Indian Infrastructure - a distant dream

Beginning this week, I am on an official visit to US. The route is to fly via Singapore, Seoul and SFO. At all these places the airports are true in class, in terms of space, architecture, cleanliness and facilities for passengers. The photos speaks for themselves.


Planes parked in SQ Changi Airport


Runway view of SQ


Travelers Lounge in SQ


SQ ready to handle A380


Lounge


Gateway


Dustbins in SQ


Gateway


Escalator


Reception in SQ


Gateway in Seoul


Escalator in Seoul


Lounge in Seoul


Runway in Seoul


This is the bird taking me from SQ to SFO


Flight SQ16 parked


Incheon Airport


Lounge


Korean Air


Panaromic view of airport


Way to go


SFO Airport Front view


BART in SFO

Now compare these with Indian airports. Are we anyway near? Having these kind of infrastructures in India seems like a distant dream.

Online Radio

After the recent boring stint with local songs (mp3s in my local machine), switched to online radio.

RadioTime lists all the Online India Radio Stations
http://radiotime.com/region/c_100355/India.aspx

Some of the good tamil radios
Suryan FM - kelunga kelunga
Radio Of India -Tamil
Shyam Radio - Online Tamil FM Radio Station

The reasons behind switching over
1. Variety in content (mix of old and new songs)
2. Surprise element in what comes next

Do not leave ethics at home

While discussing with my dad about the aspects of this materialistic world, he mentioned a couple of adages that he read in an article published in "The Hindu". The following is the excerpt of the complete article.

In today’s world there are seven deadly sins that mankind is witnessing. They are:

•politics without principle

•wealth without work

•pleasure without conscience

•knowledge without character

•business without morality

•service without humanity

•worship without sacrifice

The adage “People leave ethics at home when they move with world” is very apt today. Many refuse to adapt human values and culture. But, it is a proven fact that people who live ethical and moral lives are much happier than those who live without it.

People chase wealth. They show concern in accumulating wealth in their prime. But, in the later stages they end up using the entire wealth to restore their health. We do not realise that the most important asset in the world are our children. They bring meaning to one’s life. Parents should show some concern in grooming children in moral and ethical values, and not only in making money.

It is this that will make them succeed in their professional and personal life. Lack of ethics and morality have been major factors behind the downfall of many firms and corporates, in spite of them having excellent vision and mission.

It is in the hands of parents and elders to bring about the needed change in children and youth to make future generations strong in character. As Einstein said, “Try not to be a man of success, but rather try to be a man of human values”, children should be made to realise that only human and moral values preserve the culture of a country.

DR. K. ANANDAN

Reader and Head,
Department of Physics, NGM College,
Pollachi.

Appealing Home Food in Potluck

A few months back a new restaurant got opened in our vicinity, named "Potluck". Yesterday took a chance to try out the dishes. As per their caption, "Home is where the food is...", the food really tasted like home made food. Less oily, not much spicy. The look of the food wont appeal like a rich dish, but simple and great!

http://www.potluck.in/

They serve authentic north indian food. Do home delivery.

(Note: Heard that this is run by a IIT-K graduate)

Downloading videos from internet

A novel plugin with Firefox enables you to download the online videos from the video portals like Google Video, MySpace, YouTube, etc. The step by step procedure can be found in the following post.

http://www.gilsmethod.com/htdownloadvideosfromtheinternet

Original post:
http://www.dvdhelp.us/php/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=120&t=3910

Excerpt from the post:

1. Download & install Firefox (You need firefox for the extension to work)

2. Download & install the Video Downloader extension for Firefox (The video downloader extension allows you to save videos from popular websites like Myspace, YouTube, Google, and others.)

3. Download & install Media Coder (This encoder converts the video you download into .avi files which allow you to view and store them at your won discretion)

4. Find the video you wish to save. Once you are on the page click the Video Downloader Button in the bottom right part of your Firefox Browser window.

