Where to from here now.

Wow, didn't realize that its been more than a year since my last entry! Last year was abuzz with activities, there was not much idle time. Well, last year is over now, even the last year at GRIET. B.Tech in CSE is complete and now, theres time to do other things :P

Well, first of all, the main thing that comes into mind now, is "What about the future". I've been planning my future carefully, thinking of all that will happen and that might happen. Took insights, help from many people in the industry I want to be in and also from people who are presently working and happy doing what they're doing. What exactly is my plan? Well, that all will be known as and when it unfolds.

Options

After I finished my tenth, the only thing I had to think of was "Biology or Maths" and chose the one I like, i.e. maths. Afterwards it was all a strange 2 year journey. I basically knew that I want to do something with computers, hence always only thought that I should be doing CSE after I complete Inter. Well, inter finished and thanks to my parents, I got to do what I wanted to do. 4 years later, that part is also done.

As years go by, the options become more specific. In one of our long chats, Kunal told me "do what ever u want... if u love it then ur life is set" There were many things discussed before and after that; but that is one thing that I will remember forever. That along with many other chats and discussions has helped me in coming up with the most probable choices for the path to take from now.

Plan A

The thing that is most probably going to happen now is that I will study Masters in CS at SUNY Buffalo. Its a really good university and I'm really glad I got into it. The university offers 4 specializations and the one that I know I will love the most is AI.

Lot of thought went into that decision. The main thing being that I didn't have AI in my BTech (I did have Neural Networks though, liked it comparatively more) and it is generally considered a "hard subject". But after checking all the subjects and the way everything is laid out, I will be learning everything about AI from the ground up, hence the path being smoother for me to take.

Rather than taking subjects that I already know, or which will be "Easier to pass" I will try to take the risk and do something that I really feel like doing. My goal is not to go there and get an MS degree. Its for me to learn what I wish to do, and what I think I will love doing.

Everyone who knows me, knows that I want to live a life doing something with games. It would be like cheating myself if I didn't do what my heart tells me but do what will easily get me a job and settled life. I will only get satisfaction after I have tried my best to do what I always wanted to do.

Its better to try and fail than not try at all.

Thanks to the input from the internet and many people currently in the games industry, I got a realistic picture of what lies ahead; and thanks to my own pessimistic views, I already am prepared for failures. I wouldn't at all be prepared for my failures if it weren't for my parents and brother. They will always be by my side, knowing that, I set forth and once again, make my own decision of what I want to do.

Dreams come true only in stories.

Lot of thought has been put into it, anyone who has had a serious discussion with me knows how much I think. Its hard for me to be optimistic about my future; even as I type, I feel how wrong I am to think that anything I am typing here will go as planned. I tell my self how foolish it is to think so. But the fact that I have written it tells that there is something in me that tells me I can do it.

I always used to imagine myself sitting and doing experiments and getting lost in my own world like the Robin Williams from Flubber (or like in Nutty Professor, or like in A beautiful Mind). My brother will testify about my problem solving self. That thought would immediately lead me to think that a PhD. is best option for me.( There's the absent mindedness thing too :P ) If I have something to do, I'm more than happy to dedicate myself to it, as many years as it takes. That would be the best way to sharpen my skills and get a high entry point into the games industry after completing my PhD.

Thanks to my pessimistic side, very low chances of me doing that exist. So many stories of the perils of doing a PhD.; other thoughts of me telling myself that its just an over optimistic dream, etc made me just stop thinking about it.

Right now what I believe I'll be doing is choose my MS projects wisely, make myself a nice portfolio of tech demos, try my best to get an entry level job and progress from there according to the other huge plan in my head. This will a test of patience and especially a huge fight against the inner self. My exact dream has been available only in a certain Slam Book till now and even thinking of realizing that dream is a huge no-no as my pessimistic side will be all over it like a rabid wolverine.

