My Scribblings

I have been using two mobile phones, one a Nokia E75 for my personal use with a BSNL Cellone connection and an Airtel Blackberry for office use. It had been a pain to carry two phones but I let it be for almost an year. Last month, my E75's display died. I figured out that it would cost about Rs.2500 to get this fixed but if I tried it sell it would fetch me much less. I decided to use this opportunity to port my existing number to Airtel and do away with the need for a second phone.

I thought this would be an easy job but little did I know it would take so much effort. According to the process, it is as simple as sending an SMS to 1900, get a UPC number and submit a form to the new provider and voila, the magic happens.

But Cellone ruins this magic. For one whole day, any SMS to 1900, would result in a reply from 1901 with invalid message format, please send message 'PORT ' to 1900. I read, re-read, tried and retried in vain. Infact another co-worker said, I was sending it wrong and tried the same thing and failed.

The next day, I requested Vasu to call customer care to see if they could help. Their customer care was a serious joke. I was surprised how I lived with this pathetic support for such a long time. Thankfully, I never had to call them.

The next day I decided that I would walk into their CSC to see if it would help but wanted to give 1900 a last try and thankfully it worked. I thought it was the end of all my woes and walked into a Airtel Relationship Center for MNC. The guys were very pleasant, even waved off the paltry Rs.19 fee for MNP and told me that it would be ported and activated within a week.

In a few days time, I got a message from Airtel that my number would be ported the next day. Next morning, I inserted the new SIM into the BB and it worked. I called customer care to enable the BB plans and I was back to business with in a couple of hours.

Now I thought it would be another call to Airtel Customer care to get my existing Airtel BB connection cancelled. I called the customer care and they tried to woo me to keep the connection by giving me a bunch of offers. With great difficulty, I coaxed the customer care executive to take the request and give me a request number. When she finally did provide a request number, she told that the request would be completed in a month? I was baffled and asked again to be sure? It takes a couple of hours to activate a new connection but a month to disconnect one. :) And since the next day, for almost a week, I was getting calls to see if they can provide a better deals, so that I can keep the connection active. I got frustrated and showered my choicest cuss words and got them to deactivate the number. Last week I got a bill from Airtel for the old number with excess rental being charged. I am still fighting with them to get this resolved. Despite that, I still get emails from them every week if I would be interested in reviving that connection.

From devil to the deep sea, the network follows...

I am at IIT Delhi for the Hack U. It has been a fun event so far with some interesting discussions on hacks. Met with a bunch of students who are working on their PhD thesis and some of them were awesome. Let us see how the rest of the event goes.

My presentation from the event is on slideshare.

I am not a mac fan boy. For that matter, I am not a gadget freak. I have been using a Mac for a couple of years. I very recently started using an iPod and an iPad, all thanks to Yahoo! And I am amazingly impressed by both the devices. I am sure both these devices are going to change the way I look at gadgets.

May be that is why, when I woke up this morning to the news of Steve Jobs death, I felt as if someone close to me has died. Even after all the fun we had today, somewhere in the bottom of my heart, that sorrow feeling lingers on.

RIP Steve Jobs. You have changed the way people will look at gadgets.

In June, while I was preparing for my trek to Roopkund, I was looking for trekking shoes. I was recommended Forclaz 500 Ventiv by friends. The shoe was retailing at Rs.2999 at Decathlon. The same was available for Rs.2499 online with free shipping. I went to the store to try it out, thinking that will order online and save Rs.500. John, the salesman helped me out with my questions and suggested that I pick up a tight fit. It was too tight but he suggested that it will expand a bit and will be fine. He also promised that he will replace it if I find it uncomfortable after a couple of days use. I told him about the online store and price and he told me that he can give it to me for 2799 and joked that Decathlon needs to pay him salary and hence cannot match that price. I bought the shoe and paid the premium just for his service.

A couple of days burn-in did not help and it was causing pain in the toe. I called up the store and Kuldeep another salesman at the trekking section suggested that I bring in the shoe for replacement. I picked up one size bigger and it was very comfortable for most part of the trek.

On the last day of the trek, thanks to heavy snow and rain, the shoe lost its shape. There was a bulge around the ankle support and due to this the show wasn't stable, causing ankle strain. After I reached Bangalore, I called up the store and mentioned about the problem. Kuldeep asked me to bring the shoe along with the bill for exchange. I never had the time and I almost forgot about it. Last week I remembered and took the shoe to the store. I had already lost hopes but wanted to give it a shot.

