What will be will be will be

Why MJ?

2012-02-15T16:51:00.001+05:30

No, I am not referring to the late Michael Jackson, arguably the king of pop music. I am wondering why all the anchors in Radio One have the same initials - MJ. I hear MJ Prithvi, MJ Pavithra, MJ Rakesh... Surely, they are not siblings or share the same family name.

Ok, you tell me, MJ is not their family or father's name, but the acronym for Music Jockey or Disc jockey, as they are more popularly known. Fine, but their profession is implied by what they are doing - anchoring radio shows. Why keep telling they are MJ this or MJ that? Their names are good enough to identify them without resorting to their profession, which is obvious.

I don't see Vice Presidents in companies going about telling they are VP this or VP that. Sure, it can be in their visiting cards. They may even mention their designation when they converse in groups where they are not known.

But to self-profess your profession as an initial day-in day-out - that too on Radio - sounds too ego-centric to me.

Registering credit card for online banking

2012-02-15T16:19:00.000+05:30

I recently received a Credit Card from a reputed Bank, having succumbed to their sales pitch of 5% cashback, buy 1 get 1 movie ticket free and such offers.

I went to their website to register my card, so that I can check my transactions online. I was impressed to see that I could register online by having my Card information handy - namely card number, expiry date and my date of birth. I went into the registration screen and started entering the required information. I filled the card number and moved on to the expiry date. The expiry month and year and drop down boxes, where you chose a value. The month was easy, but then I came to the year. I had a choice from 2010 to 2016. So what is the problem you will ask. The problem was, my card expired in 2017! How do I chose the correct year now?

I was stuck and emailed the Bank. They were quick to send a regret email, but I could not help wondering how an international bank had a web application, which did not work for some of their product!

The more interesting part was the existence of 2010 and 2011 in the drop down. It is 2012 now. What would be the idea in allowing a person to register an expired card? To see his historic information?

Now I need to call Phonebanking and see how this can be done manually. So much for e-age!

Making effective use of test match time

2012-01-15T11:38:00.001+05:30

I write this 10 minutes after India lost its 3rd test match against Australia in less than half the duration of the test match - 2.5 days.

There are bigger losers besides the Indian cricket team

The Stadium collection, which will he half for no fault of the organizers
The television broadcaster, who will now need to figure out what to show, since he has blocked his time for this match
The advertisers who had advertised, especially for the 4th and 5th day, expecting higher viewership
The people, who may have set their time to view the match and are now clueless on what to do.
The logo and other merchandise providers, who would be denied the full-time to display their wares

I may have missed out more things...

I have a simple proposal to address this problem.

Based on the remaining time in the test match, have one or more one day or T20 matches.

If the remaining time is less than the time required for a T20 match (say 4 hours), then no additional match would be played.
If the remaining time is more than 4 hours but less than the whole day (say, for instance the match was over one hour into the final day, then there would be one T20 match)
If the remaining time is more than a day but less than 2 days, there would be one 1 day match
If the match got over before lunch on 4th day, there would be a T20 match on 4th and a one day match on 5th day
If the remaining time is more than 2 days but less than 3 days, there would be 2 one day match.

For the case in question (above), there would be 2 one-day match.

The choice of the type of match is based on the time available. Also, we do not want to introduce a new format of the match here.

What are the benefits?

All the above problems are addressed - in fact, in some cases there is added benefit.

The Stadium revenues remain intact. They would not need to refund the tickets for the remaining days of the match. In fact, they may get additional revenue for unsold tickets. However, they would not be allowed to charge additional rates that are usually charged for 1 day or T20 matches. This, in turn, benefits the audience, who get to see a 1 day or T20 match live in the Stadium for a lesser rate.
The broadcaster will not need to dig into his archives. Nor would he need to refund the money collected from the advertisers. Like the previous paragraph, he would not be allowed to charge additional advertisement rates. However, he can fill the unfilled advertisement slots.
The advertiser who had blocked slots for the 4th or 5th day, would thus ended up benefitting more since he would get the same rates for an advertisement, but shown in a 1 day and/or T20 match.
The audience would benefit as well, since their time set apart of the match would be put to the correct use.

There are a couple of edge cases.

Usually one day and T20 matches are under lights, while test matches are not. What should happen in this case?

The matches should happen during the normal test match time, since this is the slot which has been blocked for this - by viewers, advertisers, broadcaster, etc.

What about coloured clothing and coloured ball?

The players can carry an additional kit of coloured clothing, based on their assessment of how long the match would last. However, the match would be played with normal ball, since it would happen in the day.

What about remuneration to the players?

The players are paid for the entire test and not on a pro rata basis based on the duration of the match. This being the case, they would not be paid for these 1 day or T20 matches. However, the winning team will be, since it is not their fault that the match got earlier than planned.

A Night Show in Brookefields

2012-01-02T18:34:00.001+05:30

Nah, not Brookefields in Bangalore, but the Mall in Coimbatore.

It was Christmas and we thought let us go for the new Mission Impossible movie of Tom Cruise - Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol. It was important that we find a theatre running the English version of the movie. I still remember seeing The Mummy Returns in Tamil when we were in Trichy a few years back. English movies dubbed in Tamil run to packed houses - especially if they are disaster movies (2012 is a recent example). Just checkout any Tamil TV channels and you are sure to find a Tamil dubbed English movie, once a week, often in Prime Time.