5. A window will pop-up. Click the button that says Download Link

6. When prompted select Save to Disk and then click OK

>>>>>Please note that if the file you download does not have the extension .flv, then rename the file and end the name with .flv <<<<<

7. Start up MediaCoder

8. Click on the I agree radio button and on the Skip Setup Wizard button, then close the window that appears after that.

9. Drag and drop the .flv files you downloaded into the large white area in Media Coder

10. Click on the Video tab in the lower left-hand section on the window and select XviD in the Format drop-down menu.

11. Click the large Start buttonon the top toolbar window to start transcoding your video.

12. When completed a window will propmt you saying that transcoding is completed, go your file's original location and an .AVI file shoudl be there with the same file name. Now you can play it with Windows Media or your favorite media player.

Googled

Just after a few hours of posting about the Shivanasamudra falls trip, I could see my blog post listed in Google search results.

Shivanasamudra falls and Talakad Trip

Over the last weekend, as a mark of celebrating the friendship day, 8 friends hit the road to Shivanasamudra falls and Talakad. This trip which started as a pre-planned trip ended up in a real adventure due to bad roads.

Route:
Bangalore - Kanakapura - Malavalli - Shivanasamudra - Talakkad - Malavalli - Maddur - Bangalore.
Total distance: 300Kms
Food:
Breakfast - Kanakapura
Lunch - packed home food
Dinner - Maddur Tiffinys

Trivia:
For around 80 kms the road is in real bad condition. Completely dug up. We could barely manage an average of about 20 kms/hr.

Photos (Shot using SE K550i)


(Gaganachukki and Bharachukki falls)




(Gaganachukki and Bharachukki falls)


(Riverflow)


(Gaganachukki and Bharachukki falls)


(Gaganachukki and Bharachukki falls)


(Gaganachukki falls)


(Pit stop for lunch - in a school ground en route to Talakkad)


(View of Tree at dusk near Talakkad)

Really interested in feedback?

A shot taken at A2B restaurant in Bangalore. There is a large poster advertising their new store in New Delhi, another medium sized poster for out-door catering and the small one asking for feedback/suggestions (difficult to read even when you sit in front of it in the restaurant).



Are they really interested in taking feedback/suggestions?

Adieu to Kalam

Tomorrow our honorable president Dr Kalam will be stepping down as President of India. This will leave way for Pratibha Patil to take over. One could see high tributes being paid to Kalam for his stature and vision that he shared with every Indian.

To the best of my knowledge, Dr Kalam is the best president that our country had so far. It is mind blowing to see a president embrace technology to such an extent at his ripe age (never seen a president doing a powerpoint show sharing his vision for the country). I am on the belief that his passion for teaching and interacting with students kept him up to date with the technology and its usage.

I never had a chance to know about the incoming president. So commenting on whether she would fit into the role of a president is unfair. Apparently for any person, to fit into the large shoes left over by Kalam will be a daunting task.

FileZilla - review

Have been using the FileZilla ftp client and server, the experience has been amazing. It is free and stands by these words.

"FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP client and server with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface."

Tatoo in Beckham's hand

Happened to see it in rediff,



What does the tatoo in Beckham's hand read?

"Victoria" (in Hindi)

Blog stats

Monthly stats:



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Yearly stats:

Outlook 2003 Search annoyance

Have you performed a simple find in MS Outlook 2003 client? The search happens in the folder from older date to the recent one. Doesn't it sound strange?

Ideally I would be more interested in recent mail threads than the older one, since the recent ones will make more relevance. When the search results are shown, the older ones are displayed first and then the recent ones. So one has to wait till the search completes fully, before getting to see the most recent thread.

Are there any tweaks that can be done to Outlook to search in the reverse way? Anyhow the default configuration is really annoying.

Corporate communication and its significance

Most of us are working for corporate houses and we understand the significance of communication (especially for geographically disperse locations) and email etiquettes. Over recent past, I observed that many of these communications across peers are done through IM's. There are pros and cons to the chat communication that is prevailing now.

