tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-104973402024-03-07T05:52:47.498-08:00Ganesan's Blog<a href="http://rganesan.blogspot.com/atom.xml">Random thoughts, rants and ramblings</a>Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-19822288170219703762016-04-29T02:27:00.000-07:002016-04-29T02:27:21.250-07:00Sorry for the recent spam<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'd pretty much forgotten about this blog and a friend alerted me to the spam posts. Blogger allows you to set an email address that directly posts to the blog and I think that address has hit some spam mailing list. I've fixed this now.<br />
<br />
Ganesan</div>
Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-12859024833652153622011-06-11T21:44:00.000-07:002011-06-11T21:44:49.970-07:00Posting from my rooted nook colorOkay, liking the nook color a whole lot better now. Rooted with ClockWorkMod 3.0.2.8 and Manualnooter 4.5.6. Everything went very smooth and definitely much more usable than CM7 on my slow SD card. May be I should replace the stock firmware with CM7 someday and check how it performs. That project is for another day; for now happy with the rooted B&N firmware.
<p>
Oh, I did have a hiccup, solely my fault - registered with the wrong google account and couldn't get my purchased apps. I had to do a factory reset and root it again :-(.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-38142242857885782362011-06-11T10:37:00.000-07:002011-06-11T10:37:07.249-07:00Gadget UpdatesNot bad. Less than 6 months since my last post :-). Let's see the gadgets I've acquired in the interim ;-).
<p>
A Nook color. Bought for $200 plus tax B&N deal on ebay. Thanks to my friend Ramesh for ordering it for me and my BIL Srini for getting it to India. Also have acquired a iPad (also thanks to Srini) and should be getting a Samsung Galaxy S2 from letsbuy.com in a few days. I was appalled that somebody would pay 25K+ for a phone and here I have ordered one for 33K.
<p>
Any way, very impressed by the iPad. Nook has been somewhat below expectations. Touch screen response is pretty poor compared to iPad. Browsing is also a lot slower. Loaded CM7 via an 8GB SD card and also tried another SD card dual booting Phiremod and Honeycomb. Liked stock CM7 better without Phiremod enhancements and Honeycomb is beta quality anyway. Stuck with CM7 for a couple of weeks now and not really happy. It's quite slow, likely to the fact that it's running off an SD card. So manually nooted it today, if I feel like it I'll update the status in another blog post :-)
<p>Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-67760237630951586182011-02-21T21:23:00.000-08:002011-02-21T21:23:56.783-08:00Lots of updatesThis has really become a farce. Last update was nearly an year ago. Lot of things have happened. I have moved closer to office, much closer. I now stay next to Intel in Devarabisanhalli. Adarsh Palm Retreat Tower 1 is the place. Nice ground floor apartment. Bought it in Oct 2009 and moved in June 2010.
<p>
Sneha has started school - GEAR International - she has started in M0 Montessori. GEAR is one of the reasons we moved because "traditional" schools were admitting even for playschool only if the child completes 3 yrs in June. Sneha is November end born and GEAR wants to take in children into Montessori at 2.5 yrs which kind of matched our timeline.
<p>
My previous apartment in Jayanagar has been given out on rent since November. I miss Jayanagar but love the commute from the new apartment. There is a back road that leads to Cisco's back entrance; which was previously a bad road but now nicely done and hardly takes a 3 mins drive. I still need to drive about 1 KM on a mud road to the back entrance of APR but not touching ORR is a bliss. Things will probably improve on ORR once the construction is done but the back road is perfect for Cisco.
<p>
Since December 15 2011, I've also moved to a different Business Unit in Cisco - SAVBU. That's a big change after a 9+ year association with Andiamo/Cisco.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-43906744521135545262010-04-29T09:49:00.000-07:002010-04-29T10:04:31.690-07:00Nokia E5I am very impressed. Dedicated volume keys, GPS, 5MP camera, LED flash, 256MB internal memory, much faster cpu, very good battery life and 2K cheaper than what I bought my E63 for (12.5K). Removes most of my complaints except the lack of apps. I predict this phone is going to be the hit of 2010.
