New job @ TCS

I joined at my new job as a DBA at TCS. All the things I’d ever heard about Delhi traffic and the travails of bus traveling are true! There is so much road construction going on and the rainy season makes the matters worse. Mud everywhere. The first two days when I had to travel from Delhi to Gurgaon were the most tiring. I didn’t know which bus to board or where to jump off. Admittedly, I was helped a lot by co-passengers.

On my first day, 26th July, I had to reach Hauzkhas from Vasant Vihar. I wore my new Carlton London cherry shoes. A mistake a realized later because they were drenched in the downpour. It was raining like anything and I was already late. I took an auto. The autowallah was a nice guy from southern India. Though he overcharged me but dropped me right in front of the office where I had to meet Nitin. Nitin was not in office when I reached. He was stuck in traffic somewhere. I didn’t mind. Met Smita in the mean time and had nice warm tea.

Nitin reached after 30 something minutes. He was much younger than I expected, but a genial guy. Had a brief chat and verified my documents. He gave me a form which I must have taken quite long to fill because he came twice in between to check if I was done. Any way, after I was done, Nitin said that we have to report at TCS the same day. He offered to drop me which I gladly accepted. We conversed about jobs, family, India tourism (!!!) etc. Although he said that he had not travelled much but at the same time related some fine details of forts in Rajasthan and Mumbai-Pune highway!

The TCS building in Gurgaon is called ‘Towers’ because two tower like multi-storey structures stand adjacent to each other. Connected by a bridge at fifth floor. Beautiful interiors. I had to get a visitor pass at the gate and had to ‘tail-gate’ at almost every door! Later I went to the other TCS office in GG2 for a while but came back to the Towers soon. All this time, it never stopped drizzling.

Now it is a learning thing till the guy I have to replace is there. But the learning basically never stops, does it?

Themes for K750i

These are some of the the themes which I’ve used for my K750i. Do you recognize the top-left one? It is the theme used by Sony Ericsson for the promos of K750i. Has it ever occured to you to ‘actually’ use this theme?! You can get this classic theme by clicking here. Any way, some of my favourite web-sites for K750i related themes or other software are lasyk.net, eseth.net, mobile9.com and k750i.net. Do leave a comment if you know of any other nice links.

Birthday Boy, Me !

Happy Birth Day

to Me !!

Tips for K750i (Music)

I’ve been listening to MP3s a lot on K750i. Some notes and tips -

The supplied head phones are very good. Fit nicely in my ears. Bass output is also good especially when MegaBass is on. I just need to plug in the USB cable in the computer and it recognises K750i  as a flash drive. I can browse/cut/copy/paste contents to and fro the memory card and the Windows File Explorer. So all I have to do is that find the MP3s files on my computer and copy/paste them in the \MP3 folder or in \MSSEMC\Media files\audio in the memory card. Simple.

The inbuilt Media Player shows the files in Artist-Title format. So if you want your playlist to look neat and clean then right-click on the MP3 Properties>Summary>Advanced and change the Artist value to the artist name, album name or whatever you want to display in the playlist. Then change the Title value to the song name.

Tip :-
- You will need to change the Title value individually for each file but you can give a common Artist value to multiple files. Keep the CTRL pressed and select the related files with the mouse. Then right-click Properties>Summary>Advanced and change the Artist value. This will be applied to all the files.
- Another tip you might find useful. Create folders according to artist/album on the phone memory card. Then while creating playlists on the phone, you can select the folder and all the files will be put in the playlist.

This seems to be a lot of work but I don’t mind doing this coz it helps me keep my playlist neat. This will be also helpful in sorting the list by Artist or Title.

To Do :-
- Try playing  .M3U playlist files. Have’nt tried this. UPDATE: M3U does not play
- Finetune media synchronization with Windows Media Player. Windows Media Player has synchronization feature with portable devices. I’ve tried using it and it put files on the root of the memory card or in a Music folder. Both these are not acceptable coz phone plays files only from \MP3 folder or \MSSEMC\Media files\audio folder. I’ll try again and post updates. I’m surprized this topic is not discussed in any forum! UPDATE: The folder issue has been sorted out. Details in next post.

Deadly sins? Really?

“So many people/so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind,
Is all the sad world needs.”

-Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I came across this article [Deadly Sins] by Khushwant Singh, a renowned Indian author, who has a talent of writing in simple vocabulary. In this particular piece, he writes about the so-called 7 sins in Christianity and 5 sins in Hinduism. The seven Christian deadlies are pride, lechery, envy, anger, covetousness, gluttony and sloth. The Indian list has kaam (lust), krodh (anger), lobh (greed), moh (love or attachment) and ahankaar (arrogance).

Are they really so bad for humanity that they could be termed as ’sins’ ?! How come that both these religions don’t include ‘violence’ in these lists of sins? Should’nt hurting a fellow being be considered sinful? Although we all consider violence as morally incorrect, but putting it in this list would might help end much misery from the world which we live in.

July 5, 2006

Template for ‘Pocketmod’

Ever since I discovered GTD (Getting Things Done), a technique advocated by David Allen to increase personal productivity and time management, I had tried putting it to use in many forms. Even tried using my Sony Ericsson K750i but that required too many buttons to push and didn’t provide a uniform view. As I don’t have a PDA, so I was looking for alternatives which suit my lifestyle and requirements. Moleskins, Hipster PDA etc are too bulky for me. I needed something affordable and handy to take my notes and ‘next actions’.

Then I came across Pocketmod.com and have been a fan ever since. Pocketmod, is a kind of template to be printed on an A4 size paper and then folded in a way to look like a small 8-page booklet. The booklet can have lists, calendar, notes pages, story boards, sheet music, paper based games etc on each page. The Pocketmod website provides a Flash utility (online and stand-alone versions are available) which offers some nicely designed templates for To-Do lists, planners, calendars, simple games, formulas etc to be printed out on an A4 size paper. Now some people have come up with some more page ideas to further compliment the existing collection of templates. Read more about this in another post. Its virtually free (just the cost of paper and toner), looks cool and is very handy.

