Apple provides something called an AppleCare Protection Plan (APP), which extends your 1 year warranty and makes it a 3 year warranty, 3 years from the date of purchase. Effectively, you pay for 2 extra years. It also gives you complementary phone support for 3 years. The price of an APP for my 13″ MacBook in India is above Rs 13,000 inclusive of taxes. Now I don’t know about you, but that seems to me a hell of a premium to pay for warranty. I bought my MacBook for Rs 54,392. That means that the cost of warranty is over 23% of the price of the product, which sounds absurd. This put me in a tough position, I knew I would need this warranty in the future, because I have experienced problems earlier. If this machine goes down when I have no warranty, the individual parts are too expensive for me to afford. And neither would I be able to afford a new machine. In short, I was royally screwed.

Then I talked to xAbhishek. He owns a MacBook Pro, and I asked him how he gathered up the courage to pay up a hefty sum for his APP. He told me that I could get an APP agreement for my MacBook much cheaper than the prices at the Apple Store, on eBay. He himself bought his APP from a similar source.

How this works is that these sellers on eBay do not ship out the actual boxes for the APPs. Once they receive the payment, they send you an email which contains the agreement code. You can then register this code online on Apple’s official website along with the serial number of your MacBook. Even if you actually purchase the APP box, you would have to take out a card inside it which contains an agreement number, which you have to register online. The box also contains a DVD for TechTool Deluxe, but once you have registered your code online, you can download TechTool Deluxe from here. So far it seems easy.

The problem here of course is of trust. I am sitting here in India, the seller is probably somewhere in Nigeria, I don’t know who he is, if he will ever send me that email, if he does, what if the code is already used, or is fake. Your money is gone, its a blind shot. Well the good news is that you’re not throwing arrows in the dark. eBay has a feedback program, only users who buy from a particular seller can leave feedback. This makes it difficult to fake reputation. The seller I bought from, macman812, has sold thousands of Apple products on eBay, is an old member (since 2003), has 100% positive feedback from buyers. The only method of payment that this user accepted was PayPal, which is another thing to look for because PayPal has something called buyer protection. Also, the description of the product was convincing enough. In the end, it is a risk that you have to take, no matter how many safeguards are in place.

I bought the APP for $118, which on conversion to INR, cost me Rs 5892. I saved over Rs 7000, and though I faced a few issues initially, everything worked out well in the end. Now I have a 3 year warranty for my MacBook, and it only cost me 10.8% of the price of my MacBook, which seems to be extremely reasonable.

In years of my experience with computer hardware companies, this is the first time that I had a pleasant experience when approaching for after-sales service. The office of Rashi Peripherals is located at 314, Mansarovar Building, Nehru Place, which is on the 3rd floor, but the warranty section is at 207, on the second floor. Usually this place is known to be crowded, but this time, there were only 3-4 people at the door. I took a token for the queue, and registered my details in a register near the door. I went inside, and handed over the mouse to a guy at the counter. He examined it for a while, checked the serial number, put a sticker on it, and handed it over to me. He asked me to give it to another guy sitting across the counter. I gave the mouse to him, and he handed over a new, unopened box of the same mouse. No questions asked.

It kinda feels nice, receiving a new product in exchange for an old one that you have already used for 8 months. +1 to Rashi Peripherals for being nice, for once at least.

1) Opera Web Browser With Unite
2) An Opera account

Setting up Unite is amazingly easy. In Opera, just go to ‘Tools’ >> ‘Opera Unite Server’ >> ‘Enable Opera Unite’. You can enable or disable services like File Sharing, Media Player, Photo Sharing, Fridge, The Lounge, or Web Server from the Unite Side Panel.

When you do enable Opera Unite, you get yourself a URL, which points to your Unite page, a hub from where you or anyone else can access your files remotely. You can check out what my Opera Unite page looks like.

Note that this page will only be available if I am running Opera on my system and have Opera Unite enabled. Once I close Opera or shutdown my system, you’ll get a not available error. However, for you, this event should be highly unlikely because I rarely shutdown my machine, and Opera is almost always running on it.

I am not here to explain what Opera Unite can do, or how you can configure it, or enlist its features. If you want to know that you can check out the official Opera Unite website. I want to tell you why I think that Unite is an awesome idea and how it is better than other conventional methods of sharing files such as e-mail, hosting websites, dropbox like websites, setting up an Apache server on your machine, using DyDNS, SSH etc.

1) TOO FUCKING EASY – All you have to do to set it up is download and install Opera, and enable Unite. There you go. Now you can share practically your whole hard disk, your pictures, your music collection, even host your own website on your computer. All you have to do is keep your machine and the Opera browser running.

2) SOLVES THE DYNAMIC IP PROBLEM – One problem with other methods of accessing files on your hard disk (such as SSH) is that it requires you to know your IP address to access your machine over the Internet. With most ISPs out there giving out dynamic IPs to their customers, its impossible for you to remember your IP. Unite gives you a domain, a URL, which is easy to remember, and stays connected to your machine no matter how many times your IP changes. This is because Unite is linked to a My Opera account, therefore it always knows your current IP. You only need to remember your own URL. My URL is mac.apoorvkhatreja.operaunite.com

3) CROSS PLATFORM – Opera is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and *NIX systems. So practically anyone out there can get a web server up and running in minutes. Moreover, once you set up Unite, all you need to access your files remotely is a web browser, any browser that can render web pages. That is available on almost all systems by default. With SSH or other methods, you need to download some other tool before you can start downloading files.

4) ALL GUI, SO GOOD FOR n00bs – Fight it, but people are repelled by terminal windows and usually don’t like typing anything other than sensible English sentences with their keyboard. A really dumbed down, simple GUI interface for Unite makes it easy for n00bs to use who are looking to host their own website on their system or just share files with friends without any size limits.

