Trials, Tribulations and Temper Bursts
In: Review
27 Jul 2010There’s no dearth of cameras in my house. Yet, we have been wanting to add another to the growing pile of e-junk. This time for the wife.
Of the cameras we have, none are quite portable enough to fit into a ladies purse or gents pockets. The cameras we have are bridge cameras and there’s no way the wife will agree to handling these behemoths. In fact, even I don’t carry these cameras to casual get-togethers and outings because they are too prominent and immediately reduce my status to being the ‘photographer chap’.
What we needed had to be:
Our research showed that the only three ‘major’ brands that had cameras in the sub – Rs. 5000/- range were Olympus, Fuji and Nikon. Casio & Canon’s offerings were over the 5K budget we had set by 25% without offering any significant advantage in specifications.
Internet research put the Olympus FE-46, Fujifilm FinePix AV100 and the Nikon Coolpix L21 to be within our budget. The Olympus and the Fujifilm cameras offered 12 MP resolution using a 1/2.3″ sensor while the Nikon offered 8 MP resolution using a 1/2.5″ sensor. I read so many negative reviews of the Olympus FE-46 that it put me off altogether. I had used a Fujifilm budget camera in the past and knew it to be a slow camera. The Nikon was rated 6/10 by most reviewers.
To shop, we landed up at Reliance Digital (Opp. Deccan Chronicle, Sarojini Devi Road, Secunderabad) and the first thing that stuck was the professionalism of the store staff. Not at all like the FutureGroup’s eZone stores (which recently sold used + abused + old-stock stuff in the name of sale).
Since the Olympus FE-46 was not available at this store, it made my job easy to some extent. The comparison was between Fuji (cannot recollect the exact model on offer but withing my budget) and Nikon L21.
Since a further in-depth analysis of the camera was possible in the store, we placed our bets and brought home the Nikon for Rs. 4899/-
Once at home, both of us started futzing with the camera; leaving aside all important work.
If you are looking for a camera that is completely automatic and to be used by people who have no understanding of photography terms, this is a good option. The Nikon sensor, build-quality, AA battery convenience, SD Card etc. mean that even children will find this camera a delight to use.
Image Gallery:
In: Review
7 Jul 2010
3iX is a provider of cheap web-hosting solution. Their basic hosting package costs only $1/month. Like all cheap solutions, it is not without it’s fails. It maybe a good solution for those who are looking to only create basic web-presence and can live with a little downtime. Though 3iX servers may go down from time to time, I have not been defrauded by them yet and they have managed to survive where other hosting providers in this class have bitten the dust.
One of my client’s website is hosted at 3iX and since I had a feeling that our website was down a little too many times, I set-up a free website monitor using Montastic. The free account at Montastic attempts to pull a specific page from the website every 30 minutes. Every time it fails, I get an email. When the site responds again, I get another mail.
I manually feed the data into a Google Spreadsheet and chart it out for visual inspection.
The free montastic monitor can only check once every 30 minutes. Hence even if a site goes down for 10 minutes, it will appear to me that the site was down for 30 minutes. At the same time, if the site went down and came back in 25 minutes just a second after the Montastic monitor checked it, montastic will miss the downtime completely.
Nevertheless, between the limitations of 3iX and Montastic, this post presents the ground reality of hosting on super-economic hosting providers. Here’s hoping that 3iX does a little better in the coming months.
Other cheap hosting providers (some of which may have slightly better up-times):
In: Tips & Tricks
8 Jun 2010
Make no mistake – GoDaddy is a great domain registrar and host! It’s world’s Number 1 in domain registrations after-all.
Their name may seem funny in India, but I have been using them for self and clients since 2001 and have received amazing value.
GoDaddy’s forte lies in delivering the average consistently. You will not find GoDaddy in the list of Top 10 web hosting companies (the damned lists are either fake or filled with web-hosting companies which disappear within a year). Now will you find GoDaddy offering domains for free (with loads of hidden terms and conditions).
In: Tips & Tricks
23 Apr 2010
Login to Beam Cable Internet without user intervention
Beam Cable provides very attractive Internet connectivity packages to homes & offices and is available in areas where the big name ISPs don’t dare to provide services. In many ways, Beam Cable has pioneered many aspects of Internet Service Providers and set benchmarks that other providers should attempt to reach.
