A recent business proposal required me to calculate the time taken to download huge files. Being a BSNL Dataone user, I was comparing it with various plans including the Home unlimited plan for Rs.900.

1 MB = 1024 KB = 1024 * 1024 bytes

= 1048576 bytes

= 1048576*8 = 8388608 bits

BSNL offers 256Kbps guaranteed speed with a maximum of 2Mbps. So you can theoretically download a 1Mb file in …well under 4 seconds. So that’s under ideal conditions. I have seen download progresses for my 256Kbps connections at the range of 200KB/s. A lot depends on the server’s bandwidth too.
So how much does a 1GB file take to download with a 1 Mbps connection ? From the above table, 8 seconds for 1MB = 8 *1024 for 1GB = 8192 seconds = 136.53 minutes = approximately 2 and a half hours..

Update as on 14-3-08
I’m getting a download speed of 312Kb/s on my home 500 plan which means the speeds are crossing the 2Mbps speeds.

My idea was to write a complete review from my Treo, using Opera Mini. After writing couple of sentences or even more, I tried copying the content that I wrote to the clipboard using FieldPlus’ Shift- Enter keyboard shortcut. Oh! what a bad decision that was, everything went off and I was with a blank screen. Looks like since Opera Mini run’s on top off Java VM, it has problems with the standard Palm OS keys and perhaps it will have problems with any mobile OS.

I was using Treo’s Blazer browser for quite some time. That used to work for most of the sites, but failed miserably on Google adsense login.  It could be due to the time taken for the AJAX interface to load on my slow GPRS connection, I don’t know for sure. I had tried Opera Mini earlier and it was crashing, required too much RAM and was not all like my Opera on desktop. I was a bit apprehensive in trying out stuff, but I had time and installed IBM Java VM. The download is free from palmone’s site and is a prerequisite in running Opera. On installation on the VM (version J9 2.2.14 ARM 20070207_1505_IHsCmV), you can adjust the settings from the Preferences applet. Also a MIDlet manager appears among the list of applications. Next was the Opera Mini installation which went fine. No glitches what so ever. The Opera about ( taken from Menu -> Tools -> Help -> About ) show the version number as 4.0.9800 20071113(should be the build date). I’m a fan of having the build date on the version information, I usually do that and it can really tell the age of the software.

Features Overview

• Fast, yes its really fast, the VM clumsiness is overcome by the proxy I guess. Opera does not render the site directly. It uses a proxy server cluster for doing the rendering and then transferring the data to a format supported by Opera Mini. On researching I’ve found that the rendering is done using an ultra compact binary language (OBML) that reduces the page size by 90% and the result is sent to the mobile phone.
• Shortcut key support, could be very useful for mobile devices without QWERTY keyboard.
• Speed dials feature is akin to the desktop opera. In Opera Mini you enter * followed by a digit from 0 to 9 to open the set speed dial web page.
• Context menu is available on keeping the stylus pressed, with options for enabling and disabling mobile view, reloading and Information.
• Fetch title and icon feature is a cute feature, that’s available for speed dials and Search links. It lets you retrieve the icon and page title and that’s reflected in the UI of the bookmarks of speed dial lists.
• Opera defaults to yahoo search, but like its desktop counterpart you can add any search provider like Google. Management of the search providers is relatively easy.
• Feed support is native within the browser, you don’t need any feed reader. BBC News,Sport, Guardian, Opera Community News and Opera Mini Blog are the default additions.You have the option to view by feed or view by time which sorts by Feed name and most recent feed entry respectively.
• Opera Browser sync is touted to sync between opera desktop bookmarks but I have not tested it.
• Its 100% FREE.
• Know the transferred bytes for a session or total from the about screen. Looks like its not retained during a soft reset.

