Possibly Working

Well the “Possibly Related Posts feature” seems to be working. Today morning I saw traffic to an obscure old post spike up. Apparently WordPress linked to that post as “Possibly Related” from it’s blog post announcing the New Admin Bar Design.

This feature is pretty cool. It’s linking to lesser known blogs and putting them in the public eye without you, the poster having to do anything. Robert Scoble seems to be running that feature too, and getting linked from Scoble is quite handy :)

Google owns some really weird domain names

Pingdom put together a list of domain names owned by Google and found some really odd names. Here are a few examples:

• 30dayfitness.com
• bayareaburritos.com
• donationcard.com
• essentialmommy.com
• greengardengifts.com
• mariolovespasta.com
• thesecretofburritos.com

We know Google likes food but enough to buy domains? Oh by the way - goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com isn’t available either. More odd domain names owned by Google can be found here or view the entire list of domains here.

MSNBC is sick, stupid - Making a mockery of the Virginia Tech Tragedy

What kind of sick minded, demented person would do something like this? (Edit: see my update below) A quiz about the Virginia Tech tragedy, “see how much you know about the events” What do you hope to achieve from the quiz?

How would you feel I came up with a quiz on the death anniversary of your father, mother, or even 9/11 ? MSNBC needs to pull down that quiz and apologize for doing something so stupid.

What happened to any journalistic ethics that you are supposed to have? MSNBC have gone to the top of my shitlist.

If you care, send MSNBC an email: at news@msnbc.com to voice your opinion.

Edit: It seems they have taken the quiz down. Looks like there is someone in those offices with half a brain. The linked page now says “Page not Found” - But a cached version of it can be found here.

Simple RegEx for matching URLs

I wanted a simple regular expression to retrieve URLs from a paragraph of text, but a google search returned so many Regular Expressions that it was tough to separate the good from the bad. So here are two tried and tested Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) to help match URLs:

A simple one to match most ‘http’ based links:

(https?://([-\w\.]+)+(:\d+)?(/([\w/_\.]*(\?\S+)?)?)?)


and another more complex one which will match every Link/URL on the face of this planet


([0-9]{1,3}\\.[0-9]{1,3}\\.[0-9]{1,3}\\.[0-9]{1,3}|(((news|telnet|nttp|file|http|ftp|https)://)
|(www|ftp)[-A-Za-z0-9]*\\.)[-A-Za-z0-9\\.]+)(:[0-9]*)?/[-A-Za-z0-9_\\$\\.\\+\\!\\*\\(\\),;:@&=\\?/~\\#\\%]*[^]‘\\.}>\\),\\\”]


I’ve got a simple PHP function to linkify any URL in a blob of text:

$re = '@(https?://([-\w\.]+)+(:\d+)?(/([\w/_\.]*(\?\S+)?)?)?)@';
$replacement = "<a href='$1'>$1</a>";
$formatted_text = preg_replace($re, $replacement, $text);
echo $formatted_text;

Simple PHP. Any improvements, please post them in the comments.

[PHP] Print out the age of a date in words

I came across a handy piece of code to print out the “age of a date” in words on ThinkPHP. This code should print out the difference between two dates in words (X Days/Months/Weeks/Years). I have modified the original piece of code to print out the number of years as well.

This is a snippet which prints out the difference in words with respective to the current time.

$date_parsed = date_parse($date);
$date_timestamp = mktime(0,0,0, $date_parsed['month'], $date_parsed['day'], $date_parsed['year']);
$now_timestamp = time();
$timestamp_diff = $now_timestamp - $date_timestamp;

if ($timestamp_diff < (60*60*24*7)) {
   echo floor($timestamp_diff/60/60/24)." Days";
}
elseif ($timestamp_diff > (60*60*24*7*4)) {
   echo floor($timestamp_diff/60/60/24/7)." Weeks";
}
else {
   $total_months = $months = floor($timestamp_diff/60/60/24/30);
   if($months >= 12) {
      $months = ($total_months % 12);
      $years  = ($total_months - $months)/12;
      echo $years . " Years ";
   }
   if($months > 0)
      echo $months . " Months";
}

Sehwag and the record breaking run-fest

The third day of the test between India and South Africa saw a lot of records being broken. I’ve compiled a list of the records that were broken, and also compiled some useful facts.

