calicut visit-12 march 2011 to 02 apr 2011

20 march 2011
visited my classmate Biju narayanan's house
by bus to mananchira calicut then by auto to karvassery.

route- mananchira->malabar christian college->east nadakavu->take left of ernhipalam junction->take right from karaparamba jn then took to Krishnan Nair road, which cuts to left and goes somewhat steep down.
another left turn after some distance is the malikadave road which leads to his house

Early beginings of religion in middle east

Ibrahim (Abraham) was the grandson of Noah. Ishmael was son of Ibrahim.

relegion-muharram

Emam hussain was grandson of prophet (PUBH). His army was defeated on the day of muharram. His army was fighting Yazid. Hussain belonged to the shia sect. Yazid was second caliph of umayyad dynasty. He was sunni.

Shia believe in 12 Imams, who are grandson of prophet. Sunni do not beleive in these 12 imams as religious leaders. They believe that their leaders are Caliphs.

Learning Methods

I am a poor learner. I know its a bad start ..but that is a fact.. the consolation is that I am an eager learner but, this fact makes things more depressing ..that is when u want to learn something and have all the interests to do it, but, the THING SIMPLY DOESN'T STAY IN THE MIND. Its frustrating, very frustrating!!!!

All this while , I was conducting post-mortm of the situation as to why this happens to me... Today i figured it out..in the bathroom of all the places ..the reason!

I just did a cue as to how I was learning:-

1. Make Notes when doing the learning...I would waste more time in making the notes because I would be consulting many sources and I would be paranoid, what if, I loose these sources , so the effort was to make powerful notes which would help me comprehend the matter..and in the process It would be like I am writing a text book. The understanding process would not be there... at all.. During my entire college days..I was using this way..No wonder I used to have such a tough time in learning.

2. Try to understand without making notes..This is good..but, even after one day..u won't know where u are heading too and don't get any tracks.. so this is bad way!

3. Keep Pointers! This works for me...try to learn with total concenteration..as ulearn..just note the keywords and psuedo codes and jot down short description using ur own language ..this would serve as pointers to aid ur recollection ,....maybe ..even after a month..if a particular term sounds familiar and u r not able to express it clearly..go on..do a revision..the more u revise ..the better the retentivity..

Some more tips:-
1. Your brain is best suited to to do one task at one time..multi tasking won't help here esp if u r learning something..some concept or u r doing some coding or programming which needs all ur focus and concenteration.so..in such situations..don't listen to music or have tv running in backgrund or be in company of lot of people talking loudly and creating a din.

2. If u are doing something of a boring or repetitive nature like applying a code template or documentation, u can always have good music playing in headphone..it just maes the entire process very smooth and u wont even know that u r doing some tedious job..as I am typing this blog, I have some of my fav tracks playing..:-)

Thts it........I hope I learn better......

the satellite dish is working at last!
We had installed a DD Direct plus some 2 years ago and everything was working fine till they had changed the satellite in June 2007, and we were on vaccation to kerala till June 12th, so didnt miss out much. But, when we reached back, had only a handful of channels, the good bunch of 'viewable' channels was not there, and with the rains, it was difficult to tune the dish. Being a 'digital' dish, to me the tuning process was like more complicated..
I had tuned analog C band dish in late 1996, that was simple affair..all u had to do was to set a frequency in the STB and turn the dish (azimuth) and move its chin up and down (elevation) till there was a flicker of picture or sound and thats it..u had locked on to the transponder..

The problem now, was that I had not given my 'technical attention' to this digital receiver at all! The guys from the local shop had come and had set this up and we were watching TV..

This new situation presented a oppurtunity to learn the system and refresh the communication topics learnt in my engg college. The dielemma was that that how one could tune the dish and the receiver simultaneously .The advice given in DD site was to set the dish first (i.e., to make it point to INSAT 4B at93.5 deg E) and then tune the receiver..simple..no! not so simple..

Problem # 1: Rotating the dish.what the heck is 93.5 degrees E? where is the reference, I mean some point has to be zero from where the ref was made, which is that point?
Second Week of June:-
Like a simpleton, I went to the terrace, and gathereed that the sun rises from the east..and in my mind drew the two lines criss-crossing each other which would indicate N,E,W,S. I assumed that the zero degree ref was North, and 93.5 degrees would mean 3.5 dgrees off east or it would lie in S-E quadrant. At present the dish was pointing to the NSS 6 satellite at 95 degree East. I therefore, assumed that the dish had to be nudged a wee bit to the left towards the East 'Line'.
I tried doing that..but the dish woudnt nudge..i tried with all the tools availabe with me .but, the dish wouldn't budge.. tried using a plier but that wouldn't work. So, I just put some lubricating oil in the nut and came down..
next day I tried a universal spanner whoose 'mouth' is adjustable but it turned out that it was a 'kitchen' variety not having enough 'weight' to give enough 'torque' to turn the nut. I was getting furstrated..one should have the right tool.. anyway, with the adjustable spanner at least I can measure the 'dia' of the nut and get a compatible spanner.

