Traveler IQ Quiz Game Nov 30, 2008

So how nicely do you know the world you live in?

OK... Did you ever wish that you live your job or whatever you do and go for a trip around the world. Get into the exquisite hotels around the world. From East to West, From North to South.

Well Fella ! before that lets check how much you about the world. Turn on your imagination and bring the world map in front of you. Then try and imagine these places.

1. Grand Canyon - USA
2. Great Barrier Reaf - Australia
3. Florida - USA
4. The South Island - New Zealand
5. Cape Town - South Africa
6. Golden Temple - India
7. Las Vegas - USA
8. Sydney - Australia
9. New York - USA
10. Taj Mahal - India
11. Canadian Rockies - Canada
12. Uluru - Australia
13. Chichen Itza -Mexico
14. Macchu Pichu - Peru
15. Niagara Falls - Canada/USA
16. Petra - Jordan
17. The Pyramids - Egypt
18. Venice - Italy
19. Maldives - Maldives
20. Great Wall - China
21. Victoria Falls - Zambia/Zimbabwe
22. Hongkong - Hongkong
23. Yosemite National Park - USA
24. Hawaii - USA
25. Auckland - New Zealand
26. Iguassu Falls - Argentina/Brazil
27. Paris - France
28. Alaska - USA
29. Angkor Wat - Cambodia
30. Himalayas - India/Nepal/Tibet
31. Rio de Janerio - Brazil
32. Masai Mara - Kenya
33. Galapagos Island - Ecuador
34. Luxor - Egypt
35. Rome - Italy
36. San Fransisco - USA
37. Barcelona - Spain
38. Dubai - Arab Emirates
39. Singapore - Singapore
40. La Digue - Seychelles

So how many could you picture, How many could you locate? Well, for most of you when you were thinking of a world trip you were imagining of those luxury hotels, historic places, exotic beaches, and what not.

Meaning you must have forgotten the aim of this blog. To test and challenge your IQ. Let me help your imagination and take you to a wonderful Game/Quiz by TravelPod. This will brush up your GK and IQ and get you ready for that trip.

So here is the link for The Traveler IQ Challenge™. This game is also embedded below.

If you face any display problem please play at the link given above.

This Traveler IQ challenge compares your geographical knowledge against the World's Original Travel diary's other 3,372,655 travelers who have taken this challenge as of Sunday, November 30, 2008 at 03:44PM GMT. (TravelPod is a TripAdvisor Media Network member)

Checkout wikipedia for the places you know, you know but can't remember :). So when you have completed the challenge and got your Map IQ high, You can start packing your travel bags. Until then Happy Quizzing.

Display HTML / JavaScript code in Blogger - How to Nov 29, 2008

In my last post about How to add Digg to Blogger I was struggling with how to display html code on my page. Showing code in those beautiful boxes without disturbing the layout / indenting was easy but tricky. You need to know css / html and that the Blogger does not support unescaped code. Also to maintain consistency among all this boxes, is another issue. So here is what I did.

Lets have a look first at the box I am talking about.


So the question remains, how to get it?

Easy... just follow this steps.

As blogger wont take html code as it is... meaning you will need to convert it into escaped code. For that get the code you need to any text editor. Then replace all the < signs with &lt; and all > signs with &gt;. Now copy this escapped code to your blog. There is another easy way to do it. Go to this site -> Text -> HTML Entities Encoder. There are two boxes, copy your code into first box. The escaped code will be generated in the next one. Easy isn't it.

Now how to add those boxes. There are a lot of ways to do it. I will show you the one that I used. First we will make a css class in our blogger template. Use this for Basics of Blogger template. In the css section add this code.

.postCode{
 background:lightyellow none repeat scroll 0 0;
 border:1px inset orange;
 height:150px;
 margin:10px;
 overflow:auto;
 padding:6px;
 text-align:left;
}

You can change the background/border colors height etc to match your needs. Now, we will use this class with a <PRE> tag to format our code in those boxes. So enclose your escapped code in this manner.

<pre class="postCode">
YOUR CODE
</pre>

Tadaa! You are done.

How to add Digg to Blogger - Explained. Nov 28, 2008

Well last day I was trying to add Digg to blogger. I was experimenting on how to add a Digg button on my blog. The digg button should use the auto-generated link of blogger as the digg_url for digging and submitting it for the first time.

After experimenting with my Blog template I came across this way to do it.

Things you should require/know :-

• A Digg Account (optional)
  
• A Blogger Account
  
• Basics of XML/HTML/CSS/Java Script
  
• Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V :)
  

First login into your blogger account. Go to the Layout tab and click on Edit HTML.

If you want you can make a backup of your existing template by clicking on "Download full template" [ If your confident skip this step ]

Understanding the Blogger Template
The basic structure of template has various sections defined. At top there are some variables defined. Which can be changed to change the color layout etc of the Blog.
After the variables the CSS definitions are given. You can edit the different classes to change the blog to your taste.

Now in the body tag you will find all the sections and div defined. Complete blog lies in the outer-wrapper div. And in it you will have the header-wrapper then content-wrapper and lastly footer-wrapper. The content-wrapper will contain the main and the sidebar wrappers.

In them you will have <b:section> and <b:widget> tags defined. So this basic template tells all the widgets that are placed on your page and their position as per the wrappers.

