Carthik Sharma

After a long time, I feel unlike an isolated island again. My cousin, her husband, cute little daughter, and her in-laws have come here for a theme park tour. They are not staying with me at my place, but my cousin came over to my house today, with her cute sweet adorable little daughter and brightened the house with laughter, the very distinctive sound of a baby crying after waking up from a short nap, and the smell of glorious food cooking on the stove.

It’s a rainy day today, and it’s like God decided to clean his TV screen with bucketloads of water. If the TV screen part sounds cryptic, the background is that on one extraordinarily bright day me and my friend were on the patio behind the student union in school, gobbling a Subway sandwich when he said it seemed like God must’ve been unable to see his creation on his TV, and must’ve turned up the brightness on his T.V. set, and that that should explain the amazing brilliance of the sun on that day.

So where was I? Yes, well, my cousin, who is more sister and less cousin, cooked some awesome South Indian food, and I had the pleasure of lying in the couch, occasionally playing with my niece who is so cute, with eyes so wide and expressive that I could spend hours looking at them.
In other news, I made an A and a B, the B in the Design and Analysis of Algorithms. I got that despite my best efforts towards not getting it. So that’s the end of another semester. How many more? I wonder. I still have to finish polishing a paper for my advisor, which was part of the independent study, so I am still waiting on that grade.

Most importantly, this day I was awarded the Master of Science degree in Computer Engineering. I thought the graduation ceremony was tomorrow (May 1st), but it turned out to be today instead. So yes, I was granted the M.S. in absentia. I look forward to receiving the diploma( for those back home, in this land where the taps, and the switched, and even the roads are upside down, and “degree” certificate is not that anymore, it’s a diploma, and I don’t go to college, I go to “school”.)

The list grows longer. B.Tech., M.S., and I feel more incompetent and challenged than ever before

Ping-o-matic is this awesome service Dougal and Matt setup for bloggers like me and you who don’t really want to spend more time hunting down various blog update notification services, and their ping URIs, than writing articles. It’s ridiculously easy to use and the benefits are many. I started using it not so long ago, since it’s a recent arrival on the internet.
I was muchly surprised to find that the 10,000th ping was mine! I was on the #wordpress IRC channel, and Matt suggested I get screen caps, which I think is a good idea. May I go down in history as the guy who sent the 10,000th ping through ping-o-matic. Alright, I’m kidding. I know I still have a shot at many really ridiculous acheivements and records, and if nothing works out before I die, I will try my best to get a Darwin Award (I can kid more than once in a paragraph, you know).
Obligatory screencaps

…in design and analysis of algorithms was both interesting, and fair. So I did well.

I came home to find a new edition of Time lying on the modest piece of wooden furniture we like to call a teapoy at home.
In it are featured 4 Indians. The richest, the most powerful, the most beautiful, and arguably the healthiest Indian.
Azim Premji, the chairman of Wipro Technologies , is a modest man for his achievements. I am, in a strange way, connected to his fortunes. When I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree, I had a job in the aforementioned Wipro Technologies as a Software Engineer. But that was the year 2001, when the aftermath of the Dot Com Bust was being felt, and for a year, the company did not ask me to start working. By the time they asked me to join, I already had a fellowship offer from the University of Central Florida, and I had decided to pursue my Ph.D. He has been very resourceful in taking a company that produced vegetable oil (Western India Oil Products == Wipro), and making it the leader of India’s I.T. revolution.
A.B. Vajpayee, India’s Prime Minister, brought to India the “power of a thousand suns”, and also the promise of peace.
Aishwarya Rai is very beautiful. The previous sentence is an understatement. My dad was totally bowled over by the “You are looking at the green eyes of the most beautiful woman in the world…” ad that she did for a non-profit organization that worked towards getting people to donate their eyes. She has pledged her eyes for donation when she dies. Beauty and brains – now that is a deadly combination. Trust me, I know this to be true from my personal experience
B.K.S. Iyengar demonstrates the power of Yoga lucidly with his life. He is 85, and yet he leads an active life. There will come a day when I will learn and practice Yoga. I don’t have the desire now, because it is so mainstream!:roll:. Bad excuse.
There should have been more Indians in the list. At 1 billion, Indians are a sizeable chunk of the human family. I missed an Indian(-born) author in the list, so too at least a musician, and a sportsman. The presence of Norah Jones is a consolation. While there are so many Indian authors and musician that could have been there, I really wish India could produce at least one sportsman who can make Indians proud in a popular sport, and I don’t mean Cricket.