Well, lets not get into the finer details now... as far as Plan A is considered, it will be most probably what I will be trying to do. There are so many forks in this road, many choices to make.

Plan B

Plan B... well, it is basically something that will only happen if Plan A doesn't happen. Why will Plan A not happen? well, there is still the Visa processing thing left, and the other side of me tells me not to be happy already.

Well, this would mean that I take the TCS Job that I have right now thanks to Campus Placements. What will happen? I will basically be transformed into liking what I will be doing after years of doing it.

If I take this job, the chances of getting to see more places will be higher, and I can always come back home and play games. I can even have a side job of sitting and writing articles for various websites and magazines (of which some, I am doing even now). I'm more into the philosophy of gaming anyways.

This would mean that I will continue to change myself and enjoy what I get, leaving the ever lasting question of "What if" for my Plan A.

Or I can try to break free from it "After a few years of experience" and take inspiration from the words of everyone who has always said that I deserve to be doing something involved with games. Yes, Plan B has its own sub-plans, which I don't want to go into details as I dont even want that to happen.

In conclusion

I will mark today as the day that I promise myself to try what I always wanted to try and find out for myself instead of thinking a lot about it and not doing it. I used to be shy of saying this because my inner self always told me how unrealistic it is to think that I will achieve what I want the most; most of all "Enjoy" when I am in the games industry (I do know how crazy and bad the work environment is in the industry). With no further debate, I'll try and suppress the oppressor.

Expect to see me in a GDC/E3/SomethinRelevant talk sometime soon.

The eye of the Ti...Beholdaaa

"Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder"

No matter who you are, there is good chance that you've heard that somewhere or the other. Usually being used to point to the fact that different people see things differently. Especially when looking at those "Abstract Art" stuff in painting exhibitions.

So, why mention such a well known thing? Recently, I've had many experiences which relate to that saying. In different ways, learned a few new things. Just thought I would write them down here.

*Its not you, its THEM

Well, one thing I realized was that, no matter with what intentions you say it, people will see what you say, how they want to. Recently, someone on a "social site" made a status update saying that he'll have to shave the beard that he has in his profile pic.

I knew him for almost a year (with same pic mapping the id) but never realized that he had a beard, until then. So I told

"I never knew you had a beard, maybe it was the black BG"

Now.. I was actually referring to the actual black BG of the image and how his face was turned sideways and the beard camouflaged in the BG. But.. that person took it as some kind of schismatic remark with me referring to his face as the "black bg"

Yeah, thats how it works.. it doesnt matter with what intentions you say it, if the other person sees you differently there is good chance of everything going bad. Ofcourse, there are two other basic quotes that you remember at this point, the first being "Think twice before saying anything" but at that point.. even if I had thought thrice I would not have seen that coming!

The other one being "Stop f'ing wasting time on the internet with useless discussions" Yeeeaah.. very famous saying that be... I guess I should keep that in mind very much. These things dont help much but build relations that will mostly not substantiate to anything. Thats what I say now.. lets just hope the condition improves.

*Sometimes.. it IS you.



This is something my mom said recently when we were watching "Are we there yet?". I've seen many bratty kid movies, but the kids in this movie were reaaaaaly crazy.. I had no idea why they were doing those and thought that they were just plain spoiled brats. A common case of "लाड्ला बच्चा being जिद्दी " You know.. గారం బిడ్డా. The part where children are over loved by the parents and they start thinking they own the world or something.

The tricks they were doing had no justification for me and then I couldn't handle it and gave a remark about how crazy those kids were.. then mom said

"They are so nice, they're doing all this to keep their mom safe"

:O

I was totally shocked by this, I didnt even see that angle till my mom said that. I was blank for a moment, then saw the movie with mom's eyes and it all made somewhat sense.. that made me realize how people actually think so differently.

