I was trying to setup ssh connection to GitHub when I faced this error on Windows saying -

bash-3.1$ ssh -Tv git@github.com
OpenSSH_4.6p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8e 23 Feb 2007
debug1: Reading configuration data /c/Documents and Settings/hjha/.ssh/config
debug1: Applying options for github.com
debug1: Executing proxy command: exec C:/Git/bin/connect.exe -H xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
debug1: permanently_drop_suid: 500
debug1: identity file C:\\Documents\\ and\\ Settings\\hjha\\\\.ssh\\id_rsa type
-1
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debia
n-5github2
debug1: match: OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-5github2 pat OpenSSH*
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.6
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug1: kex: server->client aes128-cbc hmac-md5 none
debug1: kex: client->server aes128-cbc hmac-md5 none

debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY
debug1: Host ‘github.com’ is known and matches the RSA host key.
debug1: Found key in /c/Documents and Settings/hjha/.ssh/known_hosts:1
debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Trying private key: C:\\Documents\\ and\\ Settings\\hjha\\\\.ssh\\id_rsa

debug1: No more authentication methods to try.
Permission denied (publickey).
bash-3.1$ ssh git@github.com
Permission denied (publickey).

It shows up as “Permission Denied (publickey)”, to which you will find many solutions on net. But all have same underlying reason which is – ssh cannot find the location of keys because of which it shows -

debug1: Trying private key: C:\\Documents\\ and\\ Settings\\hjha\\\\.ssh\\id_rsa

Here “Trying private keys” means that ssh is trying to look for the key at the given location but could not find it. More details can be seen here under the heading “Finding out what keys ssh is using”. Now the possible reasons as you will find would be like “keys are not named properly” or “ssh doesn’t know the path to the keys” which seem to be valid reason and you can use ssh-add to add path if in your case ssh can’t find the path to keys.

But, in my case situation was totally different, ssh keys were placed at right locations but ssh was looking for keys at wrong location(or a location which literally doesn’t even exist). To make it right I just opened my config file which would be placed at ~/.ssh and looks something like -

ProxyCommand C:/Git/bin/connect.exe -H xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Host github.com
User git
Port 22
Hostname github.com
IdentityFile "C:\Documents\ and\ Settings\hjha\\.ssh\id_rsa"
TCPKeepAlive yes
IdentitiesOnly yes

Host ssh.github.com
User git
Port 443
Hostname ssh.github.com
IdentityFile "C:\Documents\ and\ Settings\hjha\\.ssh\id_rsa"
TCPKeepAlive yes
IdentitiesOnly yes

I saw that there were redundant backslashes placed in the IdentityFile locations. So, I edited my config file to -

ProxyCommand C:/Git/bin/connect.exe -H xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Host github.com
User git
Port 22
Hostname github.com
IdentityFile "C:\Documents and Settings\hjha\.ssh\id_rsa"
TCPKeepAlive yes
IdentitiesOnly yes

Host ssh.github.com
User git
Port 443
Hostname ssh.github.com
IdentityFile "C:\Documents and Settings\hjha\.ssh\id_rsa"
TCPKeepAlive yes
IdentitiesOnly yes

It simply means that if you are using double quotes to give any location then you need to give the path as it is without escaping spaces and special characters with backward slash. I tried sshing again with ssh -vT git@github.com and whoa! It worked!

This thing can be easily achieved in Python which in other languages usually require 3-4 lines. This is possible due to Python’s tuple data structure. So to interchange values of two variables ‘x’ and ‘y’ simply use -

x, y = y, x

“x, y” defines a new tuple which takes the values of old variables which are presented in the form of another tuple as “y, x”.

If you have arrived to this web page, you must be knowing how urls are mapped to web pages in Django. These web pages are created using templates for reusability purposes. So a full fledged content of views.py would be somewhat like -

from django.template import Context, Template

from django.template import HttpResponse

t = Template(“<template_content>”)

c = Context(<dictionary_having_mapping_from_variables_to_values>)

t.render(c) # this brings the actual required output

html = t.render(c)

return HttpResponse(html)

How to reduce the overhead of writing whole of template in views.py file? You can call template from a separate file. To achieve this, you need to change TEMPLATE_DIRS in settings.py to include the directory path where you want to place the template file. Now the above code can be rewritten as -

from django.template import Context

from django.template.loader import get_template

from django.template import HttpResponse

t = get_template(‘abc.html’)

c = Context(<dictionary_having_mapping_from_variables_to_values>)

t.render(c) # this brings the actual required output

html = t.render(c)

return HttpResponse(html)

where abc.html contains your template content and lies in the directory path you mentioned in TEMPLATE_DIRS variable.

