I’ve been using Winamp for all my audio needs since the early 2000s. And I’m STILL using it after a decade. You ask me why?

1. First and foremost, the ability to smooth fade is what makes Winamp absolutely the best media player on the web. Okay, before you start pouncing by claiming "My beautiful iTunes in my orgasmic Mac does the same", I’d like you to STFU and let me complete my point. I’m not talking about cross-fading here. I’m talking about the fade transitions when you pause, play and move to the next/previous track. This tiny little smart feature simply takes your audio listening experience to a whole new level. Give it a try!

2. Winamp has this superb awesome out-of-the-world plugin called "Visualize Me". If you use Winamp and you haven’t installed this, then please switch to your boring iTunes, because you DO NOT deserve to use Winamp. In simple words, Winamp is incomplete without this hot little plugin. Go here and download it right away: http://www.winamp.com/visualization/visualize-her/146758

Studies by David Buss showed that when couples are in the falling-in-love phase, men’s testosterone levels decrease and their oxytocin levels rise to make the bonding process quicker. This makes men softer, gentler, and more easygoing. At the same time, women’s testosterone levels rise with the excitement and confidence they feel at the start of a new relationship. This increased testosterone makes women hornier, giving the couple the illusion that male and female sex drives must be the same. When this "shagathon" period ends, about three to nine months into a new relationship, their sex drives return to the "default position", leaving a man with the idea that she’s gone off sex and giving her the impression that he’s a sex maniac. Many relationships end at this point.

This being just the tip of the iceberg, there’s an entire treasure of knowledge to be discovered in this book titled ‘Why Men Want Sex And Women Need Love‘ by acclaimed authors Barbara & Allan Pease.

If you’re a regular on my music section, you must’ve noticed a slick audio player used for previewing all my favourite tunes. Of course, you need to have a modern browser for that!

This awesome player was created by a Digital Designer from Amsterdam known on the web as simurai. However, there was one slight drawback to this player – it can only play one single audio file since there is no way of specifying the desired audio file in the page markup. To make this player usable on my music section, I had to move the audio path from the javascript file to the page markup thus solving my problem.

Download ZEN Audio Player (modified for multiple custom audio files)

<div id="zen">
  <span class="player"></span>
  <span class="circle"></span>
  <span class="progress"></span>
  <span class="buffer"></span>
  <span class="drag"></span>
  <div class="button">
    <span class="icon play"></span>
    <span class="icon pause"></span>
  </div>
  <span id="audio">audio/track1</span>
</div>

To explain more clearly, a new span "audio" has been added to the existing markup which specifies the path of the audio file you need to embed. Note that the filename is without extension, since the same is added by the javascript file.

Let me know your thoughts and suggestions!

About ZEN Audio Player

It’s a single-song HTML5 Audio Player, powered by jPlayer, styled and mostly animated with CSS3. About the name? Hmmm… In the stopped/paused state, doesn’t it remind you a little of a dark Zen stone lying on bright sand? (Read more…)

ALTER TABLE [tablename] AUTO_INCREMENT = [count]

Query this in your phpMyAdmin and replace "tablename" and "count" with the desired values.

For example if you specify "0" as your "count" value, then that table id auto-increment gets reset to 0.

input[type=search]::-webkit-search-cancel-button,
input[type=search]::-webkit-search-decoration,
input[type=search]::-webkit-search-results-button,
input[type=search]::-webkit-search-results-decoration {
  -webkit-appearance:none;
}
input[type=search] {
  -webkit-appearance:textfield;
  -webkit-box-sizing:content-box;
}

Include this in your CSS file to reset Webkit’s default styling.

In most browsers, the newly introduced search input renders just like the text input. However, in Webkit-based browsers like Chrome and Safari, the same is rendered with an inset border and rounded corners. This in itself becomes a consistency problem (across different browsers) when you need pixel-perfect styling. A lot of solutions out there seem to work on Safari, but they simply do not work on Chrome. So I sat down, and did a lot of experimenting with all possible code snippets available and came up with this rock-solid solution.

-webkit-appearance:none;

Using this instead of -display:none; makes sure the superflous padding is reset even in Chrome and not just Safari.

-webkit-appearance:textfield;

Makes sure the default rendering of Webkit is reset to make the field look like a plain text input.

-webkit-box-sizing:content-box;

Resets the input width to standard size.

Let me know your feedback on this!

<?php
  ob_start('ob_gzhandler');
?>

Just place this piece of code at the top in your PHP page and you should see a significant performance improvement. Gzip is by far, the most popular and efficient method when it comes to compressing data sent by web servers to browsers. This method claims a reduction in response size by about 70% (source).

If you are using WordPress as your backend, just add this piece of code in your theme’s functions.php:

add_action('init','enable_gzip');
function enable_gzip() {
  ob_start('ob_gzhandler');
}

In case you’re not well familiar with editing WordPress theme files, there’s a neat plugin by James Socol which does exactly this. Download the plugin from here: Link

Concerned whether all browsers would support the Gzip function? Not to worry, most modern browsers support compressed pages. And if they don’t, then this function is simply returned false.

"You are one scumfuck who I want to be dead instantly. I don’t care if you get dismembered or suffer a cardiac arrest. I don’t give a toss if your wife has devised rat poison in your lunch box. I just want you to die. Get off my feet and keep that elbow away from my face."

