Apple WWDC 2013 : Gazing into the crystal ball

Edit 12/Jun : Updated with the actual announcements !

Quick note on the WWDC which is going to happen tonight. A lot of speculation is going on, and I just wanted to list down what I think is possible to be announced tonight. After the WWDC, then I will look back and see where I was correct ! Without further ado - my expectations:

• With Intel launching the haswell chips last week, just in time for the WWDC, I expect the laptop and PC lineup to change to this new chipset. 
• Got It ! 
• The macbook air line recieved the new chip and now gives full day battery life - a day in apples term is 12 hrs for the 13" MacBook Air
• We will also learn about the retina display IPad minis
• Missed it! 
• No talk about iPads at all.
• OS7 is a given. 
• Got It. 
• No brainer here. 
• OS7 will still keep skumorphic design in the apps. I dont expect apple to be more like windows flat textures. 
• Missed it ! 
• Apple is going to remove skumorphic designs with a vengence ! However, it is not flat like windows. 
• A streaming music service - I dont know whether it will be called iRadio ? 
• Got It ! 
• It is streaming music. 
• It is just called Radio and is within the music app. Makes more sense than having it as a radio. 
• Still does not support FM though :-/
• An update to the maps software showing how it is better than before. However, if you checked the Google I/O a couple of weeks back and their Maps software, I think apple will still have a long way to go before catching up. 
• Got It ! 
• The new 3d flybys seem impressive. Eiffel tower with the rotation around it is pretty cool. And as mentioned in the video - you can see through the tower - which is a lot of data processing happening. 
• Still no idea how it will work in places like India ;-)
• I do not think an iPhone mini will be announced. If I was apple, i would not dilute the iPhone brand with a cheaper version. However, seeing that iPods are now available in all sizes, maybe someone in apple is thinking in this direction. 
• Got It ! 
• No talk at all about a smaller iphone.
• Apple TV will now also stream the music
• Umm. I dont remember this. Was it mentioned ? Need to check the keynote again. 
• No new product lineup (I hope I am wrong here)
• Sort of ! 
• The MacPro was announced - which is a whole new beast of a computer ! What a design ! 

My Earliest Memory of Delhi

Sometimes, a talk about a place triggers a memory long forgotten.

Yesterday, it was about my first recollection of Delhi. We were travelling by car and crossed the new flyovers of Delhi around the ISBT and dad was talking about the delhi of old. My grandfather's house used to be in Mori gate.

I remember the scene quite vividly. It was on the banks of the yamuna in the early morning. The ghat steps led down into the water. Behind was a jamun tree and I remember eating those jamuns. The month would have been summers as the tree usually gives the fruits around that time. In the morning light the soft rays of the sun beamed through the branches and the leaves.

The water at the ghats was quite clear. People were throwing in bits of aata for the fishes. I remember seeing a gang of eels there. I am not sure if I identified them as eels ( due to the wildlife books dad at home) or if dad was with me. But I quite clearly remember the eels writhering in the water fighting over the aata pellets.

I dont remember who was with me on that morning. I would probably be my bua or my dad or my dadi. No recollection of that. But the etherial beauty of the place I remember.

This is the kind of Delhi which the old people remember when they talk fondly of Delhi. This is the Delhi which we can never leave to our children.

Sadly, there are not many pictures of Delhi as a place as most of the pictures seem to be of politicians and british people. The one below is the closest to what I felt ( without the palace )

(Picture from 100 years of Delhi at IbnLive )

Now , my question to you - what were your earliest memory of Delhi ( or your city ) that you can recollect ? 

Royal Enfield One Ride

This weekend, did something a bit different than my usual rides. Royal Enfield had a concept of One Ride - getting as many Royal Enfields on the road. I dont own a RE bike, but with the promise of a bike from PPS, I went along. Reached the RE office at 7:!5am and found a TB 500 waiting for me :)

As far as rides go, it was not much. It was more like a breakfast ride. We went to the Sultanpur Bird Sanctuary - though no one really went inside it.

Heroku Error H14 with Django

H14 Error on Heorku

Today morning I did a new push to www.bikenomads.co.in with images from the fantastic 2013 calendar.

