Author: rahul

BSNL offers AMS facility for its customers. And in my humble opinion, their service sucks. I had the AMS facility activated after a lot of trouble and then one fine day, it was deactivated for no good reason. I again had to go through almost the entire procedure for having it activated.

Anyway, my woos aside, here is the procedure for activating AMS. You initially need to call the AMS customer care (156) and ask them to clear your mailbox number. This is the steps they will ask you to follow.

1. Dial 170512.
2. You are presented with choices for language (Select 1 for English)
3. Next you will be prompted whether you are calling from your own phone or a different phone (Select 1 if calling from own phone)
4. Now you will be prompted to enter the pass code (Please note that at this stage if you are being prompted for a mailbox number then you will have to call up the customer care and ask them to clear the mailbox number). Punch in 000000 (six zeroes).
5. Now you will be informed that your passcode has to be changed and asked to enter the new passcode. Enter a 4 digit or 6 digit passcode (ex. 300307).
6. Next you will be prompted to reenter the passcode. Enter the same passcode (300307) again.
7. You should now get a confirmation message informing you your new passcode.
8. Immediately after the confirmation, you will be presented the various choices. Dial 9 to hangup.

Also for me they gave me an account activation code which was 10 digits long and which they ask me to punch in directly from the phone. But as I had opted for STD facility and STD on my phone was locked, I was unable to punch in the 10 digit activation code. In order to have STD unlocked I had to do this. I remember calling up 23810025 for knowing the below procedure.

Note: The below procedure for unlocking STD may not be entirely correct as I had done this long back. In case there are any corrections in the below procedure, then kindly mail me or add it as a comment to this post.
1. First I think you will have to call up 23810025 and inform them to clear your STD passcode as you would like to enter a new one.
2. Next select a 4-digit passcode (ex. 3003) and you will have to punch in 123-passcode-passcode directly from your phone. The reason you will have to punch in your STD code twice is for confirmation.
For example, to have 3003 as your new STD passcode. you will have to type 12330033003. You should get a confirmation message.
3. To unlock the STD facility, punch in 124-passcode-3 (ex. 12430033). You should get a confirmation message.
4. To lock the STD facility, punch in 124-passcode-2 (ex. 12430032). You should get a confirmation message.

This was what I had to do to have AMS activated on my BSNL phone. Finally to access your AMS, dial “170512”. The steps will be similar to what I have mentioned above except for that at step 4, you will have to enter your new passcode (ex. 300307), after which you will be taken to step 8.

It is now more than 2 years since I have launched my website. Below are some of the things which I think one should keep in mind while designing a website. This article was mainly written when I had a hand-coded website. Though now I am using a CMS (Drupal) for my website, I think most of the points still apply.

XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.0 Compliance

I think keeping this as the first point itself shows the importance of following standards. Unless really necessary, it is always best to make your website XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.0 compatible. Following such rigid standards will be of great use later as you will have to worry less about cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility. You can more know more about XHTL in Wikipedia. Even CMS like Drupal produce code which are XHMTL 1.0 and CSS 2.0 compliant.

Liquid Page Layout

Try resizing the browser window and viewing. Change your resolution (make it higher (1024×768) and lower(800×600)) and observe. No matter what your browser size is and in what resolution you are viewing, you shall find the content filling the entire browser and the scrollbar being avoided wherever unnecessary. This is what is called “Liquid Page Layout” because it changes depending upon your browser size and the resolution. The easy part is that writing code for liquid page layout is very simple. Generally liquid page layout is achieved by defining the height and width of all elements in percentage. The difficult part is trying to make this liquid page layout design work in all the browsers :-).

