Tragedies of modern technologies

It all started, at 10PM one night,  when I cozied up in my bed to watch, what sounded like, an interesting 1974 movie called “The Conversation” starring Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest. I was about 3 seconds into the movie when I saw a blue screen on the TV with said “V-CHIP Protected. Enter Password”. Initially I thought I must have pressed some button on the remote by accident and tried all kind things to get it reset. I found I could view other channels, but not the one showing “The Conversation”. It seemed odd at first and then all hell broke lose!

I am sure most of us haven’t heard of v-chip, let alone its function :-) at least I hadn’t, until the struggle. Well, here is the revelation – according to the wikipedia -

“V-chip is a generic term used for television receivers allowing the blocking of programs based on their ratings category. It is intended for use by parents to manage their children's television viewing.

The V-chip works much like closed captioning as it uses the vertical blanking interval in the television signal to send and receive a special code in the programming which indicates the show's score according to a simple numerical rating system for violence, sex, and language.”

Tell me, honestly, how many of you understood it? Well to simplify it, its basically a technology which allows you to control which channels can be viewed/not-viewed on your TV set. A.K.A. Parental Control, if set, it shows a password screen whenever any channel broadcasts materials which the v-chip decides to be inappropriate. And unless you enter the password which you have set, you cannot view the channel.

Now, having cleared what it is, the real struggle for me was to find 2 things after I started getting a blue screen which asked for a password (I had no idea what the password was, how it was set in the first place and i had no TV manual)

1. Why was it asking for a password?

2. If possible, how to reset it?

The answer to the first question was pretty straight forward. I googled and I got a million sites which told me why my TV was asking for password. Mine was a second hand TV, I soon figured that the seller thought it was good idea to have the parental control on (by setting a password) before selling it to me without the manual or the password.

The answer to next question was trickier! I searched again.

One site said, you need to have the original remote if you want to reset the forgotten password. I looked at my remote with great deal of suspicion, I couldn't decide if it was the original. I then saw that it was bandaged at the bottom, which relieved me, because, I thought, chances of someone bandaging a original remote is greater than someone bandaging a replacement remote (Don’t ask me the logic behind this reasoning, I call it calculated risk!).

Ok, I thought, I seem to have the original remote. Now the next step. How to reset the password.

Did I tell you that I had a Sansui TV? Well, I had.

I searched again with keyword like “Sansui v-chip password reset”, “Sansui v-chip info” etc. In the process I discovered that many other gadgets, apart for TVs, like VCRs, DVD players etc can also have v-chip technology. So I searched again, this time with keywords “Sansui TV v-chip password reset”, “Sansui TV v-chip info” etc ! (notice the letters ‘TV’ in the search criteria, crucial thing!)

I found very few sites with Sansui on them. Many sites had other TVs like Orion or Emerson. Then I found out the reason, Orion Inc, it seems, sells its product under 2 brands Orion and Sansui. Not only that, it also sells its TV chassis to other manufacturers like Emerson. Very interesting info indeed, I am sure I would have been more excited had it been any other time, but not very useful for me, unfortunately, at that moment! I was still stuck with my blue screen and password.

So now I changed my search keywords to “Orion TV v-chip password reset”, “Orion TV v-chip info” etc.

I found one blog which seemed to have the detailed instruction to reset password. I screamed in ecstasy, in my mind though, as it was close to midnight and my wify was asleep already, tired of waiting for me.

The instruction was simple enough. Hold down the volume down key and the 0 button at the same time for 2 to 10 seconds to reset! Wow – that’s simple, I thought, So I did it. Nothing happened. I thought may be I can change the combo of buttons, So I did volume down + 1, volume down +2 etc until I reached volume down + 9. Then I ran out of buttons. So I switched to volume down + volume up, volume up + channel up etc until I think I had exhausted all the combinations. Nothing worked. I was thoroughly frustrated :-(

So I turned back to google. I searched more blogs. I found another blog, which had suspiciously similar instruction, which I now was sure was put in there by some sadists just to harass people like me by making us doing stupid things in desperation.

However, I was so frustrated by this time that I could have eaten rocks and sand if the instruction asked me to do so in order to reset my password.

The instruction said, lower your volume to 0, hold the TV’s vol down button and the press 0 button on the remote at the same time for 2 to 10 seconds. I set about to try this fully expecting it fail and imagining me trying all the combinations again !

I followed this instruction and guess what! IT WORKED!!  YAYYYY!!! I could now watch the movie again– just in time for the closing credits!

I patted myself on the back and fell asleep.

Moral of the Story

If you are looking for an instruction to do something, and you find one which says “Bend over backwards, touch the ground with your tongue while pressing the 0 button on the remote and volume down button on TV with your toe” just FOLLOW IT. It might just work!

happy follower :-)

About Gym, losing weight and maintenance !

