kinshuk sunilit aint no, dessert if therez no caek

Yesterday was an awful day.

While working on the community administration for OSS Camp Delhi, September 2007 I hit several dead ends. MDI Gurgaon does not hire out facilities for external events. JNU wants me to call on Monday. IIT Delhi and IMT do not pick up the calls. DU is as sleepy as it always has been. I’ll knock some corporate doors now and maybe premier institutions such as the India International Centre and teh India Habitat Centre. But that would escalate the cost way too high…. let me grumble about getting more sponsors.

But that wasn’t enough. I wanted to meet a very good friend of mine, but as luck and the day would have it… she couldn’t wait five minutes longer. Humbug!

Then, I gave a DVD to my friend. This DVD had been in my bag for two weeks now, and as he tells me, the surface is swamped with scratches. As far as I remember, I don’t have a copy. I should though.

And then finally, I deleted one of my best friends web site. The Kitty had a good laugh about it though I couldn’t understand how he could laugh about such great personal loss. He said some good things (I don’t remember the exact wordings, so I build them):

“Why be troubled and fume, scream and shout over it… after that we have to build it again… so lets cut the crap [...] and why waste energy over it [...] I am lazy” and

“its ok.. it happens… this is how we learnt everything.. be it vb6 or the web… sometimes the loss is small, sometimes its huge.. thats no biggie”.

Thats one of the best things he has ever said but the problem is that I have no clue how I deleted it all, so I haven’t learned. So much for the Old Skool.

Unfortunately, though I thought “maybe tomorrow”… Tomorrow hasn’t been any good either… not so far.

(from adage.com)

After six years of leading Yahoo, CEO Terry Semel resigned today in a letter to the portal’s board of directors. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang has been named as his replacement, with Mr. Semel moving to the role of non-executive chairman. Susan Decker, former exec VP-advertising and publishing, was elevated to president in the board’s announcement. Read the full story at http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=117405

(original author: Andrew Hampp, for adage.com)

IMPORTANT: I do not know PHP, or for that matter any server-side scripting language. This method (described here) is a work around to successfully add your Google Analytics code in your mediawiki installation, based on the article: MediawikiEtGoogleAnalytics/En. I am using Mediawiki 1.9.3 and I don’t know if this works on previous/later versions though logically it should.

When I followed the aforementioned article to add Google Analytics (referred to as ‘gA’ henceforth) on the OSS Camp wiki that I am currently administering, I found that the code is successfully added (there was an error for the “if (!$wgUser->isSysop())” check in the addGoogleAnalytics() function which i commented), but it is nowhere near the </BODY> tag as required for gA to work correctly. So we needed some alternative method. I digged in a bit at the Media Wiki website and tried understanding the Media Wiki flow to understand how the output page is being created. I observed this in the “includes/Skin.php” file:

(around line # 691)

/**
* This gets called shortly before the \</body\> tag.
* @return String HTML-wrapped JS code to be put before \</body\>
*/
function bottomScripts() {
global $wgJsMimeType;
return “\n\t\t<script type=\”$wgJsMimeType\”>if (window.runOnloadHook) runOnloadHook();</script>\n” ;

}

I changed this to:

/**
* This gets called shortly before the \</body\> tag.
* @return String HTML-wrapped JS code to be put before \</body\>
*/
function bottomScripts() {
global $wgJsMimeType, $gStr;
$gStr = $this->addGoogleAnalytics();
return “\n\t\t<script type=\”$wgJsMimeType\”>if (window.runOnloadHook) runOnloadHook();</script>\n” . $gStr ;
}

And at the end of the document, just below the last closing brace “}”, I added the addGoogleAnalytics() function. The modified function is shown below:

(color coding this whole block was a pain and i am lazy)

function addGoogleAnalytics() {$printGoogleAnalytics = “<script src=\”http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js\” type=\”text/javascript\”>\n”;
$printGoogleAnalytics .= “</script>\n”;
$printGoogleAnalytics .= “<script type=\”text/javascript\”>\n”;
$printGoogleAnalytics .= “_uacct = ” ;
$printGoogleAnalytics .= “\” UA-XXXXXX-X \”" ;
$printGoogleAnalytics .= “;\n”;
$printGoogleAnalytics .= “urchinTracker();\n”;
$printGoogleAnalytics .= “</script>\n”;return $printGoogleAnalytics;
}

Substitute the highlighted XXXXXX-X with your code and et voila! the code is working fine, absolutely fine!

