10:59 PM on Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Flickr

This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.
 

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2:54 PM on Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Aphorisms

An aphorism (literally distinction or definition, from Greek αφοριζειν "to define") expresses a general truth in a pithy sentence. It is a short, pointed sentence expressing a wise, clever observation, a general truth or adage.

I got these in my email today and a they seemed to make a lot of sense (Thanks Papa). Enjoy


  • The nicest thing about the future is that it always starts tomorrow.

  • Money will buy a fine dog but only kindness will make him wag his tail.

  • If you don't have a sense of humor, you probably don't have any sense at all.

  • Seat belts are not as confining as wheelchairs.

  • A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you're in deep water.

  • How come it takes so little time for a child who is afraid of the dark to become a teenager who wants to stay out all night?

  • Business conventions are important because they demonstrate how many people a company can operate without.

  • Why is it that at class reunions you feel younger than everyone else looks ?

  • Scratch a dog and you'll find a permanent job.

  • No one has more driving ambition than the boy who wants to buy a car.

  • There are no new sins; the old ones just get more publicity.

  • There are worse things than getting a call for a wrong number at 4 AM. Like this: It could be a right number.

  • No one ever says "It's only a game" when their team is winning.

  • I've reached the age where the happy hour is a nap.

  • Be careful reading the fine print. There's no way you're going to like it.

  • The trouble with bucket seats is that not everybody has the same size bucket.

  • Do you realize that in about 40 years we'll have millions of old ladies running around with tattoos? (And rap music will be the Golden Oldies!)

  • Money can't buy happiness - but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Corvette than in a Yugo.

  • After 70 if you don't wake up aching in every joint, you are probably dead.


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1:51 PM

Slingbox setup

What model of the slingbox should I buy?
Though Slingmedia does not advertise this, the Slingbox Pro supports both NTSC and PAL signals. So this means that you can buy a Slingbox Pro in the US and use it unmodified in India.

Wireless router
Another thing you will need is a wired or a wireless router. Since it is quite difficult to buy a wired router these days, I would recommend you buy a wireless router. Any router with multiple ethernet ports will do. This router will help you share your internet connection to multiple hosts.

Cable or satellite?
I assume that you plan to place shift a cable TV and not a satellite signal. The advantage of cable TV (cable over coax) over satellite (e.g. Tata Sky) is that the slingbox's internal tuner can tune into the desired channel. This means that you could be watching a particular channel remotely while a completely different channel could be playing on your TV in India.

Connectors
In India the default connector used in TV's seems to be the Belling-Lee connector. The slingbox however accepts input via an F-connector. You can easily find converters that go from PAL to F. However this is something you need to keep in mind.

Network setup
The slingbox itself is pretty easy to setup and the instructions provided by Slingmedia are excellent. Their tool does a great job of detecting network settings on routers (it supports almost all major routers) and modifying the firewall settings via UPnP to enable remote viewing. However in my case my ISP had installed a DSL modem which also had a firewall. This modem did not come with a user manual and it took me a couple of hours to configure its firewall.

More help
There seems to be a pretty big community setting up Slingbox's in India. Go here for more information.

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10:41 AM on Monday, December 03, 2007

Slinging Indian TV

Watching foreign TV channels in the US can get quite expensive. For example, if you sign up for six Indian channels with DirectTV, your cost could be as high as $30 a month. This is over and above what you already pay for programming.

However you can workaround this limitation. It is not easy and requires a bit of investment of your time and money. Enter the Slingbox.

The Slingbox is a hardware device that allows you to placeshift your TV. So in theory given a Slingbox, all you will need to setup to enjoy Indian channels at home would be

  1. An always on high-speed internet connection in India
  2. A Slingbox
  3. A router
  4. A computer capable of playing these streams and displaying them on your TV

In theory this sounds quite nice and rosy, however there are several caveats.

  1. Slingmedia advertises the Slingbox to be NTSC only. They do sell a PAL version, but this is not available in the U.S
  2. The video connectors used in India tend to be quite different.
  3. Setting up the router to forward the port alone might not be sufficient. For instance, at my place the internet connection was supplied through a DSL modem with a firewall built in. There was little or no documentation about setting this up.

Anyway it is possible to overcome all of these problems. I will go into further detail in subsequent posts. If you cannot wait to hear how to set it up for yourself, feel free to contact me, and I will be glad to help

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4:58 PM on Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Dell finally gets it

It wasn't very long ago when buying a computer from Dell meant buying yourself a computer filled with crapware. It would take not less than 2 hours to rid the computer of all the junk it came preinstalled with.