The default keyboard shortcuts for Opera Mini is given below

#1	Enter Web Address
#2	Bookmarks
#3	Goto top/bottom/text start
#4	Start Page
#5	History
#6	Page Information
#7	Add Bookmark
#8	Settings
#9	Search
#0	Reload
##	Forward
*0 to *9	Speed dial
*0	Feeds
**	Change Window Size

Limitations

• Cannot use the OS default key functionality, limited by the JVM. Keys like the context menu key not working is really irritating.
• When there’s an Internet connect request, it pops up the OS’s dial-up screen which states To complete the request you must connect to the Internet. Connect now ? This does not appear correctly, its visible only partly on the screen and would be confusing a new user.Even the service connection progress window goes outside the screen. Its probably another JVM  issue or due to the memory preference setting. Update: On increasing the JVM memory  and
• Much stable than the previous version of Opera Mini, but still crashes,  with a soft reset being the only solution.
• No password remembering options, well that’s not there even in Blazer
• Feed management and Bookmark management UI lacks the option of deleting multiple entries at a time and I don’t know why it shows ‘connecting…’ to delete an entry.
• Asking each time whether Opera Mini has to connect and use airtime is another minor irritant.

Blazer comparison

On the Treo 650, the default browser is Blazer. It was good enough but its far behind in comparison to Blazer. The UI of Blazer is more Palmy and can get the Palm user feel at home. Opera Mini 4 is really different.

Features missing in Opera Mini when compared to Blazer

1. Cannot copy the web address to clipboard or paste it to address bar from clip board. You cannot send a link as SMS or email easily.
2. No tool bar buttons, for a device with stylus, its much easier to click a button than to press a shortcut key. Screen estate is actually wasted for displaying time. Yes there’s one option ‘back’ in the status bar and there’s enough and more space to add buttons for basic stuff like refresh,homepage,bookmarks, next and signal strength .
3. Blazer allows to connect via VPN but I couldn’t find a similar option in Opera.
4. No option to view passwords while entering, it’s very much there in Blazer
5. No address bar.
6. No auto complete of previous site addresses.
7. No way to disable cookies or JavaScript.
8. Tap and drag - Blazer has an option to select between text selection and scrolling.
9. Not that its needed with the proxy, but option to disable CSS is present in Blazer.
10. Selection of a  custom proxy is  set from the IBM Java VM preferences. Not very intuitive.
11. Option to clear Cookies and cache on exit is not present in Opera.
12. No option to get back to previous page once you exit Opera Mini.

The proxy at http://server4.operamini.com:80 is what makes Opera Mini fast. You can find whether the proxy address is the same from the the About screen of Opera Mini. Out of curiosity I set this as the proxy server for my Internet host and I got a message stating that its’ plugin content. So this proxy can’t be used for your normal browser on a slow connection. Another thing that I tested was trying opera:config,opera:about. opera:help etc in the address bar. It resulted in an invalid address except for opera:about, which showed Version 10.00, Build 217, Platform Pike v 7.6 release 92 and long list of 3rd party copyrights and miscellaneous info. Its probably the server cluster version number and information.

Conclusion

Overall I like Opera Mini as much as Opera on my desktop I’ve started using it as my primary browser on my Treo and yes to to check my adsense revenue..
Even with its quirks with clipboard and without auto completion. The speed compensates for most of its limitations and then I believe Opera will definitely come out with a more feature complete product soon. I wanted to put some screen shots but couldn’t get PDA Reach working.

I have a HP dv6395 laptop (should be applicable to the whole HP dv6000 series)  and it comes with a remote. Once in a while it just stops working. The ultimate problem solving technique of resatrting windows doesn’t solve  this problem. Usually whenever there’s a problem with any IR remote, I use the digital camera technique to ensure that the IR light actually comes from the remote. In this case the RC was actually woking and I couldn’t find anything else wrong. The related services were working, but none of the functions were actually executed by the OS. Powering off and removing the power supply too didn’t work.

Finally I had this logical intuition, where I thought that since the remote can power on the laptop even if its powered off, unless I remove the battery the IR sesning circuit will not be reset. That worked, removing the battery and then inserting it back restored the IR functionality.

I was just thinking of starting a course for Computer Science and Electronics Engineers who have just passed out of College.

The topics that I thought of covering can be split into the following sections, covering what I call the basics.

