I’m Jacob Thomas

Kwaaaaaaaaaaa!!! [That’s what i think is the sound on a new born.]

A child is born! Dad is excited.He thinks about what all he has to do. After lots of talk, discussions and fights with Mum, the baby gets a name.

Next up in the ‘To Do List’ for Dad’s is all the municipal formalities including the ‘Birth Certificate’. Since it is the new-age of advanced ‘blah blah’ , people just don’t finish with that.

The ‘Youngest PAN Card Holder in India’ was Krishhey Thacker (aged 56 days then) but recently Akshita, 50 day old girl beat him in the record hunt.

The online identity is getting even more established as the person’s alternative identity as infants get their own domain at the age of ..err…on the day they are born.I know designers and developers getting so excited to know that their newborn is due soon.The excitement makes them do all kinda stuff. Buying them their own domain is just one in the ‘normal’ type.

In a CNN online article, It was written

“Besides leaving the hospital with a birth certificate and a clean bill of health, baby Mila Belle Howells got something she won’t likely use herself for several years: her very own Internet domain name. Still, even if the effort is for naught, $9 a year is cheap compared with the cost of diapers and college tuition.”

Corrie Pankow, pictured with daughter Makenzie, has claimed domain names for her children.

Many of these parents believe that their child’s domain name will not be available by the time their children reach their teens. Well if people go on buying Domain names, web spaces , registering in social networking sites like MySpace or even activating a personal GMail account for their children…yep! it is not a distant reality.

Courtesy:CNN.com, Rediff News

Blueprint CSS Framework was a very handy tool to me when i needed to work out some quick applications.

The features include:

• An easily customizable grid
• Some default typography
• A typographic baseline
• CSS reset for default browser styles
• A stylesheet for printing
• No bloat of any kind

Download Blueprint 0.4

When i was browsing through my old files, i stumbled upon this music file. The dial-up tone for connecting to the internet was remixed with a couple of softwares like Multiquence and Mp3 Remix.

The ’share all of them’ bug has recently moved into me. So here is the music file.

Size:607 Kb

~zipped

DOWNLOAD ~ Internet Remix 

This is an exclusive preview of an LF project.

LF, Liquid Fusion was a concept introduced late last year.  It has gone 3 years of rigorous development and is now the state-of-the-art programming platform that can revolutionize your programming concepts.

I had introduced LF briefly in my blog earlier but this time i have got an actual project to show you. One of the countless number of features of LF is the data manipulation from a web browser. Take for example, an imageboard. Simply stating, an imageboard is a forum that concentrates on images. What about it? You may ask. Often people  may need a software to download all the  images from a forum, a blog or even Flickr. What do you do? Hacking is not a friendly option. But  we sure can manipulate their data through the browser. LF add this feature where you can download the entire images from  an imageboard within seconds.

The interface is pretty primitive, but it was made in 5 minutes. It was used to download 350 images from different categories automatically. The concept is simple. Take the image from the browser cache. The LF program on the other hand ran into 4 lines. Woah! Pretty cool right? That interface you see is an HTML page in the LF browser. Amazing!

Well it was just a page when i designed this blog. I simply entered it into the ‘404 error page competition‘. They liked my idea and quite surprisingly they tagged me under ‘Being Poetic’

“Jacob Thomas quotes Winston Churchill and informs lost visitors that the page they’ve been looking for seems to have been burnt down by a puckish elf called ‘Prontyr’.”

That quote thing was supposed to a random quote generator with lots of quotes showed. Too bad they saw only the Winston Churchill quote.  At least some part of this theme got some recognition.

“

• The human whose name is written in this note shall die.

• This note will not take effect unless the writer has the subject’s face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.
• If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the subject’s name, it will happen.
• If the cause of death is not specified, the subject will simply die of a heart attack.
• After writing the cause of death, the details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

“

Well…What can i say…You wont find the jittery glitzy action sequences of classics like Naruto or Bleach. Not even a single modish punch offered in the story. Its all about the style…absolute style in speech.

