Eternal Thinker: 2013

ET Smiley Set for Blogger: Emoticon Panel for Threaded Comments Form

Note: This is a revised version of the post , ET Smileys Panel over your comment form updated for the new Blogger interface and Threaded Comments

Okay here's a little more to add to your very own et Smileys Script, which has helped a bunch of people to use adorable smileys on their blogs!

If you've enabled ET smileys in your blog, they can be used in the posts and even work in the comments. A little inconvenience here is that, even though all your visitors can use the smileys in their comments, they need not always know the correct smiley symbol to type in.

Here's the simple solution - just add a smiley reference panel over your comment form. Your visitors now have a handy guide to et Smileys!

The essential Steps

#0 Make sure that your comment-form is embedded below post. If you are sure about that, skip to Step #1.
Or else go to your Blogger dashboard. In the drop down menu next to the blog's name, Click on Settings and in Posts and Comments section, select Comment Location as Embedded

#1 Go to your Blogger dashboard, and in the drop down menu next to the blog, click Template and click on the Edit HTML button

#2 You need to edit 3 parts of code in the template.

a Now find the following piece of code in the template : (You can hit Ctrl+F and enter the code to search)

var onReply = function

The below screenshot shows the entire code which you need to replace:
(click for larger image)

Select all the code starting from var to the last semicolon (;), and replace it with the below code:

b Likewise replace one more piece of code in the template.
Again, find the following piece of code in the template : (You can hit Ctrl+F and enter the code to search)

<b:includable id='threaded-comment-form' var='post'>

Click on the small arrow to the left of this line to unfold the full code. A few lines below the above part, look for the following code (click for larger image):

Here you can see the iframe tag highlighted in green. Replace the highlighted part with the whole of below code:

The highlighted script tag in above code determines which of the two flavors of smiley panel is used. The above code uses the full smiley panel. You can replace the script tag part for a minimal smiley panel.
See Step #3 below for detailed options.

c Threaded comments will not be enabled until at least one comment is added to the post. In order to account for this case, you need to add the smiley script in one more place.

Search for the following code in the template:

<b:includable id='comments' var='post'>

If there is a small arrow to the left of this line, Click on it to unfold the full code. Below this line, look for the following code (click for larger image):

Below the closing <h4/> tag, paste the following code:

<b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 0'>
<script src='https://et-smileys.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/etSmileysPanelFull.js' type='text/javascript'/>
</b:if>

Again, see below for the two options of ET Smiley Panel that you can choose from!

#3 You have two choices of smiley panels:

a One, you can display the entire set of available smileys above your comment form. In order to make this happen, copy the below code and paste it after the line, as said in Step #2:

Note: More smileys may be added in the future, and this panel may get bigger then.

b Way two, you can add a minimalist panel of selected, most frequently used smileys. Copy the below code and paste it in the appropriate position:

Hope you find the smileys panel a most useful addition! :)

The Comic Portrait Project - Customized Cartoon Portraits of Real Persons

Frankly, portraits weren't always my favorite choice in drawing; It didn't seem interesting just to capture people as is.
Then again, there are multiple ways to look at things. Smile and laughter, cartoon and comic, all these magically make things several times better. It's been great fun since I took a glance at this funny and lighter side.

I started out making a few comic portraits of people around me. The idea took off real quick.
More portraits were made, and even more requests were coming in.
Now it is time to put everything in one place and give the project its own space in the Interwebs.
The Comic Portrait Project is live, complete with an option to get your own customized comic portrait.

The portraits created in the project strives to be something more than simply a cartoonified version of yourself. This is not even a caricature, for that reason, which means the portrait won't be just a copy in lines of the photo provided.
This is a fully customized, personalized portrait that is entirely the comical you!

I look forward to making more portraits - a hundred, a hundred more?
Above all, it is a happy thing to explore the comic essence in different persons and putting it down in lines and color.

Click the below image to explore The Comic Portrait Project and even get a customized cartoon portrait for yourself or your loved ones ^_^

The Comic Portrait Project - get your own customized cartoon portraits!