First of all, let me clarify one thing before I make further statements. This is not a lesson or teaching on how to lose weight. This is my experience and interpretation of things related to gym or weight loss. I may be right for some, and totally wrong for others. I accept that fact.

Over the years, while talking to various people, I had many questions raised about gym and weight loss. None more so than the golden question “how do I lose weight?”. In my belief, I think this is probably the most frequently asked question in the world.

My answer to this question is simple “hit the gym, at least 4 times a week for an hour a day”. Well, I can see that most people are not very encouraged by this answer, because they expected me to say something which they can use as a proverbial ‘silver bullet’ to lose weight. Unfortunately, as in the proverb, there is no silver bullet when it comes to weight loss, toning or maintenance.

I will try here in this blog to clear out some of the misconceptions, incorrect understanding about various things related to toning, weight loss and body maintenance.

#1 Weight Lifting or Weight Training – What are they and do I need it?

Well, most people have heard and know about weight lifting because its one of the popular sports. But most people also confuse weight training with weight lifting. So when I tell somebody to go to gym and use weights, their immediate reaction is - its not for them.

Here is the truth. Weight lifting is a specialized sport. Where as weight training is a technique used to tone various muscles of the body with the help of weights. So as you can see the 2 are really apples and oranges. Most of us would never need to do weight lifting, But most of us need to train using weights.

No other exercise (aerobics, jogging etc) helps you lose more weight than weight training. By using weights to work out various muscles of your body, you can burn more calories and increase your metabolic rate for a longer period of time than with any other exercise for the same amount of workout.

#2 Can I lose Weight if I just walk everyday.

Answer to this question is a simple question. How much calories will you burn in your walk? If you can burn 500 calories or more every day with, say, an hour of walk then probably you could lose weight. However, as most of us know, burning 500 calories or more in about an hour of walk is going to strenuous, if not impossible, for most of us. The reason is the actual interpretation of this question , which is “can I do something which is basically laid back, and does not put too much strain on me physically and still lose weight?” Answer, as you can imagine, is NO.

#3 Dieting and Diet Control

These are 2 completely different things. Most acceptable definition of dieting is “intake of low calorie, low fat, low carb, high protein food over a period of time to lose weight”

Diet control is controlling the intake (amount) of food that you normally eat.

So, the question is , which is better. Well, my real answer is which ever works for you. But more honest answer is this. Dieting, in my view, is un-natural for the simple reason that it wants you to change your natural eating habits. We are all born and brought up with a particular eating habits which are very specific to the community , race, religion we belong to. And all of them are good as time has proven them to be.

I believe its almost impossible to completely forget what you used to eat and start having a completely new kind of diet. You will go back, sooner of later, to what you have been eating for most of your life.

So my take on this is simple – Don't waste your time, money and mental peace on trying to diet. Invest instead on controlling your diet, which should be easier because there are NO restrictions on what you can eat, only on how much you eat.

Of course, diet control will work more effectively if its also accompanied by gym! :-)

#4 Which is easier – Weight Loss or maintenance

I say none,  unfortunately! :-)

You need to have enough dedication, energy and drive to lose weight. You need same amount of all 3, if not more, to maintain your body. When God put us in this world, he did not think it a good idea for the man to lose weight once and enjoy for the rest of his life. I am sure God is working on Man 2.0! :-)

So follow the 3 golden rules

1. Go to gym at least 4 times a week for 1 hour each day

2. Use weights to train various muscles of your body along with a bit of aerobics or jogging or walking

3. Diet control

Ciao and take care!

5.21 - A Story

A man walks into an empty elevator of the 15th floor of a tall building on a cold evening on 1/25. He is well tucked up in his jacket, gloves and earmuffs, so he feels comfortable. He has just said his goodbyes for the day to his co-workers. He presses the ground floor button and waits, what seems like eternity, for elevator to take him to the streets below quickly, so that he can catch a train and head back home to his wife and kids. He knows they are waiting for him eagerly today as they have made plans for a movie and dinner.

As the elevator begins to descend, he begins to experience a strange hot sensation, he thinks that the heater must have been set unusually high, and reminds himself to tell the front desk manager about it. The elevator stops at the 9th floor and woman and a man enter the elevator and give him a surprised, almost bemused look. He has seen them a couple of times in the elevator, he greets them, they return greetings, still looking bemused.

As the elevator makes its way down, he notices that they are not wearing their coats, but dismisses the thought to ask them about their coats because he assumes they must be going to some place inside the building so probably don't need their coats and jackets.

Elevator finally reaches the ground floor without halting at any other floor. At the front desk, he sees Mr. Curtis at the front desk. Mr. Curtis is the front desk manager. Mr. Curtis greets him with his usually flashy smile.

