The WallAnalysis.com is a website that performs a thorough analysis of the songs and the theme of the album and helps you appreciate the music more that you have done ever before. Archived link.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Analysis of Pink Floyd's album The Wall
Like me, if you have been a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, there is a high probability that you have heard and loved Pink Floyd's audio and video album The Wall. The album is one of the most imaginative rock album in the hist of rock and had millions of fans even to this day.
Thursday, December 1, 2005
LG RD2130: True Moonlight
I used the LG RD2130 CDMA cellphone for a few months, and I thought I'd write something on this. This is by far the best mobile phone (in its category) from the Reliance India Mobile (RIM) CDMA stock.
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| LG RD2130 mobile phone |
Not that it has got the best UI navigation, the best display, the best keypad, the best ring tones, and best everything, but overall, the product is excellent and performs as expected. The sticker price of the mobile phone is Rs. 10,500 but I got it for Rs. 4,500. The price and the cool looks are in fact the best bargain of this handset.
The box shipped with the handset, a headset, an LG Lithium-Ion battery (LG LI-AAEM) battery, a travel charger, the user manual and a hand strap.
Display
The overall effect of the moonlight blue backlit display looks cool on this monochrome handset. The display resolution is good enough. LG has also packed screensavers in this phone.
Call features
The handset allows muting, incoming call ringer muting and a scratch pad during an ongoing call.
Keys
The keypad layout is typical LG style along with the typical LG navigation hierarchy. So be ready for the usual LG-style endless clicks. The keys are well placed so you won't find much trouble once you learn the navigation tree. There are two scroller buttons on the side pane which you can use to scroll through menu and adjust the volume.
Antenna
The phone carries a Sony SSW0900 chip-type CDMA antenna running on the TX band at 824~849MHz and on the RX band at 869~894MHz. It is good that LG did away with the external antenna sticking out of this cellphone.
Battery
The cell phone comes with a 3.7V LG Lithium-Ion (LG LI-AAEM) battery.
PC Connectivity
The handset connects to the PC using a serial data cable for synchronization of the phonebook and organizer using the PC Sync application.
R World
The R World (Reliance World) services are accessible on this handset except MMS, I believe. However, I regularly face errors in the R World connection, which I'm not sure if the problem is with the phone or the R World service.
SAR (Specific Absorption Rate)
SAR value for this phone when tested for use at the ear is 0.712 W/kg and when worn on the body is 0.887 W/kg. The SAR limit set by the FCC is 1.6W/kg.
FCC ID
The FCC ID for the device is BEJRD2130 and the reports are available at here.
Conclusion
For me the phone worked fine and had a stable battery backup along with good in-call audio quality. I liked the cool blue backlight of the display and the ease of use it provides. Here are my ratings for individual features:
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| Ratings for the LG RD2130 Mobile Phone |
Sunday, November 6, 2005
LG RD5130 Mobile Phone: Low price-range and a good display
I was planning to move over to a GSM service when I decided again to go for this CDMA candy phone offered by Reliance India Mobile. Been using this cell phone since August 2004, the first impression on the look of this phone is really great considering the price tag it comes with. With a large display (for this price range) and excellent 65K colors it looks a great buy. But then you start using it and start seeing the glitches.
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| LG RD5130 |
It is available for a price of Rs. 4,600 from Reliance and it came bundled along with
a Rs. 1,000 talk time to call
other Reliance India Mobile numbers (and some Rs. 50 for other numbers) which was pretty cool.
The box ships with the handset, a headset, a 3.7V LG Lithium-Ion battery (LG LI-AAEM), travel charger (model AC-20W), user manual, hand strap and an added Quick Guide. The color I got is the Metal Silver and the rated price on the box was Rs. 11,500.
Display
This is by far the main feature of this cell phone. With a 65K color CSTN display, this phone delivers distinct, clear and smooth graphics and animation. The 128 x 128 pixels resolution (6-line LCD) is a good number for the price range. I basically went for this display. However, there is a catch - the display is not very visible in the sunlight.
A major problem with the display is that it simply shuts off after about a minute, so you see nothing on the display unless you have pressed a key. Though I initially thought that this feature was provided so the battery juice would be used more efficiently, but from the battery life it seems to have no such positive effect. Also, evidently, there is also no way to turn off this.
