ftp://172.16.8.175
ftp://172.16.8.177
ftp://172.16.8.181
ftp://172.16.8.186
ftp://172.16.8.222
ftp://172.16.8.234
ftp://172.16.8.243
ftp://172.16.8.252
ftp://172.16.9.3
ftp://172.16.9.7
ftp://172.16.9.11
ftp://172.16.9.61
ftp://172.16.10.5
ftp://172.16.10.15
ftp://172.16.10.31
ftp://172.16.10.35
ftp://172.16.10.42
ftp://172.16.10.50
ftp://172.16.10.60
ftp://172.16.11.16
ftp://172.16.11.21
ftp://172.16.11.33
ftp://172.16.13.16
ftp://172.16.13.125
ftp://172.16.13.206
ftp://172.16.13.219
ftp://172.16.13.222
ftp://172.16.13.244
ftp://172.16.13.251
ftp://172.16.13.254
ftp://172.16.14.6
ftp://172.16.14.49
ftp://172.16.14.56
ftp://172.16.15.3
ftp://172.16.15.6
ftp://172.16.15.51
ftp://172.16.15.56
ftp://172.16.15.98
ftp://172.16.15.111
ftp://172.16.16.5
ftp://172.16.16.77
ftp://172.16.16.87
ftp://172.16.16.94
ftp://172.16.16.108
ftp://172.16.16.109
ftp://172.16.16.111
ftp://172.16.16.121
ftp://172.16.16.193
ftp://172.16.16.201
ftp://172.16.18.50
ftp://172.16.19.2
ftp://172.16.19.3
ftp://172.16.19.4
ftp://172.16.19.7
ftp://172.16.19.25
ftp://172.16.19.34
ftp://172.16.19.109
ftp://172.16.26.3
ftp://172.16.26.41
ftp://172.16.26.62
ftp://172.16.29.178
ftp://172.16.31.16
ftp://172.16.31.41
ftp://172.16.31.57
ftp://172.16.31.77
ftp://172.16.32.163
ftp://172.16.32.181
ftp://172.16.32.183
ftp://172.16.32.199
ftp://172.17.8.36
ftp://172.17.8.58
ftp://172.17.8.164
ftp://172.17.9.155
ftp://172.17.9.179
ftp://172.17.9.189
ftp://172.17.9.223
ftp://172.17.10.79
ftp://172.17.16.68
ftp://192.168.36.13
ftp://192.168.36.14
ftp://192.168.36.15
ftp://192.168.36.27
ftp://192.168.36.102
ftp://192.168.36.134
ftp://192.168.36.150
ftp://192.168.36.180
ftp://192.168.36.207
ftp://192.168.36.251

List also available at http://students.iiit.ac.in/~sandeep_kr/ftpservers.html

Not in IIIT? but still of IIIT? Its for you then...

2007-01-11T22:58:00.000+05:30

What a catchy line! Steve Jobs should choose me to campaign for Apple's iPhone ;)

This post is just about a Firefox extension that I made that I allows one to browse IIIT LAN when you are outside IIIT! Yes, from any part of the world. It supports http, https, and yes ftp also ;) Its called IIIT LAN Browser. (suggestions for a better name?). However its meant to be used ONLY by IIITians. So you are required to login using your 200 ID(once per session). I guess alumni still have their 200 IDs, right?

And there is one more Firefox extension. FuckProxy 0.2 is released. Its basically the old one with with a few bug fixes and auto-update support. I request you for the last time to uninstall your previous version and install this one. Auto-update will then take care of all future upgrades.

Rona dhona...

2007-01-07T23:21:00.000+05:30

Got the first C at IIIT this semester. Its not that I am pissed off at getting C. I am expecting D or even F in compilers and similar low grades in a few other courses as well. But what I am pissed off at is that I got a C in an HSSM, Philosophical Discussions on Human Desires to be precise. This was the course that I was counting on as the saviour of my SGPA this sem! I always heard from my seniors that the least that you can get in Human Desires is B. And most probably one gets A or A-. To make matter worse, I have taken STS(Science, Technology and Society) this sem which is again under the same prof. Looks like I need to be a regular in STS and keep asking doubts to the prof to ensure that he considers me a sincere student and gives me a better grade this time.

