After a careful search on the different wireless internet service providers, i settled for a BSNL NIC (aka CDMA Data Modem). Although i found considerable amount of info at BSNLdatacard.com, it still didn’t impress me. So, after using BSNL NIC Datacard i felt i should write a review about it and shed some light on BSNL wireless

BSNL offers two kinds of Datacards presently, the NIC and the EVDO card.

• Wireless NIC (Network Interface Card) works on CDMA which offers speeds upto 144Kbps (comparatively slow) all over India
• EVDO (Evolution Data Optimized) Card offers speeds upto 2.4Mbps (only in the metro cities, in other places it performs just like the NIC)

A comprehensive list of comparison based on speed offered can be found here

BSNL has unlimited plans for both cards which amount to Rs.250 per month(PM) for NIC and Rs.550 PM for EVDO Card. There are two options of getting the connection – rent the card (requires you to pay Rs.1000 as refundable caution deposit) or buy the card. Rent for NIC is Rs.150 PM and for EVDO it is Rs.200 PM. And it costs Rs.2800 to buy the NIC whereas Rs.3500 for EVDO Card (Promo offer till 30-9-09 – Rs.1680 for NIC and Rs.2100 for EVDO Card)

So, the cheapest way out would be to rent the cards – Rs.400 PM for the NIC and Rs.750 PM for the EVDO Card. I feel renting is better because in case of any failure/malfunction of the card, it becomes easier to get it exchanged/repaired as it will be the liability of BSNL.

I have settled for a NIC (Rs. 400 PM) as its cheaper when compared to other providers like tata-indicom, reliance.. and it delivers decent download/upload speeds of 7-12 Kbps throughout the day (this depends on your proximity to BSNL tower also, i get full signal strength where i am). I have attached my Speedtest report below and as its mentioned i get 9Kbps up/down speed at the moment.

BSNL NIC Wireless Internet Speedtest

BSNL NIC Speed Comparison

Tech Specs of Huawei EC325 NIC USB:

• Air interface: CDMA2000 1X RTT
• Standard Mini USB interface
• Internal Antenna
• Dimensions: 84mm x 42mm x 12mm
• Supports Data rates upto 153.6kbps (because its CDMA!!)
• Supports Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Seven and Linux too!

Download Huawei EC325 NIC USB drivers from http://bit.ly/huawei-drivers

Some facts you ought to know before you go in for BSNL NIC are:

• NIC connection is stable enough for a voice chat through Skype or GoogleTalk but gives average results for a video chat.
• Good browsing experience for Gmail, Facebook-Lite, Twitter and some light downloads under 20MB.
• NIC gives you a static IP which makes it tougher to download files simultaneously from filehosts like Rapidshare.
• Frequent movement may disrupt the connection as it may involve switching over to another tower coverage.
• Being wireless, i feel its even better than the Cable Sify Broadband at home where 64Kbps unlimited plan costs a lot more than BSNL NIC!
• Although BSNL claims here that roaming is available for both the cards, i am yet to check it out.

Bottom Line: If your game for an unlimited connection without expecting phenomenal speeds, then BSNL NIC is the one for you! And its the cheapest of its kind too!!

Warning: Beware of areas having no CDMA tower coverage! BSNL datacards wont work there. Like in the primitive parts of Trichy – NITT – Thuvakudi. Sometimes BSNL is such a letdown

About 2 hours before the start of ProNite this Festember, i am sure no soul would have ever thought what an awesome night it would turn out to be! By far, my most memorable one till now As Russel Peters would have put it.. ProNite @ Festember’09, NIT-Trichy was just “Mind Blasting” (thats right, it was Mind Blasting rather than Mind Blowing).

Benny Dayal

ProNite was composed of brilliant (but short! thanks to the curfew restrictions! grr!!) performance by the playback singer Benny Dayal. Some of the scintillating numbers he sung were Yethi Yethi from Varanam Aayiram, Kaise Mujhe from  Ghajini, Masakali from Delhi 6, Taxi…Taxi from Sakkarakatti, Antha Arabi from Bombay, etc. He sure was a crowd entertainer!! But then! the goddamn fun began only from 23:15, when the Bandish started rocking away!