Templates

The concept of templates is simple. In simple words, a template is a page with some parts of the page being the same across all pages. So let us say your page is divided into a header, content and footer. The header and footer remain the same through out the site where as the content changes from page to page. In this case, it would be a good idea to have the header in one file, the footer in one file and then for every content page include this header and footer file. The main advantage of this is that changes in the single header file / footer file will be reflected across all the pages of the site. For example let us say the header file is header.php and the footer file is footer.php. The header file could consist code for your menu. The footer file could contain the copyright notice and probably some acknowledgements. Then your content pages would probably look like this:

header.php:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>My Website</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div style="text-align: center">
      <a href="content-page-1.php">Content Page 1</a> * 
      <a href="content-page-2.php">Content Page 2</a>
    </div>
    <div>

footer.php:

    </div>
    <div style="text-align: center; color: #cccccc; font-size: small">
      This site is designed and maintained by Rahul Amaram
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

content-page-1.php:

<?php include('header.php'); ?>
This is Content Page 1.<br/>
This is Content Page 1.<br/>
This is Content Page 1.<br/>
This is Content Page 1.<br/>
This is Content Page 1.<br/>
<?php include('footer.php'); ?>

content-page-2.php:

<?php include('header.php'); ?>
This is Content Page 2.<br/>
This is Content Page 2.<br/>
This is Content Page 2.<br/>
This is Content Page 2.<br/>
This is Content Page 2.<br/>
<?php include('footer.php'); ?>

Avoid Frames

Whether or not to use frames is always a controversy. Using frames, one would not have the need to go through the hassles of templates. There could be two parts (frames) with the links in one frame and the content in another frame. But then frames are unethical. They give out ugly scrollbars. Of course, there are always inline frames. Using inline frames you can display a frame anywhere in a page, even in a table! All you have to use is use the ‘iframe’ html tag. But then the problem of bookmarking which was there with ordinary frames is not solved even with inline frames. For example, you browse to some page in the inline frame and add to your ‘Favourites’ list. Later when you click on this Favourite page, you get always the content of the first page in the frame and not the page to which you had browsed. Therefore inline frames are only used by me when I give link to an external site and few other places. You can find more arguments on this at http://www.apptools.com/rants/framesevil.php and http://www.cti.hull.ac.uk/malang/authoring/design/frames.html.

Make latest updates easily accessible

In other words, the easier for the user to find newer content, the more likely is he to visit your site regularly. Adding a “What’s New” or “Recent blog posts” section is a real value addition to your website.

Comments

Unless you want your website to be some kind of broadcast network (like a Television :)), it is important that you provide some facility of taking feedback from users. Not doing so would mean you are not listening to your user’s opinion. Nor are you providing any facility where in the user can interact.

Dealing with Spam (having some kind of anti-spam feature)

Yes you won’t believe it. There are many crawlers out there which automatically post comments mostly related to porn. There are some well proved techniques to fight this kind of spam. For example, one can use some kind of image authentication (captcha) for posting comments. Another technique is to use some kind of learning agent which keeps improving over time in deciding whether a comment is spam or not learning from the previous spam comments.

Domain registration

I used a free url initially “amaramrahul.uni.cc” provided by uni.cc . But later I purchased “rahul.amaram.name”. My suggestion is that even if you have the smallest plan to own a website, first buy a domain name. Domain names are damn cheap (350-700 Rs. per annum). So buy one and keep it. And also remember the more you delay, the lesser are the chances that you’ll be finding your domain name. Here is an excerpt from one of my previous posts:

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I purchased the domain “rahul.amaram.name” for Rs.350/yr from Sify. So my new website address is http://rahul.amaram.name :-). Some interesting things I noted during this entire process of domain name registration are:

• If you are considering to have your own domain name, I would suggest .name, .in, or .ind.in. Though .com is very popular, .com generally refers to commercial websites. .NAME is the official top level domain registered by ICAAN for personal websites. .IN domain names are available to anyone! Companies, individuals, and organizations in India and abroad are eligible. .IND.IN is for individuals (ind) in India (in).
• I tried for “rahul.name” and “rahul.in” before deciding on “rahul.amaram.name” but they were not available. “rahul.name” was registered by some Shyam and he was not ready to sell it as his son’s name was Rahul :-). “rahul.in” was for sale and I quoted 70$ to buy the domain. Here is the best part. The seller got back to me with a quote of 75000 USD =)). So this gives you guys an idea as to the money involved in domain name market. Domain names are generally re-sold for thousands of dollars. A furthur interesting fact is .IN was officially opened to the public on 16 February 2005 and “rahul.in” was purchased by Dot Name Communications on 16-Feb-2005 06:32:27 UTC :-). So that also tells you the demand in the domain name market.
• Here are a few links which u may find interesting:
  • http://www.iana.org/gtld/gtld.htm
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.in
  • http://www.allwhois.com

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Good URL

So, What is a good url? As mentioned in http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI, a good url is something which does not change in 2, 20 or 200 years. This is especially important for content related pages. A simple example would be “http://rahul.amaram.name/blog/2006/11/31/why-we-adopted-boozi”. A similar scheme scheme is followed in wordpress. This article may come under any location, any category but the url will always be the same. mod_rewrite can be used to convert these urls to dynamic urls. You will observe that a lot of care has been taken on my website to make all urls good urls. With regard to the same, it is also a good idea to have some naming convention for urls. Some related links are:

• http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol6/html_no6.htm
• http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990321.html

Separate content from view

A very important paradigm. The presentation layer has to be separated from the data layer. This can be achieved only using dynamic urls. To elaborate, you will have the content in some database / flat files. When displaying each page, all you will do is just read in content from the database / flat files, populate the page with it and have it displayed. The main advantage of this abstraction of the content from the view is that the view (i.e. look-n-feel of the site) can be changed without making any changes in the content. All Content Management Systems follow this paradigm.

Title

It is a bad practice to have no title / the same title (ex. “My Homepage”) for all the pages in your website. Apart from giving information about the content of the page currently being displayed, the title is also used by Search Engines. Hence make sure that each and every page has a custom title.

Site monitoring

It is a good practice to have your site monitored for downtimes. There were periods when my site used to be down and I never realized it for days. Below is an excerpt from one of my previous posts:

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Added two new monitoring services for my website so that I can get immediate alerts when my site goes down. Apart from this I also get a weekly and monthly report showing me the site uptime stats. Some things you have to look out for while subscribing to these services are:

• Monitoring interval – most free services offer 1 hour monitoring interval but you can also get a monitoring interval of 15 mins
• False Alarm protection – this means that the site would be tested from various locations to be doubly sure that the website is really down
• Contacts to be Alerted – sometimes it may be necessary to recieve the alert at a different email than the one with which the login was created or to receive the alert at multiple email ids
• Performance Reports – Daily, weekly, monthly reports provide useful stats

Generally free services do not provide the whole set of facilities. I am using both InternetSeer and SiteUptime to monitor my website :D. Two other services which could probably be conisdered are (I have not tested them) Killer Website Monitor and MrAlert Free Website Monitoring Service.

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Site statistics / Web Traffic Analysis

Understanding the kind of traffic which you get and most importantly the kind of pages your visitors visit, will help you to make your website more popular. Two great sites for website traffic analysis are Google Analytics and StatCounter

Content Delivery

Make the content reach your visitors rather than the visitors reaching your content. Using emails and RSS, content can now be delivered directly to your user.

Guidelines

It is a good practice to follow guidelines. Below are links to some websites which provide you general Web Design Guidelines and also coding Guidelines.

• Web Design Mistakes
• HTML Coding Guidelines
• CSS Coding Guidelines
• Javascript Coding Guidelines

To be frank, I have not referred the coding guidelines in detail. It is not necessary that you stick to these coding guidelines. But then do follow some convention so that making changes later to your webpage will not pose a big problem and also it will help anyone trying to understand what you wrote :-).

References

Below are some of the websites I had referred for constructing my website.

