Chp 365. New Blogger Interface: Posting Tips

blogger.com has finally changed its interface. Lolz. In my 8 years as a blogger, they’ve made a change only once, and that time too it was more about template design and features. This time, it looks like they have revamped the entire backend UI.

Frankly speaking, it looks more like a WordPress backend now, and navigation is much smoother and slicker than before. Monitoring your blog visitors is also much easier now with a built-in analytics report right on the dashboard itself.

I haven’t had the time to explore much, but from my first few impressions, I’d give blogger a thumbs up (seriously, it’s about time!) and inserting images seems to be just a matter of copy-pasting too.

However, there is one flaw I noticed immediately, and it’s about the new post editor.

Again, this post is meant only for those few people (like me) who still like to write their post first on a Microsoft Word document before copy-pasting it to the post editor. I guess we prefer MS Word because we are too lazy and the auto-correct feature seems to solve a lot of problems for us. Lolz.

A year ago, I wrote about Five important blogging tips for those who use MS Word on blogger.com. Now that the interface and CMS editor have changed, I guess those tips don’t mean much.

In this new blogger post editor, it is no longer possible to copy-paste your article from a Word doc to the “COMPOSE” or the “HTML” section. I mean, it is of course possible to do that, but if you do it, your entire formatting (paragraph, alignment, line breaks etc) will now go haywire.

In the previous blogger version, I advised you all not to paste your word document article in the HTML section and that you should paste it in the COMPOSE section only, right? And once you did that, you could click HTML and everything would still be formatted the way you wanted it.

In this new version, if you paste anything in the HTML section first, you will lose all paragraph and line breaks!

And if you paste it first in the COMPOSE section…



…and then click HTML to format your post, you will now unfortunately get this sh*t.



Yup, blogger apocalypse!

But don’t get scared, I know a way to prevent this. I am familiar with this type of display result as Posterous is having this exact same CMS editor feature! Your entire post in posterous will go for a toss if you copy paste the content from a Word file.

One simple solution to this is – REMOVE MS Word formatting.

You can easily do this by using a TEXT document (.txt extension). Once you’re done writing your blog article on an MS Word document, simply copy-paste the content into a text file, with the exact line break and paragraph spacing that you want. Once you do that, again copy the content from the text file and paste it now in the new blogger editor under COMPOSE section.

Thadaaa! Problem solved.

Your post will be formatted exactly the way you wanted it to be.

And even if you click HTML on the editor after pasting it in the COMPOSE section from the text document, you will get this -



See how clean the codes are now! All those unnecessary and irritating MS Word related codes are gone, and this section now consists of just the basic (and proper) HTML codes which you can easily edit if you are even a little bit html-savvy.

If you are really interested in seeing the difference between pasting your blog article from an MS Word directly, and from a text document directly, here are the two results of this very same post –

From MS Word document to COMPOSE section – eww!



From text document to COMPOSE section – wow!



Of course most people do write their blog posts directly on the blogger editor directly, so I guess this post will not mean anything to such people. But to all those who use MS Word docs to write your blog post, this is how you can easily solve your formatting problems with the new blogger interface.

I don’t know about you, but me, I am kinda like an OCD patient when it comes to webpage layout and content uniformity. I die slowly every time I see an ugly blog with unequal and varying font sizes, spacings and colors randomly placed here and there (unless it is done purposely with an artistic direction).

Hope this helps. If you have a better solution to this or any other tips regarding the new blogger interface, please feel free to share here.

Cheers.

Chp 364. Staying Positive, Staying Happy

So Mumbai is still under heavy assault by the rains and the streets are waterlogged most of the time. People who rejoiced on twitter when the first drop of rain fell, are now perpetually cursing this hydraulic damnation.

But if you try to look at it in a positive way, trust me, you will have no resentment towards the rains. Being positive not only makes you happier, you will also end up having a great day. Nobody likes being in the company of a grumpy person forever complaining every damn time about every damn thing.

Renowned French writer and philosopher Voltaire once said, “Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”

The worst thing about travelling during the rains is when other vehicles drive past you and splash water all over you. FML right? Mumbai is infamous for its pot holes during the rainy season. And with great pot hole comes great drenching.

But instead of cursing at the driver every time you get splashed on, how about changing your attitude? The next time a passing vehicle splashes water on you, try laughing! And believe me, suddenly, everything will become so much fun and cheerful! Think of how much fun you used to have playing in the rain (against your parent’s wish) when you were a child? Reminisce those memories and wallow in nostalgia. The next time water gushes into your auto like a tsunami, scream out, “Woohoooooo!” \m/

Because this is the bloody monsoon season, and if you are so adamant about not getting wet, maybe you shouldn’t step out at all and hibernate like the good person you are. But if you HAVE to step out, then by all means, expect to get wet. And when you do get wet, having a positive thought will definitely make the shitty day feel better for you.

Calling the son-of-a-bitch who splashed water on you a jerk may give you momentary satisfaction, but it will still make you bitter and even spoil your mood the entire day. Instead of showing him the middle finger, grin and show him the “sign of the devil” with your fingers because that was “absolutely rocking”. Imagine you’re at Water Kingdom or some other Water themed amusement park and you were sliding down a monster slide!

Of course having this positive thought can apply only if you are going home (or you have spare clothes in office). One time I was in an auto when a vehicle zoomed past us and splashed water on us the size of a mini tidal wave, soaking us completely. The auto driver started abusing the driver’s mother, and I reassuringly told him to cool down and cheer up. And then he told me that I could easily change into dry clothes once I reach home, whereas he had be in those dripping wet khaki uniform the entire day. After that conversation, I am no longer provoked when many autos refuse to ply during this rainy season.

