One Foot in the Mudd

I bought this Trek more than four and a half years ago, when I went into buy another brand. Initially, I was wary given the fact that trek had just launched in India, but the minute I rode it back home, I was hooked. I found the riding position, smoothness and components amazing put together, and started crunching miles in it.

In 2010 I met with a rather bad accident, where I had to undergo surgery, but nothing happed to the bike and it was at that Point- i realsed the quality that this boasts of.

I experienced my first puncture in 2011 – after 3 years, but no other major issues.
Yes, there have been niggling issues of the disc brakes making some noise- but nothing which does’nt go away after the bike doctor looks at it.

I finally gave it in for its first major overhaul after 3.5 years and 2000 odd kms of riding, and the only major component which needs to be changed is the bottom bracket.

After using over 6 cycles in my life, I am the happiest with this. Yes, I am looking at a hybrid or a road for the weekend long ride, but for commuting, nothing beats this bike.

I have had several requests on buying new laptops and how does one go about it, so i had initially posted references to some online guides, but now I have decided to pen them down myself.

Many folks are equally confused on the variety of processors, RAMs, hard disks, screen sizes etc that are available. Though the variations and permutations and combinations are a plenty, it essentially can be broken down into eating at a buffet!

What are the basic components that make up the laptop?

1. Processor
2. RAM
3. Hard Disk &
4. Screen Size

Though there are many  more categories that one can dive into- such as video ram, ports, battery life etc, I am going to stick to the very basics, because those who know the differences between the video ram and regular ram might have outside support in purchasing their notebook PCs.

Before you set off on this expedition down the buffet line-  you need to figure out what and where you wish to eat – so similarly- ask yourself-

1. How much can  you spend and MOST IMPORTANTLY
2. What am I going to do with this PC?

Given the answer to the above two questions, you will find it a lot easier getting the right PC for you. Leaving the first answer aside, I have complied a short table that one can use when looking at “What am I going to do with this PC”

Though the above list is not exhaustive- it is indicative of what one can look at.

NetBooks / Tablets – Though they are a rage today, netbooks and tablets provide a good amount of mobility but provide what I would call passive experience – or in effect it allows you to read/ engage but not create in a true sense. Yes, there are many online tools for work such as google docs, zoho docs etc, but nothing beats the office suite and a desktop / keyboard mouse experience.

Netbooks are very handy if you travel a lot and respond to a lot of email, and if you are going to be using just one or two office applications, but if you are looking at multi tasking, I would urge you to look at good entry level laptops.

The look and feel experience- 

Buying a laptop is a high involvement proess, which requires us to do considerable amount of research. I would suggest the following game plan.

1. Visit the nearest retail shop where you get an idea of screen sizes, ergonomics of the various brands.
2. Try typing somethings in word or notepad to get an idea of the keyboard layout and mouse/ trackpad sensitivity.
3. Browse a little to get a feel of the speed.
4. Open multiple applications and see how the system slows down.
5. One nice test is to have all the applications open and get the screen saver to start. If the sysetm cannot handle the load it will slow the screensaver and it wont appear smooth.
6. Look at the prices and the models on offer
7. visit another retailer and check the same.

For India- i have found that Croma offers some good deals and rates. Having suggested a few friends to buy from there, it offers a good experience of buying and you can compare laptops with competing products.

In terms of brands, I have a personal preference with Toshiba, I have found their builds to be excellent and have not needed to run behind the service team for anything. Though some friends have had other experiences, my 6 toshiba’s have never ceased to amaze me.

So while picking a brand, look at the following -

1. Ease of service-  where is the closest service center?
2. Warranty terms- is it a comprehensive warranty or just repair warranty?
3. Extended warranty options- Most laptops remain with us for about 5 years. Warranty usually covers 1 year and maybe you can buy another 2 years, but support beyond that is a challenge. so look at companies willing to give extended warranties.

Though I do recommend online research, I also recommend that you don’t allow yourself to be influenced by it – remember very few write good reviews and many write bad reviews. So for every 1 bad review written on a product, there would be about 10000 folks who have not bothered writing about their experiences (good or bad). Remember, the market has its own way of natural selection so a bad product would be killed off- naturally. And also, a review of a purchase involves a lot of personal sentiment- so it might be skewed towards the purchaser’s preferences. Sites like CNET, Toms hardware news, Tech Republic etc do offer reviews which tend to be more technical- do go through it and decide on the technical aspects of the system.

Lastly, spend about 1500 more and buy yourself a portable hard disk which is use ONLY for backup. After spending a song for the new machine, don’t scrounge on this. Remember, its your hardwork that goes for a toss if the hard disk crashes!

