Ashutosh's blog

HTC touch service center in Pune

2009-06-23T16:25:00.003+05:30

I have a HTC touch (bought 1.5 years back) and its touch screen stopped working.

It was a nightmare to find the HTC service center, I spent 2 hours searching for it.

And you know why? It is in a Sony Erricson shop and I was looking for a sign of HTC!!

Any way, if you are in Pune, own a HTC and it is broken and want to give it to authorised service center, here is the address:

It is near to Hotel Tilak off Tilak Road. Search for Vishveshwar Bank near Hotel Tilak, and you'ill see Sony Erricson mobile shop, that's it!

Update:Now the shop has HTC logo on the shop name... and I switched to Nokia E71 recently!

More accurate search for your Outlook inbox

2007-10-24T13:28:00.001+05:30

One often needs to search mails. Available options in Outlook do give results but those need not be accurate according to semantics. For example, if I am searching for phone number of 'xyz' and fire outlook search 'xyz phone', I will get results of mails that contains words xyz and phone. This means I will get all those mails where xyz asked for someones phone, or sent someones phone. Also what if phone number is mentioned as cell or mobile ? Existing search will not be able to find it out.Omnifind Personal email search is intelligent enough (or can be "taught" to) understand above scenarios. I have tried this and am more than satisfied with the results.

read more | digg story

Harihareshwar - Shrivardhan trip

2007-05-02T16:39:00.000+05:30

Had been to Harihareshwar (near Shrivardhan) for a 3 day trip. Took the Pune - Paud -Mulashi - Tamhini - Mangaon - Nijampur -Masla - Harihareshwar route. We stayed at the MTDC resort

Here are someof the pics....

Rails 1.2 is released

2007-01-22T18:51:00.001+05:30

Rails 1.2 is released !!

PSLV Successfully Launches Four Satellites

2007-01-10T18:46:00.000+05:30

India's PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) launched India’s CARTOSAT-2 and Space capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1), Indonesia’s LAPAN-TUBSAT and Argentina’s PEHUENSAT-1 into a 635 km high polar orbit.

This was PSLV's ninth consecutive successful launch.

Congratulations to our scientists...

Running Tests on Deploy with Capistrano

2007-01-08T19:54:00.000+05:30

Running Tests on Deploy with Capistrano

Jay Fields Thoughts: Ruby: rake commit

2007-01-08T19:52:00.001+05:30

Jay Fields Thoughts: Ruby: rake commit

Finding good school for your kid

2007-01-02T12:28:00.001+05:30

Finding a good school for kids is every parent's nightmare. One of my friends asked me what did I do/what insights I gathered while finding a good school from my kid. Here are the points that might help you as well...

Do not neglect any school, try to get and fill as much forms as you can
Timeline for availability of forms . Notices are published in leading news papers(Express/ Sakal etc) around November so start tracking it.

Gurukul : Nov 1 week
Sevasadan : Dec 1 week
Abhinav: after 15 Jan
New India : After 15 Jan
Symbiosis: Early Jan (I guess it was around 18 Jan but not sure)
Bal shikshan : Late Dec/Early Jan

Consider following points while deciding the school

Distance of school from your residence
Co-education
Fees
Board/exam pattern (SSC/CBSE etc)
Importance of studies vs extra-curricular activities
How the teachers behave with children (I did not like it at Rosary, and liked a lot at Gurukul). Students were not afraid of talking to /reaching out to teachers at Gurukul and I did not see a single teacher shouting at the students while I was at the premises at different times.

Be prepared to shell out around Rs. 50K at short notice.
Send your kid to crèche for at least 6 months before you send him/her to proper school
so that (s)he gets some social (survival) training.

I am still alive!!

2006-11-01T23:46:00.000+05:30

Was busy off late on the new assignment.

New projects, new people, new technology, Diwali holidays all came at the same time.

It is demanding but interesting phase of life.....

Business Ashram!

