Hari's Corner

I was helping my brother upgrade his newly launched forum from SMF 1.0.5 to SMF 1.1 RC. All right, so we should have gone ahead and installed 1.1 RC in the first place. But since Fantastico allows installs of 1.0.5 with a single click of the mouse, we thought it would save us the trouble of uploading the installation files and upgrade later at our convenience.

Actually it is a simple upgrade procedure. Just upload and overwrite the old SMF files with the upgraded versions of those files and run upgrade.php. Right! That's what I was thinking too.

It appears that SMF will not work unless you absolutely set the file permissions exactly the way it should be. So first, the upgrade script refused to work at all. At that point, we thought we had somehow screwed up the installation because we kept getting HTTP 500 errors. So we started with a clean plate and reinstalled SMF 1.0.5 all over again and restored the database. Then we tried upgrading again and we got the same error. Now I was convinced that something else was wrong and we had done exactly what the upgrade procedure told us to do. Then with a little bit of searching around in the SMF forums, we realized that there was a problem with file permissions. Finally we managed to set the correct file permissions 755 to upgrade.php and it worked fine. Although there was a bit of trouble with the cache loading the previous error pages which at first led us to believe that we had made another mistake, it sorted itself out all right in the end. We'll now be working on bringing the forum back online after making a few changes to the templates.

I had mentioned before that SMF is definitely not the most intuitive forum software out there from the administrator's point of view. Whatever be the drawbacks of phpBB, it is definitely a much more user-friendly and admin-friendly forum software. However I think the current problems are quite minor and with some time, these little niggles should be smoothed out by the developers of this feature-rich forum package. I eagerly await the next major release of SMF (whenever it is due).

By the way, phpBB has released 2.0.18 after a long period and it's a massive upgrade for those who are doing the code changes manually. Just a tip if you have a heavily modded board - I would suggest applying the upgrade in an offline test server and test it out thoroughly before you take it to your live forum. In any case, always follow the golden rule: take a back up of everything on your server before you proceed. Better safe than sorry!

When I watched Mahendra Singh Dhoni start off against Sri Lanka in the third ODI in such a belligerent fashion, I thought, "if this guy can stay for half an hour, it'll be good entertainment. Whether India wins or loses this match, it'll be good fun." When he went on and on, I thought "I just get the feeling we are on to something here!" (imagine Harsha Bhogle's voice at this point). By the time the match was over and Dhoni had completed his single handed rout of a demoralized Sri Lanka, it was a mixture of immense pleasure and awe at having witnessed one of the most belligerent knocks in One Day Cricket. Beating Adam Gilchrist's ODI record for the highest score for a wicket-keeper batsman was no joke. Dhoni has certainly written his own rules in International cricket and it's probably his ticket to Test cricket as well as he very unsubtly pointed out at the post-match presentation.

I'll just add a couple of things here. First from a purely cricketing point of view, I think Dhoni is one of those players you don't tamper with. Sure, it's easy to praise the guy when he's got a huge century playing so aggressively. But it shouldn't blind us to the fact that he's going to have days when he won't score at all. It's natural that a guy playing with such aggression cannot score big runs every time he steps in to bat. Unfortunately, this century might well alter things for Dhoni. The typical Indian reaction to his knock was one of euphoria, but then the expectations will also rise higher the next time he walks in. There will be experts calling for Dhoni to "play with responsibility and utilize his talents properly." There will also be those who feel he should continue to "play his natural game." Whatever may be their advice, I think Dhoni should be left well alone to do his own thing. For the good of Indian cricket, nobody should ever tamper with his style, technique and most importantly, mindset. Fortunately, we are in 2005 and experience has taught us how to handle such players. When Virender Sehwag first made his way into the Indian team, he brought such a refreshing attitude which endures to this day. There were some who felt that he should "tone down" his game, but luckily he has stubbornly refused such advice and his aggressive attitude has survived up to now. In the 1990s, it might well have been a different story. In 2005, we welcome such players in Indian cricket. No longer are we obsessed with technique, foot movement, finesse and so on. In the era of Mahendra Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan and Virender Sehwag, we've learnt to accept that it's the results which count, not the means. It doesn't matter in One Day cricket whether a guy scores a boundary off an outside edge slashing wildly or scores it off the most beautiful, picture perfect cover drive. Runs are runs and that's what matters ultimately.

