me !== iPhone

Ok, here I am going to rant about Apple iPhone and iOS. I'll try to be logical, and I may not be correct at some places, feel free to consider it my ignorace to study, but then, I can excuse myself with, "what good is it if I've to study on how to do 'xyz' or hack things to get it done?"

Disclaimer: I know how to do each of these things in a Jailbroken iPhone, so please feel free to stop reading if you are going to support your statement with a wink. I've bought the phone with some hard earned money, and I am not looking to void my warranty for getting done with such basic things that I am going to write below.

Lets start with filesystem.
> Apple's iOS internal filesystem looks very similar to any Macintosh, with unix like architecture, because at the core its BSD derivative. But no application can access the filesystem outside its namespace.

That means, I cannot:
    - Connect my phone to office machine and simply copy and paste my (say legally downloaded/ripped mp3s).
    - To solve this problem, i somehow need to use a mass storage device (not iPhone itself, iPhone doesn't behave as mass storage), say pen drive, then, I need to take those MP3s to my home computer, put them into iTunes and then sync my phone. (how elegant is this!) I'll have my MP3s with me by the next day.. (plus, Apple thinks doing this stopped me from putting MP3s downloaded from songs.pk into the device, oh ya! happy DRM)
    - Lets say, this restriction is because of DRM, what about my PDFs, my Videos, my ZIP files?

Lets move ahead to Bluetooth.
> Apple does not support any bluetooth protocol other than A2DP.
That means, I cannot:
    - Copy some file from friends phone, I am talking about Image/self shot video (not his songs.pk mp3s) (happy DRM).
    - I cannot sycn my iPhone over bluetooth from my own PC (not the office one anyways).
But no one uses bluetooth right?

Lets talk about application access:
> Apple does not allow applications to access OS features.
That means, I cannot:
    - Make an application that can act as answering machine, when I am not with my phone.
    - I cannot make SMS SPAM filter application.
    - I cannot have call recorder things.
    - I cannot make an app that support filesystem browser/bluetooth OBEX support etc.
    - Infact, anything that Apple thinks is not good for a phone.

Format Support:
> Apple thinks that no other format in this world is better than H.26x video contained in an MP4 or MOV container.
That means, I cannot:
    - Play a Matroska Container file with, say, flash video, infact, any other video on this planet.
    - Infact, becuase Apple restricts hardware access too, you can't have an app other than inbuilt app.
    - If I want to play some real media file, I need to first get some mp4 encoder, change the format, add to iTunes, sync.
      (But that is easy, isn't it?)
    - iTunes won't do the encoding for you, if you don't have mp4/mov file, just go and sleep.

Flash:
> Apple prevents iOS to install flash.
That means:
    - Apple thinks Adobe sucks in making a stable application which crashes.
    - Infact, its apple who sucks in making a sandbox in which flash could run to prevent crashes from flash and for it, any other crash causing application.

Browser:
> Apple prevents iOS to have any browser that is not based on WebKit.
That means:
    - No firefox.
    - No opera (full).
    - Having that said, Apple also thinks that Opera mini is an exception to the rule and should be allowed, however it is not using WebKit, but its not impacting Safari's buisness. (And we use to say Microsoft enforces IE)
    - Did I mentioned, IE sounds better than Safari anyways?

Root Access:
> Apple prevents user's from root access (thats sane, but what about a normal user?)
That means:
    - I cannot SSH to my phone, to do any of the above (even with non-root user)

Access Point Configuration:
> Apple prevents user's from editing Access Point configuration.
That means:
    - Uless I am using Vodafone/Airtel/Idea (which I've tested to work), I cannot put (again what I've tested) Reliace/Aircel/maybe other SIM cards and get the auto detection work.
    - If you are not using either of the few providers who provide auto configuration, there is no way you can get Internet work on your phone.
    - Plus if you are using say, some plan with a differnet access point configuration (say vodafone live), you again can't.

Maps:
> Apple thinks that iOS 6 Maps are better than Google Maps.
That means:
    - You can't go back and install Google Maps once you upgraded to iOS 6. You won't find an app even on ITunes store.

