Flip HowTo

This is a very old idea, which I looked first at this site, and hence this post may not be that new, in terms of freshness of content. However, its always interesting :-).

Goto this site:
http://www.revfad.com/flip.html

type something there and you will get like this:
:sıɥʇ ǝʞıl ʇǝƃ llıʍ noʎ puɐ ǝɹǝɥʇ ƃuıɥʇǝɯos ǝdʎʇ


(-: ǝɯɐs ǝɥʇ ǝɔuǝıɹǝdxǝ oʇ ǝɔuɐɥɔ ǝuo sı sıɥʇ '(ǝɯ ǝʞıl) ǝɟıl ɹnoʎ uı sʇdıɹɔs ʇɟǝl oʇ ʇɥƃıɹ pɐǝɹ ʇou ǝʌɐɥ noʎ ɟı ˙ʎsɐǝ os ʇou sʇı lɐɹǝuǝƃ uı ɥƃnoɥʇ uǝʌǝ 'llǝʍ sɹǝʇɔɐɹɐɥɔ uʍop ǝpısdn ǝɥʇ pɐǝɹ sʎɐʍlɐ uɐɔ noʎ 'ǝsnɐɔǝq unɟ sı sıɥʇ

Technical details:
This is possible because of unicode. Unicode has a huge set of character set. People were able to find a similar, corresponding upside down character for each character in the english alphabet.

If you are interested in what those characters are, here it is:
This is copy pasted straight from the revfad.com/flip.html page's source code.

var flipTable = {
a : '\u0250',
b : 'q',
c : '\u0254', //open o -- from pne
d : 'p',
e : '\u01DD',
f : '\u025F', //from pne
g : '\u0183',
h : '\u0265',
i : '\u0131', //from pne
j : '\u027E',
k : '\u029E',
//l : '\u0283',
m : '\u026F',
n : 'u',
r : '\u0279',
t : '\u0287',
v : '\u028C',
w : '\u028D',
y : '\u028E',
'.' : '\u02D9',
'[' : ']',
'(' : ')',
'{' : '}',
'?' : '\u00BF', //from pne
'!' : '\u00A1',
"\'" : ',',
'<' : '>',
'_' : '\u203E',
';' : '\u061B',
'\u203F' : '\u2040',
'\u2045' : '\u2046',
'\u2234' : '\u2235',
'\r' : '\n' //thank you, Yeeliberto
}

So as long as you have all these languages in your unicode font, you are really good to go in terms of getting things done (i mean upside down). If you have a complex language script (like say tamil or hindi), such a feat would be difficult, since tamil has horizontal lines at the bottom when character is flipped (think க as ab example). so its difficult to find an equivalent character. Same with hindi ( think of का - or for that matter any char as there is a line at the top for every character).

Donate with AdSense

This adhoc feature allows people to donate a part or whole of their earnings to Tides foundation, which will aid the relief efforts at Myanmar and China devastations.

Although I had some hand in this project as my small 20% percent, a lot of credit should go to Elizabeth.

See details here: Inside AdSense: Make your ad cents (and dollars) count

Go AdSense!!

gtalk2voip spams

When I was happy that the heysan trouble was over, here comes gtalk2voip. I guess I registered for this sometime back and now they send an IM saying that they have updated things.

Off-line message from: team@gtalk2voip.com date: 20.11.2008 14:06:06

New feature on GTalk2VoIP:
Using Gmail voice chat to make or receive phone calls: http://www.gtalk2voip.com/gtalk_service_gmailvoice.shtml

When will companies stop using IM to spam. IMs are tooooo intrusive.

Heysan the IM Virus/annoyance/nagchatware

If you are receiving a message that someone has tagged you in heysan.com, and gives you a link, please dont click it. It seems to be a virus/whatever. The bot pinged me through so many people in the last few days, while they dint know that the bot was doing all these.

What kind of messages do you receive:
abc@def.com tagged you in a photo on http://i.heysan.com/pfGZNO9Y
abc@def.com stole your cookies. To recover click on http://i.heysan.com/someSaltValue
abc@def.com uploaded a new photo on http://i.heysan.com/pfGZNO9Y
abc@def.com commented on a photo on http://i.heysan.com/pfGZNO9Y

Action:
None I know of, please ignore the message and keep moving. DONT CLICK IT.

Making libsvm work in Mac OS X - Matlab R 2008

It was painful to get libsvm on matlab working in Mac OS X. First was a false error.

Matlab threw some weird error like this:
expr: syntax error
/p/matlab/bin/util/mex/mexutil.sh: line 13: [: too many arguments

and make did not work. SO I guessed that this was the error (which actually was not). On searching the net, I figured out that we should ignore this error and keep going.