Although i was skeptic about their performance in the beginning, i was thrown overboard by sheer joy and enthu around! Man, you should have been there! The Barn just came alive seeing them on stage and i too had a time of my life

The Bandish

80 Minutes of non-stop blood pumping, body thumping action.. Bandish sure won the hearts of all NITTians present there. They staged all kinds of exciting numbers with the hits like Zehreelay, Pichle Saat Dinon Mein and Rock On!! from the movie Rock On!! to their own creation called the Goonj from Kaise Kahoon. Hats off to you Bandish!! Your just Awe.. wait for it.. Awesome.. And you showed us how to Rock On.. Kyunki.. Jindagi Milegi Na Dobaara

Edit: Some pic of decent quality i could lay my hands on.. (Courtesy : Badri)

Bandish - Live at NIT, Trichy - Festember'09

Festember’09 was indeed a fest to remember (inspite of the minor let-downs and incessant rains). I know its a cliched expression uttered by most of the final years, but its just worth it.

A note to the cow-girls of NITT:  I also like to thank you people for evacuating the Barn early tonite. We dudes had a rocking nite without you No offense !!

I have been using Google Mail (aka Gmail) all this time and i have not been stumped by any spam/phishing email more than this one. The reason being, the mail that i received had in it the sender’s name in bold “mail.nitt.edu” – which is the mail portal of the university where i study. Although it was evident after careful perusal that it was a spam, it would have proven  fatal if i had replied to it in haste!

Now, if you face a similar threat – not being able to decide if a mail is spam or not – feel free to follow these steps which will help you to spot the bad-ass phishing mails.

Spam inbox view in gmail

Even though the mail was categorized as “SPAM” by gmail automatically, the mail subject was curious enough make someone open it. But the point to be noted here is that any mail subject which has the URL of the service instead of the service name may be potential spam. Because legitimate emails from the service admins would surely have the service names like “Twitter” or “Facebook” or “Orkut” instead of their url’s viz. “twitter.com” , “facebook.com”, “orkut.com”. Likewise, it would have been more cogent if it was “Dear NITTmail Account user” instead of “Dear mail.nitt.edu Account User”

Spot the sender using the show details option

So, what if you don’t use gmail? Here are some more ways you can identify bogus mailers

The phishing mail }:-)

Give aways the its a spam

• Note that the sender’s mail address is not from the “nitt.edu” domain
• The reply to points to a suspicious “techsupport” address
• The mail asks for the LOGIN NAME and the PASSWORD in reply! BUZZ! Never do the admins ask you for a password!

Any mail server can masquerade the sender’s name but not its address. That is why you can identify if a mail comes from a trusted source this way.

Some more preventive measures to check spam is to use the filters feature in Gmail. Just try these ten must have filters which featured in LifeHacker. One of the filters helps you to identify bulk emails that are not sent to you alone but to many others too. As spam mails are bound to be mailed in bulk, this helps you to mark them as “Not to me” (“f/! me” as shown in the screenshots).

Lastly, a word of caution to nitt junta: Just don’t be foolish (NITTmail admins never would have apologized for anything in any of their mails ). Stay safe

#success #!fail #phew

The great fail

Failorama tags: #fail #banana #kela #sad

Yippy! I have ordered a twitter t-shirt [and i got it finally! Click here to see the real tshirt]

Design as given below – Navy Blue:

Front Design:

Back Design :

Made it in a jiffy So no time to tweak the design. But then, i like it this way

In case you are interested in knowing the details on how i ordered, here it is, ordered online from a site called myntra.com. Select a basic tshirt template and upload your front and back designs, Customise with on-site tools if needed and buy your order. Payment possibilities are numerous – credit card, debit card (includes SBI and other not-so-commonly-shown-banks), Mobile payment, etc, etc. Rates start from as low as Rs. 299/-, shipping charges and taxes add up. So you can easily get the above tshirt for about Rs. 350/- Oh.. i almost forgot, the moment you register afresh onto the site, you will be given 5 gift vouchers worth Rs.100/- which can be sent across to your friends or family. But in order to claim the voucher, a minimum purchase of Rs.200/- or above has to be made.

