வசவு

April 4th, 2010 No comments

தானுண்டு, தான் மட்டுமே உண்டு என நிலைகொண்டு ஆடும் மனமானது,
தன்னை தாண்டும் நிலைகண்டு தாளாமல் துடித்தெழுப்பும் ஓலமே வசவு;
ஆறக்கூடிய மனம் ஆரவாரமடையும் போது வசவு ஊறும், உருவெடுக்கும்,
ஊற்றெடுத்து உள்ளத்துள்ளே ஊடுருவி நாவின் நுனியின் ஜனிக்கும்,
தாளமில்லா தனித்துதியாகி காலமில்லா நானெனும் இருப்பைத் தூண்டும்,
ஆடிய ஆட்டம் அடங்கியபின் சுவடேதுமில்லாமல் மறைந்துபோகும், மறந்துபோகும்.
….

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BSNL Broadband Unlimited usage

April 4th, 2010 No comments

Are you a BSNL Broadband user enjoying the 2AM-8AM unlimited access ?  Are you a person who has automated downloads programmed between 2AM – 8AM IST ? Are you seeing higher bill amount despite your carefully planning internet downloads during the unlimited access times ?  You should read this article for sure.

Do you know, you could track your internet usage on daily basis ? If not, register yourself at http://www.data.bsnl.in/. If you send the webmaster an email requesting for user account, you promptly get response within a couple of days with the required credentials.  You could login to the website to check your usage on a daily basis.  Infact, you can see your usage data for the past months also.  It is really very useful.  Alternately you could register your mobile number with BSNL and activate the notification service.   Upon activation, BSNL would send you SMS if your usage crosses the set-limit for your account.  See the following excerpts from BSNL website about this service.

If you are an user of BSNL Broadband and are not on any one of the unlimited plans, then you must keeping tabs on the data usage you have done. But what if you are on the move and not able to access the internet to check the data usage?

Simple, Send an SMS.

Yes, BSNL has now introduced a new feature where in you can now know your broadband usage via SMS.

How to Register for this New Feature?

Just SMS “REG Landline Number” prefixed with your STD code (For Example REG 080 23456789) to the following numbers:

52295: For Bsnl Mobile Customers.

9448077777: For Any Other Mobile Customers other than BSNL.

After Registering your landline number, you will receive a Thank you message and from then onwards, you can check the broadband usage of your account anytime by just sending an SMS.

How to Check the Broadband Usage of My Account?

Just SMS “BBU Landline Number” prefixed with the STD Code (EG BBU 080 23456789) to the following numbers:

52295: For Bsnl Mobile Customers.

9448077777: For Any Other Mobile Customers other than BSNL.

Note: This service is completely free, and you will be charged only for the SMS, based on your operator’s sms charges.

Coming back to the billing issue.  Lately, I noticed that I get very high BSNL broadband usage bills.  I wanted to keep a tab on that and sent a couple of complaint mails to BSNL billing.  But I did not get any response from them.  Following that I registered on the Broadband Usage statistics website mentioned before and was surprised to see that I had indeed used beyond my 2.5Gb limit (I have subscribed to 500C+ plan). 

When I looked the data usage pattern, I could figure out something very interesting about the way BSNL charges.  Consider that I have my automated download scheduled to start at 2:05 AM and stop at 7:55 AM.  I generally keep my machine in Sleep mode and have enabled the Scheduler application to wake up the machine for downloads.  Sometime, I keep the machine on over night.  I figured out that whenever I kept my machine on, I was charged for the usage even for the free-usage timespan.

Consider the case of a machine running over night.  When the machine is running the router to BSNL connection stays in “connected” state.  If the machine was in sleep mode, the connection is “offline” and whenever the machine wakes up, the connection is reestablished.  BSNL has setup the usage measurement exclusion only for the connections started after 2AM. Meaning if a computer was running over night and the connection status is “connected”, one may not get the free usage time-span.  Because the current connection is active and it was started before 2AM and hence the current connection is billable, as per the BSNL usage algorithm. 