I walked into the store on Sunday, explained him the problem and showed the shoe. Kuldeep / Jon, said only one thing "Give it at the counter calling it a defective piece and pick up a new one'. Absolutely no questions, no nagging, not trying to put the blame on the buyer, no delay.

This is an excellent example of customer service. I had to go to the store 3 times but I will never mind the distance of driving 20+ KM to the store for such excellent service. Looking forward to the store opening in Bannerghatta Road. I am a Decathlon convert.

I watch a movie to relax and laugh. And I prefer to watch it at my own pace, pausing it, rewind / forward, sometimes with subtitles. However, we have been thinking to watch a movie in a theatre for a while but that never happened. I hate this idea of reserving a ticket well in advance. I prefer to walk up to the window and buy tickets. But this mad rush in Bangalore does not help. So I decided to try my luck today for Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Bookmyshow crapped out, INOX was unavailable, Cinepolis was giving useful error messages. Until I discovered Vision Cinemas and Ticket New. Got the tickets booked for the 7pm show, at 6:00pm. And a mad rush ensued we reached the theatre on time.

Enough story, now about the movie. The movie is about 3 people rediscovering themselves while giving up their inner fears. Nothing new in the story and I felt as if I have seen the story before. But what stood out was the amazing shots of Spain, the way the story was told and some really funny lines. Every one had played their role very well but Farhan Akthar was classy and stands out. There are some amazing lines in the movie (BML, Bagwathi). I have tried skydiving but the film makes me think about skydiving again and deep sea diving. Though the music was good, I don't think any of the songs stayed with me. And I did not get the ending where Kabir goes to marry Natasha.

Sitting in the first row, the full screen barely visible, a slight neck pain and the tension to get to the movie on time - All worth it for a good evening and a nice movie.

--
My name is Imran but my friends call me Majnu.

The day of the run, Pratheepan, Vasu and me, managed to reach the stadium by 7:30AM to join the sea of runners. For the first 10 odd minutes, we just moved with the flow, while Pratheepan moved ahead. The crowd eased up a bit after the 2km and we saw a lot of familiar faces going past. I kept cheering while telling Vasu to keep moving. It was down all the way till the U-Turn point and it was a good place to pick up some pace. She was doing her run, walk routine but we could not gain much pace. Around the 4km mark, she got severe cramps and was struggling in pain, almost in tears. I was worried but suggested that she should keep moving if possible. And onlookers started cheering us and that gave the motivation to walk. I also tried my PJs but it did not help. We walked till about the 7K mark, but tried to keep a pace of about 9mins per KM. At the 7K mark, a wheel chair participant had an emergency and I suggested Vasu to go ahead, while I went in search of a support crew / ambulance. It took about 10 minutes to get some help, and then I ran to catch up with her. She had covered a good pace and was entering Cubbon Park, by that time.

We met another couple of folks who were walking at a decent pace. The next couple of KMs were covered with ease, since it was our regular route. I also realized that we would be missing the 90min mark but tried to motivate her to keep a good pace. We ran the last few hundred meters to the finish.

Garmin Connect Link

Except for a bit around the 7K mark, I ran along with her, most of the time holding her hand, and pulling her along, until the finish. It took about 94 minutes for the entire run, but it was awesome. It was my way of saying thanks to her, making this run memorable for her. And I did make my home minister smile at the end :)

--
It hurts up to a point and then it doesn't get any worse.
          -- Ann Trason

I use Yahoo! Calendar to keep track of my calendar events. I sync to it from Lightning/Thunderbird and iCal. And use the iSync plugin to sync it to my phone. I also use mutt over a screen session at times. During such times, this is how I update my events to Yahoo! Calendar.

• Save the text/calendar attachment from the mail to a file, say cal.ics


• Determine the UUID of the calendar event. Not the best, but one that works is given beow.



perl -n0e 's/(.*?)UID:(.*?)\w+?:(.*)/\2/gms; s/\s+//gms;print ' tmp/ical.ics



• Yahoo! Calendar supports Caldav. Upload the files to the calendar with the following command.



curl -i -k --data-binary '@tmp/ical.ics' -H "Content-Type: text/calendar" -X PUT \ 

https://caldav.calendar.yahoo.com/dav/<yid>/Calendar/<calendarname>/<uid>.ics \

-u <yid>:<password>



• Voila, You are done.