(The movie, however, was a reaaaaal struggle for me to watch.. they even had a part with the little girl singing. I pitied ICE CUBE like anything after watching movie)

*The Beauty of Opinion

So, yeah, because of these and many other events like these, I really started seeing things in a few more angles before saying stuff. The "beauty" is pretty subject, its not actual beauty that the QQ is talking about, its "everything", its basically opinion that it is talking about.

I've always kept the difference of opinion in mind, thats why whenever at a forum or blog (where people know I am not some troll).. I usually oppose others opinion (regardless of what I think) just so that I can get a deeper look into why they think like that how they see things.

These things, might feel kinda useless.. buts thats how I roll :P I like studying people and what they think. Such things make it easy for you communicate with people differently, especially when you are part of a team. You don't want to isolate someone, its not an argument there, so it helps in communicating differently and pleasing them (as always.. regardless of your opinion). I believe, throwing away what you think and flowing with conversations just so things happen is the best thing one can do. Only a bit of experience is what is required for one to just leave away his opinion for a small amount of time, without showing with the face, actions ofcourse!

Ofcourse, this is something you might already know. This is just me, stating the obvious facts on The path to Reeteshification

The Yahoo! and Twitter connection!

*The Mystery begins

Not too long ago, Shrikey was asking me what I had done to show my twitter status in Yahoo messenger, that time, I was using Digsby, and I was updating both my Gtalk and Yahoo statuses using that, I thought that he mistook my Gtalk updates to be twitter updates and told him the same.

Few days passed by and then one day when me and Phani were experimenting on Apache server I tweeted about it. Later, Venu came online and was asking Phani, what he was doing on Apache.. we were thinking that he was observing my twitter feed and hence got to know of it. But he said that he saw it in his Yahoo messenger. This time I was not using Digsby neither had I updated the my Gtalk status. He even stressed the fact that it was in Y! Messenger and told the location where it was visible.

*What could it be??

So it had to be some service that I used and forgot about. I then started scanning my memory to see what it could have been, but all tries returned no results. Finally I visited everything.yahoo.com its the exact thing I needed, an exhaustive list of all the web services that Yahoo! provides.

I found some really crazy things via this.. a site called omg.yahoo.com which has a totally "different" layout, something called myweb.yahoo.com that's going to be shutdown soon (redundancy and Recession :P ) then there was as developers.yahoo.com where I got to know that there is a thing called "Yahoo Query language"(No wikipedia entry for it even!) These yahoo people sure are doing a lot of stuff. They have services starting with every letter of the alphabets but Q and X, I wonder what they're waiting for.. just 2 more and your collection is complete!

*The Root Cause!

After looking into those things, I finally found out which place made my yahoo status automatically change to the latest twitter status.

It was MyBlogLog.com. I recently went to that place after finally clicking on a link to it, in one of the blogs I frequent. I found out that it was a service (now) under Yahoo. As soon as I saw I already have an ID for it, I activated it and started adding services.

I added all services I could remember and then left it to that. Little did I know,it has a thing called "NewWithMe" which is a feed combined from the feeds of other services that were entered by me in the profile.

MyBlogLog being a Yahoo service, was updating my yahoo status message to the latest entry in "New With Me" feed every hour, even when I'm offline (i.e the state in which I am 95% of the time)



Finally, the mystery of the Twitter updates and "How is everyone who is not on twitter also talking about my tweets" is finally solved!

In retrospect.. it could have been very easy if someone clicked the blue line and saw that it redirected to MyBloglog :| Oh well, atleast I got to find out "everything" at Yahoo this way :P
Hope it answers all your questions!

Breaking the habit...

Ok.. sorry for that superbly cheesy LP reference, but yeah.. today was special.. I finally did something that I never liked doing.. and liked doing it!

What am I talking about?? "Coaching Classes" ofcourse...finally, on my own.. decided to go to one of those factories that I didn't like so much since... ever.