Anyway, we did find a few theatres having English shows and one was in The Cinema in BrookeFields. And what do you know - they had online booking as well. The 6.50 PM show had four tickets, but scattered in three different places. So we opted for the 9.50 pm show. The movie ticket costs Rs.120/- with a Rs.20/- booking charge - (less than?) half the price of a weekend ticket in Bangalore!

It was quite late (9.30 PM) when we reached Brookefields. Hence we could not check out the Mall. We found the Parking place quite crowded. We were pleasantly surprised to see a grandmother stepping out of a car - ostensibly to see a movie!

We just needed to show the SMS on the phone to get the tickets. The theatre had about 260 seats and the screen was pretty big. The sound system was impressive as well.

Mission Impossible movies are wholesome entertainment and this one was no different. Read the plot here. The movie takes us from Budapest to a Russian prison to Kremlin to Burj Khalif in Dubai and to Mumbai. The movie is fast-paced, the action non-stop. The Burj Khalif scenes, where Tom Cruise climbs the world's tallest building is awesome.

It beats me, how Anil Kapoor could play the role that he does in this movie - a lecherous Indian arms dealer. And to talk about it with pride - that he learnt to speak better English for this movie?

The movie was a Housefull and paisa wasool.

Booking tatkal tickets

2012-01-02T15:27:00.000+05:30

Notwithstanding claims by Indian Railways and irctc, Tatkal booking is a nighmarish experience.

Reducing the booking time from 2 days to 1 day prior to travel has made it impossible for people to plan an impromptu weekend trip, since they will still be travelling when booking starts for the return journey! For instance, a couple of weeks back, I had to travel to Coimbatore on the weekend. I was in the train on Saturday morning, but had to book Tatkal ticket for my return on Sunday evening. I had no choice but to get it booked by my relative whom I was visiting.

Coming to the booking process itself, try logging into IRCTC at 8 AM. If you get the login page, and are able to enter the username and password, the subsequent page access will time out. If you do get into the Plan your trip page, then the next one will be inaccessible. It looks like OnDemand and Cloud computing are only for social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook and not for commercial sites!

To add insult to injury the "Quick Book" option is disabled for Tatkal as well, which means you have to navigate three pages where one would suffice - thrice the chances for network and other errors.

You see 60 seats available and by the time you come to the payment screen, it has become 6 seats. By the time the payment is done and the ticket issued, you are now having waitlisted tatkal ticket.

Amazingly, there is no option in the site to not book a ticket unless you get a confirmation. You have options not to book, if you do not get a berth of your choice, but why not an option not to book unless you have a confirmed seat? The answer lies in the cancellation process. You lose Rs.20/- for cancellation, plus the Rs.10/- service charge of the e-ticket, which is non-refundable, plus Rs.11.03, which most Banks charge for e-ticket booking - a total of Rs.41.03 loss for no fault of yours - you had pressed pay option when there were still 6 seats left! The Banks and IRCTC gets to make money for doing nothing!

My relative went through the above experience and got a waitlisted tatkal ticket on one train. He then tried another train and got a confirmed tatkal ticket. As we began to watch during the day, the waitlist began to reduce, as people started cancelling their waitlisted tickets. Now, there is no longer a refund on tatkal tickets - which meant, if my waitlisted ticket got confirmed, I would lose money on one of the tickets! We ended up cancelling the waitlisted tatkal before it got confirmed, losing just Rs.41.03, instead of the entire ticket amount.

But why still persist with tatkal, instead of resorting to alternate means of travel? The irony is the demand is so high for weekend travels (especially around festivals), that the prices of normal bus tickets are jacked up to exorbitant levels during this time. For instance, the cost of a bus ticket from Coimbatore to Bangalore for 1st Jan night was Rs.850/- (in a fly-by-wire operator, whom I had never heard of). With all its issues, tatkal still remains cheap as also train travel comfortable.

Renewing my car insurance

2012-01-02T15:00:00.000+05:30

My car insurance was expiring on 30th Dec. It was 26th Dec and time for me to renew it. I had received an email from Reliance General Insurance a month before the due date. I had also received a letter home with the renewal premium amount and other details.

I logged into the web portal and saw my insurance details were present. I hovered the mouse over the link "Renew Policy" and saw that the link was disabled. Hmm! Must be a temporary glitch I thought.

I also saw a separate link to Buy or Renew Car Insurance and tried to pursue that path. I chose the option to "Renew existing car policy", provided the old policy number and engine number. The screen showed by existing policy details, but wait... there was a message in Red at the top.

Failed to calculate premium for the below reasons: Renewal notice details are not available from Renewal Notice system

I had 3 more days to do the renewal, but to be on the safe side, I sent an email to the Reliance General Insurance customer support with the details. I got a prompt reply that someone will contact me soon.

I kept checking the portal to see if the problem was rectified, but in vain. I got no calls or further response from Reliance General Insurance either. Finally on 28th Dec, I decided to renew my insurance with an alternate provider. I chose Bajaj Allianz for two reasons - a) my two wheeler was insured with them and b) I had successfuly renewed my policies online the last two-three years.

I had to enter some personal information and vehicle details, before I got the insurance quote. Within half an hour, I got call from the Pune office of Bajaj Allianz. "Sir, you are looking to renew your car insurance. How can we help you?" Talk about customer service.

They called me multiple times, helped me specify the details, which helped in computing an optimum premium and on top of that had me do the renewal through IVRS, saying that it would make me eligible for a free tow service. They gave me the same No Claim Bonus (NCB) as Reliance would have. By evening, I had the soft copy of the policy.