• W3Schools Online Web Tutorials – This is an excellent site which can be used for reference while building the homepage as it contains descriptions of all HTML tags, CSS 2.0, compatibility of tags with browsers, etc.
• HTML 4.01 Specification and XHTML 1.0 – This site contains information about the W3C recommendation for building web pages using various tags. This is an extremely huge site and I recommend this to use as a reference only and not as a must read.
• irt.org – This is another site which can be used for reference. While searching for solutions in google, I found most of the solutions were linked to pages in this site.

There are a lot many things you can do to increase your ranking in search engines (like Google). The above are just some points which help you address design issues and increase site ranking in Google.

I started using contacts about a month back. Anyway, I had many queries related to the usage of contacts. Hence I mailed these queries to Customer Care (Bausch & Lomb). I use traditional daily wear (soft) contact lenses for astigmatism. But I think the below response applies to any soft contact lens. Below you can find the questions I have asked and the responses I have received. The below responses are by Neeraj Dabral, Professional Services Manager, Bausch & Lomb. Also Bausch and Lomb has a FAQ reg. contact lenses at http://www.bausch.in/faq.html.

Q) While travelling in the bus from office to home and vice-versa, I fall asleep daily for about 20-30 mins. Is this harmful to the lens/eyes ?
A) While wearing your lenses, kindly avoid sleeping with them. Reason being that the oxygen reaching the eye goes down drastically when contact lenses are worn and the wearer closes the eye. Please restrain from sleeping even for 15-20 minutes if possible.

Q) About once in 2 days, I may need to remove the lens in order to take a nap. But I don’t have the solution to clean my lens at office. So I remove the lens, keep it in the case (which has some solution) and later take it back and put it on. Is this harmful to the lens/eyes?
A) If you have to remove the lenses in the office, then please keep a small size bottle of ReNu Multiplus Solution for cleaning ,rinsing, storage etc otherwise what you are currently following may also work. Kindly ensure that lens cases is filled with solution whenever you move out so that you can use that solution in case you have to remove lenses. Another recommendation is that kindly change your contact lens solution after every usage.

Q) Lastly, once in a blue moon (3 months or so), I may need to travel to other places. Then if I sleep overnite with my lens on, is it harmful to the eyes/lens?
A) Sleeping with these lenses overnight even on an occasional basis is not at all recommended. Kindly do not attempt it and it may lead to complications. Some of these complications can be sight threatening too.

Q) Can I put on contact lenses while taking a shower ?
A) Lenses can be used while taking shower however care must be taken that soap water doesn’t enter the eye. This is possible with lenses worn on Continuous Wear basis but not applicable to your lenses. Since you should not sleep with your lenses, it will be a good idea to wear them post you have taken shower.

Q) Sometimes I rub my eyes with my contact lens put on. Can that hurt the iris/cornea ?
A) Rubbing the eyes with lenses is again not recommended, reason being that if there is a foreign body then it can hurt your cornea and other fragile structures of the eyes.Incase you think something has fallen into the eye then best thing is to flush it off with a lot of water and then remove the lenses. If irritation still persists, kindly consult an ophthalmologist or your eye care practitioner.

Q) Also was just wondering if an occasional (once in a week) nap of 10-15 mins could actually cause any serious eye damage ?
A) Sleeping with contact lenses is not recommended as in closed eye condition the oxygen transmission to the eye drastically reduced. It may cause subsequent complications like lens getting stuck to the eye,Acute red eye etc.These complication may not happen all the time but sleeping with lenses even for a shorted duration like 15-20 minutes increase your risk of complications.

Q) Can I use the contact lens if they are exposed to air for a very long time like more than an hour? (the response to this was given by my ophthalmologist)
A) When exposed to air for a long duration, the contact lens become brittle. Upon putting it back in the solution they again become soft. You can use it then provided no scratches were formed on it. Also sometimes the lens become folded when exposed to air and does not unfold. In such a scenario, soaking it in the solution for a few hours will generally unfold it.

