BSNL 3G on Ubuntu rocks

One more (much delayed) post on my experiments with Ubuntu. Earlier I had written on how easy was to setup BSNL EVDO device with my ubuntu laptop. And this time it is BSNL 3G connection on Ubuntu, and it as been delightfully easy to setup.

It's a UMTS third generation connectivity which offers much better bandwidth compared to GPRS or EDGE. BSNL (and may be MTNL too) is the first to implement this in India, and other service providers are catching up - we have just finished reading in the news papers on the 3G spectrum auction and stuff. The BSNL website provides on the tarrif and other details here, and the SIM card just costs Rs.59/-.

I bought a Huawei USB modem which was instantly regonized and setup by my Jaunty. This device supports sending and receving SMS, but not making voice calls using from the PC - which is okay for me since my primary intend is just to browse the internet. The configuration is done with very few clicks. Simply use the network management applet on the desktop panel..and enter the dial in number as *99# and APN as 'bsnlnet'.. and click  Apply button, that's it, done.

You can find the details of your modem by lsusb command on the shell, it should print the modem details, in this case Huawei - as in this output

$ lsusb
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 12d1:140c Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 090c:3714 Feiya Technology Corp.

This internet connection is pretty fast and serves well for my practical purposes that includes everyday browsing (including youtube videos without any buffering delays), my office VPN and little bit of downloading. I can say, it gives almost 1Mbps.. but download speeds around 120-200 KB/s. Well, the wireless connections are known for their inconsistent speeds, and my observations could not be very accurate. Still my overall experience with this has been very good. I would suggest configuring KPP for dialing into the network, since it provides this nice 'Accounting' features and helps you to keep a tab on the usage. Another free tool umtsmon might also be a good option.

I occasionally use Wammu for sending and receiving sms, and for other SIM management stuff.. It 's cool and suits well for my needs. I used the "Phone Wizard" to configure the modem details (device to use :  /dev/ttyUSB0, make : huawei -  for example) and it is a just a self explanatory simple interface.

Okay, just wrapping up my quick notes here. Bye for now!

Bloom Box!

Saw this interesting report in today's Hindu - the bloom box. Thought of bookmarking it here. I 've not yet read about its principle of operation or any other details, but all that I could guess now is that it would be something like a fuel cell. And that can generate power for normal household needs, interesting!

Here is my plan!
Read this on weekend!
And watch this video.

BSNL EVDO on Ubuntu-9.04 made easy!

It is time to knock off all your skepticism about using GNU/Linux; it is equally (if not better) equipped to meet most of the general purpose computing requirements for an average user. Believe me, I have been using Ubuntu-9.04 on my laptop, and till now I have not come across a situation which forces me to have another OS, say MS Windows.

Here is one more reason to reinforce my belief.

Recently I had to connect to the internet while away from home. I was looking for a internet connection for temporary use, and soon landed onto a BSNL EVDO device borrowed from a friend.

The next question was how to get the EVDO USB device (ZTE make) work with my laptop running Ubuntu-9.04. Google search results took me towards lengthy articles detailing how to probe for our USB device, configure wvdial.conf etc. But NO! Time to be updated, all those steps are not required any more.

Here is how I configured the ZTE EV-DO device, that took not even a minute!

1. Right click on the NetworkManager tray icon.
2. Click "Edit Connections" on the menu and choose the "Mobile Broadband" tab.
3. Select "Auto Mobile Broadband (CDMA) connection" & click "Edit"
4. Type-in the details - Number : #777, Username and Password and click "Apply" button.
5. Left click on the NetworkManager tray icon again and click "Auto Mobile Broadband (CDMA) connection".
6. Yes, done! You will find the connection notification on the right corner soon. You could disconnect any time using the "Disconnect" from the menu when you left click on the NetworkManager tray icon.

Happy web browsing!

I found this EV-DO connection fast enough for normal requirements. On 2wire speed meter it showed ~100Kbps at BTM Layout, where as at Koramangala speed touched ~384 Kbps. The speed is not found to be consistent like a wired connection, and may not be suitable if you have specific bandwidth requirements.

Before doing the above steps you could check the /var/log/ to make sure that the ZTE device is detected by Ubuntu.
$sudo tail -f /var/log/messages

Update:

Saw these steps on this forum too.