While user’s without computer networking background crib about the lack of knowledge in Beam Cable technicians and inability to solve technical issues; power-users like me crib about handicapping ‘features’ in the Beam Cable network (such as manual login and Fair Usage Policy limits).
Beam Cable uses a ‘Web Based’ authentication system. Instead of using the more common PPPoE authentication, Beam has chosen some really complicated HTTP based authentication system. Users like me who use non-customizable Wi-Fi router (Netgear, Belkins etc.) cannot automate the login process. Logging in requires a computer with a web-browser. If you have attached devices like VOIP gateways, Security Cameras, these devices stop working till you manually login everyday.
If you have multiple users in your house, you need to share the login/password with everyone. The situation becomes worse if you use the connection in a company environment where confidentiality of login/pass is paramount. Read the rest of this entry »
In: Review
22 Apr 2010The Asus Eee PC 900HA Netbook was released in the second half of 2008 and I would be considered as ‘Out of his mind’ to review it now.
So does this article review the product mentioned in the title? Yes. But more importantly, this is an impassioned plea to the families in India to adopt the netbook and bring computing to the dining table.
Asus pioneered the concept of ‘netbook’ when they boldly came up with the idea of creating a tiny ‘notebook’ computer using under-powered components and selling it at throw-away prices. Obviously, they had done their market research because the concept of a ‘netbook’ (a notebook only good enough to browse the Net) caught on like wild-fire and soon enough every laptop computer maker in the world was peddling his version of the netbook.
Asus started by offering a product that featured a 7″ screen, 512 MB memory, 4 GB storage (less than what your mobile phone probably features), all powered by a 1 GHz CPU. The miracle was the fact that it was compact and light-weight enough to fit into a woman’s purse, yet powerful enough to launch Mozilla Firefox and WinAmp simultaneously. After-all, aren’t Firefox and Winamp 95% of our computing today? Read the rest of this entry »
In: Rajib-isms
20 Apr 2010It appears that most of the email service providers who have operations in India, have committed to turn over email boxes of citizens under the scanner of the law. This process includes recovery of deleted emails.
I have been asked this question time and again – Can deleted emails from Hotmail / Gmail / Yahoo / etc. be recovered?
My simple answer would be “Yes”. Can you get access to recovered email? Again simple, “No”.
Email today is no longer stored as ‘mbox’ files on a Unix system. The sheer volume of email, the ginormous in-box sizes and superb facilities such as tagging, indexing & search, context sensitive ads; mean that your emails are undoubtedly stored as database records.
It is quite simple for email service providers to change the tag of your email from ‘inbox’ to ‘Deleted’ when you click delete. In fact all email providers let you review your deleted emails. From this point on, the choice is yours – either empty the trash immediately or allow automatic house-keeping to empty the trash after 30 days. We sleep well at night knowing that incinerated emails will not rise from ashes again.
What if the process of ‘emptying the trash’ did not actually delete the database record but simply tagged it as ‘incinerated’? Read the rest of this entry »
In: Rajib-isms
18 Apr 2010If you are cheap like me (Yes! I am an Indian and I wear the term ‘Cheap‘ proudly on my arm), you are probably spending quite a few frustrating minutes per month trying to coax the shampoo bottle to give up it’s last drops of hair elixir. Or trying to add a little extra zing to your fries by slapping the bottom of the Maggi Hot & Sweet Tomato Sauce bottle that has technically become empty. Read the rest of this entry »
In: Tips & Tricks
14 Apr 2010In this day and age of affordable photography, you can arm every member of your family with a digital camera. But many of us don’t want to – because then we will have to sit through a slideshow of their horribly taken photographs. Despair not, if people have the same opinion of your efforts, then these simple tips will make you the ‘Designated Family Photographer’ in no time. Here are 7 steps to photographic excellence.
1) Don’t Leave The Wife Behind (Excessive zoom):
Just because your camera features the latest mega-zoom technology does not mean that you need to zoom into every distant mountain, bird and overhead aircraft.
