Recovery from injury: 5 weeks and counting

Yep! first plaster of my life.

Got the plaster on my leg cut yesterday. Yeah, i did not mention that I hurt my ankle on 15 Aug 2011 (independence ??) badly. The sad part is, it did not happen doing some sport or hi-octane activity..yep. I had gone to check out on houses for a very good friend and was climbing down stairs near my apartment. Trust me, it wasn't the poor stairs' fault. It was me who was hurrying down ..kind of running :(. Actually, I do that quite often, ie., running while coming downstairs. That is ..no wait..'was' one of my bad habits. Blame my long frame and legs! You know the momentum feels really good while coming down. Anyway, so I ran down the whole stairs and had put my first step on the ground. The ground had some pebbles perhaps..and my left ankle got twisted inwards...it pained like hell when I heard the cluck-cluck sound coming from the feet-side. Here I should mention that in the past too, i've had my ankle twisted quite a number of times, and my ankles are prone to such events. But never did I ended up in this kind of pain. It had always been a sprain which subsided in a few hours.

After hurting my ankle I almost toppled and would have fallen had I not re-balanced myself quickly. Came back home ..hopping on one leg, did a tiny iodex massage and went for a nap. Two hours later I woke up to feel the damn pain, couldn't keep my foot on the ground. Had swelling around the joint too. Mom and I knew that things were not OK and we should visit the hospital. Doc advised plaster for 3-4 weeks and told us that i had a fracture.

Inspite of a five week rest I was disappointed when I did not find the recovery which I expected  ...you know it was my first (and hopefully last!)...some pain is still there if i try to walk normally. To avoid the pain, I have to put my feet slowly, cautiously and being aware of the angle of foot lift and drop. Also have to walk with a stick. Now I've put an anklet, to give support to the joint. I have a feeling that it'll take yet another month for 90% recovery ...too long!

By the way, the whole experience was, in a way, an eye opener. First, body cannot take twists and turns and punishments as it could take..say 3-4 years ago. It grows old :(. Not that I was not aware of this..I have always been somewhat of a fitness-freak, but there is nothing like 'first-hand experience', 'first encounter' or 'pehla-nasha'...call it whatever you want. It is now that I've truly understood..from the bottom of my body.. that regular exercize is super important to keep the bones and other inside stuff (immune, digestion, metabolism level, skin quality, blood flow, bp, heart muscle etc) strong and capable for absorbing jerks and shocks, thereby avoiding the hospital visits. Second, as we grow old we should stop our childish habits ...like running down the stairs ...

A Beautiful Thought

When I read it at first, I did not think of it much. But as I dwelt upon it, gradually the truth behind the idea made itself completely evident. I had heard it umpteen times before, from elders, in books, in the form of quotes, but this was the simplest and most effective form of it. It is: "Thoughts crystallize into actions, and actions quickly solidify into habits". Simple as that. It is very succinct and discreet, but holds the wisdom of worlds.
To test the veracity of the said statement, I took examples from my own experience. To my surprise, it never failed. And why should it? Of-course some wise man must have seen the world before he said it.

Thoughts, then, are the ultimate foundation upon which the outcome of every event of our life rest. Which is why every great man, be it Bapu, Einstein or as a matter of fact even Hitler, emphasized on changing the core thoughts of the masses to obtain desired result. It is only natural that thoughts which reside inside of us, will, in someway express themselves. It is then, only a matter of time and circumstance, that the faithful servant of thought, Action, will show itself. And it is straight-forward enough, you will reap the outcomes of the similar fashion. You will agree with me that if one continues to be in some state of mind, he becomes, or in other words, starts living that state sooner or later. He becomes that state eventually. That state becomes his habit of living and it is certain that everything that will follow in his life will be a mere extension to his state of mind.
Let us take the very typical example of a dissatisfied employee. He may be unhappy with his compensation, environment, the way his employer behaves with him, or he does not find himself suitably skilled with the role of the job. If the employee is a person who harbors only negative thoughts, let us see what is most likely to happen. Since he is unhappy with his work, all negatives thoughts surround him. He thinks ill of his boss, lowly of his job and his life. Action follow thoughts. His interest will suddenly decline in job. He is mostly seen cribbing about everything in his life and polluting the air around him by spreading negativity. Now as a result of all this, the only logical outcome is that the boss notices that he is a non-performer and is morally degrading the environment, and dismisses him, perhaps after some counselling which turns out to be futile and ends in a fight. So, we see that the thoughts which the person fixated upon, finally, resulted in negative outcome for him and most probably for people around him, like his family. Now in same circumstances, had the person been of a positive mindset, the outcome would have been greatly opposite. He thinks foremost, that as he is unhappy about his job he has to do something about it. He thinks of improving his skills, or speaking to the boss, about what is it that is wrong with him. As the thoughts mature, his actions imitate them. He starts building his skills and makes himself better than he was yesterday, or the day before. His mood also cheers up. The quality of his work improves inch by inch and it begins to shine. Then it becomes a habit. With his new found energy and enthusiasm he gives innovative ideas and profitable inputs to the business. A day comes, when amazed by the changes, his boss gives him a raise, and starts trusting him. Good things begin to happen. New opportunities also find him, like a much better job, good friends, and eventually his life takes a 360 degree turn. And he then himself becomes the the state, with which he started.

