Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

December 22, 2009

Finally sync’d my Phone to my Google Calender

Filed under: My Life,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 3:54 PM

After reading Vinit’s response to my post about Google Calender Notification (and talking to him) I finally went ahead and installed Mail for Exchange on my N95.

The configuration was easy, however the interface I got and the settings the system requested were different than what the Google Help site showed. Initially when I was setting up the profile it only asked for my username and password and the domain (which it didn’t let me leave blank as the Google site recommended).

After I saved this info and tried to exit from the configuration screen that’s when it told me that I hadn’t filled out all the required information and asked me for the remaining information (like the exchange server name etc)

Once all that was done, I initiated a sync. Even though I had told it to sync calender entries and included events up to two weeks ago it didn’t sync all my events. So I told the system to sync all calender events and that’s when it downloaded all my entries from the Google calender to my local phone.

The only problem I see is that the events that my phone got from the Google calender don’t have any alarm set for them even though I have an alert set up on the calender for them. Though this could be because I only have the SMS and email alerts configured on all my events but not the pop-up alert. Maybe setting that alarm also will give me a phone alarm. But its not that big a deal.

Now I have to sit and clean up all the double entries I have ended up on my phone and calender for the same events… Basically on my phone I had the alert configured for a different time than the alert on the calender so I have to sit and clean that out. Will do it when I have some spare time when I am not doing anything…

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

December 18, 2009

Google adds Text to Speech capability to its translation service

Filed under: Interesting Sites,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 12:01 AM

While surfing the net I discovered that Google has a service that reads out text, converting it to speech so I tried it out and it works great, the voice doesn’t sound robotic at all like some of the other converters that are available today. The best part is that you can use it by passing it a sentence as part of a URL and it will return a mp3 file with the voice over.

For example, visiting the following link will cause it to read out “Hello and welcome”: http://www.google.com/translate_tts?q=Hello+and+welcome

Try it out. To have it read out a different text just change the text after ‘q=’ with your own text, replacing the spaces in the sentence with a + sign.

The only other Text To Speech service I have seen that does this good work is the AT&T Labs Natural Voices site.

The advantage of the Google service is that it can be automated and can be used within scripts and other programs to generate natural sounding voice responses.

Source: blogoscoped.com

– Suramya

November 19, 2009

World Toilet Day: 19th Nov

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 7:29 PM

Spent about 3 hours of my life driving around Delhi today and since I was in the Esteem which doesn’t have a CD player (It only has a tape player) I was stuck listening to radio as the other option was to listen to some random tape that mom/dad had left in the car.

Thats how I found out that today is the “World Toilet day”. I almost crashed the car the first time I heard it as I was laughing so hard… Then I realized that they were not joking and it was an actual day dedicated to toilets… Whats next? a day dedicated to the Kitchen Sink?

– Suramya

October 24, 2009

Found a good online bookstore for India

Filed under: Books Related / Reviews,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:41 PM

Recently I ordered my first set of books (after almost 2 1/2 – 3 years) online from Flipkart.com. I used to order a lot of books online but then stopped because shipping to India is very expensive on most Online book stores. e.g. Amazon charges about $5 per book and it doesn’t seem to matter how many books you order you still have to pay $5 per book. Though a friend told me that if you order about 10-15 books then the price of shipping does go down. *shrug*

FlipKart is a Bangalore based company that allows you to order international editions of books at a reasonable price and ships it to anywhere in India. So I ordered my first set of 4 books. The ordering was painless and pretty quick, though the site search engine does leave a lot to be desired. It seems like it can only do an OR search so its hard to locate books with common words in the title. Other than that the site is pretty easy to use.

Today at 11 am I got an email that 3 out of the 4 books I ordered have been shipped to me and the 4th one was being processed. At 1:10 pm I had the books in hand. I was amazed. Plus the books are in great condition and arrived safely.

The books ordered internationally (i.e. books that are not available for sale in India) take about 14-21 days to ship, but mine arrived 18 days. Once I get the last book I will be ordering my next set of books. 🙂

I am pretty happy that I found this store, though my bank balance is not going to be that happy with me. 😉

If you want to buy books that are not available for sale in India, check out their site.

– Suramya

October 10, 2009

What is friendship about?

Filed under: My Life,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 12:49 AM

What is friendship about?

  • Friendship is not about “I m sorry “ its about “abbe teri galti hai ”
  • Friendship is not about “I m there for u” or “I missed u “ it’s about “kahan marr gaya saale”
  • Friendship is not about “I understand “ its about “sab teri wajah se hua manhus”
  • Friendship is not about “I care for u “ its about “kamino tumhe chhod ke kahan jaunga”
  • Friendship is not about “I m happy for ur success “its about “chal party de saale”
  • Friendship is not about “I love that girl“ its about “saalo izzat se dekho tumhari bhabhi hain”
  • Friendship is not about “R u coming for outing tomorrow “ its about “ nautanki nahi, hum kal bahar ja rahe hai”
  • Friendship is not about “Get well soon “ its about “ Itna piyega toh yehi hoga”
  • Friendship is not about “All the best for ur career“ its about “ bahut hua, abhi toh switch mar saale“

    • Got this from a friend and Guess what? Its all true.