Security:
> Apple does not believe in app level security.
That means:
    - If I want to have password on my Messages (only) I can't.
    - Plus since there is no direct/indirect OS access, you can't even have an app for that.


This is not the end of the list, just the beginning..
Therefore, I, in my full concious, hereby, solemeny declare that, this was my first and the last iPhone ever.

Now feel free to stay in the fan following crowd for Apple iPhone, treat it as status symbol or anything, I'ld prefer anything over iPhone now on.

A round of applause for irctc..

Well this comes from personal experience, and is for those who still think they should book from irctc...

I set up an alarm to wake up at 7:55 to get the tatkal booking done, at 8 I was almost ready with my laptop all geared up.
Till 8:30 I wasn't able to see even the login page, and when it opened up, it took 15 minutes till I signed in. (that was definitely faster than my expectations!)

Then I had a hard time to get the autocomplete fill in the 2 stations in another 5 minutes, I mean whats so hard about an autocomplete engine? Even a novice programmer can write an autocomplete engine that can horizontally scale and can respond in acceptable time.

Well then by the time I saw the list of trais, the clock was ticking 9. And the first bump came in when the train I was looking for (Taj Express) was left with only 4 seats! Were others really able to open up such site and book tickets? It immediately clicked that my net connection could be at fault at that point of time, a quick ping to a few servers, there was no packet loss at my end. Then how in this world 4 seats left? (I was supposed to be booking 7, meaning 2 transactions).

Quickly changed plan to another train, it had 17 left, clock was ticking and I was supposed to make 2 transactions. Filled in the form by 9:10, but wait! while I was filling the form, the lazy javascript from irctc removed last 2 passenger textboxes... (ting!) That means I can only book 4 tickets for tatkal at a time. (Although fair enough, because it would have taken 2 turns anyways)
Then checked in the payment mode (that was fast because I have by-hearted my card details), and viola! After about 2 minutes of processing of only god knows what, I got the tickets.

But wait, only 4 passengers are travelling by now..
So I repeated the process, and by 9:30 I again checked in the payment, but this time even after 3-4 minutes of processing of only god knows what, it failed to book the tickets. Account was debited for the transaction, and no tickets!

Thats fine, I'll get the refund in some 7 days or so (without interest anyways), so I retried, because half the passengers were travelling already, and rest of them has to!

So by next 10 minutes, I was again at payment gateway, this time it took 1 minute of processing of only god knows what, and it replied.. "I am done with my 2 transcations for the day for tatkal, and my tickets cannot be booked" (although the last transcation failed)

(And irctc is so kind that they debited the account first and then lately came to remember that "oh! this guy has done his transcations") (either valid or invalid transaction)

Thats sounds good, because now I cannot book tickets, my account was debited twice, half the passengers are travelling. And irctc doesn't know how to count a transaction!

Now what? Let me cancel the first ticket as well and the entire trip... Wait shit! You won't get a penny to cancel a tatkal ticket... (lol)

So now I was at a stage where, half the passengers are travelling, I was denied ticket because I have done a failed transcation, my account was debited twice without any ticket, and if I cancel a ticket I won't get a penny..

Then I thought, cancelling is better than trying one last time (I will get the refund most likely).. So I called up my friend, asked his irctc username and password, and re-tried the transaction (luck was with my side or not, but the tickets were still available in this train).

So there I was again at payment gateway page, and I used a secod card to do this transaction, and guess what, it took 2 minutes of processing of only god knows what and when it came back, it said "You have crossed your limit of 2 transactions"
What? irctc is doing its math on IP address! (I was smart enought to clear the cookies, but couldn't have changed static IP of mine)

That sounds even better, because now I cannot book tickets from this computer all together, my account was debited thrice without any ticket, half the passengers are travelling and irctc has applied all its engineering (whatever they know) on blocking IP addresses. (I mean people cound be on NAT, whats the point in blocking by IP address)

Finally, I called up another friend (Asheesh Varshneya), who booked the tickets from his computer, using a third card and I've got all the passengers travelling.