And here is how, I discovered this. Enable debugging in iCal, with these commands and then start iCal from a terminal. You can see the HTTP transactions between iCal and the calendar server.

defaults write com.apple.ical IncludeDebugMenu YES
defaults write com.apple.ical LogHTTPActivity YES

It is the Marghazi of Bangalore. The Carnatic Music season that happens around the Rama Navami festival. Looks like my blog gets a lot of hit where people look for the concert details. And this time, the official website of the mandali seems to be down. So here you go.

Sree Ramaseva Mandali - 73rd Ramanavami Celebrations from 04-April to 05-May 2011 at Fort High School Grounds, Chamrajpet, Near K.R Market, Bangalore.

04 Apr Mon

06:00pm Inauguration

06:45pm Nityasree Mahadevan & Party

05 Apr Tue

06:30 pm Rajesh Vaidya ( Veena ) & Party

06 Apr Wed

05:15 pm Suman G & Party

06:30 pm T M Krishna & Party

07 Apr Thu

05:15pm Sriranjani Santhanagopalan & Party

06:30pm Neyveli Santhanagopalan / TKV Ramanujachryulu / K V Prasad / Sukanya Ramgopal

08 Apr Fri

05:15pm Shikha & Party

06:30 pm S.Sowmya & Party

09 Apr Sat

04:00 - 6:15 S V Narayanaswamy Rao National Award Function

06:30 pm K J Yesudas & Party

10 Apr Sun

05:15pm Niranjana Srinivasan & Party

06:30 pm Mysore Manjunath ( violin) & Purbayab Chaterji ( Sitar) - Jugalbandi / Thiruvarur Bhaktavatsalam / Viswanath Nakod

11 Apr Mon

05:00pm Dr.Muralidharan & Party

07:00 pm Gayathri Venkataraghavan / B U Ganesh Prasad / Cheluvaraju / Sukanya Ramgopal

12 Apr Tue

06:30 pm Kadri Gopalnath / Kanyakumari / B Harikumar / B Rajendra Nakod /N Amruth / B Rajasekhar (Saxofone)

13 Apr Wed

05:15pm Praveen ( violin ) & Party

06:30pm Lalgudi GJR Krishnan& Vijayalakshmi ( violin) / B Harikumar / Guruprasanna

14 Apr Thu

05:15 pm Sridevi Koushik & Party

06:30 pm M S Sheela / Mysore Srikanth / H S Sudhindra / Sukanya Ramgopal

15 Apr Fri

05:15 pm V Vijayalakshmi & Party

06:30 pm Sudha Raghunathan & Party

16 Apr Sat

05:15 pm Abhiram R N & Party

06:30 pm P Unnikrishnan / Mysore Nagaraj / thiruvarur Bhaktavatsalam / Guruprasanna

17 Apr Sun

10:00 am Founders Day - Felicitation of senior musicians

M S Anantharaman-M A Sundareswaran -M A Krishnaswamy - Parur Ananthakrishnan ( Violin Quartret) / R Ramesh / N Amruth

06:30 pm Ranjani& Gayathri / B U Ganesh Prasad / Poongulam Subramanyam / M A Krishnamurthy

18 Apr Mon

05:15 pm Malladi Vasavi & Party

06:30 pm Malladi Brothers / S Varadarajan / K V Prasad / Giridhar Udupa

19 Apr Tue

05:15 pm S A Karthik & Party

06:30 pm O S Arun / H N Bhaskar / J Vaidyanathan / S Karthik

20 Apr Wed

05:00 pm Bangalore Brothers / C N Chandrasekhar / V Krishna / Rajashekhar

07:15 pm Kunnakudi Balamuralikrishna / H N Bhaskar / J Vaidyanathan / B N Chandramouli

21 Apr Thu

04:30 pm Akshay Padmanabhan & Party

06:45 pm S Shashank ( Flute) / Avaneeswaram S R Vinu / Yella Venkateshwara Rao / S Karthik / B N Chandramouli

22 Apr Fri

05:15 pm Harsha & Sanat ( Violin) & Party

06:30 pm N Vijay Siva & Party

23 Apr Sat

05:15 pm Suchetan Rangaswamy & Party

06:30 pm Mysore Nagaraj & Mysore manjunath ( violin Duet )/ Karaikudi R Mani / V Suresh

