Body Building
I don't know what got into me, but I just know that, I have fallen in love with body building. And I have just two things in my mind as the goals
- Gain weight in terms of sheer muscle and bone strength ( current aim is 70 KG)
- Endurance training resulting in more strength and stamina along with fitness
Now I know that, these goals cannot be reached overnight, But I just started loving the journey towards it. And the best part was that, my body has reacted in a very positive way (Contrary to my 'friend's' comments that I will never put on weight) And with the mouth watering nutritious food that I get from my fiancee I believe this would be one ride I would not forget(Yeah, she comes to my office just to give me this amazing food)
I was able to gain over 2 Kgs(over 4.4 pounds) in less than 2 weeks, and I want to continue in that path. The best part is I don't look that different :)
Firstly started with a pair of 4 KG dumbells, then recently graduated to a barbell, without weights, since the shop did not have stock for 2 x 2 KG steel plates. But that turned out to be boon for me since I think I might actually move to 2 x 4 KG plates ! in a few weeks time
The current routine looks like this
| Exercise Name | Total Time(mins) |
|---|---|
| Jogging | 10 |
| Stretching (Kung fu based) | 10 |
| Upper body(with weights) | 10 |
| Lower body(with weights) | 10 |
Nowadays, I regularly track my food consumption using Livestrong website and I got a chance to learn from several of these websites mentioned below
- Dumbbell exercises for Men
- Hundred pushups in 6 weeks
- About Calisthenics (Also 'Google' in videos for Calisthenics)
- Review of fitness sites
- Scooby's free site about excercise, nutrition and tips
Books that I am reading now
- Dumbbell Training For Strength And Fitness by Matt Brzycki, Fred Fornicola
- The New Encyclopedia Of Modern Bodybuilding : The Bible Of Bodybuilding, Fully Updated And Revised - Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Dobbins
- The Men's Health Big Book Of Exercises - Adam Campbell
I will keep you posted(Hopefully with some 'Before'/'After' photos too :) ) with all the happenings around me related to Health and Fitness.
Happy rocking your body, bye.
Labels: body building, hacking, hobbies
Changing blogger template
(My blog, before the template change)As promised in my last blog entry, this post would be about changing the blogger template. Note that in order to make full use of this post, you must either be using the old blogger or you are hosting your own blog site.
But guys, if you are using the new blogger, its okay. Here is how to revert to the old blogger.
Click on the 'Template' tab and then click the 'Edit Html' tab
Scroll down, do not scroll contents of the template, I am talking about the page. And you will see a link titled 'Revert to classic template'
Once you have done this, you are free to hack your template in which way your heart desires. But if you still want to use the new blogger and change the template, you can google for it.
So in the next 4 steps, I will show you how to get your blog and new sleek look.
1) Choose a cool template of your choice
This is the best part. Rather than being limited to a handful of templates that blogger offers, You are now free to choose your template that really suits your blog. So first lets google for it. When you google for 'free css templates' (without quotes) the first site you get is(or the first site I got was) www.freecsstemplates.org
This is a really cool website offering mind blowing templates, and that too free.If the 222 handpicked, eye candy templates do not suit you, you can surf through the other results that turn up in the Google result, most of them are really worth checking out.
Now to make things simpler, lets assume that you downloaded the template from www.freecsstemplates.org The folder will contain a css file an html file and many image files.
2) Hack the code
To start beginning to edit the css and html files that you got, I recommend you try to get a slight hang of using css and html. Googling for css or html could get you enough stuff to get your hands up and dirty.You could also head on to http://www.w3schools.com which has an excellent section on html and css.
Now someone may ask, why take "so-much" trouble(?) to learn and do things rather than be content with the same boring template blog that one has been using for ages. The simple answer is - its just the part of hacker mentailty and culture. Hacker mentality typically revolves around discovering new things, finding answers and learning new stuff and so on. Thats all.
