Random musings...

Use your existing printer as a wireless printer for less than Rs 2000 ($40)

2011-07-16T11:40:00.013+05:30

With a increasing number of computers and laptops inside each house, the need to share a single printer across the house has become increasingly necessary. I personally have a office laptop, a desktop, a Android tablet and my wife has a laptop; it is a complete pain trying to attach the printer to each of them and print stuff as we need.

One simple solution is to attach the printer to the home machine and share it on the network and have your laptops print to the network printer. I do not like the solution because every time you need to print anything from any place, you need to boot up he machine where the printer is attached.

So a wireless printer is the solution. A wireless inkjet printer itself is very expensive, the moment you need a wireless laser printer, the price complete goes insane. Made me think, there must be a simple way to get to share one printer across the network in such a way that I can place it anywhere and print from any machine. I personally have the Samsung ML-1666 Laser printer.

The tried and cheap Asus Routers with a USB port come to the rescue. Some of them allow you to share printers with a default firmware they ship with, but the default firmware does not allow you to use the router as a client to my wireless network.

So Asus WL-520GU it is for Rs 2000 as it fulfills all our needs and is really cheap !!!

Getting the router ready for OpenWRT:

1. Boot into linux on the PC (LiveCD will work well), typically Ubuntu. Connect the PC network cable to the lan port. Switch OFF the router.

2. Run the following commands (substitute the XX:XX with your router's MAC ID which is printed on the box):

ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0

arp -s 192.168.1.1 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

3. Now run the tftp command and enter the commands under it one by one,

tftp 192.168.1.1

binary

rexmt 1

timeout 60

trace

put openwrt-brcm47xx-squashfs.trx

Wait three minutes and then hard reboot, then go to 192.168.1.1, use default user "root" and no password to get to the web interface. Set a default password for the user.

Now do a telnet 192.168.1.1 and login using user "root" and the password you just set.

Run the following commands in the telnet session:

opkg update

opkg install kmod-usb2 kmod-usb-core kmod-usb-storage kmod-usb-storage-extras block-hotplug block-mount hotplug2 kmod-usb-ohci kmod-usb-printer

All of them should succeed !!!

Configuring the OpenWRT router

Fire up a web browser and go to 192.168.1.1 for the web interface, move into Administration mode and fix the following:

Step 1 : Go to Luci Overview page and add luci-app-p910nd and p910nd packages to the system

Reboot the router. When it comes up and you login to the web interface again, make sure you go to Services/Initscripts in the web and enable the p910 service and reboot again.

Step 2: You should be able to see the p910nd link in the services page. Enable it.

Step 3: Now is the tricky part, make the Router works as a wireless client for your existing network by changing the settings below to suit your existing network.

Note the fact that the network interface is set to a WAN instead of a LAN, so the router acts as a client to your wireless rather than becoming a access point itself.

Step 4: Set your WAN screen in the following way :

Step 5 : Now open up the firewall on the router to accept print requests from the WAN side:

Save and apply all the changes above and after a few minutes, physically reboot (power off and then on) the machine.

The moment of truth : Switch off the router, take off the network cable connecting the computer to the router and boot it up. Configure your main network modem/wireless router to assign a static ip address to this router (so that you can always print to the same IP). Again reboot the router and wait till the wireless lights come up.

You should now be able to access the wireless router's web page from the computer again. Get to a telnet session for the IP that is assigned to the router :

Type "dmesg". You should see a boatload of stuff on the screen, ignore all ! Now connect the printer to the usb port on the router and switch on the printer. Wait a few seconds. Type "dmesg" again. You should see messages in the end saying the device saw and configured the USB printer.

usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 2

usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 2 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x03F0 pid 0x1D04

Ensure that the p910d process is running using the command "ps -aef". The output should have:

/usr/sbin/p9100d -b -f /dev/lp0 0

That is it from the router side. Move the router to where the printer is at any corner of the house, connect everything and start it all up

On the windows machine:

Add a new printer, choose Local Printer. Choose to create a new Standard TCP/IP Port. Set the IP address to the IP of the route, Protocol should be RAW, Port number 9100. Install the correct drivers for the printer in Windows (This is very important).

Make sure you create a new printer and not change a existing one.

Fire a test page and the page should print out of the wireless connected printer :-)

Notes :

1. I have tested with Samsung Laser and HP printers, they seem to work well. But that is no surety that your existing printer will always work. Do a little reading to see if anyone has had success with your printer and OpenWRT/DD-wrt before you go this route.

2. All in one printers are a different ball game. I do not recommend them and I do not use them. So read up on your own if you want support for your scanner in the All-in-one. The printer by itself should work though.

3. Samsung and HP have released nice drivers and applications for Android that allows you to print anything from the Android phone or tablet. I just installed the Samsung application for Android, setup my network printer and can now print seamlessly from the tablet over the network. This makes it a complete solution.

The quest for the near perfect HTPC continues...

2011-06-11T21:31:00.002+05:30

My quest for a perfect (or as close to perfect as possible !) HTPC has made me change my HTPC setup multiple times over the last few years to find the right balance between power consumption, noise, size and flawless 1080p movie play. After the last upgrade this month, I think I have the almost perfect HTPC player.

CPU/Motherboard : AMD Fusion E350

The AMD E3509 is the perfect CPU and motherboard for media playback. A 1.6ghz dual core processor combined with the AMD Radeon HD 6300 on-board graphics takes care of any media that you throw at it, more importantly has on board component and optical outputs for Audio and HDMI that is capable of doing Video+Audio.

It is important to note that XBMC live works by default with a Geforce based solution because of native geforce drivers, butI prefer the Windows 7 combination with DVXA2. The second option works perfectly with both Radeon and Geforce solutions.

The best part of the solution is that the whole platform takes a measly 19watts of power. It is really unbelievable that such a powerful HTPC can work off just 19watts for the CPU and motherboard.

I got the MSI E350 board, available everywhere for less than 7k :

Msi E350IA-E45--AMD Fusion Platform | eBay

Note that when I got the motherboard from the shop, the fan was running really fast and making more noise that I liked. After a BIOS update to the latest on the MSI speed, the fan is hardly heard and is really silent now.

RAM : 2gb or 4gb DDR3

DDR3 is dead cheap now and it makes a lot of sense to get 4gb of memory to run Windows 7 comfortably.

The cheapest ram I got, 1600 for two sticks of 2gb each : EVM Strontium 2GB DDR3 Desktop RAM Memory Module | eBay

Cabinet :

Choice 1 : CFI Cube A8989

This is a beautiful cabinet that is really small and absolutely cute. It comes with a 150w PSU and is perfect as a HTPC if you intend to use a large (3.5") hard drive.

If you want some specific details of the cabinet, look at this site:
CFI Cube Casing for Intel Atom | Surfnux's Weblog

Choice 2: PANACHE T3311 : Panache

This is the one I choose. It is a really small cabinet and is very cramped, but works very well if you have a external hard drive to store your movies and only need a 2.5" small drive to boot Windows 7 and XBMC. More importantly, it comes with a DC power convertor in the small chassis that provides power via a laptop like adaptor. So no fans and zero noise from the PSU.

Hard drive : Determined by the cabinet choice above !

I went for a Kingston 30gb SSD for Rs 3300 from Primeabgb. Loads Windows and XBMC in less then 10 seconds and browsing movies is instant. This ia a perfect choice with the Panache. If you went for the CFI cabinet, you can get a 2tb internal hard drive for cheap and add a 30gb partition for Windows 7 and XBMC.

Getting it all together

Assemble the above, install Windows 7, the ATI drivers and XBMC 10.1. Start XBMC and enable DVXA2 in the system settings and you will find that every movie plays flawlessly over HDMI and CPU consumption never exceeds 15%.

Add a good media remote control for about Rs 1000 and it all works flawlessly.

It is now almost perfect HTPC solution :-)

A 110v surge protector instead of isolation transformers ?

2011-06-07T01:07:00.003+05:30

I have been reading up a lot on step down transformers since I intend to get a Pioneer receiver from the US and am looking to see how to get a good deal.

Almost every thread on this in various forums has details on how to get the best transformer and more importantly, to get isolation type transformers. Comments like these abound : You need to get "Isolation Type" Step down Transformers. Now the reason given for getting a isolation type transformer is that the normal transformers can go bad and start supplying 240v directly instead of converting the voltage, thus bringing down the entire system.

Im thinking, how about getting a normal good brand (Maxine ?) transformer of 1kw/Rs 1k and take the output of the transformer into a US surge protector ($10) and then pass the output of the surge protector to the AV receiver. A good US surge protector comes with ample guarantees of coping with high voltages. So if the cheapo transformer does go bad and supplies more than 120v, the surge protector will kick in and protect the attached device.

Obviously, I could be missing something fundamental here in this line is thinking since folks spend 3-5k on isolation transformers. So Gurus, what am I missing here technically ? Can a surge protector NOT work with a transformer ? Any holes in the theory ?

AMD motherboard stability issues with DDR3 (XMP based memory)

2011-04-08T11:57:00.002+05:30

Im building a new computer with the following components:

Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H motherboard
AMD Phenom II x6 1055T processor
Gskil F3-10666CL9D-8GBXL (2x4gb)
Antec 650w PSU
HIS 5670 Video Card

I wanted a AMD 880 board and while picking the RAM, I noticed that some of the RAM were marked as specifically designed For 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor. It kind of put me off, but I kept wondering why it should make any difference. I assumed it is a Intel muscle at work and moved on. In short, since AMD cannot take more then 1333mhz DDR3, I stuck to the Gskill as it was advertized to run 1333mhz at 1.5v.