<p>
I am still leaning towards the Android but I think I'll hold out for Samsung Galaxy S pricing before taking a decision on my next geek toy ;-).
GanesanGanesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-81359160577141640582010-04-26T10:12:00.000-07:002010-04-26T10:24:12.219-07:00Samsung Galaxy Spica i5700I currently have a Nokia E63. Had endless trouble with it initially - it would hang frequently when answering a call. After a firmware update, things are a lot smoother and I've begun to like the phone. Push mail via Good messaging works pretty neat. Google Maps is excellent - though I wish I had splurged and bought an E71 for the GPS. Phone is pretty decent for the price - I bought it for about 12.5K Rs and it's now dropped to around 9K Rs. For the price, it's definitely value for money. The keyboard is pretty usable and it's definitely a decent business phone.
All that said, I do have a long list of complaints for the phone
<ul>
<li>Phone becomes very slow sometimes - could be due to Good Messaging.</li>
<li>Good drains battery and introduces an annoying bug. Incoming calls don't show the user name, only the number is displayed. </li>
<li>Lack of dedicated music keys. The soft key is buggy. If you're listening to a song/podcast and try to fast forward/backward the mp3 will restart. I found in some forum that the bug is triggered if you change the volume while it's playing (which I happen to do all the time). I can't believe this stupid bug is yet to be fixed.</li>
<li>No GPS. I already mentioned this. Cell tower based location identification is pretty neat but doesn't match GPS. </li>
<li>Lack of apps. I would dearly love scrabble and some decent apps on the phone. The only one I like currently is Google Maps.</li>
</ul>
All of which makes me interested in the Samsung Galaxy Spica i5700 which has recently got a Android 2.1 upgrade. Phone is available for about 12.5K which somehow seems to be my sweet spot for buying mobile phones :-).Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-49565187399152428002010-04-21T09:12:00.000-07:002010-04-21T09:31:35.566-07:00Cisco's recruitingAlmost a year since my last post :-(. Ah well, can't be helped. As is probably true for many companies, Cisco's also recruiting. Specifically in our Business Unit we're looking for a experienced manager in the platform area (bring up Linux on a Line card, drivers, diagnostics etc). Candidate should be 10+ years experience in related work with minimum of 2+ years in managing a team. <p>
We're also looking for an experienced kernel programmer (4+ years) to work on the protocol stack in the kernel. <p>
Work will be on Cisco's NX-OS which is based on Linux. Platform would be <a href="https://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/ps4159/ps4358/index.html">MDS 9000</a> and/or <a href="http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9402/">Nexus 7000</a> datacenter switches. Please send your resumes to grajagop at cisco.com.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-57928163401346795842009-07-15T21:31:00.001-07:002009-07-15T21:46:46.048-07:00Only Six months gap this time :-)This blogging stuff is too painful. So what's happening in my life? Some Random rambling:
<p>
After ignoring facebook for a long time I finally took the bite. Seems to be a really happening thing, looks like I am a dinosaur in this social networking rage ;-). Found some old friends which is really cool.
<p>
Sneha's a year and 8 months old. She has a allergy and asthma problem which seems to be affecting a lot of kids in Bangalore. Allopathy doesn't seem to be helping much. We tried Ayurveda but it's very difficult to get Sneha to take the medicines. So we're trying homeopathy now. We just started with Dr. Latha of Raghavendhra Home Clinic in Jayanagar 7th Block (near KR Road). Let's see how it goes. At least, Sneha takes the medicines easily :-). Hey, thanks to all the folks who sent in references by the way.
<p>
Work is tight - as usual :-). Still find it hard to balance work and life after so many years!