Another time, I was in an auto, and this time my auto driver was the perpetuator. He was driving extremely fast, splashing water on bystanders and other autos that were moving slowly. When I asked him why he was doing that, he told me it was a case of either splash or be splashed. If he slowed down, other vehicles will splash water on us. Hmmm… food for thought indeed.

It’s kinda like one of those B-grade slasher movies or an episode from Criminal Minds, you know, where a psycho kidnaps four hot chicks and locks them up in a dungeon, with the condition that if they fight among themselves and kill anyone, the remaining three will be released. Now all four can cooperate and not fight with each other, but at the same time, they have to trust each another and make sure none of them do anything stupid.

Likewise, we can all trust each other and drive slowly so that nobody gets splashed on, but then, that is nothing but a utopian dream. There is bound to be one jerk driving fast because he is a jerk, or a case of real emergency where somebody’s driving fast in order to reach the airport or hospital in time.

Hence, it is really not possible to have something like that. So, just expect to be splashed on and get wet during this raining season. Instead of complaining about it, if you can meet it with a positive thought, trust me, that will definitely make your day much better!

   

So enjoy the splash! Cheers.

Ending this post with YET another RAGE COMIC strip I made. I seriously think I’m gonna start making a rage comic strip for every new post from now onwards!

Chp 363. Sunday Bloody Sunday: 8-2 defeat.

I usually leave for work around 9-10 am. Today, I left for work at 6:30 am, surprising not just my apartment watchman but our office watchman and office-boys as well. Why so early? Because I just couldn’t sleep anymore.

Yeah we all know about the devastating sports news – Manure thrashed Arsenal 8-2. That’s why sleep eluded me. I kept going to our Arsenal discussion forums, and I kept seeing other gooners posting messages at 3 in the morning, 4 in the morning, 5 in the morning, complaining about not being able to sleep too. I’m sure every gooner worldwide went through the same phase.

The last time Arsenal conceded 8 goals was in 1896. Of course everybody knows the Arsenal team that played last night was an extremely weakened side, with 3 main players sold recently, and eight main players missing the match due to injury or suspension. Rumor has it that two Arsenal fans who came to watch the match were also pulled off from the stands and forced to play by Wenger

But nobody’s going to remember last night as a weakened Arsenal side losing 8-2 to Manure. This will go down history as Arsenal losing 8-2. Nobody gives a shit about how strong or weak a team was or whether there were controversial calls by the ref or not. In the end, people remember just the score line, and that’s what matters the most.

We usually have our injury and “not enough players” problem towards the end of the season for the past 6 years. This time, it’s right from the very beginning. And throughout the world, I’m sure many gooners are frustrated with Wenger’s policy of not splurging big money to buy experienced players. And this time, it’s not even as if we don’t have any money!

In fact, the sale of Nasri now puts Arsenal 19th in the list of Premiere League Clubs with the highest net spending, and the current net spending of Arsenal is actually NEGATIVE!


[Source]

Yeah, financially, Arsenal FC is a very healthy club. But what’s the point when it is not doing well on the pitch?

And with a net spending difference of a whooping Rs 13,34,17,26,508/- !!!! between Manure and Arsenal, Manure was able to beat us by this much ONLY ONCE so far? Lolz, poor Manures. Just imagine if we start spending like everybody else (considering we have that much to spend). It would be the days of the Invincibles again.

In a way, I am glad this thrashing came just days before the transfer window closes. Now Wenger is under pressure not just from the fans but from the board as well to buy some #$%#$^ experienced player(s). All the top teams not only have a formidable starting 11, but a very impressive bench as well. We on the other hand are struggling with the quality of our first eleven itself!

When Ashley Cole left Arsenal for money, we called him Ca$hley. When Adebayor left for more money, we called him Moneybayor. But at the end of the day, if you really think about it, most of us do the same too – we tend to shift jobs if a competitor is offering us more money. To us, football is a passion, but to these players, it is after all work. That’s what we often fail to remember. As Wenger stated, yeah, most of these players are overpriced, but teams that are overpaying them are at least getting something, somewhere. If you can’t beat them, join them?

I can already picture every Arsenal fan screaming out “SPEND SOME F*CKING MONEY” again, and let’s see what Wenger has in store for us. Until then, I will still vehemently say, “In Wenger I trust”.

Some manure friends of mine are asking me to burn my Arsenal jersey because this defeat is a humiliation. Lolz manure fans! So that means if manure loses, they will immediately burn their manure jersey and switch loyalty to another winning team? Typical manure fans. Remember what I said in my previous post about Glory Chasers? In fact, I just realized, their anthem sounds a bit like “Glory chaser, Glory chaser Man United!!!” Haha.

I’m so not burning my jersey. In fact this is me proudly wearing our jersey to work TODAY. I am saddened by the defeat but I am not ashamed of my Club.



So yeah, fuck 8-2. Gooner 4 Life.

Ending this post with this amazing video of Arsenal fans singing in support of the team after the match despite the 8-2 defeat. Makes me proud to be a gooner.

Chp 362. Of Adulthood and Online gaming

HAHAHAAA!!! I still can’t stop laughing at The Oatmeal’s latest update – A comic strip of what it’s like to play online games as a grownup. I can sooo relate to this, and you really have to check it out!

[Click on pic to view complete comic strip]


Lolz. So true!

Even till today I just can’t get over gaming. I love gaming – computer gaming, mobile gaming, online gaming, you name it. But I did stop describing myself as a “hardcore gamer” because these days, any schmuck with an iPhone playing “Angry Birds” describes himself as a hardcore gamer too.