These examples are common in life and I have witnessed both cases first hand. It can be confidently said, that if one controls his thoughts, he can change his life. There is nothing which can stop him. Because the truth is, what you think, you become. It will not happen suddenly, but gradually it is bound to happen. All that is required to build your thinking and keep your thoughts high and unperturbed. Nature is such, that what you keep thinking, will slowly surround you in your everyday life. From no-where, things, opportunities, people and events which match your frequency of thinking will come to you from all directions. If you are sensitive you may already have noticed it happen at some point, but may have attributed it to chance. It is not chance but a law of nature.

There are no limits to the benefits that we can draw from this knowledge. We can reach anywhere we want, we can learn any skill we wish to, we can be as rich as aspire ...anything is possible. The only mandate is, those positive thoughts, are to be kept alive in one's mind, undiminished, untarnished by tiny obstacles, which naturally will come along the way. There is absolutely nothing which cannot be achieved. Remember, what we think, we will do. And what we do, the outcome will invariably be of same nature. Keep your thinking high and you will always reach higher.

- the usual me

perl script to use google language translate API

I created this script which translated text from one language to another using yahoo's http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ services. But its not the one which i'm going to talk about. That is because in the yahoo version i used perl's LWP module to do a post query on the yahoo server and get back the http response, much like what we see on a browser, and got the translated text using pattern matching operations. That is one crude way of getting things done, but it works!

Now this does the same job but using google services (translate.google.com) and the respective APIs. Its a more sophisticated and efficient way of achieve the same result. Google has exposed the API and the methods for doing this job. You can call them from applications such as - your software, your mobile app, your website or a small script (like tihs one), etc. Mind you, it is illegal to use it for commercial purposes.

For this translate API, you've to generate an activation key (tied to your google account). 

First section is the creation of a LWP::UserAgent object. Then for sanity, convert the text to webformat. Then I've created the url with editable parameters as variables. The text to be converted is $str and needs to be given as command line argument. I like German so its my language of choice for converted text. The response object is created by the get function on UA object. The 'content' method is used on response object for the output, whereas the error state and message are captured in 'is_success' and 'status_line' methods of the response obj. Again, for the desired line in the http response content we need to use pattern matching as shown.

The idea is, how the google (or any) api can be leveraged with perl's lwp module to do some fun programming or something more useful which can solve real problems at your work/school/college. If you've something to share, do comment.
Here's the code:

## google translate API

# https://www.googleapis.com/language/translate/v2?key=INSERT-YOUR-KEY&q=hello%20world&source=en&target=de

use Strict;

use LWP::UserAgent;

use URI::Escape;

if ($ARGV[0] eq "") {

print "Usage: perl lwp12 \"text to be converted\""; die; }

$ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();

$str = uri_escape ($ARGV[0]);

$tolang = "de";

$url = "https://www.googleapis.com/language/translat/v2?key=<yourPersonalKeyHere>&q=" 

. $str 

. "&source=en&target="

. $tolang;

$resp = $ua->get ($url);

if ($resp->is_success) {

$newstr = $resp->content;

$newstr =~ /Text":\s"(.*)"\n/;

print "Text in $tolang:\n$1\n"; }

else { print "Program failed with message: ", $resp->status_line;}

# END


Here is how it runs:

>perl lwp12googletranslate.pl "My first program."
Text in de:
Mein erstes Programm.


