Ramesh Thiruchelvam's Blog

Windows XP HSDPA Dial Up

Ramesh — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:01:27 +0000

I’ve been using Airtel Data using my Sony Erickson W595 for the last couple of weeks and being happy user I decided to buy an HSDPA USB dongle. I didn’t wanna buy a locked dongle from Airtel so I called my friend at Cellular Connection and got my self an unlocked O2 ZTE MF100 HSDPA dongle.

Though unlocked, it comes with the O2 connection manager software, and I found it to be very slow on my Windows XP box, so that I decided to use the Windows XP default dial-up connection. Windows XP dial-up connection don’t have an option to specify the APN (Access Point Name) so that I got to set it the advance way.

1. Go to the Control Panel.
2. Click Phone and Model Options.
3. Switch to Modems tab.
4. Select the HSDPA Modem, click Properties.
5. Switch to Advanced tab.
6. Type AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”AirtelData” in the Extra initialization commands text box.

Now if making a dial-up connection using the HSDPA modem dialing *99# it connects using the AirtelData APN without any 3rd party software.

Prepaid Data Plan on Airtel

Ramesh — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:44:17 +0000

Airetel has launched a new prepaid data plan for it’s customers which gives 1.5 GB of data for just 45/- per day. To subscribe for the data plan just reload 45/- and the plan will be activated instantly and will be available for a period of 12 hours.

The 12 hour count will reset in the midnight, so be wise when reloading; do not reload 45 bucks at 11:00 PM as it will only be valid for 1 hour!

This offer can be used in conjunction with the 99/- youth plan as well.

Configuring Bluetooth PAN in Debian

Ramesh — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:20:52 +0000

I wanted to use Internet using my Sony Ericsson W595 Bluetooth Personal Area Network. It wasn’t that hard, here are the steps…

1. Install bluez-utils

sudo apt-get install bluez-utils

2. Enable the PAND in /etc/default/bluetooth and configure it to connect to your device.

PAND_ENABLED=1
PAND_OPTIONS="--role PANU --connect 00:25:E7:2B:E9:60"

3. Add the Bluetooth network interface in the /etc/network/interfaces

allow-hotplug bnep0
iface bnep0 inet dhcp

Your are ready to go, every time you start your computer it will automatically connect to the PAN, and you are on the net, wala…

Tax imposed on Companies using VoIP

Ramesh — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 03:15:30 +0000

Telecommunication industry is loosing a huge sum due to the use of VoIP, and it’s currently imposting tax and notifying big companies (IT) to register under the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) and pay the tax. You might also remember the times when TRC was trying to block VoIP via SLT and failed on that! Why in earth the people at TRC do not understand that we are paying for the internet and we can use it for what we want (Browsing, Chatting, Calling) as we need…

If this is so the Electricity Board mighty also impose a tax on CFL bulbs, and other low power consuming devices saying they are loosing huge sum of money as it consume less power! Internet is more like electricity, we pay for the service once we get it we do not pay for what we use it for! or need to be taxed for what we use it for… Be piratical!

3rd Wedding Anniversary

Ramesh — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:56:12 +0000

It’s our 3rd Wedding Anniversary today… Didn’t get to do much as we planned to go on the office trip and got to prepare for it in short notice! Amirthan was so happy that I am back home early and took him shopping around for his trip dresses! So happy wedding anniversary to us…

Fix VIM the backspace problem in Windows

Ramesh — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:06:08 +0000

Working in Windows XP now days, I found a strange behavior in gVIM as it wasn’t allowing me to use backspace when editing source files with indenting! After googling a bit I found a solution by adding the following to my .vimrc file…

:set backspace=indent,eol,start

Using Javascript codes in Smarty template files

Ramesh — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:41:32 +0000

Using Smarty fist problem I encountered is how to use JavaScript inside the template files! There is this magic keyword literal which will refrain from parsing the code within!

{literal}
<script type="text/javascript">
  function isblank(field) {
    if (field.value == '')
      { return false; }
    else
      {
      document.loginform.submit();
      return true;
    }
  }
script>
{/literal}

Setting the SVN external

Ramesh — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:47:09 +0000

Use Smarty for Templating, I had to include the Smarty libraries in the sri-lankan code base, but I didn’t wanna maintain it in the sri-lankan subversion repository, for that I had to just add the Smarty libs as a svn:externals property! Here is how…

[~] svn propset svn:externals 'smarty http://smarty-php.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/libs' .
property 'svn:externals' set on '.'

Templating with Smarty

Ramesh — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:25:37 +0000

I’m redoing sri-lankan.net from the sketch and gonna use smarty template engine for easy templating! So-far the moving is fine, as you see I’ve broken some existing links I’ll try to restore them as soon as possible!

Bye bye Lanka Bell WiMax

Ramesh — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 16:34:22 +0000

I got my Lanka Bell WiMax connection disconnected today, I’m gonna try the Airtel Net for some time, and see how it works…