A few years ago, I was a part of a historic team that dominated a major World of the popular browser MMORPG TribalWars. We battled out day in and night out, regrouping whenever it was necessary and counter attacking with merciless destruction. Within our tribe, we all had our ranks & roles & duties to perform, and we played them out to perfection. But at our private discussion forum, guess who stood out?



Lolz. Yeah, I know how I look like to many of you. Don’t say the P word! Haha.

When it comes to games like AOE, Warcraft, Command & Conquer etc, I actually used to go 2-3 straight days without even sleeping because I couldn’t do anything else until I had completed the entire built-in campaign!

And now it’s the age of mobile phone gaming. Contract Killer, Inotia3, Zenonia3, My Country, Free Townsmen 6, Myth Defense, these are just some of the many games I am currently hooked to. And most of these games are MMORPG! Gone are the days when you interact and play with different players across the globe using a bulky computer and modem connection. Now you can easily do all that from your mobile phone even while sitting in the loo. And with mobile phones coming out with dual core processors and more features, the future is extremely bright for us gaming enthusiasts.

Taking all these into consideration, when exactly is someone “too old to play online games”?

In my defense, let me just tell you that we never had online games when I was a kid. We didn’t even know what internet meant back then. So there is no question of outgrowing online gaming, because we basically never had them while growing up!

Over here in India, during the late 80s, gaming meant playing Space Invaders, Pac Man and Pong on my Atari console.



Then during the early 90s, gaming was about playing 8-bit games like Contra, Super Mario bros, Donkey Kong, Double Dragon, etc. Do you remember any of these?



I don’t know about the rest of the world, but here in India it was Sega who came out with the first 16 bit console, and I literally cried in sheer joy when my dad bought me one even though I already had an Atari and Nintendo system. Yeah, I was really pampered then, lolz.



Ah ohhhh let’s not forget about the ADAPTER! Lolz. A device that lets you play Nintendo cartridges on a Sega console, and Sega cartridges on a Nintendo console! My dad’s friend in Cal managed to get one for me, and I was one of the few kids in Mizoram who had it back then, and the news spread like wildfire and many young boys of my age who I didn’t even know used to come to my house everyday to check out this amazing “technological wonder”!

The late 90s saw computer games taking over, and we were hooked to Dave, Prince of Persia, Doom etc. Those were the days when hard disk drives were 2GB and carrying a large 8 inch floppy disk was considered hip!



…until the 3½ inch version overtook the market later



Then the computer games revolution happened and I will not talk about those games because there are just too damn many to mention!!

What I want to say is, even though I’ve been playing games all my life, online games where you interact with real people across the globe are different. It brings in a new level of gaming experience whether you’ve been playing games right from childhood or not. You can now do things that were once deemed impossible.

Hence, once again, this is something that just cannot be outgrown because it is an entirely new phenomenon! To outgrow something, you need to be doing it for quite some time first. Therefore it is practically not possible to outgrow online gaming. There, I’ve said it. I rest my case.

And oh, one last parting shot – The average age of online gamers is 34.

Chp 361. Football Fans Mentality and Fans Rivalry

Ah! The new EPL season has started! Time to start blogging about Arsenal games again, lolz. However, this is not one of those posts. I just want to say something I’ve been observing for a very long time now.

This is probably the first time I’m writing a football post and not thrashing Manure Manchester United. In fact, this is definitely the first time I’m going to write something positive about ManUtd fans here on my blog.

Shocked? Surprised? No you’re not dreaming, and no, my blogger account has not been hacked.

Being a hardcore Gunners fan here in India, things may be a bit different from the Gooners in UK, especially those in London. Over there, Arsenal’s main nemesis in terms of fan rivalry are definitely Spurs and there is a long history of enmity and bad blood between the two groups.

However, here in India, our main rivals are ManUtd fans. For the love of Lucifer, we hate each other like Hell. We’re like fire and ice, locked in a steel cage with rabid dogs chained at all four corners.

Even when it comes to other top rivals like Chelsea, Liverpool etc, if ManUtd is playing against such teams, we always support the other team. I’ve been supporting Arsenal for around 15 years now, and all these years, all I ever see is how much Arsenal and ManUtd fans hate each other.

I’m a member of AMSC (Arsenal Mumbai Supporters Club) which is an OFFICIALLY recognized fan club of Arsenal FC. And I won’t be wrong to state that the most hated club and fan of every AMSC member is definitely ManUtd.

I still remember that fateful night last year when we went for the Carling Cup final screening (and lost), where almost 150 Gooners turned up. Before the match started, there was an ad about an upcoming match promotion. At first Chelsea players appeared on the screen. Immediately everybody started booing and screaming “F*ck you Chelseaaaa”… and then the opponents appeared. It was ManUtd! Suddenly everybody started screaming, “Comonnn Chelseaaa!! We love you Chelsea!!!” Lolzzz.



Some of my Mizo Gooner friends have also formed the Arsenal Mizoram Supporters Club and have currently petitioned to Arsenal FC for an official recognition. They boast of a strong membership support of around 100 members in Mizoram alone, and I sincerely hope they do get the official recognition from Arsenal FC very soon.

Even among them, mention ManUtd and it will probably mean war. That’s how much bad blood there is between the two fans.

Now what I want to say in this post is – yes, when there is team rivalry, there is bound to be fan rivalry. We all swear by our teams. But one thing I have noticed many Gooners call ManUtd fans is “Glory Chasers”.

“Glory chaser” here is actually a negative term which means that a person will do anything to be in a winning team (as a fan) without even having any real spirit or passion about the game. Such people don’t even understand the game sometimes, and may not even know what is happening in the football world but act like a hardcore ManUtd fan just because the team is winning and he/she thinks people regard them as hip for this.