Usually, when i used to watch anime like Inuyasha, Bleach etc.I always could sense what was coming next…predictive to an extent but in Death Note. Man! I couldn’t keep up with the storyline. I was actually seeking my player to the previous section every now and then. The story is well etched into a very strong drama with elements of suspense and uncertainty of the main plot lingering almost in very second of meaningful conversational crossfire between ‘L’ and ‘Kira’.

Yagami Light, our central character is so surreal and an ideal student. No offense, but i don’t believe in a student who goes on scoring 100% in his University entrance exams (WTF!) after he is on a killing spree which takes up precious energy and almost the living hell out of a high schooler.[Later this kid is said to be a junior champion in tennis!] But then! Shinigamis’ and the Death Note itself isn’t real! [Silly me!]

Well there is no denying the fact i was very much engrossed in the anime much because turning a crime ridden society into a perfect ‘Utopia’ requires some good story line and emotionally inviolable characters like Light and L. Well now its the perfect time to introduce you to Death Note (awkwardly pronounced in Japan). The ultimate synonym for death. This useful gadget (contains no microchips and ICs in it and is not made in Germany!) is known for defining the inevitable death itself of a person with suitable extensions. By extensions, I mean the time, place and the way a person can be killed. Light uses a series of experiments on very immoral, perverted prisoners and criminals to test his limits with Death Note. Owned by a shinigami named Ryuk (quite funny, contrary to the normal Death God…looks more like a hollow from Bleach), the Death Note was accidentally dropped into the hands of Light.

One the other hand the mysterious and weird Mr ‘L‘ surprisingly a teenager with another 100% in everything.(Boy! I really hate university rank holders!). ‘L’ seems to have innumerable number of aliases for himself and at such a ‘tender age’ he is a known entity among the FBI (haha,another good one!) as he has solved for them, some serial murder case in America. With a faithful assistant (Servant??) named ‘watari‘, he is helping the investigation team to track down the the famous ‘Kira’.

Thats enough of story telling, but i am impressed how the director has transformed a slow, rather sloppy theme into a ‘nail biter’. With gutsy dialogues , strong characterization,effusive emotional pauses and the plausible look of ‘Death’ in Death Note, It sure is one good anime you don’t want to miss out. I will be back after some more episodes.Later!

[

• The author has seen only the first 10 episodes.
• He likes watching anime.
• This review is strictly a personal viewpoint.
• The author hasn’t seen the live action Movies of Death Note.Please donate
• This review is in no way eligible to be an ideal critical appreciation (Its crap!I know)
• Warning Spoilers!. lol now that you have read it this line doesn’t really care, right?

]

Image Courtesy:Aniyume

For a beginner like me certain articles really helped. One of them would be ‘Coding Style‘ by Dionyziz. This article deals with a detailed description of why coding style is very important to a developer and how these can be used to improve the readability of the code. Since i have never worked in a real professional group, i haven’t yet felt the need of a coding style. Anyway from now on i may be forced to develop an own coding style focusing on readability and usability. He has also outlined some styles which can be used in very popular procedure oriented languages like PHP, Python, C, C++, Java and Javascript. However a structured presentation of CSS and XHTML is also beneficial.

“In Type we trust”

Well I’m not absolutely sure but the ‘editor’ speaks justice to what is written at their homepage Its good. really good and it is free.

“Intype is a powerful and intuitive code editor for Windows with lightning fast response. It is easily extensible and customizable, thanks in part to its support for scripting and native plug-ins. It makes development in any programming or scripting language quick and easy. “

I tried Intype and found it to be surprisingly fast..yeah..somewhat near to the so-called ‘lightning fast”. My quest for a good editor started from

1)Notepad: Well you can’t dismiss good old’ Notepad right away because its still a good editor even now.Still very reliable, simple and blah blah blah.

