Tech Notes

So there I was, trying to use the World of Warcraft downloader and it telling me some of my ports were blocked. It apparently needs a set of ports to be open and enabled. I googled and found that I need to setup port forwarding for faster downloads. But that assumes a static IP for my computer. My setup is something like this:

Airtel --> Huawei modem with DHCP enabled --> Netgear router with DHCP, which doles out IP addresses to my VOIP adapter, my laptop, my desktop and any rogue machines in the wireless vicinity that are aware of my SSID.

Fixing a static IP for my desktop was the first step. I could set it up in my Negear router itself, by assigning a fixed ip to the MAC id of the desktop. Then I moved on to the Huawei modem and went into the Virtual Servers section. Added the ports needed by the WoW downloader. Restarted the modem. Moved to the router and went to the Port Forwarding section, ditto. The final part was configuring my Comodo firewall to allow TCP-in on those ports. Everything worked like a charm and I felt so proud of myself.

Until I found the Vundo trojan happily resting in my machine. Sigh.

Tech Talk

I'm thinking of upgrading my prehistoric Windows 98 to something more modern and less problematic, like Win XP. However, what's stopping me is the cost. Of course, I can grab a pirated version and go right ahead, but I thought I'd at least consider a Linux distro. My main requirements out of the OS are:

1. I should be able to setup my DSL modem and use my BSNL broadband account fairly smoothly. Smooth to me, not sm00thorz, if you know what I mean.
2. I need to be able to burn CDs using my Samsung CD Writer.
3. I should be able to watch Div-x movies
4. Winamp or its Linux equivalent should work
5. I should be able to work with MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
6. Yahoo and MSN messengers should work. Oh, ok. At least GAIM or something that alows me to sign into Yahoo, MSN and AIM.

I understand there is a distro (SUSE?) which allows you to run Linux off a CD and evaluate it. Would that be a good option? Are the above requirements too stringent? Hmm.

Another tech question

I'm thinking of getting an external hard drive, maybe about 80GB in size. Read somewhere that a clever option would be to buy a USB case which can take an internal disk drive. This would not only be cheaper, but also gives me the option of plugging in a dvd writer or other devices into the case later on.

What do you think? Suggestions? Brands?

This journal is fast turning into a classified ads section

Broadband Blues

I've been struggling to get Broadband at home for the past couple of months. Tried different providers: Sify, Touchtel, Dishnet and BSNL - none of them cover my area. I get Hathway cable at home so I thought they might be able to help, but calling them a couple of times hasn't sent their sales guys racing to meet me. 's review on MouthShut is quite true.

The reason I want broadband so badly is to work from home and take conference calls. I tried using Skype over dial-up yesterday, to join a conference. I had purchased 10 hours worth of talktime, so was hoping this would work. It didn't. Skype did not allow me to punch in the conference bridge id after reaching the conference number. The operator came on after a while, but he couldn't hear me, probably because the connection through dial-up was poor. Damn, damn, damn.

Any bright ideas? How's the speed through (shudder) Reliance mobiles? Or the wireless set from Reliance or Tata Indicom? Would connectivity be better than that through dialup? Or is there any other cheap way to get on to conference calls from home?

Question

I'm looking for a blogging tool - preferably freeware - that can be used within an enterprise. This is to be used mainly for knowledge management, sharing of information, email updates, etc. Should have a good search function and security features.

I'm not sure I can setup LJ to do this. Does anyone know of other tools that are available? Movable Type? WordPress? Any pointers on how to set it up easily?

Importing into gmail

Stumbled across this neat little utility that helps import all your Mozilla based email into gmail. Just download the tool from the site and follow instructions. Remember to copy/move mail from your local folders into your Inbox before you run the tool, as it sends mail from the Inbox folder, not the subfolders (at least as far as I could tell).

If you are an Outlook/Outlook Express user, you can import your mails into Mozilla Thunderbird and then use the tool.

I'm now scratching my head trying to think of a quick way to organize all this new mail I've got.

Y! IM

The latest version (6.x) of Yahoo! messenger looks pretty good, apart from the silly colours.

Dialup sucks.

Dialup sucks.

Interesting stuff that convince me the world is becoming a smarter, better place for mankind

The wonder that is email

I get this mail from Microsoft on my yahoo account every single day, asking me to use a patch immediately. The mail is sent from the address security@microsoft.com but has a return path to admin@duma.gov.ru. I cleverly went to this website but my browser settings appear to be incompatible with whats displayed. Couldn't make head or tail of these characters. A firebird bug, very possibly.

The mail is very nice though. It reads: "Dear friend , use this Internet Explorer patch now! There are dangerous virus in the Internet now! More than 500.000 already infected!" The mail helfpully contains an attachment called patch.exe which I think I'm supposed to use to kill all these 500.000 viruses (virii ?). Man, I feel like a Terminator already.

Traffic Improvements

The traffice police in Bangalore is implementing a new policy in some roads like MG Road and Airport Road. You need to switch off your headlights while driving on these roads. I think this is a very positive move and will make driving a pleasure, comparable to playing games like say, RoadRash and Need For Speed. I was cruising along MG Road the other evening, having a wonderful time trying to separate the autos from the Qualises (Qualii ?) when the streetlights went off. There was great merriment all round - some vehicles had headlights on, some had none, others had their parking lights and a few were switching from high beam to low to off and then again back to high. All the horns were working very well, though.