    – Suramya

    PS: Normally I translate all Hindi expressions to English on the blog, but these don’t really translate that well so I have left it out for now.

    October 5, 2009

    Weird MSN Password reset logic

    Filed under: Computer Related,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:45 PM

    Yesterday I was organizing my system and found log files from an old MSN account I had which I used mainly for chatting with friends. I decided to enable the account in Pidgin and see if the account still worked. When I tried logging in to the account it didn’t let me because I guess the account had gotten locked down due to inactivity.

    So I went to the MSN site and tried to login to the account. At first it didn’t let me, so I tried resetting the password for the account. But that didn’t work as I couldn’t remember what information I had initially filled when creating the account so I asked the system to email me the password reset instructions.

    Now came the funny part. The system was going to email me the password reset instructions to the same account that I was requesting the password reset for. Below is a screenshot I took of the process.


    Weird MSN Password reset logic

    How I am supposed to access the account to get the reset instructions is something that they didn’t quite explain. The funny part is that the system finally let me login with the same password I had tried with originally. *shrug* Atleast it worked, though I am surprised that the account wasn’t deleted considering I hadn’t logged in for over 2 years.

    – Suramya

    September 23, 2009

    Top 15 books that I liked/I will remember

    Filed under: Books Related / Reviews,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:51 PM

    Over at Facebook Tarini asked people to list 15 books that affected you the most and that will always stick with you. I don’t have a lot of books that affect me (probably because I mostly read fiction) so I have modified the requirements to show top 15 books that I liked and will always remember:

    1. 1984 by George Orwell: One of the most popular and lasting books about the issues with a Big Brother society

    2. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: Amazing book about a future where critical thought through reading is outlawed and all books are burned on sight.

    3. Jungle Adventures: This was the first novel I read back when I was in 4th.

    4. Bobbsey Twins by Laura Lee Hope: The first mystery novel I read. (This was the second novel I read)

    5. Earth Invaded by Nathan Elliott: Pretty cool book about alien invaders that can only be hurt by physical weapons (bullets/arrows etc) when such weapons are no longer in use.

    6. Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard: An awesome book where humans are an endangered species on Earth

    7. A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: One of the first books I read as an ebook

    8. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow: Great novel about how several teenagers defend themselves against what they see as the Department of Homeland Security’s attacks on the Bill of Rights.

    9. Jurassic Park By Michael Crichton: Do I even need to say more?

    10. Lost World By Michael Crichton: Do I even need to say more?

    11. Invasion by Robin Cook: Pretty chilling story about an Alien invasion that transmutates people

    12. All books by David Weber: One of the best military Science Fiction authors of all times

    13. All books by Mercedes Lackey: One of the best Fantasy authors of all times.

    14. All Dr Who Books: My all time favorite TV show and books. Terrance Dicks used to be my Favorite author

    15. All books by David Drake: Another great Science Fiction and Fantasy writer.

    This list above is no way complete. There are probably a hundred more books that I really like but these are the ones I could think of right the top of my head.

    – Suramya

    September 15, 2009

    How to crash Windows 7

    Filed under: My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 1:59 PM

    I found an easy way to crash Windows 7 RC 2 when working on Gaurang’s computer. He has VMWare installed on his computer that is currently running Ubuntu so that he can learn Linux. We were playing around with it by trying to see if we could connect to it over the network using VNC.

    First we ran the VNC server on the Linux instance and then connected to it from Windows using the VNC client and it worked great. Then we enabled Remote Desktop on Windows 7 and tried to connect to it from the virtual linux computer on the same system. Basically we were remote desktoping to the the same computer. As soon as I ran the command from the Linux system the entire windows OS crashed and I got the Blue Screen Of Death!

    This is not good. There is no way that a remote desktop look like this one should crash the OS, at the worst it should have crashed that process (VMWare)…

    Found it interesting that a small thing like this can crash the entire OS.

    – Suramya

    September 9, 2009

    Suvudu Free Book Library and thoughts about ebooks

    Filed under: Interesting Sites,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 7:42 PM

    How do you know that giving books away for free increases sales? When most major publishers start giving for free samples on their site. Yesterday while going through an author’s site I found a link to Suvudu Free Book Library which is Del Rey’s free book library.

    I have told you earlier about Baen Books that has the Baen Free Library for free downloads of books. Even Tor books has its own mailing list where they send out free books once in a while.

    So it seems pretty clear to me that book publishers are realizing that making free copies of books available doesn’t necessarily mean lost sales. I think the music industry and the movie industry should take a good look at these sites and try to understand that people who download most are usually people who are huge fans and usually people who end up buying the most.

    It takes me about 3 hours to finish a book and I read a lot. The way I discover books and new authors to try is by downloading a book by the author and seeing if I like it. If I do I usually end up buying most of the books by that author. e.g. Mercedes Lackey and David Weber are my favorite authors but the first books I read by them were ebooks I downloaded from the Baen free library. Now I have pretty much every book written by either of them in Hardcopy.

