Subin's Blog

Popular baby names of Kerala 1920 - 2007

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0530

After the place name analysis, I was curious about human names of Kerala. Name of a person is dependent on the time of their birth. When I was in school, there were 4 Vishnus, and some 3 or 4 Aishwaryas among 200 students.

Why did a name become popular? Who started the trend? When was it trending? When did it become "unfashionable"? Good questions to ask for a name.

Data

To do this, we need names. The only public data available for this is the voters list. I've been working on this project on and off for the past 1.5 years. Collecting the data was the most difficult part.

I've collected names from the 5 corporations of Kerala: Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kochi, Thrissur, Kozhikode, Kannur.

and the biggest municipality in each of the other districts: Kasargod, Mananthavadi, Malappuram, Palakkad, Thodupuzha, Alappuzha, Kottayam, Thiruvalla.

Important points to note:

The total names being considered for this analysis is 2,197,000 which is roughly 8% of the voters list population.
The age in voters list is not entirely correct. My age in the list is still 23 even though I'm 26 now.
2025 is set as the base year to calculate birth year from the age.
Some names have minor spelling differences. This has been rectified. See this file.
To simplify the analysis, only the top 50 names from each year (separated by gender) were included in the final SQLite database used for this study.

Analysis

The graph below shows the year on the x-axis and, on the y-axis, the number of people with a given name who were born in that year.

Top 10 names over the years

Aishwarya

The name Aishwarya appears to have gained popularity due to the fame of actress Aishwarya Rai.

Rahul and Priyanka

Rahul appears as a baby name in Kerala for the first time in 1971, a year after Rahul Gandhi was born. Priyanka first appears in 1974, two years after Priyanka Gandhi's birth.

Thanks to Abhay's dad for mentioning this.

Fathima

There was a hit song about a girl named "Fathima" released in 2005. This is the overlap of the song release with popularity of the name.

Note that people don't necessarily name a baby immediately after birth. In many cases, the official name is finalized at the time of school admission, which is usually around age four. Therefore, this graph may reflect a correlation between the song and name popularity in the years after 2000.

Bindhu vs Sindhu

The names Bindhu and Sindhu began gaining popularity in the mid-1960s and became closely associated with each other. Both saw a sharp decline in usage after 1985.

It's quite likely that the first daughter was named Bindhu and the next one Sindhu 😄.

Baby

A unique naming trend in Kerala was the use of the name "Baby" for both boys and girls. This peaked in the 60s and then gradually faded out. M.A. Baby is one of the most well-known people with the name "Baby" here.

This was surprising to me — more girls were named "Baby" than boys, which was the opposite of what I expected.

Sheela

Actress Sheela popularized the name "Sheela" and helped start the trend.

Check your name

Replace the names in the textbox below to generate comparison graphs. You can also control the year. If this is small in mobile view, open this page separately.

Note that the dataset only has top 50 names from each year. So submitting your name might not show anything.

Interactive chart

This interactive chart shows top 10 popular names each year from 1930 (95 years old) to 2007 (18 years old). The chart in the early years is not pretty because there's less people in that age group in the dataset.

Thanks to Nadieh Bremer for making this interactive chart. I explored several data visualizations of popular names and found hers to be the best.. Since it is open source, I was able to modernize it a bit and put our data in.

This won't look good if you're seeing this from mobile. Open this page in landscape mode or better, a computer.

Syllable cycle

One pattern observed in the interactive chart is a generational shift in popular names from three syllables to two syllables, and then back to three syllables over three generations.

തങ്കമ്മ, അമ്മിണി, രാജമ്മ, ഓമന, അന്നമ്മ, ലക്ഷ്മി, ജാനകി, ശാരദ

ബിന്ദു, സിന്ദു, ബീന, ഷീജ, ഷീബ, ഗീത, ദീപ, നിഷ

അശ്വതി, ഗോപിക, ഐശ്വര്യ, ഫാത്തിമ, ആതിര, ദേവിക, നന്ദന, അഞ്ജന

Racing chart

Some names are very popular that it dominated the racing chart for many years. To make it race-chart-worthy, a name is set to have an age of 8 years. This makes the race chart feel more of how your classroom looked like.

Girls

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Boys

Your browser does not support the video tag.

I later realized that Muhammad was actually the most common "first name" in my classroom, but students usually had another name to distinguish them. For example, someone's official name might be Muhammad Raheez, but we would simply know him as Raheez.

Muhammad is also the most common "first name" in the world, and that trend is reflected here as well.

Both Abdul and Muhammad function as prefixes. The actual given name is the one that follows, and that is the name by which the person is commonly known. Therefore, listing the prefix in my analysis above as the first name does not accurately represent the true name choice; it only reflects the choice of prefix.

Further analysis

More analysis can be done with this data. I've been working on this project for over a year now, and I'm honestly exhausted 😭. If you notice any interesting patterns or have ideas for further analysis, please let me know in the comments!

You can download the SQLite DB here. All source is on git: https://github.com/subins2000/kerala-baby-name-analysis

You can put this SQLite database into ChatGPT or Gemini and ask questions too.

Technical notes

Nadieh Bremer made that interactive chart in good ol' JavaScript of 2013. No transpilers, no npm, just a simple HTML page with <script> tags. Because of this, I was able to easily run and modify it locally.
Like in the previous place name analysis, the SQLite DB is loaded in the webpage
The JavaScript library racing-bars was used on a webpage, which was then screen recorded.

Query used for Baby graph in graph generator:

SELECT
  id,
  CASE
    WHEN gender = 'M' THEN 'Baby Boy'
    WHEN gender = 'F' THEN 'Baby Girl'
  END AS name, gender, year, count
FROM humans WHERE name = 'Baby' ORDER BY year;

Do you know the reason behind your name? Let me know in the comments!

Misc

Discussions elsewhere:

External coverage:

In the New Indian Express: Link 1 Link 2
Talk with ClubFM Radio

KDE India Conf 2025

Sun, 11 May 2025 00:00:00 +0530

I attended KDE India Conf (conf.kde.in, CKI) 2025 in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. My last and first CKI was in 2020 in Delhi. Had written a blog then.

There was a CKI last year in Pune but I was unable to attend it. So it's been 5 years. The constant from then and now is Bhushan :)

My talk

Title of the talk was "Learnings from creating an input method for KDE". My primary desktop environment since 2018 is KDE Plasma. Varnam input method was created to use in KDE. The talk was about the learnings of creating the input method.

The talk has been uploaded here: https://mirror.freedif.org/KDE/files/confkdein/2025/learnings-from-creating-an-input-method-for-kde.mp4

Emoji picker

The current way to input emoji in KDE Plasma is by copy-pasting the emoji from a window. GNOME has a better emoji input where you could open the emoji suggestions box anywhere you type and directly insert it. Behind the conference, I looked at whether this can be improved.

I tried to make an emoji input method just like Varnam. The source code is here: https://github.com/subins2000/semoji

It was partially successful, it works, but one month in I still use the KDE copy-paste one.

I later saw that one of KDE goals this year is this, "We care about your input". There is already an issue open: https://invent.kde.org/teams/goals/we-care-about-your-input/-/issues/15

This is a very core thing to Qt, so it is beyond my expertise. I'm just gonna watch in the sidelines, and meanwhile I'll survive with copy paste 🙂.

Conference

Like all other free software conferences, I met people who shared the same interests as me, so there was lot to talk about!

Rishi has done an elaborate write up about the conference, so I'm not gonna repeat things. Link to Rishi's blog.

Rishi had also brought a Steam Deck which was fun to use! A popular mainstream device that comes with GNU/Linux? That has been a dream once. That too gaming!

One thing I have to mention here is Joseph's talk on End of 10. Windows 10 is about to end its support in 2025 October 14. The newer Windows 11 requires modern hardware. This would mean millions of working devices will end up being unupgradable, and potentially e-waste.

My personal computer from 2010 to 2018 was a 2GB RAM machine. I had to use Linux Mint + XFCE + i3wm to get the maximum out of the system. Windows 8 and 10 was uninstallable in that machine.

There was a BoF on the same, and one major thing about India at least is that "if it works, then don't touch it". I've seen retail stores using Windows 7 to even Windows XP (A display in Cochin international airport). When they have a working flow, it's difficult for them to change.

Adobe Pagemaker that was deprecated in 2003 is still being used here. It works because Windows is very good in backwards compatibility. If Windows ever breaks it, maybe they'd upgrade.

My state Kerala already uses GNU/Linux widely across school, government departments etc. School students are usually given a laptop which is low-end hardware that already runs GNU/Linux. No way can these laptops and machine run Windows, even Windows 10.

Next conference

This is the second time CKI has been ogranized in Gandhinagar. I've lowkey suggested that maybe Kerala can host it next year 🤞. Last time it happened in Kerala was in 2015, that's 10 years ago!

A good place to do it would be a university. I've been helping organizing Kochi FOSS meetups for the past 2 years. There is definitely audience for the conf, it's just that where would we do it.

Let's see.

Use ActiveRecord + SQLite without Rails

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0530

Recently been using ActiveRecord + SQLite a LOT, so making this post for the basic template.

Gemfile

source "https://rubygems.org"

gem "activerecord", "~> 8.0"
gem "pry"

gem "sqlite3", "~> 2.4"

playground.rb

require 'active_record'
require 'pry'
require 'sqlite3'

ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(
  adapter: 'sqlite3',
  database: 'db.sqlite3'
)

class Place < ActiveRecord::Base
end

@first_run = !Place.table_exists?

# Create the table (migration-like setup)
if @first_run
  ActiveRecord::Schema.define do
    create_table :places do |t|
      t.string :name
      t.string :lat
      t.string :lon
      t.timestamps
    end
    add_index :places, :name, unique: true
  end
end

binding.pry

Talks

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 16:00:55 +0000

Whenever I feel like it, I give talks at conferences and meetups. I like public speaking especially when it's to showcase something that excites me.

2021

2020

State of writing Malayalam on GNU/Linux : ഗ്നു/ലിനക്സിലെ മലയാളമെഴുത്തു്‌

DebConf20, Online

Simple analysis of place names in Kerala

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0530

Update

After this post was published, some people asked for some other suffixes to be analyzed. I've now made an interactive webpage to analyse place names in any way with SQL:

Open Playground

Intro

I noticed something unique when I walked around in Kakkanad, some of the local place names ended with the word "മുഗൾ".

I haven't heard of any other place having this suffix in Kerala before, so it was quite interesting to me. The curiosity instantly brewed in my mind, is this really specific to Kakkanad? Why so?

I never got the time to explore this idea more until last week at a Wikimedia event in my alma mater.

Goal

To list all the places in Kerala with a particular suffix and show them as dots on an interactive map. This'll help to know the frequency better.

Gathering data

Where to get the list of all place names in Kerala & their coordinates?

It is only when you try to do data analysis, you realize the lack of data and errors in the data that is available.

OpenStreetMap

Get the list of all place names

https://overpass-api.de/api/interpreter?data=[out:json];area[name=%22Kerala%22];node(area)[place];out;

Get the list of all bus stops

https://overpass-api.de/api/interpreter?data=[out:json];area[name=%22Kerala%22]-%3E.searchArea;node[%22highway%22=%22bus_stop%22](area.searchArea);out;

Bus stop names are usually the place names itself, I noticed in OSM that some place name nodes are not on the map but the bus stops are. Hence why I collected them both, there will be duplicates because of this but that's fine, this is a simple human analysis.

Wikidata

Wikidata query service is used to run these SPARQL queries.

Get the list of human settlements in Kerala:

SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?len ?lml ?coord
WHERE
{
  ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q486972 .
  ?item wdt:P131/wdt:P131* wd:Q1186.
  ?item wdt:P625 ?coord.
  OPTIONAL { ?item rdfs:label ?len. FILTER(LANG(?len)="en") }
  OPTIONAL { ?item rdfs:label ?lml. FILTER(LANG(?lml)="ml") }
}
LIMIT 100

The good folks at OpenDataKerala has made ward data openly accessible on Wikidata and OpenStreetMap. Some of these wards have coordinates assigned.

Get list of local body wards that has a coordinate.

SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?len ?lml ?coord
WHERE
{
  ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q1195098 .
  ?item wdt:P131* wd:Q1186.
  ?item wdt:P625 ?coord.
  OPTIONAL { ?item rdfs:label ?len. FILTER(LANG(?len)="en") }
  OPTIONAL { ?item rdfs:label ?lml. FILTER(LANG(?lml)="ml") }
}

Combining data

We have four sources of data in JSON. They need to be combined so that it's easy to filter out data.

I figured putting them all into a SQLite DB would be the best way. For this I wrote a Ruby script. Rails' ActiveRecord makes it pretty easy to manage the DB.

ActiveRecord without Ruby on Rails

One of the main features of Ruby on Rails is the ActiveRecord ORM. This can be used without Ruby on Rails as well.

require 'active_record'
require 'sqlite3'

ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(
  adapter: 'sqlite3',
  database: 'db.sqlite3'
)

# This is a model that corresponds to a table
class Place < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Table name in SQLite will be plural: "places"
@first_run = !Place.table_exists?

# 3. Create the table (migration-like setup)
if @first_run
  ActiveRecord::Schema.define do
    create_table :places do |t|
      t.string :name
      t.string :lat
      t.string :lon
      t.timestamps
    end
    add_index :places, :name, unique: true
  end
end

The above script will setup the DB. Sometimes you'll want to reset and start over, simply just the delete the db.sqlite3 file (Good part of SQLite being simple).

Insert data

The next step is to insert the data, for this I created separate functions.

if @first_run
  osm_bus_stops
  osm_place_nodes
  wikidata_places
  wikidata_wards

  Place.insert_all(@records)
end

Now that we have the DB setup, we can do the analysis.

Ruby interactive console can be used to debug and query easily with ActiveRecord, for this I trigger the runtime developer console at the end of the file.

require 'pry'
...
...
binding.pry

Using the console to fetch all the places that has the word mugal in it:

Place.where("name LIKE '%mugal%'").pluck(:name, :lat, :lon)

Analysis

The most effective way to show the result is with a map of marked points. I figured using Leaflet will be the easiest because I can programmatically control it and I have seen it being used everywhere on the web.

Showing just Kerala region

Leaflet showed the full map of the Earth, but I wanted to show just Kerala. This was difficult to achieve. I needed to get the exact boundaries of the Kerala region. My first attempt was to use the geometry data from Wikipedia.

But I wanted to distinguish the districts better. I explored many ways and finally reached the best solution. Write a query in Overpass, download the geojson and load it in leaflet.

The geojson can be obtained by running this query on https://overpass-turbo.eu/

[out:xml][timeout:500];
{{geocodeArea:Kerala}}->.searchArea;
(
  nwr["boundary"="administrative"]["admin_level"="5"](area.searchArea);
);
// print results
out meta;
>;
out meta qt;

If you notice the query, it fetches administrative regions with level 5, this is the districts of Kerala.

Coloring districts uniquely

Since the geojson is made up of district region boundaries, based on the name of the region, the fill color can be changed. This is how that looks like:

L.geoJSON(json, {
  style: function(feature) {
    return {
      fillColor: colors[feature.properties.name], // colors["Thrissur"]
      fillOpacity: 0.5,
      color: "#000",
      weight: 0.2,
    }
  }
})

Result

I've analyzed suffixes of "kari", "mugal", "ssery", and "kulam" suffixes, plotted it on to the map, then use Firefox's screenshot tool to grab the boundary box. This is how the webpage of Leaflet looks like:

Firefox' screenshot tool is pretty nice to grab just the rectangle box by the border:

Conclusion

mugal

The place names ending with "mugal" suffix is indeed a specialty of Kakkanad. The logical reasoning I have so far is that it's because of the nature of the place. Since they're hilly areas, using the name mugal/മുകൾ (top) makes sense.

kari

Kuttanad has a reason why it has a lot of place names ending with kari/കരി. From Wikipedia:

Kuttanad was once believed to be a wild forest with dense tree growth which was destroyed subsequently by a wild fire. Chuttanad (place of the burnt forest), was eventually called Kuttanad. Until the recent past burned black wooden logs were mined from paddy fields called as "Karinilam" (Black paddy fields). This fact substantiates the theory of Chuttanad evolving to Kuttanad. Ramankary, Puthukkary, Amichakary, Oorukkary, Mithrakary, Mampuzhakary, Kainakary, Chathurthiakary, Thakazhy, Edathua, Chambakkulam, Mankombu and Chennamkary are some familiar place names in Kuttanad

Interestingly, Kannur mountain ranges also have a lot of such places! I don't have a good answer to this but I think it must be because the people who settled in these mountain regions are people from south Kerala. When people migrate, they tend to name the new places from the places they came from or are familar with.

kulam

Kulam means pond and Kerala has a lot of it. So it obviously makes snese that it's present everywhere in Kerala.

ssery

Interestingly it's not present in Kasargod or Thiruvananthapuram but is present everywhere else.

You can see more imagery here.

Credits

Thanks to OpenStreetMap, Wikidata contributors. Data analysis is all fancy and all, but no analysis is possible without data. So first and foremast thanks to all the people who contibute!

Thanks to Jinoy, Manoj K & Ranjith Siji for answering my queries at the event. This made things faster to build.

samam, Malayalam Kannada Tamil Telugu dictionary

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0530

This is the story of solving a problem, making a dictionary book online.

The dictionary

Njattyela Sreedharan (ഞാറ്റ്യേല ശ്രീധരൻ) is an 85 year old person from Kannur, Kerala. Out of his interest for Dravidian languages, he spent 25 years in compiling a dictionary of four Dravidian languages - Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu.

The dictionary was originaly handwritten in a book of four columns. This was later published as a book by Senior Citizens Forum. This news article tells a better story than me here :)

The story of Njatyela Sreedharan's effort became a documentary and it won the National Film Award for Best Educational/Motivational/Instructional Film (2020).

The documentary is really good and seeing it gave me a huge motivation to make this dictionary online.

Start

The easiest way to make this dictionary book online is to convert the soft copy to a format understandable by dictpress.

A dictionary is structured data, in this case here is how the ideal structure looks like for each entry:

Malayalam word
Malayalam definition
Tamil word
Tamil definition
Kannada word
Kannada definition
Telugu word
Telugu definition

Pretty simple structure.

The soft copy we have is PDF and the Adobe Pagemaker 7 files.

Here is how the book/PDF/Pagemaker file looks like visually:

There are 4 columns. This looks all pretty in the front but behind the scenes the way it is created is superbly difficult to parse.

There are 4 hidden problems here to summarize:

The Malayalam text is written in ASCII (Adobe Pagemaker 7 doesn't support Unicode)
The way the table is created is not the best way to create a table, the black border is fake, it's an image
There are hidden text in each cells to make the row alignment correct. These text has white text color, so it's not visible when printed, but when we try to copy text, we get these unwanted characters.
In some pages, the ordering of columns is incorrect although it's shown correctly in PDF

Getting semantic data

HTML/XML is a good data structure for semantic data. HTML/XML is semantic in nature by default. Take this code for example

<tr>
  <td><b>Apple</b></td>
  <td>-</td>
  <td>a fruit</td>
</tr>

The word and its meaning can be separated out from the above HTML very easily because the distinct content has its own tags. Since our PDF already shows text formatting like this, getting the HTML of it would help things out.

Attempt 1 - Extract from PDF

I used many tools to convert PDF to text/HTML but the output had no proper structure.

I learnt it the hard way that PDF is black magic, what you see is not what you get, copying the text from it is not giving the correct datapoints. Akshay gave an eye opener on this:

The first team call on how to make this into an online dictionary we learnt about all these problems, and things were looking bleak. The initial talks were all focused on the PDF and it was Joice who suggested if there's a possibility of getting HTML because it'd make things a lot easier.

Ok, so how do we get the HTML?

Attempt 2 - Extract from Pagemaker

Along with the PDF, we had the original .psd files.

Adobe officially stopped Pagemaker in 2004. It has a proprietary data format that is difficult to parse. Document Foundation (Libreoffice) has made a library libpagemaker to parse Pagemaker documents. (Side note: freaknz has made changes in libpagemaker to accomodate some rare Malayalam ASCII bugs)

But I wanted to see what this Pagemaker actually looked like. So I got a Windows machine that had Pagemaker.exe.

I opened these files in Pagemaker and could see an Export to HTML option. But as soon as I clicked the export button, Pagemaker crashed. I figured out that I have to not change any options in export and to be very careful in moving the mouse and clicking the "Export" button. Some weird bug.

Gotta appreciate the backward compatibility of Windows,

this 20+ year old software works smooth on a Windows 10 machine.

It is a good thing and also a bad thing.

I got the HTML output and it was not what I expected:

We have new problems now:

The table data structure is weird, it is column wise instead of row wise
There are empty cells in all kinda places
Some entries continue into the next page
Some entries doesn't have any Kannada Tamil Telugu values because it is a duplicate of some other entry
Many more edge cases that I forgot (it's been 6 months since I last touched the code)

If I explained the solution of these, this blog post would go soooooooooo long. Here is the code which fixed these problems and made it into a CSV format:

Interesting tidbits

"Jack of all trades, master of none" is a quote that I often see from developers. For solving problems, these surface level knowledge of many things is actually very useful. You will know what to apply, where to apply.

I'm just gonna mention these trades.

Usage of jQuery

The best way to parse HTML is JavaScript (duh) and a swiss-knife that makes this easier is jQuery. I've used jQuery for various kind of things from building apps to browser automation.

Remember the problem of white color text in the PDF/HTML? This can be solved by removing all such white colored text like this:

$("font[color='#ffffff']").remove();

Pretty simple eh!

Usage of PHP

There are 10 HTML files, I want to first experiment with some tables, and then expand it to others. How do I dynamically load the HTML pages? The easiest way to do this is in PHP.

PHP is another swiss-knife for hacks. PHP's beginning itself is from quick shortcut hacks for making websites.

<?php
$number_of_tables = 100; // Configure how many tables to show

$src = file_get_contents("source-of-truth.html");
$table_count = 0;

$tables = preg_split('/\<\/table\>+/', $src);

for ($i = 0; $i < $number_of_tables; $i++) {
  echo $tables[$i];
}
echo "</table>"
?>

<script src="fix-tables.js"></script>
<script src="make-csv.js"></script>

Unlike 2012, you don't need apache server for rendering PHP pages, you can do this

php -S localhost:3000

PHP + jQuery helped to get a CSV file but it was still in ASCII text

Usage of C++

payyans is a python library made in 2008 by Santhosh Thottingal for converting ASCII text to Unicode.

AlphaFork has made a desktop app called freaknz using the payyans logic. They made it for Janayugom newspaper's migration to Free/Libre software.

Freaknz desktop app is a very simple application that does the job really well. I simply copy pasted the CSV into it and got the Unicode output back.

payyans is in Python, freaknz is in C++, the logic of both is the same. There is also chathans reimplementing the same logic in C. To prevent this in future and to bring a standardization, we (SMC) have started a Go port of payyans. Just like Varnam, the output will be a C shared library which can be binded to in any other language.

Usage of Python

The next process was to convert the CSV into a format understandable by dictpress and along with it try to transliterate the Kannada, Tamil, Telugu text written in Malayalam script to its corresponding scripts.

libindic's transliteration module was used for this. It gave transliteration to native script, Latin script and IPA.

Usage of Go

dictpress is written in Go. It was created considering two languages like Olam which has English -> Malayalam and Malayalam -> Malayalam.

Accomodating samam, a 4 language dictionary into it is a task. Some new things had to be implemented for it. I consider this very hacky, and it is not following the relational DB way of handling things. It's just one JSONB column 😬. But hey it works.

Usage of Ruby on Rails

dictpress only gave a search -> result interface. The glossary view of dictpress lacks the ability to show a tabular structure like what the book/PDF had. That is the main hero here, the tabular view for comparitive study.

Modifying dictpress for this is a heavy task, glossary logic needs a change, new search logic needs to be implemented in glossary.

The easiest, fastest way to do this is to make it in Ruby on Rails. I was able to make the glossary view /glossary in 4 hours.

Side note: I haven't mentioned this in my blog, but for the past 2.5 years I've been working on Ruby on Rails and I love it. ActiveRecord and the rails console helped to do analysis, manipulations on the data easily:

Entry.find_each do |entry|
  entry.update!(meta: JSON.parse(entry.notes))
rescue
  print("error #{entry.id}")
end

ActiveRecord's elegance in handling DB data is another fantastic tool to do quick hacks. Both dictpress and the glossary app uses the same DB just to make it clear.

This is how the Entry model looks like:

class Entry < ApplicationRecord
  LANGS = %i[malayalam kannada tamil telugu]

  has_many :relations, foreign_key: :from_id
  has_many :definitions, through: :relations, source: :to_entry

  enum lang: Hash[LANGS.map { |symbol| [symbol, symbol.to_s] }]

  LANGS.each do |target_lang|
    define_method :"#{target_lang}_defintions" do
      return self if lang.to_sym == target_lang

      definitions.where(lang: target_lang).select(%i[content]).first
    end
  end
end

With the Ruby magic, this brings the convenience to do this:

first_entry = Entry.first
first_entry.malayalam_definitions
first_entry.tamil_definitions

Deployment

Akshay helped in setting up the server. In the era of Docker, Kubernetes blah blah blah deployment has gotten quite a complicated topic. We had a phone call on this and decided to keep it dumb simple:

Debian & ssh

Whatever deployment process you choose, what matters is the documentation and simplicity. Here is the doc we made.

Volunteer driven projects really need the simplicity.

And finally we have samam.net.

PS: I don't work in samam anymore.

Running JavaScript code & Getting Result from Go using V8 Engine

Sun, 17 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I have a VueJS app, I want to make the <title> and <meta> tags to be populated in page source itself for better SEO.

I could use Server Side Rendering but it was difficult, express.js keeps crashing and there's JavaScript inconsistencies (ES Module imports didn't work in node). More explanation at the very bottom.

To solve this problem, I did something wild.

I made a Go server, served the JS app. On each request, the HTML file is processed by Go and title, meta tags are dynamically populated, rest of the page is just another VueJS app.

The title and meta tags depend upon the page URL (subdomain to be exact). The logic of how title and meta tags should be is already in the VueJS app, I'd have to rewrite the logic in Go.

To avoid that I now call the JS function from Go, get the result and use it to make <title> and <meta>. Calling JavaScript from Go is done via V8 Engine. There is a Go library called v8go that has C bindings for V8 Engine.

Serving a Vue App From Go

I'm using echo library to make a server easier.

func main() {
  e := echo.New()

  e.GET("/", HandleIndex)
  e.Static("/", "dist")

  e.Logger.Fatal(e.Start(":1323"))
}

The dist folder has the output from building JS (yarn build). A script of /assets/index.js in webpage will be in filesystem at /dist/assets/index.js.

Dynamically Making title and meta Tags

Modify index.html used by VueJS app. Insert a placeholder for the things we need to modify via Go.

<html>
  <head>
    <title>${title}</title>
    <meta itemprop="name" content="${title}" />
    <meta itemprop="description" content="${description}" />
    <!-- other stuff -->
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="app"></div>
    <script type="module" src="/src/main.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

Our Go server will replace ${title} and ${description}. Echo library has a template engine which can be used for this but its syntax conflicted with Vue's syntax and yarn build failed because of it.

The title and meta tags are depended on the request hostname (subdomain to be exact) :

type PageInfo struct {
	title       string
	description string
}

var html string

func HandleIndex(c echo.Context) error {
	hostname, _, _ := net.SplitHostPort(c.Request().Host)
	pageInfo := getPageInfo(hostname)

	formattedHTML := strings.Replace(html, "${title}", pageInfo.title, 50)
	formattedHTML = strings.Replace(formattedHTML, "${description}", pageInfo.description, 50)

	return c.HTML(http.StatusOK, formattedHTML)
}

HandleIndex will be called on every request to /. We don't ned to make a filesystem read of the HTML file on every request (that'd be slow) :

func loadHTML() {
	fileBytes, err := ioutil.ReadFile("dist/index.html")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalln(err.Error())
	}
	html = string(fileBytes)
}

func main() {
  loadHTML()
  // rest of it
}

Calling JavaScript from Go

getPageInfo() can be anything. Here I'm using V8 Engine to call a JavaScript function that will give the page info :

import (
  v8 "rogchap.com/v8go"
)

var jsContext *v8.Context

func getPageInfo(host string) PageInfo {
	jsContext.RunScript("var siteInfo = getSiteInfo('"+host+"')", "call.js")
	title, _ := jsContext.RunScript("siteInfo.title", "retrieval.js")
	description, _ := jsContext.RunScript("siteInfo.description", "retrieval.js")

	return PageInfo{title.String(), description.String()}
}

jsContext is a context inside a V8 JavaScript VM. We need to make this VM and context once only :

func makeJSContext() {
	scriptBytes, err := ioutil.ReadFile("dist/utils.js")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalln(err.Error())
	}

	iso := v8.NewIsolate()
	jsContext = v8.NewContext(iso)

	script := string(scriptBytes)

	// dummy module object
	jsContext.RunScript("var module = {}", "module.js")

	_, err = jsContext.RunScript(script, "index.js")
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}
}

func main() {
  makeJSContext()
  // rest of it
}

dist/utils.js has the JavaScript function that we need to call. If that function depends on external libraries, you'd need to bundle the JS and then call the script. V8go doesn't know the ES syntax to import files.

We can use esbuild for bundling. Add a build script to package.json :

{
  "scripts": {
    "build:utils": "esbuild src/utils.js --bundle --outfile=dist/utils.js --format=cjs",
  }
}

Here's a rough sketch of how utils.js looks like :

import * as punycode from "punycode";
import pages from "./pages/index.json";

export function getSiteInfo(host) {
  // ... stuff
}

esbuilding this would bundle all the dependencies (punycode, that index.json file) into a single file dist/utils.js. Note that we're not minifying the output file, so getSiteInfo() will still be named the same in output file.

To make things easier for deployment, here's a simple build script :

yarn build
yarn build:utils
go build .

I also use a restart.sh script for convenience :

kill $(ps aux | grep '[k]ittum' | awk '{print $2}')
./kittum >> web.log &

Final Result

That's it. See these subdomains to see the final result :

You can see the full source code at https://github.com/subins2000/kittum.com

Coding In Malayalam

Tue, 14 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Some days ago, I came across Malayalam numerals and found it very interesting. Unlike Hindi or Kannada numerals, the numerical grammar of Malayalam was unique. It's a direct fork of the Tamil numeric system. So, Tamil & Malayalam has this unique numeral system. It is no longer commonly used though. Like the rest of the world, we use Hindu-Arabic numeral system now.

I had to include my phone number in a webpage recently for an event hosting and was concerned whether spammers would take hold of it with their fancy phone-number mining scripts. An idea to prevent this and still give the phone number was to write it in Malayalam numerals. The event was related to Malayalam, so some people would recognize it. Besides, if there were people who really really wanted to reach via phone, they'd go through the trouble to read the numerals eh ? 😉 :D (psst, see my contact page)

Here's a phone number sample :

+91 7458367458

+൯൧ ൭൪൫൮൩൬൭൪൫൮

So this is a good usecase right, and it's very unlikely that there's a spam crawler script which can read malayalam numerals.

It's difficult to look up each number and do a manual replace. I automated it by making a webtool to convert Hindu-Arabic numerals to Malayalam numerals.

Demo Source Code

But I wanted to make this more cool, so I decided to write the code in Malayalam using Thengascript. Thengascript is a dialect of JavaScript. Each JavaScript keyword has a Malayalam alternative in it. Once you have the dictionary, it's fairly easy to write code.

Editor

My primary code editor is Sublime Text, but Malayalam rendering in it wasn't good. So I had to find alternatives.

KDE's Kate editor with Manjari (and other Unicode Malayalam) fonts worked really well.

VSCode failed to give correct rendering of some ligatures even after setting the font. This is definitely because of splitting up of characters due to syntax highlighting :

So I picked Kate.

Typing

I used a mix of Varnam & Swanalekha to code in Malayalam on Linux. With the ibus integration, I can toggle between them and English very easily.

Language Style

Since Malayalam is Subject-Object-Verb as opposed to English's Subject-Verb-Object, it feels awkward to write some statements.

Example :

var arr = [1, 2, 3]
for (var a in arr) {
  if (a == 1) {
    continue
  }
}

In Thengascript, the equivalent is :

ആവട്ടെ arr = [1, 2, 3]
ഇന് (ആവട്ടെ a ഇല്‍ arr) {
  ആണെങ്കിൽ (a == 1) {
    തുടരുക
  }
}

If following Malayalam grammar, the better way to write it would be :

arr = [1, 2, 3] ആവട്ടെ
(arr ലെ a) ഓരോന്നും {
  (a == 1) ആണെങ്കിൽ {
    തുടരുക
  }
}

At last, I've made a simple script to encode and decode Malayalam numerals <-> Hindu-Arabic numerals. I called it Malayakkam (മലയക്കം) and it's just under 30 lines of Thengascript.

Also check out malluscript, a scripting language in Malayalam and Manglish made with Rust.

Tamil has its own programming language called Ezhil from 2007 onwards. They specially made it for kids to understand programming better which is noble. It follows Tamil language logical constructs in the code syntax which makes it easier to understand for a Tamil native.

Projects

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 23:00:00 +0530

Make Picture In Picture Browser Window Visible On All Workspaces in i3

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

If you're using i3 window manager and you want the Picture in Picture (PiP) window of Firefox and Chromium to be seen in all workspaces, just add this to your i3 config file :

for_window [title="Picture-in-Picture"] sticky enable

This will work for both Firefox and Chromium/Chrome PiP.

If it doesn't work, open a video in Picture in Picture mode and run the command wmctrl -l in terminal which will produce a similar output :

0x0b800006  1 swift Screenshots - Dolphin
0x07e00005  2 swift Telegram (278659)
0x03c00003  3 swift Make Picture In Picture Browser Window Seen On All Workspaces in i3 - Subins Blog - Mozilla Firefox
0x08c00007  3 swift Konsole
0x08600001  4 swift Akkara Kazhchakal Ep 42 (Part A) - YouTube - Chromium
0x08c00003  3 swift Akkara Kazhchakal Ep 42 (Part B) - YouTube - Mozilla Firefox
0x03c008e7 -1 swift Picture-in-Picture
0x03c008e7 -1 swift Picture in picture

You can see the title of the PiP window there. For me, it was Picture-in-Picture for Firefox (v76) and Picture in picture for Chromium (v81). Use this obtained title in the i3 config above.

Sticky windows are windows that is visible on all workspaces. Read more about sticky windows in i3.

You can see my i3 config and other dotfiles here.

Indic-En, a Browser Extension to Convert Indian Language Websites to English Script

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is certainly not an April Fool and doesn't involve a rickroll. :P 😝

Introducing Indic-En, a browser extension to convert websites in Indian languages (Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada) to Manglish, Hinglish & Kanglish. This is the first WebExtension that I've made.

This extension will be useful for people who can understand the language, but can't read it (read the script). I've also made a similar Android app "Manglish" which does this, but only for the Malayalam language. Special shoutout to r/Kerala folks who support and help spread the word around of Manglish app. Thanks to all the folks who have donated and spread the word about Manglish app. I'm happy that it's helping people ❤️. As a Free software indie developer, marketing is a difficult thing to do. Please spread the word around :)

The extension is available for both desktop and mobile. Download the extension from your browser store :

Firefox Firefox Android Chrome

Extensions are not available for Chrome mobile browser, but extensions can be installed in other Chrome based browsers such as Brave Browser.

The -nglish Scripts

Languages are for communication and they're created and evolved by speaking. Some languages have its own unique script to write or might use other scripts to write them. A language can be writen in multiple scripts. For example, Malayalam is (used to be) written in 3 scripts :

Its own Malayalam script
Arabic Script : Arabi Malayalam
Syriac Script : Suriyani Malayalam

And in this internet age, we're using English script (Roman/Latin script) mostly through chats, messages because it is easier to type. Here's a thread on it [Twitter].

Similarly, Hindi written in English is called Hinglish and Kannada, Kanglish. Here are some examples :

കാക്ക => kaakka

कौआ => kauaa

ಕಾಗೆ => kaage

So that's what this browser extension Indic-En basically do, convert Indic scripts to English/Roman/Latin script.

Usage

Simply install the extension from your browser's extension/addon store. You will then see the Indic-En logo on your toolbar. On the page that you want to transliterate, click the button on toolbar, a popup will appear, choose language and Transliterate !

In Firefox Mobile, you can access the extension popup straight from browser menu (toolbar) on a page. It'll be below the "Help" button in the menu.

Features

Supports Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada : Manglish, Hinglish, Kanglish
Auto transliterate page on load
Offline [Requires no internet to transliterate]
Privacy : Your data stays with you and only you
Options page has a transliterator tool for converting text

Screenshots

A Malayalam webpage

Malayalam webpage after running Indic-En

Indic-En extension page on Firefox Android

Technical

libindic

Indic Project [SMC Project] has made a library libindic which has a Transliteration module. It's written in Python and has support for various languages. You can cross transliterate Malayalm into Kannada and others.

I extracted the Indic-English part of it and ported it into JavaScript and called it indicjs. The name Indic-En is made from a function in the original Python module : transliterate_indic_en. It was kinda difficult and I had to make some unique changes in JavaScript to make it work. I have published it as a library in npmjs. It's also my first published npm package ! Yaaaay 🎉

The transliterator library can be used like this :

const Transliterator = require('libindic-transliteration');
const t = new Transliterator();

console.log(t.transliterate_ml_en('അ'));
console.log(t.transliterate_hi_en('अ'));
console.log(t.transliterate_kn_en('ಅ'));

And the output of all of em will be a.

Free Software

libindic is licensed under LGPL while this extension and indicjs is GPL-3. Indic-En is a Free/Libre/സ്വതന്ത്ര software.

You can see the source code here on GitLab. There's also a GitHub mirror.

Extension

It's my first time making a WebExtension. I thought I'd have to use different APIs to build extensions for different browsers. Nope, there's a standard API : WebExtensions. The manifest file of extensions has differences for some browsers, but this can be easily taken care of with this :

I used Abhijith Vijayan's awesome web-extension-starter to make the extension. It's very easy to use and helps to build extensions simultaneously for Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc. Shoutout to this fellow Malayalee and his useful project :)

Logo

The logo is designed by my good friend, Akshay TG. This guy is special: he draws very well on paper and digital. I've known Akshay from wayyy back in grade 6. We together grew in a free software environment. While I got into coding, he drew with GIMP and now he's amazing all of us with his artwork. He draws with a mouse and the artwork he has made (Here's one of em) is just WOW !!

If you like my work, buy me a tea. Psssst, I like tea more ;)

Rickroll, Love Calculator & Social Engineering

Sun, 22 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A global pandemic is going on and we're all staying in our homes. College's been closed for a week now. Yes, it gets boring staying in home all day. But, we must !

Out of boredom and a wish to cheer up people in my circle, I made a website which ends up rickrolling the visitor. It took me an hour to make it.

If you're reading this, you probably got rickrolled by me ;) 😉

In this post, I'm gonna talk about Social Engineering and the experience I've had with it.

What's A Rickroll ?

There's a whole Wikipedia article on it :D

Have you heard the awesome song & dance moves of Rick Astley in the song "Never Gonna Give You Up" (YouTube) ? IF NOT, YOU MUST !

In the early internet days, people used to prank each other with this. You would see a link like "The cutest cat ever" and when you click it, it goes to the Rick Astley's dance moves in Never Gonna Give You Up. You just got rickrolled !

See who has visited your Instagram profile ! OMG !!

I haven't ever rickrolled anyone before (maybe in reddit, but that doesn't count), but I've been rickrolled.

If I'm gonna rickroll them, how can I convince them to click the link I send them ? I didn't want it to be like a normal [here's the cutest cat ever] cause 50% people likes dogs :P 😛. It should be something creative, and harmless fun !

What's the one thing millenials/teenagers/youth has in common ? Enjoying memes ? Yes. Also, majority of them are on Instagram. Some people just use Instagram for the memes. It's the safe haven for kids these days. It was Facebook before, but our parents' generation has overcrowded there 🤷.

Majority of "Instagrammers" do want to know who's seeing their profile. Teenagers, eh ? They want all the attention 😆.

So that's what I chose. I made the website, this message :

I just found a new secret endpoint in Instagram that allows you to know who has visited your profile.

Find out who has visited your Instagram profile : https://cdpn.io/subins2000/fullpage/QWbVWry

and sent it to people (plus WhatsApp status / Instagram story). And boy oh boy, didn't I trick many people ! 👿

Why I did it ?

Fun, Fun, Fun :D !!
Kids these days don't know what a rickroll is. I'm enlightening them about the good ol' Internet days. Don't Ok Boomer me :P
To demonstrate social engineering
For motivation to write this blog (It's the success of the prank that made me write this)
Ay, come on ! You'll obviously smile when you get rickrolled. I did make you laugh eh ;) 😉

How it works

I made the website in CodePen. You can see the pen here.

It's simple. An alright looking form which asks user to enter their Instagram username. When user clicks the button, a purposeful delay is made (setTimeout) before showing the Rick Astley gif and the YouTube video.

The video should have autoplayed. Autoplaying videos work in desktop browsers, but is disabled in mobile browsers. It would have been wayyyy better if the music autoplayed 😭. But, sadly, mobile browsers won't allow it :(

Hence, I added the gif and then the video. The gif is 2MB long and it'd take time to load in a slow connection. Pffttt.

This rickroll ain't perfect (-_-), but it works.

Love Calculator

IIRC (If I Remember Correctly), it was in 2016 that I came across a message like this in the school group on WhatsApp :

Find how match you and your crush is. Check the love calculator : https://linkto.that.love.calculator.com

Pretty bored at the time, I checked out this link.

Pretty stupid at the time, I typed in the original name of me and my crush.

Pretty nishku (innocent) at the time, I submitted the form without any thinking.

The screen showed "Calculating... Calculating..." and after some seconds, it showed :

YOU'VE BEEN PRANKED !! Your name and your crush's name has been sent to [email protected]">v*****[email protected]

😨😱 ARGHHHHHHH !!!! OH NO !!!

At the time, it was a secret known only to me and me only. How stupid was I to believe it !! I immediately sent a message to the guy who set it up and begged him to not share it. I remember his exact reply :

Ithra valiya computer daavaayittum neeyithil veenallo

You even fell for it, you big computer geek

That's the point. Anyone can be fooled or tricked or pranked.

End of story: He didn't share my secret, though he kept ridiculing me when we saw again face-to-face. Ah, embarassing !

Anyone can do this prank with this Love Calculator website. You only gotta sign-up with your email and prank anyone you want to. I don't remember the site, otherwise would have linked here. PS: There's lot of ads in it, so it's a good revenue booster for the site owner 😂.

Social Engineering in the context of information security is defined as :

any act that influences a person to take an action that may or may not be in their best interests.

Love Calculator is definitely an example of Social Engineering. Rickroll can be considered as an example of it too.

I had one more experience of being a victim to Social Engineering, a severe one, it was self XSS 😨

See who has visited your Facebook profile ! OMG !!

IIRC, it was in 2014 that I saw a Facebook friend adding me to a group in Facebook. The group was titled "100% Working. See who has visited your Facebook profile". It also had a pretty convincing header image (thinking now, it probbably didn't :P).

A post in the group specifically had the instructions on how to find it :

Press F12
Go to the Console tab
Paste this long code (script) there
Press Enter key

Whoa! Cool! You have to paste a weird looking code ? Pretty legit.

I did exactly as it said.

A window popped up, showing some of my Facebook friends in the list, I believed it.

In fact, all my Facebook friends were added to this group by me ! In the background, this script (the long code) picked up my friends list and added each of them to this "100% Working. See who has visited your Facebook profile" group. And the list was just random people. This scam would then continue with other people and so on and on.

This is called Self-XSS.

Self XSS

As per Wikipedia :

In a self-XSS attack, the victim of the attack unknowingly runs malicious code in their own web browser, thus exposing personal information to the attacker.

In the previous "Find Facebook profile visitors" mishap, the malicious code added all of my friends to that group.

This malicious code can be changed to do much dangerous things :

Send rude messages to everyone in your friend list
Unfriend all your friends
Post obscene messages in your wall

Basically, the script can do anything like what you can normally do, at many times faster than a human.

Since this scam became rampant, Facebook started putting this in browser console :

Self-XSS can be used for much worse things with your banking site, financial services etc.

Don't do any things that ask you to open browser console and paste some code (unless you absolutely know what you're doing and know the code). The browser console can be used for good things too (TODO: Write about it in a new post).

Conclusion

So I've shared my experience with Social Engineering and being a victim of it. I have one more experience to share, but later :)

This can happen to anyone. You should be careful putting your trust on people on the internet. There are many nice people, yes, but there are others too.

Be careful on the internet.

Stay Safe.

Garnier.

PS: Since yesterday, I dug into a hole of Rick Astley interviews and videos. And I can't stop listening to "Never Gonna Give You Up". Send help.

Making Piano Stairs With Raspberry Pi and Ultrasonic sensors

Mon, 17 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We made a stair into a Piano ! It was our college tech fest and we needed something cool to showcase, something audience can interact with and have fun ! Piano Stairs sounded like a cool idea, but implementing it was a challenge.

I'm a 3rd year B.Tech CS engineering student now and this is my first time hacking with hardware. So I didn't know much. I was joined by my juniors, Muhammed Hashim and Athul Raj, both in their 2nd year of CS engineering. They have played with hardware before and has more experience than me. Having them with me was a great help for a noobie me.

Note: It's better if you use Infrared sensors or Light Sensitive Resistors instead of Ultrasonic. We learnt it the hard way 😬

Demo

You can see the videos here :

Requirements

Raspberry Pi
HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Distance Sensor
Raspbian Buster OS installed in Pi
Piano key sounds
mpg123 program :
```
sudo apt install mpg123
```

The ultrasonic sensor measures distance by sending sound waves. It bounces back to the sensor after hitting someting. This time dealy is used to calculate the distance.

You can directly see the source code here.

The Idea

Piano Keys

The idea was to assign each step of a staircase with a piano key. There are primarily 7 piano tones :

C - Sa
D - Re
E - Ga
F - Ma
G - Pa
A - Da
B - Ni
C - Sa (repeat)

All other keys in a piano is a different variant of these primary musical tones, and those are named with numbers :

C0, D0, E0, F0, ..., C1, D1, ..., F8, G8, A8, B8

We picked C4 to B4 (7 keys => 10 steps). You can download the sound files from here.

In the code, we make a simple dictionary in Python to easily track them :

pins = {
    # Index: [echo pin, trigger pin, "piano key sound filename"]
    0: [17, 18, "c4"],
    1: [27, 23, "d4"],
    2: [22, 24, "e4"],
    3: [5, 25, "f4"],
    4: [6, 12, "g4"],
    5: [13, 16, "a4"],
    6: [19, 20, "b4"],
    7: [26, 21, "c4"],
}

You don't have to give the file extension in the 3rd value of each list.

Plan

Place ultrasonic sensor on one side of each step
Periodically measure distance. It should be a constant value throughout
If there's an obstruction (leg on step), the distance measurement would change and when it does so, make the corresponding piano key sound
The sound should not repeat as the leg is kept on the step. For this a playStatus list is kept (See the code)

Setup

Ultrasonic sensor

The HC-SR04 sensor has 4 pins :

Vcc - Where you give the voltage
GND - Ground
Trig - Trigger pin (Output : We trigger the sensor to send a sound wave)
Echo - Echo pin (Input : We receive the sound wave back.)

Vcc and GND can be each made common to all the sensors.

Trigger and echo should be separate for each sensor. (Trigger can be made common into one pin too, see footnotes).

Fix each sensor at one side of the step. Connect wires to the 4 pins and extend them all together to a single place where we'll join them with our Pi.

As said before, you can use one wire for the Vcc of all the sensors. Similarly for GND too.

Pi

Get a Raspberry Pi.

Code

The source code is available here. Download this to your Pi. You need to run python3 run.py to start the piano. But it'll only work once you connect the pins.

Make a folder named sounds and place each musical note file there like c4.mp3, d4.mp3 etc. This filename should match the ones we gave in pins dictionary.

We use Python's Process to parallelly track distance with the sensors. This is only possible if the trigger wires are separate. You can make it common too. See footnotes

Connections

There are 40 pins on a Pi. We'll use GPIO pins to connect to our sensors.

Using this pin diagram of a Pi, connect the common Vcc to pin 2 (5V). Connect the common GND wire to pin 6. There are many ground pins available. You can use jump wires to easily connect.

Now, we need to connect the separate trigger and echo pins. Note these pin number down. We need to mention them in our code later. Important: We use the GPIO's pin number in the code, not the physical number from the 40 pins.

Example: Connect the trigger of the first sensor to GPIO6 (31) and echo to GPIO13 (33). Now, the dictionary in the code will be :

pins = {
    # Index: [echo pin, trigger pin, "piano key sound filename"]
    0: [6, 13, "c4"],
}

Note that in the above code that we used 6 and 13 from GPIO6 & GPIO13 instead of 31 and 33. You should similarly add new item to this pins dictionary with the GPIO pin numbers for every sensor attached.

Once you've made every connections, you can now run the script run.py. There's a maxDistance value hardcoded in the script. This is the distance below which we count it as an obstruction.

Footnotes

Common Trigger

By using a common trigger, you can reduce the number of GPIO pins used. With the extra pins, you can connect it to a relay and turn on LEDs which will make it more cool.

When you use a common trigger, you'll have to change the code to remove usage of Process and instead, sense one by one :

while True:
    for k, v in pins.items():
        sonarSensor(k)

Make It More Cool With LEDs

If you use a common trigger, then you can use the extra pins to run a relay and light up each stairs on stepping.

Conclusion

Ultrasonic sensor is not the best way to make this. Because distance measurement is not accurate in case of an obstruction and there might be variations. The delay to calculate the distance will affect the smoothness of the piano. It only worked out smooth for us at lucky times.

I enquired with few of my hardware friends and they all recommended using light sensitive resistors. See this piano stairs made by Bonnie which has a very good result, though it requires both Arduino and Pi.

KDE India Conf 2020

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I attended my first KDE India conf ! conf.kde.in 2020 happened in Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology, Delhi during January 17-19, 2020.

I started contributing to KDE since 2019 in localization as part of Swathanthra Malayalam Computing. The KDE localization process is still on SVN and it's difficult for a newbie to localize. I simplified it for the Malayalam localization by setting up an easy to use web interface with Weblate.

I attended #CKI2020 as a speaker.

Event

I attended CKI2020 along with Kannan VM. His talk was on how their company AlphaFork managed to migrate Janayugom newspaper entirely to free software. Janayugom is probably the only mainstream newspaper in the world to run entirely on free software.

KDE contributors from different parts of India attended the event. Some students who are doing Season of KDE (SoK) were also at the event. It was very nice to meet them in person. Adriaan de Groot & Arjen Hiemstra travelled all the way from Europe to attend CKI2020.

Last year, me and Balasankar C took the initiative to localize Calamares (The universal installer framework) to Malayalam. We were able to make it 100%.

Adrian De Groot a.k.a @kdedude is the maintainer of Calamares. He's also a KDE dev and is a member of the KDE e.V board. I got to meet him in person ! @kdedude did a talk on localization and KDE Frameworks which was very fascinating. Did you know that there's an API in KHolidays for moon time cycle ?!

Arjen's presentation on QtQuick was amusing. He took presentation to the next level, by making the presentation with Qt itself. It had live code-compiling demos right in the presentation itself !

My roommate was Anupam Basak, one of the devs of MAUI project. He also had a talk on MAUI. He had a Plasma mobile to experiment on. The MAUI apps were very cool. Convergent apps that work the same as on desktop and mobile with good performace is just 🔥 !

Saw Krita running on Android and artists drawing on it. It will soon be available for the public to work on !

I got to meet with the Indian northeastern KDE people. Coming from the extreme south of India, knowing that KDE folks are spread throughout India, to the north, west and east was very interesting. We all speak different languages, have different culture, but we have 2 things in common : India & KDE ❤️. Unity in diversity.

Gallery

CKI2020 Group pic

CKI2020 Group pic from top

My talk at CKI2020

CKI2020 ladder group pic

Sandwich pe charchaa

My Talk

My talk was titled "KDE Kerala". You can see the slides here.

The talk was separated into 3 sections :

History of FOSS In Kerala
How FOSS is used in Kerala's education sector
Localization

FOSS In Education

My extensive experiments with GNU/Linux started from school. I first used Ubuntu when I was 10 (2010) in 6th grade. I didn't have a computer back then. Previously, I only knew of the Windows OS. So, the free software push in schools have personally helped me. It helped many other kids too.

Now, Kerala schools have local students clubs called "KITE Clubs" where students learn and make stuff with FOSS tools. They play with Blender, Raspberry Pi, Arduino etc. Here are a couple examples of animation videos made by school kids :

I've known @AkshayTG3 since I was a kid. We together grew in a free software environment. While I got into coding, he drew with GIMP and now he's amazing all of us with his artwork. He is the chief designer of our college club @fossersvast. And he draws with a mouse !! Here's an amazing artwork by him.

