Nice poem by Amar Palanpuri

આંખોમાં છલકતો કૈફ હશે, હાથોમાં ભરેલા જામ હશે;
બોલાવ્યા અમે ના બોલીશું, પણ હોઠે તમારું નામ હશે.
આંખોમાં છલકતો કૈફ હશે…..

મેં લાખ ગુનાઓ કીધાં છે, પણ સાવ નિખાલસ હૈયાથી;
હો નર્ક જ મારું ધામ ભલે, પણ સ્વર્ગમાં મારું નામ હશે.
આંખોમાં છલકતો કૈફ હશે…..

હું તુજને કરી દઉં માફ ભલે, પણ લોક નહીં છોડે તુજને;
જે માર્ગમાં માર્યો તેં મુજને, એ માર્ગ પર મારું નામ હશે.
આંખોમાં છલકતો કૈફ હશે…..

હો દિલમાં ભલે સો દર્દ ‘અમર’, હમદર્દી ખપે ના દુનિયાની;
મનગમતો દિલાસો મળશે તો, આરામ હશે આરામ હશે.
આંખોમાં છલકતો કૈફ હશે….

ગની દહીંવાલા ની રચના

દિવસો જુદાઈના જાય છે, એ જશે જરૂર મિલન સુધી:
મને હાથ ઝાલીને લઈ જશે, હવે શત્રુઓ જ સ્વજન સુધી.

ન ધરા સુધી,ન ગગન સુધી,નહી ઉન્નતિ,ન પતન સુધી,
અહીં આપણે તો જવુ હતું, ફકત એકમેકના મન સુધી.

હજી પાથરી ન શકયું સુમન પરિમલ જગતના ચમન સુધી,
ન ધરાની હોય જો સંમતિ, મને લૈ જશો ન ગગન સુધી.

છે અજબ પ્રકારની જીદંગી, કહો એને પ્યારની જીદંગી ;
ન રહી શકાય જીવ્યા વિના, ન ટકી શકાય જીવન સુધી.

તમે રાંકનાં છો રતન સમાં, ન મળો હે અશ્રુઓ ધૂળમાં,
જો અરજ કબૂલ હો આટલી તો હદયથી જાઓ નયન સુધી.

તમે રાજરાણીનાં ચીર સમ, અમે રંક નારની ચૂંદડી !
તમે બે ઘડી રહો અંગ પર, અમે સાથ દઈએ કફન સુધી.

જો હદયની આગ વધી ‘ગની’, તો ખુદ ઈશ્વરે જ કૃપા કરી;
કોઈ શ્વાસ બંધ કરી ગયું, કે પવન ન જાય અગન સુધી.

- ગની દહીંવાલા

ગની દહીંવાલા ની રચના

બનાવટની મધુરતામાં કટુતા પારખી જાશું,
નિખાલસ પ્રેમથી પાશે જગત, તો ઝેર પી જાશું…

સજાવીશું તમન્નાઓની મહેફિલ એક દી જોજો,
ધરા ત્યારે ગગન બનશે, અમે તારા બની જાશું…

પડીશું તો ગગનના ઘૂમટેથી મેહુલા રૂપે,
ઉરે ફળની તમન્ના લઈને માટીમાં મળી જાશું.

પતંગાની અગન લઈને ‘ગની’, કંઈ શોધીએ શાતા;
દીસે એ દૂર પેલી જ્યોત, ત્યાં જઈને બળી જાશું.

- ગની દહીંવાળા

Tools for teaching programming

Hi,
     I read a couple of articles at linux journal. Two programming environment, especially meant to teach programming in a very interesting way. Namely, Alice and Scratch. The reviews at Linux Journal are here and here.

Fatal Attraction

Well,
don't get any ideas from the title. This title is given to an incredible chess game that happened between Edward Lasker and George Alan Thomas. Here is the link. Observe, how every move after the Queen sacrifice is forced :-)

Vim Trick : Search and Replace

Today I found out a cool vim trick. Not so much great, but sure it's nice to know.

For example, if you want to search for string consisting of all a's followed by all b's and then reverse it.


aaaaaabbb -> bbbaaaaaa

:s/\(a+\)\(b+\)/\=submatch(2).submatch(1)/

\(regexp\) defines an atom in vim. So the first atom is defined as a* and the second is defined as b*. In the replace pattern we are executing a vim expression. submatch(0) stands for the entire matched pattern where as submatch(1), submatch(2) stands for the strings matched by first atom, second atom etc.