FuckProxy Update

2007-01-05T08:03:00.001+05:30

Use the following url to view this blog: http://192.168.36.200/~sandeep_kr/cgi-bin/FuckProxy/showPage.cgi/http/sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/

FuckProxy has been updated to work with latest firefox version 2.0.0.1.
I have kept the old version number, so in order to install it, please uninstall the previous version first.
I am thinking of enabling the auto-update option so that firefox automatically looks for updates as it does for other extensions. But that will take time.
Also FuckProxy has been disabled for requests that are from outside IIIT intranet. This has been done to prevent possible misuse of IIIT resources.

Enjoy!!

PS: My blog is unblocked now in labs. Will have to check for hostels.

Finally Sysadmins managed to block my blog in labs too...

2006-12-29T18:22:00.000+05:30

http://192.168.36.200/~sandeep_kr/cgi-bin/FuckProxy/showPage.cgi/http/sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/
PS: Use the above link to view my blog for the time being.

I guess the title says it all...

Sysadmins blocked my blog! - but failed at that too!!

2006-12-11T05:24:00.000+05:30

http://192.168.36.200/~sandeep_kr/cgi-bin/FuckProxy/showPage.cgi/http/sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/2006/12/sysadmins-blocked-my-blog-but-failed-at.html
PS: IIITians plz use above link or FuckProxy to view it.

I highlighted a couple of truths about the sysadmins and they blocked my blog.
But how could a linux newbie who doesn't even know commands like ls; who searches for notepad on a linux system; who tries to use a mysterious command called unblock whose working only he knows; who creates 100 accounts manually; who sends mails like this; could ever successfully accomplish a task as tough as blocking a website?

Yes. You guessed it right. They couldn't even block my blog completely. Its blocked for Wireless LAN(in hostels to be precise) but unblocked in labs. So this once again exposes the sheer inability of IIIT's so called 'system administrators'.

But think how low they could go? I never wrote any abusing words about them. I only wrote truth(to the best of my knowledge). I just tried to expose the problem that we iiitians are facing. And look at what they have done...

I think I have to be careful in future. What if they do something with my students id? What if they send fake mails from my id to my girlfriend(s)? Well... I don't have any :(
What if they delete all my projects on 200 and 205? Well... I have already made backups... and I am pretty sure that when they delete something from 200/205, they will definitely forget to delete it from the respective backup servers.

PS: Best of luck to all my seniors for the placement season.
PS2: I am suffering from using-well-too-many-times syndrome.

How about a projector without a canvas and on the battered corner of your room?

2006-11-29T19:31:00.000+05:30

How about a projector which does not need a white canvas or a flat surface to project on?

I was reading about my BTP(Smart Camera - Projector Systems), and then found this cool application of it. No need to roll down a big white canvas anymore for a theater experience. Just select any part of your wall, or just a curtain, a table cloth or just anything. The surface need not be even flat..., you can even choose corners of your room as a screen..... To know what I am talking about see the pics below:-

A scruffy corner(yes a corner of a wall!):-

Output of a normal projector(notice the effect of choosing a corner as your viewing screen):-

Geometry-Corrected output by the smart camera-projector system:

Geo+color corrected output by smart camera-projector system:

For more read this or this research paper(pdf).
Here a few more cool pics:-
Projection on a natural stone wall inside a castle vault (click to get a larger view):-

Projection on a checkered curtain:-

Its cool!!

LOL at sysadmins

2006-11-24T23:05:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, when Wireless LAN was down, the following mail was sent to the students mailing list by help@iiit.ac.in for helping us out of the problem:-

dear student,

wlan is not working due to some technical problem. In your
browser
setting (mozilla) you select direct internet connection setting it will work.

thanks
sysadmin

Do I need to say anything more?

GOD help us...........

Performancing For Firefox : Review and How to install

2006-11-12T23:31:00.001+05:30

PS: Since IIIT Network does not seem to be coming back to normal, contrary to what is claimed here, so you can help me by trying out this.

