Praneel’s Blog

I have 2 BSNL DataOne connections, one old and the other new. I took the new Home 500 Plan for downloads which I can schedule for the free hours 2 - 8 AM. The old one was billed perfectly even if I connected before 2 am and continued downloading. It automatically deducted the free bandwidth and showed the billed bandwidth. Last month I found that my billed usage included free hours in my new Home 500 Plan. I logged in just 3 and 4 minutes before 2 AM and was charged for more than 500 MB each time. There is no way I can download 500 MB of data in 3 minutes. It was for a 30 min period that extended from 1:57 AM to 2:27 AM.

So I called the customer service and explained the situation. They told me that it was not a big problem and asked me to check it after the month is over. I did, and there was no change. So I did a small experiment and found some interesting things.

1)BSNL bills broadband access in a 30 min (1800 seconds) chunks.

2) The billing software cannot calculate the mixed up data session stretching from [Billed] to [Free] hours. ex 1:50 AM to 2:20 AM

3) In theory it should not be able to do the same for a session stretching from [Free] to [Billed] hour. ex 7:50 AM to 8:20 AM

So I wanted to test this theory. I connected at 7:48 AM and downloaded almost 400 MB by 8:18 AM. You want to see the results.

And here is my current billed usage,at 9 MB. No charge for the 400 MB. I got half my last month’s over billed bandwidth back. I don’t know what happens next month ?

Moral of the story: BSNL’s BroadBand is an excellent service. They even have an option to get back everything they over charged. Just Kidding.

If you try this, BSNL might correct this error and you might get a corrected huge bill next month. So don’t attempt it.
If you find any such irregularities in your billing, the best thing to do is - take a snapshot of that page (click printscreen button and paste in MS paint, save) and call customer service.

I read this Indian inventor who lives in penury just now, and it is about the inventor of an amphibious bicycle from Bihar, who made it under Rs 6000 against patented designs of Rs 45000 to 50000. The BBC got an interview and declared that NIF used and left the guy to his fate. The NIF gave an explanation about the help he received and expressed their sympathy and apology for not being able to make this a financial success for the Inventor.

My Ideas
I think this amphibious Bicycle / Tricycle can be sold in states like Kerala and in countries like Thailand where waters ways are highly used.
Instead of the usual boat, tourists can get a ride on this amphibious bicycle / tricycle. They can even rent their own Amphibicycle and have a trip in the water ways. If successful we can see couples in this amphibicycle instead of a gondola in Venice.

If you have any ideas please share them here.

2 Things about Yahoo Hosting

[1] Yahoo Removed the line “500 Concurrent MySQL connections” from their features list. I couldn’t find it anywhere in their site now. May be they realized that it’s too much for such a low price.

[2] Yahoo India is offering a domain, 5 GB space, 200 GB transfer and a Rs 250 worth of Ad promotion for Rs. 999/Year. Not a bad deal, considering they are offering .in domains also which go for Rs 800/year on renewals. The catch - it’s only for small businesses, so no personal sites are officially allowed. The workaround is - You can call any site with ads as a small business venture and may one day actually make it your cash cow.

2 Broadband Connections, 1 Billing Account - Convert BSNL’s Free land line into a second Broadband Connection

I already have a Home 900 Unlimited Connection from BSNL.
Recently a marketing guy from BSNL called me and offered a free phone connection for 1 year. The reason - I was paying more than Rs 1500 per month in bills for the past one year. He told me that this new phone has no free calls and no security deposit or installation charges. The call charges were Rs. 1.20/min.

Then I asked him if I could use this new phone for a second broadband connection. He told me that this was the first time he had heard this question. So he checked and told me that it’s absolutely possible. He gave me a choice of numbers and picked a good one out of them. I said OK, and believe it or not, with in 1 hour I got my new phone installed. The phone was activated the next morning. I applied for a Home 500 plan and paid for the Type 2 Modem (1 WiFi + 1 LAN port). With in 4 days I got a second broadband connection with a Type 4 Modem (1 WiFi + 4 LAN ports). The guy who brought it doesn’t even know what he is holding. I opted out for installation, so he gave me the DNS, login, pass, helpline no. etc. and left.