And the website died :(

One minute it was working fine, and the next it died ! Showing a problem with the app, and if you are the administrator to check the logs.

It took me 2 hrs to fix this, as Heroku site is not clear on what to do in case of errors ( see here for list of errors in Heroku) . So, here's a short guide to fix it ( this guide is for a Django project but I think it should work out similarly for other platforms )

First , if the app is not loading , check the logs in heroku. So, I logged into the web console and could not find the error log at all ! Apparently you need to use the command line for the logs as :

$ heroku logs

and it showed something like this to me : 

2013-02-16T08:35:49+00:00 heroku[web.1]: Process exited with status 143
2013-02-16T08:35:51+00:00 heroku[router]: at=error code=H14 desc="No web processes running" method=GET path=/ host=www.bikenomads.co.in fwd="122.161.143.22" dyno= queue= wait= connect= service= status=503 bytes=

The what ?! Web process exited ?? Then how will the site run ? I checked the web console and it did not show anything under "Dynos" ( I am also not sure if it existed 2 months back?) 

Check with heroku ps if there is any process running: 

$ heroku ps

That did not return anything. 

So, a bit of search over the net and stackexchange pointed to something called the Procfile - which I had never used before. Apparently, heroku picks up the info on what to run automatically, but sometimes it jinxes. It is safer to put the information into a Procfile . This problem seems to keep recurring for over a year, but Heroku guys have not fixed it or fixed their tutorials, and that is where it all starts going downhill. 

Now follow the steps below to fix it for your installation : 

1. Create a file called Procfile ( it is case sensitive - so capitalize P !) in the root directory of your application ( where you have the venv folder ) . On windows you will have to make sure that windows does not add a .txt extension . I use linux so it was just 'touch Procfile'.
2. Edit the file and put in the following details for Django ( other apps you will need to figure out depending on what is needed to run it ) :

web: python website/manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:$PORT
Note the spacing and the IP you need to give. If you miss out the last part, it will run on localhost which you will not be able to connect to from your machine. 

3. git add the file and do a git push heroku master to push this file to the server. We are not done yet even though the push says everything is fine.
4. Remember the heroku ps did not give any results earlier ? So, now you need to attach the process. Do this with the following command to add a web dyno :

$ heroku ps:scale web=1
Scaling web processes... done, now running 1

Check your website now and it should be working ! 

And check out my site : http://www.bikenomads.co.in 

Product Spec of a A Basic Phone

I was recently looking for a basic phone for my uncle ( and also for myself ) which would be cheap and have a long lasting battery life. I am yet to find something which suits me, but it got me thinking that there is no really good low end phone OS now.

What has happened in the last few years is that with the advent of the touchscreen, everyone wants to sell a touchscreen phone. Now, it makes sense when you have something which consumes a lot of data - e.g. for emails or browsing or facebook. And the low end phones - like the nokia Asha series - which are cheap to sell, have this touch tacked onto the phones. This is a pretty bad experience as things like scrolling etc do not work well.

The closest phone that I came to liking was the Motofone, but like Motorola is apt to do, they under-made the phone, and it did not do that well.

Motofone F3 - not quite there.

So, here is my specifications of a low end phone.