Although above trick didn’t make views.py concise, but it did provide a separation of template code(frontend) from views(backend), which now can be modified separately without affecting each other. Now, comes the actual trick to make views.py concise. There is a function called render_to_response() in django.shortcuts module, which performs the following tasks in one go -

t = get_template(‘abc.html’)

c = Context(<dictionary_having_mapping_from_variables_to_values>)

t.render(c) # this brings the actual required output

html = t.render(c)

return HttpResponse(html)

All the above tasks can be achieved through one statement -

return render_to_response(‘abc.html’,<dictionary_having_mapping_from_variables_to_values>)

Now, if you say that you don’t even want to mention that dictionary mapping, there is a way out, use locals() -

return render_to_response(‘abc.html’,locals())

Using locals automatically picks up variables and their values from the view. So obviously for this thing to work, variable names in template and views should match.

With loads of features built in, UMPlayer can surely replace VLC as your best media player. As per the official site, it can handle various media formats like AAC, AC3, ASF, AVI, DIVX, FLV, H.263, Matroska, MOV, MP3, MP4, MPEG, OGG, QT, RealMedia, VOB, Vorbis, WAV, WMA, WMV, XVID, etc.

I won’t extend this post long and waste my readers’ time. Rather I would like to come to the point directly that how UMPlayer has han edge over VLC Media Player. It has following exclusive features -

1) YouTube integration – UMPlayer lets you play YoutTube videos directly. Just go to Tools –> YouTube and search for the video or directly search from the text box on the main UI. Don’t forget to put your proxy settings for the network before starting with this feature. It automaticall shows

2) Automatic subtitles search – Just open the file which you want to play and click on Subtitles –> Find Subtitles on OpenSubtitles.org. It will automatically search for the possible subtitles from OpenSubtitles.org and give you the options.

3) Radio Integration – Just click on Tools –> SHOUTcast and it will show the list of Top 500 stations. Just double click on any station to play it.

Moreover, its lightweight than VLC Player, occupies less disk space.

Download UMPlayer from here.

Many a times you have faced this situation on Windows where you can’t delete certain file because its busy or being used by some other program. You may get a message from Windows that this file is being used by another program, even you have closed all the running programs. Here I present you the solution to how to delete those locked files.

Most probably you will receive an error message as shown in the above screenshot. So, the problem here is that the file we want to delete is used by some program that we don’t know. As we have closed all the running programs, this means that the program which is using the file we want to delete is running in background. If you try to look at the program through task manager, you can’t find it. So, the best way to look for this is to have a utility which shows that which file is being used by which program. So, once you get the program name using the file you can easily close it.

This nice utility is WhoLockMe Explorer Extension. You can download it from here. Its very small yet powerful utility. Just unzip the downloaded zip file and run install.bat. You are done. Now, if you get the error while deleting any file, just right click that file and in the menu you will see “Who Lock Me ?”. Click it. Then you will see the list of programs that are locking that file. Just select the process and click Kill Process and that process will be killed. Now you can delete that file.

In this short blog post I am gonna show you how to share any Facebook album publically with anyone. When I mean sharing any album publically, I mean to say that that sharing with anyone irrespective of whether he is on Facebook or not. Some people share pics on Flickr, Picasa and other image sharing sites. But some hardcore Facebook users prefer to keep all their pics on Facebook. In image sharing sites like Picasa and all, you have option to create an album and share your albums publically. But how a Facebook user gonna manage that. Here I show you.

So, to share any album publically go to Profile –> Photos. Choose an album you want to share publically. Now, scroll down until you find the link – “Share this album with anyone by sending them this public link”. Below this you will find a url. Give this url to any person you want to share that album with and he can view that album. The good part of this whole thing is that the person with which you are sharing the album need not be on Facebook. So, now you can share Facebook album with non Facebook users also.

Do you like listening songs in rainy weather? Well, here I present a way to add rainy music as background to any song you want to.

Simply go to RainyMood and it will start playing a nice soothing rainy music. Now you can play any song of your choice either from YouTube or Grooveshark or any other source of your choice. But the thing here is although you can change the volume of your song but can’t control the volume of the rainy music because there is no such option. So, you can get this rainy music from the following youtube video -

Here, you have much control over the volume and all. At first I thought that playing rainy music behind will ruin the original music but when I tried playing it, it works too well, esp with romantic songs.