So, How is this like a buffet? Well, its simple:

1. Decide how much
2. Decide the experience you want
3. Select the components
4. Pay

Simple!

With Lion available on the shelf – the urge to update will be stronger than ever- but there is some not so good news. I am not diving into the awesome OS that is Lion – but the little nuisances that it comes with. First, with a change in certain architecture methods, some applications are not compatible with Lion (much like 98 and W2K) – the casualty for me was MPlayerOSx – in my opinion the coolest player for the Mac. Though VLC has now fought back to reclaim the top spot in my book. The second and most critical for me was the deletion of iSync. With a Nokia- the best way to sync contacts and calendar events was via iSync. Now with it being gone- it was a little startling. However, fear not there is a workaround this irritant.
First- if you have not upgraded to Lion good. Copy the iSync.app file and any modules that might be there in the library to an external drive. After you update to Lion, copy back the files to the Application folder (iSync.app) and the others to the library. and Viola – it works.

Incase you have already upgraded to Lion – and were shocked to find iSync missing- don’t worry – Visit: http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1184017.html or http://www.mediafire.com/?6rt8k244sbxyyem and download the iSync.zip from the server. Unzip and run. and it works just as well.

disclaimer: its worked for me – and I downloaded the file. I cannot verify / vouch / authenticate the particular file as I have not uploaded it.

In a recent article that appeared in BusinessWeek – about the new genre of reality TV shows – really got me thinking. Of the whole lot – i was hooked onto a handful – actually just 2.

1. MasterChef – Australia and

2. Undercover Boss

Though I believed that there was a good amount of learning from the two shows, Businessweek has gone ahead and debunked this great theory of mine.

MasterChef – yes- i still rate it as my favorite reality TV show to the point my wife and I used to rush back to watch. I remember i timed one travel of mine so that I can reach in time for the 11pm rerun of the same! That was me.

Though Undercover boss has just started screening on the tele, i caught it during my recent trips. I really enjoyed the fact that many CEOs take time to understand what the issue really is, and implement policies in improving them. Can be rather small gestures in sending folks on a holiday, to career advancement steps. As much as I wondered how the folks would not know this was something big – the usual explanation that they were part of a reality TV show about startup jobs, so many episodes were filmed without them guessing. Then the shit hit the fan!

You can read the BusinessWeek article here.

Undercover Boss is entertaining precisely to the extent that it’s dishonest. The fraudulence peaks with its messianic mythmaking, but its faux populism is the true sham. Because the series’ very existence requires cooperation from the executives that it purports to make suffer for their sins, it has to raise them higher, in the end, than it found them at the start. If it doesn’t, they’ll stop volunteering for their fake lashings and ritual redemptions. “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss,” sang The Who. However he chooses to hide it, scuff it up, or beg forgiveness for misusing it, the power is still his. And that’s reality.

Though these are rather scalding allegations, there is a certain amount of truth or if i repharse it- there is a certain amount of doubt on the authenticity of the program that has cropped into my head!

Well, that being said- i think its time to just stick to the regular programs that come on TV!

So you have installed a dual boot windows 7 and Ubuntu and then after a futile attempt to make things work at office, decide to delete the partition onto which Ubuntu has been installed. you restart and bang!

With more powerful computers, come more powerful viruses

with more powerful viruses come more powerful Anti Viruses

With all this – comes a WHOLE lot of paronia!

Scamsters building on this have created a worm that goes through the browser’s auto execute function and disables all applications.

Called the MS Removal tool – its a pain.

The users get an error message like this:

MS Removal Tool belongs to a family of software products that call themselves as antivirus, antispyware or registry cleaners and often use deceptive or high pressure sales tactics and deliberate false positives to convince users into buying a license/subscription. They are often repackaged and renamed. They do not actually remove malware instead many of them add more malware of their own. They need to be removed immediately from your system.

The trojan file was about 319488 bytes in size. It was detected by 11/ 43 (25.6%) of the antivirus engines available at VirusTotal.

This scareware is detected as:

• Trojan.Generic.KD.170369
• Trojan.Fakealert.20556
• W32/FakeAlert.LO.gen!Eldorado
• FakeAlert-SecurityTool.bf
• a variant of Win32/Kryptik.MAR
• Trojan.Agent/Gen-RogueLoad

The typical Error Messages are

Warning: Your computer is infected
Windows has detected spyware infection!
Click this message to install the last update of Windows security software…

MS Removal Tool Warning
Intercepting programs that may compromise your privacy and harm your system have been detected on your PC.
Click here to remove them immediately with MS Removal Tool

Warning!
Application cannot be executed. The file filename.exe is infected.
Please activate your antivirus software.

