Monday, September 19, 2005

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Old blog archives-2nd Anniversary

Old blog archives reposted: From Isabel to Rita it’s 2 years of blog hurricanes….
I just noticed its been 2 years since I strated blogging, but very few blogs are worth a read in my opinion. Here is the recap of it all from the beginning…..

Saturday, 24 July 2004
Now Playing: @life<> Everyone loves Music. For some it is a passion. For some it is a pastime. From time unmemorable humans tried to capture and play music in variety of forms for personal entertainment. It was by the invention of gramophone did one have the ability of true personal enjoyment of prerecorded music when ever they like. Then came electricity driven devices to capture and playback magnetic tapes we still use in form of cassettes. We could buy the albums/songs we like from the friendly neighborhood music store and playback in our boom boxes or walkman and share/exchange with our friends. Music pros had expensive systems at homes which not only played cassettes loud and clear, but had the capability of copying to another cassette and record their own songs, sing along karaoke etc. Walkmans allowed music to be carried on person anywhere along with cassettes. The numbers were limited as how many cassettes one wants to lug around.

Then came the first digital experience in form of plastic discs, read by a laser ray and played back with same technology but with much higher quality.

Audio Cds hold typically 15-20 songs in a standard format which can be again played in home/car audio cd players as well as portables. Life was better with better quality and slightly more quantity per media. Still the hassle of carrying around media was there and the havoc of organizing and maintaining the discs. By the increasing popularity of computers and the media files it can handle brought into light a new array of devices which work with your personal computer. One place to buy store, sync and enjoy your music, virtually unlimited amount of it. The King of such portable music players is Apple ipod.

Apple Ipod is a musical dream come true. It offers huge capacity (as big as a hard disk can go), letting you easily slip all your songs into your pocket. And enjoy it wherever you go. In the car. On the treadmill. At the office. Around the house, virtually @nywhere you like.
Some Luxury carmakers like BMW started interfacing IPODs with the Car music systems which can be convienetly controlled by steering weel controls and in dash displays. There are hell lot of accessories for ipod available in the market of which the most expensive accessory is a BMW.http://www.ipodyourbmw.com/
Although the iPod is essentially an MP3 player, as it has a hard drive you can also use it as a storage device. While that is true of many MP3 players, including the devices based on flash memory, you'll find your iPod has plenty of storage capacity. You control the iPod with four buttons that have a gorgeous luminous pink backlight, but the really cool part is menu navigation. A circular track uses the same touchpad technology that you find in notebooks and in the centre is a button that works in the same way. Scrolling and selecting could hardly be easier or more intuitive, and there are no moving parts to go wrong either. And the icing on the cake is it can be integrated with some car audio systems and can be controlled and played back through the cars interfaces. Good bye CDs and cassettes.

On the face of it an iPod is an expensive luxury, but that's not true for a music buff or one who appreciate all the conveniences. The new version, compatible with both Mac and PC, offers excellent value for money and it is a pleasure to use. And, for the style-conscious, the white earphones unmistakably mark you down as an iPod owner.

Posted by iwasp0 at 8:55 AM EDT post your comment (0) link to this post



Thursday, 27 May 2004
The smarter way to talk ..digitally!Four years ago when I started to live alone in an apartment, just like anyone my choice was to apply a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service), hook it up to a cheap handset and it started swarming me with cold sales calls. I used a centralized voice message provided by the company. My only use of the land line was to dial-up for connecting internet. Over the time as my needs surpassed the bandwidth of dialup, I switched to DSL which inturn hooked me tighter to the land line. Now I started getting more and more sales calls as DSL never made the line busy thereby making sure that voice spammers never missed me. The caller id and filtering was an option but still a waste of time on decision making for each call. By the time I had a cell phone and one fine day I decided that land line should die forever. So I switched to a cable broadband provider for internet and TV programs (which are rarely watched).

I lived happily for 2 years till one day last month I had to attend an internet training where instructor was delivering the lecture by a POTS line (are we really progressing?) and the video of the class through the internet browser. As cell phone was not feasible for a week of 8 hrs a day training I called my good old telephone company and got myself a land line (they were good enough to give me the same number I disconnected about 2 years back) hooked it up to a new state of the art phone system and I had a perfect education for 1 week. Then what next?

