Prakash Advani's Blog » General

Open CourseWare

Prakash — Mon, 17 May 2010 04:59:50 +0000

For a while now, many of the leading institutes of the world have released all their courseware under and open license. Which means anyone can download them and use them.

OpenCourseWare Consortium has a list of all courseware and institutes that are participating.

Some of the well known institutes:

IIM Bangalore
MIT
UC Berkeley
And many more.

Happy Learning

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Possitive affirmations

Prakash — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:44:42 +0000

What is Positive affirmations?

Its a positive thought that you say/write/think.

How do I create one?

It has be present tense.
It has to be positive.
It has to be personal.
It has to be specific.

Why present tense?

Because you want to start working on it right away, you want to send a message to your inner conciousness that thats want you want to focus your energy on.

Does it work?

Yes it does, Most successful people do it, those who tell you that they don’t do it, don’t want you to know.

Scott Adam of Dilbert fame, did it! He wrote his goal 15 times a day.

I’ve often written about my own experiences with affirmations, the practice of writing your goals 15 times a day. It seems to work much of the time, at least in my experience, but presumably not because of any magic. At least one probable explanation for its perceived effectiveness is that focusing on goals changes the person who is doing the focusing.

Read his blog post if you want to know more.

How often do I do it?

Everyday preferablly, multiple times a day if need be.

Example of usage:

If you always think you are poor, you have no money, its not going to help. Its best to do a positive affirmation like this.

I am rich. I have all the money that I need. New sources of income open up each day.

To be specific, you can say: I am rich by xyz date.

Don’t say: I want to be rich, cause affirmation has to to present tense..

See this site for examples of positive affirmations and to manage your affirmations.

Bmindful.com

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Oh Rats! They find explosives!

Prakash — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:10:14 +0000

Fight global terrorism with Rats, the bomb squad is here!

Rats, which many people dislike are being trained to find explosives. They are used to find Landmine’s and are saving lives.

They are suitable for this, as they have a keen sense of smell. They are also being used to screen for diseases and are found to be faster and cheaper than normal lab tests.

Read More about APOPO the NGO behind one. Want to adopt one?

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USB 3 is here

Prakash — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:00:04 +0000

USB 3 devices have finally started showing up in the US and expect them to be more widely available everywhere else in the world, later this year.

USB 2 has been around, but with serious bottlenecks. Its slow and gets slower when you connect multiple peripherals. Is USB 3 going to solve the problem? It looks promising. What is USB 3 all about?

10 times faster than USB 2.0 with 5Gbps.
USB 3 is bi-directional so its much faster. In USB 2 data can flow only in one direction at a time.
Realistically you should get 3 times faster transfer speeds for external drives.
Backward compatible with USB 2. If you connect to older systems, you will still be able to use, but at slower speeds.
More power. Since more and more devices are being powered by USB, USB3 provides more power to adequately power those external hard drives.
Linux is the first operating system to support USB 3, and yes Microsoft has followed by including support in Windows 7.

The first place where USB 3 has started showing up is in external hard drives. If you are looking for one, you should consider USB 3. To get USB 3 performance, you will need USB 3 port on your computer, which is lacking in most of the PCs/Laptops sold today. However you can buy a hard drive with a card for your PC/Laptop.

From Amazon: 1 TB USB 3 external desktop hard drive with PCIe USB 3 adaptor.

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Why Microsoft can’t be creative anymore

Prakash — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 06:49:56 +0000

Here is a nice article posted in New York Times written by a former Microsoft Vice President.

“Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason.

Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers.”

Microsoft should open source the projects which got killed and will never see the light of the day.

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Good morning Mumbai

Prakash — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:38:32 +0000

Here is a photo taken during a sunrise in Mumbai. Have fun!

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5 More Reasons Why IE6 Must Die

Prakash — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:51:31 +0000

“There are at least 142 vulnerabilities in IE6, 22 of which are not yet patched.”

Sending emails faster with Thunderbird

Prakash — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:56:04 +0000

Here is a tip to save time while sending emails using Mozilla Thunderbird.

If you compose an email with Thunderbird, you do not come back to the inbox immediately, unless the email is sent which take a few minutes.

A solution to this is to use the add-on Sendtools. Once you install this, your emails are sent in the background and you are immediately returned back to your inbox.

This also allows you to schedule sending emails at a specific time.