• Third Fastest Double Century
  Sehwag scored his double century in 194 balls, the third fastest ever. He now has the second & third fastest double centuries.
• Fastest Triple Century
  Sehwag scored his triple century in a mere 278 balls. The fastest triple century and the only triple century to be scored at more than a run a ball. The next fastest triple century came in 362 balls, here’s a list of the fastest triples.
• Third player with two triple centuries.
  Sehwag is only the third player with two triple centuries. The other players are Brian Lara and Sir Don Bradman. What is amazing of this feat is that Sehwag has played only 55 test matches, Brian Lara played 130 matches and Bradman 53.
• Highest score by any player in India
  Sehwag has the highest score in India by any player breaking VVS Laxman’s epic 281 at Kolkata. Conveniently he has the only triple century in India.
• 10 consecutive centuries of more than 150 runs
  Sehwag’s last ten centuries have all been above 150. This shows that when he crosses 100, he crosses 150 often. The closest to this record is current India coach Gary Kirsten with 7
• Most number of runs scored in a single day of play (since 1954)
  Sehwag scored 254 runs, the most number of runs in a single day’s play since Denis Compton’s 273 in 1954
• Consecutive 200 plus partnerships
  Sehwag and India are the only player, team to have two consecutive 200 run partnerships in the same innings.
• Most number of runs scored in a single day in India
  India scored 368 runs in the day’s place, the highest ever.

Random Sehwag Facts:

• Sehwag’s last triple century against Pakistan came on this exact day four years ago. He scored 309 against Pakistan at Multan on 28 March 2005 2004
• Sehwag hit 41 boundaries and 5 sixes in his 309
• He has more century’s than fifties. He has 14 centuries and 13 fifties.
• Out of his 14 centuries, 11 are more than 150. A conversion rate of 78%
• He clearly learn’t from Sachin’s nervous 90’s. Sehwag raced from 90-100, 190-200 and 290-300 with atleast a couple of boundaries or a six. he didn’t sit around much in the 90’s

There were so many records broken, created that I may have missed a few. What a thrilling day of test cricket. For the people who say test cricket is boring… think again!

Image courtesy: Cricinfo

Slashdot, Digg, Reddit and now the “Buzz” Effect

Three weeks ago Yahoo! launched Buzz, a digg like news site. Get news from several pre-approved news sources, vote, rinse and repeat. We’ve all heard about Digg/Slashdot/Reddit “Effect” bringing websites down, but Yahoo Buzz trumps them all. Since Yahoo! publishes a few of these links on it’s homepage, a few minutes can garner you a lot of hits. A link on Yahoo Buzz almost brought down TechCrunch yesterday. This is no ordinary feat considering that TechCrunch gets a lot of visitors. Looks like Yahoo! is finally using it’s core power - the people.

Michael Arrington at Techcrunch says:

“it’s clear that a link from Yahoo.com blows away anything Digg or any other competitor can offer”

Take a look at the stats provided at TechCrunch.

The Future of Australian Cricket

Australia maybe have been a champion need for the past decade however once you are at the top of the mountain there is nowhere to go but down. India has shown this by beating Australia consistently this year in Twenty20 games, at home in India and in the CB Series at Australia. South Africa is now the #1 one-day side. Mighty Australians no more.

India has had Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid as a solid back bone in the ODI lineup for the past decade, but now Sachin is the only one left from that three. He is the only one who can keep up with the youngsters. With the inclusion of so many youngsters in the ODI side the future doesn’t look for Ganguly and Dravid.

MS Dhoni’s policy of selecting youngsters is starting to pay off. India has only one player above 30 in their squad and that is the master blaster, Sachin Tendulkar. This ensures that the entire current team can play the next World Cup in 2011. The younger players may not have as much experience as their senior counterparts but they are learning on the tour and in bits and pieces they are contributing to the team. India is building a team for the future. The younger players running between wickets, fielding and enthusiasm make up for any runs they don’t score with the bat. India may still lose a lot of matches but they are building a team for the future.

