It has always been my dream to get a DSLR for myself. I had been saving money since a long time but somehow things were not falling in place.
Finally got this camera for myself. I was not looking for a full frame camera initially. But after doing a lot of research decided to bite the bullet and get a full frame cam. Also, got a L glass since I intend to keep this body and lens for a long long time.
Time for weekend shoots? Only time will say….. But finally I got a friend in Gurgaon. 
This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
Recently I had changed jobs. My earlier employer had a BlackBerry Enterprise Server and my BlackBerry HandHeld was locked by the IT policy. Since I used to use my own SIM as well as Handset, the policy which was pushed to my phone was pretty permissive. However certain things like the “Firewall Policy” as we as the “Password Policy” was locked.
I had been lethargic for the first few days but finally decided to sit and clean up the policy. Unfortunately the BlackBerry Admin of my previous employer was too “lazy” to push a blank policy file to my device. So I had to manually remove the policy. A very good writeup on how to remove the IT policy can be found here.
However after completing the entire procedure I found that although the General Settings screen inside Security didn’t show any IT Policy present, I was unable to disable the Firewall. There was a small red lock icon displayed next to Enabled on the Firewall Options page. I could however disable the Password policy which further confused me. My first assumption was, the blank policy file which I downloaded and pushed must have been corrupted. However on further looking I found that its not the case. Poking around in a lot of BlackBerry related forum revealed that a second wipe should do the trick. The device is going to the second wipe now.
I however feel that is a functional flaw. Why would the device need 2 wipes in order to completely clean all IT policies?
Update 1: Wiping the BlackBerry didn’t help 
Need to look further.
The idea of mobility had always excited me. I really like to be able to access my work and other stuff while being on the move.
Wireless internet access has been around for quite some time in the form of GPRS and EDGE tethered through mobile phones. But the speed had always been so bad that one could not ever think about doing any “work” on such a connection.
I was very excited when HSIA became a reality in India. Many providers like Tata Teleservices, Virgin Mobile, Reliance Communications, etc started providing USB sticks which could be used for mobile internet access up to 3.1 Mbps. The USB sticks were however programmed devices which were locked to the provider. This very reason of putting money and getting stuck to a provider kept me from subscribing to such a service.
However this time when I was going to Calcutta for a surgery, I convinced myself for getting a USB modem which would allow me to have internet access while I was in the Hospital. I had cornered on two providers, Reliance NetConnect Broadband+ and Tata Photon+.
My first impression with Tata was terrible. I got in touch with a representative who visited my office with a demo device. The speed was pretty impressive. However it did not work with Snow Leopard due to some driver issues. I decided to go for the connected and submitted all the forms and documents to the executive. However he did not turn up for the next 2 days with the new device. I thanked my stars and decided to move on.
A couple of days later, I visited the Reliance Website and found an option to buy the USB device online. However I left the registration form incomplete on the online store and decided to research a bit more. However I got a call from a Reliance Executive in Delhi who wanted to “assist” me in buying the device. I must say that he had excellent marketing skills and he “got” me. He promised to get the device delivered by the end of the day and he held up his end of the deal.
As per the conversation with the executive, the device was supposed to be activated the next day. But that didn’t happen. It didn’t happen the day after either. I just got too busy with work to follow it up further.
3 days later, I got a call on my mobile phone asking whether I am using the Netconnect Device. On asking, the executive confirmed that the device has already been activated.
Now comes the tricky part. Most of the users for these devices use Microsoft Windows. So when I asked about Snow Leopard to the customer care, they were largely clueless. However I did find an “installer” for MacOS on the Reliance Website. I am always skeptical about installing software just for the heck of it. I was trying to find out if I could get around installing their “Advanced Dialler”. I was using a ZTE device and unfortunately I found out that it is not possible to not use the dialer. Apparently its not just the dialer, but it also includes a driver for the device.
Strangely, I found that my battery runtime drastically went down when I was using the Netconnect Device. I found it hard to believe that just a USB stick is pulling down my Battery life of 4+ hours to just 2.5 hours. Further poking around revealed that iostat was reporting back extremely high disk writes. Further curious about what is going on, I checked with lsof which files are being used. To my horror, I found that the dialer is so advanced that it writes an extremely verbose debug log to /var/log/system.log. The disk was active the whole time the system was on battery and hence the low battery time.
