Tharu's Blog

Disclaimer: if you crash, its on your own cash. No responsibilities taken for following guidelines here!

Okay, you might think this is some sort of AGPS crap, but no. This is how I’d describe driving with a GPS device hooked onto your car.

This applies to Sri Lanka, and I’m pretty sure it would for most Asian and other developing countries as well.

The fact that there aren’t many GPS providers with accurate data makes navigation; hell, to guys like me. I usually can’t memorize any road. The only roads I have in my head are the ones I travel or drive very frequently. Unlike my father and some other people like several cousins I have, I neither can tell a guy how to reach Kandy with n-turns and m-roads in the description nor can I listen to that description and figure the road out.!

That’s where GPS comes in. I’m not the kind of guy who buy expensive hardware off the market if there’s a free alternative. So my alternative is Google Navigation powered by Android. I’m not here to talk about Navigation and directions. I’m here to talk about Navigation and cornering.

The level of detail Gmaps gives in cornering was tested by myself on two trips now. The first was the family trip we had to Katharagama. It proved vital in the Horana-Rathnapura road. The second was the more recent trip to Badulla. In addition to the Horana-Rathnapura road, I used it for the entire trip.

Before I elaborate, take a good look at these

This is Racedriver GRID.

and Need for Speed Underground (Sorry for the view, but this is the best I have in my collection)

and this is my setup;

Yes, it’s the lower left that makes them similar.

I know exactly what comes to your head. So let me explain.

The phone shows me the Google map in navigation mode (if you think navigation is disabled outside the USA, you need to grow up and root your phone) In the map is the latest and up to date version of the map. I say this because before these ‘trips’ I check the Google map myself and correct the road alignment to the map myself.

So before I reach any part of the road, I know how its going to lay out. The only thing I need to figure out is the placement of the vehicles in front of me.

I know, you still look a bit astonished. You have the issue; of the need to ‘look’ at the map to do that. This is where the pictures I showed you come in. If you have played NFS, GRID and most other racing games, you need to know when to keep the eye on the road and when to peek at the map. This needs intense practice.

If you keep your eyes in the map too long, you will crash for sure. and you need to keep in mind not to peek at every corner. Keep a small cache memory of the bends, and never peek while taking the curve.

If you’ve driven your car long enough and know what you’re doing with the map, this will be the coolest way to drive.

What I have seen is that most drivers calculate the speed of approach for a curve after they have reached the apex of the curve. In places where multiple curved exist, this is troublesome. And then they brake at the apex, resulting in a jerky ride, a gear shift and wasted fuel.

With this method, you know what the bend looks like. This is the sort of knowledge which daily drivers have on these roads. then you can brake, shift or even accelerate accordingly to the bend ahead.

Take a look at this bend-set. would you know that U shape before you take the first one to the right and then passing the smaller ones? If I was going in this spot, I’d stop overtaking others altogether, and start slowing down. Take the map off and visualize the bend. All you see is a left trun! And imagine this in the night.!

Hope you guys got my point. But remember, you need to

1. Keep you eyes on the road. NOT on the map. Just peek on it for several milliseconds.

2. Keep the device level with your vision. Never keep it anywhere you need to turn or lower your head to look at it.

3. Setup the system BEFORE you go.

4. Always keep in mind that the map might be wrong. use it to take a hint. Don’t try to drive the shown path

5. Use common sense (yeah right!)

Note: if you see the blue navigation path off from the yellow/white road, the road is probably right. Gmaps updates itself in stages, and when someone corrects the road, the navigation takes time to update. So the navigation layer might show old data.

If you see that some of the parts you drove was drawn wrong, go to mapmaker.google.com and correct it!

Cheers!

After a long long time, something came up to post. :D

I was able to publish my first android application yesterday. It isn't an advanced app. And in fact, it was the very first app that I used to learn android programming. When I purchased the market publisher account, I didn't have any app to publish.
So what I did was, I re-did the whole thing at home since my original program was in the office laptop. The older version I did just had text boxes so that users need to enter text.

But after several office Java projects and Android learning of my own helped to revamp the UI a bit and I got it compiled.

You can check it out at
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tharu.subnet

laters...

I downloaded the Windows 8 developer preview yesterday and got a test disk and installed it today to check out the all new OS in town. I got to say, the smartphone and the tablet has taken their toll on the PC. Now, the PC’s OS has a tablet interface in it! damn! the world has changed.