Assembled the comp, everything is stock, brand new, basically nothing is OC'ed. RAM settings are 9-9-9-24, 2T DRAM Freq 669.6 mhz and CPU Freq 2008.9 mhz. I put the system together, it booted first time no problem. I installed windows and then I started getting random BSOD's. The BSOD's indicated memory issues, so I ran Memtest for hours on both sticks, then each stick and there were zero errors. The memory always passed on any test I threw at it. But Windows would randomly freeze, the ATI drivers would restart randomly, basically it was hell !!!

Temps were fine for the entire time, and since I was not OC'ing anything, it did not seem like a issue. Everything in the BIOS was left untouched, voltage was stock at 1.50v and timings were stock at 9-9-9-24. I swapped the sticks between DIMM's, reseated them, etc - nothing seemed to work.

I then ran Prime35 and it would fail in a matter of seconds with a warning that there are rounding off errors. Folks on the net say that this means that the CPU or RAM is malfunctioning, which leads to data corruption and hense rounding off errors.

Frustrated, I started reading more stories on the net, then I noticed something fishy. Few other people had similar issues with AMD and DDR3 memory with support for Intel XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) and almost all of them RMA'ed the memory and got different brands. A little research pointed out that XMP allows the DDR3 and the motherboard to exchange information on what speed was necessary and how much voltage was required. On a AMD board, this information exchange was lost.

So I bumped up the voltage on the RAM manually by 0.05v and the Bios showed that the memory was now getting 1.65v. Rebooted, reinstalled and bingo, the system is now as Stable as stable can be. The Ram heats up a little, so I needed another fan blowing air on the sticks, but otherwise everything works beautifully. Prime35 ran for hours and no errors.

Moral of the story, if you buy DDR3 meant for Intel, it means that the sticks use XMP. It also means that AMD boards might not necessarily provide it the correct voltage to run at the rated speeds. In my case, GSkill claims a 1333mhz at 1.5v, but the sticks require 1.65v to be stable at that speed. So do not leave the Bios voltage at default and play around a little if you have stability issues.

Hope this helps someone facing similar issues :-)

Two short stories with a great moral...

2011-01-27T11:05:00.000+05:30

The Frogs

A farmer came into town and asked the owner of a restaurant if he could use a million frog legs. The restaurant owner was shocked and asked the man where he could get so many frog legs! The farmer replied, "There is a pond near my house that is full of frogs - millions of them. They all croak all night long and they are about to make me crazy!" So the restaurant owner and the farmer made an agreement that the farmer would deliver frogs to the restaurant, five hundred at a time for the next several weeks.

The first week, the farmer returned to the restaurant looking rather sheepish, with two scrawny little frogs. The restaurant owner said, "Well... where are all the frogs?" The farmer said, "I was mistaken. There were only these two frogs in the pond. But they sure were making a lot of noise!"

Moral : Next time you hear somebody criticizing or making fun of you, remember, it's probably just a couple of noisy frogs. Also remember that problems always seem bigger in the dark. Have you ever lain in your bed at night worrying about things which seem almost overwhelming like a million frogs croaking? Chances are pretty good that when the morning comes, and you take a closer look, you'll wonder what all the fuss was about.

The Pretty Lady

Once upon a time a big monk and a little monk were traveling together. They came to the bank of a river and found the bridge was damaged. They had to wade across the river. There was a pretty lady who was stuck at the damaged bridge and couldn't cross the river. The big monk offered to carry her across the river on his back. The lady accepted. The little monk was shocked by the move of the big monk. "How can big brother carry a lady when we are supposed to avoid all intimacy with females?" thought the little monk. But he kept quiet. The big monk carried the lady across the river and the small monk followed unhappily. When they crossed the river, the big monk let the lady down and they parted ways with her.

All along the way for several miles, the little monk was very unhappy with the act of the big monk. He was making up all kinds of accusations about big monk in his own head. This got him madder and madder. But he still kept quiet. And the big monk had no indication to explain his situation. Finally, at a rest point many hours later, the little monk could not stand it any further; he burst out angrily at the big monk. "How can you claim yourself a devout monk, when you seize the first opportunity to touch a female, especially when she is very pretty? All your teachings to me make you a big hypocrite.

The big monk looked surprised and said, "I had put down the pretty lady at the river bank many hours ago, how come you are still carrying her along?"

Moral : This very old Chinese Zen story reflects the thinking of many people today. We encounter many unpleasant things in our life, they irritate us and they make us angry. Sometimes, they cause us a lot of hurt, sometimes they cause us to be bitter or jealous. But like the little monk, we are not willing to let them go away. We keep on carrying the baggage with us. We let them keep on coming back to hurt us, make us angry, make us bitter and cause us a lot of agony. Why? Simply because we are not willing to put it down or let go of the baggage.

We should let go of the incident soon after crossing the river, that is after the unpleasant event is over. There is no need to be further hurt by the unpleasant event after it is over.

Step by Step guide to setting up Buffalo router into a torrent downloader & NAS box

2011-01-25T23:03:00.006+05:30

I have been using the Linksys 610N as a torrent downloader plus wireless router for the past year and while I was happy with the router, there are a few things that were bugging me. One was the NAS speeds to copy the downloaded torrents to my PC. I would hardly get 3mbps. I have also tried the Asus W500g and that was also a broadcom chipset and it was more limited than the Linksys.

So I decided that I would give a try for the Atheros wireless chipset. I shortlisted and got the Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH router for INR 5k. It is a sleek black router with nice antenna's, fantastic wireless range, gigabit ports, a 400MHz processor, 32MB flash, 64MB RAM and a USB port.

The biggest stumbling block with the Atheros chipset was the fact that DD-WRT had limited support for packages on this chipset. The reason being that the Atheros CPU in the Buffalo router is MIPS while the Broadcom routers like Linksys 610N are MIPSEL. In laymans terms, it means the popular optware packages in DD-WRT compiled for broadcom will not work on this router. I installed dd-wrt and the openwrt packages using a lot of hacks documented on the web and most things did work. Then I started discovering issues, the primary one being there is no large file support in the firmware, so any downloaded files over 2gb would not even be visible on the Samba share.

This left me with the last option, install OpenWRT on the router. Information on OpenWRT is sadly less than for DD-WRT, there are lots of scattered information all over the net, but no consolidated place. Anyways, once I finished the setup, I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of NAS and the wireless ! I easily get over 7mbps to read files off the NAS connected to the WZR-HP-G300NH and the wireless range is fantastic. It also seems to draw less power than the Linksys (3watts as compared to 7watts for the Linksys).

Since I struggled for over a week to get everything working, I decided to document the procedure. Here are the exact steps to setup and configure the Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH with OpenWRT to act as a wireless router, NAS and torrent downloader.

Remember a few ground rules.

1. Rule one, make sure that all the features of the router works in its default firmware before you move further. If there is a issue with the hardware, you do not want to find out after you have voided the warranty.

2. On the warranty front, OpenWRT is not a supported firmware for the Buffalo, so you might need to move back to the official firmware if there is ever a need to open a warrarty request. Do not blame me if you end up messing everything and cannot revert for some reason.

3. The router is virtually un-brickable as it has TFTP support in its bios. So you can almost always recover in any worse case scenario. Just make sure you have a Linux machine or LiveCD that can be used to update the firmware with TFTP.

4. Have a UPS connected to the router when upgrading. Power cut halfway through a upgrade is one way to void point 3. This router takes almost 5 minutes for a flash update and goes through multiple boots. Never do anything with the router till the red diagnostic LED stops flashing and the green LED come on solid. Get some popcorn if you do not have patience !!!

5. Make sure you have the Indian (B0 C0) or a non Japanese version of the router. This 4 digit code is printed on the router itself above the default SSID (unfortunately no way to figure this out unless you open the box. But if you are buying from a dealer in India, you will not get the Japanese version). If you have a Japanese version (A0 A1 or A0 A3), STOP right now and read this link , there are lots of complications with the Japanese router upgrade.

Here goes:

1. Download the latest "buffalo_to_ddwrt_webflash-MULTI.bin"

Pick on the latest date in the ftp link, move to the buffalo_wzr-hp-g300nh folder to get your file.

ftp://dd-wrt.com/others/eko/BrainSlayer-V24-preSP2/

I particularly used the file from this link for my work.

Note : There is a easier way to directly move to OpenWRT using the TFTP method as described in the last section, but I will use the easy method, even if it means three firmware flashes !!!

2. Connect to 192.168.11.1 with your browser and go to the firmware update page.

Choose the file you downloaded in step 1 and wait till the router is flashed fully.

Note : I will be referencing 192.168.11.1 as the default router page. Sometime the default page could be 192.168.1.1. One of them will always work.

3. After the reboot, if you again go to the router homepage via your browser, you should now see the DD-WRT webpage.

Change the admin password so that you can use ssh and login using the same password you just set.

4. Login to the router via ssh (Can use putty.exe)

Run these commands :

cd /tmp
wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/backfire/10.03.1-rc4/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-wzr-hp-g300nh-jffs2-sysupgrade.bin
mtd -r write openwrt-ar71xx-wzr-hp-g300nh-jffs2-sysupgrade.bin linux

Note : As of now, 10.03.1-rc4 is the latest, always go for the latest version you find.

