Basic equation

Life's basic equation is:

sadness = happiness

This equation always holds true at every moment in one's life. It is just the way we interpret certain events that lead us to believe that one side of the equation is not balanced. But in reality every event cancels out some other or maybe itself on the other side of the equation. Because the equation above is a net zero, if we move either on the other side, our great sages wrote volumes and volumes on 'Karm Yog'. Do your duty, worry not about the results. However we are ordinary mortals, and it is hard for us not to try to run after increasing the right hand side of the equation almost with our eyes and minds closed.

Anyways, the weather here is so funny, one moment it snows or rains, the next hour it is bright and sunny. And about my separation from my beloved, I can only think of Ghalib's wonder sher:

ने मुज़्दा-ए-विसाल न नज़ारा-ए-जमाल, मुद्दत हुई की आश्ती-ए-चश्म-ओ-ग़ोश है.

"Neither there is the good news of our union, neither the sight of my beloved; It has been a while that there is peace between my eyes and ears!!" (discounting the fact that my ears have a slight advantage, since they have the privilege of hearing her voice over the phone!! :-D )

TGIM

Thank God! its going to be Monday soon!
The weekend was very dull outside. It was a couple of degrees below zero and the sky was covered with cloud with forecast of rain or snow. I stayed mostly inside. Apart from chatting with my wife over the phone (thanks to VOIP telephony) I did not have anything exciting planned. So I decided to play around with something that was on my mind for sometime.

You all must have used (or at least heard) of software such as Nokia(TM) PC Suite and the Sony Ericsson(TM) PC Suite. I have always been wondering how these applications connect to the phone and retrieve all the data to and fro from the device. Well, it seems fairly easy. Whenever we hook up our phone to the PC (by USB cable or bluetooth) it establishes a connection on a PC's Serial COM port. Then these software issue AT commands (mostly) to perform all the "magical" operations.

So, there I was, I connected my ME (nothing fancy, W890i) to my laptop through the USB cable. I then identified the COM port, from the Vista Device Manager, being used by the connection. Fired up PuTTY and selected the serial mode with the COM port number (COM13 in my case). That opened up a session with my phone on the PuTTYconsole itself!

I then downloaded the AT Command list from Sony Ericsson developer site (Publication number: 1206-6103.15) and played around with them. For example, refer to the screenshot below for some of the commands that I executed:

For example at+csca? queries the phone to get the current SMSC address. at+csq? reports the signal quality. 17 indicates the rssi (received signal strength indication) is -70 dBm. at+cbc? reports the battery charge on the phone. 1 indicates that the phone has a battery connected as is currently being charged (which is obvious, because the PC was charging it through the connected USB cable) and 42 indicates the current level of charge (as a percentage) in the battery.

We can do a lot more. Read SMS, write and store SMS and what not! I shall explore this further and come up with more ideas over time. A fruitful weekend after all!

लोकल ट्रेन का सफर

नेताजी ने आज लोकल ट्रेन में सफर किया| इस खबर पर समाचार माद्यम टूट पड़े| इन्टरनेट पर विडियो क्लिप्स भी आनन् फानन में जोड़े गए| विशेषज्ञों ने अपनी विशेष राए में यह बात रखी के ऐसा करके नेताजी ने अपने प्रतिद्वंदियों को मुंह तोड़ जवाब दिया है|

यह भी देखा गया के एक सफर के साथी नेताजी से बात करते हुए इतने भावुक हो उठे के उन्होंने यह कह दिया के नेताजी इतने अग्रिम राजनीतिज्ञ हैं उन्हें उनके प्रतिद्वंदियों के धमको को हंसी में उड़ा देना चाहिए| शायद सज्जन यह भूल गए के नेताजी इस देश के उन 'खास' लोगों में से हैं जिनकी सुरक्षा के लिए राजकोष का धन खुल्ला खर्च किया जाता है|

कब? कब इस देश की जनता नेताओं को देखकर पसीजना बंद करेंगे? कब इस स्वतंत्र देश के लोग अपने नेताओं को देश की इस हालत के लिए उन्हें जिम्मेदार ठहराएंगे? कब?

That's all in Hindi today. Used the new IME tool from Google to type in the text. It's cool!

Now Then...

Just writing this post to get back on track and start the सिलसिला of blogging once again.

Happy new year 2010, and all that.

So, everything went well and as planned. Thanks to all for the wishes and blessings. It seems a lot different these days.

We are now executing the hard part of the deal. Before, we felt it would be easy, but now it seems to get tougher day by day. Obviously a lot depends on how the case is viewed by the Irish immigration, but I have now almost made up my mind and have "Plan B", prepared for the worse.

Let Us C.

Excited and nervous now

The counter now reads:
Remaining: 00 weeks, 06 days, 15 hours, 49 minutes, 38 seconds, and 594 milliseconds
as I prepare for my wait at the Dublin Airport for another 8 hours before I can check-in!!!

Could be sometime before I post again.

Wrapping up another phase, bracing for the next

Well, now I am on the verge of wrapping up this phase of my life. This phase started with the world and life showing it's true and harsh face to me. Out from my adolescence, these realities were a great jolt to me in the beginning. Later they replaced themselves as my teachers and today I have a much better knowledge of life and it's ways than I had 10-12 years ago.

I have learnt many lessons. However harsh it may sound, there are only certain relationships in life that are genuine. I have also learnt that one should dream to the fullest, no harm in that, but one should not get carried away by them. One should act towards them taking all the limitations of one's surroundings into consideration. If one is hardworking, he or she never fails. My work taught me that, hardworking necessarily does not mean slogging, it means smart work and work that is effective to achieve it's desired goal. Also, you may be right on certain issues, but there is no point in getting worked up to make others believe in it, if their belief or disbelief doesn't matter to you much. Argue definitely, but there is no need to go overboard after a certain point. One should exercise "controlled aggressiveness".

Out of the many mistakes I have made, one of the biggest seems to be my premonition that love (as in two young individuals) and subsequent relationship is doomed to be bad. Rather it is a challenge that should be accepted as a part of life. One needs to be ready to alter drastically one's lifestyle till now, and also be ready to make more "un-selfish" sacrifices. 2nd April this year onwards, my views definitely took turn in the right direction, and it is for this new phase of my life that I now prepare myself to fight and enjoy!!

Praying to god and expecting blessings from all my well wishers in making it a success!!

Virtualization - New Age Coming

During my recent project experience, I was introduced to this wonderful concept of virtualization. This concept allows one to install the true installations of "guest OSes" on a host OS. For example one can install Windows XP, Windows 2003 server on a PC running Windows Vista. What's more you could install the Linux flavours too! And the best part is that you could setup a virtual lab of these systems!!

Leading software provider of virtualization is VMWare. However, VirtualBox from Sun (Oralce??) offeres a free and GNU/GPL license for use. What then? I have installed VirtualBox on the laptop. The laptop runs the office version of Windows Vista and I have installed Ubuntu as the guest inside VirtualBox. In a few days I plan to setup a mini lab of my own, depending on how the hardware fares ;)

Below is a screen shot of the setup. Check out the Vista logo in the bottom left corner... and the Ubuntu desktop covering the entire screen. In fact, I am posting this blog from within Ubuntu!