Technopersonal

Can we live more sustainably please?

2021-06-26T16:37:00.003+05:30

Sustainable living had always seemed to me as a remote idea, something which can be read in articles and books but is difficult to adopt in our daily lives. It's quite surprising then, that over the past few years we (as a family) have found ourselves adopting more sustainable habits in our daily lives. We have found this way to be more healthy, hygienic, and less expensive. There is also a sense of doing something on our part to make the world a better place. After all, we take so much from nature when we live, breathe, eat, work, travel; the least we can do is to reduce wastage of natural resources!

I must admit that at many times, these sustainable habits are directly against our consumption mindset. Why use that old mobile phone for few more months, when a new one will hardly cost a few thousand rupees with an exchange offer? They also take some effort to develop like any other habit. Why remember to take a cloth bag for shopping every time when carry bags are so easily available? Many times, the initial investment could be higher but they pay off in the long run e.g. a steel water bottle will cost more but is much cheaper to refill and carry in the long run.

Most of the habits I am listing below are already practiced by our parents, friends, and people around us. What definitely helps is to be less judgmental about these habits and learn the good bits from them!

Extend the useful life of things by using them for a longer timespan, taking better care of things, and repairing them if it makes sense. When trying to buy a replacement, I check the last time I bought it and how long I have used it. This usually gives me time to think about re-purchasing, preventing impulse buying.
When buying a replacement, exchange the old product or sell it on Olx. If it doesn't make sense to sell it, donate it if it's in a usable condition.
Regularly donate old clothes, shoes, and other such items rather than stocking them. Use torn clothes for dusting & wiping.
Use technology to reduce wastage:

Apps like BigBasket Daily allow us to buy vegetables and fruits daily without needing to store things. This means less wastage and more fresh food.
With apps like BigBasket, Amazon Fresh, etc. it's possible to order groceries when needed without stocking them. This generally reduces wastage.
Smart bulbs reduce electricity wastage(and they are becoming cheaper by the day). Switching off lights & fans when not in use works too!

Carry a steel/glass bottle on trips and refill it rather than buying packaged drinking water. Similarly, carry it to the office and refill it rather than using paper cups. If you are paranoid about water hygiene, there are water bottles that also purify water.
We chose a water-saving RO purifier that reduces water wastage.
Collect the wastewater from the RO purifier and use it for cleaning purposes and watering plants.
Avoid carry bags. Use recyclable dustbin bags. Reuse the cartons & plastic bags from our shopping.
Avoid wasting perishable food: fill the plate with only what I can finish eating, use recipes that utilize left-over vegetables in the fridge, feed left-overs to animals.
Walk/cycle short distances instead of driving. Use public transport when possible.

I am sure you would already be practicing many of these sustainable habits and much more. Do share them here and with friends/family! Every bit counts in saving the earth.

My investment journey and learnings!

2021-06-06T15:02:00.003+05:30

With almost 10 years of investment experience now, it's a good time to look back on my investment journey. I can't claim to have made any out-of-the-ordinary gains so there will be no extraordinary advice here. As they say, most investment stories are boring! However, there might be a lesson or two hidden somewhere :)

Phase 1 - the beginnings

Having luckily bypassed the 2008 recession, my investment journey began in 2010 with my first job after engineering. I took investment advice mostly from personal finance articles in newspapers back then and from http://www.subramoney.com/ (it was a much simpler blog at that time). A good job, no responsibilities, and an innate lack of imagination for spending ensured that I was able to invest the recommended 20% of my salary. While it amounted to only a few thousand rupees per month of SIP in mutual funds, I am thankful to my past me for at least starting to invest which taught me some important lessons:

Keep aside money for investment and then spend the rest - no amount is enough for spending
Like anything else, saving is also a habit
Purchase from savings rather than borrowings
Know inflation - money decreases in value with time
Stay away from LIC policies!
Read a lot, research, make sense of risk & reward, debt & equity, mutual funds & stocks etc.
Know the difference between saving & investing

Phase 2 - getting serious

1st phase ended with me leaving my job for Mba and withdrawing all my investments and my epf proceeds for paying fees. 2nd phase started with my 2nd job after completing mba with more money to invest, a greater pinch of taxes, learnings from phase 1, some more knowledge from finance lectures, a longer investment horizon, and more spending goals. Lessons learned have been:

Importance of health and term life insurance! (with a reminder from a more than minor injury - entirely paid by my health insurance)
Importance of saving for retirement - dynamics are very different due to very long term horizon
Investment type must match investment horizon - learnt this the hard way when I had to withdraw my MF units at almost 10% loss because I had no fixed return investments!
Take advantage of tax saving for investment rather than invest for tax saving
Lost capital in stock & bitcoin trading - money takes a lot of time to grow!

Phase 3 - coming of age

Some more learnings over the past couple of years, accelerated by COVID times:

Balancing investments for the long term with spending in short term - it's important to spend on good things!
Efficient investing - low cost of investments can make a big difference e.g. Direct Funds, Index Funds, NPS, FDs with no foreclosure charges
Explore more investment avenues - NPS for retirement; online FDs for emergency funds; Gold ETFs/Foreign ETFs, Debt MFs for asset allocation
Take adequate insurance - not too much, not too less - insurance mitigates risk, it's not an investment strategy
Invest in building physical + mental health and good habits - money saved is money invested!
Keep partner informed of total investment, investment platforms, basic investment terminologies

Phase 4 - to be updated after 10 more years! :)

My new favorite device - a Google Chromebook !

2021-05-15T19:49:00.002+05:30

It was early last year that I came to use Chromebook by chance and I have been loving the experience since! Sharing my story here.

I was looking for a personal computing device (not exactly a laptop because there are several choices now: tablets as good as laptop, laptops as good as tablet, phone as big as tablet and so on) and doing some research for it. And a listing on Olx caught my attention, it was a listing for used corporate HP Chromebook. The Flipkart listing is here but the laptop itself has been discontinued now. I felt the deal to be a bargain and immediately bought it though I had never used a Chromebook before, I though in worst case I will wipe Chrome OS and install some Linux OS on it!

Please note that it's a top of the line configuration with i5 processor and 8 GB RAM which actually might be an overkill for such a lightweight OS - Chrome OS is basically a browser running as an OS (not completely true tough). Also, the touch screen and convertible form factor open up several use cases, much better than a convertible running Windows. However, even with a modest configuration in modest price, I have read and heard that Chrome OS runs great.

