How To Use Bash Aliases

I am awesome.

I'll let Yehuda explain the whole deal to you, how Rails 3 and Merb 2 will be the same. Why? Well, he's also doing it and I'm a nice guy dude, give credit where it is due.

What does that mean though?

I'll quote qwantz here, "like ants combining to form the shape of a giant ant"



I hope everyone feels as positively as I do about this.

So I got myself a tumblr. It's at http://batsysid.tumblr.com

I'm sorry if this appears twice in your RSS feed, fucking Mac blogger widget is being such a bitch.

Thank you for the answer Mr. anarchogeek to "you are in the middle of a conflicted merge"

"Your heart is a river that flows from your chest
Through every organ
Your brain is the dam
And i am the fish who can't reach the cord."
Death cab for cutie - Lightness

Rails 2.2 thread safe.

Oh man, this should be awesome.

Of course it only helps in certain situations, this will not guarantee your app running on steroids.

Shit like MERB might though.

Peppy CSS Selectors

Faster than a speeding bullet.

More cross-browser than Superman?

This idea is sufficiently plausible in an attempt to account
For the phenomenon
The sickness and the sentence of blood.
I could no longer strubble,
Every moment threatened to be the last - there was pain,
Dizziness and profuse bleeding at the pores,
How is this possible
The transmission was transfusing
In a moment the sober eye of reason would detect a vibration in the flesh.
Creeping, incoherent,
Bearing no mark of a human hand

The vision comes and goes,
But tonight I saw very clearly.
The vision comes and goes,
But tonight I saw very clearly.
Very deeply.

I got sick of re-writing the crawl login again and again, and I don't like using the attribute CSS selectors [attr=value]

So I wrote this.

require 'rubygems'
require 'open-uri'
require 'net/http'
require 'hpricot'

class Rule
  attr_accessor :tag, :callback
  def initialize(tag, &callback)
    @tag = tag
    @callback = callback
    @preconditions = []
  end
  
  def all_ok?(tag)
    @preconditions.each do |condition|
      return false unless condition.call(tag)
    end  
    true
  end

  def with(condition, &callback)
    @preconditions << condition
    self.callback = callback   
    self
  end
  
  def with(attribute, value, &callback)
    @preconditions << lambda {|tag| tag.attributes[attribute.to_s].include?(value)}
    self.callback = callback   
    self
  end
end

class Farser
  def initialize(source)
    @source = Hpricot(open(source))
    @rules = []
  end
  
  def find(tag, &callback)
    rule = Rule.new(tag, &callback)
    @rules << rule 
    rule   
  end
  
  def farse
    @rules.each do |rule|
      @source.search(rule.tag) do |found|
        next unless rule.all_ok?(found)
        rule.callback.call(found)
      end
    end    
  end  
  
  def self.fetch(from, to)
    uri = URI.parse(from)
    return if File.exists?(to)
    File.open(to, "wb") do |f|
      Net::HTTP.start(uri.host) { |http|
        resp = http.get(uri.path)
        f.write(resp.body)
      }
    end
  end
end

farser = Farser.new("http://something.com")
farser.find("a").with(:href, 'index').with(:name, 'someone') do |index_link| 
end

In my efforts to further make my blog prettier, I'm trying out this plugin called SyntaxHighlighter It's all Javascript and CSS and a little flash, but that's ok.

traits.each {|trait| trait.spread_awesome}

Electric Sheep seriously rocks my socks. I wish I was on a Mac, cuz I've seen how pretty it is on that, but on my sweet little Dell on Windows, it's still pretty awesome.

I wonder why they called it that though.

Weird.

"Mother,
Tell your children not to walk my way"
Danzig - Mother.

Her Black Wings
Devil's Plaything
777
Going Down To Die





"See she comes,
Blacker than pitch"
Danzig - Her Black Wings

Al Pacino in Scarface said, "I never fucked anybody over in my life didn't have it coming to them. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don't break them for no one."



Al Pacino in The Insider said, "I never left a source hang out to dry, ever! Abandoned! Not 'till right fucking now. When I came on this job I came with my word intact. I'm gonna leave with my word intact. Fuck the rules of the game! "



As you can see Al Pacino is trying to make a point.