As you might usually think, I am not writing this off in Win 8. The reason? well, I tried to install the Windows live writer to it and it started downloading .NET framework 3.5.1 or something from Windows update and I saw my Win 8 BSOD’s twice in an hour. Those are the BSOD’s I saw for a long time in any PC. (Are we missing them? ) So I put the screenies I took to a flash drive and started writing off in Win 7 instead.

This is it. The all new Metro style interface for Windows 8. It has most of the apps that we use day-to-day I guess. IE, a twitter app, and a Social Network app to connect Facebook to, RSS reader and some other stuff.

The tiles update themselves after configuring accounts on them. I could not try adding/removing tiles coz I forgot to try that.

The metro UI has the search feature that comes with Windows 8. It is the only way we can open an application, even Paint. The start menu is now a thing of the past.! When we open the metro mode (or whatever its called) and start typing, the search bar comes alive from the side and starts searching through apps, settings and other stuff.

The spotlight of discussion that was on the Building Windows Blog was the existence of two Internet Explorers. The PC type one and the tablet type one. Although both share the settings, history and all, the experiences are quite different.

This is IE 10, on the desktop. You might notice that the desktop is pretty much the same thing except for the Windows Logo. When you click that, the screen goes straight back to the tiles. (Ah, NOW you miss the start menu?)

This is the metro style tablet friendly IE. Notice the entire thing is full-screen and when I right-click, the top and bottom bars appear with tabs and the address bar shown here as well. It’s a real pain in the back to right click every time you need to switch tabs. But in a touch environment, that would make some sense. Even though the Windows team expects a lot of bad comments about dual-IE, I think it’s a good thing to keep both in line to cater the PC and tablet users. (Or in tablets’ case, when using the keyboard or the touchscreen)

Given below is a snap of the downloads progress bar.

The release is full of bugs. apart from the BSOD, I experienced that sometimes the app tiles don’t work when clicked. And there was a time that things wouldn’t just show up in the screen after login. And this social network app crashed saying I need to login.

and the Store was not available (well its not a bug anyway )

But the twitter app worked fine

 

The animations in the system are also revamped. Take a look at this waiting animation at installation.

The lock-screen is real eye candy. Take a look at this;

The desktop environment has also gone through some changes as well.

First, these are the properties.

And some eye watering reality

Most of the changes are to good old Explorer. The ribbon is now official for explorer.

I know for sure this will make things really easy to work with and will take some considerable amount of time getting used to.

The title bars have gone through some design change.

These are the new buttons

As opposed to the old ones in Win 7.

They look somewhat square I guess.

I tried to mimic that multiple copy case, but ended up in an error saying the desktop was in use.! So we cant put two files from two sources to the same destination at once? That’s peculiar.

That’s about it.

At the end of it all, I have to sum up. 2 great working apps, @ BSODs, 0 shutdowns (yes, it was a restart and a reset!) and some time later, I think I still like the new OS. We have to keep in mind, this is pre-beta (in mozilla terms, aurora channel)

I’ve got a feeling we will get one heck of an OS with this Windows release. I wish the Windows team all the best, and I will keep track of the changes when they happen.

Just read some news regarding Chinese search engine Baidu doing some development copying the Google's OS Android to make a mobile OS called yi.

When seeing the website, I realized how lame China has become. And this came in to my head. The great firewall in place in China. I wanted to do a comparison of a controversial search term.

Enough words, see the pics. This is what internet censorship means. Lets hope our government don't implement something like this.!

The search term was "Tianamen Massacre"
This is the bing results set:

 What our old friend Yahoo! had to say:


And finally, this is the Baidu result set! According to them, I've searched for a myth! XD

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[update 2011-11-17]
Nalin, from barclays personally called me. As per Nalin, they have got a set of cards from Singapore hand delivered to the shop. But I insisted that Nalin look in to the matter and I told him how sure I was about this. I'm putting this on top because this post is showing up in the 3rd Google hit for "Barclays Sri Lanka".

Nalin assured me that he will look into it and he will personally monitor the hardware sold. So I think we need to give these guys a small break and see.

Hope you can get the stuff done my friend. Hope we all can go back to Unity Plaza and buy good stuff as we have done in the past.

 Cheers.