Hey, right now I am blogging straight away from my browser using Performancing For Firefox or PFF in short.

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.

Get the PFF extension from here. Blogger beta users should install the latest version(1.3.5 Beta 3) from here or you will have troubles. Learn to set it up from here. Remember that Blogger beta users should give their google username(e.g. bla@gmail.com) and password when asked.

Now lets have a look at the features. This is the list of features that I got from performancing's home page.

Features

Full WYSIWYG and source editing
Save as Notes
Add all your various blog accounts
Technorati Support
Delicious integration
Trackback support
Draft support
Ping support
Image upload and FTP
Metrics stats

In order to copy the above features I just used another cool feature thats not mentioned in the above list. Just selected the feature list and did drag-n-drop. And it got placed here with all the formatting! Now lets see whether its also possible to drag-n-drop images.

O.. Yes. It works. Now I got to see whether it will get posted to blogger nicely or not. That I could only see after I post. So wait.[EDIT: Seems like it does not get uploaded. This is the only thing of blogger that PFF is unable to support.]

Now lets label it using the categories tab on right hand side and see whether its converted to blogger beta labels(after I post).[EDIT: Yes]
Also provides technorati tagging. No need of any bookmarklet now.

The bookmarks tab aka del.icio.us integration seems useless. It just provides link to all your bookmarks, which you can directly see in browser also. Ya... One use is that you can automatically bookmark all your post. Check the checkbox on option on right hand side for that.

Lets also try the trackback support. Lets put a link to my shaastra seo contest blog to check it. It is great boon to blogger users as blogger does not sends trackback pings.(EDIT: Does not seem to work, may be I missed something :( )

The pinging(not the trackback one) support is also cool. Blogger pings only weblogs.com. PFF allows you to ping more than 20 services using Ping-O-Matic, PingoAt.

One of the most important thing is that it provides more space to the editor window than what is provided by blogger. Also writing offline is much faster than editing in blogger's editor. May be thats why I could write such a long post :) [EDIT: One thing that I missed is editing of a posted blog. They claim somewhere that you can do that. But I couldn't.]

Technorati Tags: blogger, blogging, blogspot, firefox, Performancing, Review, technical

Ain't it cool?

2006-11-10T19:00:00.000+05:30

Warning : This is a crap post ... so read it at your own risk....

Hey... I have edited my template and gave it a totally new look. The new blackish template looks fcuking cool to me. Hover your mouse at the bookmarking buttons at the bottom of each post. Such a nice effect. But I haven't seen any comments saying its good. Isn't it cool? Or is it that exams' tension is stopping people from reading blogs and dropping comments. Or is wireless LAN not working? Or is net not working? Or is slow net keeping people from reading blogs ?

Or is it the thing that I fear the most... its fcuking bad? No No. Please don't say that. I made it during the exams. Devoted(or wasted?) so much time on it during exams. Hey, I know my template is worthy of appreciation. At least its not copied. I mean I edited an existing template on blogspot to get to this. This is the original template:-

And here is current template(just for the sake of future reference):-

I call this "Black Beauty".
Some of you might prefer the original one. But then thats one of the standard 30 templates that blogspot offers. And you will find hundreds of users using those same 30 templates. Having your own distinct template makes you feel happy.

PS: Nowadays I am posting so much crap ;) So from now on I will put a warning on every post :)
PS1: Firefox has updated its list of recommended addons (extensions).

Image Storage

2006-11-09T00:42:00.000+05:30

I created this page just for the purpose of storing images on blogspot.
Just now I created my own template for blogspot and needed to store my images somewhere. Storing them on iiit's server would mean increased load on our server, apart from the fact that it is fucking slow. So this is the post that will contain all special images that I need for blog. Just using those images in this post will allow me to store them on blogspot. I want this page to be the central repository of all my *special* blog images. Images appearing just on one post don't count as special images.

feed-icon32x32.png:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/feed-icon32x32.png

headbotborder.gif:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/headbotborder.gif

outerwrap.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/outerwrap.gif

technorati.png
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/technorati.png

diamond.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/diamond.gif

commentbug.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/commentbug.gif

fav-normal.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-normal.gif

fav-hover.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-hover.gif

fav-reddit.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-reddit.gif

fav-digg.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-digg.gif

fav-netscape.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-netscape.gif

fav-delicious.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/fav-delicious.gif

Shaatsra SEO Contest Results

2006-11-08T18:23:00.000+05:30

So here are the results of the contest in which I wasted almost one month.