Wait for a full 6-9 minutes before you do anything. When the router comes up again, you should have OpenWRT running.

5. Run the following commands one by one to install all the USB and file system drives :

opkg update

Make sure this command above completes. If there is a issue with your network, the update will fail. Fix this before you move ahead.

opkg install kmod-fs-btrfs kmod-fs-ext2 kmod-fs-ext3 kmod-fs-ext4 kmod-fs-isofs kmod-fs-reiserfs kmod-fs-vfat kmod-fs-xfs

opkg install kmod-nls-cp1250 kmod-nls-cp1251 kmod-nls-cp437 kmod-nls-cp775 kmod-nls-cp850 kmod-nls-cp852 kmod-nls-cp866 kmod-nls-iso8859-1 kmod-nls-iso8859-13 kmod-nls-iso8859-15 kmod-nls-iso8859-2 kmod-nls-koi8r kmod-nls-utf8

opkg install kmod-usb2 kmod-usb-storage kmod-usb-storage-extras block-hotplug block-mount hotplug2

6. Connect a USB drive to the router and reboot.

Im going to assume that there is a external drive connected with a single partition formatted to ext3. If you need more partitions or a different file system, you probably know what you are doing, so tweak the commands !!!

7. The next set of commands are a safety net.

If you ever bootup without the USB drive connected, you might end up writing to the router flash and mess things, so the command below will make sure you cannot write anything to the share if the drive is not mounted.

mkdir /mnt/download -p
touch /mnt/download/WARNING_USB_DRIVE_IS_NOT_MOUNTED
chmod 444 /mnt/download -R

8. Run the following commands to setup the first partition to be mounted automatically :

uci set fstab.@mount[0].target=/mnt/download
uci set fstab.@mount[0].device=/dev/sda1
uci set fstab.@mount[0].fstype=auto
uci set fstab.@mount[0].enabled=1
uci set fstab.@mount[0].options=rw,sync,noatime,nodiratime
uci commit fstab

Reboot the router

9. Run the following commands to install samba3:

cd /mnt
chmod 777 download/
cd download/
mkdir -p /mnt/download/downloads
mkdir -p /mnt/download/torrents
chmod 777 downloads torrents

opkg update
opkg install samba3 luci-app-samba

uci set samba.@samba[0].name=Buffalo
uci set samba.@samba[0].description=Buffalo
uci set samba.@samba[0].workgroup=WORKGROUP
uci set samba.@sambashare[0]=sambashare
uci set samba.@sambashare[0].guest_ok=yes
uci set samba.@sambashare[0].path=/mnt/download/downloads
uci set samba.@sambashare[0].name=download
uci commit samba

10. Samba3 is now installed. Time to configure it.

Edit the file : /etc/samba/smb.conf.template

Add the lines :

force user = root
writeable = Yes
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777
inherit permissions = Yes

Remove the line:

invalid users = root

11. Run the command to start samba :

/etc/init.d/samba restart

At this point, use explorer to goto \\192.168.11.1 to make sure the samba share is accessible and writable.

12. Time to install transmission for the torrent downloads.

Run the following commands :

opkg install transmission-web
transmission-daemon -g /mnt/download/torrents
killall transmission-daemon
cd /mnt/download/torrents
cp settings.json settings.json.copy

13. Time to configure transmission startup :

Replace the contents of the file /etc/init.d/transmission with the text below :

#!/bin/sh /etc/rc.common

START=99

start(){
cp /mnt/download/torrents/settings.json.copy /mnt/download/torrents/settings.json
transmission-daemon -g /mnt/download/torrents
}

stop(){
killall transmission-daemon
}

14. Edit the file /mnt/download/torrents/settings.json.copy and replace all the content in the file with these lines below :

{
"bind-address-ipv4": "0.0.0.0",
"bind-address-ipv6": "::",
"blocklist-enabled": false,
"blocklist-url": "http://www.example.com/blocklist",
"cache-size-mb": 2,
"dht-enabled": true,
"download-dir": "/mnt/download/downloads",
"encryption": 1,
"incomplete-dir": "/mnt/download/incomplete-torrents",
"incomplete-dir-enabled": false,
"lazy-bitfield-enabled": true,
"lpd-enabled": false,
"message-level": 2,
"open-file-limit": 32,
"peer-limit-global": 240,
"peer-limit-per-torrent": 60,
"peer-port": 55555,
"peer-port-random-high": 65535,
"peer-port-random-low": 49152,
"peer-port-random-on-start": false,
"peer-socket-tos": 0,
"pex-enabled": true,
"port-forwarding-enabled": true,
"preallocation": 1,
"ratio-limit": 2,
"ratio-limit-enabled": true,
"rename-partial-files": true,
"rpc-authentication-required": false,
"rpc-bind-address": "0.0.0.0",
"rpc-enabled": true,
"rpc-password": "{414db619f34798e4204bce201b584670afd2795ax7vJCOc. ",
"rpc-port": 9091,
"rpc-username": "",
"rpc-whitelist": "*",
"rpc-whitelist-enabled": true,
"speed-limit-down": 1000,
"speed-limit-down-enabled": true,
"speed-limit-up": 100,
"speed-limit-up-enabled": true,
"start-added-torrents": true,
"trash-original-torrent-files": false,
"umask": 0,
"upload-slots-per-torrent": 14
}

If you know what you are doing, feel free to change any of the values above to change the behavior of your torrent downloader.

15. Run the command below to make transmission auto start with the router :

cd /etc/init.d; chmod +x transmission; ./transmission enable

16. Increase the life of the hard drive by making it sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity :

opkg update
opkg install hd-idle luci-app-hd-idle
uci set hd-idle.@hd-idle[0]=hd-idle
uci set hd-idle.@hd-idle[0].disk=sda
uci set hd-idle.@hd-idle[0].idle_time_unit=minutes
uci set hd-idle.@hd-idle[0].idle_time_interval=5
uci set hd-idle.@hd-idle[0].enabled=1
uci commit

opkg install of the luci component might return a few errors, just ignore them.

16. Reboot the router and browse to : http://192.168.11.1:9091

You should see the transmission webpage from where you can add and control all torrent downloads.

That is about it. Add torrents, let the router download all night, then use samba to copy the downloaded file to your machine !!!

Have fun downloading and NAS'ing

If you mess up with the steps and your router stops responding : :

1. Boot into linux on the PC (LiveCD will work well), typically Ubuntu 10.10. Connect the PC network cable to the lan port closest to the blue WAN port. Switch OFF the router.

2. Run the following commands (substitute the XX:XX with your router's MAC ID which is printed on the box):

ifconfig eth0 192.168.11.2 netmask 255.255.255.0

arp -s 192.168.11.1 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

3. Now run the tftp command and enter the commands under it one by one,

tftp 192.168.11.1
binary
rexmt 1
timeout 60
trace
put openwrt-ar71xx-wzr-hp-g300nh-jffs2-tftp.bin

4. Now turn on the power to the router even as the command above is running.

The TFTP command would timeout a few times and will start the process as soon as the router is turned on. Wait for a full 10 minutes after the tftp command returns (yes, it takes that long !) and you should be back up and running.

Full guide to build a cheap and powerful HTPC !

2010-12-22T13:12:00.006+05:30

I checked that there are quite a few threads on building HTPC's, but what prompted me to write a new one is because there are quite a few changes from a few months ago in the HTPC world, specifically with XBMC. So what has changed now ?

Hardware acceleration has been added in Windows 7 via DXVA2 in XBMC 10.0 which released in Dec 2010. What this effectively means is that if you use a supported graphics card, XBMC will offload all the video rendering to the card (Remember that this option is available only in Windows Vista and Windows 7, not in Windows XP). You will see the effect this small change has on the choice of hardware in your HTPC.

First things first, the hardware list. I will categorize a few items with a *Splurge*, which means you can blow up the money on them if you are really interested in reducing the noise to a minimum or looks to the maximum in the machine :

1. CPU : When I used to build HTPC's a few months ago, I used to go with a decent CPU and motherboard, specifically a Intel Pentium Dual core E5300 to E5700 and a good mini-itx motherboard with inbuilt graphics support. This used to result in a system that is capable of handling almost every movie I threw at it, save for movies encoded with extravagantly high bitrates.

As of today, the CPU has lesser role in the HTPC. so you can reuse any old cpu that you have and it will work great. Im currently reusing a old Athlon X2 3600+ and it works just fantastic.

In short, if you are setting up a new system, get a Pentium Dual core E5700 for Rs 3000. Else reuse any decent CPU from the last 5 years.

2. Motherboard : Trust me, just go and get the most basic and cheapest micro-atx motherboard that you can lay your hands on. Just make sure it matches the socket for the CPU that you purchased. The ASUS M2N68-AM is a simple choice for about Rs 2000 if you are going the AMD way and the Intel G31/41 motherboards are similarly priced.

The choice of the board will also depend of whether you have any old DDR2 memory sticks lying around. If you have even a single 1gb DDR2 stick with you, go for a DDR2 board. Else stick your neck out and go for DDR3. Im reusing a old Asus AM2 motherboard that was lying around as I had a extra stick of 2gb DDR2 with me.

*Splurge* : If you have the moolah to blow up, you can get a mini-itx motherboard from the US, or if you are plain lucky, you might get it in India. Mini-itx boards are definitely better looking when assembled in a small case, but the boards cost upwards of 5k.