The thumbrule here is: “Unlimited usage only for connections start at or after 2AM”.But interestingly, the 8AM connection is correctly handled by BSNL.  If you connection stretches beyond 8AM, the usage is billable for all the bytes transferred from 8AM onwards.

The following are the action points:

  1. Avoid running the computer over night with the connection is “connected state”. Because if the connection stretches beyond 2AM, you would not get the benefit of unlimited usage.
  2. Prefer to put the machine on sleep mode and make the scheduler wake up the machine for running your download tasks.
  3. Make the time of your computer synchronized with a standard time server like in.ntp.pool.org or time.windows.com
  4. Plan to start the download at 2:05 AM and stop at 7:55 AM
  5. Register on http://www.data.bsnl.in and keep a tab on your usage
  6. Register for SMS notification service

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காதல்

March 6th, 2010 No comments

கீழ் கண்ட இப்பாடலை “கோவா” படத்தில் வரும் “இது வரை” என்ற பாடலின் மெட்டில் பாடி பார்க்கவும்.

இருவிழி கொண்டாடும் கனவிது;
இதயத்தில் நின்றாடும் இசையிது;
கருத்தினில் கண்மூடி கரைந்திட காத்து கிடந்தேனே..

தூங்காமல் தூங்கி சரிந்தது,
பார்க்காமல் பார்க்க துடித்தது,
பேசாமல் பேசி ரசித்தது,
எங்கே ??
நோகாமல் நொந்து விழுந்தது;
தீண்டாமல் திண்டி தவித்தது,
தாண்டாமல் தாண்டி சிரித்தது,
எங்கே ??

உள்ளத்துள்ளே உன்னைத்தேடி அலைய,
உன்னைக்கண்டு உலகத்தை மறக்க,
உயிரிலும் உணர்விலும் கலந் திருந்தாயே..
எண்ணத்துள்ளே என்னையறியாமல் தாண்டவமாடி களித்தாய்,
என்னை தூங்கவிடாமல் துளிர்த்தாய்,
இதுசுகமென வேண்டி என்னைத்தேடி தொலைந்தேனே..

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காது குடைவது ஆனந்தம்..

January 31st, 2010 No comments

காது குடைவதின் ஆனந்தம் இணையற்றது. சிந்தித்து பார்த்தால், சின்னஞ்சிறு வயதிலிருந்தே காதை குடைந்தெடுத்திருக்கிறேன். எண்ணிப் பார்த்தால் பலதரபட்ட உபகரணங்களை உபயோகித்திருப்பது தெரியவருகிறது. அதில் சில இதோ:-

  • துடைப்பங்குச்சி
  • பாய் குச்சி
  • ஊக்கு
  • கொண்டைஊசி
  • சுண்டுவிரல்
  • துணியின் நுணி
  • பென்சில்
  • பென்
  • பல் துலக்கும் பிரஷின் பின்பகுதி
  • மூக்கு கண்ணாடியின் சட்டம்
  • திருப்புளி (ஆபத்தானது)
  • சாவி
  • வயரின் உரை (sleeve)
  • உருட்டிய காகிதம் (மிக பிரபலம்)
  • Buds (எனக்கு பிடிக்காது!)
  • காக்கை/கோழி இறகு
  • பலப்பம் குச்சி

Tamilnadu Cricket Association Team at Bad Conduct ..

December 26th, 2009 No comments

I happen to fly King Fisher airliner from Hyderabad to Chennai (IT 2479 20:20 Departure) on 18th December 2009 along with the Tamilnadu Cricket Association Team (India Cements) cricketers.  I happened to sit very next to the big shots of the team like the Team Co-ordinator Palani (everybody calls him Mama) and Star Cricketer Dinesh Karthik.  Lakshmipathy Balaji (alias Jacque-Pathy; that’s how the others in the team address LB), Anirudha Srikanth and more.