So the above vim command reverses the order of a's and b's. Having a vim expression as a replace pattern gives enormous power and can be used for much more complex things :-)

Nice sher by Amir Khusro

खुसरो दरिया प्रेम का उलटी वा की धार,
जो उतरा सो डूब गया, जो डूबा सो पार
                                  -- अमीर खुसरो  

જલન માતરી - Jalan Matari Gazal

દુ:ખી થવાને માટે કોઇ ધરતી પર નહીં આવે;
હવે સદીઓ જશે ને કોઇ પયગમ્બર નહીં આવે.

છે મસ્તીખોર કિંતુ દિલનો છે પથ્થર નહીં આવે;
સરિતાને કદી ઘરઅંગણે સાગર નહીં આવે.

ચમનને આંખમાં લઇને નીકળશો જો ચમનમાંથી,
નહીં આવે નજરમાં જંગલો, પાધર નહીં આવે.

અનુભવ પરથી દુનિયાના, તું જો મળશે ક્યામતમાં,
તને જોઇ ધ્રુજારી આવશે, આદર નહીં આવે.

દુ:ખો આવ્યાં છે હમણાં તો ફક્ત બેચાર સંખ્યામાં,
ભલા શી ખાતરી કે એ પછી લશ્કર નહીં આવે.

હવે તો દોસ્તો ભેગા મળી વ્હેંચીને પી નાખો,
જગતનાં ઝેર પીવાને હવે શંકર નહીં આવે.

આ બળવાખોર ગઝલો છોડ લખવાનું ‘જલન’ નહીંતર,
લખીને રાખજે અંજામ તુજ સુંદર નહીં આવે.

કરીને માફ સ્નેહીઓ ઉઠાવો એક બાબત પર,
‘જલન’ની લાશ ઊંચકવા અહીં ઇશ્વર નહીં આવે.

- જલન માતરી

Download Lyrics from Rankaar

Dear Friends,
Many of you would like to get lyrics from Rankaar for your personal use. To save you the trouble of writing them down on pen and paper here is the trick you can use :

1. From any browser, load the page containing your favourite song.
2. Click on 'Email This Post'  to email it to yourself. Then you can copy it from your email account. Alternatively, you can do the following
3. Go to File -> Save As. Now, give it any name you want the file to be saved as. For example save it as 'mysong.htm' or 'mysong.html'.
4. Now, from your computer, open this file 'mysong.htm' or 'mysong.html' using Microsoft Word. You will see that now you can select the lyrics of the songs.
5. Alternatively, open this file 'mysong.htm' or 'mysong.html' in WordPad or NotePad.
6. Now, go to Edit-> Replace. Search for 'return false' ( without the single quotes, of course! ) and replace it with 'return true'. Save it and close it.
7. Now, double click on 'mysong.htm', it will open in your browser. But now, you will see that you will be able to select the lyrics/text of your choice.

Contents on Rankaar as under Creative Commons License. Hence, you are free to use it for any non-commercial purpose and you do not plagiarize (look it up in a dictionary :-) ).

--Saurabh Joshi

Rankaar Songs Download

Dear Friends,
Rankaar has stopped support of Firefox browser. Here is a fix for you so that you can continue enjoying your favourite Gujarati music.

1. Install Firefox.
2. Install "User Agent Switcher" add-on to Firefox. You can install it via the link provided, or go to Tools -> Add-ons -> Get Add-ons and search for "User Agent Switcher" and install it.
3. Restart Firefox
4. Go to Tools -> Default User Agent -> Internet Explorer -> Internet Explorer 8 ( you can choose 6 or 7 too )
5. What this add-on does is that it sends the signature of IE 8 to the website to make it believe that you are connecting to the site using IE 8, even though you are using Firefox.
6. Now you can open Rankaar from Firefox.

Note : please note that, having one browser pretending to be another browser will not give you a good user experience, as the pages might not render as they should. Hence, you should use it only to surf websites which requires that you use Internet Explorer only. After that, you should switch it back to default mode using , Tools -> Internet Explorer -> Default User Agent.

ગુજરાતી સંગીત નો લ્હાવો - Enjoy Gujarati Music

Dear Friends,
                     Due to some people with selfish and evil intentions I am removing this post. Those who host their website under 'Creative Commons Licence' should really know the true meaning of it. Creative Commons Licence allows one to use and copy any material for non-commercial use in its original form ( non-derivative ) as long as the due credits are given to original authors ( no plagiarisms ).