Cabinet : The big question with very few answers in India. The cabinet is what brings in the eye candy from your friends when you showoff, it does not matter how much you blew up on the components inside the box, the cabinet needs to look good. Unless you want to buy a cheapo cabinet from iball, I would recommend three choices:

Choice 1 : Cooler Master Elite 360

A beautiful cabinet that has all the quality you need and has a horizontal layout so that you can keep it near your receiver. One of the best things about this cabinet is that the PSU sits in the front and blows air out from the front. So if you have woodwork done and the cabinet sits in a closed enclosure, this will allow the air to come out from the front. Priced between 2k-3k on ebay.

Choice 2 : Silverstone SG02B (My personal preference)

PrimeABGB is currently running a great offer till new year where you get a Silverstone 500w PSU free with the Silverstone SG02B cabinet. The cabinet itself costs 4.5k otherwise and is a compact one that can take Mini/Micro motherboards. Looks good and is a Silverstone, what more do I say.

Choice 3 : CFI Cube

If you have already blown money in getting a Mini-itx case, this cabinet will work well for you as it only takes mini-itx boards. Comes with a inbuilt 150w PS.

PSU : Any Basic PSU of 250w will do as the machine is not a power guzzler. On the other hand, as most experienced folks in TE will tell you, this is one component where you should gladly put in a little more money and get peace of mind.

*Splurge* : Get a good PSU with a 120mm fan. This will reduce the PSU noise to a bare minimum. I personally got a Corsair CX400 for 3k.

But you will do equally well with either of FSP Saga II 350W or Gigabyte 400w.

CPU cooler : Since the CPU will not be stressed much, you can tweak the bios to run the fan at the lowest necessary speed and save on money.

*Splurge* : Get the Cooler Master Vortex Plus CPU cooler. It is a low height CPU cooler for Intel and AMD and works cool and quiet with a 92mm fan, meant specifically for building HTPC. You cannot just hear anything when the machine is idling. Available locally for Rs 1700.

Video Card : I definitely do not want to get into a ATI versus NVidia war here, but we cannot go much wrong with either here. The Linux support is better for NVidia, but for the DXVA2 support that we need, Radeon works equally well.

My personal preference is the Radeon HD5450 passive cooled card. Passive cooler, great technology and good support in XBMC. Most importantly, it has support for 7.1 Bitrate Audio. Effectively means that you can pass pristine Audio via the HDMI to your receiver and the video to the TV from the receiver. So Dolby TrueHD and DTS MasterHD over HDMI: a necessary addition for serious Home Theatre enthusiasts.

I picked up the HIS HD5450 Silence for 2.9k shipped. Comes with extra brackets for small cases.

Audio :If you do not want to use the HDMI out for audio, or if you have a older receiver that can only take optical output, you can add a Turtle beach Micro II USB adaptor for unprocessed sound via optical output. Costs about Rs 1500 in India via Global ebay. The reason Im suggesting the USB adaptor rather than a full fledged PCI card is because the PCI card will use up a slot in the machine, leading to less airflow.

If you want pristine 7.1 bitstream via optical output, I would also suggest the Turtle Beach Montego 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card. It is a awesome sound card. Available for Rs 3500 via global ebay. This card is supported out of the box in XBMC.

Hard drive : You want a cool and fast hard drive. Two choices based on how your media is available for viewing. If you already have a NAS server hosting your movies, get a cheap and small hard drive, preferably WD green or Blue. If your HTPC will also host your movies, get a WD Greeen 2tb drive and use the first 20gb for XBMC and the rest to store your movies.

*Splurge* : Get a Super talent 16gb SSD card from Global ebay for 3k. Or if you want to splurge more, get a OCZ 40gb Vertex 2 SSD for 5.5k with local warranty. And the XBMC box will boot up crazy fast, will run cool and zero noise !

DVD drive : Just pick any of the LG or Samsung DVD writers for 1k. This will become your default DVD player. Liteon drives are great, but they make a little more noise than I would like on a media center.

*Splurge* : I have personally not used a Blu-ray drive, but I do not see why they will not work. If you have the moolah, get a Blu-ray reader for 6k !!! It will work full fledged as a blu-ray player as XBMC gets better.

Media Remote : You need a simple remote control to sit on the couch and control the movie. I would recommend the USB IR Media Remote Controller for PC. It works very well on XBMC without any configuration and is cheap.

DealExtreme: Universal USB IR Media Remote Controller

Also, I personally wanted to use my existing Logitech Harmony remote with this setup. The code to use the Logitech Harmony with the above USB IR adaptor is Chinavasion CVSB-983 ! Works flawlessly without any changes.

*Splurge* : If you want some geek factor, get the Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard for $35

Its a unique combination and works great with XBMC. Only downside, no backlight when you are sitting in pitch darkness and want to press a key.

And that is all you need !!!

Assemble the stuff, install Windows 7, video drivers and download and install XBMC 10.0. Once XBMC is installed, the key is to make sure that you enable DXVA2 in XBMC.

If you need more info on this, go to the official link.
How To: Enable Hardware Accelerated Decoding via DXVA2 in XBMC for Windows - XBMC

And that is it, connect the Video card via HDMI to your HD capable TV and enjoy the movies via XBMC. If all goes well, the cool and quiet machine you just assembled should be purring along showing a CPU usage of less then 5% to render the most complicated of movies and pass pristine audio to your receiver.

Some of you might have already seen the famous "killa sampla" scene which wrecks havox when rendered by any CPU without hardware rendering support (Including my AMD X6). Well, XBMC used to suffer and shudder when it would try to render this video, but with DVXA support, it plays flawlessly on my old Athlon X2.

Download the full video, but check it out in 1080p in Youtube !

YouTube - Bird 42 MBit ABR + 1 5 MBit

I personally built my new HTPC using a old AMD X2, a older AM2 motherboard and DDR2 memory. You can also put your old machine to good use and spend a little to assemble a great HTPC.

Choosing a good Internal Hard Drive...

2010-12-15T11:01:00.007+05:30

When was the last time you bought a new internal hard drive ? It used to be a simple decision three years back, pick the cheapest Seagate or Western digital based on the drive capacity that you need and you are all set to use and enjoy it for many years.

Not so anymore, especially if you need a high capacity internal drive. There are so many newer models and sub versions that it becomes a major pain if you buy the wrong drive. Here is a quick write up on the various options based on my own experience:

Internal Drive: There are a few factors to consider if you need a new internal drive.

1. Usage : Is this a drive that is going to go into your computer and be used once in a while for data access ? Or is this going to go into a enclosure that will be on many hours in a day (say for media player, FTP server or a backup server). Or do you need it as a primary boot drive in your primary computer ?

2. Heat : How much heat will the enclosure create ? Is it a nice computer cabinet with plenty of fans to circulate air or is it a small NAS/USB enclosure with hardly any fan movement ?

3. OS : What operating system (Windows 7, Windows XP and Linux) will be used to access the drive ? And will you have some form of Raid ? Yes, it seems like a idiotic question, but trust me, this has a bearing on the choice of drive.

Once you have answers to the three questions above, you can pick the right drive from below:

Seagate 7200rpm 1tb (Barracuda 7200.12) : (Fast, Hot, All OS) These are fast and really hot drives. They are ideally suited for boot drives which are quick, but need a lot of air circulation to keep them cool. They work well on any operating system. I have seen one such drive being used in a enclosed media player that failed because the temperature reached over 80degrees. When we took it out, it was so hot that we could not even hold it. So DO NOT use them in tight enclosures.

One point to note. When it comes to Seagate drives, avoid the older Barracuda 7200.11 drives at any cost. There are some good drives in that series, but the amount of issues and heat in the series is not worth taking a risk especially when the 7200.12 series is easily available.

Seagate LP 5900rpm 1tb and 2tb (Barracuda 7200.12) : (Medium fast, medium hot, All OS) These drives are the Seagate answer to the slower competition drives that generate less heat. They are a good compromise drive if you have a enclosure with less air circulation and are still looking at reasonably good performance. My second choice for NAS and USB enclosures as they still run hotter than the Western Digital.

There is one note of caution that I read with these drives. The Seagate LP has a much lower load/unload rating of 50,000 cycles, . Reason being, the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB uses the older Contact Start-Stop (CSS) technology to park its heads, while the other drives use the more updated and more reliable Ramp Loading technology. Not sure if we will ever hit the 50k number, but you never know !

Western Digital WD20EARS : (Fast, Cool, Windows 7, no Raid)

These are excellent drives in general and come with 64mb cache. Run fast and run cool and are a great value for money. But with all good choices, there is a major caveat. The WD20EARS, along with the companion 1TB WD10EARS, are the first 3.5" drives to hit the market with Western Digital's new formatting structure, which divides the drive into 4k byte sectors instead of the smaller 512-byte sectors used in current drive technology.

What this means is that if you want to use a old OS like Windows XP or a NAS box or a USB enclosure with its own adapter, the incorrect partitioning and formatting can make the drives three times slower and the data very unreliable. If you need a fantastic drive on a new OS like Windows 7 or a new Linux variant, go for this drive with your eves closed. But if you are not a geek who can find their way around with manual partitions and sector alignments, stay away from this drive for all other operating systems and enclosures.

