There are free lunches ;)

Its time to head back to school after a 2 yrs in industry. These two years have turned me into nothing less than an epicurean in true sense of the word. Used to free internet/coffee/21 inch monitor/super fast PC/free softwares just a click away/free local and international phone calls/ lots of money at the end of the month/...the list continues. It has to be back of austerity of college days, where each penny spent bites. Being a software engineer in the company of other software engineers have ensure that I dont have the financial security as I truly believed that penny saved is fun sacrificed. As I open my excel sheet titled 'finances' again and again and try to calculate how much money do I have to spend in the coming two years at my b-school the furrows on my forehead deepen. Still I hope to get the loan for laptop a luxury in which I indulged just for the heck of it. That would bring some sort of respectablity to my bank account.

My laptop has the meanest of all softwares. Mean featurewise. MS has made sure that its philanthropy with software is not to compare with philanthrophy of its Chief Software Architecht and his wife. What I get for free is Microsoft Works + Outlook Express and both suck. The moment you try to indulge in something slightly fancy they remind you that its a free ware and one should not be expecting anything out of the bare necessity from it. So much for free software. So I thought can we stay free of MS' bread crumbs??? Thus began my search for free softwares on net. And i have just started using them.
For now I have tried the following softwares:
1. Open Office 2.0.
2. Mozilla thunderBird.
3. Mozilla firefox.
4. Google Earth.
5. AVG antivirus.
6. Webaroo.
7. Google Desktop.
8. Google Picassa.

Well I have been able to live without any licensed softwares for now. I was ecstatic when I was able to create my resume with tables and all fancy word formatting and was able to export it to a pdf using openoffice. Impress, the open office equivalent of powepoint seemed powerpacked to.

For now atleast I think I can live without any costly softwares.

Reviews:
Excellent review of mozilla thunderbird vs. outlook express
http://www.beust.com/weblog/archives/000118.html
http://beust.com/outlook-thunderbird.html

http://www.physorg.com/news2292.html

Google Desktop vs. Windows search
http://www.website101.com/arch/archive158.html

AVG Antivirus reviews:
http://www.tonytoews.com/editorial/avgantivirusreview.htm
http://www.software-antivirus.com/program/avg-antivirus-review.html

The interview!!