A lady from Reliance General called on 29th, saying that they were not in a position to help me renew the policy online, but would put me in touch with their Bangalore office, who would, in turn, do the needful. When I told that I did get the premium amount in their letter, she had no response.

Based on personal experience, thumbs up to Bajaj Allianz for their customer support. As for Reliance General, they suck big time.

Kolaveri and nonsensical lyrics

2011-12-07T10:39:00.001+05:30

Javed Akhtar tweeted that Kolaveri Di is an insult to sensibility. But then the other day, I was listening to the greatest hits of Kishore Kumar. The lyrics of one of the song goes - C A T Cat - cat mane billi. This is from the 1958 movie Dilli ka Thug. There are three lyricists for the movie, including Majrooh Sultan Puri - not sure which one penned this lyric. How would Mr.Akhtar classify this song?

I wrote about reusable lyrics that we see in today's movies and referred to nonsensical lyrics in Amma is amma.

Nonsensical lyrics are here to stay and there are complete songs made out of a collection of nonsensical ones. Read the lyrics of O Maha Ziya from Thamizh Padam.

Live pause and watching ads free tv programs

2011-12-06T15:22:00.001+05:30

"Oh oh, the baby is crying"

"Just pause the program. I will watch once I attend to him".

"What! pausing a tv program! What are you talking about? It is not a DVD."

"No, it is better than DVD."

"Perhaps you should explain."

These days, many of us use a Set Top Box (STB) to view TV programs.   There are two (popular) types of STBs - cable and satellite. In satellite STBs (which is also called DTH broadcast), we have a small dish which receives signals, which then passes through the STB and gets into the TV. In cable STBs, the signals come via cable.

In the good old days of Doordarshan, we needed to have an antenna to watch TV programs. This was because the broadcast was terrestrial and the signals came to the TV by means of this antenna. Then came the era of cable TV, where cable operators downloaded contents via large dishes and sent by means of cables.

The older TVs restricted the number of channels that you could watch. Also, the signals broadcast by cable were analog - this restricted the number of channels that could be transmitted.

Thus the need for STBs. This allowed for digital signals which both increased the number of channels that could be transmitted as well as enhanced the quality.

As per a recent/upcoming regulation, all cable TVs are expected to get digitized in the coming years.

The simplest STBs support viewing of channels broadcast by the provider and nothing much. Then there are models which come with some games. The recent ones allow viewing of HD channels - which are high-quality TV programs which have much better viewing experience than normal channels. Then there are STB models which allow you to record and playback TV programs. These are typically called DVRs. The newest models allow you to connect the STB to internet and download and watch internet content (besides TV content).

The features provided by the STB is determined by the provider. The simple ones are fairly cheap and in some cases provided free of cost. The more the features, the more the cost of the box.

To cut a long story short, if you have an STB which allows you to record, then you can typically Pause a TV program. The STB immediately begins to record the content of that channel in the background. Once you Resume, it begins to playback from the place you had paused. The screen is frozen the instance the Pause key on the STB remote is pressed.

This feature is in addition to the ability to specify any TV program to be recorded.

Now how do these help us view TV programs ads free? Simple.

Set for recording the TV program that you are interested in - say a Hindi movie, at 2 PM. Typically, a 3 hour movie completes in 3 and a half hours with 30 minute ads.

Start watching this movie at 2.30 PM by choosing the Playback option. Each time, there is an ad break, use the Fast forward function of the remote to Forward/Skip ads!

STBs that support Recording typically have 2 tuners, thereby allowing you to watch one program, while recording another. By recording one movie and pausing another movie during ads break, you can watch two movies - switching back and forth during ad breaks.

Serial lovers no longer need to worry about channel clash - two channels broadcasting their TV programs at the same time. Record one, watch the other!

Family fights on which program to watch together will also be lessened since one can be recorded while the other watched.   Just define a time-frame for each person : the kid 4-6 PM, the elders 6-8 PM, the others 8-10 PM, etc.

Of course, you still need to bear the agony of ads for live programs (like cricket matches), unless you have HD STB and the cricket is shown ad free in an HD channel.

Me first me first

2011-12-05T12:19:00.001+05:30

Yesterday we had gone to a friend's kids' birthday party in our apartment party hall. It was 7.30 PM. The party was on in full swing - there were people of all ages. There was someone with a mike running some contests. Children were running around. There were many carrying their younger ones on their shoulder.

There was a food counter along one side in the small open area outside the hall. We were late and there were people who had already had or were having food. There was small queue before the food counter and I appended myself to the end. As I stood for the queue to move, a lady came forward before me and picked up about three plates. The polite guy that I am, I did not mind it.

I picked up some food and moved on to an adjacent area, where dosas were getting freshly made. A couple of people were waiting. As the dosas got ready, from out of nowhere a few people moved to the front and managed to get the dosas onto their plates. The lady I referred to, got a dosa on all her three plates.

Ok, so I will get it in the next round, thought me and stood there, kind of embarrassed. A couple of ladies came around, instructed the guy making the dosa on specific customizations that they wanted. A kid moved in, followed by another within touching distance of the dosa stone (if you may call the flat iron plate that). The heat from it was high and high also was the likelihood of oil getting splashed from it. 8-9 dosas were being made at a time. The kids got to have theirs, so did the ladies - I somehow managed to get the last one, before another person put his plate in front of me.

It was, to say the least, a sad experience, but nothing new to me. This is prevalent everywhere in India - on the roads, in shops, office cafeteria - anywhere where two or more people are present.