<p>
Latest toy is a Nokia E63 mobile phone. Didn't have the heart to splurge nearly 20K on the E71. E63 cost about 12.5K. Like it so far - so finally giving my Treo 650 a good bye. I tried a E51 briefly but the screen was too small for my comfort. Like the E63 a lot so far. My biggest requirement was to sync Address book and Calendar. Mail was lower priority. Cisco has Exchange sync enabled over WLAN and I was able to set it up relatively quickly. Works like a charm and no costly mobile bills :-)Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-54975435325019768552009-01-07T05:54:00.000-08:002009-01-07T05:59:08.830-08:00Ganesan ReloadedWow. I can't believe it's more than a year since my last post. Lots to catch up. My daugher's name is Sneha. A lovely, bubbly 13.5 months old baby now. I'll post pictures now. She recovered fine from the infection she had at birth. She seems to have trouble adjusting to Bangalore weather (frequent episodes of wheezing). She's in my home town for the last 3-4 months. Hoping to get her back to Bangalore after the winter.
Since Sneha is in Coimbatore, Jaya is obviously in Coimbatore too. I've been spending a forced bachelor life for the past few months. I've been going to Coimbatore most weekends but weekdays have been boring. I'll update on what I've been upto the last year in future posts. Obviously, I've accumulated tons of gadgets ;-).Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-56993166097180327782007-11-25T17:50:00.000-08:002007-11-25T19:55:40.400-08:00New Family MemberI now interrupt my irregular random, rambling feature to announce a new arrival to our family. Jaya gave birth to a baby girl last Wednesday (November 21st) evening :-). Unfortunately she (the baby) picked up some infection the same night and gave us some pretty anxious moments. She seems to be doing fine now though she's still in the hospital.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-4478978592487161212007-11-17T05:30:00.000-08:002007-11-17T06:23:28.672-08:00Wireless bridging with Linksys WRT54GI had bought a Linksys WRT54G (version 2.0) a few years back for home wireless networking. Since I already knew that it was Linux based and eminently hackable, choosing this particular router was a no brainer. However, I never really bothered to upgrade the firmware because the stock firmware served my needs. In fact, after I bought a Huawei ADSL modem with a 4-port switch and wireless, the WRT54G was idling in the back of my cupboard.
<p>
In my recent trip to San Jose (Sep/Oct), I was waxing ebulliently about VoIP ATA adapters to my friend Ramesh Panuganty when the topic of putting the VoIP phone in another room came up. These ATA adapters (Linksys PAP2T, Grandstream Handytone 503 etc) come with a regular ethernet port. Both our homes don't have a wired LAN configured, so this was a problem. When we looked at wireless bridging options, we found the solutions to be quite expensive and supported only one port (See <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Linksys-WET54G-Wireless-G-Ethernet-Bridge/dp/B00008WMBT">Linksys WET54G</a> for example, 90 bucks for 1 ethernet port!).
<p>
Compare that to the price of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Linksys-Cisco-WRT54GL-Wireless-G-Broadband-Compatible/dp/B000BTL0OA">Linksys WRT54GL</a> for only $64 at the same website. You can get other brands like Netgear or Buffalo for even cheaper. So the question of whether you can use these devices for bridging to LAN segments came up. A bit of googling and reading confirmed that this is called "Client-Bridge" mode and is supported by all of the open source firmware options for the WRT54G.
<p>
Incidentally, I was feeling a dire need for a ethernet hub to debug the SIP registration problems (no low end home networking switch seems to support span). Wouldn't it be nice to run tcpdump right on the WRT54G for this purpose? So it was time to dust out my little box and play with it. It turned out to be surprisingly simple. I initially downloaded the <a href="http://www.dd-wrt.com">DD-WRT</a> version which seemed to be more popular. Following the advice in the wiki pages, I first downloaded flashed the mini generic version of v23 SP2. Without even checking it out immediately upgraded to the WRT54G "voip" version (no good reason, the "voip" just sounded attractive :-). Wireless bridging worked beautifully. Just configured my SSID and my WEP key and everything worked flawlessly.