You're integrity is all you're born with. What you do with it, in you're whole life is what people remember about you.

My mother will never forget the fact that I lied to her about not studying for an exam when I was 5. Does that make me a bad person, I hope not. Does that make me a liar, definitely not. That just makes me someone who lied really terribly when I was 5.

I had a Principal in school. Mr Roberts. He'd say, "The thing with lies is, they have very short legs. They run very very fast, but they get caught very soon."

My Dad says, "The thing with lies is. You need to keep stock of who you lied to about what. The thing with the truth is, it's just so much easier."

Now, I have lied before. But it was always for the right reasons, or selfishness or vanity. Why am I saying all this today? Am I confused about something? ells yes!

The Oracle in The Matrix Reloaded says, "No, you've already made the choice. Now you have to understand it."



What that means is I am trying to understand a part of myself. One that says my balls and word don't break for no one.

And while I'm at it, I'll solve world hunger and poverty and terrorism.

I switched to feedburner. Because I feel really important this way, when I know how many people are stalking me.

Awesome cool ask the manowar fan feed

"If I just stay in bed, and pull the covers around me; if I just unplug the phone, if I don't answer the mail, then whatever bad news is waiting for me can't get to me. If I can just sleep, and then just sleep some more, then I won't have to deal with it. Not now. I can't deal with it now. Maybe it'll go away on its own. Maybe I'll die and I won't ever have to deal with it"

Call me fishmeal: On being crazy

"The most lonliest day in my life.
Such a lonely day.
Shouln't exist."
System Of A Down - Lonely Day

On the one hand we have:

"Freedom, urge, faith - and deeper he falls
Hatred, rage, fear - the stronger denial
Anger, heat, lust - the higher he climbs"

Satyricon - The rite of our cross.

And it is my right to my own cross.

"Life's no ordeal if you come to terms,
Reject the system dictating the norms

From dehumanization to arms production,
To hasten the nation towards its destruction
Power, power, the law of the land,
Those living for death will die by their own hand"

A perfect circle - Annhilation.

Let me be the man that you hate for always being right, on THIS day.

So if it's news to you that I bought a Moto Rokr E8, then dude, you don't know me at all now do you?!

Apps I can't do without:

1. GMail mobile app. Dude, that shit is fast!
2. Opera Mini. Dude, that is seriously fast! Can't do without Facebook now can I?
3. Google Maps. I get lost a lot.
4. Flickr uploader. For all the photos you take!

I will update that list with more as I discover them!

Everyone in the whole wide world should use the new Opera mini browser on their cellphones.

Why? Because it's super fast, super-cool, speed dial bookmarks rule! And it's actually really really fast for some reason.

No, I mean it man.

I haven't tried flash on it yet, but so far kickass!

Opera mini = Jack Bauer = Chuck Norris.

"There're millions of lives at stake, and millions of people will die if you don't do what I say, NOW! Dammit, NOW!"
Jack Bauer - Every single episode of 24

In Rails you ought to look at before_save as your slightly bad ass friend, who you won't give control of your assets to.

You might think that's a bad analogy. When in fact it's not. Bear with me.

Truth/Sane part of analogy:

Don't modify your objects in an before_save hook. In any way, small string manipulation, prepend a dollar sign. Any of that, in any way. Of course, this argument is only valid if you're going to add validations on that object on those fields.

Example:

class Thing
before_save :underscore_most_special

private

def underscore_most_special
 name.gsub!(/[-_/]/, '_')
end

end

class Thing

before_save :underscore_most_special
validates_uniqueness_of :name

private

def underscore_most_special
 name.gsub!(/[-_/]/, '_')
end

end

class ThingTest

def test_name_should_be_unique
 Thing.create!(:name=>"rambo")
 assert_equal false, Thing.new(:name=>"rambo").valid?
end

end

def test_name_should_be_unique
 Thing.create!(:name=>"rambo-the-dude")
 assert_equal false, Thing.new(:name=>"rambo-the-dude").valid?
end

For what you might ask?

TO EXIST.

Really, I've had a cold for the past two months and it refuses to go away.

