Much 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.

Cymbals are high frequency instruments and produce sound waves in frequency right up-to 20 KHz. The spectrum analyzer revealed that this audio track did not have noticeable audio above 16 KHz.

Missing audio over the 16 KHz spectrum is characteristic of highly compressed MP3 files. When audiophiles complain that MP3 files downloaded from the Internet just don’t have the quality of an audio-CD (even though the MP3 sounds just fine to most of us), they are complaining about missing audio.

So what was happening here? Did the music studio email 128 Kbps MP3 files to T-Series to decode and master into a CD? Or did some T-Series audio engineer had the brilliant idea of converting Studio-Output (Uncompressed WAV files) to MP3 so that he could make space for porn on his HDD?

Big questions are: Read the rest of this entry »

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?

• Net4’s login IDs are either cryptic numbers or even more cryptic alphanumeric names automatically assigned by them. It’s a devil remembering them. Apparently they have not yet caught on to using email-IDs or Open-IDs as login IDs.
• Once logged in, the interface is inconsistent. Features like ‘Reopen ticket’ are visible in some pages and invisible in other related pages.
• Domain management is very painful. To change Name Server (NS) entries you are required to type both the domain names and the IPs. Come on! Net4 can very well resolve the IPs themselves instead of forcing customers to ‘Open Command Prompt’ and run a ‘ping’ on the name-server address.
• Requests for Auth Codes are an unending cycle of Trouble-tickets and angry emails. Unlike other registrars, Net4 does not reveal the Auth Code upon clicking the link. More on this later.
• Net4’s pricing is way off the mark. Net4 currently charges Rs. 689/- to register a .IN domain for 1 year. Mitsu.IN charges Rs. 589/- and even a US Based registrar like GoDaddy.com charges 694/- and throws in Free 1GB email.

The Domain Transfer Saga

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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.

Forward mails to more than one recipient in google apps

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.

Create Email Groups in Google Apps

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.

The solution to forward emails to multiple recipients simply consists of creating a group-ID and adding recipients to the group. Once added, configure the master account to forward emails to the group-ID and they will be forwarded to all the recipients.

To illustrate the concept:

• Let us assume that we have a real-estate project called ‘Lotus Leaf‘ and we have an email ID on which we encourage prospective customers to shoot enquiries.
• The organization requires that all emails received at should be forwarded to , , & .
• To achieve this, we will create an email group called team- and add the email IDs of the four persons to the members list.
• Now we configure POP & Forwarding options of to forward all emails to team-
• All emails received at will now be automatically replicated to the members of the team- group

Notes:

Add Users To Email Groups In Google Apps

• If creating a group, try to set the group type to “Team”. In this mode, you can add recipients from any domains. For ex: Group members can be from Hotmail, Yahoo, Rediff or any other email service.
• In “Team” mode, emails received at the group ID are automatically forwarded to the team members who can be from any domain.
• Any member of the team can send an email to the group ID and the mail will be replicated.
• Non group members cannot send emails to the group ID since their email will be rejected instantly. This is useful to avoid spam.
• If a group member forwards a spam message to the group ID, it will be replicated to all the group members. Please avoid blindly forwarding every email to the Group ID; instead use a rule to forword emails so that only those emails which concern the group are forwarded.

10 Tips for buying the perfect LCD TV

LCD 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.

#1 Screen Size

Determining the right screen size is quite easy. It’s mathematical, hence precise.

* 1a. By Viewing Distance

To decide the screen size based on your viewing distance, multiply the distance (in feet) with 4 to get the screen size (in inches). For example if your sofa is 8 feet (96 inches) away from the TV, you need a 32 inch TV (8 x 4 = 96 / 3). Corollary, to determine the optimum viewing distance for your TV, divide the screen size (in inches) by 4 to get the viewing distance in feet.

