Fall Schedule

1. Monday
• Two Broke Girls
• Two and a Half Men
• Gossip Girl
• How I Met Your Mother
• House M.D.
2. Tuesday
• 90210
• Ringer
• New Girl
3. Wednesday
• Modern Family
• South Park
• Up All Night
• Suburgatory
• Revenge
• Harry's Law
4. Thursday
• Grey's Anatomy
• Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia
• Private Practice
• The Big Bang Theory
• The Mentalist
• Person of Interest
• The League 
5. Friday
• Chuck
6. Saturday
• Rules of Engagement
7. Sunday
• Desperate Housewives
• The Good Wife
• Pan Am

HTML Refresher

 

It has been long time since my last blog post. I visited blogger yesterday and I must say I am impressed by nice changes done to the application . I also saw preview video of next set of changes to come and  they do look promising.

With all the HTML5  buzz and hype , I decided perhaps it is time to invest sometime understanding HTML . More like a refresher , since I do understand little bit of HTML and CSS.

Even though I started visiting sites and checking mails(yahoo mail) on internet  in 2001. It was not until my first year of IIT , when seniors held a HTML basics talk, I explored HTML a bit. I used notepad and Dreamweaver ,mostly Dreamweaver to create basic pages and styles. As with everybody new with HTML , I ended up creating a geocities page. which I never touched again. That was the only time I guess , I tried to understand HTML in a focused manner .

Afterwards , It has been mostly here and there on need basis like when creating web frontend for database project using JSP. Recently I used HTML while understanding ASP.NET web forms and MVC.

So I decided to read  Head First HTML as refresher course. I am through with first couple of chapters in breeze as there is nothing new to me till now.

That’s all for now.

Conned – Fake USB

I got outsmarted and conned by a fraudster and situation recently. I was late for office so I was in hurry . I  was approached by a person in scooter, I stopped as I thought he was going to ask for directions. He showed me four 32 GB Kingston flash drives in Kingston package and  told me some tale about how he acquired them which I do not remember as I was hardly paying any attention and was not interested.

Then he feigned innocence as if he is unaware of what it is worth. He offered me to test them and if I felt that they are good I can buy them.The offer seemed tempting so I decided to test it . So I took all four of them upstairs and broke open one and plugged them.

It showed 32 GB free  I formatted it to Fat32  and then I went to Kingston site and verified the seal the seal looked authentic. I tried entering the no. but the china site was not working. So I decided to test it by copying few media files and then disconnecting and reconnecting and see if they were working fine. It worked fine but slow and I was in hurry so I did not further testing.

So I went downstairs where he was waiting and gave him 3 USB sticks back and kept the one just that I have opened. He asked me how much I will pay I said 600 and he bargained for 800 and to buy more but I gave him 600.

Next two days I was happy thinking that it was either good obtained through illegitimate means or it was some Chinese product which is not guaranteed to last long.I told some of my friends and colleagues about this how it is too good to be true.But it was short-lived as two days later when I tried to copy some 2 GB of data to my friends comp it showed nothing on my friend’s comp.

After some research on internet I found out that I have been conned as it was 512 MB drive which has been flashed to show 32 GB.

So bottom-line is if something is too good to be true then it is not true.

Things that saved me from buying extra in hindsight were 

• He told me he is from Ghaziabad and I knew Ghaziabad is the biggest fake goods city in the India.
• I did not have lot of money in my pockets I only had 400 so I had to borrow some from building guard.
• The performance of  drive was slow.

Things that did not work in my favor

• I was in hurry.
• I  underestimated con people thinking they cannot make packaging almost like original with original looking seal.
• The guy’s innocent and suspicious behavior  acting was very good.
• I only copied files which were less than 512 MB had I copied a bigger file like movie file  I would have found out the truth.
• Most important point is he gave me full control like testing and fixing price so which made it seem like I was in control .

Here are few items to verify fakeness of USB drive :

1.Try using h2testw . It will write the complete size and verify it. This is sufficient condition but it will take long time as it will try to write full size.

 http://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/h2testw-14-gold-standard-in-detecting-usb-counterfeit-drives/

2. One faster way would be trying to format it to NTFS if it fails it must be fake .(This is necessary but not sufficient )

3. If something looks dirt cheap think again.

There are lots of other links on internet to detect fake USB drives and lot of people have been conned by EBay sellers.

So after discovering that I have been outsmarted , I was amused at my bêtise, I broke open the drive and to see the insides and saw handiwork of it being tampered .

In case you are wondering how it looks like here is pic of the package

Here is link which shows one :-

http://www.gadget.co.za/pebble.asp?relid=1349

Also check-out the

http://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/

Lies

You keep me in the dark

Until the difference from the truth

Becomes evident and stark

You play me around

Like a dog fetching the Frisbee

On the whistle’s sound

You give me false hope

Only to be disappointed like a person

Rappelling left with a cut rope

Why can’t you come clean?

Stop giving lame excuses and

For once just spill the bean

Because I am tired of being pushed around

Listening to same lines and

Being treated like a hound

IPL semis

Lets start with the team which has already made to semis :

Delhi is already in to semis with 16 points and four matches left because even if they lose all matches they will still make to semis

Chennai with 13 points and 3 matches left including one against KKR are favorites to go through

Rajasthan with 13 points have two matches including one against KKR so they are also looking  good

Lets have a look at teams which have matches against Delhi and Chennai, two strong but not invincible side as shown by Bangalore today.

Mumbai  to go through has to win its remaining two  matches against DD and CSK and still rely on other teams on not winning to go through.

Punjab needs to win against Deccan to have any real chance of going through.But it is only necessary condition but not sufficient because they have to still hope that Deccan does not win its remaining matches. With its matches against DD and CSK it is a tall task.

Bangalore need to win against Deccan because a loss there would concede them points and poor Run Rate of  Bangalore will force them out.

In order to go to the semis Deccan has one thing clear

Three straight wins guarantee semi final spot

Two wins from 3 games is sufficient to see them through in most case if they win against

1) Bangalore and Punjab both  as both team will be left with 14 points at max then while Deccan will have 16 and  MI will have 15 max

2)or Kolkata and Bangalore/Punjab on the basis of run rate (unless there is any dramatic change in run rates)

If it loses all three it is certainly out of semis as  Bangalore,Delhi ,Chennai and Rajasthan  will have more points.

Only scenario which can lead to multiple outcome for Deccan is single win,then it has to rely on Delhi and Chennai to beat its competitors.

Next three matches are important as they are decider for  the semis berth :-

DD vs. Punjab : Must win for Punjab otherwise they have to rely too much on their luck to go through

Mumbai vs. CSK : Must win for Mumbai else they are certainly  out

DC vs. KKR : DC must defeat KKR to make it easy for themselves

Watch out for rain and  KKR , they can certainly make somebody else’s life miserable if they prevail.

So lets see how things play out.