ask the manowar fan

We know own this!

2010-02-23T16:15:00.003+05:30

I know own and wrote What is my Google Ranking?

Awesome possumness!

It's just a simple enough tool that tells you your Google page ranking for a set of words. US, UK, whatever suits your jazz music.

Efficient XML generation in Ruby (RAILS)

2009-06-25T16:55:00.002+05:30

  
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../config/environment'
before_time = Time.now
config = Rails::Configuration.new
db_config = config.database_configuration[RAILS_ENV]
{
:table=>"statement"
}.each do |table, statement|
  system(%{cd #{RAILS_ROOT}/public && mysql -u #{db_config["username"]} -h #{db_config["host"]} -p#{db_config["password"]} #{db_config["database"]} -e '#{statement}' --xml > #{table}.xml})
end
after_time = Time.now
puts "Took: #{after_time - before_time}"

So awesome, I am.

I just bought these

2009-06-17T16:55:00.001+05:30

12 gauge shot glasses

Oh yeah! Addition to the things I don't need but love to spend money on.

I love these phones

2009-04-16T17:47:00.001+05:30

BlackBerry 6710 Vs. BlackBerry 6210

How to use bash aliases

2008-12-28T15:04:00.002+05:30

How To Use Bash Aliases

I am awesome.

Rails <3 Merb ... or Rails 3 meets Merb 2

2008-12-24T12:48:00.003+05:30

I'll let Yehuda explain the whole deal to you, how Rails 3 and Merb 2 will be the same. Why? Well, he's also doing it and I'm a nice guy dude, give credit where it is due.

What does that mean though?

I'll quote qwantz here, "like ants combining to form the shape of a giant ant"

I hope everyone feels as positively as I do about this.

I've always wanted this

2008-11-30T02:32:00.001+05:30

So I got myself a tumblr. It's at http://batsysid.tumblr.com

I'm sorry if this appears twice in your RSS feed, fucking Mac blogger widget is being such a bitch.

Git: You are in the middle of a conflicted merge and the interwebz awesomeness answer

2008-11-17T13:43:00.002+05:30

Thank you for the answer Mr. anarchogeek to "you are in the middle of a conflicted merge"

"Your heart is a river that flows from your chest
Through every organ
Your brain is the dam
And i am the fish who can't reach the cord."
Death cab for cutie - Lightness

There's this awesome ninja/ninjitsu shop in Mumbai. It was closed when I was there though :(

2008-11-08T15:08:00.001+05:30

Rails 2.2 thread safe. This is big fucking news, I shit you not.

2008-10-24T19:31:00.002+05:30

Rails 2.2 thread safe.

Oh man, this should be awesome.

Of course it only helps in certain situations, this will not guarantee your app running on steroids.

Shit like MERB might though.

Crazy heavy metal album art changing into my wallpaper

2008-10-23T20:49:00.000+05:30

Peppy CSS Selectors?

2008-10-22T09:23:00.001+05:30

Peppy CSS Selectors

Faster than a speeding bullet.

More cross-browser than Superman?

Transylvanian Transmissions

2008-10-21T17:17:00.002+05:30

This idea is sufficiently plausible in an attempt to account
For the phenomenon
The sickness and the sentence of blood.
I could no longer strubble,
Every moment threatened to be the last - there was pain,
Dizziness and profuse bleeding at the pores,
How is this possible
The transmission was transfusing
In a moment the sober eye of reason would detect a vibration in the flesh.
Creeping, incoherent,
Bearing no mark of a human hand

The vision comes and goes,
But tonight I saw very clearly.
The vision comes and goes,
But tonight I saw very clearly.
Very deeply.

I wrote a small parsing DSL

2008-10-13T20:53:00.003+05:30

I got sick of re-writing the crawl login again and again, and I don't like using the attribute CSS selectors [attr=value]

So I wrote this.