The Aftermath

After CKI2020, Wrishiraj Kaushik from KDE Assam took the initiative to localize Calamares to Assamese, which hit 100% ! I'm now helping Wrishiraj and SuperX team in setting up an easy to use infrastructure for localizing KDE apps to Assamese, similar to what we did for Malayalam.

When I got into KDE Malayalam localization, I had a hunch that this will help other teams too. So, I documented everything as I progressed and tried different tools. We ended up using Weblate and it's going smooth. And now Assamese team are using that documentation to setup their Weblate instance !

Conclusion

It was my first ever conf this far outside Kerala, that too as a speaker. I had a wonderful experience at CKI2020 and Delhi. Thanks to the Delhi organizers for successfully conducting CKI2020 conf. I hope to participate in Akademy and more KDE confs in the future. And along with it, more contributions :)

You might wanna read other blogs on CKI2020 :

20 Years Of Revolving Around The Sun

Mon, 20 Jan 2020 06:29:06 +0000

Writing this at Delhi airport waiting for the flight back home. I came to the capital city of India for KDE India Conference.

This blog is a part of the revolving around the sun series :

This birthday is very fancy :

01-20-2020 20:20:20
MM-DD-YYYY HH:mm:SS

I'm turning 20 on 20 in the year of 2020. Very fancy ! And at 20:20 (8PM) tonight, it's the peak moment of fanciness 😂. The next such fanciness will be in the year 3030 at 1030 years old ? Nopeeeee, this is my fanciest birthday timestamp ever ! :P 😝

I have officially revolved around the sun 20 times ! Woah ! At the beginning of the last decade, I was in 5th grade and at the end, I'm in college 3rd year. That's a lot of time eh!

A tagline that I've been using for the blog were "A 21st century teen". Gonna have to replace "teen" with "millenial" or something else hehe 😁😌.

Coding

Went to many events, networked with people
Contributed to IndicNLP project
I participated in my first ever International Hackathon, ETHIndia and won it !!
Participated in national hackathon InOut. Didn't win any thing, but learnt about P2P tech, WebTorrent and those cool stuff. Torrent is now my favorite thing
Released Manglish app. Blog on it
Released Varnam Editor. Blog on it

KDE

I'm now a KDE contributor ! I'm a maintainer of KDE Malayalam localization now ! This gives me a developer access to KDE's localization SVN repo. This means I can directly push to it which is kinda dangerous too 😬.

In the post of '19, I shared my wish of getting selected for GSoC with KDE. I made my own project idea proposal on improving the localization experience, but the community was divided on whether implementing it. So, that went down.

But !

I implemented that proposal anyway for our Malayalam localization. And it worked ! KDE Malayalam localization is being done now on Weblate. The whole step to implement is documented here which might be useful for other localization teams.

This led me to work with the SMC Team and become a SMC contributor.

Here's the Twitter thread on completing a part of localization and having Malayalam included with KDE after many long years.

ഒരു വെടിക്ക് രണ്ടു പക്ഷി => A contributor to both SMC & KDE.

PyCon

I attended my very first PyCon last October in Chennai. It was a very big event. Lot of people from across India attended it. Got to meet some online folks in real life. Got some swags participating in contests in some booths.

I did a lightning talk on my project Selfie A Day. It was both exciting and anxious to do a talk in front a wide audience. I have a habit of talking too fast and that helped me to finish this talk within the alloted time of 5 minutes.

Since I have to go to Chennai and it's a conf, I wanted to make it a bit more grand. My family has never got in an aeroplane before. My first was also last year when I came back from Bangalore attending ETHIndia. So I asked my family to come with. They can see Chennai while I attend the conf.

We went to Chennai by train. We haven't ever went on such a long journey together (Appa was never the travelling vibe person). It was a new experience for us. We enjoyed Chennai and we all got to fly back ! Amma was scared in her first flight. I love it though, the turbulences are a poor human's way to experience almost 0g.

So much has happened to write, but it better stay as memories & photographs in our minds.

I had some savings doing freelance and used that to buy the plane tickets. I'm proud that I got to do this for my family (eldest son extra proundness :P). Amma was so happy of all this :)

UPDATE: With 2020, lockdowns, masks & air-travel not being the same anymore, we're super glad that we did this before it all went down.

College

Academics

Just like '19, I was more outside of college than in. I was afraid that I won't pass all subjects in semester 3rd last time. But that didn't happen. I passed all subjects, but with bad grades tho. Mehhh, it's alright.

The 5th semester exam just finished at the beginning of this month, and yes, I'm afraid there's a chance that I'll fail on atleast 1 subject :/ 😕.

FOSSers

FOSSers is there, but I feel like it wasn't as active as the year previous to '19.

For the first time, we had a FOSS Stall in our college tech fest. We also did a online puzzle-solving competition called CrypTux, an offline treasure hunt event and more... All of the software we made/used is open sourced of course ;)

We did a Debian Packaging workshop. We got to invite [email protected]">Pirate Praveen and [email protected]">Sruthi Chandran.

Attending the workshop, one FOSSer (oh yeah, that's a name we can call each member :D), Abhijith Sheheer digged deep into packaging. He has got more than 5 packages into Debian at the time of writing this.

We introduced Inkscape to Radhika Sharma and now she's really good at it ! She's making all her posters, artwork with Inkscape.

Jijin KH, Athul Raj, Muhammed Hashim worked on making a bot to easily get our college attendance. It works ! We call the bot VAASU (VAST Attendance Analyzer & Stats Utilizer) :P

We hope to do more, grander events and more contributions.

Life

The past year's been good, though I feel I could have done more. Time is moving pretty fast. Next year, at this time, I'll be in my last semester of college. Woah ! It was like yesterday I joined college.

I've always been a nostalgic person, having butterflies in stomach thinking of the past and memories. Y'know that feeling ? And I'm getting nostalgic now. Just 1 more year and my college life comes to an end. Another part of my life is going to end.

ഈ കോളേജ് കാലം ഒക്കെ ഒന്നല്ലേ ഉള്ളൂ ഫ്രണ്ടേ

Gonna listen to this song and delve in nostalgia.

My Article In Infokairali Magazine on Localization

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 20:00:00 +0530

About

Lately, I've been volunteering for Swathanthra Malayalam Project (SMC). I took up the initiative in revamping KDE localization which was dorminant for many years. More about how, why I started this is in this Twitter thread. We were successful in pushing new Malayalam localization to the wide range of KDE products.

November 1 is the birthday of Kerala state of India. Kerala was formed on the basis of the language spoken, Malayalam. Being November, Infokairali magazine decided to roll this edition with the theme "Digital Malayalam". Infokairali is the only tech magazine in Malayalam.

Seeing my work with KDE localization, Nandakumar Edamana of Infokairali invited me to write an article on localization. I've never published in a magazine before, that too with this wide reach. Well, I made one and here's my final draft.

This draft is very much likely boring to read. It's pieces scrambled finally at the end. Nandakumar fixed it all up and made it cool to read. Thanks ! You can see the pictures of the article in the magazine here.

Well, here's the draft :

Article

ഇംഗ്ലീഷിലോ മറ്റ് ഭാഷകളിലോ നിർമ്മിച്ചിട്ടുള്ള സോഫ്ട്‍വെയറുകൾ പ്രാദേശിക ഭാഷകളിലേക്ക് മാറ്റുന്ന പ്രക്രിയെയാണ് പ്രാദേശികവത്കരണം എന്ന് പറയുന്നത്. വെറും തർജ്ജമ്മയല്ല പ്രാദേശികവത്കരണത്തിൽ നടക്കുന്നത്. ആ സൊഫ്റ്റ്വയെറിന്റെ ഉപപോഗ്ത്താവിനു എളുപ്പം മനസ്സിലാവുന്നതും ഉപയോഗിക്കാവുന്ന രീതിയിലാണു പ്രാദേശികവത്കരണം നടത്തുന്നത്.

പ്രാദേശികവത്കരണം അനുവദിച്ചിട്ടുള്ള സോഫ്ട്‍വെയറുകൾ പ്രത്യേകതരത്തിലുള്ള POT ഫയലുകൾ ലഭ്യമാക്കും. അതിൽ ഉപപോക്താവിന് കാണത്തക്കമുള്ള എല്ലാ വാക്കുകളും വരികളും ഉൾപ്പെടുത്തിയിട്ടുണ്ടാവും. ഈ POT രൂപരേഖ ഫയലിൽ നിന്ന് ഓരോ ഭാഷയ്ക്ക് ഓരോ PO ഫയൽ ഉണ്ടാക്കും. ഇതിലാണ് പ്രാദേശികഭാഷയിലുള്ള തത്തുല്യ വാക്കുകളും വരികളും ഉൾപ്പെടുത്തുന്നത്. ഈ ഫയലിൽ നിന്നും സംഗ്രഹിച്ച MO ഫയലുകൾ നിർമ്മിച്ച് സോഫ്ട്‍വെയറുകളിൽ ഉൾപ്പെടുത്തിയാണ് അവ പുറത്തിറക്കുന്നത്. ഇങ്ങനെയാവുമ്പോൾ ആ സോഫ്ട്‍വെയർ പല ഭാഷകളിൽ ഉപയോഗിക്കാൻ നമുക്കാകുന്നു.

Android, Windows അങ്ങനെ പലതും മലയാളത്തിൽ ലഭ്യമാണു. ഇതിനായി ഈ കമ്പനികളുടെ ഉള്ളിൽ തന്നെ ഭാഷാ ടീമുകൾ ഉണ്ട്. സ്വതന്ത്ര സോഫ്ട്‍വെയറുകളുടെ കാര്യത്തിലാണെങ്കിൽ volunteers ആണ് മലയാളത്തിലേക്കാക്കാൻ ശ്രമിക്കുനത്. സ്വതന്ത്ര മലയാളം കമ്പ്യൂട്ടിങ്ങിന്റെ ആദ്യ കാലം മുതലേ ഇതിനായി പരിശ്രമങ്ങൾ തുടങ്ങിയിരുന്നു. GNOME, Debian, KDE അങ്ങനെ പല സ്വതന്ത്ര സോഫ്ട്‍വെയറുകളും SMCയുടെ നേതൃത്വത്തിൽ പ്രാദേശികവത്കരിചിട്ടുണ്ട്. ഇവയുടെ settingsൽ പോയി നിങ്ങൾക്ക് ഭാഷ മാറ്റാവുന്നതാണു.

ഇങ്ങനെ മലയാളത്തിലാക്കുമ്പോൾ ഒരു പ്രശ്നം അനുഭവിക്കുനത് എന്ത് വാക്കുകൾ ഉപയോഗിക്കണം എന്നാണ്. സാങ്കേതിക വാക്കുകൾക്കുള്ള പകരം വാക്ക് മലയാളത്തിൽ ഇല്ല. മലയാളത്തിൽ പുതിയ വാക്കുകൾ ഉണ്ടാക്കാൻ ഒരു ഔദ്യോകിക സംരഭം ഇല്ലാത്തതുകൊണ്ട് തന്നെ ഇത് ബുദ്ധിമുട്ടാകുന്നു. അപ്പൊ അത് ഞങ്ങൾക്ക് നിർമ്മിക്കേണ്ടി വരുന്നു. മലയാളം UI ഉപയോഗിച്ച് ഉപയോഗിച്ചാണു ഈ വാക്കുകൾ പൊതുവായി വരുന്നത്. ഉദാഹരണത്തിനു "Folder" എന്ന വാക്കിനു "അറ" എന്നാണ് ഉപയോഗിക്കുക. ആദ്യമായി മലയാളം UI ഉപയോഗിക്കുന്ന ഒരു വ്യക്തിക്ക് ഇത് മനസ്സിലാവണമെന്നില്ല. കൂടുതൽ ആളുകൾ ഉപയോഗിച്ച് ഉപയോഗിച്ച് അത് പ്രചാരത്തിലാകുന്നു, മലയാളം ഭാഷ കാലത്തിനൊപ്പം വളരുകയും ചെയ്യുന്നു. ഒരു കമ്പനി എന്ത് വാക്ക് വേണം എന്നു തീരുമാനിക്കാതെ, ഉപപോക്താക്കൾ തന്നെ അത് ശൃഷ്ടിക്കുമ്പോഴാണു കൂടുതൽ ഇണങ്ങുക. സ്വതന്ത്ര സോഫ്ട്‍വെയറിൽ ആ സ്വാതന്ത്രം നമുക്ക് ലഭിക്കുന്നു.

l10n & i18n

i18n - സോഫ്ട്‍വെയർ പ്രാദേശികവത്കരിക്കാൻ തരത്തിലുള്ള രീതിയിൽ മാറ്റുന്നതിനെയോ നിർമ്മിക്കുന്നതിനെയാണു "Internationalization" എന്ന് പറയുന്നത്. അത് ചുരുക്കമായി "i18n" എന്നുപയോഗിക്കുന്നു. l10n - "Localization" എന്ന വാക്കിന്റെ ചുരുക്ക പേരാണിത്. പ്രാദേശികവത്കരിക്കുക എന്നർത്ഥം.

AI & Localization

ഈ PO ഫയലുകൾ ഒരു dataset ആയി ഉപയോഗിച്ച് malayalam NLP AI വച്ച് വികസിപ്പിക്കാനാവും. അതാണ് indicnlp.org എന്ന സ്വതന്ത്ര സോഫ്ട്‍വെയർ പ്രോജെക്റ്റ് ചെയ്യുന്നത്. അപ്പോൾ പ്രാദേശികവൽക്കരണംകൊണ്ട് രണ്ടുണ്ട് ഗുണം !

Apps localized good in ml

Firefox - both mobile and desktop
Calamares Linux Installer - https://t.me/calamaresl10n
GNOME Chess game and lot of others - https://l10n.gnome.org/languages/ml/gnome-3-34/ui/ Anish Sheela did the most
KFind
Kate - KDE code editor
Kwrite - KDE text editor
Dolphin file manager
Konsole terminal

KDE

ലോകത്തിലെ തന്നെ ഒരു വലിയ സ്വതന്ത്ര സോഫ്ട്‍വെയർ കൂട്ടായ്മയാണു കെ.ഡി.ഇ. കെ.ഡി.ഇയുടെ കീഴിൽ കൊറെയധികം സോഫ്ട്‍വെയറുകളുണ്ട്. ലിനക്സിൽ ഒരു ഡെസ്ക്ടോപ് UIയും കെ.ഡി.ഇ ക്കുണ്ട് (പ്ളാസ്മ). ഇവയൊക്കെ മലയാളത്തിലേക്ക് പ്രാദേശികവത്കരിക്കാനുള്ള ഉദ്യമം ഇപ്പോൾ നടന്നുകൊണ്ടിരിക്കുന്നു.

മലയാളികളുടെ സ്വന്തം OS ആയ തെങ്ങ് ഒഎസിന്റെ അടുത്ത പതിപ്പ് കെ.ഡി.ഇ സൊഫ്റ്റ്വയെറുകൾ ഉൾപ്പെടുത്തിക്കൊണ്ടായിരിക്കും. അതിനു വേണ്ടിയാണ് കെ.ഡി.ഇ പ്രാദേശികവൽക്കരിക്കാനുള്ള യഞ്ജം വീണ്ടും ഉണർന്നത്. ഇതിൽ പങ്കാളിയാകാൻ നിങ്ങൾക്കും സാധിക്കും : https://kde.smc.org.in

മലയാളീകരിച്ച PO ഫയലുകൾ കെഡിഇ സംഭരണിയില്‍ ചേര്‍ക്കാന്‍ അനുവാദം ഉള്ളവരാണ് "Localization Maintainers". ഇതിൽ ഒരാളാണ് ഞാൻ (സുബിൻ സിബി). പൊതുവേ ഈ PO ഫയലുകൾ ഓരോ ആളുകൾ download ചെയ്തിട്ടാണ് പണിയെടുക്കുക. പക്ഷെ അതിലും എളുപ്പമായി ഒരു websiteൽ തന്നെ പ്രാദേശികവത്കരിക്കാൻ സഹായിക്കുന്ന ഒരെണ്ണം ഞാൻ ഉണ്ടാക്കി. അതാണ് kde.smc.org.in. ഇതുപോലെ Firefoxനുള്ളതാണു https://pontoon.mozilla.org/

Top Contributors to KDE Malayalam

നീനു ചാക്കോ
അമൃതനാഥ്‌ മനോഹരൻ
അതുൽ രാജ്
ശ്രീരാം വെങ്കിടേഷ്
ലക്ഷ്മി സുനില്‍,
അനൂപ് എം എസ്

More : https://blog.smc.org.in/smc-monthly-report-april-2019/

Varnam, An Editor To Easily Type Malayalam & Other Indian Languages

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 03:00:00 +0530

Today, I'm introducing Varnam Editor, an easy software for you to write Malayalam and other Indian languages. It is easily installable for GNU/Linux distros like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian, Archlinux etc.

Technically, it's an editor for transliterating Indian languages. Varnam Editor uses an existing library called Varnam and makes it easy to install & use.

Transliteration

From Wikipedia :

Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus trans- + liter-) in predictable ways (such as α → a, д → d, χ → ch, ն → n or æ → ae).

Basically transliteration is Manglish to Malayalam conversion. Example :

ennaa -> എന്നാ

We write the text in english letters and it will be converted to the language we need. This can be done for any languages. Even malayalam to hindi or tamil to bangla. Check out libindic project which do just that.

Varnam

Varnam is a C library to easily type Indian languages using transliteration. The project was started by a malayalee Navaneeth K.N in 2010. It's written in C and works on GNU/Linux and Windows.

Varnam is a great tool ! I found it very useful and typing with it so easy ! There's an ibus integration which makes it easy to type natively in apps (ibus is a keyboard input system for GNU/Linux.) :

Varnam Components

libvarnam - The varnam C library
varnam-ibus - The ibus integration for varnam

Compiling and installing libvarnam will give a nifty command line tool :

varnamc -s ml -t aa ennaa undu

which will give an output :

ആ എന്നാ ഉണ്ട്

Installing varnam for the first time won't give good predictions. You need to import a word corpus. Read the README. This is also another problem that is solved by my flatpak package.

One amazing feature of Varnam is that it has predictions + character map :

ennaa -> എന്നാ eNNaa -> എണ്ണാ

So capitalizing letters will give better results. Google Input Tools doesn't support this.

Varnam Editor

Why I Built Varnam Editor

Altough varnam is a great tool, setting it up was difficult :

Need to compile and manually install
No debian or other distro package
Setting it with ibus didn't work in some apps such as Telegram (Qt app)
In KDE+i3, switching ibus layouts didn't work sometimes
Varnam has to be set up to learn words which is time consuming
For the average user, setting up Varnam is hard
Google Input Tools which does transliteration isn't available for GNU/Linux

Varnam is such a great tool that most people don't know of it, possibly because it's hard to set up. So to make things very very easy, I made a Flatpak package ! 🎉

I tried packaging it with Flatpak, but the ibus engine didn't work out because flatpak has some issues with ibus, dbus. I've filed a bug report; if that gets solved, I'll package the engine too.

So I made an editor web app that integrates with the varnamc CLI tool installed in the system :

I purposefully avoided electron, cause that would make it heavy. Instead I used Python eel.

Install

GNU/Linux

Install flatpak
Download the latest varnam.zip from here
- Version 0.1
Extract the zip file
Double clicking the extracted varnam.flatpak file may open it in your Softwares app and allow you to install from there
If step 4 didn't work, open a terminal an do these :

cd ~/Downloads
flatpak install varnam.flatpak

Windows

I don't know if it'll work in Windows, but it may work with the new Windows subsystem for Linux. The steps are same as GNU/Linux's. Please do let me know what it took to make it work there. I'll include it here.

If you have any problems setting it up, please feel free to comment below.

Features

Lightweight
Supports Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bangla
Malayalam works really good. Better than Google Input Tools
Free & Open Source Software
Pressing the corresponding number will pick the suggested word

Contribute

Varnam uses C, Go, Ruby & Varnam Editor uses Python, JavaScript, HTML/CSS. So there are multiple stacks you can contribute to.

Thanks to Navaneeth K N for this amazing Varnam library without which we won't be able to type Malayalam so easily in GNU/Linux !

Screenshots

Manglish, a Malayalam to Manglish Converter Android App

Sun, 02 Jun 2019 16:00:00 +0530

I'm happy to announce a new Android app called "Manglish", it's an app to convert Malayalam text to Manglish. It's a GNU GPL v3 licensed completely free software app with no ads thanks to the donors. Kept it as light as possible.

You can download & install it in many ways :

Play Store F-Droid APK (1.5MB)

Updates

2021 May: Version 7 released with new On Screen Button feature.
2020 August: App has reached 5000 active installs.
2019 November : App has reached 1000+ active installs and more than 3000 downloads !

Manglish

When Malayalam text is written with English letters, it's called Manglish. Not to be confused with Malaysian pidgin language.

Manglish = Malayalam + English

For example, consider this Malayalam text :

എല്ലാവര്‍ക്കും സുഖമല്ലേ

The above Malayalam text will be written in Manglish as :

ellavarkkum sughamalle

Manglish text is used mostly in chatting, social media etc. It basically came into existence and became popular after internet. It's an easy way to write Malayalam.

Malayalam is a bit complicated language. It has 52 letters including 16 vowels and 36 consonants. So fitting all of them in a small sized Phone keyboard is hard and to type it more harder.

This persuades people to use manglish instead. There are apps & keyboards available to convert manglish to Malayalam. This helps everyone to easily type Malayalam.

Why Manglish App ?

I know people who are malayalees, can understand Malayalam, but can't read. There are many such people. Malayalees are everywhere in the world. Most of us are expats. So the kids brought up are most likely to not get a good education in their native language Malayalam.

I have some cousins too like this. They speak excellent Malayalam, but can't even read a letter. There are such students in my college too. Well, this app would help them all ❤️.

I've made this app for such people to easily understand malayalam text without depending on someone else. All you have to do is paste the text, click a button and voila !

Help people understand Malayalam text they see/receive
Potentially help people learn the language

Now you can understand what your WhatsApp ammavan forwards. :P 😝

Features

Fast, quick conversion
Ability to select text in other apps, browsers and share to this app to convert
No ads, bloatware
As lightweight as possible
NEW May 2021: On Screen button to transliterate text on any app

On Screen Button

Version 7 introduces a new feature: A "മ" button that floats on screen. When clicked, it will convert Malayalam text on screen to Manglish.

To enable this feature, a special permission is needed. You will need to explicitly give this permission in Android Settings -> Accessibility. How this feature works is explained in technical section below.

Before converting

Manglish On Screen button after converting text on screen

Contribute

Donate

The app is and will always be free of ads. It was made for the sole intend of helping people. If you can, you may help financially in the development of this app.

Donate

Donors

Thank you so much to these donors who helps keep the app ad-free and help me maintain the app.

Athul Cyriac
Mathew Mani
Pranoy Dev

Code

Read the technical section and contribute to the code !

Feature Request

You can submit a feature request in the comments below or on our GitHub issues.

Screenshots

More screenshots here.

Technical

ml2en

The app uses ml2en library made by Kailash Nadh. It's the brain behind the conversion. This library is also used by a reddit and twitter bot to help in translation. But those require a server to run and is not reliable forever. This app solves that problem.

A web app is also available for ml2en. ml2en is licensed under GNU GPL v2.0.

ml2en's not perfect, but is enough.

App

Source Code

The JavaScript version of ml2en.js is used by the app. Mozilla's Java implementation of JavaScript, Rhino is used to run this JS file. Yes, it's not efficient. Instead, a native Java implementation of the ml2en algorithm would be the best. I tried to do it, but failed because of my inexperience with Java.

See this issue.

UPDATE July 2019: This issue has been fixed. I made a Java port of the ml2en algorithm.

On Screen Button

The On Screen button feature works using Android's Accessibility API. You may have seen people with vision impairment using screen readers for using phone. Such screen reader apps use this API to get data from apps and read it out aloud. Similarly, Manglish app gets text from screen and make an On Screen box on it with the converted text.

This was challenging because some apps like Facebook & Instagram uses special TextView elements for displaying text. I couldn't solve the issue with Facebook app. But for every other app it works.

I hope this app has been helpful. Please do let me know your feedback :)

And rate it on Play Store !

Curse Words

Sun, 26 May 2019 23:45:28 +0530

I have an interesting story of how I learnt & used a curse word.

Myru

In Malayalam, a main curse word is "myru" which translates to "pubic hair". In Tamil, it simply means "hair". You can just go to a barber shop and say "annaa, cut my myru", but in Malayalam this sentence is hilarious 🤣.

When you refer the word to someone, it becomes "myre". It's like calling someone bro, but in the worst way possible :

eda myre = hey pubic hair

This word is weird.

Urban dictionary calls it the Malayalam equivalent of f*ck.

Story

I'm writing this because of this meme I saw earlier today :

"been there done that"

When I was 12 (2012), there was this new word in school. I thought it was just a one more level upwards of those normie words like "patti" പട്ടി (dog), "thendi" തെണ്ടി (beggar) stuff. I never bothered to know what its meaning was. I was just happy that I'm not missing out on stuff (high school eh).

Some months after that, we were all in a family get-together. It was during nighttime. The room had us kids (8 of us cousins) just simply sitting (y'know the time before the smarthphones). My uncle was sitting and peeling onions. Amma was in the next room doing something. I remember all this vividly. I'll never forget this wonderful experience.

I have a sister (cousin to be exact) named "Ammu". I'm called Appu in home. She's just 6 months younger than me. We fight all the time like any other siblings do. This time, somehow we ended up calling each other words.

It started from "patti", went to thendi and then to some others. BTW, my "bad words" dictionary goes like this :

patti thendi pulle naaye chette naari

After all these words we knew ended, it was my turn to call her something. And BEHOLD, THE LATEST WORD THAT NO ONE KNEW...

The room quickly got silent. Everyone looked at me in a weird way. I heard Amma who were in the other room saying

Apputtaaaa, enthaadaa nee ee parayunne. Evidunnu kitti ninakkithokke

in the most exclamatory way possible ! Kinda like this (+/- 30%) :

I got frightened, my heart was racing. Damn, I remember every little detail.

My uncle still sat there peeling the onions. My older brothers were laughing trying to easen the mood. They were too "enthaaanu appuuu".

Meanwhile Ammu went around asking what the meaning of the word was which I didn't know too. I pleaded before amma "I DON'T KNOW THE MEANING MAAA". She was like "ente mon pizhachu poyeeee".

After the incident, I asked my friend Vishnu Manoj the meaning of the word. Well... he enlightened me. And have I never ever ever used the word... until college.

aadyam arinja theriyum ath padippichu thannavanem aarum marakkillaaa 😌

Few years later we all went to watch a football game of Kerala Blasters. Blasterd were playing really poor and I heard the word there again. But this time it was my uncle 😂 who stood silent before peeling the onions. It was a surprise to us all, we have never heard him swearing before. As we grow up, we see new things and discover new faces. The elders too were kids once eh 😁.

Now

Fast forward to now, Ammu cerainly hasn't forgotten the incident nor did anyone else of us cousins. I asked my mom if she remembers it, nope she doesn't.

Ammu, I taught you the word. I regretted it during the time and later. But, not now.

Nee enthaayalum arinjene, ithithiri nerathe aayenne ullu 🥴

ingane paranju samaadhaanikkaale :P

You would have eventually learnt anyway kiddo 🥴.

Looking back, it's just a funny moment and we can have a laugh on this forever 😂

InstaLV - Live Stream To Instagram From Computer

Sun, 07 Apr 2019 12:56:00 +0530

Instagram allows you to livestream from the phone only. And that too from the camera which means you can't add extra effects, overlays or cool stuff like that.

If you could livestream from the computer, you can customize the livestream video as you like. Similar to livestreams on YouTube or Twitch.

I was bored and was thinking of cool projects to do. I just got into Instagram and was checking it out. Livestream was pretty cool ! So I searched for livestream from desktop and found this. It worked, but didn't have some features I needed and it isn't easy for a normal user to use (cause everything was in the terminal).s

So I forked it and made InstaLV ❤ (InstaLiVe. ❤ is optional :P)

How It Works

YouTube, Twitch and other streamers use a broadcaster software for livestreaming. The most popular of them is OBS Studio (Open Broadcaster Software Studio).

The Streaming service (YouTube) provide a link, username & password for connecting to it. These credentials are set in OBS Studio and streaming is started. Instagram also works like this, but they don't give you these credentials. But it can be obtained. InstaLV gives you these credentials and allows you to control the livestream from the computer.

Features

A webapp to easily control livestream
See livestream viewers
See likes & comments during livestream
Pin/Unpin comments
Call custom callbacks when a user like or comment

Screenshots

Installation

The commands

Install PHP
Install Composer
Download the latest version of InstaLV
Extract the folder to a place
Open a terminal in that folder and run this command :
```
path/to/composer.phar install
```
Edit the file config.php and add your Instagram username and password
In the terminal again, run the live.php script :
```
php live.php
```
On another terminal in the same folder, run the server :
```
php -S localhost:8000 server.php
```

You can also simply execute the run_server.sh or run_server.bat (Windows) which will run the above command.

Open the link http://localhost:8000 in a browser.
In the InstaLV webpage, click on the button Stream Key/URL. Copy the Stream-URL and Stream-Key and paste them into your streaming software. For setting up OBS, read this

OBS Setup

Go to the "Stream" section of your OBS Settings
Set "Stream Type" to "Custom Streaming Server"
Set the "URL" field to the stream url you got from InstaLV
Set the "Stream key" field to the stream key you got from InstaLV
Make Sure "Use Authentication" is unchecked and press "OK"
Start Streaming in OBS
To stop streaming, click on the "Stop Stream" button in InstaLV and then press "Stop Streaming" in OBS
Note: To emulate the exact content being sent to Instagram, set your OBS canvas size to 720x1280. This can be done by going to Settings->Video and editing Base Canvas Resolution to "720x1280".

At the time of writing this post, the original project of JRoy's has improved a lot ! Do check that out too !

19 Years Of Revolving Around The Sun

Sun, 20 Jan 2019 06:29:06 +0000

Writing this at CUSAT MakeATon Hackathon.

Part of the revolving around series :

age = 18
age = age + 1

I have officially revolved around the sun 19 times. 19 years of existence. This is the beginning of my last teenage year. I feel old.

A tagline that I've been using these days is "A 21st century teen". Well that's gonna go off in a year.

Coding

I participated in a lot of hackathons this year. Well, I'm writing this from one ! And my GitLab & GitHub profile is lit this year !

Made some cool projects and learnt new stuff.
Networked with a lot of people and made some cool new friends !

I MET RICHARD STALLMAN this year at Kochi Muziris Biennale ! One of the living greatest person on this planet. Got a really weird pic with him, cause he don't like taking photos :P

One quote he said during the talk was hilarious :

Calling me the father of open source is like calling Ambedkar the father of BJP

I'm also trying to participate in Google Summer of Code this year. I have to work full time for it and I hope I can. I would really love to work in a large project and make a significant contribution to a FOSS project. I'm currently looking at KDE cause I use it everyday and they have really cool projects (Have I mentioned how much I love KDEConnect :P).

College

The past 3rd semester, I was more outside of college than in. More about my hackathon experiences. That's probably gonna affect my grades this semester. I seriously doubt I'll pass all the subjects last semester.

FOSSers is getting very active. We now have a good website up and running. The community is growing and I'm very happy and excited to lead it. We're one of the most active FOSS clubs in our state now and I'm proud. I never thought that I had a leader in me. I always doubted that. But I'm now realising that I'm capable of being a leader :)

Discovered more friends ! I met a gal and a guy who are Pewdiepie fans. This is a first. Bros 👊. This gal was the first new person I met in first day of college. There was this orientation class and we were divided into groups and she was in my group. I made some lame jokes (Subin v17.08 lame-jokes-bug) and yet she laughed to it :D. I found her laugh pretty cute. Never thought she was a Pewdiepie fan. In my place, it's pretty rare to find such people.

Well... after that, we didn't even speak or mind at all for over a year (MY FAULT. Another Subin v17.08 bug). And now we've renewed that one-day friendship again. I absolutely regret not doing it earlier. Here's one quote to remember :

At the end of the day, you'll regret the chances you didn't take

I've also made friends with some new cool people. What's interesting is that the friendship happened online through messages. We're in the same college yet we haven't talked directly

I've said this many times and I'm saying it again :

I have a variety of interests and lots of stuff to talk about. I'm that middle intersection in a Venn Diagram 🤓

I mentioned about the possibilty of getting a scholarship in the last post. I GOT IT ! So less burden on the money part :)

Personal

My grandma died just a week ago. Every year for birthday, she would call me first in the morning and wish me. This year, there won't be a call :(

The best picture I have with grandma. Took in June, 2018. Took this placing the camera on a table and controlling it with an Android app

I stayed along with her for the first time ever in last June during semester break. I'm glad I did that. Atleast I could spend some happy moments with her :)

I've never lost someone so dearest to me. Death is hard to comprehend.

I hope to do more stuff in the future.

വെറുതെ ഇരുന്നിട്ട് കാര്യമില്ല

and meet new people...

I am because we are ❤️

2018 Year Review 👏👏👏

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Year Review 👏👏👏

And there goes another year. Been very inactive in this blog. Should have blogged of some of the major events, but couldn't. I'm all now posting stories on Instagram and on my channel in Telegram. Here's a summing up of my year 2018.

Coding

I kinda tried doing a #100DaysOfCode challenge, but stopped at 73. This is my longest streak ever on GitHub !

When I look back at my contribution wall, I can see what I've been doing my whole year. It's kind of like a journal and you don't have to write anything. It just explains itself !

Projects

BeX

A book exchanging webapp specifically meant for colleges. I made this to learn Django & ReactJS.

Source

Created this in semester break to implement in the following semester, but it wasn't complete. Have to work on this and possibly implement it in my college soon !

OpenSalve

A disaster management software for volunteers and rescue teams. Created as part of hackathons.

Source

TorrentBro

Ceated TorrentBro in 2017. Added some more features to it I think. I don't remember much :D

Hackathons

This year, I participated in my very first hackathon and went on to more hackathons !

Photos, experience and stuff I did there are all uploaded as stories in my Instagram profile !

HackForTomorrow

HackForTomorrow is my first ever hackathon. Me and my college senior, Geon George participated in it. I didn't know what hackathons were.

And we won 2nd ! Our project was OpenSalve, a disaster management software.

FISAT TechPlanet

The next hackathon was at FISAT TechPlanet. Our team consisted of 5, all from college. We won 1st !

Hardware Hackathon

I never got into hardware hackathon but I was curious. So I got into a hardware hackathon to see how things were. We didn't win anything but the experience was damn awesome !

NASA SpaceApps

Level up 🆙. I travelled solo 300KMs to Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram to participate in NASA's SpaceApps challenge. This hackathon was 48 hours and is the best hackathon I've been to.

IBeto

Winning 2nd position in HackForTomorrow got us into a direct entry to IBeto. I teamed up with 4 people who I met in HackForTomorrow event. We were able to make an Android app of OpenSalve and make the OpenSalve backend more better.

Drishti

College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram conducts their annual tech fest called Drishti. I participated in MCA deaprtment's DCOD3.0 competition. The aim is to find the best techie. It had interesting various rounds.

There was a round to decrypt encrypted values which I found very interesting. I was able to solve it. It was in PHP. All I had to do was reverse engineer the encrypt function.

At the end, passing through 8 challenges, I won DCOD3.0 !

LocalHackDay

The last hackathon I've been to is Local Hack Day. It was a general hackathon and what we made is a site of information about Linux distributions.

Hackathons Are Great

I had this worry in my mind of going to hackathon thinking that I won't be able to do well in it and other people are all smarter than me and stuff. I wanted to know what hackathons are like. So I went for HackForTomorrow and enjoyed it !

There are all kinds of people at hackathons. Whether you're an absolute beginner or not, just go. Hackathons are the best place to learn. You're in a room full of vibrant people collaborating and learning together.

And it's not just for coders. A software has all kinds of people involved in it; coders, designers, testers, documentation people and so on. You can pick your path and be in a team.

Hackathons are all about learning, collaborating and sharing together. The experience I got from attending such events is tremendous. And I got to meet a lot of fun, interesting people. And I'm now doing projects with them !

College

FOSSers

I talked about revamping the FOSS club of our college in an old post.

Here's the update : It's going REALLY WELL ! We now have a good community of people. Got a website set up, social media accounts and did a lot of events ! I should make an entire blog post on FOSSers itself, cause there's lot to say ! (Into the wishlist it goes !).

FOSSers Website

FOSSers Instagram

FOSSers Telegram

Life

Pretty rad ! I disliked college at first, but visiting other colleges and seeing the state, I became more happy with my college 😂. Students in my class are not that most-active, but are alright. Just need to push, set them ablaze to do stuff.

The CSE juniors who just came 5 months back are pretty awesome. Vibrant bunch of people.

I'm now more of an extrovert now. I got to know that there are a lot of interesting, fun people in my class and college itself. All you gotta do is find them which is why I'm trying to be friends with almost everybody ! I'm now a people person 😁🤗

Every person's interesting and I have something in common to talk to. I'm that middle intersection in a Venn Diagram 🤓

Introvert -> extrovert 💯

If I had time and interest, I would have written a lot more. Have an exam on 2019 January 4th. Oh and BTW, I'm not focusing on academics much anymore.

I'm writing this all in a hurry and I've missed a lot. Perhaps another post soon 🤞

Peace out ✌️

OpenStreetMap Mapathon on Software Freedom Day 2018

Tue, 18 Sep 2018 23:06:19 +0530

I mentioned about me working with the FOSS club of my college in a recent post. Well, we're getting more active ! On Software Freedom Day 2018, we did an OpenStreetMap mapathon.

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. Unlike Google Maps, OSM is completely open source. Its data can be accessed and used by anyone. Because of this, many softwares and organizations use OSM. Examples would be Pokemon Go, Facebook and many others.

Mapathon

An OSM mapathon is a collaborative work of mapping places on OSM. From satellite imagery and local surveys, we mark the buildings, roads, lakes etc. in OSM. By doing so, we can extract specific layers of data from the map. For example, if I need to see all houses in a particular area or if I need to see all the roads in an area, then I can simply use OSM to get that data. This is not possible in Google Maps.

But who will add these data ? The world is vaaaast. This is where communities come in. Free Software communities, students, social groups etc. contribute to OSM. They go to a certain place, go around surveying places, note the details down, head to a lab and upload the info by looking at the satellite imagery.

Nodes are created and joined to make a building, road etc. Information such as elevation, floors, name can also be added to each buildings. In case of roads, the type, lanes, width etc. are also given. Overall, each item is related with a lot of data.

Relevance

My home state Kerala went through the worst flood in over a century. When the dams were opened, government failed to accurately evacuate places. As a result, a lot of places got flooded and people suffered.

During the flood, developers in Kerala came together to make keralarescue.in and microid.in/keralaflood. Both helped a lot during the flood. Both used OSM.

keralaresuce.in - Requests for help were collected, organized and shown in maps for help to reach
microid.in/keralaflood - A map to see the flooded roads. Useful while travelling

Technology has evolved so much and we can use it in situations like these. Never before in human history had the capability of doing this. We have grown so much and we should use the technology to help people and make the world a better place.

GIS can be used for knowing that if a river overflows, which all places would be flooded. It can also be used to exactly know which places require to be evacuated. It helps a lot in disaster management as well as prevention.

QGIS is a free and open-source desktop GIS application that supports viewing, editing, and analysis of geospatial data. OSM's data can be used in QGIS to do this.

But for that to happen, OSM should be populated with data and it is necessary to do it. I understood its importance during the flood.

Event

We planned this event just 4 days before SFD. Made a Google Forms link and passed to college groups. We got 36 volunteers through it.

Our FOSS club is called FOSSers and our group is on Telegram, Matrix and a mailing list. So these new members were added to each. We have grown from 2 (last year) to 80+ now ! Yay !

Together with OSM Kerala, FSUG Thrissur, Kole Birders, River Research Centre Thrissur, we conducted a mapathon on Software Freedom Day.

We also had experts from outside who joined the program :

Manoj K, our alumni, Free Software Activist, Wikipedia/OpenStreetMap volunteer, coordinator of Kole Birders Collective led the mapathon.
Ajith Kumar (GIS Expert from CSRD)
Rajaneesh P (River Research Centre, Thrissur)
Sujin NS (Jawarhalal Nehru Tropical Botanical Garden, Thiruvananthapuram)
Sreenath K (Soil Test expert, Irinjalakkuda)

People who have also helped include :

Naveen Francis (Open Street Map and Wikimedia India) gave Technical Help for the event
Jaison Nedumbala (Asst. Secretary , Koorachundu Village Panchayat and Member of Swathandra Malayalam Computing) gave advice in Mapping Efforts.

Led by Manoj, we were given instructions on how to map and what to do. I had no idea on how to do it. We used tasks.openstreetmap.in to manage tasks. In it, our district was divided into many blocks and each volunteer would pick a block and start mapping.

Result

In under 5 hours of working, we were able to do :

4,388 edits
2,799 buildings
118 km roads
Map Lakes, Streams, etc.

Complete info of contributions can be found here on MissingMaps.

Search

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 15:26:47 +0530

Install Realtek d723 WiFi driver for GNU/Linux

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 13:20:37 +0530

I've been doing a lot of Linux Mint installations lately and one very annoying thing that I found in 2 laptops was the non availability of WiFi driver. Apparently, it's a new hardware and is not in the Linux kernel.

The hardware is Realtek device d723. This new WiFi hardware is being shipped in new PCs and laptops now. Without having the internet, one can't do almost anything. So it's important to have this fixed up.

UPDATE : Added a new method to make it work on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

If method 1 doesn't work for you, try method 2 or method 3.

Getting Internet

We need a temporary internet connection to fix WiFi. Ways to connect :

Connect USB cable and use USB Tethering in your phone to connect your computer to the internet (through phone's cellular data/WiFi)
Use wired ethernet cable for connecting to internet

Finding Device

Open a terminal and do the command lspci. You will see all the PCI devices of your system. If you have the d723 device, you can see it at the bottom :

Or to quickly know if you have the d723 WiFi hardware, do :

lspci | grep d723

Prerequisite

You should install the corresponding header of your kernel :

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

Next, install the packages necessary for building :

sudo apt-get install git build-essential dkms

Method 1

This is the RECOMMENDED METHOD because in future, when kernel is updated, the installed driver will be automatically compiled to make it work in newer kernel.

We're gonna use the driver available in this GitHub repository's extended branch.

To simplify everything, run the following commands one by one :

git clone -b extended --single-branch https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new.git
sudo dkms add rtlwifi_new
sudo dkms install rtlwifi-new/0.6

Restart your computer. And you'll get your WiFi !

Method 2

We're gonna use the driver available in this GitHub repository's extended branch.

To simplify everything, run the following commands one by one :

wget -d -c -O 'rtlwifi_new.zip' 'https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new/archive/extended.zip';
unzip rtlwifi_new.zip;
cd rtlwifi_new-extended;
make;
sudo make install;
sudo modprobe -r rtl8723de;
sudo modprobe rtl8723de;

What the commands does is download the GitHub repository (extended branch) with wget. If your system doesn't have wget, install it :

sudo apt install wget

After that, the downloaded zip file is extracted with unzip. Then inside the extracted folder, the drivers are compiled and installed with make & make install

After that the drivers are enabled using the modprobe command with sudo.

PS : Thanks to Bruno Loy for confirming that this works !

Method 3

smlinux has made a driver for d723. Compiling it and installing it will help you connect to WiFi.

First step is to identify the version of your Linux kernel :

uname -r

The driver is different according to the Linux kernel version. Only the driver to download will vary. Rest of the installation steps are the same.

Download

Now according to the kernel version download the driver :

4.11 and up

If the Linux kernel version is 4.11 or greater (>=4.11), then download this file :

wget -d -c -O 'rtl8723de.zip' https://github.com/smlinux/rtl8723de/archive/4.11-up.zip

4.10 and down

If the Linux kernel version is 4.10 or below (<=4.10), then download this file :

wget -d -c -O 'rtl8723de.zip' https://github.com/smlinux/rtl8723de/archive/4.10-down.zip

Build & Install

Now let's build the driver and install it.

After the download of the driver zip file, extract it :

unzip rtl8723de.zip

Go into the extracted folder, build it and install it :

cd rtl8723de
make
sudo make install

Reboot

After the installation, restart your computer. After the restart, you'll be able to connect to WiFi :

FAQ

"Required key not available"

The easiest solution is to disable Secure Boot in UEFI settings. Solution here.

Poor WiFi Range

Open a terminal and do :

sudo modprobe rtl8723be ant_sel=1

If that doesn't fix it, do this instead :

sudo modprobe rtl8723be ant_sel=2

This is a temporary solution. To make it permanent, we need to run it every time the system starts. For that, edit the file /etc/rc.local :

sudo gedit /etc/rc.local

Replace gedit above with whatever text editor you have.

Then, in that file add :

sleep 10
sudo modprobe -r rtl8723be
sudo modprobe rtl8723be ant_sel=1

Replace ant_sel=1 above with the one that worked for you. Either '1' or '2'.

18 Years Of Revolving Around The Sun

Sat, 20 Jan 2018 06:29:06 +0000

I'm legally an adult now. I have successfully revolved around the sun 18 times. Yay !

This post is dedicated to the future me who will be having nostalgic feelings reading this. Hey there, future me !

Coding

Lobby was a mistake. I think I've wasted my 2 years in developing it. I was too ambitious. But I gained a lot of experience. This was the first time that I got into cross-compiling, virtual environments, Android development, etc.

Every project is an experience may it be a disaster or not. Be grateful of that experience

^ I guess I have to just say this loud to comfort me. My GitHub commit history is filled with Lobby contributions. There was a day with 56 commits.

I was very much focused on developing Lobby that I forgot to see the bigger picture, people aren't gonna use it if there aren't enough apps. Don't we already have Android Play Store and similar things.

The idea of Lobby is good though, open source apps where you can directly edit the code to modify it and so on. But I don't think it's possible without a good team of devs and a solid framework.

OpenShift ended their free plan and 2 of my sites is discontinued :

Open
Lobby

Both the above projects were really helpful to me as a self-learning dev. My lab site was migrated to Heroku and it runs fine on the free plan. And this blog is now a static site with the help of Hugo.

I started developing desktop apps with Python and Qt :

Python is beautiful ❤

My project CryptoDonate got some attention and someone created a whole new site for it. He/she also linked back to me. That made me happy.

College

I have joined Vidya Academy of Science And Technology in July 2017 pursuing a BTech degree in Computer Science Engineering. It's a private college and it's expensive ! There's a chance for a scholarship and I hope I get it.

I like it here. Got some really great friends ! I have company with everyone in my class and is getting to know more kind of people from different parts of Kerala.

Every person is unique and it's interesting to know them

I've benn in internet too long that I know a variety of things. So there's always something in common to talk to a person. Be it politics, science or entertainment.

So I have very different set of friend circles. It's a Venn diagram where I intersect in every other sets.

Some noticeable changes :

Much more active on WhatsApp (more friends)
Less coding than before (as a consequence of #1)
Addicted to social media (phones are dangerous, another consequence of #1 ?)
Much more socially comfortable. I was awkward before. Now I don't mind it at all. I just ring up conversations and my sense of humour is okay-ish.

Activities

I took initiative in revamping the FOSSers (Free and Open Source Software Users) club of our college. Even though we're freshmen, we were able to move it around and attract people to GNU/Linux :)

I think I have helped more than 25 people in installing a distro. I recommend Linux Mint for newbies.

Teenage

I've always expressed myself as a "teenage developer". That's gonna go soon. I'm getting old.

This blog has been very inactive. I don't have that energy and enthusiasm I had during my early teenage years. What happened to me ?

Maybe it's gonna get better ?

Maybe.

Originally wrote this post on March 14. I missed updating my blog about my birthday :(

CryptoDonate, The Donation Button For CryptoCurrencies

Fri, 16 Jun 2017 08:12:53 +0000

CryptoDonate is a JavaScript (vanilla JS) library to embed a donation button for cryptocurrency. It doesn’t require any external library and is very lightweight. I created it to replace my existing BTC donation button in my blog.

Demo Download

Features

Supports BTC, LTC, ETH, XMR
Lightweight
Have an embed script
Easy usage
Supports theming

You can simply add the CryptoDonate widget to your blog or site by using this Widget Maker Tool. The widget maker tool generates a script that will load the files asynchoronously meaning your page’s load time won’t be affected.

The Fr.loadCD() function is used to load CryptoDonate to an element. It’s first parameter is the element (can be an element ID or element DOM object). The second parameter is the options.

Fr.loadCD(document.getElementById('cd-loc'), {
  coin: 'bitcoin'
});

To the second parameter, you can pass the same options as you pass to CryptoDonate object.

CryptoDonate dialog

Usage

CryptoDonate comes under The Francium Project and therefore the object is referenced by Fr.CryptoDonate. Here is how it’s constructed :

var cd = new Fr.CryptoDonate({
  coin: 'bitcoin',
  address: '3Q2zmZA3LsW5JdxkJEPDRbsXu2YzzMQmBQ'
});

Then you can add the button to an element by using the appendTo function :

cd.appendTo(document.getElementById('target'));

Options

Options is passed to CryptoDonate as the first parameter while constructing the CryptoDonate object. Here are the default options (JSON object) :

{
    coin: 'bitcoin',
    address: '3Q2zmZA3LsW5JdxkJEPDRbsXu2YzzMQmBQ',

    qr: true,
    getQrImage: function(data) {
        return 'https://api.qrserver.com/v1/create-qr-code/?size=200x200&data=' + data;
    },

    strings: {
        button: 'Donate',
        buttonTitle: 'Donate {coinName}',
        coins: {
            bitcoin: 'Bitcoin',
            ethereum: 'Ether',
            litecoin: 'Litecoin',
            monero: 'Monero',
        },
        dialogHeader: 'Donate {coinName}',
        dialogHelper: 'Please use this {coin} address to donate. Thanks !',
        openInWallet: 'Click here to send this address to your wallet.'
    },

    baseURL: '//lab.subinsb.com/projects/francium/cryptodonate',
    buttonLarge: false,
    buttonClass: '',

    dialogClass: '',
}

Notice the sub-object strings. It helps you to change the text displayed. You can use another language or change the "donation" to a "Pay Now" button.

coin

Type: string; Values: ‘bitcoin’, ‘litecoin’, ‘ethereum’, ‘monero’

address

Type: string;

The address to which payment is made. This value will be in different format for different coins. CryptoDonate does not check whether it’s valid or not. Make sure it’s correct.

qr

Type: boolean; Values: true, false

Should the QR image be displayed or not.

getQRImage

Type: function(string data);

The callback function used to get the URL to QR image representation of the given string.

strings

Type: object;

The strings that are displayed to the user is stored in this object. This is useful for translating strings.

Certain words closed in curly braces can be substituted :

{coin} – The coin’s name in lowercase. Example: bitcoin, ethereum
{coinName} – The coin’s name. Example: Bitcoin, Ether

baseURL

Type: string;

The base URL from which resources are loaded. The folder structure of base folder should be like this.

buttonLarge

Type: boolean; Values: true, false

Should the button be large sized.

buttonClass

Type: string;

Additional classes that must be added to the button. The classes must be separated by a whitespace.

If ‘dark’ class is added, then the button’s theme will be changed to dark.

dialogClass

Type: string;

Similar to buttonClass, it adds additional classes to dialog. Can be used for theming the dialog as well.

Functions

appendTo

Parameters:

element – Type: DOM Object; Element to which the button should be appended

Example :

cd.appendTo(document.getElementById('target'));

Using the CryptoDonate library directly may feel difficult for you if you don’t know JavaScript. In that case, I highly recommend you use the widget.

How To Cache GPG Passphrase In Ubuntu

Wed, 07 Jun 2017 18:25:13 +0000

I got into Debian packaging and one of the most brutal part was to type in the GPG secret key’s password every time I sign a package. I wasted a lot of time typing my long password.

I searched a lot to cache my password for some time after I type it once. All of them said to edit gpg-agent.conf, but none of them worked for my fresh installation of Xubuntu 16.04. I’m writing this to save you a lot of trouble.

First of all, install seashore :

sudo apt install seashore

Seashore is a great application to manage your keys. I’m asking you to install seashore as it comes with a graphical pinentry tool.

Configuring gpg-agent

Edit the file /home/username/gpg-agent.conf and add these two lines :

default-cache-ttl 1800
max-cache-ttl 1800

If your gpg-agent version is less than 2 (you can check it by running gpg-agent --version), add these lines instead :

default-cache-ttl 1800
maximum-cache-ttl 1800

The value gives the maximum amount of time the password should be cached. 1800 seconds mean 30 minutes. Here are some conversions :

600 seconds = 10 minutes

1800 seconds = 30 minutes

3600 seconds = 60 minutes = 1 hour

Configure gpg

This is the secret sauce I’m going to give you that might solve your problem. This is what worked for me.

Edit the file /home/username/.gnupg/gpg.conf. If it doesn’t exist (most likely) create it. Add this line to it :

use-agent

This makes gpg to use an agent to enter passwords.

Restart gpg-agent and you’re all set :

killall -q gpg-agent && gpg-agent --daemon

Now when you need to enter the password, a graphical dialog will be brought up :

Pinentry dialog for entering password to unlock GPG private key

and after you enter it, it’ll be cached according to gpg-agent configuration file.

