18.2.2012 #Fail

I had been wanting to learn PHP for quite some time. In all probability, by my high standards of procrastination, its likely that I will check it out some years later when it becomes obsolete.

So, by the way, the initial setup needs one to install the AMP (Apache MySql PHP) combination in the machine. The steps are pretty much straightforward, and it is much simplified and explained for the less geeky mortals like me to grasp in "Beginning PHP6, Apache, MySQL Web Development" (Wiley India).

The setting up of Apache Web Server was going smoothly until they told me to make some changes in the configuration file (httpd.conf) to set the port and all. Guess port 80 was already being used by some other program in my system. I wasnt able to modify the file at all. I tried with all the text editors I have, but it wouldnt budge. While you try to save the modified file, it tells me I dont have the permission. Really, WTF. I had logged in as administrator, and the file properties showed me and only me had all the permissions enabled. I tried editing the file from elsewhere and pasting it there, which too failed.

Now, the solution is pretty simple, even though I havent understood why it works out as such. Double clicking the file and opening it with Notepad doesnt do it. Instead, even though you are logged in as the admin user, you have to go all the way to Notepad, right click, Run as Administrator and then open the file from that.

I checked some online forums, and found quite some people had faced this, across platforms. Some geniuses have provided the solution then and there, Run Notepad as Admin, that is, but no explanation given as such as to why should I run it as admin specifically even when I am logged in as admin.

??

Update: Got screwed up with the installation. Lost my patience. This finally offered some respite. Funny enough, the Run as Admin issue came up with managing the WampServer as well.
The steps were pretty straight. Dont know how I managed to mess it up.
Now have to settle with Netbeans and WampServer. As opposed to learning it the notepad way.

Sigh.
#Fail.

11.2.2012

This seems to have been scripted by someone who has a nice sense of poetic justice.
How more fitting can it get?
(And that too, set up by Arshavin! Not even by the remotest half chance of a wildest guess, going by his present form, that is.)

The way he kept thumping the Arsenal crest on his jersey during his celebration, which, symbolically enough, lies close to his heart, said everything.
Thank You King Henry The L.E.G.E.N.D.
Respect.

Whatever it is, I want to come back [to Arsenal], maybe as a water boy, I just love this club..

[All rights for the image lie with Mr Michael Regan of Getty Images. (Lucky dude.) Sorry Mike for not asking permission, but I had to use this one.]

10.2.2012

It wasn’t planned, and the sudden craving for something other than Plain Dosa and Coffee from Aryas for dinner was impulsive. Ok, that salary got credited the day before might have got something to do with it. I felt the craving the day before  too,  but then it was coupled with an urge to hit the road for a nice drive along the highway on my bike, so ZamZam was a natural choice and I had the customary Half Shawaya, Porotta and Chilled Lime Juice. But no desserts. I did venture a bit out of the shell by trying their new offering, the Wheat Porotta.  As sad as this makes me, I have to admit that the usual, harmful-for-health Maida Porotta wins hands down.
So that day, earlier at office I had planned a visit to the newly discovered Gamers’ Lounge-cum- Cafeteria, Café 1337, and had actually googled the directions. Upon reaching home, there was a change in plans, partly out of the fear that they might actually close down by the time I reach there. So that’s how I ended up heading off to the Zinc n Rock’s new outlet at Karyavattom, which wasn’t too far either and hadn’t been checked yet.

That leads to
Restaurant Review: Zinc n Rock, Karyavattom 


How to Reach : This shouldn’t be difficult at all since its very conspicuous, located bang on the roadside at Karyavattom – to your right if you’re coming from Kazhakkoottam.

Now, I had been to the real Zinc n Rock, at Vanross Junction for more than a couple of times, and had even tried their Burger Fest once with Bibin. And I am afraid because of that experience my reviews on this one shall be slightly comparative, but then its their sister franchise only. So, if anything, it had a classy ambience, with tastefully done interiors, sticking to a particular color theme and with real instruments placed randomly as an attempt to do some justice to the Rock in their name. But the choice of songs they played each time, I should say, had very little to do with rock. I am yet to try out eating from there on Wednesdays (or was it Thursdays?) when it is said that they play live music along – as in, real musicians come and perform.  

Their new outlet at Karyavattom, fails flatly on the ambience front, to start with. Firstly, it was too congested to the extent of being described, without too much exaggeration, as dingy.  It was far from cosy, which is the word one could say about the one at Vanross Junction. 
 

I don’t know if it was a part of the routine, but the day I chose to check it out was a No Air Conditioning Day for them, and seriously, being subjected to zero air conditioning in a glass room for a dinner for which one comes with fairly high hopes is such a turn off, even for a person who sleeps with his fan speed set to zero.  (May be that’s just me.) 