But there was one thing about the Pocketmod that I wanted to change. Each time I printed one from the Pocketmod website, I had to copy by hand all my stuff to the new one. I wanted the ability to save my lists to avoid writing them all over again with every fresh print. Also, a printed list looks more neat. This also forces me for the weekly review of next actions and print a fresh copy. I believe the Pocketmod team is already working on that functionality but I couldn’t wait. I guessed someone must have created some utility to do that already or at least have designed a template which could be edited. I searched on the Net but nothing for me. So I’ve decided to design my own and share it with Pocketmod fans. You can fill in your lists/appointments and then print it. Get it by clicking here. The folding instructions are available here.

This template has the following pages -

1. Front page for brief contact info or a favorite image
2. To-Do lists for home and office
3. Reminders for phone calls, emails and ideas for blog
4. Wishlist/Shopping List
5. Two single lined pages for taking notes etc
6. Weekly calendar (the dates need to be changed manually, though)

I designed this for myself and your needs might be different so you can edit the template as you wish and maybe forward it to me also. Or drop me a mail about what you think about it. Till then, Enjoy!

Post edit: If you find my template too “complex” then there is a simple one available too here.

Tips for K750i (Calendar & Video)

Calendar: I found an annoying thing about the calendar feature in K750i. The calendar application provides no way to put a recurring appointment like birthdays, anniversaries etc. The calendar application on Nokia series 60 phones is a lot more user friendly. Nokia phones allow recurrent appointments and also show a brief event text at the top while in month view. It becomes frustrating in K750i when I have to click open each day to check out the appointments. The development guys at SE should look into it. Anyway, as far as the recurrent appointment is concerned, I am giving you 3 workarounds-

1. Create a recurrent appointment on a Nokia phone and send to K750i via bluetooth or IR. K750i saves it as a recurrent appointment! Simple isn’t it?!
2. Create your recurrent appointments in Outlook and sync the phone with Outlook. All appointments will saved on phone appropriately.
3. Suppose you want to save John’s birthday. Create a dummy entry for John in phone book with bogus phone number. Save this entry and again come back to edit this contact entry. In the edit mode, the last tab option is for Info and Birthday. Edit the bith date here and save. You will be prompted to save it to calendar. Select ‘Yes’ and it will be saved as a recurrent event. You can delete the phone book entry safely with out affecting the calendar entry. For other purposes, you can use a descriptive name like ‘Ron’s Wedding’ or ‘Insurance Premium’ instead of John.

Video: A very less discussed feature in K750i is its ability to take screenshots from video files. Pause a running video and press [More] > [Capture Frame]. The screenshot will be saved in phone memory. The only limitation is that the picture will of 176×144 resolution. It is not possible to take screeshots in full-screen horizontal mode i.e. 220×176 resolution.

Have you ever felt the need to watch some part of a video in slow-motion? Well, its possible in K750i. While watching a video, move the joystick down. The frame rate will slow down. To continue playing at normal speed, press [Play]. Video can not be slow-motioned in full-screen mode, but once it is in slow-motion, it can be turned full-screen by pressing [More] > [Full Screen]

If you want to see your video even slower then pause the video. Now move the joy-stick down. With every downwards movement of the joy-stick, the video will advance one frame.

Stuff I’m Doing With My K750i

I’m using my K750i for the following activities -
- Making Calls
- Listening music
- Watching videos
- Net Surfing limited to Airtel Live service and Yahoo
- PIM ie Calendar +To-Do Lists+Notes
- Reading Articles and Novels now reading Dan Brown-Angels & Demons
- Clicking Photos
- SMS
- Transferring files between Home and Office as Flash Drive

I’ve found these features to be most useful -
- Flash Light This is basically a LED light to be used as a flash with camera but as it can be kept on like a torch so I’m using it to find my way around the house when I come back late from work. I’ve made a shortcut to it in my Activity Menu for quick access. Another quick way to start the light is to slide open the camera shutter and press * (Bottom-left button)
- Active ScreenIt is possible to create a note in K750i and display it on the standby screen at all times. Open that note in the phone and select the More > Show In Standby option. I use this to show important To-Do items or Reminders so that I’m reminded of them every time I use the phone.
- USB ChargingI don’t need to carry a charger to my office because I carry my data-cable to office anyway.

My First Post!

Well, the title of this post is misleading because this isn’t exactly my first post! First post in WordPress, yes … but first post as a blogger, no. I’ve been maintaining a blog called EyesOfCalvin at RediffBlogs earlier but some how my login requests were being denied. I’m sure I had not forgotten my password, but the fact was that I have not been able to post another entry.

I guess I really liked that blog. I think there were some withdrawl symptoms too initially … palpitations, nausea … you know what I mean, don’t you?! After all, that blog had given me some friends, I had invested time into it in the form of content, template designs and the chutzpah et all. And one day I find something akin to ‘Invalid Password‘ snip at my umbilical cord with the blog! Was the red color of the font some thing symbolic? Like dripped in the blood of my murdered aspirations! Of course, I was not expecting to be nominated for Pulitzer or something for my ranting about ‘Saas Bahu’ serials, but still, it was my blog!

Maybe WordPress will be more forgiving. Maybe this rebirth will last longer. Maybe I will discover something about Life … about myself … ‘my’ ’self’ ! Maybe … …

“Abe bahut ho gaya abhi tera natak. Abhi jyada Shakespeare mat ban aur line pe aaja” (I guess I’ve already discovered some of my real self!