Pros:
1. Quick turn around time
2. Grabs immediate attention of the receiver and sender is deemed to get a response/acknowledgment

Cons:
1. Becomes a lot more unofficial
2. No archiving - means you loose the proof
3. No means of intimating the people in higher ladder (Unable to CC).

So which way is better and which will prevail over the longer time frame?

Photos from Sony Ericsson K550i

Happened to visit Eagleton Resort in Bangalore. Couple of shots taken using SE K550i.


Golf resort



Golf resort


View from seats



Swimming pool


Swimming Pool

Some more macro shots using SE K550i.


Red Rose Bouquet


Yellow Rose Bouquet


Yellow Rose (macro)

Sony Ericsson K550i themes

I was looking for some alternative themes for SE K550i. The default themes that comes with the phone pre-installed is pretty basic. SE site wont allow you to download the themes into you computer and then transfer it to your phone (for free stuff).

The alternative is ESATO. You get nice themes over here.

Event Mailer

The spark happened when there was a discussion in the college group, "how prompt people are in sending birthday wishes". Somehow I am never prompt in this one. I wish to make a mark every time a wish is sent. Another reason is to kill the time when I get locked in office (happens during most of evenings). Thirdly wanted to have a hands-on on a couple of Java technologies which I know only conceptually.

Technologies Used:
JDK 1.5
JAXB
XML and XSD
Java Mail
Java Servlet
Apache Commons HTTPClient

Flow chart:
There are two parts to this project.

Getting the event list
1. Got the recurring birthday list from the Group Calendar
2. Converted it into a CSV file format
3. Used JAXB to create a events xml file from the CSV file

Sending the mailer
1. Read the events xml
2. Check for any events scheduled for today
3. Send out a request to Event mailer servlet with subject, message and mailId.
4. The event mailer servlet sends a mail

The events xsd is made generic such that it can span more than birthday list. I had to use event mailer servlet (hosted in myjavaserver), since could not make SMTP connections (I am behind the firewall). Made a cron job (using windows scheduler), to run the mailer everyday.

Sony Ericsson K550i - Network icons

Just pondering over the 'G' and 'E' icons displayed near the network tower indicator on the top left corner of the phone screen. Lately found that it represents the network capability of your mobile service provider.

For more information refer the network tutorial on the Learning Center in SE site.

Legend:

Sony Ericsson K550i review

After a span four years with Motorolla C350i, I moved to Sony Ericsson K550i.

I guess I am the one to use Motorolla C350i to the max extent. This cell phone's battery started cranking out about 6 months back, I somehow managed extending its life (because of under usage).

Before starting to lookout for a new mobile, I just framed my must-have requirements.

1. Good call quality
2. Good battery life
3. Good camera (~2 MP)
4. MP3 player support
5. *No* 3G (no affordable 3G support in any near future, that is my prediction)
6. Price range Rs ~10K
7. Form factor - Candy Bar (easy single hand handling)
8. Connectivity - Bluetooth, IR, GRPS, Quadband

This restricted search resulted in a couple of options. I blatantly ignored LG, Samsung and Motorolla for their poor battery life and build quality.

So the options were
1. Sony Ericsson K550i
2. Nokia 6300

Nokia 6300 didn't pass the litmus test with its poor battery (before this phone I believed that Nokia had the reputation of good batteries, but in the reviews it has been stated that Nokia changed their battery to gain the slim factor). So the best choice I am left with is Sony Ericsson K500i. Before hitting the stores, I read through the reviews on CNet Asia and GSM Arena.

Somehow these reviews lacked that feel good factor. Eventually when I had the phone on my hand, I was impressed. The build quality is much superior than I expected. Based on a couple days of use, the phone is beating all my expectations.

Pros:
1. Good camera with better options
2. Comes with all standard connectivity options (read the specs)
3. Good battery (with full charge running for 2-3 days, avg use)
4. Mp3 player is awesome (generates easier navigation list)
5. Accessible keys
6. Speaker phone support
7. Neat look
8. Slim - 14mm
9. Value for money

Cons:
1. Smaller keys (do not bother much unless you message a lot)

What is in the pack:
1. K550i phone
2. Battery (Li-ion)
3. USB cable
4. Hands-free
5. Charger (universal)
6. Software CD and Docs

Verdict:
Recommended for those with aforesaid requirements.