Without further ado, here is why I love my Chromebook:

Super fast startup - in 10-15 seconds. It has never hung on me in a year and it's super-fast. The battery also lasts a lifetime.
Ability to install many Android apps (though not every app). This combined with touch screen and ability to use the laptop in tablet mode makes for a great experience - a huge tablet running apps.
Ability install Linux apps - greatly enhances the software availability. The Linux terminal keeps my geek side happy!
Good integration with android phone - the laptop can make a direct connection to phone's internet which is way faster than a hotspot and much more battery efficient. This has saved me on several occasions! Recently, there are more integrations like viewing messages and browser tabs from phone.
Super smooth Chrome browser - it's kind of obvious because the laptop is meant to run Chrome but with Chrome being itself a very powerful and versatile browser, this enhances the experience.

So there are 3 ways to install apps on a Chromebook and all are generally quite straight forward - Android apps, Chrome browser plugins and Linux apps. If somebody is heavily dependent on a Windows software which is not available on either web/Android/Linux then there is no choice but else do give Chromebook a try, it deserves that!

Do let me know if you want me to cover any other aspect of Chromebook :)

Access blocked websites on work / office laptop with ssh tunnel to AWS cloud instance

2015-03-02T23:13:00.002+05:30

Given the propensity of IT admins to block websites, using office laptops at home can be a very frustrating experience. While blocking certain malicious/nsfw websites definitely makes sense, I could never understand the logic behind blocking very useful blogs/discussion forums etc.

Now that our aim is clear, let’s get started. We need the following:

An open SSH port (port 22) on your laptop (on my work laptop, it’s blocked on office network but open on home/personal networks)
A credit card (required for AWS account)
A new Amazon AWS account (which comes with access to AWS free tier for a year)
A ssh client (e.g putty.exe on windows)
FoxyProxy plugin for chrome/firefox browser

The basic principle behind how it works:

Let’s go step by step, configuring the AWS instance, putty client and browser. Since this is a guide meant for ‘power’ users, it would be better to skip step by step details:

Set up Amazon AWS
Set up AWS by following this guide and then launch an instance by following this guide.
Remember that the instance type you launch should be T2 micro instance if you want it to be free. When adding inbound traffic rules in security groups, allowing only SSH (from anywhere) would be enough. For now, skip the part about connecting to the instance, it’s described in the next step below.

Set up SSH Client (putty)
Now that we have a Linux server running in the AWS cloud, we will configure Putty on our local machine to connect to the server. Follow instructions at connecting to AWS instance , ignore the “transferring files” part but before saving the session for future use, go to Conection->SSH->Tunnels and add new forwarded port with Source port: 8080, Destination: leave text field empty, Dynamic and Auto.

We now have a ssh client connected to our AWS instance, ready to pass our browsing data to the AWS instance in a secure manner, bypassing IT controls e.g Websense. We just need to tell our browser to how to pass the browsing data to the ssh client.

Set up Browser
We will use chrome/firefox because of their support for exceptional plugins. You might want to configure an alternate browser(other than what you regularly use) for this purpose.
Add FoxyProxy(basic version will do) to the browser. Now in FoxyProxy settings, change the default proxy settings (or add a new setting) to: Manual Proxy enabled, Host: localhost, Port: 8080, SOCKS proxy enabled. Enable FoxyProxy with the new settings.

That’s it, happy freedom to you! Browse whatever you want to your heart’s content. Remember to check back and stop the AWS instance after a year.
Since AWS instance is always on, so the only things you need to check before doing secure browsing is that Putty is connected to AWS instance and FoxyProxy is enabled in your browser.

SUPER BUDGET 2015

2015-03-02T20:55:00.000+05:30

The first full budget of the Modi govt was presented by FM Arun Jaitely on 28th Feb.As usual there was huge expectations from the budget .More so because this was the first full budget of Modi govt which has won a landslide victory last year on the plank of development and they have a clear majority in the lower house, a privilege which none of the previous govts had.

So was it a SUPER BUDGET ?? Were there BIG BANG REFORMS ?? Was it something that would propel India to a new growth path??

Well the answer to these question may not be a thumping yes. But a lot of steps has been taken which will make India investor friendly country. Currently India ranks above 150 in the index of ease of doing business in a country. But steps taken in this budget will definitely improve the investor sentiments and bring down India's rank to around 100 -110 in the index

Lets understand one thing first , that budgets are mere allocation of funds and all policy decision does not necessarily be taken in the Budget statement only. But be as it may, the budgets in India is still given way too much attention and we will take a look at this year budget.

One thing that is very much clear about this year Budget is the thrust on Infrastructure.The very fact that INFRASTRUCTURE found as many as 15 mentions in the budget speech so did MAKE IN INDIA as many as 10 times.We all know that with around 9 lakh crore of investment in infra sector is stuck due to various reasons,there is an urgent need to look at the PPP model itself.This model has not yield the result which was expected . So there seems to be an pressing need to invest public money in to the sector. The budget allocates $11 billion more this year for this very purpose.Also pushing the fiscal deficit target by 1 year (they were to achieve fiscal deficit target of 3% by 2016-17) the govt has got the elbow room to increase its public spending which they intend to use on infrastructure building. It also intends to create a NATIONAL INVESTMENT AND INFRASTRUCTURE FUND(NIIF) which will enable to raise the debt .They also intend to set up 5 UMPP(ultra mega power projects) which will augment the power generation in the country. Making roads of 1 lakh km in a year in addition to the already sanctioned 1 lakh km has been announced.Also custom duty was reduced on 22 items which will make it cheaper for indian companies to imports parts to manufacture .

These measures are definitely commendable. But the problem lies in the execution.All these measures are not new. UMPP were announced earlier also but they have stuck due to land allocation issues or financial issue . NHAI has already sanctioned creation of many thousand km of roads but they have not been created . So the problem lies in the execution of these budgetary allocation.Simplification in PPP policy is also something that was very much required.I have read somewhere that the govt now intends to adopt a new model called PLUG n PLAY where all the clearances will now be done by govt and the parties can straight away start developing the port,road,etc .Thats a good policy to start with.