<p>
There was one small problem. After wasting half an hour on it I realized that my 4MB box had no free space to install tcpdump. So I switched to the mini WRT54G version which gave me enough space. After wasting another half an hour on it because I didn't configure the IP router and DNS correctly, I managed to install tcpdump package using ipkg. Only, tcpdump didn't work. I always got a bus error. Okay, what next?
<p>
Fortunately I had already downloaded <a href="http://www.x-wrt.org/">X-WRT</a> image bundled with the <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWRT</a> "White Russian" firmware. I download the X-WRT because it promised a better Web UI and I didn't really want to muck around with the CLI trying to configure the box. This one worked great. The original settings from the DD-WRT firmware worked fine for the OpenWRT firmware too. I was able to get tcpdump working. OpenWRT is more Linux/Debian like (more software options and no weird Microsoft like SP2 naming for the image). So everything is hunky-dory now :-).
<p>Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-52171078035854697412007-11-16T07:10:00.000-08:002007-11-16T07:18:50.665-08:00SIP registration saga continuedI am currently using the Linksys PAP2 adapter because it has 2 SIP accounts allowing me to connect to either callcentric or gizmoproject. I have only one phone connected but switching the phone cord is easier than changing the configuration everytime. Any way, I noticed yesterday that sipsak on the PC was able to query proxy01.sipphone.com without problems. But Linksys was still complaining that it couldn't contact the login server. Rebooting the Linksys didn't help. So I tried tshark on the PC and ran sipsak. In addition to the response to sipsak request, I noticed something strange. I was getting "401 SIP Status Unauthorized" packets coming to my PC. The content looked like some kind of Challenge for authorization which I confirmed by googling.
<p>
So it turned out that the BSNL Huawei modem had a messed up NAT. Response to the outgoing registration packets from the Linksys were coming to the PC! So I rebooted the modem but that didn't help either. I just retyped my password in the Linksys and that did the trick. I am reasonably confident that it was NAT translation issue; so BSNL is not at fault on this occasion. At least not since yesterday.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-77936182538467767372007-11-15T16:49:00.001-08:002007-11-15T17:20:38.997-08:00BSNL Broadband SIP Access is down againWell, what do you know. SIP registrations are failing again for my Bangalore connection for the last two days. I know for a fact that registrations are currently going through in my home town (Coimbatore) for both my parents and in my in-laws. As I mentioned in my earlier post, non standard ports currently work - I don't know how long it will last. So I am officially recommending <a href="http://callcentric.com">Callcentric</a> which allows SIP registrations on port 5080. Callcentric accounts are also more feature rich than Sipphone (which is used by Gizmo Project). For instance, Callcentric allows you setup speed dials in the server which can be accessed by a four digit code ("*75xx"). SIP to SIP calls are free and I am able to call my home town over SIP without problems.
<p>
Some one commented to my previous post that BSNL is blocking specific range of IP addresses which may very well be true. I tried logging out my PPPoE session a couple of times to get a new IP Address. It didn't seem to help, I didn't have the patience to keep trying. But really, this sucks.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-55038721029001534332007-11-03T21:36:00.000-07:002007-11-03T21:55:54.925-07:00SIP registration successful againMy Grandstream device has successfully registered overnight with the <a href="http://sipphone.com">sipphone.com</a> which is the SIP server used by <a href="http://gizmoproject.com">Gizmo Project</a>. So this does seem to be a temporary problem. However, this keeps happening fairly regularly, I'll keep monitoring and post if I see the same problem again.
<p>
On a related note, it's pretty painful to debug what exactly going on with these headless devices. This is not just a Grandstream device issue. I face the same issue with the Linksys PAP2. Grandstream did provide logging to an external server which helped me quite a bit. However, I need either a hub or a low-end switch that can do span. I do have a Linksys WRT54G, I can put openwrt firmware and do tcpdump right on the box. That's a project for another day.