"Good evening Mr. Curtis, just wanted to let you know that the heating in the building seems to set usually high. I am sure you can do something about it. See ya, and have a goodnight", he prepares to turn around and leave when he notices that the man and the woman have turned around and are looking at him. Just then Mr. Curtis calls after him.

"The heating is not on in the building Mr. Kreecher, we have the low cooling on though"

Mr. Kreecher turns around, confused, the man and woman have now gone through the revolving door into the streets. Now he and Mr. Curtis are alone in the lobby.

He says "And why on earth would you have cooling on instead of heating in the middle of winter?"

"Middle of winter!? surely you are kidding me Mr. Kreecher" laughs Mr. Curtis

"No, no, I am not, and I didn't get the joke. Tell me about it" says Mr. Kreecher with complete seriousness, he is now feeling really hot in his outfit and is agitated, and Mr. Curtis is taken aback by this sudden change in the Mr. Kreecher's mannersim.

"Well Mr. Kreecher" says Mr. Curtis "surely you know we are in summer"

"Summer? what summer? look at the calendar above you, its Janua..." his voice trails off as he looks at the calendar himself.

it says 5/21.

How to upgrade your Laptop Hard disk

[Replace old hard disk with a new one with all data intact]

Well, to be honest, this is not something for the faint hearted. Let me say that first before I am accused of not warning everybody. :-)

If you are thinking of doing this yourself be sure you have these pre-requisites

• You need to be reasonably well versed in recognizing hardware components of a laptop.
• You need to understand what each component does and how to handle them (anti-static and all)
• You really need to understand what is SATA, PATA, IDE ports what's the difference between them.
• You need to have a good tool-kit to, preferable de-magnetized. Tool-kit should be capable of taking out screws from cranny places.
• You should know about various disk formats such as FAT, FAT32 and NTFS and know how initialize and format a new disk.
• Last but not the least, you need to have a decent cloning software. Without this, you will not go anywhere

So here you go. This is what I used for upgrade

1. I used a simple Philips screw driver tool-kit

2. I had an old Hitachi 80GB, 5400rpm, SATA HDD (hard disk drive) on my Toshiba M45 laptop. I was desperately in need for more space and faster disk. Also my old hdd was very noisy so I needed a quieter hdd. So I decided to replace this with a WD Scorpio 250GB , 7200 rpm SATA drive.

3. I used Apricorn (www.apricorn.com) DriveWire HDD adapter kit. This comes with 2 very essential things

a. An HDD adapter, which can take in a SATA, PATA/IDE hdd and provide a USB 2.0 interface which you can attache to laptop's USB port

b. EZ GIG II cloning software for cloning your old hard disk so that you retain all your data and software in the new hdd after you upgrade

Now lets start with the upgrade!

STEP 1: Figuring out HDD interface

1. Understand what kind of interface you current hdd has. Whether its SATA, PATA/IDE. This will tell you what hdd to buy. This is the most important first step. Here is how the SATA, PATA/IDE interface look

2. In order to do this you can either go through your laptop manual or open your laptop. I suggest you open your laptop to check what interface it has. This is because, sometimes the laptop manufacturers put generic config information in your manual which may be different from the actual config your laptop has, secondly its fool proof (my manual said that my laptop had PATA drive and when I opened it up, I found a SATA drive!).

3. IMPORTANT : Ensure that you have removed the power cord and battery of the laptop, otherwise you can destroy your HDD. Ensure that you ground yourself (either by touching something metallic or by having anti-static wrist band) before you touch the HDD. As a precaution, always handle the HDD by its sides.

4. To open the laptop hdd bay, turn over the laptop and locate the hdd bay. This area under on some laptops has a figure of disk etched (mine didn't), if not then check your manual to see where exactly the hdd bay is located. Open the bay cover by unscrewing the screws that keep the plastic cover in place.

5. Remember, the laptop hard drives are really thin, so they are almost always housed in a enclosure called a caddy. This is done so that the hard disk can be placed securely in the laptop, to protect the hdd and it also works as a heat sink. The hdd is generally secured in a caddy using star screws. We will discuss more about this when we are actually replacing the hdd.

HDD bay under the M45 laptop. HDD is inside the plastic cover circled.	Inside HDD bay (HDD taken out).
HDD inside a caddy

6. Once you remove the caddy containing the HDD, you should be able to see what interface your hdd has. Once you know your HDD interface, order a good HDD of the same interface from an online store (amazon.com, newegg.com have great deals).

Ensure that when ordering HDD its a 2.5 inch HDD for laptop. any other form will not fit in your laptop.

STEP 2: Formatting your New Hard Disk

Pre-requisite: You have purchased a new HDD to replace your old one.

1. Once you have your new HDD, first thing you need to do is to connect to the computer so that you can format it. Of course you need to connect it externally. For this we will use the DriveWire HDD adapter as shown in the figure below. Ensure that the power cord to the adapter is really tucked in tightly. Ensure that your PC is not running on battery and is connected to a power source.