The situation for Australia on the other hand is looking quite bleak. They have only 3 players below 30 in their squad - James Hopes, Mitchell Johnson and future Captain Michael Clarke. Let’s take a look at Australia’s key players with the 2011 World Cup in mind:

1. Mathew Hayden - He is 36 right now and in 2011 he will be 39. Unless he finds the fountain of youth it will be highly unlikely that we shall see him there.
2. Ricky Ponting - He is 33 right now, in 3 years he is 36. Depending on his form, personal life, IPL he may or may not be there. However, there is a good chance he is still around to lead the side. But we can’t predict his form at 36.
3. Mike Hussey - Currently 33 - He will be in the same boat as Ponting, the World Cup maybe his swan song.
4. Adam Gilchrist - 36 years - Retired. One of the most prolific partnerships in ODI history is broken. This is going to hurt Australia a lot because it means a completely new opening pair at the top of the order.
5. Brad Hogg - 37 years - Retired. Australia’s one-day specialist since Shane Warne is gone. Over the years Brad Hogg was an effective foil to Lee, McGrath and Gillespie picking up crucial wickets in the middle overs and being a useful batting option lower down the order. Australia has no quality spinners left. Stuart MacGill is an exception but he is old and struggling with injuries as well. Now Australia has to go find an unexperienced newbie to start in the XI.
6. Brett Lee - He is 31, comparatively young but he is a fast bowler, the fastest bowler. Bowling at 150kph for another 3 years with his current form is going to take a lot of effort and mental strength. The world cup maybe his final ODI appearance too.

With the exception of Brett Lee, Australia’s bowling unit is very inexperienced in the ODIs. The next 4-5 years is going to prove crucial for Australian cricket as a lot of old warhorses will go out form, retire themselves or be forced to retire (like Steve Waugh). They have to introduce a lot of youth give them a little experience and if they have to survive, follow India’s example and make the tough choices. Cricinfo takes a look at what Australia’s 2011 World Cup team could look like. There are a lot of new faces in there but no Hayden, Gilchrist, Hogg, Hussey, Symonds.

The winds of change are blowing and Cricket’s future looks promising.

Watch out for password stealing application “G-Archiver”

G-Archiver professes to be an application which backups your Gmail messages.

G-Archiver is your one click Gmail backup solution.Backup Gmail email messages to your computer using G-Archiver.Never lose another message - backup Gmail messages and you’ll have a stored copy on your computer in the event of Gmail data loss incidents. Gmail backup with G-Archiver allows you to free up additional storage space beyond Gmail’s storage limit. No technical knowledge required. No other software or mail clients required. Easy to use. No time-consuming, confusing configurations required.  

One thing which it doesn’t mention is that it also steals your password. The creator of the application John Terry has hard-coded his own username and password in G-Archiver. As soon as you input your own login details, it will email him your own username and password. This is highly unethical behavior and depending on the application’s EULA, illegal.

Do not use this application and spread the word! This guy is pure scum and needs to be dealt with.

Tip: Jeff Atwood 

Warren Buffet - Richest Man, Zuckerberg - Youngest Billionaire

Forbes magazine has declared that Warren Buffet is now the world’s richest man. Even though Buffet pledged 85% of his wealth to charity in July 2006 his wealth is increasing and is now at $62 billion, an increase of $10 billion from last year. More to donate now Buffet? Bill Gates ($58 Billion) who was #1 last year is now at #3 and Carlos Slim ($60 Billion) of Mexico is now #2.

Lakshmi Mittal stays at #4 on the list with a mere $45 billion as Europe’s richest resident. Mukesh Ambani ($43 Billion), Anil Ambani ($42 Billion) and KP Singh ($30 Billion) round out the Indians in top 20 at positions 5, 6 and 8. The number of billionaires from India are increasing, a very promising sign.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook at age 23 is one of the youngset entrants to the billionaire list. He has been “valued” at approximately $1.5 billion. I wonder what happens if and when Facebook goes public (or bought over?).

Source: Forbes Magazine