The WordPress smiley named “g”

I wonder if anybody has ever noticed this: At the bottom of every wordpress page, there is a teeny smiley. Not just the blogs, even at the bottom of every page of wordpress.com‘s site.

This is the way they track accesses to their website, and generate stats for themselves, and their bloggers.
I like to call the smiley the “g”. No, not as in great. In fact, the
name “g” is the name that the makers of wordpress.com themselves have
given it…

I inspected the smiley using the Firebug firefox add-on, and guess what I found? It has come from the location “http://stats.wordpress.com/g.gif”. See? The little “g”.

A request for the smiley tells the server at stats.wordpress.com that the blog ABC was accessed by DEF, and the post being accessed it GHI.
Then there is another “g” on the page, but its been hidden using “display: none” css. All it contains is a LOOOOOooonng random string.

I wonder if these things can be exploited by hackers to do nasty things. Like increase their stats count. Who knows?

How (not) to make a website

Roaming around on the internet, I came across the website of a festival (read competition) being organized by “Symbiosis Centre for Information Technology”. Here are all the reasons why I loved the website soooooo much: (the website is located here)

1. The banner on the top of every page is just great. It says, “Techie Kaun”, but there really is nothing like tech in either the style used, nor in the cheesy colours behind the text. To add to it, the font just won’t let me decide if its a K or an H! But what I loved the most is the wacky logo on the left side of the banner. What does it say? Manual labour?! I also loved the goofy question marks that have been deemed to be a part of the event’s name.
2. The home page starts off with a pompous: TechieKaun will be another year older … joined hands with the environment … adopted Green [something that looks like an oak beside a pedastal] … invites you to participate … new chaper int the journey. Notice something wrong? The whole time, you don’t know if its an art festival, a programming contest, a mangagement fest or what! Of course, I had to check out all the events to know the devil’s “true nature”.
3. It’s actually hosted on IIS! It has been ages since I have seen any decent website hosted on a Microsoft server. I wonder how much they are paying for that piece-of-crap software, all the time getting low grade performance. Yea, you guessed right: I’m a sworn ubuntu user, and I avoid Microsoft software.
4. It is completely php. No, seriously. PHP has been used to display static pages like contact us and about us, but for some reason they chose to use plain HTML to show a map, which again could well have been just an image. Curious!
5. I like the way I can’t know what their shcedule is, and also the way the schedule is an Excel file (again Microsoft… I’m sure they’re in love with MS).
   

   HTTP 404 Error: Cannot find page!

6. I also like the way they have used old school marquee at the bottom of their page, along with the plagiarised javascript that makes the news bar scroll. Face it. There are some people who will use other people’s work, and won’t attribute it to them. I bet the template is stolen too. Stolen.
7. The one thing I don’t mind is that the back ground colour is the purest black. No one bothers if my eyes get hurt reading this site.

I’m sure I will feel bad later about writing such spiteful articles. Too bad it the feeling won’t last.

What else did you like about this website??

U.S. Playing “Big Daddy” again

Many recent developments have showed just how much bossy the US is getting now-a-days.
Its influence over Pakistan, Its demands over India’s nuclear deal, its defiance of the UN, and so much more!

It has long been playing international police, and now it’s starting to interfere in foreign politics too.

I happened to come across this news today, and what do I read!

The US will “not accept rescheduling of general elections”!
All right! “Don’t agree”, gasbags. You think anybody gives a damn to your supposed “agreement”?! Ha, it’s just like saying “If my neighbour buys a couch, I won’t agree”!!

QOTD: “The US wants to see and elected government … as there is no alternative to democratic rule”
Agreed. No alternative. No better one anyway. Thats way better than not agreeing.

The US really gets on my nerves. If it does that one more time, I won’t agree.

Twitter for “normal” guys

I am a normal guy. Not someone who has profession blogging. Not a startup guy. Not a businessman. Just a guy who cares for his friends. See how twitter helps a normal guy:

Some of my friends live in bangalore.

And today, someone tweets there’s been bomb blasts in bangalore!
What do I do? How do I confirm the news?

I google for it… but there’s no news already. I search for “bangalore” and “bomb blast”, but nada.
I look at news sites: Reuters, Yahoo news, google news, but to no avail.

So I go to search.twitter.com and search for bangalore and I instantly get all the news I want to.

I SMS my friends in bangalore and confirm all is fine.

The result: I luv u twitter

Now, as I type this post, the twitter search page title has changed. I go to the tab and see what happened: around 60 more tweets have appeared containing “bangalore” since I searched. This is 30 mins since I first got the news. I refresh the page, and find that the news sites (CNN-IBN, Reuters and the like) have caught up, 30 mins later.

In the same search results, a new twitter user blastnews has sprung up, is tweeting all the latest news on the tag #bangalore, which is now the hottest on twemes.com. This phenomenon of hyper-connectivity and wild-fire like spread of to-the-moment news is one of the great things that social networks have to offer to a well connected individual. This is also a classic example of how social networks can deliver you content most relevant to you. If I had no contacts in bangalore area, I would not get any news related to that area.

I guess social networks have so much more to offer than just communication…

Hey hey!

Hey all!

I am Harshath, and this is my blog. Yeah, pleased to meet you too

I am a junior undergraduate student with a keen interest in computer science.

This is my personal blog, and here I post things like what I am currently working on, my opinion on various things and the like.

To keep track of me, you might want to add this feed to your faves.

Cheers!