(Wordpad ??? yeah notepad, wordpad whatever)

2)PHP designer is a very good editor with lots of features but its very “memory consuming” for me.

3)Dreamweaver :No Comments( Still i will force one out!Loading time is so inspiring. )

4)Most of my coding was with this buddy, EditPlus.Its quite fast versatile and reliable.

5)Notepad++ I haven’t used it much but is also good especially with themes and all.

6)InType : I think i am gonna use this for a while but a few basic interface disabilities like “Where the hell is the close button for the tabs”? (Ctrl+F4) .Oh sorry!I will find more problems soon.Till then InType rules!!!

(the cobalt theme of Intype is notable.)

Eating out with veggies can be a big problem.Two of our team members at Opdyne happens to vegetarians.Now let me analyze.Vegetarians and web development?
hmm..Not that veggies can’t do development but,Meat rules!!!.I mean where is ‘the meat’ in the stuff they develop.?

Of course! After a sumptous meal for the Opdyne Annual at Park Rajadhani. I was forced to tell the guys.”Yep!It was Bad!”.

Face it buddy! The food was really good. Hmm What else could i do? I have to work with them for some more years. I got to have a good relation with then until we split. (Split! Not in a million years!). From Plato to Gandhi , all of them advocated a good vegetarian diet.

Vegetarians are believed to have 40% less chance of getting forms of cancers compared to meat-eating machines.Another good point is the have comparatively less blood pressure due to high fibre content and lower viscosity of the blood. That means more qualities of patience , stress and a smiling “No!” . Then that should prove that they can work long hours in a stretch without grumbling or any sort of discomfort.(I must demand for less working hours!!!). Those hapless professionals on a non-veg diet tend to live shorter than their veg counterparts.OMG!

To all my fellow non-veg developers out there, eat less meat and live on low fat, high fibre food!!!

Wait!The lunch break siren!!What do they have?.Ahhhhhhh!!

Nice looking biriyani with a reddish yellow tint with minced meat sprinkled all over garnished with green coriander leaves with tomatoes and 2 eggs floating in the richness of rice and butter(MOM!How could you!I just preached ……)

[Sound of someone washing his hands]

This post may be directed towards a community with high intellectual values but poor socialization or maybe to a person with the same problems transcended in enormous proportions! A man is basically a whole junk of whopping crap if he can’t understand what it feels like to work with teammates. Yeah!Thats right I’m talking about a the problem of undefined protocols and a group that’s struggling to make an identity.

Let me rewind to months back when the whole concept of Opdyne was given birth too..

jac_acme: Daey i am gonna start a site
jac_acme: u in?
intelinsidepranthanoutside: yep
intelinsidepranthanoutside: name?
intelinsidepranthanoutside: wats it abt?
jac_acme: dunno
jac_acme: i am just seeing it as a learning experience

That was it . The real genesis.. behind the screen.. behind this wonderful minimalistic blog and all the young weird of the world ideas. The brainchild, Opdyne was a concept that could have led its way into oblivion. But some really good spirit pumped it all the way to a success. Not that its a smashing or dandy in appearance,but it was our concept come true. I really love it. After years of studying all theory and doing nothing productive, that was a moment of absolute happiness and a sense of victory engulfed us. Its really sad why this venture comes to a dead end. I never considered my team members as my teammates. Moreover it was like a group of friends coming together and doing some work for fun. After all the motto of opdyne was,”Work for fun and learning”. True!. It was a motto so far fetched that i had to fill in my real experiences with fantasies to complete it.

A great man, once remarked.

“Anyway, do whatever it is that you must. When you have finally understood what I’ve said (since you so obviously haven’t, judging by your quotes) we’ll sort this out. Go and think.”

Little does he know what the person he is accusing hasn’t anything other than the prestigious post of being a member of Opdyne. And this is my statement.I will say it loud and clear.

“I love Opdyne.”