Unless photography is your profession, don’t use the Zoom lens to focus on esoteric subjects and leave your near and dear ones out of the frame. Trust me, if we want to see Ships and Airplanes, we will just use Google Image Search.
As my brilliant Guru Dr. Neeraj Raj advised me, “Use the zoom to capture subjects who will otherwise be disturbed from their natural state.”
Shoot kids, pets using the zoom. Shoot candid. Don’t shoot voyeur.
Read the rest of this entry »
In: Rajib-isms
2 Apr 2010Everywhere I see, I find a PPT person. And I don’t mean an IT professional with a penchant to convert conversations into bullet points and pie charts. Find out if you are the PPT type too.
In: Rants
31 Mar 2010
Vh1 thought of educating us about the history of music and has planned to show a series of musicals & concerts at prime-time.
A very good idea indeed. I would love to see the current A.D.D. generation sit through 2+ hour long movies that kept us glued to the chair and we couldn’t get the tunes out of our heads for weeks. Trying to make the screenings politically correct has been it’s undoing.
Take for ex: the movie Grease. This John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John classic set hearts and pulses racing with it’s no-brainer plot about boy-meets-girl, boy-girl-break up, boy-girl-patch up. Johnny T. is continuously smoking, leering & generally living dangerously (very well-mannered boy by today’s standards). Read the rest of this entry »
In: Tips & Tricks
29 Mar 2010If Microsoft Word 2007 takes a very long time to start-up on your computer, you maybe the victim of some bug in HP Laserjet m1522nf printer.
The problem does not manifest itself in all computers with similar configuration; even Microsoft Excel seems to work just fine while Word gets totally stuck. It seems to be a problem with Network Printers – in particular the HP m1522nf.
Don’t despair though, a quick & dirty solution is available. Read the rest of this entry »
In: Rajib-isms
28 Mar 2010In: Rajib-isms
26 Mar 2010In: Tips & Tricks
24 Mar 2010I am dreading the day my Laptop’s battery dies and I am forced to buy a new one. The damned things are so expensive, one starts considering buying a brand new laptop instead of buying a battery and paying for some over-due laptop repairs.
Recently when I had to change the battery on one of the company laptops, I couldn’t help but wonder what is inside them that makes them so expensive-heavy-mysterious?
Mind you, opening a laptop battery is considered so hazardous that the manufacturers generally use a sealed container and print warning notices galore. Technically, a Lithium-Ion Battery contains volatile chemicals that may explode and cause severe bodily harm. The contents of the battery are also dangerous pollutants and users are requested to spend money to return the dead thing to the original manufacturer for safe-disposal.
So here we go opening a laptop battery to discover it’s innards. Read the rest of this entry »
In: Rants
6 Mar 2010Much music today is considered to be an esoteric collection of broken vocal chords and noise generators parading as musical instruments. The fault though does not always lie with the musicians. Technicians connected to the industry contribute heartily.
Case in point, I was listening to the soundtrack of the bollywood movie ‘Partner’. Music by Sajid Wajid and performed by a host of biggie singers, some of the tracks on the album are distinctly catchy. So when faced with an original CD replicated by Super Cassette Industries (aka T-Series), I was looking forward to blasting the music on my Creative Computer Speakers.
What shattered were however my ear-drums and hopes and I went – “Blast! The sound sucks”. I wondered why and set about investigating it.
I extracted the Digital Audio (Track #4, ‘Soni De Nakhre’) and opened it up in Sound Forge to analyze it. Immediately noticeable is the compression in the sound. To maximize the loudness factor of the music, the technicians amplify every nuance of the music and damp out the loud portions so that the sound does not clip.
Such music is quite loud even at low volumes and is characterized by complete lack of sharply defined instruments. While this kind of compression may be fine for dance music, the loss of Q-Factor is quite telling when cymbals no longer sound crystal and sharp, but turn out as FM noise.
When overdone, compression has a nasty side-effect where loud portions of the audio disintegrate. It sounds as if you have turned the volume of your speakers all the way up and your speakers can no longer handle the torture.