Atrieecs http://atrieecs.seo.iitm.ac.in
Saarang http://saarang.seo.iitm.ac.in
Priya Venkateshan http://priyaven.seo.iitm.ac.in

Yes, my contest blog is not there. So sad!!
But I am sure I am fourth. And I am sure I would have been second or third only if Google hadn't banned by blog. It banned my blog just when it reached the top. You are so bad google bot. You didn't ban when others were spamming. And you banned all when my splog(spam blog) came at top. So bad!!! You are partial google...

PS: Made my own blackish template. Its fcuking cool!!
PS1: Blogger offers so less templates. I don't know why I am not shifting to wordpress.

Technorati: blogging, contests, google, SEO, Shaastra

IIIT's Network blogs out its woes!

2006-11-06T12:03:00.000+05:30

IIIT's Network after being sucking for so long could not stop itself from blogging. Well, blogging is the new buzz and how could the ultra savvy techie iiitians' network remain behind? Confused? Well.. it seems like some iiitian after getting frustrated over the condition of IIIT internet, started an anon blog, thats quite good to read.

PS: The blog claims the network is back to normal and will be better very soon. Lets hope its true.
PS1: IIIT's Network back to normal => one of my almost finished project(beta already released) is now useless :(
PS2: IIIT Blogroll seems to have gone weird. It shows refreshed 20 mins back and still doesn't show the post posted 4 hours back. Heard smr is adding some new features. Waiting eagerly for the new features! One of them is really cool.... don't want to spoil the surprise.
PS3: IIIT Blogroll has gone even more weird now. Its now even refusing to publish my blog. [UPDATE: Its published now after about 3 days. ]

Technorati: iiit, network, blogging

Server Room Tragedy: #11

2006-11-03T05:04:00.000+05:30

Well.... tragedies are happening so frequently that I don't even have time to report them. This tragedy happened before I reported the last tragedy... but I didn't had time yesterday to report it.

Well this time the server room staff knowingly or unknowingly changed some configurations that blocked SAS. Those who don't know, SAS stands for Simple Authentication Service. Its purpose is "One person One password". That is, you can use your 200 password for all IIIT portals. It is used in almost all IIIT portals- Mess Portal, Movie Club, ISAS Portal, Student Information Portal, News portal, TV Portal, Election Portal, and tens of other portals that students make as a part of their projects.

Most probably(just my guess), they tried to make the 200 more secure by blocking unused ports and in the process blocked port 61237, that was being used by SAS. Well, the shocking thing is not that they blocked it (because they did it by mistake), but that they could not unblock it back themselves. Devansh sir, had to help them for such a simple task. System administrators don't know how to unblock a port. LOL. (DISCLAIMER: This para makes sense only if what I guess is correct.)

Those who missed the last tragedy(10th), here is the link:-
http://sandy007smarty.blogspot.com/2006/11/server-room-tragedy-10.html
Links to previous nine tragedies (reported by Nirnimesh sir) is also available at the above page.

PS: If you have a screenshot supporting the last tragedy(10th), please mail me. I need to put that on the last post as a proof.
PS1: Feel free to bug/flame/spam sysadmins at http://students.iiit.ac.in/sysadmins/suggession.htm . Its your right to ask them questions on what is happening. Why is net down... etc. etc.

Technorati: server room tragedy, iiit, SAS

Server Room Tragedy: #10

2006-11-02T04:43:00.000+05:30

Server Room Tragedy series was started by nirnimesh sir. But now he is out of campus and no one is reporting the blunders that are still being done by the server room staff. We need to highlight the problems(apart from several other things) that the stupid server room staff is creating. So I thought I might report the latest tragedy in the same series. I hope there is no copyright issue :) Links to the previous 9 tragedies are at the end of the post.