17 Years Of Revolving Around The Sun

Fri, 20 Jan 2017 06:29:06 +0000

Sweet 17 ! The age in between an adult and juvenile. I’m going to take a relook at my 16th year.

Coding

Lobby 1.0 was released. That was a trough one.
Francium logSys 0.7 was released
Updates to Francium voice
Release of Francium Diffsocket & Francium Star
Many more contributions to FOSS

I could have done more if there was less school. I also got into Android programming and released my first app Lobby.

Videos

I took my old hobby of making videos. Editing using Kdenlive makes me happy. I look forward to making tutorial videos, and other kinds in the future.

I’ll continue maintaining my projects and making new ones !

Google Code In 2016

Mon, 16 Jan 2017 14:23:04 +0000

Google Code In is a contest run by Google for teenagers (13-17) to promote contributing to open source projects. It is like Google Summer Of Code, but for teenagers who are not in colleges.

This is my 4th time in Code In and it was fantastic just like before. Here’s a summary :

2013 – Wikimedia

2014 – Drupal

2015 – Ubuntu

2016 – Wikimedia

This year (2016), I chose Wikimedia again ! It’s nice to contribute to various FOSS projects. Even a small help to FOSS projects is a big deal.

Joy of First Commit

My first commit was replacing Linker::link() usages with LinkRenderer in the mediawiki core. It was simple, but a little complicated since it was my first. The task was to do it in 5 special pages, but I did 10. I had to make 6 patches to make it perfect.

The joy of the first commit to a project that powers up Wikipedia and thousands of other wiki sites is so much. I still remember that feeling I had in me. The commits after didn’t evoke that much feeling.

Tasks

I did 16 tasks. Never wanted to do tasks speedily, because I don’t wanna mess anything up by going too fast. The idea is to be smooth, steady and being calm.

It’s not about how many you did, but the quality of how you did

The last task I did was pretty hard, but it’s gonna help a lot of newcomers. I had a fever during the task which made me not use the computer. Funny thing, a good night’s sleep cured me. Didn’t even needed to take any medicine.

Videos

Apart from programming, another hobby I had since 11 was making videos. There’s some really embarrassing videos I made in the early days. If you want to feel cringe, see those.

For Wikimedia, I made some tutorials on using Phabricator. I used my phone to record the audio and **Kazam **for screencast. For editing, I used **Kdenlive **and Audacity. All these softwares are very awesome and make the FOSS community proud.

I hope these tutorials I made will help the people who come in the future.

Community

I would like to say a thousand thanks to all the mentors who were in this year. What makes kids like me continue a work is appreciation and what the community did is give them a lot.

The appreciations they gave really helped me. I could only work with a few of mentors, but I’m sure everyone is supportive.

What I Learnt

The biggest thing I learnt is how development of a big software work. Many people contribute to MediaWiki a day and managing all those works trough Phabricator and gerrit is amazing.

I have a lot of open source projects, but none of them is very much active like MediaWiki. Working in their environment helps me to be prepared when a project of mine explodes.

I also learnt how important documentation is. If it weren’t for those beautifully documented functions, I wouldn’t be able to make even a single change.

Another thing I learnt is the coding standards and how code can be made beautiful to see.

My future FOSS projects will absolutely be influenced by my experience with MediaWiki.

Draw Animated Christmas Tree In Bash

Sun, 25 Dec 2016 07:34:24 +0000

It's Christmas again and you'll be receiving all kinds of greetings. How about greeting them back with a fancy way ? Show off your nerdiness with this super cool Christmas Tree in Bash.

All you need is a bash shell. Most systems have bash shell by default, so you don't have to install anything for this !

All thanks goes to the Argentian programmer Sergio Lepore for this cool script.

Here's how it looks :

Christmas Tree in Bash

First of all open a terminal and copy this script to your computer :

wget -d -c -O "christmas.sh" "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sergiolepore/ChristBASHTree/master/tree-EN.sh"

Make the file executable :

chmod u+x ./christmas.sh

RUN !

./christmas.sh

Ain't that fancy ? All thanks goes to the Argentian programmer Sergio Lepore for this cool trick.

Fork

You can make your own little changes in the script to add your name and other stuff. I added my name using this line :

tput cup $((lin + 3)) $((c - 4)); echo subins2000

I added the above line just after "And lots of CODE in $new_year" line.

You can do anything with this script. Maybe translate it your own language or add more fancy stuff. Let me know what you have done 🙂

Make A Gif

Let's make a gif of this great terminal gift. You can use this gif to send to your friends or post on social networks.

We'll use a screen recorder and a gif converter. For this, install these :

sudo apt install gtk-recordmydesktop ffmpeg winff

Use gtk-recordmydesktop to record the terminal. This will output a OGV file. Then do the following 2 commands to make the gif :

ffmpeg -y -i input.ogv -vf fps=10,scale=800:-1:flags=lanczos,palettegen palette.png
ffmpeg -i input.ogv -i palette.png -filter_complex "fps=10,scale=800:-1:flags=lanczos[x];[x][1:v]paletteuse" output.gif

If you want to trim the video, you can add the following options to the second command :

-ss 3 -t 30

which stands for "start from 3rd second and end at 30th second.

Make A Video With Background Sound

How about mixing a christmas song to the gif and make a video ! We can use ffmpeg for this. I'm gonna mix Feliz Navidad which is saved as sound.mp3. Here's what the command looks :

ffmpeg -ss 34 -i "sound.mp3" -i output.gif -vf "scale=trunc(iw/2)*2:trunc(ih/2)*2" -strict -2 -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -b:a 192k -pix_fmt yuv420p -t 17 xmas.mp4

In the above command, I specifically mention the point of audio to mix : start from 34th second and duration 17 seconds. This is the point where the lyrics is I wanna wish you a merry christmas, I wanna wish you a merry christmas from the bottom of my heart

And here's the result

An Interview With GNUKhata Developer Krishnakant Mane

Tue, 06 Dec 2016 05:47:09 +0000

This is my first interview with a person. I don't do interviews normally. But when I read about Krishnakant Mane I wanted to know more about him. So I contacted him by email and got the response within an hour. The guy is really hooked up with computers !

Krishnakant Mane is blind, but that didn't stop him from coding. He created and maintains the GNUKhata project, a free and open source accounting software. GNUKhata is an alternative to the proprietary softwares like Tally which is widely used all over the world.

Even in my small town, people use Tally and they pay huge sums for it. I'm glad that there is an open source alternative to it. Here is the full interview with him :

Which languages do you know ? Which is your favorite programming language ?

I know Java, PHP, C and Python, apart from SQL and Javascript.

Python is my personal favorite because it has the best balance of ease of use and great power. You almost end up writing English like code. Indentation and other things make it a clean syntax language.

How do you code without seeing what you have made ? What softwares do you use for coding ?

I use a screen reader for all my computing.

It is a free and open source software called Orca which now comes with almost all distros of GNU/Linux. It is a complete screen reader which reads out every thing including web pages, documents, spreadsheet or code.

You're working for FOSS. How do you pay the bills ?

Apart from being a great movement for people's digital freedom and rights, free software is a great source of earning. Lot of people come to free software due to it's low cost to start with and then tend to like the features most of the time. Then they need customization with few features specifically for their needs. Many corporates pay for free software support and also for specific modifications which they need for running their business. They see the transparency and the low Total Ownership Cost (TOC) as a benefit.

More than this there are a lot of crowd funding opportunities.

Does people donate money for your works ? If so, what is the major contribution you received ?

People hardly donate specially in India. Yet the central government has given lakhs of Rs as grant to my projects, GNUKhata in particular.

Kerala state government has given more than 50,00,000 Rs (73,000$).

A commercial software company called Tech blue ENTP has also contributed.

How does FOSS help you in your life ?

I use only and exclusively free software and I never use or recommend or advocate proprietary software in any form. I have got a lot of benefit personally because I use software as I please and I never have virus issues. I totally get digital freedom of my own.

I can help build communities around technology including for training etc. This way I also gain professionally both in terms of money and as a personal satisfaction, because I am doing some thing good for society.

GNUKhata is a rival software to Tally and similar proprietary softwares. Many over the world pay huge amount of money for Tally. Do you think GNUKhata is developed enough to be substituted for such proprietary softwares ?

As a matter of fact, in many aspect the said free software is having more and better features than the likes of Tally. We had made it a point that we will not copy every thing blindly. We took new standards based approaches in many cases and what ever was good in other programs we took it.

GNUKhata is being used by many organizations now. In fact this project started on the very demand of many companies and a lot of accountants who found that a certain software is exploiting them.

How do you get inspired to do something ? Who are your role models ?

Every good work done by any individual is valuable so every one is a roll model in a way, yet Dr. RMS, the founder of free software movement is my role model.

In addition, Dr. Nagarjun from Homibhabha Center for Science Education of TIFR, Dr Prakash Amte, socialist leaders like Lal Bahadur Shastri are all my role models. I am a proud liberal socialist myself so the list becomes obvious.

How are you planning to go forward in the future ? Any plans for a new project ?

My vision is to make rural india digitally empowered and raise the level of education and employment. I have an organization called Digital Freedom Foundation and we wish to bring cost of education down and also bring disabled people to the level of main stream society. All this is possible through ICT and if that has to be available for every one then free software is the only solution.

What message do you have to say to the youth today ?

We all are capable and do what you feel best for you.

Unless your acts are physically harmful to an individual or a group and unless your acts are harming the nation's integrity and status, there is nothing right and wrong. So do what you feel, but think about those who might be as capable as you are but can't come up only because there are no opportunities and no high quality education because they are not provided with enough social and financial infrastructure. So always be socially conscious and do not play unfair.

Krishnakant is an inspiration, to overcome the odds, do what you love and make a difference. You may also want to check out his TEDx speech and follow him on Twitter.

My Interview With Paysa

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 02:50:53 +0000

Paysa is the world’s first platform to empower individuals to maximize their salary across the span of their career.

I have taken a look at Paysa and it’s wonderful to know that you can get self-evaluated about your career and salary. I didn’t know there was one. It also gives you guidance to follow the career path of your choice. An excellent service indeed !

I’m very happy that such a company like Paysa has interviewed me. Thank you Paysa. Please do read it !

Read Interview

Sun, 27 Nov 2016 15:32:39 +0000

Make Headers Jump Links In WordPress Posts

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 12:24:57 +0000

You might have noticed that the

,

headers in my blog posts are links that can be used to jump to that section. These links are called Jump Links.

These Jump Links can be sent anywhere on web for reading that particular section. This is very useful for tutorials as when someone comments a problem, we can use the link to redirect that user to the section where the solution is situated.

Demo

I’ll show you how to automatically make all headers Jump Links in WordPress.

Go to WordPress Admin -> Appearance -> Editor. This will bring you to Theme Editor.
Choose "Theme Functions (functions.php)" file from the list on the right.

At the end of that file, add this :

/**
 * Add id attribute to <h1>, <h2>, <h3> tags
 * http://subinsb.com/make-wordpress-post-headers-jump-links
 */
function anchor_content_headings($content) {
  $content = preg_replace_callback("/\<h([1|2|3])\>(.*?)\<\/h([1|2|3])\>/", function ($matches) {
    $hTag = $matches[1];
    $title = $matches[2];
    $slug = sanitize_title_with_dashes($title);
    return '<a href="#'. $slug .'"><h'. $hTag .' id="' . $slug . '">' . $title . '</h'. $hTag .'></a>';
  }, $content);
  return $content;
}
add_filter('the_content', 'anchor_content_headings');

What It Does

This is the HTML of the headers that are normally outputted in your post :

<h1>Hello World</h1>
<h2>Who ???</h2>
<h3>It's Me</h3>

The code you just added will make them into this :

<a href="#hello-world"><h1 id="hello-world">Hello World</h1></a>
<a href="#who"><h2 id="who">Who ???</h2>
<a href="#its-me"><h3 id="its-me">It's Me</h3>

What it means is that if you go to this URL :

http://myblog.com/my-post#hello-world

You will be shown the section that starts from Hello World heading.

Hacks

You can modify the script to also include

and

as well. You can do this by replacing the "preg_replace_callback" line with this :

$content = preg_replace_callback("/\<h([1|2|3|4|5])\>(.*?)\<\/h([1|2|3|4|5])\>/", function ($matches) {

You may want to add a prefix or suffix to the IDs of headers. You can do this by modifying $slug variable :

$slug = "section-" . sanitize_title_with_dashes($title);

This will make the URLs :

http://myblog.com/my-post#section-hello-world

Create A Profile Picture Framer Web App

Sun, 20 Nov 2016 09:10:40 +0000

You might have seen your Facebook friends’ fancy profile pictures with the frame of the sports team they support. These days for any major events, the best way to support them is by adding a frame to your profile picture with their logo.

Football (soccer) is my favorite sport. My state Kerala have a franchise club in the Indian Super League called Kerala Blasters. We are the largest club by average crowd attendance and the fans are so passionate. What if a passionate, crazy fan is also a programmer. Then you will get this.

Facebook didn’t have a profile picture frame for Kerala Blasters and so I had to make one myself. It was an interesting project and I was able to make it in a night. UPDATE: Facebook now has a frame for Kerala Blasters and all other Indian Super League clubs, but the frames are ugly 😛

Download Demo

When I released the Kerala Blasters Profile Picture Framer, it was very successful and thousands of fans in Kerala had used it. The visitor count reached 3,000 in a single day on a site that had an average of 200 in a day.

To be exact, 3759 people have downloaded their framed profile pictures. Here is a sample :

Features

Crop image

Preview before download

Customisable frame

Ability to choose different frames

Direct upload to Facebook

Besides all this, the greatest feature is that the code is simple and easy.

Set Up

Let’s begin by creating the files and libraries needed. The directory tree looks like this :

css

frames

uploads
convert.php
download.php
index.php
upload.php

All except the ".php" files above are folders.

We’ll use Croppie for letting user crop her/his profile picture. Download this file to "css/croppie.css" and this file to "js/croppie.min.js".

Set the permissions of "uploads" folder to Read/Write. On Linux this would be :

sudo chown ${USER}:www-data uploads && sudo chmod 0755 uploads

Make Frame

Make a frame using your favorite image editor. It should be a square and should have a minimum size of 400x400px. An example :

Frame

Make sure you make the frame keeping in mind that a face has to fit in it. Also make the background of the image transparent and save it as a PNG file.

You can make multiple frames, because our app supports choosing from a list of frames. You should save the frames in "frames" folder as "frame-0.png", "frame-1.png" etc. Note that we start numbering from "0" and not "1".

index.php

Copy this file to "index.php".

The page has a small box for customizing the profile picture, a button to upload profile picture and a button to upload to Facebook.

download.php

Copy this file to "download.php".

When user clicks the download button, he/she is redirected to this page. This page will show the generated profile picture and when user clicks on that image, the file will be downloaded. This is done by download attribute :

<a href='uploads/123.png' download='kerala-blasters-profile'><img src='uploads/123.png' /></a>

The download attribute gives the file name to the downloaded file.

convert.php

Copy this file to "convert.php".

This file has a function called "makeDP()" :

binary makeDP(string $profilePicturePath, int $design = 0)

"binary" denotes the image’s RAW data. Example usage :

makeDP("/home/me/profile-picture.png", 1);

If the $design argument is not passed, "frame-0.png" will be used.

upload.php

Copy this file to "upload.php".

When user clicks the download button, the profile picture is uploaded to this file via AJAX. Then this file will make the framed profile picture and save it to "uploads" folder.

The AJAX response would be something like this :

uploads/sk2e9c1cu2.png

The file name would be of length 10.

css/style.css

Copy this file to "css/style.css".

The stylesheet probably don’t work for old IE. But it is supposed to work in all modern browsers and is mobile compatible.

js/app.js

Copy this file to "js/app.js".

When user uploads her/his profile picture, onFileChange() is called and a preview of the image is shown. If the image is smaller than 400x400px, then an alert box is shown.

The user could then adjust the profile picture according to the frame. This feature is done with the help of Croppie.js.

When user is done adjusting, the "Download Profile Picture" button is clicked and the blob data of cropped picture is obtained :

croppie.result({
  size: "viewport"
}).then(function(dataURI){
  var formData = new FormData();
  formData.append("design", $("#fg").data("design"));
  formData.append("image", dataURItoBlob(dataURI));
...

Croppie returns a data URI and we convert it to blob using dataURItoBlob() function. The form data that is sent to "upload.php" looks like this :

design=0;
image=<binary>;

The design parameter is an integer of design chosen. This value is got from the list of designs :

<div id="designs">
  <img class="design active" src="frames/frame-0.png" data-design="0" />
  <img class="design" src="frames/frame-1.png" data-design="1" />
  <img class="design" src="frames/frame-2.png" data-design="2" />
</div>

The data-design attribute is the ID of that design.

Upload To Facebook

There is an option to upload the framed profile picture to Facebook. But this requires you to create a Facebook app and submit a review request for the following permissions :

publish_actions

Before you submit the App Review request, you must set up the website and make a video of how your app works. It took me a week to get the permissions approved.

If you would like to implement this feature, copy this file to "js/fb.js". Don’t forget to replace the URL to image file with yours.

Note that we can’t directly set the user’s profile picture. The FB API doesn’t allow you to do that. What we can do is upload the image to user’s wall and redirect the user to that image in FB, so that user can click the Make Profile Picture button.

That’s it ! Enjoy your own profile picture framer web app. Use it for special events.

New Theme Brenton

Fri, 18 Nov 2016 12:51:18 +0000

It’s been some time since I have been active on this blog. For the past months, I had been paying little attention to my blog. It’s because I was busy with other projects and school of course.

From now on, I’ll try to make the blog more active. As a first step, I have updated the theme. This is the third update to the theme.

The previous themes were named "Subin’s Blog V1" & "Subin’s Blog V2". That’s a pretty boring name. So I went to a random name picker website and chose one – "Brenton".

Someone who liked my last theme wanted it to be open sourced and so I did it. The old repo is moved to the new one.

GitHub

Changes

You’ll notice the UI change first. The comet falling background is removed for good. The site was laggy in performance because of that bg. Here is how I did that bg :

body:before{
  content: "";
  position: fixed;
  top: -50%;
  left: -50%;
  bottom: -50%;
  right: -50%;
  z-index: -1;
  -webkit-transform: rotate(-30deg);
  -moz-transform: rotate(-30deg);
  -ms-transform: rotate(-30deg);
  -o-transform: rotate(-30deg);
  transform: rotate(-30deg);
  background-image: url("bg.png");
  background-color: #000;
  background-repeat: repeat;
}

The "bg.png" file was rotated diagonally to make the comet falling effect. This was a huge mistake as browser had trouble rendering this effect every time the user scrolled. As a result scrolling caused a lag and it was messy as glue. Yuck !

That background is replaced by a linear gradient now :

body{
  background: linear-gradient( 0deg, #4CA454, #000 );
}

And overall this is how the site look :

Please comment your feedback & suggestions. It will be very helpful. As I said, I’m gonna drive this blog on the right track once again. 🙂

Get Architecture Plainly Without Version In Android

Sat, 03 Sep 2016 19:09:08 +0000

If you want to just get plainly the architecture of system like "arm" or "x86" in your apps, then this post is just for you.

So with this function that I’m gonna present, you will get 3 values, "arm", "mips" or "x86" whether or not the system is 32 bit or 64 bit.

Here is the function :

public static String getArch() {
  String arch = System.getProperty("os.arch").substring(0, 3).toLowerCase();
  if (arch.equals("aar") || arch.equals("arm")) {
    return "arm";
  }else if(arch.equals("mip")){
    return "mips";
  }else{
    return arch;
  }
}

Just call it statically if it’s under a class :

MyClass.getArch()

and you can correctly check if it’s an ARM or MIPS or x86 :

if(getArch().equals("arm"))
  // Hurray, it's an ARM system

School Election Software "sElec"

Wed, 10 Aug 2016 13:12:46 +0000

I’m currently studying in 12th grade at Government Model Girls Higher Secondary School. Don’t mind the word "Girls" in the name, because in higher secondary both boys and girls study.

Like schools all over the world, we have an election for each classes to select our class leader. Even in 21st century, our schools were conducting the election with ballot papers.

So I thought why not make a software for it ? This led to the creation of "sElec" – a Lobby app for conducting school elections. (I just came up with the name at this moment writing this line)

Features

Free, Open Source (Apache v2 licensed)
Web based (so it works on Linux/Windows)
99.99% Secure
Class & Division support
One software for all school elections
Easy to download and install
Can be used for various type of elections
Passwords for students (voters)
Networking capability

Run election on multiple computers in a computer lab
Highly Customizable
- Can be used for various type of elections
- Lock class-division choice to prevent fraud

Download

There are two versions you can download :

sElec Linux sElec Windows

Since I’m a FOSS guy, I recommend using the sElec Linux on Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus.

Install

Installation is pretty simple if you do it rightly.

Download the ".zip" file according to your system (I recommend using Linux)
Extract the folder inside the zip file to a location of your choice (I prefer Home folder or Downloads folder)

Open

Run the file "Lobby" inside the folder you just extracted.

If you’re using Linux you may double click on "Lobby.sh" file and choose "Execute" in the dialog that will pop out.

NOTE (Windows) – When you run "Lobby.exe", there is a chance for an error :

VCRUNTIME110.dll is missing

To fix it, see this page and read it.

After you run it, the URL "http://127.0.0.1:2020" will be opened in your default web browser :

The voter registration

If you got a window similar to above, installation is completed. If not try :

Update your browser to a latest version. (I recommend Chromium or Google Chrome)
(Linux) Run Lobby.sh in terminal and see the output. Google the error shown in output to find a solution

Administration

Okay, let’s add some candidates. For this let’s go to the admin page. Admin page’s URL is :

http://127.0.0.1:2020/admin

A login page will be shown :

Admin login

Both the default username and password is "admin" :

Username : admin

Password : admin

After you login as admin, hover on the "I" symbol seen on the top of the page and choose "App Admin" :

Hover on "I" symbol and choose "App Admin"

Now you have entered the administration part of sElec. Whenever you want to enter the Election Panel, just click the "App Admin" button after you hover the "I" symbol.

Election Panel

The Election Panel lets you configure the election :

Election Panel

Here is a brief description about the options you see in that page :

General Settings – Basic settings for election
Manage Candidates – Add, edit and remove candidates
Manage Voters – Generate passwords for user if you have chosen to set password for voters
Results – View the results of election
Voted List – See who all have voted or not in a class.
CLEAR ALL DATA! – Clear all data stored including candidate information, votes and voter passwords

Clear All Data!

Before you start a election, ALWAYS clear data before proceeding to add candidates. So, click on the "CLEAR ALL DATA!" button colored in red and choose Ok on the dialog that comes. This will clear all data associated with election.

General Settings

The page looks like this :

Election Panel -> General Settings

Election Type

There are 3 types of election you can do with sElec. They are :

Normal Election (Default)

Used for school leader elections.

There will be a set of candidates for the whole school and students in each class must vote for them to become school leader
Class Wise

Used for class leader election.

There will be separate set of candidates for each class and students in those class must vote for their candidates to make them class leader.
Boys & Girls

Used for school leader selection from boys and girls separately.

Similar to Normal Election. But there will be separate "Boys" & "Girls" candidates list. The voter must choose their candidate from these two lists.

Number of Votes

This option tells how many votes can one voter do. If this value is changed into "2", the voter can choose 2 candidates from the list. The default value is "1".

Maximum Strength

This value indicates the maximum roll number one can enter. Example: If 5A has 60 students and 5B has 63 students, then the value should be 63

Password For Voters

Whether the voter need to enter password along with roll number to vote. If you enable this option, you would have to go to Election Panel -> Manage Voters and generate passwords for voters.

Classes

Add the classes that will be using sElec to vote. You can add a new class field by clicking the "+" button and remove an existing field by clicking the "-" button alongside the input.

Divisions

Add the divisions that will be using sElec to vote. You can add a new division field by clicking the "+" button and remove an existing field by clicking the "-" button alongside the input.

Add/remove classes and divisions

Default Class

This option tells which class should be selected by default when the voter sees the page.

Default Division

This option tells which division should be selected by default when the voter sees the page.

Disable choice of class and division

The voter can change the class and division if he/she wants to. You can prevent them from doing so by enabling this option. When this is enabled the class and division remains constant according to the default class and division chose in the above setting.

After you have chose the settings, click "Save Settings" button.

Return To Election Panel

You can return to the Election Panel by choosing the activated sElec tab in the sidebar :

The sElec option lets you go to Election Panel

Manage Candidates

In this page, you can add, edit or remove candidates. You can add a new candidate field by clicking the "+" button and remove one with "-" button.

The gender option is not actually necessary unless the election type is "Boy and Girls".

Manage Voters

Passwords for the voters can be generated in this page. This should only be done if you have enabled "Passwords" in General Settings.

Enter the roll number up to which passwords should be generated and submit the form. The passwords will be shown :

Password generator

It is better to re generate passwords after a class has completed voting.

Results

The results will have two sections "Standings" and "Graph". Both are color coded by Gold, Silver, Bronze and all others black. Gold is for 1st, Silver is for 2nd and Bronze for 3rd.

Results of election

If the election type is "Class Wise", then you have to submit a form asking for class and division to get the result in that class.

Voted List

In this page, you can see :

How many votes in a class has been done
How many didn’t vote in a class
Time when a vote was made

Voted List

There is no provision to see who has voted who. **sElec **does not store that data in any ways whatsoever.

Implementation

We have seen the software. But, how to implement it ? Let me follow you through the procedure :

Clear data
Change General Settings
Add Candidates
Make a polling booth with a computer having sElec installed
Form a voter line to the polling booth
Generate Passwords in sElec (if you’re going to enable passwords)
Enter the first voter, tell him/her the password, let him/her go to the polling booth and do his vote
When the BEEP sound is made, make him/her leave and let the next voter inside
Continue the process…

It is recommended to re generate the passwords at intervals like when a class completes voting.

Networking

Another interesting feature about sElec is that you can use it on a WiFi or Wired network. For this, :

Connect the computer and a smartphone to the same WiFi network.
Get the computer’s LAN IP address (192.168.1.2)
Copy this IP address
In the folder where the software is installed,

– Open "Lobby.sh" if system is Linux and change "127.0.0.1:2020" to the IP address you just copied before

– Open "lobby.ini" if system is Windows and change "127.0.0.1:2020" to the IP address you just copied before
Stop the Lobby Server by running "Stop Lobby Server" file in that folder
Start Lobby again by running "Lobby" inside the folder.

Security

As I stated above, no one will know who you voted for. It’s secure, guaranteed.

The data is stored in an SQLite database. The data refers to candidates info, number of votes and passwords.

During the election, it’s impossible for one person to find this database and copy it. Even if he/she copied it, there is no use for it.
Admin area is password protected and this password is hashed with a very secure algorithm
Free of SQL injection and XSS attack vulnerability

If you faced any problem (however small it may be) or have any questions, feel absolute free to comment below. I’ll be more than happy to help.

PHP Output Buffering For Noobies

Fri, 10 Jun 2016 16:37:00 +0000

You might have heard about output buffering while you code in PHP. I will tell you what it is and how to use it simply.

"Output Buffering" Meaning

"Buffering" in computing means

store (data) in a buffer while it is being processed or transferred.

This is exactly what PHP does too. But, the default mechanism is not this. It is turned off by default i.e :

data is not stored in a buffer while it is being processed or transferred.

Output Buffering Off (Default)

When a user requests a PHP page from your server, PHP processes the page and on the fly, the HTML is sent to the browser (user).

This means, that HTML is received by the browser in chunks during the connection and the connection won’t close until the processing is finished.

This is the default setting in PHP i.e output buffer turned off.

Output Buffering On

As the word meaning says, the processed HTML is stored in a variable until the processing is finished and when it is finished, the contents of the variable is sent.

So, instead of chunks of data, the full data is sent at an instant. These are the advantages if output buffering is turned on :

Able to do redirects even at the end of page :
```
Hello World
<?php
header("Location: https://subinsb.com");
?>
```
Normally, the above code will print "headers already sent error". But, with output buffering turned on, this error won’t be produced.

"Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output)" error and all such errors won’t be produced

Toggle Output Buffering

You can choose to turn on/off output buffering permanently by editing "php.ini" file. Find "output_buffering" key and set the value :

<a class="link" href="http://php.net/manual/en/outcontrol.configuration.php#ini.output-buffering">output_buffering</a>=On

You can also set it by ".htaccess" file :

php_flag output_buffering On

Run Multiple WebSocket Services On Same Port

Mon, 30 May 2016 17:28:51 +0000

Are you as crazy as me when developing WebSocket applications ? It’s so awesome to work with WebSockets that will blow up your mind and irritate you at the same time.

WebSockets can be used for any real time applications such as :

Games
Chat
News
File Transfer

And because it’s impact is so vast, we can develop as many applications as we want. But, a problem arises for freebies like me and you.

Problem

Running multiple WebSocket servers for multiple apps requires you to run a listening node on different ports. But, on some hosting servers, this isn’t possible.

In case of OpenShift, this is impossible as there’s only one port in the app where you listen for incoming data ie 8080. See Port Binding On Openshift.

In this scenario, your only solution is to listen on a single port and send out data according to the service the client requested.

Francium DiffSocket

And for this purpose, I developed a small Composer package called Francium DiffSocket, an abbreviation for :

Francium Different Sockets

What it does is, allow you to add your own custom services and serve it through a single port. This means you can host your Online game server, Chat server etc. on a single port.

Usage

Instructions on how to use it is in the README file of the project.

Demo

All of the WebSocket demos that I have created uses Francium DiffSocket. List :

Example

Let us make three different services :

A service that responds "hello" to incoming messages
A service that responds the incoming message itself (mimic)
A service that responds "hey, how are you ?" when "hi" is sent (bot)

We make three separate class files for the three services. These are stored in a folder called "services".

Hello Service

Location – services/Hello.php

namespace Fr\DiffSocket\Service;

use Ratchet\MessageComponentInterface;
use Ratchet\ConnectionInterface;

class Hello implements MessageComponentInterface {
  public function onOpen(ConnectionInterface $conn){
    echo "New Connection - " . $conn->resourceId;
  }

  public function onClose(ConnectionInterface $conn){}
  public function onError(ConnectionInterface $conn,\Exception $error){}

  public function onMessage(ConnectionInterface $conn, $message){
    $conn->send("Hello");
  }
}

The API used to build the service is Ratchet as mentioned in the README file.

Mimic Service

Location – services/Mimic.php

namespace Fr\DiffSocket\Service;

use Ratchet\MessageComponentInterface;
use Ratchet\ConnectionInterface;

class Mimic implements MessageComponentInterface {
  public function onOpen(ConnectionInterface $conn){
    echo "New Connection - " . $conn->resourceId;
  }

  public function onClose(ConnectionInterface $conn){}
  public function onError(ConnectionInterface $conn,\Exception $error){}

  public function onMessage(ConnectionInterface $conn, $message){
    $conn->send($message);
  }
}

Bot Service

Location – services/Bot.php

namespace Fr\DiffSocket\Service;

use Ratchet\MessageComponentInterface;
use Ratchet\ConnectionInterface;

class Bot implements MessageComponentInterface {
  public function onOpen(ConnectionInterface $conn){
    echo "New Connection - " . $conn->resourceId;
  }

  public function onClose(ConnectionInterface $conn){}
  public function onError(ConnectionInterface $conn, \Exception $error){}

  public function onMessage(ConnectionInterface $conn, $message){
    if($message === "hi")
      $conn->send("hey, how are you ?");
  }
}

Okay, all of the services are made.

Run The Server

Now, we must make the code to integrate the services into Francium DiffSocket and then run the server.

require_once "vendor/autoload.php";
$DS = new \Fr\DiffSocket(array(
  "server" => array(
    "host" => "127.0.0.1",
    "port" => "8000"
  ),
  "service" => array(
    "hello" => __DIR__ . "/services/Hello.php",
    "mimic" => __DIR__ . "/services/Mimic.php",
    "bot" => __DIR__ . "/services/Bot.php"
  )
));

You can add more services by calling the addService() method too :

$DS->addService("service-name", "path/to/class.php");

Now, we can run the server :

$DS->run();

That’s it ! When the server is started, this message will be printed out :

Server started on 127.0.0.1:8000

You can connect to the different services in JavaScript like so :

var hello = new WebSocket("ws://localhost:8000/?service=hello");
hello.send("nothing"); // Server will respond "Hello"

var mimic = new WebSocket("ws://localhost:8000/?service=mimic");
mimic.send("Hola!"); // Server will respond "Hola!"

var bot = new WebSocket("ws://localhost:8000/?service=bot");
bot.send("hi"); // Server will respond "hey, how are you ?"

Use and hack the project all you want. It is licensed under the "Apache License".

Greed – A Short Film

Fri, 20 May 2016 15:18:10 +0000

Besides coding, my other passion is film making. I have already made some films since the age of 8. But those were raw footage and I didn’t edit them.

When I was 11, I created an another film and edited it with Windows Movie Maker. I didn’t publish it and it still exist in my computer.

Now, after 5 years I decided to create another film. This time with the help of my friends. I got the idea when I was studying at 5 AM in the morning of Mathematics exam.

I’m glad to tell you that I have completed the short film and published it. Check it out :

About Film

This is a film created by four friends. Here, in Kerala this summer was the most hottest reaching up to 42 degree celsius in some places.

Global Warming is real and we are experiencing it. We complain about it, but doesn’t do anything. The selfishness of humans are overcoming our kind hearts.

Together, we must throw over our greediness and work together to make our world habitable for the future generations. By not doing so, what is the need of us students studying and people working if there is no future ?

How It Started

I got the story idea through a daydream while I was studying for Maths. Maths rocks ! At the start of the vacation, the first thing I did was create the script.

You know that Yes/No feeling in your gut when you try to do something ? I have experienced the same feeling when I tried to get out and do this.

At first, when I tried to meet up with my friends Vikas & Rejohn, it failed as Rejohn is too busy with his stuff. But with constant tries, I made a little meeting between us and decided what to do. But, further proceedings failed.

Then the summer classes began and at there my other friends asked me about the film. I replied it didn’t work out. Just after two days, the school was closed due to severe heat. This was a big coincidence, because the film we’re about to do was also about heat.

That night, Vikas called me asking whether I was going to do the film. Now, I knew that he had interest in doing it. This renewed my confidence in making the film. I asked my brother whether he could act and he said yes in a sudden. But, shooting with him was so tiring. He is a stubborn, arrogant person. I think this probably because he’s my brother.

The 6 minute film was shot in 4 days. The time difference between the shots blend really well.

Final Thoughts

I’m glad that we could finish what we started. This vacation was spent really well.

Now, I have a memory that I can look back after 20 years and say "I spent my teenage well"

If you are planning on doing something, do it. Gain confidence, you can do it !

Just do it…

Lobby

Sun, 08 May 2016 19:13:00 +0000

Lobby is a localhost Web OS. It can be attributed as a combination of Android and WordPress.

Lobby is a framework for building web apps and publishing it.

How To Install & Run Composer Binaries Globally

Thu, 28 Apr 2016 15:19:18 +0000

Take PHPUnit as an example. You can install it using Composer doing this :

composer require phpunit/phpunit

This will install a phpunit shortcut in vendor/bin directory. This obviously means you can run it. But, you would have to point to the exact location of the phpunit file to run :

/home/username/mysite/vendor/bin/phpunit phpunit.xml

But, that’s long and uncomfortable. And you would have to install PHPUnit separately for each projects.

I’m gonna tell you how to install binaries globally as well as running it simply.

Install Packages Globally

Same command, but add a "global" before "require" :

composer global require phpunit/phpunit

If you’re using Linux, this will install PHPUnit to :

/home/username/.config/composer/vendor<br />

This will also create the phpunit binary shortcut in vendor/bin directory.

Use It Simply

Now, let’s add the location so that we can use it like this in terminal :

phpunit phpunit.xml<br />

For this, you simply enter this into your terminal session :

export PATH=$PATH:~/.config/composer/vendor/bin

But this (^) is only temporary and will fade away when the terminal is closed.

To make it permanent, open any of the following files using your text editor :

/home/username/.bashrc<br />/home/username/.bash_profile

Then, add the command we used before at the end of the file :

# http://subinsb.com/install-run-composer-binaries-globally<br />export PATH=$PATH:~/.config/composer/vendor/bin<br />

I added the link to this post, because in the future if you open this file, you shouldn’t confuse yourself. You should close all running terminals and re open before you test it out.

Now, you can use any binary shortcuts in "/home/username/.config/composer/vendor/bin" by simply typing it on your terminal. Also, make sure the Linux native programs doesn’t conflict with the file names of Composer binaries.

Earth Day Special – 21 KMs of Exploration

Fri, 22 Apr 2016 15:56:45 +0000

Today is Earth Day, a special day dedicated to our mother Earth. I didn’t knew about this day until I saw the Google Doodle today morning at 12:15 (around-ish).

When I looked it up, I saw the ways to participate in this event :

Walk to work, cycle or take public transport

Cycle ? That’s my favorite thing besides coding. It’s a way I could relax and exercise without losing the fun.

I had this plan long before to go Westwards and reach the beach. In my place, going West is nearer to reach the seashore than going in any other directions.

I looked up on Google Maps (of course) and found the way to reach the place faster with less distance. First, I wanted to go alone. But, going this much distance provoked my parents and said No! So, I went with my dad on a motorbike.

Google Navigation certainly helped and we reached the place.

^ This happened about one year ago. I can’t remember the date.

Today, I went alone on my bicycle. My Mom asked me not to do it, but I went on. My GOD, it was one hell of a trip !

This is the path I took.

I left the house at 4 PM with these :

A bottle of Water
Purse
Phone
And of course the cycle !

The starting of the trip did not go as I planned. Going about 20 Meters, I realized the tyres didn’t have enough air. So, I went back and filled it. How idiotic I was !

It was then alright. I calmly rode the cycle without any problem until I traveled about 8 KMs (5 Miles). The cycle was moving slowly even though I gave the strength it needed. Then I realized the air inside the front tyre was less.

I then started to walk instead of riding it. I entered into a house in which a kid was in the porch with his cycle. I asked him if there was a cycle pump. He said "No". I only had a little more to go to reach the destination.

I din’t give up and went on walking. To my surprise, a man in the fifties smiled at me. I don’t know the guy and haven’t even met him before, yet he smiled. I saw that there were no cycle inside, but still I asked if there was a cycle pump.

He said, "Let me look" and I entered into the porch of the house. He was searching for the pump in the house. To my surprise, he looked for a while and brought me a pump. I didn’t expected a stranger to be this nice.

The air entered the back tyre finely. But, the air kept coming out in the front one. Alas ! another problem. I was like "I’m screwed". A conversation was started :

The Kind Guy : Did it work fine ?

Me : No, the air is not getting inside the front tyre.

The Kind Guy : It's probably because that the wal tube is damaged

Me : Hmmm...

The Kind Guy : Where are you from ?

Me : Kunnamkulam

The Kind Guy : Kunnamkulam !!! From all the way there ? Why did you come here for ?

Me : I came here to go to the beach (Smiles)

The Kind Guy : Oh ! (Smiles back) How will you bring the cycle back to Kunnamkulam ?

Me : Is there a bicycle shop near ?

The Kind Guy : Yeah, it's in the junction

You should know, people like me who goes on these "**long **trips" on a cycle is considered CRAZY.

I said Thanks and went back to the junction to find the cycle shop. I fixed the tyre for 5 Rupees (0.075 USD). I went ahead.

After a while (about 2 KMs), I found the air inside the back tyre was also becoming less. Shit…Shit…Shit. I should have went back, fix it and come back. But, I went on as there is also another junction coming up… That was a really stupid mistake.

The cycle shop on the next junction was closed. I’m screwed again. Meanwhile, the air inside the tyre was going out.

I went on and reached the destination. The feeling I had in my mind cannot be expressed in words !!!

A dream come true !

The confidence and happiness I had at that point was the highest I ever had. I’m normally a shy person (but not too shy), but there I confidently asked a boy to take a photo of me with the cycle :

What A Trip !

I couldn’t stay there for a long time as I reached at 5:30 PM and it becomes dark by 7 PM. It took me 1 and a half hour to reach here. How the hell am I gonna reach back with this tiredness and fatigues legs ? Also, I need to hurry to get my back tyre fixed.

So, I quickly left after staying for 15 Minutes. After a while, most of the air inside the tyre had gone and the cycle was jumping when the wal tube part hit the ground.

If I continued this "jumping journey", the tube inside would become flat. I’m long away from home and my dad isn’t at home yet from work. I’m trapped. But, I continued walking and sometimes I rode the cycle with the flat tire even though it can damage the tyre from fixing.

A guy from North Indian said in Hindi :

ये पन्जर है !

meaning "The tyre is punctured". The vast diversity of people Kerala have !

After some more while at 6:15 PM, I reached the same shop where I had fixed my front tyre. The first time I came, the old man there gave me a balance of 5 Rupees. Now, to fix the back tyre, I gave back the same coins I once got from him ! Ah, the irony !

It was a miracle that the shop didn’t close even after 6 PM. Incidents like this make you believe in GOD.

Now, with the two tyres fixed, I was able to reach my house at 6:45 PM. The return trip took only 1 Hour.

I’m glad that I took this trip. But, I’m never gonna go this much distance again. I was very much lucky this time.

Now, I have a story to remember in my life. Guys and gals, make memorable moments in your like. You shouldn’t have any regrets when you die.

🙂

Doing Random Things in PHP

Tue, 12 Apr 2016 19:30:30 +0000

Suppose you want to display something randomly in a news feed, or pick random elements from an array, or anything random in general. Programming Languages are used to define the way how something must be done. Hence in a technical way, it can’t do things randomly on it’s own. Otherwise it would be an AI (Artificial Intelligence). Doing random things is not done at compiling, but in execution. In case of PHP, this doesn’t matter as it’s an interpreter.

Note

In situations like generating random salts for password and other security related things, you shouldn’t use this. There are really better functions to do those like random_int(), openssl_random_pseudo_bytes()

The Problem

The Random Function is useful in these scenarios :

Showing Extra Box (Ads, Friend Suggestions) between some "posts" randomly in a news feed of a social network.
Show "Subscribe" box randomly to readers in blogs

There isn’t a definite function in PHP to do something at random. How about we make one ?

The Solution aka random()

Meet the function random() which will return positive (In boolean terms, it’s called TRUE), and negative if it’s not the right time to do something.

/**
 * $occurence - integer
 * $range - integer
 */
function random($occurence = 3, $range = 100){
  return mt_rand(1, $range) % $occurence === 0;
}

By tweaking the $occurence parameter, you can increase/decrease the possibility ie returning TRUE. $range can be used to increase/decrease the scope of randomness. Example: By increasing both $occurence and $range, the possibility of getting a **TRUE **output decreases. It is inversely proportional. Note that :

$range > $occurence

Which means, tweaking $occurence has greater effect on the randomness than $range. Yeah, it’s confusing. You can decrease this confusion by reading the How It Works ?

How It Works

As you may know, there is already a function in PHP to get a random number ie rand(). We simply uses it to return TRUE/FALSE instead of numbers. So, how is it done ? By checking whether the random number is divisible by the integer in $occurence. The random number is made from :

1 – $range

^ I omitted zero as 0 can be divided by any number. As the random number is random (obviously!), it won’t be always divisible by $occurence. So, when it is divisible, you get a TRUE return value and when it’s not divisible you get a FALSE return value. This is why I earlier stated that :

Tweaking $occurence has greater effect on the randomness than $range.

Increasing $range would just increase the list from where the random number is picked. This means that the altering of the randomness will be small. But, if you change $occurence, the whole scenario changes and the randomness dramatically changes. Here’s a test case running random() in a loop for 100 iterations :

$occurence	Number of Outcomes That Were TRUE
1	100
2	38
3	35
4	18
5	21
6	9
7	14

As you can see the TRUE outcomes didn’t decrease proportionally ie it’s absolutely random.

Theme Version 2

Mon, 04 Apr 2016 14:59:33 +0000

If you are reading this post, you should have seen the new UI of my blog. It’s a custom made theme created in a week during the exams.

It’s similar to the old theme because, I liked it colorful and dark at the same time. I’m a Batman fan and black is good for the eyes. As a programmer, you don’t want to hurt your eyes.

The theme is named "Subin’s Blog V2". The name says it all. Coincidentally, this new theme comes exactly after 1 year of the last theme update.

It’s responsive – of course and super light. Even though the UI is similar, the CSS file of the new theme has less lines of code than the old one.

As usual, the source code is Open Source and you can see it on GitHub.

Vote For Lobby

Wed, 30 Mar 2016 05:40:45 +0000

I have mentioned before about my new project Lobby – A Web Operating System.

I have been developing it for the past 1.5 years in my free time. It has been partially completed. To learn more about it, I request you to read this.

I’m writing this post to request you to vote for the package Lobby in PHPClasses.

If Lobby win it, more people would know about Lobby and I can develop the project further. If you have an account on PHPClasses, you can vote here.

The voting ends on March 31st ie Tomorrow. So, please vote for Lobby as soon as you read this.:-)

Please Vote

Convert Seconds To Hours, Minutes in PHP

Thu, 24 Mar 2016 09:03:52 +0000

Say you’re running a process that runs in the background. It’s better to not let the user lose their patience and tell them when it will finish. But, you have the time remaining in seconds. If we show the user :

567 seconds to complete

He/she (user) would have to take a calculator and convert it into minutes or hours. Or if the guy/gal is not a math genius, he would close the UI and say "What the Hell ?"

The primary point in UI is that

Don't irritate the user

Mark my words : "You shouldn’t make the user angry".

Demo

Here is a simple function to convert seconds to hours, minutes and seconds separately or mixed together :

function secToHR($seconds) {
  $hours = floor($seconds / 3600);
  $minutes = floor(($seconds / 60) % 60);
  $seconds = $seconds % 60;
  return "$hours:$minutes:$seconds";
}

If you’re wondering why I chose secToHR as the function name, it’s the abbreviation of Seconds to Human Readable.

Or if you wanna display like this :

1 hour, 20 minutes remaining
10 minutes, 20 seconds remaining
15 seconds remaining

then, replace the return function with this :

return $hours > 0 ? "$hours hours, $minutes minutes remaining" : ($minutes > 0 ? "$minutes minutes, $seconds seconds remaining" : "$seconds seconds remaining");

BTW, I would suggest you do it like above ^, because it’s more user friendly.

Usage

Simple as it is :

/**
 * Function with 'h:m:s' form as return value
 */
echo secToHR(560);
echo secToHR(10950);
/**
 * Function with 'remaining' in return value
 */
echo secToHR();

And the corresponding outputs :

0:9:20
3:2:30
9 minutes, 20 seconds remaining
3 hours, 2 minutes remaining

I have used this in the Downloader App as I mentioned in the previous post.

Convert Bytes To KB, MB, GB in PHP

Wed, 23 Mar 2016 09:09:02 +0000

Say you were displaying the size of a file in PHP. You obviously get the file size in Bytes by using filesize().

You won’t have any idea what the file size is if you read it in Bytes. Bytes is useful for file transmission in a network, but not for human usage. So, it’s better to convert it to human readable form.

The circled areas show the converted size from Bytes. App – Lobby Downloader

Here is a simple function to convert Bytes to KB, MB, GB, TB :

function convertToReadableSize($size){
  $base = log($size) / log(1024);
  $suffix = array("", "KB", "MB", "GB", "TB");
  $f_base = floor($base);
  return round(pow(1024, $base - floor($base)), 1) . $suffix[$f_base];
}

Note that KB is for Kibibyte. Normal systems uses Kilobyte (1000). If you want to change it, then replace the parameter passed to log().

Note that upto TB is included in the function. You can extend it by adding more into the **$suffix **array.

Usage

Just call the function :

echo convertToReadableSize(1024); // Outputs '1KB'
echo convertToReadableSize(1024 * 1024); // Outputs '1MB'
echo convertToReadableSize(filesize("/home/simsu/good.txt"));

I had to use it for a download manager app I created for Lobby. You can see the source code of "Downloader" app here.

Create Table Rows With Alternate Colours in PHP

Sat, 13 Feb 2016 04:31:02 +0000

If you have a lot of rows on a table, users will find it difficult to find which cell is in what row. This is because all the rows have the same colour.

If we alternate the colours, then the table will be more understandable. We can alternate colours odd-even wise or by 3 rows etc.

It can be easily done in PHP. I will tell you two ways to do it.

Suppose this is how we output rows :

for($i=0;$i < 10;$i++){
  echo "<tr><td>What's Up ?</td><td>Sky (Troll Face)</td></tr>";
}

Odd-Even

Now let’s add blue colour to odd rows and green colour to even rows.

for($i=0;$i < 10;$i++){
  $bg_color = $i % 2 === 0 ? "green" : "blue";
  echo "<tr style='background-color: ". $bg_color .";'><td>What's Up ?</td><td>Sky (Troll Face)</td></tr>";
}

The table will looks something like this (forget the row contents) :

Table with alternate rows having different background colors

You can also add class to the row instead of setting the "style" attribute.

Multiple of A Number ‘n’

You can change colour of every 3rd element or nth element too :

$n = 3;
for($i=0;$i < 10;$i++){
  $bg_color = $i % $n === 0 ? "green" : "blue";
  echo "<tr style='background-color: ". $bg_color .";'><td>What's Up ?</td><td>Sky (Troll Face)</td></tr>";
}

In the above case, all 3rd rows will have green background color and others would have a blue color :

Table with alternate 3rd rows having different background colors

You can change the value of $n as you like to change the row which will have the special background color.

Life is Good 🙂

16 Years of Revolving Around The Sun

Thu, 21 Jan 2016 02:52:55 +0000

So I revolved around the sun 16 years. Yes, I turned 16. It seems like I just turned 15 yesterday.

As age increases, life becomes harder. This direct proportionality is making me closer to the answer of life. This post is an analysis of myself of what I did and what I plan to do.

"Birthdays are a constant reminder of how I wasted time"

Past 1 Year As A Student

I got full A+ in the 10th grade exam and is now in 11th grade as a C.S student. Got a whole lot of new friends.

There is this one friend who is passionate about C.S and crazy about I.T. He is Vishnu M.C – a blogger who does it via a 3 year old smartphone. It is hard to do blogging by phone. I have no idea how he manages it. He totally flunk studies, does work on blog.

I have a wish to do what he is doing now. But, as my parents say "You are nothing without a qualification". Damn this qualification thing. I just wanna work with Open Source.

Here are some pics from my current Higher Secondary days :

From Left : Rejohn, Navaneeth, Vishnu, Delvin, Me, Vikas, Mobin

From Back Left : Akshay, Godson, Abin, Me, Rejohn and the one who is taking the selfie is Kailas

It is these pictures that would be make me nostalgic 10 years later.

Past 1 Year As A Developer

I just released Lobby today. After 2 years of continuous development, it has reached a STABLE phase.

The amount of posts written on blog was so low. Due to the time wasting school, I don’t have time for fun things.

The amount of commits on GitHub has increased and I’m planning on keeping that long streak of commits :

After January 2, 2016, commits have increased

I have a lot of hope on Lobby. It’s one of a kind and I hope you will help it become a success. 🙂

Finding The Value Of Pi

Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:36:46 +0000

Everyone must have heard of Pi, the irrational number that never ends. It goes by this :

3.14159265...

I have been learning about Pi since I was in 8th grade. All the time in school, I was curious about to which Pi extends.

Now, I know the extend – Infinity :P. I dedicated my precious Christmas vacation for finding the useless value of Pi.

Why ? Curiosity. Simply, the curiosity made me want to do this. Besides, it’s always fun to do something interesting.

Demo Download

The source code is on GitHub. Please Star it. Math Enthusiasts, fork it. 😉

Findings

1 Million digits and 5 Million digits were successfully found. You can see them here.

The current World Record is > 1 Trillion digits. (I should get a super computer soon).

Equation

Craig Wood has made a Python script to calculate N digits of Pi. It’s a very complicated script and it took me 2 days to understand it.

Pi equation

What I did is, create the client side and a WebSocket server. The Pi calculation is ran through Python and inserted to the database.