Now please, let all of us stand up in ovation for the engineering and design of irctc, I would like to give special thanks to the chief architect of irctc and would request a special round of applause.

(Btw did I mentioned, the return tickets for the same date were no more available by then) :) So here I am, bashing irctc and thinking how would I come back! And the final situation ends like:

I have tickets to go, with my account debited thrice for invalid transactions, but the seats are in different coaches all together.. And yes! I yet don't know how to come back, and if I cancel the trip, I won't get a penny back on the tickets!

Happy time irctc!

Beautiful morning, but not so beautiful day, welcome to New Delhi...

Alarm at 7:30 in the morning is like "curse you phone", but yet, wake up to find it was raining heavily. Immediately checked if papa had already taken off my car, yes indeed!

Waited till 10:30 (actually half sleeping) to get off to work, but the rain was in mood today. Finally, I thought of going to market and buy a rain coat and go off on the bike, but as I stepped out, it was "one hundred percent" wetty experience, despite carrying an umbrella. I was enjoying rain-bathing although, but had to drop the plan of the rain coat. Waited for half an hour more to find out that its all gone just-like-that (typical Delhi rain, not even a single sign of any cloud afterwards). Cool, kickstarted the bike and left off for a ride (my favorite).

Just after moving about 100 meters, I realized the first after-effect of rain (in Delhi), "water-logs". A car almost spoiled my black jeans (what? are you insane to wear black jeans after rain? unfortunately yes! That was the only one pre-ironed in the Almira). I thought, driving 32kms in such road conditions would mean omfg! So I waited there for a moment to fold the jeans as much as I can and drove to next nearest metro station, Jasola.

Then comes the next after effect of rain, "traffic jam". As heard on the radio, it was kind of Dilli-Jam. Took me 1hr 05mins to cover a distance of mere 3kms which usually takes just 7 minutes.

Finally reached metro station to realize the next after effect of rain, that is not explicit, but like me, all the office going people shoot out for their respective offices just after rain, all at once. Yellow line is usually not so crowdy, but today it was like.. "wtf".
Ditto for Central Secretariat. So I though it would be good to try out express line instead. So skipped Rajiv Chowk and dropped off at NDLS.

This was the first good experience of the beautiful day. As I entered the express line premises, I was astonished to see the infra DMRC has put up. 15 mins a metro is one quality service. One bad thing that I found (although quite small), is that my metro card doesn't work at express line (Why so?). The train is even better than the station. I was enjoying the ride, but turned out to be a small one as it took just 25 minutes to reach Dwarka sec. 21. Office is just a walk from there... So am I here writing this blog and thanking papa for taking off the car today.

For all those people out there, just try out express line once, it'll really be a different outlook of commuting (except the comparative cost factor involved with express line).

Alter EGO

There is no denying the fact, that our thoughts reflect ourself. At times we become rigid, we are overjoyed, we are sad and so on... But do we realize that, at that very moment our behavior is reflecting whole of our self.

In a saying..

What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens. -Charles R. Swindoll

Each of us comprises of two parts, one is ourself, the other is imaginary.. or what in layman term called as "alter ego". Most of us might already know this, but a quick brief: "An alter ego of a person is the opposite self of himself who always drives you into the direction where you have not been to."

Point is, most of us think (or have a a mindset) that alter ego is negative you. This blog denies this fad. What I perceive of myself is that, I am living my alter ego. Let me go through this...

We all know people resist changes, which is a universal fact for all human beings. So do I. The time I left off my college, I was morally very down and upset. Nothing looks good to me. Even rainbows were like protractor those days. I was really resisting things that I left off. Then adjusting in corporate environment was another challenge in front of me. To face things I used to curtail my work. e.g I used to left off from office at 4PM (ideally 7).
Then slowly life came to a steady pause. It became my usual routine. All the thoughts from college got buried deep within me. The real me started to hide. I was like running away from myself. Instabilities crept within me.

(Scene 32 take 41 - action)
Then I met someone...