Adding another random fact: I was the only customer during the whole time I arrived there, had my food and left.  May be it was just an off day, but low customer turnout may mean they could be giving me old stocked food, but I went on with the dare. Though to their credit, I must say, the food didn’t cause any upset of magnitude to be mentioned in my post-mortem of the experience.

No music was played, there was nothing in the room that was at least an attempt to do some justice to their name save for some almost invisibly small wooden guitars perched on the higher side of the wall. Now I am certainly not suggesting they should have blared Highway To Hell at an obscenely high volume just for the heck of it. To the contrary, all music that ZamZam, one of my favorite restaurants in Trivandrum has got is the perpetual noise of waiters shouting, plates clanking and people asking to give some way. Way too congested, but in a cute sort of way. I’m drifting off.  My point is, I am not trying to get too pedantic here, but they clearly have a concept running for them along with that name of Zinc n Rock. Which is clearly not given much of a heed while opening this new franchise. 

So I settled down at the table the farthest from the Reception Desk, near the entrance. By the looks of it, I didn’t have to be on the lookout for any intruders (read other customers). The menu arrived, and thankfully, they kept the same menu as their parent restaurant. It was fairly good because there was variety and a lot to choose from, and with a not-so-exorbitant rate range. Now for connoisseurs, there are quite some options, from Burgers (having all plausible names you can think of for a burger), local dishes to even Mexican. Strangely, the times I had been to their Vanross Junction outlet, I always used to spend more time on deciding the mocktail than the food. Now, I didn’t know this meaning at first, but a mocktail is simply the non-alcoholic version of cocktail. Mock Cocktail, you see. I love this page of their menu the most. 

The person who designed and named the mocktails on that menu, I doff my bug infested hat off to you. Guess they took the list of all available fruits, did all possible permutations and came up with a drink for each combination, with names as much as fitting. Names and descriptions that make you imagine the combination in your mouth, which most probably you haven’t tried out yet, and make you crave for them. The more the better.  After the first sip, when the liquid is poking your taste buds, one tries to discern each flavor, slowly. A fulfilling experience. The first one I tried ever in that list was, I still remember, The Three Bassoons – "Melon teaming with orange and pinapple". Trust me, it did taste like Melon teaming with Orange and Pineapple. So this time when I was at this new franchise of theirs my the orders from the Craving Centre, Brain was to go easy and go for just good old lemon, so I settled for Green Tinkles – "Twang of lime and a fresh hint of mint." This means that the much postponed trying out of the Seven String Guitar – "Concoction of the seven best fruits" will have to wait.

After deciding on that, I perused the Menu for my dinner, and settled on Citrus Fire Chicken which according to the Menu, was “Chicken Breast marinated with special sauce and grilled to perfection, served with rolls, wedges and coleslaw". And looked like this :

To give them credit, I found it quite okay. Only that the chicken could have been cooked a bit more to make it a bit more softer. Green Tinkles did go well with it too. By the way, dont ask me what the word citrus is doing there in the name.

 Now regarding the service, well, it was nice but hard to take that for a word when I was their only customer. They had no choice but to treat me nicely. And feed your wallet before you step in, since they don’t accept any cards. Bad. Very.

Now, how would I rate that experience?

2.5/5

26.1.2012 GoodReads

It was in Aravind_P's yearly round up post in InfyBlogs that I first saw the site mentioned for the first time. Now this is a guy I have respect for, for he writes awesome movie and book reviews. (By movies, the reference is not to your latest random masala any-alphabet-for-first-letter-ollywood flick released over the weekend and by books the reference definitely was not to those poignant IIT-ian sagas of getting hooked,in short, the best seller list of flipkart.) Plus, he shares my other love - Bookshop browsing. So, I dont remember verbatim what Aravind posted about it, but he highly recommended the site, and he apparently had a "librarian" access/status in the thing.

I checked the site then and there, but then saw it required a registration, and I assumed they would want the email verification (this is such a turn off. Turned out that they dont. Spammers and other cyber miscreants dont tread this way it seems.) and all, plus it was office network, so I left it at that, and now that I am taking a week off, all to myself, thanks to that bout of severe viral fever who has left in time like a good regular guest that he is, I made an account and delved into the parallel world that is the site.

Dear reader if you are a reader, (haha. clever, huh?). Lameness apart, if you are a passionate bibliophile, (now dont get me wrong. We are not talking about Ben-Streetman's-Solid-State-Devices or Fun-With-Pointers breed of books. People who like that please form a separate queue and get in that space-shuttle-like bus. Thanks.) please check out this website www.goodreads.com. Even otherwise you'll end up liking the site, but if you love books, then you're going to fall for this site. Its a social networking platform sans its evils. It has the good features of your popular social networking site (built on a stolen idea in the first place) incorporated, to a good purpose.

