Personal blog of Prasad Ajinkya
On my birthday this year, my family decided to get me a Diablo themed cake. The excitement around the game’s launch earlier this year and my fascination of the game for the past decade was more than enough for me to enjoy this cake.
Thank you folks for this :)
As the Chief Technology Officer at EduPristine, I have been involved in almost all high profile purchases that we have done in the tech department. Starting from the latest allotment of machines and laptops to the software licenses which are needed by the firm to avoid any piracy issues. These are pretty easy to do and follow … but when it comes down to purchasing software licenses for my family’s personal use, then the same set of equations do not apply.
When I decided to purchase a set of anti-virus packages for my house (we have two laptops and a desktop), the price point was NOT the deciding factor, neither was the performance or the memory print. I thought that I could put down my thoughts on each of the popular anti-virus solutions out there.
McAfee – This used to be an awesome security package has somehow declined over the years into this clunky bundle which is forced (read pre-packaged) into your computer’s operating system. I generally try and avoid this these days.
Norton Antivirus – Norton AV is by Symantec and used to be the top AV of its time, over a period of time it became clunky and heavy almost making the system which it was meant to protect inoperable. But over the past couple of years, they have re-written their entire system from scratch. You can read more about Norton Antivirus. From what I have been reading about Symantec and Norton is that it is one of the most respected and widely used antivirus. Overall, this package works and it is doing well with the SOHO segment. The only disadvantage that it has it is popularity among the technical crowd, so much so that even hackers are using the Symantec name to extort money from unsuspecting victims.
ESET – I first heard about ESET when I was in Hyderabad, the best part about this package is the light memory print. It runs well on old machines. However, for feature junkies, there are newer versions released already which have better UI, more features and obviously a higher memory print.
Kaspersky – I have tried the demo version and I was impressed, over the past few years it has been consistently topping the charts. I do not know how much of a performance trade off it leaves behind, but it sure is the most effective of the lot!
For the average user, Microsoft has also released the Microsoft Security Essentials, which keeps your average trojan at bay.
In the end, if its peace of mind with usability that you want, then do give Norton or Kaspersky a whirl. If its the ability to be very very specific, then its ESET.
Yep. I just bought this monster of a graphics card.
Yes. Another navel gazing post, but I think it’s worth the trouble.
After I bought Diablo 3 and started playing the game, I noticed major lags with this game on my desktop. I was not able to diagnose the problem initially, and was relegated to my laptop. I cleared the Normal mode, but the graphics were a bit lost on the minimum requirements .. and something felt missing. I went back to diagnosing the problem and turns out that my video card was overheating for the past 3 months, causing the PCI Express bus to shutdown and thus stopping all PCI devices (including my wireless card!).
The main reason of this, was that the video card’s fan was gone. This was the point when I started delving in the world of gaming hardware … and I followed the white rabbit.
The way I came to this conclusion was by using a software called MSI Afterburner, a software which works with most graphics cards. What it does is that it provides you real-time information about the metrics of your card such as temperature, GPU usage, Fan Speed (of the Graphics card) and Fan RPM. What’s more, with the right hardware, it also allows you to change most of these values. So I tried overclocking the fan to run at full throttle, but to no avail, the fan just would not start!
Now, the hardware used in gaming is all about performance, about driving the hardware to higher and higher … to get that extra bit of richness for all your pixels. With performance, comes a host of problems – heat for instance, where do you transmit all that excess heat? Power wattage is another, the energy required to deliver this performance requires higher wattage. A normal desktop computer requires 115W of power, a gaming computer on the other hand can demand as high as 400+W of power … higher than that of a server!
So, when I purchased this card, I was suddenly in a flux … a new SMPS … a new cabinet perhaps? Where does this stop? Fortunately, I had a 400W SMPS, which meant that this card runs perfectly on my system. I fired up Diablo, and voila … the GPU usage hit 100%, temperature went from 40% to 80% … and stayed. Stable for the entire while.
Finally, a card which cools faster than it heats up! Added to the sheer beauty of each and every game … things are looking good!
This is a navel-gazing post. Yes, that means I will be talking about my life, and an event which is probably the dumbest mistake that I have made! There is no wisdom or moral at the end of the story, so you might as well stop reading now … but if you want to read about absent minded-ness, then feel free to read on.
It was a good friend’s wedding reception, and he had already followed-up with me about getting the tickets for both the wedding and the reception. The wedding was in Kolkata and the reception in Delhi. I opted in for the reception. Delhi is so much easier to reach by flight, has more frequent flights and I can also work on parallel pet projects in that city. Anubhav knows how I think, so he followed up 3 months, 1 month and 1 week before I bought the tickets. A round trip ticket to Delhi cost me around INR 12000 and it was well worth it.
The interesting thing about travel is that in the past decade of my life I have done so much of it that the anticipation during the entire prelude and climax to the travel has more or less vanished for me. I remember, when I was a child, we used to be so excited on the eve of the day we depart that we hardly ever slept! These days a 2 day trip is almost a routine activity and I have a bag planned for such trips. This means that I hardly ever bother about packing. My cavalier attitude towards this is one of the reasons why my wife gets extra stressed during these times!
