A Low Man's Lyric - Vivek Iyer's Blog

Flickr

2008-08-19T22:59:00.001-07:00

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

Aphorisms

2008-02-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

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.

Slingbox setup

2008-02-06T13:51:00.000-07:00

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.

Slinging Indian TV

2007-12-03T10:41:00.000-07:00

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

An always on high-speed internet connection in India
A Slingbox
A router
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.

Slingmedia advertises the Slingbox to be NTSC only. They do sell a PAL version, but this is not available in the U.S
The video connectors used in India tend to be quite different.
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

Dell finally gets it

2007-07-10T16:58:00.001-07:00

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 :))

Vista's UAC - An exercise in frustation?

2007-02-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

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.

Troubleshooting Beagle on Ubuntu Edgy

2007-02-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

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.

Windows wireless manager annoyances

2007-02-05T13:49:00.000-07:00

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

Free internet access at T-Mobile hotspots with Windows Vista

2007-01-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

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

Want a free domain name?

2006-04-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

Are you on the lookout for a free domain name? If you are then head over to Office Live and sign up for the Live Basics Beta. This beta comes with a free domain name and easy-to-use design tools (at least that's what Microsoft says). Anyway there are a couple of caveats:

You will need to provide a valid credit card number. This is not charged, and Microsoft promises that the service will remain free. I provided a credit card number and cancelled the credit card soon after
If you plan to customize the website to your liking, I don't think you want to go this route. I do not think Microsoft allows you to point the domain to another location. So you are pretty much stuck with the tools they provide.
Office Live is an IE only website (what else can we expect from Microsoft!)

All in all it looks like a good deal if you want a spare domain you can call home ;). I got vivekiyer.com

Haryanvi in a call center

2006-04-24T17:08:00.000-07:00

Put a Haryanvi in a call center and this is what you get. Reminds me of good old Pilani ;)

Download file (mp3 audio 588 KB)
Technorati tags: humor call center

How to actively prevent identity theft

2006-04-24T14:42:00.000-07:00

Got this from one of my colleagues. Follow at your own discretion though

ATTORNEY'S ADVICE- ---- NO CHARGE

A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company.
The next time you order checks have only your initials (instead of first name) and last name put on them If someone takes your checkbook, they will not know if you sign your checks with just your initials or your first name, but your bank will know how you sign your checks.
Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put "PHOTO ID REQUIRED."
When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the "For" line. Instead, just put the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check-processing channels will not have access to it.
Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box, use that instead of your home address. If you do not have a PO Box, use your work address. Never have your SS# printed on your checks. You can add it if it is necessary. However, if you have it printed, anyone can get it.
Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine. Do both sides of each license, credit card, etc. You will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel. Keep the photocopy in a safe place. Also carry a photocopy of your passport when traveling either here or abroad. We have all heard horror stories about fraud that is committed on us in stealing a name, address, Social Security number, credit cards.
When you check out of a hotel that uses cards for keys (and they all seem to do that now), do not turn the "keys" in. Take them with you and destroy them. Those little cards have on them all of the information you gave the hotel, including address and credit card numbers and expiration dates. Someone with a card reader, or employee of the hotel, can access all that information with no problem whatsoever.

Unfortunately, as an attorney, I have first hand knowledge because my wallet was stolen last month. Within a week, the thieves ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Gateway computer and received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving record information online. Here is some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know:

We have been told we should cancel our credit cards immediately. The key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call. Keep those where you can find them.
File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc., were stolen. This proves to credit providers you were diligent, and this is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one). However, here is what is perhaps most important of all (I never even thought to do this.)
Call the three national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and Social Security number. I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the Internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit. By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves' purchases,none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.

Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact about your wallet and contents being stolen:

Equifax: 1-800-525-6285
Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742
TransUnion: 1-800-680-7289
Social Security Administration (fraud line): 1-800-269-0271

Technorati tags: identity theft

2006-04-24T13:55:00.000-07:00

My friend Mauruthi sent me these Dilbert toons via email. Very funny.

Technorati tags: Dilbert, office humor

No more Russell Peters Videos

2006-04-12T20:53:00.000-07:00

Looks like Russell Peters lawyers / agents are cracking down on people infringing his copyright. I noticed that they took down all content from youtube. Two short videos that were shared under my username were also removed. Hence I decided to take down all such content from my website. So if you came here looking for the videos, I am sorry to say that you will no longer find it hosted here. Thanks for the fish.

