Aren't we moving to dark age?

Well i wonder how many from the west would have heard of load-shedding, an inseparable part of our daily lives. These days we are undergoing 3 hours load-shedding everyday. The light has just gone off now in my neighbourhood. The light will show up after 3 hours (at 1AM in the morning). Now this situation will be getting more worse in the coming days, there are talks going on around that there will be 6 hours electricity cutoff daily. Experts are predicting even worst situation in the future.

The major credit for the present situation goes to maoists, who have destroyed numerous infrastructures to come to the mainstream for the political change in Nepal. So far they are successful but all of us are paying huge price. Now agitated Terai is just around the corner. Nepal still seems to be far from the political stability, instead approaching dark age. May gods of Nepal help Nepal.

My Accomplishments in January 2007

These are some of the achievements that I could remember of

1. Coordinated hands-on training on Wiki at ICIMOD on 3/4/11 Jan 2007
2. Ran 10 days in the morning (achievement so far)
1. Need to increase this number
3. Posted 31 in total in 3 blogs
1. I need to blog more on my talkict blog
4. Completed and implemented Document Flow Tracker at ICIMOD
5. E-library application is 80% complete
6. Developed a small script for Html Table to Wiki converter in python
7. Understood the sphider search engine and customizing it for my need (around 70% done)
8. Learned Jquery framework for Javascript and Code Igniter php framework
9. Hacked Mediawiki for versatile page by page access control (based on page-by-page access)
10. Hike to Lakhurebhangyang

Time flies. We don't remember everything we do. Generating a list, as above, makes sense of my might-have-wasted time. Now I can sit back and enjoy thinking 'I have achieved something!'. This list definitely needs to increase. One thing I am missing here is reading books. Hope to have at least two books in my next month achievements list.

what to do when you don't feel doing anything?

What do you do when you don't feel like doing anything? and at office? Well right now I am going through the similar situation and don't know what should I do. There's work to be done. And yet I am writing to you, incase you have anything interesting to suggest for the next time. I think it's maybe because of fatigue due to running in the morning after a long break or because of hot air. Possibly that. Ok i found the reason. Now what?

powered by performancing firefox

A memorable hike to Lakhurebhangyang

The hike to Lakhurebhangyang (Jan 27) was definitely a memorable day to all of us. Our fatigue was none compared to the beautiful scenes on the way. I wasn't tired anyway.
The three cities of Kathmandu valley was supposed to be seen from the top of Lakhurebhangyang, but the panorama was blurred. Fog or pollution?? Didn't try to find that out. That was the second time for few of us. But still we were captivated by the soothing views on the way.
The laugh, talks, food, views, mock... are still fresh in my mind. Fresh! I am sure some of my friends would laugh at me right now.

well the "not supposed to happen" happened :))

Well it just happened the "not supposed to be happened thing". Quite a funny message by the fav. Google in the Google Reader. Just thought of showing to you ;)

I crossed the century but in blogging

This is my 101th blog. Well I hope to cross double century by the next year. Another new year resolution :) I am just thinking that I am going to write about my achievements (anything i remember and that i take as an achievement... you will see tomorrow) at the end of every month... my resolutions seem to be increasing. Good for me. Wish me luck!!

Source code formatter for blogs

I found the source-code formatter to format codes for posting in my just-tech blog. It was quite useful because I was having the problem of managing the structure of codes, when posting it in blog. I wish to have color formatting features for codes in blogspot. I am going to need this quite often.

Why you should learn programming: use of regex

Suppose your boss gives you a list of names, given below, and asks you to remove the numbers. Hapless you have no other way than to go to each line and delete the number. If you have little idea of programming, you would never think that way. You will immediately try to find the least time consuming way. You can write a program to do the job for you. I won't recommend that. But if there are hunderds of such files that need to be sorted out, then you should definitely embrace programming. However for the task given below, there's another tool that will really make your life a happy life. Regular expressions. Sometimes even the good programmer are not aware of such tools. These tools are also available in almost all high level languages.

Most text editors also come with regular expression functionality. Oh don't menion about useless Ms Notepad. I use notepad++, however there are plenty of other free editors lying around the net.

It just takes a second to extract the names from the list below. I mean a second for me and some of you. Because I already know a bit of regular expression. It's a really confusing at the beginning and you don't have to be a programmer to understand regular expression, though programming idea definitely helps.

I am assuming you are not using notepad. If you are, then change it right away.

