Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

December 22, 2004

Stats now working… sort of

Filed under: Website Updates — Suramya @ 8:02 AM

Website stats script has been fixed. It now works and is live. I updated it so that it uses sessions to prevent duplicate entries. The code is now a lot cleaner and more efficient.

I still need to make some changes to some of the sub-sections for the changes to take effect. I will do that later today though, I need to get some sleep now.

Will let you know when I am done.

Update: All sections should now be showing the correct stats and tracking visitors properly.

– Suramya

December 20, 2004

Solar Powered backpack

Filed under: Tech Related — Suramya @ 4:13 PM

Now this is something cool. Voltaic Systems just released a backpack with integrated solar panels. This allows the user to charge most electronics (excluding laptops unfortunately) using solar energy without having to setup the solar panels.

The price is a bit on the high side at $229 + Shipping. But for regular travellers it should be a great help. It even has pockets for most electronic gear (ipod’s, PDA’s etc). Check out the site for the pics.

Would like to buy this when I get some cash and go travelling.

– Suramya
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After Mobile Clubbing comes Pillow fights

Filed under: Funny News — Suramya @ 2:55 PM

Ok, this is starting to get silly. First there was Flash mobbing. Then came MobileClubbing now to top it people in UK are planning to have a giant pillow fight in front of The National Gallery.

To participate all you have to do is show up with a pillow and at 18.09pm start hitting anyone with a pillow. It should be fun but I think its silly. What’s next? Public flashing….

Source: The Register

– Suramya

December 18, 2004

Dinner with friends

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 7:59 AM

Went for dinner yesterday with Jessica and Vinit to Cafe Spice. It was a lot of fun as I was meeting Jessica after a long time. We got to the restraunt at 9:15 pm and stayed there till after 10:30pm. They were playing awesome music and the food was also just right. We talked about everything and it was good to catch up with what was going on in each-other’s lives.

Now I think I should goto sleep.

December 17, 2004

New IE Cross-site scripting Vulnerability

Filed under: Computer Related — Suramya @ 4:17 PM

Just read about this on the Secunia.com website. This one is a real scary one.

A new cross site scripting Vulnerability was discovered in the DHTML Edit ActiveX control in Internet Explorer when handling the ‘execScript()’ function. This allows the attacker to inject arbitrary script code in a user’s browser session in context of an arbitrary site. The best part is that even the SSL certificates etc are passed so there’s absolutely no way to find out if the site is spoofed or not. The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows XP SP1/SP2.

Check out a demo of the attack at: http://secunia.com/internet_explorer_cross-site_scripting_vulnerability_test/. The link above is hosted by the group which published the vulnerability. You can read the original advisory here

The code to create your own spoofed sites can be gotten by viewing the source code for the above page. I copied it to my site and tested it and it actually works. Don’t try anything stupid with this code ’cause if you do you will be caught and then you can pass my regards to Bubba your new cell-mate.

Mozilla Firefox is not affected by this so stop using IE and enjoy the holiday shopping without worying about phishing attacks.

Enjoy.

Visitor Stats is down

Filed under: Website Updates — Suramya @ 6:55 AM

The visitor stats portion of the site is down right now. I guess something went wrong when I moved the site to the new server. Since I have to fix the tracking script anyway, I am taking this opportunity to update the scripts to make them more efficient. I hope to finish the scripts over the weekend, but lets see how that goes.

– Suramya

December 16, 2004

Yahoo launches Beta Video search engine.

Filed under: Computer Related — Suramya @ 5:44 PM

Just days after AOL Released its media search engine (SingingFish.com) Yahoo has released a beta version of its video search engine. I tried it out and it actually seems to work pretty well. It has some problems finding stuff if the name is not spelled correctly but overall it works pretty nicely.

Yahoo is planning on using RSS to enable them to index the files. Its still in Beta so if you have problems/suggestions with it consider submitting a bug report.

Check it out at: http://video.search.yahoo.com/

– Suramya

X-10 Releases new home automation software

Filed under: Tech Related — Suramya @ 4:28 PM

X10 which was known for its pop up ads for wireless camera’s has released a new package which makes it easier for people to ‘give your home a brain’, meaning you can now use the software to create a smart house.

I was looking into this last year and when my house in India is nearing completion I will be buying the package and automating the entire house. The new kit costs about $100 with new modules costing ~$15. I am thinking I will add biometric scanners to the mix to allow me to unlock the door without needing keys. Although I will be adding manual overrides in case the power goes out and I will use Linux to control the system instead of windows. I will be adding UPS backup to the server incase of power outages and stuff. Another cool thing to add to this would be voice recognition software.

One of the neat things about this new system is that it doesn’t need the computer to be on after you have programmed it. Meaning once you are done programing the controller you can pug it into any electric supply and shut down the computer and still enjoy the benefits of home automation.

I will keep post updates when I actually start working on this.

Original Story: Wired News

December 14, 2004

New Guestbook script now live

Filed under: Website Updates — Suramya @ 9:21 PM

After a while of procastination I have finally finished the new guestbook script and its now live. Check it out at: http://feedback.suramya.com

New Features:

  • More efficient database storage
  • Better protection against SQL Data Injection attacks
  • Gives the visitor more options
  • Sorts the entries in reverse chronological order and limits the no of displayed entries to 15 per page.
  • Ability to screen comments before they go live.
  • and other various small fixes.

Check it out and let me know what you think of it.

Thanks,
Suramya

Google to scan library books

Filed under: News/Articles — Suramya @ 6:56 PM

According to BetaNews Google has started a new project where it will scan an index millions of books from libraries around the country and add them to its catalog. This doesn’t mean that the books will be available for free though, the search results will only show the bibliographies and excerpts from copyrighted books while giving complete access to the books whose copyrights have expired.

This will make it easier for people to search for specific items by centerlizing the knowledge into a easily accessed repository. This comes to us after the Google Scholar which allowed us to search through scholarly literature.

I think that google is doing a good job and this is a really cool addition to its formidable collection of tools.

Original Story: BetaNews

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