Firstly, to be frank, I never imagined of me using a mobile phone. I thought of it as a luxury item. It happened when I stayed out from home, during my first year of engineering studies. While we were planning to move out, I thought of taking a land line (Did I say landline), my friend thought of taking a mobile phone connection. My stand was that it is a terrible luxury. Well, he went on with the plan, and some one in my class(I am not going to mention the name) proposed a rental scheme by which we have to pay some amount and can borrow his brothers handset. I havn’t seen a handset properly till that date. One of the peculiarity was that, I did a diplomatic, negotiating stand between my friend and the classmate. Finally, we got the handset for very fair rate. The mobile was a Mitsubishi Trium. Our next challenge was taking a mobile connection. So, we went AIRTEL, ESCOTEL(idea) to get a SIM, And the rates were so terrible, which as equal as the current ISD rates from UK to India (around 5p.) At that point of time, BSNL had a huge demand on Prepaid SIMs. Fortunately one of my friend gave it us for a period of time, which after 6 months, I got it from him for 300Rs..

Mitsubishi Trium was an amazing phone. But it weighed around 1/4 kg. It was like a codeless phone, even bulkier than that. It supported text messages  of 160 chars only. No polyphonic ringtones, No MMS, A single band GSM set. Not even the good old picture messages.  Only characteres can be sent, no ringtones can be forwarded. We were able to add upto 100 contacts or something in the phone. One of the best feature, that I have found and have never ever found in other handsets was the call clarity. It had such an amazing clarity without any noise or disturbances. If you believe it or not, That was the first handset in college.

My first handset - Mitsubishi Trium

I used Trium for around 6 months. By the end of this period, people started buying  mobile phones. But I had a heroic connection and that was the BSNL prepaid, which was so rare, and the cheapest one. During that period, the price of a BSNL SIM in the black market went even upto 8 times that of its original cost. And people were even ready to buy for that price. And the trendy handset during that time was the famous Nokia 3310. So, I thought of buying a new handset, and I got a new Ericsson A 3618( I am not sure about the model number, But I am sure that it is Ericsson, not the SONY ERICSSON.)

Ericsson A 3618, My second handset

Ericsson A3618 was disaster, It had lots of complaints. But while it worked it was a super hero. With polyphonic ringtones, ringtone composer. Blue screen and Orange screen displays. Which people in my college haven’t seen before. I loved the games in it too. Unfortuately I lost plenty of money repairing it. So, I thought of buying a new handset. And it was the first colour handset in the college.

Motorola C350i

A motorola C350i . It was an amazing handset. Multiple messaging features, and it had GPRS feature too. With polyphonic ring tones. picture messages, emote icons, etc. At that time, to download a wall paper to the phone, it costed around 12Rs. which is free now. And for ringtones it was around 7Rs. So practically, GPRS feature was useless and not affordable. I think during this period the revolution of mobile phones happened in India. Call rates were down, and plans were filled with goodies and packs of free calls and SMS.

I used it for 2-3 years. And people started buying modern phones with lots and lots of capabilities. I took a mature stand and decided not to join in the competition. And during that period I took a Hutchinson Essar connection I used a Panasonic handset (one of my friends), which was so tiny. But it was powerful and simple.

Nokia 1110

When the performance of the Motorola set was diminishing, I was terribly in need of  a new set. And I took a Nokia – 1110 which is presumably, the worlds most cheapest handset. As a handset for calling and basic messaging, the performance of the set was astounding and i used it for around 2.5 years. When I came to UK, I never used mobile phones as I used while in India. But now I think, there is a great need for me to buy a new one. And today I will order it. And the new handset will be Nokia E71. And I write about it tomorrow.

I did one additional job, I installed an indic malayalam transliteration tool provider by Google. Go to http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic. This is a translator for many indic languages. You can type the content there and paste it where you want it to be displayed. One another method is by click on the link ‘Use transliteration in any website’. This link will guide you to a web page, which provides the steps in setting up the transliteration.

I remember, when book exhibition was conducted at Kottayam, a team of developers of a Malayalam font was selling a font for Rs. 200., This was the story 10 years old. Now I can type malayalam anywhere in the web, read the contents  in my mother tounge. To conclude : അങ്ങിനെ ഇവിടെ മലയാളത്തില്‍ ടൈപ്പ് ചെയ്യാം..

Barcamp London – 7

Barcamp London will be conducted on IBM’s Central London building, Southbank. The program will conducted on 24th and 25th of the October.

The organizers of the Barcamp are well aware of scarcity of tickets and sponsor’s, so for wise distribution of tickets, they seems to conduct a set of ‘ticket rounds’ and ways to obtain a ticket. (You ought to be quick, start refreshing the Barcamp 7 page to get the notice.)

The organiser’s are searching for sponsors as well. If you are well wisher of geeks of all types, give them a nice contribution.

I will try my best to update this page and inform you latest news about the Barcamp 7. To get more details on Barcamp 7 – London go to http://www.barcamplondon.org

]]> http://pivotknot.com/index.php/2009/09/15/barcamp-7-london/feed/ 0 http://pivotknot.com/index.php/2009/09/07/fire-alarm/ http://pivotknot.com/index.php/2009/09/07/fire-alarm/#comments Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:36:07 +0000 Tony Jose http://pivotknot.com/?p=38 I was in the Computer Lab searching for the project presenation schedule in the department website today. In the webpage, I found the department fire and saftey section which describes the procedures to do when the fire occours. Well, after around 30 minutes, Some bell from somewhere started ringing. People started leaving the room. Why should I leave..? Well the lab in charge and admin came to me said. It is the fire alarm. Okey…, I saw every one is taking their belongings. I have a laptop and a dual screen computer where my project running. I took the laptop and powercable and ran out of the lab. My external disk, mobile and pens and other stuffs was droped in between while leaving the building. And then one lady helped me out in picking those.

Well, after leaving we were grouped at the Square II of the building. I took the laptop and pressed the power button inorder to shut down. After a while, the alarm stopped and we got back to the lab. I turned on the laptop, and pressed the power button. BSOD, OMG, first time in my laptop and it seems that some files are damaged. What ever, I am performing consistency check now, hoping that there won’t be any harm to the laptop. Is there anything wrong with the department fire and safety web page?, Yes I do believe.

Let me start with the story of the first hard disk. I requested for a loan from department computer services of University of Essex(Department of Computing) some time in May. I never used it until 16th of August(I suppose, consider + or – 4 days.)  However it hadn’t boot even for the first time. So I requested for the second one. I got a hard disk which is supposed to be nice. Well, I was happy, because i installed every application I need to demonstrate. Safe and secure. On 23rd of August. I plugged the hard disk and found few blinks and dances in the screen. I expected fog, and soon the curtain fall down. This time it is BSOD. Blue Screen of Death. That was the end of story of the Hard disk the great IInd.

It was quite frustrating since I need to work on my project implementation, which I need to submit on 27th. So close indeed. Since 23rd was Sunday, I was forced to wait till the next day to get the service from the system admin. On 24th Dr.Bob Shelf found that there are some problems with the Windows. He suggested me to get another hard disk from the services.  I declined his offer because it will be a waste of time installing and configuring all the applications when I am facing the deadline.

Finally I submitted my dissertation. But the job is not over yet, because I need to show the implemented work in a department system(They wont trust my laptop.) Well, Today I came again to the department services. And requested for another hard disk. The hardisk the great IIIrd, was not running properly in the some machines. However, I requested again and got another one(his excellency the harddisk IV). After a lot of troublesome shifts between systems, it is running fine. I am not expecting the another one. I hope his excellency the harddisk IV will be nice to me.