It’s a Live process. Meaning, a person on the client can see the step where the Pi is being calculated. If we look at the Python script :

import math
import os
import time
import MySQLdb
import base64
import zlib
import sys

digits_to_calculate = int(sys.argv[1])

db = MySQLdb.connect(host=os.environ["OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_HOST"],    # your host, usually localhost
                     user=os.environ["OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_USERNAME"],         # your username
                     passwd=os.environ["OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_PASSWORD"],  # your password
                     db="ws")
cur = db.cursor()

# The time when program start
START_TIME = time.time()

cur.execute("""
UPDATE `pi` SET `value` = %s WHERE `key_name` = %s
""", (START_TIME, "start"))

def output(name, content):
  cur.execute("UPDATE `pi` SET `value` = %s WHERE `key_name` = %s", (content, name))
  db.commit()

sq_i = 1
def sqrt(n, one):
  global sq_i
  """
  Return the square root of n as a fixed point number with the one
  passed in.  It uses a second order Newton-Raphson convergence.  This
  doubles the number of significant figures on each iteration.
  """
  # Use floating point arithmetic to make an initial guess
  floating_point_precision = 10**16
  output("status", "sqrt," + str(sq_i))
  
  n_float = float((n * floating_point_precision) // one) / floating_point_precision
  x = (int(floating_point_precision * math.sqrt(n_float)) * one) // floating_point_precision
  n_one = n * one
  while 1:
    sq_i+=1
    output("status", "sqrt," + str(sq_i))
    x_old = x
    x = (x + n_one // x) // 2
    if x == x_old:
      break
  return x

i = 0
Qab = 0
def pi_chudnovsky_bs(digits):
    global i
    """
    Compute int(pi * 10**digits)

    This is done using Chudnovsky's series with binary splitting
    """
    output("status", "init,1")
    one = 10**digits
    output("status", "init,2")
    sqrtC = sqrt(10005*one, one)
    
    output("status", "init,3")
    C = 640320
    C3_OVER_24 = C**3 // 24
    
    def bs(a, b):
        global i, Qab
        """
        Computes the terms for binary splitting the Chudnovsky infinite series

        a(a) = +/- (13591409 + 545140134*a)
        p(a) = (6*a-5)*(2*a-1)*(6*a-1)
        b(a) = 1
        q(a) = a*a*a*C3_OVER_24

        returns P(a,b), Q(a,b) and T(a,b)
        """
        
        """
        Subin Siby <subinsb.com>
        """
        
        if i != 0 and i != 1:
          calculated_digits = str(digits - (digits/i) + 7)
          output("status", "pi," + str(i) + "," +calculated_digits + "," + str(digits_to_calculate))
          
        """
        Calculate
        """
        if b - a == 1:
            # Directly compute P(a,a+1), Q(a,a+1) and T(a,a+1)
            if a == 0:
                Pab = Qab = 1
            else:
                Pab = (6*a-5)*(2*a-1)*(6*a-1)
                Qab = a*a*a*C3_OVER_24
            Tab = Pab * (13591409 + 545140134*a) # a(a) * p(a)
            if a & 1:
                Tab = -Tab
        else:
            # Recursively compute P(a,b), Q(a,b) and T(a,b)
            # m is the midpoint of a and b
            m = (a + b) // 2
            # Recursively calculate P(a,m), Q(a,m) and T(a,m)
            Pam, Qam, Tam = bs(a, m)
            # Recursively calculate P(m,b), Q(m,b) and T(m,b)
            Pmb, Qmb, Tmb = bs(m, b)
            # Now combine
            Pab = Pam * Pmb
            Qab = Qam * Qmb
            Tab = Qmb * Tam + Pam * Tmb
        
        i+=1
        return Pab, Qab, Tab
        
    # how many terms to compute
    DIGITS_PER_TERM = math.log10(C3_OVER_24/6/2/6)
    
    N = int(digits/DIGITS_PER_TERM + 1)
    
    # Calclate P(0,N) and Q(0,N)
    P, Q, S = bs(0, N)
    
    return Q*426880*sqrtC // S
    
pi = pi_chudnovsky_bs(digits_to_calculate)
# Compress Pi
pi = zlib.compress(str(pi))

# Save to DB
output("pi", pi)

db.close()

we can see the call of function output. This function updates the respective values in DB. The "status" key holds the current status of Pi calculation. It may have values like :

<td>
  <h2>
    <a href="#stage"><span id="stage">Stage</span></a>
  </h2>
</td>

<td>
  The initialization stage. Creation of variable etc.
</td>

<td>
  The loop inside sqrt() function. I indicates the current iteration value.
</td>

<td>
  The loop inside bs() function.<br /> I indicates the current iteration value.<br /> C indicates the number of calculated digits (most likely inaccurate)<br /> D indicates the number of digits to be calculated
</td>

Status

init,[I]

sqrt,[I]

pi,[I],[C],[D]

The [I], [C], [D] above indicates an integer starting from 1.

Technical Spec

This was also an experiment of WebSocket. It was a test of Live result obtaining using WebSocket.

The server is "ws-subins.rhcloud.com" using the Francium DiffSocket library. You can see "ws-subins.rhcloud.com" shows a blank page as the WebSocket server is running. Server :

PHP 5.4.4
Python 2.6.6
MySQL 5.5.45

When someone requests for the full value of Pi, sending 5 MB file (5 Million digits) to client is quite a task. But, WebSocket handles it well.

Conclusion

The record is > 1 Trillion digits. It will surely require a super computer to calculate that much digits. I can see the processor load in my system when just calculating 1 Million digits.

If someone could get me a super computer, we could break the record 😉

Parts Of My Life

Sat, 02 Jan 2016 15:55:45 +0000

A programmer, a teenager, a student, an adventurer – 4 components in my life.

When you get all of these at once, I feel a little pressure in my life. Let me explain these 4 parts :

Programmer

I have been a programmer for 5 years. I started when I was 10 years old. I know these languages :

PHP, Python, Bash, HTML, CSS, JavaScript

My primary language is PHP. Though developers are going away from PHP, I still like it and would continue that way.

Teenager

I’m in the 2nd year of teenage life and is on the verge of 3rd year (January 20). It’s a mystery how someone get through the teenage life.

If you get sad, you get very sad. I had days where I listened to music as much as I can to relieve the pressure.

If you become happy, you become crazy. You see, if I become happy, I become crazier. Sometimes, I get really excited and does some pretty stupid stuff.

The outcomes of these stupid stuff were both devastating and spectacular :

Devastating - Doing some really embarrassing things which haunts me
Spectacular - Wrote a complaint to Prime Minister and got an internet connection

Teenage is both crazy and wonderful. Hope it continues like that.

Student

It is this part that I give my 75% to. My parents say to give more to it. If I did give more amount to this part, then I couldn’t do my other parts.

School makes me busy. I’m the class leader and that makes my responsibilities more. Studies are the other hardest thing.

The "Student" part is what you have to blame for not replying to your comments and not responding to emails.

My parents and family members say :

Without a basic qualification, you're nothing

I think it’s sad that people look at qualification more than their ability. Is qualification a value of ability. I don’t think so. Someone must create a better indicator of ability.

Adventurer

I love to visit new places and meet new people ! It’s my favorite hobby. I travel using my bicycle.

The region I live :

is a terrain with many hills and depressions. So, it’s hard to ride a cycle. But despite my parents’ warning, I travel as much as I want. The longest distance I have covered is 10 Kms or maybe more than that.

And from those places, I got some beautiful images :

Edakkazhiyur Beach. Travelled by motorbike

Another place (Mangad) :

The land that separates Kizhoor and Mangad

My adventures will continue and I have a dream that I can travel around the world one day. Perhaps I can. 🙂

Conclusion

So, there you go. My life in a post. I’m writing this to reference when someone asks for doing a job by email or comment.

And ending with a smile :

🙂

Uploading Images Using AJAX In HTML5

Mon, 28 Dec 2015 03:30:19 +0000

In a post that was published some years ago, I explained how to upload an image using AJAX. But, it is an old trick when HTML5 was not standardized.

But, now browsers have evolved and almost every person in the world has an HTML5 supported browser. Besides, the old trick used a JS file which is about 15KB. If we used HTML5 mechanism instead, then you can save about 14KB.

Demo

We use FormData object in JS to make the multipart/form-data, then the file object retrieved from the input element :

var data = new FormData();
var files = $("input[type=file]")[0].files;

// Append files infos (object)
$.each(files, function(i, file) {
    data.append('file-'+i, file);
});
$.ajax(

The code uses jQuery. If you want to use plain JS, then use this :

var data = new FormData();
var files = document.getElementById("inputfile").files;

// Append files infos (object)
for(i = 0;i < files.length;i++){
    data.append('file-'+i, files[i]);
};

Each file selected by the user is inserted into the FormData as "file-" followed by the index number of file. That is, if two files are selected, then the files is sent as "file-0" and "file-1".

Here is the server code in PHP where we access the uploaded files :

<?php
function getMIMEType($filename){
  $finfo = new finfo;
  return $finfo->file($filename, FILEINFO_MIME_TYPE);
}
function rand_string($length) {
  $str="";
  $chars = "subinsblogabcdefghijklmanopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789";
  $size = strlen($chars);
  for($i = 0;$i < $length;$i++) {
    $str .= $chars[rand(0,$size-1)];
  }
  return $str;
}

$supported_files = array("image/jpg", "image/png", "image/gif", "image/bmp", "image/jpeg", "image/bmp");

if(count($_FILES) != 0 and $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == "POST"){
  for($i = 0;$i < count($_FILES);$i++){
    $name = $_FILES['file-' . $i]['name'];
    $size = $_FILES['file-' . $i]['size'];
    $tmp  = $_FILES['file-' . $i]['tmp_name'];
    $type = getMIMEType($tmp);
    
    echo "<h3>File # ". ($i+1) ."</h3>";
    if(in_array($type, $supported_files)){
      /**
       * Max size is 1 MB = 1024 KB = 1024 * 1024 Bytes
       */
      if($size < (1024 * 1024)){
        $upload_file_name = time() . "-" . rand_string(4);
        if(move_uploaded_file($tmp, __DIR__ . "/uploads/$upload_file_name")){
          echo "File Name : $name";
          echo "<br/>File Temporary Location : $tmp";
          echo "<br/>File Size : $size";
          echo "<br/>File Type : $type";
          echo "<br/>Image : <img style='margin-left:10px;' src='uploads/$upload_file_name'>";
        }else{
          echo "Uploading Failed.";
        }
      }else{
        echo "Files must have maximum size of 1 MB";
      }
    }else{
      echo "Invalid Image file format.";
    }
  }
}else{
  echo "Please select an image.";
  exit;
}
?>

We use two functions, getMIMEType() and rand_string(). One for getting the uploaded file’s type and other for generating the uploaded file’s name.

By using the script above, one can upload multiple files. Status of each file is shown as different section with headings of each files.

Ubuntu Dekko

Tue, 22 Dec 2015 20:11:52 +0000

This post is part of the Google Code in 2015. The task was to Build the dekko app and run all testsuites. You can see the task here.

My System

Xubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf :

Xubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf

Dependencies Installation

First of all, I downloaded Ubuntu SDK with the help of this guide.

Then, I got the source code URL from Ubuntu Developers Site :

git clone https://git.launchpad.net/dekko

The source code was about 29 MB.

Next thing I did was read "HACKING.md" file. There was a section called "Building" in it. There were two steps :

ensure we have the armhf click chroot created
the click chroot is up to date and has required dependencies installed

The first step was not clear. So, I went to the "README.md" file and found that there is a group for Dekko in Telegram.

I chatted and found this page. Thanks to Dan Chapman. I also learnt that the "HACKING.md" file is no longer valid.

To build, the doc said :

If you just want to build & run Dekko on your desktop then you should use the run-desktop script with the --setup option.

<span class="pln">$ </span><span class="pun">./</span><span class="pln">scripts</span><span class="pun">/</span><span class="pln">run</span><span class="pun">-</span><span class="pln">desktop </span><span class="pun">--</span><span class="pln">setup</span>

224 MB of archives need to be retrieved. It were the dependencies. That took a while :

Installing dependencies of Dekko

The dependencies were successfully installed in a single try.

Building

I ran :

<span class="pun">./</span><span class="pln">scripts</span><span class="pun">/</span><span class="pln">run</span><span class="pun">-</span><span class="pln">desktop </span><span class="pun">--</span><span class="pln">with</span><span class="pun">-</span><span class="pln">uitk</span>

It started to build :

Bulding Dekko

There was this awesome little loading icon using ASCII chars to indicate the build process :

/ - | \ | /

Never saw such thing before. I should make a SVG animated image of this.

The building caused and error :

E: You must put some 'source' URIs in your sources.list

I looked over the script file and found why the error is coming. It was because I have disabled all the "source code" repositories.

So, I reloaded the package list and tried again. This time it worked. After that, I ran :

<span class="pun">./</span><span class="pln">scripts</span><span class="pun">/</span><span class="pln">run</span><span class="pun">-</span><span class="pln">desktop</span>

to run Dekko app. Now, it was compiling :

Dekko app compiling

And finally Dekko ran :

Dekko on Ubuntu Wily Werewolf

Running Testsuites

As per the doc, I ran this :

<span class="pun">./</span><span class="pln">scripts</span><span class="pun">/</span><span class="pln">run</span><span class="pun">-</span><span class="pln">desktop </span><span class="pun">--</span><span class="pln">tests</span>

The tests were started :

Running Dekko Testsuites

The testsuites was successfully finished :

Dekko Testuites Passed

Problems Faced

The file "HACKING.md" was outdated in the Git repo. I had to find the better documented page from Dan Chapman – maintainer of Dekko

<span class="pun">./</span><span class="pln">scripts</span><span class="pun">/</span><span class="pln">run</span><span class="pun">-</span><span class="pln">desktop </span><span class="pun">--</span><span class="pln">with</span><span class="pun">-</span><span class="pln">uitk</span>

The requirement of the above command to work is that the "Source Code" repository should be enabled.

I had them disabled and it didn’t work on my system. Everything worked after it was enabled and when package list was updated

Suggestions

The "HACKING.md" file should be removed or updated

Dan Chapman said that he was planning to remove it. So, that’s OK
The doc should mention that the "Source Code" repository should be enabled for the building to be done successfully.

Conclusion

Dekko is neat, beautiful and well written. I could only find Dan Chapman active in the project. Still, the Dekko doc site and project looks awesome.

Can’t wait to get an Ubuntu Touch Phone.

The Anagram Game

Mon, 21 Sep 2015 07:49:53 +0000

As you know, I have made Lobby – The localhost OS. I am in the process of adding more and more apps to it. This post explains how I created the Anagram game and the algorithm used for it.

You can download the app from here or search for "Anagram" in the Lobby Store.

The full source code is available on GitHub.

Anagram Game

How It Works ?

There is a dictionary file containing many english words. When a user requests for a new puzzle, these happens :

Choose random letters
Loop through each words of dictionary and see if chosen letters is present in the word. The compatible words are added to an Array.
The chosen letters and words are passed to the client side.

The client side (JavaScript) will display the letters and make the boxes for each words.

Dictionary

The dictionary consists of 51,853 words. You can see the 366KB file here.

Each words are separated by a newline (\n).

Algorithm

Here is how words are found out from the scrambled letters : Each word in the dictionary is looped over an the word is checked for same letters :

$avail = array(); // An array of scrambled letters
$dict = array(); // An array of words in dictionary
$pWords = array(); // An array of words that can be formed from the scrambled letters

foreach($dict as $word){
  $checked = array();
  $valid = true;
  $letters = str_split($word);
  
  $wordAvail = $avail;
  foreach($letters as $letter){
    $key = array_search($letter, $wordAvail);
    if($key === false){
      $valid = false;
    }
    unset($wordAvail[$key]);
  }
  if($valid == true){
    $pWords[$word] = 1;
  }
}

The $pWords will contain the words that can be formed from the scrambled letters.

Hack!

If you want to see the words before clicking "Solve", you can use the Developer Tools of your browser to inspect the "data-word" attribute of each box.

logSys Admin

Mon, 14 Sep 2015 03:30:21 +0000

After the release of logSys in May 2014, many have been asking for an admin panel of logSys. It’s finally here. I’m extremely happy to release logSys Admin as an app of Lobby.

logSys Admin Logo

You can find the app here on Lobby.

Installation

Download & Install Lobby.
Open Lobby
Open **Lobby Store **and search for "logSys Admin".
Click Install button.

Usage

Open App from the Lobby Dashboard and click "Go To Admin" button.
Click "Setup logSys Admin" button.
Enter the credentials of your database as well as the table which logSys uses and Save.
Once saved, you can use logSys Admin

The dashboard page has some quick facts about your users :

logSys Admin Dashboard

You can manage your users : Add/Edit/Remove + Add New Column + Export Data

logSys Admin Users’ Page

See the active tokens that can be used to reset pasword :

logSys Admin Tokens’ Page

See graphical representation of stats :

logSys Admin Stats

It is not complete and I will keep continuing add more features. You will be notified in Lobby when a new version is available and you can update it with a single click.

Some features I’m hoping to add :

User Roles
Specific Pages For Specific Users

Security

By default, Lobby can be accessed by anyone. So, your logSys Admin is accessible to everyone. To prevent this, you can install the Lobby Admin app which lets you password protect your Lobby installation.

Sidenote: Lobby Admin also uses logSys as it’s login system. After you install Lobby Admin, you have to login before accessing Lobby. The default username and password once you install is "admin".

Lobby

Sat, 12 Sep 2015 03:30:12 +0000

[][1]

Lobby Logo

Lobby is a new project of mine which was under development for more than a year. I’m proud to release it today with the first version 0.2. Lobby is a localhost Operating System like Android, iOS etc.

What It Is

I’ll explain it to you. There are many OSs in this world. From Ubuntu to Windows to Mac to Android to iOS and so on… Developing an application is tough as you have to port it to different OSs. And the language to develop is also different :

Ubuntu – C, C++, Python
Windows – C, C++
Mac – C++
Android – Java
iOS – C#

As you can see, a simple developer like you and me have to learn multiple languages for creating a single app. What If, you only have to create a single app with languages that you know such as HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript + jQuery and the best thing it runs on a browser. Life has become easy… This means, the app can be used in various devices as long as it has internet.

Lobby is a software completely written in PHP to simplify the process of creating an app. With Lobby, you will only have to create the app once and you can use that app in EVERY system that has a PHP localhost server.

Lobby is a software that runs on a web server, like WordPress. You can download it from here, extract it into your localhost folder (/var/www) and visit the page in your browser. There is a small installation process and after it, you can download apps from the Lobby Store.

Image it like WordPress, because I created it from the inspiration of WordPress.

Why ?

WordPress had some cool plugins which I would like personally on my computer. Since I’m using Ubuntu, there aren’t that many apps available like Windows or Mac. And even if I create one, its gonna take a long time. So, to save the time as well as help others who are also in situations like this, I created Lobby.

For example, I always had a thought in my mind to write diaries. If I did it in a paper, there’s a big chance for it to be easily lost, destroyed or anything that makes it unusable in future. So, I digitalized the diary as an app in**Lobby**. You can download the Diary app from here.

Another app that I created was a game "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire ?".

So, to me if I wanted to create a tool that anyone can use it on their computers, I can just upload it to Lobby. Example: The logSys Admin app which helps in managing users using logSys.

Features

Here are all the features :

One App For All OS

Create a single app and use it for all systems.

Super Fast Framework For Apps

Each line of the 5000+ lines code was created to be super fast and efficient.

Easy To Learn & Use

Lobby is not using MVC or any other types of existing models. It was created to be fast and easily understandable and hence is a deviation from the current types of softwares created in PHP.

Open Source

Like my previous projects, this is Open Source too. It is licensed under Apache License. You can see the GitHub repo here

Safe & Secure Apps

A central repository of apps is integrated into Lobby meaning all apps that are in the Lobby Store is tested for security as well as privacy. So, no apps can use your personal data to make profit.

FileSystem

Like an OS, Lobby has its own filesystem to access files of the user’s system. And every app is required to use this class. This means, Lobby is aware of what the app is doing ie your privacy is very important to Lobby.

Auto Update

See when a new version comes out and update with a single click. Lobby will update the source code, database and make sure nothing bad happens while updating. This is available to both apps and Lobby itself.

And many more features to be added… Here is a snapshot of the dashboard :

Lobby Dashboard

Future

I have created many apps using Lobby and it all works well. I have some great plans for it in the future and I hope it would help you too. You can head straight to the docs for learning Lobby and when you create and app, you can submit it to Lobby Repo

Lobby is an evolving project and the goal is to make stuff SIMPLEST & FASTEST.

The documentation is not complete. It is the hardest part to do, not the code. But, Lobby was created to be SIMPLE & POWERFUL and you can easily grasp how it works by looking at the example apps. Here is the source code of lEdit – The official text editor of Lobby.

Go Ahead And See What Lobby Has To Offer

What Doesn’t Work ?

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 05:58:01 +0000

I had to write this post, because I have experienced this a lot.

When something doesn’t work especially with code, the asker won’t say the details. He/she just says it doesn’t work. Then it is the duty of mine to find what doesn’t work.

To simplify things, when you ask please explain :

Contents

</div>

### What doesn&#8217;t work ?

Expected Result vs Actual Result comparison</li> 

  * ### Any Errors ?
    
    Does the compiler or interpreter (as in case of PHP) output any errors. For seeing the errors, you must first enable Error Logging. A sample of the log file would greatly help.</li> 
    
      * ### Code Samples
        
        Have you made any changes to the code which would result in the error ? If so, please post the code using <a href="http://pastebin.com" target="_blank">Pastebin</a> or <a href="http://paste.ubuntu.com" target="_blank">Ubuntu Paste</a></li> 
        
          * ### Explain Clearly
            
            The most important thing is to explain clearly about your problem. If you don&#8217;t know English well, say in your own language and translate it using <a href="http://translate.google.com" target="_blank">Google</a> to English.</li> </ol> 
            
            This post will be used as reference when queries are asked that are not able to be understood by me.

Some Plans

Tue, 25 Aug 2015 08:51:56 +0000

It’s been a while since I have written on the blog and there are many reasons for it. I’m writing now because I’m on a vacation for 10 days because of Onam, a festival in Kerala.

Reasons

School
Bored Life (These days, I’m feeling a repulsion)
Busy

I’ll explain :

Since I have passed the 10th grade and is in higher secondary education, the stuff to learn increased. Even the though the subjects to learn have reduced to 6, the size of the books increased.

Though I love all the subject that I learn now (Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science, Maths, English, Malayalam), there is something that prevents me these days to study (Teenage shit ?).

Yes, life has become boring. The fire I had 4 years ago (2011) has decreased gradually. Why ? I think it’s because of the tough 10th grade. Also, some teenage problem. There is something that controls me these days, a power which I don’t know. Perhaps this is experienced by everyone of my age (or do they ?).Back in 2011, if I had planned to do something, I had this fire in my mind to do it until I reach it. But, now sometimes I feel that fire, but after some time the repulsion force brings me down. I hope this repulsion force will go soon.
I’m so busy these days. School, work and code. GOD ! It’s frustrating.

Plans

I have new plans to achieve and I hope I can do it. I’m going to get back the fire I once had. I will.

New Company

Me and some friends are planning to create a company in my locality. We have high hopes for it. It may even grow to be an international company.

The name hasn’t been decided. It will be decided after the domain is purchased.

I will tell more about it later.

logSys

I have plans to improve logSys and add new features to it.

2 Step/Factor Authentication

I&#8217;m planning to add a 2 Step Verification on login from a new browser. A secret token will be sent to the user to verify that the user is the original owner.

This secret token will be sent by E-Mail or Mobile (your choice). So, anyone want this enhancement ?

Do you want this, then see <a href="https://github.com/subins2000/logSys/issues/7" target="_blank">this</a> and comment on it.</li> 

  * ### logSys Advanced
    
    Many of the comments in logSys was the need to have an admin panel to manage users. Though you can do this with **phpMyAdmin**, it will be a nice feature for **logSys** to have this.
    
    I plan to make this by adding user roles. Each user would have special roles. Only certain users with role can access some pages and others. It&#8217;s better if all this is integrated into a new class. So, a new class is going to be created which will be a fork of logSys. It will be called "**logSys Advanced**". It will be Open Source just like logSys.</li> </ol> 
    
    What do you think ? Do you have any extra suggestions ? Please comment.

Set Same Time Zone in PHP & MySQL

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 20:30:20 +0000

Time Zones are important if you’re creating a social app which will include chat, social network and others which is interacted with the society.

There are many time zones and you have to choose one to set in your server. I would totally recommend using UTC instead of your time zone in server.

Web Server and Database server are different and they each have their own configuration. This includes the time zone too. In this short post, I’m going to show how you can set the same time zone in both of these servers.

PHP

This is the most simplest one :

date_default_timezone_set("UTC");

Do the above before any other code.

MySQL

You can set timezone in MySQL with this small SQL code :

SET GLOBAL time_zone = '+00:00';

But in servers like OpenShift, the above won’t work as the time zone will be resetted back after a server restart. So, the above is no avail in hosting providers like this.

So, we must use PHP itself to set the time zone in MySQL server. Execute the following SQL code just after the opening of MySQ****L connection :

SET time_zone = '+00:00';

An example in PDO :

$dbh=new PDO('mysql:dbname=mydb;host=localhost;port=3306',$username, $password);
$dbh->exec("SET time_zone='+00:00';");

Any other SQL operations must only follow after the above code execution.

Implement 5 Star Rating System With PHP & JavaScript

Tue, 16 Jun 2015 03:30:53 +0000

User ratings are important for your site if you provide downloads of files or run an E-Commerce shop. It is the ratings of other users that tempt your site’s users to buy/download something. So, it is necessary for a site like this to have a Rating System. If you haven’t implemented it yet or want to replace your existing system with a clean one, you’re at the right place.

I give to you, Francium Star : a new member in our Francium Project series. This PHP & JS combined package will provide your site a complete Rating System and it’s very easy to implement.

Download Demo

PHP

The server side consists of 4 PHP files including the index page. Other files are :

Fr.star.php
config.php
ajax_rate.php

Fr.star.php

This is the heart of the rating system. Get the complete file from here.

Database

Create a table named "Fr_star" in your database with the SQL code below :

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `Fr_star` (
  `id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `rate_id` varchar(40) NOT NULL,
  `user_id` varchar(40) NOT NULL,
  `rate` float NOT NULL,
  `rated` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
)

config.php

We include the "Fr.star.php" in the file and we provide the database configuration in this file. Example :

<?php
require_once __DIR__ . "/Fr.star.php";

$star = new \Fr\Star(array(
  "db" => array(
    "host" => getenv('OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_HOST'),
    "port" => getenv('OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_PORT'),
    "username" => getenv('OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_USERNAME'),
    "password" => getenv('OPENSHIFT_MYSQL_DB_PASSWORD'),
    "name" => getenv('OPENSHIFT_GEAR_NAME'),
    "table" => "Fr_star"
  )
));

This "config.php" will be included in the AJAX request receiving script as well as the index file.

ajax_rate.php

JavaScript sends AJAX request to this file. This file processes the rating action and tells \Fr\Star to add a rating.

<?php
// This is where AJAX would sent request to

if(isset($_POST['id']) && isset($_POST['rating']) && $_POST['id'] == "index_page"){
  session_start();
  require_once __DIR__ . "/config.php";
  $star->id = $_POST['id'];
  $star->addRating($_SESSION['user_id'], $_POST['rating']);
}

Let me explain what this file do.

It first checks whether values "id" and "rating" exists in the POST data. Also, it checks whether the page ID is "index_page". It is recomended to check the IDs before rating.
The PHP session is started and the "config.php" is included in the script.
We tell \Fr\Star the ID of the page. Optionally, you can tell this page ID as the second parameter while making the object.
Finally, we call the \Fr\Star::addRating() function to insert the rating data into database.

index.php

This is the page that the user will see. It includes the JavaScript & CSS components of the Francium Star software and shows examples of the usage :

<?php
// Generate a user ID for the session only
session_start();
if(!isset($_SESSION['user_id'])){
  $_SESSION['user_id'] = rand(0, 1024);
}
?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/Fr.star.css" />
    <script src="//lab.subinsb.com/projects/jquery/core/jquery-latest.js"></script>
    <script src="//lab.subinsb.com/projects/Francium/star/Fr.star.js"></script>
    <script src="js/rate.js"></script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Francim Star</h1>
    <p>Rating for "index_page" :</p>
    <?php
    require_once __DIR__ . "/config.php";
    $star->id = "index_page";
    
    echo "Rating :";
    echo $star->getRating("userChoose size-1");
    
    echo "<p>Your Rating :</p>";
    echo $star->userRating($_SESSION['user_id']);
    echo "<p>^- You will have to refresh page to update the above value</p>";
    
    echo "<h2>Different Sizes</h2>";
    
    echo "<p>170x30" . $star->getRating("userChoose size-2") . "</p>";
    echo "<p>115x20" . $star->getRating("userChoose size-3") . "</p>";
    echo "<p>55x10" . $star->getRating("userChoose size-4") . "</p>";
    
    echo "<h2>Just Show It !</h2>";
    
    echo "<p>170x30" . $star->getRating("size-2") . "</p>";
    echo "<p>115x20" . $star->getRating("size-3") . "</p>";
    echo "<p>55x10" . $star->getRating("size-4") . "</p>";
    ?>
    <!-- NOTICE - http://subinsb.com/francium-star -->
  </body>
</html>

Note that the above script generates a unique user ID at the beginning of each session. This user ID can be an IP address or the actual user ID of the logged in user.

It is the JavaScript and CSS part of the software that enables the user to rate in the browser. Hence, it is an important part of the software as well.

JavaScript

jQuery is not needed for Francium Star, but it is included to easily send the AJAX request.

Fr.star.js

You can call this file a library of JavaScript and jQuery. Because it will work with native JS as well as like a plugin of jQuery. You will see more about this in the API section of this post.

Get this file from here if you want to include this locally instead of the lab.subinsb.com URL.

If you want a minified version, see this.

js/rate.js

This file makes the rating divs functionable. It also sends the AJAX request.

$(function(){
  $(".Fr-star.userChoose").Fr_star(function(rating){
    $.post("ajax_rate.php", {'id' : 'index_page', 'rating': rating}, function(){
      alert("Rated " + rating + " !!");
    });
  });
});

As I said before, Fr\Star can be used as a jQuery function too.

CSS

There is only one file for styling the rating divs. It’s css/Fr.star.css

*{
  box-sizing: border-box;
  -moz-box-sizing: border-box;
  -webkit-box-sizing: border-box;
}
.Fr-star {
  width: 225px;
  height: 40px;
  position: relative;
  background-color: #ccc;
}
.Fr-star[data-title]:hover:after {
  content: attr(data-title);
  padding: 4px 8px;
  color: #333;
  position: absolute;
  left: 0;
  top: 100%;
  z-index: 20;
  white-space: nowrap;
  -moz-border-radius: 5px;
  -webkit-border-radius: 5px;
  border-radius: 5px;
  -moz-box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #222;
  -webkit-box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #222;
  box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #222;
  background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee, #cccccc);
  background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear,left top,left bottom,color-stop(0, #eeeeee),color-stop(1, #cccccc));
  background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee, #cccccc);
  background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee, #cccccc);
  background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee, #cccccc);
  background-image: -o-linear-gradient(top, #eeeeee, #cccccc);
}
.Fr-star .Fr-star-bg{
  position: absolute;
  height: 100%;
  width: 100%;
  background: url(../img/Fr-star.png) repeat;
  background-size: contain;
}
.Fr-star .Fr-star-value{
  height: 100%;
  position: absolute;
  background-color: #ffbe10;
}
.Fr-star.size-2{
  width: 170px;
  height: 30px;
}
.Fr-star.size-3{
  width: 115px;
  height: 20px;
}
.Fr-star.size-4{
  width: 55px;
  height: 10px;
}

There is an image of star that is needed by the above file. Download it from one of the following and move it into a folder called "img" at the root of the site.

When you change the location of the image file, make sure to change the value of the "background" property of ".Fr-star-bg" in the stylesheet too.

API

What you saw above was an example of the rating system. In here, I’m going to show the syntax of each functions that is in PHP and JavaScript/jQuery.

PHP

\Fr\Star::__construct()

$star = new \Fr\Star($config, $id = null);

$id is the page’s ID and $config is an array that will be merged with the default configuration (\Fr\Star::$default_config).

\Fr\Star::addRating()

$star->addRating($user_id, $rating)

$user_id is the user’s ID and $rating is a float value of the rating by the user.

\Fr\Star::getRating()

$star->getRating($html_class = "", $type = "html")

If you would like to add extra CSS "class" to the HTML element created by the above function, add the class name to $html_class parameter.

You can also get the plain rating, instead of an HTML formatted one. The possible values for $type are :

rate_value
rate_percentage
rate_times

I hope you got what the returning values will be when the above values are given.

\Fr\Star::userRating()

$star->userRating($user_id);

Get the rating made by a specific user. The user’s ID should be passed (not optional) by the only parameter $user_id.

JavaScript/jQuery

Fr.star(element, callback_after_rating());

`element` is a DOM object. `callback_after_rating()` is a function that will be called after the user has rated with a parameter containing the rating value.

Example :

Fr.star(document.querySelector(".Fr-star"), function(rating){
  alert("User rated : " + rating);
});

There is no other functions in JavaScript. There is a jQuery wrapper for this function :

$(".Fr-star").Fr_star(function(rating){
  alert("User rated : " + rating);
});

That is everything on Francium Star. This is the first Francium project that uses Object class instead of static. I hope you found what you were looking for.

If you have any suggestions or faced a problem, please feel free to comment. I’ll help 🙂

Advanced Live Group Chat With WebSocket, PHP & jQuery

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 03:30:51 +0000

WebSocket is one of the awesomest part of the HTML5 and we developers should experiment with it as it will be the future of client to server communication.

In a recent post, I made a tutorial of live chat with WebSockets and PHP. It was the basic step into websockets. But, I have created another chat which is more advanced that has the capability to upload images as well as record audio from microphone of the user. It’s somewhat like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.

Demo Download

For this, you will need a WebSocket server and a web server (localhost).

Features

Basic text messaging
Anyone can join chat
Voice messages
Send images
Live messaging

This tutorial has two parts, one for setting up the website and the other for setting up the WebSocket server.

Website

The client doesn’t necessarily need to be PHP, because we aren’t gonna process the data here. But, since we are uploading images as well as audio, we should make files in the client site itself to upload these files.

index.php

This is the file the users would see to chat :

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <script src="//lab.subinsb.com/projects/jquery/core/jquery-2.1.1.js"></script>
    <script src="//lab.subinsb.com/projects/Francium/voice/recorder.js"></script>
    <script src="//lab.subinsb.com/projects/Francium/voice/Fr.voice.js"></script>
    
    <script src="js/time.js"></script>
    <script src="js/chat.js"></script>
    <link href="css/chat.css" rel="stylesheet"/>
    <title>Subin's Blog - Advanced Live Group Chat</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="content">
      <center><h1>Advanced Live Group Chat</h1></center>
      <p><a href="//subinsb.com/php-websocket-advanced-chat">Tutorial</a></p>
      <div class="chatWindow">
        <div style="display: none;postion: absolute;">
          <input type="file" id="photoFile" accept="image/*" />
          <audio src="cdn/message.wav" controls="false" id="notification"></audio>
        </div>
        <div class="users"></div>
        <div class="chatbox">
          <div class="topbar">
            <span id="status" title="Click to Login/Logout">Offline</span>
            <span id="fullscreen" title="Toggle Fullscreen of Chat Box">Fullscreen</span>
          </div>
          <div class="chat">
            <div class="msgs"></div>
            <form id="msgForm">
              <textarea name="msg" placeholder="Type message here...."></textarea>
              <a class="button" id="voice" title="Click to start recording message"></a>
              <a class="button" id="photo" title="Type in a message and choose image to send"></a>
            </form>
          </div>
          <div class="login">
            <p>Type in your name to start chatting !</p>
            <form id="loginForm">
              <input type="text" value="" />
              <button>Submit</button>
            </form>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

It has a basic layout with some resources loaded in the head.

upload.php

This file handles the uploads such as images and audios. It will upload the file into a folder named "uploads" in the root directory of the site. So, you should create that folder and set the permission of it to "Read & Write".

Here is the upload.php file :

<?php
if(isset($_FILES['file'])){
  $file = file_get_contents($_FILES['file']['tmp_name']);
  $f = finfo_open();
  $mime_type = finfo_buffer($f, $file, FILEINFO_MIME_TYPE);
  
  $supported_types = array(
    "audio/x-wav" => "wav",
    "image/png" => "png",
    "image/jpeg" => "jpg",
    "image/pjpeg" => "jpg",
    "image/gif" => "gif"
  );
  
  $extension = isset($supported_types[$mime_type]) ? $supported_types[$mime_type] : false;
  if($extension !== false){
    $fileName = rand(10000, 65000) . "." . $extension;
    $location = __DIR__ . "/uploads/" . $fileName;
    
    move_uploaded_file($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'], $location);
    echo $fileName;
  }
}

You can see that the upload file checks the type of the file and then only it uploads to the server. When it is uploaded, the file name is outputted.

js/time.js

You might have heard about the jQuery Timeago plugin. This file has the plugin with some little modifications. Download it from here.

js/chat.js

This is the heart of the chat. All functions related to the chat in the client are processed by this file such as connection to the server, sending messages, uploading files and others…

You can get this file from here.

css/chat.css

This file will decorate the chat box. We are adding just a simple design.

You can get this file from here.

assets/message.wav

There is something else too in this chat. A notification sound. When new messages are retrieved, a sound will be also played. You can download this file from here. Thanks to the open source software Pidgin IM for this sound.

assets

The "assets" folder should contain 3 images :

These files are for the advanced part of the chat. With advancement comes more resources !

WebSocket Server

Let’s move on to the WebSocket Server. This part handles the messages and does all the work to make the chat functional and awesome.

Database

The server has the Database, so create the tables first :

CREATE TABLE `wsAdvancedChat` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `user` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
  `msg` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
  `type` varchar(10) NOT NULL,
  `file_name` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
  `posted` datetime NOT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1;

Make sure the database time zone is set to UTC.

Then you should create a configuration file that will provide the credentials to connect to the database :

config.php

We are going to use PDO for the connection with MySQL :

<?php
ini_set("display_errors","on");
$docRoot  = realpath(dirname(__FILE__));

if( !isset($dbh) ){
  session_start();
  date_default_timezone_set("UTC");
  $musername = "root";
  $mpassword = "password";
  $hostname  = "127.0.0.1";
  $dbname    = "test";
  $port      = "3306";

  $dbh = new PDO("mysql:dbname={$dbname};host={$hostname};port={$port}", $musername, $mpassword);
  /**
   * Change The Credentials to connect to database.
   */
}
?>

We also set the timezone to UTC which is the same for database server and PHP server.

We will use Francium DiffSocket to set up our WebSocket server. In the "server" directory, run :

composer require francium/diffsocket

Once DiffSocket is installed, we should set up the server class and the script to run the server.

server/AdvancedChatServer.php

This file gets the sent message from server and inserts it into database. It also sends the messages in the database to the users when asked. In fact, this is the server who does everything for its clients.

You can get this file from here.

server/run-server.php

To add our "Advanced Chat" service and start the server, we must create another file :

<?php
require_once __DIR__ . "/config.php";
require_once __DIR__ . "/vendor/autoload.php";

$ip = "127.0.0.1";
$port = "8000";
  
$DS = new Fr\DiffSocket(array(
  "host" => $ip,
  "port" => $port
));
$server->run();

If you’re going to change the $ip and $port variables, you should also change the WebSocket URL in the "chat.js" file.

When you need to start the server, just run the "run-server.php" file :

php run-server.php

When new users are connected, a message will be shown in the shell that is something like this :

New connection! (29)

Each users connected (clients) will have a unique ID.

Open the website we set up, enter your name and voila !

There you go ! You just set up your own advanced chat system.

Notebook Paper Design Text Editor With jQuery

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 03:30:20 +0000

Hey, all.. it’s been a while since I wrote anything on my blog. Sorry guys, but I was working on a project which will be released soon. 🙂

WYSIWYG editors are used by us all on the web and if we are going to create a site, it’s better if the editor on it is WYSIWYG. There are many text editors, but there are none with a Notebook Paper design. Well, in this post I will guide you in creating a notebook paper with CSS3 and making that paper design into a text editor.

Download Demo

Yes, this requires HTML5 and you can easily modify it to suit your needs. Let’s begin.

HTML

index.html

We will be making the layout first. It’s minimal and there are 5 resources loaded.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <script src="//lab.subinsb.com/projects/jquery/core/jquery-latest.js"></script>
    <script src="js/jquery.notebook.js"></script>
    <link href="css/font-awesome.css" rel="stylesheet" />
    <link href="css/jquery.notebook.css" rel="stylesheet" />
    <link href="css/style.css" rel="stylesheet" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="content">
      <center><h1>Paper</h1></center>
      <div class="paper-wrapper">
        <div class="paper">
          <h2 style="margin: 0px;">HEADING</h2>
          <div class="entry"></div>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

A file called "font-awesome.css" is loaded. This file requires font files which should be stored in a folder called "fonts" in the root directory of website. Here are the font files to download :

After you placed these into the "fonts" folder, create folders "css" and "js" in the root directory.

And then, download jquery.notebook.css and font-awesome.css files and move them into the "css" folder.

Don’t forget to make sure that the links to the fonts in the "font-awesome.css" file is correct.

CSS

css/style.css

We add our custom styles in to this file and also, the CSS for making the notebook paper design is in this file :

.paper-wrapper{
  position: relative;
  height: 100%;
  margin: 20px 0 0;
  padding: 0;
	/* gradients - second red border, first red border, top white space, blue lines */
  background-image:  -webkit-linear-gradient(left, rgba(255,85,91, .2), rgba(255,85,91, .2)), -webkit-linear-gradient(left, rgba(255,85,91, .8), rgba(255,85,91, .8)), -webkit-linear-gradient(top, white 0px, white 69px, rgba(255,255,255,0) 70px), -webkit-repeating-linear-gradient(white 0px, white 18px, #A6FFED 19px, white 20px);
  background-image:  -moz-linear-gradient(left, rgba(255,85,91, .2), rgba(255,85,91, .2)), -moz-linear-gradient(left, rgba(255,85,91, .8), rgba(255,85,91, .8)), -moz-linear-gradient(top, white 0px, white 69px, rgba(255,255,255,0) 70px), -moz-repeating-linear-gradient(white 0px, white 18px, #A6FFED 19px, white 20px);
  background-image:  -ms-linear-gradient(left, rgba(255,85,91, .2), rgba(255,85,91, .2)), -ms-linear-gradient(left, rgba(255,85,91, .8), rgba(255,85,91, .8)), -ms-linear-gradient(top, white 0px, white 69px, rgba(255,255,255,0) 70px), -ms-repeating-linear-gradient(white 0px, white 18px, #A6FFED 19px, white 20px);
  background-image:  -o-linear-gradient(left, rgba(255,85,91, .2), rgba(255,85,91, .2)), -o-linear-gradient(left, rgba(255,85,91, .8), rgba(255,85,91, .8)), -o-linear-gradient(top, white 0px, white 69px, rgba(255,255,255,0) 70px), -o-repeating-linear-gradient(white 0px, white 18px, #A6FFED 19px, white 20px);
  background-image:  linear-gradient(left, rgba(255,85,91, .2), rgba(255,85,91, .2)), linear-gradient(left, rgba(255,85,91, .8), rgba(255,85,91, .8)), linear-gradient(top, white 0px, white 69px, rgba(255,255,255,0) 70px), repeating-linear-gradient(white 0px, white 18px, #A6FFED 19px, white 20px);
  background-size: 1px, 1px, auto, auto 30px;
  background-repeat: repeat-y, repeat-y, no-repeat, repeat;
  background-position: 90% 0px, 10% 0px, 0px 0px, 0px 0px;
}
.paper {
  margin: 0;
  display: block;
  min-height: 100%;
  font: 13pt Arial, sans-serif;  
  line-height: 30px;
  padding-top: 50px;
  padding-left: 10.5%;
  padding-right: 10.5%;
  text-align: justify;
}
.paper p{
  position: relative;
  min-height: 30px !important;
  margin: 0;
  z-index: 2;
}
.paper p:first-child{
  text-indent: 80px;
}
.paper:after {  
  content: '';
  display: block;
  width: 20px;
  height: 20px;
  border-radius: 10px;
  position: absolute;
  background: rgba(255,255,255,1);
  top: 40px;
  left: 2%;
  z-index: 10;
  -webkit-box-shadow: 
    inset 2px 2px 5px rgba(125,125,125,1),  
    2px 50.1em 5px rgba(255,255,255,1), 0px 50em rgba(125,125,125,.75),  
    2px 90.1em 5px rgba(255,255,255,1), 0px 90em rgba(125,125,125,.5),
    2px 130.1em 5px rgba(255,255,255,1), 0px 130em rgba(125,125,125,.25);
  -moz-box-shadow: 
    inset 2px 2px 5px rgba(125,125,125,1),  
    2px 50.1em 5px rgba(255,255,255,1), 0px 50em rgba(125,125,125,.75),  
    2px 90.1em 5px rgba(255,255,255,1), 0px 90em rgba(125,125,125,.5),
    2px 130.1em 5px rgba(255,255,255,1), 0px 130em rgba(125,125,125,.25);
  box-shadow: 
    inset 2px 2px 5px rgba(125,125,125,1),  
    2px 50.1em 5px rgba(255,255,255,1), 0px 50em rgba(125,125,125,.75),  
    2px 90.1em 5px rgba(255,255,255,1), 0px 90em rgba(125,125,125,.5),
    2px 130.1em 5px rgba(255,255,255,1), 0px 130em rgba(125,125,125,.25);
}
.paper:focus {
  outline: none;
}
.paper .entry{
  min-height: 300px;
}

There aren’t any resources loaded in the above file. So, leave it as it is.

JavaScript

Download the jquery.notebook.js file and move it into the "js" folder.

Add the following script tag inside the index.html file before :

<script>
  $(document).ready(function(){
    $(".paper .entry").notebook();
  });
</script>

That’s all you need. The text editor is powered by JS, but the style and most part is because of CSS. Thank you for reading and I hope it helped.

jQuery Popping Up Text Effect

Thu, 23 Apr 2015 03:30:47 +0000

If you are creating a web app and there is conversation to the user without audio and just text, animations and effect will make the app better.

In this short post, I’m introducing a simple text effect without any trouble at all. All it does is animate the text’s font size. But, the effect is like the text is popping up.

Demo

Here’s the code. It’s wrapped in a function and you can easily customize it :

function pop_up(){
  var begin_size = 10;
  var end_size = 60;
  var speed = 3000;

  $("<strong>.container</strong>").css("font-size", begin_size).animate({"font-size" : end_size}, speed);
}
pop_up();

In the above code, it is assumed that the element .container has text inside it.

What it does is change the font size to a smaller one, then animate the font-size value to a bigger one.

Resuming Download In Wget, cURL & aria2c

Wed, 22 Apr 2015 04:30:32 +0000

We all download stuffs and we want it to be perfect. No lagging, just download the fastest way, right ?

I don’t download via browsers these days, because it is too slow (< 5 KB/s). Google Chrome downloads are the worst. So, I download via command line now.

Not all downloading is easy. Sometimes it will break up. So, we must resume it. Only some servers allow to resume downloads. But, we need client softwares that is able to resume downloads.

There are lots of software that can be used to download in Linux and Windows. Most of them are GUIs. But, I like using commands.

In this post, I’m going to say how to resume downloads in wGet, cURL and aria2c. Since, I use Ubuntu, you should read the stuff Ubuntu Linux – wise.

cURL

If you use PHP, you can see that it has a default cURL extension. It is one of the most popular tools to download. But, it is complicated and not as easy as wGet or aria2c. Chrome uses cURL and you can get the cURL command of a file using the Developer Tools (F12) in Chrome.

Install it by :

sudo apt-get install curl

And here is the command to download

curl -L -C - -o "myfile.zip" "http://example.com/file.zip"

Here is what the options mean :

<td>
  <h2>
    <a href="#what-it-does"><span id="what-it-does">What It Does</span></a>
  </h2>
</td>

<td>
  Some URLs redirect to some other sites. This option tells cURL to obtain the file from that redirected location.
</td>

<td>
  This option is for telling cURL to resume download and the dash ("-") that follows it is to automatically detect the size of the file to continue downloading.
</td>

<td>
  This parameter says the output location of the file being downloaded.
</td>

Option

-L

-C –

-o "myfile.zip"

The last quoted value is the URL of the file. This command can be used to download for the first time as well as resuming it later.

aria2c

What a funny, complicated name, huh ? This command is the easiest one. I use this now to download.

You can install it by manually compiling. For Linux, download the plain .tar.xz{.name} file. Here’s the manual compiling commands to use in the directory :

./configure && sudo make && sudo make install

Now, here’s the command to download files :

aria2c -c -m 0 -o "myfile.zip" "http://example.com/file.zip"

Here is the explanation of each options used in the above command :

<td>
  <h2>
    <a href="#what-it-does-2"><span id="what-it-does-2">What It Does</span></a>
  </h2>
</td>

<td>
  Tells aria2c to resume downloads
</td>

<td>
  This option will make aria2c retry downloads for unlimited times. Some servers tend to break connection after some time. But, this option makes aria2c to auto retry when such things happen.
</td>

<td>
  This parameter says the output location of the file being downloaded.
</td>

Option

-c

-m 0

-o "myfile.zip"

Like before, the last quoted value is the URL of the file.

wGet

wGet is another popular downloading software. It’s use is similar to that of the other tools. But, one option is different.

Install it by :

sudo apt-get install wget

Here is a resumable download command :

wget -d -c --tries=0 --read-timeout=30 -O "myfile.zip" "http://example.com/file.zip"

And here is the explanation of the options used :

<td>
  <h2>
    <a href="#what-it-does-3"><span id="what-it-does-3">What It Does</span></a>
  </h2>
</td>

<td>
  Tells wGet to Download the File
</td>

<td>
  Tells wGet to resume download
</td>

<td>
  Tells wGet to retry connections unlimitedly when it is interrupted.
</td>

<td>
  If no response is received in 30 seconds, exit and establish a new connection
</td>

<td>
  Sets the output location of the downloaded file.
</td>

Option

-d

-c

–tries=0

–read-timeout=30

-O "myfile.zip"

Of the above 3, I would certainly recommend using aria2c, because it’s easy to use and is fast. Have fun downloading .. 🙂

Free Translate Using Google Without API

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 04:30:58 +0000

Google Translate is one of the best tools on the internet that translates text to another language. Currently it supports 90+ languages. Google has its API for translate, but its not free and you have to go through a lot of procedures. It’s boring, right ? If your app/website needs a translator, this post will help you.

As you know Google Translate is a web app and you can monitor the requests it sends to the server. If you look through the Developer Tools during a translation process, you will get the URL !

I did this and made a Francium class called "Translator" (of course it is). You can see the GitHub project here.

Download Demo

It is not a big project (< 300 lines) and it has only 1 function to be used by you.

Requirements

PHP cURL Extension

Configuration

One thing to note is that, we don’t mention language by its full name. But, with short forms. You can find these short forms in the class file itself. It is an array in config->languages. Example :

There is only one sub config that you have to edit. It is `config`->`default`. What it contains is the default translation languages. Again, you have to use the short form of languages here. This is useful when you are going to use the translator for a single lang-to-lang translation.

Translate

Now, let’s translate something. Here is the syntax of \Fr\Translator::translate() :

\Fr\Translator::translate($text, $translateTo, $translateFrom);

If the $translateFrom is null, the value "auto" is used which means that Google will detect the language of the text.

And if $translateTo is null, the default value from `config`->`default` is used.

Examples

Translating "Hello" into Malayalam :

echo \Fr\Translator::translate("Hello", "ml", "en");
// Outputs "ഹലോ"

Translating "My House" to French :

echo \Fr\Translator::translate("Hello", "fr", "en");
// Outputs "Ma Maison"

Translating "Internet" to Arabic :

echo \Fr\Translator::translate("Hello", "ar", "en");
// Outputs "Ma Maison"

This Francium class supports error logging too. The most likely error you’re going to get will be of cURL‘s.

For support, you can see this page.

Francium

Sat, 18 Apr 2015 18:08:55 +0000

The support forum for the Francium Projects.

Please follow the guidelines and ask for support in the corresponding pages.

This page is for the support regarding the Francium base class. This doesn’t mean that you should ask support for a specific Francium project here. You should ask for that in their corresponding Ask pages.

Getting IP Address of Your Friend Through Chat

Mon, 30 Mar 2015 03:30:46 +0000

It’s awesome to get into the depth of the network, especially when it’s the internet. An IP address can get you to a person far away from your home. It will make you mind blown when you dig deeper into the internet network.

As you may have read, netstat -an command gave you the IP address of user through Facebook chat. But, this works no more. But, there are still ways to do this.

**Facebook **uses the XMPP protocol for chatting which does not disclose the IP address of the chatters. So, what way is there to get the IP address of your friend ? Well, you can :

Ask him/her to give his/her IP address
Trick him/her into disclosing the IP address

The 1st method is simple if the friend is a dearest one. If you’re trying to catch a cracker, 2nd is the most suited way.

Trick The Friend

It’s very easy and if you’re a good programmer, you probably know how to do this. Every time when a user visits a website, the user is know by his/her IP address. So, the IP address will be known by the server.

We will use this basic HTTP protocol concept to obtain the IP address of the friend. It’s really simple if you already have a site running on a PHP server. Here’s how we’re going to do it :

Make a fake page in a website that redirects somewhere else.
Send the link to the friend through chat.
See the log file of site and get the IP address.

Make a file in the root location of the site called "redirect.php". We name it "redirect.php", because we don’t want the firend to be suspicious about it.

<p>Please Wait...</p>
<script>window.location = "<?php echo $_GET['redirect'];?>";</script>

What the above script does is simple : redirects user to the URL given through the **GET **parameter "redirect".

