An enjoyable Toy Train ride at the Longleat Safari Park, UK. Gives you glimpses of the scenery around and some nice views around the lake. At the end of this video you can also see how the Engine is detached, shunted and reattached to the Train for another journey. Video recorded by Baudhayan Lahiri using Sanyo VPC-CG20 Camcorder.
Boat Ride - Longleat Safari Park
An enjoyable Boat ride at the Longleat Safari Park, UK. Gives you glimses of the scenery around and also lets you see Sea Lions and a very old Chimpanzee. Video recorded by Baudhayan Lahiri using Sanyo VPC-CG20 Camcorder.
Longleat Safari Park Parrot Show
An interesting Parrot Show recorded at the Longleat Safari Park, UK. Video recorded by Baudhayan Lahiri using Sanyo VPC-CG20 Camcorder and HTC One X.
"A Symphony of Lights" Show from TST Promenade (Hong Kong)
The "A Symphony of Lights" show as viewed from the Tsim Sha Tsui (TST) Promenade. This show is a synchronized lights show where most of the tall sky-scrapers in Hong Kong take part. Though it does not look that amazing in the Video, I still shared it since I had recorded the same. Watching it live is a better experience. It happens everyday in normal weather conditions from 8 - 8:30pm. Video recorded by Baudhayan Lahiri using Sanyo VPC-CG20 Camcorder.
"A Symphony of Lights" Show from Victoria Peak (Hong Kong)
The "A Symphony of Lights" show as viewed from the Victoria Peak also called "The Peak". This show is a synchronized lights show where most of the tall sky-scrapers in Hong Kong take part. Though it does not look that amazing from Victoria Peak, I still shared it since I had recorded the same. It happens everyday in normal weather conditions from 8 - 8:30pm. Video recorded by Baudhayan Lahiri using Sanyo VPC-CG20 Camcorder.
Peak Tram and Hong Kong Day View from Victoria Peak
Some lovely glimpses taken of the city of Hong Kong and the Peak Tram used to commute from Peak Tram Lower Terminus to the Victoria Peak also known as "The Peak". The video is recorded from "Sky Terrace", the highest observatory on the Victoria Peak. Video recorded by Baudhayan Lahiri using Sanyo VPC-CG20 Camcorder.
Peak Tram - Sneak Preview (Hong Kong)
A sneak preview of the unique Tram service built by the Britishers to transport people from the Peak Tram Lower Terminus to the Victoria Peak, also known as "The Peak". Video recorded by Baudhayan Lahiri using Sanyo VPC-CG20 Camcorder.
Hong Kong Night View from Victoria Peak
Night view of the city of Hong Kong observed from Victoria Peak as called "The Peak". Also visible is the unique Advertisements appearing on the International Commerce Centre (ICC) building.Video recorded by Baudhayan Lahiri using Sanyo VPC-CG20 Camcorder.
VIEW62 (Hong Kong) - Revolving Hotel Experience
The marvelous experience of sitting inside one of the few revolving Restaurants in the world - VIEW62 by Paco Roncero. It is located at Hopewell Centre. Video recorded by Baudhayan Lahiri using Sanyo VPC-CG20 Camcorder.
Mermaid Dance at "City of Dreams" (Macau)
Virtual Mermaids dance inside the the virtual underwater set beautifully created at the "City of Dreams", Macau. Video recorded by Baudhayan Lahiri using Sanyo VPC-CG20 Camcorder.
Dragon Dance near Kun-Iam Statue (Macau)
A group performing Dragon dance in front of Kun-Iam statue at Macau. Video recorded by Baudhayan Lahiri using Sanyo VPC-CG20 Camcorder.
Transforming your 2nd/3rd Gen iPod and Docking Station into an Internet Radio
I am a big fan of Internet Radio since I can listen to my regional songs wherever I am in this world with a Net connection. Previously I would hook up my Nokia/Android Phone to my PC speakers to listen to Internet Radio broadcasts, but last year I decided to go for a Docking station. I got a good deal at Sainsbury's UK and bought a Sony Docking station for just GBP 35. But just a docking station wouldn't be enough, I needed an iPod. Googled quite a bit and found out that the docking station supports iPod 2 and above. Bought a second hand iPod 2 for GBP 40. I then searched for the free Apps which would allow me to listen to my favorite stations. I was now all set and very much enjoying the Internet Radio experience.
Everything was working well till the day the Internet Radio Apps on my iPod started providing updates one after the other. One fine day I was in a situation where the old Apps stopped working and the new Apps would support only the latest iOS versions. Doomed.......nooooooo!!!! I am not that sort of person to get bogged down by technical hiccups.
