Mohnish Ghodekar

Diwali "The festival of light" which marks the victory of good over evils,is celebrated by almost all the communities across India.Whether be it Hindu’s, Jains,Sikhs. Or it may be Region wise North Indians and South  Indians. But the reasons for which it is celebrated varies from region to region . The delicious dishes of Fauv (kandyantle fauv, Dudatle faiv, Kalayle fauv) are usually prepared on this day. I managed to find from my parents and grandparents as to what are actual reasons of celebrating this colourfull  and bright festival of lights.

1.Return of Lord RAM to Ayodhya after their 14 years of excile and victory and killing of Ravana in Lanka. This was the day when the people of Ayodhya met a grand welcome for their king back to the kingdom.The day was full of lights and colours glittering all the ways. The city of Ayodhya was all prepared for with the musical harmony and diyas all over.

2.The Killing of demon Narkasura by Lord Krishna, This was the day when lord krishna vanished the demon who had abducted around 16000 Gandharv princesses. The evil power of this terror evil was creating havoc for the innocent people on earth. So Lord krishna gave sure short solution for this by killing the demon with his universal sudarshan chakra. So people celebrated the killing by lighting diyas and people lit up their houses with beautiful and bright lanterns and diyas. This was called the dhakti diwali.

Being a Goan i would like to comment on the fact that why we Goans celebrate the diwali with the killing of Narkasura and why krishna so much associated with Goa?? I was always curious to know about this fact. I managed to search for enough matter on this.

• As per the Hindu Epic Mahabharata (written in 1000-500 BC) mentions Goa as  Gomantak,which means a fertile land.

• visit to Gomant by Shri Krishna as mentioned in one of the chapters of puranas.

List of days Diwali celebrated in Goa.

First Day: Dhanatrayodashi, on this day all the sources of wealth are worshipped mostly by the merchants.

Second Day: Narkachaturdashi, The day where the effigies of the evil Narkasura are burnt to mark its killing and defeat of evil.

Third Day: Laxmi pujan, Worshipping of Goddess laxmi for prosperity in wealth, luxury,power,fertility,beauty, etc.

Fourth Day: VarshaPratipada that marks the coronation of King Vikramaditya. On this day Newly wed females come to their parents place along with their husbands.

Fifth Day: Bhaubeej / Bhav-Bij, this Festivals resembles to one of the famous festives of India, raksha Bandhan. On this day a sister worship her brother with Arati. Here it is said that The brother plays the role of Lord Krishna who killed Narkasura.Sister pours him with wishes and blessings of long and healthy life. The brotther offers gifts and presents or sweets in return.

The fourteenth day is celebrated as Tulsi Vivah (Tulsi lagna). This festival is also known as Whadli diwali. People perform a wedding of The tulsi plant planted in Tulsivrindavana outside their house. Branches of sugarcane,tamarind and amla are planted along with tulsi plant in Tulsivrindavana. These poojas are usually performed late in the evening.

That was a sunday 5th oct 2008, morning.around 11 am. I was on bike (pulsar) gone for a ride as i was feeling bored siting at home. I went to my fathers dispansary just for time pass ,Finding it full of patients i decided to go for a ride in meanwhile. I moved towards carona a near by village to mine.

I then took a turn right on a road that heads towards my home.That area is known as ramtala. I was at 30km/h but the turn ahead made me change the gear, slowed down the vehicle and and i was about to put 2nd, when suddenly i could see a maruti wagon R in front of me,Ohh gosh. Nothing came to my mind than to apply breaks and  turn left.

But my bad luck was on my side, instead of moving to left, the car driver moved to his right giving me no chance to survive and there was a head on dash.(thasshhhh ) I just left the bike as it when the impact happened.I could see my self moving close to death. as i could see all dark in front . That was a big somsault jump. I was thrown in to the bushes at the side of road. I was hurt. Although i dint feel it much first.

Then there was all rush ,people coming running to see whether am dead or survived. The car owner that banged me was a nice person. He made me getup quicky from the bushes.sprikled water on me and tried to relax me. That was family going by that way. A elderly woman who i suppose is the wife of that driver was more tensed than me.What was coming to her mind was different. She kept on asking me baba tu baro aasa mu, chod lagung naa nhi tuka? (meaning are you ok?did it hurt much?).

Now was the time to settle the issue.So the next was to call my parents as the bike was all bend in front, not movable.I called up my mom first and assured her  that I am alright and nothing much is happened to me. She reached the point soon after i called. Then i had to call up my sister as my fathers mobile was not reachable. That was an tensed environment. Everyone passing by that way asking, is the bike rider alive?.

So rest of my family reached there. later police came and the conducted the further proceedings.