UPDATE:
5) You can’t DDOS a person via Opera Unite! (Unless you can sustain exactly 13 connections per second, no more, no less, but even then it’s just takes 1 core and connection piling doesn’t happen. (No overload) [via Opera Unite benchmark]

Ok, your name may be very sexy, having a score of >100 on the so called ’sexy’ scale, maybe your brain feels nice on being rated by an automated algorithm, but please forgive us and don’t ’share’ such a useless statistic with us. OMG, what? You scored a 15 trillion at online pool! Great going douche! That just shows me that you have all the time in the world. And you’ve got to be kidding me, you actually need to create a QUIZ to tell how well your friends know you? You must have some great friends, I say.

Just when Facebook had introduced a new cleaner layout to help people follow their news feed more conveniently, we had a flow in of tons of apps which pulled data (friends list) from your profile to help you spam their notifications with invites to use that app. This is taking the whole viral media fad too far, and has crossed over the line of privacy which any Facebook user deserves. Thank you Ankur Banerjee for introducing me to Facebook Purity, an awesome little Greasemonkey script that removes all the stupid quiz and app notifications from your news feed on the home page.

Another thing is the email notifications. One of your friends tags you in a photo. You haven’t even seen that photo. Now a 100 people go and comment on that photo. You get a flurry of mails which clog your inbox, a separate one for each comment on a photo that you have never seen and was tagged by a friend (so it may not be actually yours at all).

Same with when you chose to ‘Like’ something on Facebook. You liked somebody’s status, and dared to click on the ‘Like’ link? OMG how could you? Now you’ll have to pay the price. You will be irritated to no end by being forced to receive emails on every subsequent comment on that status, irrespective of the fact if its from a person who isn’t your friend.

So the point here is that I’ve always felt vulnerable when I went to water parks with friends or places like Kempty Falls or any other place with a water body suitable for a dip with family. I wanted that to change.

The first day was all about floating and learning how to kick. I must mention here that the pool I enrolled myself in has mostly kids over there, so the trainers give more attention to them and aren’t particularly good when it comes to explaining to me where I’m going wrong. So I decided to practice and perfect the basic kick on the first day.

Its been 3 more days now. I’m still practicing what I learned on the first day. I did try to learn how to dive, but I couldn’t get that right either. I usually end up splashing a lot of water on the kids nearby and hurting my chest. SO I kept on practicing the same freestyle stroke. The arm and leg movement coordination has improved definitely, but not significantly. I just don’t want this to turn out to be another big FAIL.

Also, I am still nowhere when it comes to breathing during the freestyle stroke.

I used this video to learn how, but I am still gasping for air midway. I guess its just too many things to focus at once – kicking, the hand movement, the rhythm and coordination between the two, then blowing out the bubbles, and rotating the head and not taking it out, and then taking in a breath. Guess its just practice I need.

What do you think? Am I missing something vital here?

The beauty of this plugin is that it allows you to put in your own customised HTML or PHP code, and allows you to selectively display it on various categories of your Wordpress blog such as site-wide, archives, category page, home page, a particular post page, a search page or a tag page. It can also copy from an existing widget and display it selectively.

I use this widget to display links to other websites in my right sidebar. I used the automatic upgrade feature in WP 2.7 to upgrade to the latest version when an upgrade was available for the plugin.

Sadly, after the upgrade, the custom widget I created was gone. It took me a lot of pain – restoring from backups, removing the plugin from the server, manually reinstalling and recreating the widget, to finally solve the problem.

Note to self from this experience : Always take a backup before making any changes to the WP backend, even if its as small as upgrading a plugin. The plugin now works fine.

One of those features is TrackID™ music recognition service. It basically records a small clip of music from a source (could be external or internal such as radio) and sends the clip to their online servers. The clip is then compared against a large database of music. If a match is found, the name, artist and album of the track is returned.

So far, I’ve got a 100% success from radio as well as external sources. I even played an old Hindi song from the 90s, and it got recognised instantly. The flash intro on the official website shows a guy using it to identify a sing that is played by a DJ at a discothèque or a club, but I doubt it would be able to do so with so much noise. But it, however, did pick up a track (and correctly identified it) from my speakers while I was sitting at a distance of 8 feet from them.

Some screens -

It returns the data in plaintext so you can send it to somebody via SMS or save it as a draft.

And if you’re wondering how I managed to grab screens from my Sony Ericsson K530i, I used a neato tool called DisplayReader which I found out via Life Rocks 2.0.

I checked out MTNL Delhi’s website and found out that the GPRS activation charges for prepaid connections was Rs. 0 (unlike for postpaid, the charges are Rs. 50 for that). The data charges are Rs. 0.02 per KB, which is, well, reasonable. I decided to give it a shot. The minimum balance required for GPRS activation is Rs. 50.

For activation, you have to send ‘ACTGPRS’ as a text message from your phone to 444. I did that. Finding out how to activate GPRS was in itself a big pain in the ass. While the link to the tariff and features are listed on the Dolphin home page, the activation protocol is listed hidden as a question in the long list of FAQs.

After I sent the message, I got a message back from 444, saying that my request for GPRS activation had been received and I would get a confirmation SMS when it would be done. I got the confirmation message around 20 minutes later.

Now comes the hard part. Getting the settings correct. I first tried manually entering the settings listed on the Dolphin GPRS page. I have a Sony Ericsson K530i, and the different settings for ‘Data Accounts’ and ‘Internet Profiles’ was something that confused me. I tried a lot of permutations with the manual settings, none of which seemed to work. I always got a ‘connection failure’ error.

Next I tried fetching the settings automatically from MTNL’s OTA server by sending them an SMS which contained my handset make and model number to 58354. I received an SMS shortly after that which told me that my provisional PIN number was 1111. Soon after, I started receiving settings for loads of services such as HSDPA, WAP, 3G, MMS, and yes eventually GPRS. I decided to save all of these settings, cause I had no idea what was needed and what was useless.

But I still continued getting the ‘connection failure’ error.

I opened up the settings received from MTNL to edit them manually. I discovered some discrepancies in the settings that I had received and those that are listed on the Dolphin GPRS page. For example, the page says that the port to be used is 9201 while the settings I received had the port listed as 9401. Moreover the username and password fields had been left blank in the settings I received, while the page clearly mentions what username/password to use. I edited those settings accordingly, but no luck.