Keypad
The keys on the keypad have a bumpy look and are made if rubber, so the longevity is in question, though I have not faced any wear and tear as yet. The * and # keys are hard to use, and you might miss the pressure points if you are using with one hand. The Left & Right Navigation keys are so closely placed to the Call and End keys, respectively, you'll often press the wrong key. The keys need a little more pressure than regular - I wish it had those soft keys. Typing with only one hand feels the phone is going to slip and fall.
The keypad features predictive text input using the T9 dictionary for easy typing.
Calling
The handset allows 3-way conference calling, call waiting, call forwarding, muting, and incoming call ringer
muting. It stores up to 60 recent calls including received, dialed, missed and in-call memo numbers.
Messaging
Typing SMS text messages is not comfortable with the keypad with its hard keys and the phone's form factor. SMSs that don't fit into its character space limit are difficult to scroll through to see the rest of the content.
Phone Book
The phonebook stores up to 300 x 4 entries which is pretty large. Finding entries is however very slow and not that user-friendly.
Audio Quality
The audio quality is very good, and none have complained to me about the audio they receive on their side. I haven't faced many call drops or voice breaks other than cases that originated from their side.
Software
The phone software seemed pretty good in the beginning but within a few days I realized that there might be some memory leak within the code. That is because you will see there is a problem with the way the icons animate on the main menu options. The problem is that the animation plays quite well first, but once it goes into the second loop and beyond, the animation jerks, showing distinct indication of memory blocks. I sometimes hope it doesn't hang the phone. I'm not sure if the problem is in general or comes with particularly in my unit. It looks disgusting, however.
Navigation
Navigating through the menus is easy if it wasn't for the few badly placed keys and the number of key presses you need for the operations. The number of key presses required to finish a task is too much and it is a pain for someone who is used to Nokia handsets in particular. There is however, a customizable, My Menu feature that comes handy in partly overcoming this part of the problem.
Speakers
This speakerphone is a great add-on. The sound is loud and clear as far as I have experienced. I guess it's louder than most speakers I have seen on costlier handsets (both CDMA & GSM).
Antenna
The phone carries a Hitachi SMA-S080C internal antenna. At last LG seems to be doing away with those external antennas sticking out from the head of its CDMA handsets. This is one reason I didn't say no to this phone.
What's the time?
If you are used to watching the time on your cellphone, then it's really a bad experience with the keypad locked and in daylight. The display features auto-shutoff so you just can't pick up the phone and see the time. You need to press some key to reactivate the display. Here is the catch - if the keypad is locked, pressing a key shows the message 'Press Key Guard to Unlock' and then the display dims immediately after the message disappears. In case you are in bright daylight and waiting for the message box to disappear, so you'll have a glance at the clock - you are in hard luck, because you can't see a thing with the display now dimmed. So, in case your key is locked, and you are in bright daylight, there are three steps to watching the clock: a) Press 0 for 2 seconds to unlock b) Wait for 1 more second for the ''Key Guard Disabled'' message to disappear c) Then watch the clock on the display.
My Menu
This is a really useful feature considering the large number of key presses that you have to use to access frequently used functions. This lets you create shortcuts to functions that you can access with a single key press.
Alarm
The phone has three alarms that you can set individually. You can also set the alarm to fire off once, daily, recurring Monday-to-Friday or Monday-to-Saturday. Alarms don't work if the phone is switched off, as you get in Nokia.
Battery
The battery is one of the major deciding factors that come to play when you rate a mobile phone. Being a portable handheld device, it is only the battery that keeps it going (you can't run around with the charger). The cell phone comes with a 3.7V LG Lithium-Ion (LG LI-AAEM) battery. Though you may find the standby time quite long (almost 2 days really) the average talk time is under 2 hours. If you are an average user, however, charging once a day should do. It is normal battery life even after the fuss it creates by shutting off the display.