Avatar : A Dreamwalk

It is difficult to remember when awake, what you have seen in a dream. Dreams used to be like some animated movies having a mix of realist images with distorted, in multi layered, extra colourful backgrounds and sometimes abstract shapes doing wonderful, weird acts. That's how my dreams have been, and I believe it is so for others too. And why am I talking about dreams here?

Because when I watched the movie "Avatar" on last Wednesday night, I felt like I was caught up inside a dream. Listen for our paraplegic protagonist Jack Sully's voice over in the begining : he had dreamt that he would fly one day.

A must watch - classic movie - with unimaginable visuals and computer graphics. The 3D boosts the scenes with an enhanced appeal to the visuals - feels like you are in the forest, where the leaves and fluorescent creatures float around you! Yes, a must watch (in theatre ; that ambience is very much required).

Hollywood hits have always been well-known for their technical perfection. But this one is not just about that; I felt it has a philosophical edge too.

You get so involved with the Na`vis, their culture, beliefs, bonding with nature around them and their respect for life. Look at mantra's the sing even when they were forced to kill animals - when attacked! These things are taken in cleverly from our own earthly life, from our own culture, for an example I could say - from the very old inhabitants, the native tribes. It shows how devastating can a intrusion be to the indigenous people. Isn't this a criticism towards colonisation, and exploitation of natural resources?

The movie has a mix of all obvious, familiar ingredients; but is it putting forward a socio political message - of the need to have a "real" green life? Is it pointing finger at the militarism and the greed of over-industrialism?

Personally, the idea of "bio-botanical neural network" spread over all the living organisms from trees to brains - appeared really fascinating to me! Look at the massive attack launched against humans by Pandora's wildlife. Imagine if such a attack happens on Earth - haven't we scored enough to deserve it :-) !!

Okay, that's it for now! Signing off!

And here comes...

One more reason to post!

This news will not surprise anybody who keeps a watch on what Google has been doing! - The official announcement of "Introduction of Google Chrome OS" at the Google blog.

And it brings an end to a number of rumors in forwards circulated, apprehensions posted in several blogs etc. on Google's future plans of coming out with an OS. Those stories we heard were mostly on the a possible foray by Google into the OS market for personal computers presently dominated by MS. This is a sample of such an article I read long time back - found from the bookmarks! Anyway now the suspense is over.

It looks to be a web based OS (similar to the eye OS) with probably lot more features - that s the Google way, we know.

Here is what I think it might look like:

A light-weight kernel (may be a modified Linux) boots on a netbook or laptop with limited resources, starts a minimal GUI. And this GUI could provide an easy way to connect to the web, with an extended form of an internet browser (Yes, there comes Chrome) or the user starts the browser on his own. The user gets access to various web applications for typical home/office needs - a word processor, spread sheet, presentation packs.. and may be multimedia stuff as well!

The data could be actually saved in the clouds, the distributed storage behind the web and cached at your netbook!

Okay, these are my free thoughts on what this could be - I am just trying to imagine how would this one might look like :) ..!

Google is partnering with many netbook manufactures and let s hope this reaches the needy at an affordable price. One of the advantages for netbooks is their low cost and usefulness to general computing users, and can have a better reach if sold at lower price - a low cost OS comes significant there.

Isn't Google addressing the most common need of majority of computer users - internet surfing?, providing a clean,efficient and simple platform serving the basic needs - that of the netbook.

Would it be like the splashtop where a chrome browser connected to an "eyeOS" like web based system with many Web2.0 applications?

Here is another interesting post at the splashtop.

• Is computing becoming more and more affordable?


• Will it reach the masses?


• Will it bring down the digital divide?

Wait and see!.

Yes, back again!

This post is after a really long silence lasted for more than two years!! Many things around - my work, company, tools,few personal beliefs..have changed but some of my interest areas and habits remain (tech and non tech) still the same!

So, what broke the blogger's block all on a sudden? May be it is this first post by my dear friend Appoos at "The Swami of Life" here. It's about things that we plan to do, and eventually and habitually miss out too often...that anybody who were with us in college can relate to. :) !

Looking back at my last post, feel now that I should have continued pondering on the idea of "affordable computing" and should have posted more in it. Well, but writing a post is definitely not something you take up as a "todo" item, though.

Anyway there were lot of things which I initially thought of writing about and missed out later on..(no listing, btw). But here is something that I would bookmark for myself and recommend for anybody who (by chance) read this!

Youtube link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

And the transcript here!


Okay, I don't want to describe on that - watch it for yourself! Such a superb talk.