To munch on a rainy day

For the past week, Rain God is showing mercy and the authentic bangalore cloudy climate is back. With the chill weather around, it makes awesome if you have something crispy to munch.

Tried preparing baby-corn fry and it came out well.





(Photos: taken with SE K550i)

Home Loan tips and tricks

While I was frantically searching for a home loan, I happen to see some tips and understand some tricks.

1. Banks are never under loss
Will ever the loan lending bank reel under loss if they finance a home and the borrower defaults? NO, for PSU banks, for private banks, they use some unparliamentary means to recover the money back.

Before approving a home loan the bank checks for sufficient credibility of the borrower. As per the general trend, the borrower would be paying the EMI for a few years. During those initial years the bank will recover most of their interest part of the loan. And since the home is mortgaged to the bank, they can recover the capital from the home.

2. When to prepay?
The best time to do prepayment is the initial years after taking the loan. Since the initial years are the period when the bank recovers a lot of interest. If you see the EMI calculation, during the initial years, most of the EMI goes towards interest.

3. On prepayment, what to reduce?
Some banks gives you the option of either recalculating the EMI or period of loan on prepayment. The best option is to reduce the period of loan. Because you pay less on reducing the period and keeping the EMI constant.

Things to consider while writing public APIs

When you expose public class/APIs, there are certain things that you need to consider

1. Arguments/Parameters
Carefully consider the arguments that gets passed into the API.

2. Method Name
Choose an apt meaningful name for the public methods or classes. Avoid ambiguity.

3. Exceptions
Throw only non-runtime exceptions, so that clients can handle them. Do try to handle all the exceptions in the method. If you have logging framework, log the exceptions and rethrow them.

4. Backward Compatibility
Once the APIs get released and you need to support them for an extended period of time. So if you modifying existing public APIs take care of backward compatibility, such that you wont break client code.

5. Intented use
The public APIs should do only what it is intended to do

6. Java docs
Provide clear crisp java docs. The best example is the one that comes with JDKs.

7. Trace / Log / Debug
Provide support for tracing/logging. Both serves different purposes. Trace is used to find the control flow inside the public APIs. Logging is used to log any error messages and exceptions.

8. Error statements
In case of wrong parameters getting passed, log descriptive error messages. The error message should typically say what went wrong and what is the corrective action.

Find java class files in JAR

Typically in a development environment of a big J2EE product, you often cross the step of including the right jars in your library path to get your product compile/run/debug. With lot of jars lying in you lib folder, you face the daunting task of including the needed few.

OR

In case if you want to find from which jar a particular class gets picked up, you face the same daunting task of opening the various jars and looking out for a particular class file packaged inside it.

To get rid of this one, I came up with a java program that takes a path and class name and spits out the jars which contains the class. The usage of FindClass is simple

java FindClass C:\j2ee\product\lib MyClass

FindClass iterates through the folder (and subsequent subfolders) to get the list of available jars and list out the jars, which contains the specified class.

I used JarFile and JarEntry to read a jar file. Rest is all simple File operations.
If you love to use this util class, drop a comment.

Aquaguard: Chase for invoice begins

When I see my referring links on my blog stats, many of them are from google with search query "aquagaurd" (notice there is a mis-spell over there). So taking a suo-motto cognizance of the visit trend I have decided to document the horrible experiences a customer goes through after purchasing the noble water purifier (aha, see my frustration).

Disclaimer:
The honest intention of the aquaguard related posts on this blog is to educate the intelligent net-savy customers about the horrible services offered by the aquaguard people. Nothing more and nothing less.

So the first chase begins here.

When you buy a water purifier from the "well-informed" (read it sarcastic) sales rep from Aquaguard, little will be known to you about their invoice process. At the completion of the sale, the happy sales rep will handover a slip stating that you had paid on the delivery of the device. It is not an invoice or a bill stating that you had bought the product. The sales rep will promptly inform you that you will get an invoice within 15 days by mail.