I realized today, people notice that I can't touch type very well.

And I realized more painful things today, I obviously will leave out. It's interesting how I always mention something sucks with absolutely no clue as to why or what. But always follow it up with something intelligent and funny.

Like this,

A horse walks into a bar and the bartender looks at the horse and says why the long face.

Imagine a table tennis game.

Player 1 and Player 2 evenly matched.

Match point with Player 1 on the advantage.

Player 1 serves a beauty angling it into the corner and turning it in. Player 2 chops on the backhand, it's fast but not very flat.

Player 2 leans back giving himself room and readies himself to whack that ball.

Right as the ball leaves Player 1's bat he stomps his foot down hard destroying Player 2's concentration who misses the ball.

Player 1 leaps up in celebration with another victory in the history books.

Player 2 pulls out his .50 desert eagle and lets off a shot aimed proffessionly at Player 1's forehead.

Player 1 takes it like a man.

So I was just talking to someone about beer.

I know person A not in a total social capacity. Replace "not in a total social" with "semi-professional"

Now it is my suspicion that I have come across as slightly under the influence whilst asking the question "What's your choice of beer, matey?"

Agreed, it may have not been the best question in all of eternity to be used as an ice-breaker. But I have a small and simple brain.

SMALL AND SIMPLE.

Like right now, I am not under the influence. Even though this post seems like it is written by me when I am.

Have faith. I do.

Dear Mr. Raghu Ram,

I truly and honestly believe that you and the rest of your MTV goonies are the cancer of our generation. I'm actually going to take out 10 minutes out of my day and explain to you why I think this. And then that's it. for you and me.

One, I'll start with Splitsvilla, because it's a show I watched. Sadly though. It was entertaining no doubt. I was hooked onto the results of every episode. But the question you must really ask yourselves is, how is that better than say India TV or say self-mutilation. India TV, however horrible at least delivers some news ... self mutilation ... well that causes pain which teaches you self mutilation is bad. Your shows though ... how do you even justify that?! Okay, so your participants win money.

2.5 lakhs for one winner.

Are you serious man?

Do you even tell them how much that is of the gross profit that show made? Is 0.00000000001913% even a number people can say out loud without giggling?

I mean come on, Vodafone, MSN? Don't tell me those guys didn't pay you something in like a gazillion bloody figures.

Oh! No wait, you gave them their own TV show, you made them famous. You made them CELEBRITIES! Yes of course, a lifetime full of this shit. Really man?

Two, you made this DVD. The ad actually said that people who want to get into Roadies and to impress you should but this DVD. Lets put aside the hubris in a statement like that. Really, let's let that go.

I know it'll take a while ... but for the sake of argument let's put it aside.

Do you know how much money your making off of people's insecurities?

(Cost of one DVD x Average number of people per city x Number of cities) + (All those other people who're in general trying to get into one of your reality shows because they've given up on life in general) + (All those other idiots who are randomly angry at everyone they see so they can be like you)

Mind you the cost is Rs. 599 per DVD.

Joe Rogan once said "Fuck dumb people. If they're dumb they should get ripped off. I get scared when smart people get ripped off."

Did I mention it was during a piece of standup comedy. That it was satirical?

So there you have it, you've pegged people in the age group of 10 to a 100 and the cost of their souls to you is Rs. 599 per head.

That's why I think you're the cancer of this time. Now I'm not asking people to boycott your shows or do any shit like that, even if I did it wouldn't happen right?

All I'm saying is let people know you're fucking them over, because you're a real man right? At least that's the shit you said on TV man, I dunno.

My 599 ruppees,
Sid.

By making videos:

About Perl.

About bad Rubyists.

About Zed Shaw.

"I kissed a girl and I liked it"
Katy Price - I kissed a girl

"Barring a sharp blow to the head, as you stand here today you are as dumb as you'll ever be."

Quote from Design Patterns in Ruby explaining why solving a problem you haven't encountered yet (eg: internationalizing your application without the real need for it) is risky because you're betting you can solve it right, and you can solve it right now.

