FriendComparé, my first web app

July 13, 2008 13 comments

FriendComparé

Yes, it is called Friendcomparé. To describe it simply, it basically lets you compare your musical tastes with your last.fm friends and neighbors.  You just enter your last.fm username and it brings up a list of your friends and neighbors with whom you can compare. Once you choose to compare, it shows you the top tracks, artists, albums, tags, friends as well as recently played tracks that are common between both the users.

Though it isn’t anything huge, I am happy with it. It took some effort, probably more in the design part than in the development part, to get it somewhat pleasing to the eyes and yes, functional. But it was a fun and learning experience. Along the way, Sameer gave me some brilliant ideas and criticism, for which I am grateful to him. Also, a couple of people at my favorite IRC channal, #think-digit, who gave me criticism and a third-person point of view, and also appreciation :)

As I went on coding and adding new little features, I learnt a lot on creating CSS layouts and programming with PHP. I learnt a lot more CSS tricks which are definitely going to help me out in my next webdesign project ;) . And while coding with PHP, I eventually got hints about its object oriented nature and that how it could make expanding the application a very simple task. In future, I would probably like to make use of AJAX to make it a little more web 2.0 :)

I have this idea of probably building a facebook or orkut application for it, will it be useful? You can let me know in the comments.

Here are a few screenshots:

Build.last.fm: http://build.last.fm/item/433

Yes, I do believe in astrology

May 17, 2008 0 comments

Now before you come to any conclusions about my beliefs and logical understanding of life, hear what I have to say.

I have always believed in astrology since I was in school. Maybe, it was because I was sometimes in a bad mood and it gave me a sense of consolation to know that my horoscope said that I will have low energy levels today.

But the truth of the matter is, I have always been able to connect with my horoscope in one way or the other. It may be because they are so generalized that you can relate to them from several perspectives. But, whether they actually have any meaning or not, they generally do give a sense of optimism and happiness. Thats why I like reading them.

Why am I suddenly talking about astrology? I jumped on to this website, Astrodienst, and was really impressed with its horoscope prediction. Since, I have actually read quite a few of my predictions. They have really neat Personal Daily Horoscope section.

Here’s an excerpt from my prediction for tommorow and I quote here :

Matters of love and affection are uppermost in your mind today. You are conscious of your loved ones and your feelings for them. If other testimonies agree, you might fall in love with someone new. In any case, you are more concerned with love and your relationships than with your own ego. One manifestation of this influence is a pleasant daydreamy mood in which you are not disposed to work, other than creative activity.

Now, you see why I like reading them ;) . Now the daydreamyness and love matters might be because my exams just got postponed a couple of days and I am possibly not going to study tommorow.

What’s a “Geek”?

April 29, 2008 6 comments

Linus Torvalds

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Top 10 Applications that deserve a place in your Windows Taskbar

April 15, 2008 2 comments

I personally don’t like Windows too much. And there is no one reason for it. The registry hiccups, the memory leaks, the startup jams, etc. I don’t think the list will ever end if I sit down and seriously think about it. But this is not what this post is all about.

It’s about the applications that give us a quaint little feeling that somehow using Windows is after all justified ;) These applications range from web apps to utilities and tools for windows. They don’t occupy much of the memory and prove to be very useful many times.

Its important that you choose which applications are more useful to you for 2 reasons :

1. You don’t want to be clogging up your task bar with a no. of icons which not only eat up space but also take up memory ( unless you have a widescreen 19″ monitor and 2 gig memory like me :D . And even then I have to be careful. )

2. As if the startup in windows wasn’t already slow enough, they can make it even more painful for you, that is, if you don’t keep them under a check.

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The dreaming subconscious mind

April 3, 2008 0 comments

Have you ever had that feeling when you felt like you were in a place or situation in which you have always dreamt of being?

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