Below are some suggestions before buying a PC. Please note that the PC market is changing rapidly and the information provided below may be outdated very soon.

1. Motherboard

The motherboard, processor and RAM as a set form the most important component because these three things determine the performance of the computer and act as a unit independent to a large extent of the other components. As I suggest you go for Athlon64 bit processors, it is best to select a Socket 939 motherboard.

There are two chipsets (which are based on Nvidia) currently popular in the market.

GeForce 6100 + nForce 430 – motherboards with this chipset (ASUS A8N-VM, Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9 / GA-K8N51GMF-9-RH and MSI K8NGM2-L / K8NGM2-IL ) cost around Rs. 3500-Rs.3700. For the difference in the models you may visit their respective websites and compare the features.
GeForce 6150 + nForce 430 – motherboards with this chipset (if you are going in for this model chipset MSI K8NGM2-FID is the best, you have models in ASUS and Gigabyte available but MSI one is the best GeForce 6150 chipset motherboard available … for furthur info visit http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=29&threadid=1803985) cost around Rs.4700-Rs.4900.

GeForce 6150 is definitely superior to GeForce 6100 but it is also about 1000 bucks costlier. For a comparison visit http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2626.

The most important things you must look out in a motherboard are:

i. Support for AMD Cool ‘n’ quiet technology. This is a feature provided by Athlon 64 bit processors which slows down the processor when not use thus saving power and generating less heat. (Gigabyte motherboards which I have mentioned above do not seem to support this currently)

ii. RAID support – RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5

iii. Max memory supported

iv. PCI Express slots

v. Audio chipset (5.1 channel/7.1 channel)

vi. Onbaord LAN – 100 Mbps / 1000 Mbps. Gigabit ethernet

vii. IEEE 1394 port – though this is not currently used much, it is supposed to be very useful for some video conversion etc. I think this port performs similar to USB 2.0 but only has a greater bandwidth.

viii. TV-out – this would be great if you don’t have a dvd player and would like to play DVD/CDs in computer and watch it in TV

xi. Onboard graphics – If you are gonna run some high end graphic applicatoins, then you will need a video card. Else onboard graphics may suffice.

Currently MSI K8NGM2-FID is one of the few motherboards which supports all these and has been given a really good rating. Refer the previous link.

2. Processor

You can go in for either Athlon 64 3200+ (around Rs. 4700) or Athlon 64 3500+ (around Rs. 5600).

I purchased the MSI K8NGM2-FID (GeForce 6150 chipset based motherboard) + Athlon64 3500+ for Rs.10,500. A motherboard based on GeForce 6100 chipset and Athlon64 3200+ would cost about 2000 bucks cheaper but I think it is really worth shedding out that extra bucks because as I told you the motherboard + processor + RAM hugely determine the performance of the system.

3. RAM

I would suggest you go in for 1 GB DDR RAM (I think Hynix is a good international brand). I am not sure about the other brands available. It may cost you around Rs.4000.

4. Hard Disk

Go in for a SATA 160 – 200 GB 5400 / 7200 rpm Seagate hard disk. It should cost around Rs.3000.

5. Monitor

Viewsonic is the best based on the feedback I got from some dealers. A 17″ Viewsonic flat monitor should cost around Rs.6000.

6. Cabinet

I-cabinets are of generally good quality and cost around Rs.1500. Some things to look out for are the number of fans it supports if has provision for front-audio and USB.

7. DVD-writer

A very important factor when considering DVD-writer is that it has DVD-RAM support. DVD-RAM format allows a DVD disc to be used like a hard disk. I have been using a LG CD writer for 4 years and it has never given me a problem. So I feel LG brand is good. The latest DVD-writer brand as per my knowledge is GSA-H42N and should cost around Rs.1700. Asus is also a good brand. Be sure to check its read-write speeds and support for DVD-RAM if you plan to purchase it.