Recharging
Speaking over the cell phone while recharging is really uncomfortable since the charge port is on the side of the handset. The charger adapter is too big, and the shape is not ergonomic enough so you can carry it in your pocket. LG can design it in a better way. The indicator after full recharge is useless since it's just a message box that shows for a few seconds and then disappears - so you can be sure to miss it. This is a big problem if you are recharging with the phone switched off. If you charge the phone keeping it switched on, you can however know the charge is full if the battery-charge indicator in the top-right of the display is constant and is no longer animating.
PC Connectivity
The handset connects to the PC using an LG-DC300DJ serial data cable or a LG-USB8100 USB cable for synchronization of the phonebook and organizer using the PC Sync application.
R World
The R World (Reliance World) graphics show cool on the display and all features are accessible. However, I regularly face errors in the R World connection, which I'm not sure if the problem is with the phone or the R World service.
SAR (Specific Absorption Rate)
SAR value for this phone when tested for use at the ear is 0.591 W/kg and when worn on the body is 0.335 W/kg. The SAR limit set by the FCC is 1.6W/kg.
FCC ID
The FCC ID for the device is BEJRD5130 and the reports are available here.
Conclusion
All in all, I somewhat regret my decision of buying this handset, but won't recommend to new buyers. There are better options out there. Here are my ratings for individual features:
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| Ratings for the LG RD5130 Mobile Phone |
Sunday, October 30, 2005
myWorldTime: A lightweight world clock application
I have a world clock application which you can download and use for free. I will drop the web link below. It is a very light-weight application which lets you load up to 10 clocks in a single window.
Usage Type
Freeware. This software program is distributed free by the author. If you have been made to purchase this program then please report abuse to the author.
Installation
You need some sort of 32-bit Windows, like Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 or XP or whatever you got. You also need enough space (which is very little) on your hard disk to install the software.
In order to run this program, you also should have the Microsoft Visual Basic 6 Runtime files installed.
Note: This downloadable package includes the Visual Basic Runtime files. In case you have trouble with installing these, you can download the Visual Basic 6.0 SP5: Run-Time Redistribution Pack (vbrun60sp5.exe) from Microsoft Download Center or search for it in Microsoft Download Center, All of Microsoft or Google. Ensure that you have the runtime files properly installed before you run this program.
You should also have IE 4+ to load the HTML help on the Help window. This however doesn't matter to the functioning of the other parts of the application.
Uninstallation
To uninstall myWorldTime:
Step 1: Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs. In some Windows versions, you may have to go to Start > Control Panel.
Step 2: Select myWorldTime in the Add or Remove Programs window and click on "Remove".
Step 3: If the uninstaller reports that not all files in the installation directory could be removed, then delete the folder in which myWorldTime was installed (usually inside C:\Program Files).
Running myWorldTime
Start the program from the Windows Start Menu -> Programs. You should see the myWorldTime main window appearing on your screen. This is the main screen - fully intuitive and easy to use.
Usage
Using this program is easy and simple. On the My Location drop-down box select your location.
The Local box will display your local time. This time is same as your Windows time.
Below, in the My World Zones section, double-click on each item to select time zones you want to view.
The frequency at which the application's clock ticks can be set by clicking on the "Refresh Interval" button.
There is also a tiny calendar bundled that you access by clicking on the Calendar button.
Refresh Rate
The rate at which the time display refreshes can be set from the Time Refresh Interval window. The clock is set to tick every 1 second by default.
You can optionally set the refresh rate to any value of seconds. For instance, changing it to 5 will make the program refresh the time display every 5 seconds.
Increasing this interval surely reduces processing overhead consumed by this program.
To change the Refresh Rate, click on Refresh Interval on the main window. The "Time Refresh Interval" dialog appears where you can set the interval in seconds which the program must use to refresh the main time display.
Load with Windows
If you want the program to load automatically when you start Windows, just create a shortcut to the program and place it in the Startup folder in Start Menu->Programs menu.
If your Windows is installed in "C:\WINDOWS" then the Startup folder would generally be "C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp".
If you are using Windows 2k+ or XP you will find the "Startup" folder at a location like C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Start Menu\Programs\Startup or C:\Documents and Settings\<user-name>\Start Menu\Programs\Startup.
More details about the application is here.
Friday, July 8, 2005
Music I'm listening to in 2005
Here is a quick log of the music albums that I have been listening to this year.