I havent explored the site completely yet, all these are my first impressions. Which, as you will know by now, has completely won me over. I was first asked to select my favorite genres from a given list (this can be edited later, as I found out later). They gave me a list of recommended books for each genre, and the list was quite good. I started with some of the books that I'd read, reviewed them by giving my ratings to them. Each book has a profile page of its own, where people post their reviews. If you're creatively challenged and constipated for words or just plain inscure and incapable like me (all three) to write a review of a book, heck, just rate it by giving stars out of five. You can add each book to the Read, Curently Reading or the Want to Read category. I added some of the ones I read. (I wanted to add those Malory Towers, Secret Seven, Famous Five books, but then decided against it. Part of growing up, I suppose. Woohoo.) I havent completely added all the books I've read, but even then the number wouldnt cross 45, generous case. And there are books I wish I hadnt read (Enid Blyton doesnt come under this). And the ones I read so long ago that they're almost as good as unread. Only dont compare yourself with people there because I swear I saw people who had like 1000 books written against them and (Im pretty sure) they arent vampires. And there's actually no point in comparing as well. I dont think anyone is going to judge you because of that. Adding the books you read to your profile was a good exercise for me since each book has an associated time of reading, a story associated with procuring that book in the first place, experiences while reading them, some pictures you framed in your mind as you read the book,..many of them come back. Well, all of them may come back to you. My memory is horrible. What was I saying?

There are like  hundreds of reviews written for each book unless it is that obscurely not famous as a work, and this was a high point for me. I looked out for reviews that panned books which were my favorite, to hear the other side and check if my love for the book stood the test. It was sheer enlightenment to see a work judged from so many angles. Each person sees a new whole perspective to the story. Even with favorable reviews, I read things that made me see it in a new different light, and the level of detail to which some people scrutinizes and thinks over on while they read amaze me.

There are user profiles, and you can become friends, upon which their updates will come up in your feeds as well. Only the updates are not some totally pointless and irrelevant details of the relationship status that you dont care two and a half hoots about, but about the books they read, marked to read, quotes etc. And the user profiles look the same way too. Their bookshelves, friends etc.

There were also pages dedicated to authors, and you have the option to become a fan of one, or follow them too,if  they're active on goodreads or not dead. Well, actually I'm not very clear upon how this works too. Clarified update later. See, sometimes procrastination is inevitable. (I just justified procrastination. God the levels to which I ...)

I searched for Aravind since I knew his complex second name, (which actually makes one unique among so many Aravinds) and sent him the request he cant refuse. He welcomed me, (yeah there is a simple basic message system in place too) and suggested this group Indian Readers. Talking of which, needless to say there is the concept of Groups/Communities. I sent a request to the moderator which, uhm, he had the power to refuse, but accepted graciously shortly afterwards, and I was in. The group seems like fun, and I havent read their discussion forum yet. They just sent me a mail saying the group will be reading "To Kill a Mocking Bird"and Vikram Seth's "The Golden Gate" this month. (Hearing of the latter for the first time. Should check out.)

Reading targets. Cool idea! (May be because its the first time I'm a member of  Reading Club of any sorts)

Speaking of which, you can regularly update your Currently Reading Section with the pages you read, and they'll do the math, calculate in percentage your progress and update it in your profile, which is actually a good booster. It now says I am 14% into Catch 22. (Catch 3.08, that is. haha.Not funny? Okay.)

I really hope this becomes an addiction, and that this systematizes my reading, and much more.

So much for first impression. I'm really getting sleepy now, and this spurt of words has to stop. Dear fingers, I said stop typing.

Best Part: I am not Rameez Rahman, 24, Male, Systems blah blah blah of the blah studied at blahhah

I am...

 

They have a pretty good Android App too. Free.

Hitting bed.

21.1.2012

When I create a player/Virtual Pro in Fifa, if I decide to make him frail, I give him a fair chance by boosting some of his other attributes, like Stamina, for instance.

God, I'm just saying.

Damned fever again.

18.1.2012

I tried to remember when it happened last. And I couldnt get an instance still.
Even when just this "Arrived?"/"Reached?"/"Where?" message through phone would have sufficed, he would call, say Salam, ask the question, and end the call crisply. Calls in the minimum quantum of 5 seconds. Even my non-tech savvy Mom actually types in and sends an occasional salam once in a while.

But then today Dad actually messaged me this. At daytime, when he's at his office.
Just this.
"Medicine?"
And I remembered. I was supposed to take the pills from today as per my dentist's instruction.

He knew I'd forget.

15.01.2012

I started out to make a demotivational poster, actually. I lost motivation to do it midway and then this happened.
I kept thinking about random stuff. Now, being an expert on the subject of mediocrity (I should be publishing my findings. Later.), it was only natural that this poster evolved.

Used free images and GIMP.