Bunch of selfish and self proclaimed gujarati fans just want to increase the hits on their website and want to keep other fellow gujaratis begging. To satisfy their ulterior ego they forced me to remove a post which stated how can one use Firefox and its add-ons to enjoy gujarati music for personal pleasure.


It is worth noting that Firefox ( browser ) and its add-ons like Greasemonkey ( allows to customize look of a page ), Flashgot ( allows downloading of any flash based material ) and User agent switcher ( allows to switch user-agent ) are all in open source domain available for free.

Mitti Cool Refrigerator

Well,
Innovation is not the monopoly of so called highly educated scientist. Innovators and creators walk among us as a common people with not so common talent.

Read about mitti cool refrigerator . We should encourage and nurture more and more such innovations and innovators.

Dependence on technology

Well, This post is coming as a consequence of me being cut off from having mobile connectivity as described in my previous post. Problem is not yet solved, but it got me thinking. It was extremely frustrating initially, and the frustration increased. But now after 4 days of absence of connectivity, I am starting to make peace with the situation. I started wondering how dependent I have become on my mobile. I remembered good old time when I did not have one. In fact, I got a mobile from my own stipend during my Masters. I have never been addicted to SMSing or other kind of mobile addictions people have. I only use it to call people and receive calls. When I am away from my home, I use it for at most an 40 min to an hour and when I am at home, well, I hardly use my cell phone. So I believe that is is just psychological. But this is just scary. A little disturbance in life and I lost peace of my mind. And there are two faces to this situation. Either you make peace with whatever situation ( injustice, unprofessionalism etc ) you are faced with, or you fight back. In the former, probably your conscience will bug you, reminding you that you did not take a stand. You just sat back and just made peace with the situation. In fact, that's what we all are good at. We just turn blind eye and just try to make peace with it. I think, now I understand the situation of India. At every stage, for every service, one has to put up so much fight, that at the end of it, people just make peace with it. They trade their rights ( right to get justice, professional service etc ) and money ( bribe ) for their peace of mind. May be that's why we fair much better at happiness index even we top the charts of corruption. Probably, in a long term and in a bigger picture, peace of mind trumps everything.

Airtel Sucks!

Well,
I think title tells everything that this post is about. I got an airtel SIM on 9th May and submitted all required documents. I got a call from airtel to verify the details I had filled in and I gave appropriate answers. The trouble started when I got an SMS on 29th July saying that my documents were not in order.

I went to Airtel Customer Care at Malleshwaram, Bangalore. Resubmitted all of the documents and filled the form again. They assured me that my mobile connection will not be affected now. 10 days later, suddenly, without warning, they barred outgoing as well as incoming connections. When I went there to enquire, they said that it has been barred due to 'Zero Usage'!!!!

Needless, to mention that I was using this number the whole time. Neither I ran out of balance nor validity. They made me talk to their "(mis)manager" and he asked me to submit the document, yet again!!! I do not see any connection between "Zero Usage" and my documents. After enough shouting, they told it will get activated within 4 hours. When their 4 hours did not get over after my 20 hours ( may be Airtel operates in some sort of parallel universe! ), I went again to Customer Care at Malleshwaram.

Not to my surprise, there were couple of customers already shouting for one reason or the other. I took my turn to shout at them, and now they reduced the time to 30 minutes. I am yet to gain a knowledge of the way time operates in their parallel universe. I am still waiting for my connection to get established.

It is a loot in broad day light, as they even refuse to return my balance in the event of them not able to provide me connectivity!

I have been using vodafone for last 4 years, and used MTNL 3 years before that. Never faced a problem like this. The only thing I would recommend is to keep away from Airtel.

May they rot in Hell!!! Oh, wait, I forgot that they are themselves the creators!

નાઝિર નો શેર

‘પ્રભુના શીશપર મ્હારૂ સદન થઈ જા તો સારુ,
ભલે ગંગા સમુએ મુજ પતન થઈ જાય તો સારુ.’
-- નાઝિર દેખૈયા

મરીઝ ની રચના

ઠોકરની સાથે નામ તુજ લેવાય છે ઈશ્વર,
તું કેવો અક્સ્માતથી સર્જાય છે ઈશ્વર.

હેઠો મૂકાશે હાથને ભેગા થશે પછી જ,
કોશિશ જ્યાં પતે ત્યાં જ શરૂ થાય છે ઈશ્વર.