Further ...
"Whenever you put in a feature before
you really need it, you are guilty of programming while stupid; if you wait until you
really need the thing, you are likely to have a better understanding of what you need
to do and how you should go about doing it."

Really, please. I have three of those.

Or maybe this Alienware area-51 notebook.

"You won't last that long,
You might as well transform"
Powerman 5000 - Transform

A thousand centuries of destruction in one breath. The breath of a dragon.

Because I'm weird like that.

I usually absolutely hate chick flicks ... upto the extent of really rather wanting to die in a void of entertainment so total and entire it would make simple pimple boredom look like The George Carlin show (God bless his soul).

But my point is.

I like just two of them. I promise, just these two. The Holiday and Stranger Than Fiction.

I know that Stranger Than Fiction might not be classified as a chick flick. But shit man, no one dies, there's no blood, there's no monster, there's no crazy awesome siege, there's no mutants, there's no superhumans, there's no post modern apocalyptic-reality, and there's no prophecy.

So that's my guilt pleasure. Only two ... so Far.

"Body movin'
Body movin'
with the a-1 sound sound so soothing"
Beastie Boys - Body moving

You wake up just before it. There's about five seconds of utter silence, seems like a lifetime. There's a noise, a grunt, a growl, a snore ... it doesn't matter. What matters is there's no one in the room but you, Nope, it doesn't matter.

What matters are the icy fingers clasping themselves around your heart, slowly squeezing every ounce of blood, sanity and life out of you ... breath by breath. Problem is you can't breathe slow, so you die inside yourself faster and faster.

And it's the same everytime.

But then there is the light.

"He makes us dine with him at his table,
Where the bones we eat are our own"
John Constantine

1. Take a flight back home at 5am and have the cabbie pick you up at 3:45, only to have him come an hour early and have a door that slides open while your asleep.

2. Eat a bag of nails.

Now I know the majority of you will pick number one, but trust me when I say this it feels just as bad as number two.

"Holy diver,
Sole survivor
You're the star of the masquerade"
Dio - Holy Diver

I have a problem with picking urinals.

Vison this; you walk into a bathroom at the airport and it's stark empty except for one guy. He's washing his hands at the washbasin closest to the row of urinals. How do you pick which one to go in?

Ideally, I would pick the one closest to me given that I'm lazy and whatnot. But geez man, like all horrid contemporary loos the bloody urinals don't have walls between them! So I can't go right next to the guy washing his hands there!

Okay, so you go extreme and pick the last one, but then again do you want to be that guy that walks across the whole loo just to go to the last urinal because he's shy? Do you?!

So you say, okay, compromise, pick the middle.

So you walk up to the middle urinal and decide no, not this one, too dirty. Check out the next, nope, not good enough, too much gum in there. Next, nope still not good enough.

And as such you just end up going to the frikin cubicled one.

I hate, hate, hate, hate urinals. They make you choose, and I don't want to.

"They shot, stabbed and bludgeoned nine people to death,
Committing one of the most heinous crimes in history"
Children Of The Grave - White Zombie version

Bashfully yours gemdocs

That is setting up your bash to give you gemdocs with like ... one line. Or that's kicking your ass.

PS: I had to replace open with firefox for it to work with my Ubuntu box. You might find that helpful.

Peace and love,
The Sid Sid man.

1 archaic : blindfold
2 obsolete : hide
3: to deceive by false appearance : dupe
— hood·wink·er noun

There's a circle of people you usually trust. And by trust I mean, "This is a good movie, you ought to watch it." Anyone outside of that circle you regard with suspicion. Sounds simple enough doesn't it?
I don't like being hoodwinked. It's a mean thing to do.
I could be wrong though, shit, what do I know right?

Barber (post-haircut while I'm brushing hair off my neck): Pull your pants up for a second

Me (Pulling pants up): Where's the hair?

Barber: See, isn't that better.

Me (Puzzled, look): Huh?

Barber (With wicked smile): You look way better with your pants pulled up.

Me: What?

Barber: You shouldn't wear your pants down like that? Why do you do that?

Me (Letting my pants slide down to their normal length, showing off a little of the boxers): It leaves more room for the stuff.

Barber: You got me.