Usually its not that I make idols or (fan)tsize myself about others. But this someone was the one who made me think. I found him to be one of the fastest thinker. Exceptional analysis skill and brilliant IQ. He made me think (without saying) of what has gone "has GONE". I can't segregate myself to move ahead to the best of worldly things. I have no right to throw off my wings and letup myself to fly.

Then comes up my alter ego.. It showed me the path. I started to enrich my thought process. I started to adopt myself with changes and open both hands to accept the new phase of life. There is always more ahead. Actually more and more ahead..

Now question is what all could I do if I also feels like shit!

1. First and of the foremost importance is, love yourself. Believe me, if you could be joyous to be happy with what you are (and not what you could be) you'll never feel down.

2. Be creative: Now thats not easy. But think deeply, it indeed is. The very basic definition of creativity varies for every single person to other. For me creativity could be to make code, but for other it can be some fancy things like painting, dancing, or the oddest of them, making dumb figures out of paint dropping wall while you do shit! (Like I made the map of India once)

3. Pursuit your passion: Its the key!

4. Analyze: We go on running after things, tasks etc and find 24 hrs to be too few to complete 'em all. Just take out 30 minutes of yours where you think. Think anything.. what you did yesterday, why you said X at random, when Y thing happened and so on.

And lastly understand that..
"No one can see beyond his judgement" -Oracle (Matrix Reloaded)

Understanding to this has been left as an exercise to the readers :-)

Four years!

Four years!!

(That was what I said when I got admitted to Engineering college, JMI)

2nd August 2005, I walked to the auditorium to attend the opening lecture by the proctor.

"Welcome to Jamia, a central university by an act of parliament. Here you'll get a chance to showcase your talent and blah blah blah..
I'ld also like to tell you, please don't bunk the classes and do not misbehave. Remember you are represting not only yourself, but your parents, your colloge and your country as well."

This was how we interpreted this..

"Welcome to Jamia (and we boast about ourselves). Here you'll get a chance to showcase how well you can stand in front of our tortures.
I' ld also like to tell you on this very first day, that there is another way called 'bunking the classes' when you feel nothing is going right. And you represent literally no one, and you are khulla saand."

I entered the classroom, with 60 blank faces. Just like a new person in the puppet show, and asked myself, "Who all are these blank stupid faces? Don't they get any other place except this one? Are all of them dumb (that's including me)?"

Soon lectures, classes, assignments and exams started, and in the interim we started to gain our real treasure, its was not the knowledge, twas FRIENDS. Those blank faces started to turn out more friendly, It was just 3 days and I then knew 40 new names, rest of them seldom came up to the classes, I didn't knew rest of them till 2nd year ;-) And know what, this puppet show started to turn out a huge reality show.

Time used to run very slow, we enjoyed every mischief, every adventure, every minute of our college. In this, I met few of really good friends, Bharat, Waseem, Asheesh, Kazim, Ali, Shariq, Sameer, Aaveg, Nimisha, Anjuman, to name a few. This blog is especially dedicated to all of you, and a real thanks for being there with me in all those 4 years. Life would have been disgusting and unimaginable without you all. I still remember each and every moment, every talk and every single thing with you.

A couple of years passed by, and my second home gradually became Hostel, it indeed was sweet to smell all the rotten sox in every room, although personally, my favorite smell was from RNo. 1 AMK. :)

How could we forget the proposal of sand bag theory by Dr Kazim Zaidi, I vomited for the first time in my life laughing, and we needed to call up service to clean the room up.

The bad words filled mail to a popular mailing list! We bunked the lecture to find a cyber cafe to post the message. One of the most devastating idea we had.

Money was in abundance, really. Whenever you need it, "oye 100 rs hain?"

JamP2P deadline was 1 day ahead, but did we had a game of BZFlag? "Abhi to puri raat padi hai, khelte hain yaar!"

2369 cups of tea at canteen! Or more? I remember those days when after entering the college we straight away reaches canteen and sat over there till 5.

Mass bunk Planning mass bunk was a daily business.