જો દૂર પેલી વસ્તીમાં ભૂખ્યા છે ભૂલકાં,
લાગે છે તને દૂરનાં ચશ્માં ય છે ઈશ્વર.

કે’ છે તું પેલા મંદિરે છે હાજરાહજૂર,
તું પણ શું ચકાચોંધથી અંજાય છે ઈશ્વર ?

થોડા જગતના આંસુઓ, થોડા મરીઝના શે’ર,
લાવ્યો છું જુદી પ્રાર્થના, સંભળાય છે ઈશ્વર ?

એનામાં હું ય માનતો થઈ જાઉં છું ત્યારે,
મારામાં જ્યારે માનતો થઈ જાય છે ઈશ્વર.

A gazal by manoj khanderia

જરાય દોસ્તો ખબર નથી કે, અમોને શાની સજા મળી છે,
કશુંય તહોમત નથીજ માથે, વગર ગુનાની સજા મળી છે…..

વિનમ્ર થઈ ને કદાપિય્રે કે કરી ના ફરીયાદો જીંદગીમાં,
રહી રહી ને ખબર પડી કે, ન બોલવાની સજા મળી છે…..

ઘણીય વેળા ઉભા રહ્યા તો, અશક્ત માની હટાવી દીધા,
ઘણીય વેળા સમયથી આગળ વધુ થવાની સજા મળી છે…..

અમારા ઘરમાં અમારા અવસર ઉપર નીમંત્ર્યા બધાને કિંતૂ,
હવે અમારી સભાથી અમને વહી જવાની સજા મળી છે…..

– મનોજ ખંડેરીયા

Screen capture utility

I was looking for a utility that can capture screen session in linux. Finally, I found it!

http://recordmydesktop.sourceforge.net/

Research and its impact on our lives

Well, I am sure that many of us are now aware of the "sixth sense" and how it can revolutionize the way we interact with the surrounding. For the ignorant souls, here are the a couple of videos,





The best thing about it is that it will be open source. I would really bow to the guy if he really kicks the fortune waiting for him if he patents "sixth sense" and make it available to masses to make some real change in the lives of people.

Another good news I got to know today is that some student from kolhapur has developed a system so that the electricity can be generated from the water supplied from overhead tanks of buildings. Everyone knows the principle of electricity generation from water, but getting such a nice idea of building small turbines so that it can be used in any building is awesome. I would really hope to see such ideas being implemented in day to day life. Do not know whether builders will make it a practice to incorporate such technologies in their project or not. Having solar cell panels on the roofs is also another source of green energy. Rain water harvesting and many other cool ideas are already there, all we need is to embed and embrace these ideas in our day to day lives. Will we embrace them in time, or whether we will dig the well only when our a** is on fire? Only time will tell, but I sure hope that we wake up sooner than later...

Nice sher by shakhadam abuvala

Copied from the status line of my friend sanjay vaghela.

કેવો તું કીમતી હતો સસ્તો બની ગયો
બનવું હતું નહીં ને શિરસ્તો બની ગયો
ગાંધી તને ખબર છે કે તારું થયું છે શું
ખુરસી સુધી જવાનો તું રસ્તો બની ગયો.
- શેખાદમ આબુવાલા *"ખુરસી"*

Yeh Mera India - Sher

Well,
I was looking for it and found it here (http://mayankshukla1.blogspot.com/2009/11/ymi-ye-mera-india-sher-o-shayari.html). Copying here for my own record :-). Thanks to mayank for posting it.

किरण चाहू तो दुनिया के सरे अँधेरे घेर लेते है |
कोई मेरे तरह जी ले तो जीना भूल जायेगा ||


साथ भी छोडा तो कब,जब सब बुरे दिन कट गए |
ज़िन्दगी तुने कहा आकर दिया धोखा मुझे ||

हमें इस चिस्त से उम्मीद क्या थी और क्या निकला |
कहा जाना हुआ था तय कहा से रास्ता निकला ||
खुदा जिनको समझते थे वो शीशा थे न पत्थर थे |
जिसे पत्थर समझते थे वही अपना खुदा निकला ||

जिसने इस दौर के इन्सान किये है पैदा वो मेरा भी खुदा होगा मुझे मंज़ूर नहीं |

अगर टूटे कीसी का दिल ,तो शब् भर आख रोती है |
ये दुनिया है गुलो की जी इसमें काटे पिरोती है ||
हम मिलते है अपने गाओ में दुश्मन से भी इठला कर |
तुम्हारा शहर देखा तो बड़ी तकलीफ होती है ||