My views on ads

I had always wondered why companies spend so much money in ads. I did understand that it's important to introduce the customer to the product and to compare their product with competitor’s product and all that. But, I never understood why we have ads repeated at such short intervals that after one day after, the ad's first appearance, the ad gets so irritating that we develop a dislike for even the product! You know how it goes after that, we start to even make some stupid mocks about the ads yourselves.

But this mad behavior of the ad firms to repeat ads every minute, recently stuck to me as not-so-stupid. And I reached a few conclusions of my own, which I came to from these situations I went through:

One, I went to buy toiletries with my family and I wanted a soap for the summer. And the first product that I could recall was the one which had the ad I hated the most. The one I hated so much, I had even started hating the mock-up of it that I'd myself created. So obviously i didn't want to buy it. So I bought the other one? Well no, I didn't buy any thing other. I bought that exact same thing I never wanted to buy. Why? Well cause that ad had filled my head with “summer+soap” so much I couldn't recall any other soap! I spent 5 minutes scratching my head before I had no choice. So I guess that conclusion number one is : the repeated ads are used to brainwash you and to eliminate the competition from every living brain cell in your head.

Two, I came home tired one evening. Wanted to rest and was happy eating a biscuit, cause I didn't want to get up and make a proper snack for myself. But there it was on the TV, Maggi, maggi, maggi, every 15 seconds I could see those people in the TV slurping away those unhealthy noddles, taunting every taste-buds in my mouth that they were so “deprived”! After 15 minutes, I had joined them in the slurping. So I conclude, it's not only important for the companies that you buy the product, but also that you consume it fast enough so that you buy more and that's where those ads strike at the right place and time.

Anything I missed?

Akshat

My feelings on Lansdowne

Hello friend,

I recently visited Lansdowne and would like to share my heart's words on that place...

It's a small proud place. Standing all alone and with no fear or loneliness, without the hustle and bustle that marks most modern hill stations of India. It has an air of it's own which can be summed as 'just right'. It's as if it says- whatever I am, I am just right.

There is an obvious displeasure in the visitors here, when they realize there is nothing much to visit here except a lake, a museum and a church. But this does not seem to effect this place to even the smallest degree. Its as if, some unknown strength holds it in upright in it's place and manner.

I don't mean to say it's a old and broken down neglected place, in fact it's too well kept for a hill town, but it's a still place. It's like an expensive strong box you bought , but you never found anything to keep in in. But at the same time, you never had the heart to throw it or even to not clean it. And like the peace that would be there inside that box, there is a peace in this place too. But it's not of heavenly nature, it's just a forced peace, a self contained peace.

It's so peaceful, that quite the way one would walk by that box, without giving much credit, passerby crossing Lansdowne do drive by this place, without too much notice or awe. But it does leave it's mark in a keen eyed passerby's head, especially due to it's distinct vegetation. While all around is a pine forest, Lansdowne has a lush green vegetation of a large variety of trees. And like that passerby on the road, it's visitors also move on in life, without missing Lansdowne much.



I may never come back to this place but, where ever I may be, my heart says that this place shall not change much, maybe because of it's pride or maybe because there is nothing to for it to grow to. But so is the life in the hills...

My life with a MAC

So I've got the MacBook Air's HDD replaced and am using it as my primary machine. Expect not for the CAD work which I do on my office PC, with two monitors and ubuntu.

I wish to share my experience from a point of view of a user, rather than a Apple design fan, which I am and which is something which has made my feedbacks on Apple products a bit too biased.

To start with what I use most, the browser, viz. Safari. It's true Safari is fast, and you especially notice it when you are sitting on a fat internet pipe with over 1 Mbps speeds. Its simple and does most of the work done. But there are those idiotic activeX pages, which won't load. Also I have had issues with even Apple.com not loading on MAC-Safari pair. I mean come-on!!! The problem is solved by deleting the apple.com's cookies from the browser.