Anirudha (Ani) was teased as Sambar saadam and Urulaikizhanghu kari (guess he loves that!).  Dinesh was teased for his height and he was very furious and spoke filth to scold back.

The language these cricketers use is AWFUL and FILTHY.  It is generally ok to see filth in a group in private.  But, I could not bear the language these cricketers used to scold and make fun of each other.  In the interim they were disturbing the air-hostesses as well, but not aggressively though.  But the air-hostesses of Kingfisher are really good and they handled this crowd with composure.

The co-ordinator guy, Palani; he should weight atleast 150kg was sitting (squeezed inside the seat!) just before me.  He was chewing tobacco (Mawa, in local terms) during the flight and used the barf bag to spit. How awful it could be!!?  But, he speaks good English :) .  He always kept his hands wide in the aisle, such the the air-hostesses had to always come and request him to fold his trunk.

Overall, I am not pleased about their behaviour and their language. Having representing the state in the game of cricket, I would have expected them to behave more decently, atleast in public.

I am sure, the guy who took autograph of Dinesh during the start of the flight, would have repented for getting his air-ticket dirty with his signature!! :D

Restrict MSN file transfer

November 27th, 2009 No comments

MSN uses port 1863 to transmit messages and for file transfer.

Lot of people have said that the file-transfer using MSN happens via port range 6891-6900.  But when I experimented, I found that MSN is using same 1863 port.  Linux machines are able to identify this port as “msnp”.  I used “tcpdump” to verify this.  Whenever MSN attempts to send a file across the Internet, I creates several smaller packets (typically in the range of 536-1350 bytes) and sends them one after the other.  During the file transfer process, if there are messages (text or IM) to be transmitted, the message data block is piggy-backed on the file-transfer packets and sent across.

I was desperately looking for filtering the MSN based file-transfer for some official purposes and wrote some iptables rules based on the Internet literature that said file transfers happen via 6891-6900 by TCP.  Then, to validate the rules, I used tcpdump again on the gateway machine to monitor the packets that are originated from my machine. 
tcpdump src host dev02 -i eth1 -vvv
To my surprise, the file transfer was still happening also the ports are blocked.  Then I made an “iptables” rule to drop all the packets other than 1863 and repeated the experiment.  Still the file-transfer was happening.  I could see using tcpdump that the packet transfer is happening via port 1863.
tcpdump src host dev02 and dst port 1863 -i eth1 -vvv
So, it became apparant that the file-transfer and the text messaging are all happening via port 1863 instead of the port range 6891-6900.  I then decided to write an iptables rule to filter the packets using the packet size constraint.  A rule was written to drop packets that are more then 600 bytes assuming that the IM packets shall never reach the limit.

iptables -A FORWARD -i eth1 -m length -p tcp –length 600:65535 –dport 1863 -j DROP
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth1 -p tcp –dport 1863 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth1 -p tcp -j DROP

I did see that the packet size is around 1350 bytes when files are transferred and that’s why I chose 600 bytes as the limit.  When I monitoring using the “tcpdump” command as before, I was surprise to see that the protocol adjusted the packet size automatically to 560 bytes to continue the transmission.  It tried with 1350 bytes for 3 times and as the acknowledgments were not received, it’s flow control mechanism reduced the packet size to 560 bytes and finished the transfer.  So, I had to redo the iptables rule:-

iptables -A FORWARD -i eth1 -m length -p tcp –length 600 512:65535 –dport 1863 -j DROP

It worked like charm.

The happiness did not last long.  When people logout and tried logging in, they were not able to login at all.  When I investigated the cause of this problem, I could see that the packets that are exchanged during the login process is more than 512 bytes (typically 1350 bytes).  So, I had to relax the rule for a brief time to let people login to MSN messenger service.  I enabled the file-transfer restriction after everybody logged in by enabling the iptables rule.
NOTE: iptables based filtering shall work only for packets that travel across the network.  If the MSN file-transfer happens inside the LAN, MSN cleverly does the file-transfer using P2P where the gateway is not involved at all.