2006-09-25T11:46:00.000+05:30

This weekend I traveled to Belgaum on business. Staying arrangements were made at a company (Polyhydron) guest house in the company premises.

It was a pleasant surprise to see the manufacturing company premises. It was more of an Ashram than a manufacturing company. In fact, it was called Business Ashram!

There are 8 different manufacturing units located in as many number of honey comb shaped small buildings. Each building had huge glass windows and were probably sound proof (I was there on Sunday and it was a weekly off so could not find out for sure) with two to three CNC machines in each building. See the Wikimapia details of the Ashram here.

Surprise does not end here. Tobacco, alcohol, smoking, non-veg food is banned on the premise. The owner, Mr. S. B. Hundre, told me that there were no supervisors to supervise the workers. Every worker is his/her own supervisor! They had been operating the Ashram for last 4 years and have seen only better results from the units as compared to the company’s other units located elsewhere.

Central building was s Dhyan Mandir (Dhyan = Meditation, Mandir = Temple). The temple was again sound proof and as you enter, we see a wall high painting of Swami Vivekananda in very calming lighting arrangement. There is a good collection of spiritual books, CDs and almost every book that has been written on Bhagvad Geeta.

The premise has a dozen of white Indian ducks roaming around on the lawn, swimming in the pond specially created for them. The ducks were there as pets (not for eggs or meat). There were numerous trees completely shielding the premises from outside world.

The guest rooms were clean and had two single beds. No television, no fans. Air circulation was achieved using special architecture design and believe me no fan was required at all. From the large windows of my room, I could see the green lawn, the pond, ducks playing around.. It was very calming and pleasant experience.

Do checkout the company website especially what they believe in! Awesome!!

WATIR on Rails

2006-09-19T13:00:00.000+05:30

This project provides a plugin to make it easier to write Watir (Web Application Testing in Ruby) tests for Rails applications.

Download the beta from svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/watir-on-rails

Radrails 0.7.1 is available

2006-09-12T10:06:00.000+05:30

Modifications with this release:

Terminal window is gone
Autotest functionality has been modified
There is a configuration screen to configure rails, rake and mongrel paths
Lots of code templates

Download Radrails 0.7.1

Migrated to Blogger beta

2006-09-11T14:29:00.000+05:30

Migrated to Bloger beta today and liked it. Now I can tag my comments, customize the look and feel more easily with AJAX supported drag and drop features for the paage elements.... cool stuff. The blog publishing activitiy has been revamped and posts are published instantly. Wow!

FXRI - Instant Ruby help!

2006-09-04T18:26:00.000+05:30

Something I learned today and found very useful.

Run following command fxri to get instant Ruby help on your desktop. It has decent search facilities as well.

Enjoy!!

Ganesh Festival

2006-09-01T15:23:00.001+05:30

It is Ganesh/Ganapati festival season and Pune is the main attraction for it all over India. The festival lasts for 10 days and the grand closing is in the form of a magnificent immersion rally that lasts well over 24 hours! People flock from all over the places to see the decorations of various pandals put up in almost every square, societies and roads around Pune.

Ganesh the God of intelligence, art, and also war has a special place among Indians and is worshipped first before embarking on any new project/activity/construction or even any pooja. Indians are known to worship many gods. In different parts of the countrly people worship different gods. In fact, every small village has a parent god of its own! However, Ganesh is popular in all parts of the country and you will find atleast one temple of Ganesh in every village. In fact, Ganesh idols are there in Combodia and Srilanka as well.

How to get API help for Rails

2006-08-04T11:20:00.000+05:30

There are couple of ways that I use and recommend

1. Install Devboi plug-in for FireFox and add support for Rails.

2. Use gem_server. Run gem_server command. Then launch http://localhost:8808 (or whateever port the server uses) and you can access all rdoc or www documentation for installed gems and plugins from the web page. I found this to be pretty useful as I do not have to search the web very often.