Next we got to do is, send the friend to this page. But before that, it’s better to make the URL you need to send to the friend :

http://mysite.com/redirect.php?redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fsubinsb.com&user=friend+name

Why we add the "user" parameter is to identify the user from which we got the IP when we check the server log.

You should mention a redirect URL in the "redirect" parameter. I recommend a great article, one which the friend will enjoy.

Now, shorten the URL using goo.gl or any other URL shortening services, so that the friend doesn’t get suspicious about the URL.

Send this URL by saying that it’s about a great article. You’re not lying (BTW, I hate lying), because the URL you’re going to send will redirect to that "great article". This is done by mentioning the article URL in the "redirect" parameter of the GET request. AND CLICK SEND !

The user will be taken to the server and then redirected to the article that he likes picked by you.

Next the thing you want is recorded in the server.

The script is short, then how is the IP address got ? Pretty simple. All web servers have an access log file. On a Linux system running **Apache **server, the location is :

/var/log/apache/access.log

Open the log file and search for your friend’s name. Alongside the name, you will see the IP address. All web servers logs the visitors reached with the IP address and the page visited.

So, now you got the IP address. Amaze your friend. But, try to do good things and not be EVIL !

You can do this in all chats and emails as long as the friend visits your server.

The Francium Project

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 06:51:19 +0000

I have made lots of classes and plan to create more and more. But, all of these are just scrambled all over. Here’s what I’m talking about :

new LoginSystem();
new FDM();

If you use another class named the same, then it will bring conflicts within your code. So, I decided them to group it with the namespace Fr, short for Francium – one of the least electronegative elements in the periodic table. I’m calling this the Francium project. It has nothing to do with the chemical element though.

As per this project, all my current and future classes will become a child class of the Fr parent :

new Fr\LoginSystem();
new Fr\FDM()

This post is about how you work with Francium. You can see the base class here.

Configuration

There is a static variable inside it called "default_config" containing an array with the default configuration. In that array, database information and a main info about who is using the software is written. You can either change the default configuration or set custom ones without changing the default config.

1. Custom Config

For this, you pass your config array to the config() method. You do this by making another file like "config.php" and including it instead of the class file. Here is an example of "config.php" file :

require "ClassName.php";
new Fr\ClassName(array(
  "info" => array(
    "company" => "Test",
    "email" => "[email protected]"
  )
));

Then, you include the above file in pages :

require_once "<strong>config.php</strong>"

I recommend this custom config, because you can then easily update the class when a new version come out.

2. Change Default Config

You can directly change the values of the "\Fr\ClassName::$default_config" in the class file, so you won’t need to make another file for custom configuration. But beware, when you’re updating to a newer version of the class, be sure to reupdate the default configuration again.

Now, what Fr does is merge the default config with the config you provided when making the object.

Debugging

\Fr\ClassName::log() function is used for entering log messages which is useful for debugging. These messages are sent by various functions and it is recorded in a file called "Francium.log".

To enable log messages, create a file named "Francium.log" in the folder where the class file exists. You should also make the file writable by changing the permissions.

Then set config->debug->enable to TRUE :

new Fr\ClassName(array(
  "debug" => array(
    "enable" => true
  )
));

You can also change the path of log file by giving absolute path of the new log file to config->debug->log_file :

new Fr\ClassName(array(
  "debug" => array(
    "enable" => true,
    "log_file" => __DIR__ . "/custom-log-file.log"
  )
));

After doing the above, log messages will be written to the file automatically.

Here is an example of a log message :

[2015-03-28 20:41:24] Couldn't connect to database. Check config->db credentials
[2016-04-23 12:13:41] two_step_login: Token Callback not present

It is also to be noted that PHP’s error log will also be helpful in debugging. When you enable debugging in a Francium class, it also does this :

ini_set("display_errors", "on");

It’s recommended that you see both the logs for perfect debugging.

JavaScript

Francium Project also applies to my JavaScrpt projects. My current projects are being slowly ported to the Francium Object. Note that my jQuery plugins will also be moving to Francium object. Example :

Fr.voice.record();

The debugging is not currently set for JS projects, but some messages are shown in console.

I’m Back

Sun, 22 Mar 2015 06:30:36 +0000

It’s been 3 months since I became less active on the blog. It is because of the S.S.L.C 10th grade exams. It’s all over now and I’m really happy to get back to my blog.

In between this long period from January 2015 to March 2015, I had checked my mail sometimes and found a lot of comments asking for solutions.

Since I was busy studying and all that stuff, I never had time to reply. But, since now I have 77 days left for the school to reopen again, I’m going to reply to all those comments in ascending order according to date.

4th Year

On January 30, my blog completes its fourth year. I couldn’t post on that day, because I was busy studying and almost forgot. 😛

The total views has crossed 445,000 with unique visitors more than 315,000 and returning visits > 45,000.

All Time Statistics

Future

I have an idea to make logSys a static class and not an object way. A lot of improvements are going to be made in all the projects I created.

Another thing is the launching of a new software which I think would be done in May 1.

I will be referring to this post for posting a late reply to comments to say that I’m sorry and thanks for waiting.

Coding Standards

Fri, 02 Jan 2015 07:16:36 +0000

Writing programs should be meaningful and in a long future, if you or anyone looks back at the code, then he/she must understand it. We all write codes, but do we have a standard of writing the code ? If we write codes without any standards and just go for it, then the program would be messy and no other programmer would like to read it.

Here’s what I’m talking about : A guy writes code as he like :

<?
//A function to forget. Just a demo function for showing code standards. Nothing is Nothing.
function forget ($get=false) {
echo $get===true ? "Yes":"No";
}
?>

The above code is messy and doesn’t look good and here’s how it is made better :

<?php
/**
 * A function to forget. Just a demo function for
 * showing code standards. Nothing is Nothing.
 */
function forget($get = false) {
  echo $get === true ? "Yes" : "No";
}
?>

You can see that, now the code looks better and gives a temptation to read it. Not only does it help you, but others who might read the code in the future as well.

This post is about the coding standards that I use and maybe you could use it too ! This coding standards is loosely based on the PEAR coding standards.

The PHP File

On most PHP systems, <?php works perfectly, but on others the short code is not enabled. In this case, <? won’t work. So, starting of PHP code should be by <?php :

<?php
echo "Hello World";
?>

If the file is full PHP, then it need not be closed by ?>. All files should end with a newline (\n) and not Windows newline (\r\n).

Semicolons is important. It should be placed. Do this :

<?php echo "hello"; ?>

and not this :

<?php echo "hello" ?>

Indents & Spacing

The indents should be of 2 spaces and no tabs. Tabs won’t work equally perfect in all text editors. Hence, instead of tabs, whitespaces should be used.

Lines should not have trailing whitespaces at the end. A space should be in between operators such as :

+, =, -, !=, !==, >

etc… Examples :

$myVariable = "myContent";
if(5 < 4) { }

rather than :

$myVariable="myContent";
if(5<4){}

Also, a space after "," should be made.

Control Structures

Control structures include if, for, while, switch, etc… Here is an example of if statement :

if (5 > 4 || 9 > 8) {
  doAction1();
}elseif ("a" == "a") {
  doAction2();
}else{
  doAction3();
}

Always use elseif and not else if. For siwtch statements :

switch (condition) {
  case 1:
    action1;
    break;

  case 2:
    action2;
    break;

  default:
    defaultaction;
}

Lines

All lines should not exceed 80 characters. If it does, make the overflowing chars into next line :

if($array['this']['that']['here']['pen'] ==
$array['there']['that']['myBigHat']['insideAPen']) {
  doAction1();
}

This applies to comments too :

/**
 * A function to forget. Just a demo function for
 * showing code standards. Nothing is Nothing.
 */

There might be a need to extend from 80 characters if it is a control structure. In this case, we can on one condition : it must be understandable.

Another thing is that all lines that are kept out for prettiness mustn’t have any characters, even whitespaces.

Variables & Functions

As said before, a space should be in between ‘=’ in variables :

$var = "content";
$var .= "content";

In case of variables that are together of different sizes, adding more space will help to read it better :

$name                 = "";
$fullName             = "";
$aLitttleLongVariable = "";

In the case of functions :

myFunction($var1, $var2);

Functions should return meaningful data. It’s better to avoid NULL as return and instead use boolean false. Use :

function myFunction() { return true; }

and not :

function myFunction() { return "true"; }

or :

function myFunction() { return TRUE; }

Arrays

The items of arrays should be separated with whitespace and inbetween "=>" :

$myArray = array('hello', 'world', 'me' => 'him');

It can be also made more pretty by :

$myArray = array(
 'hello' => 'a',
 'world' => 'b',
 'me' => 'him'
);

Quotes

It’s better to use double quotes (") in PHP, but both single quote and double quote have good uses.

Comments

Comments should start by "/*" and end with "*/". Each line of comment must start with "" too :

/**
 * Reads configuration & set Software according to it
 * All lines must start with *
 */

This also have the 80 chars limit.

Naming

All function names and variable names must be in lowercase and words should be separated by underscore (_) or you can do the caps way :

myFunction()
my_function()

But, your project must only use one of the above methods.

Conclusion

It’s better if all your projects follow the same coding standards as it will help you and other who read the code as well. This coding standards are my opinion only. You can choose your own and write it down in a document or on your mind and follow it forever in your coding life.

Sample Page

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 12:07:31 +0000

This is an example page. It’s different from a blog post because it will stay in one place and will show up in your site navigation (in most themes). Most people start with an About page that introduces them to potential site visitors. It might say something like this:

Hi there! I’m a bike messenger by day, aspiring actor by night, and this is my blog. I live in Los Angeles, have a great dog named Jack, and I like piña coladas. (And gettin’ caught in the rain.)

…or something like this:

The XYZ Doohickey Company was founded in 1971, and has been providing quality doohickeys to the public ever since. Located in Gotham City, XYZ employs over 2,000 people and does all kinds of awesome things for the Gotham community.

As a new WordPress user, you should go to your dashboard to delete this page and create new pages for your content. Have fun!

Drupal 8 HTML5 Initiative

Sun, 07 Dec 2014 13:43:57 +0000

HTML5 is the newest HTML version and it has tons of new features. New input types, output & input (audio, video) and many more. It is now absolutely necessary for projects to move to HTML5 to enjoy new features.

Drupal is also converting to HTML5 in the upcoming stable 8.0 release. Drupal has started the HTML5 Initiative to convert Drupal to HTML5. Now, this will upgrade Drupal into new heights.

HTML5

HTML5 Logo

The latest version of HTML upgrades the old HTML to new technology. Most latest browsers already supports HTML5 which includes :

Google Chrome
Chromium
Firefox
Safari
Opera
IE 10+

What’s awesome about HTML5 is that it contains lots of new stuff that makes Web more like an OS. More integration with the Hardware is one of the core features of HTML5. This means that you can :

Record With Web Camera
Record With Microphone
Play Songs & Videos
Animations (2D & 3D)
Access User’s File information with restrictions
Create & Access Local Site Data
Create Offline Websites

JavaScript is also updated along with HTML5 which also has the Canvas API that replaces the use of Flash in websites. This means Adobe will lose its monopoly over web browsers and no more need to install Flash !

I’ve chose HTML5 initiative to blog, because it’s simply the best and most needed improvement for Drupal as it will improve Drupal very much.

The Initiative

Drupal HTML5 Initiative Logo

The initiative is made to convert the existing Drupal to HTML5. As part of this initiative Drupal will be revamping most of the templates and theme functions and implementing new form input types and elements. It’s a big challenge, but also a great opportunity to make Drupal‘s markup and CSS the best it can be.

The organizers of the Initiative are :

The initiative is organizing discussions and meetings on what to implement in Drupal 8 and how it should be implemented. They plan to make the themes responsive with CSS and style with new CSS 3 transitions, animations and new effects.

They are also planning to restyle all of current Drupal GUI to something more modern and stylish. This includes comments, site body, themes and others. Mobile is becoming the most used device to access the internet and therefore Drupal should be ready to welcome the mobile users. The initiative organizers have agreed that the Drupal themes are not compatible with mobile and it should be made responsive.

Responsive images and updation of jQuery to 2.0 has been done in Drupal 8. This means that the new Drupal 8 frontend won’t support IE versions of less than 9. This is a good thing, because support of older browsers mean more sized files and if the code is only made for the modern browsers, less size in JS and CSS files can be achieved.

Mobile initiative is an another initiative linked with this :

My Contribution

I joined the group and went over it’s Twitter Page and found an issue. It was "Border on "details" element in system.theme.css producing weird artifact". I checked the problem and it existed. Apparently, in the Configuration -> Extend page, if the description of each modules are over a specific limit, then it won’t be shown.

I fixed the problem by removing the height limit of ".system-modules td details", changing "white-space" property and by adding "word-wrap" property. As a whole, it became :

.system-modules td details {
  border: 0;
  margin: 0;
  display: flex;
  min-height: 20px;
  white-space: pre-line;
  word-wrap: break-word;
}

Now, the bug is gone and the description is shown even if it’s long. Here’s my patch on the issue page.

UPDATE : With the patch, there was another problem. Flexbox is not supported on IE 9. I hate IE. But, I think since Flex won’t work in IE, block will be the display property value. So, it will work normally like in Chrome. What made me add flex value is that, in Firefox and extra height is added since white-space is "pre-line".

Contribute

Anyone can contribute to this HTML Initiative by going to the Group Page and Join. The official IRC channel #drupal-html5 is there to help anyone who want to contribute. There is also a Twitter page of Drupal HTML5 Initiative.

#drupal-html5 is smaller crowd, dedicated to discussions about HTML5 and Drupal. An IRC meeting is conducted every two weeks to discuss priorities, progress and issues. The meeting announcements are posted in the HTML5 group, which sends e-mail notifications for new posts/events.

Reproducing Drupal Contact Module Issue

Sat, 06 Dec 2014 17:44:25 +0000

This post contains information regarding the Drupal Core issue. This post will explain how the bug was reproduced and how the test patch was created.

The bug was "Wrong message displayed after contact form mail(s) cannot be sent".

Requires

Drupal 8.0
Contact Module

Note that URLs mentioned in this post "http://mydrupalsite.com/" is the URL of your Drupal installation and "/mydrupalsite" is the folder location of Drupal installation.

Reproducing Bug

First of all we need to make a contact form page. Go to the Contact Module configuration page :

http://mydrupalsite.com/admin/structure/contact

Click on "Add Contact Form" button and in the new window that you go to, fill up the form with the asked information. Example :

Drupal Contact Form Config Page

In the Recipients filed, type in an email address that doesn’t exist. Tick the "Make this the default form" and submit the form by "Save" button.

Go to the Contact Page of your site :

http://mydrupalsite.com/contact

Fill up the contact form with some data and submit the form :

Filling up the Drupal Contact Form

Now, we will see the bug :

Drupal Bug

As you can see, the success message is shown even when the email was failed to send.

Reproducing Bug in Tests

Create following test file :

/mydrupalsite/core/modules/contact/src/Tests/FailedContactPersonalTest.php

I made a new test class by extending "WebTestBase" class and made the testPersonalContactFail() method to reproduce bug :

function testPersonalContactFail() {
  // Create a valid form.
  $this->admin_user = $this->drupalCreateUser(array('access site-wide contact form', 'administer contact forms', 'administer permissions', 'administer users'));

  $this->drupalLogin($this->admin_user);
  $this->addContactForm($id = Unicode::strtolower($this->randomMachineName(16)), $label = $this->randomMachineName(16), "[email protected]", '', TRUE);
 $this->assertRaw(t('Contact form %label has been added.', array('%label' => $label)));

  // Submit the contact form.
  $this->drupalLogout();
  $this->drupalGet('/contact');
  user_role_grant_permissions(DRUPAL_ANONYMOUS_RID, array('access site-wide contact form'));
  $this->submitContact("Test", "[email protected]", "Sample Message", $id, "Just a sample message");

  // Check the bug messages
  $this->assertText(t('Your message has been sent.'), 'Displayed "Message sent"');
  /* The following code only works if emails can be sent in tests */
  //$this->assertText(t('Unable to send email. Contact the site administrator if the problem persists.'), 'Displayed "Unable to send email..."');
}

The messages due to the bug that are these :

Unable to send email. Contact the site administrator if the problem persists.
Your message has been sent.

was checked in the output using $this->assertText() function. But, checking of the "Unable to send email. Contact the site administrator if the problem persists." is not possible, because email is not actually sent in testing phase, so to output that message. Therefore that line is commented.

Go to "http://mydrupalsite.com/admin/config/development/testing", expand "contact" and tick the checkbox aside to "DrupalcontactTestsNotExistEmailContactTest" :

Choose the contact module for testing

Click on "Run Tests" button at the end of the page. Now the testing is started. It will take some time to finish.
Now, the success test page is shown :

Success Test Page

Patching

By using git, create a patch. For this, go to the root of Drupal installation, open terminal and commit the changed file :

git branch 2348119-Reproduce-bug-test-case
git checkout 2348119-Reproduce-bug-test-case
git add core/modules/contact/src/Tests/NotExistEmailContactTest.php
git commit core/modules/contact/src/Tests/NotExistEmailContactTest.php -m "Reproduced the bug https://www.drupal.org/node/2348119"

Create the patch file :

git diff 8.0.x > Reproduce-bug-test-case-2348119-38.patch

Uploading to Issue page

Went to the issue page and added a new comment with the Patch file "Reproduce-bug-test-case-2348119-38.patch" :

Uploading the Patch to Issue Page

Here is the comment link : https://www.drupal.org/node/2348119#comment-9409977

Conclusion

This experience gave me new information about Testing in Drupal. I realised that emails being sent in tests doesn’t actually get sent. Instead it is gone into the Drupal mail inbox. I agree with this method as if it was not like this, many emails will go into the recipient’s or admin’s inbox.

This was my first patch into the Drupal Core. Felt a little scary before doing it as I’m taking part in the CORE of DRUPAL !

With this little experience, I gained the confidence to make patches for the Drupal Core more !

Into The Drupal Community

Fri, 05 Dec 2014 02:31:55 +0000

I have been using WordPress for 2 years and haven’t tried out other CMS platforms. I heard about Drupal through the internet and via my I.T textbook of my school. But never got the time to try it out.

Now, I’m a participant of Google Code In, 2014 and Drupal was one of the Open Source organization in it. I tried Wikimedia last year but it was hard, because it was really big for me to work on. This year, I chose Drupal, because that it is a CMS platform used by millions around the world and I thought if many other programmers can work with it, Why can’t I ? Since I already have experience with WordPress, it wouldn’t be hard to understand too.

So, I claimed a task and worked on making a patch of a Test for a module. What really got me thinking and exciting was that, how awesome testing is. You don’t get testing stuff on WordPress or any other CMS platforms that I use. A module can test itself to see whether it will work with the version of Dupal. How cool is that ?

All you have to do to make a test file is to make a class, add code into it and Test ! The test file behaves like what a user would do in a browser and Drupal will make that code into action – browsing like a user.

Community is Big, really BIG

The best feature of Drupal is that it have a strong, able and big community. If you have any problems with Drupal or one of it’s modules, you can ask it up in the issues page as well as in the IRC. Since you have a live communication, solving the problems is very easy.

If I needed any help, the community is always there to help and there are many places where I could knock on to get help. It’s this community that makes Drupal what it is right now.

Drupal.org

Though there are many good things about Drupal which I experienced in a single task, there are also some stuff that I think would need to be improved.

Look & Feel

The homepage of Drupal is good. Though it would be nice to have a slideshow of the screenshots of websites created with Drupal. It would make a visitor going to the homepage thinking that "Wow, That {site} I go often was made with Drupal !". This will attract lots of web developers, especially newbies who are looking to learn a CMS.

Drupal.org is a very fast site. Loading and performance is the best and I know it’s fast, because I have a slow internet connection. If any improvement is going to be made in the styling of the site, then the changes shouldn’t affect the speed of the site what is right now.

Module Install

If you want to install modules on Drupal, you have to get the download file URL or upload he file by yourself. This is an annoying thing. Instead like WordPress, a page inside Drupal, where you can search and install with a single button is needed. See this example yourself.

Documentation

The docs are too long and would take forever to completely read it. Instead, less words and more examples (tiny) will help to understand way better. Long docs should be moved into another section rather than as the main one. If you look into the docs, you can see what I mean.

Docs like this are good. But long docs with crowded texts like this should be separated into different sections.

Dashboard

By default, the admin dashboard of a Drupal site is empty with 3 blocks. Instead a default dashboard should be made and then allow the user to customize rather than forcing the user to create one himself like in WordPress.

Database

If you look at the database of Drupal, you will be absolutely confused. In my database only, there are 77 tables where as in WordPress, there will be only 11. I think this is because that Drupal is more advanced. But, for a developer to understand what happens in the background, he can’t. Because, it’s absolutely confusing and you won’t have any idea what is in the background. Check this out :

Conclusion

I would like to make a website myself with Drupal and see how it goes. Maybe, if it’s good then I’ll move this website from WordPress to Drupal itself. I learnt may about Drupal with a single task and what all could I learn if I do more tasks ? Drupal is great, but it should be greater.

Variables in Bash ": command not found"

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 03:30:51 +0000

Bash is like the very complicated language, even a space can make a syntax error. But, when you get into it often, you will get a hang of it and it will be easy.

This post is a solution to one of the most common problems that happen to a newbie in Bash and it’s about a single whitespace.

Here is a sample Bash file :

a = 50
echo $a

and when you execute it, the error will be as follows :

script.sh: line 1: a: command not found

This error is produced by the error in defining the variable "a". There should be no space before or after the "=". If you remove it, then the script will run successfully.

When there is a space after "a", Bash thinks that "a" is a command followed by it’s attributes. Since there is no command named "a", it will produce a "command not found" error.

Append Contents to Files in Bash

Wed, 19 Nov 2014 03:30:08 +0000

In Bash, we can add contents to file easily using the > character. Like this :

echo "myContents" > ~/myfile.txt

What if you want to append contents to the file without overwriting ? The easiest way to do this is change the ">" to ">>". Just by making this small change, appending will be done :

echo "myContents" >> ~/myfile.txt

Even if the file doesn’t exist, Bash will create one with the contents given to append.

You can also use cat to append :

cat >> ~/file.txt << EOF
This is a content that can have any type of characters
single quotes and double quotes can be included.
EOF

if, else, elif Conditions in Bash

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 03:30:10 +0000

All programming languages have the if & else conditions and they’re different in syntax according to each programming languages. In Bash, it’s really different and even a small space can cause syntax errors. So, you have to be careful while writing Bash code.

In this post, I’ll give you many examples on how to use if and else conditions in Bash.

if, else

a="AC"
if [ $a = "AC" ]; then
	echo "yes"
else
	echo "no"
fi

Notice the usage of then. It’s necessary to let Bash know that if the condition returns TRUE, do the code below it.

The if condition is closed by fi. It’s the way of using "}" to close the condition in other languages and then, the way of starting "{" in other languages.

But, else doesn’t have special closing command; the fi will do. Unlike "==" in other languages, in Bash just an "=" will do to check if a variable contain a string.

The space between "[" is really necessary. If you remove it, syntax errors like these will occur :

file.sh: line 2: [AC: command not found
file.sh: line 2: syntax error near unexpected token `then'
file.sh: line 2: `if[ $a = "a" ]; then

Examples

Check if the variable "a" doesn’t have the value "AC" :

a="a"
if [ ! $a = "AC" ]; then
    echo "yes, a is not 'AC'"
fi

Check if the file "/dev/null" exist :

if [ -a /dev/null ]; then
    echo "File Exists"
else
    echo "File doesn't exist"
fi

Check if the directory "/dev" exist :

if [ -d /dev ]; then
    echo "Directory Exists"
else
    echo "Directory doesn't exist"
fi

elif

This command elif is the same as else if used in other programming languages. It should be used after if and before fi.

a="AC"
if [ $a = "a" ]; then
    echo "it's 'a'"
elif [ $a = "AC" ]; then
    echo "it's 'AC'"
fi

The else command also can be used within this :

a="k"
if [ $a = "a" ]; then
    echo "it's 'a'"
elif [ $a = "AC" ]; then
    echo "it's 'AC'"
else
    echo "it's none of it"
fi

Examples

Check if variable "a" contains "a", else check if the value is "false" :

a=false
if [ $a = "a" ]; then
    echo "it's 'a'"
elif [ $a = false ]; then
    echo "it's FALSE"
fi

Check if the value of variable "a" is greater than or less than 51 :

a=50
if [ $a -gt 51 ]; then
    echo "it's more than 50"
elif [ $a -lt 51 ]; then
    echo "it's less than 51"
fi

Creating a File with Contents in Bash

Mon, 17 Nov 2014 03:30:50 +0000

It’s really easy to create a file in Bash with cat and > :

cat "/home/simsu/file.txt"
> "/home/simsu/file.txt"

But, what if you want to add contents to file too ? In this case, we can use cat and echo. Here’s how we do it in echo :

echo "My File, My Choice" > "/home/simsu/file.txt"

But, there’s a problem with doing like this. Since there is an option to limit the characters of a Terminal command, adding large contents is not possible. In this case, we need to use cat.

The usage is very simple and can have different kinds of quotes and the ending of the contents is determined by a string you mention.

cat > /home/simsu/file.txt << ENDOFFILE
My File, My Choice
I have the right to write what I want in this file
and no NSA can stop me from doing it.
	I had privacy before NSA and the whole internet
and now I'm just a tiny little book that was read
by everyone....
ENDOFFILE

In the above case, we tell cat to add the contents until the string "ENDOFFILE" comes up. This ending string is mentioned in the first line as well as at the ending of the contents.

Since, we don’t use any quotes, you can use quotes in the content without any syntax problem at all.

Note that the ending string you mentioned should only occur at the end of the contents. Otherwise, the full content won’t be added to the file.

Check if Bash Script is ran by Root User

Thu, 13 Nov 2014 03:30:56 +0000

Root users have the privilege to do administrative stuff in Linux and if you’re creating a Bash script to install something or change something in the system, you need root. So, checking whether the script was ran by root is very important.

if [ "$EUID" -ne 0 ]
   then echo "Please run as root"
   exit
fi

There is no else condition. You can add the code which will does stuff in root after the above. If root didn’t ran the script, then the script will terminate itself without continuing after "Please run as root" message is displayed.

Example :

if [ "$EUID" -ne 0 ]
   then echo "Please run as root"
   exit
fi
print "The script is continuing"

Newton Color Disc in jQuery

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 03:30:05 +0000

Newton Color Disc is used to find the color got by the combination of multiple colors. The color is not actually formed, but the eye identifies the combination as another color due to persistence of vision.

Normally, Newton’s Color disk is made by marking sectors filled with color on a circular shaped disc. When this disc is rotated at high speed, we see the circle as another color. This principle led to the method of creating different colors by the combination of some primary colors at different percentage compositions.

We use this principle in the web too. The RGB combination is used in web pages to make colors too. If the colors Red, Green and Blue is mixed together, we get White color.

I have decided to convert the Newton Color Disc in to the digital state which led to the creation of the Newton Color Disc jQuery plugin. With this plugin, a Newton Color Disc can be made with combinations of any colour !

Download Demo

Components

It mainly use jQuery and for creating the circle with sectors, the plugin uses **Raphaël JS **library. It is a great library for creating SVG images by JavaScript itself.

For animation, we completely use CSS. The new CSS 3.0 specially helps to rotate the disc by animation.

How It Works

When the plugin function is called on an element, then a div element containing a SVG image is appended to the element from which it was called.

The SVG image is of a circle with sectors filled with colors that was given to the plugin. Then, the disc is rotated by the calling of another functions. What this function does is that starts the animation using CSS after setting the speed using animation-speed property.

As the value of animation-speed property decreases, the speed of rotation increases. So, it’s inversely proportional.

Usage

$("#holder").colorDisc()

Adds the color disc into #holder element. But, does not start rotating.

$("#holder").colorDisc("speed", "0.0001")

Sets the speed of the disc to "0.0001". As the value of the speed decreases, the rotation of disc in creases. So, the rotation of disc with the speed value "1" will be very slower than that of the disc which have value of "0.01".

The speed of the disc can be changes anytime even when it’s rotating. But, the disc will restart rotation from the beginning.

$("#holder").colorDisc("remove")

Stops the animation and removes the color disc inside the #holder element.

That’s all the usages which I think is enough to manage a color disc. Note that the color disc will work greater on computers which have a good Graphics Processing Unit – GPU.

Replace Strings in Files With PHP & Python

Thu, 30 Oct 2014 03:30:58 +0000

There are softwares already that helps to replace a string in a file. Suppose, if you’re making a program that requires saving some data in to a file. By "adding", the program is actually replacing a word. Let’s see how it’s done in PHP & Python.

This is the file where we are going to replace the word :

thisWord
I got thisWord for making it thatWord
replace thisWord already my friend.

We replace the word "thisWord" to "thatWord" containing in this file.

PHP

<?php
$file = "/home/simsu/Other/projects/Programs/PHP/test.txt";
$contents = file_get_contents($file);
$newContent = str_replace("thisWord", "thatWord", $contents);
file_put_contents($file, $newContent);
?>

I’m not using fopen for this, because to make the code short.

Python

import os
file = "/home/simsu/Other/projects/Programs/PHP/test.txt"
fp = open(file, "r+")
contents = fp.read(os.path.getsize(file))
newContent = contents.replace("thisWord", "thatWord")
fp.seek(0)
fp.truncate()
fp.write(newContent)
fp.close()

We use open for getting the contents of the file as well as to write to it. We truncate the file because otherwise the original content will be repeated again and finally the file connection is closed.

Folder Recursion in PHP & Python

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 03:30:54 +0000

A folder has files and sometimes sub directories. If we use the normal function for obtaining contents of a folder, we won’t get the details of the files in the sub directories. In this case, we have to look over into the sub folders and into other sub folders within this sub folder. This looking up of files deep down is called Recursive Folder Searching.

By doing this, we can search for a file or do various actions with each files thus recursed. An example case of this is the replacing softwares like regexxer. It uses recursion to replace a string to another in multiple files in the same directory even under any sub folders.

In this tutorial, you will see how to do this Recursion search of a folder in the **PHP **& Python programming languages. PHP have a builtin class for doing this, but complicated and for Python, it’s easier but have 2 loops.

PHP

It’s very short and effective. An array of files is made and it’s looped. Each file array will also have a SplFileInfo object to easily get the file info.

<?php
$path = realpath("/var/www/html");
$objects = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($path), RecursiveIteratorIterator::SELF_FIRST); // Objects of different files
foreach($objects as $location => $object){
	$name = $object->getFileName(); // Get the file name
	echo "{$name} - {$location}n";
}
?>

The key of the returned array is the location and the value is the SplFileInfo object. Note that we use getFileName() function of the SplFileInfo object to retrieve the name of the file. We can use many others.

Python

import os
path = "/var/www/html"
for root, dirs, filenames in os.walk(path):
	for file in filenames:
		location = os.path.join(root, file)
		print file, "-", location

As you can see, we have two loops. One of the directories and the second of the files.

The first loop with os.walk(path) will fetch all the directories and the files in each of them. Then we loop over the files and prints the location and name of file.

Word Palindrome Check in PHP & Python

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 03:30:50 +0000

Palindromes are unique words that are read the same forward and backward. We can identify them using out eyes and brain. How about we identify using a simple program in PHP & Python ?

PHP

<?php
$word = strtolower("Malayalam");
$splitted = str_split($word);
$reversedWord = "";
$length = strlen($word);
for($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++)
	$reversedWord .= $splitted[$length - $i - 1];
echo $word == $reversedWord ? "It's a palindrome !n" : "It's not a palindromen";
?>

Instead of the loop to reverse the word, you can also use :

$reversedWord = strrev($word)

instead of :

$splitted = str_split($word);
$reversedWord = "";
$length = strlen($word);
for($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++)
         $reversedWord .= $splitted[$length - $i - 1];

A line break is added to the output to make output neat if the program is ran via terminal.

Python

word = "Malayalam"
word = word.lower()
reversedWord = "";
for i in range(1, len(word) + 1, 1):
	reversedWord += word[-i]
if word == reversedWord :
	print "It's a palindrome !"
else:
	print "It's not a palindrome"

The input word should be given to the variable "word" in both the programs and both will output "It’s a palindrome" if the given word is a palindrome and if not, outputs "It’s not a palindrome".

Executing Terminal Commands in Python & PHP

Thu, 23 Oct 2014 03:30:55 +0000

Python & PHP are great languages and there are many similarities between them. In this short post, you will learn how to execute terminal commands in PHP & Python.

PHP

As I said before many times in other posts, there areexec andsystem command to execute commands :

exec("firefox ‘http://subinsb.com’");

Or in the other way :

system("firefox ‘http://subinsb.com’");

Python

In Python, there is no exec or system function. But there is a system function in the os nodule. So, you have to include the os module first and then execute the command :

import os
os.system("firefox ‘http://subinsb.com’")

Infinite loop in PHP & Python

Wed, 22 Oct 2014 03:30:38 +0000

Infinite loops are loops that doesn’t have a defined ending. It will continue to run until the program it’s running in is terminated. Normally an infinite loop is created using while loop and is used for continuity of the same program.

In this short tutorial, you will learn how to make an infinite loop in both PHP & Python.

PHP

There is no need of defining any variables.

while(1){
  print "Hello"
}

It can be done in two other ways :

while(True){
  print "Hello"
}

for (;;) {
  print "Hello"
}

Python

Same as before, but with some minor changes :

while(True) :
   print "Hello"

Configuring SSH to Enter a Password Automatically

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 03:30:46 +0000

As you know, when you SSH into a system, it will ask for the password which you have to enter everytime. But in cases where you’re SSHing in a script or in a loop, its a really time consuming and boring thing to enter password everytime.

So, in this case you have to configure SSH to use a password to enter when asked. But, there is no default option in the ssh command to set this due to security reasons I think. Therefore we should use another way to automatically enter the password.

Fortunately, there is a program called sshpass that will enter the password automatically and logs in. All you have to do is, give the password and the normal ssh command.

You can install the sshpass command in an Ubuntu system using this :

sudo apt-get install sshpass

Yes, it’s in the official Ubuntu repository. sshpass works by fooling ssh into thinking that the password was entered by an interactive user.

The password should be given in the -p parameter and the following should be the ssh command. No separate host name should be given to sshpass. Here’s an example :

This is the normal ssh command which is used for opening firefox browser in system of IP address 192.168.10.1 :

ssh [email protected] "firefox http://subinsb.com"

And this is how the above command become in sshpass assuming the password as "subin" :

sshpass -p "subin" ssh [email protected] "firefox http://subinsb.com"

You can also use sshpass to use a file to read the password and more.

Note that sshpass is its infacy at the moment and therefore bugs are highly possible. But, for me it worked like a charm. You can read the manual of sshpass here at the online man page.

Blog Changes

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 03:30:12 +0000

It’s been some time since I made some changes to the blog apart from new posts. It took me this much time because of school, of course. Here are the main changes that I hope to add to the blog :

HTTPS
No Ads
Short Posts

HTTPS

There’s nothing like feeling secure in Internet. So, I have decided to add HTTPS support to the site. It’s made possible free of cost, because CloudFlare actually gives HTTPS feature with certificate for absolutely free and it doesn’t require for your server to have a certificate or SSL support.

Check the HTTPS enabled site and the direct server one.

No More Ads

I have decided to remove the ads when the ad earnings reach 20$ (currently 18.5$). You might think I’m crazy for disabling ads. But I got pretty reasons for this :

I got more donation money than from ad revenue
Ads are not cool
I hate ads
It slows down the site
Invasion of privacy

These 5 reasons and more made me wanted to stop showing ads. The ads won’t be showed in any of the sites on this domain including Demos, Open, Search & Labs.

Short Posts

Since I’m constantly busy, I don’t have time to write long, long posts. So I decided to share useful stuff in less words. The first post will be published on 22nd October.

The short posts can be seen here. With this feature, I can publish more posts easily and efficiently.

Theme : Round Border

Before, there was no round border. Instead, it was just flat. To make it more modern, I have added "border-radius" property with value "10px" to the widgets of sidebar and the article holder.

Blocking Brute Force in PHP Website

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 03:30:25 +0000

Brute Force is a time consuming cracking process to log in to a user’s account of a web site. It’s not common and requires very high resources including the most important factor : TIME.

What’s Brute Force

Suppose, your email website have an account of username "abel". His big enemy who is a nerd, wants to send rubbish stuff to Abel’s friends to make his friends angry. Your site is heavily protected except for Brute Force and the enemy is willing to give as much time to log in to Abel’s account.

Enemy makes a file with possible passwords and made a script that send login POST data to site’s login page. The script is continuously ran with passwords made in every possible way and finally after some hours or days, the enemy entered in to the user’s account.

A brute force attack makes millions of requests to your site which eventually makes your site down or heats up your server.

Solution

One of the many solutions is to block the user from doing login action for some time after 3 or 5 incorrect login attempts.

Another solution is to do a captcha verification every time for login action after 3 or 5 incorrect login attempts.

Another way is to temporarily blocking the user account after 3 or 5 incorrect login attempts and that user can only access his / her account after clicking a link that was sent to their email address.

Efficient Solution

There are more solutions which are superbly effective, but requires more usage of database. So, the most efficient way is to take as much less usage of database and at the same time, prevent brute forcing.

So, here’s what we’re going to do :

Create a new column in the users table for storing the current login status of the account
Update that column of user everytime the user attempts login whether it’s successful or not
Does action according to the value of the column

Let’s add the column with the name "attempt" with **varchar(15) **:

ALTER TABLE `users`  ADD `attempt` VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL ;

Now, on the code of login processing, we collect the current attempt value of the user :

$status = $rows['attempt'];

Before we continue, think of the $this->updateUser() function as a mechanism to update the user details according to the array as the first parameter of the function and the user is mentioned as it’s ID in second parameter.

Add this after the code of incorrect password :

if($status == ""){
    // User was not logged in before
    $this->updateUser(array(
       "attempt" => "1" // Tried 1 time
    ), $userID);
}else if($status == 5){
    $this->updateUser(array(
       "attempt" => "b-" . strtotime("+5 minutes", time()) // Blocked, only available for re-login at the time in UNIX timestamp
    ), $userID);
}else if(substr($status, 0, 2) == "b-"){
    // Account blocked
}else if($status < 5){     // If the attempts are less than 5 and not 5     $this->updateUser(array(
       "attempt" => $status + 1 // Tried current tries + 1 time
    ), $userID);
}

What the above code does is update the attempt field of the users table according to existing value in it :

if status is null, then update it with "1"
if status is less than "5", then update it with adding "1" to the existing value
if status is "5", then update it with "b-" plus the timestamp of current time + 5 minutes. eg : "b-1412580325"
if status is starting with character "b-", do nothing

Add this before we check if password hash is that of the login password hash :

if(substr($status, 0, 2) == "b-"){
  $blockedTime = substr($status, 2);
  if(time() < $blockedTime){
     $block = true;
  }else{
     // remove the block, because the time limit is over
     $this->updateUser(array(
      "attempt" => "" // No tries at all
     ), $us_id);
  }
}

The above code will check if the account is blocked and if it is, then the variable **$block **will have value boolean TRUE. Also, if the time of blocking is over, then the attempt field is updated with a null value.

So, before when you check whether password is correct or not, see if the $block variable is set :

if(!isset($block)){
 // Check login
}

If it is set, then don’t process login and display a message to the user that the account is blocked. You can also retrieve the time when the blocking is over from $blockedTime variable. It is a **UNIX **timestamp value, so it can be changed to something like this :

echo date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $blockedTime); // 2014-10-20 12:00:00

This method for blocking brute force attack is used in the login system I created logSys.

Accessing /var/log Files in PHP

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 03:30:48 +0000

If you have tried to access a log file in /var/log using PHP in Linux, you will see the "Permission denied" error. This is because, Apache doesn’t have read permission on the log file.

Let’s look at the user groups that have permission to access the log files : it’s root and the program which created the file. Suppose, let’s say the log file is "/var/log/squid/access.log". That file’s group and owner will be "proxy" and others won’t even have the read permission on it except **root **ofcourse.

Since, Apache is not in the group of proxy, it don’t have permission to read or write the file. Here are the 3 ways to grant Apache access to the file :

Add www-data user into the proxy group
Make the group of the log file www-data
Change permission of log file to 0666

But, if the Squid server is restarted, the log file is removed and re created. So, permission are reset to what it should have been. Hence the way 2 & 3 is not permanent.

You can add www-data into the proxy group by using this :

sudo usermod -G proxy www-data && sudo service apache2 restart

The above command also restarts the Apache server to update it’s cache of file permissions or something else (I exactly don’t know why).

Note that by doing the above command, you give all permissions that proxy group has to Apache, even the write permission. This is not exactly required, if you just want to read the log file.

In this case, we can use the adm group (it’s not "admin"). adm group only has read permission to some log files. The group was specifically created to read log files. Note that in versions of Ubuntu >= 12.04, this was renamed to admin (I read it somewhere, but in Lubuntu 14.04, it’s not renamed).

Hence, it’s better to add www-data user to the adm group :

sudo usermod -G adm www-data && sudo service apache2 restart

Now, all you have to do is, change the log file’s group to adm, by using :

sudo chown proxy:adm /var/log/squid/access.log

and the owner of the log file is proxy. The first string before ":" is the user and the second, the group.

In this tutorial, we used the Squid Web Server‘s log file as example. It’s just an example and can be used for any other log files. It can also be used for other files, but be careful – you’re messing with the core of Linux.

Create HTML Chess Game With jQuery

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 03:30:24 +0000

We all love to play Chess, the most fascinating game that absolutely needs good thinking powers. You know that, comparing a human to a computer logically and arithmetically, computer has the superior power. So, certainly if you play a chess game with computer as opponent, a 90% chance is for the computer to be the winner. But, it is not sure.

It was actually in C language by Oscar Toledo Gutiérrez, who created chess game program in less than 2 KB. Since, it’s C, compiling is necessary. But, who have time for that. Let’s make it in the web.

Download Demo

We only need jQuery and a plugin I created for making the game. You can see the plugin code here and the minified version here.

The first thing you need to do is make a HTML file and select the element where you want to add the game into :

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
 	<head>
		<script src="//lab.subinsb.com/projects/jquery/core/jquery-latest.js"></script>
		<script src="//lab.subinsb.com/projects/jquery/chess/jquery.chess.min.js"></script>
 	</head>
 	<body>
		<div id="content">
			<h2>jQuery Chess Game</h2>
			<div id="game"></div>
		</div>
		<!-- http://subinsb.com/jquery-chess-game -->
 	</body>
</html>

We are loading the latest jQuery version and the minified version of the plugin.

Now, we tell the plugin to make the game in the #game element :

$(document).ready(function(){
    $("#game").chess();
});

Insert the above code in a

jQuery Birthday Form Field & Checker

jQuery Birthday Form Field & Checker

Birthday :
Users under 13 are not allowed.
YY-MM-DD

birthchecker.js

$(document).ready(function(){
v=$(‘#birth’);
function above13(v){
cur=new Date();
cls=new Date(v.val());
age = new Date(cur – cls).getFullYear() – 1970;
console.log(age);
if(age<13){
v.css("background","red");
$("#ermsg").show();
}else{
v.css("background","white");
$("#ermsg").hide();
}
}
v.DatePicker({
format:’Y-m-d’,
date: v.val(),
current: v.val(),
starts: 1,
position: ‘r’,
onBeforeShow:function(){
v.DatePickerSetDate(v.val(), true);
},
onChange:function(formated, dates){
v.val(formated);
v.DatePickerHide();
above13(v);
}
});
v.on("keyup",function(){
above13(v);
});
});

submit.php

function age($birthday){
list($day,$month,$year) = explode("/",$birthday);
$year_diff = date("Y") – $year;
$month_diff = date("m") – $month;
$day_diff = date("d") – $day;
if ($day_diff < 0 && $month_diff==0){$year_diff–;}
if ($day_diff < 0 && $month_diff < 0){$year_diff–;}
return $year_diff;
/* http://www.subinsb.com/2013/05/the-best-age-calculation-code-in-php.html */
}
$birth=$_POST[‘birth’];
if(isset($_POST) && $birth!="){
$birth=explode("-",$birth);
$nbir=$birth[2]."/".$birth[1]."/".$birth[0];
$age=age($nbir);
echo "Your Age is $age.
Click Here To Go To Demo Form";
}
?>

That’s all. If you have any problems / suggestions / feedback, comment it. I am here 10/7.

How To Create A Simple Password Strength Checker In jQuery

Sun, 13 Oct 2013 16:55:00 +0000

A lot of new hacking methods are coming day by day. So it’s the programmers duty to make their user’s password secure. Here is a simple Password Strength Checker created using jQuery. The code contain a function got from WordPress (I modified it) which is the core component of the checker. This checker will check the following on the password :

Have minimum value of 4 characters.

Whether the username matches with password

Whether the password contain small a-z characters and capital A-Z characters.

Whether the password has numeric characters and special characters.

If all of the above criteria is matched, the checker will give a Strong Password message.

Download Demo

Create two files : index.html and passchecker.js
We will also include the jQuery library on the HTML file.

index.html

<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js"></script> <script src="passchecker.js"></script> <title>Simple jQuery Password Strength Checker</title> </head> <body> <div id="content" style="margin-top:10px;height:100%;"> <center><h1>Simple jQuery Password Strength Checker</h1></center> <table><tbody> <tr> <td> Username : </td> <td> <input type="text" size="35" id="user" placeholder="Username"/> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Password : </td> <td> <input type="password" size="35" id="pass" placeholder="Type A Password"/> </td> </tr> <tr> <td></td> <td> <div id="ppbar" title="Strength"><div id="pbar"></div></div> <div id="ppbartxt"></div> </td> <tr> <td> Retype Password : </td> <td> <input type="password" size="35" id="pass2" placeholder="ReType Password"/> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </div> <style> input{ border:none; padding:8px; } #ppbar{ background:#CCC; width:300px; height:15px; margin:5px; } #pbar{ margin:0px; width:0px; background:lightgreen; height: 100%; } #ppbartxt{ text-align:right; margin:2px; } </style>  </body> </html>

passchecker.js

function passwordStrength(f,i,d){var k=1,h=2,b=3,a=4,c=5,g=0,j,e;if((f!=d)&&d.length>0){return c}if(f.length==0){return 0;}if(f.length<4){return k}if(f.toLowerCase()==i.toLowerCase()){return h}if(f.match(/[0-9]/)){g+=10}if(f.match(/[a-z]/)){g+=26}if(f.match(/[A-Z]/)){g+=26}if(f.match(/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/)){g+=31}j=Math.log(Math.pow(g,f.length));e=j/Math.LN2;if(e<40){return h}if(e<56){return b}return a}; function widthofpr(p){ if(p==0){return "0%";} if(p==1){return "25%";} if(p==2){return "50%";} if(p==3){return "75%";} if(p==4){return "100%";} } function textofpr(p){ if(p==0){return "Type A Password";} if(p==1){return "Short Password";} if(p==2){return "Bad Password";} if(p==3){return "Good Password";} if(p==4){return "Strong Password";} if(p==5){return "Password Mismatch";} } $(document).ready(function(){ user=$("#user"); pass=$("#pass"); pass2=$("#pass2"); pbar=$("#pbar"); pbart=$("#ppbartxt"); function onKeyUp(){ pbar.css('width',widthofpr(passwordStrength(pass.val(),user.val(),pass2.val()))); pbart.text(textofpr(passwordStrength(pass.val(),user.val(),pass2.val()))); } pass.bind('keyup',function(){ onKeyUp(); }); pass2.bind('keyup',function(){ onKeyUp(); }); });

When a keypress event is fired on any one of the password fields, jQuery will check the password strength and print according to the strength. Easy as compiling Python.
If you have any problems / suggestions / feedback, contact me via comments. I am here 10/7.

Create Simple Username Availability Checker Using jQuery & PHP

Sun, 13 Oct 2013 07:07:00 +0000

Many sites have signup pages. Every programmers try to make the signup pages attractive by adding stylish input CSS codes and others. Why not add a stylish username availability checker ? It’s very easy to add and will work on jQuery versions 1.2 and up. I’m also going to tell you how to check if username is available in the server side. Of course it’s PHP. The checking is SQL Injection free too. For Executing SQL queries we will use PHP PDO.

Download Demo

First of all create two files – index.php (signup page), check.php & checker.js
It’s not necessary to set the name of signup page to index.php. Any name will work.

index.php

<html> <head> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js"></script> <script src="checker.js"></script> </head> <body> <input type="text" size="35" id="user" value="" placeholder="Type Your Desired Username"/> <input type="button" id="check" style="cursor:pointer;" value="Check Availablity"/><br/> <div style="margin:5px 15px;" id="msg">http://mysite.com/<b id="prev">subinsiby</b></div> </body> </html>

checker.js – Request To Check Username

$(document).ready(function(){ v=$("#user"); $("#check").on('click',function(){ v.attr("disabled","true"); v.css({background:"url(../cdn/load.gif) no-repeat",backgroundSize: "2em",backgroundPosition: "center right"}); $.post('check.php',{user:v.val().toLowerCase()},function(d){ v.css("background","white"); v.removeAttr("disabled"); if(d=='available'){ $("#msg").html("<span style='color:green;'>The username <b>"+v.val().toLowerCase()+"</b> is available</span>"); }else{ $("#msg").html("<span style='color:red;'>The username <b>"+v.val().toLowerCase()+"</b> is not available</span>"); } }); }); v.bind('keyup',function(){ $("#prev").text(v.val().toLowerCase()); }); });

check.php – Checks Username

<? include("config.php"); $user=strtolower($_POST['user']); if(isset($_POST) && $user!=''){ $sql=$dbh->prepare("SELECT username FROM users WHERE username=?"); $sql->execute(array($user)); if($sql->rowCount()==0){ echo "available"; }else{ echo "not-available"; } } ?>

and of course config.php

<? $host = "localhost"; // Database Hostname $port = "3306"; / /MySQL Port : Default : 3306 $user = "username"; // Databse Username Here $pass = "password"; // Databse Password Here $db = "database_name"; // Database Name $dbh = new PDO('mysql:dbname='.$db.';host='.$host.';port='.$port,$user,$pass); ?>

When the user clicks the Check Availability button, jQuery will send a POST request to check.php with user parameter containing the username value the client entered. check.php will check it’s database with the username given by AJAX call. If it matches a user response will be not-available and if it doesn’t match a user, then the response will be available.
jQuery will make changes to the page according to the AJAX response ie jQuery will take care of the rest. If you have any suggestions / feedback/ problems , say it in the comments.

How To Create A HTML, CSS, JS Code Editor Using jQuery

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:56:00 +0000

There are a lot of HTML editing services in the Web. Some of the popular services are JsFiddle and JsBin. These sites offer saving function to your account too. If you want to create a site like JSFiddle, then you are at the right place. I’m going to tell you how to create a basic HTML editing software using jQuery.

The editor we’re going to create also has a live preview service which means that the user don’t have to submit the code form every time. The preview is automatically updated using jQuery‘s keyup trigger except for **JS **code update, because Javascript can’t be added every time when user types something because there will be syntax errors.

Download Demo

First, we create the text editor layout which have a table containing HTML codes, CSS codes, JS codes and textareas. Here is the full HTML code of layout (We’re also adding the jQuery library) :

<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js"></script> <script src="htmleditor.js"></script> <table> <tbody> <tr> <td> <h2>HTML</h2> <textarea class="codes" id="html" placeholder="Your HTML Code HERE"></textarea> </td> <td> <h2>CSS</h2> <textarea class="codes" id="css" placeholder="Your CSS Code HERE"></textarea> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <h2>JS</h2> <textarea class="codes" id="js" placeholder="Your JavaScript Code HERE"></textarea> </td> <td> <h2>Preview</h2> <iframe id="preview" src="javascript:;"></iframe> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <div style="text-align:right;"><input id="upjs" type="button" value="Update And Run JS"/></div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <style> .codes,#preview{ width: 320px; height: 135px; border:2px dashed white; background:white; color:black; overflow:auto; } </style>

htmleditor.js

$(document).ready(function(){ var p=$("#preview").contents().find("body"); p.css("margin","2px"); p.html('<span id="subinsbdotcomhtmlpr"></span><style id="subinsbdotcomcsspr"></style>'); $("#html").on('keyup',function(){ p.find("#subinsbdotcomhtmlpr").html($(this).val()); }); $("#css").on('keyup',function(){ p.find("#subinsbdotcomcsspr").html($(this).val()); }); $("#js").on('change',function(){ p.find("#subinsbdotcomjspr").remove(); p.append('<script id="subinsbdotcomjspr">'+$(this).val()+'</script>'); }); $("#upjs").on('click',function(){ p.find("#subinsbdotcomjspr").remove(); p.append('<script id="subinsbdotcomjspr">'+$("#js").val()+'</script>'); }); });

The jQuery code is too less. The jQuery code is only binding some keyup functions and appending HTML code to the preview iframe. If you have any problems / feedback / suggestions write it on the comments. I’m here 10/7.

