Work Stuff

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Issues when using Google Docs fonts for Malayalam

When entering Malayalam text with Google docs, Firefox on Windows XP, one cannot choose the font - only one font seems to be available. This font also had issues like showing

instead of

and so on.

So, I used MS Word and the Rachana font instead, which looks good. But this has an issue - chillaksharams are automatically joined to the next letter whenever we save and re-open the document - like

മാര്‍ഗ്ഗത്തില്‍_ഗ്രഹങ്ങള്‍_സഞ്ചരിക്കുന്നതും becomes മാര്‍ഗ്ഗത്തില്‍ഗ്രഹങ്ങള്‍സഞ്ചരിക്കുന്നതും

My workaround was to add the character _ after each such letter, and finally, using the Find and Replace tool, change the font colour for this _ character to white, so that it is not visible.

This issue with web fonts seems to be well documented. Following the advice on the comments on that page, I installed Meera and other fonts given at https://smc.org.in/fonts/
After a restart, now I see പ്രകാശം - rendered as

Meera seems to have now become the default on Google Docs and Blogger on Firefox / Chrome, replacing the buggy Windows default Karthika. Now, probably, I can directly write with Google Docs instead.

Friday, November 04, 2016

How to edit a Hindi document in Google Docs

Copy-pasting from an email sent to one of our collaborators:

I assume that you are using Google docs on a desktop computer. Then, when you click on the links I sent, Google Docs will open up. In the toolbar of google docs, please choose the "Select Input" button, which may be showing a Hindi A letter, as shown in the screenshot below.

Unless you know Hindi typing, the Devanagari phonetic option is the easiest to use. If you choose that option, if you type padaarth, it will give a list of options, and just pressing the spacebar will choose the topmost option, which would be पदार्थ

In case your window is too small, you may need to click twice in order to get to the Select Input button, as shown in the screenshot below - first click on More... and then on the Select Input button.

Friday, October 28, 2016

Some speed tests and battery info

To add to my previous post on Jio 4G. The speed tests are taken at different times of the day, time can be seen at top right.

But the speed tests done with servers outside India shows that Jio's gateways are congested.

versus a server from the US,

The same test, when done with a BSNL broadband connection limited to 1 Mbps gave the following -

and

And now a trend line showed by the battery app on the Intex Aqua, when left on as a wifi hotspot, wifi sharing enabled, but without much usage -

Edit - One more post about Airtel speeds done on 4th Jan 2017.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

iOS 10 mail app problem with rendering text

Some people complained about text being displayed as overlapped. PB replied as follows:

We have implemented the suggestion here:
https://litmus.com/community/discussions/5712-ios-10-hating-on-graphic-heavy-responsive-email
https://litmus.com/community/discussions/5687-emails-rendering-off-center-ios-10-apple-mail-iphone

Apple seems to be aware of the issue that has started with iOS 10.

Friday, October 14, 2016

USB tethering Android phone using Windows XP

During my Jio trials, I wanted to try both wifi tethering, which is easy but drinks battery, as well as USB tethering. On Windows 7, simply enabling USB tethering on the phone Settings -> More -> Tethering and wifi hotspot -> USB tethering was sufficient - the OS recognised the connection and got IP addresses by DHCP etc.

On one Windows XP machine, I found that the same procedure worked, with the phone being recognised as a Windows mobile internet sharing device, since I had earlier installed drivers for an old Windows mobile phone on this computer. Full USB2 speeds listed - "Connected at 475 Mbps". Actual download speed was about 3 Mbps when I tested on Jio.

On another Windows XP computer, the windows mobile driver had not been installed, and installing the inf file as given at
https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/2812516?hl=en
did not help. Windows did not recognise the driver as being suitable for this device.

Tried installing a driver from Intex, the manufacturer of the phone, from
http://www.intex.in/Resources/Index
but that also did not help.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Reliance Jio notes - pros and cons - mini review

Since my Xiaomi phone was showing some problems due to a crack on the screen and a dunking in water, I thought I would get a backup phone. And with 4G support in order to use the Reliance Jio welcome offer of free sim + free data + free calls upto 31 December. Got the cheapest 4G phone advertised with VoLTE - Intex Aqua 4G Strong.