Just today, when I boarded a local, the pot-bellied bastards weren’t letting me in. So I stood on the foot-rest till two stations and got a chance to slide myself in between two bellies. There… I was somewhat comfortable. Now it was my turn, fine. Around eight mid-aged monsters boarded the train. Half of them risked their wasteful life between the train and the platform while I got myself busy trailing them out. Mumbai locals make you inhuman. They suck away your moralities. Travel in the wee-hours and Satan may fear you, because you start behaving like a rabies infested pitbull.

It’s not as easy to bear as it is to think, when a 120 Kg retard stands on your costly PUMA and you can’t help but watch his disgraceful face, helplessly. And just when you are about to say something, an elbow wades your face through. These are the times when I desperately think to become a Jehadi. Boom! Happiness!

I spend ten minutes of my regretful life in these trains and experience various chemical occurrences happening on my body. It’s my sweat, Mr. Sharma’s sweat, that old man’s sweat, and some unfamiliar mixture of liquids sliding down my body. They begin from my forehead, glaciate down to my neck, while those liquids mix like ‘Ganga-Jamuna Sangam’ and smoothly flow-down till my belly. And why do I wish for fresh air? I don’t know what I am breathing. The air passed from someone’s mouth or – a fucking butt?

It seems the MNCs in Mumbai are providing free first-class travel to their employees. That means more MNCs stuff more losers in the first-class compartment. And everyone seems to have a chip on their shoulders. An accidental touch and they can show you the most venomous of feminine expressions. At least I react that way! Because it’s almost a gay fest when 100 men from all despicable backgrounds cling together. And I’ve seen that men strike when the iron is hot. Be it intentional or unintentional. You do turn into homophiles for each other. Why would a man grab my crotch and why would someone try to sniff my armpits? These are the questions even Satan will shiver to answer to.

So…

Just die everyone who intentionally and unintentionally inflicted tortures and pains upon me causing me lose ounces of blood!

With the introduction of mobile number portability on 20th January, 2011, it would now become possible to switch to another operator without having to change your number. You just need to SMS "PORT <your number>" to 1900. That’s it, done. Within a period of 7 days you will be able to use services of the operator you opted for. Sounds really simple, doesn’t it? WRONG! Let me now shed some light on this treacherous process – in detail. (Note that my experience was with Vodafone)

1. Before putting a request to port out, you will need to make sure all the additional services on your number have been deactivated. This is supposed to be your current network’s responsibility to deactivate it all. But don’t worry, Vodafone will make sure you do this all manually. Yes, they will make you send SMSs to deactivate each service. And the best part is, they won’t tell you about all your active servces in one go. You need to call them 3 times each day to figure out all. For me, I realized I had Home ISD, National Roaming, STD and Mobile Connect all through a course of 10 days. Phew!

2. Clear your unbilled amount before you put in the request. You may ask "unbilled amount"? Yeah, I know, I know. Sounds stupid because unbilled amount will keep on increasing every minute you use your phone. Does Vodafone want me to stop using my primary phone altogether so that the unbilled amount remains the same throughout the porting process? One genius customer care executive even suggested me that I suspend my number… LOL!

3. They won’t let you switch no matter what you do. They will even extend your waiting time on the customer care line for more than 8 minutes. And will stop responding to you on Twitter altogether. My request has been rejected 5 times by Vodafone. Can you believe it?

Background: I’ve been a very satisfied customer of Vodafone since a couple of years now. And the only reason I wanted to switch to Aircel was because of their amazing talktime plans and internet speeds. However, this experience with Vodafone has really lowered their reputation in my eyes. I guess at the end of the day, I’ll just have to drop their SIM card in the dustbin. There’s no stopping me from switching to Aircel now: more than ever!

• I learnt driving in this car.

• I got my license made with this car.

• I had my first accident in this car.

• I got my first job with this car.

And it goes away now, leaving behind all the wonderful memories it shared with me.

I’ve had the opportunity to use a Mac full-time at my workplace. And I can honestly say that the so-called "world’s most advanced operating system" is not really what it claims to be. In fact, it’s a total mess when it comes to usability.

1. Resizing windows

OSX just gives us one tiny little piece of shit on the bottom right corner to pull and resize windows. Yes, you heard it right. And they call that elegance.

2. Maximizing windows

Each window in OSX includes a sorry “+” button which just toggles between the default window size and the last set window size. Fan boys claim there is really no need for a window to occupy the entire screen. Sure, there’s also no need for them to have genitals either.

3. Taking a screenshot

Hold down the "Apple key ⌘" along with the "Shift key" and "3" and release all; then use your mouse to click on the screen; Done! Why don’t you also ask us to remove our undies and choke our manhoods while the screenshot is saved on the desktop?

4. Switching between windows in the same application

New Mac users have been known to figure this out after using the machine for 3 years and more. I’m glad I was able to figure this out much much faster. Use "Apple key ⌘" and the "Tab key" to switch between applications, while the "Apple key ⌘" and the "` (tilde) key" to switch between windows of the same application. Apple, I have a suggestion for your next OS version: let’s have different interesting combinations of keys for different applications. For example, "Apple key ⌘" + "P" + "U" + "S" + "S" + "Y" should work exclusively for Photoshop. And "Apple key ⌘" + "C" + "U" + "N" + "T" will work for Chrome. What say?

5. No write-support for NTFS formatting

OSX can only read files on an NTFS partitioned drive, but cannot write to it. I really don’t have anything to say now, except a big WTF?!