Now, football banter is nothing new. In fact, that’s a part of football. I will definitely gloat in front of my ManUtd friends and irritate them the entire day if Arsenal beat ManUtd. Likewise they too will do the same to me if Arsenal loses to ManUtd. Again, all that is normal and I am ok with it.

But what pisses me off is when people who are not even crazy about the game act as if they are suddenly a hardcore ManUtd fan and start annoying Arsenal fans. And this holds true for any football fan, irrespective of whether the person they're annoying is a fan of Arsenal, Liverpool, Bolton, Fulham etc.

Arguing with a hardcore fan of a rival team can often be heated, but at least it makes sense as we both know our shit – we know our players, our team, our history and our game. But arguing with a wannabe fan is perhaps the most frustrating and painful ordeal in this world. After Arsenal went trophyless for the sixth consecutive time last season, this irritating little fuck of a self acclaimed ManUtd fan came up to me and said

“Haha… So you just went six consecutive years without a trophy since the last time you won a cup!”

He probably read that in the papers or internet. I don’t know why I even bothered to reply, but I said nonchalantly –

“Do you know there were times when you went more than 30 years without any trophy?”

Any hardcore ManUtd fan would say stuff like, "That is old history while this is recent history", or some shit like that and argue about how Arsenal too had gone many years without any trophy before… But nooo this little wannabe prick of a ManUtd fan had the audacity to reply –

“Haha don’t lie okay. Manchester United has been winning almost every year since they were formed. Don’t spread dirty lies just to make yourself feel better. Look at how strong we are - we have Rooney, Ronaldo, Giggs…”

Arrrghhhh… Ronaldo!!??? Thank God he didn’t say Beckham. I really really really wanted to slam dunk my monitor onto his puny head right then and tear through his guts and brains with my bare hands. That’s what you get for arguing with a wannabe fan who will probably have no idea who most of the starting 11 of ManUtd are or what an offside means, and yet goes around acting like a hardcore fan. Fucking poser.

And this is exactly one of the main reasons why Gooners hate ManUtd fans so much. Too many posers and wannabes

But at the same time, it would be wrong to say they are all posers. I have many genuine ManUtd friends, and the fights I have with them are the ones I enjoy the most, no matter how fierce it may get, because at the end of the day, we all share one thing in common – LOVE FOR THE GAME.

The reason why ManUtd has so many poser fans is because of their recent success in the past few years. Everybody wants to be in the “in” crowd. If Arsenal has been successful the past few years, I’m sure even we will have a lot of poser fans too. Thank God for that.

And that is exactly why a part of me is not that disappointed about not winning anything, at least from a fan’s perspective. Because if I see another Arsenal fan, then we know immediately that both of us are hardcore fans because at this stage, no poser would wanna be an Arsenal fan. They go only for the glory. Hence, this is like a filtering mechanism, and for the love of God, I am thoroughly enjoying this.

In a strange way, it makes me bond deeper with other Gooners because we are all true fans.

I’m ending this post with my first ever 9gag style comic strip using popular face memes (Me gusta, forever alone, etc). If you frequent 9gag.com or reddit boards, you will understand the facial expressions I’ve used here. Even if you don’t, I think you’ll still find it funny :)



Friday Cheers!

Chp 360. Mob Mentality

These past few days, I’m sure many of you are also talking about the Tottenham riot, which started after an alleged gangster was fatally shot by the police. Every day, all we saw in the papers and news channels were about the mass looting & arson.

Anyway, I’m not writing about the looting that’s taking place in London or in the past at other places like New Orleans (after Hurricane Katrina), Haiti (after the earthquake), Vancouver (after Canucks lost in the Stanley’s Cup), or even the looting that DIDN’T happen in Japan (after the terrible tsunami tragedy). There are many discussion forums and websites where people can write their opinionated thoughts about such incidents where you’ll get the usual dosage of online commentators – a potpourri of racist comments, smart comments, stupid comments, insightful comments, biased comments, troll comments and completely unrelated comments.

However, this post is not about judging other people who are at a different location going through something we’re not. Instead, this post is about you and me. Something that we may have experienced many times unknowingly.

First of all, mob mentality is nothing but an unconstitutional (and usually violent) version of herd mentality.

Yeah, we’ve all been there, if you really think about it.

One clear example when most of us experience this everyday would be when you’re on the road. Picture a busy traffic signal at a crossroad (where there are no cops). Vehicles stopping at the red signal are waiting for it to turn green, while a few vehicles are moving across in front of them because their signal is green.

Observe carefully and you will see that most of the vehicles on the red signal are revving up slowly, moving inch by inch forward. And then suddenly one or two vehicles (usually a two-wheeler or an auto) jumps the red signal when he sees the chance, hence blocking those vehicles that have the green signal. The moment this happens, other vehicles on the red signal lane join in.

Now they know that this is a group effort. If it was some lone vehicle breaking the law, the vehicles coming on the green light may not even stop. But when a large number of vehicles break the rules simultaneously, they have the power.

Even if you abuse the drivers who are blocking your path, they will just shrug their shoulders and point at the vehicles in front of them, as if to say they too are doing it so you must abuse them too, or that they are simply going with the flow.

And here’s the irony. Sometimes if you don’t want to join the vehicles jumping the red signal and decide to wait for the signal to turn green, other vehicles behind you actually honk their horns and abuse you! Thomas Fuller was right when he said, “The mob has many heads, but no brains.”

Being in a large group where everybody has the same agenda gives you more confidence, even if you don’t know the other members in your group.