If you want the same design as above, i shall be pleased to send the Photoshop(.psd) designs across to you. You can put your own twitter username instead of mine and give it a shot. Just leave a comment here.

Boy O Boy O Boy.. eagerly waiting to wear this and go places So, BlueDart please make it home soon

[Edit - After i got my tshirt delivered]

A double yippy cuz i got my tshirt delivered to my doorstep in just 3 days (ordered on 17th July 2009, 01:00 IST and got it by 20th July 2009, 14:25 IST). The service was excellant. I even got a mail saying that my tshirt has been dispatched alongwith a BlueDart ID to track the status of the package. And wallah! whaddya know? it was delivered within 7 hours since i got that mail from myntra.com.

I have just one minor discontent – the printed area could have been bigger!

Here is a real view of the tshirt

For the uninitiated, “The periodiс table of the chemical elements is a tabular method of displaying the chemical elements.” (words lifted from wikipedia ). In this post, i will share my experiences on how i learnt up the periodic table when i was in the 11th Grade.

A word of caution! Some of the methods illustrated here will be only suited to readers who have bare minimum knowledge about the Tamil Language (and Chennai ). If you don’t have a clue on words like paambu, saapadu, sethu po! etc, then i would advice you to continue to some of my other posts. Ok enough dilly-dallying…  let me begin now

The periodic table consists of 117 elements as of 10th March, 2009. The methods i list out will enable you to remember at least about 60+ elements, whose positions are generally tough to remember. A sample of the periodic table is shown below.

Periodic Table - Tips are given for area marked by the black rounded rectangles

As marked in the above figure, the tips are given to remember the D-block and P-block elements. So, assuming you know the first 12 elements (which you ought to), after reading through this you can remember the order of close to 65+ elements.

The P-Block elements

Now, starting with the P-block, Take one column at a time. So, you are about to learn groups 13 – 17.

Group 13 – Starting with Boron [B] – is to be rememberd as – B Al Ga In Tl = BAGIT (or BAG IT !)

Group 14 – Starting with Carbon [C] – Carbon and Silicon chips in Germany doped with Tin(Sn) and Lead(Pb) – C Si Ge Sn Pb

Group 15 – Starting with Nitrogen [N] – Naga Pambu Aasaiya Saabuduthu Biscuit – N P As Sb Bi

Group 16 – Starting with Oxygen [O] – Ohh YeS! Se Thu Po (as in O S Se Te Po)

Group 17 – Starting with Fluorine [F] – Remember it as if you where rushing through it! Fluorine, Chlorine, Bromine, Iodine, Astatine – all the ‘ine’ endings somehow rhyme for me

Group 18 – You got to learn these by heart as they are NOBLE enough to be on the periodic table

The D-block elements

We shall now deal with the Dreaded D-block elements. Here, i would prefer to attack in a row-wise (period-wise) manner.

Period 4 - Taking up the 1st row of D-block, that is the 4th Period in the table, break it down into two equal halfs: viz. Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn and Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn

For the 1st half – Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn – remember it as – Scandium saw Titanic in Vettri Chrompet Theatre with Manganese

For the 2nd half – Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn – remember it as if your are reading of the Symbols – Feh Co Nee Ku Zinc – FeCo   NiCu   Zn – Fe,Co and Ni,Cu are two couples whereas Zn is a bachelor ( Be careful not to mess up the order of Cobalt – Co – and Copper – Cu – while remembering it )

Period 5 – Assume, this period is a story about two friends Y (Yttrium) and Z (Zed/Zee – Zirconium). Now, Y and Z are two friends and they say “Namba(Nb) Teacher(Tc) R-square(Ru,Rh)” (Our teacher R-square). Then they sing, dance to music from a CD – Padi(Pd) Aaadi(Ag) Cd

in short: Y and Z – two friends – say “Namba Teacher R-square” – and Padi, Aadi to a Cd ……. Sounds good ??

