Point Element

We have a habit of dumping things around, making a mess. It looks okay for a while but then one day you realize that the clutter has become intolerable. So you get a broom, a brush or anything that can help you with a bit of spring cleaning. I recently cleaned up this blog. I cleared the older bloated theme and re-applied simple theme with only solid color as background. Next I cleaned up the post labels. The label cloud on the top right is much cleaner now. I removed unnecessary labels and applied a bit of generic sauce to label names. I have also adjusted the widths so they better suit a 16:9 widescreen display. Overall this site has become much better.

http://online4.esakal.com/DamStorage.aspx Sakal maintains a page which shows current Dam storage in maharashtra. Good for a look.

[Update] ----------------- 5 Oct: I have been using this WiFi dongle and don't have positive experience. It almost never auto-connects. The network signal keeps fluctuating between 2-3 bars. I have to place it in a window to get decent signal of steady 3 bars. And I can do so since I have a power bank into which I plug this thing. The utility of this is good since you get WiFi for upto 5 devices. But the experience is crappy. Well, I guess I'll use it for a year so that I feel like my money is not total waste. Then I'll ditch it for sure. ----------------- Since I moved to new place which was six months ago, I have been surviving on need basis small internet packs. They worked fine for things like paying electricity bills, checking mails and occasional browsing. But with three internet devices( two smartphones and one laptop) and two concurrent users (me n wife), I had to get some kind of better solution. First I thought I would be able to get cable broadband, ...

In Pt 1 we took a look at what is UDS. Lets see what it took me to integrate UDS with existing firmware. We got hold of readymade UDS library which contained partial implementation of UDS. So I had to import the C sources into existing firmware code. Then debug them. And integrate UDS transport layer with eCAN module. At the same time since we did not have any kind of tester available I ended up writing a small tester application in C++. This application would enable me to verify that the integration of UDS library is correct. One clever hack I did was get the integrated firmware running somewhat on desktop and then replaced eCAN code with VCAN code (Linux Virtual CAN - socketCAN ). This way I got rid of hardware dependency, or otherwise it would have taken me months to test everything. As it is with this desktop version I was able to speed up the integration and finished it up in about a fortnight. After I verified that the UDS transport layer is working fine and is indeed complete, I...

UDS stands for Unified Diagnostic Standard. It's a diagnostic standard used for Vehicle diagnostic and is part of both Autosar architecture and OBD(OnBoard Diagnostics). According to 7-layer ISO OSI networking stack, UDS application and transport layer is defined in ISO 14229 and 15765 documents. Integrating UDS in a firmware means you develop UDS transport and application layers over base transport layer like CAN/LIN/ FlexRay etc. The first part of all this is understanding UDS layers. Lets assume underlying transport is CAN bus. In UDS transport layer over CAN, ISO 15765 standard defines the CAN frame timing and structure. In ISO 14229, UDS application layer over CAN, the UDS services are defined. These are 30+ services that operate on request-response basis. The services are defined by a 1-byte identifier like 0x22 ReadIdentifierByID or 0x2E WriteIdentifierByID. A tyical UDS transaction looks like a request with service ID and respected data. To this request UDS server responds ...

Recently I wanted some task performed for an app which meant I had to type in quite a bit of data on my phone. Now using a real keyboard is always preferable. So I tried to share the screen of my android phone with my PC and tried performing some typing. There are two ways for this: 1. USB Debugging connection 2. VNC I tried to use USB Debugging first thinking it would give better (ala faster) experience. I even found couple of apps on play store. But was soon bogged down in details of supporting apps, rooting etc. So I discarded this approach for another day. Next I tried a number of VNC servers. The problems is most VNC software in play store is VNC Clients. But finally I found Alpha VNC and this is a good vnc server. I started the program. It has a nice round button with Start as text. Tapping this started the VNC server and it showed the connection details. I have the mobile connected to my desktop via USB Tethering so they are on same network. Next I fired up Remmina on ubuntu and...

My wife needed a replacement for her aging xperia SP. It didn't have much internal storage and that caused her much pain. Since it was about three years old, I thought we should get a new one. While checking out various phones I came across an exchange offer for Honor 5X and with exchange it was in our budget. So we got ₹1700/- off and got the phone for ₹11050/-. It worked fine for three weeks and then the SD card slot died. Thankfully I had 30 days replacement and I ordered a replacement since it's otherwise a nice phone. Also couple lf my friends own Honor devices and they have had great experiences. So the replacement is coming soon. Then maybe I'll do a thorough review for that. Meanwhile my wife is using my old Are Blade C which has been my backup phone for last two years. It's battery gauge is shit, but otherwise it's a fine backup device.

I was using Windows 10 for last six months. But then all of a sudden the wifi died. And no fix to it too. So I just dumped it. Went back to Windows 7. And now my Bluetooth is working too.

I wanted to upgrade from a redmi 1S. It was October'15. I had redmi 1s for about a year. I was not happy with redmi. It was heavy, battery backup was not sufficient. The camera photos were great but it also heat up. So I sold it off for 3k and started hunting for a replacement. Soon I got an opportunity in Amazon's sale. And so I managed to snatch Nubia z9 mini for 11.5K. It's good price for a phone retailing for 17K. It's more than 8 months and I have some things to observe. Let's go over them one by one. Telephony: The speaker is decent. Loudspeaker gets muffled sometimes you hold hands over the bottom since that's where the opening for the speaker is. Earphones are good and opposite side can hear you clearly. One thing to know it this phone supports only nano sim card so I had to cut my existing Sims to nano sim. Being the adventurous type I managed it with a scissor and a nail cutter. (Don't try this youtself - you may damage the tray, or sim slot...