Category Archives: Life

The Arrow of Time

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During one of my sojourns on the Internet, I came across this web page, aptly titled “The Arrow of Time”. It is a web page which was put up by an Argentinian Photographer, Diego Golberg where he and his family took a picture of themselves every year on the 17th of June since 1976. The web page becomes a snapshot of them in time as every year rushes by.

The page has pictures of the couple from 1976 till 2007 as of now! We have to wait till June 17th 2008 to see the next round of updates! Makes me feel like taking a photo of myself every year too!

Check out this page and wish you a very Happy Diwali guys!

Baggage weight-loss program

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My room-mate Mohan started for Sweden on official business last night, and there was no power at our place during that time. I came in around 10 PM to find the house in partial darkness, only our house, the only light inside being that of an emergency lamp. He bid good-bye and left for the airport with me wondering what to do without electricity.

Fortunately, the previous night, I had left my laptop plugged in and it had full power to last atleast for a couple of hours at the bare minimum. Also, with my Data Card on, I figured I could atleast be online for sometime before having a mosquito infested sleep.

I switched on my laptop and sat wondering how I was going to pass the night, the landlord should have slept and that was the reason that I decided to go and ask him the next day about the power cut. Then after feeling restless, I decided to go and find out if it was a blown fuse which I could identify if I could lay my hands on the electricity meter. I searched around the house with the faint light of my mobile phone which was in its last stages of its power. I finally found a hound of meters at the side of the house in a dark section. I thought I figured out the right meter when I saw one which was not showing any moment at all, With glee I decided to open the mesh gate that was enclosing it when to my dismay, I found that there was a lock in place and it was locked.

I returned to my laptop and just sat there wondering how I was going to pass the night when I got a call from my room-mate! My initial thought was that he had left something behind and was calling me to get it for him. He informed me that his baggage was overweight by over 10 kilograms and that it was very expensive to pay extra and hence he asked me to come and get it from him. I started for the airport around 11:30 PM amidst a slight drizzle. I reached there and met him and started transferring all of the artifacts which we figured he could get it there, though most of them were Indian edible items which would not be available at Sweden. Out went all the food items and some heavy clothes. He asked me to wait and went to recheck.

Unfortunately it was still overweight by some seven kilograms and he came back again, this time too, we again took out some stuff, but there was not much left to take. There were very few items that could be removed, we figured that the bag on its own was heavy. This time, he told me that he would pay extra if it was overweight. It was overweight by three kilograms, but the lady at the baggage counter who was stubborn all along allowed him in without any extra expense which I got to know via a phone call from Mohan. Finally!

I returned home around half past midnight and settled for the night with my laptop. I woke up around 11AM the next day and met the landlord and we opened the mesh gate and on investigation found that the wire leading to the fuse box had melted away completely and had to be replaced. Everything was done and I finally had electricity by afternoon. I switched on the geyser to take my bath and found that there was no water. I decided to switch on the motor and found that the motor lay dead!! I figured that they had switched off the mains of the motor and went and confirmed my thoughts. I went upstairs back to my landlord to get the keys to the mesh gate and found that there was no answer at the door, they had gone out. I came back, pondered for a moment, went searching for something long and found a new pencil that was lying around. I used that to turn on the mains switch for the motor.

Water and Electricity finally!!

To the moon and back

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Over the past two weeks, I fell sick and had to be hospitalized in order to recuperate! I was diagnosed with Dengue and was also told that my platelet count was very low and I needed transfusion for my well-being. But as luck was on my side, I recuperated on my own! Then my super-dad came to my rescue and brought me back home.(I was in Bangalore all along). If it had not been for my room-mate Mohan, I doubt that I would have come this far. He helped me get back on my feet!!

Then my dad came over and relieved him of his duty! I couldn’t catch the next flights out of Bangalore to Coimbatore and hence decided to take the usual bus. I landed home the next morning and a couple of “rasam” sessions from my beloved sis, was back up and kicking. I am currently seated at a bus terminal waiting for my bus back to Bangalore which is a half hour late. After being at home for more than a week, I dont feel like going back to work, but work is work and responsibilities are always there. So off I go! Back to the whirlwind I call “Professional Life”…

Reliance Data Card(ZTE) Review

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The frustrating series of unfortunate events that I had mentioned in my previous post have finally stopped and the project was a resounding success! If not for confidentiality reasons, I would have let the world know of a great deal of tips and tricks that they would probably come in a situation similar to mine, but more on that later.

[UPDATE : Dec 2008] : I have been using this connection for over a year and I dont see any major problems with this card or connection. I do not use NetBooster(since the proxy server goes down every now and then). But otherwise, the connection is pretty decent. If you are facing connection issues, please check your network signal strength.

I finally got myself a data card for mobile internet access. I was previously using my Nokia 3230 as a modem and was browsing through it, but it would be really frustrating at times when the connection would be active, but when there would be no response from the server. Then after that, I was using this BSNL broadband at my place which was very good, but it was shared with my room-mates and I found it difficult to use when I really needed it.

