Eternal Thinker: 2011

Meowy X'mas!

So, my sister made a sweet little Xmas hat for el kitten, Chloé ^_^

Wishes to all you folks out there!

Apparently, the only time the hat is going to stay there

Penciling blogger template - recent template error has been repaired

Some users of the much loved Penciling blogger template might have encountered a few errors in the template recently.
This problem was noticed since today morning by certain users (and myself). The error made the template look a bit dis-aligned.

Without much ado, I want you let y'all know that there is nothing to panic.
Actually, the error has been already repaired and the good new template can be grabbed from the official Penciling blog:

Download the repaired template

Just upload this new template file, and everything will be good as new!

The culprit - Google!

The image resources were hosted in Google's very own Picasa. After several years of consistent working, one fine morning for god-knows-what reason, they decide to change the way the hosted images work!
And then several images linked all over the web started looking funny, including those that were part of (the late version of) Penciling template *and* my two blogs :|| .

Anyhow, the damages have been undone with some frantic run through the template code. Google, thanks for providing Blogger but no thanks for surprise changes which make our Blogger blog looks funny.

Hope you will continue using and loving the Penciling template :)

Paws of wrath

This post is all about my kitten Chloé's demolition mode, as mentioned previously :D

The daily routine of Chloé can be roughly summarized as follows:

One needs special expertise and practice to accurately determine the intensity of attack (ranging from no-nail-pounce to slaughter).
The following picture was taken moments before she unleashed demolition mode.


The depth of rage is often reflected directly in the eyes

Although fatalities so far include only cockroaches, it is always better to be aware of Chloé's dispositions.

Best defense is to stay calm, trying not to provoke her.

Always stay alert. The transition to rage mode is too spontaneous. And even if you are alert, chances of survival are less in front of the kitten's tachyonic reflexes.

Unpredictability - evil plans might be hatching in that feline brain


Wrath - no escape


Innocence - deep beyond the claws of steel lies a sleepy kitteh

And when you endure all the violence, she sleeps.

And when she sleeps, god's light shines upon her.

Until she wakes up again.

Life with Chloé - a few snaps

Chloé moves on to her 8th week and beyond. She is enough self reliable for her age, yet never in lack of spontaneous rage mode (I should be doing a separate post about that alone!). She's not tiny anymore, yet not a big cat.

Here are some snaps of Chloé awesomeness. The pictures range from her 5th to 8th week and in no particular order, so you'll notice irregular changes in her growth.

I'm on *my* bed with *my* toys. What you lookin' at?

Fairy vampires and kittens sparkle in the sunlight

New blanket? Comfort: tested OK.

MY cube


Yet another day of sleeping with the Rubik's cube for Chloé

Out of Balance - a logic game for kids (and anybody who enjoys it!)

The new game from my workshop is ready for a spin!

This time it is a weight balance logical game. The game is made with kids in mind, yet it can be enough fun to anyone who wants to try.
Making the game was an enjoyable thing - browsing for toys, drawing a cute environment and so on; Childhood is wonderful :)

It is a not-so-uncommon concept built up with some good (and cute!) polishing. As usual, you get some enjoyable background music. So here goes:

Out of Balance

Go on, try it out! Share it with the kids ^_^

Let me know your impressions and suggestions. You can check my other games at the portfolio page.

10 rather do-able steps to happiness

Happiness - yes, we're brushing through the topic once again! ^_^
But let me start with a very practical quote:

Moreover, it is an emotion. People constantly tweak their life in the pursuit to attain it, just to find themselves back at square one pretty soon. Exactly because it is an emotion. Any combination of sugar, spice, and everything nice doesn't seem to create the perfect stable form of happiness for them.

This article says about ways to improve your life in the next 3 months. It is a pretty long list. Ironically though, having too many items in any personal list is a deviation from happiness.

Below are few points I picked from the article (coincidentally 10). These daily steps, I feel, can make a whole lot of dissatisfied, bored, or still-on-The-pursuit folks reach out to happiness :)
So here comes:

10 rather do-able steps to happiness

(I've ticked ✔ those points that I've been following already, inevitably with minor/major discontinuities; That's life! ^^)

#1 ✔
Live by the mantra: a place for everything and everything in its place. That is, have a definite place for all your things so that you can figure them out even in the dark (especially useful when you have aggressive kittens at home ;)).

#2 ✔
Have a good laugh at least once a day: get one of those calendars that has a different joke for every day of the year, or stop by a web site that features your favorite cartoon.
Or have friends/family who can be real good laughing buddies.