There is an irresistible urge to be first, no matter someone has come before you. Do we not have any kind of moral or civic sense to await our turn or get permission before jumping ahead of the queue? When adults do not have this, from where would kids get this sense? And this where we have queues. Think of the innumerable places where there is no queue - like boarding a bus. We are no different from other animals.

Yesterday's was perhaps a small incident, but significant because, most of the attendees were from our apartment - people who live together, see each other every day. Luckily, neither do I remember the ladies or the kids nor will let this incident affect my relationship with them. But, when you go through this experience, day in and day out, you never know when you will snap.

When we were kids, we had a subject called Moral Science, which was meant for learning these things. We were taught, how to cross roads, how to respect elders, how to conduct ourselves in society, how to tell truth - a whole lot of socially important things. These were in younger classes and we had tests for this as well. Like any other subject that we learn and do not practice, I guess this one such, which is learnt for the exams and forgotten, the moment the exams are over.

I have been to other countries and believe, this is the single most important thing that we can learn from them.

Sonar and jacoco

2011-12-01T12:08:00.001+05:30

I am a fan (and regular user) of Sonar, a platform to manage code quality. The 2.12 release of Sonar, which happened yesterday, introduced a bunch of new features including Java 7 support and the availability of Jacoco into Sonar core.

Though I had come across Jacoco earlier, I had ignored it. I decided to look at what is Jacoco and why do we need yet another code coverage tool. Their Mission page details the origin of the tool and the people behind it.

I have been a regular user of Cobertura for command-line/maven based code coverage, and Eclemma for IDE-based. I was curious to know if there was a jacoco maven plugin and to my delight, there indeed was one.

The usage instructions could have been better for I struggled to figure out the command to run to do the coverage analysis. There are two goals, which are relevant jacoco:prepare-agent and jacoco:report.

Merely including the plugin definition in the pom and running mvn jacoco:report gives an error.

[ERROR] Unable to read execution data file \target\jacoco.exec: \target\jacoco.exec (The system cannot find the path specified)

Running mvn jacoco:prepare-agent jacoco:report is no better.

What is required is to run mvn jacoco:prepare-agent test jacoco:report

Alternately, I believe the plugin can be configured to run prepare-agent maybe in process-test-resources phase and jacoco:report in say, verify phase.

Sonar, by default, uses cobertura for code coverage. It can be configured to use jacoco instead either globally or for specific project by going to Configuration -> General Settings | Settings -> Code coverage and specifying jacoco key.

Jacoco reporting is similar to cobertura - in fact, in addition to XML and HTML reports, Jacoco also provides CSV report.

The next release of Eclemma uses jacoco.

Rentfree postpaid - yet another gimmick

2011-11-30T11:31:00.001+05:30

The last few days, I have been subjected to the advertisement of the newly launched Rent Free PostPaid cell phone plan from Tata Docomo in the radio. Sounds too to be true, right?

It was, till I saw a banner ad, in a traffic jam. As usual an asterix (*) symbol and a fine print at the bottom - rent free when the usage charges exceed Rs.500/-. No such mention is made in the ad, of course, though even the most gullible person would think there must be a catch.

A look at the plan (applicable only in select states) reveals that it is still an attractive plan (even without the rent-free). Evidently, mobile operators are waging war with each other to retain their existing customers and migrate other customers to them.

Revolution 2020 - nothing new

2011-11-30T11:18:00.001+05:30

The new BestSeller from Chetan Bhagat, Revolution 2020 made for time-pass reading during my Cochin trip a few days back. 300 odd pages - 5 hours.

The story revolves around 3 childhood classmates - Gopal, Raghav and Aarti. Raghav is the studious one and Gopal the happy-go-lucky one. The book traces their life and times in the holiest of Indian cities - Varanasi. While one gets into a reputed College and tries to carve out a career based on his interest, the other tries in vain to get an Engineering admision, despite attending coaching classes at Kota, the breeding ground for future IIT-ians. Throughout this, there is Aarti, who dreams of being an air-hostess.

Ultimately, the story is about who gets the girl, but to keep the readers happy (as well as increase page count), the book dwelves into India's education system, and how it is corrupt at all levels - from the setting up of an Engineering College to getting companies in for Campus placement. It also pokes fun at the Kota training institutions.

As I mentioned earlier, it is a time-pass book, but not something that leaves much of an impact. It makes for easy reading - as all other Chetan Bhagat book are. I wouldn't be surprised if this got made into a movie, since it adheres to the formula that typical movies are made of. I wish the author had desisted from using hindi abuses (I recall a couple of places), in the name of making it look authentic. The girl in the movie is also characterized as a clueless entity - it is not going to win the author lady fans.

Braving Bangalore traffic

2011-11-29T12:39:00.001+05:30

f you are like me and commute during peak traffic hours in a two wheeler through the busiest roads of Bangalore to reach your office, then you may want to make it a wee bit pleasurable by listening to Radio One.

I am usually in the road for 30-40 minutes between 8.15 to 9.30 AM. It is MJ Prithvi, who anchors the program during this time. He usually gives a word for people to form sentences and picks a winner from amongs the most whacky ones. The most hilarious ones in recent times has been the one using the word "baby" (coinciding with the birth of Aishwarya's baby). The winning line was "What you call an instant baby? Abhi baby".

This is followed by a segment "Prithvi ko hindi kyon nahi athi" (Why does Prithvi not know Hindi). Here listeners can send in Hindi words with their meanings and Prithvi forms sentences using the words - usually hilarious ones.