With over 600 million users active in Facebook, it is unarguably the the most used and loved social networking site. You might be addicted to Facebook and use it like a pro but ever thought of tweaking Facebook as per you needs like putting colorful text, unliking a status, rating friends’ posts? These tweaks to Facebook is no longer a dream with Social Plus. Social Plus is already is being used by many Facebook users. Here I will show you how to use this extension and enjoy Facebook in a more fun way. This extension is supported for Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

First go to Social Plus and click on Download. It will select the right browser and take you to the place to download it. Now open Facebook and you will finds loads of options. Now I will list what all you can do with this extension -

1) Colored text. Bold, Italic, Underline and Strike text. (Available as soon as click on a text box to write some text in it. You will get small buttons to edit text.)

2) Large number of emoticons. (Open Facebook chat and there you will see emoticons option)

3) Dislike option next to the Like option. This has been in lot of demand by Facebook user. Now you can dislike any post using this. (Below each post you will find this option besides Like)

4) Profile Skins (Go to your profile and choose Profile Skin from SocialPlus! menu)

5) Photo Preview (Just scroll over any picture shared by your friend and you will see an enlarged version of it)

You can all find all the options provided by this extension here.

With lots many sites offering answers to questions, competition is stiff. Top sites being Answers.com, Yahoo Answers, Rediff Q&A and Blurtit which get loads of traffic. I recently explored another such great service called Aardvark. Its a Google product. Aardvark lets you send your questions even through IM and mostly you will get the answer to your question in few minutes. If you are thinking that who will be answering you questions, is there a panel of experts doing so? No, its just the other Aardvark users, same as you, sharing the common interest who would be answering your questions. You can grow your network by simply adding people with whom you think that you share common interest. Aardvark allows you to ask questions in four ways – through its website, IM, email, or Twitter. I like IM way the best. Its too convenient. There are some tricks to use Aardvark the IM way.

Let me show you how to proceed with Aardvark the IM way. When you register with Aardvark, it will ask for the IM and your ID. Once you enter this, you will get add request from the Aardvark IM bot. I gave my Gmail ID and the bot request came from “aardvark-g212”. Now just click on it and type your question. You can use “tag: <tags>” to specify tags to your questions, so that your question goes to the right people. Just type “help” and you will get full list of help commands which you can use to get thorough knowledge of Aardvark.

In the Aardvark website interface, click on network to see the network where you will people either having mutual friend or having some common interests. You can add them to grow you network. Now go to Profile –> Topics. Here you can add topics for which you want to answer. So, if any question comes related to the topics mentioned there, Aardvark will ping you with “You there?” and then you can proceed with answering the question if you want to. Now go to Profile –> Settings. Here you can get the settings done as per your need.

So, could this be the future of Question and Answers concept or Answers.com and Yahoo Answers will continue to dominate? What do you think?

You must have sent friend requests on Facebook that are sometimes not accepted from the other side. Those friend requests on Facebook keep on accumulating and increases the chances of getting your Facebook account been refrained from adding more friends. If you keep repeating the act of adding friends and pending friend requests keep accumulating, you may face a permanent suspension of the account. So, its better to keep the count of pending Facebook friend requests as low as possible. Here, I am going to show you how you can cancel friend requests on Facebook and keep the count of pending friend requests low.

The utility to do so is “Unfriend Finder”. It provides support for four browsers – Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. As soon as you open the Unfriend Finder site, it will detect your browser. Now, click on the logo in the Download tab to download the utility as an addon or extension. I tried it in Chrome. As soon as this extension gets installed, open your Facebook account. Now you can see few different things like – Pending Friend Requests link in the left sidebar, Unfriends tab at the top and Unfriend Finder button at the bottom right corner of the screen.

Now to proceed with the main thing, click on Unfriends link in the left sidebar and click on Pending Requests. Now, you can see the list of pending friend requests. To cancel friend requests, instead of clicking on “Remove Connection” button(because that didn’t work in my case), go to the persons profile by clicking on his name. Then scroll down and in left sidebar you will find the link to cancel friend request.

You can control settings by clicking on Unfriend Finder Settings from the menu which appears by clicking on the button at the bottom right corner of the screen. If you still didn’t get how this thing works, click on Show Tutorial.