Take another road example. This time you are a pedestrian. You have to cross a busy road where vehicles are speeding and not stopping for anybody. Imagine you are not allowed to cross that road and there’s an underground/overhead pedestrian crossing nearby but you are too lazy to take that extra effort to climb up and down. If you are alone, you know how hard it is to cross that road right? But then, if you are in a large group where everybody wants to get to the other side, then crossing that busy road suddenly becomes so easy. All of you slowly inch forward and vehicles seeing the large group of people automatically slow down.

That’s the power of a large group. Even if you are all breaking the law, you know you are in a large group so chances of something happening to you are reduced. That’s how mobs are created. Samuel Johnson once said, “Get together a hundred or two men, however sensible they may be, and you are very likely to have a mob”. True indeed.

Is it from the movie Gladiator or the HBO original series “ROME” that someone said, “Control the mob, and you control Rome”?

Even in Mizoram just last year, did we not see the fury of the mob when a child rapist and murderer was caught? The police tried their best to control the mob, but they were no match for them and the rapist slash murderer died violently in the hands of the people.

But at least mass looting like what took place in London, Vancouver etc will never take place in Mizoram, because after all, Mizoram is known as a place where “everybody knows everybody” types, so if any group of people try to loot a store, the store owner will probably recognize them!

Just imagine a group of disgruntled youth (hipsters) trying their best to look all anarchist and all, charge into a shop clutching chains and machetes. The store owner looks at the ringleader-

“Oh, Sanga, how are you? How’s your dad doing these days?”

“urrmmm… fine, Pu Thiang, thanx and I hope all is well with your family?” (frantically whispers to his gang – “Not this one. Next shop. Next shop.”)

And as they all meekly leave – “Are you leaving so soon? You sure you don’t want tea?”

“Errr… no thanks Pu Thiang.”

“Oh you’re going to the next shop? Good. You will not believe Pi Chhingi has opened up there! Remember her? I think she was your primary school teacher?”

“F$%^%$” (whispers to his cronies – “think it’s better if we all just go home”)

Ahh… the beauty of Mizoram :)

I’ll end this post with a prolific quote by D.H. Lawrence:

”Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions.”

Amen to that.

Friday Cheers, and Happy Independence Day in advance!

Chp 359. Hard Disk not detected by DVD Player

Sorry for the lame post title, but I have to use this for SEO’s sake. Yup, this week’s post is a little bit technical, and I am doing this so as to help others who may have the same problem – Why is your DVD Player usb slot not detecting your portable hard drive?

First of all, the main reason why I am writing this post is that, problems like this are rare. Very few people (like me) still watch movies on their DVD Players these days. It’s all computer this and computer that, so if you try to google for a solution, most of the search results will be quite irrelevant.

I went through many tech forums and even mentioned my problems there, but the replies were all unhelpful. Most of them told me, “Why don’t you just watch it on your PC?”

Uh… what if I don’t have a computer or don’t want to buy one? What if I am content watching movies using my plain old DVD Player and TV, the old fashion way?

So after a lot of trial and error, I finally found a way to solve this problem.

These days, all new DVD Players come with a usb slot. Gone are the days of limiting your entertainment to just CDs or DVDs on your DVD Player. We can just take our pen-drive, copy the movie file we want, insert the pen drive in the DVD Player usb slot, and enjoy the movie.

After that comes the next level – Instead of inserting my 4GB or 8GB pen drive, what if I insert my portable 500GB hard drive? Will that work too? And won’t that be awesome?

And so, a lot of us tried, and the DVD player of course couldn’t detect the hard drive.

“DEVICE NOT SUPPORTED” the DVD Player proudly displayed.

Many so called “experts” on numerous Tech forums then said that the DVD Player didn’t detect the 500 GB portable hard drive because it couldn’t support such a huge data storage size, it was not built that way, blah blah blah…

BOLLOCKS!

Last night, I finally got my plain ol simple DVD Player to detect my 1TB portable hard drive! Yeah, one freaking TB, baby. 1000 gig of Movies, TV shows, Music etc. Suck on that.

So here’s how you should do it.

First of all, let me just briefly explain the basic – Your hard drive can be formatted in either FATxx (FAT16, FAT 32 etc) or NTFS. NTFS is a more popular file system, and considered to be safer, faster and more space efficient.

Most hard drives come pre-formatted in NTFS, while most pen drives are formatted in FAT32. In FAT32, you cannot save a single file that is bigger than 4GB. You can do that in NTFS, but it has many compatibility issues with third party devices.

And that is where the PROBLEM lies.

Your DVD Player cannot detect your portable hard drive simply because it is in NTFS format. You will find the same problem with a car music player that has a usb slot, your PSP etc.

The simple solution to this is to format your drive and convert it to FAT32.

Of course this is not so simple as I learnt recently.

First of all, formatting a 1TB hard drive using command prompt is apparently not possible. I googled and found the correct cmd command – Suppose the drive you want to format and convert is G:

Then type: convert G: /fs: FAT32

It will start converting. Slowly. Very slowly. 10%. 40%. 98%... Since it was converting a 1TB drive, it took nearly 3 hours to complete!

And finally when it’s done, *drumroll* I got the message that the drive could not be converted to FAT32 because it is too big! Aaargghhh…

Next, I tried formatting it directly, like how most of us would format pen drives – Right click on the drive letter, and select “Format”.

The problem is, Windows does not support formatting a hard drive of more than 32GB size to FAT32 format! And so, while you have the option of selecting either FAT32 or NTFS while formatting a pen drive, if you do the same with a hard drive that is greater than 32 GB, you will not get this option. Instead, there is just NTFS and a vague FATxx option! (See screenshot below)



So one of my colleagues took my 1 TB hard disk, formatted it in NTFS using Windows, and then converted it to FAT32 using a Linux system.

mkfs.vfat /dev/hd7

In just a matter of seconds, my 1TB drive was converted to FAT32! Whoah!