Users should not fall for the false alerts of system infection and buy the scareware to ‘clean’ the system. If you purchased one by entering your credit card number at a rogue software website, it would be prudent to:

• Immediately contact the bank that issued the card and dispute the charges.
• Request them to not allow any further transaction and cancel the card. You may also request them to issue a new card with a different number.

So Now that its there: What do you do?

Relax – there are cure’s available.

First Visit:

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam-download-exe.php

and Download the tool and save it on C drive

Next – Go to http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/malware-removal.aspx and download the tool.

• Boot in to Windows Safe Mode with networking
• Run (mbam-setup.exe) from computer or from a clean computer download and copy to a removable drive like CD, DVD or USB flash drive.
• Double-click mbam-setup.exe to start the installation. Proceed with installation following the prompts. Make sure that the following option is checked when you finish the installation: Update Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.
• Once the update is completed, Launch Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and select Perform full scan in the Scanner tab. When the scan is completed, click “Show results“, confirm that all instances of the rogue security software are check-marked and then click “Remove Selected” to delete them. If prompted restart immediately to complete the removal process.

Restart Computer

After the computer restarts in normal mode: run the microsoft scanner to be safe.

Note: This has been tested on WinXP SP3, and Win7 Pro.  Results for other OS not known.

I found this email in my spam box. For a minute I was quite taken up by the complete authentic look and feel, but on further investigation, this email did scare me a lot. These are the reasons.

The from address has been spoofed and so has the link- even these two are rather simple steps, the fact that these were the first giveaways for any scam has got the scamsters changing their MOs.

Second- the link goes to the following sites – http://www.pcc.org.nz/components/com_eweather/classes/UserPreferencefiles.php?check=3 and then jumps to another page on http://www.leroisoleil.be/

though beyond that I could not track it because it was blocked / deleted, the fact that the sites are being used to divert traffic is scary.

PCC.org.nz is Ponsonby Cruising Club and Leroisoleil is a site for a restaurant / hotel / resort. Pages have been compramized and cross site scripting has allowed for the page to jump shows that hackers are developing methods to circumvent. Wont be long before a man in the middle attack will happen from these sites.

Had heard about Kobe’s coming to chennai a while back from a friend who tried the place, and she was pretty excited with the quality of food that she got. A group of friends and I finally got some time to go there, and I was pleasantly surprised to eat there. Tucked off the main road, its very easy to miss this place. You end up driving through a rather large parking lot, and the valet parking is a bliss. We were seated almost instantly even though we did not have a reservation. We ordered almost all the meats that were there- fish, lamb and chicken. I had the veg burger, but tasted the meat, and I was quite impressed with the food. The quantities were sufficient for a single person, and the toppings were decent. There was a sizeable meat portion with an equally balanced helping of vegetables on the sizzler. The sauces were different and you could at certain points taste the individual flavours of the sauces. I must comment here on the quality of the meat. It was very well cooked. Not under done nor over cooked. However, I might have been a little happier if they had not microwaved my burger before serving as it made the bun hard as a rusk, but i foudn that to add a nice crunch to the burger. I personally woulde have liked the patty to be a little more moist with the mayo or sauces being offered on the side for me to add. The staff were courteous and the place appeared clean and neat. There was sufficient ventilation as our eyes did not start burining from a table of 4 sizzlers. Which is a feather in their cap. I would recommend this place and will surely visit again.

It was my birthday yesterday- a lot of people posted wishes on my wall.. so I decided to respond to them all…

There are those moments that you start thinking about, and yearn for them. Well, this morning was the culmination of one of those moments. Last week, the gas got over at home and then the entire week was spent eating out. As a kid – you think – oh its going to be so cool when you can just go out and eat all the time, but seriously, after 4 days, i was dying for the gas to be delivered just so that i can have home cooked food. Its either the lack of drowning oil, or simply the lack of artificial flavors and rich spices that makes home cooked food bearable and guilt free, but none the less, the greatest loss from the lack of a gas cylinder was the simple fact – microwave tea! – which i must warn you, after a while gets pretty sad.

So my mind and pallet were yearing for that one cup of rich, milky tea with a dash of cardamum and sugar, which you can sip and say – aaah! wah Taj! seriously, its that one sip that allows you to relish the taste of tea and give you that little caffeine kick!

nice way to start a great day!