next day I remembered that I had a 128 bit Screw driver set got from e-bay which had these 'ratchet' bits which can turn the nuts. thts grt! Up i went to the terrace to loosen the nut. The tool was a wonder..It had a neat plastic case with all the bits seated properly in their grooves and looked like a control panel for a nuclear weapon! ;-) I selected the right ratchet bit for the nut and turned the screw driver handle..it wouldn't budge! I applied still more force..and crack! the screw driver had become a two-piece nuclear weapon :-(
dejected...i came down..with my two piece nuke..and down below was another nuke..my wife..almost fuming at me...maybe fuming at the exterior but furstrated and maybe thinking that why this guy can't call in someone from outside and fix the thing in one hour flat!
I promised her ..like what winston churchill said.."give us the tools, and we will finish the job". Its just about the right tool..I explained..she seemed to understand..thank god!

For some days I couldn't do this work due to other commitments..nevertheless, now i needed to get a spanner to loosen the nuts.How do I specify a spanner? I could go to moti bazar (the hardware hub in Dehradun) and maybe tell them to give a spanner to open a nut whoose outside dia was 15 mm. but, that would look a bit clumsy, and the shopkeepers would sense that it was some inexperienced guy out to buy tools and may overcharge. technicians had a way of specifying spanner ..by means of a number..so, I searched in google and hit an article in wikipedia about spanner sizes, it was informative and they had a neat table giving a cross reference to spanner number and nut dia. In this case, i needed a 9/16 spanner. Ah! the wonders of web and the good people who created wiki!
Third week of June
But the next day was lucky, plumbers had come to do some repair work to the over head water tank and with their wrench I was able to loosen the nuts and nudged the dish a bit to the left as per my assumptions and came down and tried to tune the satellite by putting some value in the LNB frequency and starting the scan. In the scan, it just caught some 5 or 6 transponders and I was relieved..but in the channels I saw only paid channels of dish TV and some ching chong chinese channels..
Now, I had another doubt, what if the elevation was to be adjusted? I tried the elevation nut with my plier and the 'kitchen' adjustable spanner. No luck..I desperately needed good tools..

So, I was all ready to go to moti bazar to purchase this 9/16 thing.. I remembered then that in my office lab we had an assorted collection of spanners.. ah..some money saved..

next day from the lab I could get a 16/17 spanner and a adjustable 'heavy' spanner. the 16 end didnt fit, the mouth was too big..so it had to be the 9 end to turn the 15 mm azimuth screw, luckily the adjustable one was good enough and it could loosen both azimuth and elevation screws. Whew!

Lessons Learnt:-

1. Not to buy cheap tools from e-bay

2. To buy this good quality Chrome Vanadium Adjustable spanner (No. 91/8)

Fourth week of June

I had made lot of trips to terrace and back to my qtr turning the dish doing the 'auto scan' on the receiver, and the result was always negative with only the pay channels from NSS 6 satellite and the ching chong channels.. my wife handled things at the home front and communication was via mobile and I used to tell her to tune the receiver by giving instructions through the mobile..but it didnt work out.

First Week of July
I had a talk with my friend sunil, who uses same platform for viewing TV. Sunil though had a better satellite receiver which could lock on to a satellite by its name and then it was easy to tune the channels. He also told me that he had got someone to tune his dish antenna, but, that person was unable to do it and finally he managed to tune it on his own. This made me decide that it was no use calling people from outside and that the entire process could be a learning one.

Saturday the 07th of July 2007

Being a week end i had lot of time to attend to this problem. I used google once more, this time I searched for terms like Ku band and similar terms instead of using doordarshan DTH etc. I came across this site http://www.satcodx3.com. A very comprehensive site listing all the satellites globally in C & KU bands. The site also had a very cool utility where in the azimuth and elevtion angles would be given on clicking a geographical location in the map for a particular satellite. The values for INSAT 4 B is given at http://www.satcodx3.com/0936/eng/dishtrak.cgi . The channels on the INSAT 4 B is given at
http://www.satcodx3.com/0936/eng/.

