Random thoughts... about 2008

I have seen people who write in their Orkut profiles, "I'm cool" or "I'm hot". I've even seen some guy who has written both. I am neither hot guy, nor cool. My body temperature remains normal at 37°C, unless I'm sick. And I am still trying to understand the meaning of hot and cool. Guys (and girls, if there are any), help me out here!

When I stay alone, I think. Not that I don't when I'm with others, but I believe solitude is the time when I get time to introspect, think about myself. It's the time when I laugh at myself for my foolishness. It's the time when I realize my mistakes. It's the time I repent for my mischievous behaviours and misdeeds.

People change. Not because Barack Obama has asked for it, but they change for a reason. They change when they grow. They change when they get good marks in classes. They change when they get awards. They change when they get good jobs. People change when they get new friends. And they change, abruptly, when they get girlfriends. They change when they marry. Amidst all these changes, people remain friends.

About two and a half years back I, along with Suri, started blogging. Then, it was just like a collection of some interesting and funny mails which I was getting. After a couple of posts, I found it useless and I stopped blogging. But Suri was very serious about it. He was literally going through all sorts of websites, from Technorati to hit-counters, from problogger to pre-blogger. Every night (yes, not day. Courtesy: BSNL Sancharnet) we used to chat hours together. That's the time people started calling me Goobe (owl). I still wonder how Suri escaped from that title. He used to talk about blogging, blogging and blogging. Eventually he was able to pull me into it. So I restarted blogging in 2007, wishing everyone a happy new year. I started writing posts at the rate of one per day. Suri read it. After continuing it for two weeks, I started showing my laziness and procrastination. The frequency of my posts started decreasing.

In spite of all this, my blog has more than 75 feed readers and has recently crossed 50000 hits. Not an award-winning achievement, but I think it is quite decent for a blogger like me, who posts once in three months. I thank all my readers, friends and those who have supported and backed me during times, good and bad.

2008 has been a year when I started working as an engineer (well, although I joined in 2007, we just had training), something which I dreamt right from my childhood. Apart from that, this year has been a year of ups & downs, just like every other year. I'm sure 2009 will also be like that. But we have forget the bad, cherish the good, and move on.

I wish you a very happy new year.

Free SMS for Karnataka Spice Customers!!

With all the Cell phone operators increasing the charges for SMS, it has been a difficult time for the students and those who rely upon SMS for the communication most of the times. Spice, Airtel, Hutch all have increased their tariffs to 5 paise or above. But a week ago, my friend RJP sent me a message telling a trick to get free SMS. This works only for Spice customers in the Karnataka circle.

Change your message centre number in the message settings from default number to +919810051913 +919840011055 +919810051873.

A few notes about this trick.

• It works only for Karnataka Customers.
  
• All messages are completely free.
  
• This works only for Spice numbers which start from 9964.
• You can't recharge your mobile by sending SMS with this message centre. You have to revert to your old message centre, recharge and then put this number back on.
• The specified message centre is Broadway II Gateway number.
• Even interstate messages are also free.

Just enjoy the free messages as long as Spice finds this out and corrects this bug. I owe you a lot RJP :)

How to use Web Feeds? What is RSS? What is Atom?

By now, almost every netizen knows the usage of RSS Feeds. Nevertheless, there is a multitude of users who are still ignorant of the concept of Syndication and its advantages. There is nothing arduous about it. Called Really Simple Syndication most of the times, RSS is really really simple to use. You don't have to be a technical hotshot to get wind of the feeds. So why not give it a try?

What is a Web Feed?: It is better to know the answer to this question before moving further. A web feed is, according to Wikipedia, a data format used for serving users frequently updated content. Technically, a web feed is a document (often XML-based) which contains content items with web links to longer versions. News websites and blogs are common sources for web feeds, but feeds are also used to deliver structured information ranging from weather data, search results, top ten lists of hit tunes etc. The two main web feed formats are RSS and Atom.

What is the use of a Web Feed?: Suppose that you have a large number of news sites and blogs, which you like. How often do you check them? May be daily, weekly, monthly or even more than once a day, or at your will. But many a times there won't be any new articles in those sites. Isn't it a waste of time? Yes, and that is where the concept of web feed comes into picture. Instead of visiting each website, you can subscribe to the web feed they provide. Whenever there is a new article to the website, you will be notified by the feed aggregator.