#3 ✔
Make it a point to learn at least one new thing each day: the name of a flower that grows in your garden, the capital of a far-off country, or the name of a piece of classical music you hear playing in your favorite clothing boutique as you shop. If it's time for bed and you can't identify anything you've learned that day, take out your dictionary and learn a new word.
(Geeky folks, learn about new programming languages/libraries of course!)

#4 ✔
Make it a point to feed your mind with the thoughts, words, and images that are most consistent with who you want to be, what you want to have, and what you want to achieve.
Cluelessness regarding the text in italics is understood ;)

#5 ✔
Stop multi-tasking; do one thing at a time without distractions.

#6 ✔
Plan your day the night before.

#7
Spend a few minutes at the end of each day organizing your desk, filing papers, and making sure that your work area is clean and orderly, so that you can walk in to a neat desk the next day.

#8
Connect with someone new every day, whether it's by greeting a neighbor you've never spoken to before, following someone new on Twitter, leaving a comment on a blog you've never commented on before, and so on.

#9 (not a daily thing, so no tick)
Make it a point to associate with people you admire, respect and want to be like.

#10 ✔
Stay in your own life and don't compare yourself to anyone else.

That's it!

A bonus point is to:
Keep reminding yourself that everyone is doing the best that they can. Everyone and everyone :P.

Image: deviantart.com

Kitten gets a Red flower : Chloé's new toy

Throughout her first week in home, I found a bunch of quirky toys for Chloé. One which makes her most excited is the Red (plastic) flower. Watch her first time with the flower toy :)

To make things more interesting, I suspended the flower at a height she can reach by slightly standing up on her hind legs. It worked rather well. It is now her most favorite toy to try out new aerodynamic hunting skills (except perhaps me).
Here's a video of Chloé getting introduced to the new toy (the kitten is 5-6 weeks old in this video):

graFighters - what if your notebook doodles came to life?

So here goes my latest awesome find on the interwebs : graFighters

The website describes itself as "The first online fighting game for your hand drawn characters". I think this alone will be enough to boost up the curiosity in all the doodle artists out there.
graFighters actually do make your doodles come to life. And what's more fun than seeing your fierce or cute doodle characters fight with others!

Getting started is quite simple. Just upload your character, trace out its hands, legs etc and the Cornelius algorithm would determine its powers.
Well, here are some snaps from my time in graFighters:

My first upload was et itself, although a rough version. But WTHell, he fights real well!

The fight with ManBearPig :D

et slays monsters! (Damage and Strength are the dominant powers of each)

*nods*

New characters:

There are a bunch of creative characters in the place, and one can't help but create some equally awesome characters. So I made a few new ones ^_^


Ever imagined a dark version of et? Meet Arch et

Hm, may be I should use him in the comics.

Eagle eyes - because invisible characters would be blind if light went right through their retina :P

The below one is not a graFighter character. Many would recognize it as my current facebook display pic. Now you know the origin story of the evil eyes ;)

Note: I guess graFighters is currently open only for an invited few. Anyhow it should be publicly available soon enough.

New kitten in the home

You heard it right!

Everyone, meet Chloé.

Chloé, everyone.

Yes, there is an acute accent on the é. Kinda French, eh? You may as well save the trouble and spell it as a normal e. No pressure.

This beautiful calico kitten is in her 6th week on Earth. She was too much of a mommy girl, so getting her friendly took an incredible amount of patience. At present, though, she's familiar with her new home, new guardian (le me!) and thankfully her new litter box.

Chloé's arrival has finally swiped away the emptiness I've been feeling due to the lack of a pet ^_^. The days are fulfilling, watching her grow up.

See Chloé doing a cute stretching on my table:

More Chloé awesomeness in coming posts!

On a related note, in the future I should probably find a girl who has an equal love for cats, marry her, buy a home, and flood it with innumerable cats and kittens! Hah hah!
Okay, now don't feel repulsive.. just kidding.

Bengaluru : some odd glimpses from a quick visit

Before I knew it, two days ago, I was in Bangalore, Karnataka. Or to put it in the correct flavor, in Namma Bengaluru.

Everything happened on short notice - the travel, the exploration, and the return. And here are a few apparently brief but immensely live moments when my mobile cam was put to use.

funny sign board bengaluru weird industries

Weird.. Industries Limited

I wonder what their product line is. And unsurprisingly, the whole building is put to sale now.

This shot was taken from a moving bus, with a 5MP perfectly ordinary mobile cam, across a four-lane road and aimed at the second storey. So I am content just to get the lettering clear enough.

"Sometimes I am deeply perplexed about the life in a lake beyon- HEY ANOTHER BISCUIT!!"