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The story starts when I went to Unity Plaza to buy some RAM for a project at office. We needed five 2GB DDR 2 RAM cards to expand the memory of some of our computers used for a project. So armed with petty cash (some 'petty' cash that is!) Nalaka and I went there.

Since I have purchased a lot of items from Barclays and know the price is cheap, I went straight to the shop. Its what I normally do. If you have circled around unity plaza you might know that the final destination is most of the time, at Barclays. So I cut the crap, we needed the cards so that the colleagues installing the software can have it as soon as possible.

Once we asked the counter, the salesman asked the usual questions with his usual intentions. What is the bus speed.? I straightaway asked whether they have 667MHz or 800MHz. The man asked the question only to reply me saying "we only have 800MHz". The purpose of the question might be to judge whether we are complete IT illiterate or in the higher end of the spectrum. They do that to ether sell crap or to increase the prize of products I guess.

After that, we were told that there were two brands. I insisted on buying Kingston rather than the other which if I heard correctly was ADATA. The prize was 3300 rupees and we told him we needed five of it.

Then they billed it, as usual, and then another guy in the counter for issuing stuff was told something in tamil by the salesman.(Geez, I should have taken Kuru with us!) Then he took out the cards.

Then did I spot that three of the cards were in the Kingston packing and two were not!

I took the cards which did not have packing to my hand and gave it a good look. My Gosh! Any idiot who has seen a RAM card could say it was used!

The the following discussion took place which made my blood boil!

Me: Why is that two cards are out of the packing and three are in the packing?
Issue Guy: [silent, keeps packing other stuff]
Me: Where is the packaging of these cards
Him: We can give you a packaging, but its from a 1GB card
Me: I dont want a packaging, I want to know why these cards dont have their OWN!

And when I looked closer I could see that the Kingston stickers were rolled up in the sides, indicating clearly, the RAM was used. Usually the heat inside the casing loosens the glue of the sticker and when you remove the RAM from the slots which are usually tightly packed between the cooler and the PSU, you tend to roll up the sticker. Besides, there were marks in the gold contacts which showed insertion!

Me: These RAM are used. Mister, I'm not here to practice buying RAM, I want original cards.
Him: We're out of stock. These cards are the last. And these came as bulk, thats why no packaging!

At that point my boiling point passed!  How stupid does this guy think I am to assume RAM cards come without a packaging. What does he think I'd assume! That the cards come wrapped in a rubber band strapping them together?! I was furious over the statement. I lectured him a bit and I straightaway told them that I am NOT paying for the used cards.

After some mumbling to themselves they decided to return me the money for the two cards. Nalaka was adamant that we leave all FIVE of them behind and buy somewhere else! I just couldn't do that because we'd risk the availability factor of RAM in other shops! you know Unity, some stuff go rare all of a sudden!

So we paid for the three cards and came back. I told the salesman clearly that I would never buy from them again!

More than that, this is not the first time they tried to cheat me.

When I went to buy dad's laptop, after all the payment and stuff was finalized the salesman tries to give me the laptop on the shelf for show! On that day too they tried to give me the "last of the stock" trick. I straightaway told him that I want the money back. Then he sends someone to bring me a brandnew laptop! I think they try this trick with everyone!

And that laptop lost its motherboard in a month. The warranty is that they repair it and give it back. Those of you who think this "1 year warranty" is part to part, its a hoax! What they do is they repair it and ask you to wait 2,3 weeks till it gets back. Dad had to wait 2,3 weeks.

Same thing happened when my monitor went haywire at the end of its 3 year warranty. I had my BIT project going. I didn't claim the warranty. I somehow kept the thing going till I finish the project!


I have the following items in my PC from them

• Foxconn 45cm-s Motherboard
• 2x 1GB DDR2 667MHz Kingston RAM (Good thing I registered and verified them then)
• HD501LJ Samsung HDD
• Sony DVD+RW drive (the model number sadly is forgotten :D )
• Foxconn 9600GT nVidia card

I would never buy from Barclays again. And those of you who are planning to buy from them, I cant stress this enough, DO NOT BUY FROM THERE!



I will send complaints to memory.lk and Kingston Taiwan, whom I believe are the dealers for Sri Lanka and Asia.

And one more thing. Kingston has their website for verifying the RAM. (http://kingston.com/verify/)If you have a mobile phone or a laptop which you can access the net, do it ON THE SPOT and verify the RAM.

do you speak this language? I don’t!