I got frustrated and deleted all the internet profiles and data accounts.

Then I suddenly realised what the problem could be. I resent the SMS to receive the settings from MTNL’s OTA server. This time around, I rejected all other settings, and accepted only those of TRUMP GPRS. I tried opening up my browser and accessing a webpage again, and voila, it worked. The only explanation I could think of was that one or more of the other settings were causing a conflict with the GPRS settings and therefore prevented it from working. I however still do not know one thing – how can the same GPRS network work correctly with two different set of settings, at two different ports, and without a username/password for authentication.

My last two years at school were a living hell. I dreaded that place so much, it killed me inside a little for each day I had to go back there. Some of the main reasons for such hatred are listed here. The teaching was absolute nonsense, I gained an absolute zero when it comes to knowledge, all that I gained from there was amazing rant blog, Hash, which I used to retain my sanity and get me through those horrible, torturous times.

On the contrary, the 2 years before the last 2 horrible years were one of the best times I ever had, and ironically they were in the same school. I joined BBPS (Bal Bharati Public School), Pitampura in the 9th standard, and I was happy to get out of a filthy school in my own locality (I’d rather not name it, because going to that school is one of the few things about my life that I am ashamed of). I got a great set of teachers, a really high level of competition, a nice customised (non-CBSE) syllabus, and a sorta tight disciplined environment (which made breaking rules all the more fun, it gives you the adrenaline rush ).

I remember having the experience of studying under three different English teachers in 2 years, all 3 good at their subject, and just enough open minded. There was Ms. Aarti Madaan (sorry if I got the spelling wrong) and I remember doing Ode to the West Wind and Julius Caesar with her. Those were my best experiences with literature. We had fierce debates in class, I almost always disagreed with my teacher’s viewpoint on the interpretations of poetry. But there were no ego issues, the teacher had no problem until my contribution to the discussion was significant and helped out others to understand the ongoing subject. Because of the amazing influence that environment had on me, I was really into fiction and used to spend a lot of time with books from our school library (I used to read books on the way to school on a DTC/Blueline bus, and also on the way back).

Our chemistry teacher, Ms. Ruby Chadha, was the most perfect teacher one could find for chemistry, far better than the teachers that taught us in the 11th or 12th grade. Though she was really strict when it came to classes, and she rarely ever cracked a joke in class, but her method of teaching was thorough, simple, and interesting. I never remember her making a mistake while speaking or while writing on the blackboard. She knew her subject well and was extremely good at transferring her own knowledge to her students. This is the problem with most other teachers who fail, they have boastful degrees and qualifications, vast amounts of knowledge, but they simply don’t have that spark to share, or the ability to pass on the message. I really wish she would teach us chemistry in 11th and 12th standard, (I am 100% sure she knew the subject backwards) but I guess she didn’t have a piece of paper that the other lame teachers at the senior secondary level had.

Ms. Richa Khanna taught us biology. I now have no idea why, but back then, biology was my favorite subject. I would read biology textbooks, references, magazines, journals, online articles, all just for fun, as a hobby. The problem with most other biology teachers back then was that they got stuck in the vast terminology that we encounter while studying different forms of life, and because of the complexity of those terms and the difficulty in remembering the terms, most students dreaded biology. My teacher, Ms. Khanna was different. She focused on the understanding of the working of those complex systems, by breaking them down into smaller, more digestible parts and then comparing them to other simpler real life systems that we already understood. Because of this, I never felt the need to actually sit down and cram something up in my biology syllabus. Hats off to you too, Ms. Khanna.

Because I got to experience some really skilled teachers in these two years, I became intellect hungry and started craving for someone who was even better and would keep satisfying my need for knowledge. Sadly, BBPS had nothing to offer. I cannot take the name of even one of my teachers in either 11th or 12th standard who did justice to their subject.

Most of the teachers (especially my english teacher in 11th) were focused on how to score in the board exams, rather than giving importance to holistic learning and knowledge development. We were taught shortcuts and techniques to exploit the loopholes the existing examination system and therefore gain maximum benefit by serving to the examiners on a platter, all that they needed. Nobody gave a damn if we actually understood the underlying concept behind a topic or not, all that they were concerned with was if they had prepared us well to regurgitate in the exam paper what we had been brainwashed with in the class. The attitude of teachers was, “I don’t give a damn about this dumb job, its just that it pays so well. All I need to do is spoon feed these kids with the syllabus. They’ll vomit it out in the paper as it is, and I will get a good result in the CBSE examinations. Thus, nobody will question my ability and my job is secure”.

I do not miss going to school, I do not miss the class, the corridors, the play fields, the teachers, the school uniform. I do not dream about being a school kid again. I hate every part of it.

The only good that came out of those two years was some of the amazing people I met at school, which changed my life as I know it.

Two of my favorite tracks are Fake Messiah and Broken Hands. I feel that vocals have been done amazingly by Randy Blythe, and is the defining feature which strikes you in the first hearing. Guitarists Mark Morton and Willie Adler are also awesome. I now need to check out some of their older albums, especially Ashes of the Wake.

Check out – Broken Hands, Fake Messiah

Video playback would be a nice additional feature to the device I’m looking for, but as Brian correctly pointed out, watching anything on a 2 or 2.5 inch screen would be torture to the eyes. On the other hand, Vishal already owns an iPod Touch and watches 24 on it, and I agree, the 3.5 inch screen, though not sufficient, but is acceptable.

With the iPod Touch, you get much more than music, the iPod Touch is more or less the iPhone without the phone. It has Wi-Fi support, applications, upcoming support for all other kinds of things. But you still feel the pinch with a guy like me, who can never imagine spending 13k on something with purely entertainment value and zero educational purpose.

The iPod Classic boasts of an amazing battery life, and also of a 120 GB hard drive, but the restrictive nature of the iPod will not allow me to use the free space for other file storage purposes. And I, for one thing, know that my music collection will not reach anywhere near to 120 GB even in the near future. So the extra space goes waste. 16 GB is more than enough for me, if I am to store only music. If you start adding video, then of course, 120 GB is also a small number. Price for the iPod Classic would be around 14k, which would be justified if it were a little less bulky.

