My Technophilic Musings

• If you are twittering kinds, doesn’t matter online or offline
• If you blog or are interested in all things blog and blogging
• If you live in Delhi, have lived there, have been there, or just connect with Delhi somehow else
• If you want to meet up with your fellow twitterers and bloggers

Then you’ve got to be a part of the your very own City of The People With Hearts, Delhi. How, you ask? It’s as simple as pointing your mice and keyboards towards Delhi Tweetup to get the latest on every scoop about blogging, twittering and blogging and twittering in Delhi (and outside as well).

And if you want to be a little bit more involved, you can also join the Delhi Bloggers’ Yahoo Group.

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Quote of the day: Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: blog, Blogging, Delhi, Delhi Bloggers Yahoo Group, Delhi Tweetup, New Delhi, Twitter

Today, this blog completes one month of its existence in this world. The achievements, although minuscule in comparison to all the biggies out there, are significant for me. It achieved the following things in just 30 days from the first post:

• Front-paged at LifeHacker, HacksZine, and many others.
• Over 10000 (Ten Thousand) “unique” human visitors.
• Over 30000 (Thirty Thousand) page views by humans.
• Over 500000 (Half Million) total hits for all website files included.
• Around 800 downloads of my projects.
• Makes it to the first page on google for many keywords (like wm6.1 htc wizard, ubuntu two soundcards, and many others)
• A google or yahoo search for my name “shantanu goel” now gives around 6–7 links about me (4–5 from this blog) out of the first 10 results. (This changes quite dynamically though)

But this is all because of you, the readers. Thanks a lot and keep coming. I hope I can continue writing stuff you like, because ultimately a blog is written for the people and not for search engines. Do visit my personal blog for my random non-tech thoughts.

Regards

Shantanu Goel

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: blog, downloads, Front-paged, Goel, google search, HacksZine, human visitors, lifehacker, month, one month completed, page views, personal blog, search engines, Shantanu, shantanu goel, shantanugoel, site update, tech.shantanugoel.com, website

INTRODUCTION

This is a very simple script that I did for a friend. It can be used to quickly generate blogrolls.

Input: csv file with blog author names and blog links

Output: OPML file that can be imported into many blogging/blogrolling software and websites (e.g. wordpress, blogrolling.com, etc)

Usage:

shantz-csv-to-opml.pl <input file in csv format> <output opml filename>
Input File Format:
Each line should be like this:
<Name of Author>,<bloglink>,<bloglink>…
e.g.
Shantanu Goel, http://tech.shantanugoel.com, http://blog.shantanugoel.com
There can be any number of blogs for any author, if blogs are more than one, then multiple entries for that author will be made in opml file each indexed with increasing number like Shantanu Goel 1, Shantanu Goel 2, etc

Version History:
0.1 - Initial Version

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: blog, bloglink, Blogroll, convert csv to opml, csv, csv to opnl, generate blogroll, generate opml, Goel, opml, script, Shantanu, shantz-csv-to-opml, Software

For the uninitiated:

Shantz WP QOTD is a plugin to add quotes to your wordpress blog in a few easy clicks. It adds quotes to your posts and your sidebars with a multitude of options for sources and customization.

I made a few additions / modifications to the code and the plugin has been updated to 1.1.0. The changes are:

• Added Custom tag support for adding quotes anywhere in your posts/pages
• Added Custom quote separator support and multi-line quotes support

Config Screenshots:

I recommend that you update to this new version asap, as apart from the above mentioned changes, the code is a bit more cleaner as well, which would run a bit better IMO and also help in any modification if you have in mind. For full details and downloads, go to shantz-wp-qotd page.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: blog, customization, plugin, Programming, projects, QOTD, quote of the day, Shantz, shantz-wp-qotd, shantz-wp-qotd 1.1.0, sidebar, Updated, widget, wordpress, wordpress blog, WordPress Plugin

Motivated by Ronald’s ultimate wordpress plugin tutorial at devlounge, I decided that the best way to learn something is to use it in a live project. Armed with my laptop and multiple flasks of coffee, the marathon began on Friday night. My only experience with web-related development so far had been around 8–10 years ago as a kid when, just like everybody else at that time, I was fascinated by HTML and did a “read-through” of HTML 4.0. But I have always been a believer of the theory that a C programmer can program in any language quickly without having to go through the whole manuals. Thus that night bore fruit for me, and by 5:30 in the morning I had a working “Quote of The Day” plugin at my hand with all the features I wanted it to have in its first avatar. Did a bit of polishing last night, fixed a few bugs, and created a readme, and here it is, Mr. shantz-wp-qotd “1.0”, in all its glory, ready for general consumption.

Features at a glance:

Continue reading »

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: blog, QOTD, qotd plugin, quote of the day, shantz-wp-qotd, shantz-wp-qotd 1.0, widgets, wordpress, WordPress Plugin, wordpress qotd plugin

These are my WordPress related projects.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: blog, blog tools, plugins, themes, wordpress, wordpress plugins

I’ve added a few new sections to the blog. Do check them out. Here is a list of the new sections along with their descriptions.

Projects: Although I wouldn’t put myself in the category of an excellent developer but I can sure type in a few lines that can compile without an error and also manage to carry out a task or two. So, this page will list some of those little things that I write to weed out a few niggles or scratch a few itches of mine. 

Downloads: This page will contain the various downloads that this blog offers for a convenient access.

Submit News/Articles: Like this blog? Have something to contribute? News/Views/Articles/Links that you would like us to share with the rest of the world, can be submitted using the form on this page. Due credit shall be given to you. Also, check the box at the end of the form, if you would like to be a part of the blog as a regular contributor.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: blog, downloads, Programming, projects, submit articles, submit news, updates

A quick googling for best desktop blogging client would yield just a few (read millions/gazillions) results. Having researched the subject a lot, my choices were finally limited down to BlogJet and BlogDesk, as per my feature set requirement goes (Primarily, off line editing, draft, WYSIWYG editing, categories, tagging support, pinging, trackbacks support, timestamping, past post editing, automatic image uploading) BUT there is one little problem. Both of these don’t work on Linux.

Continue reading »

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: bleezer, blog, blogdesk, blogjet, blogs, categories, feisty, IEs4Linux, internet explorer, linux, ping, tagging, trackback, ubuntu, wysiwyg, zoundry

The ‘net is a wonderland. Gives you a lot to read and contemplate about, but that “lot” is too much for anyone to remember about. Hence, this blog. It is a David’ish attempt of mine against the Goliath that internet is, to get all the news (and views) about the things I crave about, at one place. Gadgets, gizmos and technology are the “things”, if you must know.

About me, I’m a lowly earthling, still doing the calculations to weed out the anomalies and create an equation that gives me my “42″. Other beings on this trivial planet call me Shantanu Goel, and yes, I’m a YASP (Yet Another Software Programmer).

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: about, blog, Gadgets, gadgets gizmos, Goel, me, Shantanu, technology, YASP