What is a Feed aggregator?: A feed aggregator, also known as feed reader or feed client, is an application which regularly checks the subscribed feeds and collects any newly posted articles. An aggregator can be a software (like latest versions of Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook) installed on your PC or a web application (like Google Reader and BlogLines) that can be accessed anywhere in the world. There is a large number of aggregators available. The choice is yours.

How to subscribe to a Web Feed?: To subscribe to a feed, you've to give the feed URL of the website or the blog you want to subscribe to. For this blog, it is:

http://mgharish.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

or

http://feeds.feedburner.com/mgharish

But what about other websites? To subscribe to a feed, just look around the website for an icon similar to:

and click on that. It is as simple as that! Latest versions of browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari and have built in support for web feeds. Firefox shows the RSS logo in the navigation bar itself, whenever a feed is available for the page you are viewing.

What are RSS and Atom?: RSS and Atom are, as mentioned earlier, two of the most popular web feed formats. Both are similar, with slight differences. Both are based on eXtensible Markup Language, or the XML. But the technical details behind these are unnecessary to subscribe and enjoy feeds.

Nowadays, blogging is becoming second nature to almost every Internet user. You might be having many blogger-friends. You can save a lot of time and stay up to date by subscribing to their web feeds.

Wise to be unvoiced

In the recent past, I've quarrelled with those I shouldn't have fought with, I've remained silent with those with whom I should have spent this time with and leant towards those who were better off without getting into my life. I don't know why I have been doing all this and I don't understand even the cause of it. This is the period of metamorphosis. Being myself for two more months, just two more months, would have restrained my life under my control. I guess it is too late and enough damage has been caused to last for years.

Few days ago I happened to chat with my friend after a long time, just to tell him Friendship Day wishes. In the middle of it, when I was, as usual, discussing about these boring holidays, he said something: Enjoy the last vacation until your retirement. Don't know what made him tell that, but it certainly stirred my thoughts. Already a month is over after I have been officially declared an engineer! So what I am wasting this time for? After all, time is the most precious thing in the world, and I seem to have plenty of it!!

The real reason that made me pen down my thoughts in this post now is the quote I read in my feed reader: It is not how old you are, but how you are old quoted by Jules Renard. It made me retrospect and realize that I haven't done anything useful recently, instead, they have all been bearing poisonous fruits. Two months are over since I finished our exams and I can't find anything which I did in these two months that is worth mentioning!

I tried to find the solution for this. Am I lazy? Certainly I am. Wait, may be I am not. I do all these online stuff for almost 16-18 hours a day. Someone has rightly said, the only solution for all your problems is yourself. I found 20 biggest online time wasters and it is a really pathetic to find most of them to be the causes of my problem as well.

Well, I can follow handful of those suggestions. I would certainly be happy to see my life back on track. I'm certainly going to cut down the time I remain online. I don't want to be out of the frying pan to fall into the fire. A final word, again from Jules Renard:

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it

Life on Fast track - Coffee or Cup

It has just been one month since our BE exams finished, but the life thereafter has been boring and confusing enough to worry about the future! It has been really hard to say Good Bye to the friends who were together for four years and all those conversations, teasings, tauntings, parties, treats will surely haunt, at least until we get drenched in the undulation of the real world.

However one can't keep lamenting! Destiny takes everyone where one supposed to go. But the problem is, life is a teacher who teaches lessons by giving tests.

Learning from experiences is good; but learning from others' experiences is better. I want to share a mail I got from my friend SN, who told he received it from a Swamiji of Ramakrishna Mission. Although it is not exactly an experience, it does allow us to previse the bitter truth of life:

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor.

Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups. Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."

Don't let the cups drive you... Enjoy the coffee instead

I enjoyed and learnt something from the mail and I hope you did too.

Why can't we create a folder by name CON?

I've been asked this question many a times: Why can't we create a folder by name CON? Although it seems a wonder or magic that we can't create a folder by that name, in reality, it is not so. It has a definite reason, and in fact, a folder can be created using that reserved name.

Gone are the days when computers had only CUI OS, that is, Character User Interface Operating Systems, like MS-DOS. When I joined my first computer course nine years ago, Windows 95 was ruling. You could see Windows 98 here and there. We were in 8th standard, and working on a computer was like a dream coming true. Microsoft's Paint Brush was the only known (for us) GUI software and was the greatest means of entertainment. The instructors taught us only MS-DOS commands and how to Shut Down the computer. Remembering such weird names as DIR, CD, MD, RD, CHKDSK, FDISK, VER, ATTRIB, REN, DEL etc. along with their syntax and usage was a great accomplishment. But I had a problem understanding this: DOS has a separate dedicated command for every action; literally every action, except... creating a file!