Another great expectation from the economists was on the front of fiscal prudence.Well this year govt decided that they will let go the fiscal target mainly for the spending on infrastructure.Though the fiscal condition is much better than lets say 12 to 15 months ago thanks to decreasing crude prices, a $50 Billion gift for the govt as famously said by Raghuram Rajan ,RBI Gov .Still fiscal responsibility is something the govt can not ignore. Moodys has already confirmed that they are not going to change India's status in near future and will wait for the implementation of the policies.RBI has also stated the same thing in their last policy update.Raghuram Rajan is not going to decrease the Repo rate in near future thats for sure.

The budget document is so huge that its impossible to analyse it one blog without making it boring. So remaining analysis will soon follow in the next blog.

Your smartphone has got a gorgeous screen. Why not make some use of it? (Image)

2013-11-21T16:26:00.001+05:30

My laptop has a 11.6 inch screen and my smart phone has a 4.3" screen (I am sure your phones have a larger screen). While I don't have any complaints with my laptop's screen, my phone's screen is a gorgeous SUPER AMOLED ( Retina display will also do :P ).

So why not make some good use of the gorgeous display? Ok, I used it as a an auxiliary screen for watching YouTube but it's a good way to watch videos, simultaneously doing something meaningful on the laptop.

While I would have loved this:

I guess, this will also do :D

How badly do we depend on mobile and online services! (Image)

2013-11-18T15:53:00.001+05:30

Technology has changed our lives and the way we use technology has changed too!
Our mobile phones (not desktops or laptops) connect us to our online world. And boy! The online services have literally stormed our lives. We now make calls, send messages, watch videos, listen music, read news, connect with friends, store and share our photos and much more... all online.

What else online services do you use on your phone?

P.S this entire post was done on a smart phone right from screen shot to picture editing to content writing.

Why custom ROMs for android phones are like Chinese toys!

2013-11-14T22:20:00.001+05:30

CyanogenMod, a popular custom ROM for android phones

Ok, I will admit it. I am tired of changing custom android ROMs on my Samsung Galaxy SII. I am running custom ROM and I am unable to boot my phone since last 2 days. Which ROM is giving me the sweats? Well, it doesn't matter. I have tried CyanogenMod, Slim Bean, MIUI and many more(these are the latest that I have tried, I cannot remember many others). Some are fast, some are customizable, some have unlocked features, some are based on a version of android which is not yet available for SII and increasingly all of them claim to be jack of all trades.

Installing custom ROMs has become increasingly easy. First, it required special software(e.g odin) to flash custom ROMs on your phone but now, once you have rooted your phone, it's as simple as downloading and installing from a zip. Custom ROMs can be installed as easily as themes!

But not without their own set of issues. First, rooting(required for installing custom ROMs) still requires some level of confidence about your computer skills and rooting voids warranty of phone. Even if you are confident enough, there are scores of custom ROMs for your phone out there( http://forum.xda-developers.com/ is a good repository) and choosing one among them is a matter of blind faith. Many of the ROMs are made by enthusiasts who offer absolutely no support and in my experience, most of them vanish after one or two release. This has been remedied to an exten with the emergence of well maintained ROMs like CyanogenMod and Slim Bean which even after updtaes but point to note: my phone ran on Slim Bean and it refused to boot after a well intended update :|

Not everybody has the heart to stay without his/her smart phone in case something goes wrong while installing a custom ROM(it does go wrong 5/10 times) and re-install all favorite apps after every install. Besides, performance improvement through custom ROMs doesn't matter much on a capable phone like SII (I have hardly noticed a big difference in performance on a custom ROM) and if you consider the argument, no enthusiast ROM developer can really know your phone better than the company which made it! Besides, my friend is always particular to point out the security issue arising from installing custom ROMs: what if its code includes a backdoor to sneak out all of your confidential information? If Apple can do it, enthusiast developers can go all the way stealing your information!

If you are excited about custom android ROMs, by all means go for it but remember; they are like Chinese toys which appear to be pretty good but do not last long . Sooner or later you will come back to original ROM which came with your phone!

In India, it isn't just about generation gap!

2013-11-12T19:06:00.001+05:30

Is being the "best", the only option? All around us, success is measured by individual achievement: a student who achieves highest marks, a person who has the highest paying job or the biggest house or the most expensive car... is successful.

If you are an Indian in your 20's or 30's and reading this,have you ever wondered why our parents/grandparents never seem to be interested in getting the best clothes or dine at the best restaurant in the town or get the best smart phone?(assuming no monetary constraints). Why 'what society thinks' seems to guide their actions? How could they be in the same job for years and why would they still prefer us to have a government job which is respected in the society rather than one which pays more? Isn't that a generation gap or the age effect? Would we be same after 20 years from now?

"others" are important in East

"self" is important in West

To make sense of that, we must first understand that their are two major cultures in the world: Western and Eastern. USA is representative of Western and Japan representative of Eastern culture. De facto, we Indians are a society which follows Eastern culture. While Japan is closer to India then USA, thanks to the Himalyas and the British Empire, for almost 2 centuries, India's Eastern culture came under heavy influence of Western culture. Japan suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of USA in World War II and thanks to US capitalism, there are more US firms than Japanese. All in all, this has exposed India(and the world) more to Western than Eastern culture and we have started considering the Western culture as the de-Facto standard. This only acclerated after Indian economy integrated with global economy during the 90s

While we Indians belong to Eastern culture, we are rapidly adopting Western culture which has widened the gap between generations. Each generation in India is more Western and less Eastern than the previous generation. I will let you read an excellent excerpt on Cultural Psychology which answers few of the questions raised above(click to enlarge):

MOOCs(e.g Coursera): the next best thing on the web after Facebook!

2013-11-04T22:59:00.002+05:30

MOOC: Massive Open Online Course

Certificate from Coursera(a platform offering MOOCs)

Online tutorials aren't a new addition to internet by any means. Many of us have taken up online tutorials sometime or the other. However these online courses were hobbyist by nature; they were all of different format/structure, scattered all over the internet; they addressed some niche field of study(generally related to computers); lacked any popular recognition and almost entirely lacked human touch(they were completely automated).

First, online courses were just text or videos followed by set of quizzes (e.g www.w3schools.com). Then, MIT pioneered the practice of putting many of it's credit courses as freely accessible online modules through the OpenCourseWare program (http://ocw.mit.edu/)[and thus online Tutorials became online Courses]. Many followed suit, including our own IITs and IISc(http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/). OpenCourseWare had the backing of MIT(no hobbyist!), it was a central repository of MIT's courses, all courses had a similar structure and the courses covered topics from several different fields of study. However, it still lacked something.