Do leave a comment if you find this useful and I do want to credit the original author (at the aforementioned link) for his work, without which I couldn’t have found the solution.

Ok. I dont intend to demean anyone or insult anyone. Its just a fun prank me and my friend yadu (aka the Kitty) played on messenger., so here goes:

***

kinshuk: so mr. kitty… a small interview
kinshuk: y r ur species such a pussy when it comes to getting wet?

kitty: erm
kitty: :-s
kitty: we are not!!!
kitty: that is a misconception.
kitty: .if u look at the cat family..
kitty: many of the sub species have the ability to swim..
kitty: its just a pain to clean ourlself after we get wet thats all
kitty: :D

kinshuk: ability, willingness and desire are three different concepts, right? would you throw (up) some light?

kitty: :-s
kitty: yup
kitty: they are 3 different concepts all right
kitty: ability to do a job.. but the person might not be willing.. and he wont have the desire..
kitty: get it?
kitty: maybe he is willing but not able.. and have a strong desire..

kinshuk: well… i was talkign abt the ability of teh cat family to swim
kitty: :-s

kitty: erm.. sorry :P

kitty: if we have to .. we will..
kitty: we are able to .. but we dont desire it.. but we are willing :)
kitty: like to catch a pray.. or to save a sibling
kitty: :)
kitty: :D

kinshuk: that was what my first question was all about… hy dont u desire it?
kitty: erm.. i told u.. its pain to clean ourself after we get wet..
kitty: think of all the hair balls u r gonna cough up :-s

kinshuk: uh huh
kinshuk: so u r not deisgned to be wet, is that so?

kitty: no we just dont want to.. our design is not flawed if that is what you are trying to imply..
kinshuk: ok point noted sir
kitty: :P

kinshuk: next our readers ahve wanted to ask for ages, why do kitties loose so much hair…
kinshuk: is that a feature like the dogs for marking out teh territory
kinshuk: or are they just gross?

kitty: erm.. dogs.. ha.. lets leave them out of the topic.. and you have no idea how much hair they lose..
kitty: as for us cats. the hair fall depends mainly on the climatic conditions and also depends on the individual.
kitty: i had an uncle who rarely lose any hair

kinshuk: that cant be true
kinshuk: my aunt had a cat who was like loosing 4 punds of hair every day

kitty: it is

kinshuk: its like magic, how that much hair regrows
kitty: i told u.. it depends on the individual.

kitty: we are sensitive mr. kinshuk.. we all have problems dont we?

kinshuk: oh yes oh yes
kinshuk: thank you sir.
kitty: yes..

kinshuk: that would be all about the interview
kitty: i am most welcome..
kinshuk: would you like to make a note?
kitty: till we meet again..
kitty: a note?

kitty: i wish i had an opposable thumb thumb at times.. but now we all type.. so its ok..

kinshuk: thatw as really enlightening thank you
kinshuk: our readers will be glad you decided to seak out for the kitties
kitty: :D
kitty: me iz glad!
kitty: :P

***

So now you know all about them kitties… :P

Have fun.. its finally raining in Delhi… ah, crap! now it will be all humid.

Firstly, for the uninitiated:

OSS stands for Open Source Software. FS stands for Free Software. While SRK, stands for Shahrukh Khan, who is a world famous Indian Actor.

Now, really.. SRK hasnt become the new face or the brand ambassador for OSS or FS… its simply that me and my friend, while working on a new Open Source community were writing official communiques to OSI and FSF and all… and he received a mail from his friend about SRK’s residence. He was like “What in the world are people about”..

We found that funny, I thought I should share this collection of conflicting philosophies and the complex thing we geeks are ;)