A curious chaos in a less fashionable corner of the JP Park. I was lucky enough to spot this while being busy getting lost in the long and winding walkways of the park.

Few people occasionally come up with banana, biscuits etc to feed the Catfish. They come to the surface, then some get on top of the upper layer, and then a few hop further on top this, and so on. The visual is incomplete without a hint of size comparison. For simplicity, assume that each fish will span the length from your fingertip to your elbow, or larger.

I am in ur fish stall, testing the quality

Found this teenage kitten while waiting outside the local fish stall. It is curious how such a furry-tailed, perfectly blue-eyed, snow white got into this place. She is the unique one among the other typical cats inhabiting the place, also due to her innocent behaviour.

The kitten would run away from everyone, apparently due to the kicking and beating it had to endure from them. This close snap took a lot of patience, and love.

More fun things
The first snap reminds me of this comic from Iyer Matter.
There were more fun times in BMTC, but without photos. This collection of articles by Geetanjali Chitnis is a nice summary of traveling in BMTC.

A Very Simple Game 2 - Walkthrough

A Very Simple Game 2: Odd one out was published earlier this year, in July. Check out the game if you haven't done so yet!

Here is a game guide that will give you some really helpful hints to get through the colorful levels (And a few rather unhelpful comments from the game creator).

Level 1 | Mr.Happy

As we all know, this level is a no-brainer. All the smileys are supposed to be happy. So just click on the sad one already.

Level 2 | Dumber

The game is still going on easy terms. All the smileys look alike and are constantly jumping. Of course, except one. And that's the one you need to click.

Level 3 | Frenzy Blu

Although designed to be fairly easy, a fraction of the players seems to get stuck at this one. As the level angel says, "The Dots can deceive you". That's a pretty direct hint. Look closely and you will find that one smiley has an extra dot on its head. That's the chosen one!

Level 4 | Devil

Okay things just started getting a bit scary. This level was intuitively simple to some and impossibly difficult to some others. Hm, human perception is a pretty complicated thing. Well, go through the jumping smileys and you will see that one of them is jumping out of sync with the others. Spot-it and click-it!

Level 5 | Black Lescivia

A Very Simple Game, the first one, had only one female character. So I decided to add one more to AVSG2. But I wanted something dark and seductively evil. So Lescivia was born.
Oh well, the odd one's oddity lies in the rotating symbol on her forehead. Only one of them has a symbol rotating in the opposite direction.

Level 6 | Sad Ol' Chocolate

The sad brown guy from AVSG was too simple to get through. To make things interesting the circular mazes were summoned in AVSG2. Obviously the difference lies in the rotating circular mazes on their foreheads. The exact difference is not obvious though. The difference will be easily found if you compare the two innermost circles in each maze. Other than that, the level does require some effort to your eyes.

Level 7 |Marvin the paranoid android

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wonderful series of novels, the experience of it as magical as Harry Potter (or so I *think ;)). This level originally had a nerdy character, one with big round glasses. But then Marvin's concept suddenly seemed much more appropriate.
The level presents a variety of possibilities for the difference factor. After wasting your time on all the things happening there, try to figure out the one which never stops jumping. I'd click on that one if I were you.

Level 8 | Daisy

There is something for everyone in AVSG2! So here comes the pink, flowery, girly one. Observe the band of flowers on their head. In one band, the flowers have more number of petals than the others. That's the One for you :)

Level 9 | Party Purple

Yes, so much light effects and confusion in this level. But finding that "slightest makeover" that distinguishes the odd one is fairly simple. That is, when you know that difference lies in their sideburns.

Level 10 | The Thinker

When the level was designed, there were two kinds of particles - thoughts and memories. Thoughts are white, and memories are orange, "colored in their essence". The Thinkers periodically emits their thoughts into the air, as you may observe. One of them also emits a few memories then and now. Find the one grudged by his memories!

So that's it! Complete Level 10 and enjoy the special end credits. Hope you enjoy the game!

Again, the game can be reached here.

Things you might be interested in:

You want to try the first one - A Very Simple Game, won't you now?
And no worries, one of the players has already made a walkthrough for the game!.

Another puzzling game you'd like to try is The Game of Marienbad.
No game guides this time, use your brains! ;)

Returnin'

I kind of like the feel of return journeys.

It is often the case that departure is sorrowful with the silent pain of having to call it a day and leave the celebration. But there is also a certain calmness in retracing our path back home, with memories so fresh that they are still bubbling all around in our heart. This feeling of peace is what I like about it. Our mind is filled with new experiences, and they are being carefully placed in little drawers inside; there are laughs, moments of fascination, may be a few disappointments. Nevertheless I just like return journeys in a special way.