• It will be a phone without internet access. 
• There are many people who do not want internet access. They buy the phones and never enable 3G on the SIMs or if they do, they hardly use it. 
• There are many places in the world where you do not have internet access. E.g. travelling in many parts of India. 
• It will need to have a great battery life
• I envisage that it should have a week's battery life. One of the most irritating things about phones nowdays it that you need to charge them atleast twice a day. 
• Great battery life also means that if you leave the phone charger on a short trip, you do not worry. 
• It will have a fast and responsive addressbook which syncs through your PC
• After all, once you remove internet access, all that remains on the phone is the actual phone. 
• Syncing with the PC means that your address book can be updated to google or whatever service. This will be through an installed program. 
• Essentially this will be quite simple as the extract from the phone will be a simple vCard export which can be imported to various services. 
• It will have a good camera
• 5MP or so. Saves to a SD card so that it can be easily inserted into a card reader on the laptop or an external attachment. 
• I find the camera is an invaluable addon to the phone for the sheer easy of access. 
• Maybe can have a dedicated button to start the camera. 
• It will not be touch based. 
• For the limited functionality, touch is not required. 
• FM radio
• This is a good requirement as it really used by a lot of people. I do not know why high end phones do not come with FM radio.
• Casing/Screen properties
• Screen should be big so as to have a lot of display area. I would want 2/3 of the front to be screen. 
• On not using the phone, the screen should show : 
• The current time
• Can be enhanced for multiple timezones / sunrise/moonrise/etc. 
• The FM radio station if playing 
• Only the FM should be controllable via a trackball/pad.
• Missed calls/sms incoming status. 
• When incoming call, the entire screen area should be having the details of the caller from the Phone book. 
• Font should be easily readable from arms length.
• On activating the phone: 
• Same as on not using the phone, but now can select the different rows of activities to check them out. 
• Pressing numbers should instantly start the phonebook lookup based on number and letters
• It should be eInk
• Colour eInk if the phone has a camera
• Else b/w eInk. 
• Waterproof casing for isntances of using the phone in rain. Normally, with today's phones we cannot. 
• Touch casing of the phone so that if you drop it, it does not crack. 

Would all this be achievable within 5k INR ? 

Do you think that such a basic phone will have a market ? 

Tiger Tiger

Disclaimer : Major Philosophical Rant.

TIGER, tiger, burning bright  

In the forests of the night,  

What immortal hand or eye  

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?  

In what distant deeps or skies         

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?  

On what wings dare he aspire?  

What the hand dare seize the fire?  

And what shoulder and what art  

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,  

What dread hand and what dread feet?  

What the hammer? what the chain?  

In what furnace was thy brain?  

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?  

When the stars threw down their spears,  

And water'd heaven with their tears,  

Did He smile His work to see?  

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright  

In the forests of the night,  

What immortal hand or eye  

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

- William Blake

It is one of the most endangered species on earth. It is also the most royal ones. This was the 2nd time in my life that I have seen the tiger face to face in the wild - and both the times it has been in Ranthambore Wildlife Sanctuary - one of the few haunts left for the tiger. 

You can describe what you see. Take a few pictures in the gathering dusk. But you cannot share the feeling you get when you see the magnificent creature staring at you, as though looking into the depths of your soul. 

It was a transformational journey to the jungles of rajasthan and the chance meeting with the Tigers. You see, once you see them, you are left wondering what the heck am I doing ? Is the deskjob - where you spend the entire time of your life replying to emails - life ? Comeon, there has to be more into it. Its like the mist of gadgets, conversations, pressing demands lift, and you suddenly catch a glimpse of something beyond the mist, something you suddenly feel gives a larger meaning to life. 

Questions . Questions. Questions. 

Why do people poach the magnificent creature ? Cant they see anything beyond their greed ? 

Why do corporations and businesses want to denude and permanently destroy the jungles ? 

Why do we just keep doing our job without thinking of the bigger picture of life ? 

Questions that I have no answer for. But the seed of thought has been watered. Life is more than what we live in our apparently busy lives. Life is more than consumer greed and running after the next gadget. Life is happening all around us and we are ignoring it. 

In Memory of the Delhi Braveheart

In Memory of the Delhi Braveheart

( Taken from the google page for India today)

Virtual Box VPN settings

I use the VirtualBox VPN a lot for checking out the various new flavors of OSs that come out. Part of the job and part of my curiosity. Unfortunately, it seems that the network detection over the VPN is not good, so I was usually ending up getting no network in the VM. However, if I disconnect the VPN, it would work.

This is a pain, as I need access to emails even though I am playing around with settings in the VM. After a few frustrations, I finally found the way out. So, in case someone is facing this problem ( and from the stack exchange posts, it seems that many are) here are the steps to follow:

Step 1: In your VM go to Devices -> Network Adapters.

Step 2: Change the 'Attached to' to "Bridge Adapter" and use the WLAN settings. 

It should now work. If it does not, change the name in the dropdown list. 

Ubuntu no sound fix for USB audio

Update 14/08/2012 - please see Edit2 below for a solution. 

Ubuntu 11.10 seems to be quite a step back in terms of usability. Things which worked in 10 are broken now. One of the things that was driving me crazy was the audio was not working sometimes.