Enter the MOOCs on the stage. My experience is almost entirely with www.coursera.org (Coursera, founded 2012), the most popular MOOC platform(there are several others including Udacity, EdX). MOOCs are similar to any other online course except that:

Each course is delivered by an Instructor who is affiliated to a University.
Course is delivered through a series of lecture videos designed specifically for online learners(it's generally NOT a online copy of real world course)
The course runs in a limited time window(e.g 14 weeks, much like a semester). The material becomes available one week at a time, as the course progresses and the assignments have to be completed within a fixed deadline to receive credits for it.
Several(sometimes lakhs) of people take the course simultaneously in the limited window and they interact(discuss doubts, ask questions) on discussion forums associated with the course.The discussion forum is moderated by Teaching Assistants.
On successful completion of course, participants receive a certificate signed by the instructor(subject to attaining sufficient credits). Certificate bears the name of Instructor and the name of University which offered the course.

What I like about MOOCs:

EXCELLENT course material and fabulous instructors. Just consider some of the instructors whose courses I have taken till now:

Bill Howe, Director of Research, Scalable Data Analytics,University of Washington
Andrew Ng, Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, Stanford University
Scott Plous, Professor of Psychology, Wesleyan University
Dan Ariely, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics, Duke University

Most of the courses are designed for "life long learners" i.e they have minimal prerequisites.
The discussion forums are lively and meaningful (probably because of good moderation). I have myself got into debates(sometimes hot) several times!
The Certificate :) And the best part is, people have said in forums that the courses actually helped them change their major field of employment!

Brick and mortar schools and colleges have already started accepting credit earned from MOOCs (http://www.skilledup.com/blog/coursera-certificate-whats-it-worth/). When are you doing a MOOC?

Stuck with slow slow internet on PC? Some things you can try!

2013-11-01T23:07:00.003+05:30

So you went home for vacations and were banking on your mobile / dongle's internet pack for internet access. The slow internet might be just ok on your mobile phone but it's absolutely frustrating on your PC (laptop / desktop). But now you are stuck with snail paced internet which is ruining your vacations?

Try the steps below to have a relatively primitive but better experience of internet on your PC:

1. install the plugin "User-Agent Switcher" for your PC's browser (Chrome/Firefox ) and change the user-agent of your browser to iPhone (Nowadays almost all popular websites are designed to deliver different optimized versions for different devices. The user-agent of your browser tells the website server the type of device which is requesting the website. Through this step, we are basically trying to trick the websites you will be visiting into thinking that you are visiting them from an iPhone so that server sends a version of the website optimized to be simpler and faster to load i.e pages with compressed images). The plugin can be found at:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/ (firefox)
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-agent-switcher-for-c/djflhoibgkdhkhhcedjiklpkjnoahfmg (chrome)

2. the above steps should ensure that mobile versions of websites are loaded but if it doesn't for some reason, try manually using mobile versions of websites ( e.g m.facebook.com instead of www.facebook.com)

3. use versions of websites without https (SSL) e.g use http://www.google.co.in instead of https://www.google.co.in

To get back to normal browsing, set user-agent back to your browser's default (e.g Chrome->default if you are using Chrome).

Micromax: the Indian Samsung?

2013-10-29T00:23:00.000+05:30

Micromax is all over the news(and ads); its flagship phone Canavas Turbo became available for preorder on 26th October.

Canvas Turbo has top notch specs and dashing looks, neck to neck with flagship phones of all popular brands out there in Indian mobile handset market, not to mention that Micromax has roped in Hugh Jackman as it's brand ambassador. And more important is the fact that Canvas Turbo can't be written off as a fluke because Micromax has done it before with Canavas, Canavas HD and Canavas Doodle (As per IDC report, Micromax was only second to Samsung going by total number of smart phone units sold in Quarter2, 2013).

Micromax Canvas Turbo

Samsung Galaxy S4

At a broad level, Micromax story is eerily similar to Samsung story. Samsung started as an underdog(HTC was the top android phone maker at the beginning of android story) with low end phones and then hit the jackpot with Galaxy series phone. Once at the front of the line, Samsung maintained its lead, refreshing the Galaxy line and adding more variants to it and the rest as we all know is history. Samsung has had a great run from Galaxy S to Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note to Galaxy Note3 (it announced a record profit of $9.96 billion in July-September, 2013) and hopefully will continue. Micromax started as an underdog with cheap re-branded Chinese phones in the low-end segment, steadily moved up the value chain and hit the jackpot with it's Canvas line of android smart phones. Since making it big, Micromax has continuously refreshed Canavas line to bring it closer to flagship handsets of well known brands at that time and has adopted well thought ad campaigns to shed its image of a company assembling and selling Chinese phones.

If Samsung is guilty of making iPhone knock offs(at least in initial stages), Micromax is guilty of making Samsung knock offs. Samsung tried(successfully) to match the features of each new iteration of iPhone(and by some accounts, it still does the same) at lower price point, Micromax is playing catch up with each new iteration of Samsung's flagship phone at lower prices.

If Lenovo can make it big in China in spite of all big brands being present there because it understood the local markets well, so can Micromax, because it understands Indian markets . Only time will tell whether it's strategy is a successful strategy or not but as an Indian I welcome the rise of Indian Samsung!

IRCTC gets much needed UI update!

2013-10-27T22:23:00.000+05:30

Sometime in late September, IRCTC started redirecting its users to a new interface on searching for a train. It seems to be a phased rollout as I was redirected to the new interface just today and my friend doesn't see it yet.
The login screen and the landing page haven't changed. But when you search for a train, the website redirects to subdomain jp.irctc.co.in and presents a new UI.

The screen presented on selecting a train also has significantly more information than before:

For technically inclined, the new UI uses jsf technology whereas the old pages use the archaic CGI scripting. The new interface presents several details in a concise way(it even has tabs!) and significantly reduces the number of clicks to get information. However, the huge amount of info on a single screen can be overwhelming for quite a few people.
From the look of it, the new UI is a significant improvement over the existing one(apart from these two pages, other pages on irctc don't seem to have changed yet). An eternal optimist, I am one of the billion people hoping that irctc updates its entire website to a new and improved UI!