Western Digital WD20EVDS : (Fast, Cool, All OS, no Raid) :

The latest entrant in the crowd, WD calls these as media capable drives that will fit in any existing enclosures. In layman's terms, it means that WD realized the the WD20EARS drives would have been winners without the advanced format crap that they added. So they took out the advanced format and made normal drives that go anywhere, run cool and are reasonably fast). Alas, only 32mb cache !

Western Digital WD20EADS : (Medium fast, Cool, All OS, no Raid) Four platter 2tb drives that are not available easily anymore. They are drives that run cool, work across all OS and are generally average performance. Old drives, so stay away if possible.

WD2002FYPS : (Fast, cool, RAID) WD's way to make money if you need raid support. If you need to use the drives in a raid enclosure, make sure you get these drives, otherwise the normal drives do not respond fast enough for the raid commands, thus rendering the raid unusable. There are plenty of tips in the net about using a WD internal tool to make all drives RAID compatible, but the tip is not a gurantee.

Samsung F4 2tb : (Blazing Fast, Cucumber COOL, All OS) One of the best drives available in the market for all and any purpose. The only black spot is that the Samsung warranty is not the best of class and there are plenty of horror stories. The bad news is that it is just not available in countries like India (I would be willing to pay a 10% premium if these were sold in India !).

Build your own expandable NAS box !

2009-10-25T13:47:00.008+05:30

One more step towards a networked home, I needed a NAS server where I could keep adding disks as necessary with no restrictions ! Every ready made NAS server in the merket has its own restrictions like huge cost, missing RAID capabilities, not expandable to more than four disks, missing NAS/Samba mixed usage and so on.

So build my own NAS box was the mantra. What I needed:

1. Cheap processor with low power consumption

I already had a dual core 330 Atom board at home, just had not found a use for it. This CPU would be perfect for the NAS.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121359
Cost Rs 3500.

2. Small cabinet that does not take up space or power and makes no noise.

This was the tough one, especially in India. After a lot of research, I zeroed in on the Panache T3300 as the cabinet. It is small, in fact really compact and runs off a DC power board. This means that there is no PSU in the case (hence no fan/noise) and it runs off a DC adapter like a laptop. Disadvantage is the lack of a DVD drive.

Note the Panache box kept next to a WD external hard disk and a encyclopedia to get a idea of its size ! :bleh:

http://panache.co.in/store/product_info.php?products_id=111
Cost Rs 3200.

3. Operating system for the NAS box

Lot of options here. Windows embedded, standard linux distros and more. But what caught my eye is the FreeNAS distribution. It is a embedded OS that runs off a 200mb image, configured completely from the web and works like a charm on the Atom. More importantly, very configurable and very expandable. Just perfect for my needs ! :hap2:

http://www.freenas.org/
Cost Rs 0 !

4. Install disk for the OS on the NAS box

An 3.5" disk is out of question on the small panache box. A 2.5" disk is acceptable, but still draws 4-8 watts of power for no reason. And the minimum size is 40gb when I just need one GB of space.

A little more research got me onto a fantastic solution. I found out that there are IDE adaptors for compact flash cards for about Rs 100. The bad news is that a compact flash card is expensive. But here also, I stumbled across a great solution. A CF adaptor that used cheap SD cards internally !!!

A 2GB disk for a grand total of Rs 1000 and uses 0.2 watts of power!!!

http://dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.711
Cost Rs 100

http://dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.22338
Cost Rs 700 + Rs 200 for a SD card (Be a little carefull when you buy a SD card. It has to support DMA access, otherwise the OS will not install on the disk)

5. Memory. Less is more in this case !!!

A 512 DDR2 stick would have been plenty, but I had a spare 1GB stick with me and used it. Can hardly see any difference in performance between this and a 2gb stick.

All set, I assembled the Atom box and made sure everything is working.

Now is the time to download the FreeNAS OS and boot off the OS with a external DVD drive. There is a nice option to install the embedded system to the disk. Choose this and install the embedded FreeNAS OS to the attached compact flash drive.

Attach the external USB drives that you want to share, assign a IP address and reboot the machine. When the machine is up, you can connect to the headless machine from a browser at http://myfreeNASipAddress and configure the machine, the attached drives, the network shares, the services and everything else from the web !!!

You are all set. The network access is extremely fast and you can add as many USB drives as you want and share them on the network either cvia NFS or Samba. You can even setup software raid for the drives that need protection.

The NAS box up and running, attached to a monitor. See the power being drawn on the side. Just 0.11 Amps, which translates to a grand total of 25watts for a fully running NAS box. :hap2:

Total cost of the setup was Rs 9k without the external hard disks. For a NAS server that is expandable to as many USB disks as you want with RAID and multiple share options, this is worth it !

Hack the WDTV into a networked snazzy media player and Linux box !

2009-10-23T13:14:00.009+05:30

I had a lot of spare time yesterday and thought, what the heck, it is time to hack the one device that I have not yet touched in the house

The WDTV has been a great media player for me over the last year, plays every damn file I throw at it, but I do not quite like the UI and more importantly, it is a pain to keep shuttling the attached hard disk to the computer to update the movies. So here is how I hacked my WDTV into a networked snazzy little linux box !!!

Step 1: The simplest and best hack for the WDTV :

http://b-rad.cc/wdlxtv

Just download the binary firmware file and place it in the root of a USB stick and reboot the WDTV. It should pick up the new firmware and update it. Step one done with the full fledged linux running on the WDTV !

By the way, there are quite a few options for hacking the WDTV. Two of the options I have listed below are for the advanced users who love to fiddle around in linux.

http://b-rad.cc/wdtv-firmware-dvd-enabled

http://wiki.wdtv.org/doku.php?id=ext3-boot-releases

Blow away the firmware files from the USB stick, from here on you will need the USB stick for your hacks.

Step 2: You need logs from here on to see what is happening on the WDTV.

Download : http://b-rad.cc/log-saver.app.bin

Place it on the root of the USB stick, boot the WDTV and when you shutdown, you should be able to see the boot log files on your USB stick.

Step 3: You need to buy a USB wireless network adaptor for the WDTV to go wireless !

There are a limited set of options here for what adpator you can use. See:
USB Wireless adaptor support

It seems like any adaptor that uses the rt2870 chipset is your best bet. The rt73 seems to be the easiest to get in India. The Dlink DWA-110 (1.4k) and the Dlink DWA-140 (2k+) adaptors are both available in ebay India for your reference and both use chipsets that work well on the WDTV.

I personally have the BELKIN Wireless G Plus MIMO Network Adapter which uses the rt2870 chipset :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833314026

Step 4: You need the driver pack for the network adaptor.

See this thread:

http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=1029.0

Follow the thread properly, get the dat file and the bin file for the adaptor drivers and drop them into the root of the usb key. Now reboot and if you have done the steps properly, you should see the adaptor lighting up and connecting to your router. I personally use WPA-AES encryption on my router and it works perfectly.

Step 5 : Install Samba server and NFS client on the WDTV

This is the part where I screwed up a lot as I had a lot of trouble trying to get the Samba server to export the USB devices. Anyways, it was just a matter of editing the smb.conf file to export your USB devices and bingo, the USB device attched to the WDTV is now visible on the network from any Windows box. Now I copy new movies sitting on my computer to the hard drive attached to the WDTV. It takes time as the processor is slow, but what the heck is 10 minutes extra when it saves me from moving the hard disk all over the place every second day.

Follow this post and you should be able to setup Samba pretty easily:
http://b-rad.cc/609/wdlxtv-app-pack-samba

Note that it is possible to mount NFS drives to the WDTV so that you can view media remotely, I have not yet attempted that. That is a experiment for another day, another time !

Step 6: Making the WDTV interface look better !!!

This was the fun part. Use custom packs to snazzy up the UI.

http://wdtv.free.fr/osdmod/

This changes the icons and makes the WDTV menus look snazzy. Like this:

Step 7: Show movie information for every movie.

This is something that I always wanted, go to a movie folder and get all information about the movie before I play it !!! There is a program called tvixie that does this. Download the point it to the movies folder in your hard disk and it downloads all the information in JPG form for all the movie to the same movie folder. And this is how it looks:

Here is the link : http://www.tvixie.com/

Step 8: Use the TVIXIE information on your WDTV.

See this thread below and use the plugin. As simple as that !!!

http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?PHPSESSID=d914fdbda1cd13578366c3a7941c1262&topic=1039.0

When you do this, this is how you browse your movies :

And clicking on any movie gives this screen full of info :

This was the way the WDTV was meant to be used !!!

P.S : I have provided links to the original author's webpage wherever there was a need to refer to someone else's work. This means that they have the full credit for their work and I do not mean to infringe on anyone's copyright.

The 24 hour torrent downloader plus file server !

2009-08-22T20:53:00.012+05:30

I have been obsessed with power consumption for a little while and have been considering ways to bring down the same in my home. One of the big power drainers was the downloading of movies via torrents. The PC used to be up all night downloading movies using up a full 140 watts with a super fast quad core processor and a graphics card drawing good amount of power while just idling. So I was looking for ways to prevent this.

The second issue I had was with the sharing of data between the multiple devices at home and having too much redundant data across drives for various purposes. The ideal solution was to have a network drive which allows all the devices to talk to the drive over the network. But NFS drives are prohibitively expensive and come with too many caveats. So I wanted something simple and cheap.