24 Apr Sun

06:30 pm T V Shankaranarayanan / T K V Ramanujacharyulu / B Harikumar / N Amruth

25 Apr Mon

05:15 pm R V Nityasri & Party

06:30 pm HK Venkatram(violin) / G Ravikiran ( Flute) /Ashwin Anand ( Veena) Venu-Veena-Violin / Neyveli Venkatesh / Ramanujam / Guruprasanna

26 Apr Tue

05:15 pm Hosahalli V Raghuram ( violin) & Party

06:30 pm Praveen Godkhindi ( Flute - hindustani) / Ravindra Yavagal

27 Apr Wed

06:30 pm E Gayathri ( Veena ) / Ganapathy Raman / B R Ravikumar

28 apr Thu

05:00 pm Anupama Srimali & Party

07:15 pm Muddu Mohan ( hindustani) / Vyasamurty Katti / Ravindra Yavagal

29 Apr Fri

05:15 pm Arjun Srivasthav & Party

06:30 pm Sikkil Gurucharan / S Varadarajan / Arjunkumar /Giridhar Udupa

30 Apr Sat

05:15 pm Sangeetha Tharanathan & Party

06:30 pm Ashwini bhide Deshpande ( hindustani) / Vyasamurthy Katti / Ravindra Yavagal

01 May Sun

05:15 pm S Vidya & S.Vijaya and Party

06:30 pm Hyderabad Brothers / Mysore Srikanth / MNL Raju / Giridhar udupa

02 May mon

05:15 pm Madhuri Kaushik & Party

06:30 pm R K Padmanabha / C N Chandrasekhar /C Cheluvaraju / B R Ravikumar

03 May Tue

05:15 pm B N Skandakumar & Party

06:30 pm Anuradha Madhusudan ( veena) /C Cheluvaraju / Sukanya ramgopal

04 May Wed

05:15 pm B S Murali & Party

06:30 pm Kanya kumari & Embar S Kannan ( violin duet) / K V Prasad / N Amruth

05 May Thu

05:00 pm Pallavi Prasanna / Anuthama Murali / Renuka Prasad/ Srishyla

07:15 pm Vijayalakshmi Subramanyam / Usha Rajagopal / Sudhindra / Krishna Prasad

06 May Wed

05:15 pm Vidya G Subramanian & Party

06:30 pm O S Thyagarajan / Mullaivasal Chandramouli / S Thyagarajan / M A Krishnamurthy

07 May Sat

06:30 pm Abhishek Raghuram / Mysore Nagaraj / Ananth R Krishnan / Guruprasanna

08 May Sun

06:30 pm Pt Vishwamohan Bhatt & Lalgudi GJR Krishnan ( hindustani & Carnatic jugalbandi) / Yella Venkateshwara Rao / Vishwanath Nakod

09 May Mon

06:30 pm Vishaka Hari & Party

Thyagaraja Aradhana is an annual carnatic music festival, held every year on the day, the saint attained mukti at Thiruvayaru. On the Aradhana day, the Pancharatna kritis are sung by all artistes, in unison. Over the years, the event has spread to various places and now many cities have an annual commemorative event to pay homage to the great composer and one of the Trinities of Carnatic music.

We attended one such event a few weeks back, presided over by R.K.Padmanabha. The event had a concert by Pattabhiram Pandit followed by the singing of Pancharatna kritis. While speaking, RKP narrated a hilarious event that happened a few years back at his home town Rudrapatna.

For Thyagaraja Aradhana, he had organised a week long music festival and on the day of the Aradhana, he had arranged for food for everyone. When he was explaining the contributions of Thyagaraja and the importance of Aradhana, one gentlemen misunderstanding the meaning of Aradhana (which also means worship) interrupted and said - Sir, We should do an Aradhana to you for all your good work and for the feast. RKP was stunned but when he quipped, "Give me another 10-20 years and then you can do my Aradhana", the entire audience burst into laughter.

Last week, I ran out of space on Mac. I had less than a gig left and the system started complaining that my boot disk needs cleanup. I did not know where to start the cleanup from and was looking for something similar to the Disk Usage Analyzer for Ubuntu. My search led me to Disk Inventory X and this has made my life easier.

Some of the significant points of the tool

• Displays disk usage based on directory and kind.
• Displays the size as a treemap.
• Ability to filter files based on kinds. This feature came in really handy when I sorted by name per kind, resulting in easily identifying duplicates.

The only gripe I have is that, when I delete a file from the window, it takes a while. This is probably because, the tool apart from deleting the file, also recompiles the size, location, etc.

Give it a spin, if you run out of disk space.