Once this is through, there is also a Birthday Bakra (Goat), where Prithvi calls an unsuspecting person (whose birthday it is) and converses with the person on a topic relevant to the person. Listeners can call in with the person who need to be called with information which allows Prithvi to do this call. Each call also contains a small song composed and sung relevant to the call.

There are also two other small items, which get repeated - one being Shastriji and the other about a Professor Ulfat Sultan - both again humorous.

Perhaps I have become too regular, but I felt the songs keep getting repeated - time for them to renew their playlists!

Otherwise, this keeps you engaged and in good-humour, during the horrendous traffic jams on Airport Road.

Radio One is having Play your music day tomorrow (30th Nov), where they have invited celebrities and singers like Lucky Ali, Diya Mirza.

Did someone say that driving when listening to music is dangerous? I say that it deafens your ears from the incessant honking on the roads. As to why there is so much honking, much has been written about it - may be I will write on it as well - another day.

Note: I have no affiliation with Radio One and get nothing for writing the above.

On cell phone data plans

2011-11-29T12:02:00.001+05:30

Until recently, I did not have a Data Plan for my cell phone connection. Having acquired a Smartphone recently, I thought it is time to take one. Vodafone is my provider and I went to their website to get details of their postpaid data plans.

The first thing which stuck me was, how confusing the information related to data plan is.

For one, I saw three links in their home page - Downloads and More, Online Anywhere and 3G world. So which do I visit? Hovering the mouse over each link revealed a host of other links.

I did not find a single link for GPRS or Data Plan. As for 3G, it was slightly better, I saw two categories Mobile Internet and Mobile Broadband.

Among the links that I visited was Vodafone Mobile Connect. This one seemed to be what I needed since it talked about browsing the internet directly through the phone. However, it also talked about plugging your phone into your PC or laptop and start browsing which I was not interested in.

It listed some plan charges, which appeared too high for me.

Then I visited the Support link for Verifone Mobile Connect. This has the following line:

If you are a postpaid subscriber, just choose the plan that suits your requirement from the list above and send its activation command to 111 (toll free)

Only there was no list above, forget the activation command.

I then browsed through the Postpaid Plans to see if I could get some enlightenment. Here I saw some Offers:

Vodafone Mobile Connect - 2gb free

2GB internet usage per month free. Includes usage on iPhone as well

Rs.99

I tried to subscribe to this online, was not sure about the result and ended up going to the Customer Service center, where my request was taken for this plan.

I ended up getting a data plan. All was well, until I got my phone bill, where I saw two rentals - one for Rs.199/- for Vodafone Mobile Connect and another for Rs.99/- for the above plan.

I logged into my account in My Vodafone and found that I was subscribed to both the above plans. I then tried to Unsubscribe from the Rs.199/- (through the online option). Try as I might, it did not work. It resolutely stayed subscribed.

I then emailed the Customer Care reporting this issue in the portal. I got a confirmation that I had been successfully unsubscribed.

I called the Customer Care to ask why I had two plans for the same service. He agreed to take a request to revert the charges for the Rs.199/- one. I confirmed with him that I still had the Rs.99/- plan.

But then I could no longer connect to internet from the phone. I was now in a dilemma - problem with the plan or problem with the phone.

I thought let me start all over again and give a shot at the starting 3G Data Plan (Rs.100/- for 100MB per month). I followed the instructions to activate it and sent an SMS to 111 with the words ACT MI100.

I promptly got a reply: Service temporarily unavailable, will resume shortly.

Yesterday I called Customer Care again and he took my request to re-enable the Rs.99/- plan. I write this waiting for the 24 hours for it to get enabled.

Moral of the story: The portal sucks. Either misinformation or no information. Phone calls to customer care sucks - you have to pay (Rs.0.50 for 3 minutes) and moreover you are not sure if you have got what you wanted. A visit to Customer Care seems to be the safest option.

Meru to the rescue

2011-11-23T12:25:00.001+05:30

If you are like me, who arrive in Bangalore by train on mornings, you would have experienced the auto menace. They are akin to street dogs, who flock around you, barking. In this case, the auto drivers swarm around you, begging you to board their vehicle. Not out of consideration for you, but to fleece you with their exorbitant rates. Meters mean nothing here - they know you have no other options.

We pay Rs.150/- or so for a 5 km ride from K R Puram to our place and it was that which came to my mind when we boarded the train to Bangalore. This time it was going to be tougher - we had quite some luggage and a six-month baby as well. We had three of our close relatives coming with us as well - two adults and a three year old. They stayed close to our place.

A thought struck us as the train departed - why not call Meru Cabs? We have used its services a few times - to go to the Airport or Railway Station. They charge Rs.50/- extra if we call and book their service, but not if we do it online. I logged into their website and specified the necessary details - pick-up and drop points and the time. If you are wondering how I did that in the train, it was thanks to a laptop and datacard that was accompanying us.

I had some misgivings about the pick-up, having had challenges with taxis not keeping their time or hiking their rates at the last minute.

Imagine our surprise at 3.30 AM, when we get a call from the taxi driver, saying he had already arrived.

Meru Taxis are typically Mahindra Logans with a large boot space. Our train was on time as well. We got a porter to transfer the luggage across platforms and could board the taxi, luggage and all, with space to spare.

We dropped our relatives and reached our home - right next to the elevator - a total of about 10-11 km and the metre reading showed Rs.158/- I was more than happy to tip the driver.