The iPod Shuffle is a pretty much useless device, even with the new improvements (voice and iTunes playlists), because a music player ought to have a screen so you can easily navigate to the track you want to listen to without having to wait for it to turn up like silly douche bag. You also need an equalizer, which is only possible when you have a screen. This crosses out the Shuffle completely from my list. Also, 4 GB is really a small space to fit all your music into. I’m the kinda guy who likes to keep the whole album if I like one track in it.

After all this thinking, the conclusion I reached was that none of the iPods offered by Apple suit my needs. Now I turn to other portable multimedia players in the market. Sony is one that comes to your mind when you think of the Indian market. But then I want to have a hands-on experience with a device before I decide to buy it, because a lot of things are left out intentionally in the reviews.

With everything the I require from my device, do you guys have anything in mind? Suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Its not that I’ve not been to NSIT before, I was there for the counseling of IIIT Delhi, and I was also there for their tech-fest, Innovision. The campus is though big (not bigger than DCE) but the only place where you get to see activity is around the educational area which is quite limited. Anyway, I arrived at NSIT at around 5:30 p.m, and got to meet quite a few people who had migrated to NSIT (from DCE) after the first semester.

We got to know that most of the so called small fun events were already over, and the big events for the evening were left – Mudra – a choreography event, Rouge – fashion parade, and Avalanche – the rock show. My main reason for going to NSIT was to meet old friends, and watch Arcane Deception perform at Avalanche. We were told that the venue for both Mudra and Rouge were the grounds behind the main academic area at NSIT. We moved over there and grabbed some seats. A few minutes later we were informed that all the seats were for only faculty members and NSIT alumni, and we were asked to move out.

Sorry for the shaky picture, that’s the best I could do .

Well ok, this was acceptable, we weren’t in a mood to sit anyway, so we got out of the barricades. The first team to perform in Mudra was IIT Delhi. They tried to depict the Mahabharata, and yes, they were good. There was a surprisingly good level of coordination in the performance, which was really unusual coming from a bunch of people whom you would expect to be total nerds immersed in stuides. The only thing that I thought was stupid on their end was using parts from the OST’s of The Dark Knight, Requiem for a Dream, and also the Saw theme. Next was NSIT, who were doing Pygmalion. In comparison to IIT Delhi’s performance, they stood nowhere. It was really crappy performance, and the anchor there was crying out loud boasting about how their team had defeated every other team out there at some other event. Next came UCMS, which was also a decent performance, but not as gripping as IIT’s performance. They were followed by HMR, which had a group of incredibly dumb and untalented girls. It seemed as if somebody had let a flock of ducks loose on the stage. You cannot imagine the pain caused to my eyes by watching that performance. Thankfully, in the middle of the performance, it started raining heavily, and so we left the venue to look for shelter. HMR completed their performance, and then the rest of the event, along with Rouge, the fashion parade was canceled. Great.

We spent a little time roaming around, when I got to know that Avalanche was going on in the auditorium (seriously guys, I never understood the logic behind having a rock performance in an area with chairs and where there is no possibility of moshing or having a mosh pit. Its as if people want to take the whole fun out of the event, and they intentionally make sure that people don’t get to enjoy the performances). We checked out the schedule with the organizers, and we got to know that Arcane Deception had the 6th slot. It was already 9:30, and each band would take around 20 minutes for their performance. We couldn’t wait for their performance, as we had to return by the Delhi Metro, which gets closed early. Another great event missed because of lack of appreciation of time by the organizers of Moksha ‘09.

What I need to mention here is that you can easily consider me as an unbiased third party when I say that DCE’s Engifest was way way better in terms of the participation, coordination and organization as compared to Moksha. I could see that the organizers had their asses on fire because they had really no idea what to do when it started raining. They just stood and watched everything go down. The first day at Moksha, was a really big FAIL. People who are thinking about going tomorrow, think again.

The next day, I popped in another DVD for burning, and fired up Toast Titanium. While writing the Lead-in, I got a medium write error. I popped in another DVD, ignoring the earlier one as a defected piece in the lot. Tried burning the same project again, same error. Wasted 5 DVDs like this.

Next I tried inserting an already written DVD, tried to read its contents. I waited for a long time, but Mac OS X was unable to detect the DVD. Because the DVD was not detected, Mac OS X was unable to eject it. I had to use evil methods to get it out. After that one was out, I tried inserting a completely new one, scratch free, into the drive. The disc spent about 30 seconds inside the drive, and was then spit out. Tried again, same result. Same with other DVDs. All of them were being spit out.

I ignored the problem for a few days hoping that it would magically sort itself out, but it didn’t. I did some digging online and found out the error was actually quite common. But couldn’t find a one-stop solution to it. Most people had their drives changed when this error popped up and the Apple Store guys did change the drives readily.

It was only a few days ago when I thought of trying a CD lens cleaner on the drive (though I was afraid how it would work because the brush might get stuck inside a slot-load drive). I took the chance, and popped the lens cleaner in, with the cleaner liquid applied on the brush. It repeated the same behavior – was spit out after 30 seconds. I kept repeating the process to make sure the lens was cleaned thoroughly. After 3 times of repeating this, I inserting tried a data DVD.

And it worked. Guess the whole problem was related to dust getting accumulated on the lens. BTW, how does dust get inside the tightly valved slot load Super Drive? (It must’ve got in at the time I left a DVD dangling from it for days together.)

No worries, I was extra cautious and that’s why I bought a care pack from Hotspot (where I bought the phone from), which included accidental warranty. I called up Sneezy, who had given his phone for repair to the same Hotspot and he confirmed that indeed those guys would do the job for free if I had a care pack.

I took it to the Hotspot dealer a few days later. He took the handset from me, and gave me a job receipt. I looked at the receipt; he had left the “Estimated date of completion of job” blank. I asked him when I would get my phone back. He said it would take at least 10 days. I told him to write it down on the receipt. He said, “Arre bhai aapko bola na, 10 din mein ho jayega, tension kyun lete ho?”