It does get hot, but I guess most modern notebooks do. Not as much as a Macbook Pros, but yes, no "Laptop", please!. There is an issue with placement of the fan in the Macbook Air, it's at the bottom, and it starts to get exponentially hotter when kept on the bed, so it needs a hard surface to be kept for a little more than the casual amounts of work.

Aah and the one USB is a problem, maybe, I feel the need for the second port at work, with no wifi and only LAN, so my USB goes to the ethernet connector. I eneded up buying a USB hub, but that does not power my external HDD, so it's just OK again.

As much as Apple tries to beat down Windows, take my word, Macs also hang. They too have not responding applications. Maybe 1/10th the number of times a well managed Windows machine has it, but applications do hang here too.

I do love the fact that it sleeps nicely with the lid closed, that the battery lasts long enough for most of my work and fancy and useful things like the ambient light sensor adjusts keyboard and screen light. I love it being light, I love to show it off.

Overall I'd say that it has its' own pros and cons and to be true, it "just" overshadows an expensive windows based laptop.

More soon..

Key!

Passwords protection

One fine morning an old and rediscovered friend of mine messaged me to let me that she felt her facebook account had been 'hacked'. Though later the problem seemed to have solved itself, (it was not a 'hacked' account, but just the overloaded facebook server), I none-the-less decided that I must put some of my thoughts on the subject of password protection here.

The first thing is to have a hierarchy of passwords. Two or three levels, as you like. The first is your main email. The password should be little complicated. Please for god's sake never give out this password to anyone. Avoid till the last limit, and if you essentially have to, change it the next moment you get access to it. Trust me guys, the only times I've lost my main email account is when I myself gave away the password to some supposedly"faithful "friends".

Going one step ahead, I was thankfully able to recover the password via, the Secret question/answer pair. The trick I use there is to keep a common, a bit complicated, secret answer. It has nothing to do with the secret question. This secret answer is only known to me and only me, (The main email password is at times known to my brother, for emergency uses, though for most folks it should be the second thing only known to you). This secret answer is common to all my services. This allows me to recover any password, using the secret answer, like a back-door key to one's house.

The second level of passwords are for little less important services like secondary email, personal workstations. These can be given to the near and dear ones as you might share few things over these services.

The third level is for casual services. The password should be trivial. It can be known to many folks and even if you lose any of the services protected my this password, it should not worry you. Newsgroups, workplace terminal logins, iPods and things like this enter into this category.

The second and third level passwords can be common to people depending on choice.

The first level password should of course consist of numbers. Since you are going to change it frequently, give the password some artistic touch. Write it down in a safe place, till you get used to it, as you might have a weak short-term memory and forget it the next day after changing it!

The second level of password should also consist of numbers, as most services now require numbers in the passwords.

There is another level of passwords which are very secured. The bank account passwords. They are generally more protected by the banks themselves, but one must be extra careful with them. One obviously does not give them away, but I've seen people do that also- I was once in a shop and there was a man on his phone. He was giving some travel agent his credit-card details. Trust me he spoke all that is required for me to buy from his account. So well be careful what you are revealing and where...

There is loads to write on this subject, but that's all for now guys. You are free to add your share in the comments section.

Key.

The reverse direction

So I was disturbed by someone constantly nagging me over phone and SMS one night and I wanted to sleep. So I pressed the phone off feature on my phone. I slept a peaceful night...

I woke up the in morning and wanted to check out all that I missed during the night and wanted my pending messages to be delivered. I turned on my phone and as is common with cellphone providers I had to wait till one by one all the messages were delivered to me over the next hour or so. Moreover, I was not sure if I did get all my pending SMS!

This brought me to a conclusion. What if SMS was not a push service, but a get service? Most tech-savvy folks would shudder at the thought, considering that they are running to even get email to become push. But I'm sure some of the old timers would love it. This difference of opinion has a solution, that, like email people should be allowed to choose if they want the service as push or get.