Technorati tags: Russell Peters, DMCA

Code Snippet Hell

2006-02-28T16:16:00.000-07:00

Microsoft recently released a bunch of code snippets for C#. These snippets looked quite interesting and I decided to install them. I came across a post on CodingHorror
that indicated an easier way to install these snippets. Being quite adventurous, I decided to give these a whirl. Unfortunately in the process, I mucked up somewhere and ended up installing my snippets from an incorrect location. Now since Visual Studio 2005 is a final product and not a beta, I assumed that I will be able to undo this stupidity (how foolish of me!). So I opened up the snippet manager and tried to remove stuff from there. However this did not work. I cleaned up the registry entries and cleaned up all the folders, but still no luck. I thought reinstalling these snippets the way Microsoft expects me to do might help, but this is what I ended up with

Now I have multiple entries in my snippet browser and no way to delete these entries. This drives me crazy. I tried to fix this by reinstalling Visual Studio, but even that doesn't fix this. Yes I actually uninstalled Visual Studio fully and reinstalled it, but Visual Studio is kind enough to remember all my snippets. So now I am stuck with a feature that I want to use, but no longer can. Looks like I am not alone.

Technorati tags: code snippets, visual studio 2005

Julian, CA

2005-09-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

Panoramic view of woods in Julian, CA

Technorati tags: Julian, panorama

My experience with Ubuntu

2005-08-08T00:07:00.000-07:00

I recently purchased a new 250 GB hard drive. After several days of procastination, I finally upgraded my desktop ( a dell Dimension 3000) from a measly 40 GB to 250 GB. Now since I had so much space, I decided to dual boot my Windows XP Pro installation with Linux. I have been hearing several good things about Ubuntu, so I decided to give it a shot.

Downloading Ubuntu was quite painless, I used a torrent and was able to download the iso in under an hour. I burned a CD on my Mac (I don't have a CD burner on my desktop), and booted my desktop from the CD.

Partioning the hard driver was quite painless. I just had to specify that I wanted to use only a small portion of my hard drive and the installer took care of the rest. I think I was presented with a login screen under 15 minutes and after one reboot.
Once I logged in I realized that I was running at a horrible 640 x 480 resolution. A little bit of googling led me to this solution

In terminal type: gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
In /etc/X11/xorg.conf under the line Option “DPMS” (use the find option) just add:
HorizSync 28-49
VertRefresh 43-72
Save and reboot your system.

This worked like a charm. This fixed the screen resolution. Then came the part I was really scared of, configuring my wireless card. I have had bad experiences in the past with wireless cards and Linux, and I thought that this time would be no exception. I have a D-Link wireless card (AR5212 802.11 abg NIC). Anyway surprise surprise, Ubuntu recognized the card and configured it impeccably. I just had to enter my wireless authentication and I was good to go. However, I would like to point out that the key should be entered in Hexadecimal and not in ASCII, else it does not work. I was impressed.

Next step, my Dell 720 color printer. This printer has been a pain. It works only on Windows and refuses to connect to my powerbook. Anyway a bit of googling, led me to this website. Once I was done with the steps mentioned there, I restarted my computer (maybe logging off would have been enough, but face it, I am coming from Windows. I restart everytime I install a Messenger, so a printer is a HUGE thing). Then I opened the printer utility (System->Administration->Printing). I clicked Add Printer, my printer was shown in the list of detected printers. I selected my printer type as Lexmark, and the printer driver as z600-v1.0. Voila, my printer now works.

Overall I am pretty pleased with the distro. Everything I wanted worked out of the box with minimal work required. Compare this with Windows where I had to install drivers for my video card, sound card, wireless card, ethernet adapter and printer. Now if I did not have another computer this would not have been possible because Dell did not provide me with CD's for the drivers. I instead had a restore CD which I did not want to use.
I am still trying to get a hang of Gnome. I can install KDE, but then I think I should give Gnome a fair chance. I will try to boot into Windows as less as possible. Next step, installing Mono on Linux. That will be a story for another day.

Technorati tags: Ubuntu, Linux, Dell 720, Dell Dimension 3000

Heard of C++0x?

2005-07-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

I was quite surprised when I came across an article on C++0x. I thought it was another language much like Microsoft's F#. Anyway was I mistaken. Quoting from the one and only Stroustrup (emphasis mine)

In this article, I examine the main principle we use to guide the development of C++0x, the next version of the C++ Standard.

C++0x will be almost 100-percent compatible with the existing Standard C++. Your existing code will, with a very high probability, be C++0x conforming if it was compliant with C++98, the existing Standard.

If you are a C++ developer, you really should read the article.