I went back to the Hotspot 10 days later, and as expected, my phone had not been repaired yet. He said it would take 2-3 more days and that they would call me when it arrives (That is what everybody seems to be saying these days, even the Bank of Baroda guys say the same thing, but no one actually calls up). I took their visiting card.

I called them back after 3 days, and they say that my phone has still not arrived. They gave me a number, for the Hotspot service center in Lajpat Nagar, and said that I could confirm the status of my phone with them. The number was 60005566. I was unable to call the number. I tried with my cell phone, my landline, and a friend’s cell phone. I tried it with a zero, as it is, with a 011, with a 0112, no luck. I just couldn’t get through to the number. The number was also mentioned on the bottom of the job receipt. It is also mentioned on their official website.

I went to the Hotspot again the next day and asked him to call the number he had given to me, because I was unable to reach it. He called them, and it went through (weird) and they said that the display for the K530i was out of stock and that was the reason for delay of the repair. I was promised I would get the phone in another week, and I would get a call whenever my phone was ready.

Yesterday I was passing through the area where the Hotspot was located, and I decided to give it a shot. I walked in and asked the guy at the desk if my phone had arrived. He said it would arrive after Holi. I started shouting at him because I was tired of their excuses. He said they would call me when my handset arrived. Right at that moment, the manager (or whoever he was) said that my handset had arrived. He pulled out my handset from inside a drawer.

This made me even more angry. The guy who was at the desk was confident that my phone had not arrived yet, when in fact he had no idea at all. He gave me attitude and told me that he would call when it would arrive. Now that it had arrived, I had received no calls. I wanted to punch that dude in the face right there. But I refrained. As I always do.

I checked my phone over there, and the screen was fine. I gave the manager the job receipt, took my phone, and left.

Bottom line? Hotspot is added to the long list of businesses with Crappy Customer Care. Do not buy a phone from Hotspot. They torture their customers for warranty.

A thought provoking and extremely magical movie, Benjamin Button turns reality around and offers a brand new perspective on the common phenomenon called ‘ageing’.

As soon as people cross the age of 30, the whining begins. I wish I could just grow younger and younger. I wish I could always remain 25. Well after watching the movie your attitude is sure going to change.

As soon as a crinkled baby Benjamin is born, the fascination with him begins. You see him sitting amongst the old, looking like them but seeming different. You eagerly wait to see how he will evolve because growing younger is something you don’t get to see every day. The blow comes when a lady dashes our excitement saying that growing young means that you would see all the people you love die before you. You suddenly start to see BB in a new light. How would he ever have a stable relationship, with the opposite person always on a different level than he is. Being different doesn’t seem so great anymore. But it definitely has its perks. You know what you’re up against so you follow the idea, “Life isn’t measured in minutes, but in moments”. You put meaning into every moment there is. Though in the end you realize that however you grow backwards or forwards life comes to an end , and that is a far greater truth than it all.

Barcamp is an open platform for anyone to collaborate with like minded people. It is an (un)conference where the agenda for the event remains unplanned. Various enthusiasts meet in an ad-hoc manner, network and share their knowledge and expertise with the motive of helping others.

While loosely structured, there are rules at Barcamp. All attendees are encouraged to present/facilitate a session. Everyone shares their experiences both live and after the event, via public web channels including (not limited to) blogging, photo sharing, social bookmarking, wiki-ing, and IRC.

BarCamp Delhi is one of the largest communities of individual thinkers and tech enthusiasts – bringing whole entrepreneurial community together.

BCD is a 2 day event – 28th Feb & 1st March. The venue is Management Development Institute, Gurgaon (I would have prefered it to be in Delhi, preferably CP so I could reach by Metro). Because the venue is a little far off for most people, a community Car Pool / Extra Bed arrangement is being worked out, which I think is a really cool way to ensure that people don’t hesitate from participating because the venue is out of reach for them. I am personally relying on somebody to give me a lift .

Another thing which I think is cool about BCD is that it is an unconference, which means that we would have several sessions going on simultaneously. You can go and participate in anyone that interests you, get up and walk away in between without anybody having ego issues (according to Ankur Banerjee), and if you like, you can start your own session. Ankur is pressing me hard to take one on PCLinuxOS.

So what are you waiting for? Go and register yourself for BarCamp Delhi 6!

You sir are the most amazing Indian filmmaker that exists today. You do not give a crap to Yash Raj and Karan Johar and their gay parade. And that is one of the things that I love about you. You have a die hard fan, who promises to watch all your movies with dedication. Keep up the good cinema. And ya, kudos to Danny Boyle too, and amazing cinematography.

To those who have not seen the movie, get a life. Aren’t you guys tired of watching the stupid love stories that make it to multiplexes every Friday at your local cinema hall? Its time for a little fun, time to change the definition of cinema. Go to the theater, and see the movie, trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

(continued….)

I first talk to a call center guy and tell him the problem. I say that I want to launch an official complaint against the AASP. He forwards my call to a guy in customer relations, called David. I talk to David for about 40 minutes, trying to explain to him what the problem is. He told me that he had launched the complaint against that AASP, and gave me a case number. He asked me if I wanted to give the same AASP another chance. I said yes, but only if they were informed by Apple to put someone qualified enough on the job, and that I deal with someone over there who actually listens to the problems being faced by a customer and not just ignore them because they think the problem is foolish, absurd or too unimportant to be thought about. He agreed and promised me that he would do so.

But apparently he did not. I called the Apple CC again in the evening. I gave the call center dude my case number. He said it is invalid. I asked to talk to David. He said David is not available at the moment. He forwarded me to Elizabeth at the customer relations department.I told her the whole story again. She said that she was looking at my case, and the complaint had been forwarded indeed. I told her that I was leaving to go to U. C. Infosystems and I wanted her to call them up and inform them of the seriousness of the problem. She said she would definitely do it.