Finally got some time to put this here.
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We entered the GD Room where we were made to sit sequentially in the order of our roll no. We were then handed over the printed sheet which was supposed to be the topic for the GD. The GD was about a catering service company with some workers who were dissatisfied with work. We were provided with two statistics – one pertaining to the level at which the dispute with the worker was solved i.e. at a junior supervisor level or senior manager level etc. and the other one spoke about the kinds of dispute e.g. overtime, payment etc. The GD was the usual Indian parliament with every one with the loud voice getting some airtime. The variety of points discussed was not great. In the midst of the brouhaha I thought I was not being heard and this being my first b-school GD experience in my whole life (I did not take any GD/PI coaching either). This made me be more aggressive while making my points. Finally the GD ended and I felt it was too soon till I realized that it was already 20 mins. We ventured out of the room to wait for our interview turn. Outside I was told by the fellow candidates that I got the maximum airtime, was shouting at the top of my voice and was not letting others speak. Man and I had thought I was the one who was least noticed.
Outside the interview room I got hold of a student and started chatofying him about everything related to the college. The placements, the teachers, the students, the facility etc. Meanwhile students called before me were coming back after a tidy grill. I got to know that lots of questions were asked about statistics and technical subjects. I had managed to go through some part of statistics but was wondering if I would be able to answer academic technical questions after 2.5 yrs of passing out of my college and add to that the pseudo technical work at my Indian IT company. Anyways I remembered my friend ‘Pocha’s’ principle of jhoota self confidence (false self confidence). Before each horrifying examination he used to convince himself that he is fully prepared to top the exam. And this sense of self confidence had made him crack a lot of exams. I too decided to rely on it this time.
I was soon called and I walked into the room like a king smiling with my certificate file in my hands. I greeted the panelists and flashed a colgate smile. They returned the greetings and asked me for my certificates and gestured me to sit down. I had gathered outside that the three profs in the panel say M1, F1, F2 (M for male and F for female) taught international business, finance and technology management respectively. I sat there like William’s son with apple of self esteem on my head and these three guys kept on shooting arrows at it one by one.
M1 – Showed me a diagram which he had prepared before my entering the room. Asked me which line best represents the points.
Moi – None.(Lucky me I had just gone through correlation and variance the night before. It cant get better than this. But I managed to keep the “on the spot thinking” look with lots of ummmmms and ‘I think’ before answering. This continued through out till the statistics was there on the table)
M1 – Why?
Moi – Not all points will be represented by any of the lines. Some of the points will be far away. Again after another ‘on the spot thinking’ look I said “I think you are asking about correlation and regression. Since the points are randomly distributed I think that no line is correlated with the points.” I made sure that I gave the impression that I am recollecting all this from the subjects I read in the college.
M1 – How would you find the equation of the line which best represents a given set of points?
Moi – (hmmm curve fitting) Another pondering look and then slowly as if just formulated the idea and making sure that I don’t use any technical words I slowly proceeded saying that we can probably find the distance of the points from the curve and add them up. M1 now brings a smile to his now straight face. I am relieved
F2 – What is SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)
Moi – How I wished I had read software engg well in the college!! Aneways took out a paper and wrote what ever seemed logical to me. I later confirmed outside that I was 95% correct in whatever I had written.
F3 – What is Nagpur famous for?(I had done my engg from Nagpur Univ.)
Moi – Oranges
F3 – And?
Moi – Zero Mile(the official centre of India)
F3 – A sideways Shake of head and then “And?”
Moi – Lot of coal mines and spices grown in vidharba.
F3 – Not satisfied yet “And?”
Moi – Told about cricket stadium, RSS founded there etc. etc. but none satisfied her
F3 – Is it famous for something related to railways?
Moi – I capitulated and confessed “I don’t know mam”. She now seemed to be happy.
F3 – You stay in Bangalore. What states will you pass from if you go from Chennai to Kolkata in train?
Moi – Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.
F3 – Ok now tell me the breadth of India?
Moi – Flabbergasted , the apple of self esteem had finally been hit with such a ridiculous question. And I could see them jeering at me like Mr Murdstone at David Copperfield.
F3 – Ok give me a range.
Moi – Smiling happily 0 – 10000 Km. Laugher all around felt a bit relaxed now.
I took one min to see if I can logically derive it and the started thinking aloud – Distance from Kolkata to Bombay is 1600 Km as the crow flies. So I guess the breadth of India should be 1600 x 2 i.e. 3200 KM.
F3 – Again a negative nod but said – “ I like the way you derived it.”
Moi – Finally I think I m getting there.
M1 – What’s the difference between GMT and IST.
Moi – 5:30 hrs.
F2 – What is the longitude at which IST is calculated?
Moi – Calculated 4 mins per longitude so 330 mins / 4 = 82.5 degrees. I responded 82.5 East.
F2 – Smile on her face too. Asked how did you calculate?
Moi – Explained.
M1 – What do you think about Microsoft way of doing things and Linux way? With respect to the fact that Microsoft way a limited no. of people review the code in linux the whole world is a development thing.
Moi – protested – MS vs. Linux is a whole lot of debate.
M1 – Ok tell me then whether less no. of people reviewing is better or more no. of people reviewing the code is better.
Moi – Gas this time. Told them that there is no directly proportional relation between no. of people reviewing code and the quality of the code because as the no. of people increased the increase in quality will stagnate(I made sure I dint give them a chance by using diminishing marginal utility). But surely 5 people reviewing is better than 2 people reviewing.
F2 – What is knowledge management?
Moi – Gas lot of gas.
F3 – How does my company implement knowledge management?
Moi – Gas again and cooked up some false example to show them the usefulness of knowledge management. Told about the international awards won by my company for its knowledge management practices.
F3 – What is difference between technology and engineering?
Moi – Well engineering uses technology to create something useful for the society. Threw in an example – MPEG is a technology and engineering guys realize it into a player, say, which can be used by the people to enjoy music.

Panelists – Thanks and send the next guy in.
Finally came out alive. With lot of arrows passing right beside my apple of self esteem but finally it was intact though a bit scratched.
Met my school senior who was a student there and got a chance to look at the hostel. The hostel were single seater with 1 Gbps LAN (one of the fastest in India) and 24 hrs broadband connectivity. The furniture was rubberwood and looked good though the rooms were smaller for my liking.
Got back to Gaurav’s room and then left for my flight to Bengalooru.

Anti Reservation Rally in Bangalore on 28th May 2006

At the starting point in Chick Lalbagh near Majestic bus stand.



Even kids were a part of it.


Over 5000 people of all age groups and professions were a part of this rally.



There was a helluva security arrangement. Water Tankers. Huge number of riot policemen. But the thing went on very smootly without any untoward incident.




Lots and lots of placards reflecting public opinion.



People had lot to express in their own way.



Lots of doctors from the famous Manipal Hospital were there in the protest rally.Guys with white overcoats are all practicing doctors or medical students.



End Point.



Lots of OBCs joined the protest against reservation. Here is one of them speaking his thots out against the reservation.