Now I have a Home 900 automatically converted into a Home 750 (which I will convert into a Flexi 350 next month) and a Home 500 Plan. I use the unlimited one all day and for all systems and the 500 (with 2Mbps true speed) in the free hours. I wanted this setup for more than a year now. And they always said that one billing account can get only one Broadband connection at home. Somehow it’s changed for the better.

Here is a big disappointment with a little bit of good news.
The disappointment -
“Flexi 350″ is a 256 kbps plan, not a 256 - 2 Mbps one. And there is no Night time free (2-8am)

The Good News -
“Home 900″ unlimited is now “Home 750″ unlimited (at 256 kbps). A slash in price of Rs. 150 . BSNL automatically changed all Home 900 plans into Home 750 Plans.

If you are not sure how much bandwidth you are going to use, then take Flexi 350 which is enough for casual browsing, email and a lot of instant messaging. If you exceed the plan’s limit of 2GB in a month you will be charged at Rs. 0.85 /MB of transfer. So after exceeding ~ 2.5 GB of transfer in a month your plan will become unlimited Home 750 for that month only.

Impact -
Is minimal, but encourages more people to get a broadband (as it is called by BSNL) connection.
Decreased risk of heavy bills, compared to Home 125 , Home 250 and Home 500 plans which are not suitable for people with less understanding about bandwidth.
If your broadband usage varies between months this plan will save a good amount of money. There is no worry if you decided to use more bandwidth in a particular month- your monthly bill will never exceed Rs. 750

People who don’t have a clue about the bandwidth, usually take a plan with minimal monthly pay i:e 125, 250 and 500 Home plans. And most of them end up paying the heavy bills. There was no option for an optimal speed + cost plan in Broadband category. The beauty of this Flexi 350 plan is not fully explained by BSNL people. They have to brush up their pitch. We used to pay 12000 (including taxes) for a 900 Home plan per year. Now the same plan costs between 4600 to 9960 depending upon usage.

Recommended -

I strongly recommend BSNL Flexi 350 Broadband plan for - email , browsing and instant messaging.

For beginners and parents at home.

For net junkies. If you are on Home 900 (or Home 750 now) you can change to Home 350. There is a psychology aspect here. There is no excuse now. If you know that ‘not being a net junkie’, you can save money, then it can help cure net addiction.

For people with legitimate necessity for net access and a tight budget- like job seekers and part timers. They actually know the value of money.

I hope, one day, we all can enjoy much higher speeds and learn to better utilize the resources.

Good News for New Webmasters and Small Businesses.
There are many web hosting deals that oversell and offer unlimited everything for peanuts and ban you when you try to use what they promised. They offer this because they know you are not going to use. But when Yahoo announced their new Unlimited Hosting plan I was sure that it is going to make a huge difference.

This plan replaced all the 3 old plans ( Starter, Standard and Professional ). Yahoo says the plan includes Unlimited Web Space, Unlimited Transfer, Unlimited MySQL 4.1 databases and Unlimited Storage for the 1000 email accounts besides all the other goodies like constant backups and multiple mirrors.The best part is 500 concurrent MySQL connections, which is not offered by anyone in this price range.

Did not happen. Check this post.

At last the day we are all waiting for has arrived. Unlimited 2Mbps Broadband Home Plan is here. BSNL gave this ad today and I’ve confirmed with the their customer care. This is going to be integrated into the system tomorrow i:e 8th April 2008. I repeatedly asked them if it is a 256 kbps to 2Mbps plan (Like the Home plan 500) or one like the current Home 900 Plus at 256kbps constant speed and their answer was very exciting to me. It is a 256kbs to 2Mbps variable speed plan (like Home 500) . BSNL did mention that this is an Unlimited Plan in the ad and their customer care explained what “Maximum Rs 750 per month billing” means.