At this point, I had enough of mobility and finally sold the device on Ebay. I guess the eternal wait for the auction of 3G spectrum in India resumes.
Reliance Rest in Peace.
The much awaited iPhone 3Gs launched in India today. I had always felt that Apple does not understand the potential of the Indian market and the launch today further reinforced that idea.
iPhone is being offered in India only in the locked variant by 2 different carriers AirTel and Vodafone. There has been no plans to launch the unlocked variant. The pricing has however got me stunned.
A locked iPhone is being sold at prices which are same as the unlocked phones sold in other parts of the world. The flagship mobile from Apple comes with a price tag of Rs. 35,500 for 16GB and Rs. 41,500 for 32 GB variants. Apple has cleverly mentioned that any iPhones which are jailbroken would be not covered under warranty.
I think this is a fundamental mistake. Apple does not provide direct support in India. It is provided through Apple Authorized Service Providers. The support quality is very patchy and questionable. Most of the times, I have needed support for my Apple Macbook was because of a hardware issue. The one stop answer for all software issue was to reinstall the OS which was definitely not an option for me. Apple iPhone is not a phone for the masses. The people who use iPhones are mostly technically sound and know what they are doing. If things turn out where a customer requires help from the AASPs, most of the times the phone is dead and they do not have a way to find out whether it has been jailbroken or not.
One of my theories why the prices of iPhone are skyrocketing in India is because of the excessive greed of the service providers. It has boomeranged earlier when iPhone 3G sales was a disaster. Now whether history will repeat itself or not, only time will tell.
On a personal note, I firmly believe that the only product *worth* buying from Apple are the Macbook Pros.
MacOS has always been a platform of choice for me on Portable PCs. I am a purist so I tend to use native applications on my PC.
My primary web browser is Safari (currently version 4.0.5) and it works decently well for my needs. However recently I noticed that it has been consuming excessive amount of resident memory. While staring the browser the memory usage was fine, but as and when time progresses, it started consuming upto 1GB of Resident memory and started swapping out other applications to the disk.
Searching on Google landed me to lots of people facing the same problem. I was not using any external plugins, so chances of there being a memory leak is eliminated.
Turned out that Safari was trying to prefetch lots of things for “Top Sites” which it shows when a new Tab is opened. Going to Preferences -> General and changing both New windows open with and New tabs open with to “Empty Page” seems to have fixed the problem.
I am still keeping a watch on Activity monitor to make sure that the problem is indeed fixed.
Microblogging has recently gained a lot of traction on the cyberspace. Everyone seems to be a very interested. I also decided to try out my chances at Microblogging.
There were quite a few things which were playing around in my mind. First of all, why would people be interested in finding out what I am interested in and what I am doing at a certain point of time during the day. Most of the posts I have been coming across in Twitter and FaceBook makes me respond with “So… ?” Also the idea of fitting your entire emotions and ideas within 140 characters seemed to be a bit too much for me.
I have this bad habit of trying to look under the hoods of everything. My first task was to find a suitable microblogging client which was native to MacOS. While there are many clients out there, I started off with Twitterific. This client does a neat job of hiding behind the menubar without creating useless clutter on my dock which I think is a very good idea. However soon I got bored with the UI and the way it manages tweets. The entire idea of putting all information from public timelines to direct messages seemed a bit too much to me. Also, there seemed to be a race condition in which if I do not have a working internet connection on my notebook when Twitterific starts, it consumes too much CPU.
The next app to be tested was TweetDeck. There are lots of good reviews for this app. However this is an Adobe Air application and I am allergic to that.
The next app which I was really looking forward to was Tweetie Unlike the other two applications, this is not a freeware. There is an ad supported edition which I think is pretty good. The application is pretty sleek and also pretty low on memory requirements. It just consumes over 38MB of Resident memory.