The most recent of such departures was from a short stay at Cochin - a popular city in Kerala, the Queen of Arabian Sea, yet my first visit to it. If you walk around the Marine Drive or MG road, you'll find a bunch of street vendors with a great collection of books. Yay, that's all the shopping I need! After brief walks through the city streets, its seaside walkway, and all the crowd, I had rushed for the last train back home. In a calm return journey, a good book is such a great luxury. I had Haruki Murakami's After Dark. It is a nice book to get lost in. The events occur after midnight and all through the very early hours of morning. So the characters are essentially in a state of caffeinated consciousness.
The book has been my traveling buddy for the two days. It became more interesting as I noticed how the passage I read at any moment would somehow relate to my surroundings - sometimes it vaguely described the people I met and sometimes it related to my state of mind. It could be that I was too immersed in the world inside the book, or it could be simply the talent of this Japanese author.

As the evening moved to it's end the sky showed more shades of colors among the clouds. It was, indeed, beautiful and all but also very subtle that it made me think that artists are often exaggerating the nature's palette when they make long strokes of intense colors across the canvas. A few minutes later pretty long strokes of intense reds and yellows were dabbled across the sky and the trees became neat stark silhouettes in the foreground. Then I was left with the impression that nature is exaggerating a bit regarding sunset colors.

The train compartment had all the seats facing a single direction - like in a bus - instead of the more common facing-each-other type orientation. Also, all these seats were facing a direction opposite to the train's movement! So all of us in that compartment were sitting there and moving backwards, together. My mind half carried way in the world of the book, yet conscious that I was traveling backwards in great speed, picking up a peanut once in a while from the paper cone in one hand, vaguely absorbing the soft instrumental music from somebody's cellphone playing in the background, I even managed to pay part of the attention to the cold breeze whooshing past the window seat.

A few of the familiar characters appeared once in a while going through their usual routine, either singing songs wearing their shades or persuading us to buy lotteries or giving a detailed account of how they got attacked by an elephant and why we should help. People also went through their usual routine, listening to these characters for a moment and then resuming whatever they were doing a moment ago.

*   *   *

A couple of days ago I went to the beach. It was unusually lonely. Since it is officially the longest driving beach in the whole country and justifyingly pretty long, being the single person standing within a few hundred meters of the shore feels considerably isolated. Then I noticed I wasn't exactly alone. There was a great number of sea creatures around. Starfish lying awkwardly face down in muddy sand, oval shaped pink crabs, bigger ones in their long winding shells, and smaller ones rolling around with the waves in their decorated shells. And me, standing amidst all of this lively situation.

That's life. The weirdness never seizes.

ET Smileys no-wait-for-load version : The end of all JavaScript Conflicts!

Even when things are going good and fine, there's nothing wrong in making them.. better. Here is a hack on the et Smiley script for Blogger (and all other blogs) which brings in more smiles.

This update is mainly aimed at users experiencing JavaScript conflicts while using the et Smiley set with other scripts, resulting in any of the scripts not working properly.

The hack is to initialize the script manually. This can also result in a faster loading of the smiley script.
The smiley script waits until the entire page loads before it makes the smileys appear. But sometimes it has to wait until some small missing element in the page is loaded. This new method loads the script as soon as it is safe for it to load. No extra waiting!

So, the users who are currently happy with the script can just move on. Anyhow, if they find the improvisation discussed above interesting, feel free to try out the new method.

Let us see how it works:

Step #0 (old users)

Users who are already using the smiley script and changing to the new method, make sure to remove the script currently in use.
Refer to the post from which you added the smiley script (Smileys for Blogger or Smileys for any blog/website) and remove the added lines of code.
Note: This update doesn't concern the smiley panel over comment form in anyway

Step #1

In your Blogger Dashboard, click the More Options down arrow next to your blog and select Template. In Template page, click the Edit HTML button.
Find the portion </head> in your blog's HTML code

Now just before </head>, add the following code

For Blogger blogs:

For other blogs/websites:

Step #2

Again, in the HTML code find the portion </body>
Yet again, add the following code just before this part

And you're done! This should solve any JavaScript conflicts caused by the smiley script :)

Note: If you're not using a Blogger blog, and adding the smiley script for the first time, also follow the additional Step #2 in this post for the smileys to work

The Smell of Pasta

Several conventional recipes (and a few embarrassing disasters) later, last day I tried a pretty long recipe. This time the aroma comes all the way in Italian style.
It's pasta time!