Hard reboot

Tiny goofs and blunders like that are necessary part of life. In some sense they validate a person; the very fact that a human is human, and nothing ever works out the way it should.
[Liquidation, Imre Kertész]

Laws of productivity

Recently I came across a quote by Jerry West which caused a great rush of motivation.
Now, this was one quote which I wanted to follow everyday. I made a small design based on it and put it up in front of my work spaces, both at home and office.
Time to get some work done!

The weekend that followed was a total denial of these words so highlighted in yellow and red.
An unusual sleepiness crept in; the postponing part of the brain kicked into action.
I convinced the conscience that something is being done by doing minor designing, fuzzy sketching, and writing no-brainer cosmetic changes to some hobby code.
This probably didn't justify the hours spent watching Star Trek and Big Bang Theory and those spent inside Assassin's Creed.

The sound of purring

The 1st Indian International Cat Show was happening in Bangalore. I expected something along the lines of this:

My brain explodes due to an unhandlable amount of pure cuteness

Many things contradicted my expectation. They were mainly, but not limited to: 1) All cats being in cages 2) A congested hall with no space to move 3) Gloomily sleepy cats 4) Over-protective owners

Quest for taste

It has been a joyful occasional weekend exercise to take a long walk alone in the evening, the destination being some pastry shop, where I make up for all the lost calories.
The day's final quest was a pretty long walk culminating in front of a pretty big slice of Death by Chocolate.
So there I was, walking into the the food court of a big mall, taking the shortest path to the pastry outlet, and guess what?
The whole outlet was gone. It had been replaced by something else. No cake. No meaning to all the walk.

And finally, rain

If you don't break schedules for too long, the universe will break it for you.
It is not always about the satisfaction of getting things done or every day turning out to be awesome.
Sometimes, it takes a hard reboot ^_^

I sat in my cubicle today and was reading about rain.
Even inside the isolated area, I noticed that the weather felt great.
This feeling dragged me to the wide open terrace, and the air was welcoming with gentle breeze and a drizzle tiptoeing happily around the place.

And it was clear that the awesome times were back.

365 days later

A few days ago, I completed living a year in Bengaluru.

This is the first city where I've spent this long, away from home.
There are new things and new friends I've discovered here.
I am loving the city, and still exploring it, and occasionally looking out from the balcony at night to observe the dark outlines of buildings with colored lights dotting the sky and concrete.

Among all the noise of big obvious things, there are the few little truths that you find out, the little decisions you make about things, and the little realities that you accept. In this post, I'll go through a few of these little passages added to my book of experience.

1 On attaining perfection

Planning is good.
In fact I plan a lot when it comes to side projects, new learning etc. I plan so much so that in the end all the time and space is consumed on making plans.

Okay, Planning is starting to look bad...
It felt like a bit too much of push when Chris Guillebeau kept talking about starting your plans 'now', in his new book. But this is one of those things you learn the hard way.
It is preferable to get started with an actual tent than living in a castle made of plans.

This doesn't mean you have to forfeit your perfectionism!
Understand that Attaining perfection in a work in progress is different from Awaiting perfection in the conditions and environment to get started with a work.

2 On spending

I am no expert in this topic to authoritatively quote Warren Buffett and pretend that I actually understand it.
But here is a thing or two from experience.

Ask whether you need it. How frequently will you use it? To what degree will it make your life better?
Don't end up spending money to add clutter around you.
Even after this simple analysis, if your mind and/or heart keeps telling you that you really *need* this expensive designer watch in addition to the two you have at home, go for it :P.
Because once in a while, it is okay to gift yourself something pretty.

On a related note, it is worth spending a little extra cash on things of quality, beauty, and reliability.
In the long term, you can only gain so much by saving too much on essential things, or by selecting cheap and disposable alternatives.

3 On space

Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo
~Desmond Morris

The essential realization I had about space in general and personal space is that, the two are becoming almost the same at various levels. The world is getting crowded.

When I first traveled from Kerala to Bengaluru, I had in mind this image of a bunch of people in different clothes, speaking different languages, going to different hang outs.
Then on the foot path, a couple pass me by, speaking in my native tongue.
I go to an event, and a lot more Keralites pass me by, chattering away in Malayalam or English (with the unmistakable slang).
A friend and me go to try out a new café, and a gang of Malayalees are sitting around on bean bags, shouting and joking in Malayalam. For a moment, I felt like sitting in a small town restaurant back in Kerala.

