The Goan » Life

Google Talk Not Authorized – Pidgin / Trillian

Brian — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 04:57:34 +0000

I had been struggling with this problem for quite some time; every now and then Pidgin would refuse to connect to Google Talk and give me a Not Authorized failure message. All credentials, server details and network conditions were unchanged. I installed Trillian and found that when Pidgin failed in this way, Trillian wouldn’t connect either.A few forum threads would suggest updating to newer versions of Pidgin/Trillian or changing servers and re-checking credentials; most were dated threads which are irrelevant today. Pidgin would resume working as suddenly as it stopped, but sometimes after days of being unable to connect. All this time, the GMail based chat would work without issue, a veritable PIA!

I found, entirely by accident that my account had an Account Locked status if I logged in with the official Google Talk client. Unfortunately, I didn’t have their official client installed all this time, so I didn’t realize this earlier. Attempting to login to chat at this time would present you with a captha and after passing through this, you would be able to connect on Pidgin too. Apparently Pidgin and Trillian are foxed when the account is locked and don’t know how to proceed; I have no idea why my account gets locked either… I also don’t know what the platform independent solution is because AFAIK the official client is available only on Windows; logging in and out of chat in GMail didn’t help.

TL;DR If you get a Not Authorized message in Pidgin or Trillian, login using the official Google Talk client, pass the capthca test and you will now be able to connect again, even after quitting the official client.

Friends Youth Magazine

Brian — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 11:00:33 +0000

An old magazine from 1977, 4 years before I was born. Found in my grandparent’s house; thought you guys may find it interesting, especially Anand’s secret

HDFC Bank – Special Message FAIL

Brian — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:08:26 +0000

For at least a year now, I have seen this message greet me when I login to HDFC Bank’s NetBanking site. I have better things to do and always ignore it.

But today I finally gave in and clicked the link…

The Goan Restored

Brian — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 06:09:25 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I lost this site due to human error. Unfortunately I had no backups at all (big mistake, duh) and have only just managed to restore most of the site by hand. I restored the blog posts using Google cache and a friend’s Akregator cache, I’ve had to painstakingly re-post each entry. Other parts of the site which hadn’t been moved over to WordPress were safe on my machine and I restored those immediately, though I did lose all “in progress” conversions of these pages.

Had a few files missing all over the site, some which I discovered as late as today For all of you who took the time to comment, sorry, lost those.

On the brighter side, I’ve invested all of $.05 in Amazon’s S3 service and will be storing weekly backups there.

My New Job

Brian — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:41:19 +0000

…and my new boss.

Okay, I was just planting a few saplings on instruction from my aunt, sometime last week. My holiday ended today; I’m still in Goa, but am now working with different tools and writing some too

State of Maharashtra Hates my Name

Brian — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 07:18:59 +0000

Around 8 years ago, I got my first license, for motorcycles. Everything looked kosher until I noticed my name incorrectly spelt as Brain. I decided to live with it and have used it as proof of age and proof of residence several times, nobody seems to notice the mistake.

So when I started driving lessons, I made sure my name was correctly spelt on the learners license I was issued at the beginning. On the day I completed my driving test, the driving school filled out additional forms and I checked the spelling, again. I asked if I needed a new photo and they said it wasn’t necessary, all details would be taken from the learners license, including some biometric details and my mug shot. So I didn’t bother highlighting the problem in my older motorcycle license. My mistake. All details were copied, except the name. Hooray! So, I’m stuck with this for another twelve years… Brain Victor Fernandes. Cool beans when you’re eighteen, irritating when you’re twenty six.

I can get this fixed, of course, but I’d like to know how much longer this will continue to be accepted everywhere. Hey, remember to check back in twelve years for the results!

Firefox T-Shirt

Brian — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:29:51 +0000

A few months ago, I updated DataFox to work with Firefox 3. It was more than just updating the compatible version numbers, I had some trouble with password management, tooltips and some other stuff I cannot recall right now. I managed to do this in time to claim an AMO T-Shirt which arrived a month ago. I like the way it says Add-ons Development Team on the back

So here are a couple of photos of me being awesome. My face is not included because when I sent an un-cropped version of the first photo to my friend, his monitor exploded! Guess it is just too awesome for most hardware, sorry. True story.

Without me, it’s just Aweso…

Brian — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:26:29 +0000

So, probably 3 whole years after I should have, I finally have started my own blog. I was holding off until I could write my own blog/wiki hybrid article site, but realized I will never have the time to work on either the framework or the articles, so here it is – The Goan blog.

I hope to write about my ongoing experience as a MyEclipse developer, my own little hobby projects, technology and a few occasional rants. Probably write some more about life in India, driving and other stuff (stopping here or this post will never get out).

Thanks to my friends, Riyad and Sushubh for encouraging me to start blogging; if you don’t like this blog, blame them, otherwise, enjoy!