Yes, we used COPY CON filename to create a file with name filename. Anyone can say that it is a form of COPY command. So, why was creating a file different than all other commands? I didn't understand it, till I found out how to print using DOS, almost four years later.

DOS uses different names for the attached devices, I learnt. PRN was one such name. TYPE filename would display the contents of a file and TYPE filename > PRN would print it instead of displaying. Curiosity brings many hidden matters out. PRN would surely mean Printer and will redirect the output to the printer instead of console. Console (monitor) is the implicit default output device, and it can be bypassed if needed. So, how to put it explicitly? There must be some means to do that. Yes, there is! TYPE filename > CON performs exactly same function as TYPE filename. These special names for the devices really mean something special for the operating system and those names can not be used as folder or file names: CON, PRN, NUL, COM1 to COM9, LPT1 to LPT9, which stand for CONsole, PRiNter, NULl, serial COMmmunication ports, Line PrinTer ports.

The time has changed and Operating System can also be fooled! But still, many people think that it is not possible to create a folder by name CON. Using the path of network drive, these special names can also be used as folder names! Here is how:

1. Goto DOS
   
2. Type MD \\.\C:\CON. The folder will be created. You can check it in Windows Explorer also, but you can't access it
   
3. To delete the folder, type RD \\.\C:\CON

In short, use the network path syntax instead of absolute path syntax.

Now on to the practical aspect of this. Why can't we create it directly but using the network path syntax? The answer is simple. A computer can have only one default console, printer, null etc. So, if it is accessed from a network, theoretically, the console should belong to another node in the network. Since that node may not have a device which can be referred using the name CON, it will no longer be considered as a reserved name. Hence, the folder can be created.

The next time when someone asks the question why we can't create a folder by name CON, say with confidence that it is not true...

Hidden Files Not Shown

Recently virus programmers are becoming smart. A worm w32.USBWorm which attacked and banned Orkut, has left one more problem. (Here are the steps to remove w32.USBWorm). You will not be able to see the hidden files. Even if you change the setting in the folder options, it will not show the hidden files. So here are the steps to remove that problem and make the hidden files appear as before. I got the solution from one of the comments on my previous posts.

1. Go to Start --> Run, then type Regedit
2. Navigate to the registry folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
   CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL
   
3. Find a key called CheckedValue.
4. Double Click CheckedValue key and modify it to 1. This is to show all the hidden files.

Now you should be able to view all the hidden files, and also to alter its status from folder options.

This is where I found the solution.

UPDATE
If the virus is still present, this solution may not work permanently. Once you restart the PC, the hidden files will be concealed once again. I recommend using Avast antivirus, but remember to change security level from Medium to High after you install it.

You can see more tips about securing your computer here.

Somewhere, something went terribly wrong

There are some pictures which are equivalent to thousand words. Some pictures are just for fun, and some put you in serious thinking. Here is rare image belonging to both of these categories, which I saw first on my friend's (MAP) T-shirt:

Then I googled for more of this, and found many websites. Also a colourful image:

I found it wonderful. In this world, in which everything is being be forgotten because of the Internet, in which the difference between man and machine is becoming narrower day by day, I think the title Somewhere, something went terribly wrong matches the present condition and the image reflects the situation. What went wrong? Whether it is really wrong? We might never know. What is your opinion?

Download Yahoo! Messenger Installer to PC

It may seem as trivial as it can. But have you tried to install Yahoo! Messenger? Read on, and you will find the problem. Yahoo messenger installation, as given in the website, involves the following steps:

• Save msgr8us.exe to your desktop
  
• Once downloading has completed, go to your desktop, double-click the msgr8us.exe icon
• Follow the instructions to finish the installation

Well, what's the problem with that? Consider that you want to install messenger on multiple PCs. Of course, you can follow the same procedure on every PC, why waste bandwidth on every PC?. But consider doing it on a dial up, or a slow connection. At that time, it is really a pain to download it every single time. Instead, why not have a direct installer? Sounds feasible right? Here is a little hack just to do that:

• Save msgr8us.exe to your desktop
• Once downloading has completed, go to your desktop, double-click the msgr8us.exe icon
• Now, don't just keep watching till the wizard finishes the installation. Instead go to C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Installs folder on your computer
• You will see a temporary file. As soon as the download reaches 100%, that temporary file will be renamed to ymsgr8us.exe
  
• Now you have to be really quick. Just copy that ymsgr8us.exe file and paste it somewhere else. You have to do this as early as possible, because the wizard will delete that file soon after the installation

Now, you can use the copied ymsgr8us.exe file to install it on any PC. If you have a fast connection, you can share it with your friends who have a slower connection, so that they don't have to wait for an hour to install Yahoo! Messenger

Online Radio - A wonderful experience

I have been wondering why I didn't explore it earlier. It makes online experience great, and you never get bored. I am talking about Online Radio or Internet Radio. I knew it existed, and even I had heard two three online radio channels some time ago. But it was only recently, that I became a fan of it...