The very thought made me uneasy because I am using very much the same technology what Alexander Graham Bell invented and called "Electrical Speech Machine" which is now called a land phone. Little bit of history here - By 1878 Bell setup first telephone exchange in New Heaven, Connecticut. By 1884 long distance connections were made between Boston and Massachusetts and New York. In 2004 we still call up a company with same Bell lineage and a new fancy name for buying same technology. Isn't it time for trying out something fresh and dump twisted pair copper wire connections with analog signals forever?

Welcome VOIP/Internet Telephony as a main phone solution, a full fledged phone service with virtually everything POTS offer and much more. This is not your old telephone service. It can look and work like an ordinary phone despite it connect to the internet. It costs less, extremely convenient to use and provides lots of features. Sign up for a service with a broadband phone company and receive a self install kit along with the request to transfer your existing number with POTS. Just plug your normal phone to a small box in the kit called ATA (Analog Telephone Adaptor) and then plug the box into your cable modem for broadband internet connectivity. Pick up the phone and you will get a dial tone within a few seconds. Call anybody, anywhere as usual who has any kind of telephone. You may use a soft phone and use your computer/PDA as your phone if you don't like to deal with dumb hardware. Cost factor and the cool features are the 2 main attractions of internet telephony. Calls can be very cheap or even free worldwide. Quality depends on the provider infrastructure. No hundred digits calling card numbers to dial, no used up messages, no pin purchases or renewals etc. You can pick your area code regardless of the place you live, carry over the existing telephone number, get voice message, configure the setting, and add features from a browser anywhere. Call hunting make sure that you wont miss a call even when the internet is down as it will reroute the calls to any alternate number you provide.
All this being said, the technology at this point of time is not for non techies, but I am sure the differences diminishes in couple of years. VOIP software and hardware usage needs some extent of technology awareness on the users part. Quality is variable due to a lot of reasons like bandwidth, provider infrastructure, instrument quality, configuration etc. At its best the call quality is much superior than a land line or comparable. Go get it if you like to troubleshoot, experiment, save money, and live intelligently in 21st century voice communication.

Posted by iwasp0 at 11:13 PM EDT post your comment (0) link to this post
Monday, 29 March 2004
Spring Time!Seems like there is an escape finally from cold weather and here comes Spring time. Also the First wedding anniversary falls on March 30. Pretty busy at work front and probably need to take a short Vacation soon after an year of non -stop running.

Posted by iwasp0 at 9:38 AM EST post your comment (0) link to this post
Monday, 23 February 2004
New Website For 2004.. like every year, but this is best effort ever.I created my first website during the turn of Millenium. December 1999 in India, I hosted my first home page on geocities as I thought it would be appropriate to have an online presence in the Virtual Century ahead. I alreday had my domain registered as www.rajeshravi.com some time in 1999. It was a one page site with some funny photoes and few text. It was created in a notepad and uploaded on geocities site. My knowledge about all web stuff were basic as I started using Internet only in 1997 and one hour of internet access was like winning a Carriebean Cruise(at least the happiness value).That web site was added with one or 2 pages and links and remained there till Jan 2001. I was in US by that time and decided to work more on that as a hobby and First redisign happened on 2001 Jan. Then onwards I made it as a habit to redesign it every year and this one is the Fifth. This time I put more effort to make it extensive and elaborate. Thansk to everyone for timely feedback to make it better and for all that valuable suggestions. I know still I am a toddler in Website design, but the version 5 is the one i liked most and the one i visited most after ..again and again. Any of you who read this please comment on it and help me make it even better. Thanks for your time. Raj

Posted by iwasp0 at 2:43 PM EST post your comment (0) link to this post
Tuesday, 27 January 2004
First Major Snow Fall of Winter '04Snow days! After the overdose of snow in Feb 03, this was the first time this year we were covered with the 4-5 inches snow in DC metro area. Had a long weekend thanks to the liberal leave on Monday due to inclemaent weather conditions. This year winter is very frigid , having temp much lower than dew point. So less chances of snow fall. Will have to wait another month anda half to get over this chill stuff and roam freely with out jackets and gloves...