Technorati tags: C++0x, Stroustrup, C++

Funnies for the day

2005-06-28T19:58:00.000-07:00

New age detention

Technorati tags: humor, school

Deploying Services in C#

2005-06-14T23:33:00.000-07:00

In case any of you have ever written a Windows Service in C#, I am quite sure you have deployed the service via a setup and deployment project in Visual Studio .NET. In any case writing and deploying such a service is quite an easy task. You can find instructions on how to write a service and get it installed via a setup file on MSDN.

Now this works fine for the ideal case where you perform only two actions on your service, namely Install and Uninstall. However if you have worked on Windows and installed as many programs as I have, you might have noticed that under Add / Remove programs almost all apps have an option - Repair. Now a repair merely reinstalls the application. In case of the above mentioned setup project, the re-installation fails with the error

"The specified service already exists"
This occurs because a reinstall includes running custom actions, and so the Installer class tries to install the service all over again. This can be prevented by adding a Condition of NOT REINSTALL on the Install and Commit custom actions in the setup project. This way these won't get called during a repair / reinstall.

Technorati tags: windows services, c#, setup

Obtain the DNS while on DHCP on Mac OS X

2005-06-13T22:30:00.000-07:00

Just the other day I needed to look up the DNS on my Mac. Now if you look at network preferences and if you are connected to the net via DHCP, Mac OS X provides you with a quite unhelpful looking window.

Network Preferences

Of course there is a CLI to obtain this information. All you need to do is hit

ipconfig getpacket en1

(en1 is the network interface you are interested in). Voila, you have what you need.
I was pretty surprised that ipconfig works on *nix too. I always thought that ifconfig was for *nix and ipconfig was for Windows.

Technorati tags: dhcp, dns, Mac OS X, ipconfig

My bike

2005-06-05T03:06:00.000-07:00

I am not really an outdoors person. Most of my time is spent slouching in front of my computer working / reading / wasting time on something. But there is one thing that I do love, and that is biking. I have owned several road bikes over the past few years, starting from a BSA Mach in India to an old used Schwinn out here in the US. I loved my Schwinn and spent many an evening on it going places not many people would dare to in the Arizona heat and on my bike. I can say this quite confidently because of the fact that my bike lacked one brake, and I didn't own any biking gear as such. Anyway I finally decided to leap big time into bike mania. I bought myself a treat, a Trek 2100. You can see a picture of it below.

My Trek Bike

I love the way this bike handles,and it is so light it doesn't fail to astound me even today. However the reviews on the internet say that this bike is kinda on the heavy side. All I can say to those guys is, you should have ridden my Schwinn ;). Anyway I am still trying to get into the bike lingo. These are the bike specs stolen from the Trek website

FRAMESET:
FRAME: ZR 9000 w/OCLV Carbon seat stays
FORK: Bontrager Race

WHEELS:
WHEELS: Bontrager Race
TIRES: Bontrager Race Lite, folding, 700x25c

DRIVETRAIN:
SHIFTERS: Shimano 105 STI
FRONT DERAILLEUR: Shimano 105
REAR DERAILLEUR: Shimano 105
CRANKSET: Bontrager Race Lite 53/39 or 52/42/30
CASSETTE: SRAM 970 12-26, 9 speed
PEDALS: Shimano 520, clipless

COMPONENTS:
SADDLE: Bontrager Race Lux
SEATPOST: Bontrager Race X Lite, carbon
HANDLEBARS: Bontrager Race, 31.8
STEM: Bontrager Race, 31.8
HEADSET: Cane Creek Internal, sealed
BRAKESET: Shimano 105 w/STI levers

Now a lot of this still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but I think I will get there in sometime. Right now I am fiddling around with the various features on the bike and enjoying my rides. So to all you wannabe bikers out there, join the gang, trust me it is worth it.

Technorati tags: Road bikes, Trek bike

Directshow ... No longer available?

2005-04-11T12:28:00.000-07:00

I use Directshow quite a bit in my work, and quite like the way it works. Anyway since the November, Directshow headers, samples and include files are no longer shipped as a part of DirectX SDK. It turns out that Directshow has been moved to the Extras portion of the SDK. So in case any of you use Directshow and wanna grab a copy, you can do so by downloading the DirectX SDK extras. Also Mike Wasson provides some further information. Looks like directshow is being moved into Platform SDK. So I guess in the future you will be able to download it from here

Technorati tags: directshow, directX SDK, platform sdk

Russell Peters coming to town in May

2005-04-10T02:08:00.000-07:00

I receive quite a lot of hits because of a Russell Peters video that I host on my website. While I was looking at that post, I came across an ad for his manager (Google ads work!!). Turns out that Russell is coming to town (Phoenix) sometime in May. He seems to be on a tour most of the time too. So in case you are interested and really like his work, do attend his show. You can find his touring schedule here.

Technorati tags: russell, humor, standup comedy