I’ve finally decided my plan for Total Solar Eclipse of July 22, 2009 which is going to be visible across(well almost!!!) India. The eclipse, in India, starts from Surat in Gujarat but the Sun would be at ~2 degrees at totality. Also, recent weather conditions have revealed that the coastal regions in Gujarat have been under the wraps of monsoon rain lowering  the chances of observing the eclipse.

As you very well know, India will be having it’s monsoon around mid July lowering the possibility of visibility of eclipse across India. Now, I’m not reach enough to shell out INR 79,000 for a fancy flight across the path of totality. So, I had to stick to the ground and find for a good location to observe it.

As per Jay Anderson during a Workshop at New Delhi, based on last 20 yrs collective record, Indore (Madhya Pradesh)  had the lowest cloud cover, followed by Surat, Gujarat. Also, the Sun would be at ~5 degrees at Indore, giving a little more advantage over Surat. While Surat is quite close to my city, I wanted a place that wouldn’t be too far(coz of my budget) yet not too close (due to Sun’s low altitude). After weighing my options, Indore turned out to be the best option for me(actually, I can tell you this only after eclipse is over :D :-s). So, we, a group of 18 consisting of me and other members of Big Bang Astronomy Club will be heading for Indore to observe The Longest Eclipse of Century.

Here are some details of totality conditions at Indore, based on Xavier Jubier’s (another speaker at the above said workshop) Google Map for TSE of July 22nd, 2009.

First Contact: The first contact is expected to occur at 00:00 UTC(05:30 IST) when Sun would be around ~5 degrees below horizon. Therefore, first contact won’t be visible at Indore.

Second Contact: The second contact is expected to occur at ~00:52 UTC(06:22 IST) when Sun would be around ~5 degrees above horizon. If we are lucky enough to not to have have clouds near horizon(which is highly unlikely because of ongoing Monsoon Season), second contact will be visible to us which also marks the start of ~3 min totality. During this phase one can observe Shadow Bands, a phenomenon still strange to our modern world. We are planning to observe and record them for Dr. Hari Om Vats’s Shadow Band Campaign.

Totality:  The totality is expected to last for 03 minutes and 06 seconds. This phase is the most important phase of the eclipse. The Sun would be ~5 degrees above horizon. It will be the best time to observe & photograph Solar Corona.

Sky during Totality at Indore

Third Contact: After 3 beautiful minutes at 00:55 UTC(06:25 IST), when Sun would be at ~6 degrees, the totality will end with a beautiful diamond ring which again would be visible if there are no clouds. Shadow Bands can be observed during this phase.

Fourth Contact: At 01:52 UT (07:22 IST), fourth and final contact will mark the end of The Longest Eclipse of Century. The Sun would shine at ~18 degrees with no part covered by Moon.

There are other parameters like intensity of light, temperature, cloud cover etc that we are planning to observe and maintain a record of each of them during the eclipse. But, these are, as of now, just ideas. Can’t say until eclipse is over.

So, if you are observing this beautiful eclipse from anywhere, All The Best to you. Don’t forget to tell me how it went for you ;)

Other Resources

AAA, Delhi

Eclipse Chasers Athenaeum

Bangalore Astronomy Society

Solar Eclipse Surat

It’s been quite a while that I actually wrote a good content but trust me, I was busy for good. Recently, I wanted to monitor downloads(not total monitoring, I’ll leave that to Google Analytics and StatCounter, but just how many files get downloaded everyday) of files I posted on the blog. For this, I’ve been using Al Nyveldt’s Simple Download Counter extension for couple of months. I just loved its simplicity and as it’s name suggests, it was pure vanilla simple extension.

But, due to its simplicity, I had to visit each page to check the download counts. Since, the extension used quite a simple XML file, I thought, maybe I could consume the file in a web service and allow a remote client to connect to it and get its local content synched with the server. And Eureka, it was a great idea(maybe just for me but yeah….it saves my time and is comfortable to use :D).