I reached U. C. Infosystems just a couple of minutes before their closing time. This time I dealt with a different guy, called Dharam (He seemed to occupy a higher post at U. C. Infosystems) and this time he sent me directly to the technician.

The technician was located in another building. He was sitting in a crappy room that looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in years. He booted up my machine and checked out the problem. The problem was obvious to him, he shut the machine down and ripped it apart.

The top case is a one piece item, and the whole thing was connected into the motherboard in a micro USB kinda port. All that the technician did was unplug the cord, and reinsert it. And the problem was gone, poof. The keyboard and trackpad were working fine. I checked, double checked. Working fine.

While the technician closes up my MacBook, I try to explain to him the problem related to the audio output and subsequent high CPU usage. This time, I have both my headphones, and a USB mouse, so I take my time and demonstrate the problem to him. It took me a while to set up the scenario for the problem to surface, and I am happy that after 15 minutes, I am successful in showing him how the problem works. He does a little testing, checking if the problem is related to a particular application. After he was satisfied of the origin of the problem, he said that the motherboard of the machine had to be changed. I was slightly taken aback by this, because that was like buying a new house if you lose the keys. Anyway, I didn’t give a damn about that if my problem was solved for free under warranty. We went back to the main building to U. C. Infosystems, where the technician talked to Mr. Dharam and told him about his opinion that the motherboard had be changed. Mr. Dharam behaved is very concerned and professional manner and said that he understood my angst and this time he would order the motherboard in advance for me, and give me a call when it arrived so that I could have the problem fixed within one visit, and I don’t have to leave the machine with them, so my work would not be impeded. I thank Mr. Dharam and leave.

I come home, open up my MacBook, start working as usual. Ten minutes later, my keyboard and trackpad are dead again. Great.

I feel extremely annoyed but am happy that I had got myself a ‘just-in-case’ USB Keyboard. Thankfully I can do my work and am not totally helpless. Because I have another option, I become lazy and continue working with a USB Keyboard and Mouse. I have lived with the audio-output problem long enough now, so I don’t really care enough about it to actually go back to U. C. Infosystems to get it fixed.

20th January, 2009 : I finally go back to U. C. Infosystems because now I am tired of all the setting up I have to do before I can use my MacBook. Mr. Dharam had previously promised me that he would pre-order the motherboard for my MacBook and call me up when it arrived. Sadly, that never happened. When I called up U. C. Infosystems and asked to speak to Mr. Dharam about the issue, I was given an excuse by Anu that he wasn’t available and that I had to bring the machine back to them and leave it with them for a few days for thorough checking. I told her that her technician had done the checking, and that they had done a thorough checking the first time I left my MacBook with them (31st December, 2008). She plainly refused and simply said that the only way I was going to get my MacBook repaired was if I left it with them for a few days.

Now these are the times when you feel totally helpless. I had tried contacting the Apple Customer Support multiple times (I have made at least 12 calls and 2 online written complaints) with no such visible effect on the people at U. C. Infosystems. Even the people I talked to at the customer relations department (David and Elizabeth) promised me numerous things but none of them ever materialised. Mr. Dharam promised me something, but he too was unable to fulfill it. I decided that I had no choice but to comply to what they asked.

I took the machine to U. C. Infosystems that evening. I asked Anu why my motherboard hadn’t arrived yet, and she quickly improvised and said that when they had ordered it from Apple, they got a call asking them what led to the diagnosis that required the change of a motherboard. She said that they told them about my problem but they were not satisfied, so Apple asked them to recall the machine and thoroughly check it again. I did not argue further, and simply asked her to keep the machine and give me a receipt. This time, though, I told her that I wanted both the motherboard and the top case to be changed (again), because I didn’t want the problem to resurface again. She wrote down both the problems on the receipt that she gave to me, and I left. I also asked her when I could collect my machine, and she said within 2 days. I asked her to keep me informed if there is any development which would delay the repair of my machine. She said that she would certainly do so.

24th January, 2009 : Despite my request, nobody called my on the 22nd or 23rd. I called them up on the 24th, and talked to Vivek Sharma, who said that everything had been completed, and I could collect my machine. He said that both the top case and motherboard had been changed, and that the machine was working fine now. I took some equipment along with me (for testing the machine) and left for U. C. Infosystems.

I spent around half an hour at U. C. Infosystems checking the machine, both the top case (keyboard and trackpad) and the audio output problem. I concluded that both the problems had been eliminated, and that I could take the machine home. I noticed that the system profiler no longer displayed my Serial Number (which was due to the change of motherboard). I asked Vivek how would I avail the warranty if my machine didn’t display the serial number. He said the warranty would be provided by looking at the sticker below the top case, which had the serial number of my machine imprinted on it. I checked the sticker to confirm. I thanked Vivek and left.

3rd February, 2009 : I am using my MacBook now, writing this post. I am having no problems, neither the audio output one, nor with the keyboard or trackpad. I just hope it stays this way.

In the end, this experience had a satisfying ending but was extremely painful and torturous. I had to pay 5 visits in total to a place that is extremely difficult for me to reach. Apart from this, I made hundreds of calls to different people trying to get help. And not to mention the immense waste of time. If Apple is reading this, please improve your customer support in India, specifically in Delhi/NCR where a lot of people are using your products. A suggestion – Before giving a particular service center the title of ‘Apple Authorised Service Provider’, at least check out what kind of personnel they have for dealing with customers.

1st Week Of September, 2008 : I had bought a new MacBook, and was very excited about it. Was using for hours at stretch. Noticed a really strange problem. After some time of usage, mouse started lagging, CPU usage went up, heat sinks went crazy, everything became jerky. I thought it was an overheating problem and disregarded it.

The problem came back again and again. While during some of my sessions it would refuse to go away, it wouldn’t appear in others at all no matter how long I used the machine for. This made me suspicious that the problem was due to some factor that wasn’t an integrated part of the system, because there had to be something that was different in the sessions in which the problem did not appear. I posted the problem on MacRumors Forums and the official Apple discussion forums, but didn’t get any satisfactory solutions or explanatory answers.