*School

Well.. till 9th class I never even felt that "it is a competitive world" I would always do what I wanted, read and write exams and top with ease.. then there was this thing in tenth where all teachers would always stress on the importance of getting really high marks. I never actually understood it.. however.. with more attention to "marks" than ever before I wrote the exams. I saw many of my friends go to tuition and other things after school, which I never could understand why they went to.

I am you know, that guy who reads and doesn't battify/byheart every friggin thing.. basically most of you reading this are also of type, so I guess you get me when I say this about tuitions and other things.

Other than that one time when we stayed in karnataka and "kannada" was compulsory (my 3rd class) we (me and bro) didnt go to tution for anything, not that I am against tuition.. I can understand that it helps many people because of the "better" teachers they have.

*Interim-Idiot (Intermediate)

You know.. that time after 10th, the 2yrs where practically ANY place can be called a "coaching center" where the main aim of a "college" is to hold one test after the other, making students feel like they're cattle not humans..I was ok with it for the first year, but then.. some kind of stupid thing happened to me.

Seeing all these people around me read like CRAZY, I started wondering if I really deserved getting good marks because I did far less hard work than others, yet was able to perform satisfactorily... its just that the environment was like that.

I know how stupid it sounds but that's how I used to think of it back then.. I thought that, if I would get better marks, there is someone else loosing an opportunity, and almost everyone around me was like this super hard working lifeless machine who have dedicated their life for this thing hence I felt that they deserved better rank than me ( :| )

So after this, I finally started realizing how everyone is competing for everything everywhere and that this is a competitive world.

*Coaching Classes

Rather than being a participant in the competition, I just slid away, the fire to "be the best" never burnt within me. You can say that was basically the most stupid part of my life. I just started hating all these factories with a passion because it was removing all kinds of fun from everyone, going to one was like shaking hands with satan. I always viewed school in my childhood as that lovely place where you learnt things.. but everything changed because of the poor "Teacher-child" relations, and lifeless lectures.

The best thing in intermediate were those classes when the really awesome lecturers taught, it was only about being there and learning things. Only two were really good, almost everyother class felt so dead that my brain learnt only because it was the min. required thing.

All these dead lectures and other things, confirmed my belief that "learning things on your own" is the best way to do it. I've learnt oh so many things since I was young and those are the things I remember even now.. down to the most trivial details. One is his own best tutor I must say.

*Engg Coll.

Well after coming to engg, I must say I've been having the time of life, because I've been doing what I wanted, learning what I wanted, and doing it the way I wanted! The detached attachment with the lecturers and subjects is such a good thing, I can keep having the best of both worlds. The fact that almost all the subjects are computer things, adds to the learning experience..

However, there is another thing , sometimes the thing you really wanted to learn turns out to be one of the subjects of your engg. course.. so because of this, I found myself NOT learning it on my own.. also because of the sub-par to poor lecturers teaching those subjects to me.. those thing totally died :( That's one of the saddest things I felt.

*Why go to them now?

Well, what happened later is specific to me, don't know if all others can relate to this, but the thing is that, the place that use as my "learning tool" had turned into one of my biggest vices.. yeah.. you know..

Using my computer paired with teh internetz as the source for total timewaste by reading each and every article in 10 blogs everyday, commuting in forums, stalking on twitter, among other things, really effected my life.. infact, it CHANGED it totally..

All I did was now look here and there, and waste time, I would plan on doing something but only rarely did I get anything done, because the system idle process was just one click away (browser)

So basically, there HAS to be a way to limit this.. ofcourse, there is "self control" which I have been rigorously applying since the past few weeks, which btw have been my recent BEST, but no matter what, the best way seemed to be the one where I would stay away from the computer..

The thing is that, I am planning on writing GRE soon, and there is no way I'll be able to dedicate myself COMPLETELY, if I plan on reading it on my own on the computer .. I've been controlling myself while reading oracle, but even then.. I feel that there must be a better way.

