All in vain

Recently i had this brilliant thought, here it goes. We normally receive so many calls from unknown numbers, it could be great if we know where this call is actually from. I am wondering this can be easily done in a mobile OS like Android. Here is how i think this can be achieved.

1. Create a DB of name-value pairs for all the operators in India (Some guy here has already done it).
2. When a call is received intercept it and look up the first four digits. If a match is made then display the Provider name and State.
3. Optionally, Map of India with a dot for location :)

So if somebody does it before me then its good, otherwise i think i will take it up later when i get some free time.

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Recently at work i had to generate images from latex equations. I used Miktex latex suite to generate the images. Here is the template i used for generating the images.

== Preamble ==
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\newenvironment{custommargins}[2]%
{\addtolength{\leftskip}{#1}\addtolength{\rightskip}{#2}}{\par}
\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{mathptmx} % rm & math
\usepackage[scaled=1.0]{helvet} % ss
\usepackage[papersize={5.75in},top=1pt,bottom=1pt,left=5pt,right=1pt]{geometry}
\begin{document}
\begin{custommargins}{-2cm}{-2cm}
\begin{flushleft}

== Your equation latex snippet ==

== Postable ==

\end{flushleft}
\end{custommargins}
\newpage
\end{document}

Steps to create image
1) Create a tex file using the above template
2) Create a DVI file using - $LATEX_PATH --quiet --interaction=nonstopmode $temp_tex_file_name
3) you may need to run it twice for formulas to render properly
4) Create png image using - $DVIPS_PATH -q $tmp_filename.dvi -o $tmp_filename.png


You are done!!

Dont forget to write to me if you find it useful.

In one of my previous posts i showed a technique wherein you could reduce the size of your css and javascript files. You run them through a minify engine which strips down all the spaces and comments and possibly zip it as well while serving.

While it is all fine and dandy for a while but after a while you start to think even after the minify-ing process my html page size is still upwards of 300-400K! Then i think you need to do soul searching like i did. Why do we need all those javascript and CSS for anyway? cant we write css which is only 30-40 lines and still keeps my site functional and javascript which "really" helps the vistior.

Post your comments and suggestions :)

Phew a new post after such a long time. It has been a long time i have blogged. So here it goes. This post is about TextPattern. A PHP MySQL based CMS.

I was searching for a simple, elegant and unobtrusive CMS for my personal site. I dutifully headed to opensourcecms.com for seeing the latest and greatest PHP powered CMSes but sadly none of them fitted the bill for me. I was amazed by the bloat and stupidity of those CMSes.

Thats when i remembered about textpattern. I had known it existed for quite a while but never had the time to take it for a ride. Now that i have done it i am quite happy with it and it seems natural to me. I have added one WYSIWYG plugin and an admin theme. Now i am good to go. More to come later.