Well... 200 was hacked!!! Yes! On monday evening(30th Oct. 2006), students logging into 200 were greeted with the message :-
"You have no profile. Permission Denied."
The prompt was changed by the hacker to "I don't have a name".
Running pine would ask you "who are you?"

[UPDATE: If someone has a screenshot supporting this, please mail me. I would like to put that here as a proof.]

As far as I know, this was the first time in the history of IIIT that 200 was hacked... Not stupid hacking... but someone could actually hack into the system and change so many things that only the root user could.

The server room staff responded by blocking telnet and ftp on 200. They didnt give any reason or explanation. With no student sysadmin, the student community doesn't even know what actually happened, how was it hacked. So we can't even say whether blocking telnet and ftp is the right move.

I bet they(server room staff) don't even know how it happened. They just blocked ftp and telnet to show that "They are doing something". Someone must have told them that ftp and telnet are insecure and then they just blindly blocked these services.

Here are the links to previous 9 server room tragedies reported by nirnimesh sir:-
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/04/server-room-tragedy-1.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/04/server-room-tragedy-2.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/05/server-room-tragedy-3.html(hilarious as well :P)
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/05/server-room-tragedy-4.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/06/server-room-tragedy-5.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/06/server-room-tragedy-6.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/06/server-room-tragedy-7.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/07/server-room-tragedy-8.html
http://nirnimesh.blogspot.com/2006/07/server-room-tragedy-9.html

PS: Feel free to bug/flame/spam sysadmins at http://students.iiit.ac.in/sysadmins/suggession.htm .

Technorati: server room tragedy, iiit

Omkara Song Video Spoof by IITD Guys

2006-11-01T09:17:00.000+05:30

Its quite good. Watch it.

Technorati: personal, life, bakwas, video

So its true - Google is intelligent and it penalises you if you try to be oversmart

2006-10-26T18:14:00.000+05:30

Google has blocked almost all the sites that were participating in the Shaastra Google SEO Event, including mine :( Now if you search for the keywords Shaastra Thamesportal Zalecenia Autophytes Invernesshire on google, you will find blogs that have just one or two posts, blogs that have been started but never taken care of, and blogs that are not at all participating in this contest!!
Yes ... a big blow to all those who have been trying so hard for over a month now. Here is a screenshot from my google webmaster page that clearly shows that google has removed all my pages from its index:-

You can also see it was last indexed on 19th Oct,2006. That was when my page achieved the top spot. You can still see the cached page here. But now, its banned......... :(

My dream of SANDEEPs winning this contest is shattered :(
Now I understand. Google, you are intelligent.
Ohh... I forgot to mention why has it been banned. It is banned because of Keyword Spamming. One-tenth(not sure) of the words on my blog were just the keywords. With such a high keyword ratio, how can it go undetected by the search engine giant Google? I knew that Google penalises you for keyword spamming. But I had to do this because the contest had not left much options.
1. You had to host your blog in their domain and you were not allowed to use keywords in your domain name.
2. There was not any control over the template other than choosing another template.
3. This also means no control on meta tags like keywords, description, etc.
4. And many may suggest getting links was a good option. But PR does not changes so quickly. Also it takes time before you come out of the google sandbox. This contest had only allowed you one and half months and now only 4 days are left. Till now, no blog participating in this contest has a PR greater than zero.

So contestants were left with no other option that blatant keyword spamming. All those who have ever been in top 10 had done the same.
However, what surprises me is why they banned all of a sudden. I mean if its not manual banning, then the site should have been banned as soon as google bot detected the spamming. This was been done for more than one and half a month. Google cant be so late in detecting such simple keyword spamming. And if its manual ban, then why at all Google Bangalore sponsored this contest?(see the sponsor on top right of this page)
Well.... Google's ways are mystery.

Technorati: blogging, contests, google, SEO, Shaastra, spam, technical