So I created the web service and a client to consume it. To add little bit of security, I’ve included a plain text passphrase authentication that should give you sufficient enough security(in my initial idea, it wasn’t even there).

Now if that’s enough, why don’t you test the client and provide me feedbacks or bugs that you may encounter during your use and if you like it, just leave your thanks :).

Feature List

• Allows you to monitor downloads of files posted on your BlogEngine.Net Blog without visiting your blog.
• Provides a simple list of files that are downloaded and how many times they are downloaded.
• Monitors old and new download values and highlights files that are downloaded since last save.
• Stores copy of each website locally so that it can load last statistics when that site is monitored. Helpful when you are running multiple instances of BlogEngine.Net
• Uses a single password for the purpose of security. Uses BlogEngine.Net’s Membership Provider interface to authenticate web service request.
• Resides in Tray when minimized. Shows a balloon tool tip when a file is(or files are) downloaded.

Requirements

• A working instance of Al Nyveldt’s Simple Download Counter extension which can be downloaded here on the server.
• .Net Framework 2.0 for the client application.

Installation Steps

• Download the Web Service & Client setup from the below link.
• Extract it to your favourite location.
• You will find “downloadstats.cs” under “wwwroot\App_Code”. Open it in your favourite text editor(try Notepad++)
• Goto line 23 & change  the value of default_hash to your own password. You will need it when you connect using the client application.
• Upload the files in given structure i.e. “downloadstats.asmx” to your blog root and “downloadstats.cs” as well as “downloadedfile.cs” to your App_Code folder.
• Install the client application on the client computer.

Usage

• The client application is very simple. You need to provide two three attributes for the application to work.
• First one is Site URL. You need to enter your complete site URL that you use to access your blog. For example, mine is http://www.mayankraichura.com/. The application appends the web service file name(“/downloadstats.asmx”) to the link you provide. So the final link would look like http://www.mayankraichura.com/downloadstats.asmx.
• Password is the value you entered in the downloadstats.cs file. Make sure the password you enter and the default_hash value are same. Otherwise, the application won’t work. The web service uses the default Membership Provider to authenticate user. Therefore, you need to provide the username & password to request your download statistics. You can change your password through Users in Admin section of your blog.
• The default(and the only duration) of update is 1 minute. Once you press the Start button, the client will keep updating the table every 1 minute by querying the web service.
• The client also compares new values with old values and if there is increase in a value, that record will be highlighted with yellow colour.

Download Link

Simple Download Counter Stats Client.zip

Regards,

Mayank Raichura

Recently I was going through the comments I received on my posts and I was shocked to see Spam all over it. These comments seem so genuine that it’s hard to identify that they are spam unless you do a little search over it. For example, I received a comment from a person(or rather a  bot) which seemed so faithful that I couldn’t stop replying to it thanking for his interest over my blog. But when I ran a google search over it, the result page was full of such comment from different BlogEngine.Net sites.

Infact, I’m already using Akismet extension to protect against comment spam but it is clearly visible that it has severely failed to do so. Anyways, it will always be hard to protect your blogs from Comment Spam but what we can do is stop the spammer getting benefit from it.

Let’s first understand the motive behind comment spam. This has to to do with Google’s PageRank feature which, lets just say, works based on the links to different websites. For further information check this page and this page. So, what spammers want to do is increase page rank of their(or their clients’) PageRank by posting comments with links to their sites. So all we need to do is stop Google from indexing these links. And the best way to do it is by using the well known rel=”nofollow” attribute. So let me show you how to implement this feature on your blog.

First of all, it is necessary to know that how comments are shown at the bottom of your blog posts. Well for this, BlogEngine.Net uses a user control called CommentView.ascx that resides in your theme folder. Yes, the control is theme specific and so the c

hanges, we’ll need to make, will be theme specific. I’m just going to show you how to do it in Standard theme that comes out-of-the-box with BlogEngine.Net

Open CommentView.ascx in your favourite text editor(if your don’t have one, I suggest you to try Notepad++).