I had thought that online radio was available only in English and other major languages. But once I came to know that it is available in local languages like Kannada, Hindi etc., there was none stopping me. Yes, there are thousands of languages, and there are many more radio channels. You just have to be patient to find the right one for you!!

Finding the right radio channel itself may not make you a radio-junkie. You also need a software which makes it easy to listen to any radio channel easily. My friend, VRGS, introduced me to Screamer Radio just two days ago, and I found in it, every feature that I needed: Hundreds of preset channels, which are neatly classified into several groups based on Genre, Language, Network, Region make it easy to find your desired channel very easily. It even updates the list of channels frequently, thus keeping you in touch with the latest channels also! It keeps history of the recent channels played, and also it has the feature to open your desired radio station by giving the streaming URL directly. You can easily add any channel to favourites, which comes as a menu by itself. So you can always find the channel you love at the click of a button. It can even record radio station being played and save it into the folder you specify!!. Versatility in setting the folder, name of the file etc., is simply superb. One more feature which I liked too much is minimizing to system tray. Yes, it is very convenient to have the player running as a system tray icon than having it as a button on the taskbar. Organizing and editing the channels and favourites is also very easy, since they are stored in popular XML format. It is a nifty software, and also compact. Best of all, Screamer Radio is a freeware.

Screanshot of Screamer Radio

There are many other features also, which I am yet to explore completely. All in all, I give 5/5 for this software, SCREAMER RADIO. Be sure to download screamer radio if you want to judge it by yourself.

Road Destruction

It was hard to see good roads in India a few years ago. Thanks to the development, we can see them in many areas now. But there is a problem. There is a road destruction board, which digs the roads within a few days after they are constructed. No one takes the responsibility of repairing them or reconstructing them for the next 15-20 years. That board can be named Bharateeya Sadak Nirnam Limited (BSNL).

Yes, I am talking about that same governement company, Bharath Sanchar Nigam Limited, which provides telecommunication services throughout India. It has been undertaking this work (of digging roads) from quite a few years now, right from the moment when the cables were replaced with Optical Fibre Cables (OFC). But the annoying thing is that they put the OFCs only after the construction of a new road, never before it. They dug the National Highway 4 (the famous PB Road) after 2 weeks after construction. They dug the cement road in Harihar just after 2 days. I can't guess whether it is intentional or they get the idea of putting OFC only after the road is constructed or whether there is any aggression between the BSNL and the PWD (Public Works Department).

We have to just wait and see when there will be a co-ordination between these two government bodies and when India would shine!

Modern Education

There is a verse in Sanskrit:

न चोर हार्यं न च राज हार्यं न भ्रातृ भाज्यं न च भारकारि ।
व्यये कृते वर्धत एव नित्यं विद्याधनं सर्वधनप्रधानम् ॥

A rough translation would be:

Knowledge, which can't be stolen by a thief, which can't be seized by a king, which can't be shared with brothers, which isn't heavy either and which goes on increasing as you spend it, is the most important wealth

Let us discuss this in the current situation. Knowledge can not be stolen by thief, and it is true. But in modern education, it is being stolen by copying in the exam and other means. As per the next condition a king (or the ruler) can't seize it. But nowadays, it is common for the government to take control over the educational institutions and ruin the students. (You know what a government college means, eh?).

Now on to the next one, sharing with brothers. It is true that the knowledge can't be shared directly. However due to monetarization of education, if your sibling goes for medical or engineering, you are certainly deprived of higher education if you are not from a rich family. It is bitter, but true.

Knowledge is not heavy(?!)... Ask engineering/medical/or any other graduate/post graduate student, and you will come to know. There is so much of cramming that no one can probably finish the entire prescribed syllabus. When this is the case, remembering them for a long time is a distant dream. And there remains no question of telling it to others, when you don't have the time to read and understand it yourself.

Hence, in my opinion, education has entirely lost its meaning. However, it has emerged as the wealth in its entirety, not in the true meaning, but because it can be exchanged for money.