That's the last time I go back to that 30 buck haircut shithead. That's the last time I ditch my regular barber because I decided on a split second I needed a haircut. That's the last time I do anything based on an assumption that someone is trying to help me brush hair of my knee.

"They can't stop us,
Let 'em try."
Manowar - Die for metal.

Because they know how to tell stories.

Small secret, I'm badly addicted to doing this sentence with each word pointing to a separate link, which is freaky cool I know, but it goes against my philosophy of having meaningful link texts so Google indexes better.

Sigh.

"We the sons of Odin,
Await thy command"
Manowar - Gods Of War.

500,000 websites running Microsoft shiznit wormed.

Now it's really not Microsoft's fault. It's really a feature and not a bug. Honest.

I know it's mean to laugh, but jeez guys I told you so. Actually wait, my bad, I didn't.

"I am the scariest super-fuck who ever walked the Earth"
The Killer.

I fly a lot.

Every single weekend, and I always fly economy ... company pays right ergo it's going to be cheap. Especially for a chindi player like me ;) Anyways point. So on an economy flight you know the rule of armrests right? It's unwritten I know, but I figured putting it up here might change something.

Here's what an armrest looks like:



I know it's a funky one but it'll do for this story.

So when you get on a plane you know you have to share the armrest with the guy next to you. Either you take the top half and leave the bottom half for the other guy (the horizontal line), or you share it half in half vertically (the vertical line). That's basic shit right.

Right?

This guy gets on the plane and wakes me up to get into his seat, which is okay I mean no harm, no foul I wasn't asleep yet. So I pull out my earphones and let this guy sit down but here's the kicker just as I get ready to sit down this guys taken up the whole armrest. The whole frikking thing!!

I'm thinking to myself, what the hell, he doesn't look to happy in life, let it go Sid. Just breathe, enjoy the Manowar playing in your head and chill out man, it's a 3 hour flight be zen, be buddhist and let it go.



So Mr. Smarty pants next to me starts flapping his arm right in my face. Twice, thrice ... the man has fits I swear!

So know I'm thinking to myself you know what, this guy really didn't seem like an asshole when he came in and what the fuck, I'm not doing to Daddy talk this guy into sharing the armrest, let's show this guy what a real asshole is like ... so if this guy is really on the fence he'll be a good airline traveller for the rest of his natural born life. If I'm wrong ... well that didn't come up.

I yawn, just as he's plugging his headphones in and wham I shove my elbow into the back of the armrest and into his ribs. Alright, not so much shove and gently nudge. Gently nudge is true.

Archimedes once said, "Give me a stick and a place to stand and I could move the Earth" ... I paraprhase but you get the picture.



The trick with sharing an armrest is if you're sharing horizontally and you have the back portion you're the King man. You're God. You're the dictator. You can nudge the other guy into how much ever space you need, hell how much ever you WANT!

I spent the next half hour nudging the shit out of the guy ... whilst pretending to be asleep listening to insane insane Manowar and enjoying every thorough moment of it. Twenty minutes later I leave this guy no space on the armrest and he's dying for space ... but nu-huh talk time is over I'm asleep listening to my music, being zen.

Meal time comes.

After the meal, I'm ready for him to rush and try to grab the power half of the armrest ... but this guy just folds his hands with a big prissy look on his face giving up.

I turn to him with a smile that says, "Everyone needs a motherfucker now and then" and say, "It's alright, you can have the armrest I'm going to sleep" I fold my hands and fall asleep content after a meal of uncooked chicken on a fake five star airline content with myself that I prevented one more asshole from being born.

"You know that everytime I try to go where I really want to be,
It's already where I am,
Because I'm already there"
SOAD - Sugar

Joel Spolsky writes about Idealists versus Pragmatists.

You should read it.

"They made a statue of us,
The tourists come and stare at us."
Regina Spektor - Us

The reason I really really dig the Rails fields_for helper is this reason:

Someone wakes you up and you wake up, but you're too goddamn tired so you just lie there hoping the guy poking you will just realize you're too tired to wake up and leave you there to your peaceful slumber.

He pokes you again, "Sid, wake up man."

You grunt, hoping your friend would understand and leave you alone without you having to castrate him for his transgressions.