1 FirstA LastA
2 FirstB LastB
3 FirstC LastC
...
...
100 FirstAA LastAA
...
...
1000 FirstAAA LastAAA
1001 FirstAAB LastAAB
...

The list goes on

The presentation below shows some regular expressions to manipulate the list of 1000 rows, but definitely not a comprehensive one to master regular expressions. Just know that there's also regular expression around the corner, should you need to do some work expeditiously.

goggle gets right when you search for me...

Do you ever wonder what google gives when you search for your name? Well I really wanted months back to give pages relevant to myself when being searched for anjesh. Guess what? Now google gives the real me for anjesh, in the first place. There are other anjesh also.
Try searching yourself. It's very unlikely that you will get your own results. If you are curious about what I did for that, then the answer is regular blogging. I think google is curious about updated pages.

Finally html-table to wiki get going... developer's satisfaction

Every developer knows the satisfaction of having something accomplished. Like today I was able to convert html-table to wiki format. I will post the python code in my tech blog soon. Though it's a simple code but it's usage is tremendously high. I found few sites that does table conversion from html to wiki, but they preserve the attributes of rows and columns of table, which I don't need + few other issues. So had to do on my own, also a test of knowledge of Python. Python is a one of the must-know languages.



We at ICIMOD are moving intranet contents to Wiki. We have also hired an intern to do the job. This program is just to make his job a little easy. I understand the pain of creating tables in Wiki, especially when it's two pages long :-(

powered by performancing firefox

Track flying-time and elude frustration

Well the first month of this not-anymore-new-year is almost coming to an end. When I look back in January, it seems like I have done nothing at all. Frustration!! Well there are some productive things that I think I might have done but don't remember it clearly. Time flies and no body can control time. The only way to control time is to use it properly. To justify the proper use of our time, we should log our tasks and see at the end of month what we achieve. Easy to say, hard to do. Well I haven't done that so far, but it seems quite promising. That log will give us a glimpse of our achievements over the last month. We can develop strategy accordingly and also it won't let us to frustrate over flying time, unless you happen to waste time doing nothing.

Video editing is a breeze!!

Last night I was really busy trying to convert mobile video format .gp3 to other format recognizable by Moviemaker and do a little editing, slicing, adding titles. Finally I was able to convert .gp3 to .avi using mobile 3gp converter, the best part is it's freeware. Editing in Moviemaker is a breeze. Just took 10 minutes to edit the video file that you may see below.

Are we helpless or we just don't care?

Two boys, possibly at 15,16 or even less, kicked, thrashed the footpath fence with exertion. Passers-by gave a look. Nobody dared to say anything to those boys. Finally the boys were able to take one bar out of the fence. I was also little frightened while taking the shot with my mobile. I know nobody would come to help me if they snatched my mobile. I would have been helpless. There were police, traffics but just enjoying the scenes; perhaps they had no other choice. I couldn't shot the car being shattered in front of police.

People were saying that they have never seen those hooligans, despite the fact that they have been living in this neighborhood since 30/40 years. So true. When it comes to hooliganism, it appears as if they are being sent from the Satan. Who dares to challenge with the Satan? Just watch, enjoy, talk, and say "Nepal is always like this!" Perhaps the scenario would have changed, should only 100 people from the neighborhood stood against such act. I wait for the day.

http://www.nepalnews.com.np/archive/2007/jan/jan21/news09.php

(Liverpool vs Chelsea) vs cornered people

I am watching Livelpool vs Chelsea, but with no real intension of watching. I was thrilled to see the two goals by liverpool within the first 20 minutes. Aren't we very privileged? We are indeed and we take many things for granted. And then we have preferences. I do have lots of friends who know about the transfer of player in real time and have opinions on the performance of the teams. I was never bound to sports like an addict. I do watch games but I watch for fun. Some of my friends say that futbol is kindof religion for them. In between i wonder how many of them actually think about cornered people, just a curiosity. Maybe I am talking about the cornered people because I watched them yesterday and their pain still hanging in my mind. I wait for the day when these people would get the same value as Liverpool vs Chelsea.

"We corner People" is cornered and will be always

Everyone almost choked when a person ,from Helvetas, was reading a letter to a family in a Tamang village of Rasuwa District, so called the corner of the country, in a documentary "We corner people" by Kesang Tseten. That person even couldn't complete the letter and apologized. That particular scene showed the hardships living through by exploited Nepalese in Arab countries. At the end, everyone of us at ICIMOD conference hall was distressed, it was felt in the silence among people leaving the hall towards the party; everyone forgot what they have just seen and felt through. After having dinner, some started to dance and "We corner people" was definitely cornered. I really wish we could do something.