Look for a line similar to the one given below.

<%= Comment.Website != null ? "<a href=\"" + Comment.Website + "\" class=\"url fn\">" + Comment.Author + "</a>" : "<span class=\"fn\">" +Comment.Author + "</span>" %>

Now, just after class attribute, add rel=”nofollow”. The code should look something like this…

<%= Comment.Website != null ? "<a href=\"" + Comment.Website + "\" class=\"url fn\" rel=\"nofollow\">" + Comment.Author + "</a>" : "<span class=\"fn\">" +Comment.Author + "</span>" %>

This will tell Google not to index the links in the comments section and therefore, the links in the comments in the comment would remain futile.

Your comments and suggestions are always welcome :)

Just received call from my Dad that he was stuck in a heavy hailstorm and high speed wind which he assumes to be of around 50-60 KMPH. As per his information, the hailstorm started around 6 PM and lasted hardly for 15 minutes followed by Heavy Wind that uprooted large trees. One of the trees fell just near my dad’s car and broke the side mirror. A professional photographer has been called upon at the site to take pictures.

Strangely there are no reports of High Speed Wind around Rajkot and as per GujaratWeather.com (WX CallSign CW8030) there is no record of wind above 49.9 KMPH which was reported 3.39 PM, approx 2 hours before the said incident.

It should  be noted that similar incidents have been noted in last couple of years while I have been  a witness to one such incident.

I’m expecting the pictures to come by tonight and will update it as soon as possible.

As I had already hinted in my previous post, I was creating a program that would ease the process of creating extension for BlogEngine.Net. The advantage of this program is that you don’t really have to know everything about BlogEngine.Net Core. Most of the work is done by the program. The program automatically generates the code for settings including initializing it.

Please note that this program is not totally complete. The program generates very limited code and therefore I cannot say that it’s a complete solution. But as far as my needs were concerned, it did fulfil it.

So let me show you how this program works by showing you how to create an extension using this program. Before you start following the steps, let me tell you what the extension will do.

The extension will insert the HTML, you provide through settings page, at the bottom of the posts. So let me show you how to use this program by showing you to create a basic extension.

• Download the program from the below given link and extract the exe to the desired location.
• Run the program from that location.
• As you can see, the program is divided into three sections.

• Basic Info, Setting Details & Settings List
• Add the Basic Info as depicted in picture below

• Also add the Setting Details as given below.

• Now press Add button. The setting should get listed in the table given on the right.
• Again enter the Setting Details as given in the image below and press Add

• Now you should have basic information about your extension plus the settings you need for the extension listed on the right grid.

• That’s it. Now go to Action menu and click on Build Code.

• A window will open the core code which is given below.

#region Using

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using BlogEngine.Core;
using BlogEngine.Core.Web.Controls;

#endregion


[Extension("Adds a signature text at the end of the post.", "1.0", "Mayank Raichura")]
class Signature
{
    #region Declarations.
    private static ExtensionSettings settings;
    private static Post post;
    #endregion

    public Signature()
    {
        InitSettings();
        Post.Serving += new EventHandler<ServingEventArgs>(Post_Serving);
    }
    private void Post_Serving(object sender, ServingEventArgs e)
    {
        post = (Post)sender;
        if (post == null)
            return;
        settings = ExtensionManager.GetSettings(GetType().Name);
        //Settings should be retrieved after this...
        string sigSignature_Text = settings.GetSingleValue("Signature_Text").ToLower();
        bool sigRestrict_to_single_post = bool.Parse(settings.GetSingleValue("Restrict_to_single_post").ToLower());