He pokes you again, this time accompanying the poke with a shake obviously getting more agitated, "Sid, dude, wake up. We should leave."

You shake his arm away in disapproval.

He pokes you again, this time knowing he's going to get results.

You sit up and open your eyes. You have that feeling again. That knowing feeling that you dreamt something important, something worth holding onto. Something you're going to see six months down the line and go, "Woah! I've been here man". Something you're head is still clutching onto with all it's might, because this one seemed a little more important than the others. This one ... but when you open the palms of your mind ... emptiness.

Nothing.

Plain, nothing.

Living alone is like being married to yourself.

Now that could be a good or bad thing, could swing either way.

But if you're like me

You like clean, soft, ironed, nice smelling clothes. You tell your wife to use fabric softener and you understand so you use it.

If you like a cup of tea in the morning with an apple maybe. You tell your wife. So you go out the previous evening and you buy the stuff. You'd wake up an hour earlier and make that shit, because you understand.

If you like tucked in bedsheets before you go to bed, you take half an hour when you come back from work and tidy up, because, well as a wife, you'd understand.

Unfortunately the sex is not so good, at the end of a long hot day you're just tired ... and like I said. You'd understand.

Disgusting I know. But every now and then, I must convince myself that all this shit doesn't make me a woman, because it's the nooni that keeps me seperate innit.

Because he has a point ... always.

That because of this cruel awesome remember insignificant password tool by Giles Bowkett ... and the argument at the bottom.

"Kill 'em.
Kill 'em all"
Random Dimmu Borgir song I can't remember the name of.

Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!

"I am a vampire,
I am a vampire,
And I've lost my fangs"
Vampire - Juno OST

A fool is someone who makes a mistake, unknowingly.

An idiot is someone who keeps making that mistake knowingly.

A smart person is someone who learns from being a fool.

A dirty bastard is someone who makes that mistake because he understands the consequences of that mistake will confuse someone. Akshay is a dirty bastard.

I would name my general store Bhagvaan general store not Sejal.

Would you walk into such a store?

You remember this arcade game from when we were kids?



Well, this idiot business complex I work in, has about six elevators on the ground floor. Now the problem is around 7 pm some of them arbitrarily shut down. By shut down, I mean, they seem like they work the digital LED says "G" but when you hit the button the sadistic doors won't open.

So today, I actually ran from lift to lift and managed to miss all four of the working lifts. In the process of running (I know, I ran) I sprained my ankle.

Can you believe that?

What're the odds that I was actually paddled around. I feel slightly important.

Or maybe I should change my strategy. It's either that or lose it and break those lifts of death, whichever comes first.

"Whoever appeals to the law against his fellow man,
Is either a fool or a coward."
Lamb Of God - Omerta.

The Mumbai domestic airport waiting lounge has free wi-fi. No, I'm serious. It's labelled "Free Internet From Airtel" and it's super brilliant fast. Which is really convenient because you know, you're sitting there addicted to the internet and having nothing to do. It's frankly quite warming that Bharti is so thoughtful. Makes you wonder a little bit.

Picture a guy come in open up his laptop, scan for networks and then see "Free Internet From Airtel" open his browser, fire up Gmail and see a page that tells him he needs a username and password to use the internet, and that he can have one sent to his Airtel phone by just typing his Airtel number into a text box and hitting Send.

Which is so damned convenient, really it took exactly 20 seconds for the SMS to come through, and the username and password actually worked. Now that's convenient.

Unless of course you're not an Airtel consumer.

In which case you'll probably get so angry you won't want to use Airtel or see one of their super awesome emo advertisements.

Bharti is a 27 billion USD company and they can't give free internet to a waiting lounge 100 people strong. The whole point of advertising free stuff and giving yourself a better image is to invite people into you're circle of trust. Instead, what they've gone and done is alienate the 4 out of 5 people who're already outside they're circle of trust and literally give the ones' inside an egalitarian feeling, which is quite alright of course if you weren't already doing that with your hairbrained billing schemes that trap us in for life.