8. Keyboard + Mouse

Go in for Microsoft or Logitech combo (keyboard + mouse). The combo generally costs lesser than buying individually and should cost around Rs. 1000 – Rs. 1500.

9. Floppy Drive

Though you may feel it is not necessary, go in for it, it should cost around Rs.400.

10. Speakers

I do not have much idea about speakers but I think creative brand is good. Ordinary two speakers should cost Rs.500 while 5.1 channel audio maybe more than Rs.2000. If you are not crazy about music, you can go in for the lower end ones currently and later puchase a 5.1 channel audio / 7.1 channel audio speakers.

11. UPS (optional but recommended)

A good UPS costs around Rs.2000- Rs.2500. I think APS is a good brand. I am not sure of the other brands. You should essentially check for two things while buying a UPS, one is the backup time and second is the output wattage (or rather how many devices can it support).

12. TV Tuner Card (optional)

If you are planning to purchase a TV Tuner Card, I would highly recommend “Pinnacle 50i” (40i is also available in the market but I think it is a slightly old model). It costs around Rs.2500 whereas local brands cost around Rs.1000 but if you plan to purchase, I suggest you buy Pinnacle.

So the approximate price would be = Motherboard (Rs.4900) + Processor (Rs.5600) + RAM (Rs.4000) + Hard Disk (Rs.3000) + Monitor (Rs.6000) + Cabinet (Rs.1500) + DVD-writer (Rs.1700) + Keyboard and Mouse (Rs.1500) + Floppy Drive(Rs.400) + Speakers (Rs.500) + UPS (Rs.2000) = Rs.31100.

If you are good at bargaining you can probably get it for less than 30 K. Bhoomika computers is a good place to purchase the PC. Of course, if you know any other dealer you can go there as well. Be sure to take the bill for everything you purchase and they generally also write the date of purchase on products with warranty.

Certain things to look out for while buying a laptop:

1. The best way to know about a laptop / any computer part is to read reviews in the web. Make sure you do that before you make your decision. Sites such as http://www.notebookreview.com should be a good start to understand about the most popular laptops.

2. Look for the laptop company support in you city of residence.

3. Look for atleast 512 MB RAM (if refurbished) and at least 1 GB (if new). Anyway, the amount of RAM should be decided on how memory intensive apps do you plan to run on your laptop.

4. If taking a DVD writer, definitely look for DVD double layer write support … if possible look for DVD-RAM support as well .. using DVD-RAM u can use a DVD disc exactly as a hard disk. On a side note, I hardly recommend go for a DVD writer rather than a CD-writer.

5. My laptop comes with a TV-out (S vidoe port) … so that I play DVDs in my laptop and watch in TV. If you don’t have a DVD-writer this is a cool feature to look out for.

6. Certain laptops come with TV-tuner card .. if u r crazy about TV then it may be worth considering this .

7. Laptops generally generate a lot of heat … many have complained about this problem … try to find out if the laptop has a good cooling effect.

8. Laptops are cheapest in US … if u know someone coming to India from US .. then I’d highty recommend that you buy there and get it imported to India.

9. The in-built microphone is something which I simply loooveeee in my thinkpad. Laptops also come with in-built webcam but they may be costly.

10. If buying refurbished laptops, I suggest you do not go for P3 or P4 systems as they generate a lot of heat. Instead, Pentium M laptops are a better choice. If purchasing a new one, look for Intel Duo Core 2 (the dual core 2 is supposedly better than its competitor AMD in performance).

11. Look out for coupons and gift offers (especially during festive season and Black Friday). Deals2buy generally has good offers on especially Dell laptops.

12. If you intend to have a good gaming experience or are likely to use any graphics intensive applications, a discrete graphics card is anyday preferred to integrated graphics. Also another thing to remember is that unlike other parts such as RAM, Hard Disk, in laptops it is generally not possible to upgrade to discrete graphics later if you have one with integrated graphics.