        //End Settings Retrieval
        e.Body += "\n<!-- Signature extension by Mayank Raichura -->\n";
        e.Body += BuildHTML(sigSignature_Text, sigRestrict_to_single_post);
    }
    string BuildHTML(string sigSignature_Text, bool sigRestrict_to_single_post)
    {
    }

    private void InitSettings()
    {
        {
            ExtensionSettings initialSettings = new ExtensionSettings(GetType().Name);
            initialSettings.IsScalar = true;

            string htmlHelp =
            "<strong>Signature Text:</strong> The HTML that will be injected at the bottom of the post. You can even insert javascript.<br />"
            + "<strong>Restrict to single post:</strong> Check this if you want to restrict signatures to full post view only.<br />"
            ;


            initialSettings.AddParameter("Signature_Text", "<br /><br /><strong>Signature Text</strong>", 50);
            initialSettings.AddParameter("Restrict_to_single_post", "<br /><br /><strong>Restrict to single post</strong>", 50);


            initialSettings.AddValue("Signature_Text", "Regards<br />Mayank Raichura");
            initialSettings.AddValue("Restrict_to_single_post", true);

            ExtensionManager.ImportSettings(initialSettings);
        }
    }

}

• Please observe that all the major work has been done by the program. In normal case, the only code you will need to modify will be the BuilHTML function which is currently empty. Ofcourse you can write other functions and call them in BuildHTML. But what’s best is that you don’t have to go through the API for the extension.
• Now to maintain brevity I’m not going into how to implement the Restrict to full post feature but will directly to insert the signature to the post. Infact, it’s a piece of cake in here.

string BuildHTML(string sigSignature_Text, bool sigRestrict_to_single_post)
{
	return sigSignature_Text;
}

• You are done. Copy the code to a text file, save it as a .cs file and copy it to your extensions directory in ~/AppCode/Extensions/ and your extension should be visible in the extensions page.

Possible Enhancements

• Add support for DataTable (Non-Scalar) Settings
• Add support for other events like Page.Serving, Comment.Serving and many more
• Save/Load project.

A/N: This extension is no where near a full-blown program to create extensions of all kind. But I’ll keep updating it as and when I find time to add extra features.

BlogEngine Extension Base Class Creator.zip

Your comments & reviews are always welcome…..:)

This extension is based Danny Douglas’s  SocialBookmarks Extension. I suggest that you also have a look at it.

What is AddThis?

AddThis is one of the popular(actually #1 per their site) social bookmarking button on Internet. This button eases your burden of maintaining links to each and every social bookmarking site on internet. Instead, the site provides us with a code that, once embedded into your post, opens a small popup with number of ways for sharing your content. Also, it tracks all the bookmarks through which you can analyze.

What AddThis extension does?

Instead of manually embedding the code, provided by AddThis, to each and every post, this extension inserts the code, on the fly, as and when the posts are requested.

How to insall this extension?

• Download the extension from the bottom of this post.
• Extract the AddThis.cs and upload it to your BlogEngine.Net’s ~/App_Code/Extensions folder. If your blog isn’t hosted on root, please change the path as needed.
• Goto Settings and select Extensions tab.
• Look for AddThis under the Name column and click on Edit link on the same row.

• In the next page, change the Username to your own AddThis Username so that you can track your traffic.

• Check Only Full Post  if you want to show the AddThis button when a full post is requested. If you want to show the AddThis button on all post on the default page(as request by Chad), just uncheck it.
• Now, you should be able to see the AddThis button at the bottom of your posts. 

New features in v1.3

• If you don’t wish to monitor your bookmark traffic, just check the Keep Anonymous option and your traffic will not be monitored.
• Now you can choose from multiple buttons supported by AddThis. The details on how to use different button is given in the inside help, on settings page. If you are struck anywhere, just leave a comment. You can see the list of possible buttons here

• I’ve also added a simple option to change between small and large buttons. Check Large Button option to show large buttons. This will not apply to plus button.

Your comments, compliments and bug reports are always welcomed…

Download here --