Problem #1 above..solved!!
Though, I knew about azimuth and elevation reg the dish antenna, it is the map as such which caught my attention ( the first link). It is a world map with the latitude and longitude lines superimposed on it. I tried recollecting the geography learnt at school. so, the zero degree was recokened from the greenwich line (pl see the first link), everything to the right was treated as east till the tip of alaska. So, the latitude went upto 180 degrees east. To the right of village of greenwich was treated as west and it went upto 180 degrees west. It was like a cylinder developed into 2-d plane. Now I knew why satellite was at 93.5 degrees East! Ok, but what about longitude? obviously it wont be needed as these satellites are in geo sync orbit aligning the equator.
Now..the longitude.. it is simple..everything that is above equator is north and below it is south.
I searched in google for location of dehradun and found that dehradun was at 30degree N and 78 degrees East. Now, the web page reported azimuth and elevation for 4 b as 151 degrees and 51 degrees respectively.
All I had to do was to go to terrace and find the N,E,W,S and draw the imaginary lines as before. The zero for azimuth would be recokened from the geographical North(it is like turning ur head and if u were a owl, u could turn it full 360 degree) and zero for elevation would obviously be reckoned from the ground up (it would be maximum 90 degree, like using ur neck to look up and down). The situation was much better now. I used the web page for calculating the azimuth for NSS 6 and found that there was a good 5 degree difference between the two satellites.

I kept the preset channel as "DD urdu" , it was showing "no signal" and like before and went up and tuned the dish coordinating with wife on mobile. this time when it locked on dd urdu, i tightened the nuts , knowing fully well that the dish was looking to INSAT 4 B and no other channel could carry DD urdu ..all that remained was to tune the other transponder freqs to get their 'boquets'.

Problem # 2 Understanding the basics of Satellite receiver
All i knew prior to this date was that there was a frequency translation going on in the LNB before it is fed to the reciver. but while tuning, there were so many other parameters like 22 Khz ON/OFF, 12 V ON/OFF, DisEqc, PCR PID etc. I knew what Audio PID, Video PID, symbol rate and FEC were.why this frequency translation was needed and the other terms were explained in this page http://www.satsig.net/lnb/explanation-description-lnb.htm. The C band signals are somewhere between 2 and 5 Ghz and the KU band signals occupy a slot between 9 and 12 Ghz. The advantage of using KU band is the small size dish of about 80 cm dia.

From satsig.net I came to know the LNB Local Oscillator frequencies which are 5.15,9.75,10,10.75,11.3 Ghz in most of the KU band LNB's. The frequency translation is needed as Co ax cable connecting the dish and receiver has a bandwidth enough only for L band signals (0.95 to 2.1 Ghz).
also, the 22 Khz tone was used to select LO frequency of 10.6 Ghz esp for input frequencies between 11.7 and 12.7 Ghz. (which may otherwise be skipped if other LO freqs are used). A LNB having LO freqs 9.75 and 10.6 Ghz was called as Dual Band LNB.
For selecting signals between 10.7 and 11.7 Ghz, the LO frequency of choice was 9750. The downlink frequency of INSAT 4 B was between 10.9 and 11.7 Ghz

Problem # 3: Understanding the menu options in the Receiver

Till this time, I was just using the search option by giving some LNB frequency like 9000 Mhz and tuning the receiver, only one transponder would be added and some 10 channels would be tuned.
I noticed a option called "change param" for a particular preset program in which the values of transponder fr,LNB fr, the other parameters like 22 Khz, 12 V, Audio, video and PCR ids, symbol rate could be entered.
Conclusion:
I entered 9750 for LNB freq and 10990 for transponder freq, entered the AID,VId,Pcrid, symbol rate and used 22 khz as off(as i was using 9750 for LNB fr) and pressed OK.Lo!!! there was DD-1 channel!!! similarly we added all the channels in the DD boquet . I gave sree a Hi-5! The project was a success! I learnt so many things in one single day..it was great..simply great!
My next project would be to make some kind of a Dish motor to rotate the dish internaly and DX on the satellite bands using the satelite info given in the links above.

Intranet Web-site Development

It was such an exhilirating moment when I first discovered that a simple windows XP PC with sufficient memory could be made to host applications accessible thru LAN. So many ideas came into my mind which could be deployed on this platform.

Idea #1 : PLatform for Sharing ISO-14001 documents

This one is deployed in the office. I was in the core team of ISO and it was a documentation hell. So many documents, so many revisions and each time, a seperate print out had to be taken and circulated. big problem! Then, I had hit upon the idea of sharing it on the computer. But, simple file sharing was unattractive and users would not bother to type the IP address in the run window and then have a look at the documents. Therefore, the idea of developing a site on the intranet which could be accessible to all on the network was thought of.