* 1b. By Image Size

LCD TVs (wide-screen, 16:9 ratio) are actually smaller than their CRT TVs (4:3 ratio) for the same diagonal screen size. When compared to a 32″ CRT TV, a 32″ Wide-screen TV is smaller by 11% & presents an image that is 33% smaller in area. Hence, if you are looking forward to maintaining the same image size while viewing, be sure to choose a LCD TV that is 1.22 times bigger. For example, if you had a 21″ CRT TV, you need a 26″ LCD TV. If you had a 27″ CRT TV, you need a 32″ LCD TV. If choosing a TV by image size, be sure to calculate the optimum viewing distance using corollary presented in (1a).
Read the rest of this entry »

To control piracy, punish the genuine customers

The 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.

• Direct to Home (DTH)Video on Demand: This is a very popular concept where the broadcaster streams relatively new movies all day on specific channels. To tune in, you need to pay a subscription fee. Depending the ongoing scheme, you are given access to the channel and all movies airing on it for a period of 24+ hours. Tata Sky’s solution to deter people from pirating movies by recording them off their TVs was to periodically flash a code on the screen that presumably will help them to identify the exact set-top box(and hence the exact customer) from which the content was recorded. What they did not envisage was that people who are recording the content for distribution simply use a video editing software to mask the code. Where the code normally appears as white text on blue box (completely hiding the image underneath), now it simply appears as a blue block. These movies are available widely and known as DTHRip. Clearly, the hordes of educated staffers at Tata have not predicted something like this would happen and genuine customers are left to watch a movie on which banners and non-sense information keeps popping up with irritating frequency.
• DVD Video: From hair-brained schemes such as Region Codes (which lock out the Indian child from watching movies that his cousin from USA gifted him) to CSS & Macrovision, by far the most irritating is the mandatory notice screens. If you play DVDs made in USA, before anything you are greeted with a message from FBI threatening legal action. This message cannot be skipped and must be endured for 10 – 30 seconds. As paying customers, this is a nuisance for you. As a pirate, you ensure that while ripping this video and making it available for mass distribution, you simply skip the FBI notice. So now the folks who did not pay for the movie end up with a better viewing experience . If you are an Indian who bought the DVD of an Indian movie from DVD marketing companies such as Shemaroo, you are the unintended victim of Indian ingenuity. The Indian DVD disc manufacturers have replaced the FBI warning screens with advertisements of their brands, upcoming releases and other products. Not only as a paying customer you cannot skip these and head to the main movie, but you also have to endure these from 1-3 minutes!

These are a few examples of punishing genuine customers. I will add to them as I discover more. Leave your feedback with more examples of such brain-dead schemes.

One For All Protecto 4 Universal Remote

Serendipity 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.

The remote features 4 device selection buttons (TV, Satellite, DVD Player, Amplifier) and comes with a booklet that contains basic instructions and codes for various devices. OneForAll also maintains a functional website that makes it relatively easy to find codes for your device.

Setting up the remote was quite easy. It seemed to work with the Tata Sky Set-top Box (Humax make) out-of-the-box. Making it work with my new Panasonic LCD TV took two attempts. Making it work with my DVD player took longer (about 5 attempts before I found semi-functional codes).

As with all universal remotes, don’t expect this to provide every single function of your original device remote. Most common functionality is enabled just by entering a 4 digit code. For specific functions, the device can be trained using the original remote.

Read the rest of this entry »

Review of Panasonic TH-L32X15D Television

For 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:

• Image quality
• Full-HD (1920 x 1080)  vs. HD-Ready (1366 x 768) resolution
• No. of inputs: HDMI, Component, S-Video, Composite, VGA
• Speakers: Speaker placement, Power Output
• USB: USB Slot, Card Reader, JPEG Player, MP3 Player, DivX / XviD / MP4 Player
• Aesthetics

Read the rest of this entry »

Yamaha PSR I425

Recently 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:

• Both the keyboards have a lot of focus on the Indian market and hence feature Indian tones and styles. While the Yamaha has a greater selection of Indian tones (more percussion instruments), the Casio features a good selection of tones from Indian, Chinese and Arabic music.
• IMHO, the the quality of Indian tones on the Casio is slightly higher (the Harmonium-2 on the Casio sounds way better than the Harmonium-3 on the Yamaha) but most string instruments (Sitar, Tanpura) sound terrible and not at all like what I have heard from the real instruments.
  I must also make an important announcement here: Once upon a time, the Sitar tone on keyboards imitated the rubber-band guitars we used to make ourselves. These days the Sitar tone is very very life-like and since our expectations have risen automatically too, we always compare it with ‘What it could be’ instead of ‘What it was’. By this benchmark, the tones on both the keyboards indeed sound quite good and are only a few steps away from fooling the listener.
• Both keyboards feature Touch sensitivity, Arpeggio, Harmonize, Pitch-bend, Transpose, Tuning, Dual-sound, Split, Registration memory and Song recording. Both keyboards feature Headphone-out, Sustain Pedal-in and USB connectivity.  Both keyboards are 5 octaves and support the entire General MIDI (GM) sound set and many more (nearly 500 tones). Most tones are quite similar in name as well as sound. The selection of styles (rhythms) on both keyboards is quite good and very live-band like. There is a healthy selection of Demo/Learning songs and a ‘Music Guide’ which automatically selects the style, tone, effects and tempo of a popular song (from a list).
• Both keyboards feature One-Touch Setting (OTS). Based on the style you select, the keyboard automatically selects the Primary tone, The layered tone, Reverb/Chorus settings. To activate OTS, on the Yamaha you must select a style and then select ‘000′ as the tone. On the Casio, you must select the style and press the ‘Style’ button for 2 seconds.
• Both keyboards also seem to use similar power adapters and have similar back-lit buttons. The plastic keys have similar feel and respond dully to nimble fingers. Even the pitch-bend wheel on both keyboards looks weakly constructed and the modulation wheel is missing from both. Both keyboards feature Blue back-lit LCD displays and have Rubber buttons. Is this a case of OEM manufacturing and Brand customization?

Differences: Read the rest of this entry »

Fix network printing issues with HP Laserjet 3055

Twice 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.

In a conversation with tech. support at HP, my IT Assistant Mr. Krishna Manda heard something about NVRAM Init. While he was hesitant to  execute it without authorisation, he dutifully noted the steps down. Upon my arrival at office, I tried the NVRAM init and voila! The printer was completely reset and the network started working as expected.

To execute a NVRAM Init: Read the rest of this entry »

Local Cable TV Provider has arbitrarily switched off channels from being broadcast and called it their 'condolence' gesture.

The untimely demise of Shri Shri Y.S. Rajashekhar Reddy, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh has left my family in deep shock.

Being a metropolitan family, we rooted for a urban development oriented political party like Telugu Desam Party (TDP) or Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) to win and were quite surprised to see Congress-I win the elections with a clear majority.

Our visits to the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) however clearly pointed out the reason for the landslide win of this Rain Minister. The populist programs launched by the State Government under his aegis has benefited millions of citizens of the state and continues to provide relief to millions more in the state in numerous ways, not always tangible.

The reaction of professionalism of my Cable TV provider however surprised me in a very unpleasant manner. Channels just went-off the air. What I assumed incorrectly to be a ordinary glitch was quickly replaced by a dismay as the Cable TV Operator informed me that they had switched off the broadcast of most channels to express their condolences.

What next? Doctors going off-duty to express condolences or Pilots disembarking for the same reason? Public transport system rolling back into the shutters, hotels and medical shops locking their doors, banks and post offices suspending operations? Will these organisations too display their condolences? Perhaps it’s high time for the ATM machines to display a blues screen of death as mark of respect for our departed leader!

At a critical time like this, when the public is clamoring for every bit of information from the unlikeliest of sources, if a public service provider suspends operations by it’s whims & fancy – the situation can only be considered as criminal negligence. This has the potential to spread panic by not disseminating much needed information.

Would the Cable TV operator go off the wires if someone important died of swine flu? Maybe this one will. And all his subscribers may be denied the infotainment options for which they subscribed and paid in advance.