There is another fact..these 3years in college, have completely changed my perception of the world. I still understand that its a "competitive place" but after going through all what I have gone due to my ... *ahem* confusions of an immature mind then being the awesome environment that is college life..I.. you know, grew a brain and stopped caring about such things..

You could say.. the thing about "equivalent exchange" from FMA really REALLY helped me understand everything better..( another proof that, there is someone out there in the world who has experienced something similar and written/created something to show you the consequences, also, anime/manga has the answer for everything in life :P )

All I see now is 1)set a goal and 2)achieve it. Try your best and SCREW others and how they perform! Its like you know , back to being the mindset that I was in school, I never actually thought that someone would be "sad because he didnt get better rank because I got one better than him" and nonsense like that :P and neither did I keep a lot of burden on my shoulders.

So basically, now my goal is to just write that GRE exam, and do what I can do.. and the best thing is that the exam is also my kind.. THERE is no frigging RANK,seats and all that nonsense.

*The first experience

So yeah.. after Phani talking me into it (in a common sense way :P ) today I went to the class.. and I must say, it felt good, the thing that I have a "schedule" and I need to do things at a given time, really gives the complete feeling.. and the lack of time after returning, makes me want to keep work first and news later, making things more effecient, its not like I am wasting time, and its not like I am totally shileding off one part of life :D

So yes... thats what happens, you can basically see my tansition from a person with different views, its not called being "hypocrite" its called "growing up" and understanding things :P I have not written anything in a way that it'd give you, the reader, any direct info on what to do, but showed you what I've gone through, which might inderectly help you.

Its how I tread on the...

Path to Reeteshification.

BLatNee, A recurring....occurance

You know.. how you always think.. "OMG this day/trip was so awesome, I hafta write about it!" and end up not writing it at all.. because of how elaborate you want it to be but get busy always and think time is not enough to write it? You know... "procrastination" the never ending cycle that gets you nowhere.

Well.. there is also another thing that I do..I think... a lot.. I usually create the comments that I would get and create total conversations with different personalities even before I actually sit and write the thing. I think of writing it, but once I sit on the computer, something happens, I get distracted and do crazy stuff often "System idle process" stuff.

But soon.. when I get holidays or some "real" free time.. I realize that.. I need to archive my thoughts and start writing whatever was the last thing I thought a lot about.

I totally omit many things just because I think they wont make sense when late..

but well.. times a changing.. from now on , I will sit and write.. whenever I get some time.. just because I love recording things and saying things ;)

I will be tagging those posts with "Blatnee" (pronounced like Matinee, indian way :P ) Its the "Better late than Never" edition of posts..

So yeah.. this has been a public service announcement for both of you who read this place..

Lake House

I saw the movie yesterday.. it was one of those movies that my bro gave me and I have no Idea of.

At first I thought it was a horror movie because the title sounds very apt for one, then from the IMDB page for the thing I saw that it was a drama movie.

I saw that page long back, when I first saw the movie's name after bro me gave the disc.. only thing I remembered was that it was a movie about a former tenant and a new tenant exchanging letters and falling in love.. like some classic hindi movie.

Recently, I started doing things in an ordered fashion and hence was seeing one movie everyday.. finishing up all those backlogs , you know :P So I decided to see "lake house" and put it in.

The beginning

Not until I saw the opening credits did I know that Keanu reeves was the main hero.. I saw that and went "ooh, keanu reeves in a lovey dovey movie?" and wondered how it would be to see him after only seeing in movies like the matrix.

The movie started a bit slow.. the dialogues were over cheesy, it felt kinda boring.. until

THE TWIST

It happens that by some strange magic, the heroine (sandra Bullock :D ) is from the future, and the hero is from the past. The heroin lives in the lakehouse from 2005-2006, and right now the hero has come into the house in 2004.

So by some magic both of em, communicate by putting letters in the mailbox of the same house and using it like IMs where they sometimes, just stand and keep exchanging letters.. the mailbox goes into "unread" position.... automagically!