- The New Prescription / Breed
- Catalog No: UMZ6001 Urban Music Zone
- Leave Scars / Dark Angel
- Catalog No: 9962082 Century Media
- Spiritual Healing / Death
- Catalog No: 88561-2011-2 Combat
- Symbolic / Death
- Catalog No: RR 8957-2 Roadrunner Records
- The Sound of Perseverance / Death
- Catalog No: ICARUS 332 Icarus Music
- Tyrants Of Netherworld / Desaster
- Catalog No: I.P.015 Iron Pegasus Records
- Mandrake / Edguy
- Catalog No: AFM CD 050-2 AFM Records
- Why Do You Love Me / Garbage
- Catalog No: 5046780732 Festival Mushroom Records
- Celebrity Skin / Hole
- Catalog No: GED 25164 Geffen Records
- Blizzard Beasts / Immortal
- Catalog No: CDM 0304-1750 CD-Maximum
- Sons Of Northern Darkness / Immortal
- Catalog No: NB 612-2 Nuclear Blast
- Underground Version 3 (Limited Editon) / Linkin Park
- Catalog No: Not on Label
- Melissa / Mercyful Fate
- Catalog No: 168 618 116-2 Roadrunner Records
- All or Nothing / Milli Vanilli
- Catalog No: 259 458 Hansa
- You'll Rebel to Anything / Mindless Self Indulgence
- Catalog No: MET 366 Metropolis
- The Music from Need for Speed II: Excessive Speed!
- Catalog No: 3611 Electronic Arts
- Need For Speed: Underground - The Original Soundtrack
- Catalog No: LXZ 040189 East Records
- With Teeth / Nine Inch Nails
- Catalog No: B0004553-02 / Nothing Records
- Rain Of a Thousand Flames / Rhapsody
- Catalog No: LMP 0110-036 CD LMP
- Freak Show / Silverchair
- Catalog No: 67905 Epic
- Frogstomp / Silverchair
- Catalog No: EK 67247 Epic
- Seasons in the Abyss / Slayer
- Catalog No: CK 69407 American Recordings
- Pop / U2
- Catalog No: CIDU210 Island Records
- The Best Of 1980-1990 / U2
- Catalog No: CIDU211 / Island Records
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Yahoo! increases free email storage space to 1 gigabyte
Yahoo Inc. said on Wednesday it will soon begin giving users of its free Web e-mail service 1 gigabyte of storage, four times more than it now offers, amid intense competition. Google Inc. last spring was the first to offer 1 gigabyte of free storage to users of its invitation-only test Gmail service, setting off me-too moves from rivals. CIOL has an article on this here.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Displaying Indian languages on a web site using EOT fonts
Objective
We want to build a website that displays its content in the Bangla (or Bengali) language. One method to achieve this, is to type the text in a desktop publishing program like Adobe PageMaker or Microsoft Word and generating images by taking screenshots which can then loaded on the webpages using the IMG HTML tags. Though this is possible, it is a cumbersome process and given that downloading these image files consume a lot of bandwidth, loading the web pages can be slow with a slow or moderately slow internet connection. We intend to improve the user experience by having the text load as a supported font which can be rendered and displayed by the browser as soon as the HTML loads instead of waiting for images to load to display the Bangla content. We want the Bangla font file to be delivered along with the webpage so that the Internet Explorer browser doesn't have to depend on locally installed TrueType Fonts (TTF) to successfully render the Bangla letter on the HTML pages.
Typing in Bangla
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| A screenshot of the Avro Keyboard homepage |
Configuring your system for Avro Keyboard
After Avro Keyboard is installed, to configure a Windows 2000 system, go to Control Panel > Regional Options and select Indic under Language settings for the system. If you are on Windows XP, go to Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Language and select Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages (including Thai). In addition, you also need to update the Uniscribe Engine (usp10.dll) which resides in the System32 folder inside the Windows installation folder. The detailed steps for configuration are available here.