Note: I have tested this with the latest Mozilla 2.0 but sendtools wouldn’t install as it checks for version compatibility and doesn’t install if you have a newer version.

Here is a fix. After you download sendtools, you will find a .XPI file.

Right click on the .XPI, this will open in your archive/zip application.

Now you will see a install.rdf, open this file with any text editor.
Change the max-version to 2.0.*
Save and close the file.
Save and close the archive.

Now install sendtools, it should work correctly.

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My Next Notebook or Netbook?

Prakash — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:27:39 +0000

Two years ago, I said good bye to my lone Desktop. I wasn’t sure how I would survive since I had so many peripherals, but I am doing pretty well so far. I only use a Notebook these days.

Would I still buy a Notebook or a Netbook would fit the bill? Was just thinking if I were to buy a notebook next, what would I be looking for?

Pre-Installed with Ubuntu: The last 2 Notebooks I bought, had Windows pre-loaded. I didn’t have an option to buy without Windows, this is a big pain. I am paying for something that I am not using, so why not have a choice? Ubuntu pre-installed notebooks are available, but there is not enough choice. Currently I need to boot into Windows perhaps once in 6 months to update my camera software, only because the application doesn’t have a Linux port. Other than that I don’t need to use Windows.

Good Battery life: This is important, I can’t survive with just 1-3 hours. I would look for 10 hours of battery life, useful for long flights or go for meetings the whole day without a charge.

GPS built in: This will help in integrating with Google Maps.

3G Built in: With 3G getting very common these days, it makes sense to have the 3G build-in, so you don’t need to carry those dongles.

SD Card slots: these are common these days in Notebooks and Netbooks but now can’t do without them

More USBs: I already have 3 USBs and sometimes find them insufficient specially when I connect external mouse and keyboard.

eSATA: With external 1TB hard drives becoming cheap, the bottle neck to transfer huge amounts of data becomes the USB port. eSATA is about 3 times faster and you can get a hard drive casing with an eSATA port. Make sure your notebook/netbook has an eSATA port too.

LED Monitor: These are nice displays which are easy on the eyes and they have already started showing in laptops. What would be even better is an epaper type reader that doesn’t hurt the eyes since we spend so much time reading in front of the computer each day.

Good resolution Webcam: these are also common but not all of them are high resolution. With Skype video getting pupular this is nice to have.

Tablet Convertible: I have see a few notebooks which can double up as a tablet, they are a little rough, but nice feature to have. Not sure if I would actually use it alot. But my wants exceed my need.

SSD: Solid State Drives are getting cheaper, they are safe to use in mobile environments and consume less power too.

What about processor speed? Well this is irrelevant today. For basic computing todays processors are fast enough. Most PCs have only 5-10% utilisation so why have this craze for faster processors and hurt the environment? when we can buy small low powered processors?

Netbook or Notebook?
I may invest in a Netbook instead of a Notebook, they are sufficiently powered for my need. Now only if they have a nicer keyboard too.

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Brewing your own herbal tea

Prakash — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 08:59:00 +0000

Making your own herbal tea can be fun and keep you healthy too. Here is Herbal Tea-HOWTO. Herbal teas boosts your immunity, maintain general good health and can be useful in curing common cold, cough, allergies and indigestion. For best results drink early in the morning.

Ingredients

5 Lemon Grass – Good for Digestion and cold.
Slice of Ginger root – Generates heat in the body, good for digestion, cold and throat, heart and prevents arthritis.
10 mint leaves (pudhina) – good for digestion.
5 tulsi leaves (holy basil) – good for immunity and memory.
5 whole pepper corns – good for throat and cold.
Ajwain (thyme) – induces hair growth and provides relief from stomach problems.
Honey for sweetness – good for throat.
1/2 Lemon – rich source of vitamin C. Provides cooling since we are using many hot herbs.
1 1/2 cup water.

Optional Ingredients

Black Cardamom – it is very hot, useful in fighting cold, congestion.

Procedure:

Wash the lemon grass and mint leaves thoroughly. Cut the lemon grass into smaller pieces for easy handling.
Mix all the ingredients except the lemon and honey, which will be used later.
Cover with a lid, Bring to a boil, reduce the flame.
Boil on low flame for 30 min till it gets reduced to 1 cup.
Strain, add honey, lemon and serve hot.
Drink and Enjoy!

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