That 15 day deadline will never happen. I have bought the product about 4 months back and still haven't received any invoice.

One more thing that you will not know is that the sales rep from whom you have bought the device, would have done either of one these in the following few weeks

1. Changed his mobile number, so that you cannot reach him
2. Changed his job
3. Changed his department with in aquaguard

In my case, it was option 3. I am chasing them through their customer care and every time they tell me the same crappy story. They ask me my mailing address and receipt number, stating that the invoice will be delivered in 2 days. Again nothing happens.

This is not an one off case. My friend has ended up calling them more than 100 times to get the invoice. Many more are in the process. Some are blissful enough with out caring that they require a legitimate invoice some time later when their device starts mall-functioning.

MyJavaServer - Signup Challenge

When I tried to sign-up for MyJavaServer service, I was quiet amused by their sign-up challenge. The challenge is to write a small Java program (just to make sure that you are conversant with Java). The site then compiles your program and runs a couple of tests to validate the program. Quiet a novel way to authenticate the users.

Signup Challenge
Master a simple Java programming challenge (STATUS: NOT PASSED)

As the principal engineer of an HTTP web server, you are responsible for implementing the request processing subsystem of the server.
An incoming request for a specific resource, identified by an URI, must be dispatched to the appropriate handler according to the server configuration which maps URIs to request handlers. 'HandlerFactory.getHandler' must be implemented:

public class HandlerFactory
{
public String getHandler(String[] config, String requestUri)
{
}
}

The string array 'config' contains URI patterns and handler names. Two consecutive values form a key-value pair comprised of URI pattern and handler. 'requestUri' represents an incoming request, the URI to match against the configured handlers. 'getHandler' must return the correct handler for a given URI as a string value.

An URI pattern never contains wildcards and represents the start of an URI string, a prefix. Matching must be implemented accordingly. The handler with the longest matching URI pattern wins if more than one pattern matches. If no handler can be found, "XqAoLy" must be returned.

MyJavaServer

Found that MyJavaServer is a free online java application server that one could use to host their web applications for free. They offer the following services on their site for developers.

Java
Java SE 6.0 based application server
Servlet 2.3
Java Server Pages (JSP) 1.2
Pre-installed third-party libraries

RDBMS services
Embedded: HSQLDB, InstantDB

Miscellaneous
SMTP service
Unfiltered HTTP responses (no ad placement)
WAP/WML, Java WebStart MIME extensions

Storage
5 MB initial filesystem quota
Full native filesystem read/write access
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) file management


Quite cool. They use Tomcat application server to provide the service. So if you just want to host any simple web app for free, MyJavaServer is the place to go!

Sting operations by Private News channels

One good fallout of the private news TV channels. Recently NDTV exposed through a sting operation the nexus between defense and prosecution in the BMW hit and run case. Such clandestine deals could prevent people from getting a fair justice.

Google turns down my request suspecting a virus

See the snapshot



Btw had a hard time guessing the word verification. The image is so crumbled.

Will this spell the end of aquaguard monpoly

I had been cribbing about the monopolistic practices by Aquagaurd Water purifiers. It seems that Philips had listened to it. Philips India is entering the water purifier market. I hope two things will make Philips a big hit

1. The price range of their water purifiers are in the same range of Aquagaurd.
2. They sell their product through retail outlets. (So customers win here. They get cheaper maintenance)
3. Battery backup

Google's Bot is amazingly fast

Google's web crawler bot is amazingly fast. My yesterday's post on Nimishambha Temple trip has been already added to google's search index and ranks first.

Nimishambha Temple and Sangam Trip (13-May-2007)

After a long while, the remnant guys in Bangalore (myself, Nag, Gops and VK) (that's how I guess we should call ourselves after the brain-drain in our gang) thought of a get-together. I came up with the idea of lunching together, but as per the de-facto standard, Nag came with the dynamic plan of a one day picnic. The choice of place, transport, itinerary were all decided on the previous day night.