Looking back, I realized we would have each ended up paying Rs.150/- or even more to go to our homes, if we had taken autos. In addition, we would have had challenges with the luggage. There are a few taxis in the station, but mostly Indica - too small for all of us and the luggage. That would have meant our relatives would have had to take another taxi or auto. Auto would have meant bearing the cold and wind of early winter morning, with possibility of catching an illness to boot.

So, the next time you plan to arrive in Bangalore early morning, seriously consider taking Meru (or EasyCabs) - both running on meter 24 hours - with polite drivers and excellent service.

Amma is amma

2011-11-23T12:02:00.001+05:30

Sounds confusing? Looks crazy? Not if you are like me, taking the Old Airport Road and Inner Ring Road. Large posters of a smiling caped Amma adorn both sides of the Roads tied to lamp posts and other available structures. The words Amma is Amma run top to bottom. You and I know amma cannot be anyone else - but then perhaps certain sections of the population need this emphasised.

Reminds me of the lyrics of a hit Tamil song Ajakku nna Ajakkuthan Kumukkunna kumukkutha. [See more here] Ajakku cannot be anything else but ajakku; similarly amma.

Anyway, on one hand we have an accused coming to Bangalore to go to a court to be questioned and we have sycophant supporters wasting money on her cut-outs. And here I am trying not to take a printout of an e-ticket thereby saving a small branch of a tree from being cut.

Beer for Petrol

2011-11-07T13:54:00.002+05:30

After yet another petrol price hike, it appears that a litre of petrol and a bottle of beer costs the same. What if we fueled our vehicles with beer instead of petrol? Notwithstanding technical issues, it could lead to interesting situations.

You are on a long drive and you are thirsty. Who needs fuel more - you or the car? You could attribute petrol-theft from vehicles to economic disparity and financial need, but beer-theft from vehicle? That could be attributed to thirst. Beer pump owners would have a tough time containing spiriting away of the spirits.

The possibilities are aplenty, save one - drinking petrol instead of beer.

The Metro Ride on Rajyotsava Day

2011-11-07T11:27:00.001+05:30

1st of November was a state holiday - Rajyotsava - State Formation Day. I thought it is as good a day as any to check out Namma Metro - the newly functional Metro train service in Bangalore.

I stay in Basava Nagar. I debated if I should take the Feeder bus service, which comes upto Vignan Nagar about 1.5 km away, but decided against it for two reasons - I still needed to drive upto this place and I was not sure about the frequency of the Feeder service.

It was overcast as I took my two wheeler and set off to Byappanahalli. I was not sure about the Parking facilities and thought two-wheeler parking was easier. It is a fairly long drive to the Metro Station, especially since I had to take a longer route thanks to road divider. Those coming from Big Bazaar side cannot take a right onto Metro Station thanks to the divider. I did pass three Metro Feeder buses - two on Suranjan Das Road.

It was around 10.45 AM. The Metro Station did have fairly big parking facility - both for two and four wheelers. I went on the escalator to the Ticket section. There was not much crowd. There were separators for people to stand in queue for tickets. Despite this, people crowded around the counters and thrust their hands in - national habit.

I have disappointed to find that you could not get round-trip tickets. ("No return tickets" said a notice, pasted prominently). There are a total of 4 Stations from Byappanahalli to M.G. Road - Swami Vivekananda Road, CMH Road, Halasuru, Trinity and there are four different ticket rates - Rs.10, Rs.12, Rs.14 and Rs.15! Talk about simplifying things!

There were quite a lot of Security personnel, one of whom inspected my backpack. It was nice to see many women-folks among them as well. There was a general air of politness among them, though the same could not be said of passengers. They crowded around Entrance and Exit gates, though the gates could take only one person at a time.

The Station is impressive. There are several display boards on when and where the next train comes and where it goes.

The train came on schedule and I hopped in. It quickly became full, and there were a few who had to stand. The seats face each other (like any metro train) and hence you cannot look out the window, without straining your neck.

The train doors closed with with suitable warning and the PA system inside the train turned on. There were display boards inside with messages in English, Hindi and Kannada, besides announcements after announcements. Some of them were downright silly like this one - "Please do not put tiffin boxes, water bottles and books between the doors to prevent them from closing".

Half the people in the train had their cameras out and were clicking away. Evidently there were in it for the ride! From the train, you do not get to know that you are going above roads, thus do not have the satisfaction of watching traffic (jams) below.

Stations came minutes after each other - the distance being quite short and there being no traffic jams. In less than 15 minutes, we were in M.G. Road.

I needed to go on the other side of M G Road and realized that the pedestrian bridge was not done. This is supposed to come up in the erstwhile Plaza Theatre compound. I ended up crossing the road.

After I had completed some errands and had lunch, it was time to get back. I could see a long queue leading up to the M.G. Road Station - two queues in fact, from two sides. It was a holiday and people had come to have fun. I had three choices - wait in the queue till my turn came, take a bus from Residency Road or walk to the next Station - Trinity. I chose the last and boarded the train from a near-empty Trinity station. Soon I was in Byappanahalli, which now resembled a festive place.

I tried logging into the Metro website to give feedback and got a 500 Internal Server error. The website sucks!

Interestingly, I found another Station driving via BEML gate the other day. BEML Metro Station, which houses the model Metro Train. What was amusing was it had a foundation stone with the names of prominent people, which included a Minister. Is it their idea of fun?