Time to logout! bye for now.

Questions, if you are a techie..

The pace at which devices get smarter and more intelligent is amazing. The mobile phone handset has become almost like a full fledged personal computer, with features added up in every generation, the transformation is from a mere Voice/Data communicator to a device for Watching TV, or controlling your house hold devices using a Palmtop kind of thing remotely etc.The network is converging showing a clear sign-A future with nearly all the voice, data and other types of media integrated and served together.

Now, in a country like ours who will be able to buy these kinds of new generation gadgets? What kind of applications they can find for these smart devices in our (leave IT guys for the time being) lives?
Both the service providers and gadget manufactures will be looking for ways to develop their products much more cost effectively, thereby increasing their reach. We do have handsets spreading out in a wide range, with costs affordable to a common man.

When it comes to something more than just a mobile handset, the digital divide remains as a fact. I feel this issue is going to become severe in a society where access to information and keeping information is going to be possible only by a few people who can enjoy the benefits of an IT revolution with their purchasing power.
What about the people who are left away, that may lead to a knowledge divide?

Yes, (increased volume ;)), So guys, what about affordable computing?

This leads to another interesting question, what will a common man do with a 'computer'? How do devices like "simputer" will become more effective?

Considering the small and medium scale industries, and the agricultural sector, where can we bring in Automation and Effective Information Management, affordably? Running a business will be more effective, both the producer and consumer can enjoy the advantages like faster processing (be it any field), can get updates on various levels of information in the system, be it present status of my application, how much due one has to pay ....goes like that.
From what I have seen, some of such things would be:

• A bus conductor using Electronic Billing Machine that prints out tickets, makes his work much easier..
  


• An electronic Voting Machine, that makes our fundamental process of democracy much more easy,not only for the voters. but bigtime for those who Count the votes!! :)
  


• Information kiosks found at Railways Stations, Bus Stations and many other places..
  


• A BESCOM 24x7 electricity bill payment counter..
  

And lot more...

All these are designed for a specific usage, and are more of a traditional embedded system.But, what will be the uses of a general purpose computer affordable to the masses?
Let us discuss!

Geography 's gonna be History

There is much to read in the Linux For You, March 2007 - An exclusive coverage on Linux Asia: Making Geography History. It talks about the new trends, India and open source, Linux for the blind - ADRIANE Knoppix demo, the CXO Summit, Gandhigiri and open source and lots more.

Click here to read the report!

And then the biggest wonder: Microsoft debut in a Linux Asia.

On reading the reports, I found this interesting, their 1st theme in keynote - Challenge the Indian OSS community to innovate.

"Thought-leaders from the industry, academia, government and the community will challenge the Indian Linux/OSS community to develop innovative ICT solutions that can empower developing nations like India."

Too long, isn't it? Well this is copied from the LINUX ASIA website.

India, as we see, is demographically diverse, economic differences existing in its widest form, from overcrowded Hi tech Metros to Villages still in blackout.

Can the OSS community help to bridge the gap? The challenges are not only technical, of course the social, educational conditions and infrastructure - everything has to be made better, and there is always a limit for what technology can deliver.

Can the Information and Communication Technology(ICT) solutions be used to bring the north east or the Ladak on par with Bangalore? What is the scope? Have not we read about the people who are far beyond the reach of information technology - those who go marginalized in near future due to lack of knowledge in operating and managing the information in the hi-tech form? Designing devices, tools, computers, web pages for the masses are going to be the challenges.

Will we be able to push the geography to history?
Let's wait and see.

All about (over)playing

This is an "unlock" routine in action, if there was a blogger's bLOCK.

I am deliberately changing the topic, which I first thought of writing. I simply hated the way the media overplayed things those are least important for most of Indians, and hype that had been given to the cricketers of the country. I am a cricket lover, and of course even from my school days I used enjoy those golden moments - whether it is Rhodes taking a nearly impossible catch, or Tendulkar punishing Warne for a big six over the mid on or whatever. Yes, these are great, and there are even greater moments - But, let us take the world cup match between India and Bangladesh. It was a stunning defeat for India, and in cricket such things happens. That's the beauty of the game. Well, let me not analyse the match, we have specialists to do that.

I remember the headline of one popular newspaper about how much the organizers and sponsors will lose if India does not make it to the Super Eight. Don't understand how can this be a front page main headline when there are many other burning issues. It was just a day before, I (happened to) read in a prominent Malayalam daily about a young bowling "phenomenon" who has proved his skills by showing his arrogance in the fields..."the young new brave face of India!"..still, what is the point in giving over coverage to his family and all..