require 'rubygems'
require 'open-uri'
require 'net/http'
require 'hpricot'

class Rule
  attr_accessor :tag, :callback
  def initialize(tag, &callback)
    @tag = tag
    @callback = callback
    @preconditions = []
  end
  
  def all_ok?(tag)
    @preconditions.each do |condition|
      return false unless condition.call(tag)
    end  
    true
  end

  def with(condition, &callback)
    @preconditions << condition
    self.callback = callback   
    self
  end
  
  def with(attribute, value, &callback)
    @preconditions << lambda {|tag| tag.attributes[attribute.to_s].include?(value)}
    self.callback = callback   
    self
  end
end

class Farser
  def initialize(source)
    @source = Hpricot(open(source))
    @rules = []
  end
  
  def find(tag, &callback)
    rule = Rule.new(tag, &callback)
    @rules << rule 
    rule   
  end
  
  def farse
    @rules.each do |rule|
      @source.search(rule.tag) do |found|
        next unless rule.all_ok?(found)
        rule.callback.call(found)
      end
    end    
  end  
  
  def self.fetch(from, to)
    uri = URI.parse(from)
    return if File.exists?(to)
    File.open(to, "wb") do |f|
      Net::HTTP.start(uri.host) { |http|
        resp = http.get(uri.path)
        f.write(resp.body)
      }
    end
  end
end

The usage is pretty simple


farser = Farser.new("http://something.com")
farser.find("a").with(:href, 'index').with(:name, 'someone') do |index_link| 
end

No error handling and super duper method chaining.

I love it!

SyntaxHighlighter, post code to your blog and make it look pretty!

2008-10-12T17:08:00.005+05:30

In my efforts to further make my blog prettier, I'm trying out this plugin called SyntaxHighlighter It's all Javascript and CSS and a little flash, but that's ok.

traits.each {|trait| trait.spread_awesome}

There's a nice how to use SyntaxHighlighter to post code to blogger and wordpress here.

Electric Sheep is bloody awesome

2008-10-12T12:21:00.001+05:30

Electric Sheep seriously rocks my socks. I wish I was on a Mac, cuz I've seen how pretty it is on that, but on my sweet little Dell on Windows, it's still pretty awesome.

I wonder why they called it that though.

Weird.

"Mother,
Tell your children not to walk my way"
Danzig - Mother.

Danzig

2008-10-10T15:59:00.004+05:30

Her Black Wings
Devil's Plaything
777
Going Down To Die

"See she comes,
Blacker than pitch"
Danzig - Her Black Wings

My Word.

2008-10-01T11:34:00.003+05:30

Al Pacino in Scarface said, "I never fucked anybody over in my life didn't have it coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don't break them for no one."

Al Pacino in The Insider said, "I never left a source hang out to dry, ever! Abandoned! Not 'till right fucking now. When I came on this job I came with my word intact. I'm gonna leave with my word intact. Fuck the rules of the game! "

As you can see Al Pacino is trying to make a point.

You're integrity is all you're born with. What you do with it, in you're whole life is what people remember about you.

My mother will never forget the fact that I lied to her about not studying for an exam when I was 5. Does that make me a bad person, I hope not. Does that make me a liar, definitely not. That just makes me someone who lied really terribly when I was 5.

I had a Principal in school. Mr Roberts. He'd say, "The thing with lies is, they have very short legs. They run very very fast, but they get caught very soon."

My Dad says, "The thing with lies is. You need to keep stock of who you lied to about what. The thing with the truth is, it's just so much easier."

Now, I have lied before. But it was always for the right reasons, or selfishness or vanity. Why am I saying all this today? Am I confused about something? ells yes!

The Oracle in The Matrix Reloaded says, "No, you've already made the choice. Now you have to understand it."

What that means is I am trying to understand a part of myself. One that says my balls and word don't break for no one.

And while I'm at it, I'll solve world hunger and poverty and terrorism.

My new feed

2008-09-29T18:53:00.001+05:30

I switched to feedburner. Because I feel really important this way, when I know how many people are stalking me.

Awesome cool ask the manowar fan feed

Such a lonely day. And it's mine.

2008-09-29T10:59:00.003+05:30

"If I just stay in bed, and pull the covers around me; if I just unplug the phone, if I don't answer the mail, then whatever bad news is waiting for me can't get to me. If I can just sleep, and then just sleep some more, then I won't have to deal with it. Not now. I can't deal with it now. Maybe it'll go away on its own. Maybe I'll die and I won't ever have to deal with it"

Call me fishmeal: On being crazy

"The most lonliest day in my life.
Such a lonely day.
Shouln't exist."
System Of A Down - Lonely Day

The conflict of the mind

2008-09-26T17:01:00.003+05:30

On the one hand we have:

"Freedom, urge, faith - and deeper he falls
Hatred, rage, fear - the stronger denial
Anger, heat, lust - the higher he climbs"

Satyricon - The rite of our cross.

And it is my right to my own cross.