Started looking out for alternatives and now finally have my solution ready for stations which use Shoutcast Radio for streaming. Here is how you can rejuvenate your old iPod and Docking Station to have an ever-lasting Internet Radio experience -
(I would take the example of MastRadio.com in this Post.)
1. Search for the Internet Radio Station Shoutcast stream by googling across.
2. Googling "mastradio.com shoutcast stream" provides me with the link http://stream.mastradio.net:8000/ . But unfortunately there is no way by which you can play this link directly on an iPod. Here is the screenshot of the website -
3. Now comes the trick through which you can play this stream on your old 2nd/3rd Gen iPod. You can see that there is a link for "Listen". On clicking this link your iPod internally loads Apple Quicktime Player and starts playing the stream. Basically the iPod starts playing the link http://stream.mastradio.net:8000/listen.pls
4. To bookmark http://stream.mastradio.net:8000/listen.pls the easiest way is to key in this link on the Safari browser and immediately after pressing enter click stop loading. You can now add this website as a bookmark to your home screen.
5. Now you can load the Internet Radio Station every time by clicking the Home Screen shortcut.
6. Trying to be more creative - you can create your own web page on a free web publishing site like Blogger and create hyperlinks of your favorite Internet Radio Stations ending with the Playlist extension .pls .
Isn't it now simple to play Internet Radio Stations on your 2nd/3rd Gen iPod without the need for an App? Would love to hear your feed back.
Started looking out for alternatives and now finally have my solution ready for stations which use Shoutcast Radio for streaming. Here is how you can rejuvenate your old iPod and Docking Station to have an ever-lasting Internet Radio experience -
(I would take the example of MastRadio.com in this Post.)
1. Search for the Internet Radio Station Shoutcast stream by googling across.
2. Googling "mastradio.com shoutcast stream" provides me with the link http://stream.mastradio.net:8000/ . But unfortunately there is no way by which you can play this link directly on an iPod. Here is the screenshot of the website -
4. To bookmark http://stream.mastradio.net:8000/listen.pls the easiest way is to key in this link on the Safari browser and immediately after pressing enter click stop loading. You can now add this website as a bookmark to your home screen.
5. Now you can load the Internet Radio Station every time by clicking the Home Screen shortcut.
6. Trying to be more creative - you can create your own web page on a free web publishing site like Blogger and create hyperlinks of your favorite Internet Radio Stations ending with the Playlist extension .pls .
Isn't it now simple to play Internet Radio Stations on your 2nd/3rd Gen iPod without the need for an App? Would love to hear your feed back.
Beware of registering your websites offering free sub-domains!
Currently I have been running my Blog on http://baudhayan.blogspot.com , also accessible through http://tinyurl.com/gadgetguru from past 5 - 6 years. Very recently I registered myself with a Domain registration site noip.com . Since they offered few free sub-domains I registered http://gadgetguru.myvnc.com with them which now pointed towards http://baudhayan.blogspot.com . As instructed by Blogger.com I also made the necessary changes on Blogger and noip.com so that my Blog was now publicly viewable as http://gadgetguru.myvnc.com . Once the DNS settings refreshed on noip.com http://gadgetguru.myvnc.com could now be used in the browser to view my Blog.
The first hint of some Malware I realised it was when I tried posting a Status Update on Facebook with http://gadgetguru.myvnc.com . Facebook immediately popped up an error message saying that I could not use the above URL due to security restrictions. I then deleted the registration of gadgetguru.myvnc.com from noip.com and restored by original Blogger settings so that my Blog is accessible via the traditional URL
http://baudhayan.blogspot.com . Though I had done the changes the damage was already done. I started receiving some strange mails from Google Webmaster Tools with the subject-line "[Webmaster Tools] Message summary". The mail contents were as follows -
http://baudhayan.blogspot.com . Though I had done the changes the damage was already done. I started receiving some strange mails from Google Webmaster Tools with the subject-line "[Webmaster Tools] Message summary". The mail contents were as follows -
___________________________________________________________________________________
Message summary
Webmaster Tools sent you the following important messages about sites in your account. To keep your site healthy, we recommend regularly reviewing these messages and addressing any critical issues.http://avalss.myvnc.com/: Googlebot can't access your site
Over
the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 1 errors while attempting to
access your robots.txt. To ensure that we didn't crawl any pages listed
in that file, we postponed our crawl. Your site's overall robots.txt
error rate is 100.0%.
You can see more details about these errors in Webmaster Tools.
You can see more details about these errors in Webmaster Tools.
Recommended action
If the site error rate is 100%:
Learn more in our Help Center.
If the site error rate is 100%:
- Using a web browser, attempt to access http://avalss.myvnc.com/
robots.txt. If you are able to access it from your browser, then your site may be configured to deny access to googlebot. Check the configuration of your firewall and site to ensure that you are not denying access to googlebot. - If your robots.txt is a static page, verify that your web service has proper permissions to access the file.