Reactions and responses on India's defeat was "promptly" covered by all news channels. Some went on by spending more than 70% of the news time.. And in between the "informative and fact-full" news flashes, vow!! the nice colorful ads - where our cricketers are continuously improving their acting talents!!

Another headline - Bollywood tells team India, get the cup!! - Bol Diya to Bol Diya!! And Reactions from various parts of the country, that too on an hourly basis .."yes, tell us how do you feel about India's deafeat!!", that is okay if you dont have water to drink, you have Cola.

Smart reporting, eh ?

Oh.. Does our national game Hockey get at least one tenth this kind of hype? Who cares about Nandigram, or Iran's reactions when you have such burning issues ....

Anyways, here is the core dumped.
and now
return 0;

Multilingual plus plus..

Here's some thing interesting on Multilingual Computing again. There is a Unicode Conversion Gateway for Indian language newspaper sites and server side transliteration tool available. I found this info on Indlinux blogs, oops i am a bit late, still clipping it here again. (They did this Sept 06) Great!

If your browser has Unicode support, you can view newspaper sites which use their own proprietary fonts in Unicode.See it here!. Also you can do transliteration of a Unicode page with say Hindi page to Malayalam page. (Good for me!!)
It is works similar to padma plugin for firefox.

When something goes wrong..

It was while reading one thick bind grey text,I read about Murphy's laws for the first time.It was found really interesting to me.Later, whenever things go wrong, I used to console myself saying - If anything can go wrong, it will..
Later during one lab examination, when PC went off the power with lots of unsaved C code, I cursed myslef for forgetting thsese laws "The lifetime of a computer is as long as its power cord"..and the very first law itself.

Clearly, it was these kind of experiences that pushed me towards arguing for dedicating a special page for Major Edward A. Murphy, Jr in our tech magazine named "Breakthrough" during my college days.

I was becoming more and more convinced on the correctness of Murphy's laws :) and was eager to know more about Murphy..

Almost every day I used to plan - okay,today i will spend some time on Murphy-and then as usual forgetting the matter completely, got indulged in the routine WORK and chit-chit with friends on India Vs South Africa cricket match and new Mohanlal movie being released..
Yesterday, while working on an important assignment,I happened to remember my gonna be perpetual action item : knowing more about Murphy..and started googling with newly upgraded firefox..and things went fine.

It is during such situations where, all on a sudden you realise that, somebody is staring at you and asking why you didnt finish the work - You understand Murphy is right, absolutely.

Anyways, there are some good things to think - if something could have gone wrong earlier and it did not, it ultimately would have been beneficial for it to have.
:)-Yes!! ultimate corollary for Murphy's laws.

But what about this case:If Murphy's law can go wrong, it will.
Right?

A new Stage

One more Stage is ready..

It has been very long time..
Okay, I have created a malayalam blog named "arangu"(means Stage in Malayalam).
Visit @ http://arangu.blogspot.com
A malayalam unicode font like Anjali Old Lipi or Rachana Unicode needs to be
installed on the system to view this blog.You can download it here:
http://indulekha.com/AnjaliOldLipi-0.730.ttf
Somebody may call it a mee-too syndrome..but atleast in this case, there is something more to it.It is a practice for my sweet old multi lingual computing experiments.:)

Election and Some 'Out of Syllabus' thoughts..

The kerala assembly election results are out now. This time, the results are in tune with the exit polls and the Left Democratic Front secured 98 seats in the 140 member house. Though there are reports about the the new left wave, considered to be a temporary phenomenon, it marks a clear indicative line.
It may once again prove the ding - dang nature of kerala elections, favouring the LDF and the UDF alternatively, but more than that now we all witnessed the fall of many top guns, particularly in the Muslim League.
Well..... I am not writing any analysis kind of thing....:)
These are just few thoughts, or may be early reactions of a young mind who missed the chance to be part of the very fundamental process in Democracy..:-)
Few lines of an old poem flashes in,"I am the people the mob.." from an old text book
which struck me in school days, but missed it badly, in the class room coz it was clearly classified OUT OF SYLLABUS!! :)
Here are those lines:
It starts like this..
I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.

It goes ..
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.