"Life's no ordeal if you come to terms,
Reject the system dictating the norms

From dehumanization to arms production,
To hasten the nation towards its destruction
Power, power, the law of the land,
Those living for death will die by their own hand"

A perfect circle - Annhilation.

Let me be the man that you hate for always being right, on THIS day.

Pimp the Moto Rokr E8

2008-09-23T14:01:00.002+05:30

So if it's news to you that I bought a Moto Rokr E8, then dude, you don't know me at all now do you?!

Apps I can't do without:

1. GMail mobile app. Dude, that shit is fast!
2. Opera Mini. Dude, that is seriously fast! Can't do without Facebook now can I?
3. Google Maps. I get lost a lot.
4. Flickr uploader. For all the photos you take!

I will update that list with more as I discover them!

The opera mini is awesome

2008-09-19T09:54:00.003+05:30

Everyone in the whole wide world should use the new Opera mini browser on their cellphones.

Why? Because it's super fast, super-cool, speed dial bookmarks rule! And it's actually really really fast for some reason.

No, I mean it man.

I haven't tried flash on it yet, but so far kickass!

Opera mini = Jack Bauer = Chuck Norris.

"There're millions of lives at stake, and millions of people will die if you don't do what I say, NOW! Dammit, NOW!"
Jack Bauer - Every single episode of 24

Rails before_save and validations

2008-09-13T10:54:00.003+05:30

In Rails you ought to look at before_save as your slightly bad ass friend, who you won't give control of your assets to.

You might think that's a bad analogy. When in fact it's not. Bear with me.

Truth/Sane part of analogy:

Don't modify your objects in an before_save hook. In any way, small string manipulation, prepend a dollar sign. Any of that, in any way. Of course, this argument is only valid if you're going to add validations on that object on those fields.

Example:


class Thing
before_save :underscore_most_special

private

def underscore_most_special
 name.gsub!(/[-_/]/, '_')
end

end

This is all cool right, well let's say now you throw in a validation.


class Thing

before_save :underscore_most_special
validates_uniqueness_of :name

private

def underscore_most_special
 name.gsub!(/[-_/]/, '_')
end

end


class ThingTest

def test_name_should_be_unique
 Thing.create!(:name=>"rambo")
 assert_equal false, Thing.new(:name=>"rambo").valid?
end

end

Of course this test will pass, what test won't pass on the other hand which I didn't write on the first go is.


def test_name_should_be_unique
 Thing.create!(:name=>"rambo-the-dude")
 assert_equal false, Thing.new(:name=>"rambo-the-dude").valid?
end

Any guesses why?

The thing that's saved is saved with underscores, and the thing that's wants to get saved is being compared with hyphens. Later on get's saved with underscores. And you end up with duplicates.

So what's the solution. Don't use those AR hooks? Hell no, hooks are awesome! Use before_validates.

I was asked to be part of this uber-cool coterie

2008-09-12T12:47:00.001+05:30

Email I got:

No, we don't wear goggles in the night. We don't claim we can play the
guitar when we can't. We do not listen to 'cool' music like Himesh
Reshammiya. We don't speak English in a fake American accent. We don't
even ape the Paris Hiltons and the Brad Pitts of this world...

Oh yeah! We happen to have IQ level more than 120. We think that one should just try to be herself/himself.

Talking about something more than films and girls/boys is our forte. We
have something more than corny jokes to offer as humor and we can hold
a meaningful conversation for more than 5 mins.

And we don't believe in spending half our day in beauty parlor. We have
better things to do than to waste our time on 'loveship' and
'frandship'. High heels and ill fitting cool dress is a strict no no.

Rash bike driving and puking on the road is not our style. We don't flaunt what we got.. Jeez!

No! we are not cool, for my friend "Uncool is Cool"

xxxx

Now, I don't know how to reply. Some responses come to mind:

1. I stopped using Orkut, because well, I was shamed into it by Facebook. But I have a small place in my heart for Orkut and those cheesy poems they sent out when you did their crush thing. Heeheh!

2. Dude. Being uncool is not cool. It's actually uncool. It's what uncool people tell themselves man. Shit, I thought you knew :(

3. Rash bike driving may not be my style but come on man "frandship" ... goggles at night ... puking on the road! It's almost like you were there watching the whole time :)

Love in uncoolness,
Sid.

Ah, the good days.

PS: I do use words like coterie. All the time dude, in all my conversation. Or ubiquitously.