Not only Dell but all computer manufacturers including Sony, HP, Acer (these are the only ones I have bought / got new computers with) are guilty of this crime. In fact the situation was so bad that quite often I used to recommend a clean install of the OS as soon as I opened the box. Unfortunately unless you had your own personal copy of Windows, this was not possible, since these computers did not ship with an OS. Instead they shipped with a restore CD which in turn restored the computer to the same bloated state it was in to begin with.

But with Dell's market share falling, the company is reinventing itself - and this time for the better. What prompts me to say this. Well lets see ...

  • They are now selling computers with Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu Linux preinstalled. Yay!

  • They introduced a new line of computers called Vostro today. Why do I like this new product line?

    Dell today announced a new brand "Vostro"of notebooks and desktops built with a focus on professional design, quality and value, shipped with no trialware and customized to meet the unique needs of small businesses worldwide. To complete the small business solution, the company also introduced a new 19-inch widescreen display, color laser printer and mono multifunction laser printer.


    Yes, you read that right. No trialware by default. You do not have to ask for it to be removed. Another score.

So yes, I think Dell is finally getting it. The prices are pretty good too. I configured a Vostro laptop today and I think it is a pretty good configuration for the price(I am not going to buy it though. I am waiting for Leopard :))

Dell Vostro

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6:21 PM on Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Vista's UAC - An exercise in frustation?

From Slashdot

I had probably the most frustrating ten minutes i have ever spent on a computer before.
Start, typed in regedit enter.
Vista:Are you sure you want to run this program?
Me: Yes. I went OUT of my way, hit start, run and typed in the pogram name I wanted. Thanks for checking though. (click) ....
Edit the registry, close it. That was easy. ....
double clicked on setup. Stupid shield on my icon, what does that mean?
Vista: are you sure you want to run this? it's a program, you know.
Me: Oh that must be what the shield is for. Vista feels like it should protect me from software!
Vista: This is from AMD. Do you trust AMD?
Me: yes, they pay me. I trust them. (click) .....
Install......that was easy. ....
Oops, there's a problem. Well, let's grab the correct file from the build server and copy it over ...
Open my computer, go to program files ....
Vista: Are you sure you want to go there?
Me:Yes (click) ...
open up the application folder ....
drag a file from a network share to the application folder....
Vista: Are you sure you want to overwrite this file?
Me: Yes (click)
Vista:A program wants to write to the Program Files folder. Is this ok?
Me: Yes (click)
Vista:You are trying to copy from a network share to the program files folder. This isn't allowed. Hit ok.
Me: (Pounds head) (click) ....
Drag to Desktop. ....
Drag from desktop to application folder. ...
Vista:
Are you sure you want to overwrite this file?
me: for the love of god yes
Vista:A program wants to write to the Program Files folder. Is this ok?
Me: Die.Die.Die.Die.
 

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5:29 PM

Troubleshooting Beagle on Ubuntu Edgy

If you are running Ubuntu Edgy Eft (6.10), and have installed the latest version of Beagle, you might notice that your computer is running quite hot. This is because of a bug in the version of beagle that is shipped with Edgy. To check if you are suffering from these symptoms, just open a terminal window on Ubuntu, and type the command top. If the process beagled-helper is taking anymore than 2% of your CPU, then you are a victim of this bug (This is of course assuming that you have had Beagle installed and running for a few days, since Beagle might run up to 100% when it indexes your hard drive for the first time).

The fix
1. Add the following line to the list of repositories.
deb http://beagle-project.org/files/ubuntu/edgy/ ./

2. Using Synaptic (or the installation tool of your choice), upgrade Beagle to the latest version (1.2.16)

3. Kill the beagled-helper daemon. To do this, get the pid for the beagle-helper process using the following command
ps -ef | grep beagled-helper

The output of this should be something like this
1000 29157 25899 0 16:46 pts/0 00:00:00 grep beagled-helper

Now, run the following command (Note: replace 29157 with the appropriate number)
kill -9 29157


That's it. Beagled will restart and now will stop killing your processor and you can start saving on your energy bills

Hope this helps someone.

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1:49 PM on Monday, February 05, 2007

Windows wireless manager annoyances

While Windows wireless manager thinks I am disconnected from the internet, Intel's ProSet Wireless thinks I am still connected.

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4:27 PM on Thursday, January 25, 2007

Free internet access at T-Mobile hotspots with Windows Vista

It looks like Microsoft is opening all its coffers for the Vista release. T-Mobile and Microsoft have tied up and are providing three months of free internet access at any T-Mobile hotspot. The caveat here is that your laptop needs to run Windows Vista. I wonder how soon someone is going to hack this and get sweet sweet internet access on any OS

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