Here's the full text of the poem- http://carl-sandburg.com/i_am_the_people_the_mob.htm

This is written by Carl Sandburg, the famous American poet, essayist, biographer of the late nineteenth century, who won the Pulitzer Prize twice.

We are witnessing the days, people start using “my” instead of “our”, going away from ‘national’ towards ‘personal’..and students, sticking to only SYLLABUS , leaving the OUT OF SYLLABUS values of life..
In these context, it will be worth to remember these lines..
Okay..with this I am signing off for now..

Just to tell you this..

This was accidental. I was searching for something related to my work, but got hooked on a blog which tells a few new project ideas in Computer Science which in turn pushed me to some other interesting links.
I have started this blog with some ideas on multilingual computing and Malayalam and Computers etc. Such ideas were topics for many blogs and they have gone some in detail articles.
These are URLs,I thought worth visiting:
* For a set of really DIFFERENT proj ideas:
http://cseprojects.blogspot.com/
* Malayalam & Computers:
http://helpmalayalam.blogspot.com/
http://varamozhi.blogspot.com/

By this time, “peringodan” has entered the stage. This blog written fully in Malayalam, and so you may need Unicode support),I would say a must-read blog:
http://peringodan.blogspot.com/
Introductory lines remind me of the great dialogue in "Aaram Thampuraan", celebrated malayalam movie.:)

Why diamond is much more costly than water?

It has been a long time since I wrote something here..Time has changed, it is no longer the free "vacation" after the collegedays..
Many days have passed and now I am at bangalore, working in Wipro.Well, now let's have a different topic..(Does the title looks strange ..?)
It all happened during a usual chit-chat during the lunch, somehow that became really serious ..!!The new economic policies & their impacts andall..Here in the corporate world , many people strongly support capitalist views, free market etc.What is really suitable to a country like India..? Discussion got heated up ..and this time, I got new title , "Wealth of Nations" , by Adam Smith.I didnt know anything about that, and later I ( as usual ) googled..:).Interistingly I stuck with with an idea "Why Diamond is costier than Water"?.
It is all about "Theory of Value"..The author uses practical theory ofValue and tells that an object's value was rooted in how useful it is to mankind. If this theory were true, why was it that diamonds (which had, at thetime, little practical use) have a much higher price than water(which is utterly crucial to man's existence)? It is "the diamond-water paradox". He again uses Labour theory of value, and sees diamonds are worth morethan water because of their rarity, and because great effort is requiredto mine and cut them.But then, it does not sufficiently describe why diamonds are worth morethan, say, emeralds (which require even more labour to mine, and areconsiderably rarer), or why a large, easily mined diamond is worth more than a small, difficult-to-spot one.
I admit this is not a new issue to be stated, but for me it has triggered an act of opening this blog once again :) Atleast, I feel it is good to think of something away from the really tech things..right?

Multilingual Computing

History 's a good teacher, right? The development of language was actually in pace with the development of small communes , later to civilizations and to nations. After the internet explosion a lot of changes are visible in the way we read and write -some ‘net culture’ born.

In the same way, changes can be seen in the getting-automated libraries, schools, printing-DTP works etc. Mostly they are dealing with regional languages but their processing is not that much ported.It is more on the other side.. But somehow the computer industry / software guys always stick more to English ( atleast the small scale ones, we can see in kerala)

Modern operating systems like Windows XP ,GNU/Linux etc support more regional languages , the custom made applications are more on English.
So how can we make a fully regional language processing , and how can we create applications which can input a regional language ( say Malayalam ) input and process it ?

I have tried running a C program that accepts a malayalam string in the KDE terminal. That was by enabling Malayalam globally ( ie over the entire gui environment) and typing c statements mixed with malayalam data.
( For that one need to enable malyalam keyboard layout and use some Unicode font.)

I do believe that there is much more to go deep in multilingual data processing ,particularly in Malayalam ( our keralites’ mother toung).

Thoughts Unleashed - Intro

Hi Netizens,

This is one more blog where you can give thought to.., if you are looking for / want to share something on the computing philosophies and various issues related to the multilingual computing...

Well, I have always wondered how this "wise-fool" machine has grown to such a big way so as to influence even the day to day life of a common man..!
and how the internet has created several new media "mails" and blogs..

It seems the hyper-text 's striking above the text!!
Reading and writing is no more linear, and anyone can grab any particular information without reading through the whole text.. quick, easy and accurate(almost na).
With these transformations, the literature field is also getting bifurcations ( as many of friends agree)