Rappelling in Ramnagar

2011-10-18T15:11:00.000+05:30

It was time for our bi-annual team outing. The last time we had gone to Club Cabana. We wanted it to be different this time - a little more adventurous. We enquired at a few places and finally decided on a trek in Ramnagar along with rappelling. An organization called Thrillophilia took care of organizing the trip - they arranged the transport, booked the resort and had their Tour Manager accompany us from office, as well as had their staff take care of the trekking and rappelling.

We started from office at 7.45 AM on Fri, 14th Oct, 45 minutes later than planned. This meant, we hit peak hour traffic en route our destination. To compound it, we decided to go through the city (BTM, Banashankari) rather than take the Hosur Road/Nice Road. This was to allow us to pick up our colleagues. It was close to 10 when we reached Club Magnolia, Bidadi. We had breakfast and then proceeded to Ramnagar, 25km and 25 minutes away.

Our bus stopped near a cluster of rocky hills. We armed ourselves with a bottle of water each. It was 11 AM and the sun was beating down hard on us. We had to trek about 30 minutes to reach the top of one of the hills. The trekking route was scenic and dotted with trees, shrubs and occasional thorny bushes. It was a narrow path and in places, we had to pull ourselves up on all fours.

We were panting when we reached the top of a hill, from which we had a scenic view of the surroundings. A large rocky cliff faced us and this where we were to do the rappelling. The organizers set up the ropes and other equipments for this. Once it was ready, each of us were strapped to a safety harness, a helmet clamped on our heads and we were sent off down, foot by foot, holding the ropes at all times. An exciting experience, though a little forbidding at the start.

Most of our gang was adventurous and it took us about two and a half hours before all of us completed. It was 3 PM, when we returned to the resort for a very late lunch.

The rest of the evening with many of us playing cricket and a few, managing to wrangle out a free game of billiards. A few took to the pool before we decided to call it a day around 6.30 PM.

We retraced our path back amidst heavy traffic and it was 9 PM when we reached office - exhausted, but none the worse for our adventures.

A few lessons learnt were

Leave early - five hours in the bus is not an ideal way to do an outing, even if we did Dumb Charades and Anthakshari
Take the fastest route - preferably tolled roads - pick-ups are good, but it is just one day - people will not mind some hardship, if better time is spent at the outing
Rappelling takes time - it was roughly 5 minutes per person, which meant about 2 and a half hours for all of us! When one person rappells, the rest of the people do not have much to do!
Utilize the resort better. We used it just for the food - we could have played cricket anywhere!

Upgrading to Oneiric Ocelot

2011-10-18T14:34:00.001+05:30

It was the morning of Sunday, 16th October. I had switched on my desktop to do some torrent downloads. I use Ubuntu 11.04 - Natty Nawhal - on my desktop and Transmission Torrent client.

The Update Manager popped up. This is akin to Windows Update and keeps the system updated with the latest software releases. But this time there was something different. "There is an upgrade to your Operating System", said the message with an "Upgrade" button next to it. Ubuntu 11.10 - Oneiric Oncelot - was here!

It was the first time, I was going to do an upgrade of Ubuntu - that too online and I was a bit skeptical after my Android escapades. But the urge was too much to ignore and I clicked "Upgrade".

I got a warning message that my hardware was a little too old for the new version of the OS and I may face issues. I decided to ignore it, since with 11.04, I ended up getting Gnome Desktop in place of Unity. I felt, it would just continue the same way.

The upgrade involves the download of bootstrap files, followed by the download of a bunch of packages, followed by installation, cleanup and then a reboot. The download was fairly quick (about 600 MB) - an hour with in my "upto 2Mbps" connection. The installation took around 40 minutes and when the system rebooted, I waited with bated breadth.

The login screen was totally different from the earlier one. I logged in and was presented with a desktop, which looked totally different from my earlier one. I guess I was on Unity desktop and that too, a revamped one. Words cannot describe the desktop, but you can take a tour on the Ubuntu site.

The upgrade was a seamless one and a wonderful experience. The new desktop UI is awesome. Way to go Ubuntu.

BSNL woes - yet again

2011-10-11T14:31:00.001+05:30

Not again! Yeah, time I created a separate tag for BSNL, considering the number of times [1 2 3] I end up writing about them.

It was Saturday (8 Oct). BSNL broadband had stopped working.   The landline was working though. A couple of restarts of the modem did not help. Time to dial 1504. Surprise of surprise - I did not hear any music and advertisements and got connected to a customer support personnel immediately.

He asked the usual questions - my phone number (as if he did not have it - after all, this is a toll-free number which can only be dialed from your BSNL fixed line), modem model, operating system that I use (how does that matter) and my cell number.

Here we go, I thought - now I will be asked go through each screen of the model web interface, re-enter information, reboot modem... But that was not to be.

"Our support engineer will call you in your cell number after some time".

This was on Saturday evening and I am yet to hear from any one.

The weekend passed with no internet access (yeah, high time I enabled 3G or got a USB modem).

I came into work on Monday and wanted to log an online complaint. I have done this previously to good effect. I navigated to Bangalore Telecom website and then clicked on Bfone complaints link in the main page.   After a good 5 minutes wait, I got a Connection error.    Yet another door closed!

I actually wanted to change my limited broadband plan to unlimited, but after this experience all I can expect is unlimited woes. I guess a better strategy is to not put all my eggs in one basket - instead go for a USB modem with another provider!

As it turned out, broadband services resumed Monday on its own - evidently BSNL fixed some problem at their end.

How to train your dragon

2011-10-04T12:59:00.001+05:30

I happened to get the Blueray print of the movie, How to train your dragon from a relatives place the other day. I had heard of the movie, but had not got a chance to see it.

