Santro Amaron battery

My Santro was giving starting problem since last week. So, I went to the Safdarjung Hyundai showroom in Gurgaon for repairs. They informed me that my company fitted Exide battery (I got my car in 2006 with Exide OEM battery, though now Amaron is the OEM) needs replacement as one of the cells was damaged. And since these batteries are completely built units, so whole battery needs to be replaced.

They quoted Rs. 4000/- as the price for Amaron battery with 3 year warranty, plus ~ Rs. 400 VAT and Rs. 50/- labor. So the total stood at 4450/-. I was offered Rs. 200/- discount if I give them the old battery, to which I agreed. So, I ended up paying Rs. 4250/-. All the time, I felt that they might be overcharging as authorized dealers often do but then got content thinking that it would be at the most Rs.50 or 100/-.

But to satisfy my suspicion I searched for battery price over the internet. I found that they overcharged Rs. 800/- !!! The 200/- they gave me in exchange for the old battery was generally Rs. 600/- from other dealers. And the battery price was 3600/- instead of 4000/-. So, if you wish to get your battery replaced, prefer Amaron over Exide and do compare the prices before finalizing the deal.

PS: I found that Amaron was recommended over Exide almost everywhere.

Mp3 in Rhythmbox on Ubuntu

Hi,
Wondering how to enable mp3 support in Rhythmbox in Ubuntu. Just open synaptic and install "gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3". That's it. Sit back and enjoy your mp3's.

Pidgin on Ubuntu

Hi,

Here's an excellent write-up on installing Pidgin from source package. Works like a charm!

Nice bit torrent client

Let me share my experiences about bit torrent clients in Ubuntu. I started out with the default bit torrent client available in Ubuntu. Though it was good at work but it's UI didn't provide much information. Then moved to my favorite on windos, Azureus! It's good and provides good UI features and control but the problem was it's memory gootprint, a whopping 40MB !!! Why should a bit torrent client require that much of memory? Maybe, because it's Java based :)

Anyways, now am using uTorrent . It's a windows based BT client but works well under Linux with wine. And it's memory footprint is just 7MB for the same download as Azureus. Guess, Azureus needs to be off from my system.

Mic problems in Ubuntu 7.04

I have been an Ubuntu user for more than an year now and feel very good having made the choice. Recently, I tried configuring Skype to chat with friends in US. After installing it on my Laptop, I tried the Skype test call. Boom! it failed ! Tried looking into some configurations but no use.

So, the immediate next step was to google for the solution. I hit upon this website. Updated the ALSA drivers as mentioned and then the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart

Tried again the Skype test call and hurray!

Happily talking through Skype using Ubuntu.

UPDATE: On Ubuntu 8.04 just enabled the capture profile. Click volume button and Edit>Preferences>Capture. Push the capture option bar all the way to the top.

Cheers

Testing web services early on

I have been into situations in a project where the web services was ready for consumption but the client not ready yet to consume them! We then used http requests to test the functionality, which is always a pain. I wished there was some tool that, provided with a url, took care of placing the http request, and showing the result. I found such a tool recently and it's really good at the job. It can be found here. So, get going with testing your web services early on!

Cheers!

Technical Stuff

DOS
===
Command to iteratively copy files within a directory structure

for /D %f in (*.*) DO copy /Y %f\*.jar c:\MyLibs

PS: %f should be replaced with %%f, inside batch files.

E.g. In batch file , to do something for each directory within a given directory,
for /D %%f in (%base_dir%\*) DO


Hibernate
=======
Good Hibernate associations tutorial http://www.xylax.net/hibernate/

Bibliography (Computer Science)

Java
====
There are many fine Java books, but here are the ones that come to mind...
Core Java 2, Vol 1 (basic) and Vol 2 (advanced) , by Horstmann and
Cornell. Nice coverage of many Java features.
Effective Java, by Joshua Bloch. Neat collection of intelligent Java tips.
Thinking in Java, by Bruce Eckel. Dense and complete coverage of
many Java topics.
Just Java, by Peter van der Linden. Relatively quick coverage of Java
with a sarcastic tone.


Software Engineering
===============
Refactoring, by Martin Fowler. Introduces Refactoring. The 1st book to
get.
Extreme Programming Explained, by Kent Beck. Introduces extreme
programming. The 2nd book to get.
The Mythical Man Month, by Brooks. A bit dated, but contains many
useful and influential observations:
Software Project Survival Guide, by Steve McConnell. Practical wisdom
for managing software projects
Design Patterns : Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, by
Gamma, Erich / Helm, Richard ("the gang of four"). Patterns are
ok, but I'm not as excited about them as some people.

Miscellaneous
==========
Flow : The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi. A great psychology book about what makes a
process enjoyable. You've just got to love that last name!
User Interface Design for Programmers, by Joel Spolsky. A quick, funny,
and to the point introduction to the interface design. Joel also
publishs the joelonsoftware.com site, which has many neat ideas.