The explanation

The movie gives no kind of explanation to how it is happening, but I think its not needed.. its just happening! Its fantasy.. enjoy it and see how things play out. The main story is about how they both get to meet each other,eventhough they are talking in a very confusing time lag.

The experience

Just when I saw the "OMG TIME BEND" part.. I started thinking that this would be "my kind of movie" you know like Toki wo kakeru Shoujo and all those.. time travel movies with "love" themes.

Basically, the movie had a great chance of being one of my favourite movies of all time.. it was so confusing (in a good way) that it kept my brain thinking of what all things they could possibly do and how they would meet each other.

But, for some reason.. there were many scenes that were just unnecessary, the characters at time expressed emotions which made no sense, the dialogues... could definitely have been better. There are some other things, but I just cant seem to put my finger on it...it was missing a certain factor that almost every other "great" love-fantasy had. Maybe its the BGM and scenry.. or the direction..

However

Do watch it.. its a nice movie with great twist, It will keep you excited in many parts. There is a lot more to the movie than I mentioned.. don't want to spoil everything :P

I however, wish that this movie is remade after a few years or so.. in a better way. It was good, but could get definitely better in many areas! Or maybe is there already some movie from which this was inspired? something that was done better? hmm... will have to look around on the net first..

[UPDATE] Thanks to my friend I found out that, there IS infact another movie just the same as this one.. and it came before this movie (lake House was inspired from that) and just as you guessed it.. it is infact better than this. Gotta get my hands on that movie soon :D

It's a Korean Movie named Siworae/ II Mare . Check it out :)

ReeTweet : My First PHP/AIR/Twitter ...thing

Well, I am in 3-2 now (thats, IIIyr IIsem ) and its high time that I decided I go "deep", following one of the many paths open to me in the computer field. I can say I am marginally good in many things. Although its "many" its still marginally, I can make a simple webpage for myself, make a poster or two, edit some photos, write some codes, edit videos, mix audio, animate stuff in flash, do some DB management etc.. but nothing did I go too deep where I could actually say I am VERY good at.

My interesting in web-developing started back when I was a 12yr old making websites with flash navigation bars, but it stopped there, afterwards 10th class etc started and it was only curricular learning, extra-curricular things only involved "fun" :P

And seeing that I am very much interested in internet related developments, I thought that it would be better if I did something to expand my knowledge in this field.. So one fine day I asked @aalaap for some suggestions and after hearing what exactly I wanted to do, he suggested I learn PHP, and directed me to a nice learning place for beginners.

And I don't know why, just 5 Days ago it hit me that I should try out Adobe Air too (knew nothing about it till today) and just downloaded the SDK and stuff.

Lets fast forward to today, which after THIS happened, and also when I really started feeling that I should just have one small dabba with me using which I can just keep posting to twitter, not using a browser, so that I dont waste time stalking the timeline :P

So, I set my goal this morning (first "my" day of the holidays) to finally sit and see this Air thing and learn some PHP.

HelloWorld

So, I started off the day by reading how I could make my first "HelloWorld" app in Air. As I read on, I realized that the Air is really awesome! I dont know if there are already things like this, but its basically like having a browser window of your own! You just write HTML things like you would usually do for it to appear in a browser, and then you point that HTML file as the source for your app, and then Air creates a window showing that HTML page, making it look like its a standalone App.(FYI uses Webkit engine)

Pretty good it is! This technique of doing things compliments my forte very much!

So, I kept doing things from that HelloWord tutorial and within no time I had it successfully working.. no hitches or anything :D After doing that, I immediately shifted my attention to PHP

Monkeys are your best friend.

You have your code monkeys, greasemonkeys, lab monkeys, and lots more, @aalaap directed me to this "webmonkey.com" which has good resources and tuts for beginners and experts alike.