How To Use FileZilla/SFTP To Update Site in OpenShift

Wed, 09 Oct 2013 14:35:00 +0000

In the recent post, I mentioned about OpenShift, a PaaS Service that offers Free Hosting. You can update your application using GIT. OpenShift also provides SSHing into your application. You may have heard of FTP protocol which allows you to transfer files through web. Most hosting companies use FTP protocol to update client apps. OpenShift unlike AppFog have FTP support, but in a different manner.

It has SFTP support ie SSH File Transfer Protocol. SFTP is a FTP like protocol that allows to transfer files via SSH sessions. Most FTP clients support SFTP. FTP client FileZilla supports SFTP which means that you can use FileZilla for updating site hosted on OpenShift. You can download FileZilla from here available for Linux, Mac & Windows.

You should mention the ssh-key you gave to OpenShift in FileZilla too.

For that Got to **Edit Menu **-> Settings and choose the tab SFTP :

Click on Add keyfile and choose the file containing the ssh-key. Normally on a **Linux **system it will be /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa. When you select the SSH key file, FileZilla will ask for to save the key file in a format FileZilla understands. Choose Yes and save it in /home/user/.ssh with the name filezilla.

Now, go to your OpenShift account and get the username of the SSH account.

Here’s how to get the username :

ssh://[email protected]/~/git/demos.git/

The username of the above SSH command is **198734c26793ca219000106d **and the host is demos.subinsb.com.

Now, type in the credentials you got from the SSH command into FileZilla.

Example :

Host : sftp://<b>demos.subins.com</b> Username : 198734c26793ca219000106d

Leave the Password field blank, because we already have an ssh-key that will authorize us.

You will now have complete access to your app’s hosted directory.

If you want to update the source code paste/add/remove you’re source code in the **app-root/repo/php **or whatever the language is.

Screenshot :

Note that if you do a git push to the application, the changes made by SFTP will be replaced. So, be careful while doing a git commit to application if you have made changes to code by SFTP.

If you have any problems / suggestions / feedback type it out in the comments.

How To Change The Browser URL Without Refreshing Page – HTML5

Tue, 08 Oct 2013 16:03:00 +0000

This post was suggested by Sumit Kumar Pradhan. I recently saw many questions like this on Stack Overflow. Let me start explaining, there is already a function in JavaScript to do this special task. The function is window.history.replaceState. It’s a simple function that needs 3 values.
This is actually a HTML5 function that came out on July 2012 (I think). All the latest browsers support the new function except IE 9.

Download Demo

Here is a small example of the usage of window.history.replaceState :

window.history.replaceState({},’subinsb.com’,’/html5′);

If someone clicks a special URL on your site, you could also change the browser URL with the URL clicked by the user. Here is a small example :

$(".link").on(‘click’,function(){
window.history.replaceState({},’subinsb.com’,’/’+$(this).attr("href"));
return false;
});

The return false; is used at the end of the above code to prevent the redirection of browser to the URL. window.history.pushState is similar to window.history.replaceState function.
If you want to see a demo, you can stop by here.

Goodbye AppFog, Hello OpenShift

Sun, 06 Oct 2013 17:27:00 +0000

AppFog and Heroku were one of the most popular PaaS services. But due to the limitations of service many moved out. At first when AppFog came, there were a lot of cool awesome features more than Heroku. For the Free plan AppFog had SSL, Custom Domain and other features. But by the end of February 2013, AppFog removed Custom Domain from free plan. Many customers (including me) got sad, angry and were trying to find another PaaS service. And Here it is, the next Awesome PaaS service – OpenShift. Here is the best part : OpenShift is created by the Open-Source legend Red Hat. How awesome is that ? OpenShift is easy to use, fast and reliable. I used it for like 5 hours now and I already liked it. I have moved the Demo site from 3owl to OpenShift.

<div> You will be amazed by the speed of the <b>PaaS</b>, From what I experienced <b>OpenShift</b> is faster than <b>AppFog</b>. <b>OpenShift</b> is just like <b>AppFog</b>, <b>OpenShift</b> have a large list of supported languages and services. Here are some of them :</p> <ol style="text-align: left;"> <li> Java </li> <li> PHP </li> <li> Ruby </li> <li> Node.js </li> <li> Python </li> <li> Perl </li> <li> MySQL </li> <li> MongoDB </li> <li> PostgreSQL </li> <li> Jenkins </li> </ol> <p> See More <a href="https://www.openshift.com/developers/technologies" >Here</a>. Why wait ? Use <b><a href="https://www.openshift.com/" >OpenShift</a> </b>Now. I totally recommend you to use <b><a href="https://www.openshift.com/" >OpenShift</a></b>.<br />As long as <b>OpenShift</b> don’t remove <b>Custom Domains</b>, I’m gonna stick with <b>OpenShift</b>.</div> </div> </div>

E4KS : The Great Work Done By Rajeev Joseph

Sun, 06 Oct 2013 05:10:00 +0000

There are millions of bloggers and blogs in the World Wide Web (WWW). 90 % of those blogs are useful. There are a lot of people who would visit those blogs. Since there are a lot of viewers, most of the blog owners would set up ads on their blog to get maximum revenue. Most of the Bloggers (including me) only set up blogs just to get revenue from it. I’m gonna introduce you to a man that has helped a lot of students (including me) of Kerala. His name is Rajeev Joseph. Check out his Google + profile here. And his blog is English4KeralaSyllabus :

As you can see it’s a typical blog with a lot of posts and pages. But what you won’t see are ads !
Yes, He didn’t put up ads on his blog. With Page Views like that, he could have made thousands of Dollars. In the field of education in Kerala, this man has helped a lot of students (including me). That’s one of the reasons why the blog got a lot of Page Views.
He could have made thousands of Dollars by monetizing with ads, but he didn’t. He don’t even ask for donations. This blog is the best example for "giving without expecting anything in return" also known as generosity.
Another Example of generosity is Wikipedia. Actually E4KS (English4KeralaSyllabus) is like Wikipedia.
Thank You Rajeev sir for making the blog ad-free and keep continuing the good work.

Create a Simple Browser Using PyGTK, GLADE And MozEmbed

Wed, 02 Oct 2013 06:47:00 +0000

Let’s start creating softwares using Python GTK (PyGTK). Python is the easiest programming language ever and If you are coming from other Programming Languages such as PHP, Here is something that you should understand :

Python doesn’t have semi-colons for closing a code.

function in PHP is def in Python.

Spaces from the starting of a line decides the wrapper of the code.

{ in PHP is : in Python.

There is no closing } in Python.

Since there is no closing attribute (";"), 2 or more code can’t be placed in a single line.

Python doesn’t need variables starting with $.

The Browser we are going to create is built using GTK 2. The latest version of GTK is GTK 3.

We are going to use GLADE for designing the interface. If you don’t have GLADE installed, install it using the following command :

<blockquote class="tr_bq"> <p> sudo apt-get install glade </p> </blockquote> <p> Let’s begin. First of all create a folder named <b>browser</b> on your <b>home</b> folder.<br />Create a new project in <b>GLADE</b> with the <b>Project File Format</b> as <b>GtkBuilder </b>: </p> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="//1.bp.blogspot.com/-j7Z4wUCuAk0/Ukuq_mGcKLI/AAAAAAAADEA/ckE8w8y6yJ4/s1600/0051.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="//1.bp.blogspot.com/-j7Z4wUCuAk0/Ukuq_mGcKLI/AAAAAAAADEA/ckE8w8y6yJ4/s1600/0051.png" /></a> </div> <p> Save the project as <b>window.glade</b> in <b>browser</b> folder we created in <b>home </b>folder.<br />Create a Window by clicking on <b>Window</b> button in <b>Toplevels</b> section on the toolbox. Choose <b>Signals</b> and add <b>remove</b> signal of <b>GtkContainer</b> to <b>on_MainWindow_close_event</b> : </p> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="//3.bp.blogspot.com/-QmJa9RgpBS8/Uku5E1QiqoI/AAAAAAAADEo/ZHgCP6TWBSk/s1600/0053.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="//3.bp.blogspot.com/-QmJa9RgpBS8/Uku5E1QiqoI/AAAAAAAADEo/ZHgCP6TWBSk/s1600/0053.png" /></a> </div> <p> Choose <b>Vertical Box</b> from the <b>Containers</b> and click on the blank space of the <b>window1</b>. The <b>Number Of Items</b> should be <b>2</b>. The <b>window1</b> would be divided into <b>2 </b>now. </p> <p> Choose <b>Tool Bar</b> from the <b>Containers</b> and click on the <b>1</b>st division of <b>window1</b>.<br />Right click on <b>toolbar1</b> and choose <b>Edit</b> option. Toggle to <b>Hierarchy</b> tab and add the following Buttons : </p> <blockquote class="tr_bq"> <table class="table"> <tr> <td> Name             </td> <td> : </td> <td> <b>new</b> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Label </td> <td> : </td> <td> <b>New</b> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Icon Name </td> <td> : </td> <td> <b>list-add</b> </td> </tr> </table> </blockquote> <blockquote class="tr_bq"> <table class="table"> <tr> <td> Name             </td> <td> : </td> <td> <b>stop</b> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Label </td> <td> : </td> <td> <b>Stop</b> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Icon Name </td> <td> : </td> <td> <b>view-refresh</b> </td> </tr> </table> </blockquote> <blockquote class="tr_bq"> <table class="table"> <tr> <td> Name             </td> <td> : </td> <td> <b>reload</b> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Label </td> <td> : </td> <td> <b>Reload</b> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Icon Name </td> <td> : </td> <td> <b>edit-delete</b> </td> </tr> </table> </blockquote> <blockquote class="tr_bq"> <table class="table"> <tr> <td> Name             </td> <td> : </td> <td> <b>urlcont</b> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Type </td> <td> : </td> <td> <b>Custom</b> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Expand </td> <td> : </td> <td> <b>Yes</b> </td> </tr> </table> </blockquote> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> Choose <b>Text Entry</b> from <b>Control and Display</b> and click on empty space of <b>urlcont</b> of <b>toolbar1</b>. </div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> The Current Window Will Look Like This: </div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vfrjGagDsKQ/Uku2QgFWXCI/AAAAAAAADEc/h8--HTDsvGo/s1600/0052.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vfrjGagDsKQ/Uku2QgFWXCI/AAAAAAAADEc/h8--HTDsvGo/s1600/0052.png" /></a> </div> <p> The Interfacing is over, Now we should create the <b>Python</b> file. Create a file named <b>browser.py</b> in the directory containing <b>window.glade</b>. Add The Following contents on <b>browser.py</b> : </p> <blockquote class="tr_bq"> <p> #!/usr/bin/python<br />import pygtk<br />pygtk.require("2.0")<br />import gtk<br />import gtk.glade<br />import gtkmozembed<br />class SubinsWindow:<br /> def __init__(self):<br />  self.gladefile = "window.glade"<br />  self.glade = gtk.Builder()<br />  self.glade.add_from_file(self.gladefile)<br />  self.glade.connect_signals(self)<br />  self.win=self.glade.get_object("window1")<br />  self.win.show_all()<br />  self.win.maximize()<br />  self.win.set_title("Subin’s Blog Browser – http://www.subinsb.com")<br />  self.mw = gtkmozembed.MozEmbed()<br />  self.glade.get_object("vbox1").add(self.mw)<br />  self.mw.set_size_request(800,600)<br />  self.mw.load_url("http://www.subinsb.com")<br />  self.mw.show()<br />  self.glade.get_object("entry1").set_text("http://www.subinsb.com")<br />  self.glade.get_object("entry1").connect("activate",self.on_entry1_activate)<br />  self.glade.get_object("reload").connect("clicked",self.on_entry1_activate)<br />  self.glade.get_object("stop").connect("clicked",self.on_stop_click)<br />  self.glade.get_object("new").connect("clicked",self.on_new_click) </p> <p>  def on_entry1_activate(self,widget):<br />  v=self.glade.get_object("entry1").get_text()<br />  self.mw.load_url(v)<br />  self.win.set_title("Subin’s Blog Browser – "+v) </p> <p>  def on_reload_click(self,widget):<br />  self.mw.reload() </p> <p>  def on_new_click(self,widget):<br />  self.glade.get_object("entry1").set_text("http://www.subinsb.com")<br />  self.mw.load_url("http://www.subinsb.com") </p> <p>  def on_stop_click(self,widget):<br />  v=self.mw.get_location()<br />  self.mw.stop_load()<br />  self.win.set_title("Subin’s Blog Browser – "+v+" – Stopped") </p> <p>  def on_MainWindow_close_event(self, widget, event=1):<br />  gtk.main_quit() </p> <p> if __name__ == "__main__":<br /> a = SubinsWindow()<br /> gtk.main() </p> </blockquote> <p> That’s It ! Run <b>browser.py </b>using <b>python browser.py</b> and see your own <b>Browser</b> in action : </p> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="//3.bp.blogspot.com/-6vF3PBfr2yY/UkvAypPzcaI/AAAAAAAADE4/JJuFGWvCqXc/s1600/0054.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="//3.bp.blogspot.com/-6vF3PBfr2yY/UkvAypPzcaI/AAAAAAAADE4/JJuFGWvCqXc/s1600/0054.png" /></a> </div> <p> If you have any problems/doubts/suggestions/feedback print it out in the comments. Thank You. Hope You Like it. </p>

How To Change Your Country By Using Proxy in Ubuntu ?

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 17:15:00 +0000

There are certain restrictions on some sites such as Country Restriction. Mostly there are sites just for US citizens. For Example The most 99 cent domain offers from GoDaddy is only available to US citizens. They check the country by IP Address. I’m going to tell you how to Change your Country by changing the IP address using a PROXY. This is explained to work on Ubuntu, you can also use this method in Windows & Others but in a different way.
OK. First Of All Open Terminal (CTRL + ALT + T) and do the following command :

gnome-network-properties

You will get a Window Like Below :

Now, What you have to do is go to a Free Proxy Site like free-proxy-list.net and get a Proxy IP and Port. You can choose the Proxy based on countries or anything else.
Click On Manual proxy configuration‘s radio button and choose Use the same proxy for all protocols. Then type in the Proxy IP address and port. Example :

Then Click on Close button. You will be asked for using the proxy completely on your system which means that the applications you install via syanptic or software-center use the Proxy mentioned. If you just want to trick a site, then ignore the dialog box. Here is an example of my IP details when my Proxy was changed :

If you have any doubts/suggestions/problems/feedback say it out in the comments, I will help you.

Submitting Blogger Blog Sitemap To Google & Other Search Engines

Sun, 29 Sep 2013 06:35:00 +0000

Sitemap is a XML file that contains all the links of your site/blog. Sitemap can be manually created or automatically created using some online tools. These Sitemap can be submitted to search engine via the tools they provide or by mentioning the sitemap in robots.txt. In Blogger blogs the sitemap is located in different places.
In Blogger Blogs with the .blogspot.com sub domain, the sitemap is in a simple location ie :

http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml

But on other blogs ie blogs on custom domains doesn’t have a sitemap like the above URL. Instead you should use the following URL :

http://YOURBLOG.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=1000

Now, Let’s mention the sitemap on robots.txt. For That Go To Blogger -> YOUR BLOG -> Settings -> Search Preferences.
Click on Edit button near Custom robots.txt and add the following in the textbox:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search?q=*
Disallow: /*?updated-max=*
Allow: /
Sitemap: http://www.subinsb.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=1000

Replace The yellow background URL with your blog’s sitemap URL and click on Save Changes button :

When the search engines crawl your site, they will get the sitemap URL from robots.txt and they will index all the URL‘s in the sitemap.
If you have any suggestions/problems/feedback say it out in the comments, I will help you.

Create Your Own URL Shortening Service Using PHP & jQuery

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 16:30:00 +0000

I made a URL shortening service a year back using PHP & jQuery. It was pretty simple. You should know the concept of URL Shortening. The concept is simple. When a user sends a request to short a URL, PHP will check if the URL is valid. If it’s valid then PHP will make a string of 5 or 6 characters. A folder is created with the name of this string and an index.php file with header function code is created in this folder. This will make the folder redirect to the URL the user requested. Since it’s a folder no extensions will be seen ! So You can make up some pretty good URL‘s.

Download Demo

Here is the form for URL Shortening :

Type in a URL and click on Short URL ! to start shorting.

Shorting Successful

Here is Your Shorted URL :

Invalid URL

We also added a loader div, success div and an error div in the
tag. The jQuery code plays a vital role in this process because we are not adding any action attributes in the form, so if jQuery fail to load then the conversion won’t work. Here is the jQuery code :

Insert the above code anywhere you like. The jQuery will check if the URL is valid and will send a POST request to add.php when user submits the form. If the URL is not valid, then jQuery will show the error div. Here is the add.php file :

header(‘Content-Type: text/html’);
function rantext($length){$chars="abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzsubinsblogABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789″;$size=strlen($chars);for($i=0;$i<$length;$i++){$str.=$chars[rand(0,$size-1)];}return $str;}
$dir="/urls/";/*Directory to store URL’s. If main folder use "/" */
$url=$_POST[‘url’];
if(!preg_match("/^(http://|https://|ftp://){1}([0-9A-Za-z]+.)/",$url)){
die(‘{"stat":"0″}’);
}
$name = rantext(5);
if (file_exists($name)){
$name = rantext(6);
}else{
mkdir(‘.’.$dir.$name);
$subinsbshort = fopen(‘.’.$dir.$name.’/index.php’, ‘x’) or die(‘{"stat":"0″}’);
}
if(fwrite($subinsbshort,'’)){
echo ‘{"stat":"1″,"url":"//demos.subinsb.com/url-shortener’.$dir.$name.'","name":"‘.$name.'"}’;
}else{
die(‘{"stat":"0″}’);
}
fclose($subinsbshort);
?>

We also added the Random String Function to the add.php available from here. The Function will generate a string of 5 characters. If the string created is already used, then the script will generate another string of 6 characters. Then the add.php will create a folder with the name of random string. The add.php returns a JSON data to jQuery. jQuery will process the data and if everything is OK, then jQuery will show a success message with the new shorted URL.
If you have any suggestions/problems/feedback say it out in the comments, I will help you.
And Happy Birthday Google.

Uploading An Image Using AJAX In jQuery With PHP

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 17:25:00 +0000

As you know AJAX is the method of sending data without refreshing the page. Now I’m going to tell you how to upload images using AJAX in jQuery. For This You need to Download the jquery.form plugin from here. The Minimum requirement for this plugin is jQuery version 1.5 or later.

Download Demo

A Sample of uploading image using AJAX in jQuery is shown below :

<div> Now Let’s start on the code. Here is the <b>HTML</b> page : </div> <div> <pre class="prettyprint"><code><!DOCTYPE html>

<html> <head> <script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js"></script> <script src="http://malsup.github.io/jquery.form.js"></script> </head> <body> <form action="upload.php" method="POST" id="uploadform"> <input type="file" name="file"/> <input type="submit" value="Upload"/><br/><br/> Message : <div id="onsuccessmsg" style="border:5px solid #CCC;padding:15px;"></div> </form> </body> </html>

We don’t have to mention the enctype or encoding attribute on the form because the jQuery.form will take care of it.

Add the following JavaScript code just before :

<script> $(document).ready(function(){ function onsuccess(response,status){ $("#onsuccessmsg").html("Status :<b>"+status+'</b><br><br>Response Data :<div id="msg" style="border:5px solid #CCC;padding:15px;">'+response+'</div>'); } $("#uploadform").on('submit',function(){ var options={ url : $(this).attr("action"), success : onsuccess }; $(this).ajaxSubmit(options); return false; }); }); </script>

Here is the upload form’s details :

ID : uploadform Action : <b>upload.php </b>Method : <b>POST</b>

This is the upload.php file to which we send the form data :

<? function getExtension($str) {$i=strrpos($str,".");if(!$i){return"";}$l=strlen($str)-$i;$ext=substr($str,$i+1,$l);return $ext;} $formats = array("jpg", "png", "gif", "bmp", "jpeg", "PNG", "JPG", "JPEG", "GIF", "BMP"); if(isset($_POST) and $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == "POST"){ $name = $_FILES['file']['name']; $size = $_FILES['file']['size']; $tmp = $_FILES['file']['tmp_name']; if(strlen($name)){ $ext = getExtension($name); if(in_array($ext,$formats)){ if($size<(1024*1024)){ $imgn = time().".".$ext; if(move_uploaded_file($tmp, "./uploads/".$imgn)){ echo "File Name : ".$_FILES['file']['name']; echo "<br/>File Temporary Location : ".$_FILES['file']['tmp_name']; echo "<br/>File Size : ".$_FILES['file']['size']; echo "<br/>File Type : ".$_FILES['file']['type']; echo "<br/>Image : <img style='margin-left:10px;' src='uploads/".$imgn."'>"; }else{ echo "Uploading Failed."; } }else{ echo "Image File Size Max 1 MB"; } }else{ echo "Invalid Image file format."; } }else{ echo "Please select an image."; exit; } } ?>

The above code only accepts a file if it met some conditions such as :

A File Should Be Uploaded

Should be an Image Extension

File Size Must Not Exceed 1 MB

If you have any suggestions/problems/feedback say it out in the comments, I will help you.

How To Use Hard Disk As RAM In Ubuntu Linux

Sun, 22 Sep 2013 15:32:00 +0000

I heard that it is possible to use a portion of hard disk as RAM in Windows. I wondered if this trick is available for Ubuntu, so I googled about it and couldn’t find anything related to it. But I found out an AskUbuntu answer of using USB sticks as RAM. I did the same trick on Hard Disk and it works !!
This trick can be accomplished with the use of some small commands in Terminal. The RAM memory increase can’t be noted in the System Monitor application.So, Let’s begin.
Create a file of 512 MB (The 512 indicates the RAM memory to be added):

dd if=/dev/zero of=~/subinsblog bs=4096 count=<span style="background-color: yellow;">131072</span>

The yellow background text above shows the count of the file we are going to create. This count and bs determines the file size. This is how I got the count :

<span style="background-color: yellow;">512</span> * 1024^2 / 4096 = 131072

The yellow background text above shows the file size we need to create in Mega Bytes (MB). If you need to create SWAP space with more than 512 MB change the yellow background text above to the MB you want and get the result of the calculation. The result is the count.
Example of 1 GB :

1024 * 1024^2 / 4096 = <span style="background-color: yellow;">262144</span>

and the command will become :

dd if=/dev/zero of=~/subinsblog bs=4096 count=<span style="background-color: yellow;">262144</span>

The command will create a file named subinsblog on your home directory.

Now let’s create the SWAP space on the file and enable the SWAP :

sudo mkswap ~/subinsblog -f && sudo swapon -p 1000 ~/subinsblog

You’re RAM Memory is now increased. To check whether if it is increased, do the following command :

free -m

You will get a result like below :

The picture says it all. Good Luck ! 🙂
If you have any problems/suggestions/feedback just print it out in the comment box below.

GoDaddy WorldWide 99 cents for new or transfer domain of .COM

Sun, 22 Sep 2013 05:10:00 +0000

Here is the ultimate coupon code you were waiting for : 99 Cents for .COM buying or transferring domain worldwide. This offer is applicable to every country. Here are the conditions for this coupon :

Plus ICANN fee of $0.18 per domain name per year. $0.99 price for the first year for one new or transfer .COM purchases only; not valid for renewals. Additional years or .COMs may be purchased for $9.99* per year. Discounts cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or promotion. After the initial year, discounted domains will renew at the then-current renewal list price. Customers may not use gift cards, Store credit, PayPal® or AliPay to redeem this offer. Your discount will be applied in your shopping cart. Go Daddy reserves the right to deny use of this offer and/or cancel domains purchased using this offer if the offer is abused or used fraudulently, as determined by Go Daddy in its sole discretion.

Please Like/Share this post to your friends (Sharing Is Caring!). The expire date of this coupon code is unknown so use the coupon code fast.
Here is the coupon code :

99lUv

Proof : I bought www.subinsb.com by using this coupon code for just Rs 75.
Good Luck ! 🙂

Loading A Window Created Using GLADE in Python

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 05:20:00 +0000

If you have created a window using Glade and want to display this window on your Python program containing the event handlers of the Window, then you should follow this tutorial.
This small code will load the Glade file and displays the window.
Note : The Glade Project file format should be GtkBuilder.
Now, let’s get down to the code. Create a Python file named window.py in the folder containing the glade file and put in the following contents :

#!/usr/bin/python
import pygtk
pygtk.require("2.0")
import gtk
import gtk.glade
class SubinsWindow:
def __init__(self):
self.gladefile = "window.glade"
self.glade = gtk.Builder()
self.glade.add_from_file(self.gladefile)
self.glade.connect_signals(self)
self.win=self.glade.get_object("window1") # Window Name in GLADE
self.win.show_all()

<p> if __name__ == "__main__":<br /> a = SubinsWindow()<br /> gtk.main() </p>

The first yellow backgrounded text has the name of the GLADE file.
The second yellow backgrounded text has the name of the GLADE Window. Normally It would be window1.
Execute the Python program by opening a terminal with the folder and execute the following command:

python window.py

Here is a sample window created using GLADE and executed in Python :

So, Now you know how to import a GLADE file in Python and display the window.
If you have any problems/suggestions/feedback just say it out in the comment box below.

GoDaddy .COM domain for just 0.99$ Worldwide

Sun, 15 Sep 2013 06:31:00 +0000

Want to buy a .COM domain for just 0.99 US Dollars ?
This coupon is valid for everyone in the world.
Here is a table of price of .COM domain using this coupon :

Indian Rupee : 65
Australian Dollar : 1.07
British Pound Sterling : 0.62
Chinese Yuan : 6.06
Kuwaiti Dinar : 0.28

Just type in the following coupon in GoDaddy and you’re good to go.

SMB99F

Good Luck.

Add Floating Like Box to Blogger Blog

Sat, 14 Sep 2013 06:29:00 +0000

Every Success Blog was popularized with the social integration such as Like Box, Share Box, Commenting and others. The social sharing widget will help other users to reach your blog. So, In this tutorial I’m going to tell you how to add a Floating Like Box. I made the like box floating, because wherever the user goes the like box will also go with him. Hence the user will notice the like box all the time and he will click sometime during his visit. The liking action will be posted to his Facebook Wall or Google + page or his Twitter and his friends who sees this post will also visit. That friends too like your post if it is good and thus your post will pass along a lot of people.

In this Floating Box, there are 5 like plugins. They are :

Facebook Like

Twitter Tweet

Google Plus +1

Pinterest Pinning

Stumbleupon Submission

Let’s begin. First of all go to Blogger -> YOUR BLOG -> Layout.
Add a new HTML/JavaScript widget.

Leave the title value of the widget blank.
Then add the following contents :

Yes, It’s a long code. If you want it less, Here is the compressed version :

Be sure to change the values accordingly. The values to change are :

Pinterest Image URL

Pinterest Description

Please don’t change variable names or any piece of the code, because it may cause problems in the working of the floating share box.
If there’s any problems/suggestions/feedback just say it out in the comment box below.

Automatically Redirect A Blogger Blog To Another URL

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 06:37:00 +0000

You can redirect your blog to another URL. This redirection can be done using JavaScript or by adding a special meta tag. This redirection is useful when you want to redirect your old blog users to your new blog. The function we use in JavaScript is window.location and the meta tag has http-equiv attribute.

DEMO

So Let’s begin.

Go to Blogger -> Blog to be redirected -> Template -> Edit HTML.
You will get a box with a lot of text. Use one of the following methods to redirect :

1st method (JavaScript)

Add the following code just below :

2nd method (META Tag)

Add the following code just below :

http://www.REDIRECT_TO.com/’ http-equiv=’refresh’/>

Change the yellow background url to the url you want to redirect to.

What’s the Difference ?

The JavaScript redirection is executed when the page starts to load, but the meta tag method can be configured to set the no of seconds to wait before redirecting. The second is mentioned just before the ;url. To set the no of seconds to 10 just use the following code :

10;url=http://sag-3.blogsppot.com/’ http-equiv=’refresh’/>

The first yellow backgrounded text is the no of seconds to wait before redirecting.
If there’s any problems/suggestion/feedback just echo out in the comment box below.

Send Email using GMail SMTP server in PHP

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 04:42:00 +0000

This tutorial was suggested by SWDS. To send an e-mail using GMail’s SMTP server, you need extra help. Download the latest version of Swift Mailer Package from here.

This mailing class is simple, that’s why I recommend you to use Swift Mailer.
If you have enabled application specific password feature on Google Accounts, you may have to generate a new application password and use that password for SMTP authentication. Otherwise the example won’t be able to login to your google account.

<p> Let’s get started. </p>

Create a file named send.php :

ini_set("display_errors",1);
require_once ‘../path/to/lib/swift_required.php’;
// Configuration
$transport = Swift_SmtpTransport::newInstance(‘ssl://smtp.gmail.com’, 465)
->setUsername(‘[email protected]‘) // Your Gmail Username
->setPassword(‘my_secure_gmail_password‘); // Your Gmail Password
$mailer = Swift_Mailer::newInstance($transport);
// Create a message
$message = Swift_Message::newInstance(‘Wonderful Subject Here’)
->setFrom(array(‘[email protected]‘ => ‘My Name‘)) // can be $_POST[’email’] etc…
->setTo(array(‘[email protected]‘ => ‘A guy‘)) // your email / multiple supported.
->setBody(‘Here is the message itself. It can be text or
HTML
.’, ‘text/html’);
if ($mailer->send($message)) {
echo ‘Mail sent successfully. Time to celebrate’;
} else {
echo ‘Some error occurred. Check your configuration’;
}

The above example has configured with the following credentials :

Username : [email protected]
Password : my_secure_gmail_password
Send From : [email protected]
Sender Name : My Name
Receiver : [email protected]
Receiver Name : A guy

You should change the credentials to meet your conditions. If the mailing didn’t work, make sure the configuration is correct. If there’s any problems/suggestion/feedback just echo out in the comment box below.

Setting up Google DNS in Ubuntu

Thu, 12 Sep 2013 17:01:00 +0000

Google‘s DNS service is spreading rapidly. It’s time for you to use it. I used it and noticed some great speed changes even though my internet is just a dial up connection. Here is how to set up Google‘s DNS on your Ubuntu Linux.
Open Network Settings (network-admin) by going to System -> Preferences -> Network Connections. Go to your default net connection and click on Edit button.

You will get a window like below :

Change the Method option to Automatic (PPP) addresses only. Then change the DNS servers field to the following text(IP addresses):

8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4

Finally, click on Apply button. Now the settings have been saved. To try the new settings either disconnect the active internet connections and start a new connection or reboot your computer.

Execute Command Without Waiting For It To Finish

Sat, 07 Sep 2013 03:41:00 +0000

If you just execute a terminal command using exec or system in PHP, the page will only load completely until the command has been finished. If you are running commands to run a websocket server, the page will not load, because the start server command won’t terminate. So to avoid this problem you should just do a simple trick, Just add > /dev/null & after the command you’re running.
Here is a quick example :

exec("php -q server.php");

becomes:

exec("php -q server.php > /dev/null &");

Or you can wrap it all in a function to run the commands in both Windows and Linux :

function <span style="color: red;">bgExec</span>($cmd) { if(substr(php_uname(), 0, 7) == "Windows"){ pclose(popen("start /B ". $cmd, "r")); }else { exec($cmd . " > /dev/null &"); } }

So, by the function you can call the command like this :

bgExec("php -q server.php");

Use it as you wish.

Upload Image To Remote Server With PHP cURL & Handle File in Remote Server

Sun, 01 Sep 2013 15:12:00 +0000

If you want to upload images to an external server which is uploaded to your site by a client, you are at the right tutorial.
For this submission we will use 2 files :

form.php – The Page Where we will show the client the form. This file also sends the uploaded data to the external server.

handle.php – The Page on the external server which receives the uploaded data from form.php using cURL.

We won’t copy the uploaded file by the client to our server, instead we will directly send the file to the external server. For sending we will encrypt the file with base64.
OK. Lets’ Start. First, Let’s create the FORM page :

<form enctype="multipart/form-data" encoding='multipart/form-data' method='post' action="form.php"> <input name="uploadedfile" type="file" value="choose"> <input type="submit" value="Upload"> </form> <? if ( isset($_FILES['uploadedfile']) ) { $filename = $_FILES['uploadedfile']['tmp_name']; $handle = fopen($filename, "r"); $data = fread($handle, filesize($filename)); $POST_DATA = array( 'file' => base64_encode($data) ); $curl = curl_init(); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, '<span style="color: red;">http://extserver.com/handle.php</span>'); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 30); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, 1); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $POST_DATA); $response = curl_exec($curl); curl_close ($curl); echo "<h2>File Uploaded</h2>"; } ?>

Now the code of the handle.php in external server where we sent the data using cURL :

$encoded_file = $_POST['file']; $decoded_file = base64_decode($encoded_file); /* Now you can copy the uploaded file to your server. */ file_put_contents('<span style="color: red;">subins</span>', $decoded_file);

The above code will receive the base64 encoded file and it will decode and put the image to its server folder. This might come in handy when you want to have your own user file storage system. This trick is used by ImgUr and other file hosting services like Google.

Password Protect folder in AppFog

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 15:45:00 +0000

You won’t know the location of the .htpasswd file in AppFog. Hence you won’t be able to password protect folders in the normal way. To password protect folders in AppFog you should use a different way. You should add the following location of .htpasswd instead of the full location.
If the full location is :

/home/simsu/projects/TestPalace/Blog/Password_Protect/.htpasswd

The Location of .htpasswd in .htaccess deployed in AppFog should be :

../app/Blog/Password_Protect/.htpasswd

If the file is on the root directory, then the location would be :

../app/.htpasswd

If you have any suggestions/feedback/problems just echo it out in the comments below.

Password protect folder using HTACCESS

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 15:35:00 +0000

HTACCESS is able to protect folders with passwords. To password protect folders you should mention the location of .htpasswd – a file that contains the username and password to unlock the folder.
First of all create a .htaccess file if doesn’t exists and create a .htpasswd file.
Now Add username and password to the .htpasswd file which you can get from this simple tool.

Add the following text in .htaccess :

AuthName "This folder requires a login"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /home/simsu/projects/TestPalace/Blog/Password_Protect/.htpasswdAuthGroupFile /dev/null
require valid-user

Replace the red highlighted text above to the location of the .htpasswd file. Now open the folder on the site and you will get a screen like below :

Split Name in PHP and Javascript

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 13:41:00 +0000

If you have a user with a long name and want to short it because it won’t fit into the element that contains the name, you can either do it on the server or the client. In this post I am going to tell you how to accomplish this with PHP and JavaScript.
Suppose We have a user named Paul Steve Panakkal (my cousin). To separate the first name, middle name and last name you can do the following in PHP :

$name="Paul Steve Panakkal";
$parts=explode(‘ ‘,$name);
$first_name=$parts[0];
$middle_name=$parts[1];
$last_name=$parts[2];
echo $first_name."
";
echo $middle_name."
";
echo $last_name;
?>

The above code would print out :

Paul
Steve
Panakkal

There you go! Now Let’s do this with JavaScript :

The above code will also print out :

Paul
Steve
Panakkal

Now you know how to split up names in to first name, middle name and last name in PHP and JavaScript.
If you have any suggestions/feedback/problems just echo it out in the comments below.

Prevent Directory Listing using HTACCESS

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 03:30:00 +0000

If you don’t want your site users to see your directory listing, you can do a simple trick in .htaccess file.
Here is a screenshot of a directory listing on Apache Server :

Now, to disable directory listing of all types of files, type in the following code in .htaccess :

IndexIgnore *

This will change the directory listing to this :

The empty directory listing looks ugly. To make it beautiful, you can add an index page for all directory listings without adding each index files on each directory. Use the following code on .htaccess for that.

DirectoryIndex index.php /primary.php

The above code will make all directory’s index file primary.php which is kept in the root directory of the site if there isn’t an index.php file in the directory. I have made a primary.php file and added it as the index file of directory and It looks like below :

Program to Replace localhost links with website url

Sat, 24 Aug 2013 03:30:00 +0000

If you are working on a project and wants to upload the project to your site, then you have to manually replace all the localhost links with the site url. I created a small Python program that will replace localhost links with your WWW site url.
Here is the Python code :

#!/usr/bin/python
import os
indir = ‘/var/www/mysite‘ #!Folder of your localhost site.
for root, dirs, filenames in os.walk(indir):
for f in filenames:
log = open(os.path.join(root, f), ‘r+’)
f=log.read()
n=f.replace("http://localhost", "http://mysite.com")
log.seek(0)
log.truncate()
log.write(n)
log.close()
print "Successfully Replaced."

Change the location of your localhost site and the localhost link and mysite link to your site address above if you want to change it. Then save this file as link-replace.py. Make the file executable and run it in terminal. The program will automatically replace the links and will print out "Successfully Replaced" if the program completed replacing links.

Cross Origin Communication – window.postMessage

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 03:30:00 +0000

The Window.postMessage helps to make scripts talk over different domain connections. When you call a function on an external iframe from the parent window, Javascript won’t allow it.
That’s because of the Cross Domain Policy that makes this not possible. But it’s possible since Javascript introduced postMessage function.

Suppose you want to call a function on an cross domain iframe with id monu. Let the function be subins(). Here’s how to do it using postMessage technic.

window.frames[‘monu’].postMessage(‘alert’,’*’);

The alert in the code above is not a function. The parameter targetOrigin is set to * because we don’t know the url of the iframe. Now the code in the iframe :

function subins(){
alert("Support Wikipedia");
}
window.addEventListener("message",function(e){
if(e.origin==’http://example.com’){
subins();
}
},false);

When a postmessage callback is received on the iframe the origin where the postMessage callback is called is checked on the script in iframe and if it is true, subins() is called and it will alert the text Support Wikipedia.
So now you know how to communicate between cross domains. Code Great.

Loading Bar until page loads completely using Javascript

Thu, 15 Aug 2013 03:30:00 +0000

This tutorial was requested by Sumit. In this tutorial I’m going to tell how to put up a loading screen until the page has loaded completely.
DEMO Here is the screenshot of loading screen :

The loading bar will fade out when loading is completed.

This code will work for all sites including Blogger Blogs, WordPress Blogs except Dynamic Views Template of **Blogger **(because it uses ajax loading). You can change the image if you want. I have created an image of my own :

Ok. Now let’s get down to the code. This code is pure Javascript, no jQuery because the site might be loading jQuery and we should have to show the loading bar before the loading of jQuery.

Here is the code. You have to place it just after

subinsblogla = 0; setInterval(function() { if (document.readyState != 'complete') { document.documentElement.style.overflow = "hidden"; var subinsblog = document.createElement("div"); subinsblog.id = "subinsblogldiv"; var polu = 999999999; subinsblog.style.zIndex = polu; subinsblog.style.background = "black url(<strong>https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-4WVJgCO93zc/UgpU2Y60CjI/AAAAAAAAC8E/R3XujnTjz3Y/s474/initializing.png</strong>) 50% 50% no-repeat"; subinsblog.style.backgroundPositionX = "50%"; subinsblog.style.backgroundPositionY = "50%"; subinsblog.style.position = "absolute"; subinsblog.style.right = "0px"; subinsblog.style.left = "0px"; subinsblog.style.top = "0px"; subinsblog.style.bottom = "0px"; if (subinsblogla === 0) { document.documentElement.appendChild(subinsblog); subinsblogla = 1; } } else if (document.getElementById('subinsblogldiv') != null) { document.getElementById('subinsblogldiv').style.display = "none"; document.documentElement.style.overflow = "auto"; } }, 1000);

You may replace the variable names, but make sure that the variable name is unique.

If you want to change the Loading Image just change the

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-4WVJgCO93zc/UgpU2Y60CjI/AAAAAAAAC8E/R3XujnTjz3Y/s474/initializing.png

url in the variable subinsblog.style.background.

Well that’s it for now. If you have any problems/suggestions/feedback, just say it out in the comment form below and Happy Independence Day to all Indians and Pakistanis.

Setting Iframe height to its content height using Javascript

Thu, 08 Aug 2013 03:30:00 +0000

While loading an iframe on page the most difficult thing is to set it’s height to the height of the content of the iframe. I looked around the web and got the code. This is pure Javascript, doesn’t contain jQuery or any other libraries. Set these functions :

function getDocHeight(doc) {
doc = doc || document;
var body = doc.body, html = doc.documentElement;
var height = Math.max( body.scrollHeight, body.offsetHeight,
html.clientHeight, html.scrollHeight, html.offsetHeight );
return height;
}
function setIframeHeight(id) {
var ifrm = id;
var doc = ifrm.contentDocument? ifrm.contentDocument: ifrm.contentWindow.document;
ifrm.style.visibility = ‘hidden’;
ifrm.style.height = "10px"; // reset to minimal height in case going from longer to shorter doc
// some IE versions need a bit added or scrollbar appears
ifrm.style.height = getDocHeight( doc ) + 4 + "px";
ifrm.style.visibility = ‘visible’;
}

Now add an event listener to the iframe :

onload=’setIframeHeight(this)’

After adding the event listener, the iframe element will look like this :

When the iframe completes loading the function will check it’s content height and set the height of the iframe to it’s content height. Pretty Neat, Huh ?

Create MySQL Injection free Secure Login System in PHP

Wed, 07 Aug 2013 03:30:00 +0000

There were a lot of people who created tutorials to create a PHP Login System. But they were all vulnerable to MySQL Injection. In this post I’m going to demonstrate a login system free of this vulnerability. It is very secure. There are mysqli and PDO in PHP to escape these injections. We are going to use **PDO ( PHP Data Object **).

Download Demo

UPDATE – logSys

There is a new, free, better Advanced Login System which you can check out here.

First of all create a file named login.php, home.php, logout.php

Create Users Table

****For storing user information you have to create a table named users. Here is the SQL code to create the table.

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `users` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `username` text NOT NULL, `password` text NOT NULL, `psalt` text NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=1 ;

The column username is to store the e-mail of the user. This e-mail is used as the username.

The column password is to store user’s password which will be heavily encrypted using SHA256.

The column psalt contains a random text to check if password is true.

Now we should add a user to the table. Execute the following SQL code to create a user.

INSERT INTO `users` ( `id`, `username`, `password`, `psalt` ) VALUES ( NULL, '[email protected]', '4f8ee01c497c8a7d6f44334dc15bd44fe5acea9aed07f67e34a22ec490cfced1', 's*vl%/?s8b*b4}b/w%w4' );

The user is inserted with the following values:

login.php

Create a login form :

<form method="POST" action="login.php" style="border:1px solid black;display:table;margin:0px auto;padding-left:10px;padding-bottom:5px;"> <table width="300" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1"> <tr><td><td colspan="3"><strong>User Login</strong></td></tr> <tr><td width="78">E-Mail</td><td width="6">:</td><td width="294"><input size="25" name="mail" type="text"></td></tr> <tr><td>Password</td><td>:</td><td><input name="pass" size="25" type="password"></td></tr> <tr><td></td><td></td><td><input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Login"></td></tr> </table> Login System provided by <a target="_blank" href='http://sag-3.blogspot.com/2013/08/secure-injection-free-login-system-php.html'>Subins</a> </form>

Now we should add the PHP code to check whether the username and password is correct. You should add the PHP code before </form> we just added in login.php.

<?php session_start(); if(isset($_SESSION['user']) && $_SESSION['user']!=''){header("Location:home.php");} $dbh=new PDO('mysql:dbname=db;host=127.0.0.1', 'username', 'password');/*Change The Credentials to connect to database.*/ $email=$_POST['mail']; $password=$_POST['pass']; if(isset($_POST) && $email!='' && $password!=''){ $sql=$dbh->prepare("SELECT id,password,psalt FROM users WHERE username=?"); $sql->execute(array($email)); while($r=$sql->fetch()){ $p=$r['password']; $p_salt=$r['psalt']; $id=$r['id']; } $site_salt="subinsblogsalt";/*Common Salt used for password storing on site. You can't change it. If you want to change it, change it when you register a user.*/ $salted_hash = hash('sha256',$password.$site_salt.$p_salt); if($p==$salted_hash){ $_SESSION['user']=$id; header("Location:home.php"); }else{ echo "<h2>Username/Password is Incorrect.</h2>"; } } ?>

home.php

<html><head></head> <body> <? session_start(); if($_SESSION['user']==''){ header("Location:login.php"); }else{ $dbh=new PDO('mysql:dbname=db;host=127.0.0.1', 'root', 'backstreetboys'); $sql=$dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE id=?"); $sql->execute(array($_SESSION['user'])); while($r=$sql->fetch()){ echo "<center><h2>Hello, ".$r['username']."</h2></center>"; } } ?> </body> </html>

logout.php

This file is simple. Just add the following :

<? session_start(); session_destroy(); ?>

Now login using username as [email protected]">[email protected] and password as subinsiby. You will be redirected to home.php and it will say the following:

register.php

What’s logging in without registering ? Here’s a sample Registration page :

<? session_start(); if(isset($_SESSION['user']) && $_SESSION['user']!=''){ header("Location:home.php"); } ?> <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head></head> <body> <form action="register.php" method="POST"> <label>E-Mail <input name="user" /></label><br/> <label>Password <input name="pass" type="password"/></label><br/> <button name="submit">Register</button> </form> <? if(isset($_POST['submit'])){ $musername = "root"; $mpassword = "backstreetboys"; $hostname = "127.0.0.1"; $db = "p"; $port = 3306; $dbh=new PDO('mysql:dbname='.$db.';host='.$hostname.";port=".$port,$musername, $mpassword);/*Change The Credentials to connect to database.*/ if(isset($_POST['user']) && isset($_POST['pass'])){ $password=$_POST['pass']; $sql=$dbh->prepare("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM `users` WHERE `username`=?"); $sql->execute(array($_POST['user'])); if($sql->fetchColumn()!=0){ die("User Exists"); }else{ function rand_string($length) { $str=""; $chars = "subinsblogabcdefghijklmanopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789"; $size = strlen($chars); for($i = 0;$i < $length;$i++) { $str .= $chars[rand(0,$size-1)]; } return $str; /* http://subinsb.com/php-generate-random-string */ } $p_salt = rand_string(20); /* http://subinsb.com/php-generate-random-string */ $site_salt="subinsblogsalt"; /*Common Salt used for password storing on site.*/ $salted_hash = hash('sha256', $password.$site_salt.$p_salt); $sql=$dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO `users` (`id`, `username`, `password`, `psalt`) VALUES (NULL, ?, ?, ?);"); $sql->execute(array($_POST['user'], $salted_hash, $p_salt)); echo "Successfully Registered."; } } } ?> </body> </html>

Note to change the Database credentials on above code.

This login system is totally 99% secure. It’s very hard to crack for a hacker and it’s completely **MySQL Injection **free. It took me less than 1 hour to create this system and create this post. Happy Logging. If you have any problems/suggestions/feedbacks just comment. I will help you.

Better Google Chrome History Page

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 03:30:00 +0000

As you know, Google Chrome‘s Browser History is not efficient. It’s history is not like any other browsers. I think they made the History page in a hurry. If we want to search for a page we visited before, we won’t get it by searching on History page. That’s the main problem.
This problem was solved when a lot of users created an alternate History Page extension on Chrome Webstore.
In this post I’m gonna tell the most used History Alternate Extension. It’s Better History extension. You can download the extension from here.

Deleting:

Delete all visits for a day

Delete individual visits

Delete visits to the same domain

Delete all history

Grouping:

Group visits by 60, 30, or 15 minutes

Group visits to the same domain

Format hours to 12 or 24

Customizable grouping behavior

Organizing:

Filter visits by day

Searching:

Search the last few months

Search by date, url, and page title

Highlighted search terms

Right click option to search by domain

Right click option to search by selected text

Styling:

Styled with Chrome UI

Access from button in toolbar

Remembers closing state

Back button support

Setting Infinite Width on an element – HTML

Sun, 04 Aug 2013 03:30:00 +0000

The maximum width we can add on a div is 100%. What if you want more than that ? The solution is not to add more percentage to div but to do something other. Adding white-space property.
This will only work on the main parent elements such as elements with display property as follows:

block

table

inline-block

So now you know what are the main parent elements. Now back to the point, to add infinite width set the white-space property to the value nowrap. Example:

div{
white-space:nowrap;
}

and put display:inline-block on all the children elements.
Now the div will get an infinite width. Enjoy !!!

Generating Random String in PHP

Fri, 02 Aug 2013 03:30:00 +0000

In PHP you can generate random number by using rand function, but there is no specific function to generate a random text or string. In this post I’m going to show the function that will generate a random string of length mentioned.

Here is the function:

function rand_string($length) { $str=""; $chars = "subinsblogabcdefghijklmanopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789"; $size = strlen($chars); for($i = 0;$i < $length;$i++) { $str .= $chars[rand(0,$size-1)]; } return $str; }

Usage

To generate a random string use rand_string() function with the parameter of length of the to be generated string. Here’s an example:

echo rand_string(6);

The above code will print out something like this :

oSuN1R

Note that the above printed out string will be different for everyone, not the same.

Explanation

The first variable $str is the variable where the function adds random single strings to make the long random string.

The variable $chars contains lots of characters including integers and alphabetic letters. You can change it if you want.

The $size variable contains the number of characters in the $chars string.

Now it’s looped at n times where n is the length of to be generated string we mentioned in the function.

At each loop a character is added to the $str variable from random letter got from the $chars variable.

And finally the generated string is returned.

Installing Wine 1.6 on Ubuntu 10.04

Sun, 28 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Wine 1.6 is not latest version for Ubuntu 10.04, but you can install it by compiling the source code and it works perfectly. See demo here. To install Wine 1.6 follow the instructions.

Optional :

Wine Team recommend you to uninstall previous Wine versions when installing a compiled version. But its optional. If the Wine 1.6 fails you can uninstall 1.6 and use the old version.

Steps :

Download the Wine 1.6 Source Code from here. Extract the wine- 1.6 folder in the archive file to a place you desire. For Now, place it on your home directory.

The Wine-1.6 folder will look something like this:

Right click on blank space and click Open In Terminal.

Do the following command:

sudo make install

The program will automatically compile and install Wine. Also sometimes it might want some software to work and the software they want will be printed on terminal. Install it. If you need instructions Google It.

It might take up to 30 minutes to compile and install or maybe more. After installation the Wine Config window will look like below:

The styles of button are changed in the above window of Wine because I have installed a theme.

Javascript code Compressor Tool

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

If long long Javascript codes are compressed, it will make the page load faster. In this post I’m going to suggest a perfect tool for compressing Javascript code. The tool is JsCompress.
Go to http://blimptontech.com/ to see the compressor in action.
You have three options:

Paste Code and Compress

Compress code in files

Compress Multiple files into one.

It’s a great tool and it will help you reduce the file size up to 100 KB. This site is similar to the JsCompressor tool @ http://jscompress.com.

Preventing double encode of URL in PHP

Mon, 22 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

There is no practical way to check whether an URL is encoded or not to encode if it’s not encoded. But you can do encode the URL by first decoding like below:

$string = url_decode($url);

And then you should encode as to prevent double encoding.

$string = url_encode($url);

By doing this we can prevent double encoding of URL‘s.

NFS Most Wanted running on Wine 1.6

Sun, 21 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

These are the screenshots of Need For Speed Most Wanted running in Wine 1.6 on Ubuntu 10.04.

Wine 1.6 is released with 10,000 changes

Sat, 20 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

After 16 months of development, Wine version 1.6 has been officially released by the Wine Team. Wine is the Windows Program emulator for Linux and Mac. You can download the source files from here. You can only get the source files now. Binary packages are in the process of being built. If it’s been build you can download the Wine 1.6 version from here.

What’s New ?

New User Interface

Networking capabilities

Support for Windows Transparency

Graphics improved

JoyStick Installing

Mono package for .NET applications support

Support of new softwares and games.

Improved Input validation

Mac Driver

Direct3D

and more. Wine Team officially said that the new Wine version more than 10,000 changes.

Encode/Decode URL in Javascript and PHP

Fri, 19 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

URL encoding and decoding can be done in both Javascript and PHP. In this post I’m going to tell you the functions used in both languages for url encoding/decoding.
Javascript
Encoding

encodeURIComponent(url);

Decoding

decodeURIComponent(url);

PHP
Encoding

urlencode(url);

Decoding

urldecode(url);

There is an encodeURI and decodeURI function in Javascript but it won’t encode/decode the url. Note that the the word used in Javascript is URI not URL. But in PHP both are URL. Don’t mistake the word.

Fix: Dynamic Views failed to load properly

Thu, 18 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Well, this problem is pretty annoying to everyone who is using Dynamic Views, even to me. It’s a Blogger fault as always and there has not been a solution to the problem since it started on the Dynamic Views launch. Päivi & Santeri of Global Nomads founded a solution to this problem. Oh! I didn’t said the problem was. The problem is that the whole Blog will fail to load completely/properly. Some of the problems happen when the blog won’t properly load are listed below:

Page List will become blank

Custom CSS won’t load.

Ugly Blog.

Visitor Disaprovement

and many more. Let’s get back to the solution which is pretty simple.
Go to Blogger -> Template -> Edit HTML.
Search for blogger.ui().configure()
You will get a code like this:

The only thing you should do is to replace the seTimeout value from to 500. And the final code will be:

If you have any problems/feedback/suggestions then feel free to comment below on Disqus.