So I rushed home all excited and all… connected my newly FAT32 formatted 1TB drive to my DVD Player… and bloody hell got the same freaking message that the device is not supported again! Aaaarghh!

So yesterday, for the last time, I googled again, trying to be more specific. I did come across some discussions saying that Linux formatted FAT32 drives sometimes don’t work well on third party devices. Which didn’t surprise me much because it took just 4-5 seconds to convert the 1TB drive. Lolz. Linux systems are not exactly my area of expertise, so I browsed for some more time and took another advice – Use softwares like Partition Magic to format it in FAT32.

I found the perfect software – Aomei Partition Assistant. Using this, I could format up to 2TB partition in FAT32! Me Gusta!

There’s a freeware version from the link mentioned above. Less than 3MB file, the software is very easy to use. I formatted my 1 TB drive to FAT32 in 5-10 minutes.

And FINALLYYYYY my DVD Player can now detect my 1TB hard drive. W00t!!

Imagine all the movies and TV series I can fit into this and easily watch via my DVD Player and TV. And 1 TB portable hard drives now come cheaper than 5 grand, so it is indeed a good investment.

Of course there are many disadvantages to having a FAT32 drive, like you cannot save a file that is bigger than 4GB. So if you are a gamer, you will come across many .iso files that are bigger than 8GB. Also, many of these HD movies are more than 4GB per file.

So in the end, it’s your call. Meanwhile, if you just want your DVD Player to detect your portable hard disk, whether it is 250GB or 500GB or 1TB or 2TB, it can be easily done the way I’ve mentioned above. Don’t let any so called tech expert tell you that it cannot be done because of the file size limitation.

Friday cheers!


Edit: WARNING!!! Please BACK-UP your files before you format! :D I was working on a new 1TB hard drive above so I didn’t have any data on it, but if you are doing it to your existing hard drive, do back-up all your files first before you format, or you’ll lose everything. [Thanx @mnowluck]

Chp 358. History of STUDS in Mizo Society, 1980+

Who is a stud? The exact definition may differ from culture to culture, but at the end of the day, a stud is one who is surrounded by women or can easily be with any chick he wants. As the universal Bro Code aptly puts it – A stud is respected by all other Bros.

Yes you may find this post a tad sexist. Like how my friend Jerusha would say, “If a girl sleeps with different men, she is labeled a whore, but if a guy sleeps with different women, he is called a stud? That’s not fair!” Or as my friend Amos would say, “If a girl sleeps with different guys, she is called a whore, but if I do the same, then suddenly I am called gay? That’s not fair!”

A stud is a guy other guys respect, especially by us nerds and geeks. While we slogged our asses off during engineering exams, he was constantly on the prowl, always in the company of women. We respected him and envied him at the same time. “Don’t worry nerds, study hard for your exams and you will get all the bitches you want later,” he would tell us, as he took the assignment we did for him with one hand, and held the hottest girl in college with the other hand.

Oh we hated him right then. Because we didn’t want any female dogs. Why the hell would we want female dogs? We just wanted to speak to women, that’s all. But even though we never actually understood him, one thing’s for sure – We may have hated him, sometimes even loathed him, but at the end of the day we respected him!

In our Mizo culture, the word we use for such a person is “Luck”. Yes, it is derived from the English word, and it means exactly that. “Tlangval luck” means a guy who has a lot of women admirers or one who has no difficulty appealing to the opposite sex. There is hardly any moment in his life when his relationship status remains “single”.

In Mizoram, things are different.

I still remember being asked by a friend in Bangalore when he saw me play a riff of “Hotel California” and end it with the intro of “Sweet Child of Mine” – “Dude! You’re bloody amazing with the guitar! You must be having a lot of chicks after you, back in Mizoram huh?” Hahaha! Nopes. In Mizoram, women don’t give flying crap if you play the guitar or whether you're in a rock band. Because 90% of the guys can play the guitar over there. It’s as if we were all born with our fingers clutching an A minor chord and the first time we cried in the hospital bed, we probably did so in tonic sol-fa.

Nah, things are different in Mizoram. There are actually different time periods when a person with a particular designation was considered a stud. Every profession had an era of being deemed a “Tlangval luck”.

Here are some of them, and the reason why many Mizo children (like me) had once upon a time dreamt to become just like that person, so that we too would be surrounded by women. Ah… the dreams of a folly youth!


1. The TV Antennae Twister

This is as far as I can remember. During the early 80’s, Mizoram, which was not even a state then, was just starting to develop. The insurgency led by the MNF was slowly coming to an end, and few “privileged” people started buying TV sets. There was only Doordarshan channel back then, but Mizoram being situated on a high altitude and lying between Burma and Bangladesh, we could get (free) channels from Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, and even Korea, simply by adjusting our TV antennae reception!

That’s where the Antennae twister stepped in. He’s usually around 20-25 years old, jobless, clean shaven, smokes like hell, skinny, and really got a badass talent of climbing up the roof and twisting the TV antennae to find a particular channel. Women used to sigh in admiration as he twist and twist and twist… androgenic sweat dripping off him as he turned the antennae… switching from Burmese channel to Korean to Bangladesh… ahhh… ohhhh… ahhh…

Watching the women squirm in ecstasy, that was when a lot of kids decided they wanted to become just like the antennae twister when they grow up. And maybe that’s why a lot of guys started training by practicing with their little antennas first…


2. Driver/Handyman

The mid 80’s saw the signing of the Mizoram Peace Accord, and Mizoram became a state. Employment rate started growing and more and more people bought vehicles. Of course people who had vehicles were considered affluent, but they were not considered “Tlangval luck” because most of them were married and had a family. But the drivers were not. And boy oh boy, they had all the women!