So we gather round the raw materials..

Macaroni, Chicken, Onions, Tomatoes, Pepper and lots of Sauce. AND Butter.

Shed ~~some~~ a lot of tears on the onions. Don't mess up too much with the sauce.
And make a quantum leap (for me ;)) to the final dish

Wow! Delicious and fantastic. Who's the cook? :P

Here we have the amazing Buttered Chicken Macaroni.
Le macaroni au poulet au beurre.

Try some Italian flavors in your kitchen too :)
Au revoir!

And the blog has been redesigned

The good ol' Eternal Thoughts template has retired to make way for the fresh new Mindblast template.

Speaking of freshness, this design idea or at least many of it's features has been sketched down and/or implemented within the last 2 years. In the end time wins, procrastination surrenders, because time is essentially infinite ;).

The old template was much loved by many readers. But after all, the old one was my first attempt at a blog design and so the code badly needed some total makeover.

There are a few extra features thrown in the new design, and a new Portfolio page. Discover as you get acquainted with it ^_^

My aim in the new design was simplicity and each part of the design having its own importance, thus no element being superfluous. Anyways, eagerly looking forward to your comments and suggestions <3

God took my wish seriously

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
Douglas Adams

Right after weeks and months of bragging about hectic college life, suddenly I am given all the free time I ever wanted. It is a sweet contradiction :). Following this all my previous blog posts were about creating something and publishing it. The list of ideas is being ticked off one by one and I must say that it is a wonderful feeling.

A recent work

The Perfect to-do List

article published in The Viewspaper

The Game of Marienbad

When you watch the 1961 French movie Last year at Marienbad, don't bother trying or Googling to find its actual storyline. Apparently, it's not made to have an accurately interpretable storyline.

Apart from this, what captured my curiosity after watching this film is the game they play many times in the movie. It is mostly between M and X, and sometimes with M and other people. M always wins. But do we actually have a chance to beat M? See for yourself in the Game of Marienbad I've made, inspired from the movie :)

You can play two slightly different versions of the game. The original version or the neat version.
The neat version is nothing but the game with words like 'dammit' edited out. If that doesn't hurt, you can go with the first one itself :). The neat version edits were meant for small kids playing the game.

Let me know if you could beat M!

How to add the ET Smileys to your blog/website

Yes! Now the ET Smileys set is available for use in any blog or website. Read on to find out how to add them to your website.

* See the list of smileys

Follow the simple steps below to add the smiley functionality to your website/blog:

Step #1

1) In your website/blog's HTML code, search for the part saying </head>
2) Now just before this, insert the below code:

And the first part is done!!

Step #2
Now you need to add the etSmileys class to the sections in your blog where you like the smileys to appear.
If you want the smileys everywhere in the website, search for <body> in the HTML code, and add the class as follows:

If you want the smileys in only particular sections of your blog, add the class to only those. For example, if a section has id main-content, the code would look like this:

Now add the new class as follows:

If main-content is already a class, then new code will look like this:

Step #3
Again, in the HTML code find the portion </body>
Yet again, add the following code just before this part

How it works?
You can simply type in the emoticon symbols in your arrticle/post, like in a chat.
The above script replaces the emoticon symbols you type with the corresponding smileys. For this you'll have to know the correct symbol for each smiley.
Example: :) becomes :)

See a full table listing the ET Smileys and their symbols at the end of this post. You can bookmark the above link for quick reference.

Adding a smileys reference panel
You can add a smileys reference panel anywhere in your blog by pasting the following code at that location:

Complete smiley panel

Minimalist smiley panel

Usage guideline:
One important point you should remember is to put a space before the symbol.. or else the smiley image won't appear.

Staying up-to-date and Keeping in touch..
The smiley list is never complete! Suggest your own ideas of interesting smileys that can be included in the list :i . You may make your suggestions at the comments. Please note that the current smileys are 16px in height, so that it won't create an unnecessary spacing between the text. So hope that your ideas won't go ABOVE that! :O

Whenever new smileys are added, the script will be updated automatically. But you'll need to know the new symbols for the fresh smileys. So stay connected to know the updates in the smiley data base.

Bookmark this page to stay in touch with the constantly updated smiley list and other related updates.

Put the smiley badge in your blog to let others know of the smileys and also for a quick link!

Embed code:

Get the smiley updates via Twitter: Follow me on twitter

Hope that helped! 8)

Spread the Word
So have you decided to use the et smileys? Then do a little favor. Kindly link back to this page so that others can also come to know about this smiley set. Thank you!! :)

The ET Smileys - Complete List: