Today i was testing an application that i have built this weekend for which i need to create some couple of accounts in the application which requires unique email ID for each account and we have to verify it to successfully create an account. (app sends a key in the email to verify )
I have some 3 emails of mine but then i need to create at least 10 accounts to test it properly. insted of creating 10 emails accounts for testing, i found this cool trick .
Gmail doesn’t recognize dots
that means sandeep.eecs@gmail.com is same as sandeepeecs@gmail.com, s.a.n.d.e.e.p.e.e.c.s@gmail.com or sand.eep.ee.cs@gmail.com (cant believe it, just go to gmail.com and try logging in with out dots if ur username has dots. it works 
)
As my application does recognize dots. So each time i enter my emails with dots at different places it thinks them as new email id and creates account for it. and i could finish my testing with one email ID only 
.
Found it interesting so thought of sharing it with you guys.
BTW it seems even Facebooks did same thing for vanity url . facebook.com/psandeepreddy is same as facebook.com/p.sandeep.reddy
Book Review : The Pleasure of Finding things out .
If you have ever seen my signature this is how it looks. I use this every where, passport, bank accounts almost every where . its definitely Not my name “sandeep” .. .. its Feynman my childhood hero. He is the one who taught me how to learn Science . he is my role model, inspiration how to look at things and understand how stuff works in a scientific way.
So how I got to know about Feynman is when i was studying my 10+2 at delta Academy (Hyderabad), Srikanth sir was my Physics Professor (one of my fav teachers) there and one day I went to library and asked for a good Physics book and a guy in the library suggest me to read the book “Lectures on Physics By R P Feynman” thats it the beginning of it all. I read all most all topics from vol 1 and vol 2 which i can understand at that time and Vol 3 was above my head and those book are my life time fav books. if any one ever asked me to suggest a book for Physics i will tell them these books in fact they should be a must read of every physics student. I always regret That i made a wrong decision of not choosing a Physics career. but I am scared of my math skills so due to some wired reasons i came to this field Engineering .. 
Recently i came across this book in the store. it was there in my reading list since long time so i bought it and read it finally so here goes the review..
Title: The Pleasure of Finding Thing’s Out. By R P Feynman.
The book is the collection ranging from a talk given at Caltech in 1959 to his minority report to the space shuttle Challenger inquiry it does bring together a broad variety of his work and offers further insight into the mind of this quirky genius.
Whether speaking about his personal experiences in Los Alamos (discussing everything from his safe-cracking methods to the first atomic blast itself), about cult sciences, about Computing Machines in the Future or, more generally, about What is Science ? (and how it should be taught), Feynman shows the advantages of great curiosity (and a healthy dose of doubt, especially when confronted by authority). The book is filled with anecdotes and speculations, raising possibilities, considering what is and might be possible in the future (notably with regards to things of minute size, from computers to engines). At every turn his mind seems to jump ahead to the next idea.
As the name tells its the pleasure of finding things out that makes people Like Feynman Do science, there is a Thrill in Finding out how world works.
One of his Interview on BBC Horizon . see its simply great he explains that well with no charts no powerpoint. its infectious
Links : Feynman wiki Complete Book review Some of His interviews on BBC Horizon His Picture
Today I was building a simple authentication system for a web project of mine using CodeIgniter with Dx auth Library. and found a bug in the Dx-auth code when used with gmail as smtp server. i was breaking my head for hours to fix it and finally I got the solution. so here is the small tourtial as to how to fix it.
I was using windows vista, Xampp server (php 5.2) with mysql database.
first varify your SMTP connection details Especially port its not 25 (default) but its 465.
Even after you giving all the right configuration details for your SMTP connection like
$config = Array(
‘protocol’ => ‘smtp’,
‘smtp_host’ => ‘ssl://smtp.googlemail.com’,
‘smtp_port’ => 465,
‘smtp_user’ => ‘username’,
‘smtp_pass’ => ‘*******’,
‘mailtype’ => ‘html’,
‘charset’ => ‘iso-8859-1′
);
your code still might not be working and you may get activity time out by localhost or SSL errors . the exact reason i still could not figure out
But Here is how you can fix it
1. go to System\application\libraries\DX_Auth.php
search for the function _email($to, $from, $subject, $message)
$this->ci->load->library(‘Email’);
$email = $this->ci->email;
$email->set_newline(“\r\n”);
$email->from($from);
$email->to($to);
$email->subject($subject);
$email->message($message);
return $email->send();
as you might have observe the line $email->set_newline(“\r\n”); might not be present in your function so just add the line and problem is solved. I found this solution at this place check the video and comments section .
feeling bored today so thought of sharing some reviews about the Books, and documentaries
Books
- Seeds of terror I wrote a review for this check out the Hiperlink
- Indian Caste system A study by Hayavadana Rao : This is a very small book about the Cast system in india. the book tells about how caste sytem got started and how its been followed from the centuries and book gives analysis about different Theory proposed by different people both Indian and foreigns about the origin of Caste sytem. he also talks about Why the bramins are at the top and how they tried to influence the society. there are some references about Buddha, shankeracharya, and there role in caste system. he compares caste system in north India and south India I got to learn many things from this particular chapter. overall the book is very informative its may not be for a light reading but its for the people who want to do some research into caste system.
Documentaries:
Germs Guns and Steel : A friend of mine Sudeep has suggested me to read this book but i did not get it and luckily i got the documentary made by National geographic derived from same book narrated by Jared Diamond the author of the book, The title of this thing can also be called as “A short history about everyone for the last 13,000 years”. have you ever got a doubt that why only Europeans have concerned the whole world and why not Indians or Africans. Are they gifted human beings ? why there is lot of inequalities in human societies like Africans are poor and less technologically developed and why American are highly developed. this documentary give the answer about one simple question even though we all started from the same Origin but why there are inequalities in the societies. the documentary is divided into 3 episode of each 1 hr i guess. check out wiki for more info
The Story of India : The Story of India is a BBC TV documentary series, written and presented by historian Michael Wood, it comes with 6 Episodes. Wow its amazing Show with lot of info abt the history of India present in a very wonderful way. I came to know many new and great things about India If you people don’t know following things then you have to watch the Show.
- There is a fire festival which is being celebrated in india(kerala) (i don’t no the name) where they sings songs with no Words only sounds like the birds and owls make its originated 10,000 years back when there was no language discovered in this world still to this day its followed in kerala in the very same way its done 10.000 years back. this thing you can see only in india
- The harappa is the biggest city in the world at that time.
- there is one village in Tamil Nadu where the entire village is having the genome which roots back to Africa (the African genome is preserved in those people because those people married only people from there village) so they say south Indians came from Africa and North Indians are from central Asia (Aryans)
- Do you know india is the richest country in the world in the medieval period with the Largest GDP in the world.
- Do you know about Soma drink.
- cruelty was ashoka and mugals.
- people died at the time of India and pak division and the things you don’t know abt Indian freedom struggle
- war of the worlds at gaugamela ,greatness of chandragupta maurya, chola kings, Kushan Empire,Raja Kanishka
- and lot more abt India.
I feel this is must watch for all Indians and If you like the idea of watching a really good National Geographic article brought to life, with the lush photography, fascinating facts, sense of discovery and slight superficiality that implies, you’ll love “The Story of India.”
Read the review of Story of India at NYtimes
Emotional life :This Emotional Life is a three-part PBS series that explores ways to improve our social relationships, cope with emotional issues, and become more positive. its very good i learnt lot of things form this show and i rate it 4/5 BTW you can see the real person who has asperger’s syndrome in this show (shahrukh khan MNK) this show is all about social relationships (friends Family and Love) , Effects of stress and depression, what makes people happy and how can we be happy.
Today I would like to share with you how Hackers can hack your Password when you are local network or wireless shared network. (like the Wi-Fi at Starbucks, CCD or in a hotel).
So first I would like to tell you very quickly some thing about how the data you enter on a web page is communicated with the web server.Basically there are be two protocols which can be used to talk to a webserver, they are Http and second one is Https. Https is the secured one its used SSL certificates to encrypt all the data you enter on a webpage and sends to the web server ideally speaking it is very secure and unbreakable until and unless a very HiFi organization (like NSA ) get into the work, they cannot break the code and crack your password.( assuming they are trying to hack using network packet sniffing)
There are two ways the web browser can send info to the webserver one method is GET and second one is POST so if you want to know which one the form is using just open the code and see it will be written some thing like <form action=”some link” method=”Get”>
Now the difference between the two is GET will simply append the parameters inside the form to the url and send it to server some thing like say for example somewebsite.com is having a form like userid and password and a submit button and it uses get method so when you enter userid and password then click submit then the url will be appended like [somewebsite,com/?userif=userid_you_enterd&pass=Password_youentred] the user-scores wont be there i included for better readability. normally any form which asks userid and pass will not use get method. so the second method is POST post also does the same thing but it wont append the parameters in the url but send them to the server in the background without user seeing it. and remember POST do not encrypt your password if there is any way we can see this post message which browser is sending then we will be knowing the password. In this post i will explain you how to see the post message that the browser is posting to the server.
Example of GET Method. check out google : search some thing and see the url.
Example of POST Method. Facebook and all the webpages where Userid and pass is asked.
Now to see what browser is communicating with the server there is a nice plugin for firefox that is live HTTP headers Plugin.
- open your firefox browser go to this link : live HTTP headers
- Install that Plugin
- Restart firefox.
- go to the menu section of firefox tools>livehttpheaders click on it
- A new window will open and there is small check box at the bottom named as capture. check it.
- minimize the window and keep it like that .it is going to capture all the data the browser is sending and receiving.
- open Facebook.com in firefox and enter your id and password click submit. thats it.
- Now go to the window that you have minimized before. it will show some large no of lines with out much meaning for you
On top of this window there are four small tabs Headers,generators,config,about. click on Generators there you will find all GET and POST messages. you see the post message in it you can notice id and password of your facebook account Shown in Plane Text
Here is the screen shot of how it looks the red colored one is My id and Password I know you people will try to crack mine so i have that pass .
So this is how your browser send the data.
This data that you are sending from your system to your local router to the facebook server can some times to taped and the hackers look for such Packets and try to crack your password.
Here are some tools that people use to sniff the data from the local Network or wireless network. these tools will give you all the data that local network users are sending and receiving through a router so it simply works like the httpliveheaders for the firefox but for netwroks ( some of the tools are Kismet Netstumbler Nmap )
Next time when you are brousing on free unsecured network be carefull
Note: As far as my knowledge is concerned about internet that about things presented are correct Please let me know if i made any mistake or Error. and Please take this article as a guide to protect your self from hackers and not to Hack other Passwords.
I recently read the book Seeds of Terror by Gretchen Peters,a good book to know middle east and terrorism. In this book she mainly talks about how terrorists get funds and how they operate, and about why America and NATO are failing in Afghan. and the book also tells us about the power of poppy, as WSJ writes Poppy trade in Afghan witnessed three stages ( good, bad and ugly).
Good: In 1980 at the time of cold war opium funded the holy warriors who fought against invading Russians which is backed by US. Afghan’s used the poppy, Russian soldiers hooked on drugs and later Russia need to call off the battle. ( at this time it was said that CIA was involved in drug trade and had dealing with drug smugglers)
Bad: In 1992, the holy warriors came to power when the Russians left Afghanistan. They grew poppies at a phenomenal rate and used the profits to underwrite their internecine killing, support terrorist training camps and fatten their overseas bank accounts.
Ugly: From 1996 to present is the ugly stage with the Taliban and Qaeda being funded by the Drugs(that is what she says).
She stresses on the point that war on terror can only be won if the high level drug traders are bought to justice and the poppy farmers are shown the alternatives. The book also gives info about how ISI, pakistan and saudi are involved in the drug trade and the economics of it and how the black money is circulated and where most of it ends up.
Over all I get to know many things about Terrorisms,American Tactics, Policy, poor situation of Pak in this issue,plight of afgan farmers, pak stock exchange, and many more thing .
Finally I would like to tell you about the author. First of all I was awestruck when I saw her Picture and wondered how such a beautiful women has dared to go to Afghanistan to do research on terrorism . She is really great. I admire her. She went to afghan in her twenties, did interviews with military officers, local farmers, and even went to the houses of some of the top terrorists.
Thanks Harish Kumar Tungaturthi for sharing this book with me :)
Here I am posting my most favorite poem. I feel this is how a place of learning should be. The first time when I saw this poem , was on a wall at the Delta college in Hyderabad(this is where i studied my 10+2) . I understood the meaning of this poem at that time when Srikanth sir and Ravi kumar was teaching me .I can say that place is exactly like the one mentioned in the poem and till date it is the best part of my learning life. Those 2 years at delta I can’t forget. All thanks to srikanth and ravikumar sir. Very soon I will be posting about best teachers in my life you can read about these people over there .
Here is the poem
Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high,
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken
up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the
depth of truth;
Where tireless striving
stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward
by thee into ever-widening
thought and action–
into that heaven of freedom,
my Father,
Let my country awake.
By Rabindranath tagore.