4th October, 2008 : While playing around with the machine, I accidentally discovered the source of the problem. I was right, the problem appeared whenever something was plugged into the audio output port. It could be anything – headphones, earphones, speakers, I tried it with all of them. Whenever anything was plugged into the audio output port, the CPU usage for the process ‘kernel_task’ increased drastically and went up to about 45-50% which in effect caused the lagging of the mouse and all other problems. As soon as the device was removed from the audio output jack, everything went back to normal. I tested the problem under several different conditions, with several related and unrelated applications, and I could reproduce the problem successfully whenever something was plugged into the port. I confirmed this problem on the Apple Discussion Forums, several other people had the same problem, and somebody on the forums said that the cause of the problem was the accidental triggering of ‘digital audio’ by a 3.5 mm jack inserted into the port, which opened up multiple threads to the kernel and caused high CPU usage (don’t really know what it means, but I think this is what he said). Bottom line, I was happy in a way that I finally knew what the problem was, but because of the complicated nature of the problem, it was going to be hard getting help for it.

29th December, 2008 : My MacBook’s keyboard starts malfunctioning after some regular cleaning (using a damp cloth and a bit of soap). I did the cleaning when the MacBook was powered down. The next time I started it, I heard a repeated sound of a key being pressed on boot, except for the fact that I obviously hadn’t kept any keys pressed. Did another reboot, waited for some time to let the machine cool down, used a hair drier to get any remaining moisture out, but nothing worked. Ultimately the keyboard failed completely and I went to sleep, giving up.

30th December, 2008 : I boot up my MacBook again in the morning and find that the problem though is not solved, but is not bad as it was the previous night. Now, pressing 1 key in turn types 3 – for example pressing ‘d’ typed out ‘dc3′ and pressing ‘g’ typed out ‘gb5′. Now I was convinced that definitely the keyboard was fried. Thankfully, the trackpad is working fine.

31st December, 2008 : While everyone else is celebrating the arrival of a new year, I am sitting in a Blueline bus trying to get my MacBook repaired. I took it to the AASP (Apple Authorised Service Provider) nearest to my residence which was U. C. Infosystems in Naraina (New Delhi). I dealt with a person named Vivek Sharma over there, who took a look at my machine and said that I needed to deposit the MacBook over there for a thorough checking. I told him that it was really difficult for me to survive without my MacBook but he still insisted that I leave it over there for a full check up. I reluctantly agreed and also tried to explain to him the weird audio output problem that I was facing. Though he didn’t seem to get exactly what I was aiming at (I didn’t give him a demonstration of the problem, I just tried to explain it to him verbally) but he said that he would get it checked and wrote down ‘audio output mouse lagging high cpu usage problem’ on the receipt that he gave to me (apart from the non functional keyboard of course). He said the all keyboard problems are usually solved by completely replacing the top case – the part which consists of the keyboard, the trackpad and the palm rest area. I was happy because that would mean I would get a brand new white palm rest, which wouldn’t be an eye sore (the palm rest area in white MacBooks are known to turn yellow or get discolored). An executive called Anu told me that the job would take around a week and she would call me up and tell me when the machine would be ready to collect. I am so shaken to have to give up my MacBook that I go and get myself a USB Keyboard, for a just-in-case scenario.

6th January, 2009 : I called up U. C. Infosystems to ask them if my machine was ready. They said that they had replaced the top case and the keyboard is now working fine. I asked if they had fixed the audio output issue. By the voice, I guess it was the same executive, Anu. She said that she didn’t know about the audio output problem and would call me back after 5 minutes after checking it up with the engineers.

Half an hour goes by. I call them up again. Its Anu again. She tells me that the engineers are still busy and she will now call me in 5 minutes after checking up.

10 minutes later I get a call from the technician Vivek Sharma, who tells me that they have checked the MacBook thoroughly and completely and have fixed the audio output problem. He said that I can come and pick up the machine. I leave immediately from my home. This is trip number 2 to U. C. Infosystems.

I go there and check the keyboard and trackpad. Its working fine. I sign the required papers and go home. I’m really tired when I reach home, so I go to sleep.

7th January, 2009 : I turn on the machine, use it for a couple of hours, and boom. In the middle of my work, I am writing a sentence, typing, and suddenly my keyboard stops working. So does the trackpad. This time I am doing nothing related to cleaning where moisture could creep in. I am just typing normally. And keyboard and trackpad are no more.

I am devastated by this, and feel really frustrated over the incompetence of the technicians to fix a problem completely. I decide to complaint to Apple, but I was unable to find email support for MacBooks. Thats right, Apple has NO email support for MacBooks, not in India, not anywhere in the world. So your only options for support are calling up the call center people on the CC number or taking your product to an AASP. Again feeling let down by Apple, I call up the Apple CC and tell them the situation.

(…to be continued)

I burned a data DVD on my PC, using K3B and something went horribly wrong, the DVD was spinning really, really fast and making sounds which could give you heart attack. Nevertheless, K3B displayed a ‘Success’ sign after the DVD burn process was over. I ejected the disc and reinserted it to check if the burn process was really successful. I got nothing. The system was unable to detect the DVD. I decided to check the disc on my MacBook.

I inserted the disc in my MacBook while it was running Mac OS X (I also have a copy of Windows Vista using Boot Camp and Ubuntu over that using Wubi) and the disc began spinning at unbelievably high speeds in the Super Drive. This along with the fact that it was unable to read the disc. Now I was stuck with a problem. You can’t eject a disc from your MacBook unless it is detected by Mac OS X. Only then do you get an option to eject a disc. This problem coupled with a non functional keyboard and trackpad (yes the problem was solved temporarily but it is back again. A long post on that problem when it gets solved) became a nightmare because I am using a USB Keyboard and Mouse which does not have the eject button that the MacBook keyboard has (I later learnt that pressing F12 for 2 seconds does the same thing but it didn’t work and the disc was still stuck).

Adding to the problem is the fact that the new Super Drives don’t have a hole (which are meant for emergency removal of discs by inserting a pin inside the hole and manually triggering the ejecting mechanism).