Satellite TV companies in India may not be perfect. They display yet another logo on the image, image quality is not always consistent but at-least they are not arbitrary and they understand their public responsibility better. Jai Ho for them!

Read the rest of this entry »

419 scammers now use SMS Centres based in India

419 Scams are nothing new, at-least not to techies. However there are scores of people across the planet who continue to fall for these scammers who are primarily based out of Africa.

Why do people fall for such schemes? Lack of common sense is obviously the reason. Greed is another. Take a look at this SMS message that I received on my phone the other day:

Congrate!! you won GBP.400.000.00.In Onging Hewlett Packard CO UK. Mobile Draws.for claims Contact Mr.Martins via E-mail:

Sender: C.H.H.P@
SMS Centre: +919247055007


It is obviously a scam, but to the un-initiated, here’s what ticked me off: Read the rest of this entry »

HAL.DLL Missing error on Windows XP MCE SP2 with IE8

If you are the proud owner of a Sony Vaio VGN-N130G (PCG-7T1L) or similar laptop, you are probably facing this issue right now. The malady also infects laptop of other makes.

Recently a laptop was submitted to me for diagnosis and rectification of this error. What I assumed incorrectly to be a 5 minute job turned out to be a 10 hour job. The error reported was simple – laptop running Windows XP Media Center Edition refuses to start with HAL.DLL Corrupt or Missing error message.

Simplest solution is to ask the user to start the computer with a Windows XP installation disc and press F2 when prompted for ‘Automated System Recovery‘. As it generally turns out, the customer did not have Recovery discs. Sony did not supply any and the customer never bothered to create them using the ‘Vaio Recovery – Create Discs’ option present on his laptop. The laptop was also running Windows XP Media Center Edition for which installations discs are not easily available with neighbors.

I requested the laptop to be brought over to my place so that I could manually replace the missing file. Since Windows XP acts completely dead if HAL.DLL goes for a toss, I generally start the offending computer with Hiren’s Boot CD, Load Mini Windows XP (if present) or go-to Command Prompt and load NTFS4DOS. To replace the offending file, I either search of the I386 folder already exists on the computer and use the EXPAND computer to decompress and replace the corrupted file with the original. If I386 folder is not present, then I either copy the file from another machine using USB Pendrive or Microsoft Networking for DOS.

As it turned out, in this case, neither helped. Replacing HAL.DLL from it’s archived version found in I386 folder present on the laptop did not help. Nor did copying a file from my computer and downloaded from Internet help. The error message re-appeared dutifully on every boot.

Read the rest of this entry »

Review of Windows 7

The launch of Windows 7 is currently the hottest Tech News. Forums are filled with people asking for first hand feedback. Warez sites are filled with download links to Beta & Pirated Release-to-manufacture (RTM) versions of the OS.

Since I provide I.T. Support to Small & Medium Businesses (SMB) and sooner or later, they are bound to end up with computers which came with Windows 7 pre-installed, I decided to take the OS for a spin.

I installed & tested the May 2009 Beta version ¹ of the operating system on my computer ² and summarized below are the findings:

Read the rest of this entry »

Calculate Cost per GB for Hard Disc Drives

It is not uncommon for me to provide advice to my friends on their Gadget Purchase Issues. The most frequent question being – Should I purchase Product A or Product B? Determining the superiority of a product is not only based on comparison of features, price & requirements; but also factors such as aesthetics, brand trust etc.

Some of my friends (not all of them well-heeled) prefer products that are stylish even if it means they are expensive and have less features than the nearest competing product; while others (who are quite well-heeled) solely request price  as the decisive factor.

Making this decision for lifestyle related products can be daunting, but deciding on IT related products is generally a breeze courtesy clear cut documentation & competitive pricing.

When purchasing new hard disk drives, most common questions are:

• Desktop (3.5″) or Laptop (2.5″) profile?
• IDE (PATA) or SATA or USB or Firewire connectivity?
• Manufacturer: Seagate or Maxtor or Western Digital or Hitachi?
• Capacity: For data backup? For massive Internet downloads storage?
• Budgetary limitations?