Steps to rename wordpress website folder without ruining SEO

2013-10-19T14:13:00.001+05:30

You didn't want WordPress files to clutter the root folder of your web host so you installed WordPress in a sub-directory named 'blog' or 'wordpress' etc. Now you later realize that having your webpage's URL appear as http://solsarc.org/wordpress/our-services/ isn't a good idea after-all(maybe it looks unprofessional or may be it's bad for SEO). Instead you want the URL to be something like http://solsarc.org/school-and-therapy/our-services/ . Houston, we have a problem!

Steps:

Log-in as admin. Go to settings-> General panel. In the box for Site address (URL): change the address to the new directory's URL. Example: http://solsarc.org/school-and-therapy
Go to http://goo.gl/f85WZj and follow the steps mentioned under the heading "When Your Domain Name or URLs Change" to safely change all instances of your URLs
Change the name of the folder in which WordPress resides (e.g from 'wordpress' to 'school-and-therapy')

You now have the URLs appear as you wanted them too. But wait, your website appears in Google search and when Google realizes that http://solsarc.org/wordpress/ no longer exists, it's going to get mad at you and probably penalize your site's rankings(and ruin your website's Search Engine Optimization). Steps to prevent that:

Generate a new XML sitemap for your website and submit it to Google Webmasters
Put a 301 redirect for all http://solsarc.org/wordpress/* pages. To do that, create a .htaccess folder in the root of your web host(note: WordPress folder has it's own .htaccess file, we are not talking about that) and put the following in it , replacing 'wordpress' and 'school-and-therapy' with your own folder names:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^wordpress/(.*)$ /school-and-therapy/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

That's it! Google(and anybody else) will still be able to use the old address(with old folder name) and still find exactly same pages at new address(that is, in folder with changed name).

Indian general elections battle: capitalist BJP vs socialist Congress?

2013-10-19T09:46:00.002+05:30

capitalism

The basic premise of capitalism is 'Invisible Hand': people pursuing their own interest frequently promote the interest of the society more effectually than when they really intend to promote it. Capitalism promotes competition because everybody is working for his/her own good. But the problem with laissez-fare economy(with no government intervention) based on capitalism is that it frequently leads to short term pains. A capitalist will probably not care for the environment,he will think of pains caused by unemployment before shutting down an unprofitable factory and he will not care for alleviation of education levels and poverty because he is there for profit not charity. But in the long term, the same drive for profits will lead to better technologies which are good for environment, more employment opportunities under better working conditions, better education facilities being setup because trained human resources are required for positions requiring skill and knowledge and all these factors will lead to alleviation of poverty.

The problem is nobody knows what short term is. it could be 10 years, 20 years, 30 years or more. If capitalists are given free reign, who cares for the worker who became unemployed because the factory in which he worked became unprofitable? Sure, the closing of factory led to free capital which was invested in say, a technology firm. But the unemployed worker doesn't know what's a computer and since he is uneducated and 50 years old, it's probably not possible for him to "up-skill" in computer technology. By the time capitalism completes a short-term cycle(of 20-30 years) he will probably die of starvation.

welfare

And here enters the Government. It "taxes" the capitalists for things that they don't care about such as environment, education, poverty and uses the tax proceeds for the betterment of the section of society "affected" by capitalism; leading to a welfare sate, a balance between capitalism and socialism. India is a welfare sate. As my friend explains in this post, we have had a historical inclination towards socialism(first stage of communism) with much of the economy controlled by and belonging to the state, almost tripped into it under Indira Gandhi but then embraced capitalism under Rajiv Gandhi after events of 1991(still remaining a welfare state).

Interestingly, as a nation, we continue to imagine a black-and-white difference capitalism and welfare. Because BJP continued "capitalisation" of the economy when it was at the center during 1998-2004, it's viewed as pro capitalist. Because Congress ruled the country for most of the time before 1991 and then formed a coalition government with left in 2004 and took other pro-social steps during 2004-2013, it's viewed as pro-socialist. But India cannot afford to be either a capitalist or a socialist nation. We must promote capitalism as well as we can, then tax the capitalists and use the money from taxes for social welfare.

So, India must provide facilitate and support capitalist entrepreneurs and then use the money from taxes to educate, nourish and care for less fortunate citizens trying to make them a part of the capitalist system. Neglecting either capitalism or welfare would hurt the political party which does that(BJP was overthrown after 2004 and there is huge ant-incumbency sentiment in the country against present Congress government) but the bigger damage is done to the social fabric of the country.

Due to whatever historic policies and situations, there are two Indias: one would be better served by capitalism and the other by socialism. Whichever political party wins the coming general elections, it must balance the needs of two Indias unlike what has happened in the past.

Facebook's debut in TV commercials promises more Likes for girls!

2013-10-16T00:37:00.003+05:30

At one point or the other in our digital lives, all of us(boys/men) have been amazed/mortified/ anguished by the number of likes received by girls. The anguish has spawned a whole class of posts: "ladkiyon ke liye 1000 likes aur [replace with a valiant deed followed by a picture]".

Well that is going to change. Because it's going to get a lot worse if the latest TV commercial from Olay Natural White cream (from the P&G stable) is to be believed! Featuring a good looking girl, the ad starts with the girl getting 88 Likes (which I would say is a fair estimate, at least for girls in my friend list) which increases to 521 Likes after using Olay Natural White Cream.

That's a whopping 492% of increase in Likes!! A day would come when all fairness creams would urge girls to apply the cream before every fb photo session :D

Handing your Android phone to a kid? You might expose him to porn!

2013-10-14T01:19:00.002+05:30

Google is seen as the flag bearer of open platforms and this characteristic automatically extends to the Play store, the official app store for android based smart phones.
While Apple is known for strict review of apps before they appear on iTunes store, Google in the spirit of openness is very liberal with allowing apps on the Play store(with very few restrictions). Google's openness is generally good for all, developers can make more apps with more functionality and android users get more apps to use.

However, the openness can become a liability too as I observed today evening when browsing for top new free apps on Google Play store. Here is a screenshot od top free apps:

Now imagine a kid using your phone(they seem to be surprisingly good at it nowadays!) and coming across this while browsing for top apps!
And that's only one part of the danger. These are the permissions requested by the "Indian Bluefilm" app:

That's a fairly large assortment of permissions requested by the app without the app having any apparent need for those permissions. Imagine text messages being sent by the app to all your contacts that you have!(possible with the combination of "Your Messages" and "Your Social Information" permissions).