The Plan Details

-

1. You pay Rs 350 per month for 2GB of transfer limit.
2. Once your limit is exceeded, you are billed Rs 0.85/MB of transfer.
3. The maximum billed amount per month is Rs 750.
4. Once the overage exceeds 470 MB (470 x .85 = Rs 400) or your total bill reaches Rs 750 ( initial 350 + 400 = 750) the plan becomes unlimited, and you will be billed no more than Rs 750 for that month.
5. No more “2 AM to 8 AM free hours”. (Who needs them now ?)
6. This plan is for a limited period only. ( It sounds cheesy.. cos they didn’t say if they are going to keep the plan for a limited time or the sign-up period for a limited time)

This the coolest thing BSNL has ever done (besides rural mobiles). I am waiting till tomorrow to see if they keep these specs or change them to 256 kbps.

It’s Impact

- More e-learning courses can be launched by providers
- Rich content can be delivered without compressing too much detail
- The real broadband experience can be felt by everyone
- Students have more time to learn and less frustration downloading a lecture
- We can see an exponential increase in creation and exchange of rich media content

Let’s see tomorrow whether this holds true.

Yesterday, I was searching for a cable in my attic and I found a rusty piece of metal fitted with a wooden handle. I brought it down to throw it away. Then I found out that, this is my Air Rifle which was a gift from my uncle in 1994.

The butt was broken off at the grip. It’s GNW India make .22 cal with Grill tip, scope rail and an excellent Trigger. They don’t make this anymore. I bought a Chinese made Sisco Air Pistol a couple of weeks ago and because of it’s pathetic performance (couldn’t even pierce a coke can at 10m) some new boxes of .22 pellets are in my closet. I loaded the old rifle with a .22 pellet, set up an empty Coke can, aimed and fired a shot. I was totally surprised. This gun was not used for 7 years and it is covered in rust, still the first shot sliced through the coke can, a plastic bin behind it and chipped off a piece of cement before ricocheting and hitting my hand.

I gave it a quick overhaul, fixed it with some nylon rope (the screws on the sides are not available, I have to find some other solution) and zeroed it with some rusty tricks. Now it is amazingly accurate even at 20m. Here is a coke can and my old air rifle.

Ziziphus + Muesli

This is a Good breakfast to start the day.
Take 45 gm muesli with 6 fruits of Ziziphus mauritiana (regu pandu in Telugu). Muesli are available in all Major Super Markets. There are many blends and brands of muesli some have added dry fruits. For best results select a brand without any added sugar. Muesli are usually better than cornflakes and have a high fiber content and low glycemic index.

You can add sliced banana or diced apple for a change. Keep changing the fruit everyday.
You can eat it dry or with some hot milk.

Toshiba R15 Tablet PC / Laptop Fan Sound Problem - Solution

My Toshiba R15 Tablet is making a lot of noise and the Fan is running at full speed almost all the time. In addition to this the laptop is overheating. Usually this is caused by clogging of the heat-sink or fan blades with dust.
My options were -

1) Send it to service (1200km away)
2) Replace the fan and heat sink by my self
3) Try a simple repair. Though risky I took the third option and proceeded with the cleaning.

[Caution: This procedure is not tested thoroughly and any harm caused to the equipment is unknown. Proceed at your own risk.]

Procedure:
1) Turnoff the laptop, remove battery and Remove all connectors.
2) Use suction to remove easy dirt.
3) Use fine nozzle attachment to blow away hard dirt.
4) Use suction again to remove any dirt residue. (If the cleaning is complete, you will hear a whistle during suction- this indicates the vents and fan blades are dirt free.)
5) Plug-in all connectors, replace battery and plug-in power.
*Extra Caution: Some suggest removing Ram modules and Hard Disk also during this procedure. I did not remove them and there seems to be no problem.

After the cleaning my Laptop is cooler and more silent than before. I might need to change the fan later, but this cleaning bought me more time and less noise.

This is a real inspiration for me. Lee and Sachi are doing a great work in a simple yet powerful way.

CMS : Vivvo
Problem: mod_rewrite not working/enabled on 1and1 hosting.
The main problem for implementing Vivvo CMS News Publishing system on 1and1’s non server packages is the confusion about mod_rewrite. Well it is enabled by default, according to 1and1. The problem we see while installing Vivvo is the pre-install page that checks and gives us a “?” after mod_rewrite. If we proceed ignoring the problem the installation will end up in a 500 error or 404 error.
Solution:
Just add this one line in .htaccess file in the Vivvo root directory (before starting installation). After the line RewriteEngine On just add

Rewritebase /

. The .htaccess file might look like this before the change

Options All -Indexes
ErrorDocument 404 /404.php

FileETag MTime Size

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^sitemap\.xml$ feed.php?output_type=sitemap [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)(\.html|\.htm)$ index.php [L]

..ofcourse there are more lines of code after this.