Next edit the html and the corresponding css files to suit your needs. You can add your images and stuff like that. For example, I have added links to World Food Programme(a N.G.O) and Feedburner feeds and so on.
3)Add the necessary blogger variables
Now this part took a bit time for me to get used to. But I bet, this would go as easy as pie for you, since all the information is presenter right HERE.
Once you have a template that closely matches your blog's theme, then its time to decide, where you want the links to 'previous posts' , 'archives' and the body of post must appear. Then its only a matter of copy-pasting those variables to the html file. But it must be done in a proper order. So i have numbered them below.
(From now on, all code in this post will be in RED)
i) The blog post title and body
Inside the
(if you have any doubt refer your original template [blogger >Template > edit html ]
<$BlogItemTitle$>This displays the blog title, Next comes the date header
<blogdateheader>
</blogdateheader>
<$BlogDateHeaderDate$>
Note I have used tags to specify the formatting which suits my blog. It may be different in your case. Only thing you have to note here is that not to change the name of Blogger variables.
Then finally comes the actual body of the blog post
posted by <$BlogItemAuthorNickname$> @ <$BlogItemDateTime$>
<$BlogItemBody$> and author and comments links
|<$BlogItemCommentFormOnclick$>><$BlogItemCommentCount$>
comments |
<blogitemcommentsenabled> </blogitemcommentsenabled>
ii)Previous post link
Also add the links to previous posts
<bloggerpreviousitems>
<$BlogPreviousItemTitle$>
4) The great joining
This last section is the is the most simplest of all. Create a new file. Lets call it myNewTemplate.html.
Open using using your favorite text or html editor. Please do not open with Microsoft word or any such software, becuase these softwares themselves add unwanted code and bloat our neat, clean template.
For windows users I would suggest notepad, PSPad( its a freeware HTML editor, PHP editor, XHTML, JavaScript, ASP, Perl, C , HEX editor.) or cream (A awesome editor with syntax highlighting that supports most languages you can ever think of)
For linux users Kate, BlueFish or cream would suffice.
Now add the code from the css file to the style section of the head tag.
Next add the contents of the html file to the body of this newly created file.
<html>
<head>
<title>My new blog</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--- add the code from css file here -->
</style>
<body>
<!-- Add the code from html file here -->
</body>
</html>
Once you have done this, save this file. Now head on to blogger >Template > edit html. Now remove everytihng from the text box and copy and paste the code of newly created file(myNewTemplate.htm) into the text box.
Click apply changes and voila you have your new template ready.
(My blog after the template change)
A Final word
If you encounter any problems, counter check the steps I told you and dont hestitate to google for more help. If you find any problems in grasping the css template while trying to edit it, its okay. Take your time and try to figure it out, with help from the web.
And finally, you can also comment this post and share with others your experience while hacking out your own template as I have shared mine.
One last note, in case you are hosting your own blog; Rather that using the blogger variables you will have to use the variable names of the language, used to host the blog. So if your blog uses PHP, substitute the PHP code instead of the blogger variables that I mentioned earlier.
Thank you
Justin
Joining IRC rooms
(IRC room of php in Pidgin)Now after successfully logging into irc.linuxchix.org IRC server and getting into a few rooms, I then, tried out to google for more IRC servers and rooms, but could not find much. Suddenly, I realized that, I had overlooked the default server name that appears, when I choose IRC protocol in Pidgin, namely
irc.freenode.net
I just logged in and it had thousands of rooms(yeah, u heard it right)And I first logged in to two rooms, namely php and centos.Now, note that sometimes, the nickname that you use might have been used by someone else
so issue the command:
/quit
then go back to Pidgin, and change your nickname to some "not-so-common" ones;Come back again and try to join the room. If it is accepted, then issue the command
/register your-password
and viollaaaa, you are IN
IRC rocks
(Pidgin to the rescue again)
I have been using Pidgin for a long time now to chat with my friends both in Google(gmail) as well as in Yahoo using this single super cool client. The usual trojans and boot-ins, that is so common among Yahoo messenger users, wont simply, just work in Pidgin, and thats the beauty of it.