- If your robots.txt is dynamically generated, verify that the scripts that generate the robots.txt are properly configured and have permission to run. Check the logs for your website to see if your scripts are failing, and if so attempt to diagnose the cause of the failure.
- Using Webmaster Tools, find a day with a high error rate and examine the logs for your web server for that day. Look for errors accessing robots.txt in the logs for that day and fix the causes of those errors.
- The most likely explanation is that your site is overloaded. Contact your hosting provider and discuss reconfiguring your web server or adding more resources to your website.
- If your site redirects to another hostname, another possible explanation is that a URL on your site is redirecting to a hostname whose serving of its robots.txt file is exhibiting one or more of these issues.
Learn more in our Help Center.
http://caring121.myvnc.com/: Googlebot can't access your site
Over the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 2 errors while attempting to access your robots.txt. To ensure that we didn't crawl any pages listed in that file, we postponed our crawl. Your site's overall robots.txt error rate is 100.0%.You can see more details about these errors in Webmaster Tools.
___________________________________________________________________________________
The above content is just an extract of a large mail where Google talks about several sites which the Google Bot is unable to crawl while indexing. I was surprised that none of these sites were mine, but I was receiving the error messages. I logged on to the Google Wemaster Tools page and tried searching a lot but couldn't find any references to these sites.
After searching the Google forums I found a solution - visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/verification/home?hl=en&authuser=0 and look into the list of sites where you appear as the Verified Owner. Begin with the 1st site on which you are receiving the error. In my case I just saw 2 sites which were http://baudhayan.blogspot.com and http://sites.google.com/site/baudhayan . I did not find any reference to http://avalss.myvnc.com . But as instructed in the forum I clicked on "ADD A SITE" and added http://avalss.myvnc.com to the list. To my surprise it added the site and showed me as the verified owner. On clicking the site it also showed various other website ending with myvnc.com where I was shown as the Verified Owner since myvnc.com somehow poisoned the DNS records and showed be as the verified owner. I quickly clicked on "Unverify" and deleted http://avalss.myvnc.com from the list of my sites.
Though I do not know the entire details about how this Malware is introduced but my understanding is that the DNS registration causes the Google Bot to start crawling across the entire domain myvnc.com which has a suspicious robots.txt which requests Google to crawl through many more sub-domains on myvnc.com and each of these domains report me as the Verifies Owner.
It looks like I have fixed the problem as of now but would like to warn my readers about doing some research on the Net before you use any free sub-domain and plan to re-point your URL.
Make your Standalone Printer accessible over the web as a Google Cloud Printer
In the age of the Cloud it makes sense getting rid of localized set-ups and moving on to the Cloud. Time to quickly make your local Printer too as a Cloud Printer.
If you have a Printer connected to your Home / Office PC and want to share with your group virtually over the Net why not use Google's Cloud Print service. Sharing of your Printer can be due to a variety of reasons and I will leave it on you to be creative in that direction. At the time of writing this article the Google Cloud Print service is still in BETA stage.
The process of making your Printer a Google Cloud Printer is a 2 step process -
1. Registering your Printer with Google Cloud Print. Rather than duplicating the contents I will re point to Google's help on this matter. Please click here to learn.
2. Installing the local Cloud Printer in the remote PC from where you wish to Print. The best part is that Google has included all possible Operating Systems and other Java-based systems from where you can Print. Please click here for the drivers.
Once the Google Cloud Print driver is installed and you issue a Print command from your system, you get the option of selecting "Google Cloud Printer" in the Printers list and when you click the same, the Google Cloud Printer provides you with a list of Cloud Printers added to your Google account where you can Print. You can even share your Cloud Printer with other Google users.
If you have an Internet Cafe you may also provide the facility to users to Print files remotely rather than carrying their USB drives.
Wooow.....just so easy to make your Standalone Printer a Google Cloud Printer!
If you have an Internet Cafe you may also provide the facility to users to Print files remotely rather than carrying their USB drives.
Wooow.....just so easy to make your Standalone Printer a Google Cloud Printer!
Tech Review: Hathway DOCSIS 3.0 Network based 50 Mbps Internet Plans
It's almost a week since I got the fastest Broadband I have ever used in India. I am talking about the recently launched Hathway's DOCSIS 3.0 Network. Infact it is faster than what I used in UK - 20 Mbps from Virgin on Fibre. Time to write a review while comparing it with my previous experience with MTNL. The last plan which I used was MTNL 8 Mbps connection paying INR 1050 (excluding tax) with a download limit of 28 GB.