Whether you drove a private vehicle or a government vehicle, being a driver was the new definition of being a stud. My dad was working in the Power & Electric department then, and I used to go with him during his tours across Mizoram. He usually moved in a convoy of 4-5 vehicles. And during those tours, I spent more time with the drivers, probably because I have three elder sisters and no brother, so they were like the elder brothers I never had.

During the tours, I used to just sit with them and listen to their campfire stories as they exchanged stories about their conquests and sexcapades, about the many virgins they "conquered" at this village and that village etc. And they weren’t just bullshitting. Wherever we went, while my dad and other senior officers were working inside the local office, these drivers always managed to find a village damsel they could take to their rooms. I was young then, but I understood.

And the best part about being a driver was that sometimes many of these drivers, especially truck drivers, had handymen. The handyman acted as the wingman. Now what better ways to score than having the stud reputation of a driver with an equally cool wingman! Ah, it was Paradise for them. That was definitely their era. In my mind, the studification process started right then.

So after we got back from one of those tours, I told my mom I wanted to become a driver when I grow up. She nearly had a heart attack. Strangely, my dad never took me along on his tours again…


3. SDO/JE

With more employment opportunity and Government sectors opening, the late eighties saw a sudden surge in a new stud category – the SDOs and JEs. The SDO (Sub Division Officer) and JE (Junior Engineer) bachelors were the center of attraction at every function, regardless of whether they were in the P&E dept, PWD, PHE, etc.

Maybe it was because of their lifestyle and the way they partied, even till today, if you go to any Mizo house party, people will be doing the “SDO dance”. And yes, to have an SDO or JE son-in-law was the desire of many Mizo parents back then.


4. Doctor

During the 90s, the stud crown was passed on to the doctors. Hell yeah, they not only saved lives, but made lives, if you know what I mean. They were that “lucky”.

In fact, I think more than the girls, it was the mother of the girl who was more in love with the doctors – most of them would do anything to make sure their daughter married a doctor. Now this kind of fight and attention, every guy loves, right? And so, many of us slogged hard for various medical entrance exams, hoping to become a stud one day too.

In addition to that, I was hooked to Robin Cook novels those days, so I really used to think doctors had an extremely glamorous lifestyle. After school, I was probably the only Mizo guy who had never even kissed a girl, and the ambition of becoming a doctor only became stronger.

But then, after the entrance exam results came out, I got into Guahati Medical College (GMC) which is a well reputed college, but I got a much higher rank in the Engineering entrance exam – So after much consultation and contemplation, I told myself – Ahhhh chuck it. I’m a nerd. And I’ll always remain a nerd. I’ll die alone, unknown, unconquered, unridden. Let the other guys enjoy, maybe this is my fate.

And so with a heavy heart, I said goodbye to GMC, lost the opportunity to become a stud, and dwelled even deeper into NerdDom and became a Computer Science Engineer. After graduation, I went back to Mizoram and everybody thought I took a four year course on how to install Windows. Now which mother would want their daughter to marry somebody like that huh?


5. Pastor

Ahhh now this is one stud who isn’t a badass and yet commands deep respect. He’s the apple of every mother’s eyes, the gem of the locality, and sometimes even the entire local community would go around searching for a fitting bride for him!

Take this scenario for example. Guy comes across a beautiful hot girl. He asks people around about her, and learns that she is extremely homely, devoted to God, sincere, honest, and all other things nice and sweet. He doesn’t think, “Dayymm, I gotta nail that” or “I gotta marry her”. Instead, the first thought that comes to his mind is, “Yeah, she’s perfect for our Pastor. I gotta fix them up!”

See, that’s how Pastors roll. Wicked! You come across such a girl and you do not hope that she likes you. Instead, you hope that she likes your Pastor! See? Bros before Hopes! Yeah, even the Bro Code works perfectly fine here.


6. IAS

IAS (and recently MCS) bachelors are another batch of studs who have no difficulty in finding a partner. I think they are currently the reigning stud-pions in Mizoram.

Line up a couple of suitors for the hand of a girl, and the one with an IAS designation will blow every competition away for miles. They are like the Terminator of bachelors, powerful and feared. Some are humble, some are badass, and some are humbly badass. All in all, they rock!


Conclusion:

So where do we copywriters stand in the stud ladder? Well, for the fact that most people in Mizoram will not even know what I actually do for a living (the term “copywriter” does sound like somebody who spends his whole day in a government office copying files and writing them out manually into a new document right?), I guess we don’t even make it to the ladder.

...which reminds me of that animation “Shark Tale” (with the voice of Will Smith) –

Sykes: Now I have to pay Don Lino protection, so everything you owe me, you owe him!
Oscar: How do you figure that?
Sykes: Simple - the food chain!
[Pulls out chart]
Sykes: On top there's Don Lino, there's me, there's regular fish...
Oscar: And that's me!
Sykes: No. There's plankton, there's single-celled amoebas...
Oscar: And then me!
Sykes: I'm getting there, I'm getting there... There's coral, there's rocks, there's whale poop, and then there's you.
Oscar: That's messed up.




Yup, in the Stud hierarchy within Mizoram, we copywriters are so messed up. Hehe…

Maybe there’s an important lesson in this. If you want to be a stud, then be one. Remember the old saying, “Nice guys finish last”? Yup that is so true. If you want to be a nice guy, that’s well and good, but don’t regret finishing last. I wanted to be a stud when I was younger too, but later chose the nerd path. And now, I am definitely not regretting that decision at all. What matters in the end is, regardless of who you are, are you happy? Once you learn the importance of happiness and job satisfaction, being a stud suddenly becomes insignificant.

