Retired! Last Post

I am retiring this blog. I have my own domain (satpathy.org) and a good hosting package from www.hostmonster.com.

My blog will hence forth be hosted at http://whatho.satpathy.org.

See you there.

Free The Left Lane

Free The Left Lane is an initiative from the engineers at SumTotal, an elearning company, in Madhapur Hyderabad. They have launched a blog and are working with the Hyderabad Traffic Police

1. Their Blog: Hyderabad Traffic - Your chance to improve it!!
   
2. Article in NewIndPress.com.
   
3. Article in Hindu
   
4. Other Blog Posts

Most Hyderabadies are bad drivers. They have no patience, and zero consideration for other road users. The Left Lane is typically blocked because some impatient idiot who actually wants to go straight cruises down the left lane to the head of the traffic and stops in the lane, blocking it till the light turns green.

If I find my self in a situation where I need to turn left and an idiot or idiots are blocking the lane, I keep my turn indicator going and lean on the horn. This typically earns me glares because the idiots blocking the lane think I am at fault!

Zero Tolerance.

Do not tolerate idiots who break traffic rules to gain a few extra seconds. Like the idiots who will change lanes to overtake slower vehicles and end up coming straight at you in the opposite direction. I make it a point to stand my ground and not budge from my lane, even if it costs me time. The last time this happened to me I was driving the motorcycle instead of my car and an idiot in a Zen changed lanes. I refused to budge and came to a stop in front of the car. I was verbally threatened, pushed by the car and had fists shaken in my face. I switched off the bike and refused to budge. Finally the car walla had to back up and get back into his original lane. He hated it but he did not have an option. The people standing around told him that he was in the wrong. No body told me to move.

Follow rules and maintain a zero tolerance policy.

Create Slide Shows With Picasa Web Albums

Blogger Templates has a great online tool to help generate HTML code for Picasa Web Album based Slide Shows.  I am reproducing it here for my convenience. I have made a few small changes for posting here.

 

Installing a Picasa Slide Show In Blogger Or Other Web Page 1 Go to the album you want to display in Picasa Web Album. 2 Right-click on the  button and "Copy shortcut" (?). 3        e.g. http://picasaweb.google.com/jsmith/Album2007?authkey=kqiIFUT#s123456789123456789 4      e.g. My Beautiful Album 5        (You have to be logged in to your Blogger account) 6 Not at Blogger.com?       Get the code

Disclaimer:

This code is from Blogger Templates. Please visit their Picasa Slide Show Post to see the original. No copyright violation is intended.

[Update] - A link to this post has been added to the side bar.

Web2PDF - Convert Web Pages to PDF

Web2PDF is nifty service that is a snap to setup and provides a easy way to convert HTML web pages into PDF documents. And best of all it is free!

With Web2PDF you can add a "Save page as PDF" button to your web page and allow users to convert you page into a PDF document with one click. It is  easy to setup. First of all you have to sign up for an account. After completing that you need to specify some standard settings like Portrait or Landscape modes, your web page's URL etc. You can run an immediate test to see the result of your settings. Once you are satisfied, generate the required JavaScript and paste it into your web page wherever you want the "Save page as PDF" button to appear.

I have added one to this blog. Works fine. Do give it a try.

I have to figure out a few things though - How to change the formats (CSS) used during the conversion process. Not sure if they can be changed at all. For example I would not like the generated PDF to have a black background with white text. Quite the opposite really.

List of Blog Ping Servers

Here is a list of Blog Ping Servers:

http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com/
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/
http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.britblog.com/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.focuslook.com/ping.php?url=http://www.yourblog.com
http://www.holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/
https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast

New Personal Finance / Investing Series

I am planning to write about personal finance & investing in India. The focus will be on Indian Mutual Funds, Insurance and other topics of interest.

Stay tuned.

Windows Live Writer - From Work

I am writing this from work. Lets see how well Live Writer works from behind the firewall.

 

Update:

It works! Great.

Windows Live Writer

I downloaded and installed Windows Live Writer last night. This is the first post using Live Writer. Lets see how this works.

I have tried using other offline Blog post editors, without much success. Most of them have nice features but almost all of them cannot handle a proxy server. As a result I cannot use them at work. Sad.

If this works for me then I will move to Live Writer completely. Have to figure out all the features though. Particularly how images are handled as I do a far amount of photo blogging.

Simplifying Financial Matters - A India Specific Financial Blog

Ketan has a very nice blog on India specific financial matters called "Simplifying Financial Matters". Very informative & well written.

Great job Ketan.

Thingamablog & Dynamic Lists etc

One gripe I have always had with blogging tools like TAMB is the fact that the templates are essentially static. So when I edit one of my lists, say the favorites links list, then the entire blog has to be republished. This is particularly true of TAMB.

Yesterday I finally decided to try and make this a more dynamic process.

I used a separate JavaScript file to store my links and used document.write() to dynamically populate the page HTML at run time in the browser. Now if I wish to add a new link to my list I just have to edit the JavaScript file and upload it to the website. Voila! Dynamic lists! Or as close as it gets

My Javascript file looks like this:

//
// Dump my Favorite Links into the sidebar.
//
function whatHo_FavLinks( ) {
 document.write('<div class="sidetitle">Favorite Links</div>' ) ;
 document.write('<div class="side"> ' ) ;
 document.write('<a href="http://www.satpathy.in/">Satpathy Home Page</a><br>' ) ;
 document.write('<a href="http://sermonsonstone.blogspot.com/">Oracle Book Club Blog</a><br>' ) ;
 document.write('<a href="http://pupu1972.blogspot.com/">Sandip Blog</a><br>' ) ;
 document.write('<a href="http://tanushreep.blogspot.com/">rideo, ergo sum</a><br>' ) ;
 document.write('<a href="http://rakeshkumar.wordpress.com/">Rakeshs Place</a><br>' ) ;
 document.write('</div>' ) ;
}

Now I am not a JavaScript expert. Just know enough to hack something together. Anyway the whole thing works.

Opps. I forgot the TAMB template part. In the templates files I have to call my JavaScript function whatHo_FavLinks() in the place I want the favorite links to go. To do this I created a Custom Tag in TAMB and inserted that into my templates.