Recently in Internet Category

I have a convoluted synchronization setup.

• I use Thunderbird as my primary mail client.
• Lightning is my calendar application and is configured to synchronize with Yahoo! Calendar.
• I also have iCal synchronized with Yahoo! Calendar.
• Finally using Nokia's iSync plugin, I synchronize my calendar to my Nokia E75 phone.
• Also at times, I synchronize my phone with Ovi.com and with Nokia Ovi PC suite.

A few weeks back when I was upgrading the phone firmware, the calendar synchronization broke. I got this error message.

[Y man] There was an error getting data from the phone. The synchronization may have been canceled on the phone.
Device “Y man” synchronization failed.

This seems to be a common problem but nobody seems to have found a working solution. I tried to locate the calendar database on the phone to see if deleting it would help. But could not locate the same. Was contemplating a hard reset and restore from backup when I accidentally discovered a working solution.

Calander -> Select Any date -> Options -> Delete -> Before Date. This cleans up the calendar. A synchronization after this worked. Now you know what do when your calendar sync screws up.

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I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from Julian to Gregorian.

I discovered Vimperator about 3 months ago and I fell in love with it. Browsing with Firefox suddenly became so powerful and efficient. But a couple of days back, the status bar disappeared. Without the status bar, I felt crippled. Tried reading the help pages, asked around for tips, updated the extension, downgraded and what not? Nothing helped. Unfortunately, search did not help too. And finally I stumbled upon this tip in the mailing list. The status bar was disabled from the menu. How dumb? Interestingly, more than one person had faced the same problem but none had a solution. Looks like the mailing list is not archived and that is the reason why search did not help. Let us hope this blog post shows up soon in the indexes.

A reader was kind enough to point to me that my Greasemonkey script for BSNL Cellone bill payment no longer works. This is due to the fact that the BSNL site changed the site URLs earlier this month. He had also pointed out the fix. It is updated now and available for download. Enjoy!

Airtel sent me this email today, with subject "Your Airtel Bill for Account XXXXXXXX, For the Period 26/03/2009 to 26/04/2009, Airtel Number 080XXXXXXXX"

Dear Customer,

Please find attached your Airtel Bill for,

Airtel Number: 080XXXXXXXX
Account Number: XXXXXXXX
Bill Number: XXXXXXXX
Bill Period:26/03/2009 to 26/04/2009

Please save it for your future reference. You need Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to view this bill.

Further down the email, I see this.

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Your Airtel e-bill is protected by a unique password, please enter your account number as password to open your e-bill. Password remains the same for every e- bill sent month on month.
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Who are they trying to fool? What is the point in password protecting the bill, when the password is provided in the email? How does one deal with such morons?

The 8th edition of Bangalore Barcamp happens at Yahoo! on 7th and 8th March. There has been enough debates about BCB8. So it will be interesting to see how it goes. I am not in town and will not be able to make it. But if you are around, you should go. It helps to connect with like minded people in town.

Ever since I discovered twitter, I have tweeted more than writing here. 140 chars seems more than enough for me to rant about. However, a lot has happened and a lot more is happening and this blog needs update. Like last year, I will be heading out of Bangalore mid next week until the first week of Jan. So the next few posts are going to summarize these before I bid good bye to a fairly successful 2008. Stay tuned.

Last Monday I was trying to pay my Cellone bill via the BSNL portal. Everything went fine, the payment was done at the payment gateway and when I clicked on the confirmation, the BSNL site conked off with a "unique constraint violated error". I was worried since I was thinking that I will now need to run between my credit card provider and BSNL. I checked with Sandip and he said that he had a tough time convincing Airtel when a similar problem occurred to him. The BSNL website said that if an error has occurred after the transaction was completed, they received details via "alternate backup channel" and the site would be updated after a day. I was a bit skeptical and decided to wait a day. I was really surprised when I got an email confirmation the next day saying my payment has been received. While I was wondering the state of online commerce, this is indeed a pleasant experience. And that is one of the reason why Cellone has remained my favourite service provider for the past couple of years. Even though I have had connection issues with Cellone, specifically at office, I am happy with the service. I have also taken a Vodafone subscription last month since my usage is going to increase a lot in the next few months and I have enough gripes with Vodafone already. Cellone rocks :-)

I received a message from Airtel about best way to secure the PC, copied to some 100 other folks. I replied back with a stinker to those morons to stop spamming me and my mail bounced back. So they dont receive /read emails?

Reporting-MTA: dns;spmail03.bharti.com

Final-Recipient: rfc822;Marketing.South@Airtel.in

Action: failed

Status: 5.0.0

Diagnostic-Code: X-Notes; Error delivering to Marketing South/Sales&Mkt

 /Telemedia/Airtel; Router: Database disk quota exceeded

 Subject: Re: Best way to Secure your PCFrom: Balaji Narayanan Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:17:36 +0530To: Airtel Telemedia Services 

I have one other ticket opened with them for issues with their website. Their website does not show up the tariff plan and I think it is most probably because the page is not standards compliant. They have been telling me to check my router and firewall and keep saying it could be a problem with my network. I am pissed off with these jokers. Any tips on dealing with these idiots?