    You have to realize that there is a small percentage of people out there who will not buy the book and would rather steal a copy to read, but then again these are mostly people who would not have bought a copy anyway. The advantages and the free publicity you get is phenomenal.

    If an author is good people will go out of their way to help out. For example David Freer is moving to Australia from Africa and due to the exchange rate dropping he doesn’t have enough money to pay for the quarantine of his pets. So he put up a story jar where he will to put up a chapter a week of his latest book “Save the Dragons” assuming that he received enough donations to pay for that chapter. Each chapter costs $400 (US) and so far fans have put in $4855. That’s a lot of money put in in a few weeks.

    If you like his books and want to help out make sure you visit: Save The Dragons

    What I am trying to say is that we are not all thieves out here. So stop treating us like criminals. For a more detailed analysis/discussion of the problem you should read the Introducing the Baen Free Library by Eric Flint. He is an author with a huge list of published books and he does a great job of explaining why people downloading books doesn’t hurt the authors in the long term.

    – Suramya

    September 6, 2009

    Airtel Delhi’s underhand billing tactics

    Filed under: My Life,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 9:15 PM

    I have an Airtel broadband connection at home with the 1 Mbps unlimited plan for which I pay Rs 2222 (plus taxes) per month and I was pretty happy with it. Today while taking to a friend I discovered that Airtel had reduced the price for the 1 Mbps plan to 1699 4 months ago but have still continued to charge me at the same cost.

    So I called up the Airtel support center, got their billing department and the conversation went something like this:

    Me: Looking at your plans online I see that the cost for a 1 Mbps connection is Rs 1699, is that true?
    Rep: Yes
    Me: Ok, then how come I am being charged Rs 2222 for the same plan?
    Rep: Hold on. (About 30 secs later) you are being charged for the Freedom 2999 plan which gives you 2 Mbps speed
    Me: I know I don’t get 2 Mbps speed.
    Rep: Let em check your plan again. Yes you are on the Unlimited 2222 plan which gives you 1Mbps connection
    Me: Ok, so why have you been charging me 2222 when the plan is 1699?
    Rep: Your plan was set a while ago thats why…
    Me: I know my plan was set a while ago, about 2 years ago. Whats your point?
    Rep: You didn’t give us any notification that you wanted to switch to a new plan.
    Me: How am I supposed to know that the costs have changed?
    Rep: The new plans were listed on the Airtel website.
    Me: So your customers are supposed to check your site every few days to make sure that they are not being over charged?
    Rep: The plans were also advertised via phone and email.
    Me: I haven’t received any calls/emails from you regarding the change.
    Rep: You must be on the Do not Call list, hence you didn’t get the call
    Me: Ok, so why do I keep getting calls from you on my landline to buy ringtones but didn’t get a call about this?
    Rep: Some random explanation…
    Me: Ok, switch me to the new plan.
    Rep: Can’t do that you will have to go for the 2 Mbps plan at Rs. 2999.
    Me: What nonsense? I don’t want a 2 Mbps connection. I want a 1 Mbps connection. Why can’t you switch me to the new plan?
    Rep: Let me check if thats possible. Can I put you on hold?

    Rep: Ok, I will put in a request for your plan to be migrated to the new plan. Will be done in 3-4 days.
    Me: Ok, now when was this new plan launched?
    Rep: About 4 months ago.
    Me: Fine, I need a refund for the extra amount that you have been charging me for the past 4 months.
    Rep: Sorry that won’t be possible as you didn’t change your plan.
    Me: Ok, explain to me the difference between the plan I have and the new plan you launched?
    Rep: There is no difference.
    Me: So why would I pay Rs 700 more for the same plan?
    Rep: This plan gives you 100 Rs free calls also…
    Me: Ok, so you still need to refund me 600 Rs..
    Rep: Can’t commit that the amount will be refund.
    Me: Why?
    Rep: Because you didn’t change your plan.

    Me: Who approves the refund?
    Rep: The Billing department
    Me: And you are in the Billing department correct?
    Rep: Yes.
    Me: So whats the problem approving the refund?
    Rep: Because you didn’t change your plan.
    Me: Please put in a request to change my plan and another request to refund my money.
    Rep: Ok, here’s your request no: xxxxxxx
    Me: What about the refund?
    Rep: Thats also in the same request, but I can’t commit that the refund will be given.
    Me: Ok, how will I know that the plan is changed?
    Rep: You will get a confirmation call when its changed
    Me: What about the refund?
    Rep: If the request is approved then you will see the refund in your next bill otherwise you won’t.
    Me: Fine. By when can I expect a response?
    Rep: 3-4 business days
    Me: Ok. Thanks.
    ———-

    The stuff that irritated be about the call above was:

    1. He lied to me about my plan to keep me on the same plan
    2. He tried to tell me that I couldn’t switch to a lower cost plan with the same data transfer rate
    3. They are refusing to refund the amount that they over charged.

    So now I am going to wait for 4 days, if I don’t get a refund from them I will be lodging a complaint with the consumer court.

    I think I will also email this to the customer care department. Lets see what they have to say.

    – Suramya

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