Tribal and Cultural day at the creche

Firefox has been my mainstay browser for quite some now. There are five Firefox add-ons or plugins that i usually use

1) DownThemAll
2) Sage
3) Zemanta
4) IE Tab
5) Gmail Manager

HP Cartridge cost , Pricing and ink levels

I have an HP All-in-one C3188. Its proved to be a worthy buy and i have used it quite a bit. My cartridge's ink seems to be very low now. First thing, i wasn't able to make out the current ink level on the cartridge. On right clicking the HP Printer icon, on the "Printing Preferences" menu, on the features tab, i can see a "Printer Services" button. This button doesn't work when i click on it. Well anyways, i decided to buy a new cartridge. There were 2 options, buy a new one or refill the older oner. I guess the latter is the unofficial way of doing it. I enquired at the BDA complex in Koramangala. There are 4-5 stationary shops there and one of them refilled Black cartridges at Rs125/- and coloured ones at Rs 300/-. As i walked way after the enquiry, he called out for me and said, he would refill both at Rs 350/-. The enquiry for a new cartridge numbers 851 (Apparently i was enquiring for the wrong number, i should have been asking for the number 850 which is compatible with the C3188) was surprising. I got 5 different prices from 5 different shops within the same BDA complex building. Prices varied from Rs 740 to Rs 825. I of course ended up buying the Rs 740 one and then later realized that it was not the correct cartridge. I ended up buying the correct one for 675/- only to later realize that the HP website was offering one for about 8-10 rupees lesser. I'm sure if i'd gone through the entire procedure of finding prices again, i would have got a better deal. This reminded me of the lecture by Dr Preston of Yahoo which i attended at the Leela Palace, Bangalore some months back. A very insightful talk about pricing.

Bangalore Traffic Status

This website BTIS provides details on the current traffic conditions on roads in Bangalore (and some other cities as well). Alos listed are the routes to the new Airport in devanahalli. Very useful site with details on where the bus stops are.

BSNL Broadband, Wireless Issues with Huawei and DNS address

I have had trouble this month connecting to the BSNL broadband service. On a particular weekend, i just couldnt connect to the internet. I called up the customer care at 1500 and they told me they were experiencing server problems. Again last weekend, i faced similar issues. i finally decided to check if there was something i could learn by logging on to my wireless router (Huawei).
I logged in and it showed me as connected. I then checked the system logs but dint see them too well. A little later i figured out the logs showed the complete bootup of the router and it did show 2 DNS address which i wasnt using in my network configuration. I used a static ip actually and have not enabled DHCP. The new addresses were 218.248.240.24 and 218.248.240.208. These were different from the 61.1.96.69/71 addresses i was using earlier. I used these new addresses and well i was able to browse without issues.

Another peculiar problem im facing is my laptop doesnt work with the huawei wireless router at home. Im wireless all the while at office and so it definitely is a problem with the router at home. I chan check my ralink wireless utility and it shows the wireless signal going off and on every 5-10 seconds or so. i now need to investigate this in greater detail, maybe first with google and them later again with the utilities available on the router.

Family Pictures

Some family pictures when my parents came visiting us during Jan/Feb 2008. This is at the flower show held annually at Lalbagh, Bangalore. The one above is with Megz and Mom.

Pittu and me













Dad, Diya, Me and Mom and of course courtesy the proffesional photographer Megz