Man belittled

The tsunami that struck Maldives on the 26th of Dec 2004 is still a bitter memory to a good number of people. Bitter memories lay within remnant ruins. Man, as in the bipeds that 'walk in extended pride and boast of rule over the little they inhabit' were humbled by the might that nature could lashed out with. All in a matter of mere seconds, more horrific in real life that anything a movie has portrayed, the wonderous earth jumped out of serene slumber to Shock 'n Awe a 'paradise' nation.

Here's to taming the beast...




Chilling..

I am on a mini break away in Manchester at the moment.

My exams finished peacefully except for one day when I absent-mindedly walked over to the wrong examination hall - thankfully, a short sprint had me at the correct hall in time. :-P Anyway, no university obligations for another week, after which I have some compulsory sessions in preparation for a mobile robot we will be constructing next year as part of our cybernetics module. I am really looking forward to that!

TV series and movies frequent my daily schedule now. I watched X-Men 3 recently. It wasn't too bad a movie I guess, atleast I didn't fall asleep like the last time I hit the cinema and watched Silent Hill which turned out to be total disappointment - but then, that's just my opinion. I watched "Road to Guantanamo" last nite - the film is based on a real life account of a few who were (wrongly) imprisoned in Guantanamo by the Americans. I've also devoted a whole load of time numbing my brain with a couple of TV series since the exams - namely, House M.D. seasons 1 & 2 ( i liikkeee), Joey seasons 1 & 2 (funny, sort of), Sleeper Cell season 1 (nice!).


On a train from London to Reading...


Manchester Piccadilly train station


On a sunny day Whiteknights campus, Uni of Reading


Duck family...

Blobsy Server Window

One of the users of Blobsy (a PHP based bot framework for MSN Messenger I authored) has released a control panel for Blobsy. The project called Blobsy Server Window (BSW) was released by Ralphje.

I haven't given the code a go yet but the BSW project page lists the following features:

* Quiet start/stop of bot - with ability to control multiple bots
* Handle different configuration files - with ability to control multiple bots
* Instant (and permanent) change of program variables
* Possibility of using System Environment variables

This would probably make using Blobsy a whole lot more easier!

Maumoon for MSN Messenger

We all love MSN Messenger don't we? Here is something I made a few months ago to "brighten" up Messenger chat conversations: animated emoticons of our *ahem* beloved *ahem* leader. To use them, just right click on the picture, save it to your computer and load it up in MSN Messenger.

Enjoy!

Dhiraagu MMS: kung fu-ed!

Ah. Data back up disks are always nice - especially those with older snaps of work. You find things that you've totally forgotten about. Perhaps it is a photo, a document or maybe that song you used to play all the freaking time. As for me, I just stumbled across a hasty log and an interesting screenshot I had taken around mid 2005.

There is a litter of articles dedicated to Dhiraagu on my blog - there is one about their E-Bill system, another on the WWW proxy server and yet another on their WebSMS service. However, the Dhiraagu MMS service, which I recall as being officially launched in July 05, is something I haven't posted about. But now that I chanced upon this "ancient" screenshot and given that Dhiraagu has revamped their MMS website, I thought I'd share...

The screenshot shows the Dhiraagu MMS internet portal that is intended to be used to retrieve recieved MMS and to acquire MMS content for the phone. The shot shows an SQL injection probe on their website and listed by the system as response is a list of database tables - a couple with interesting names. I leave to your imagination what they contain, for I don't remember going pursuing any further on the matter :-P Note that Dhiraagu seems to have re-programmed their MMS service sometime late last year and I have no idea whether the lapses that gave rise to this exploit exist on the new website.

Dhiraagu MMS exploited?

Exam time

Eeeeeks. My exams start tomorrow! I have 6 exams with one almost everyday till the beginning of the following week. First up tomorrow is my electronics module and I am pseudo-ready for it. Wish me luck. I probably will need it! :-P

All of my course-work/project-work for the various modules were finally completed and handed in this week as per our assignments schedule. The assignments all fetch a healthy chunk of our final grade. I am being optimistic about them though and expect to be in the clear in all course work matters.

Sadly, the end of exams doesn't mean I can relax on study matters as more lectures and work continue after the exam till the end of June and they are said to be critical for next year. Well, so much for post-exam celebrations. Sigh. Anyway, I suppose I shall be travelling back to Male' around early July.

Toodles.

Love.

This goes out to someone special that has stormed into my life, bringing along with her a miscellany of most awesome wonders...