The long project is finally at an end!!
Cool.
Now all I have to worry about is another project, a paper, the end sems, and the exam for the undergrads

This article should explain how to use the Feed on Feeds server-side RSS aggregator to create a page on a WordPress powered blog.

Update : Instructions in Spanish, thanks to Frank Pereiro, from Tenerif�, Spain. He also adds that it works so much to his satisfaction that he now uses this as his primary news reader. Many thanks to him!

First off, let me say that I love Feed on Feeds, and I wish to thank Steve Minutillo for making it available under the GPL.
This modified code is also made available under the same terms as the original Feed on Feeds code. I claim no rights to the original Feed on Feeds code. You are free to modify part or whole of the _modified_ code that I have included for your needs.

I started off with this with gat’s excellent tutorial for doing something similar. Thanks, gat

For example, I can read all the feeds I subscribe to at My subscriptions page using the setup I am about to describe.

Advantages:
1) Feed on Feeds (FoF) is a server-sider RSS aggregator, so you dont have to rely on other applications/ websites/ services to read a page with all your RSS feed updates.
2) FoF gives you updates in chronological order, unlike some RSS aggregators, where, if you are subscribed to say 2 xml feeds, you see all the entries from feed 1, then all the entries from feed2. With FoF you get the latest from feed 1, the latest from feed 2, — in short, you get the entries in the order that the websites were updated, latest first.

Here’s an overview of what needs to be done :
1)The required files need to be edited/uploaded.
2)The WordPress index.php file needs to be modified.
3) The .htaccess file needs to be modified to rewrite some urls.

Step 1.
a) Get the fofwp.zip file and unzip it.
b) edit the “config.php” that is in the “fof” folder.
c) edit the “init2.php” file that is the “fofwp” folder, that is, outside the “fof” folder (lines 3, 11 and 12 to be precise).
d)upload all the files to your server, if your wordpress files are in the /blog directory, the “init2.php” and the “view.php” files should be in the same directory The “fof” folder should also be in the same directory, so now the directory with wordpress installed in it now has an additional directory “fof” in it so that you now have a “/blog/fof” directory.
e) point your browser to /blog/fof/install.php and run through the installation.

Now FoF is hopefully installed and running fine. If you had any problems, the installation help at the FoF about page should be of help.
Also, please read the same page for more details about how to add/delete feeds, update them etc.

Step 2 : Modifying index.php

The portion of index.php that serves the entries is what needs to be modified. What we are trying to do is to have the index.php file display the subscriptions page when the parameter “subscriptions” is passed to it.

So find the line that says :
<?php if ($posts) { foreach ($posts as $post) { start_wp(); ?>

and just above this line, include the following piece of code :
<?php
$subscriptions = $_GET['subscriptions'];
if ($subscriptions == 1) { echo "My subscriptions:<br/>";
include('view.php');
}
else { ?>

then,

find the lines that say :
<p>Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.</p>
<?php } ?>

and add :
<?php } ?>

on the line immediately after.

–So, here, we did a “if subscriptions, serve the view.php; else serve the index.php as you normally do otherwise”.

Step 3 : Taking care of security.