Vertically center align an element using CSS

Wed, 17 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Vertical alignment is difficult to find a solution. But I will tell you a simple way to align a div vertically center. The CSS property you’re going to use for this purpose is vertical-align.
Here is the code of a div aligned vertically.

#adiv{
display:inline-block;
vertical-align:middle;
}

This only works for div with the display property inline-block and some others which I don’t know. But it’s better to use inline-block.

Check whether request is made from Ajax – PHP

Tue, 16 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

To check whether a request has been made is from Ajax or not you can use $_SERVER[‘HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH’]. See the following example:

if(strtolower($_SERVER[‘HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH’])==’xmlhttprequest’){
echo "The request is from an Ajax Call";
}else{
echo "The request is not from an Ajax Call";
}
?>

There you go. You now know how to check whether request made to file is from an Ajax Call or not in PHP.

Scroll Horizontally Without Scrollbar Using jQuery

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

To scroll horizontally with CSS is very annoying, because the whole page will move vertically and sometimes the Y axis will scroll. So I decided to use jQuery and it’s very simple. Only 237 characters which is only 2 lines. Here is the **jQuery **code with the div id #scrollho.

jQuery

$('#scrollho').on('mousewheel',function(e){ e.preventDefault(); scrollLeft=$('#scrollho').scrollLeft(); if(e.originalEvent.wheelDeltaY.toString().slice(0,1)=='-'){ $('#scrollho').scrollLeft(scrollLeft+100); }else{ $('#scrollho').scrollLeft(scrollLeft-100); } });

CSS

#scrollho{ overflow:hidden; }

Explanation

The #scrollho div’s scrollbars are hidden with CSS. When a mousewheel event occurs on #scrollho the default event is neutralized and the div is scrolled horizontally to the direction of the mousewheel using e.originalEvent.wheelDeltaY. **e.originalEvent.wheelDeltaY **is converted into string as to do the slice function to check whether the number is negative or not.

The main reason why adsense was disapproved

Sun, 14 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

From my experience with Adsense I got disapproved after a visit from a URL to my blog. The URL was SPAM which is known as REFERRAL SPAM. See more about REFERRAL SPAM here.

Why Adsense account got disapproved of Referral SPAM ?

In the Google Adsense policies, It says that you should not pay someone to visit your blog/site. When you are placing the ad on your blog, Google tracks each visit to your blog. When they see a suspicious URL in the traffic sources they count it as a paid to click URL. Hence you will get disapproved.

What should I do If I got disapproved of Referral SPAM ?

You should appeal to Google Adsense that you didn’t violated any policies. Click this link to appeal. You will be asked some questions. The sample answers of those questions with can login option are below:

Contact E-Mail address ?

<p> [email protected] </p>

Have you ever purchased traffic to your site(s) ?

<p> No </p>

How do users get to your site? How do you promote your site?

<p> Users get to my site mostly from <b>Google Search</b>. I promote my site using <b>Google</b> Adwords, Chatting (Facebook, Google+ etc….) </p>

Have you or your site ever violated the AdSense program policies or Terms & Conditions? If so, how? Also, include any relevant information that you believe may have resulted in invalid activity. *

No. There are SPAM url’s on my traffic sources. Adsense may have disapproved because of the invalid visits from these SPAM sites.

Please include any data from your site traffic logs or reports that indicate suspicious IP addresses, referrers, or requests which could explain invalid activity. *

http://www.filmhill.com/redirect.php?url=http://flf-course.com?a_aid=510d2acc92117&a_bid=6f93443e
http://vampirestat.com
http://r-e-f-e-r-e-r.com/
http://t.co/MaAptuGFVu6

Add GET or POST parameters on include files in PHP

Sat, 13 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

If you want to add GET parameters or POST parameters to files loading using include function in PHP then you should know the following:

It’s not possible. But it is in a different way.

If you are adding GET parameters to file name like the following, then it won’t work:

The above code won’t load the file, because PHP Include function only looks for files, it won’t send any parameters. It will search for file.php?user=subin in the directory for the case above. You can make it work in a different way.

We use $_GET and $_POST to get the parameters sent for each type. You should know that these variables are Arrays and not Strings. So you can just add a key and value to the array.

So to add the key and value just use the following code along with the include function :

$_GET[‘user’]="Subin";
include(‘file.php’);
?>

The above code works with the same as $_POST. When the file.php is loaded you will get the parameters using $_GET or $_POST.

How to access a remote computer using SSH in Ubuntu Linux

Fri, 12 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

SSH is the easiest way to access a remote computer not in graphical interface but in character interface.

To access a remote computer you should need the computer’s ip address & a username of the computer. Now connect using the credentials you now have. For Example:

ssh [email protected]

Type the password of the user and hit enter. You now entered the user’s system.

You can logout, shut down the computer if you ssh root user. For that use the following ssh command:

ssh [email protected]

Type the password of the root user and hit enter. You now entered the user’s system with full privilege.

You can shut down using poweroff command and to log out see this post.

Revert back to normal resolution after running a fullscreen app in Wine

Thu, 11 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

While running a fullscreen app in Wine such as games, you might not get the screen resolution back after you close the app. It’s because Linux won’t automatically change it’s resolution like Windows.

But you could if you run a simple file in terminal. Here is how you could do it.
Create a file named normal.sh in your Desktop with the following contents:

#!/bin/bash
xrandr -s 0

Save it on a place where you can open it easily. Make the file Executable to run it in a terminal. See this post to see how you could make a file executable.

After you run a full screen program and closed it, run the file we created to return back to the normal resolution.

If you get a dialog like above when executing the normal.sh click on Run in Terminal button.

How to make a file executable in Ubuntu Linux

Wed, 10 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Executable files are files that can be used to run a program or to do a specific purpose specified in the file. Normally not all files defaultly would be executable in Linux because of security reasons. If all files are defaultly executable then the scripts can do whatever the hell they want to do in your computer. As we call them VIRUSES. This is one of the main reasons why you should use Linux. It’s virus free.

If you want a file executable you can do it with a simple trick in Ubuntu.
Right click on the file and click Properties. Choose the tab Permissions and click on Allow executing file as program.

After clicking close the dialog. Now the file is executable. While opening the file you will get a dialog :

You want to execute the file so click Run in Terminal.

How To Log Out Using Terminal in Ubuntu Linux

Mon, 08 Jul 2013 22:00:00 +0000

There is no specific command to logout in an Ubuntu system.

Why ?

Here’s how it works. The desktop you’re seeing is a separate software. They are called Desktop Environments (DE). The default DE of Ubuntu is Unity from Ubuntu’s 11.04 versions. Before it was GNOME. There are many DEs for Ubuntu. Some of them are :

Openbox

XFCE

LXDE

and many more.. There are also separate Login Managers to provide the login screen while Ubuntu is loaded. When you log in, the Login Manager starts the default DE set up on your system and when this DE program is closed or terminated, it will go back to the Login Screen or Login Manager.

So, as to log out the user, you have to terminate the DE program. This is why there is no special command to log out.

How ?

Now, let me show you how to terminate the DE program. It’s very easy, just like closing an application.

First, we need to find which DE Ubuntu is using on your system. You can find it from the small Ubuntu icon on your login screen just near Username field. Here are some other clues :

Unity – Stylish Sidebar with icons and the Dashboard menu appears when you press Super/Windows key

GNOME – A Footprint logo on desktop

XFCE – There’s a mice logo somewhere on your desktop

LXDE – Have a Windows like Panel at the bottom

And here are the program names of the above DE except for Unity :

GNOME – gnome-session

XFCE – xfce4-session

LXDE – lxsession

Open a Terminal (CTRL + ALT + T) and do one of the two methods shown below :

Method 1

Do the following command :

ps aux | grep <DE_program>

Replace "<DE_program>" in the above command with the program name of DE.

You will get a list of processes running. Find the DE program name from the list. Get the process id of that process from column no 2. Suppose the id is 1728. To logout you should kill the process. For that use the following command:

kill <process_id>

If the process id is 1728 the code will be :

kill 1728

What the above command does is that it terminates the DE program.

Method 2

You can directly kill the DE program by mentioning it’s program name, like this :

pkill <DE_program>

Replace "<DE_program>" in the above command with the program name of DE and execute it. This will also kill the program just like the 1st method.

Unity

Unity has some special consideration. The log out can be initiated without killing any program. Run the command :

gnome-session-quit --no-prompt

The above will work on Unity even though the command is for GNOME, because the program is included with every installation of Ubuntu.

Disabling sidebar from fading out in Blogger Dynamic Views Template

Sun, 07 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

The black sidebar on the right side of the blog is hidden and is only visible when mouse is over it. This is a problem because most of the users who are visiting your blog won’t even see the sidebar. The following list shows the advantages of having a sidebar not fading out :

Google + Followers Increases

More people will subscribe to your blog

People will know the popularity of your blog when they see the blog stats

and others…….

So I’m gonna tell you how to prevent the sidebar from fading out to the right side.
First of all Go to Blogger -> Template -> Customise
Choose Advanced option and click on the Add CSS button from the sub options. Paste the following code in the white box:

#gadget-dock{right: 0px !important;}

Screenshot:

Now go to your blog and see the sidebar not moving anywhere and is standing still.

How to execute a PHP PDO prepared statement

Sat, 06 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

PDO – a method used to execute SQL statements risk free. Fast, secure and easy when compared to mysqli and mysql functions in PHP.
A lot of newbies including me heard about PDO mostly in the 2010 – 2013 years when a lot of sites got hacked of Mysql Injection. PDO is the easiest and safest way to execute an SQL code, complete risk free.
In this post I’m gonna tell you how to execute a prepared statement in PDO and the common mistakes made by programmers which results an error while executing SQL code.

Contents

<ul class="toc_list"> <li> <a href="#how-to-execute-a-prepared-statement"><span class="toc_number toc_depth_1">1</span> How to execute a prepared statement ?</a> </li> <li> <a href="#common-mistakes"><span class="toc_number toc_depth_1">2</span> Common mistakes</a><ul> <li> <ul> <li> <a href="#-right-way"><span class="toc_number toc_depth_3">2.0.1</span> Right Way:</a> </li> <li> <a href="#-right-way-2"><span class="toc_number toc_depth_3">2.0.2</span> Right Way:</a> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> </ul>

How to execute a prepared statement ?

The following example shows how to execute an INSERT statement with the credentials {database_name:"db",host:"localhost",username:"root",password:"subins",table:"users",fields:"name,age,city"}.

<?php $name=$_POST['name']; $age=$_POST['age']; $city=$_POST['city']; $db = new PDO('mysql:dbname=<span style="color: red;">db</span>;host=<span style="color: red;">127.0.0.1</span>', '<span style="color: red;">root</span>', '<span style="color: red;">subins</span>'); $sql=$db->prepare("INSERT INTO users (name,age,city) VALUES(?,?,?)"); $sql->execute(array($name,$age,$city)); ?>

Common mistakes

Now the common mistakes made while executing a code like above.

1. Some will put variables inside execute function instead of putting it in array like below:

$sql->execute($name,$age,$city);

Right Way:

$sql->execute(array($name,$age,$city));

2. The other mistake is calling a function from $db instead of $sql like the following:

$sql=$db->prepare("INSERT INTO users (name,age,city) VALUES(?,?,?)");
$db->execute(array($name,$age,$city));

Right Way:

$sql=$db->prepare("INSERT INTO users (name,age,city) VALUES(?,?,?)");
$sql->execute(array($name,$age,$city));

How to redirect users to a page in PHP

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

If you want to redirect users to a specific page or url like when user is not logged in or something in PHP then you can accomplish this with header function or by Javascript printed by echo function.
The following example will redirect user to http://subins.hp.af.cm

Or you can use the normal Javascript :

window.location=’http://subins.hp.af.cm’;"; ?>

What’s the difference ?

header function is called in server itself not when the page reaches the browser. So no content will load, instead the client’s page will be redirected to the specified url.

Javascript redirection takes place in browser. So when the page loads to the Javascript redirect call the user will be redirected. It takes some time if you put the redirection code below script loading or stylesheet loading.

So it’s better to use header than calling a redirection in Javascript. If header function won’t work then you can use Javascript redirection. It’s that simple.

How To Integrate Disqus Into Blogger Dynamic Views

Thu, 04 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Disqus works in normal Blogger template but won’t work in Dynamic Views because it don’t support HTML/Javascript widget. But you can edit the contents in head tag of Template and I found a way to integrate the Disqus commenting system in to Blogger. I’m gonna show you how to do that.

DEMO

Works On

Sidebar

Classic

Flipcard

Magazine

Mosaic

Snapshot

Timeslide

Disadvantages

On Classic Templates Disqus will only be available for the first post, because they won’t allow you to put more than 1 Disqus Comment box on a page

Dependencies

Sharing buttons below posts should be Enabled

Google + Comments should be hidden

Blogger Default Comments should be hidden

Current Version

Updated on 2017 July 29.

First of all go to Blogger ->** Settings** -> **Posts and Comments **and change the **Comment Location **option to Hide. If you enabled Google + Comments, Please disable that too.

You have two options :

Include the code below in "Text/JavaScript" widget of Blogger

Include the code below in your Blogger Template

Go to **Blogger **-> **Template **-> Edit HTML and Paste the following code before </head> :

<script type='text/javascript'> /** * Disqus in Blogger Dynamic views integrated by Subin Siby [http://goo.gl/jPb8TR] */ window.disqus_shortname = "example"; // required: replace example with your forum shortname var d = document, o = d.createElement("script"); o.type = "text/javascript", o.async = true, o.src = "https://lab.subinsb.com/projects/Francium/dibd/load.min.js"; d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(o); </script>

Replace the yellow color background text example in the above code with your Disqus shortname. Example: subinsdemos from subinsdemos.disqus.com.

It’s that simple. Your blog posts will now have a Disqus comment box. Enjoy !!

UPDATE : "2015-07-14" The Sidebar first post problem has been fixed.

UPDATE : "2015-09-24" An Improved version was released.

UPDATE : "2016-02-05" Fixed bugs. Thanks Spikeren.

UPDATE : "2017-07-29" Changed URL to HTTPS. Thanks Transmission Radio.

UPDATE : "2019-11-07" Fixed bug in code display. Thanks Amber.

If you have any problems/suggestions/feedback just comment in Disqus below.

Check whether a site is XSS vulnerable or not.

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

XSS is a method to hack sites which most of the newbie programmers don’t know. Here is a quick way to identify if a site is vulnerable to it. Go to a site which offers searching or other GET parameters which are outputted in the site’s page.

Instead of the value in one of the GET parameter use the following value :

XSS Vulnerability checker by Subin Siby

For example a site with the GET parameter query with value subins and the url will be :

http://subins.com/search.php?query=subins

For such a site you have to replace the parameter value with this:

XSS Vulnerability checker by Subin Siby

If the site outputs the GET type parameter then you will get a javascript alert. The alert means that the site is vulnerable to XSS.
This trick can be also used in POST type parameter by injecting the code mentioned to the input field.

Why you should switch to Linux from Windows 8

Tue, 02 Jul 2013 16:10:00 +0000

Definition of Windows : An Operating System that helps Microsoft Corporation increase their income and helps you to empty your wallet.

Definition of Linux : An Operating System that helps users in a great manner and not for the profit of the company.

Here is why you should switch to Linux from Windows

Is embedding video from YouTube an Adsense violation ?

Tue, 02 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Many embed YouTube video in to their blogs. This is a adsense violation if the video has:

Copyright content

Owner is not you

Video is Copyrighted and no one is allowed to put it on a site

The reasons above may be a reason why your Adsense application was rejected. Please THINK BEFORE YOU ACT while writing each blog posts. You should make sure that the post you are about to write isn’t a copied content or doesn’t contain a copyrighted material such as images, videos etc……
These rules not only applicable to YouTube videos but to all sites that offer video uploads and embedding such as DailyMotion, Vimeo etc….

How to show Disqus comment count in Blogger

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Many of sites have switched to Disqus comment system. It’s fast, easy and simple to use. Many wanted to show the comment count on their homepages. For showing the comment count on your **Blogger Blog **you can just do a simple trick.

Go to Blogger -> Template -> Edit HTML.

Place this Javascript code above .

<script type="text/javascript"> /* * * CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT BEFORE PASTING INTO YOUR WEBPAGE * * */ var disqus_shortname = '<span style="background-color: yellow;">subinsblog</span>'; // required: replace example with your forum shortname /* * * DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE * * */ (function () { var s = document.createElement('script'); s.async = true; s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.src = 'http://' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/count.js'; (document.getElementsByTagName('HEAD')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('BODY')[0]).appendChild(s); }()); </script>

Replace the yellow background text above to your **Disqus **shortname example: subinsblog from subinsblog.disqus.com is the shortname.

Now place the following code anywhere on the template where you want to show comment count :

<a expr:href="data:post.url + "#disqus_thread"">0 Comments</a>

You should place the above code anywhere inside <div class=’post hentry’> or else the code won’t work.

How students do Hindi Homeworks

Sun, 30 Jun 2013 16:12:00 +0000

Cohesion Force : You just can’t stand it

Sun, 30 Jun 2013 16:05:00 +0000

Creating a Contact Me page for Blogger Blog

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 06:08:00 +0000

Blogger has added a new widget in their widget page. This widget is a Contact Me widget which allows blog visitors to contact you.

This can be added in your blog sidebar or footer. In this tutorial I will tell you to how to add this to a blog page.

Create a blank page from Blogger -> Pages -> New Page -> Blank Page

Toggle to tab HTML and paste these code in the HTML textarea :

Name

Email
*

Message
*

contact-form-button contact-form-button-submit" id="ContactForm1_contact-form-submit" type="button" value="Send" />
Powered By Subin’s Blog

Now we have to register the widget to make it work properly. To do that Go to Template -> Edit HTML and scrollto the bottom of the code and paste the following code before </html>

<div> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Replace the <span style="color: red;">Wheat color background text</span> above to your blog id</span>. See <a href="http://sag-3.blogspot.com/2013/06/find-blogger-blog-id.html" >this post</a> to see how you can find blogger blog id. </div>

When a user submits the Contact Me form you will get a mail from Blogger like this :

How to find Blogger Blog ID

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 06:00:00 +0000

You may need your blogger blog id for various needs. Here’s a simple tutorial on how to find the blog id.

Go to your blog dashboard on Blogger. See the url of the page in the location bar.

In the page url you can see a text blogID= followed by a number until it stops with #.

Here’s a sample url :

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=123456789101112#overview/src=dashboard

The wheat color background text in the above url is the blog id of that blog.

How to remove keyring password dialog in All Ubuntu versions

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 12:34:00 +0000

You will be getting a keyring unlocker dialog to type your password to unlock the keyrings such as:

Password you stored in Web Browsers (Google Chrome, Chromium)

Passwords stored in Chat and Mail Applications (Empathy, Pidgin, Evolution)

and other passwords

This passwords should be unlocked each time you login but won’t automatically unlock when you login. To automatically unlock you can do as follows:
Open Terminal (CTRL + ALT + T) and do the following command:

seahorse

You will get the Passwords & Encryption Keys window :

Right click on the folder Password: default and choose Change Password :

Type the old password you used to unlock the keyring and leave the other two fields empty and click on OK button.

You will be asked to keep passwords unencrypted :

Click on Use Unsafe Storage and it’s done. The dialog won’t be seen again after you login.

Facebook Hacker Cup 2013:Beautiful Strings solution in PHP

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 16:31:00 +0000

Here is the solution for FHC 2013 Beautiful Strings problem in PHP:

$ip = fopen(‘input.txt‘, "r");
$test_cases = trim(fgets($ip));
$c=1;
while($c!= $test_cases+1){
$case=preg_replace(‘/[^a-z]+/’, ", strtolower(trim(fgets($ip))));
$vals=array_count_values(str_split($case));
arsort($vals);
$beauty=26;
$max_b=0;
foreach($vals as $v){
$max_b +=$v*$beauty;
$beauty–;
}
print("Case #".$c.": ".$max_b);
if($c < $test_cases){
print("
");
}
$c++;
}

Replace the red highlighted text with the input file name.
Sample Output

Case #1: 152
Case #2: 754
Case #3: 491
Case #4: 729
Case #5: 646

Advanced Rest Client : Create and Test custom HTTP requests.

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 07:42:00 +0000

I recently noticed a Google Chrome Webstore app that can be used for making a request to a web site or local site. I loved the app from the beginning. You can send a request to any site with header data, form data etc…

You can also attach a file to the form. Ain’t that Awesome.
Every web developer must have this app. Install it from Chrome Webstore

Features

– Integrated with Google Drive

– It’s own backend service to store and share data between coworkers

– convenient HTTP headers and payload editor thanks CodeMirror

– Make a HTTP request (via XmlHttpRequest level 2)

– Debug socket (via web socket API).

– JSON response viewer

– XML response viewer

– set custom headers – even does not supported by XmlHttpRequest object

– help with filling HTTP headers (hint + code completion)

– add headers list as raw data or via form

– construct POST or PUT body via raw input, form or send file(s) with request

– set custom form encoding

– remember latest request (save current form state and restore on load)

– save (Ctrl+S) and open (Ctrl+O) saved request forms

– history support

– data import/export

I am giving this app 4/5 stars
It’s 4 because it doesn’t support image mime types and it gives a Unexpected Token while parsing some JSON responses.

Connecting database to both mysqli and mysql entension

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 07:26:00 +0000

You can use both mysql and mysqli extension for executing SQL queries. Here is a tutorial on how to connect both the extensions to a database.

Create a file named config.php where you will connect to the database. Put the following code in it:

$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "username", "password", "db");
if ($mysqli->connect_errno) {
echo "Failed to connect to MySQL: (" . $mysqli->connect_errno . ") " . $mysqli->connect_error;
}
$bd = mysql_connect("localhost", "username", "password") or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("db",$bd) or die(mysql_error());
?>

Replace the red highlighted text with the credentials of your database connection.

Check whether mysqli connection is made or not in php

Wed, 29 May 2013 16:37:00 +0000

This function helps to check whether connection the mysql server has been made or not.

Here is the code:

if ($mysqli->ping()) {
echo ("Our connection is ok!n");
} else {
    printf ("Error: %sn", $mysqli->error);
}

The $mysqli variable is a connection made via mysqli function.

Know more about mysqli ping function here.

Hide File Extensions In Browsers Using .htaccess

Wed, 29 May 2013 04:12:00 +0000

Many of us programmers want to hide the file extension of server files such as .php, .jsp, .py etc….

You can easily hide these extensions with the help of a .htaccess file. This feature is only available to Apache servers.

Create a file named .htaccess if your root directory of site doesn’t have one.

Add these lines to the .htaccess file :

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span class="kw1" style="border: 0px; color: #2060a0; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">RewriteEngine</span><span style="line-height: 18.200000762939453px; white-space: nowrap;"> </span><span class="kw2" style="border: 0px; color: #2060a0; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">on</span></span> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span class="kw1" style="border: 0px; color: #2060a0; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">RewriteCond</span><span style="line-height: 18.200000762939453px; white-space: nowrap;"> %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d</span></span> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span class="kw1" style="border: 0px; color: #2060a0; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">RewriteCond</span><span style="line-height: 18.200000762939453px; white-space: nowrap;"> %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f</span></span> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span class="kw1" style="border: 0px; color: #2060a0; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">RewriteRule</span><span style="line-height: 18.200000762939453px; white-space: nowrap;"> .* $0.php</span></span>

The above lines wll hide the PHP extension. If you want to hide the HTML and other extension too add these line after

<span class="kw1" style="border: 0px; color: #2060a0; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">RewriteCond</span><span style="line-height: 18.200000762939453px; white-space: nowrap;"> %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f</span>

as you want. You can also replace it if you don’t want php extensions to hide.

HTML

<span class="kw1" style="border: 0px; color: #2060a0; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">RewriteCond</span><span style="line-height: 18.200000762939453px; white-space: nowrap;"> %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f</span>

JSP

<span class="kw1" style="border: 0px; color: #2060a0; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">RewriteCond</span><span style="line-height: 18.200000762939453px; white-space: nowrap;"> %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.jsp -f</span>

ASP

<span class="kw1" style="border: 0px; color: #2060a0; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">RewriteCond</span><span style="line-height: 18.200000762939453px; white-space: nowrap;"> %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.asp -f</span>

PY

<span class="kw1" style="border: 0px; color: #2060a0; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">RewriteCond</span><span style="line-height: 18.200000762939453px; white-space: nowrap;"> %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.py -f</span>

JS

<span class="kw1" style="border: 0px; color: #2060a0; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap;">RewriteCond</span><span style="line-height: 18.200000762939453px; white-space: nowrap;"> %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.js -f</span>

You really should go into each page and delete the extensions, but I believe you can redirect them by adding another rule :

<span style="color: #2060a0;">RewriteRule </span>(.*).<span style="color: red;">html</span> $1 [R=301,NC]

The above rule will redirect all .html pages to non .html extension page.

Replace the red highlighted text with any extension you want to redirect.

Create Facebook Like System With jQuery, MySQL, PDO In PHP

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:14:00 +0000

Facebook have it’s own like system which pretty good. This post will tell you how to create a "Like system" like that of Facebook. All you have to need is jQuery, MySQL Database and PDO PHP extension. This technic is partially used in my social network, Open. See the demo there in the social network. But you have to signup.

DEMO

You should create a user table with users data including user id, username, password, email etc…

<div> <span style="color: red; font-family: inherit;">The table should be like this:</span> </div>

Let’s start by creating a likes table where we store the like actions by the user.

Here is the SQL code that create the likes table :

CREATE TABLE `fdlikes` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT, `pid` int NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY , `user` varchar(25) NOT NULL UNIQUE );

The pid field is for the post id. The user field is for the user id.

Create a post table to insert posts created by users.

CREATE TABLE `fdposts` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT, `user` varchar(25) NOT NULL, `message` varchar(200) NOT NULL, `likes` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `posted` varchar(20) NOT NULL, );

The id field is an auto increment field which decides the post id. User field is the user’s id and likes field contains number of users who liked the post. Posted field contains the date and time in which the post was created.

First of all create a config file that will connect to database. We are going to use PDO.

config.php

This file contains the $dbh variable which is the PDO object we’re going to use for executing SQL queries.

$dbh = new PDO('mysql:dbname=database;host=127.0.0.1', 'username', 'password');

Showing Like/Unlike Button

<?php require_once "config.php"; $pid='1'; //Post id - Post is "Hi everybody" $uid='1'; //User id - User is "Subin Siby" $sql=$dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM fdlikes WHERE pid=? and user=?"); $sql->execute(array($pid, $uid)); if($sql->rowCount()==1){ echo '<a href="#" class="like" id="'.$pid.'" title="Unlike">Unlike</a>'; }else{ echo '<a href="#" class="like" id="'.$pid.'" title="Like">Like</a>'; } ?>

Place the above code anywhere you like.

jQuery code to post like/unlike action

<span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">$(document).ready(function(){ $(document).on('click', '.like', function(){</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">if($(this).attr('title') == 'Like'){</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> $that = $(this); $.post('action.php', {pid:$(this).attr('id'), action:'like'},function(){</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> $that.text('Unlike');</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> $that.attr('title','Unlike');</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> });</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">}else{</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> if($(this).attr('title') == 'Unlike'){</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> $that = $(this); $.post('action.php', {pid:$(this).attr('id'), action:'unlike'},function(){</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> $that.text('Like');</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> $that.attr('title','Like');</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> });</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> }</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">}</span></span> <span style="line-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> }); });</span></span>

<p> The above code can be placed inside <strong>script</strong> element or as an external file. </p>

PHP code to like/unlike to which jQuery sends request

This file is action.php

<?php require_once "config.php"; $pid=$_POST['pid']; $user=$_COOKIE['user']; $action=$_POST['action']; if ($action=='like'){ $sql=$dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM fdlikes WHERE pid=? and user=?"); $sql->execute(array($pid,$user)); $matches=$sql->rowCount(); if($matches==0){ $sql=$dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO fdlikes (pid, user) VALUES(?, ?)"); $sql->execute(array($pid,$user)); $sql=$dbh->prepare("UPDATE fdposts SET likes=likes+1 WHERE id=?"); $sql->execute(array($pid)); }else{ die("There is No Post With That ID"); } } if ($action=='unlike'){ $sql = $dbh->prepare("SELECT 1 FROM `fdlikes` WHERE pid=? and user=?"); $sql->execute(array($pid,$user)); $matches = $sql->rowCount(); if ($matches != 0){ $sql=$dbh->prepare("DELETE FROM fdlikes WHERE pid=? AND user=?"); $sql->execute(array($pid,$user)); $sql=$dbh->prepare("UPDATE fdposts SET likes=likes-1 WHERE id=?"); $sql->execute(array($pid)); } } ?>

That’s it. Try it out. If there’s any bugs, problems or questions feel free to comment below on Disqus.

Friendshood Update new feature – Post to Facebook

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:33:00 +0000

I updated Friendshood. The new feature is that the user can post status update and photos to Facebook along with posting in Friendshood. I implemented this function using Facebook PHP SDK. You can download the SDK here.

It was not quite easy. It was hard to make Picture uploading function along with the normal status update. Next I’m gonna implement twitter posting from Friendshood.

I’m gonna tell you how to post a status update in the following posts. Wait for it.

How to get Facebook PHP SDK and install it

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:59:00 +0000

Download Facebook PHP SDK from here.
Extract the folder src in the zip file to a folder named fbsdk in the home directory of your app.

Installation

There is no installation. You can run the functions in the file if you put this line at top of each file you run the SDK functions :

include(‘fbsdk/facebook.php’);

Facebook SDK requires the following to work properly :

JSON PHP extension.

CURL PHP extension.

How to get Current Time and date in Javascript

Tue, 07 May 2013 05:47:00 +0000

This tutorial will help you to get current date and time at which the function is executed. Here is the function:

function ctime(){
var currentdate = new Date();
var time=currentdate.getFullYear()+"-"+(currentdate.getMonth()+1)+"-"+currentdate.getDate()+" "+currentdate.getHours()+":"+currentdate.getMinutes()+":"+currentdate.getSeconds();
return time;
}

Just print out ctime() function to get the date and time in the format YEAR/MONTH/DAY HOUR:MINUTE:SECOND

Explanation :

new Date() function prints out the current date and time in a disorderly way. You can order it in any way as I did in the time() function.

currentdate.getFullYear() will get the year from new Date() which is in the variable currentdate

currentdate.getMonth() will get the month from new Date() function. The program adds 1 to the month because Javascript always count the month from . So we should add a +1.

currentdate.getDate() will get the day of the month in which the function is executed.

currentdate.getHours() will give the Hour of the time.

currentdate.getMinutes() will give the Minute in which the script is executed.

currentdate.getSeconds() This function will give the seconds of the time at which the script is executed.

The best age calculation code in PHP

Thu, 02 May 2013 14:36:00 +0000

Age calculation is a tricky calculation especially in Programming Languages. I’m going to tell you a simple way to find out age in PHP. This is a simple function that will calculate age if it is given a birthday date in the format date/month/year. For example : 20/01/2000 or 04/12/1990
Here is the function :

function age($birthday){
list($day,$month,$year) = explode("/",$birthday);
$year_diff = date("Y") – $year;
$month_diff = date("m") – $month;
$day_diff = date("d") – $day;
if ($day_diff < 0 && $month_diff==0){$year_diff–;}
if ($day_diff < 0 && $month_diff < 0){$year_diff–;}
return $year_diff;
}

You can print out the age like this:

echo age(’20/01/2000′);

This echo function will write 13. See another example :

echo age(’04/12/1990′);

This echo function will write 22.

How to check if the mouse is over an element in jQuery?

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 15:56:00 +0000

Here is a simple plugin to check if the mouse is over an element in JQuery. Open your jQuery source file and search for window.jQuery = window.$ = jQuery;

Paste the code shown below after the code you have just found.

<span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mlp </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">=</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">{</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">x</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</span><span class="lit" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">0</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">,</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">y</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</span><span class="lit" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">0</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">};</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">function</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> documentHandler</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(){</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">var</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $current </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">=</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">this</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">===</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> document </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">?</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">this</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">)</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">this</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">).</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">contents</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">();</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $current</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mousemove</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">function</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">e</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">){</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">jQuery</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mlp </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">=</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">{</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">x</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">e</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">pageX</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">,</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">y</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">e</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">pageY</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">}});</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $current</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">find</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="str" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">"iframe"</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">).</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">load</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">documentHandler</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">);</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">}</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">$</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">documentHandler</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">);</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">fn</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">ismouseover </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">=</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">function</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">overThis</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">)</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">{</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">var</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> result </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">=</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">false</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">;</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">this</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">eq</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="lit" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">0</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">).</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">each</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">function</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">()</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">{</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">var</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $current </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">=</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">this</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">).</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">is</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="str" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">"iframe"</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">)</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">?</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">this</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">).</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">contents</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">().</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">find</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="str" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">"body"</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">)</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">this</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">);</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">var</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> offset </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">=</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $current</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">offset</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">();</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> result<br /> </span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> result </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">=</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> offset</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">left</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><=</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">$</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mlp</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">x </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">&&</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> offset</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">left </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">+</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $current</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">outerWidth</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">()</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">></span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mlp</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">x </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">&&</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> offset</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">top</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><=</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">$</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mlp</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">y </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">&&</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> offset</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">top </span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">+</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $current</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">outerHeight</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">()</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">></span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> $</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">mlp</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">y</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">;</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">});</span><span class="kwd" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">return</span><span class="pln" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> result</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">;</span><span class="pun" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">};</span>

To check if mouse is hovering an element, just check it like this:

$("div").ismouseover()

The .ismouseover() function will return true if the mouse is hovering the element and false if it’s not hovering.

This function is tested on IE7+, Chrome 1+ and Firefox 4. It is working properly on all these browsers.

NOTE : The solution does not work if the element is an iframe. Because the mousemove event does not fire over the iframe, and the Mouse Last Position is not updated.

SPAM URL’s in Blogger Traffic Source Stats : What should I do ?

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 14:34:00 +0000

You might have noticed a great volume of sites you never heard of coming to your site apart from Search Engine URL’s. Some of those URL’s are filmhill.com and vampirestat.com.

These kind of URL‘s are SPAM. The SPAM site is referring your site but they are not persons, they’re BOTS. These bots are visiting your site just for fun. These bots don’t read your posts or anything. They’re just a pile of robots. The bot is ran by a script. Probably PHP.
This scripts visits your site using CURL function with the referrer of their site. In PHP if you echo $_SERVER[‘HTTP_REFERER’] you will get the site where the user just came from. Blogger is using the same function but not PHP to record the traffic sources.

<h1> What’s the benefit for my blog and the SPAM site ? </h1> <p> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>My Blog </b>: Your stats will rise up. Even though the visitor is a <b>bot,</b> <b>Blogger</b> will still count it as a visitor. The human viewers will see the <b>rise up in your blog’s stats</b> making them believe that your blog is a popular blog.</span><br /> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /> </span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>SPAM</b> <b>Site</b> : The site do this because they want to promote their site to you. When the blog owner sees this traffic source, they will click the link to check it out. Hence the SPAM site’s stats will also rise and more advertisers will come to advertise on the SPAM site.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /> </span> </p> <h1> What’s the disadvantage ? </h1> <p> <b>Ad</b> <b>Networks</b> such as <b>Google Adsense</b> and <b>BuySellAds</b> tracks all the visits coming to your blog. When they sees the <b>SPAM</b> URL’s visiting, they count it as a <b>paid-to-click</b> visit. According to the <b>Adsense</b> Policies, You shouldn’t use a <b>Pay To Click</b> service. Hence your Adsense Account will get <b>disapproved</b>.<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /> </span> </p> <h1> What should I do ? </h1> <p> <span style="font-family: inherit;">You can’t do anything to stop these traffic sources, Only Blogger can. But you can do two things : </span> </p> <ol> <li> Don’t click on these kind of URL’s </li> <li> Don’t add those URL’s to your blog pages. </li> </ol> <p> <span style="font-family: inherit;">If you link the SPAM URL’s they will keep coming to your blog.</span> </p> <p> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /> </b></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">Here is a list of <b>SPAM</b> sites found in Blogger Traffic Sources.<b></b></span> </p>

<tr> <td> http://gsniper2.com/?hop=gerbill3 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://0rz.tw/orp80 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://t.co/6kSaxKTT </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://www3.t-8jy1o8pij.trickip.net/ </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://6dd260ed.urlbeat.net </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://adsenserrors.info </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://software.refererx.com/ </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://www.elebda3.net/redirect.php?url=t.co/TpCBMDg9 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://zombiestat.com/ </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://uglystat.com/ </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://adsensewatchdog.com </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://adsresultpages.com/?aff=5801&saff=1&source=1&q=buy+viagra </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://bit.ly/FreeDownloadMoneyMakingPackage </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://tinyurl.com/EarnMoneyFromADFLY </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://myhealthscore.com/frame.cfm?page=http%3a%2f%2ft.co%2fz1v6ZazZ </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2gA2gc/t.co/TIlBBraD </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://tr.netlog.com/go/out/url=http%3a%2f%2ft.co%2fcM5qnlnl?kjKJHl8HKd23 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://www.filmhill.com/redirect.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F5UQiESCF </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://www.filmhill.com/redirect.php?url=http://flf-course.com?a_aid=510d2acc92117&a_bid=6f93443e </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://www.filmhill.com </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://www.vampirestat.com </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://yandex.ru/yandsearch? </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://www.meendo.com/?partner=2631 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://pregolom.com/find/in/index.php </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://super-online-search.com/find/in/index.php </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://www.elebda3.net/redirect.php?url=t.co/TpCBMDg9 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4p9PjdqHN4 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://bytovaya-tehnika.blogspot.ru/ – Dec. 2012 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://electronika-tech.blogspot.ru/ – Dec. 2012 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://obo-vsem-blog.blogspot.ru/ – Dec. 2012 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://lshirlene.github.com/166.html </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://thesecrettool.blogspot.com </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://kechinf.phpnet.us </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://members.multimania.co.uk </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://olshopu.netai.net </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://flf-course.com/?a_aid=517d0f042c205 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://r-e-f-e-r-e-r.com/ </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://r-e-f-e-r-r-e-r.com/ </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://www.linkedin.com/redir/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fflf-course%2Ecom%3Fa_aid%3D517d0f042c205&urlhash=e75j5 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://t.co/MaAptuGFVu6 </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://www.kmzackblogger.com </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://kallery.net/ </td> </tr> <tr> <td> http://7secretsearch.com/ </td> </tr>

http://www.omgmachines.com/?hop=gerbill3

Thank you Rahul Saitand & Brittny for reporting some SPAM URL’s.

If you have any other URL’s than this, please report it via comments.

NimBuzz Official Website hacked by Iranian Hackers

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:53:00 +0000

Just now. Nimbuzz main site nimbuzz.com was hacked by someone identified as Sourena.

The hacker defaced the main site to this

<p> </div> <div style="text-align: left;"> As a proof he saved a mirror at <a href="http://zone-h.com/mirror/id/19693441" style="font-weight: bold;" >Zone-H</a>. The <b>Nimbuzz</b> website can’t be accessed right now. Google Chrome gives an error "<b>Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to nimbuzz.com</b>" </div> <div style="text-align: left;"> </div> <div style="text-align: left;"> <b>Nimbuzz </b>is one of the popular chat clients in <b>PC </b>and mobile phones. After this attack, it’s sure that users will move out of <b>Nimbuzz</b>. </div> <div style="text-align: left;"> </div> <div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="font-size: large;">Earlier in the <b>Nimbuzz </b>Blog They said that they would give <b>Cash</b> if anyone reports security issues.</span> </div> <div style="text-align: left;"> See the blog post <a href="http://blog.nimbuzz.com/2013/04/03/report-bugs-and-win-cash-prizes-and-more-with-nimbuzz/" >here</a>. </div> <div style="text-align: left;"> </div> <div style="text-align: left;"> They also said "<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><b>Each week we would announce one winner and his photo would be up here on the Global Blog and will get Nimbuzz Merchandise. After 6 weeks we would then pick one of these 6 winners and that winner would get Cash prize.</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">"</span></span></p> <p> <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">One thing is for sure : The hacker’s photo would be on the Global Blog.</span></span></div> </div>

How to make your Windows 8 PC speak out Time at Every Hour

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:33:00 +0000

Thanks for this useful information by NextOfWindows
This small tutorial will make your PC speak out the time every hour. This will help especially if you’re a programer. Because programmers usually lose track of time.

Most Programmers don’t use a Windows OS. But there are some ! This tutorial is for those people.

Create a file named time.vbs containing these code :

Dim speaks, speech

<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 25px; text-align: center;">speaks = "It is " & hour(time) & " O’clock"</span></span> </div> <p> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"></span></span> </p> <div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 25px; text-align: center;">Set speech = CreateObject("sapi.spvoice")</span></span> </div> <p> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"></span></span> </p> <div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 25px; text-align: center;">speech.Speak speaks</span></span> </div> <p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"></span> </p> </blockquote> <p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Save the file wherever you want.</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Open the <b>Run </b>dialog<b> </b>by pressing <b>WIN + R</b>. Type <b>taskschd.msc</b> and hit <b>Enter</b> to run the program.</span> </p> <div style="text-align: center;"> </div> <p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><b>WIN = </b>Windows button on keyboard.</span> </p> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="//4.bp.blogspot.com/-jQKV82iZM4M/Ub1P7qOCdQI/AAAAAAAACsw/09G1Rhp9dpU/s1600/0003.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="//4.bp.blogspot.com/-jQKV82iZM4M/Ub1P7qOCdQI/AAAAAAAACsw/09G1Rhp9dpU/s1600/0003.png" /></span></a> </div> <p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> </p> <div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 22px; text-align: center;">In <b>Task Scheduler</b>, click </span><strong style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">Create Task</strong><span style="line-height: 22px; text-align: center;">.</span></span> </div> <div style="border: 0px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Give the name <b>Time</b> </span><span style="background-color: white;">under </span><strong style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">General</strong><span style="background-color: white;"> tab</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Run the task repeatedly every hour by adding a trigger. Like below:</span></p> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="//1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZT7BBT-AXco/Ub1QdM6-S2I/AAAAAAAACtE/7lY7AOF9EMM/s1600/0004.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="553" src="//1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZT7BBT-AXco/Ub1QdM6-S2I/AAAAAAAACtE/7lY7AOF9EMM/s640/0004.png" width="640" /></a> </div> <p> <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">Point the location of the <b>time.vbs</b> file in <b>Program/Script</b> field, like below:</span></span> </p> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="//4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fgvwu8Hrvck/Ub1P9vDn2RI/AAAAAAAACtA/hiPv8jRDI6c/s1600/0005.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="//4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fgvwu8Hrvck/Ub1P9vDn2RI/AAAAAAAACtA/hiPv8jRDI6c/s1600/0005.png" /></a> </div> <p> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Change the program input to the path where you saved </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">time.vbs</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">.Click </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">OK</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> button.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">That’s it for today. I will post something more cool next ti</span></div> </div> <div style="border: 0px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"> <div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #373737; font-family: 'Segoe UI', Segoe, 'Helvetica Neue', Verdana, Geneva, Arial; font-size: 1.1em; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span> </div> </div></div>

Login with Google OAuth without using Google PHP Library

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:50:00 +0000

Google PHP Library is very hard to use and is very long. It wasted a lot of my time. So I decided to do it manually.
I created a new library for Google OAuth in PHP.

Download Demo

It is very simple to use and you don’t have to worry about a thing.

FAQ

How to get a client Id and Client Secret ?

1) Go to https://code.google.com/apis/console and create a new project.
2) Fill up the form.
3) In the redirect URL’s type in the URL of the index.php in your site.
4) Add your site URL as trusted Origin.
You will now get a client Id and a Client Secret Id. Type both of those in each $client_id and $client_secret variable of Configuration section in index.php file.

What should I type in $redirect_url variable ?

Open the page index.php in your browser and you will be redirected to the Google Oauth site and when the user authorised your app they will reach the redirect_url you specified in index.php configuration section.

Where can I get the list of scopes ?

I have made a blog post containing the list of scopes. View the post @ http://sag-3.blogspot.com/2013/04/list-google-oauth-scopes.html

List of Google OAuth Scopes

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 07:45:00 +0000

Here is the list of Google OAuth Scopes. It can be used for different purposes.

<td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/adsense </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gan"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Google Affitrate Network </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gan </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/analytics.readonly"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Analytics </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/analytics.readonly </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/books"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Google Books </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/books </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/blogger"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Blogger </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/blogger </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Calendar </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/calendar </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/devstorage.read_write"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Google Cloud Storage </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/devstorage.read_write </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Contacts </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/ </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/structuredcontent"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Content API for Shopping </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/structuredcontent </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/chromewebstore.readonly"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Chrome Web Store </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/chromewebstore.readonly </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://docs.google.com/feeds/"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Documents trst </td> <td class="secondary"> https://docs.google.com/feeds/ </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Google Drive </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Google Drive Files </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive.file </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Gmail </td> <td class="secondary"> https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.me"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Google+ </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.me </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.me"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Google+ Friend list </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.login </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/groups/"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Groups Provisioning </td> <td class="secondary"> https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/groups/ </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/latitude.all.best https://www.googleapis.com/auth/latitude.all.city"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Google Latitude </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/latitude.all.best https://www.googleapis.com/auth/latitude.all.city </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/moderator"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Moderator </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/moderator </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/atras/"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Nicknames Provisioning </td> <td class="secondary"> https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/atras/ </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/orkut"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Orkut </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/orkut </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://picasaweb.google.com/data/"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Picasa Web </td> <td class="secondary"> https://picasaweb.google.com/data/ </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://sites.google.com/feeds/"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Sites </td> <td class="secondary"> https://sites.google.com/feeds/ </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Spreadsheets </td> <td class="secondary"> https://spreadsheets.google.com/feeds/ </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tasks"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Tasks </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tasks </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/urlshortener"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> URL Shortener </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/urlshortener </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Userinfo – Email </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.profile"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Userinfo – Profile </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.profile </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/user/"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> User Provisioning </td> <td class="secondary"> https://apps-apis.google.com/a/feeds/user/ </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/feeds/"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> Webmaster Tools </td> <td class="secondary"> https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/feeds/ </td> </tr> <tr class="op-menutrstitem op-menuchecktrstitem multiple" val="https://gdata.youtube.com"> <td style="margin-right: 20px;"> YouTube </td> <td class="secondary"> https://gdata.youtube.com </td> </tr>

Adsense Management

See this post to know how to login/signup your users without using Google OAuth PHP Library.

How to display errors in a PHP file ?

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 05:42:00 +0000

When you code PHP some errors might have happened. But you won’t know that and the program don’t work. You can use PHP‘s error_reporting function to display errors. Here’s how to do it:

Create a file named errors.php in the folder where the file with errors exist.
Open the errors.php file in text editor and paste these codes in the file:

error_reporting(E_ALL);
ini_set("display_errors", 1);
include("filename.php");
?>

Replace filename.php with the name of the file that has errors.
Open the errors.php file in browser. You can now see the errors in the file.

jQuery .live function removed in V 1.9. What is the best replacement for .live function ?

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 04:09:00 +0000

As of jQuery version 1.9, the .live function has been removed which means it is no longer available to use. Instead of this function you can use .on function which also has the same function as .live.

Both of them attach an event handler for all elements which match the current selector, now and in the future.
Since .live has been removed you can use .on function. Here’s how we should do it.
Replace .live function with .on. It’s that simple.
Example:

<div class="container" style="background-image: none !important; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px !important; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px !important; border-top-left-radius: 0px !important; border-top-right-radius: 0px !important; bottom: auto !important; box-sizing: content-box !important; float: none !important; font-size: 1em !important; height: auto !important; left: auto !important; line-height: 1.1em !important; margin: 0px !important; min-height: auto !important; outline: 0px !important; overflow: visible !important; padding: 0px !important; position: relative !important; right: auto !important; top: auto !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;"> <blockquote class="tr_bq"> <p> <span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">$(<span class="string" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #dd1144;">"<span style="color: red;">#dataTable tbody tr</span>"</span>).live(<span class="string" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #dd1144;">"<span style="color: red;">click</span>"</span>, <span class="keyword" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;">function</span>(event){<br /><span style="background-color: white;"> alert($(<span class="keyword" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: red; font-weight: bold;">this</span>).text());</span><br /><span style="background-color: white;">});</span></span> </p> </blockquote> </div>

With :

$("#dataTable tbody tr").on("click", function(event){
alert($(this).text());
});

Use a software such as regexxer to replace all .live( word with .on( word.

How to make sure that a CSS file will load on your site using PHP

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:50:00 +0000

This is a simple trick. Most of the web developers worry that the Stylesheet file will not load completely. This happens if your CSS file’s size is too large. The fail in complete loading of the file mostly happens to users who are using slower connections like me.

The page will look disgusting if the CSS file don’t load. To avoid the file not getting loaded you can do this simple trick using PHP.

Open your PHP page and replace the lines that embed the stylesheet file.

Example:

Replace this:

https://subins.hp.af.cm/files/css/all.php" rel="stylesheet" />

With this:

When the page loads the CSS styles of the external file will be loaded in the

No need of adding any HTML element because the Jquery script is adding the HTML element in BODY tag.

Create Text Editor like Blogger Using HTML & jQuery

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 16:23:00 +0000

You might have seen text editors where you can bold a text, italic a text etc… The perfect example of this the Blogger Post Text Editor.

This is a simple tutorial that will create a text editor using HTML, Jquery & JavaScript.

Download Demo

We have two files, index.html which contains the HTML code and texteditor.js which contains the jQuery code. You should include the texteditor.js in index.html.index.html

<span style="font-family: inherit;"><!DOCTYPE html></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><html></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <head></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.8.0.min.js"></script></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <script src="texteditor.js"></script></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </head></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <body></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <center style="margin-bottom:20px;"></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <div class="ze ie"></div></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <style></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> .font-bold.bold{font-weight:bold;}.italic{font-style:italic;}.selected{background-color: orange;}#openpb{margin:15px;}</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </style></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <button type="button" class="g-button g-button-submit" id='stext'>Text</button>    </span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <button type="button" class="g-button g-button-submit" id='shtml'>HTML</button></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <div id="controls" style="margin-bottom: 10px;"></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <a id="bold" style="color:black;display: inline-block;" class="font-bold"></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <button type="button">B</button></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </a>   </span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <a id="italic" style="color:black !important;display: inline-block;"class="italic"></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <button type="button">I</button></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </a>    </span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <a id="link" class="link" style="display: inline-block;"></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <button type="button">Link</button></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </a>    </span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <select id="fonts" class="g-button"></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <option value="Normal">Normal</option></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <option value="Arial">Arial</option></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <option value="Comic Sans MS">Comic Sans MS</option></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <option value="Courier New">Courier New</option></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <option value="Monotype Corsiva">Monotype</option></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <option value="Tahoma New">Tahoma</option></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <option value="Times">Times</option></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <option value="Trebuchet New">Trebuchet</option></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <option value="Ubuntu">Ubuntu</option></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </select></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </div></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <iframe frameborder="0" id="textEditor" style="width:500px; height:80px;border:2px solid #CCC;border-radius:20px;overflow:auto;"></iframe></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </div></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <textarea name="text" id='text' style="border-radius:20px;overflow:auto;display:none;padding-left: 10px;" rows="6" cols="53"></textarea></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </center></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </body></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"></html></span>

<p> <span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>texteditor.js</b></span> </p>

<span style="font-family: inherit;">$(document).ready(function(){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> document.getElementById('textEditor').contentWindow.document.designMode="on";</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> document.getElementById('textEditor').contentWindow.document.close();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> var edit = document.getElementById("textEditor").contentWindow;</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.focus();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#bold").click(function(){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> if($(this).hasClass("selected")){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $(this).removeClass("selected");</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> }else{</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $(this).addClass("selected");</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> }</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> boldIt();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> });</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#italic").click(function(){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> if($(this).hasClass("selected")){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $(this).removeClass("selected");</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> }else{</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $(this).addClass("selected");</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> }</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> ItalicIt();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> });</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#fonts").on('change',function(){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> changeFont($("#fonts").val());</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> });</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#link").click(function(){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> var urlp=prompt("What is the link:","http://");</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> url(urlp);</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> }); </span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#stext").click(function(){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#text").hide();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#textEditor").show();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#controls").show()</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> });</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#shtml").on('click',function(){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#text").css("display","block");</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#textEditor").hide();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#controls").hide();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> });</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">});</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">function boldIt(){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> var edit = document.getElementById("textEditor").contentWindow;</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.focus();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.document.execCommand("bold", false, "");</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.focus();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">}</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">function ItalicIt(){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> var edit = document.getElementById("textEditor").contentWindow;</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.focus();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.document.execCommand("italic", false, "");</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.focus();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">}</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">function changeFont(font){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> var edit = document.getElementById("textEditor").contentWindow;</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.focus();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.document.execCommand("FontName", false, font);</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.focus();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">}</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">function url(url){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> var edit = document.getElementById("textEditor").contentWindow;</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.focus();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.document.execCommand("Createlink", false, url);</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> edit.focus();</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">}</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">setInterval(function(){</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> var gyt=$("#textEditor").contents().find("body").html().match(/@/g);</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> if($("#textEditor").contents().find("body").html().match(/@/g)>=0){}else{</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#text").val($("#textEditor").contents().find("body").html());</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> }</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> $("#text").val($("#textEditor").contents().find("body").html());</span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">},1000);</span>

The user will type text in the iframe. The HTML of iframe will be added in the textarea. So when the user clicks HTML button he sees the HTML of iframe. You can pass the textarea value to your database if needed, but use htmlspecialchars when passing in PHP, because the user can inject XSS codes.