Pros -
1. Lightning fast speed which is comparable to many other developed countries. Also this comes at very affortable rates. For pre-paid subscribers you pay INR 3370 including taxes but excluding Installation charges for quaterly subscription. This is for HD3 Plan with 25 GB download limit per month and 1 MPBS post 25 GB limit. The upload speed is also excellent - at 10 Mbps speed it is just what I wanted to uplod my HD videos on youtube.
2. You can watch all favourite recorded International TV soaps on youtube and other site owing to the excellent speed.
3. You can play online games without any lags.
4. Free Public Static IP. You will not get this free of cost with many other Broadband service providers.
5. No manual login/PPPoE login required, the Internet is always on.
5. No manual login/PPPoE login required, the Internet is always on.
6. Didn't find any Port Blockings as my IP Phone continues to work.
7. Easy Network configuration for a layman.
8. 24/7 Helpdesk.
Cons -
1. Sales team not trained enough to answer any technical question. They don't know the difference between Private IP and Public IP. They are unable to say on which Interface the IP will get assigned. I had to wait for the Modem to arrive and connect it to my Router to understand that the IP gets assigned on the LAN Interface of the Modem which connects to your PC or Router.
2. The Bandwidth usage on their website is not password protected and you can check some one else's usage if you know their user name.
3. The Bandwidth usage doesn't give hourly usage details. The MTNL website is much better which provides hourly session based usage details.
4. Though it is a 24/7 Helpdesk, the executives only answer standard set of questions and are not sufficiently trained on technical front.
Other Technical details -
1. The Internet is offered through traditional TV cables, but end user receives it on Ethernet.
2. I have been provided with a Skyworth CM4100 modem. I was not provided with any manual and was a bit sceptical since not much documentation is yet available on the Net. Till the point of time your Modem is activated on the Network you can connect your PC to it's Ethernet (LAN) port and through DHCP auto-config you will be assigned an IP 192.168.100.2 . You can thus connet to the Modem's web interface by keying in http://192.168.100.1 on your web browser. But please note that this is a read-only interface, doesn't require any login. You cannot configure anything here since all Provisioning will be done remotely by Hathway. The funny thing is that once your Modem is activated by Hathway remotely and you are live on the Network, you will get assigned a Static Public IP through DHCP when you connect your PC. I have used a D-Link DSL-2750U ADSL Router with Russian firmware (learnt the same from India Broadband Forum) and now LAN Port 1 is an Ethernet WAN Port which is assigned the Static IP.
3. Once your Modem is registered on the Network and you can access Internet, you can still access the Modem's Web Interface by keying in the HFC IP Address (on the Web Browser) which you can find out when you connect the Modem's LAN Interface with the Laptop directly.
2. I have been provided with a Skyworth CM4100 modem. I was not provided with any manual and was a bit sceptical since not much documentation is yet available on the Net. Till the point of time your Modem is activated on the Network you can connect your PC to it's Ethernet (LAN) port and through DHCP auto-config you will be assigned an IP 192.168.100.2 . You can thus connet to the Modem's web interface by keying in http://192.168.100.1 on your web browser. But please note that this is a read-only interface, doesn't require any login. You cannot configure anything here since all Provisioning will be done remotely by Hathway. The funny thing is that once your Modem is activated by Hathway remotely and you are live on the Network, you will get assigned a Static Public IP through DHCP when you connect your PC. I have used a D-Link DSL-2750U ADSL Router with Russian firmware (learnt the same from India Broadband Forum) and now LAN Port 1 is an Ethernet WAN Port which is assigned the Static IP.
3. Once your Modem is registered on the Network and you can access Internet, you can still access the Modem's Web Interface by keying in the HFC IP Address (on the Web Browser) which you can find out when you connect the Modem's LAN Interface with the Laptop directly.
4. You can register on a website like dyndns.com or noip.com and register a DNS name for your IP and may be host some Web Servers on the Net.
5. You can introduce Cloud based Content Filtering at Home by using OpenDNS.com DNS Servers - 208.67.222.222 , 208.67.220.220 , register yourself on the site and block websites based on categories. OpenDNS.com also provides you a Dashboard which provides excellent report about the websites being used on your Home Network.
6. Do remember that since this is a very high speed Net connection and you
need to decide very quickly on any video streaming site whether you want
to watch the Video, because as soon as you click almost the entire
video gets cache/downloaded within seconds and that gets counted against
your monthly Bandwidth limit.
7. I did not find that there was any locking of Internet associated with the MAC ID of the Router and Internet can be accessed from any device.
Will keep updating this article as and when things strike me. Do get back to me if you have any questions. Drop me your email address and I will respond back.
7. I did not find that there was any locking of Internet associated with the MAC ID of the Router and Internet can be accessed from any device.
Will keep updating this article as and when things strike me. Do get back to me if you have any questions. Drop me your email address and I will respond back.
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