So, if you have a kid around you using your android often, consider making it safe for child.

Embed post feature of facebook and twitter let you create stories out of your posts!

2013-10-10T10:17:00.002+05:30

All major social networks now allow public posts on the respective platforms to be embedded in other websites/blogs. This post explains the steps for all social networks.

What's the advantage? As per facebook: "The embedded post will show any media attached to it, as well as the number of likes, shares, and comments that the post has. Embedding posts will let people using your web site see the same rich information that is shown on Facebook.com, and they will enable people to follow or like content authors or Pages directly from the embed." Here is an example: http://solsarc.org/wordpress/testimonials/

Posts on social network have the inherent disadvantage that they are not linked to each other!(e.g if you went on a vacation and made status updates about it, your friends see the updates simply as unconnected posts as and when the updates are made). The embed feature can be used to string the updates into a story!

Below, I have made a collection of movie reviews but I can imagine that a better use of the embed feature would be for example to create a story(blog post) of a vacation with status updates and tweets(own and of others who went with you) in a sequence and some lines in between :)

It's nothing without the the madness! You can download and watch a movie on your laptop but you have to visit a theater to appreciate it's true beauty!

Post by Abhishek Kumar.

#Rush movie Happiness Is the biggest enemy: It weakens you. It makes you fear that you have something to lose. Mind blowing dialogues ;)
— abhishek (@technopersonal) October 10, 2013

Post by Abhishek Kumar.

- Abhishek Kumar

Do you still use a id and password (and 100s of them?)!

2013-10-09T00:12:00.001+05:30

It so happened that one of my friend’s colleague got arrested for some matter and was sent to jail. My friend went to meet his colleague in the jail. Pretty normal, right? Well he went to meet his colleague to get the username and password of the colleague’s computer, required for some urgent work which apparently couldn’t wait till the colleague was freed!

Now this incident just highlights the importance that logins have come to occupy in our digital lives. Login information is any confidential information that only you, the person trying to login knows. It’s generally a username and a password but also covers pin codes, fingerprint scanners, face unlock, pattern unlock and many other outrageous methods to unlock your smartphone (including the iPhone 5S Touch ID). I need not remind you that it’s required to access your Device, your Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Bank Account and IRCTC ticket booking(basically any online service which can be customized).

What I might remind you though, is that the login is slowly changing as you know it. Logins generally protect some confidential data behind them and as a result they are the target of hackers. As a result, several innovative measures have been tried to make it more complex and other times simpler but definitely more secure:

OpenID: Ever felt drowned in 50 usernames and passwords? Worse still using the same username and password across 50 websites? OpenID is your rescuer! Basically, you create an account with your preferred OpenID provider once and you use your OpenID credentials across all websites. You always sign in to only your OpenID account and the OpenID provider authenticates you on your behalf. As a result, you are saved from remembering several logins and you don’t give your private data(name, age etc) to every xyz website.

Ever used Sin in using Google/Yahoo? Congrats! you have already used OpenID!

Single Sign-On(SSO): While OpenID allows you to use a single username+password combination to login into several services; SSO allows you to use a single username+password combination to automatically login into several related services(with OpenID you will have to authenticate every service every time you want to login).

Ever noticed that once you sign into any Google service, you are signed across all other Google service? That’s because Google uses SSO.

2-step verification: Username+ password is simply not enough so logins using 2-step verification require username+password+passcode. Passcode can come from OTP(One Time Pin) on your phone or from token generator(like RSA SecurID)

Then, there are other methods of authentication which assume username+password based login to be cumbersome, insecure and easily hackable and hence, they seek to replace something you know (username + password) with something you own(your fingerprint, your face, you retina!). Face recognition and fingerprint scanners are already in mainstream use with Android and iPhone respectively. May be, in near future we will simply be our own login information! and my friend would have to wait for his colleague to be freed from jail before authenticating :D

- Abhishek Kumar

Sen vs Bhagwati? Who is right?

2013-10-06T22:14:00.001+05:30

It has been sometime now since the debate between the two eminent Indian economists about the growth model India should pursue has been going on (Bhagwati argues for growth purely through deregulation whereas Sen has put his weight behind a simultaneous push to education and health). But the larger question remains about the underlying theme of the debate.

Both Jagdish Bhagwati and Amartya Sen are very eminent economist who became famous in the 1970s .Sen is well known for his work in development and public choice where as Bhagwati is famous for his work on trade. Sen has won a noble prize for his work in development economics and Bhagwati is a well renowned economics professor at Columbia University famous for his trade theories (Paul Krugmen is one of his protege).

Although the argument between them is nothing new. Bhagwati has always attacked Sen and his economic theories but Sen has avoided attacking Bhagwati personally.But this time when ECONOMIST did the review of his book "India: An Uncertain Future " (Bhagwati whereas has praised Gujrat Growth model in his new book); Sen hit back with a letter to Economist stating his point of view about growth .
Also recently, Sen has praised Bihar's inclusive growth model and maintained that Narendra Modi should not become the PM. The media rumor wheels have it that Sen is pro Congress and Bhagwati is pro BJP.

So what exactly is this debate about or is there any debate?

Is growth of paramount importance or its just a means to achieve the larger goal of human development ? Should state be more involved in health care, education, nutrition, housing and other benefits? The answer of these questions is the topic of the debate.

According to Sen growth is important but not as end result but as the means of better education ,better health care for the citizens of the country. Sen in his book has compared India with other poor countries(Sri Lanka, Bangladesh...) who are better than India in many human development indicator such as life expectancy at birth ,infant mortality, access to improved sanitation,female literacy rate etc . This is despite the fact that India has better income per capita than those poor countries. Sen prescribes that India should invest more in health and education even if the wealth generation i.e GDP growth is low. Sen argues that the type of GDP growth that India has pursued, has not led to improvement in health and education because of the quality of growth is not broad based.His theories have of late resonated with government evident from enactment of MNREGA and FSB. He gives example of Kerela in health care where all the figures of human development indicator are better than the rest of the country as the state has actively taken part in the healthcare sector and education.According to Sen, India should give importance to development of its people and not just headline growth rate.If the people are healthy and more educated, they will further contribute to GDP.