<p>
Incidentally the Grandstream box appears to be running Linux though Grandstream website makes no mention of it. I'd love to get a shell prompt on it. It's a very small and sleek device.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-26883230506732754522007-11-03T06:41:00.000-07:002007-11-03T07:20:52.161-07:00BSNL broadband blocks VoIP?Yeah, yeah, it's been a while since I blogged. I won't bore you folks with miserable excuses. Let me jump right to the topic. I have this neat <a href="http://www.grandstream.com/ht503.html">Grandstream Handytone 503 ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter)</a> which allows me to connect a regular phone to it and make VoIP calls. I bought it from <a href="http://telephonydepot.com/">Telephony Depot</a>, shipped to friend in the US and got it to India. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_PAP2">Linksys PAP2</a> is more popular but this one is sleeker and has analog PSTN pass through which I liked (it doesn't work well with BSNL PSTN line, but that's a topic for another post). Any way, I have a VoIP account with <a href="http://gizmoproject.com/">Gizmo Project</a>, voice quality is excellent, even better than Skype except for one small problem.
<p>
Suddenly, BSNL appears to blocking SIP ports. The clue is your device fails to register with the SIP server. For all I know this may be a regular thing because the problem keeps popping up for me once in a while in the short time I've used the device. I always thought it's a device issue but today I decided to dig deeper and here's what I found. Outgoing port 5060 (the SIP port) is definitely blocked for both tcp and udp (I test with an external BSD box where I have ssh access). So I found another VoIP provider called <a href="http://callcentric.com/">Callcentric</a> which conveniently provides SIP port 5080 and SIP registration appears to go through fine.
<p>
The summary above looks simple but I had to go through a lot of trial and error. At first it appeared that ports 5061 through port 5080 were also blocked but right now just after I started posting this I was successfully able to get through to callcentric. I am using an excellent utility called <a href="http://sipsak.org/">sipsak </a> to help me with debugging this. Any way, if BSNL is indeed blocking SIP calls that's really bad. VoIP is legal in India for individual users and BSNL has no right to do this.
GanesanGanesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-39493557826300943312007-01-04T08:27:00.000-08:002007-01-04T08:44:27.834-08:00Finding Technical talent in IndiaHappy new year to the crazy people still reading my blog ;-). The topic I am raising in this new year is the difficulty in finding good technical talent in India, especially senior developers. Tech leads in Cisco are expected to Code. Managers are also technical and many continue to code (including yours truly!). We're hiring - Cisco Systems in general and my own group in particular. I guess that's true for most companies in Bangalore. However, it appears that most senior technical people (I am talking about 7 or 8+ years) don't actively write C code. We're finding it quite hard to find good programmers. There are three possibilities.
<ol>
<li> Most good developers are happy in their current job.
</li><li> The demand is very high.
</li><li> Good developers are in a minority.
</li></ol>
I guess it's a combination of all these factors. However, I do feel depressed when I get 8/9+ years resumes for technical people and the person can't even write simple C programs or answer basic questions no data structures.
<p> Oh well! By the way, if you're reading this and consider yourself a good C programmer (3+ years experience!), you know how to reach me ;-). We're looking for good Unix/Linux Network and System Programming Skills for working on an Enterprise networking switch.