Posted by iwasp0 at 6:50 AM EST post your comment (2) link to this post Updated: Wednesday, 28 January 2004 9:52 AM EST
Friday, 12 December 2003
A loooong Work week!!It all started on 5th Dec friday night2003. When all went home for the weekend i started out to bring a system to production. Bulding from database migration to upgrading Siebel to integration of different components it was a great team effort to bring the system to production by Sunday evening.All went fine according to plan and the work week extended till today 12th Dec. I am doing a major Siebel upgrade for the same client the second time after 3 years, the first one in 2000 Dec my first major assignment in US. I have done it again.Of course thanks for my team mates for great co-operation and team work. It was an effort worth mentioning!!

Posted by iwasp0 at 11:19 PM EST post your comment (0) link to this post
Saturday, 22 November 2003
Thanksgiving 03Beginning of 03 Holiday Season .Looking forward for a Long weekend on the end of mont. Getting back to work on Dec 1.

Posted by iwasp0 at 1:13 PM EST post your comment (0) link to this post
Friday, 3 October 2003
Fall Skipped?It feels like winter. The trees have not changed color yet and nt dropping leafs. But the temp is 40 -50 . Amazing change from 70 F last couple of weeks before. Looks like and early indication for a long and severe winter. Need to get some rest for a very hectic month ahead at work.

Posted by iwasp0 at 7:38 PM EDT post your comment (0) link to this post
Saturday, 27 September 2003
Lazy SaturdayWell. Summer is stepping out definitely in these parts of world, as i could feel the slight chill when i was riding the motorcycle Friday to work. Time to think about some thin fall jackets and enjoy the last precouos sunny days of this year for motorcycling. Kawasaki Vulcan is a very relaible motorcycle as compared to Big names like Harley.Plan to stay at home most of the day and work a bit on website.

Posted by iwasp0 at 9:43 AM EDT post your comment (0) link to this post
Monday, 22 September 2003
Back to business!After a mini vacation all back to work on Monday.Lot of things to set to order after a reboot of normal proceedings.Still in hurricane brains, but expect to catchup to full steam by end of the day. :-)

Posted by iwasp0 at 1:19 PM EDT post your comment (0) link to this post



Saturday, 20 September 2003
2 Days BlackOut!!That was an experience.... not even experienced in India. 2 days of blackout. Have seen blackouts frequently when lived in India, but none lasted more than a day. Fortunate to expereience the most extensive blackout of my life in the Earths most advanced place!Some times bad things happened frequently is good, that makes us experts to recover it fast.Ok Isabel gone , life is again normal and we can believe humans control everything in this small world once again!!

Posted by iwasp0 at 5:19 PM EDT post your comment (0) link to this post
Thursday, 18 September 2003
Expected Holiday. Thanks to Nature!Ok Isabel give all of us a break from work for 1 or 2 days. Seems like Monday is going to be the next work day. Its time to sit at home and take some rest, clean up and do some chores. Sujith called up and said he is coming over. Need to go pick him up from somewhere in Alexandria before Isabel gets here!

Posted by iwasp0 at 1:39 PM EDT post your comment (0) link to this post
Wednesday, 17 September 2003
Welcome Isabel or not?Everyone is talking about Hurricane Isabel which is going to hit the East coast of USA in 24 hours.As usual Media is doing a double edged task . Informing( which is good) , frieghtening and consuming. I lost hope in TV channels except their head lines. In this information age i dont think any one is not aware of what is happening.Too much misinformation and interpretation is good market for some product and companies. Frieghten, isolate and consume! As fo r me i am going to cover my Motorcycle,and doing nothing else. Welcome Isabel! You have the natural right to travel in this free country

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Welcome to Personal Blogging

This kind of personal blogging is new to me, but thought of giving it a try. Please watch this column…

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September 2005

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