Bhagwati on other hand believes that growth is of paramount importance. According to him a country should have a healthy GDP growth which would generate enough funds which can further be redistributed. India should remove trade barriers and a rising tide would lift all boats. He also professes that govt should remove trade barriers and get back on track its reform agenda.He has undertaken many studies which confirm that with increase in growth, there is decrease in poverty.According to Bhagwati, growth makes redistribution possible; not the other way round. He maintains that ever since the reforms of 1991, there has been substantial decrease in the poverty in the country. He doesn't support of state playing a larger role in country's economics. Bhagwati believes that govt should remove the regressive subsidies and instead use direct cash transfer. He is a proponent of Gujarat model of growth .

So who is right and who is wrong?

Neither. They both are complementary rather. But Bhagwati is more correct when he says that growth is necessary which will create resources . Investment in health and education can be made with those resources. Since 2003 -04 there has been rapid decrease in poverty as a result of rapid increase in growth rate of GDP.Nobody can deny the importance of dealing with the poverty. But the ways of doing it is equally important. One of the main reason of current macroeconomic slump i.e low growth , high inflation is the fact that govt spending per capita has increase by almost about 75% . The spending has led to more demand but the supply side is still languishing leading to inflation which effects aam aadmi more than anybody else.
We need to get away from regressive subsidies and start targeted cash transfer. We also need these kind of debates on economy in election year and people to take part in these debates. Its high time economic issues became political issues!

- Abhishek Ranjan

Indian prime ministers: how old?

2013-10-03T23:26:00.005+05:30

Click here if you are unable to view the embedded chart.

Elections are round the corner and very soon, Indian democracy will choose the head of the top executive body(cabinet) which runs the Government of India. So, how old is our Prime Minister on an average? Is he/she quite old because surely the top job of the country requires a vast experience or is he/she young and dynamic with enough experience?

As the chart above shows(hover over the bubbles for details), most of our prime ministers here in India were in the age bracket of 60-75 years when they assumed office (indeed the average age of all prime ministers is 66.6 years). Rajiv Gandhi was the youngest prime minister India ever had(40 years old) and Morarji Desai the oldest who was of 81 years when he assumed office. Indira Gandhi was also quite young at 50 years while I K Gujaral, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Charan Singh, Manmohan SIngh and P V Narsimha Rao were all septuagenarian.

The name of PM candidates for 2014 general elections are already out and if Narendra Modi becomes PM, he will be of 64 years which is in the most common age range ofpast PMs(60-75), whereas if Rahul Gandhi becomes PM at 44 years, we will have our youngest PM only after Rajiv Gandhi!

- Abhishek Kumar

Microsoft Office is under serious threat from Google Apps. Already!

2013-10-03T16:16:00.002+05:30

Few days back, we were working in a group on complex financial valuations and we were of course using Microsoft Office Excel (what else! right?). People were working on many related calculations but on their own laptops and as a result, we had to do a lot of mailing the sheets back and forth between us, adjusting our own calculations as the calculations of others' changed. The sheets soon became unmanageable for concurrent working.

We then decided to use Google Sheets (part of Google Docs, an on line office suite, which is itself a part of Google Apps, a cloud-based productivity suite which includes apps like Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Drive etc) for our calculations, though we had our own doubts on whether it would be able to handle such complex Excel formulas( the formulas in itself were pretty standard, mostly BODMAS and some financial ones but many of them ran into several lines). And surprise, surprise! Not only did the Excel workbook with almost 10 sheets import successfully into Google Sheet, every formula and even color coding was perfect! Once our work in Excel was imported into Google Sheet, collaborating on it was easy; we shared it among ourselves and then worked on it simultaneously.

So why am I generalizing on this one instance? Well, it shows that Google Docs is ready for at least intermediate level of complexity (I have generally been able to create a doc in Google Docs for collaborating and then giving it a finishing touch with Microsoft Office) which when combined with its online collaboration features, makes it a very potent threat to Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office doesn't have a comparable collaboration feature in either Office 2013 or Office 365. Even Gartner seems to be surprised on how well Google is doing, with Google now having 50% market share in cloud-based productivity suite!

All the stats are important, but there is one crucial piece: people are reluctant to switch from Microsoft Office because they are used to it. Microsoft has tried to capitalize on it by offering Office bundled with PC and by offering low cost Student Edition so that people get used to Office. But the students today are on line more than anybody else and they collaborate a lot more (I am a student and I can vouch for that). Because Microsoft Office doesn't have collaboration capabilities, students are using and learning Google Docs. The problem? Future employees / businessmen / educators will be comfortable using Google Docs and will not hesitate to switch only because they don't know how to use any other office suite. And that's going to be the biggest problem for Microsoft!

- Abhishek Kumar

I know what you did online!

2013-09-30T22:21:00.001+05:30

With an average person spending more than 3hrs daily on internet chatting, shopping and reading instead of bring with friends, it's the need of the time that we started judging a man(or woman) not by the company he keeps but what he/she does online!

To be a good investigator, you must always be on the lookout for a chance to look over someone's shoulder when he/she is online or the best way is to get access to the person's unlocked pc/smart-phone with browser open and logged-in. There are several other methods in between these two extremes and it all depends on your ingenuity, shrewdness and presence of mind.

Step 1: check if online behavior is consistent with offline behavior!

With the Google account logged-in, head over to www.google.com/settings/ads . Google will tell you what it thinks of the person based on the websites he has visited.

Step 2: Check what he watches online! More importantly: what Google thinks he must watch!

Head over to YouTube homepage with Google account logged-in.

Step 3: Don't forget to check the spam folder! It's an official record of all sins done online!

Easy, just head over to gmail's spam folder.

Step 4: What does he buy online! Groceries? or Guns!

Head over to the frequently used online buying portal (you already know this because you have been keeping a tab for quite some time)

Step 5: Last but not the least, don't forget to check the social aptitude/behavior!

It's easy and you have already been trailing for quite sometime now.

If you follow these five steps, you easily know a man/woman more than what he/she know about himself/herself! And once you know the rules of the trade , there's is no limit to the amount of information that you can collect. Do let us know your own genuine methods in comments section.

- Abhishek Kumar

Where did India go wrong in her economic policies after independence?