So we all stared an hour late on Sunday due to the mess-up my car created. Vk's new Indica Xeta came to our rescue. We stopped at Kamat on Mysore Road for breakfast (We made use of the buffet really well).


(Remnant Gang with the Guest of Honor Nag Jr.)


(Gops, VK with Guest of Honor Nag Jr.)


(Simian Acrobatics for the Guest of honor)


(Simian Acrobatics for the Guest of honor)

Reached our picnic spot of Nimishambha temple around noon-time. This place is near SriRangapatna en-route to Mysore. The Mysore highway SH-17 had unusual high traffic on the weekend.


(Cauvery River bank)


(Gops on way to cool off his heels)


(Nag and VK taking a dip)


(Nag and Vk discussing a shot)


(Vk and Nag fishy)

Ate lot of junk stuff (such that we can skip lunch). Unusually there was lot of crowd over the place.

Then on the way back went to Sangam.

(Confluence of three rivers)


(Winding flow)


(Another shot)


(Rocky terrain on the banks)


(Grand view of Sangam)


(Another shot)


(Nag Jr. on a pensive mood... on how to get a mallu girl)

Evening tiffin again at Kamat. Back in bangalore on time.






(End of Trip)

Game shows: People attitude

These days private TV channels are flooded with umpty number of game shows covering people in all age categories right from kids to couples. Out of these some are quite interesting like BBC's MasterMind and Star Sports Quiz. Even DD's BSNL Sports quiz is worth watching. Sun TVs "Thiruvalar Thirumathi" is for married couples and is one whole crap game show.

I am alarmed at the outwardness of the people participating in such game shows. They reveal lot of their personal things to the whole world for the take-aways they get in the shows. I hope not those holiday packages comes with no-strings attached. We the viewers never get any clue whether the people who were given the holiday packages really went for such ones.

How to connect cellphone using IrDA port

This post is based on the experience of transferring content between your cellphone and laptop using IrDA port.

Is this the latest standard?
Using IrDA port to transfer content between your cellphone and laptop is really old way. The latest way to communicate is to use bluetooth.

Then why?
But at some juncture IrDA comes in really handy. Say when your laptop doesn't have a built-in bluetooth adapter and you doesn't have an external one too. And more you are lazy to use the wired approach of connecting using USB cable.

How to?
Laptop: Dell Latitude D600
OS: Win XP
Cellphone: Sony Ericsson K700i


Firstly the Dell D600 had built-in IrDA adapter. One needs to enable them.

1. Go to BIOS setup. (Press F2 when the laptop boots up to enter the BIOS setup)
2. Press Alt+P to go the various pages in the setup program
3. Find the IrDA section in the Commuincation Ports page (I guess so)
4. If it is disabled, then enable and set to a particular COM port. I used COM2 as COM1 is used in my laptop.
5. Save and Exit the setup and boot the laptop.

Enable IrDA in your phone and place in the line-of-sight with IrDA port

Win XP had default drivers and it was able to recognize the device. From then on, it is a single click to transfer data from laptop to the cellphone and vice versa.

Recent tamil movies and my ratings

All of a sudden tamil movie buff kicked in to me and I happened to see four movies in a span of two weekends. I have given "my" fair ratings for these movies.

1. Unnale Unnale - Promising (Happened to see part of the movie and it looks pretty promising)
2. Mayakkannadi - Cheran movie, realistic approach. Average
3. Naan Avan Illai - Below average. Hopeless screenplay
4. Parattai Engira Azhagu Sundaram - Pathetic (only one word)

Online Vulnerabilities

The other day when I was having a conversation with a friend using orkut scrapbook, suddenly I realized how much personal information is left open to the world wide web. Scrapbooks are not private, anyone can read others scrapbook. If one could correlate they could get all vital information about a person.

Other way if one uses mail, there is much more confidentiality involved. Mailboxes are private. Hence the rule to delete scrapbook entries once I reply. By the way then why is there a scrapbook and what is its purpose?