You need to protect your “fof” folder on the webserver with a .htaccess and .htpasswd file setup.
I have included a “sample.htaccess” and “sample.htpasswd” file , but you need to create your own .htaccess and .htpasswd to protect this directory so only you can update/delete/modify the feeds etc. A lot of resources are available as to how to password protect a directory in Apache.
Once that is done, lets write some ReWrite rules for friendlier urls. I you don’t have the mod_reqrite module installed on the server, or don’t want to use it, then your subscriptions page can be accessed at “http://yourblog.com/index.php?subscriptions=1″
To add the rewrite rules, open the .htaccess file in your blog root directory and add the following lines to it :
RewriteRule ^subscriptions(.*) /index.php?subscriptions=1 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^view.php(.*) /index.php?m=000000 [QSA]

The first one makes “http://yourblog.com/subscriptions/” the url for your subscriptions page, and the second one prevents nosy people from accessing the view.php page directly, so you can be sure no one can mess around.

If you use the above instructions, and the code, please do let me know at mail @ carthik REMOVE THIS. net . I will be glad to hear from you.
I know this is no where near perfect, ’cause this is the first time I am attempting anything of this kind, so please tell me whatever you think about it, including suggestions for improving how it works/ feedback etc. Leave me comment on this post, or send me an email.

Thanks to bobben for the link that made my day.
Chindogu – and Patents. Just how much is a patent worth, in itself? When I hear someone say that a person has a patent to his name, the first thought that flashed in my mind is, “Is it a patent for a minor improvement on an existing idea?”.
I can never quite make up my mind regarding whether or not patents are good. I think the more useful a new invention/method is, the more freely it should be available, which is not always the case. There are two aspects to claiming a patent – intellectual pride, and the financial motive, and I guess it would be unfair not to have patents at all. Oh well, if I say anymore, then this will sound more like a personal-opinion piece on intellectual property than it already does. So here I stop.
P.S. – I would really love to have a “hold-it helmet”

I let off some steam at a bookstore. I saw an intriguing sign on a highway that said “Book Sale – No book over $3!”, and decided to go for it, a second time. The first time, I had taken the suggested exit, and having not found the bookstore, had found a good hot dog shop instead. One of those place which has a “This is NOT BurgerKing – You either have it MY way, or you don’t have it at all.” Oh well, but I am digressing.
The book store dealt in books released by libraries, and so the books were cheap, and after 2 hours, I found myself richer by 21 books, and poorer by around $55.
-I got the 7 books in “The Chronicles of Narnia”, the first of which is now my bedside book.
-I got two Le Carré’s – “The Constant Gardener” and “Single & Single”. I love him the most among folks that write spy stories.
-I discovered Milan Kundera’s “Ignorance” hiding behind two books. He is one of my favourites among authors who ramble on and use a story as an excuse to converse with their readers.
- I got José Saramago’s “All The Names”. I was impressed by Blindness, and so I decided to give this a shot.
- I got Kazuo Ishiguro’s “When We Were Orphans” – an author I have always wanted to read.
- I got a Terry Pratchett – “Theif of Time” – some people say he is funny and intelligent.
- I got Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” – unfinished business. I once borrowed this from a library and never finished it.
- I got Douglas Adams’ “The Salmon of Doubt” – so what if I have read it?
- I got Saul Bellow’s “Ravelstein” – Free Fall was good, and so I am hoping this one will be good too.
- I got “The Great American Ghost Stories” , which has 50 ghost stories, one for each American state.
- I got H.R.F. Keating’s “Bribery, Corruption Also” – an Inspector Ghote Mystery – out of curiosity.
- And then I got Rohinton Mistry’s “A Fine Balance” – I so want to complete reading this!
- David Davidar’s “The House of Blue Mangoes” – Davidar used to write a weekly column in The Hindu, and I used to wait expectantly for Sundays, so I could read his column. I hope the book is at least half as good.
- Manil Suri’s “The Death of Vishnu” – Suri is a mathematician at the University of Maryland. I want to see how good a mathematician can be at spinning a yarn.

Now to read them, one at a time. I won’t feel that I don’t have enough to read at home, and I don’t have to worry about library fines.

As for the exam, I think I did pretty well in most of it. I got the timing all wrong, and the order too, and ended up writing the answers to the questions related to my major last, which meant I did not have too much time for it. I bungled up two questions, and I had to redo them, which meant I lost a lot of time on something I had not planned for. I have to keep my fingers crossed and hope everything turns out okay.