Now the IRC story
I had heard about IRC, a long time ago - the intial impression I had was that, it was a place where hackers met. And 6 months back, one of my friends namely Mr.Manu Unni - who was chief project lead in localization of Open Office in Malayalam, again told me about the great world of IRC and told me to look our for my Linux queries there. As soon as I came back home, I installed a shareware IRC client, but to my dismay, found it rather intriguing and not so easy to use and I gave it up altogether.
Fast forward to today, I just Googled for IRC, came across an wiki entry on the same. But it was pretty boring(its not usually like that,though - wiki entries are one of my best sources of info), but I got a pretty interesting link referring to rfc(Request for comment) of IRC. Next I got a list of free IRC's from wiki. And i was surprised to see our dear own Pidgin there.
I googled for configuring Pidgin and IRC and got these links
- IRC for beginners : Just beginner stuff, to get you started
- Aussie Linuxchix : Joining the IRC channel - a nice guide to installing and using Pidgin
- The IRC Prelude: A detailed view, on IRC communication, including jargons and ways to talk and so on.
Currently I am logged on to the server irc.linuxchix.org and its really cool feeling to know that, you are part of a whole new world of gurus and students alike.
Rather that just burst in, I plan to learn the netiquettes of IRC cha tfirst and then proceed further.
It worked !!!!!!!
As mentioned in my previous(last) post, when disabled the feature - "turn off usb device on standby" , I am able to connect to the Internet even after the pc is back after a stand-by session. Hooray!!
(Before I had to log-out and then log-in after each standy!!)
Labels: hacking, internet, IRC, modem, net connection, pidgin
Well, I am back
(A snap taking during our way to Pune )
A small note about the photo
The snap was taken using my c653 easy share kodak digital camera. I had taken this photo while peeping out of the window in the train that we were travelling. Note that, the photo has NOT lost any details, even though the train was travelling at over 100 kilometer per hour (62.13 miles per hour)
(Note:The date in the photo had been mistakenly set wrong)
Trip to pune
The trip to Pune was really cool, and I got really excited about sytem and security testing, that I found myself reading some really good books/blogs on the same, after coming back. Some blogs that worth checking are :
- http://softwaretestingguide.blogspot.com/
- http://software-quality-testing.blogspot.com/
- http://www.opensourcetesting.org/
Brother also gifted me 5 cool books : 3 on java, 1 about google and one on software testing. The one on testing, really caught my attention, and I haven't laid down the book ever since. I've completed 5 chapters on the same: Software Testing by Ron Patton.
Strange modem not connecting problem
I have been a facing a starnge problem recently. Its like this. I connect to internet using Scientific-Altanta WebSTAR DPC2100R2 Cable Modem throgh my usb. I use for a while, and when I take leave and come after, say an hour, the computer would be in stand by mode.
When I return, i wont be able to connect to internet. I recently learnt that it could be that, usb goes to standby mode. This can be disabled as follows: Right click on my computer. click on properties. Click the hardware tab, and click on Device manager.
From the list, select USB serial bus controllers, select USB root hub. Double click it.Select the power management tab and uncheck Uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power I think, that must fix the problem.
I haven't tried out yet, and whatever may be the outcome, i will post it here. I got the result by googling for "standby XP modem problem" (without quotes)
Path to hacking (not cracking)
I feel one can learn a lot about security features, and various exploits in a software, if one has good grasp over software testing. And as I could learn from the recent past, people just not stumble across exploits or back doors in softwares;(although, some rarely do) But they systematically work out possibilities, leading to the security breach, and publish it in bug-forums where they could be rectified in future release.
As a side note, I happened to hear last week that, famous security related bugs are being auctioned off, for cool hard cash. Strange indeed!!
Labels: bugs, hacking, modem, net connection, pune, software testing