While the first few questions are easy to answer, the thorniest question remains the price that should be paid. Some veer towards a drive that is clearly commanding a premium but features the latest and the greatest, while others veer towards the one which is the cheapest of the lot. This can sometimes result in the purchase of a drive that does not deliver the “best value”.

What I suggest to them is to consider the “Price per Gigabyte” factor and make the purchase.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have wanted to buy a portable keyboard for a while now. But I felt that the asking price for the equipment was a tad higher than my commitment to learn playing the keyboard systematically.

My primary purpose was to amuse myself hammering out the first few bars of popular tunes, possibly connect the keyboard to a computer and tinker around with the masses of music making software that is available; again for amusement.

As a kid I have owned a Casio PT-20, a Casio SA-20 , a Casio MA-120 and tinkered around with waves of mini-keyboards from Casio, Roland & Yamaha keyboards. Needless to say, the keyboards from Casio proved to be completely useless (Brilliant PT-20 but micro-keys are impossible to play by anyone who has attained puberty, the SA-20 produces an annoying typewriter-click sound every-time you press a button on the control panel & the MA-120 has sounds that are completely unnatural). The SA-20 annoyed the hell out of folks at my school when I connected it up to the PA system at a school function and proceeded to emit loud 1930’s typewriter sounds in my efforts at selecting the tone and setting the volume level.

All in all, I dismissed Casio as a possible manufacturer of serious musical instruments. In fact, later on when I wanted to buy a 4/5 octave keyboard for home use, not one person would recommend me any Casio product. It seemed that Yamaha was the only company manufacturing usable musical instruments for amateurs. Roland was for semi/professionals and Korg, Alesis, Fatar etc. were only for the professionals (most of the high end keyboards cost as much as a Tata Nano and go up-to the price of a Honda Civic).

Resigning myself to purchasing a Yamaha, I started scouring the Indian market and was disheartened at the price tags the Yamaha’s sported. The base model PSR E-213 sported a price tag for Rs. 12,500/- while the usable PSR-I425 went upto Rs. 22,000/- Way over the budget I had allocated. These cost considerably less in USA but by virtue of being large and unwieldy electronic equipment, I could not ask my brother to carry-in one for me on his next visit.

On an off-chance, I wandered into a small music shop (Musical Mart, Shop No. 72, Swapnalok Complex, S.D. Road, Secunderabad) and spotted the Casio CTK-810IN which I had spotted at a few malls (Rs. 12,500/- & powered off to prevent tinkering). The dealer informed me that I could have the CTK-810IN for about 11.5K. This was quite close to the budget I had set (Rs. 10K) so I quizzed him about this model and others. He mentioned the newly launched CTK series which were not yet available widely in the country. The specs and pricing were superb. Starting at CTK-2000 (Rs. 6.5K) the range encompassed CTK-3000 (Rs. 8K), CTK-4000 (Rs. 10.5K) & CTK-5000 (Rs. 14.5K). All models featured 5 octaves and General MIDI (GM) compatibility, USB MIDI Connectivity and no handicapping features.

The gradation of the product line is simple. The CTK-2000 features 400 tones & 150 rhythms along with reverb/chorus. The CTK-3000 features an additional Pitch Wheel. The CTK-4000 doesnot feature a Pitch wheel but has much improved sound (AHL) and arpeggiator. The CTK-5000 adds a pitch wheel and SD Card reader to the CTK-4000. The newly added CTK-2100 adds sampling function to CTK-2000, while the new WK-210 is essentially a 76 key version of the CTK-4000.

Based on the fact that I could never figure out the pitch wheel (even today, I draw the pitch curves in MIDI recording software) and would probably limit myself to Piano style playing, I chose to go for the budget friendly CTK-4000. That said, the CTK-5000 is an excellent deal over comparable Yamaha models which cost almost twice as much.