Basic  Networking / Internet

• Protocols (TCP/IP, NWLink, NetBios )
• Application protocols, ports, configuring POP,SMTP,IMAP,NNTP,FTP,
• Routers,ADSL, dynamic DNS,WIFI
• Trouble shooting tips, techniques
• Search Techniques,  Newsgroups search, Torrents
• Web hosting, blogging, CMS, Adsense, search engine optimization, tools,tips and techniques
• VPN, Open VPN

PC Trouble Shooting Assembling

• BIOS - what can be done, basic and advanced techniques.
• ISA,PCI, PCI Express, AGP and newer bus topology
• PCMCIA,ExpressCard
• Various Boot CDs, booting from Flash disk, CDROM
• Drive imaging techniques, software, nLIte, VLite
• SysInternals

Telecom

• Mobile - GSM,CDMA,EDGE,GPRS,Evdo, SMS - PDU/Text formats
• Land line - ISDN- BRI,PRI, PSTN,PABX,SMDR
• IP Telephony

Software

• Various OSes, basic command, shortcut keys etc., Separating DATA from OS, Data Recovery
• OS differences, versioning
• Freeware useful Utilities, registry hacks
• Programing -  Source Control, UI design, Registry, Dotnet, Network programming tricks, techniques, tools(packet sniffers).
• Virtual Machine Software -VMWare (Snapshots,Serial Ports on VMs) Virtual PC, Live CDS 
• Sysinternals tools

Electronics

• Basic electronic circuits
• Batteries, chargers
• Microcontrollers - PIC
• Simulators, Emulators
• Serial Port, USB, Bluetooth
• PCB design with Eagle

Will add more as and when required or when I get new ideas. If you are in or around Calicut and needs training on the above topics, please contact me using the contact form of this site.

With the release of the new version of Jaledit, I thought of introducing a new feature to all my programs. It’s the typical check for updates. I found that Opera does something similar, where in, when the check for update menu option is clicked, a message is displayed if there are no updates. If there’s an update the web page with the download link for the new version of Opera is is displayed.

I didn’t want a fully automatic update where the update file is downloaded in the background for selfish reasons (I want a page hit )
So here’s the base spec in my terms

1. Have a check for updates menu item in the main form and button in the about box form of my Delphi program JALEdit.
2. Once the user clicks the option, the JALEdit webpage is displayed .
3. Display message on the page about the status of the update on the top of the page.

My PHP skills = 0, Delphi skills = Advanced

Digging a bit around PHP documentation led to  version_compare, generally used to check PHP versions, but works quite well for program versions as well.

Here’s the code that does the job
$latest = ‘0.5.6′; // define your latest version
$ver = $_GET[’ver’]; // for me this is like a command line argument get whatever is there after ?ver=
if  ($ver)  // Do the check only if the version info is passed  if its just http://jal.sunish.net/jaledit then nothing happens
 {
if (version_compare($latest,$ver) == 1) // there is an update available
print(”<hr/><strong>”.”An update to JALEdit is available. Latest version is :”.$latest.”</strong>”) ;
 // display in bold about update status in between 2 lines
else
print(”<hr/><strong>”.”No update available.You are using the latest version.”.”</strong>”);
print “<hr/>”;
}

What I learnt,

1. version_compare()  functions compares versions with “.”.
2. $_GET[’variable’] - function to sort of retrieve command line argument.
3. . is equivalent to + for string concatenation.
4. A semicolon is required before the else clause (different from Pascal syntax)

Delphi Code

procedure TfrmSecMain.acncheckUpdatesExecute(Sender: TObject);
var
  tempStr: string;
begin
  tempStr := ‘http://jal.sunish.net/jaledit?ver=’;

  with TJclFileVersionInfo.Create(Application.ExeName) do
  try
    tempStr := tempstr + Format(’%s’, [FileVersion]);
  finally
    Free;
  end;
  ShellExecute(0, ‘open’, pcHAR(tempStr), ”, ”, SW_SHOW);
end;

The Delphi code is pretty straight forward with the JCL function to retrieve the file version from the exe file and that’s passed to the Shellexecute function to do a default browser call.