So here is one great solution. I purchased the ASUS WL-500g Premium V2 wireless router for Rs 5.5k and this one device does all that I want and consumes less than 8 of power for all the wonderful work it does. Here is the router :

The hardware chip on this router is a broadcom, which means that you can flash plenty of opensource firmwares onto this and make it into a full fledged linux machine. DD-WRT, Oleg and Tomato were the options for firmware and I choose the Oleg's firmware since it closely resembles the Asus factory firmware and is well extensible. Here is the link for the firmware: http://oleg.wl500g.info/

Next step, install "transmission", a torrent client to this linux box. Install the windows agent onto your PC and bingo, you have a torrent downloader running on the router, controllable from the PC. Here is how the PC applicaiton looks like when it connects to "transmission" running on the Asus router.

Im sure you are wondering where the downloaded file is saved ? Now the beauty is that the Asus router has two USB ports. Connect a USB drive to it and the linux OS on the router shares the whole drive on the network as it was a network file system. Works like a charm !

Part two of the project was to make sure that I get a USB device that itself that does not draw too much power. So I opted for a 1.8" hard disk with a external enclosure that consumes 1 watt of power. Gives me space for 60 gigs of download space and also serves as a swap disk for the linux box.

Just for the sake of curiosity, above is a picture that shows four external USB drives, a Verbatim 3.5" disk, a Transcend 2.5" disk, a Diva 1.8" disk and a regular USB flash disk. The 1.8" disk seems to be the best compromise between pocket size, speed and price.

So folks, project succeeded ! I connect to transmission on the router from my PC, start off a any download (FTP, torrent and HTTP) and switch off the PC. Download happens all night and the electricity meter is hardly running. And I can monitor it using the transmission internal webpage from my mobile phone !!!

Do remember that all this does not change the main job of the router and it still functions as a fantastic wireless router.

And to top it all up, I have connected a 1 terabyte external hard disk to the Asus box. I switch it on when I need to and it gives me a 1TB network disk !

Aah the sweet satisfaction of a job well done...

"Kill A Watt" for 220v !

2009-08-08T07:56:00.010+05:30

I have been recently thinking a lot about how to conserve power. Part of this is driven by the ever increasing number of gadgets in the house which are leading to larger and larger electricity bills !

I did a lot on searching on the net to figure out if a device to measure the amount of current being drawn by any device is available on the net. Sure it was, "Kill a watt" is a much used, much loved device to do this exactly. Unfortunately, like most things American, it uses 120v and there is nothing for the 220v side of the world. And one 220v option available for Europe was just ridiculously expensive.

So that set me thinking that this should not be too difficult to build. With the help of a few friends who were good at circuits, I finally built it for just Rs 750 ($15).

Here is the circuit diagram of the same. Remember that the current has to flow in series through the multimeter. The current has to pass through the multimeter and the selected component in series to measure the current flowing through the circuit.

Now for some live photos and DIY steps of how I to made it.

Disclaimer : Remember that we are talking of live current here, so the standard disclaimers apply. If you electrocute yourself or burn down your house, it is all your fault !!! Be careful with the circuits and do not connect anything till you are reasonably confident it is all going to work.

What do you need ? A digital multimeter that can measure current, these are available for Rs 600 in any good electrical shop. Remember that the multimeter's available for Rs 200 cannot measure current. They only work on DC and measure current voltages. (If there is a doubt, check if there is a "A~" option among the options).

This is the one I used:

You also need a ready made switch box, again available in any electrical shop for Rs 50. Make sure you get a 5amps model as I would not be comfortable connecting a 15amps component to the multimeter.

Now, you are ready to connect the multimeter to the switch box. Chop off one end of the multimeter cable so that you can connect it directly to the switch box. Remember to cut the cable from the side which does not connect to the mutimeter (It will be a special molex cable on one end to connect to the multimeter and a sharp pin on the other side. Cut the side with the sharp pins). Current flows from the mains to the box and the multimeter wires are connected in series.

Here is the snap of the same.

Close the box and bring the cables from one side of the box so that no live wires are hanging out. This is how the completed box looks like:

Now connect the multimeter molex cables to the multimeter and leave it there. This is because current will be flowing through the molex ends and you do not want them to touch the ground.

That is it basically. Set the multimeter to the 20amps mode to make sure the fuse does not blow, connect ANY device to the box and plug the box to the mains. Switch on the current and the device and you can start seeing live data on how many amps are being drawn by the device. If you multiply the amps reading with 235, you get the number of watts being drawn by the device. Note that even though India claims to run on 220v, we actually get anywhere between 220v and 240v in the mains. I seem to be getting 235v almost constantly, hence I multiply by 235. You can measure the voltage in your house using the same multimeter at the precise moment you are taking the reading if you want perfect figures, otherwise 235 is a close approximation.

See the picture here of my old 17" TFT monitor monitor connected to the circuit.

The 17" TFT monitor is drawing 0.21 amps, which translates to 50 watts of current being used. Note that my new 22" LCD draws a similar amount of current which shows how electronic components are getting more and more power efficient !!!

That is it folks, connect any 5amps device to the circuit and measure the current being used.

A homemade DIY Kill a watt on 220v for Rs 750 !!!

Please leave comments if you find this post usefull !

Life is all in reverse !!!

2009-04-10T22:16:00.002+05:30

The most unfair thing about life is the way we keep growing old and the way it all ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time and what do you get at the end of it?

A death. What`s that, a bonus?

I think the life cycle is all backward. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home where you are taken care of with full government benefits. You get kicked out when you`re at the retirement age, you get a gold watch and nice gifts and you start to go to work.

You work 40 years until you`re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do girls, drugs, alcohol; you party, and you get ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities.

And then you become a little baby. You suck around all day with no restrictions, sleep when you want and pee and shit where you want. And then you move into the best natural SPA in the world, your mother's womb; you spend your last nine months floating around, everything being taken care off and in complete control.

And then you finish off as an fantastic orgasm !!!

Six crores to provide security to Kasab

2009-04-02T18:23:00.003+05:30

Aaaargh, I wish I could just throw out these ridiculous politicians and their asshole'ish laws to the outer space. People in India people don't get food and thousands of sick people die of hunger, but we are busy guarding an enemy and treating him as a VVIP.

It is not inconceivable to see Kasab contesting elections in India in the far future.

Read furthur...

Ajmal Amir Kasab -- the lone terrorist caught alive in the November 26 attacks in Mumbai-- will get to travel around in special hi-tech secured vehicle.

The Maharashtra government has imported a van costing a whopping Rs 6 crore.

According to media reports, the van will be handed over to Indo-Tibetan Border Patrol, which is providing security to Kasab. The van is fitted with a scanner that will detect any explosive in the periphery of 200 metres.

Meanwhile, as the government spends crores to ensure Kasab's safety, the lawyer defending him will be entitled to receive a meagre Rs 900 (as per the provisions of legal aid) at the end of trial.

Rules from the male side...

2009-03-26T17:54:00.002+05:30

Now here are the rules from the male side. Please note that these are all numbered "1" ON PURPOSE because every one of them is equally important.

1. Crying is blackmail.

1. Ask for what you want.
Let us be clear on this one:
Subtle hints do not work!
Strong hints do not work!
Obvious hints do not work!
Just say it!

1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.

1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a Problem. See a doctor.

1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become null and void after 1 Day.

1. If you won't dress like the Victoria's Secret girls, don't Expect us to act like soap opera guys.

1. If you think you're fat, you probably are. Do not ask us.

1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one

1. You can either ask us to do something Or tell us how you want it done. Not both. And if you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.

1. Whenever possible, Please say whatever you have to say during commercials.

1. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.

1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing", we will act like nothing' s wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.

1. If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, expect an answer you don't want to hear.

1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine. Really.

1. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as CRICKET, finance or the next door good looking lady.

1. You have enough clothes. And you have too many shoes.

1. I am in shape. Round IS a shape!

Mumbai attack from Pakistan's point of view..

2008-12-01T16:28:00.003+05:30

This has got to be the most hilarious piece of crap I have ever heard in my life. I understand that Pakistani's act dumb when it comes to India, but this is taking it too far !!!

http://www.hotklix.com/?ref=content/152704

Take a look at this video to hear the Pakistan perspective on the Mumbai attacks !

Oh god, this is just so painfull...

2008-12-01T16:12:00.006+05:30

It took me three days before I could get into any sort of a mood to type. The last week has been very sad. I was somehow feeling very depressed even though its the nth time there have been attacks on India this year. This attack is somehow looking different, say even compared to the attack on the Parliment, since it targets the very points that the emerging India takes pride in. The coordinated attack is so unlike the serial bombings (which were more of a sleuth attack) as it shows that we are helpless in every aspect. It also shows how easy is it for a person to walk into any place he wants and create panic there. It also shows how porous the borders are if a group of people could get into a speed boat and enter the ports so freely.

Power, Money and Vote bank (thus Religion) seem to be the only things that the neta's care about and Im feeling vulnerable that we are sitting in a country where there is no value to our lives. There is no solution in sight and even worse, no attempt at making the situation any better. And we are flanked by two neighbours, one of whom is on the way to crush us with their economic growth and progress and the other who is hell bent on jumping off the cliff while dragging us along with it.

More importantly, this attack brings in one major change, it will brand India as very unsafe for every foreigner; includes investors, business people, sports persons and tourists.

It is a sad and disgusting situation to be in...

In the meantime, one article caught my eye. I have cut and pasted the article here, take a look and you will realize that the politicians care about nothing and you will also realize why the new generation of leaders are not any different.