When we just needed a voice to be raised to have lunch at Al-Bake. (NARE main lagata tha, and Waseem used to say, 'main nahin jaunga')

When S***** sir used to scold us for wearing the shoes in the lab, when he himself was wearing 'em, and we all stood up in a line outside the lab for a couple of periods as punishment. It couldn't have been a 'jaza' instead of 'saza' unless juniors congratulated us for getting relieved from the practical. :)

Algorhythm/Encomium used to come up as a festival, when without reason we worked like anything.

Asheesh's leg pulling, didn't anyone noticed he grew up 6inches more in his college time? (I am specifically talking about body height, sorry no leg pulling here)

Bharat's jokes, combined with Kazim to produce deadliest fun ever.

The cup below the computer table at Bharat's room, I still imagine how could it be there for so long!

Today, its nearly an year that I am out of that world. It feels like someone has snatched the treasure from me. Why am I working? I yet have no responsibilities, is this just because everyone is working, so should I? Why I cannot continue that life?

Its only that I added a word "just" to my first sentence when I left off on the last day of college..

Just 4 years!!

How not to name you child?

Disclaimer: This is not a "how to" or suggestion list to name your child or else wise an offence to those whose name appears here. It is a work of fiction, any resemblance with any living or dead is purely coincidental.

Incidentally it came up in my mind, when I heard the name called "Chunna" (might be a nickname), when a woman near my home was shouting on her son. With this, we can very well think of the odds, that might come up with the name that we are choosing for our new ones. Here are few of the considerations:

1. Name elegantly:

In olden days, people used to name "Chunna", "Munna", "Gudiya", "Babu", "Kallu", "Mitthu" etc.

You might be surprised to know, two elderly siblings, at my hometown has names - Anno and Mujji respectively. Now think, someone calling you as, "oye mujji idhar aana". So name elegantly, keeping in mind next 50 years. You might very well know, Chiraunjilal.. (Khosla ka ghosla). These names don't work anymore in present.

2. Names based on film stars or celebrities:

This might be funny if someone calling you Shahrukh Khan. Often people name there kids, sometimes unintentionally, with superstar's name. e.g. One may call his son as Aamir. But since the family name is Khan, it becomes Aamir Khan. Which raises difficulty later.
It is left to the readers to imagine someone calling you Tushar Kapoor :)

3. Always try to form anagrams:

Anagrams are the words that are created by jumbling the alphabets. A friend of mine named Anjuman Bhatla (name changed), has an anagram of Batman!!

4. Keep in mind the reverse of the name:

e.g. Atir becomes Rita.
Amir becomes Rima. Oops, changed the gender as well.

5. Changing one or two characters should not blast out the name.

I've a good example to make here, my name itself, Shamail.. When I was in school, others just replaced 'a' with 'e' and it became SHE-MAIL! Now thats pathetic!
A friend of mine, Adil got printed on his I-Card Adick.
A friend of my brother has name Saadh, What if you replace 's' with 'p'. OH MY GOD..

6. Pronunciation:

Shamail (sha-ma-el) is usually pronounced as, sha-mil, sha-mail (as in GMAIL), shu(the one we says to dogs)-mal etc etc.
Anas, read the way you want.. !!! (Anus?)

6. Does including sir name still keeps the name intact?

A cousin of mine has a name "Taha Ahmad", say it quickly to make it "Tehmad"

7. Is the name too old fashioned or ultra modern?

Imagine calling a 2yr child with name "Maurya Ranjan". How would his mom scold him? "Maurya Ranjan ye kya kar rahe ho!"
Similarly, imagine a 60 yr old lady called Pinky or Sweety!

In my school days, when it was time when we awaits 6 days to get 30 mins of P.T class as games, and whole of the week, it was team building, making decisions of what to play etc etc.
But to note, we used to call our friends in abbreviation. but these abbreviations are not the initials of that person. Its very different. This abbreviation is the initial of the fathers name!
e.g. I "Shamail Tayyab" was called by name MT and not ST. Similarly one of my friend Mohan was called BS (fathers name Bharat Singh)

Now this is interesting, we could keep our offspring with a name subjected to a lot of filters, but do you have any solution for this? What would name your kid if your name is Anant Shyam Sundar...