Why do people, or better you, smoke?

For fun, show-off, peer pressure, environment, loneliness, foul breath... or to die first, that's for sure whether you like it or not.

A friend of mine once explained to me that he first started to smoke for show-off; young people often feel superior when they do something they are not supposed to do. It doesn't take time for continuous show-off to turn into habit and finally addiction. I also asked another friend of mine, a girl, that whether she is addicted. She proudly said no. I asked her again that if she could refrain herself from smoking for even a day. Surprised. 'wow.. I haven't thought of that'. That was funny.



We all know that smoking is injurious to health and yet we do (excluding me and some of you). Sometimes people would make fun of themselves saying that "Yeh.. I have left smoking", after a little pause, "since 2 hours." That clearly shows how much will power that we, humans, lack; there are and will be exceptions though.



I wonder whether these smokers are also contributing to the global warming - risking our planet. As long as they are risking their own lives, let them enjoy. When it comes to other non-smokers' lives, they should be stopped. But how? Will government ever stop high-income generating cigarette industry? But at least they should be reminded that 'Smoking is not just injurious to their health but the entire planet.' But again who cares. Humans! Social yet selfish animals!!!

my nokia mobile broke again....

I was installing few applications in my nokia 6600 from http://www.crazy4mobilez.com. Fortunately I also installed "backup contacts". I was also testing bluetooth connector for pc and luckily happened to transfer the backed-up contact file. Otherwise I would have lost the contacts again like couple of months back. Suddenly one application caused mobile to collapse. I guess the mobile c drive got corrupted. I was not able to view contacts or do anything. The last time, the same thing happened, restarting helped. This time, nothing helped at all. A message came at the same time and couldn't do anything to view that message. It was on mobile memory. Now i have changed the settings to store the messages in MMS card. Finally I had to format the mobile losing all the data on the mobile phone. This time I have my contacts in my pc so didn't worry much. You wouldn't believe that the last time, my mobile broke, I paid Rs 500 to fix it. That guy who fixed my mobile did nothing more than formatting it. I still hate that guy. But again I got an opportunity to know about formatting the mobile myself and freed myself from the anxiety of what would happen if i did this. Now I am not afraid to do anything stupid with my mobile.

lost in the city

Well it sounds funny that I got lost today in the morning in the puzzling alleys of this city. I woke up little late so decided not to run far. But something came up and I decided to run inside the city. On reaching Bishalnagar, I wanted to take another route which I have never been to. I happened to circle the same area thrice, everytime with different routes. Finally I went back from where I came and took known route back to home. I got so so tired :-<

test:blogging from flock

This following text was written 2 days back. I couldn't blog from flock nor could I log-in to my blog through flock. Finally i am able to log-in now.

I just installed flock browser, which is just another fork of mozilla base code, or you may say a brother of firefox. Flock already comes with blog, image posting features. I am just trying to test blogging from flock. Hope this will get to my blog.

Firefox needs a separate extension for this feature, which is embedded in flock core. Also I noticed that this is comparatively fast than firefox2.0. Sometimes typing in the address bar of firefox lags almost 5 seconds before appearing. I don't know if only i am facing this problem. Anyways flock seems to be a good competitor to firefox: my opinion!!

Blogged with Flock

Creative CV: worth watching it

Below is the screenshot image of musical CV in flash - very creative, funny, interesting, sounds good...

The forward mail contains the following message.... (believe at your own risk but who cares :)

This guy posted his resume musically on the net and he really got hired by Microsoft graphics team. This is amazing stuff.....The person who prepared this CV received job offers from 180 companies; More than 1,000,000 ppl have viewed this CV...

http://www.paradoxware.com/alstudio/cv/en.htm

lesson learned...