407 Authentication error

2006-08-03T17:53:00.000+05:30

Was getting this 407 authentication error every time I tried to install a plugin to my RadRails project.

Finaly found a solution. Installed Ruby Win32 SSPI and used ruby -rspa script/plugin install .

Curently exploring RadRails 0.7. Lots of goodies (like mongrel web server, editor enhancements etc) added since last version.

Life on Rails

2006-07-25T18:32:00.000+05:30

You need the following to get started:

1. InstantRails
2. A Database - I preferred DB2 Express C. You need to download the starter toolkit for DB2 on Rails . The toolkit comes with ROR framework, DB2 Express C and DB2 adapter for Rails. (I use InstantRails for WEBrick server only)
3. RoR IDE- I prefer RadRails
4. A copy of Pragmatic programmers guide (link to which can be found on technical section of this blog)

That's it. You are ready to roll on Rails.

Having spent most of my professional life on thick client applications, Rails was a welcome and much needed change.

I am rather uncomfortable though with one thing - no WYSIWYG editor to design the web pages. One has to use some other decent tool to design web pages and then copy the code into Rails projects.

Otherwise I am enjoying this new change in life.

Tanvee's first day at school

2006-06-14T11:09:00.000+05:30

All excited, sporting her new clothes (a "Hanuman" Tee shirt and cool skirt) Tanvee, I and Sonali started for Tanvee's kindergarten. Today was her first day at school. She promised not to cry and play at the school.

It was going to be just for half hour since it was the first day.

Sonali and I left her with the teacher. Sonali left for office and I stayed outside. Kids were coming with there parents. Some were crying some were dancing. Almost all of them with brand new clothes and bags and water bags.

The teachers rushed all parents out and closed the door. Minutes passed by, I started hearing crying noises from the school. Almost all of us parents were nervously strolling outside - trying to identify from the number of screams if our kid was crying...

We started speaking with each other to get rid of our nervousness, telling each other that my kid won't cry and that he or she is brave and will adjust easily. It was an attempt to keep our nerves and we all understood it.

Finally after half an hour the door opened and the kids were out one by one - all crying and looking desperately for their parents. Tanvee came out sobbing and jumped towards me. It took almost 10 minutes before she calmed down.

She told that she cried because everyone elase was crying. She did managed to play slide and see-saw and swing.

I wonder what did I do on first day of my school... Need to ask my mother.

Let's see what unfolds tomorrow....

Diverticulosis and Ayurveda

2006-06-12T18:13:00.000+05:30

My father developed diverticulosis and had to be admitted to hospital due to bleeding from the rectum.

Allopathy suggests treatment such as antibiotics and surgery but due to his age and earlier open heart surgery we decided not to go for the surgery.

Then we came across Dr. Atulchandra Thombre , MD (Ayurved) who had earlier treated similar case with success. We approached him and he started treatment on my father. Within a week the bleeding stopped.

Of course we needed allopathic support to keep blood pressure and pulse stable (blood transfusion, IV solutions etc) but the doctor's treatment helped stopping the bleeding.

He carefully collected history of my father's eating habits, his nature, his daily routine to find root cause of the problem and then suggested a treatment. Cause was my father's liking to spicy food, drinking excessive tea etc. This was very different from what Allopathy does and established our faith in the treatment.

Few useful links:
www.ayurvedacollege.com/articles/Healthy_Digestion.htm
http://goldbamboo.com/topic-t2778.html

Ruby or not Ruby that was the question....

2006-04-27T16:58:00.000+05:30

Finally took the plunge and accepted a new assignment that uses Ruby on Rails. I had been working on M$ technologies so far and the J world and the R world were something that I kept a distance from so far.

So far I am facsinated by ROR. Its intutive and one can see results very quickly.

Let see how it turns out....

One day trip to Nasik

2006-04-12T14:48:00.000+05:30

Had to rush to Nasik due to two reasons. Firstly parents wanted to come to Pune and needed a driver to drive our Santro to Pune. Father drives it but not this far (200+ kms) and we did not want any other driver to drive it :o) and secondly, my father-in-law was incidentally hospitalized due to sudden weakness and high blood sugar.