Opening the Spectrum Analysis Tool reveals another surprise! The reason for cymbals sounding like FM noise is also because the complete frequency spectrum required to accurately produce the sound of the cymbal is missing. Read the rest of this entry »
In: Review
27 Feb 2010
In this day and age of modern computing, Internet, CRM, TAT and many other buzzwords that define efficiency and customer satisfaction, it is rare to encounter a private sector company that makes you run pillar to post like Govt. Departments. Congratulations Net4India – You are up there with the worst examples of Indian bureaucracy.
A company for whom I provide IT Consultancy reserved 7 domains at Net4 a few years back and paid premium prices (this was before I was a consultant for them). Now that I am in charge, I wanna transfer the domains out to a registrar where it is easier to manage the domains.
What is wrong with Net4′s domain management system?
The Embassy of France in India in collaboration with Krishnakriti Festival of Art and Culture is organizing a fellowship program to study art in France under an internship at some of the best colleges in the art capital of the world.
Successful candidates will travel to France for a period of 12 months / 6 months and study at some of the best institutions for fine arts in the world.
The process to apply for this fellowship program is completely online and free-of-cost.
Apply now at www.krishnakriti.in. Last date of application is 28-Feb-2010.
In: News
6 Jan 2010
It’s that time of the year again when the city of Hyderabad witnesses and explosion of cultural events to mark a “Happy New Arty Year!”
In collaboration with The Embassy of France in India, Alliance Francaise of Hyderabad and a variety of sponsors, the Krishnakriti Foundation presents “Annual Festival of Art & Culture in memory of Krishnachandra B. Lahoti”.
Tightly integrated with the ongoing “Bonjour India – Festival of France in India”, the Krishnakriti festival will showcase a heady mix of classical & modern art-forms from cultures across the globe. The line-up includes music, dance, art and fusion art forms.
The Krishnakriti foundation will conduct an art camp from Jan 7 to 11, 2010 at the Kalakriti Art Gallery. A panel comprising of some of India’s best known artists will conduct a discussion on “Where is the Indian Art Market Heading?”.
In the following days, artists such as Dobet Gnohare, China Moses, Penn Masala will present programmes on music. Margi Madhu’s troupe & Mayakkam Oxymore will present programmes on dance. Renowned Indian photographer Amit Mehra, will conduct a two day workshop on photography. A french film festival will showcase some of the best that classic french cinema has to offer.
For more details, visit the Krishnakriti Website.
For reasons best known to Google, the email component of Google Apps allows users to automatically forward all email to a single email address only. Since it is not uncommon for organizations to set-up a common email ID for interacting with customers and then forwarding all email received to multiple people for action, the restriction on forwarding emails to multiple recipients is a bit of a bummer.
Sure, multiple recipients can use the ‘recent:’ tag while logging in and ensure that all of them download the emails, but it is easy enough to forget to switch on ‘Leave messages on server’ and actually delete all messages.
Recently, a friend of mine also complained of this and since he is an individual, yet affected by this issue; I felt I should figure out a workaround to this and publish it.
The simplest solution is to set-up an Email Group in google apps. Simply put, an email group is an email ID that itself comprises of multiple users. Any email sent-to the group ID is automatically replicated to all members of the group. Read the rest of this entry »
In: Review
2 Nov 2009LCD TVs are now in vogue in India. Everybody desires one and even middle class families have started to buy them to replace their old CRT TVs. However the biggest challenge that is being faced by the buyers, is the selection of the right make-model. Hundreds of models are on display, but not enough technical / testing information is available and unscrupulous dealers are more than happy to palm off their defective wares on to the unsuspecting customers.
Here’s a quick guide to help you decide and purchase the right LCD TV for your home/office. Evaluate the LCD TV you intend to purchase against the following parameters.
Determining the right screen size is quite easy. It’s mathematical, hence precise. Read the rest of this entry »
In: Rants
2 Nov 2009The battle between those who have created the content and those who have appropriated it is nothing new. It’s not a phenomenon of the digital age, it’s been around for centuries. In it’s simplest form, it was plagiarism. In modern age, it’s free distribution on a massive scale. Somewhere in between, sit the Corporations who have have funded the ventures and now expect to collect revenue from 6.5 billion customers.