The web pages were created with MS-word. A few scripts in asp were written and that did the authentication part. The IP address was communicated to all, which could be simple typed into the browser.. and behold! the page would load.. so far so.. good!!

Then, the procedures in the ISO manuals were ammended to reflect this new change. I also published a papaer on this approach on our company portal. The paper was well received. It was a tremendous saving on paper and costs and of course time! There were a few problems.. like that of old content being displayed even after the new documents were uploaded. How I solved this? well.. it is described at length in one of my previous enetries in this blog.

The documents were uploaded as pdf.. so it made viewing them very easy. Thank god I took this step, otherwise, I would have got some Obssesive compulsive disorder of printing some 100 page manuals for 20 distributions .... :-))

Idea #2 : A site for uploading budget, circulars and a Forum

This was suggested by a friend.At the end, it was a very learning experience and the utility for searching circulars, and posting to forum etc took me to some depth in asp development. But, I just had a simple PC, no server.. and I had to warn him of relaibility problems.. he must have re-thined about it and finally made a decission that he would not go for it.. but never did he tell me in express 'no'.. always procastinating.. so i got the idea.. anyway the entire thing is ready for the past one year.. awaiting some good use..

Idea #3: Document tracking Using the LAN

This was suggested by the boss of my friend.. he was more bothered with docs and papers being in the 'system' , so that they could be tracked easily.. I developed a simple system, which according to me was very rudimentary but had certain features like the generation of e-mails to support the workflow. However, the database design was very very primitive..only one table ha ha ha .. anyway, the contraption worked and the boss was impressed,.. but .. again.. my friend might have had some questions in the back of his mind.. so.. he kept postponing this.. at one time he one lied to his boss that Iw as sick.. some terrible sickness which had left me bed ridden.. and imagine my surprise.. when the boss meets me and asks me as to how I was feeling.. quite naturally.. I would replay 'fine'.. I always reply 'fine' btw, thats another story ha ha ha.. anyway.. I was at some thinking end.. what am I going to do with my 'investment'. well.. again.. documented the entire thing and sent it to the company portal as a .... u guessed it right.. a 'paper'... I was getting very much interested in this paper thing..

then... in the night.. I had a call from the company web site person.. he wanted to interview me.. he found this concept revolutionary.. hmm.. i said.. ok fine.. big deal.. i answered his questions and told him.. it was nothing great and that it would be nice of him to publish as a paper in the company portal.. so that people could offer some constructive criticism... however.. I was in for a shock next morning..... There it was.. the headline on the portal.. "XXXX engineer develops system for Dak"/..... lord almighty.. what a spike!!! i am on the headline and it was friday.. it stayed like that page 1 for 3 days.. comments poured in .. some 40 comments were registerd.. all positive,. people encouraging with all kind words.. I was overwhelmed.. like paulo coleho says in the Alchemist, If you decide to do something, the entire universe gets together for the success.. some how i feel it was true..
more latter...

Some Mountaineering terms from DMAS Manali

1.Approach March Boot-For Walking
2. Technical climbing-Climbing to reach the summit.

3. Tape Sling-For Anchoring

4. Ice Axe-Third leg of mountaineer.

5. Gator-To prevent snow from getting into boots.

6. Crampon:- Spike on shoes to get grip while walking on the snow.

7. Mitten:- Gloves

The Problem of caching in INtranet client

The Problem of caching in INtranet client
Links for downloading files.Step wise desciption:-
1. A pdf file was removed from the directory.
2. On clicking the link in the internet explorer (IE) client, it returned "page can not be displayed"..so far so good.
3. Another file was copied to the directory and renamed with that of the deleted file.
4. On clicking the link, the previous file was displayed! why? i guess, there is caching either at server end or at client end or both.
Solution:-1. It seems caching improves performance..naturally..
2. So, what if, we just delete some charaecters from the address and re-type them and save..?sorry..does not work..!
3. ok, So, what if, we modify the link address each time a revision is uploaded?..Yes!! it works...so, each time u upload a new file..make sure to replace the filename in the htm,asp page contaning the url with new file name..dont do copy paste replace..the caching will prevent the new content from displaying..

No access to shared printer after Sp2

A typical support issue here..After applying the SP2 patch on all the systems, the shared printers were having problems communicating with the clients.
Solution #1:
Check RPC Service,properties tab, change log on type to Local System Account.

Access db does not take e-ml or e-mail as field

The access db having a field e-ml or e-mail as a field behaves strangely when the conection method is through ADO. while executing a INSERT INTO statement on the table, it says, "Syntax error in INSERT INTO stament"
better keep this in mind next time!