The second was the issue with libsvm. The file make.m was referring .obj files while the makefile was generating .o files. So all .obj was to be search and replaced with .o. Things started working after that.

Hope this helps others who are struggling with libsvm and matlab in OS X.

Google News Blog: Google News: Now in தமிழ் (Tamil)

Google News Blog: Google News: Now in தமிழ் (Tamil)

Let me point to the latest Google release for the (Tamil koorum nallulagam) market. :-).
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Google news in Tamil. Tamil news stories aggregated from various tamil news sources and seperate category for Srilankan news, Google News Tamil rocks :-). In case you want to know who worked on it, its my dear friend Kiran Gunda and his teammates.

Everyone I know who reads tamil liked it (myself and my father as of now ;-) )...

Thank you Google!
(Obligatory thanks to Google for all the good food that added 10kgs to my weight).

Trekking at Skandagiri

This blog post is about trekking to a place called Skandagiri (aka Kalavarahalli Betta - Betta in Kannada means hill). Nandi Hills is something most people in Bangalore know about, which you can see from Skandagiri. This trek was done by myself and my college friends (totaling 15 people). This place is 6km from Chick bellapur. At the foothills of Skandagiri is Papaghni mutt. From the mutt, it takes 4-6km walk to reach the top. I will split the blog into two parts. During the first part, I will stick to general info, for those who are planning to go trekking there and are here through Google search looking for more info. The second part is mostly my experience there.

Map:

View Map

You should be able to see Chick bellapur here. From there ask for Papagni Mutt and from there, you trek.

What time is it best to go?
Good question, it is good to go during times when it doesn't rain. We had people skid even though it was totally dry. Remember that, if its gonna rain, you have no shady place to take shelter. If you really meant time, its nice to see sunrise, so do a night trek. The ideal climate for trekking is to have clouds but not rain. The clouds stick below the hill. So you can see sun rise above the clouds, which is something you can see otherwise if you were a bird ;). It is a great idea to trek on Full moon day mostly because its easier to trek, as you will have some natural lighting. On an average, during weekends, the guide told me that around 1000 people trek, which is a fairly large number, by most standards.

How do you go there?
Pack all these:
1) Torch - very very important if you do night trek. I got a three LED bulb torch that cost like 120 Rs. It was very powerful and I should say, the brighter torch you have, the easier it is to climb.
2) Water and Snacks - Pack as much snacks and water as possible. Remember that every snack you take up, you will have to carry apart from your body weight. So be choosy of what U want to take up. Please don't litter at the top of the mountain. We saw a lot of Lays packets at the top. Now that you have carried so much snack items to the top, it wont take a lot of effort for you to get them to the foothill. Collect all of them in a plastic cover, come down and drop them near the dustbin near the mutt. Its not tough to do. Also don't empty the water bottles on the way down. You could do better service to others than to make a slippery path for them to climb. (sorry for preaching, but we did face/see all these).
3) Shoes and Jerkin - Wear the shoes and go, keep the jerkin in your bag. When you climb, you will sweat, so its a nice idea not to wear it (I wore it, it was stinking when I reached top). Also check the grip in your shoes. No point if it skids - you are going to climb up the hill.
4) Cash - (credit cards don't work ;) )
If you are taking a vehicle (cab/ van etc), then the spending for you will be this:
Rs. 225 for trekking in wild - permit (We had 15 people climbing up).
Rs. 400 for the guide - You can find guides in the night waiting there on Sat and Sunday. Other days, it seems that they don't allow beyond 1 AM or something. So if u are trekking on a non-sat-sun, be early there. Our total expense per head ended up Rs 370. It becomes cheaper with more people sharing the conveyance expense.

How much time does it take to trek up from Mutt?
It takes 2 hours if you can climb up fast. If you are average climber it should take 2.5 hours. If you are slow climber, it should take 3-3.5 hours. More than that, check your health if you are young :p.

What do you do after you reach top (can be rephrased as: What to do there)?
Actually nothing ;) Once you reach the top, till the sunrises, you have nothing else to do other than eat and sleep (and probably star gazing which I will describe momentarily).

When should I get back?
After you watch the sunrise, get yourself off the mountain. Its going to get hotter and you will sweat. If you climb down with the sun overhead, its really not a pleasant climb down. (We started at 7 AM and reached down at 9:15 AM). By the time we reached the bottom, we were all exhausted and the sun overhead can be more irritating. Since you haven't had sleep the whole night, its even more irritating. So get off the cliff after the sun rises. Personally, I found that it was far more difficult getting down the cliff and your knee trembles. DO NOT do a free fall walking/running down the path. That is very dangerous.

PART 2 - My Experience: