Have a car, but don't want the steel flyover

I wish to make a disclosure first. I have a car and stay in North Bengaluru. I also take responsibility for being one of several people who voted the current state government in Karnataka to power. I travel daily to the Whitefield area in an office provided bus and the 25 km journey typically takes around 1.5 hours each direction! Whenever I have to go towards the city, just like anywhere else, I have to budget for the extra time that it takes to traverse through the traffic. I am in a way, a beneficiary of the controversial steel flyover that is meant to connect one of the crucial junctions in the north to the heart of the city. However, I am still against the construction of this steel flyover. Why? For a detailed technical analyses of why the flyover, to be built at an astronomical cost, would not do much to help curb the traffic problem, the reader can refer to other articles (like this, this, this, this, this and this). What I am going to provide is an analysis based on pure gut feeling and what I see around me so that the reader gets an idea on why there is such opposition from all quarters to this project in the city.

·         The stretch that I take regularly has the hanging bridge at K R Puram (commonly known as Tin Factory), one of the most notorious traffic bottlenecks in the city. Why do you need a hanging bridge just to cross a railway track ? In any case, the main issue with the hanging bridge at K R Puram is that there are 3 lanes from the Outer Ring Road (ORR) and  3 lanes from the Old Madras Road (OMR) that merge into 2 lanes towards Kolar and 2 lanes that continue the ORR with a split towards Whitefield. This merger and mixing of traffic creates a bottleneck that one has to only experience to understand.

·         Earlier, it was only the K R Puram junction that was the problem. But now, after the construction of Brigade Metropolis and Pheonix Market City and other large buildings on Whitefield Road, the entire stretch is congested. The additional high rise buildings have clearly added to the traffic. With more buildings under construction, this is only going to get worse.

·         The troubles at Silk Board junction is very well told. However, it must be noted that there is an elevated corridor towards Electronics City, and while it benefits those who can pay the toll, the added burden at silk board almost erodes the time gained. How I wish a metro was constructed at that time.

·         The flyover at Hebbal, which was an excellent one when built, is turning out to be insufficient now. I don't blame the engineers then as they did not anticipate the construction of the airport at that time. But today, we all know how busy the airport is, and is well into building a new terminal and runway. Also, with more high rises coming near Hebbal and all the way upto Yelahanka, I only see the number of vehicles going up to unsustainable levels. The planners of today are completely aware of this and cannot be excused for coming up with a short-sighted solution.

·         The Hebbal flyover wasn't such a pain in the first few months after the elevated corridor towards the airport was opened. It is only afterwards, as the traffic increased that the congestion at Hebbal has become severe. It is again the same story of 3 lanes and 2 lanes merging into 3 lanes that is causing all the trouble. I seriously worry that adding three additional lanes from the steel flyover is only going to make matters worse.

·         I also worry about the unfortunate ones who will not end up taking the proposed flyover. The existing road is already a signal-free corridor and the current underpasses at CBI junction, Ganganagar are likely to be demolished. While they are claustrophobic, they at least work. Demolition of these implies reintroduction of signals, and is likely to worsen the situation.

In summary, I simply don't see this steel flyover to help solve the traffic problem in the city. The only way the proposed flyover would meet the requirements is when all further development in the north is stopped (including expanding the airport) and we get loads of money magically to spend on it while balancing the environmental impact. This is not going to happen, so what's the way out? My vote is for a Metro Rail or a Mono rail on this stretch. Just looking at the sheer number of buses that ply on this stretch, between Hebbal and the CBD should convince one of the underlying demand for mass transit in this area. I am fine with leaving the car and using mass transit.

Review of British Library (India)’s Online Library

Many of us members had a heartburn as the British Libraries in India withdrew many engineering and IT Books. We were sad that many good books from our fields would no longer be available. However, we now also have the option of taking the online membership. As of 2014, the online membership for e-books and e-journals cost Rs. 600 each. They are available as an add-on to your membership (and will expire along with your membership). Alternatively, one can subscribe to both e-books and e-journals for Rs. 1100. Since there was no mention of what the new service looks like, I thought it would be good to publish a review of this new facility to wanna be subscribers.

The catalogue section of the webpage might not give a good understanding of what books are likely to be available. After you login to the library webpage to your account that you get the link to access the online library.

The link will take you to a new site, that of ebrary. Books are arranged by a range of topics, as shown below. There is also an app for Android or iOS devices which requires you to authorize your device with your account credentials.

Let me focus on the content first. There are eBooks from various subjects as shown above. There is also a search box to search for particular terms. The following is a snapshot of the Computers and IT section:

Browsing through the section showed a good collection of some well-known and some not-so well-known books. Nevertheless, a large variety of topics seem to be covered. I could find books on Java, C++, Android, HTML5, PHP, mySQL, Python, etc. I could also find books on algorithms, security, analytics, data mining, and also on Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc., which would be great for hobbyists. In my experience, it is better to search for what you are looking for rather than browse for books (the way you would do in a real library).
Let me show some searches from fields that I am aware of. For e.g., when I search for the term “Heat Transfer”, I get the following result:

Titles include books by Indian authors. A search for the term “Fluid Mechanics” showed the following results:

Again, though some of most popular titles do not seem to be available, it is still a decent selection of titles, in my opinion. A search for “Parallel Program” showed the following titles:

In some cases, after looking a bit deeper, you do get to see some good titles on a topic. The following show the results for the term “Finite Element”:

Scrolling down the pages also gives some truly good ones:

“Data mining” gave the following results:


A search for Sherlock Holmes gave the following results:

The search did yield the classics by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle along with other ones.
Now, lets come over to the interface itself. In the webpage, you can add books to your bookshelf.The bookshelf consists of folders that contain books, which is helpful. On opening a book, the content of the book opens on the left, while the other data, like the Table of contents, other information are shown on the right side. Annotation tools and search tools are available which can be handy. However, the display of the book leaves much to be desired. The actual content is only in one corner of the screen with a button to resize the window to fit the page. While this works, it is not very intuitive and the overall experience in my opinion is not very easy on the eyes or on the brain!

An alternative to reading on the web is to download. The site allows two options. One, to download individual chapters as PDF files which can be read on devices like the Kindle. However, the Kindle is not a great device to read PDF files. Also, my experience of this download method hasn’t been good. After repeated trials, it took me more than an hour to download a chapter of a book only to finish it in half an hour! It looks like some books don’t download due to publisher restrictions and there is no way to know that till your downloads repeatedly fail. The second option is to download the entire book. This option means that the book has been “lent” to you and the book expires in 14 days or you need to return it before that time. The second option uses Adobe Digital editions and can be opened on a PC but not on devices like the Kindle. On tablets such as the iPad, ebrary has an app that you can use. However, my opinion is that it is not as refined as some of the other apps like iBooks or the Kindle app. It would be really great to have a Kindle formatted file (Ok with DRM protection, if that is necessary).
So, overall, the ebrary experience from British Library India is decent and would in a way, compensate for the loss of physical textbooks from the libraries. The content seems to be good, but the form of delivery needs significant improvement. I am sure it will be a good source of reference for people who would like to have one. It is also good for those who wish to learn topics on their own. If you are looking for specific books, be wary of this service and you might be better off getting them yourselves.

Gmail's new unsubscribe feature

Noticed today that Gmail has a nice spam feature when you report an email sent by a certain company or a mailing-list. When you click on the spam button, Gmail automatically asks you whether you want to send an unsubscribe request to the email sender.

In my opinion this is a really nice feature, in case you haven't used it, do try it the next time you get emails from lists that you never subscribed to!

More info here:
http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=80405

Trying out Windows 8 without disturbing your existing setup

Windows 8 is here, ready for all of us to try out. While a typical install requires that the new OS be installed afresh, a lot of us would not like to disturb our existing setup. Most of us are not upto the task of reinstalling the existing system if something goes wrong. Heaven knows what software we have installed, what customization we have done and what data lies where on our machines in the years gone by! There's a way though, to try out this brand new edition of windows, even while keeping your existing OS.This is done by installing Windows 8 in a virtual machine. 

Let me explain how to do this step by step:

• Firstly, you must have an installable copy of Win8. You could have the now released version on a DVD or a .iso file. You could also have the Consumer Preview version with a valid license key.
• Download and install Oracle VirtualBox. It can be downloaded from here. Virtualbox is a software that helps set up virtual machines, i.e, one operating system running within another operating system. So, basically, we would be installing Windows 8 inside our existing OS, which in my demo is Windows Vista. The host operating system (Vista) sees the virtual machine as just another resource hogging software and the virtual system's installation as just another file, while the virtual machine doesn’t know that it is running inside another OS. This way, we get a clean install of Windows 8 without even doing any major change in our existing system (except installing a software and creating a large file).
• Start up VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine.
• On some systems, the user might see an error of the following type:

This requires rebooting the computer and entering the BIOS setup to enable the Intel Virtualization technology in their BIOS as shown below:

• With this done, start your system and start Oracle VM Virtual Box. Click on New VM and follow the setup as shown below to create a new Virtual Machine for Windows 8:

• Allocate some memory for this new virtual OS:

I wouldn't recommend allocating all the RAM. It is better to allocate 1GB less than the RAM available in the computer.

• The next task is to assign hard disk space for the virtual machine. While this exists as a file on the hard disk for the existing OS, the virtual OS sees this as its only available hard disk.

 

• Create a new virtual disk where the OS will installed:

• Do remember to select the right location to save the Virtual Disk file:

 

• With this, you should be able to create the Virtual machine needed to install Win8. Now, click on start in the virtual box manager and the virtual machine should start. Virtual Box will ask you to select the DVD to use for the first boot. At this prompt, select the .iso file that contains the Win 8 installation. With this, Virtual Box loads the .iso file as a DVD and the windows installation program starts:

Enjoy your evaluation of Win8, when you are ready to upgrade, go ahead and replace your existing OS, or else, just delete the virtual machine from the Oracle Virtual Box Manager and you are back safely to where you started.

2D Barcodes in Indian advertising

I was surprised to read the advertisement at the lower of half of business line today.

The Godrej Interio Ad

  Zoom in towards the upper right hand of the advertisement and you can see a nice black and white pattern. Now, thats not a design, but a 2 D bar code. . Thats a new way of advertising in fact. If you have a smartphone, you could use one of the several bar code scanner apps and scan the bar code. That would take you to their advertising websites.

 If you don't have one, just send an sms GIGREEN to 56767 and they would send you their own app that will scan and direct you to their ad page.

 

 I tried the app on a Nokia 6300 with a 2 MP camera, I needed to try several times before I succeeded (most likely due to a poor exposure from the camera).  I hope its better on the newer mobile phones.

 If the bar code scanning succeeds, it would take you to a product catalog from which you could get further information by selecting the appropriate product.

The product catalog

Details on a product

This is a new way of advertising, have 2D bar codes with web addresses that people can scan and obtain further product information. I have seen this being used in the android app market and I believe it is in use in western countries for general products too. And it is catching up here in India too!

Sort by Magic in Google Reader

I just found out this sort feature in Google Reader. It says "Sort by Magic"

I haven't yet figured out what it does other than sort by newest. Please leave a comment if you know the answer.

How to get over Office Install Error 2203

So you buy this new copy of MS office with your hard earned money and find that it simply doesn't install on your new Windows Vista or Windows 7 machine due to an Error 2203. You search the net and find this microsoft knowledge base article 2000547 and it still doesn't seem to help. To add to your frustration, you can get help from Microsoft only after paying $49 for the support which frustrates you even further! Here is what you should do.

Step 1) First provide Everyone full control to the Temp folder. Search for %Temp% in the search bar right under the start menu and click on the link to your temp folder (It would be usually the only link or the first link). The %Temp% is usually in C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Temp. Right click on the Temp folder in the folder list on the left and click on properties as shown below.

In the security Tab, click on edit and add Everyone with Full Control. After you are done, your security tab should look like below:

Try installing MS Office with this settings. If it works, then great, you are done. If it doesn't, then follow the next set of instructions.

Step 2) Disable UAC
    Windows Vista and 7 will prompt you to confirm every little and big thing that you (or any one else!) might try to do with your system. While this is a good feature to prevent malicious codes/users from doing stuff on your system that you don't like, it can also be annoying at times and this could be one reason why your software isn't installing. Just disable User Account Control for the time being. Click on Start and on your account image. It will take you to User Account controls. Alternatively, the User Accounts page can be accessed using the control panel.

The User Account Control is last in the list. Turn Off User Account Control by unchecking the check box that comes up when you click on "Turn User Control On or Off".
Try installing Office and if it fails again, go to Step 3.

Step 3) Perform a Clean Boot
    You need to boot your machine without loading anything "extra". For this, go to start and type MSConfig in the search bar. The first option should point you to MSConfig.

MSConfig holds the some of the boot options for your machine.

In the General Tab in MSConfig, click on the Selective Startup tab and uncheck "Load Startup Items".

The startup tab should look like this. There is nothing to modify here if it looks the way it is on the left. If it doesn't, just click on Disable all and you are done.

In the services tab, First click on "Hide all Microsoft Services" at the Bottom left side. Then, click on "Disable all".








Click on Apply. At this time, Windows is frustrated with you and asks you to reboot. Click on reboot and after your machine restarts, try installing office before you do anything else! Office should install. If it still doesn't, I'm sorry!
Once you finish installing office, do not forget to roll back the changes that you have done, especially the MSConfig ones (requires you to reboot again!).

This post is a collection of my searches on the internet for resolving the issues I have faced. I have essentially simplified and made recommendations at the Knowledge Base and forums such as this one at Tech Arena easier to understand. I hope this post helps you in resolving your issue.

PS: Please do drop me a comment if this post helped you, this would help me know if my efforts have borne fruit!