2013-09-29T22:29:00.000+05:30

Every time we talk of India's GDP ,we inevitably compare it with China's and China outnumbers India by a long shot. Both the countries or for that matter all the Asian countries became independent around the same time. All of these countries were torn apart by the foreign rule at the time of independence .Since then they all followed different economic models and now they are either reaping the benefits or paying for the policies that their founders choose to pursue. In this blog i will be looking into the economic policies followed by India since independence: what were they? what went wrong? when did it go wrong? could we have done anything different?

India became independent from 200 years of British rule on 15th Aug 1947. At the time of independence India was plagued by a vicious circle of poverty characterized by the lowest levels of per capita income and consumption levels in the world.The economy was dominantly rural and around 85% people lived in the villages.Illiteracy was as high as 84%. India at the time of independence was truly an underdeveloped country.

Immediately after independence, our leaders had to choose the economic model that our country would pursue.Jawahar Lal Nehru ,India's first PM, was impressed with the Soviet Union's style of command and control economy ever since his first visit there. Soviet style central planning model(a task assigned to the Central Planning Commission) and import substitution model(aiming to be self sufficient in producing whatever we need rather than paying foreigners for our needs) to run the economy was adopted. Public Sector Units(PSUs) were set up; several dams ,steel mills and other industries were constructed and premier institutes including the IITs were started, all built and operated by the government. Nehru aptly dubbed our factories, research laboratories, irrigation dams and power stations as the “temples of modern India”. However, Nehru also sought active participation of private entrepreneurs (though working within the purview of Planning Commission) in the country's development

Did we got it wrong right at the outset? No. Socialism was the order of the day and was very much in vogue at that time . Also, we had got independence from British and hence were afraid of imperialism of any kind including economic. So government took control of the commanding heights of the economy . This model served well for India at least for the 1st two plan period. The GDP growth for the 1st and 2nd plan period is 3.6% and 4% respectively which was quite an achievement given the condition of the economy which we had inherited from the British. The initial economic model served India well in the 1st decade since independence.

In the beginning of the 1960s India had to face a war with China which was a big drain on the exchequer .Then there was a war with Pakistan which further exposed the economic problems. With Indira Gandhi at the helm after Nehru's death in 1964, began the true socialist era of Indian economy. At this stage, our democracy had stood the test of time and economy was in a much better shape. This was the time to switch gears of the Indian economy by encouraging private entrepreneurship and reducing the role of government in economy. But what happened was exactly opposite. Several private enterprises including Banks, Insurance, Oil companies were nationalized. Although Nehru was a socialist at heart, he never prevented private companies from growing. But Indira Gandhi (after her initial years in politics) became a socialist to the core. At a time when the entire world was accepting export led policies, India continued with import substitution model.

It was from here India started to flounder. Indo-Pak-Bangladesh war happened in 1971 and then came the oil shock in 1973 which were a huge drain on the exchequer. Despite repetitive reminders in form of high inflation ,India did not mend her economic policies. Indira Gandhi's economic policies were very much leftist and that left India in a lurch at a time when East Asian economies has started their very sensational growth story.
Instead of investing into capital formation, India under Indira pursued populist policies under her slogan of "garibi hatao" which only worsened the economic indicators. Her other policies like strengthening the labor laws(which made it almost impossible for an industrial enterprise with more than 300 employees to either retrench its workforce or even close down without government permission, which was rarely given) are still haunting Indian economy. Instead of opening up of economy, she made the economy more inward looking by Small Scale Industry(SSI) reservation which prevented the entry of medium and large scale Indian industries into segments like garments, shoes, toys, sporting goods, small electrical appliances etc . It was precisely in these segments that East Asian countries started their manufacturing led growth. India became a laggard in manufacturing because the SSIs were neither efficient nor could they take advantage of large scale manufacturing to reduce costs.

So, inspite of the Writing on the Wall, why did India stick to her import substitution model? Answer to this question is more political than economic. Indira Gandhi, with time, became more and more socialist. Even when the writing was on the wall, she stuck to her populist measures. It was not as if she did not have political support; after breaking "the syndicate"and Indo-Pak-Bangladesh war, she had became a towering political figure and had all the political power to pursue whatever economic policy she wanted. But her political outlook passed onto her economic policies.
The results were devastating: per capita income rose from 775 per month in 1969-70 to just 815 in 1976-77 at 1999-2000 prices. The average per capita income growth during the period was just 0.8% with no reduction in poverty achieved. India had lost almost an entire decade!

Whatever economic reforms were undertaken, they were taken because India was pushed to the wall and had no other option. However these measures were simply not enough.There was definitely a spurt of growth in GDP in the 1980s but the investment was made using our foreign capital reserves which led to the much known Balance of Payment crisis of 1991 which i will deal with in the next post.

But Indian economy would indeed have been in a much better stat; had the leaders after Nehru given due importance to progressive economic policies and opened the economy at sometime in the 1970s. Then, we could have been at par with China and our ASEAN neighbors today.

- Abhishek Ranjan

Corporations: the religion of modern times?

2013-09-28T01:08:00.003+05:30

credit: Dr. Yuval Noah Harari's course "A Brief History of Humankind" on Coursera

Have you ever wondered at the scale which the modern companies of our times have achieved?

Walmart operates more than 9000 stores and has 2.2 million employees!
McDonald's operates 34000+ stores employing almost 2 million people
The Indian Railways operates 10000 trains daily aided by its 1.3 million strong workforce
and many more huge, huge companies...

What makes them tick?

The product/service which the company provides? Probably not.

The factories/offices? Cannot be as they are anyway replaced time to time.

The employees? nah! (however hard the employers try to convince otherwise). Employees retire and get fired to be replaced.

So, what is Apple or Disney or Ford or Sony? They did not end with their visionary founders or star employees and span over several products and over several decades! A corporation is a common thread which runs through several thousands of people and binds them together with a spirit of brotherhood across cultures and countries.
Corporations are simply myths, a set of stories which reside in the beliefs of the employees! Very similar to a religion or a cult which binds people together through mythical tales. As history bears evidence, religion is a fantastic tool to mobilize people. Wars have been fought over religion, homicides perpetrated and most recently terrorism justified in the name of the religion. Of course, religion also mobilizes people for good deeds like donations and charity work.

Next time you enter a workplace or buy a product or avail of a service, think of it. What's the story of that corporation? What binds together the people at that office? Is it just the salaries?

- Abhishek Kumar