The only thing I didn’t like about Tweetie is it does not have a provision to be hidden from the dock. It is possible to manually edit the plist for this app and make this invisible from the dock, but that creates other problems. Also another bug that I found was, if I start this program as a part of my login programs, the icon does not appear on the menubar. I think I am going to open up a support ticket with Atebits Software.
Looks like this is going to be my Twitter client for a while now.
You can follow me on twitter @subhrokar
Taking the GMATPrep Practice Tests Multiple Times
Posted using ShareThis
I think this is a very good article and addresses concerns of many students who are preparing for GMAT. GMAC just hands over 2 practise tests and lots of people are very sceptical about wasting one test without any preparation.
On a personal experience, I however believe that it is extremely important to gauge the existing status. This will allow the individuals to exactly understand where extra work is needed. As mentioned in the article, there is a large database of questions from which the test questions are drawn. So there is a very good chance that there would not be lots of repetitions.
The GMAT prep software also relies on the time taken to answer a question to judge the next question. So in order to reduce duplications, it would be a good idea to actually take more time for questions, answers to which are already known. Also it is possible to clear the memory of earlier tests taken. The method to do so is mentioned here. Unfortunately, this software only runs in Windows.
Medical Science has reached new heights. Reconstructive surgery has gone places and this time I am under the knife. I had a birth defect in my lower jaw which is called Class III Maxillofacial Osteotomy. To keep it short and simple, its a defect in which my lower jaw did not meet my upper jaw and it was impossible for me to incise anything using my incisors. I decided to get it corrected by surgery.
The first question which everyone asked me was was it required? Everyone thought that this was mostly a cosmetic defect which can be dealt with. Specially considering that the treatment for this is an invasive surgical procedure and there are risks, everyone was suggesting me repetitively to reconsider my decision. However in my case, the problem was much more than a mere cosmetic defect.
The first and foremost problem that I faced was my teeth were getting out of place. I was having pains in my teeth and my dentist had to say the reason for that was my teeth being loaded unevenly while I was eating.
The next problem was of course that I was having problems in pronouncing certain sharp consonants like “s” “f” and a few more. This was audibly spoiling my accent, something which I am really concerned about.
The third and the most irritating one was of course a lot of spit coming out of my mouth which I was speaking. This is extremely irritating I know that. But I just could not help.
Now the million dollar question. How come I have stayed with this defect for 27 years and now suddenly find this intolerable? The reality is however otherwise. Most of the time of this 27 years I have not “worked” in a corporate environment and therefore it really did not matter that much. So technically I have decided that I can not live with this defect just for 4 years of of life. Ergo, this decision of going through with the surgery.
The day was last Sunday, 14th of March, 2010, 0900 hrs. I was scheduled for surgery at the Park Clinic. My surgeon Dr. Amit Ray is known to be one of the best surgeons not only in this part of India but he is one of the best in the whole of India. He consults at the Wockhardt Clinic on Sarat Bose Road, Calcutta. I had visited him the first time in the month of September 2009, expressing my desire to get my jaw surgically corrected. At that point of time I was still undergoing an Orthodontic Decompensation being done by the best Orthodontist in India, Dr. Sadashiv Shetty. There were some initial hiccups but finally I was prepared to be on the table.
I was woken up 6 ‘o clock in the morning and asked to complete nature’s call and I need to take a bath. When I am at Calcutta, no one wakes me up this early, that too for a bath. The feeling was pretty strange. I was otherwise completely healthy and it seemed pretty odd that I was to be carried in a stretcher to the Operation Theatre. I wanted to say that I would like to walk down my way. But so many people around me in my cabin kind of got me scared and I did not dare to express my opinion. My mum, dad, uncle, maternal uncle everyone was there to see me through the surgery when the ward boys came and transferred me from the stretcher and started rolling me to the Theatre. All my family members, specially my dad seemed to be be pretty tensed. I was greeted by my surgeon in the elevator as he wished me Good morning. I was not wearing my spectacles, so I was not able to see around very well but I could recognize him from his voice.