</p>Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-81350577866075252172006-12-29T19:03:00.000-08:002007-01-04T08:44:56.438-08:00New Tariffs for BSNL Broadband postedDownload speeds increased for all plans except unlimited plans. In other words, no bandwidth upgrade for Home 900 plus, which is what I have :-(.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-23339235824393693282006-12-27T20:20:00.000-08:002006-12-27T22:32:09.343-08:00Whither WiMAX in Bangalore?2007 promises to be an exciting time for Broadband users in Bangalore. BSNL has promised 2 Mbps as default for ADSL. I am on the Home 900 plus 256 Kbps which offers unlimited downloads. If this gets automatically upgraded to 2 Mbps it will be bliss. Even though the good minister promises 2 Mbps in new year, the reality is there is probably some hardware upgradation involved and will be probably rolled out first on a few exchanges. It may be a while before every one gets it. Still, BSNL and the Telecom ministry needs to be applauded for pushing this forward. Private players will be soon forced to follow. <p>
This brings me to the strange problem of getting connectivity in the first place. The consensus (at least in my Office) is that Airtel is the best (connectivity wise, don't talk about billing :-), followed by BSNL, followed by other options like Sify, Hathaway etc and to never go near Tata Indicom. However, getting Airtel or BSNL appears very tough. Even being in a "well connected" locality is no guarantee to get a connection. It seems that BSNL has virtually stopped giving connections in Bangalore. There seems to be a big "last mile" problem in Bangalore. <p>
Which is where WiMAX comes in. There are reports that some company (probably Airtel) plans to cover whole of Bangalore with 2 Mbps WiMAX in 2007. The trouble is, while there are lots of news articles talk about WiMAX in Bangalore, no company website has any information about the launch. If that happens, it will be really a good thing.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-35066104214711381482006-12-23T22:17:00.000-08:002006-12-23T22:18:56.371-08:00Another long lagNothing new about the lag, is there :-(. Still haven't managed to find the LG DR165. I wrote to LG India, they gave me a LG contact in Bangalore. I called the person and he said I should find it in e-Zone and I should call him if I can't find it in e-Zone. I haven't done that yet.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-1160998362023061442006-10-16T04:19:00.000-07:002006-10-16T04:32:42.093-07:00In search of a DVD recorderI've always wanted to buy a <a href="http://www.tivo.com/">Tivo</a> like device. You don't get program information in Indian cable networks (at least, not yet; though it's possible with satellite TV), so I was interested purely for live recording and skipping ads. I didn't dare to buy one in the US because of NTSC/PAL issues. The closest I could find in India was <a href="http://www.samsung.com/in/products/dvdplayer/dvdrecorder/dvd_hr720.asp">Samsung's DV-HR720</a> which at 24K is way too expensive for me (though the street price would be lower). The next best option was a plain DVD recorder. I got a LiteOn recorder from the US because it specifically mentioned PAL support. Unfortunately, I didn't read the fine print carefully. It turned out that it could play PAL but the tuner was NTSC only :-(. Bummer! I had to send it back. Despite, having learnt a lesson the hard way, I ended up getting another US DVD recorder, this time a Philips one (I won't go into the reasons to maintain peace at home ;-). That had the same NTSC/PAL issues. So I had to find a model in India.
<p>
I was pretty excited to see ads for a LG DVD recorder (model DR 165) in Bangalore Times of India for 11.5K. Though Samsung India has had a <a href="http://www.samsung.com/in/products/dvdplayer/dvdrecorder/dvd_r121.asp">model (DVD-R121)</a> in India for a while, I didn't know about it till later. Any way, the LG model is DivX capable (player only, not for recording) and quite a bit cheaper. Unfortunately, I can't find it any where in Bangalore (by any where, I of course mean checking 3 or 4 shops in Jayanagar area ;-). If any reader knows where I can get one, please let me know.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-1160996468230000342006-10-16T03:17:00.000-07:002006-10-16T04:01:08.860-07:00Another long hiatus :-(I don't know how people manage to keep blogging every day, or even multiple blogs in a single day. Oh, well! What's new? I just bought a new Samsung 19" widescreen LCD monitor for my home PC. Ever since assembling my dual-core box, I've been shopping around for a LCD monitor which can take DVI input (my video card has a DVI out). My budget was for a 17" monitor but there were none available which can take DVI input. In fact the only display I found which supported digital input was a ViewSonic 19" model costing about 19K. The price dropped to around 17K but I was still reluctant to go with ViewSonic because Samsung is clearly the leader in LCD displays. Prices of LCD displays are dropping rapidly and I was pleasantly surprised to hear about this new Samsung model (940BW) decently priced (I paid 15.2K). I am sure prices will continue dropping but at around 15K it's worth the price in my budget. I remember paying 13.5K for my first 17" CRT monitor (I also remember about 10K for my first 2X CD writer ;-). I guess you can't call me an early adopter, but I am not too late either ;-).