So I made my way to that place and then started reading the PHP for beginners tutorial. Everything is basically like just any other programming language you've learnt in the past, so learning that part was not that hard. The main thing was knowing exactly how things work, the way communication between HTML and PHP things happen and all that.

And once again, the way PHP and HTML work together seems like MAGIC, i.e compliments my interests :D

After reading the whole article, ( which I say should be THE way anyone should write tuts! ) I did a bit of experiments with Air and PHP.

Now comes Twitter!

So, after making myself comfortable with how all things work. I started looking at how the twitter API works.. its basically just updating a RSS feed. So I started looking up on how I access and update feeds using PHP, and webmonkey lead me to THIS place.

It has links to things that people have already done to use Twitter API, using different platforms. The main aim here is "Dont re-invent the wheel"

I.E. Rather than sitting and writing those codes of lines again just take them from others who are sharing it.. but this, if you're a beginner, stunts your knowledge..so what I did was just sit lookup all the methods and variables that the person used in his small code by going to PHP.net and tried to figure out what how it was working.

After spending a good amount of time I was comfortable with what all of it meant and what was exactly happening. I also realized that there is a looooooot more to learn.. its the just the beginning.

Here comes ReeTweet!

After observing everything, I finally started making the application. I just used the code provided there in the TwitterAPI Wiki, and then added forms in my HelloWorld HTML.

The first build I made had only Username and Password dabbas, along with the tweet area. Basically not much work was needed to be put into it. Just make your text areas, give them ids, POST the values to the PHP script and then update the twitter.com/statuses/update.xml using cURL commands.

So here is the Box you've all been waiting for!

So simple, is it not?

So, after a few hours of reading and trying out various things, I was finally able to get the thing done in the same day!

First I thought only email id can be sent for the authentication so tweeted that.. then I tried using my Userid instead. It works both ways! :D



It echo()s these lines of text after submitting, I guess I can use the information and then render a nice page after submit :D

Afterwards, I realized that there was no point in using the userid and password, as this was something I created for myself.. so made the simple dabba I was talking about :D

So, yeah thats how I am leaving it for today.. will see more next time.

My app Link is where?

One of the main things that I wanted was that I will get "from ReeTweet" whenever I make the post.. I used to think that it was a parameter in the XML file that I should be updating in order to give the name and link.. but after looking around a bit.. it turns out that .. inorder to get "from app" and make it link to someplace, you must "File a request" and it has many constraints set.

It was very discouraging :( I dont see why they should do that, I mean, make it possible via some xml parameters and people who make things can show it.. I dont see how it can be "abused" linking to something there is similar to linking something in your tweet. Well, I guess its them being on the safe side, or maybe doing that to have an "exhaustive" list of all the apps that people are making.

I just hope that after I finish working on the thing I can get permission to mention my app :P

So what's next?

Well there's LOT of stuff to be done! I didnt take any security measures, and neither did I make more "personalized" here is a small list of things I want to do.

• Look around about what security measure should be taken
• Go back to main page after successfully posting!! (right now have to restart the app :P )
• Add script to show remaining characters.
• AJAXify IT!!
• Make my own icon
• Make a nice BG
• Show @replies in another tab
• Count number of tweets in current session and show

Well thats only a start, I just hope I learn a lot of things doing that :D

Final Thoughts

There is no guarantee that I will be doing web development in my future, as in, job.. but for the moment, I am loving and will keep doing it till..well.. circumstances force me to do something else... I wouldn't be sad if it had something to game programming :P (comfortable with designing algorithms there too :D )

And as for AIR, I have to say! Its far far FAR better than me having to make those swings/jFrames applets in java, this feels so natural to me, and very comfortable with it! Swings and all feel so scary when you look at them, and doing this in Air is... just so ME.

So.. yeah, thats it about what I did today, Now I will look into where I should go next to learn more about PHP, the exhaustive lists and everything at PHP.net are a bit scary :S