Courtesy, my WD TV Live Plus, I could play the movie from the hard disk to TV.

It is an animation movie - released as 3D in theatres. Of course, what I saw was the 2D print.

It is the story of a young Viking, in whose village, killing dragons is a national pastime (and possibly a necessity). He is part of a young group, getting trained on how to handle various types of dragons. His father, the village chieftain is disappointed that his son is not showing the flair that he should.

Hiccup, as our hero is interestingly called fortuitously captures the dreaded Night Fury dragon, but does not have the heart to kill it. He sets in free. He names it Toothless since the first time the dragon opens its mouth, he does not see any tooth. He learns dragon behavior from Toothless and applies it in his training.

The rest of the story is about unearthing the dragon nest and saving the village.

The movie is based on a book of the same name, but deviates from it (as per wikipedia). The picturization is amazing and leaves you spellbound. Toothless as the dreaded dragon is very endearing and it is amusing to watch its interaction with Hiccup.

An excellent children's movie, which adults can enjoy as well. It must have been even better in 3D.

Rangla Punjab Koramangala - avoid

2011-10-04T12:40:00.001+05:30

It was time for yet another lunch out. This has become a regular feature with our office caterer dishing out fares of deteriorating quality.

The plan was to go to Mast Kalandar so that we could have a good and quick lunch and be back for our meetings. On the way, we saw Rangla Punjab. "Let us check this out. We go to Mast Kalandar always", said a friend.

We saw a flight of stairs leading upto First Floor. The place was quiet. Should we go up further? We saw a waiter. "Please come in, sir." He lead us to the restaurant. We were the only people there. We stood hesitating, wondering if we should ditch the place and go to our usual.

"Oh, what the hell. Let us eat here".

The waiter came over.
"How long will you take?"
"15-20 minutes"

We gave some orders - both starters and main courses included. And waited. And waited. It took about 20 minutes for the starters to arrive. That was after the waiter came and said one of our orders was not available.

And then even longer for the main course. We were both hungry and frustrated by this time. One other group came in for lunch, but otherwise the place was empty.

We joked that the same guy doubled up as waiter and cook - and changed his dress each time he came over. This was possibly taking time!

I had to leave since I was late for my meeting. I later learnt that the bill was written by hand on a piece of paper. The restaurant did not accept cash either. They were not cheap either.

A place to avoid, based on our experience.

Gingerbread on Galaxy Ace

2011-10-04T10:56:00.001+05:30

Ever since I bought Galaxy Ace, I always had the nagging feeling that I was not on Gingerbread, the newer Android version for cell phones. Ace came with Froyo. I had seen links stating Ace could be upgraded to Gingerbread - most of them unofficially.

Then came the firmware upgrade in Kies, the official Samsung Windows application to talk to Ace (and other phones). I had installed Kies on my laptop as soon as I got the cell phone. That was Kies 2.0.2. Recently, there was the Kies 2.0.3 release. I updated Kies to it, but did not see any firmware upgrade coming in.

I installed the same on my desktop and lo, there it was - a firmware upgrade for Ace. Gingerbread was here.

The very fact that the firmware upgrade was detected in one installation and not another must have alerted me that something was wrong. I found a bunch of links [1 | 2 | 3 ] describing how people had used Kies to upgrade their Ace to Gingerbread. Each blog had a bunch of comments at the end - most of them about people having problems getting it working. This should have been another warning.

But then am I not technical? My ego spoke and I connected Ace to desktop and started the process. The steps happened as documented. Till the cell phone screen started showing "Downloading..." and Kies started getting stuck at 0%.

This went on for 45 minutes or so. One of the links had mentioned that this does happen and not to worry. "Disconnect cable. Restart phone..." it said. I disconnected the cable. And that was it! The phone had hung - it showed three symbols - cell phone - triangle - monitor and stayed there - no matter how many times you tried restarting.

It was time to visit Samsung service centre. The nearest one for me was in Domlur. The ambience was forbidding - a dark room with a bunch of seats and a lady seated in the far corner taking service requests. It was a laborious manual process - with the lady writing down each person's complaint, while getting interrupted continuously. At least two people who got their phone after repair came back to her saying the problem was not fixed. She needed a photostat of the invoice to prove the phone was under warranty. The best part was, I said "problem upgrading to gingerbread using kies" and she wrote in the complaint sheet "logo hang. data lots (she meant lost, of course"

The only redeeming thing was I was not the only guy who had the problem - a bunch of Galaxy S2, Galaxy S and other assorted Android phones had been brought in for similar reasons.

I went back and collected the phone yesterday and it was indeed running Gingerbread.

Sincere advice: Do not try updating Samsung software on your own - it sucks big time

Websites and cleartext passwords

2011-09-12T12:03:00.001+05:30

The other day, I received an email from my company insurance provider's third-party administrator, asking me to review and update my dependant details.

No issues with the email, but for one detail. It contained not just my login, but my password (in cleartext) as well. What this indicated is, my password was being stored in cleartext in their system/database or whatever.

This website is arguably not an important one, since it allowed just registration and printing of e-cards, but that does not rule out someone doing some mischief like updating/deleting data using my credentials.

The more harmful issue is if you use the same password for your Banking or other more critical websites. A malafide person can use this information to gain access to your account in these sites.

Interestingly the website of this TPA used https/SSL for protection. The purpose of this is defeated if the site sends cleartext password in emails!

Perhaps websites should publish the information if they are indeed storing passwords in cleartext, so that users can choose their passwords suitably.