Speaking of Airport Road, there is this massive roadwork going on just next to my office. A clover leaf shaped flyover (in contrast to a horseshoe shaped one, I guess) is being constructed. It takes roughly twenty minutes to cover twenty metres on a good day. Not satisfied with this, the good folks of the BDA are planning another constriction construction upstream, near the Windtunnel road junction. This is going to benefit me a lot - I get to work from home or look for a job at ITPL. Win-win.

On the other hand, some really good stuff

My parents arrive tomorrow. lands up in the evening. Mu ha ha ha !!

No more Firebird

I'm switching back to IE, as predicted. Firebird is a good browser which has a few improvements over IE, but it doesn't work for me. Mainly because:

- I cannot get my intranet sites to work correctly
- My product UI cannot run on it
- I have trouble getting the MoneyControl site to render correctly
- I just cannot login into the ICICI Direct website on firebird

, thanks for the link and the info on Firebird, but I'm switching back to IE. I can live without tabbed browsing. I do owe you one for introducing me to Thunderbird, though. Coupled with Hotmail Popper, I found it to be a very neat little email client.

I might continue to use Firebird for LJ and a few other websites, but IE is returning as my default browser.

God's Own Restaurant

Tried out this new restaurant at Koramangala (near Jyothi Nivas College), called Padippura. Man, its probably the best mallu restaurant I've been to. Then again, like says, aren't they all ?

This place has a buffet lunch, kerala style, for just Rs 75 ! The decor is really good and quite unlike the one-step-better-than-a-mess ones I've visited recently. Buffet menu: chicken, fish, boiled rice, white rice, avial, sambar, theeyal, thoran, mezhukku purattiyathu, chammandi, pappadam, sambharam and payasam. Burp !

In news from the email front, I switched back to hotmail from netscape. Sorry, I just had to use an id thats stable and will survive in the long run. So sue me.

Septic Spam

This just landed in my Inbox:

Dramatically Increase the Life and Effectiveness of your Septic System

Try Septic Cleaner for Free by Clicking Here

You'll keep your septic system free flowing as SPC breaks down large waste materials into smaller particles and liquids so that they pass quickly through your septic system

Just what I always wanted

Annoyances

Damn ! Puggy is down and I can't check my mail...not through my email client anyway.

I need to remove myself from . Too much noise, too many spoilers, very little info on books I haven't heard of.

What's common to...

Hey baby, wash the pounds away, live amateur teens online, home loans and refinancing, control diabetes, 2 Girls 1 Huge Dildo, 50 lbs. of lobster, celebs exposed, ht horny teens, dental coverage, sex with a horse, university diplomas, viagra diet pills and new goodies for the new year ?

current book: The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Yesterday

I hadnt used icq in ages, so downloaded the lite version yesterday and started playing around with it. Was surprised to find I could send sms messages through it. Of course, the supported networks for India is limited, but thankfully Airtel is on the list. I could also receive replies on my icq chat window, which I found quite cool.

I also downloaded Netscape 7.0 and the latest version of Yahoo messenger (yeah, !!). Netscape sucks as expected (flame bait) and I couldnt see any major improvements to the messenger (flame bait #2). Oh, well.

I made my first online purchase of stock yesterday. Bought Zee Telefilms on a whim after seeing their recent ads which show a long list of over-hyped movies appearing soon on a boob-tube near me. Felt accomplished till I saw the market wrapup at the end of the day where Zee was the biggest loser of the day. How very surprising.

But hey, mark my words. Zee will do well in a couple of months and I shall rake in the moolah. Muhahahahaha....!!!

Hey everyone, go and watch all the Zee channels ! Now ! Hurry ! They are showing The Legend of Bhagat Singh tonight !!!!!!

On a rainy evening...

Headed to GRS Water Park (or some such) tomorrow, along with the team from office. This is close to Mysore, so another long bus ride in store. Should be fun, though.

My bike refused to start today morning. Sindha says this will be a thing of the past once we get the Palio. But what if the Palio doesn't start ? I know zilch about cars. I know zilch about anything mechanical in fact. I don't have a black thumb.

Checking hotmail is bliss now that I have filtered out everyone apart from the folks on my address book. And since my address book contains just three addresses, I don't get any mail nowadays. I wonder why e-mail harvesters haven't started on my yahoo id.

Better

Feeling better now. Got the monitor on the CD-writer machine to work, so have been burning CDs like pappadams now. And the sysadmins at Dallas have fixed the problem.
Alls well that gets postponed to tomorrow.

Hmph !

I hate Saturdays.

Am at the office right now, trying to help my team in getting a patch release out. Its not going too well due to some problems with the servers at Dallas. Frustrating. I think we'll need to come back tomorrow and try again.

Had lunch at Nadhinis, alone. Which is another thing I dislike. I'd much rather buy lunch and take it home if I am to eat it alone. Put my feet up, read a book, put the TV on, listen to music - multitask while eating.

Feeling angsty, if that's a word. Other stuff happening at office is also getting on my nerves.

Miscellaneous rants - the monitor on the machine with the CD-writer at office is not working, its very hot outside, I haven't yet renewed my vehicle insurance, my loan application at office is in some goddamn queue, I need money to pay the booking advance for the Palio, don't have good books to read, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

I hate Saturdays.

Current book - True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

Switch

Switched to Netscape to read my friends posts in L-J. I just couldn't read them in IE because of the refresh problem.

Maybe its all a conspiracy to convert me to geekdom.

No more Popped Yahoo

Yahoo is going to charge for POP3 access from April 24. Now I need to check my mail on a browser - yecchhh.