But the main reason behind the accident were the bushes on the turn that makes the vehicle rider difficult to spot the vehicles on the turn.Also was the mistake by the car driver moving to right rather than left!!!! I can understand that anyone can  get nervous in that situation. But it all happened. There is no a single person responsible.

It was very nice of that family that they did not say anything to me, neither they shouted at me. Becasue most of the the bike riders are always scolded even if they are not wrong.  But i was on correct side!!!!

I was only thankul to god that i survived such a hard crash. That was really an accident on fly…

Thats castrol With Raji

A geometrical stunt

Well Its been a while since the Web 2.0 is in use that introduced a new trends in web development since its evolution. Web 2.0 as officially defined  says

“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform”

Web 2.0 was more more about business logic application  that empasisis on implenting business application .It also brought about a latest innovations of the time such as communities,forums,social networks, and so on. Webservices and Ajax could be the major ones.

Web 3.0 says

“Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform. ”

Now is the time for Web 3.0. So what has web 3.0  all about and what is something new in it? Well altough web 3.0 still not a final product.An evolutionary stage of the Web that follows Web 2.0. But as of now Web 3.0 promises to bring with it a huge change in the trend of the web development.

Web 3.0 all speaks of semantic web (i.e information and services on the web is defined).This is all set to make a clean way in the next generation of the WWW. So we could say that Web 3.0 is Artificial Intelligence Web based systems. Artificial Intelligence Technology is expected to make the web intelligent. Natural language processing will provide new innovation in buidling database system with a capabilty to convert information from computer databases into normal-sounding human language.

Web 3.0 is expected to give birth to following trends challenges in web arena during its stage of evolution and maturity.(courtesy by Nova Spivack)

• ubiquitous connectivity, broadband adoption, mobile Internet access and mobile devices
• the intelligent web, Semantic Web technologies such as RDF, OWL, SWRL, SPARQL, GRDDL, semantic application platforms, and statement-based datastores;
• distributed databases, the "World Wide Database" (enabled by Semantic Web technologies); and
• intelligent applications, natural language processing, machine learning, machine reasoning, autonomous agents.

The most striking feature of PHP that has revolutionized the web development is its humble support towards mail. It is a mandatory now in every website that we built whether it be a CMS,shopping carts,forums or business listings sites to include the mail functions at variety of instances. Lets learn to write a simple mail class that can be used to implement simple to complex mailing functionalities for the websites.

Lets start with a mail class.

<?php

class mailclass    {
 
public $to;
public $from;
public $subject;
public $content;
public $bcc=array();
public $cc=array();
public $headers;
 
function mailclass()    {
$this->to="";
$this->from="";
}
 
function to($to_add)    {
 
$this->to=$to_add;
}
 
function from($from_add)    {
$this->from=$from_add;
}
 
function subject($sub)    {
$this->subject=$sub;
}
 
function content($cont)    {
 
$this->content=$cont;
 
}
 
function add_cc()    {
 $cc_list;
 $cnt1=1;
 foreach($this->cc as $ech)    {
 $each_cc=$ech;
 $cc_list.=$each_cc;
 if($cnt1!=sizeof($this->cc))    {
 
 $cc_list.=",";
 }
 $cnt1++;
 }
  $this->headers.="cc:".$cc_list."\n";
}
 
function add_bcc()    {
$bcc_list;
$cnt2=1;
 foreach($this->bcc as $each)    {
 $each_bcc=$each;
 $bcc_list.=$each_bcc;
 if($cnt2!=sizeof($this->bcc))    {
 
 $bcc_list.=",";
 }
 $cnt2++;
 }
  $this->headers.="bcc:".$bcc_list."\n";
}
 
 
 
function sendmail()    {
 
 $this->headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\n";
 $this->headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\n";
 $this->headers .= "X-Priority: 1\n";
 $this->headers .= "X-MSMail-Priority: High\n";
 $this->headers .= "X-Mailer: php\n";
 $this->headers .= "From: \"".$this->from."\" <".$this->from.">\n";
 
 if(sizeof($this->cc)>0)    {
 
     $this->add_cc();
 }
 
 if(sizeof($this->bcc)>0)    {
 
      $this->add_bcc();
 }
 
  if(mail($this->to,$this->subject,$this->content,$this->headers))    {
  return true;
  }
 
}
 
}
?>

The above mail class houses the main logic of the funda.The two functions add_bcc() and add_cc()can be used to set the BCC and CC list of emails.This is useful when sending mails in case of newsletters.