Read the rest of this entry »

Induction Stove Close-up

Alright, agreed. The article title is the cheapest knock-off in the history of advertising, but the intention is as genuine as ever.

Be it Jalal Agha on television 25 years back; urging us to purchase Prestige Pressure Cookers with gasket release system or my plea on this side of the millennium; you have got to check out this piece of technology meant for use by your better half (or her legal representative – the maid).

Induction stove technology is not new and does not draw any exclamations in developed countries. However in developing countries like India, it is only now being introduced in the market in a ‘testing the waters’ way and meeting with lukewarm response. We have to thank Government’s heavy subsidy on cooking gas and acute shortage of cylinders for this.

When out of cooking gas, my wife (Manjari) and I are faced with the following options:

1. Start eating out – Always a bad idea. Trust me.
2. Go on a raw diet – Not a good idea unless you are trying to loose weight. Some foods are absorbed better only if cooked well.
3. Coal/Wood Stove – The housing-society has forbidden me from storing cow-dung & burning coal in my flat.
4. Kerosene Stove – Requires me to go prostrate at the feet of my maid so that she will source some kerosene from the ration shop. Smoky, fire-risk & expensive. Definitely not a good idea.
5. Electric Coil Stove – Cheap but suffers from frequent breakdowns, slow cooking and high risk of electric shock.
6. Microwave Cooker – Fine for heating pizza & cooking some Indian dishes but plain impossible to cook fried eggs (which I love very much).

In an experiment I conducted, it took about 5 days before my Wife and the Maid stormed out of the kitchen uttering cuss words and barking ultimatums to restore cooking gas supply. The TTF (time-to-frustration) factor grows exponentially shorter with each Gas-out incident.

What we were looking for was a solution that:

• Cost less to buy
• Cost less to run
• Had low accident risk
• Reliable & maintenance free
• Would fit in my cluttered kitchen
• And most importantly, could cook a wide variety of Indian delicacies.

Read the rest of this entry »

RCA Lyra 4GB

My well intentioned friend set a challenge for me a fortnight back. Repair his portable MP3 player which was acting comatose.

The device in question, the RCA Lyra RD2762 was quite a trendsetter in it’s time. Featuring an internal 1.8″ 4GB HDD, rechargeable Li-ion battery, USB port connectivity and charging, drag-drop file transfer … the list of features is long and enviable.

Just one big problem: Device only displayed ‘File system is corrupt’ message.

Multiple attempts to connect the device to a computer and format the storage met with big failure. The reason: while the device itself is detected and shows up dutifully in Device Manager, no partitions on the disk are visible. Hence no formatting. In fact in the Disk Management Console, the drive does not show up at all.

Google members had lot of suggestions:

1. Change the USB protocol from MTP (Music Transfer Protocol) to MSC (Mass Storage Controller). Quite logical thing to do. MTP is not natively supported in Windows XP and requires the installation of manufacturer specific software. Vista supports MTP by default. MPT devices do not show up as  removable devices that can be formatted. MSC on the other hand shows up as a drive.
2. Attempt a device reset.
3. Open up the device and check for broken parts.

So I went about all three of them. The default USB behavior was indeed set-to MTP. Once I changed it to MSC, the device promptly showed up in ‘My Computer’ with a drive letter. Attempts to format the drive were unsuccessful. In fact, the HDD was probably so badly corrupted, that if the player was connected to the PC, File operations tended to get stuck for minutes altogether. Read the rest of this entry »

D-Link DI-524 WiFi Enabled Internet Router

A very well meaning friend (aka client) recently popped an innocuous question: The wireless router which had been working perfectly till last week; worked no more. Could I help?

Like all tech-support professional brethren of mine, a hundred things that could go wrong; and hundred & ten ways to fix the issues instantly popped to my mind. The only quick fix of recycling the power to the device had already been tried out autonomously by my client. Clients are getting quite tech savvy these days. All other solutions either required me to be on the phone for extended periods on a late Saturday evening or request the client to come over to my place with the device. I chose the later as the lesser of two evils.

