Update:

If you are using Fiddler 2 follow the instructions in the Fiddler FAQ

Why don’t I see traffic sent to http://localhost or http://127.0.0.1?

Fiddler does not capture packets sent to the localhost URL which makes debugging web applications hosted in your local machine painful.

Here is how I configured Fiddler to debug web applications hosted in your local machine,

Lets say your application is accessed using the URL http://localhost:8090/MySpiffyApp/default.aspx. To make fiddler capture the HTTP requests sent to this URL, all you have to do is edit the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Fiddler\ReverseProxyForPort and set the decimal value to 8090. This tells fiddler to proxy all traffic sent to HTTP port 8888 (default proxy port) to HTTP port 8090. Now access the application using the fiddler proxy port

http://localhost:8888/MySpiffyApp/default.aspx

and you should be able to see the packet trace in Fiddler.

If you see the page below instead of your application then try restarting Fiddler and make sure the registry key name matches exactly as above.

1. Set the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Fiddler\ReverseProxyForPort registry DWORD to the local port you’d like to route inbound traffic to
2. Restart Fiddler

Let me know if this didn’t work for you or if you have another way of debugging web applications hosted on your local machine.

A cool rap video about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) caught my attention and I shared it with some of my old buddies.

I received a few encouraging words mostly in jest about how I should be involved with something revolutionary like the LHC project and drew a few sarcastic comments too.

The email responses from my friends inspired me to write this post and made me understand the significance of the LHC project a little better and also made me realize how we may be overlooking great revolutions happening around us.

Here is my email response,

Dear XYZ,

Thanks for the encouraging words and I enjoyed the sarcasm too…

Revolutions don’t happen overnight… rather they reach a crescendo at the right moment or they erupt from their simmering state into an eruption almost overnight. The trouble with revolutions, too is that you don’t know when they are happening.

The point of sharing that video was to show, how serious research can be presented in a light manner.

And personally, it had a context to me since I recently read this article, Surfer dude rewrites Physics ?that made references to the Large Hadron Collider.
If you do not have the time to read the whole article , here is a snippet that references the Large Hadron Collider,

“…The ultimate proof, or disproof, could then come when the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, begins operating later this year in Switzerland. It is widely anticipated that the LHC will lead to the discovery of new subatomic particles, and string theorists are also betting on it to validate some of their ideas…”

In short, the assumptions we are making about how we are held together in one piece can be shattered by this collider.

This my friend is an example of a revolution in progress since it can explain among other truths the beginning(s) and the end of time…

-Senthil

Sometimes you should never understate the obvious. You have to overstate the obvious.

For example here are some obvious Smart people traps and yet they need to be overstated.

I particularly liked the following observations,

..in order to change the world through politics, you must gain power, and the game of gaining power will fuck you up for sure.”

“…They leave school thinking that the way to be useful and show your smarts is to point out why things won’t work, rather than using some of those smart to find a way forward.”

Can you think of more smart people traps like these?

I hope this is useful to someone. I was trying to set up git and gitweb.

>sudo apt-get install git-core

was successful but gitweb was not,

>sudo apt-get install gitweb
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Package gitweb is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package gitweb has no installation candidate

If you get this error message,

Try sudo apt-get update

and then run

sudo apt-get install gitweb

This installed gitweb successfully.

Online communities are popular. In case, you are interested in building one here are some tips from the trenches.

Highlights from the original article

* Build a personal profile:

While it was difficult to get the attention of the mainstream media, Hamilton did find a receptive audience writing for community and neighborhood papers, and speaking to local women’s groups.

* Take advantage of technology:

Linking up with like-minded sites and including lots of references to other electronic sources — especially to lesser known causes such as Ovarian Cancer Canada — has really helped, Hamilton says.

* Seek sponsorships, not advertising:

Traditional advertising is not always available to website developers and the big companies tend to be interested mainly in an audience of millions, but there are tons of smaller sources of support, she says.

* Building a network of skills:

There is only so much one person can do, and Hamilton draws from a loosely knit association of professionals that ranges from web designers, to regular contributors, to brand management specialists. She gets the skills she needs without the expense of a full-time staff.

Here are some useful CSS links from Christopher M. Leighton-Brooder. Christopher was my colleague and a great designer/ IA.

I asked him for some good CSS links for a beginner and he suggested these, I haven’t gone through all of these links and I am repeating these links verbatim , in his memory.

http://www.gne.net/
http://stopdesign.com/log/2004/07/06/filtering-css.htm
http://glish.com/css/
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson
http://www.stylegala.com/articles/no_more_css_hacks.ht
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/holygrail

I never fully understood the difference between a geek and a nerd like most people.

Last week I was at a Fellowship graduation dinner for cardiologist (tagging along with my housemate Dev)and it appeared that the debate of who is saving the world was settled once and for all in favor of the physicians and the cardiologists of the world.

But life is such a big drama and once again there is a new twist to the tale.

The geeks are showing and leading the way claims David Brooks in this NY Times opinion page article

My “Fellow” geeks and I feel vindicated. Go ahead and tell the world that you are geek.

Its Cool!

In case you are wondering how the Hacker News karma point system works you can follow this thread.

The India that I grew up in was a country of extreme contradictions, socially speaking. A sizable minority does not eat meat and consider themselves “vegetarians”.

The logical conclusion would be that people in India are kind towards animals since they do not eat meat.

Sadly, this is not the case, remember I told you this was a country of contradictions.

Why is this so?

When I was a kid I was programmed to follow this rule,

IF you see a dog
THEN look for a stone to throw at it


This programming probably had something to do with it.

But seriously, this can only be an effect and not the real cause… I have my own non-scientific reasons as to what may be the real cause including a feverish selfishness and a dedicated disregard for others, people or otherwise.

Do you know why people don’t care about dogs or mistreat them in India ? Or If you know why, Please leave a comment.

Thankfully, I have learnt better now and don’t throw stone at people or dogs

People are simply not aware of animal rights in India and fail to acknowledge that animals do have rights. The common excuse I hear is that an average woman/man’s life was worse than that of a dog or a pig.

People have to be kind and treat animals fairly.

What prompted me to write this story was this news article of a couple of German Tourists rescuing a Dog in Madurai, a major city in TamilNadu, South India.

I thank their kindness and hope that people learn to be kind to animals from these beautiful strangers.

The internet was supposed to be scalable in its original design. Its debatable whether that definition extends to applications built for the web.

Apparently not..

The struggle to maintain websites up and running 24/7 is currently a lost battle. Atleast for myspace and twitter. I tried myspace.com a year back and the page won’t even load. I am trying it again for the past couple of days and its only marginally better. I lost all my friend requests and/or invites.

Thank God the software from these guys is not used by my bank. You can only guess what happens if they write software for pacemakers.

Another quick hit in the web 2.0 that is plagued with intermittent service errors is twitter. You read about it here, pictures and all http://mashable.com/2007/12/17/twitter-maintenance/

Update (2007-12-21T04:14:30+00:00):

Techcrunch had a report on the raising twitter downtime, validating my earlier observation.