And after the change-

Options All -Indexes
ErrorDocument 404 /404.php

FileETag MTime Size

RewriteEngine On
Rewritebase /
RewriteRule ^sitemap\.xml$ feed.php?output_type=sitemap [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)(\.html|\.htm)$ index.php [L]

That’s all. You will see that installation pre-check detects mod_rewrite this time and you can start tasting the flavor of Vivvo.

I just got these ideas about how tringme can be used.

-If you have a tringme widget at your homepage you can receive wedding/birthday wishes as voice greetings, even when people don’t know your number.

-When someone wants to complement you, but they are shy, they can use tringme.

-Anonymity and accessibility are the best features of tringme. But you might get some unwanted threats/messages also if you don’t protect it. Any calls for me

I love this animation. Simple and brilliant.

Esc - Animatior Vs Animation In 3D - Click here for the funniest movie of the week

Just now I received my tingme invitation. Now anyone can leave me a voice message right on this blog.

The Problem: There are many complaints from owners about the faulty fuel pump indicator and the eventual low torque revving of Fiat Palio 1.9 Diesel . There are funny stories and elaborate nightmares in gruesome detail told by those who endured the service department’s sensible touch. Some sold their cars and some got them fixed for the time being. But there seems to be no real solution for this. Insurance company won’t cover it, because it is not a manufacturing defect (at least according to Fiat). And Fiat is not promising warranty on either the Repaired Pump (By TVSE motors - for Rs. 25,000 they change the Faulty sensor in the pump) or the new Pump (costs Rs. 75,000). As a bonus you have to pay it from your pocket. This is going to continue until Fiat accepts that it is a major screw-up in their manufacturing and rectifies it.

The Solution: You have to start the engine 2 to 3 times until the indicator goes off. Once started, then usually there is no problem (except some public embarrassment).

This I think is a cool way of knowing how smart you are. The game is simple. They give you 1000 chips for free (it’s still in beta). And you can play as many games as you want. When you loose all the chips and come back to your account panel they will fill you up with another 1000 chips. Cool… Isn’t it. But if you win substantial amount of chips (25000 to 100000 or more ) you will get Gift certificates for Amazon.com and some cool cash too.

The game is simple. You have to guess and bet on the color chips that make up (and reveal) the image randomly picked from Flickr. You get more chips for betting more on the color that is abundant in the picture. At first there is a blank frame so most of the people try to bet on the darkest color. And once the outline is revealed you can try to guess the other colors. You can play with your friends by inviting them or can play with the ones occupying the tables.

What I like about the game is the imaginative potential required to play this game. It becomes a leveled playing field. Your intellect or pride won’t help you. Only your instincts and imagination. Very cool.

Warning: It could be a little bit addictive. Play only if you must relax

The only downside (or the upside) is there are not many players to play with. Better invite a friend to join first.

Game on.

Signed up for tringme . Waiting for the invitation!

Simply Superb

In a desperate attempt to squeeze more out of a day, I’ve decided to time my sleep cycles and modulate my sleep accordingly. I set a (mental) alarm and when ever I got up in the middle of the night I recorded the time. I got up at 45 min, 1 hour, 1 1/2 hour and again 45 min intervals. My minimum sleep cycle was 45 min (that’s half the usual).
I want to get minimum cycles in a single sleep session with no undesirable effects. Today I’ve slept for 4 1/2 hours ( 12:30 AM to 5:00 AM ). So far there is no sign of fatigue or drowsiness, in fact I am more active now.
Before I can brag any more, I have to see how my day goes (I hope I don’t sleep like a narcoleptic before I click Publish).

——
7:03 AM 13th May
Last night- I slept from 10:30 to 5 in the morning. Woke up at 3 AM but decided to give my self a break .