दीपावली शुभकामनाएं
Happy Deepavali
Deepavali is just around the corner and I can't wait for it to arrive. The main reason being, this is my first Deepavali in India since my thalai deepavali years ago. All these years in the US, I still would celebrate deepavali (complete with sweets and deepavali marundhu) but I would have to go to work and it would seem like a normal day. I remember that once on Deepavali (was right after my first born), I took a shower at somewhere around 3 in the evening. Deepavali just doesn't have the charm in the US.
This is also my first Deepavali in Bangalore, my new hometown. I have heard that Bangaloreans don't celebrate Deepavali as much as they do Dusshera so will have to wait and see.
In the meantime, A Very Happy Deepavali to one and all.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Airtel Broadband and Wireless WRT54G setup
So for a change, something useful from me which is not Vetti Arattai.
I got my airtel conn on this Monday. The Airtel guys came and did the internal wiring for the same and enabled the connection. The marketing guy had promised me to hookup my wireless router. So the tech tried connecting the router and guess what, he plugged in the 110V adapter into the 220V socket and blew the fuse for the entire house. For a while I was worried that the router was fried. Yesterday, I took the router to some random electronics shop on SP Road and got a 220V adapter for the same. I asked the salesperson to test my router with the adapter before buying it (smart me!!!) and lo and behold!!, it worked (oh joy).
The next hurdle was to hookup the wireless router. Piece of cake...right? Apparently this cake is neither soft not sweet. I first went through the user guide for the wireless router (Linksys WRT54G) and went through setup using the web console. Two major issues arose:
1. Whenever I change the wireless security settings, the web console wouldn't resume.
2. It wouldn't connect to the Internet. (bigger problem than 1 I must admit).
So I started digging around on the Net and found an article that described how to put the Airtel modem in Bridge mode. I tried that, still wouldn't work. I called the Airtel guys and they sent another tech home (not the guy who fried my adapter). After struggling with various settings, he finally managed to get my wireless up. and here's what is needed.
1. Don't mess around with Airtel modem's settings. There's really nothing that you need to change there.
2. hookup the router as per configuration and power it on. Connect it to your computer.
3. Go to http://192.168.1.1 This will open up the Router config (linksys). Choose static IP from the dropdown on the basic setup page.
Enter a static ip such as 192.168.1.100 and set the gateway to 192.168.1.1 (This is your Airtel modem). Do you remember those two DNS IPs that you used for initially setting up your airtel modem? Type those in as well. Change the Local IP to 192.168.0.1 so that it doesn't class with the modem. Change DHCP start IP to 192.168.1.100. Save settings and continue
4. Configure your Wireless settings. Enable security for wireless (128bit WEP is pretty good). Save settings. On my router, whenever I saved settings on the wireless, it wouldn't proceed further but nevertheless the settings would be saved. So i could still safely power cycle to get it back up.
Restart ur modem, ur router and ur pc. And that's it. Everything works. Here's a screen shot of the actual changes that was made to the basic setup.
Monday, July 23, 2007
New midyear resolution
Ok make that a 210/365 year resolution. I will try to write atleast few lines in my blog everyday and more importantly, try and make it useful or at the very least interesting to others. If you read my previous blog, which is so outdated in terms of Net years, you already know that I suck at writing and by that, I do not mean my eloquence of the English language. So this seems like a good resolution to help me overcome that block and who knows, maybe one day, this blog may actually turn out to be useful.
Two things for today:
1. To prove that I am an absolute total geek, I am going to start with a really cool perl oneliner. For those of you who have the privilege of a perl command line, try this
This will tell you if the number is prime. Pretty cool huh? For those of you interested in a little more challenge, try figuring out how it works
2. I actually got lost in the loading area in my workplace. I tried to find this place where we can, supposedly, drop off old computers and accessories for recycling. I took the freight elevator (Didn't even know there was one in that building and I have worked in that building for 6 months). When I went down to the loading level, the place was deserted, not completely, it was filled with all sorts of junk but not a soul around. Considering the size of the place, it did freak me out a bit. I then took the elevator down again to the garage level and couldn't find the stairs. So ended up walking around for a bit in vain, taking the elevator back to the ground level and taking the stairs from there. Totally frivolous useless information for a blog but hey, I only said I would try to make it useful.
That's it for now. See you tomorrow
Ok make that a 210/365 year resolution. I will try to write atleast few lines in my blog everyday and more importantly, try and make it useful or at the very least interesting to others. If you read my previous blog, which is so outdated in terms of Net years, you already know that I suck at writing and by that, I do not mean my eloquence of the English language. So this seems like a good resolution to help me overcome that block and who knows, maybe one day, this blog may actually turn out to be useful.
Two things for today:
1. To prove that I am an absolute total geek, I am going to start with a really cool perl oneliner. For those of you who have the privilege of a perl command line, try this
perl -wle 'print "Prime" if (1 x shift) !~ /^1?$|^(11+?)\1+$/' [number]
This will tell you if the number is prime. Pretty cool huh? For those of you interested in a little more challenge, try figuring out how it works
2. I actually got lost in the loading area in my workplace. I tried to find this place where we can, supposedly, drop off old computers and accessories for recycling. I took the freight elevator (Didn't even know there was one in that building and I have worked in that building for 6 months). When I went down to the loading level, the place was deserted, not completely, it was filled with all sorts of junk but not a soul around. Considering the size of the place, it did freak me out a bit. I then took the elevator down again to the garage level and couldn't find the stairs. So ended up walking around for a bit in vain, taking the elevator back to the ground level and taking the stairs from there. Totally frivolous useless information for a blog but hey, I only said I would try to make it useful.