I didn’t lose heart, I decided to try another way suggested by Apple to remove a stuck disc. That is to hold down the trackpad button when your MacBook is booting. This was again a problem because my trackpad along with its button is currently COMPLETELY non functional, and so pressing the button would have no effect. I thought that pressing the left mouse button of the external USB mouse would have the same effect. I kept the mouse button pressed on boot, and I think it did work as a forced eject command. But here’s where Apple’s dumb controlling philosophy comes in. Even in the forced eject mode, a disc is not ejected until its contents are read at least once. Any MacBook user would know this because even when you do a forced eject, the disc spins up completely (you can tell that by the spin up sound and time taken), then spins down and is then ejected. Since this DVD was totally fucked up, the forced eject command put it into an infinite loop of trying to read the disc and it got stuck on the white boot screen. I left it for 15 minutes thinking it would give up, but the heat sink fans were screeching like hell and I was afraid that the processor would melt down if I didn’t shut the MacBook down.

I then used my PC to search for answers on how hard-eject a stuck disc from a MacBook Super Drive. Fortunately, I found the answer on somebody’s personal blog. It states the obvious ways to get out a stuck disc first, but then states some seemingly drastic methods.

Since the disc is being read in an infinite loop, you can try using a small cardboard or even a name card and stick it in until it touches the disc to stop it from reading. Press the Eject key few times. An example of a good cardboard is a battery pack cardboard.

I used a visiting card, inserted it inside the Super Drive slot, adjusted its alignment until I could feels it touching the disc from above and then tilted the card so as to put sufficient pressure on the disc and stop it from being read. I held the card in position, booted my MacBook, and pressed and held the left mouse button. I could hear the Super Drive groaning, trying really hard to read the disc, but I increased pressure and completely ruined all efforts to make the disc spin. This went on for about a minute when it gave up and spitted out the disc.

I was relieved, and simultaneously disgusted. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that I’m shifting from the Apple fanboy to Apple-hater phase.

2) No Hang-Outs – Usually I would depend upon Sneezy or Shitty or Kitallis or Vishal for calling me up and making a programme for some kind of fun which would involve refreshing old memories, watching a movie, WLAN gaming, book hunting, feasting on random roadside food, or just mocking handicaps on the road. But no one came to my rescue. Sneezy had plans with his family, Shitty was down with some random illness, Kitallis was away in Noida partying with his cousins, and Vishal was at some random gathering near Vasant Kunj (?!). I was forced to walk alone on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

3) A Bad Dinner – After all the bad time that I had throughout the day I expected to have a good meal at home. Is that too much to expect on New Year’s Eve? I was disappointed again. Bad food at home. Had a fight with parents. I went to bed early on an empty stomach.

4) Broken Plans – When I couldn’t think of anything else to do on New Year’s I thought Shitty and me could hang-out at Adventure Island and see what all had changed in the two years since it opened. We spent our New Year’s in 2006 at Adventure Island with old friends like Shailesh and had a lot of fun on the then exciting rides like SideWinder. From what I’ve heard, that is pretty much the only ride people truly enjoy over there, but I still wanted to do something to pass time. Shitty, as I already mentioned, was bedridden.

The only good thing that happened was that I went out to do what I enjoy doing alone – hardware shopping. The AASP was in Naraina, and my work over there was over in about 10 minutes, after which I was left with the option of going home, or doing something else, alone. I had come half the way from my home to Nehru Place, and so I went ahead to Nehru Place, alone. I spent around 4 hours at Nehru Place looking around at small accessories on which I could spend the little money I had, bargaining with the dealers and then going around different shops doing market research for lowest prices and more so to kill time. I got myself a Logitech Classic Keyboard 200 (USB), a Quantum 4-Port USB Hub, a Bluetooth Dongle from Quantum again, Streetwear Earphones EP-50 from Creative, and a pack of 10 CDs.

Crappy new year, but gave me a lot of ‘me’ time, which I spent thinking about my life in general and listening to music on my new earphones.

Quoted from the official Lolax page :

LOLAX

When you mockingly LOL at a situation and simultaneously stretch out your tongue and make it sound as Vulgar as possible.

It is an evolved interpretation of the term LOL.
Unlike LOL, it possess an amazing feature of Vocal Integration. It can be used freely in normal speech.

Pronounced as : “LOL-AXE”

Gaming :
“He Knifed him from behind!!! He didn’t even notice!!! LOLAX!!”

Somewhere else (In Speech) :
A: *Laughs* Look at that guy! His fake beard fell off in the middle of the show!
B: LOLAX!
C: LOLAX!
D: LOLAX! Totally!

Digg it here : Lolax

To apply online for BITSAT, Click Here.

To visit BITS Admissions Homepage, Click Here.

To visit BITS, Pilani Homepage, Click Here.

Date Of Examination: 26-04-2009

Paper I : Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics: 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM

Paper II: Mathematics-Part I, Aptitude Test-PartII & Drawing Test-Part III: 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM

Scheme of Examination

Entrance examination would consist of two papers i.e. 1st paper consisting of three parts of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics of equal weightage with objective type questions for BE/B.Tech courses and 2nd paper – consisting of Mathematics,Aptitude Test and Drawing for B. Architecture and B. Planning. The Aptitude Test is designed to evaluate candidate’s perception, imagination, observation, creativity and architectural awareness.

Scoring and Negative Marking

There will be objective type questions with four options having single correct answer. For each incorrect response one fourth (1/4) of the total marks allotted to the question would be deducted. No deduction from the total score will, however, be made if no response is indicated for an item in the answer sheet. The candidates are advised not to attempt such item in the answer sheet if they are not sure of the correct response. More than one answer indicated against a question will be deemed as incorrect response and will be negatively marked. All objective type questions are required to be answered on specially designed machine gradable answer sheets. Answers are to be marked using ball point pen (black/blue) only. For the purpose of evaluation, Test Booklet Code as printed in the Answer Sheet on Side-2 will be accepted as final.

Visit the official AIEEE 2009 website here : Click Here