Text Editor
To type Bangla in Notepad once Avro Keyboard is installed, go to Format > Font and select a Bangla font that was installed - Solaiman Lipi, Rupali, Akaash Normal, Likhan, Mitra Mono, Sagar or Mukti Narrow. Back in Notepad's main window ensure that Avro's keyboard mode is set to Bangla Keyboard. Now, typing on your keyboard would generate Bangla text. The file must be saved as Unicode, instead of the default ANSI format. To do this, go to File > Save As... and set Encoding to Unicode. However, for the purposes of this experiment, we will use save the file as ANSI but enable "Character Codes" in Avro. More of that later.
HTML Editor
I have been using Microsoft FrontPage 98, which is a WYSIWYG HTML editor, to design web pages for a while. Even though it is a couple of years old, FrontPage 98 works fine for me as it is barebones and lets me take full control of all the pages that go into the website - i.e., there are no auto-generated files with scripts and other stuff as it happens with FrontPage 2002 or 2003. But to type Bangla characters in an HTML file, we need an HTML editor which supports Unicode and FrontPage 98 doesn't seem to be one of them. Notepad in Windows XP/2000 and Microsoft FrontPage 2002 supports Unicode and works with the Avro Keyboard so we will have to use one of them.
Embedded OpenType Fonts
As I said before, we don't want to depend on fonts that are already available on the user systems as there is very little likelihood of the font to be already installed. Embedded OpenType provides the mechanism to deliver fonts along with the web pages so that the web browser knows how to render the font. The Microsoft Web Embedding Fonts Tool, WEFT Version 3, lets web authors create 'font objects' that are linked to their web pages so that when an Internet Explorer user views the pages, they'll see them displayed in the font style contained within the font object. So, we will use WEFT to create OpenType font objects (.EOT files) from the TrueType Fonts (TTF) that are used in the webpage. While generating the HTML page, we will insert the Bangla letter using a TrueType Font on the local machine, but we will make the web browser render the characters using the OpenType font object which will be hosted on the same website.
Embedding EOT in HTML
The EOT font will be embedded in the HTML using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Here is a sample:
<style type="text/css">
.beng {
color: #000000;
font-family: SolaimanLipi;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
src: url(SOLAIMA0.eot);
}
</style>
Implementation
Create a Basic HTML file
Create a basic HTML file that you will use as basis to generate the EOT files. Open Microsoft Notepad and save the file using ANSI encoding. Set the font for Notepad to SolaimanLipi. [To set the font go to Format > Font]. From the Avro Keyboard options, enable "Character Codes" for it to generate character codes while you type using the selected Bangla font. When "Character Code" is enabled, the Character Code of the key pressed is entered in Notepad instead of the character itself. Close Notepad. Here is an example:
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=x-user-defined"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body>
<font face="SolaimanLipi">কেমন</font>
<font face="Verdana">what's new</font>
</body>
</html>
Generate the EOT files
Provide the HTML file created above as an input to Microsoft WEFT 3 to generate the EOT files. In the example above, we have used font faces SolaimanLipi and Verdana - so WEFT generates two files SOLAIMA0.eot and VERDANA0.eot.
Create the final HTML file
Next ensure that the EOT files have been stored at an accessible location. Type your final HTML file using the same method that was used previously to create the basic HTML file. Use the EOT file inside Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Here is an example:
html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=x-user-defined"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
<style type="text/css">
<!-- /* $WEFT -- Created by: Debjyoti Das on 2004-09-14 -- */
@font-face {
font-family: SolaimanLipi;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
src: url(SOLAIMA0.eot);
}
.verd {
font-family: Verdana;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
src: url(VERDANA0.eot);
}
-->
</style>
<style type="text/css">
.beng {
color: #000000;
font-family: SolaimanLipi;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
}
.verd {
color: #000000;
font-family: Verdana;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<span class="SolaimanLipi">কেমন</span>
<span class="verd">what's up?</span>
</body>
</html>
If everything works well, Internet Explorer will download the page and font object and render the Bangla text correctly. This was tested on Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and 6.
Avro Keyboard is available at this website.
There is a short and simple guide to typing in Bangla at their website here.
The SolaimanLipi and other Bangla fonts - distributed under the GNU General Public License - can be downloaded from here.
The Unicode Consortium is located here.
The Microsoft Web Embedding Fonts Tool (WEFT) Version 3 is located here.
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