My system uses a USB audio system (Bose Companion 5). I believe this issue is there on other systems using USB audio also.

When I used to boot, the system would come up but there was no audio. The audio would start once I would slide the volume slider down and up. But if I start VLC video player, the sound would go away all together and the only way it would work was to reboot the system. This was nuts.

After a lot of searching, i finally got the solution from Ubuntu Forums . Here's the relevant part of the solution.It involves un-installing and re-installing the audio systems.

Open a terminal and enter the following:

sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa-base
sudo apt-get remove --purge pulseaudio
sudo apt-get clean && sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get install alsa-base
sudo apt-get install pulseaudio

For some reason while removing alsa-base it removes the ubuntu-desktop. So you need to install it again.

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

Now reboot your system. Once it comes up you will see that the audio icon on the top bar is no longer there. But now all sound should be working without fiddling around.

Drop me a comment if you had this problem and this change worked for you.

Edit: Seems there is still some reboot issue as pointed out by Albin in the comments below. Once you reboot - you will need to go to Settings -> Sound and slide the volume indicator up and down to get the sound. :(

Edit 2 : 14/Aug/2012

I entered a bug for this as I got frustrated. And then after googling extensively I finally got a solution of setting usb audio as primary sound device and it seems to work.

Essentially you need to do the following steps :


1. Edit the file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf . Since this is a system file you will need to sudo to get this done. e.g. 

$sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

2. Scroll down to the end. Now you have to change the line which says 

options snd-usb-audio index=-2

to 

options snd-usb-audio index=-1

Reboot and it should work. 

Ubuntu - getting it to show partitions

One of the main frustrations that I have with Ubuntu nowdays , apart from the USB audio problem and the grouping of open windows problem, is that it has stopped listing the windows partitions that I can mount. I do not know who is the Product Manager, but he/she has their heads in a jar.

This blog post is a howto to undo that harm for the people who dual boot.

Fixing the problem of partitions not showing up ( see the rectangular area for what I am talking about)

The solution, it turns out, is quite simple. You need to use the Advanced Setting application to turn the slider to on as in the image below. You can achieve the same thing by using the udisks command from the command prompt also if you want, but I am not gonna talk about that here.

Toggle this option!

Once you toggle this switch, the partitions will be shown in the bar on the left side. however, you will still need to click them to mount them - which is fine with me as I do not want to mount all of them.

Install the advanced setting using Ubuntu Software Center or Synaptic.

In case you do not find the advanced settings, you will have to find it in the Ubuntu Software Installer and install it. I do not know why this is not installed by default.

Mars - Curiosity Has Landed

Not often you get to watch a historic event like this. If you are one of the people who were in office and not following the event, you should just die. You are not living, but existing.

A good resolution image from Curiosity after landing (c) NASA

Yes. It took a lot of money for this.
Yes. There are other big problems the world is facing.

So What ?

Does it mean that you stop dreaming ? For this is nothing but a huge boost to one's imagination.

My earliest recollection of Mars is from an encylopedia on the Solar system of a barren red planet. This was followed by fantastic novels like Edgar Rice Burroughs's Princess of Mars books ( recently made into a movie - John Carter ). I was hooked to science fiction - it was probably the first scifi book I read. Years go by , but this morning's events brought back all those memories. I know they are fictitious, but they add to the sense of wonder.

The landing was being live streamed by NASA on their website to millions around the world as well as a few News channels like CNN. As the lander went into the final descent the only information from it was a 'hearbeat' - like a continuous pinging that 'all iz well'. Finally came the first image - a tiny 64x64 pixel image in which the wheel could just be seen ! Wow! Like someone mentioned on twitter - it was back to the days of dialup - but considering the space between the Earth and Mars - a feat of technology !

The journey itself took 9 moths - so for those born today, you know what happened 9 months back ;)

Next we expect to see some great images being sent to the Earth. The objective of the mission is to see if life ever existed on Mars.

Now, if you are interested here are some links:

• NASA's mars page with all the images etc. 
• Wikipedia Mars
• Project Gutenberg for Novels by E.R.Burroughs

PS : If you know of more Sci-Fi books on Mars, please leave a comment below :)