Today I had a presentation on Wiki, followed by hands-on training for the ICIMOD staffs. This was the third one, the previous two were carried out last week. During the presentation, the images of Wiki site was not quite clear, because of some problem in projector. I was apologizing again and again every time images appeared in the slides. I realized that I shouldn't repeat apology and yet I did. Later a veteran senior officer commented on this particular repetition of mine. He pointed that I should have dropped that image, and only one apology was enough. I will make sure that such action doesn't repeat later. The audience would definitely get bored to hear the same thing again and again. A lesson learned...

keep yourself up-to-date is the most accessible yet hard to realize in this information age

Today Dr. Gabriel Campbell, ICIMOD DG, gave a short presentation in the beginning of the workshop on ICIMOD next strategic plans. Almost every speaker appreciated Gabriel's insightful ideas. I won't elaborate all here. But the one of the many he stressed and the one I already know and yet procrastinate is "to keep up-to-date ourselves in which we work". That's very important if we want to keep our competitive. For that we have to read a lot. I have lots of books to be read, and all of them in ebook version. It's easy and most importantly free to download. I download everything that I perceive as a little interesting. In the back of my head, I tag "read this" note but again with time, note starts to fade, until I see the ebook again later.

There's never been a time in history when keeping up-to-date is as easy as in this information and internet age. Information at our fingertips. Can we imagine going through the library for new publications, waiting for magazines to arrive in the markets. I can't! But the amount of information now is so huge that we tend to get lost in its vastness, making the accessible hard to realize. At least for me!!

I am running now...

Well it's been two days since new year that I started running in the morning. Finally! And I don't want to or probably won't miss throughout this year. I know it's hard just for a minute to wake up. Once I am out of bed, I am fresh for the entire day. But the problem is even the dark morning (it's quite dark quarter past six in the morning in this season - winter) is not fresh as I am running besides the road. Though vehicles are quite less in number in morning, the evening smoke still seem to be in air. There is not any appropriate place or park to run. There's one small park, where I go for stretch-up after running. I guess it should be stretch-down. The park is so small that I can cover it in 10 minutes or less, walking. It is quite mono walking round and round.



I am planning to run to Budhanilkantha in Saturday. I don't know how long will it take, probably more than an hour from my place. This may also be counted as one of my resolutions. Hope to fulfill it soon...

gmail address: one to many

If you have created a gmail account, you are blessed with hundreds or even more email addresses. How many you want?

I already know one trick of generating many gmail addresses from one. Thanks to lifehacker. If your gmail address is username@gmail.com, then username+anyword@gmail.com is also yours. I used this whenever I subscribed to any sites. This way I will know if my email address is being used for spamming. Some sites don't allow plus (+) in the email address and I am compelled to use username@gmail.com. But not anymore.

Today I happened to know another trick. Use dot anywhere in your gmail address and it works. I just tried to myself. I always resented having created my gmail address as firstnamelastname@gmail.com, I used to miss dot between firstname and lastname as it is getting more and more standardized. Thanks to my friend who forwarded this information. Now I can have my email address as firstname.lastname@gmail.com. Thanks to fore-thinking attitude of google.

Google help center has the info on same.

Now tell me how many emails address you want.
username@gmail.com
username+a@gmail.com
username+b@gmail.com
....
user.name@gmail.com
user.na.me@gmail.com
...
this will never end. Enjoy!!

Why you shouldn't pursue MBA?

This is just an irrational reason for why you shouldn't pursue MBA. I suppose MBAs don't act or speak like such. Forget it...just a forward.

An MBAgraduate and an Engineer go on a camping trip, set up their tent, and fall asleep. Some hours later, the Engineer wakes his MBA friend. "Look up at the sky and tell me what you see."



The MBA replies, "I see millions of stars."



The Engineer asks "What does that tell you?"



The MBA ponders for a minute:



"Astronomically speaking, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies



and potentially billions of planets.



Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo.



Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three.



Theologically, it's evident the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant.



Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow.



What does it tell you?"



The Engineer friend is silent for a moment, and then speaks.



"Practically...Someone has stolen our tent".

A new morning...

A nice forward...

When the door of happiness closes, another opens.

But often times we look so long at the closed door.

That we don't see the one,

which has been opened for us.





If u learn to translate every event of ur life into a POSITIVE one,



U'll stop being a prisoner of ur past n become the



ARCHITECT of ur future…!!!

A week after new year... my new resolution????

It's been a week since the year 2007 has begun. One of my new year resolutions is to blog daily and i am writing to remind myself. Another is to run in the morning daily.. guess what? I have been sleeping since new year. Am I really weak? Or resolutions are just the medium to make us think feeble. Unfortunately I hadn't drafted my resolutions on paper yet... see my zeal? Just in my mind... Anyways it's never too late to start anything worthwhile. Resolutions don't generally work unless you can see them in paper. One of my major resolutions should be to first write one.