The advantages of SMS as a get service are many. I could finally be able to subscribe to those SMS information services like 'word-a-day', without worrying about the SMSs reaching me in the middle of the night, either due to the source server sending it then, or the SMS being stuck in the operator's network for hours(which is more of a problem).

Of course one can argue and say that - 'dude just tell your phone to not beep/vibrate to an incoming SMS and read all of them at leisure', but we all know that a pending SMS, always tempts us to read it. :)

I hope someone is listening to this.

Akshat

A drift

I would like to take pardon of my technical/idea readers and would like to use the feelings part of this blog. Here goes.

After a long long time today "Mystical Experience" made me breathless. I don't how Boyzone songs are just so perfect. I really want to spent the whole night sitting on the chair on the roof top on winter night and know I'm feeling the "Mystical Experience".

Life was many doors...

AKI!!!

who is me?

So i started out with thinking 'who is me?' What I really want and what defines me. I think the question came from a sudden attack where all the rules, your set motos in life, your principles forbid you to do that one thing you wish to do more than anything. They prevent your heart from being free to control your mind, so much, so much, that you start to question your believes and then the question, is this really who I am and want to be? What defines me? Can I trust the things which define me...

And I looked at the one place which has always guided me, answered all my question, set all my moods- my iPod. And the first time in my life it disappointed me, it didn't allow me to venture into a zone where i wanted to be. My rebel machine, restrained me and I was shocked. I looked at my best friend in disgust and stopped it. It was then i realized my music was too constrained. For the first time in my life i felt what I thought was variety was not really true. And I played each of those varieties to realize they are all just me in different modes or in different situations.

I am standing at a crossroad which allows me to choose between what I want to do and what is safe and right. Its not that I'm saying what I want to do is wrong, just that i'm not sure if it right. It's not a road less travelled, but it's road for which i'll have to shed all my covering of my own set rules and principles. To go away from being me, to being what this sudden sparks wants me to be. For once to let go of all bonds and be naked in the track of life and make myself again. I want to step out and live a different me.

I think I've lost the self respect which I had for my own standing and I wish to use my entire experience in life to build a new me, seeing and knowing what people like me to be. To remove what I don't like about myself, without once caring if it disowns any or all of my life's principles!

I wish the morning light would shed light on the right path... Till then, i just wish to be in my dream... my own created dream.

Key!

The Capacitor Trick

We as not-so-professional engineers have a habit of not putting in the required capacitors at place. We generally ignore the safety, noise suppression capacitors in power supplies of all kinds. These don't lead to immediate failure or fault, but it hampers the life of the product. It also makes the device the unsteady and this directly hampers user experience, which is of critical importance.

Leaving that to the personal jurisdiction of my fellow engineers, I move on to tell about a good capacitor trick. There is nothing great about it, but it adds a lot of grace to the device.

It's as simple as : Attach a capacitor in parallel with any LED in the circuit which needs to blink. What does it do, you ask? Well rather than the immediate turn on and turn off, the LEDs turn on and off slow and smoothly. From zero intensity they slowly rise to full intensity turning on and similarly when turning off.

Try it in one of your upcoming projects and notice the grace it brings. Oh, by the by, adjust the capacitor value to suite your taste and blink speed requirement. The law is simple, more capacitance makes the LED take long time to turn on and off.

An example of a MacBook doing the same.

Enjoy.

Happy New Year

Hey readers,

First and foremost a very happy and prosperous New Year to you and all your loved ones.

Delhi has taken to being very cold. The weekend felt like hibernation period, I'm in my blanket all day just sleeping and eating. No going out, it's foggy and chilly. More so, my semester starts from monday and early 8am classes are making me relax more in these last two days.

Trying to catch up with a few ideas and will post them soon. And there is reason to rejoice, of all the new year resolutions, i'll be writing at least once in a week here. :)

More soon.

Akshat