Output while error handling:

>perl lwp12googletranslate.pl "my first wife"
Program failed with message: 404 Not Found

perl program to report port status

This program here checks and reports the status of ports on a windows machine. The objective was to check whether some application (web site) was running and hence using those ports. The logic is simple. The ports (actually, ip:port combination) which are needed to be monitored are listed in a file. This could have been kept inside the code, for better performance. But i wanted to keep the "logic" portion separate from "data" portion so data / logic can be edited independently without affecting other by mistake. And ofcourse it is easier for the user to open a file and edit the port file, rather than going through the code and getting in unimportant details. So the port status is available thru windows "netstat -an" command. The status of our ports is checked and the output is logged into a separate log file. This log file, by the way, is read by another software which then puts the data on display for the user. Here's the program. First section is the custom timestamp for log file. Then every port entry in our file (first foreach loop) is compared with every netstat o/p line (second foreach loop) and mark a flag if matched. Then get out of inner loop, check the flag value, and log the entry with a custom message. I guess thats about it. At some places, such as pattern matching, it can be done more efficiently (with less characters) but i like to keep it simple. i think some advanced users may be able to do it with lesser line of code too. Basically it is a straight forward program which produces desired results. For perl beginners it might prove to be helpful and can be used in other similar situations.

#

#

# Purpose: Script to report status of active ports on Windows machine

# Associated Files: 

# 1. portlist.txt - list of ports. File required in current directory.

# 2. log_status.txt - port status log. File is generated in current directory.

# Date: 29 March 2011 

# Author: Abhishek Danej

# Revisions:

#

use Strict;

use Time::Local;

##

## USER EDITABLE PARAMETERS

##

$portfile = "portlist4.txt"; #path to list of ports file

$logfile = "log_status.txt"; #path to log file

$true_msg = "Listening"; #success message in log file

$false_msg = "Not found"; #failure message in log file

##

## END

##

## NON USER EDITRABLE SECTION

($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime(time);

$mon = $mon+1;

foreach $val ($sec, $min, $hour, $mday, $mon) {

$val = "0" . $val if ($val < 10); 

}

$timestamp = ($year+1900) . "-" . $mon . "-" . $mday . "," . $hour . ":" .  $min . ":" . $sec;

#$timestamp = scalar(localtime());

$host = `hostname`;

chop ($host);

open (LOG, ">>$logfile") || die "Cannot open Log file";

#@portlist = ("4757","1111","1101","6000","7153","57153");

unless (open (PORTS, "<$portfile")) {

print LOG "$timestamp ERROR: Cannot open portlist.txt file, program quitting.\n";

die "Cannot open port file."; }

@portlist = <PORTS>;

open (FH, "netstat -an |");

@lines = <FH>;

foreach $ip_port (@portlist) {

$flag = 0;

$ip_port =~ s/\s*\b(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+):(\d+)\b.*\n*/$1:$2/;

next if ($ip_port !~ /:/);

print "Now checking: $ip_port";

# EACH LINE OF NETSTAT

foreach $line (@lines) {

if ($line =~ /$ip_port\b/ && $line =~ /LISTENING/ && $line =~ /\b0.0.0.0\b/) {

$flag = 1;

last; }

}

if ($flag == 1) {

print LOG "$timestamp,$host,$ip_port,$true_msg\n"; }

else {

print LOG "$timestamp,$host,$ip_port,$false_msg\n"; }

}

close (PORTS);

close (LOG);

# END

the week at work

This week at office was really hectic. So many things coming in from different directions without head or tail. Still at the end of it I got to learn new things out of it which I had never touched until now. New Things! well, all know that new things are cool and good learning experience and blah blah. But the truth is...it can only be felt first hand.
I guess I'm fortunate to be in that spot where I get that kick now and then. Apart from that, I also realized somewhere that in the run for being logical my creative side has been diminishing this time. It struck me when I was in that position where I wanted to actually create something from zero and I didnt have any inspiration around me. It took around a week to get those creative cells back to shape. And then ideas started flowing in. So then its true that based on repetitive action our brain makes patterns which we tend to use again and again ..which in turn makes those patterns deeper and stronger. That makes it even difficult to break to neuron patterns later. And slowly our creative juices start to dry up. Hmm..bad na..but if one keeps doing creative things and indulge in new ideas, he can create new patterns and become a 'creative person'. And like every other thing, it requires practice. I had been through Lateral Thinking by Edward D. Bono, and it really left an impact on me. We know so little about our thinking habits came as a surprise to me. It just exposes the whole pattern making stuff. Also teaches how to get out of that rut. ...suddenly gotta a call and gotta hurry to dinner! will catch up later with gyan.

do the new

Road less travelled

this is my first post and the feeling is very new...i guess thats how it feels when one introspects (i've been told, its a good thing). haven't done that lately...but hey..better late than never :)
every now and then we hit a stage when our interests come in the way of our "daily life". that is when we have the opportunity to grab it and think about it, work upon it and feel happy(satisfied, rejuvinated, and other nice adjectives). this time again, i've got an opportunity to explore my very old interest development. just started learning cgi/perl. i just love coding :D will keep posting about how it goes. till then, bis bald!