The PHP code I guess should work with wordpress and any CMS.

Being one of the early adopters of GPRS in Kerala, I thought I knew what’s going on with BSNL GPRS. Time and again I was proved that my knowledge is limited. I wanted to change my GPRS Plan to Plan 199 and had thought that required a letter. I had suggested to BSNL employees and customer care how easy it would be if that was possible through SMS. In fact it was possible for Prepaid customers and I was told Postpaid users are less and the feature is likely not to be implemented. For me to give the letter to customer care I have to travel around 80 kms in total and wait for the activation. Now with my friend in BSNL office I was confident I could get it done fast. To my surprise I was told it can be done by sending an SMS.

So the procedure is as follows.

To deactivate BSNL GPRS on postpaid connection

Send an SMS to 53733 (3733 was the suggested number but with the new numbering an from the reply SMS no that I got it should be 53733) with the following message.

GPRSD

For activating Plan49 send GPRS49 and for Plan 199 send GPRS199 to 53733. You’ll get a reply SMS asking for confirmation to which you got to reply with GPRS49Y and GPRS199Y respectively. The activation seems to take more time than deactivation and it could take upto 24hours.

The important thing about the service was that it was notified by BSNL officially and it will probably work for only customers in the south zone.

A search with google lead to this doc http://www.ap.bsnl.co.in/mmsgprs/Portal%20link%20documents/Manual-Device+Settings.doc Why can’t they summarize the information and present it decently ? Looks like I got to do it, with all major mobile service providers, their data plans, APN names, activation and deactivation procedures etc would make good blog post.

Yesterday I got a new Visa ATM card for my Federal Bank Account. The expiry date is in 2017. The previous card was valid only for 3 years and the new one has a validity period of 10 years. I was told the old one will work without any problems. I tested and it indeed worked. I guess the bank auto renewed the old one and associated it with my account. Since the new one has a different card number, there’s no conflict of PINs.. However I just changed the new one’s PIN to the old one. So if you have a Federal bank account and thought that the card expired on expiry date, don’t worry, you an continue to use it.

Of course for businesses you have no choice, you got to get one for the n number of reasons that you might get on a Google search. Long time back my good old friend Shankar Subrahmanian asked me What do you do with a domain name ? 

So here are the pros and cons of having a domain name in your name.

Advantages

• You feel as if you are one the web, on the net, having a web presence or identity or what ever.
• Have a stylish email id root@root.com or me@me.com or whatever@whatever.whatever . Yes most domain names will let you have unlimited email ids and you can have a catch all email id so that you can get all spam.
• You can find the web site who spammed you. On the  registration form on various websites, give the email id as websitename@yourdomainname and use the catchall option to get the registration info.  Later you can know when you get an unknown newsletter, or spam from which web site it actually originated or which web site sold your email address.
• You don’t loose your identity till you stop renewing your domain.
• You can register and get free samples of products from sites like http://microchip.com where they do not accept emails from hotmail,yahoo or gmail or any free email providers.
• Create as many accounts that you want for invite by email id sites. You can have multiple Gizmo accounts or anything that offers a service or product for free.
• Provide great content and your site becomes a brand, a sellable commodity something like a business entity.

Disadvantages

• Spam
• Spam
• and more spam with catch all
• Its like you lost your anonymity, anybody can contact you. You have a  forced identity. Well you asked for it …
• You got to pay renewal fee every year
• You got to have hosting and have to pay for it

I want to add more, but here’s a start. do comment and add more advantages or disadvantages.

I just did a Wordpress upgrade to 2.3.1. The main attraction was keyword support with WLW. I’ve started to like WLW like anything. After the upgrade I still didn’t see the keywords option, just discovered  that I got to enable properties from the View menu and don’t forget to update your account settings from Tools-Accounts.

Today, there was a long outage of my site, looks like Manas Hosting is best described by keywords cheap and unreliable. I will have to let everyone know about their poor service and not fall into trap of their Google ads.  There were lots of database errors off late and they couldn’t answer most of my tech queries.