There is another issue which I want to raise here. It's about rewarding our cricketers for such brilliant performances. During the post-match presentation, when Ravi Shastri announced the special cash prize of Rs. 10 lakh for Dhoni's performance from the cricket board, I was staggered for an instant. Don't get me wrong - I really did think that Dhoni's record breaking effort deserved a special award. However, let's be reasonable about it. In the euphoria of victory, the local cricket association, the state governments involved and sometimes the BCCI offer huge gifts to players for one-off performances like this. Cricket experts and commentators start groping around for superlatives in their excitement and enthusiasm to eulogize the player. In fact during the post-match review show, good old Kris Srikkanth actually went to the extent of comparing Dhoni with Viv Richards! There is nothing new in all this especially in Indian cricket. However, Rs. 10 lakh is a staggering sum. To add to that, I read this in this morning's paper that Dhoni's home state government is giving him a sum of Rs. 5 lakh! That's 15 lakh earned in a single day! I agree that this was a special performance and I can understand that sponsors sometimes offer huge amounts of money from their own pockets for an especially brilliant one. But think about it: when the BCCI or the state association or the government offers such rewards, whose money are they giving away? With whose authority? How can a single, individual performance in a team game, however great it may be, be rewarded so lavishly? I think such knee-jerk, emotional responses to success in Indian cricket need to be toned down. Tomorrow if Dhoni scores a couple of ducks in a row, are they going to take it away? Let's not deny that there is a streak of irresponsibility in the behaviour of our governing bodies in such situations. I could understand a sum of Rs. 1 lakh even. But 15 lakh! That is surely going overboard. All said and done it's just a game and come to think of it, we've not even won the seven-match series yet. Ok, ok, so it's a religion. But perspective is such a good thing. Let's use it for a change.

Picture courtesy: uk.sports.yahoo.com

There was a peculiar LaTeX problem that I encountered recently with the tabular environment. Controlling the appearance of vertical lines between columns can be a real problem. It was particularly baffling me because although there is a \cline command to draw horizontal lines spanning between a few columns, there was no corresponding command to draw a vertical line that spans only a few rows. By default, when you create a tabular, you can draw vertical lines between columns, but only if they span the entire length of the table.

You can see what I mean, by looking at this screenshot.

As you can see, drawing such a table is not straightforward. It's easy to draw those horizontal lines, but not at all possible to draw vertical lines which don't span the entire table. There was a workaround which I found after asking for help at CQF.info. The solution was to use the \multicolumn command.

Here is the code which produces that effect:

\begin{tabular}{lll}
& X & Y \\
\cline{2-3}
\multicolumn{1}{l|}{Number of bulbs used} & \multicolumn{1}{l|}{100} & \multicolumn{1}{l|}{100} \\
\cline{2-3}
\multicolumn{1}{l|}{Average life (hrs)} & \multicolumn{1}{l|}{1300} & \multicolumn{1}{l|}{1248} \\
\cline{2-3}
\multicolumn{1}{l|}{Standard deviation (hrs)} & \multicolumn{1}{l|}{82} & \multicolumn{1}{l|}{93} \\
\cline{2-3}
\end{tabular}

It's fair to say that LaTeX is not particularly strong when handling tabular material and so you have a lot of additional packages which provide environments such as supertabular, tabularx, longtable and so on. However I am glad that I could resolve this particular issue, although the code involved is much longer since you have to use the \multicolumn command repeatedly. A better solution would definitely be appreciated.

I have always been interested in digging for interesting blogs on blogspot.com and one thing which struck me was how useful the random/pseudo-random "next blog" feature is (when you neglect the occasional spam blog that you come across). It seems to, in a sense, connect so many blogs together and gives a sense of community to the whole blogging business. Another fact is that many bloggers with the blogspot.com address seem to group together with other blogspot users to form "clubs" within themselves. They comment on each other's blogs, feed on each other's blogging talents and thrive on a potentially large audience for their writings. It is a fascinating phenomenon of the blogosphere that so many thousands of people have a medium of self-expression which actually attracts like-minded people to form such social networks. But since I'm hosted on my own site, I have always felt a little bit left out of the mainstream blogging world as represented by blogspot.com.

Before I created my blog, I was aware of blogspot.com. So what prompted me to create my own blog with Wordpress rather than getting my blog hosted on a free blog hosting service? I would say two factors: one was that I had my own web host. I had no reason to look beyond this. Secondly, I was quite uncomfortable with the idea that (theoritically) one day somebody could just shut down the free hosting website and I would be in no position to retrieve my writings. Highly improbable, I know, but it is a kind of psychological feeling of insecurity that you are not in control under such circumstances which influences such decisions. Having decided to host my own blog, at first I was seriously considering using bBlog until somebody on LinuxQuestions.org recommended WordPress as an excellent personal publishing tool. I haven't looked back since. After all, why would I want to host my blog on somebody else's property when I can do the same with much more control and power on my own web space? The fact that I can take regular backups of the database at whatever time I want makes me feel that much more secure.

This is not to say that blogspot is bad or anything. I really think that blogspot has really helped in making blogging a mainstream phenomenon, easily accessible to everybody who is connected. Being taken over by google has also given it a kind of security. In fact, if anything, free blog hosting services seem to be the trend today. You can now own a WordPress blog without your own web hosting space at www.wordpress.com. At present though, it seems to be invitation-only for users of Flock, the new Mozilla-based web browser on the block. But it just shows that the concept of free blog hosting is really taking off in a big way. It just remains to be seen how many of the free services can sustain themselves over the years with a growing number of bloggers adding more and more load on their servers.