Friday cheers! :)

Chp 357. Gaming it to the next level - 1

With the smart-phone gaming industry still at its nascent phase, there are indeed a lot of games (and features) I would like to see in the future. I may not have the resource to produce such games, but it won’t hurt spilling out my reviews & ideas here.

First of all, before I begin, I’d like to share something I discovered recently – For all you Androiders, if you go to the Android Market, not the mobile version but the actual site market.android.com and login with your Google account, you will see a complete list of all the apps/games you have downloaded till now!

Lolz. Yeah, all those three-letter-word related apps and other apps you have downloaded and kept hidden from friends and family… they are ALL THERE! Listed. Recorded. Archived. With complete details regarding the download date, version, file size, etc etc. haha! Not so private now huh?

Anyhoo, here is my first review, one of my recent favorite games, and how I think the developers should take it to the next level.



Contract Killer

Originally an iPhone/iPad game, this is probably one of the most awesome games I’ve played on my droid. You’re a contract killer, and your job is to take out the mob. You get orders now and then, sometimes from a rival mob, an informant, or from the cops, and you can also refill your ammunition or buy better weapons using the in-game cash/credit.

Every contract requires around 5 energy, and whether you fulfill the contract or not, you end up losing that much energy. So, as addictive as this game may be, you cannot play the entire day. You need to quit the game now and then after your energy runs out and wait for it to recharge. You can also use your credit to buy energy, but trust me, it’s not worth it.

But it’s been more than a month now since I last played this game. Why? Because if you don’t intend on spending money (real money), it is close to impossible to buy the good guns, especially the Zerstorer!

As I kept advancing, the bad guys were harder to kill, and the level kept getting more difficult, and yet, the bounty did not increase at all. Eventually, if you subtract the cost of ammunition per contract, I wasn’t getting anything at all. I even stopped buying the medikit to get more cash per contract, such that I would die during an ambush rather than buy expensive medikit, but even then, I realized it was going to take me forever to reach my target money to buy the awesome guns.

Plus there is no cash-credit converter. Some guns like the Zerstorer costs 400 credits. Yet, even if I have collected a million cash during my missions, I cannot use them to buy those special guns that can be bought only through credits. Hence I need to buy the in-game cash and the in-game credit separately with real money. A Zerstorer gun, costing 400 credits, would be around $20 (INR 900!)

And yeah, couple that with the fact that the game gets boring after some time… repetitive kills and instructions. You can easily start predicting where the boss’ goons are going to come running out from.

Hence the reason why I stopped playing this game.

----------------------------------



How I wish the game could be like this:

With such an amazing (and realistic) game as this, I wish Glu (the developer) could make it a bit more interesting. Here are some of my suggestions. I’m not talking about changing the interface of the game, like players should be able to run towards an enemy and stab him etc. I’m sticking to the original game action. My suggestions are purely about the gameplay and the kinda story that can come in etc.

1. Locations:

First of all, I want to stop using the single map selection theme.

Instead, how about making this game truly global? Give users the option to travel from one country/continent to the other.

And the user will end up losing quite a lot of energy as he travels, which is ok, as he can always recharge his energy once he lands at his new destination.

At his new destination, he will of course get new sets of orders and who to kill, and most of the targets will be region specific (example – the Yakuza in Japan, the Triad in China, Cosa Nostra in Sicily, Drug warlords in Cambodia etc etc).


2. Weapons:

The guns can also change from region to region, depending on the availability.

Hence, even if the player has managed to buy really good guns in the US, he cannot take his guns along with him when he flies to other countries (for the obvious reason). So he has to start from scratch.

He can take his cash (and credit) along from one place to the other though. And when he returns to a place he has been before, he can use his existing gun there (he probably has a safehouse where he stores his guns and ammunition).

This way, we are making everything more interesting just by introducing different characters and maps, even though the gameplay is the same as before – you get info from somebody and you take the contract.

Remember, at the end of the day, the backend logic may be the same, but if the game is coated with different characters and maps, it will definitely make the game more interesting. Take Storm8 for example. All their games like Ninjas Live, Vampires, Zombies, World War, iMobster etc are (almost) all the same. Take away the character names and tasks, and they are all quite similar, yet most of them are the top downloaded games at the Android Market and iPhone App Store. In the end, the way we package a product really counts too.


3. The Bounty:

Like I mentioned earlier, it sucks when the level gets harder and harder but the bounty remains the same. Collecting money takes too long. If the amount of bounty can increase per level, then it is worth spending more on medikits and ammunitions too. Otherwise, it is purely a waste.


4. Non-scope guns:

Seriously, there was actually no point buying non-scope guns like SMG, shotgun etc. They are not effective at all, and I usually end up wasting an entire clip of ammo before I finally manage to take down one gangster. If this can be changed a bit so that even non-scope guns have their uses (trust me, I thought they would be more useful in the Dockyard fights etc when the enemy is relatively closer to my hideout compared to the other locations, but they still take time to die there too if I use non-scope weapons).


5. Silencers:

Ah this is my dream feature for this game. There should be some guns that can be attached with a silencer/suppressor. How awesome would that be! That way, we can quietly kill off some of the boss’ men one by one, and I can be discovered only if one of the gangsters is within, say 10 meters from the dead body. Unlike currently when I fire one freaking shot (even a tranquilizer gun) and the entire mob descends upon me like a swarm of bees. The silencer should be an option during the gameplay, and I should be able to use it only 5 times. After that I need to purchase it from the store again.


Trust me, making these small changes will definitely change the game a lot, and I for one, will definitely come back to playing it.

Ending this post, here are some screenshots of the game for those of you who have not played this game yet.

Disclaimer: All images in this post are from The Droid Guy, 148 Apps and I code and code.