But yeah, it's alright to assume every 100 people out of a 100 waiting for an airplane to Chennai in Bombay at 21:30pm on a Sunday night must be Airtel
users. It would be blasphemous to assume otherwise.

"Sanitarium,
Just leave me alone."
Metallica - Sanitarium

ThoughtWorks Chennai

I've been staying in Chennai for the past three weeks, I've flown home for all weekends and am in the loo, where I blog at my best.

The Chennai office is at the Regus office complex in Guindy.

The weather in Chennai is summer-ish, which I like but it gets slightly intense in the afternoons which is alright considering everything is centrally air conditioned all the time.

We spent the first week interacting with the client as part of the inception of the first project here, and it's been one of the more kickass expriences I've had here at ThoughtWorks.

The codebase we're working on has been written by ThoughtWorkers from the UK office. It's got some really kickass aspects to it. For example, it uses jQuery all over the place, it also uses an adaption of the Presenter pattern, the view adapter pattern.

Overall it's been a fairly intense time, but I wouldn't trade it in for anything in the world :) The next four months promises to be interesting in n number of ways, which is nice. I like interesting times, makes me feel alive.

Plus, the office complex has a ridiculous set of rules which I love breaking with a big grin on my face.

That and Martin Fowler is apparently making a stop here for a couple of days, should be *ahem* interesting to meet with the guy.

"Everyone has a place in this world"

I think that's BS.

The thought of not fighting to be where I want to be makes my gut tighten. The thought of having to accept something I don't want to makes my throat clench.

I honestly believe when you wake up in the morning, you are your own snowflake.

So no, I don't think my life is not in my hands. In fact I'm sure it's in my hands, dead sure. So take someone and go somewhere. It sounds like fun.

So much so that I'm going to quote.

"Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life."
The Matrix - Neo

I'm back to the old school shiznit, Manowar Manowar Manowar kills.


I could never forget how crazy killer Manowar is.

"Fight for the kingdom bound for glory
Armed with a heart of steel
I swear by the brothers who stand before me
To no man shall I kneel"
Manowar - Call To Arms

I highly recommend visiting Amy Lilley's shop on Etsy.com Etsy.com a website for exotic hand-made products that you can buy online and ship anywhere I guess.

I highly recommend Amy's shop because I've had the most wonderful experience just deciding what to buy from there. Amy is definitely a super awesome lady who gives a decent amount about her customers and cares about whether or not they're satisfied with what they're buying. Not just that since she makes her earrings herself, she has intimate knowledge of what you might want and might go best with your taste.

Plus, those are really super pretty earrings, she makes them. Sigh, wish I had talent.

Styx is a sweet heavy metal pub in Bangalore. Two buildings before the Cauvery Emporium on the Brigade Road/ M.G. Road crossing.

It is fucking sweet.

Anyone who plays Satyricon and Slayer at 9pm is damn sweet in my book.

I would suggest going in after 8:30pm though, they start picking up the music only after that.

"They can't stop us
Let 'em try
For heavy metal
We will die!."
Manowar - Die For Metal.

Initialize Objects from Hashes without using AR:B - Jay Fields

"Check this riff out,
It's fucking tasty"
Tenacious D(Satan) - Pick Of Destiny

"Got shiny diamonds,
Like the eyes of a cat,
In the black and blue,
Something is coming for you"
Dio - Holy Diver

Songza is so frikin' awesome.

"Before you see the light,
You must die."
Slayer - South Of Heaven

I'm not very good with decisions, they make me anxious. And I'm not very good with anxiety either. It makes me sick.

The only way I deal with things is I ask myself two questions:
1. What's your worst fear RIGHT NOW?
2. What's your worst fear for tomorrow?

If I'm able to answer those questions my anxiety goes away, and then I'm able to arrange things I want according to their priorities and decide what I want.

Point is, sometimes it doesn't make any sense, here's somethings to put what I'm trying to say into perspective.

Shit I did, that I didn't regret:

1. 11th standard I ditched math classes. I sat at home everyday for an hour and solved the entire coursework. I never told my parents out of fear. I ended up getting a 96 in 12th boards.

2. 12th standard I never went for a single English lit/lang lecture after the prof. threw me out. She totally dissed me man, I bribed a peon for attendance towards the end. The same went for Computer Graphics lectures and practicals.