Although, this is not a very good solution, it is definitely worth knowing about!
Happy firewalling!.

Netgear Router & BSNL Broadband

November 8th, 2009 No comments

During Raining Days, BSNL broadband line gets little noisy. I used to connect only my router and never my land line phone in the phone line as I use the BSNL telephone line only for Internet access. Lately, I noticed that the Netgear router having difficulty in establishing connection with the BSNL server whenever it was raining or the phone line is noisy. The “i” indicator keeps blinking in ORANGE color and never stabilizes into a GREEN color indication. Having the “i” indicator blink made sure that the link exists. When I wanted to check the condition of the link (telephone line connection), I connected the BSNL telephone to the splitter port which splits the telephone line to the router and the telephone. When I lifted the cradle, I could notice that the telephone line is little noisy. When I was wondering when and how to make the complaint to BSNL, surprisingly the Netgear router made a stable connection with BSNL gateway. I have used this hack several times, whenever the router (modem) had difficulty in establishing connection.

One theory behind this could be the “loading” effect of the telephone on the telephone line which is subsiding the noise ripples coming over the telephone line.

வர்ணனை

October 28th, 2009 No comments

நிறம் பல கொண்டாய்,
புறம் இழைய பொதிந்தாய்,
நிலம் பார்த் தசைந்தாய்,
புலம் போற்றி யீர்த்தாய்.

திரை சீலை கொண்டாய்,
பட்டுடுத்தி நின்றாய்,
திரை விலகி திமிர,
பட்டாக படர்ந்தாய்.

உள்ளங் கையில் தவழ்ந்தாய்,
உள்ளவன் கையில் தவித்தாய்,
உள்ளந் நெகிழ தளர்ந்தாய்,
உள்ளவன் மகிழ மலர்ந்தாய்.

உச்சம் முரச நிமிர்ந்தாய்,
மிச்சம் முதலாய் சிலிர்த்தாய்,
முத்து உருண்டோட மிளிர்ந்தாய்,
சித்து சுதியேர மசிந்தாய்.

உருவம் ஒன்றன்றி இருப்பாய்,
இலவம் பஞ்சினும் சிறப்பாய்,
உலகும் வியந்தபடி பிறப்பாய்,
இலகும் மதுரமேனி விருப்பாய்.

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காதல் தோல்வியும் நன்மைக்கே

October 19th, 2009 No comments

எங்கோ பிறந்தேன்,
எப்படியோ வளர்ந்தேன்,
எதற்கு என்றறிவதற்கு முன்பே
காதல் கொண்டேன்,
பொய் பல பகர்ந்தேன்,
மெய் பல துலைத்தேன்,
நான் மட்டும் என்றேன்,
அவளும் அப்படியே என்றாள்,
காதல் கசந்தது,
தனித்தேன்,
துவண்டேன்,
நண்பர்களை அடையாளம் கண்டேன்,
என்னையும் அடையாளம் கண்டேன்,
பார்வையை சற்று திருப்பினேன்,
வாழ்வின் வெளிச்சம் புலப்பட்டது,
காலம் கைகொடுத்தது,
புத்துணர்ச்சி கொண்டேன்,
வெற்றி கண்டேன்.

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ஒரு கோரிக்கை

October 19th, 2009 No comments

அசைவம் தவிர்த்தல்,
வாக்கு தவிர்த்தல்,
அச்சம் நீக்கல்,
அவசரம் நீக்கல்,
பந்தம் அறுத்தல்,
எதிர்பார்ப்பு அறுத்தல்,
பற்று அகற்றல்,
குரோதம் அகற்றல்,
ஈர்ப்பு விலக்கல்,
உணர்ச்சி விலக்கல்,
சுவை குறைத்தல்,
பாரம் குறைத்தல்,
நிதானம் கொளல்,
எளிமை கொளல்,

இவையாவும் எனக்கருள் நீ பராபரமே..