And then the Maharashtra CM taking along Ram Gopal Varma (RGV) to the site for a first hand inspection.

Aah, for crying out loud, is anyone listening to the country and what it needs ?

Stocks to buy in the Indian Stock market !

2008-10-28T16:43:00.013+05:30

Its been some time since I put my foot, the whole of it into my mouth !!! So I thought this is a good time to do so by publishing online what stocks I follow and buy.

The markets have been trashed out of shape for a whole lot of reasons and stocks are at such mouth watering levels that I can no longer stay out of the market (For the record, I moved every last penny out of the markets at a Sensex level of 15,000 for a variety of reasons). Having ridden the market on the journey from a Sensex level of 6,000 to 21,000, it is almost crystal clear to me that this is probably the best time of the decade to make money, even if it takes 3 years to do so.

Im no expert in the stock markets, but I have been fairly successful over the last 10 years in making money from it (even though a few of my friends insist on calling me lucky rather than smart !). I have made all the common/silly mistakes in the past and still continue to do blunders that change my portfolio from being a fantastic one to a moderately succesfull one. In fact I always land up with one dud stock my list that I keep averaging and it ends up screwing me up.

Why am I saying all this before I come up with my list ? Because disclaimers do matter in this corporate world and I do not want my ass to be dragged out by some loser who claims that he lost money trying to follow my advice. I do not want anyone to blindly look at this list, assume it is a good list of stocks, buy them, lose money and then come kill me !!!

So here goes the list of stocks that I own as of Oct 20th :

1. Reliance Ind
2. Reliance Capital Ltd
3. Punj Lloyd Ltd
4. Adlab Films
5. Neyveli Lignites
6. Jaiprakash Associates Ltd
7. Relaince Petroleum Ltd
8. Radico Khaitan Ltd
9. Welspun-Gujarat Stah
10. Tata Teleservices (Mah)
11. Reliance Communications Ltd
12. Glenmark Pharma
13. Suzlon Energy Ltd

And a list of stocks that Im eying like a hawk, waiting to get the next salary so that I can buy them !

1. Mundra Port
2. ICICI Bank (Little doubtful)
3. TISCO (Little doubtful)
4. Bharti Airtel
5. Larsen and Toubro
6. SBI Bank

This is my personal selections and are in no way a indication of what you should buy or sell. Let us see how I do in a few months from now.

Why are the markets crashing - no technical jargon !!!

2008-10-16T18:37:00.010+05:30

I have been getting a lot of friendly inquiries from friends on whether I can decode the crisis in the markets and explain it to them in plain English !!! The media has created such a ruckus along with the falling markets that everyone and anyone is suddenly worried sick of the economy, the markets, recession, their jobs, salaries and whatever else you can think of !

So what is happening ? I do not want to type a long explanation or bore you with technical explanations, but will try and explain the problem in plain English ! There are few issues that have built up over the last 10 or so years:

1. Banks have lent more money than they collected as deposits and spread their hands all over the world in the name of globalization !!! For example, banks in America borrowed money from banks in Japan at 1% interest, gave the money to people in India at 7% and pocketed the 6% difference. This worked till the currencies, especially the US dollar were stable. When the US$ started falling like crazy, the 6% profit turned into a 2% loss and suddenly, all banks started scrambling for money, thus leading to chaos.

2. Banks have lent money to people they should not have lent at all. This was the essence of the sub-prime crisis. People who earned low salaries and others with less than stable income were given loans at slightly higher rates to buy homes. When they could not pay back the EMI's, the banks had to pick up the house and sell it off. But by then, the houses had lost half their value as the housing markets were terribly down.

For example, I buy a house for $100,000 with a down payment of $5000. Since my job is not stable, the bank makes me pay a higher interest of 10% which I agree. After making payments for a year, I see that the housing rates have collapsed and now my house is worth just $50,000. So I stop paying the EMI's, the logic being I do not care about the $5000 I put as down payment, or the $6000 I paid as EMI all year. If I get out now, I lose $11,000. If I stay on in the house, I have lost $50,000 of the house value. So I let the bank take over my house.

The problem for the bank is that it has a $100,000 liability on its books against a property worth just $50,000. Multiply the problem with a few millions houses and suddenly, the bank's financial s are looking terrible and the stock markets are thrashing the bank stock !!!

3. Banks have lent money to each other by holding securities that have shaky fundamentals.

To take a example, the bank mentioned in point two wanted to raise money. So it sells bonds that are backed by its own name and offers 10% return on the bonds. Since the bank had run great for over 100 years, other banks and folks like you and me buy the bonds and hope to get the 10% return.

When the bank starts to ruin its books from point 2, the stock market thrashes the bank and suddenly the investors are worried and want to redeem the bonds, even if at a loss. Since the bank has no money to offer, its rating get thrashed and the stock gets battered even more, thus completing the cycle of downfall of the bank.

Some banks also raise money from other institutions by offering their own stock as collateral. If a institution lent money to the bank in our example and took the bank stock as collateral, the institution is now holding a security that is not worth the paper it was printed on. And along with the original bank that went down, the institution that lent money against the bank's stock is also going down !

Finance is built on trust, and suddenly that trust has been replaced by fear all over the world. That is the essence of the entire problem ! Banks everywhere in the world are not willing to lend money to other banks and they are not willing to take any kind of security that the companies are willing to offer. When there is no money in the system, everyone postpones their buying and investing decisions, thus leading to even lesser money in the markets.

And the problem gets deeper till it gets us to the shit hole that we are all in currently !!!

Long time since I blogged...

2008-10-16T18:31:00.002+05:30

Aah, its been a long time since I blogged. Possibly the thrill of starting a new blog died on me ! To be more frank, I think more about writing now a days than I actually write ! A bad biker cuts me off on the road and on the rest of my drive home, Im thinking about how desperately I want to blog about bad driving and what all I want to mention in there. And by the time Im home, Im reasonably happy that I have a excellent article to write about in the blog next day and then I hit the next issue I want to blog about and start thinking about it !!!

Its a never ending story, hopefully all the thoughts will start coming down on the blog soon !

Sell dollars stocks and buy India stocks !!!

2008-03-26T23:49:00.005+05:30

Pursuant to my last note on why you should not hold onto stock options in the company you work with, I would like to present more compelling reasons !!!

When you sell stock options in a foreign company after holding them for any period of time, you have to pay a standard 33% tax on the proceeds. Take the money out when the price if reasonable, buy Indian stocks of good companies, hold them for a year and viola, the entire profits are your to keep and the Indian taxman will not ask for any part of that profits.

Long term capital gains on stocks listed in Indian exchanges are fully tax free. And there is no reason to believe that a Oracle, a Cisco, a Microsoft or a Adobe systems will do any better than a Reliance Industries, Tata Motors, State bank of India or Bharti Airtel. Indian companies are just starting to blossom and this is the best time to cash in on this boom.

And if you do not have the guts and the appetite to invest directly in India companies, go the mutual fund route. Pick up cap mutual funds like Reliance Vision and HDFC Equity fund and there is every chance that you will end up making a lot of money.

And nothing beats tax free money !!!

Stock options and its pitfalls...

2008-03-26T22:58:00.006+05:30

I currently have the privilege of working with a IT company in Bangalore that treats its Indian employee on equal terms with any employee across the world when it comes to stock options. In simple words, my company is very generous when it comes to handing out its stock valued in dollars to Indian employees.

On one hand, it seems like a great retirement kitty when you see your stocks vesting and adding upto thousands of dollars over time. The sheer thrill of seeing the portfolio in dollars is enough to keep many employees stuck to the company with a real hope of seeking early retirement. Its little wonder that I see more employees who are on the verge of completing ten years in this company than I have ever seen elsewhere.

So what is the pitfall that Im talking about in the headline. Its about greed and the fact that most people succumb to it with absolutely no idea of the risk they are taking. Its widely accepted that its never a good idea to keep too many eggs in the same basket. The basket might be very well made and very secure, but all it takes in one wrong move for the eggs to crack !

You have your job at stake in a certain company where your salary and career depends on the performance of the company. On top of this, you are given stock options that are valued pretty highly and form a substantial part of your overall package. The point to note is that these stocks options are all about paper money till you actually sell them and convert them to cold hard cash.

And guess what do many people do on top of holding onto stock options like their dear life ? They go and put their savings from the salary into the ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan) program that many employers offer !!! The ESPP program gives you a guaranteed 15% return if you are diligent about selling the shares on the day you receice them. The catch word here is diligence. The problem is that most of us are not careful about this and just allow the ESPP stocks to accumulate in same portfolio with the hope for even more profits.

God willing, the company will keep going great guns and you can retire in a few years. But what if the basket does fall and all the eggs break in one shot ? So why on earth would you not diversify your holdings and make sure that if the company does take a turn for the worse, you still have something to cling onto ?

The trick is to make sure that you cash in on your stock options when they are actually of some real value and put the money in a different asset class immediately. This way, not only do you cash in on the market boom by owning stocks of good companies, but also save your ass when things go bad. If the company you work for goes down, you have money invested elsewhere and if that investment goes down, you hopefully still have the job and salary !!!

Diversification is the key to success in the financial world. The bad news is that there is not a single asset class in the world that is not prone to falls and fluctuations.

Net net, when you invest your hard earned money by spreading it across asset classes like stocks, Land & Gold; across geographies & currencies, there is a good chance that at any given point in time, there will always be one asset class that will be going great guns and making money for you. And its easy to retire soon when you have some part of your savings always bringing in 25% returns !!!

JVC Camcorders suck !

2007-05-01T11:01:00.000+05:30

JVC Camcorders. The name does sound good, right ? Sounds like a good company that makes fantastic electronic products. Why would their camcorders be any worse ?

Well, it turns out that JVC camcorders suffer from a terrible and dreaded problem called Condensation problem. It basically has a moisture sensor inside the tape mechanism and this sensor keeps giving false readings. When this happens, the camera will just refuse to function. A message reading “CONDENSATION - OPERATION PAUSED - PLEASE WAIT” blinks on the LCD screen in a stupid font, and the camera will not operate, except to eject its tape.

Numerous people have experienced the Condensation defect on their JVC camcorders, mostly 12 months after you buy it and right after the warranty expires. Despite Google being flooded with this problem, JVC says its not a recognized issue and refuses to fix it. Its not a recognized issue because they have your money in the bank and no longer need you. Whoever came up with the concept of repeat business and word of mouth advertising must have never set foot at JVC.

It turns out that there is a stupid black sensor right under the cassette casing that reports this to the brain of the camcorder and at this point, the camcorder refuses to do anything else. And why it was designed so, because JVC wants to protect the parts from the condensation. And in the process, making the camcorder a complete lemon.

I hit the same issue after 2 years and barely 20-30 hours of usage. But I decided that Im not paying another penny to JVC to get this fixed. Suggestions on the web about applying after shave lotion on the black sensor with a Qtip were useless for me and did not work. So I took it to a local whiz in Bangalore and gave him complete ownership of the camcorder since it was pretty much useless. It turns out that if you short circuit the sensor, the problem still remains. Instead, this guy added a small resistor to the sensor so that it always reports the same values to the camera brains.

And guess what, Rs 1500 (USD $30) later, its fixed and working great now. And to think that JVC wanted me to pay $100 to even look at the problem outside the warranty.

Moral of the Story: Avoid JVC camcorders. Any company that does not recogonize the customer issues does not deserve your hard earned money.

Why the stock market is good. And bad !

2007-03-26T16:27:00.000+05:30

One quick at the picture below tells you exactly why the markets are a great way to make money. But then another glance tells you why they are a great way to lose money too !!!

The picture shows that the one sure shot way to make money is not to panic when the markets turn bad. Time, time and more time is the only way the markets make money for you. If you had entered the market in 1999 and then exited sometime in 2003, you could conceivably argue that you lost a lot of money even after being invested for 5 years. But if the same person entered the markets two years earlier or exited two years later, there was a lot of money to be made.

Moral of the story ? If you want to make money in investments, follow these simple and time tested rules :

1. Start investing early in your career. I cannot stress this enough.

2. Investing is a long-term proposition. Its not for the people who look at the charts everyday and perspire based on how it is moving.

3. Don't let your emotions overpower your sense of reason. Markers are inherently volatile and that is the reason they are good in the long term.

4. The most important point that you can make out by looking at the chart. It is not the "market timing" but time in the market that matters. No one know how the markets will move, so do not try to time your entry and exits. Stay invested for long periods and you will reap rewards.

5. Investing is a complex exercise only because we insist on making it so. Its actually very simple if you understand what you want and reset your expectations.

Investing abroad with MF's

2007-02-27T14:08:00.000+05:30

Investing abroad without restrictions, its been a long time coming for Indians. And now its possible not just to invest abroad, but actually do it with the convenience of a mutual fund !

To provide some history, Principal Global Opportunities fund was launched in 2004 with the objective of investing abroad. But till last year, the government permitted funds to invest only in those foreign companies which had a 10 per cent stake in an Indian company. So the whole diversification factor was restricted to less than 50 companies. Which in turn made the fund a complete dud.

But such a restriction no longer exists and mutual funds are allowed to freely invest abroad. Because of this, the fund has now repositioned itself and instead of

Gold EFT's arrive in India...

2007-02-26T20:46:00.000+05:30

Investing in Gold is finally easy in India. I have never been a fan of buying gold biscuits just to invest in gold as there are too many overheads with the storage and protection. Now with the Gold ETF's coming into India, you can just buy the mutual funds on the market and rest assured that part of your portfolio is invested in Gold

Induction cooking !!!

2007-02-19T20:00:00.001+05:30

Cooking food at home has just gotten safer and easier, thanks to the help of an induction cooktop that controls and intensifies heat using electromagnetism.

Traditional electric cooktops use some form of electric resistance to create heat, which is transferred to the saucepan and its contents. Induction cooking is based on magnetic fields: each ‘element’ generates a magnetic field that induces heat in steel cookware placed on top of it. In essence, the pot becomes the element that cooks the food, so the cooktop surface doesn’t get as hot as other cooktops. Induction cooktops have the same instant control as gas and are the fastest of all cooktop types to heat and cook food.

Look at this half made egg to realize the power of this technology:

Even better is this photo of the ice cubes outside the pan remaining unchanged as the water in the pan boils.

Amazing, right ?

This technology is virtually idiot proof. There is no risk of fire if food or grease overflows from the pan, no risk of burns from touching the cooktop surface, and no worry about dangerous fumes from gas or other cooking fuels. The ceramic glass surface can be cleaned by simply wiping off the surface with a damp towel.

Im so exited that I want to go out now and buy it. Where it is available in Bangalore, I have no idea !!!

Update : I have since figured out that you can either buy it in many major shops for Rs 2700 onwards or you could go to the grey markey in Majestic and get the same for Rs 1700 or less.

Recharge AA battery on USB !

2007-02-16T10:17:00.000+05:30

I just love this technology. Combine the biggest headache in power, ie running out of batteries and combine it with the simplest form of charging and bingo, you have a USBCell !!!

Released as a teaser to the IT press over a week ago with the tagline ‘Time to recharge the battery market’, the details are finally out and they are oh so logical yet very cool.

Produced by Moixa Energy, USBCELL batteries are simply batteries that recharge from any USB port. They require no separate recharging devices, cradles or cables and can be used exactly like a normal battery. The design itself is rather like a typical memory stick with its flip top lid and they could be set to deliver the same killer blow to the battery market that memory sticks did to floppy discs.

Battery Chemistry
NiMH - Nickel Metal Hyrdride

Technical Specifications
90%+ Charged after 5 Hours by powered USB

Also rechargeable by approved NiMH charger at 250ma for 7 Hours

Amazing use of the mind, is it not ?

Buying a Digital Camera...

2007-02-14T19:09:00.000+05:30

I have been asked many times as to what is a good digital camera to buy. Here is my 2c's.

Digital camera's have come a long long way in the last few years. So you really cannot go too wrong with any of the Canon's, Sony, Kodak, Fuji or Olympus. The newer ones with over 5MP offer decent quality both in terms of picture and printing. More megapixels does not mean better quality. I have seen pictures from the Canon 5 MP A5xx series and they are as good as you can get. Sure, you can pay a lot more and get tons more megapixels, but what use are they going to be ? Are you ever going to blow up your pictures to more than 8x11 ? Probably not, and if you need to, then you better get a professional to take the picture.

My advise, do not blow up money on the advanced features you will never understand nor on Megapixels that you will never have use for. Go for a simple camera that works great in automatic mode.

Having said that, here are a few basic things to look out for:

1. 5MP / 6MP is the value for money as of today in terms of money paid per MP. 6MP should suffice almost everybody, but the most demanding users.

2. Never go for a digital camera that uses proprietary batteries unless it is too good. Look out for camera's which use AA, so that you can use NI-MH rechargeables all the time and if you are ever in a corner and need immediate power, you can buy a few AA's from any grocery shop to keep you going.

3. If possible, go for camera's that use a standard USB port. These non-standard cables are always a pain and if they go bad, you have to get it from the company for a high cost.

4. Given a choice, go for a camera that performs better in auto mode in low light conditions. You will find it very useful.

5. Never give a damn to the digital zoom numbers. Anything in the 4x optical zoom is okay for most people. If you move into the 10x optical zoom and more, the camera tends to get bulkier. Its a toss up between size (which will hit you every time) and zoom over 4x (which you will use rarely).

6. If the camera has video recording, make sure it can record sound too. Not that the video recording is anything useful at 640x480, but just make sure in case you need it.

7. This is the most silliest suggestion I will give. Never ever buy a camera where the lens cap is separate and cannot be attached to the body via a cable. Best if to go for camera's with in-built lens cap. You will lose it soon enough !!!

I have a Fuji 5MP camera that I got a few years back and never have had any complaints. But I personally think that the Canon A540 is a great camera. If you want to step up, the Canon A630 is amazing too. I have seen snaps from both of them and they rock.

Had to start somewhere...

2007-02-14T19:00:00.000+05:30

I have been thinking of sharing my thoughts on two of the things that continue to fascinate me.

One is Indian mutual funds. I have been dealing with mutual funds in India for many years now. This hardly makes me a expert, but then they say that experience is the best teacher. I have learnt finance the hard way, falling on my face many many times before I learnt to walk. I would share my thoughts on the ongoing happenings in the mutual fund industry in India.

Two is technology. The more I get a hold on it, the more I see it slipping away !!! But it never ceases to amaze me. I would also like to talk about my thoughts on some of the questions I come across regularly among the people I work with.

So here is a start, with the hope that it continues into something meaningful and useful...