Apricorn DriverWire HDD adapter

Another view of DriveWire Adapter with HDD connected.

2. Once you have the drive connected as above, you need to format it. You can format the HDD from inside your Disk management in the Computer Management console. Ensure that you format the new HDD whatever format your old HDD is (FAT/FAT32 or NTFS). I will not go too much into how to initialize and format disk because that's a separate topic in itself.

Disk management - you can format your disk using this windows tool.

3. The formatting operations may take upto couple of hours depending on the size of disk. My 250GB HDD was formatted in 1 hour. After you have formatted the drive, Proceed to STEP 3. below

STEP 3: Cloning the Old HDD to New HDD

Pre-requisite: You have installed the EZ GIG II software on your laptop. This is in the CD which comes with the DriveWire adapter

IMPORTANT NOTE: My Laptop had Windows XP. Apricorn EZ GIG II software can be installed on XP. If you have Windows Vista the Apricorn Software will not install on it, so you will have to boot the PC using the EZ GIG CD and perform the operations. Apricorn technical support has confirmed that they do not have a version of EZ GIG II yet (as of 25-Jan-2009) which will install on Vista, so booting through CD is the only way on Vista. To boot from your CD you would need to change your BIOS settings to tell the computer to boot thru CD.

This step is required because you would want to retain all your software and data which you have in the old hard disk to new hard disk. Ensure that your PC is not running on battery and is connected to a power source.

Open the Apricorn EZ GIG II application by clicking on Start-->All Programs-->Apricorn-->Apricorn EZ GIG II and follow the steps mentioned below

a. Click on Clone Disk

b. Click Next on this screen

c. Select Custom and click next

d. Select your source HDD. This is the HDD which is currently in your laptop. Ensure that you select the correct HDD. After selecting source HDD click Next

e. Select the destination HDD. This is the drive which you attached using the DriveWire adapter. It should show up as USB interface. After selecting destination HDD click Next

f. If you have formatted the new HDD as above in STEP 2, then the EZ GIG software will think that it contains data. So it will show a warning screen that if you really want to delete partitions (deleting HDD partition will wipe your data). Select "Delete Partitions from the destination hard disk" option, because we know it doesn't contain data as we just formatted it. Click Next

g. I am not sure why EZ GIG software even shows this screen? This is basically to tell you that its going to retain all data in your old hdd (the one currently in your laptop). I don't understand the logic of having one radio button on this screen! selection of which you cant change! And anyway, we would always need the old disk to be intact, just in case. Anyway, just click Next and proceed to next screen

h. In this screen, you get to choose how your new drive structure. Just choose "Proportional" option, because you would want the data to span as per the size of the new hdd. This will create a single partition. (If you are an advanced user, you could try choosing Manually Resize partitions, which gives you more control on how the partitions look)

i. This is the last screen, it will tell you all the step that will be taken to clone your disk.

Once you click on Proceed, the PC will reboot. On reboot, the the PC enter into a special mode (like it does when you do chkdsk /f and reboot) and the EZ GIG II software will start the cloning operation.

On my PC, for cloning my 80GB HDD to 250GB HDD, it took about 1 hour to complete its job. One the cloning is complete, it will show a Congratulations message and the it will ask any key to shut down the PC. Once the PC is shut down, you can disconnect your external DriveWire attachment.

IMPORTANT NOTE: DO NOT BOOT THE PC with the cloned HDD attached to the PC through DriveWire. This can screw up your system. I am not sure how, but this is what the Apricorn manual claims.

Once the cloning is done. Proceed to replace your Old HDD with New HDD in your laptop

STEP 4: Replace old HDD with new HDD in your laptop.

1. Disconnect all the wires and remove the battery

2. Open the HDD bay as described in STEP 1.

3. Remove the Old HDD from the Drive bay. Be careful not to apply too much pressure in trying to release the SATA/PATA connection. Pull the HDD gently out.

4. Remove the old HDD from its caddy by unscrewing the caddy screws from the sides, these screws hold the HDD in caddy. These are generally present on the sides of the caddy, though it may differ from laptop to laptop. Some laptop have caddies with no screws, just a push-in adapter kind.

SATA HDD inside the Caddy. Notice the screws on the side.

A PATA HDD in a caddy

5. Once you have removed old HDD, keep it in safe place. Put the new HDD in the caddy and secure it with screws.

6. Insert the caddy with new HDD in the hdd bay and connect properly

 

7. Close the HDD bay with the bay cover.

8. Connect the battery and plug in the computer and power it up. As the PC boots up, the Apricorn EZ GIG software will give a short message saying completed successfully or something similar and then the PC will continue its boot sequence.

9. Once the PC boots up, you are good to go! You have successfully upgraded you HDD!! Enjoy!

Cheers and have a great day.