I just came across this page on handwriting tips and I thought I would share a few tips on handwriting here myself. I have always believed that the best handwriting can be obtained with good, old fashioned fountain pens rather than ball point pens, gel pens and microtip pens. For a long time now, I've been using a fantastic Sheaffer fountain pen which is smooth and thick-tipped giving me excellent writing comfort and decent handwriting. It is quite an old pen, but it is still in excellent condition and allows me to write for long durations with consistently good handwriting and with much less finger-fatigue.

I don't claim to have great handwriting, but it's decent enough as you can see here. In particular you might find the difference between the thick tipped pen and the thin tipped pen interesting.

What I find interesting is that a fountain pen with a thick tip and smooth flow of ink can do wonders to anybody's handwriting. A thicker tip does two things: for one, it increases the line thickness and it smooths over a few flaws in your handwriting which might otherwise get highlighted by using a thin-tipped pen. Secondly it allows neat handwriting with a very pleasing, straight, rounded style of writing than a narrow, slanted style. It allows me to write much more naturally and smoothly this way, as you can see from the picture. For writing several pages in a row, it's much nicer too. With a thin tipped pen, it becomes much more difficult to control the character shapes in a rounded style. Needs a lot more control too.

Another thing is ink flow. This is obvious. A pen which allows me to apply much less pressure to get a smooth flow of ink going is going to put much less burden on my wrist. It also allows me to write faster and more freely. I have tried different kinds of pens, but never have I got the same kind of smoothness with anything else. Ball point pens are the worst in this regard - they're not meant for long durations of writing. Cheap ball point pens can give you a severe wrist ache, simply because you'll be naturally applying a lot more pressure for the same duration of writing.

A quality I particularly like about fountain pens is the fact that the good quality ones are long-lasting. They can serve you for decades or even a lifetime. Used with high grade ink, they will remain in good condition for a long time. This saves a lot of wastage compared to other kinds of disposable pens like ball-point pens, gel pens and microtip pens - those kinds are simply meant for short-term use and then you just throw them into the dustbin. Before anybody can raise their hands and say, "But fountain pens start leaking after some time and become messy!" I'll just say one thing: when I said "good quality" I meant good quality. The best pens that I have haven't leaked even once. My Sheaffer and Parker pens haven't leaked at all and I've been having them for several years now. And lest you think that good quality pens can only be had for a price, I have another, less expensive pen with a large capacity for holding ink (I humourously refer to it as the "tanker lorry" pen) which hasn't given me much trouble since I bought it. Buying at a reputed stationery shop always helps. Of course, it isn't as smooth as my Sheaffer (how can it ever be?) and obviously it's tip is not as good. However it's a solid workhouse and suitable for voluminous writing work. And in any case, paying a little more for quality always does help too. The value you get in return for paying a slightly higher price is worth it.

Long live the fountain pen!

So India has comprehensively won the first two games of the seven match ODI series against Sri Lanka. There are a quite a few things to be happy about as an Indian cricket fan. Apart from the fact that Sachin has returned to refreshing form with a bang, it has given the new skipper time to settle into his job and has allowed him some breathing space to work at his captaincy. It will also allow some of the new faces to make an entry into the Indian team. Already the likes of Venugopal Rao, Suresh Raina and Sreesanth are competing for places in the Indian side with some of the seniors. In this transition stage, every cricketer will now be on edge. I don't think any senior player can take his place for granted.

In spite of this early success for Dravid, I think we should expect a few failures here and there as well. This is a new-look Indian team and Dravid certainly needs time to establish his leadership. And a couple of victories shouldn't blind us to the fact that this is still a team that is in the process of rebuilding. In my opinion, it's always tough for a team after an established captain who's been at the helm for a long time leaves the team. One thing in India's favour is that Sachin has come back after a long break to fill up some important gaps in the team. It was crucial that he performed now and he has delivered so far. Dravid will certainly need all the help he can get in keeping the critics at bay. It would certainly be interesting to watch how this team progresses over the next few games.

I'm beginning to wonder how Saurav feels about all this. Certainly it won't be easy for Dravid at the stage to captain the side because the selectors have (officially at least) kept their options open and there will be immense pressure from Saurav's supporters in the BCCI for a change if he fails a couple of times in a row. This is why I wish that the selectors would come out with a policy where the captain doesn't have to be uncertain of his post for at least a couple of series. It happens every time in Indian cricket: transition has never been easy and politics has always played its part during such times.

However, one thing is certain: the era of Sourav Ganguly as dada is over. Whatever happens from here on and even if he makes a comeback (which is very likely, given that he's a class player), I doubt whether he will ever hold the same influence on Indian Cricket as he has done over the last four or five years. The selectors have only given an early signal that his International career might practically be over. All said and done, nobody can complain except the Ganguly's most devoted fans. The fact is that he's had a nice, long and successful career as a player and captain and though we all acknowledge his past contributions, it was time for a change. In fact, it was long overdue.

Picture courtesy: uk.sports.yahoo.com