On the D-Day, I was all ready, packed and set to go. I met Amit at the airport and we checked in. The Kingfisher airhostess asked us to wait at Gate 8, so without even taking a discerning look at our boarding passes, off we went to the designated gate. There was still time for the flight (we were an hour early), so I went and got myself a good book to read. We had met after quite some time, so we were talking for quite a bit of time. After what seemed like ages, Amit had the good sense to look at his boarding pass … there it was written Gate 10! Horror of horrors …we were waiting at the wrong gate all this while! We rushed off to Gate 10 … only to discover that the staff was closing up there and the flight had left without us!
Kingfisher staff must be used to such mishaps, because there was a standard op that was being carried out here … we were summarily ferried out of the airport and into the main waiting room where we could either collect our luggage and go home, or get onto the next flight. The problem with getting onto the next flight is that the previous ticket was non-refundable and it meant that 2 new tickets would have to be bought.
Simple enough, buy the next flight and reach Delhi. However, the prices were all inflated to INR 9000 – INR 10000. At that point, we decided to cut our losses and cancel our trip. What saddens me the most out of this trip is missing opportunities to attend the reception … due to the colossal act of stupidity. This post is also going to serve as a humble reminder to me to double check all documents.
After reaching home, the amount of explanations that we had to do, and the tum dono se yahi expect karna chahiye remarks still sting :) <—this smile is the smile of weary person who just wants to put this behind him and move on.
A couple of nights back, it was the coldest dip in Mumbai city ever. A chilly 11 degrees celsius!
I thought, that I might share with you good folks this family recipe that we have been having ever since my childhood. It’s a simple enough drink and it beats the cold and soothes the throat. Here’s what you need –
Simply heat the water to the boiling point and cool it down, while it is hot add the honey and lemon. Serve it hot. It works great with kids, Anasuya is loving it :-)
For the parents, here’s a twist – add 30 ml of brandy or scotch! Have it hot, and it goes down pretty smoothly.
Three guesses what we are going to have for New Years :-), ohhh and here’s wishing all you good folks out there a very happy new year!!
Anasuya is two years old, and it was time for us to get her admitted into a good nursery for her schooling. Little did I know the amount of efforts, planning and arm-twisting that is required for acquiring admission for your ward!
Being a student of Ramabai Paranjpe nursery, I naturally assumed that by de facto Anasuya will be welcomed there with open arms. My first mistake was not bothering to talk to the powers that be regarding her admission.
Interestingly, I was not the only one who had made such an assumption! Amongst the waiting line, I bumped into some familiar faces, and quite a few of them harboured such expectations. The one thing that any new parent should get used to is waiting in the line. Waiting for forms, waiting for interviews, waiting for results, waiting for your child to come out from class … get used to the waiting.
The D-day came for the interview, and Anasuya aced all the questions put in front of her. Things like separating veggies and identifying them. We (my wife and I) had prepared long and hard for this day, and it seemed that the fruits of our labour were close at hand. Another mistake a parent should never do, is assume its over … it’s not done until the fat lady sings!
When the results did come out, we found that to our chagrin, our daughter’s name was not listed anywhere. How can my school reject my ward? This question was hounding me for the next 3-4 days. It’s not that I was the darling of the school or anything … but nursery school was probably the only time when I had excelled academically ;-)
After denial, the analysis-paralysis stage started, where we tried to examine what could have possibly gone wrong. And we starting reaching out to our contacts who could be of help. The one thing about pulling strings and setting up contacts, is that it needs to be done prior to the actual event and not after. Having never resorted to such tactics before, this was a revelation for me.
It became increasingly frustrating for us to know that we knew so many people and yet we did not do anything about it. However, we did not stop .. a word here, a word there, calling up old-friends to ask for favours and calling up strangers and begging and pleading with them. I was literally shameless, and was trying every option available to me. Including meeting with local politicians to see if they could help out with the admission.
Friends whose families were related somehow with the school, seniors who knew people at the school, friends whose parents were influential, the local ward controller … we talked with nearly 10-15 people who could have individually made a difference … but we were mostly told that it was too late.
Obviously, this is not the only nursery school in the world, or the city. So we started looking at other good schools and approaching them. However, it was too late for most, but for those who still were taking admissions, we got all other forms and initiated the process. ICSE / SSC / IGCSE … it mattered naught. As long as my child gets an admission in a school, the rest could be sorted out later!!
Sitting at home was getting to be more miserable, since the mood in the house was always bleak. There was no other talk, but about the admissions.
Someone made a difference. I do not know till date who made the actual difference, but I thank everyone whom I had approached, and god bless your souls! Anasuya now has secured admission in my nursery school and we have just paid the up-front annual fees to the school. The Ajinkya household has heaved a huge sigh of relief as the high-strung tension wrought from the past week is washed away.
For all parents, learn this lesson, prepare for the battle of admissions from as early as 2 years.
It’s no wonder Indians become so competitive. There is not respite for us, right from the age of 2 years … till we finish our formal education … we have to compete for good education. Some of the most competitive exams in the world are Indian examinations! IIT-JEE (10,000 seats for 400,000 applicants) and CAT (3,000 seats for 300,000 applicants) are prime examples of such examples. Not even ivy league b-schools such as Harvard or Oxford can boast of such ratios.
Wishing every one of you a very happy and prosperous Diwali.
I remember during my bachelor days, I would get up early in the morning and be all ready. Then my friends and I would meet up in the local ganesha temple (Parleshware mandir). Half the suburb of Vile-Parle would eventually turn up there, and what a festive time it used to be!!
After that, we used to go as a group to all our friends’ house to “sample” the faraal. By the time we used to be done, it would be lunch time and that meant more goodies!!