That's it for now. See you tomorrow
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Happy New Year to all!!! Yeah I know it's a bit late but this is my first post for this year. Hopefully I will keep up. The last time I posted was way back in Sept/Oct 2005. I have been really lax about blogging. I guess I am kind of lazy about writing in general, it is counterintuitive because I really do like writing. When I eventually get down to writing, I end up writing at length running to several pages. At work, most of my emails are verbose and whenever I email my mom, it turns out pretty long as well. It does, however, take me a while to get into the mindset of writing.
Take for instance, the performance reviews that I wrote recently. I had to write reviews for 10 people at work, it being the end-of-the-year annual review season and all. Now the due date for it was Jan 10th. For the life of me, I could never get ready to start writing. It wasn't like I had nothing to say, quite the contrary, I had a lot to say about (at least) some of these people. Still I just wouldn't sit down and write. I even blocked my calendar for writing perf reviews but eventually I ended up finishing them on 15th. I am lazy about writing snippets, feedback, u-name-it. So it is going to be quite a struggle to keep up with blogging, but at least let me give it a try.
On a more interesting note, we watched Guru last week. This is a movie by Mani Ratnam (his movie 'Mouna Ragam' is my all time favorite), supposedly based on the life of Dhirubhai Ambani, the pioneer of Reliance Industries in India. Incidentally I was in Mumbai, India when Dhirubhai passed away leaving his vast empire to his two sons Anil and Mukesh Ambani. Anyways, back to the film, the performance by Abhishek Bachchan was superb. At an absolute level, I don't think it was stellar but compared to his earlier performances, this film was in completely different league. The chemistry between Abhishek and Ais in this movie was so apparent. The makeup was amazing. It really transformed Ais from a teenagish looking girl to a mature old lady from beginning to end. So overall I liked the presentation of the lead pair. Now coming to the other pair (Madhavan and Vidya), I feel they have been totally wasted. Madhavan still delivers his dialogue as though he's a chocolate lover boy. There was this really poignant scene between Abhi, Mithunda and Madhavan where Mithun basically tells Abhi that he's going to let Madhavan expose him and there are some subtle but strong dialogues there and Madhavan actually smiles when he says some stuff(?!!!). I mean who the hell would smile when he is tasked with exposing the leading businessman in the country. Vidya is a fine actress and delivers her role with amazing poise though all her role does is provide mushiness to the movie. The sad part is the content wasn't engaging. I felt the movie was too wishy-washy, I wish Mani Ratnam had taken a bold stand one way or the other. Anyways the film is definitely worth a watch. On the music front, Barso re is captivating, the others are easily forgotten but like all Rahman music, I guess they too will grow on me over time.
I am almost about to end this blog when I get a sudden idea. I am currently learning Spanish and French (don't ask). Maybe I can write my next post in Spanish. Por que quiero practicar mi espanol. vamos a mirar. Por ahora adios amigos.
Take for instance, the performance reviews that I wrote recently. I had to write reviews for 10 people at work, it being the end-of-the-year annual review season and all. Now the due date for it was Jan 10th. For the life of me, I could never get ready to start writing. It wasn't like I had nothing to say, quite the contrary, I had a lot to say about (at least) some of these people. Still I just wouldn't sit down and write. I even blocked my calendar for writing perf reviews but eventually I ended up finishing them on 15th. I am lazy about writing snippets, feedback, u-name-it. So it is going to be quite a struggle to keep up with blogging, but at least let me give it a try.
On a more interesting note, we watched Guru last week. This is a movie by Mani Ratnam (his movie 'Mouna Ragam' is my all time favorite), supposedly based on the life of Dhirubhai Ambani, the pioneer of Reliance Industries in India. Incidentally I was in Mumbai, India when Dhirubhai passed away leaving his vast empire to his two sons Anil and Mukesh Ambani. Anyways, back to the film, the performance by Abhishek Bachchan was superb. At an absolute level, I don't think it was stellar but compared to his earlier performances, this film was in completely different league. The chemistry between Abhishek and Ais in this movie was so apparent. The makeup was amazing. It really transformed Ais from a teenagish looking girl to a mature old lady from beginning to end. So overall I liked the presentation of the lead pair. Now coming to the other pair (Madhavan and Vidya), I feel they have been totally wasted. Madhavan still delivers his dialogue as though he's a chocolate lover boy. There was this really poignant scene between Abhi, Mithunda and Madhavan where Mithun basically tells Abhi that he's going to let Madhavan expose him and there are some subtle but strong dialogues there and Madhavan actually smiles when he says some stuff(?!!!). I mean who the hell would smile when he is tasked with exposing the leading businessman in the country. Vidya is a fine actress and delivers her role with amazing poise though all her role does is provide mushiness to the movie. The sad part is the content wasn't engaging. I felt the movie was too wishy-washy, I wish Mani Ratnam had taken a bold stand one way or the other. Anyways the film is definitely worth a watch. On the music front, Barso re is captivating, the others are easily forgotten but like all Rahman music, I guess they too will grow on me over time.
I am almost about to end this blog when I get a sudden idea. I am currently learning Spanish and French (don't ask). Maybe I can write my next post in Spanish. Por que quiero practicar mi espanol. vamos a mirar. Por ahora adios amigos.
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