Your Web Portfolio

I always had this problem of going to every site that interests me and finding out what's the latest on them. Recently I discovered RSS/Atom feed. Though this looks terribly techie the techiness of the whole affair ends at the name only. Using it is a moron's job.
For background on RSS read this and for gyaan on Atom read this.
For the lazy souls here RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Syndication means 'Selling (an article or cartoon) for publication in many magazines or newspapers at the same time'. This might give you an idea as to what it is.
Most websites feature RSS/Atom feeds, which means if you have an RSS/Atom reader you can read the most recent updates on the websites automatically and you dont have to visit them to check out whats new. For example I use google reader to organise my favorite websites. To know more about google reader read the google reader FAQs.You can add subscriptions in the following ways:
1. Site directed - For example if you want to add Wired Magazine's RSS subscription to your google reader, simply go to the site and click on the RSS link at the top of the page (Note most of the sites have a link reading RSS/XML which takes you to the RSS feed xml page). There you would find a "Subscribe Now!" space where you would find a list of readers. Choose "Add to Google" and then you would be asked whether you want to add to Google homepage or Google reader. I prefer google reader. You would now be taken to google reader page ( you might have to sign in to google reader service using your gmail username/password). And you can see the latest headline from wired magazine in your reader. Now just open your reader any time of the day to see whats the latest story on the wired mag.
2.Dino Age way - This is the good old mechanical way. Lets try and add the Hindu's editorial page in our reader. Click on RSS at Hindu's website to see the list of sections which can be fed. Copy the link saying Opinion. Now go to your google reader and click "Edit Subscriptions". Click on the link "Add Feed" and then paste the xml link in the textbox reading "Feed URL" and click 'Preview'. And you are done.
3.OPML way - Now this is not for the faint hearted. I have not been able to use this successfully but if someone does, its very very useful feature. OPML stands for Outline Processor Markup Language. The curious ones or the ones with technical appetite would like to check out the OPML home page and the wikipedia entry for OPML . The idea is simple. OPML is a common XML based format which helps you in storing and exchanging outline structured data in a platform independent way. An analogy can be HTML which can be understood by html readers in any platform mobile,windows,unix etc. etc. What one needs to do is sequence the xml links to the RSS feeds in an OPML format and feed the OPML file to the google reader. The google reader will automatically subscribe to all the links. Its pretty simple to do as is mentioned here, but somehow the google reader is not able to import from my OPML file.More on this when I get going with it.
Another interesting thing is one can share one's subscriptions with freinds using the share feature of google reader.
Check out and condense you web world. Happy Syndicating!!!
PS - Please post links, comments etc. about anything related.
Thanks.

Installing R Connect on LG Reliance Phones

Setting up R Connect is pretty simple for all the LG phones. I have tried setting it up for LG LSP 350 R, LG LSI 110 both of which are Fixed Wireless Phones and also RD 5130 which is a CDMA mobile. Dont expect the Reliance call centre guys to help you out as they are worthless and pass on lots of wrong information.Looks like they are not trained for handling R Connect problems.
The process is very simple and goes as follows:
1.Get the data cable for your phone. For most of the models you have to buy the data cable separately. The showroom price is 1200 bucks, but u can easily get it from ebay at a fraction of the cost. I recently bought the data cable for LG LSI 110 for Rs. 150 only whereas the showroom price was around Rs.1200. Also note that data cables of two models may or may not be compatible. For example data cable of LG LSP 350 R and RD 5130 models are absolutely compatible but that of LG LSI 110 is different. Note the CD accompanying datacable is not useful for Rconnect try to keep it away from ur system :).
2.Download the RConnect software corresponding to your phone from here. Note you must directly install this software and not the one on the CD accompanying the data cable.
3.Install the R Connect software downloaded from the above site. Make sure you have not plugged in the USB cable yet into your CPU. Doing so might lead to errors and problems.
4.After installing some files and drivers , the installation wizard explicitly asks you to plug in the USB end of the data cable to the PC. Only now should you connect USB end of the datacable to the PC.Make sure that before connecting hte USB end to the PC the other end is connected to your phone.
5.As soon as you plug in the USB end into the PC the new hardware wizard pops out and asks you to detect.You should select "Run this time only" option and click on next. It will ask you to install recommended driver and you must faithfully click on finish button. This happens three or four times before you can finish the installation of R Connect.
6.After the installation is completed, the installation wizard asks you to restart the PC. Restart and you are ready.
7.After restarting click on the R Connect icon and enter the user name and password both of which are usually the phone number.
The browsing speed as per my experience is ok and RConnect is recommeded only for antique applications like email and content browsing. For serious downloaders some broadband connection will help better.
If I missed some points or if you want to add something pls add in the comments. I will update this post if comments are compelling.
Hope this helps. Bye for now.

Updated Link for r-connect phone drivers -> click here