Period 6 – For this one, i would like to approach it from the reverse. That is Hg, Au, Pt, Ir, Os, Re, W, Ta, Hf

Expanding and associating each symbol with easy to remember words like:

Hg – Mercury – Marie – a brand of biscuit which is popular in India

W – Tungsten – Wandhichu or Vandhichu- meaning “to come” or “to get affected with”

Ta – Tantalum – Theriyuma – meaning “do you know? “

So imagine your talking to the element Hafnuim (Yup! Hafnium is a tamilian and knows tamil Absolutely no questions to be raised here !!), the complete sentence in tamil is like

“Marie Gold Platinum biscuit saaptu Irridium ku Soree Wandhichu Theriyuma Hafnium ?”

The same with some more explanation in braces for better understanding would be:

“Marie(Hg) Gold(Au) Platinum(Pt) biscuit saaptu Irridium(Ir) ku SoRee(OsRe) Wandhichu(W) Theriyuma(Ta) Hafnium(Hf) ?”

which translates to “Hey hafnium, did you know that Irridium got a bad itch after eating Marie Gold Platinum biscuits ?”

And not to forget the first element of the 6th period (also the first element of the Lanthanides) – Lanthanum !

So there you have it! That was how i learnt the periodic table.

Kudos! to my chemistry professor – Mr. Baskar or ‘Aufbau’ (Wondering why we named him so? for everything he would say “Aufbau principle padichiko! Adhu podhum !” ) as we used to call him affectionately in school, and i must not forget to mention that we do have this Orkut Community dedicated for him, http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Community.aspx?cmm=18670311. This is just one of the most amazing things which he taught me. And i must say it was damn helpful during those gruelling times when i was in 11th & 12 th grade. And guess what?  I still remember the periodic table by heart! even after more than three years of passing out of school

So did you find this useful? Or, Have you figured out a better way of learning the periodic table? Do share your thoughts on this as comments

Hope that helps

“Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.” – David Grayson

Just <3 it !

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Finally a final year? Well.. Not YET!

Its been long since i blogged. So i have to decided to come out of the hibernation period starting with this post. Ok, now coming back to the point of discussion! Yippy am a final year. After the summer of 2k9, i ll be one of the “final years” of my college. Feels good (well.. atleast for now.. ). Summer hols have come as a breather! phew! whatay sem that was! Right from the start.. Classes, CPCs, PIs, GDs, Assignments (yuck!) and finally the Sems! (i guess all those exclamations would convey my level of happiness now that all of that is over. Even if its for a brief period. It does matter you know!). And then the good times – Pragyan’09 & Nittfest’09.

All those grueling CPC’s, though appear to be taxing you too much but it actually helps you at the end of the day. Even if you dont take it seriously, the whole experience is worthwhile. But opinions may differ .

Ah! finally.. Summers here and am going home . Am reminded of those good ol’ summer hols during school days which used to be filled with fun. And heat is on the rise   Guess i ll have to try my luck at beating the heat this time (more here). But then, this summer is going to be action packed. Really looking forward to it.

Some of the tags that will remind me of 6th sem :

OR – cee pee cee – cee yes – staff c – dfm – proe – minmal dota – Pragyan – prodigy? – nittfest – gd’s & pi – project LOL – wifi – heroes, himym, smallville & tbbt – finally “soup”

Can’t believe it all this happened so fast so quick! all seems to have gone past in the blink of an eYe!!

Alas! I just hope all goes smooth.. inluding the three letter Gee-Word (interpretations of the different meanings conveyed is left to the discretion of the reader )

[Edit]

Just for the record, i managed to get my very own first 9+ gpa in my department (in 5th sem) and am happy bout it…