Population is increasing. The same space is being claimed by more and more people.
Real estate prices are shooting to the sky. Desmond Morris is right. You can't have everything.
Learn early to focus and be happy about other finer aspects of life.

4 On flavor

It's all subjective.
I continue to find Pani Puri not that great, and continue to have debates with the lovers of this food.
Ditto about pizza in this city. In fact, the hometown mock up of a pizza we used to laugh about every time seems at least ten times better in taste.
The mere smell of Chilli Bajji makes me run away from the eating table.
In brief, I've been having a hard time with the native food.

That being said, non-veg continues to be mostly universal in taste.
And learning to cook is quite handy in bringing back the homely feel of flavor.

5 On love

There are a lot more people in this world than you imagine there are.
No matter how unique your tastes are, there is someone, or more than one, matching the pattern.
It'll be surprising when you discover it, but it is a fact.
For everything else, start working now. For love, keep an open mind and let it happen.
Love will find a way :)

I am cured alright

As I was watching A Clockwork Orange, the following scene instantly became one of my favorites among the many brilliant/memorable/violent/explicit ones in the movie, all credits to the adorable, cheerful, purple haired psychiatrist.

It was in fact surprising to find that Pauline Taylor, the purple haired lady, only had so much resources about her in the interwebs. This is sad. One would expect such a cheerful and happy face to last across movies with her wide and curvy smile gliding along people's hearts. But in reality, Google returns a countable number of images of her with 99% of them being the very same psychiatrist from Clockwork Orange.

Well, perhaps true beauty is better not over-advertised. It should stay in your heart as one continuous yet brief glimpse of the most comforting smile topped with a purple haze.

Ode to DBC

Last week I have been trying to be minimalistic and economical in food.
By weekend, I found myself craving for all the flavors I have been avoiding. I would walk into the food court in a mall, and would want to try Everything! I'd want to try random tastes that pop up in my mind.

Like the one day I couldn't resist pastries:

Stepping into the next 365 days

The idea of New Year Resolutions seems to be losing it's spark and glitter with people increasingly being aware that it doesn't properly bring about the change it promises. Change comes from within and stuff.

Facebook makes a pretty good attempt at a recap of 2012 with the Year in Review feature. This review could be very accurate, depending upon the amount of personal data and photos you've freely given to Facebook.

On Dec 31st night in 2011, I was in Bengaluru city by some turn of events and I was loving it. This year I intentionally joined the New Year celebrations in the same city, and it had hardly any resemblance to the colorful picture of cheerfulness, neon lights, and peaceful festivity that I had in mind from a year back. To the contrary it was an annoying chaos of noise, drunkards, and police charges in a rather hot weather.

There goes, the only three reasons to write a blog post around New Year's Eve. Blogs will indeed be having a hard time of survival this 2013.

Be all that as it may, it is still a useful thing to reflect upon your past few months and look at how you as a person has grown up, expanded, and what tiny waves of change you've contributed to the general mess that is the world.

For the past few weeks, I have been waking up to the above quote on my apartment wall (originally designed by Jeremy Beasly for the Resolve Project).

This motto can have wonderful results if we are ready to follow it. On an average day, we have several opportunities to concern ourselves with managing the daily routines. At the end of the day, much energy and time is spent on these chores and we'll procrastinate on the extra things or hobbies we'd like to do.

But when we let these routine tasks take a back seat - meaning not to stop doing them, but to give them a lesser priority, to see them as the little things that they are - the amazing possibilities of the rest of your day uncovers in front of you.

An interesting side effect of trying to live for so much more is how you smoothly flow through days; Mondays and Fridays will be equally fun, weekends and weekdays will hardly differ. In short, the fatigue of living disappears.

Plans for the year
You can take a look at my Facebook album of artworks which sums up how I progressed with drawing in the past months.

Other than that, I am in the middle of a set of plans carried on from 2012. It is a list of illustrations, paintings, and even some coding, not to mention the novels literally overflowing from my cupboard. The current plan is to finish these plans, and then to look into a different set of things, perhaps create a few more games.

Being in the new city has been a joy ride, unlocking a bunch of fond memories ^_^

Happy 2013 !