4. Wrote an overdramatic email that I will never regret in my life :)

5. Decided I was okay talking to much and dressing the way I dress, or getting absurd haircuts or listening and advocating very anti-social music.

6. To never wear a single pair of pants as long as I have say in what I wear to worl.

7. Take up Ruby instead of java or .NET post my C++ phase.

8. Take advanced databases in place of AI. My entire batch just wanted to do Artificial Intelligence for no apparent reason, I think computers are brainwashing people into doing coursework that'll make people develop the next AI warlord.

You have to understand that you have a comfort zone, and if you're young enough you need to know that is no place to live in. Step out of your comfort zone. Learn. Experiment. That's the only way you'll every get to know something about yourself. I truly believe that in your most dire hour of need, you really get to know the person who helps you, and if it's you then that's the best learning experience of your life.

BUT On the other hand, stupid shit I did, that I did regret:

1. Phone bills.

2. Taking my JEE as lightly as I did, because my brother convinced me to do it and the motivation didn't come from me primarily. Rebellious stupid bum.

3. Submitting assignments for two years in college.

4. Not playing as many sports as I would have liked to

5. Pissing off my family at different stages in my life :)

6. Not say things I would have wanted to say just because it might've sounded odd or wrong.

7. Not listening to my Dad/Mom/Brother when what they said kinda made sense.

8. Not putting in enough effort for my 10th standard boards. Left everything for the last minute and as it turns out last minute memory retention is not a talent I have. See, I didn't know myself :) I assumed I was in my comfort zone leaving everything for the last minute. Case and point.

9. Not getting out of the car and killing the motorist who spat on the road. I will regret this, again and again.

So yeah, at the end of the day if you're more out of your comfort zone that you're in it, it's a good deal.

Excellent deal.

"Turn up my collar,
welcome the unknown."
Megadeth - Addicted To Chaos

Isn't it so damn cool!

Drool, makes me want to buy a Bajaj Pulsar.

Drool, makes me want to drive like that. And be a TOTAL FUCKASS!

DUMB ASSHOLES!

The day this ad came on television, Pune traffic lost a lung.

Drool, makes me want to turn into an asshole myself and go upside one of those bikers and show him with the meaning of true traffic is.

How can you, in a good state of mind, advocate what's going on out there on those roads?! Have a bloody soul, feel bad for cutting someone off, feel bad for coming close to your death and cheating it. Feel bad for thinking it's okay to disrespect every single rule in the book, feel bad for disrespecting the law.

Believe you me, you can get lucky a 100 times out of 101, but that one time it won't work, don't go crying to your Mommy, freebikers aren't allowed to that ... I think it's written in the freebikers' manual.

Save Pune Traffic. Don't be an asshole.

"No one knows what it's like,
To be the bad man,
To be the sad man."
The Who - Behind Blue Eyes.

Why the lucky stiff is one of the best Ruby hackers out there according to a colleague I respect. In this blog post about io, he calls io's meta tricks and introspection gunpowder and treason, via io having a clean mirror, which I like.

I like, I like.

Even io, I like ... oo goodness.

In other news, I've started experimenting with Erlang. It's damn nice ... functional goodness.

"Cos nobody loves me
Its true
Not like you do"
Portishead - Nobody Loves Me.

I will be in Chennai from the 21st about 4 months. If you're there and wanna hit me up, just shoot me an email at siddharthdawara(at)gmail(dot)com

"Dil me mere hai,
Dard - E - disco,
Come on now let's go."
Om Shanti Om - Dard - E - Disco

Dr. Nic talks about TDD'ing JavaScript and using autotest for JavaScript on Rails

We all know I have a JavaScript fetish :D And one for TDD.

"Black-hearted devil honey,
With a touch of high class"
Eagles Of Death Metal - Eagles Goth

No seriously, have a beautiful new year. May 2008 kick ass.

"Puzzle pieces in the ground
But no one ever seems to be digging
Instead, they're looking up towards the heavens
With their eyes on the heavens, mhm"
Jack Johson - Traffic In The Sky