<?php

include(’mail.class.php’);
 
$to="testmail@localhost.com";
$from="admin@localhost.com";
$subject="mail class test";
$content="Mail class test was successfull";
 
$cc_list=array("m1@localhost.co.in",m2@localhost.com","m3@localhost.com");
 
$bcc_list=array("m1@localhost.co.in",m2@localhost.com","m3@localhost.com");
 
$mail_instance=new mailclass();
$mail_instance->to($to);
$mail_instance->from($from);
$mail_instance->subject($subject);
$mail_instance->content($content);
 
//to enable CC just uncomment this part,This sets the CC mail list
 
/*foreach($cc_list as $cc)    {
$ecc=$cc;
$mail_instance->cc[]=$ecc;
}
*/
 
//this sets the BCC mail list
 
foreach($bcc_list as $bcc)    {
$i=$bcc;
$mail_instance->bcc[]=$i;
}
 
if($mail_instance->sendmail())  {
echo "Mail Sent Successfully";
 
}
else
echo "error";
?>

Refering to the above piece of code first we create an object named $mail_instance. Then we set the to and from addresses of the mail by using $mail_instance->to($to), $mail_instance->from($from). Similarly we set the subject and the content of the mail. Inorder to set the BBC or CC we use the $bcc[] and $cc[] arrays t store the relevant addresse. Remember that the addresses are to seperated by  ","

The function sendmail() is used to send the mail.The function checks to see whether BCC or CC are set and sets the headers accordingly. We set the MIME headers for plain and HTML format of the mails. Altough the headers can be customised as per the requirements.

Working

save the class "mailclass" in a file named mail.class.php

include the class file in the relevant code where you want to use the mail function. The path can be customised as per the requirements.

Are you guys finding it difficult to login as root in Ubuntu? Well Thats the way actually it goes.
But there are ways by which one can do that so that you don’t have to cry while installing linux packages that requires accessing filesystem directories. Here’s The solution for this dilema.

First login with your normal account.

open Terminal window.

Enter the following command

sudo passwd root        

Now Enter the following command

gksu gdmsetup .

This will open up a Window,click on the security tab, In this security tab, there is an option which can be used to allow local system administrator login.Once it is done,restart your system. Now You can enjoy accessing your root login account.

As per the norms of ubuntu it highly suggested to avoid root login.

This was the error I was encountering when I was trying to include a heavy javascript code which I succeded in doing after a long research. But the error made me feel dissapointed. What I could see was IE just crashing out. There are many factors to consider when using Javascript in web development. One of the major problem associated with IE (Internet Explorer) is the "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site, Operation aborted" error. This is one of the error mostly encountered by the IE Javascript engine when parsing the script. Whenever a Javascript code is placed inside any of the HTML tags such as ul, ol, table,div, form, blockquote, and various other tags.. which inturn is the immediate child of the <body> tag the javascript engine of the Internet Explorer fails miserably and crashes out. This is mostly seen in google maps api’s or swf files when used improperly in the HTML. There are numerous solution for this for this single error. 1.Placing the javascript code either to the top or bottom of the body tag, or in the <head></head> section.Or placing it after the body tag. 2.Using defer="defer" in the script tag can also fix the silly error. Although there are still more ways to avert this. The first point succeded in solving my problem. Any more suggestions on this would be appreciated.

This was one of rarest to rarest incident happened with me till date.

That was an evening of 31st May Saturday,around 6:45pm. I was late from the office because of some urgent task.

I was in the bus,standing at the end ,close to the last seat.That was not so crowded asit usually happens.

I can see a elder( a man) seating with a brand new tubelight in his hand.trying to save it from being broken.

I was sharing some words with one of the local guy from aldona.

suddenly a seat got vacant.that too a window seat!!!

Sitting at the window is a different pleasure

As i was moving towards the seat,cautious enough because of the tubelight.

I was passing by, and suddenly the tubelight man positioned it perpendicular 90 degree to me. Ohh goshh…

I was about to avoid the devastation,that the man himself got up and the tube got bend and it then….

doooh!!!! There was a blast. The tubelight blasted. The whole bus was shaken.

Conductor was all panicked. What he thought was something different…

It got powdered into small piece.. It was an emberacing moment for me. The elder was dissapointed to see his Tube light busted into pieces.

I could only here him saying Kite re (in our local language). It was an emberrasing moment for me. I thought of paying his breakage expenses.But soon realised that it may turn out to be an insult for the elder,taking money from an young boy 40 years younger than him.Everyone in the bus was on my side,blaming the elder for not handling the tube properly.I was relaxed with that,feeling a bit supported.

So i kept quite.But before i could say sorry, the man had already left the bus.He was an respectable cool natured personality.After he left,the conductor came walking close to me. The one thing that he said to me was really funny “Kite futle te pailii mhaka kallena. Pun Aavazan khariuch mhaji pent sakail devli i.e he meant to say that he dint feel what happened first but his pant did came down when he did hear the sound.“

And i was only laughing

It was a wonderfull day!! a Picnic Day, saturday 10thMay 2008.