Example code:

<div id='main-wrapper'>
    <b:section class='main' id='main' showaddelement='no'>
        <b:widget id='Blog1' locked='true' title='Blog Posts' type='Blog'/>
    </b:section>
</div>
<div id='sidebar-wrapper'>
    <b:section class='sidebar' id='sidebar' preferred='yes'>
        <b:widget id='BlogArchive1' locked='false' title='Blog Archive' type='BlogArchive'/>
        <b:widget id='HTML1' locked='false' title='' type='HTML'/>
        <b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'/>
    </b:section>
</div>

Now the widget tag... i.e., <b:widgets>
This above basic template just gives you a method for understanding the layout, But to understand how to put the automated url Digg button you will have to understand the code in this widget. So go ahead and click the checkbox marked as "Expand Widget Templates". This will expand the <b:widgets> tags and show you how the widget is implemented in it.

Each widget when expanded will have many includables <b:includable>. Each of this includable will have an id.
Example code:

<b:includable id='flat' var='data'>
  <ul>
    <b:loop values='data:data' var='i'>
      <li class='archivedate'>
        <a expr:href='data:i.url'><data:i.name/></a> (<data:i.post-count/>)
      </li>
    </b:loop>
  </ul>
</b:includable>
<b:includable id='menu' var='data'>
  <select expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + &quot;_ArchiveMenu&quot;'>
    <option value=''><data:title/></option>
    <b:loop values='data:data' var='i'>
      <option expr:value='data:i.url'><data:i.name/> (<data:i.post-count/>)</option>
    </b:loop>
  </select>
</b:includable>

So as seen in this code there are two includables. we are interested in the includables having the id as post i.e.,
<b:includable id='post' var='post'>

So then in this includable we need to add our digg code. This blogger template defines and provides access to its data object. For e.g., <data:post.url/> signifies the url of the Blog post. It is the permalink of each blog entry. The digg widget button provided by Digg needs the post url. So this will generate it automatically for us. Now the code that I have used on to show the digg button is pasted in the includable as shown. You can place it and style it as you like.

Basically you will need to copy from the Digg Box start comment to Dig Box End comment. Copy and paste it in your blog and enjoy the easy Digg Button.

<b:includable id='post' var='post'>
  <div class='post hentry'>
    <a expr:name='data:post.id'/>
    <b:if cond='data:post.title'>
      <h3 class='post-title entry-title'>
     <b:if cond='data:post.link'>
       <a expr:href='data:post.link'><data:post.title/></a>
     <b:else/>
        <b:if cond='data:post.url'>
          <a expr:href='data:post.url'><data:post.title/></a>
        <b:else/>
          <data:post.title/>
        </b:if>
     </b:if>
      </h3>
    </b:if>
    <!--- ==== Digg Box Code by J start ==== -->
    <div class='diggBox' style='margin: 4px; float: right;'>
        <script type='text/javascript'>
        digg_url = &#39;<data:post.url/>&#39;;
        </script>
        <script src='http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js' type='text/javascript'/>
    </div>
    <!-- == Digg Box code end ===-->
    <div class='post-header-line-1'/>

    <div class='post-body entry-content'>
      <data:post.body/>
      <div style='clear: both;'/> <!-- clear for photos floats -->
    </div>

 </div>
</b:includable>

She broke up with Me ! Nov 24, 2008

So they say, every love comes to an end. Or does it?

I thought otherwise until it happened to me. Or did it?

Is it the end of the relationship? Or is it just a breakup and we will meet again. I hope we do.

We had a year long relationship. One Year and 7 days to be precise. Its the time when I came to this city in south. We had a really good time together for like 3-4 months then I kind of didn't pay that much attention, got busy with other stuff. But for the few weeks I had only my beautiful Elf in mind. The relationship was back strong. I was too happy with her for the few days. It was kind of a performance tweak. And then this huge blow, suddenly without even saying a good bye :(.

What happened? What went wrong?

Some might say that I cheated but thats not the thing. I paid equal attention to both of them, Gharwali and Baharwali. And I am sure they both knew that too. They had a great ActiveSync partnership working between them. I guess losing a baharwali is more difficult.

Well thats how they(my friends) say... my lappy T42 is my Gharwali for enjoying at home, and P3450 my Baharwali for outdoors. Yes, my HTC Touch P3450 codename Elf has left me, or I can say the Big Bastard world came between us.

So let me tell you the story, So that I dont have to tell it over and over again.

It happened today, the cloudy weather outside made a way into my life. I as usual woke up late and started for my office. On the way I found an auto and the guy asking 20 Rs extra on the metered fare. I argued and got it settled to 10 Rs. extra. Well everything was usual daily routine until now. When I got down at office, while taking out my wallet I kept the Elf on my bag beside me. Then there was this problem of change of 100Rs. I came out and asked a colleague who was passing by. He gave me the money I gave it to the Auto driver and took the bag and left. I pulled the bag from the handle without looking so he mobile dropped over there. I went upstairs and realised, started calling the number nobody picked it, then somebody started rejecting the call and then switched it off. Well I and you kinda knew this was going to happen.

Well rest you know what I had to do, called customer care barred outgoing calls. Went to customer care office got a duplicate SIM card. Went to police station with the IMEI number filed the complaint.

Now I seriously hope that the good guys of the Police Dept find her out. Otherwise, I am stuck here with a company provided Nokia 1100, Oh my god !!

Well for those who dont know HTC Touch product code name is ELF. If properly tweaked she runs like hell :). Wish the breakup gets over and we are back together. Hope you add a prayer for me.