<p>
Oh about the display, it's fantastic. Very crisp display, great colours. Both WindowsXP (yeah, I do boot it once in a blue moon) and Linux had no problems with the 1440x900 display resolution. Recommended.
<p>Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-1154940895479245152006-08-07T01:40:00.000-07:002006-08-07T01:54:55.490-07:00Sorry for the long breakI apologize for not blogging for a long while now. It appears that some crazy people are actually interested in what I write ;-). So I've resolved to start again :-). What's new? Well, in the last 6 months, I've assembled a dual core AMD 3800+ system for home use with the help of a Colleage at work. As with all tech stuff, the price of the processor has dropped drastically before I figured out something useful to do with the system. <p>
Intel's new Core 2 Duo processors now appear to the best processors on earth. I am a big fan of AMD, but this time Intel seems to have a winner. For multi-core systems, AMD still appears to have the edge because of their better interconnect technology. AMD's new DDR2 based AM2 platform doesn't seem to be a significant upgrade. I am still hoping AMD will manage to pull a rabbit out of it's hat :-). In addition to better performance at lower power consumption (as if that's not enough!), another nice thing about Core 2 Duo systems is hardware support for virtualization with Intel's VT technology. <p>
Speaking of Virtualization, VMWare Server is now free. This means I no longer have to build VMWare virtual disks using qemu-img. VMWare Server is really good, but I failed to configure booting from my existing Windows installation inside Linux (or vice-versa). Vice-versa (I mean existing Linux inside Windows) sort of works but I have to put in some funny hacks. I have a SATA drive, WindowsXP seems to think of it as a IDE drive despite installing the proper SATA drivers. The upshot of this is that, when Linux boots inside VMWare, the disk appears as hda, whereas when booting natively, the SATA drive appears as sda. I'll keep playing around with this.<p>Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-1136810394557249312006-01-09T04:39:00.000-08:002006-01-09T04:44:27.953-08:00Reading websites with horrible fontsMy company provides access to Safari. Safari default fonts are not very readable with Firefox with Linux. I could opt to override all fonts in Firefox settings but this is not very desirable. Instead I just "disable styles" (Ctrl-Shift-S) using the Webdeveloper extension. I find that this simple trick makes many sites much more readable. Now if only I could figure out how to disable styles for only specific sites, life would be heaven :-).Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-1136810355242369402006-01-09T04:36:00.000-08:002006-01-09T04:39:15.253-08:00Site FeedA colleague of mine was asking how to configure blog feeds from blogspot. It's not mentioned by default anywhere in the blog. Luckily, I did remember configuring some settings regarding site feeds. So I've now provided the blog feed URL in the blog title.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10497340.post-1135527425955646562005-12-25T08:11:00.000-08:002005-12-25T08:18:04.556-08:00Looking for the ideal mp3 playerLooks like I am on a roll today, third post in a single day ;-). Anyway, I am looking for a flash based mp3 player with the following features. The following are the must have features:
<ul>
<li>Flash based</li>
<li>Removable battery</li>
<li>512MB+ capacity</li>
<li>USB 2.0</li>
<li>FM</li>
<li>FM and Voice Recording</li>
</ul>
The following are nice to have features:
<ul>
<li>Built-in Speaker</li>
<li>FM Transmitter</li>
<li>Expandable media</li>
<li>Color Display</li>
</ul>
I've been shopping around and narrowed it down to a few choices but can't decide between them. Before I post my choices, any recommendations off hand? Note that the iPod Nano is out of question because it lacks FM and removable battery.Ganesan Rajagopalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05743123129435557682noreply@blogger.com3