Chronicled here are a few follies that make their efforts seem laughable and their intentions questionable, since all they have done till now is to question the genuine customer. Read the rest of this entry »
In: Review
17 Oct 2009Serendipity strikes when you least expect it.
I was out helping my friend Saleem select a suitable LCD TV & Home Theater system for his flat. At check out, I mentioned to him that eventually we will buy a universal remote to reduce the clutter on the center table. Basically replace 4 remotes (LG 47″ LCD TV, LG DVD Player, Tata Sky Set-top Box, Onkyo Home Theater System) with just one.
The OneForAll range of remotes has become quite popular now and can be easily found at electronic stores across Hyderabad. Basic model (4 devices) start at just Rs. 750/- and go all the way up-to 5,000/- for touch-screen remotes. The price is a far cry from the offering by Logitech weighing in at Rs. 27,000/-
In a spontaneous gesture Saleem purchased and gifted me a OneForAll remote and left me speechless. Our weak protestations were insufficient to convince him that he needed the remote more than we did! Hence, now I am the proud owner of a OneForAll Protecto 4 Universal Remote.
The Protecto 4 remote is quite similar in functionality to the other universal remotes by the company in functionality. The USP of this model is it’s colorful appearance, rubberized grip and back-light. Read the rest of this entry »
In: Review
16 Oct 2009For a couple of years now I have been doling out “expert
” advice to my friends regarding which LCD Television to buy for their home/offices. This festival season we decided to take the plunge, having waited long enough for the cost/inch to drop below Rs. 1000. I guess the time had come for me to practice what I preached.
Buying an LCD TV is way harder than just visiting the store and being wowed by their LCD wall and glib sales-people. That said, I think the quality of technical sales-people in Hyderabad has improved quite a lot. During my exercise to buy the LCD TV, many of them turned up to be quite knowledgeable earned my respect; on prior occasions I would openly vent my frustration at their lack of knowledge by making un-parliamentary comments giving them a disdainful look.
At start, we decided that we needed a TV of 32″ size. I owned a Philips 21″CRT TV and for my small drawing room, it proved to be sufficient. When I bought the TV in 2002, it cost me Rs. 18,500/- (Rs. 880/inch) and the image quality after 7 years of service was as impeccable as the day I had bought it. I would have happily relegated it to be my secondary television had it not been an acute lack of space in my house.
While most LCD TVs being sold in this season are ‘Under Exchange’, the store valuation of my TV varied between Rs. 500/- to Rs. 1,500/-. I found a buyer for my CRT TV at Rs. 3,500/- and to our mutual satisfaction, I let go of my old love.
I checked out LCD TVs from 19″ Wide up-to 47″ and decided that the optimum size which I should go in for would be 32″. Just enough prestige without breaking the bank. Hey! I am not gonna live in this small rented apartment all my life!!
Size being fixed, the other parameters which I considered for evaluation were:
In: Review
27 Sep 2009Recently by an amazing stroke of luck I found an opportunity to tinker around with the Yamaha PSR I425 (nearest international mode: PSR-E413) and it’s nearest equivalent, the Casio CTK 5000. While feature-wise they are quite similar, a quick comparison revealed that there are quite a few differences in the products, some glaring while others subtle.
Similarities:
Differences: Read the rest of this entry »
In: Tips & Tricks
17 Sep 2009Twice in a week I was hit with the same problem. It appeared that on two of our HP Laserjet 3055 printers, the network printing stopped working for no apparent reason. While printing using USB worked just fine, we could not print using the Network. We tried setting the IP address to automatic, tried setting the IP address to manual, tried pinging the port, ran an eyeball check on the network-path from the computer to the printer and verified that the network itself was working; nothing helped.
The funny part was that while the indicator lights on the network port on the printer were glowing as expected and indicated traffic being received, the network functionality on the printer itself played dead and wouldn’t respond to pings or http query.
While on one of the printer, we were able set/reset the IP address, on the other printer attempts to set IP address were met with failure. It would revert to 0.0.0.0 on every power-on. Obviously, we tried Resetting the printer settings and that didn’t help at all. Read the rest of this entry »
Hello and Welcome to my blog! This blog records what I face, What I think & What I do. I hope information presented here maybe of some use to you & helps you save money or time.