So we (yes we all three traveled for this one day journey. Sonali wanted to see her father..) took 7 pm asiad bus to Nasik. Tanvee slept for most of the journey.

Next day we went to see Sonali's father at the hospital and while there, I tried to make a call to one mf my friends at Nasik and realized that my outgoing and incoming calls have been put on hold (discontinued in plain English). Reason being their system was showing that I had not paid the bill !

Now that was interesting because I had dropped the check 6 working days before the due date. (The cheque was drawn on SBI and they were on strike from April 3rd. So effectively I had dropped the cheque 4 working days in advance!) and it takes a single working day for clearing local cheques at Pune.

The customer care executives (all of them) (I had called using a paid phone booth and using another service provider :o)) kept telling me "Sir our system does not show that you have paid the bill" . So I tried to explain them that "system" on its own is a dumb thing and does not do anything unless humans do something like entering bill payment details.

The service was discontinued at most un-appropriate time and I was frustrated.

So after seeing my father-in-law we started back to Pune around 4:15 pm. Took a chai-pani halt at Daulat dhaba. The place is really good as compared to other dhaba's on the road. Father drived for some 20 kilometers or so.

Finally reached Pune at 9 pm.

Need to talk to the cellular service provider first thing in the morning!

India won 4th ODI against England at Kochi

2006-04-07T17:03:00.000+05:30

India won 4th ODI against England at Kochi and grabbed the ODI series. Its India's 15th straight win while chasing a target and England's 9th loss in last 11 ODIs.

However England were playing without 6 prominent players. So I wonder whether India were really good or England were a poor side. Kaif and Sehvag did not click and that is big worry for India. Despite his poor form , Sehvag will be leading the Indian side for next couple of ODIs! Why ? I fail to understand.

Yuvi got his second bike in a week as his second man of the match title. I am imagining Yuvi riding both the bikes simultaneously like Ajay Devgan in 'Phool aur Kante' :o). Are they paying for the fuel as well?

Investment planning

2006-04-06T15:51:00.000+05:30

It's new financial year and time to plan for year's investments.
My mutual fund investments done in last year proved to be good. I highly recommend Valuresearch site for Indian mutual fund investment studies. The guys know their business well, provide very good analysis which help you choose appropriate funds.

This year I am planning for more than a year. I am planning to start some investment for Tanvee and for our retirement. Unit linked instruments are giving good returns currently and I think will continue to give good returns for few more years – thanks to huge investments pouring in for basic infrastructure like roads and energy.

I checked few unit linked schemes and HDFC standard life schemes (Insurance and Pension) appear to be most suitable for me. Their charges are lowest and performance is good. They have been in Indian market for a while and understand it better.

India won third ODI against England at Goa

2006-04-03T18:08:00.000+05:30

India won by 49 runs!

Weekend trip to Alibag

2006-04-03T16:55:00.000+05:30

Went to Alibag this weekend. Tanvee saw the sea for the first time in her life and was very much excited. She did not want to come out of the water and wanted to play there the whole day.

We took the Pune Mumbai express way till Khopoli. Then took the Khopoli exit and took the Khopoli-Pen road. From Pen we went to Alibag. Total journey (one way) was around 14o km. Apart frmo Khopoli-Pen road, the road was good. Khopoli-Pen 30 km streach was the worst road. I could not go above 3 rd gear and it took us aeround 70 min for the 30 odd kilometers!

We stayed at Hotel Sea View just next to sea. Went to Nagaon beach and spent the afternoon there.

While returning, we took the Alibag-Pen-Panvael (NH17) - Old Mumbai Pune highway route. Entire road was good.

January 26 and The Last Samurai

2006-01-27T16:48:00.000+05:30

Yesterday on January 26, I spent my evening watching the The Last Samurai. Impressive movie. Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe were fabulous.