This was a summer picnic organised by Netsparx IT services for its beloved employees.

The spot we chose to visit is not one of those chosen by many for picnics. That was CANACONA. A beautifull natured mixed scenic place in the southern part of Goa,sharing its border to our Neighbours Karnataka.

We started off from Panjim in a mini Bus(Travellex)

Its was a long one way journey.I was all excited as we were supposed to pass by my native place,Cuncolim.Finally reached the place,by passing through one of the many of the mini ghats of Goa,the karmal Ghat. Although dint seems to be so dangerous and exciting. On reaching there we first turned ourself in some holy mood by visiting of the famous temple located in the lush green,hilly areas of Shrishtal,Canacona.That was none other than Shri Mallikarjun temple. This temple is dedicated to Lord Mallikarjun.This temple really reflects the unique architecture different from other temples in Goa with its Fully wooden carved interiors(although the temple is in its renovation phase). This was a total Holly place.

After being offered the blessings from the temple we decided to move ahead to one of the famous local beach. That was Palolem Beach. Wow!! Thats one of the cleanest beaches i have ever been to any in Goa. With its clear goldish sand and clean water with greenish reflections from the shallow of the beach. We preferred to be away from the little crowd seen on the golden land.We setteled on other side of the bay.This part of the shore mostly had beatiful natural smooth and polished rocks on its surface.

This part was having a knee level water comfortable enough to move in. Not knowing much of swimming we stayed back in here,not entering the shallow (which was more than… we were in). We tried to be a little adventurous by climbing the rocks I commented some lines back.

Finnaly tired roaming on the heated Beach we returned back to our traveller.

It was already 12:30pm and we were dying out of hunger and thirst(altough we still had water and some snacks before).

Searching for a good food we succeded in spoting a local Hotel close to the beach(named something like paradis ). That was a really good food for some and not a so good for others.But it was a tasty one for me.

Now all were sleeping (hey not beacuse of tiredness!!). we enjoyed clicking some of the funny sleeping faces of our collegues.

It was 2:45pm, all confused(?) Where to go next? we decided that we should visit some ancient places. Although Galgibag was in our original list.

I always love to visit the old ancient archive places. We planned to visit The Cabo de Rama fort.We traveled for an around 20 Km from where we left to reach here.This was an ruined fort looked as if it crying for its maintainance and repairs.

It is said that Lord Rama of the famous Hindu epic Ramayana took shelter here with his wife Sita.This was in their time when they were sent for excile for 14 years. Fort originally built by Hindu Rulers and then portuguese waging on it in and around 1763.

What was really amazing to see was the Sea view behind the Ancient fort.The beautiful sea view behind of the fort is an ideal place for the ones seeking peace and serenity away from the noise and disturbances.We stayed their for around an hour.

It was a evening time really tired of roaming and climbing we decided to return as it was getting dark and all worried of reaching their home. We stood to take a halt. Cooled ourself with Ice creams and cool winds at Colva beach.

Finnally back to Panjim. Thats it and the day was finnaly over.

That’s it and millions darling company microsoft fails to acquire yahoo,the biggest ever online portal in the world. What made the bid fail, as many says that share prices between the two were not negotiable. As reports says that yahoo earlier claimed for USD 57 billion in return of a offer of USD 47.5 billion by microsoft.Originally, the software giant had offered USD 44.6 billion or USD 31 a share but raised the offer as the negotiations proceeded. The CEO of Microsoft, Mr Balmer said,

“We continue to believe that our proposed acquisition made sense for Microsoft, Yahoo and the market as a whole,” Ballmer said in the letter posted on the Microsoft website.”

“In the letter, addressed to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, Ballmer said that in conversations earlier in the week “we conveyed our willingness to raise our offer to 33 dollars per share, reflecting again our belief in this collective opportunity.

This increase would have added approximately another five billion dollars of value to your shareholders, compared to the current value of our initial offer. It also would have reflected a premium of over 70 percent compared to the price at which your stock closed on January 31. Yet it has proven insufficient, as your final position insisted on Microsoft paying yet another five billion dollars or more, or at least another four dollars per share above our 33 dollars offer.”

But could that have been a successful even if microsoft would have got to yahoo? I think a big no.Beating Google at this stage is merely impossible. Also whatever microsoft takes over turns out to be a blunder for them. Hotmail is a great example. Also yahoo would have lost their reputation in the internet market as it has now. What makes google lead is the way they play their game. Silent and productive and innovative.. Thats why it is Goooooooooogle !!!! Googles Operating system could be a next planned attack on Microsft..