BZFLAG Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx PPA

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 06:42:00 +0000

Bzflag stopped supporting Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. But you can still install the latest version by adding this PPA.
To add the PPA follow the steps.
1 – Go to Ubuntu Software Center
Under Edit Tab Choose Software sources.

Click Add button.
Type this in the APT line field.

ppa:ferramroberto/game/ubuntu

and click Add Source.

BZFLAG PPA is now added. Close the Software Resources dialog.

A window will ask for your password.

Type your password and click Authenticate. Some files will start to Download.

After the download is finished packages will be updated. Close Ubuntu Software Center. Open Synaptic Package Manager and search for bzflag you should see an exclamation mark on the left side of the package bzflag. It means an upgrade is available. Double click on the packages bzflag , bzflag-data , bzflag-client , bzflag-server. Then click Apply button on the top.

The packages you double clicked will be downloaded and upgraded. Enjoy BzFlag.

Upload your image to the web in just a minute without registering

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 05:14:00 +0000

There are many websites for uploading images for various purposes. Some of the popular services are Picasa, Flickr etc….
But you need an account for using the services shown above. If you don’t want to waste any time and upload image in just a minute, then there a re some services which will upload your image in their servers. In this tutorial I will introduce to a service called Post Image.
Go to Post Image (http://www.postimage.org/).

Choose the image file. Choose whether you want to resize your image. After completing the form. Submit it by clicking Upload It.

Your image will start to upload. After uploading Copy the image URL in the Direct Link field.

That’s it. Now you got the URL of the image. You can use this URL to show the image on your website or blog using the IMG tag.

phpMyAdmin – A software to manage MySql Database

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:18:00 +0000

If you want to manage your MySql table you can use a software called phpMyAdmin. You can install phpMyAdmin in any Operating Systems. This tutorial will help you to install phpMyAdmin in Linux.

<h2 id="require" style="font-family: sans-serif; max-width: 70em;"> Requirements </h2> <ul style="font-family: sans-serif; margin: 1em; max-width: 70em;"> <li style="margin-top: 0.5em;"> <b>PHP</b> <ul style="margin: 1em 1em 0px; max-width: 70em;"> <li style="margin-top: 0.5em;"> You need PHP 5.2.0 or newer, with <tt>session</tt> support and the Standard PHP Library (SPL) extension. </li> <li style="margin-top: 0.5em;"> To support uploading of ZIP files, you need the PHP <tt>zip</tt> extension. </li> <li style="margin-top: 0.5em;"> For proper support of multibyte strings (eg. UTF-8, which is currently default), you should install mbstring and ctype extensions. </li> <li style="margin-top: 0.5em;"> You need GD2 support in PHP to display inline thumbnails of JPEGs ("image/jpeg: inline") with their original aspect ratio </li> <li style="margin-top: 0.5em;"> When using the "cookie" authentication method, the <tt>mcrypt</tt> extension is strongly suggested for most users and is <b>required</b> for 64–bit machines. Not using mcrypt will cause phpMyAdmin to load pages significantly slower. </li> <li style="margin-top: 0.5em;"> To support upload progress bars. </li> </ul> </li> <li style="margin-top: 0.5em;"> <b>MySQL</b> 5.0 or newer (details); </li> <li style="margin-top: 0.5em;"> <b>Web browser</b> with cookies enabled. </li> </ul>

Press ALT + CTRL + T.

You will get the Terminal window.

Type the command shown below.

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

Press Enter and the installation will begin.
You will get a setup window during the installation. Type in the details and continue the installation.
One of the setup process will ask for MySql Database password and username so be careful not to type in the wrong password or username.
After installation go to localhost/phpmyadmin.
You will get a page of a login screen.

Type the username and password of MySql Database. Press Go and you will enter in to phpMyAdmin. That’s it.
In the next tutorial I will tell you how to use phpMyAdmin.

Toggle Element visibility using a little piece of code – Jquery Toggle

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:00:00 +0000

You might wanted to Show/Hide element based on the visibility of the element. If the visibility is block , hide the element and if visibility is none, show the element.
You can do this without the if statement. You can do this in just a line of code.
For example : if we want to toggle the visibility of a div with the id sh.

$("#sh").toggle();

If the div #sh is hidden the code above code will make it visible and if it is visible the code will hide the div #sh.

20,000 Views. Thank you.

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 13:25:00 +0000

Hello Visitors. I am very excited to tell you that my blog has reached 20,000 views. Thanks to everyone who visited my blog. Hope the posts helped you. Thanks for this amazing achievement. Hope my blog would get more views and someday my blog will reach 1,00,000 views. Thank you guys. You were amazing.

Keypad not working in Ubuntu fix

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 13:02:00 +0000

Some can’t type numbers using keypad. This because you enabled the Pointer cab be controlled using keypad. To disable it there are two ways.

By Keyboard

<p> <b>          CTRL + SHIFT + NUM LOCK</b></div> <div style="text-align: left;"> <ul style="text-align: left;"> <li> <b>By Terminal</b> </li> </ul> <p>           Command :- </p> </div> <blockquote class="tr_bq"> <p> gnome-keyboard-properties </p> </blockquote> <div style="text-align: center;">                          <u><b>OR</b></u> </div> <div style="text-align: left;">            go to <b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">System ▸ Preferences ▸ Keyboard</b> </div> <p>            You will get a window.<br />           Under <b>Mouse Keys </b>tab there is a option called <b>Pointer cab be controlled using keypad</b>.<br />           Uncheck it as shown in the image below. </p> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="//4.bp.blogspot.com/-DAekZTlaHRA/UHll83cXVAI/AAAAAAAACAs/5l65kPO3Pxk/s1600/numpad.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="//4.bp.blogspot.com/-DAekZTlaHRA/UHll83cXVAI/AAAAAAAACAs/5l65kPO3Pxk/s1600/numpad.png" /></a> </div></div>

Install a RPM file in Ubuntu/Linux – Convert RPM files to DEB packages

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 11:57:00 +0000

Some programs will only have an RPM file which can be downloaded and can be installed. But most of the people don’t know how to install. If you open the RPM file you will see the archive in Archive Manager.

This post will help you to convert RPM files to DEB packages which we can install in Linux.
Open the terminal (Applications ▸ Accessories ▸ Terminal) or by pressing CTRL + F2.
Install Alien package to convert the RPM file by using the following command.

sudo apt-get install alien dpkg-dev debhelper build-essential

After installation we can convert the file. For that use this command.

sudo alien file location

Replace file location on the above command with the source of your file. For Example :

sudo alien Downloads/wine-1.3.rpm

The process would take some minutes depending on the size of the RPM file.
After the process open the folder where your RPM file is. You would see another file with the same name with the only difference that it’s a DEB package.
Open the DEB package and install it using GDebi Package Installer.

That’s it !! Hope this worked for you. If it didn’t worked Tell the problem in the comments and I will help you.

How to take a screenshot in Ubuntu/Linux

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 06:56:00 +0000

You can take screenshots of your desktop in Linux. For taking screenshots you can use Take Screenshot application.

Use shortcut keys

To take a screenshot, use the following shortcut keys:

<td width="50%"> <b>Function</b> </td> </tr> <tr valign="TOP"> <td width="50%"> Print Screen </td> <td width="50%"> Takes a screenshot of the entire screen. </td> </tr> <tr valign="TOP"> <td width="50%"> Alt+Print Screen </td> <td width="50%"> Takes a screenshot of the window which is active. </td> </tr>

Default Shortcut Keys

From the Menubar

Choose Applications ▸ Accessories ▸ Take Screenshot.

From the Terminal

You can use the

gnome-screenshot

command to take a screenshot. The gnome-screenshot command takes
a screenshot of the entire screen, and displays the Save Screenshot
dialog. Use the Save Screenshot dialog to save the screenshot.
You can also use options on the gnome-screenshot command
as follows:

<td width="50%"> <b>Function</b> </td> </tr> <tr valign="TOP"> <td height="6" width="50%"> –window </td> <td width="50%"> Takes a screenshot of the window that has focus. </td> </tr><colgroup> <col width="128*"></col> <col width="128*"></col> </colgroup> <tr valign="TOP"> <td width="50%"> –include-border </td> <td width="50%"> Takes a screenshot after the specified number of seconds, and displays the Save Screenshot dialog. Use the Save Screenshot dialog to save the screenshot. </td> </tr> <tr valign="TOP"> <td width="50%"> –delay=seconds </td> <td width="50%"> Takes a screenshot including the border of the window. </td> </tr> <tr valign="TOP"> <td width="50%"> –border-effect=shadow </td> <td width="50%"> Takes a screenshot without the border of the window. </td> </tr> <tr valign="TOP"> <td width="50%"> –border-effect=border </td> <td width="50%"> Takes a screenshot and adds a shadow bevel effect around it. </td> </tr> <tr valign="TOP"> <td width="50%"> –interactive </td> <td width="50%"> Takes a screenshot and adds a border effect around it. </td> </tr> <tr valign="TOP"> <td width="50%"> –remove-border </td> <td width="50%"> Opens a window that lets you set options before taking the screenshot. </td> </tr> <tr valign="TOP"> <td width="50%"> –help </td> <td width="50%"> Displays the options for the command. </td> </tr>

Option

When you take a screenshot, the Save Screenshot dialog opens. To save the screenshot as an image file, enter the file name for the screenshot, choose a location from the drop-down list and click the Save button. You can also use the Copy to Clipboard button to copy the image to the clipboard or transfer it to another application by drag-and-drop.

Know/Check Ram Type in Linux

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:38:00 +0000

If you want to know what type is your RAM. This command will help you in Linux.

sudo dmidecode –type 17

Type your password and press Enter. The details of your ram will be shown.

You can now see the DDR of your Ram as shown in the picture above.

Can’t boot into Ubuntu after upgrading.

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:03:00 +0000

When you upgrade to any new version of Ubuntu you will not be able to open Ubuntu. There might be a number of reasons. This post will help you to solve the problem of not completing the
installation of new packages.

To solve this, boot in to Ubuntu. You will be stuck in the Ubuntu Logo.

In there press ALT + CTRL + F1.
You will get a terminal.
Login to your account there in the terminal by typing your username first and password second.
Then Enter the following commands in the terminal.

sudo -i

You will be asked for your password. Then the next command.

sudo dpkg –configure -a

Wait for 10 Minutes or more for completing it depending on your RAM.
After completion reboot your computer using the following command.

sudo reboot

You can now boot into Ubuntu.

Removing HTML tags in an input element.

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 05:09:00 +0000

index.html (Removing HTML in INPUT element).

in" value="Subin">

If the code above didn’t worked try placing the script after the input element.
This is the script

How to make a text bold in Google + post.

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 12:54:00 +0000

How to make a text bold in Google + post.

Did you ever see some post with bold text. Do you want to add this to your Google + post. Here’s How.
When typing a text add "*" to the starting word and ending word.
For example type "*Text*" without the quotations and when you post the word, "Text" will change to a bold text.

DEMO

Block a site on all browsers in Linux

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 12:58:00 +0000

This tutorial will help you to block a site in all browsers on Linux

Open Terminal (ALT+F2).

Type sudo -i in the input field as shown in the picture above.

Check the Run in terminal option.

Finally click Run button.

Type your password if necessary and press enter.

Then enter the following commands.

gedit /etc/hosts

You will get Gedit Text Editor window.
For Example we need to block Facebook add the following lines just after 127.0.0.1 localhost

0.0.0.1 facebook.com
0.0.0.1 www.facebook.com

That’s it. When you now open www.facebook.com or facebook.com You cannot access it. In Google Chrome you will get this page.

To enable back Facebook remove the lines we added from the file /etc/hosts.

0.0.0.1 facebook.com
0.0.0.1 www.facebook.com

Jquery ExtAjax Plugin : Submit forms to external files using Jquery

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 15:20:00 +0000

Hi. You can’t submit a form to external file using Jquery Ajax. Finally I created a Jquery Plugin to solve this problem. I named it ExtAjax.
This Jquery Plugin will help you to submit a form to a external file without refreshing the page.

Requirements

1) Jquery Latest Version

2) extajax.js file

Here’s how the HTML file will look like:

form" action="http://yahoo.com/search" method="get">

Here is the Jquery code added in the file above.

Replace the red colored codes above with the id or class of your form eg: #form2 , .myform
The form :

form" action="http://yahoo.com/search" method="get">

Replace the blue colored line with your form id. It should be same on the script too.
Replace the red colored line with the type of method of the post (post or get).
Replace the green colored line with the place you want to submit the form to.

Download

Can’t Boot Ubuntu after installing Nvidia Driver Fix 2

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 12:50:00 +0000

A lot of people has trouble booting in to Ubuntu after installation of Nvidia Driver.
Here is the second solution if first solution didn’t wok.

Since you get a terminal when you boot in to Ubuntu.
Login to your account in the terminal

Then run the command.

sudo -i

and save a new Nvidia Config File by running this command.

nvidia-xconfig

Your new config file has been created!
Reboot your computer and boot in to your Ubuntu now.

Google + going to host a hangout with Steven Spielberg and Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 16:15:00 +0000

Steven Spielberg and Joseph Gordon-Levitt discuss about their new film LINCLON.

The hangout is Tomorrow, 14 September, 04:30 GMT+05:30.

Google Play presents: Steven Spielberg and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in their first ever Hangout On Air where they will be exclusively premiering the trailer for their upcoming movie, Lincoln. If you want to be one of the lucky fans to join the hangout please:

-Let us know how we can contact you here http://goo.gl/ApTvq.
-Upload a short video to your YouTube channel with the #lincolnhangout tag explaining who you are, why you are interested in "Lincoln" and what you would like to ask Spielberg and Gordon-Levitt
-Reshare this G+ event

+Google Play will reach out to you if you’ve been selected to join.#lincolnhangout .

ABOUT THE MOVIE:

Steven Spielberg directs Joseph Gordon-Levitt in "Lincoln," a revealing drama that focuses on the 16th President’s tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come.

Get extension of a file using PHP

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 14:59:00 +0000

This function will allow you to get a file’s extension in PHP.

function getExtension($fileName){ $i = strrpos($fileName, "."); if (!$i) { return ""; } $length = strlen($str) - $i; $extens = substr($str, $i+1, $length); return $extens; }

For example you need to get a extension of the file photo.jpg. To get the extension type this code in your PHP file.

<span style="color: #660000;"><?php</span> <span style="color: #660000;">echo</span> getExtension<span style="color: #660000;">(</span>'<b><span style="color: #e06666;">photo.jpg</span></b>'<span style="color: #660000;">);</span> <span style="color: #660000;">?></span>

The above code will print out "jpg".

How to remove an item from GRUB boot menu

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 04:45:00 +0000

When you upgrade from old Ubuntu to new Ubuntu. Your GRUB menu will contain more than one Ubuntu. To remove unwanted Ubuntu from GRUB you need to edit the GRUB configuration file.
Follow these steps.
Backup your GRUB configuration file which is in /boot/grub/grub.cfg which we will need if something goes wrong.
Open Terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal). You need to be the root. For that :

sudo -i

Now we want to edit the file. For that:

<span style="font-family: inherit;">gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg</span>

You will get GEDIT window.
Now search for ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###.
After that line you will see the items of your GRUB.
So if we want to remove Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.32-30-generic from GRUB, Remove the red highlited line in the image.

You will now get the idea of removing items from GRUB.
Do as you like but be careful not to remove other lines.

How to Repair/Restore/Reinstall GRUB Using Ubuntu Live CD

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 13:15:00 +0000

GRUB is the default bootloader of Linux. It is installed on your Hard Disk, but it's not accessible as a drive. GRUB is installed on your Hard Disk when you install a Linux Operating System.

Without GRUB, you can't boot in to OSs. Windows, Mac and other OS have their own bootloader. Linux too have different bootloaders. GRUB, BURG are examples.

When you install Windows after you install Ubuntu, Windows replaces the GRUB in the Hard Disk to Windows' boot loader which won't identify Linux systems (Damn you Windows !). But, our GRUB detects every OS. So, it's better to have GRUB over Windows Boot Loader.

You have to re install GRUB after the following scenarios :

Changed Partitions of Hard Disk

Installed Windows after Ubuntu

GRUB comes with every Linux Distros. So, all you have to do is install GRUB from those distros. Luckily, Ubuntu can be booted from the Install Disk itself. Therefore you can install GRUB from the Lice CD.

Boot From Live CD

Insert the CD or Pendrive that has Ubuntu in to your computer.

Restart your computer and press F12 repeatedly until the BIOS Boot Menu appears. You can see 2 or 3 items in the menu.

If you inserted a Ubuntu CD then Select CD-ROM or others accordingly.

Note : Boot menu might change according to the BIOS version.

After selecting you will enter in to the Ubuntu Installation Process.

After some time, Ubuntu Installation Window appears.

Select Run Ubuntu / Try Ubuntu from the options. You will now boot in to Ubuntu.

For more information about booting into Ubuntu from CD, see the official Ubuntu Community Page : Boot From CD

Re Install GRUB

When you reach the Ubuntu Desktop, open the Terminal using CTRL + ALT + T key combination or by the Dash menu or on Old systems by Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal.

Mount the partition where your Ubuntu is installed. If you are not sure which it is, launch gparted (included in the Live CD) and find out. You can open gparted from the Terminal with the command :

gparted
Linux distros use ext4 partition. Locate your installed Ubuntu partition (drive) from gparted and note the partition (drive) letter and number (example: sda5).

Now, mount the installed Ubuntu Drive. Replace XY with the drive letter, and partition number. Example: sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt

sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt
Then bind the directories we need. Copy the whole command (it's separate commands wrapped into one) below and run it :

sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev && \ sudo mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts && \ sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc && \ sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
If your system uses UEFI for booting, you may need to do additional steps as mentioned here.

Then we need to be the super use of the installed Ubuntu. For that use chroot.

sudo chroot /mnt
Now install, check, and update grub. Replace X in the following command with only the drive letter (usually a). Example: grub-install /dev/sda

grub-install /dev/sdX && grub-install --recheck /dev/sdX && update-grub
GRUB is now installed in the MBR (Master Boot Recorder).

Now you can exit you mounted hard disk, and unmount everything we mounted

exit && sudo umount /mnt/dev && sudo umount /mnt/proc && sudo umount /mnt
Restart your computer and you will get the default GRUB Boot Screen.

Can't See Windows

When you reboot after installing GRUB, you night not see Windows. To fix this do as below.

Boot in to the installed Ubuntu (not live CD) and open Terminal. Then do the following command :

sudo update-grub
It will ask for your password. Type it and press enter. Reboot your computer and you will see Windows now.

If you have any problems, comment on this post. I will help you.

How to Stop your Blogger Blog from Redirecting to Country Domains

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 05:14:00 +0000

When you open your blog you will be redirected to the country based domain of your blog.
This will affect your blog badly. For Example:

The social stats – or Facebook Likes, Google +1s and Tweet counts – for your blog stories may be diluted as the URLs for the same story become different from different visitors.

You will have a similar problem if you are using an external commenting platform like Disqus or Facebook Comments.

To prevent this you need to add this code to your Template.
Go to Blogger -> Template -> EDIT HTML

Paste this code below tag

How to make a transparent background/selection on an image using GIMP

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:10:00 +0000

Open your image in GIMP.

Select the area you want to make transparent.Select the appropriate selection tool from the Tool window or the Tools – Selection Tools menu on the Layer window.

I usually use the magic wand/fuzzy select (Select contiguous region) tool or the Select regions by color tool.

Click in the region you want selected. Use shift-click to add more regions/colors.

Tip: It’s easier if you zoom in (View – Zoom menu) to see finer details of exactly what you’re selecting.

In the Layer window (the one showing your image), select Layer – Transparency – Add Alpha Channel. If this is blanked out then it’s already done. This makes sure your image can store transparency data.
Select Edit – Clear. This makes the selection transparent.
Save the file.

Note: If you save it as a PNG file, be sure to select the ‘Save colour values from transparent pixels’ option in the Save as PNG dialog box.

The Subins Project

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:39:00 +0000

UPDATE - 2019

There are some posts on Subins. But, I never wrote detailed about "The Subins Project". I don't know why. So I'm writing this for archival purposes.

I lost the source code of "The Subins Project" because I accidentally formatted by whole drive back in 2013 during an installation of Windows XP (their installer is very bad !).

I named it "Subins" seeing how Linux was named from its creator Linus. It had a

Search engine

Chat site (Google hangouts like)

Social network site called Friendshood (like Facebook)

Games site (like Chrome web store)

Videos site (YouTube)

Wiki site (like wikipedia)

URL Shortener. This was my first repo in GitHub, but it's not the exact site

and some more (I don't remember)

I didn't know GitHub back then, else would have published the source code.

Tech

It was created entirely with PHP and had design/style inspired (and copied ?) from Google, Facebook and elsewhere. I learnt web development with this project :

Starting from a google search of "How to create a website" to "How to host on AppFog".

I spent countless hours working on it. I think I started this in 2011 November or something and it got hosted in 2012 December.

I was in 7th & 8th grade during the time.

The project was hosted online with help of [AppFog.com] (a PaaS provider) in 2012. They gave free hosting back then. I wrote a blog post on it here.

The code was a disaster

I used mysql_query() for everything. The whole site was vulnerable to MySQL Injection and probably lots of other vulnerabilities.

One of my friend did point this to me and I took down the site cause all the user details was easily accessible.

The code had bad indentation and coding standards. I kinda remember it. It was very ugly. YUCK !

Passwords weren't hashed. DISASTER 💯

What's Left

All that's left of "The Subins Project" are these screenshots and the archived webpages on archive.org :

Search Engine - subins.hp.af.cm - https://web.archive.org/web/20130101000000*/http://subins.hp.af.cm:80/

Accounts Management Site - accounts-subins.hp.af.cm - https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://accounts-subins.hp.af.cm:80

Subins Chat - chat-subins.hp.af.cm - https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://chat-subins.hp.af.cm:80

Subins Get - get-subins.hp.af.cm - https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://get-subins.hp.af.cm:80

Friendshood - fd-subins.hp.af.cm - https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://fd-subins.hp.af.cm:80

Subins Apps - apps-subins.hp.af.cm - https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://apps-subins.hp.af.cm:80

Aftermath

I went on to create a better social network with Open

I created a better search engine with a custom crawler

I became a much better programmer !

And looking back now :

Although it was a disaster, I learnt a LOT !

That's what matters at the end :)

Upload more than 1 MB file in PHP.

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 06:43:00 +0000

Some may have problem with uploading file more than 1 MB or 2 MB. You can fix this by editing the configuration file of PHP. To fix this follow the steps.

Open Root Terminal (Applications -> System Tools -> Root Terminal).
Type

sudo gedit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

and press enter key.
You will get gedit application with the php.in file.

Search for the words post_max_size & upload_max_filesize.
If you found the words you will see a = after the word post_max_size & upload_max_filesize.

Change the number as you want (Default will be 1M or 2M).
After editing save the file and restart Apache Web Server by opening Root Terminal and pasting this code

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

and press enter.
That’s it. Upload a file in PHP and see the magic !

How to create a Localhost site on Apache Server in Ubuntu Linux – Video Tutorial

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 02:31:00 +0000

Contribute : Guest Posts

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 14:27:00 +0000

If you are a guest post writer and want to write a post for this blog, send your post to [email protected]">[email protected]. If your post is great / suits to the guidelines of this blog, I will approve it and publishes it under your name.

If you have feedbacks / suggestions please contact the administrator of this blog via [email protected]">[email protected]

Microsoft’s New Logo

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 14:17:00 +0000

Microsoft got a new Logo after 25 years. Here is the new logo.

This Microsoft New logo contains the four sqaure and the name of the company. Logo designer Sagi Haviv for the Library of Congress and Armani Exchange, thinks that the logo simply isn’t distinctive enough. By opting for a simple array of four colored squares, Haviv says Microsoft missed a big opportunity.It kinda looks like Google’s Logo.

Here’s a image I found in Google +.

The image is right. It looks like the Nazi Symbol. But it’s a good logo.

Hoping Windows 8 would be good.

Refresh a Div container in equal intervals of time

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 08:14:00 +0000

Hi this tutorial will help you to refresh a div every 10 seconds. You can change the seconds if you want. For this we are going to use Jquery.

The html of the div container

jQuery Code

<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script> <script>setInterval(function() {$('#refreshdiv').load('divcontainer.html')}, 10000);</script>

divcontainer.html

This is loading in the div #refreshdiv.

This example will load divcontainer.html in the div #refreshdiv and refresh the div after 10 seconds.
If you want to change the file to load replace divcontainer.html in the jquery code to the file name you want to use.
If you want to change the number of seconds, replace 10000 with the number to refresh(Must be in milliseconds).
If you want help comment on this post.

Insert XML Data to MySQL Table Using PHP

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 16:46:00 +0000

This tutorial will help you to insert XML file’s contents to a MySQL Database table using php. Note- If you can’t open PHP files in browser in Ubuntu Linux See the Tutorial : http://subinsb.com/how-to-open-php-files-in-ubuntu-instead-of-downloading

This is the XML data we are going to insert in to our MySQL Table.

<pre class="prettyprint"><code><span style="font-family: inherit;"><items></span>

<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <item></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <title>Google</title></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <url>google.com</url></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </item></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <item></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <title>Google Accounts</title></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> <url>accounts.google.com</url></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </item></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"></items> </span>

The name of the XML file is "items.xml ".

MySQL Database Table Creation

This is the SQL code to create a table named "items" in which we will add the XML data to.

<span style="line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">CREATE TABLE </span><b style="border: 0px none; color: blue; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">items</b><span style="line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">(</span><span style="border: 0px none; color: #cc0000; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">id</span><span style="line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> INT </span><span style="border: 0px none; color: blue; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">PRIMARY KEY</span><span style="line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> </span><span style="border: 0px none; color: #a64d79; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">AUTO_INCREMENT</span><span style="line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">, </span><span style="line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="color: #cc0000;">title</span> TEXT, </span><span style="border: 0px none; color: #cc0000; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">url</span><span style="line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> TEXT</span><span style="line-height: 16px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">);</span>

Create a PHP file named "add.php" in the same directory where the XML file is. Open the add.php file in text editor and add the following code into it :

$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument(); $xmlDoc->load("items.xml"); $mysql_hostname = "hostname"; // Example : localhost $mysql_user = "username"; $mysql_password = "password"; $mysql_database = "database_name"; $bd = mysql_connect($mysql_hostname, $mysql_user, $mysql_password) or die("Oops some thing went wrong"); mysql_select_db($mysql_database, $bd) or die("Oops some thing went wrong"); $xmlObject = $xmlDoc->getElementsByTagName('item'); $itemCount = $xmlObject->length; for ($i=0; $i < $itemCount; $i++){ $title = $xmlObject->item($i)->getElementsByTagName('title')->item(0)->childNodes->item(0)->nodeValue; $link = $xmlObject->item($i)->getElementsByTagName('url')->item(0)->childNodes->item(0)->nodeValue; $sql = "INSERT INTO `my_table_name` (title, url) VALUES ('$title', '$link')"; mysql_query($sql); print "Finished Item $title n<br/>"; }

We’re using the depreciated mysql_* functions in the above code, but for a simple task like this, it can be used. If you really want the latest technology, use PDO and the code will be something like this :

$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument(); $xmlDoc->load("items.xml"); $mysql_hostname = "hostname"; // Example : localhost $mysql_user = "username"; $mysql_password = "password"; $mysql_database = "database_name"; $dbh = new PDO("mysql:dbname={$mysql_database};host={$mysql_hostname};port=3306", $mysql_user, $mysql_password); $xmlObject = $xmlDoc->getElementsByTagName('item'); $itemCount = $xmlObject->length; for ($i=0; $i < $itemCount; $i++){ $title = $xmlObject->item($i)->getElementsByTagName('title')->item(0)->childNodes->item(0)->nodeValue; $link = $xmlObject->item($i)->getElementsByTagName('url')->item(0)->childNodes->item(0)->nodeValue; $sql = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO `my_table_name` (`title`, `url`) VALUES (?, ?)"); $sql->execute(array( $title, $link )); print "Finished Item $title n<br/>"; }

As you see, you have to change the variables for connecting to Database. Open the file "add.php" in your website or in a localhost server Or Execute it via terminal with the command (Linux) :

php add.php

When it’s opened it will show a success message of every nodes in the items.xml file to make sure that the XML file contents are added to the MySQL Table. That’s it.

How to Empty Trash of root user in Ubuntu

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:03:00 +0000

Install nautilus-gksu
About Nautilus-gksu

Privilege granting extension for nautilus using gksu
The gksu extension for nautilus allows you to open files with administration privileges using the context menu when browsing your files with nautilus.

Reboot computer after installing nautilus-gksu
Open your home folder.
Right click on any folder and click Open as administrator.
You will enter root user.
On the left pane you will see root home.

Go to /root/.local/share/Trash/files
Delete the files you don’t want.
All Done !!
Close the window and your root trash is emptied.

Make a short url for Google + Profile

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 15:23:00 +0000

Do You want to Make a short url for Google + Profile like in facebook ?

Demo

eg: Redirect from http://gplus.to/subinsiby to https://plus.google.com/u/0/100940821362767953768/

You can do this using Google Plus Nick

Go to Google Plus Nick and follow the instructions

Custom Cursor CSS

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 08:50:00 +0000

This css code will help you to add custom cursor image.

SEE DEMO

Copy this css code to your html page.

OR

Copy this to your css file

body {cursor: url(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-u1rSVKP3Vpc/UAEqLZnKv0I/AAAAAAAABCQ/3alnkvGlnlQ/s32/cursor.png), url(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-u1rSVKP3Vpc/UAEqLZnKv0I/AAAAAAAABCQ/3alnkvGlnlQ/s32/cursor.png), auto;}

10000 Views !!!!

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:16:00 +0000

Thanking everybody who helped me to make it @ 10000

Thank You Everyone

DNS Changer Trogan Virus: Thousands of Computers lose internet connection today

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:28:00 +0000

From today on wards about 3 lakh of computers will lose their internet connection. The computers will become offline. This is because of a Trogan Virus named DNS Changer.

What Does DNSChanger Do to My Computer?

DNSChanger malware causes a computer to use rogue DNS servers in one of two ways.
First, it changes the computer’s DNS server settings to replace the ISP’s good DNS servers
with rogue DNS servers operated by the criminal. Second, it attempts to access devices on
the victim’s small office/home office (SOHO) network that run a dynamic host configuration
protocol (DHCP) server (eg. a router or home gateway). The malware attempts to access
these devices using common default usernames and passwords and, if successful, changes
the DNS servers these devices use from the ISP’s good DNS servers to rogue DNS servers
operated by the criminals. This is a change that may impact all computers on the SOHO
network, even if those computers are not infected with the malware.

Am I Infected?
The best way to know that is by going to the website DNS Changer Check-Up
If it shows Green then you have nothing to worry about.

What Should I Do?
In addition to directing your computer to utilize rogue DNS servers, the DNSChanger
malware may have prevented your computer from obtaining operating system and antimalware updates, both critical to protecting your computer from online threats. This
behavior increases the likelihood of your computer being infected by additional malware.
The criminals who conspired to infect computers with this malware utilized various methods
to spread the infections. At this time, there is no single patch or fix that can be downloaded
and installed to remove this malware. Individuals who believe their computer may be
infected should consult a computer professional.
Individuals who do not have a recent back-up of their important documents, photos, music,
and other files should complete a back-up before attempting to clean the malware or utilize
the restore procedures that may have been packaged with your computer.
Information regarding malicious software removal can be found at the website of the United
States Computer Emergency Readiness Team: Recovering from a Trogan.

How to add a header image to Blogger Dynamic Views

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 14:54:00 +0000

You must have seen some blogs like mine and Blogger Buzz which have a header image like this. These header images make the blog attractive. Do you want to add a header image to your blog like this ? Then you are in the right place. It is very easy to do this in your blog. You only need to add few codes to your Blogger Template.

Note :- You must have enabled a Dynamic views Template on your blog to use this feature.

Create a banner image of size (resolution) ** 1200 X 65 pixels **and upload into Picasa or any other image uploading service. See this tutorial to see how to upload an image.

Go to Blogger -> Template. Click on **Customise **button.

You will now enter the Template Designer of your blog. Go to Advanced -> Add CSS page.

You will see a text box on the right side of the screen as show in the picture below :

Type these text (code) in that text box :

/*Subin's Blog*/.header-bar{background-image:url('<span style="color: red;">YOUR IMAGE URL</span>') !important;}

An Example of adding the image http://goo.gl/Xt1G1 as header:

/*Subin's Blog*/.header-bar{background-image:url('http://goo.gl/Xt1G1') !important;}

After doing all this click on "Apply To Blog" button.

After the changes have been saved, open your blog and your header has a background image now.

MAXX MX151 ARC

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:55:00 +0000

I just bought a MAXX MX151. It’s a good phone. It’s like other MAXX and Karbonn type mobiles.
You can’t install a app on it.

Features
Digital Camera
1.8″(4.6cm) TFT Display
Bluetooth
MP4 Player
3.5mm Audio Jack
LED Torch
Upto 4 GB MMC Support.
Maxx Arena

This phone contains good apps. But the only problem is that you can’t install any new applications.

It’s not a touch phone. But it’s a good phone at a good price.

Even with all the awesome features you can buy this phone @

Rs 1537

$27.7512

It’s at the lowest price. In my opinion it’s a good phone.

I love my MOM

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Can’t Boot Ubuntu after installing Nvidia Driver.

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:24:00 +0000

NOTE – Go to this post to fix this problem. If that post didn’t helped you the do the steps in this post.

A lot of people has trouble booting in to Ubuntu after installation of Nvidia Driver.
Finally I had found a solution to this problem.

On the boot menu Click
Ubuntu Recovery Mode

You will see a Blue Screen . On the options scroll down and click on failsafex
You will now see a small dialog box. Click on OK Button.
Press OK two or three times more.
You will now boot into your Ubuntu OS.
Connect to the internet.
Open Hardware Drivers and install(activate) a recommended Nvidia Driver.

Reboot and boot into Normal Ubuntu and your Ubuntu will boot just fine. If this doesn’t work ask me by commenting on this post or [email protected]" >email me.

How to see transit of Venus using Stellarium in Ubuntu

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 08:39:00 +0000

U can watch transit of Venus in your Computer

Edubuntu operating system using Stellarium.To know more click the link below

SIMMASH Efingers Google

<p> <b>To view in Ubuntu </b><br />Go to<br /><span style="color: blue;"><b>Applications –> Ubuntu Software Center –></b></span><br />and search for <b>Stellarium </b>and click install button<br />Then do the steps as shown below</div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> <b>Steps</b> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> ***** </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> <b><span style="color: blue;">Applications—>Science—->Stellarium</span></b> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> in tool bar select <b><span style="color: blue;">location window</span></b> , then select country name the location u need </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> here we type India country name and location kunnamkulam </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> ——————————————————————————————————— </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> in tool bar select<span style="color: blue;"> <b>Search window</b></span> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> <span style="color: blue;">find objec</span>t position </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> in here we type <b>venus </b>on the search box </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> by scrolling mouse you can zoom the selected object </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> ———————————————————————————————————- </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> in tool bar select <b><span style="color: blue;">Date And Time</span></b> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> adjust the date <b>2012/6/6 </b>and time <b>1:00:00</b> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> in status bar selec<span style="color: blue;">t <b>inceasing and decreasing the time</b></span> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> using the keyes <b>L</b> and<b> J </b>on key- board </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> The transit also between the time <b>6:00 to 10:15 in kunnamkulam</b><br /><b><br /></b> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"> </div></div>

Thankyou

Sat, 05 May 2012 07:05:00 +0000

Yesterday(4 May 2012) I posted a post about Keith Haring because of his birthday. Google changed their homepage logo. The internet was celebrating Keith Haring’s birthday. A lot of people came to this blog yesterday. I want to thank the people who came yesterday to this blog. Thank you Visitors.

Here are the pics of the stats yesterday.About 200 people saw the post.

The image shown on left side shows the number of views yesterday and today. 216 people viewed the blog yesterday and 27 people saw the blog today.

Once again I am Thanking everyone who saw this blog and made it a big success.

Thank you

Hide or show a div using data sent to a php file

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 05:13:00 +0000

This tutorial will help you to send data to a php file to hide a div ie sending a string to a php file to hide a div.Follow these steps.

1 : Open the php file which contains the div to hide.

Paste this code above the tag

<blockquote class="tr_bq"> <p> <b><style type="text/css"></b><b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">#<?php echo $_GET[‘div’]; ?>{</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: red;">display:none;</span></span></b><b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">}</span></b><b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></style></span></b> </p> </blockquote>

If you want to show a div change the line "display:none;" to "display:block;"

2 : Paste the div code with an id on the php file.

Hello World

<p> <span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3 : If the name of the file you just typed is "<b>main" </b>and the url of the file is <b>"http://example.com/main" </b>then if you want to hide you have to type the url like this. <b>"http://example.com/main?div=hide" </b>. After going to this url the div id <b>"hide"</b></span><b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </b><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">will be hidden.</span></div> </div>

How to open PHP files in Ubuntu instead of downloading.

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:15:00 +0000

No one can open PHP files in web browsers without a server. Page types such as HTML, Javascript and CSS can be understand by the browsers. But browsers can’t understand PHP. So the file will download.
There are two types of file that will run : Client-side and Server-side

Client Side : The program runs in browser itself. The client can easily access the code. The browser can understand the language in which the client program is written.
examples : HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, AngularJS

Server Side : The program runs in server and the finished page is sent to the client’s browser. The returned page won’t contain any source code of the language ie the client won’t see the code in page source unlike in Client Side. The returned page won’t contain any server language at all.

So now you got the reason why the PHP file won’t open in web browsers. You can only open PHP file with a server that supports PHP language. So here’s how to install Apache server and configure the server in Ubuntu

Open Terminal [CTRL + ALT + T]

Install Apache

Type

sudo apt-get install apache2

in terminal. You will be asked for your password. Type your password and press enter key.

Restart Server

Type

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

in terminal and press Enter Key.

To check whether you installed Apache correctly open your web browser and go to http://localhost/

If the browser doesn’t say "This webpage is not available", You installed Apache correctly.

Install PHP

Type

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5

and press Enter Key.

Enable this module by doing the command :

sudo a2enmod php5

and relaunch Apache by entering the command:

sudo service apache2 restart

To Open the PHP files now, copy the files and paste it on /var/www folder. The go to http://localhost/file-name.php to see your PHP file in action. See this tutorial to see how to create a localhost website.

How To Create A Localhost Web Site In Linux Using Apache Web Server

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:44:00 +0000

Localhost is a hosting place in your own computer. There are a vast number of Localhost servers you can use. The most used and popular of them is Apache. Localhost enables you to test your work on your computer itself, instead of testing on a live server on the web. If you are creating a project, Localhost is the best place to test that project. In this tutorial I will show you how to create a localhost site running on Apache Server in any Linux Distribution.

This tutorial is for Ubuntu versions 10.10 and below. The latest versions from 11.04 should see this tutorial.

Apache Server Installation

We need to install Apache server first. To install Apache Web Server open Terminal and do the following command :

sudo apt-get install apache2

The Apache Server will be downloaded and installed automatically. After installation continue to the next part of this tutorial.

Site Creation

Open the Terminal CTRL + ALT + T. Make a copy of /etc/apache2/sites-available/default, let’s make the copy name mysite. (Name depends on the site you wish to create). The following command wil copy the file and name the new file as mysite.

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/<span style="color: red;">mysite</span>

Now edit the new file to configure :

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/<span style="color: #ff0000;">mysite</span>

Then, Add the following contents in the file using gedit we just opened. Please read the 3 conditions below and then paste the content.

You will need to change the codes ‘username’ shown below to your home folder name.

You will need to change the names ‘mysite’ shown below to your desired site name.

You can also change the web address of your site by renaming "mysite.com" to the site address you want.

Content that should be added to the file :

<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="tag"><VirtualHost</span><span class="pln"> *:80</span><span class="tag">></span></span> <span class="pln"> ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost</span> <span class="pln"> ServerName </span><span style="color: red;"><span class="pln">mysite.com</span></span> <span class="pln"> DocumentRoot <span style="color: red;">/home/username/mysite</span></span> <span class="pln"> </span><span class="tag"><Directory </span><span style="color: red;"><span class="pun">/</span><span class="atn">home</span><span class="pun">/</span><span class="atn">username</span><span class="pun">/</span><span class="atn">mysite</span></span><span class="tag">/></span> <span class="pln"> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews</span> <span class="pln"> AllowOverride All</span> <span class="pln"> Order allow,deny</span> <span class="pln"> allow from all</span> <span class="pln"> </span><span class="tag"></Directory></span> <span class="pln"> ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/</span><span style="color: red;"><span class="pln">mysite</span></span><span class="pln">/error.log</span> <span class="pln"> # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,</span> <span class="pln"> # alert, emerg.</span> <span class="pln"> LogLevel warn</span> <span class="pln"> CustomLog /var/log/apache2/</span><span style="color: red;"><span class="pln">mysite</span></span><span class="pln">/access.log combined</span> <span class="tag"></VirtualHost></span>

Once you’ve saved these changes, you’ll need to enable the site. ( You will need to change the name ‘mysite’ shown below to the name of the file you create at "/etc/apache2/sites-available/" ).

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available && sudo a2ensite <span style="color: red;">mysite</span>

We specified a separate directory for storing log files, so we’ll need to create that log directory.( You have to change the name ‘mysite’ shown below to the name you given in the configuration file on "/etc/apache2/sites-available/" ).

sudo mkdir /var/log/apache2/<span style="color: red;">mysite</span>

Finally, we need to point the site address to localhost in your hosts file. For that, Edit /etc/hosts :

sudo gedit /etc/hosts

and add the following at the end of the file. ( You need to change the web address "mysite.com" shown below to your address given on the file in sites-available folder ).

127.0.0.1 <span style="color: red;">mysite.com</span>

Now we restart Apache Server using Terminal to apply all the changes we made.

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

You can now store all your work in /home/you home name/site name and navigate to it by pointing your browser to the address you gave.

Tonight Venus passes directly between Earth and an elusive cluster of stars known as the Pleiades.

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 06:38:00 +0000

Once every eight years, a luminous Venus passes directly between Earth and an elusive cluster of stars known as the Pleiades. Tonight, you’ll have a chance to witness this event with your own eyes.

The photo up top was taken a few days ago on the evening of March 31st, and showcases the two astronomical entities that you’ll be looking for. Obvious-as-ever is Venus, the brightest object in the night sky save for the Moon, beaming on the right. Less dazzling, but conspicuous in its own right, is the cluster of blue stars gathered on the left. These are the Pleiades.

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="//1.bp.blogspot.com/-GmPjyMmbt8c/Ub1kZlLqhcI/AAAAAAAACvo/zRI0aTWhrtA/s1600/0016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="//1.bp.blogspot.com/-GmPjyMmbt8c/Ub1kZlLqhcI/AAAAAAAACvo/zRI0aTWhrtA/s1600/0016.jpg" /></a> </div>

Also known as Messier object 45 (M45) or the "Seven Sisters," the young star cluster is thought to have formed less than 100 million years ago, which helps explain the blue-white hue of its largest members. At just 400 light years away, the Pleiades are still visible with the naked eye, but they’re usually easier to spot with a pair of binoculars or a small telescope. Tonight, however, you should be able to spot them due to their proximity to Venus. According to NASA, the planet will join the Pleiades in the night sky beginning just after sunset, making it "look like a supernova has gone off inside the cluster."

The cosmic conjunction began last night, and will remain visible through Wednesday, when Venus finishes passing across the face of the cluster. Tonight, however, promises to provide the most spellbinding view. Look west as soon as the Sun dips below the horizon, and remember to look for the light of Venus — you’ll find it resting in the company of the Seven Sisters. (Also: be sure to check out this breathtaking photo of the Pleiades posing with Ecuador’s active Tungurahua volcano.)

Here’s another picture

Tutorial : Write a file using php

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 15:39:00 +0000

Hi. You must have heard of writing file using PHP. You want to know how to do this. I’ll tell you. Please follow these steps.
1 – Open your php file in text editor. Paste this code in it.

$myFile = "file.html";
$fh = fopen($myFile, ‘a+’ );
$stringData = ("Hello");
fwrite($fh, $stringData);
fclose($fh);
?>

This will write Hello to a file named file.html. Enjoy!!!

Tutorial : How to add date and time using php

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 15:17:00 +0000

You might want to add date and time using php in your php files. I will tell you how to do it.

1 – Go to your PHP page. Paste this code where you want to add date and time

date("J-F- Y–H:I A")

This code will Show date and time in Date-Month-Year –Hour:Minute:AM/PM
If you want to change the type of showing date and time just change the position of the letters.
Here is a list of dates you can use in PHP

<td width="50%"> Date types </td> </tr> <tr valign="TOP"> <td height="114" width="50%"> J<br />F<br />Y<br />H<br />I<br />S<br />A </td> <td width="50%"> Date<br />Month<br />Year<br />Hour<br />Minutes<br />Seconds<br />AM/PM </td> </tr>

Functions

Next Tutorial please.

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:24:00 +0000

What do you want to know. Tell me what do you want to know. Ask me by commenting.

Add Facebook and Blogger Comments As Tabs In Blogger

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:45:00 +0000

Having multiple comments box on your posts make more comments. The most popular of Comments are Facebook. Why not add Facebook comments with Blogger comments on your blog. This can be easily done if you follow this tutorial carefully.

Demo

Go to Blogger -> Template -> Edit HTML.

Paste the following code below "" tag :

<script src='http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1'></script> <script src='http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js'/> <script type='text/javascript'> function commentToggle(selectTab) { $(".comments-tab").addClass("inactive-select-tab"); $(selectTab).removeClass("inactive-select-tab"); $(".comments-page").hide(); $(selectTab + "-page").show(); } </script>

Search for <html and replace it with the following code :

<html xmlns:fb='http://ogp.me/ns/fb#'

Add the following HTML code above "" :

<style> /*--- Tabbed Facebook Comments By subinsb.com ----*/ .comments-page { background-color: #f2f2f2; width:450px; } #blogger-comments-page { padding: 0px 5px; display: none; } .comments-tab { float: left; padding: 5px; margin-right: 3px; cursor: pointer; background-color: #f2f2f2; } .comments-tab-icon { height: 14px; display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; margin-right: 3px; } .comments-tab:hover { background-color: #eeeeee; } .inactive-select-tab{ background-color: #d1d1d1; } </style>

By using the Blogger shortcut key **CTRL + F **find this code :

<div class='comments' id='comments'>

Note : If you found two codes like above, you have to paste the code shown below after the two codes you found.

<center> <table> <tbody> <tr> <td> <div class='comments-tab' id='fb-comments' onclick='javascript:commentToggle("#fb-comments");' style='float:left;' title='Facebook Comments'> <img class='comments-tab-icon' src='https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rae4j6NaLkY/T1JrjUEIkkI/AAAAAAAAGBc/PzwMIo1g1Is/s400/fbcomment.png'/> <fb:comments-count expr:href='data:post.url'/> Comments </div> </td> <td> <div class='comments-tab inactive-select-tab' id='blogger-comments' onclick='javascript:commentToggle('#blogger-comments');' title='Blogger Comments'> <img class='comments-tab-icon' src='http://www.blogger.com/img/icon_logo32.gif'/> <data:post.numComments/> Blogger Comments </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <div class='comments-page' id='fb-comments-page'> <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'> <div id='fb-root'></div> <script> (function(d){ var js, id = 'facebook-jssdk'; if (d.getElementById(id)){return;} js = d.createElement('script'); js.id = id; js.async = true; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(js); }(document)); </script> <fb:comments colorscheme='light' expr:href='data:post.url' expr:title='data:post.title' expr:xid='data:post.id' width='450'/> </b:if> </div> <div class='comments comments-page' id='blogger-comments-page' style='display:none;'>

Save the template. You will get an error. Blogger will automatically highlight a code (). Paste the following code above the code Blogger highlighted :

</center></div>

Save the Template and check out a post on your blog. Every post on your blog will now have a Facebook & Blogger Comments tabbed. If you want help, post a comment.

Disable Right Click On Blogger Blog

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 04:46:00 +0000

For preventing copying of your content by visitors, you can disable the use of Right Click on your blog. Some websites and blogs prevent the right click for preventing copiers. You can also prevent the copiers by disabling the right click.

Demo

Go to Dashboard -> Layout -> Add Gadget -> HTML / JavaScript

Add HTML/JavaScript Widget In Blogger

Copy the following code and paste it in the Widget text area :

<script> var message="Not Allowed"; var shouldAlert=1; document.oncontextmenu=function(){ if(shouldAlert==1){ alert(message); } return false; }; </script>

Save the "HTML/JavaScript" widget.

If you want to change the message, edit the contents of the variable "message".

Now, go to your blog and try right clicking. You will get a message saying "Not Allowed".

Whenever the user right clicks, the message will be displayed. It can be quite annoying to the visitors. So, if you don’t want the message to appear, change the "shouldAlert" value to "0" instead of "1".

Get a work email on Blogger

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 15:04:00 +0000

You must have heard of work email.
Do you want a work email for your blog without creating an another gmail account???
If you want then follow these steps.

1st step : Go to your Blogger -> Settings -> Mobile and email

You will see a box like this

Type the word you want on the text box.
Then click on the radio button on the left side of "Save emails as draft post "

After this click on  button

Finished !!!!

All the mails sent to the mail id you created will be on the "drafts" option in "Posts" menu

Jupiter and Venus near the moon today!!

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:43:00 +0000

Today 26 February the Jupiter and Venus are near the moon. you can see the two planets near the moon.

See the sky and find the moon. You can see two bright stars. One is Jupiter and other one is Venus.

Enjoy!!!!!

Here is a picture of the moon and the planets seen in the west side of the sky

How to Add a Fixed Header to Blogger Blog

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:44:00 +0000

A fixed header is a header that is in a fixed position. It will be seen in your blog wherever you are in your blog. See an example here.

To add this follow these steps

1st Step : Go to Blogger -> Template -> Edit Html

Copy and pate these lines before the tag :

<style type="text/css"> /* Subin's Blog - http://subinsb.com */ .fixed-header{ overflow: hidden; position: fixed; z-index: 999999; top: 0px; left: 0px; right: 0px; height: <span style="color: red;">76</span>px; background: <span style="color: red;">#EEE</span>; }</style>

2nd Step : Go to **Blogger -> Layout **and click on  button.

Then Click on  button and type these in the content area

<div class="fixed-header" > <center><h1>Type Your Blog Name Here</h1></center> </div>

After typing Click on "SAVE" button. That’s it. You should now see a fixed-header in your blog.

NFS Most Wanted cover

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:12:00 +0000

Call of Duty 2 Cover

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:09:00 +0000

Tutorial : Add Sharing buttons to your blog

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:21:00 +0000

Sharing buttons are used on blogger to increase its popularity and stats. You can also add this share buttons to your blog. To add sharing buttons Click this button.

Tutorial : How to add floating share box in your blog

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 04:43:00 +0000

Today we see some blogs have a floating share box. You can also have this share box.
See a demo of floating share box here
1st step : go to Blogger > Template/Design > Edit HTML

Before paste this code

Subin's Blog

Popular baby names of Kerala 1920 - 2007

Data

Analysis

Top 10 names over the years

Aishwarya

Rahul and Priyanka

Fathima

Bindhu vs Sindhu

Baby

Sheela

Check your name

Interactive chart

Syllable cycle

Racing chart

Girls

Boys

Further analysis

Technical notes

Misc

KDE India Conf 2025

My talk

Emoji picker

Conference

Next conference

Use ActiveRecord + SQLite without Rails

Gemfile

playground.rb

Talks

2025

2024

2023

2021

2020

Simple analysis of place names in Kerala

Update

Intro

Goal

Gathering data

OpenStreetMap

Wikidata

Combining data

ActiveRecord without Ruby on Rails

Insert data

Analysis

Showing just Kerala region

Coloring districts uniquely

Result

Conclusion

mugal

kari

kulam

ssery

Credits

samam, Malayalam Kannada Tamil Telugu dictionary

The dictionary

Start

Getting semantic data

Attempt 1 - Extract from PDF

Attempt 2 - Extract from Pagemaker

Interesting tidbits

Usage of jQuery

Usage of PHP

Usage of C++

Usage of Python

Usage of Go

Usage of Ruby on Rails

Deployment

Running JavaScript code & Getting Result from Go using V8 Engine

Serving a Vue App From Go

Dynamically Making title and meta Tags

Calling JavaScript from Go

Final Result

More Context To The Problem

Coding In Malayalam

Editor

Typing

Language Style

Projects

Make Picture In Picture Browser Window Visible On All Workspaces in i3