Getting a BSNL connection takes time, so I decided to get an Airtel Broadband connection and to my dismay, found that it wasn’t available at my location. So finally, after conducting some research on my own, found that the reliance data card was the best choice of the lot, being wireless, minimal setup and with the advantage of carrying it everywhere. While I have personally experienced a little improvement when using CDMA for data transfer versus GSM.. Hence I decided to go for a CDMA Data Card instead of a GSM data card, like the one offered by Airtel.

The available two choices were from Tata Indicom and the other from Reliance Communications. Though performance-wise, I found that both were the same, the delimiting factor being the strength of the network signal at your place of usage. Then I found a deal at Reliance that seemed good and went for it, I took a plan which had a one time payment of something around INR 9K for which I got a one year subscription of the Reliance NetConnect Service, with 1GB usage per month for a year and with the cost of the card being waived(more tariffs here). Initially I faced some problems with the account not being activated even after being assured by the salesperson at the Forum Branch, Bangalore. After more than a day of calling them(the branch, read below for Customer Service), they finally activated my account. The most disappointing thing about Reliance was that I could not connect to any of their support lines, getting a ‘busy’ tone even at 1:00 AM in the morning.

Then I found that the service kept getting disconnected even when the device could detect three ‘points’ of the signal, with 5 being full. I decided that I needed a powerful signal and hence I sat at another location which had four points and found that I could get decent connectivity at that location. The bottom-line now is that if you have a good signal, your connection will also be good, but if not, its as good as nothing. So check if you have a good signal using any cell-phone(borrow it from your friends!) before buying either of the cards.

One other feature I noticed is the NetBooster software by Venturi Wireless that is provided by Reliance.. I found this to be extremely effective. The software connects to its server which acts as a proxy for our connection, All content is routed through that proxy and depending on our settings, we can load pages much faster. It was interesting to see how they were doing it, If you select the “fastest” options for images, the images are manipulated at the proxy server and sent to the device at a very low quality, which obviously speeds up our download and lowers bandwidth consumption for un-necessary images. It also proclaims that it removes unwanted markup from HTML code, making it load faster without altering the layout of the page! Really very interesting to note! And I found that it was pretty effective too.

I am using the ZTE card model, Sierra and Huawei being the other two models available with Reliance. I doubt that they give us the option to choose though you get to choose if you want the USB external modem or the Data Card itself. I found the Data Card to be giving me around 6.5 to 7KB/sec download speed. The speed fluctuates going as high as 15KB per second but for the most of it hovering around the 7KB mark with four points of network.

I would recommend buying this to anyone who is in need of a “something-is-better-than-nothing” internet connection, though the advantages it offers, especially on the move far outweighs the other drawbacks such as latency and frequent disconnects.

Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong

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Most of you must know about Murphy’s Law, which states that if something will go wrong, it will go wrong no matter what!! The same thing happened to me, We had developed something which was part of a series of items that were to be deployed. Everything was working to a T…

But when the D-Day arrived and when we had an ‘important’ audience.. the first item that we had developed just refused to work and do its function!! Rats!! I am still trying to figure out what went wrong! Most probably it isn’t something big and will resolve by itself tomorrow, or a small trace will identify the problem!!

But in the end, Murphy seems to always have his day!!

Voice by Pentagram

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Great song! Great video! Check it out for yourself!

One of the best songs I have ever heard from an Indian rock Band.Well picturised and drives home the point.

Stupid reservation policies.

Are we gonna ask the questions that scare me
are we gonna break the bonds of silence
will i find the truth in my reflection
will i see the meaning of my defiant

cuz there are words that must be said
and there are words that must be heard
and that they’re not as really quite absurd
and there’s a footstep in the clouds
and there is warmth in drops of rain
and there’s a meaning to the words i say

i need a voice now
come be my voice now
find me a voice now …. yeah
come be my voice now
give me that choice now
you be my voice now

At your service

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I started for work today morning, just like any other day and sat astride my bike. I pressed the electric starter but the engine just did not jump to life as it would in normal circumstances do. I tried kick starting it to get the same result but to no avail.

Then deciding to troubleshoot, I checked if the petrol flow was open, then I checked if there was any petrol in my tank and then when I saw my spark plug, I found out the reason for my bike not budging to start.

It was removed from its spot! There was no way that it would have come off during the course of my journey the previous day as I had parked my bike at 1:00 AM alongwith my friend the previous day.

There were some onlookers who were watching my antics. And one of them said that some idiotic element should have done this and I agreed, Then I started my bike after fixing my spark plug and started towards office and after riding for some distance, I wanted to make some move and tried to look if there was anyone close behind me on my rear-view mirror and to my surprise!! I found one of the rear view mirrors missing!!

Crazy punks!