My Client true to his professional form was at my doorstep on the dot while my Sunday arse was just trying to come to grips with the position of the sun in the sky.

The wireless router is question is a D-Link DI-524 (H/W Ver B4, F/W Ver 2.03, FCC-ID: KA2DI524G) Wireless-G Internet Router. At my client’s place, it is connected to a Huawei DSL Modem/Router. The DSL Modem is configured in bridge mode and its the D-Link that is configured in PPPoE mode to perform On-demand dialing and routing.

The second quick fix to fixing a router is simply to reset it. This I desisted from performing right away since I had configured the router with a host of settings and didn’t wanna re-do all the settings. So I attempted to diagnose the problem with the router. Read the rest of this entry »

The new Sony P Series is by no means an innovative product. Years before the newly launched Sony Vaio VGN P15G , Sony developed and sold the Picturebook series Vaio VAIO PCG-C1XS laptop.

Unfortunately, the trend of Netbooks hadn’t caught on then. Much like the consumer demand for gas guzzling cars in 50’s in USA, the public screamed for laptops armed with more CPU power, RAM, HDD, Durability & Expansion possibilities. Weight be damned. Price be damned. Heat be damned. Power consumption be damned.

The Asus Eee PC Series of netbooks ushered a bold new trend of low powered, low cost and low maintenance computers designed to perform one or two tasks only; but with minimum fuss.

Thanks to some really clever marketing and timing in the market, anticipation alone decided that Asus’s product was a winner from the word go. We don’t expect our Music players to do the dishes, so why should we expect an Internet gadget to do Photoshop?

Quite unfortunately though, as more and more manufacturers crowd the netbook market, in an effort to outdo each other, they have started diluting the concept and started cramming mainstream notebook components in these dinky machines.

Sony’s new offering is certainly no exception. Built to look more cheeky than it’s 8 year old offering, the current netbook offers more of the same. If the ad is anything to go by (svelte lady shaking her hips while her netbooks keeps slipping out of the back-pocket), even non IT savvy customers will instantly notice the design flaws.

Deep inside the netbook, a mashup of disjointed components and stratospheric pricing will probably mean that for a while; this netbook will remain in the domain of the elite, where the bling matters more than brawn. The netbook will command a premium price and go from 100% to 30% of value in flat 2 years.

Article of interest:
A pictorial guide to the subtle differences between small, cheap laptops

Hello all!

For some time now, I have been toying with the idea of setting up a website dedicated to health & related issues.

This becomes particularly imperative since I intend to start populating www.rajib.com with Information Technology related articles and I did not want people looking for help regarding CGHS, Medical Insurance and Alternate Medicine related issues to wade through non-related issues.

I registered HealthBuzz.in last year and have been meaning to migrate the articles (health related only) to the new blog.

Well, the article move is done. Testing is complete. Life can again run at full speed.

I hope you will use the new website with equal fervour as you have shown for this website.

Thanks!

The ‘Krishnakriti Festival of Art & Culture‘ (sponsored by the Lahoti Foundation) in association with the ‘Emabassy of France in India‘ is organising the IInd Fellowship Program for emerging artists to study at France.

The 3 winners will each a fully paid trip to France to study at a leading art university and work under leading professors for 6 months.

To apply online, Click Here.

Reliance Infocomm’s latest stunt has fallen on it’s face and become the gaffe of the year. Ok, maybe gaffe of the month.

It activated ‘Ring-Back-Tone (RBT)’ for all customers without any prior intimation/permission. To my discerning musical ears, a nondescript song being played at 2.4 kbps-mono over a 1mm speaker is probably worse than Chinese water torture.

Read the rest of this entry »

Take the talent shows – so much in vogue in India.
First you invite the industry pundits to join the panel of judges. You make them do the sweaty work of scraping the dirt, trying to find raw gemstones. And when they have fairly narrowed the selection based on their years of experience, you completely disregard their skills as judges and leave it to the fanatical masses instead.
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