The Operation Theatre was a 15×15 room and no way looked similar to the theaters shown in the movies. I expected that it would be a HUGE room with lots of gadgets and a huge observation gallery. There would be lots of people standing to see my surgery and there would be lots of lights and cameras to capture every detail of the process. There were lights, but there was no camera. At-least I didn’t notice any. I met one more doctor inside. I remember his first name, Sandeep. He spoke to me in English and told me that he would take my photos before the surgery. He was equipped with a Lumix Digital Camera and started taking photos from various angles of my face and jaws. At this point, Dr. Roy came and used a couple of clamps which had LEDs fixed on it to separate my lips so that he could take a better look of my jaw. I was asked lie down. The table seemed pretty small for me. I was scared that I may roll off after I lose my senses. The attendants there smiled and said that they are there to take care of me. I lay down and my hands were tied to the sides so that I could not move. The IV channel was made in my left hand and Sphygmomanometer was attached to my right Biceps. An earthing pad was attached to my right calf muscles. I was pretty curious about what are the different devices to be used on me and their functionalities. I must say, the personnel were really nice answering all my questions. I could hear someone comment that I have a very low pressure, which I had inherited from my grandfather and father. The only other thing I remember was a black mask which was put on my face. I remembered that once it was removed and then it was put on again before I passed out.
3 and a half hours later, I felt someone was unclasping the pads from my hand and feet. I immediately understood that its over. I could feel a difference in my jaws meeting together although I could not feel any pain apparently. I heard my surgeon say that it was a very successful surgery as I was transferred back to the stretcher from the Operating Table and being rolled out. Dr. Roy again met me at the door with my dad standing near to my stretcher. I heard him say, “Is this the same boy you had sent for the surgery?” I understood I must have had a major facelift . I could also see that my dad took out his mobile and took a couple of snaps. I shook the hands of Dr. Roy as I was moved back to my cabin.
Since I have left for Bangalore, my home desktop has always been acting up. The system used to be very close to me as it was bought using my first earning. I have run varieties of Operating Systems on it. But since I have left, it has been running Windows Vista.
These days, the desktop is primarily used by my father to speak to me over Skype and check stock quotes. When I came to Calcutta last December, I noticed that something has gone wrong with the display. I used a Samsung 710N 17” TFT Panel hooked onto a GeForce 6800XT which is capable of being driven at “1280×1024” resolution. However this time I found that windows is not showing any resolutions above “1024×768”.
My first hunch was a bad driver. Downloading and installing the latest Nvidia Display drivers did not help. Unable to figure out further I started looking for other options. I was very skeptical about whether my dad would be able to deal with *nix like OS. I have always been into FreeBSD and MacOS but I was not sure about how friendly Linux would be. After some amount of research, I cornered on 2 distros Ubuntu and OpenSUSE. I decided to settle with OpenSUSE as I also had the ISO handy and downloading a whole DVD over the crappy “cable” connection is absolutely out of question.
My hunch of a bad driver turned out to be wrong the moment I booted up using the liveDVD. I noticed that the installer was running at a resolution on “1280×1024”. But strangely when I booted into OpenSUSE after installation, it turned out to be behaving exactly similar to Windows Vista.
Further poking around on Google, came up with a case where there was a bug with a Nvidia driver which has trashed my monitor EDID. All modern graphics cards probe a monitor for certain information like its model number, resolutions it supports, serial number, make, block times and a few more things. This buggy driver has somehow trashed my monitor EDID causing it to report incorrect Make and Model numbers. It was also reporting the resolutions supported incorrectly. As a result, Windows Vista and OpenSUSE were both refusing to drive the monitor at any resolution higher than “1024×768”.
I tried to download a utility called Phoenix EDID Designer and modified my monitor EDID but I was unable to find a utility using which I could write back to the flash memory of my monitor. There were 2 options I had:
Considering that #2 was safer, I tried to follow that. Windows has been pathetically hopeless in this regard. However OpenSUSE was far more configurable in this regard.
I referred to this link and added the following section to the Device Section of my xorg.conf.
Option “UseEDID” “FALSE”
This caused X to ignore all EDIDs and after that I was able to set the resolution using nvidia-settings.
Another day done!! And WINDOWS SUCKS!!
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