Got a barcode by entering my Aadhaar number into the MyJio app, got a free SIM in ten minutes from a nearby shop, got thumb-print scanner verification done there itself. Though the dealer said the network would start working in another hour, it took another 6 hours or so, until at night the data connection on the SIM started working - activated.

Incoming and outgoing calls were not happening. Tried installing Jio4GVoice app to make outgoing calls over VoLTE - outgoing calls started going through. But not incoming calls. After 4-5 days, incoming calls from other Jio numbers started to work. Perhaps incoming calls from other networks would also work after a few more days. Solution suggested by Jio dealer was to install JioChat app - not sure how that would help.

Battery life of this phone is not stellar, as the reviews suggest. But for Rs. 3500, no complaints in using this as a backup phone. Just on 4G standby, battery drains in 10 hours or so. Tethering via USB or wifi also drains battery quite fast, though USB tethering also charges the battery.

As this indiatoday post indicates, there are many issues with Jio. The reliability issues are so much that anyone who needs a phone to work all the time must have another number from another provider. Interconnect issues apart, even Jio to Jio calls have problems due to people going offline - though this is probably due to their using other network options instead of Jio. Can use it as a free toy till Dec 31, that would be my policy.

Speeds - apparently Jiofi devices have greater speeds than sims put inside mobile phones. I generally get around 5 Mbps, with speeds dropping to 1 Mbps in the evenings. Early morning peak speed of 15 Mbps. Torrents are probably throttled - we got around 2 Mbps over a half hour test run. Also, the speeds are limited after 4 GB per day (as of now) as shown in the MyJio app below.

With Jiofi device, as tested by my colleague V, has gone upto 50 Mbps also,

In general, the DNS services on Jio are bad - changing to Google public DNS immediately improved browsing responsivity. Streaming videos are generally good - HD streaming on the JioTV app and on YouTube. On Vimeo, sometimes spotty, sometimes OK.

Edit: One week post-activation also no incoming calls. So, called up customer care at 199. Spent around 20 minutes on hold before a polite agent picked up. Apologetically gave me separate complaint numbers for voice and sms not being received, giving a 48 hour resolution time. Got a truncated sms from Jio tech support during the 48 hours. Finally, around 3 days later, incoming calls started working.

Monday, October 10, 2016

email ids for a new domain

Similar to my earlier posts, copy-pasting from an email I sent:

Google Apps for domains (now called GSuite) no longer has the free option for new customers.
https://support.google.com/a/answer/2855120?hl=en
"As of December 6, 2012, Google stopped offering Free edition to new customers. If you already had the Free edition, you can continue using it for free"

Microsoft Live email has also stopped new registrations for free domain support -
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-ends-support-for-custom-domains-in-free-email-service/

Zoho offers free for upto 10 users only,
https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/email-hosting-with-zoho.html

There are many paid options, I could discuss them with you if you are interested. And for the extremely tech savvy, you can also run your own mail server. Initially when we started with our domain's emails, we used to forward the emails to gmail from our own mail server. But that is a lot of hassle.

If you want Google GSuite free, an option would be to get the educational version, which remains free. But that has terms and conditions.
https://support.google.com/a/answer/2856827?hl=en

Sunday, September 25, 2016

formatting bold lines in MS Word table

Needed a specifically formatted table with some bold lines and some lines without bold face. Did the bold lines as per
http://superuser.com/questions/276778/how-to-adjust-the-thickness-of-some-lines-in-a-word-table

That is,
"Under Table Tools/Design menu, go to Draw Borders and adjust the line values to your preference. Then click on Draw Table and a pencil icon will appear. Click on any line and voila! The line is now set to your liking."

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

speed comparison - Matlab vs C vs python vs perl

I had found C code to be around 150x faster than Matlab for my implementation of the Monte Carlo code in Matlab.

User time: 3 sec for the C program
elapsed_time = 453.2500 sec for the Matlab program

This stackoverfloe discussion has some interesting points to make - use Matlab first to get correct results, then increase speed with C, beware of errors in C libraries.

These benchmarks show python to be 3x to 100x slower than C - so, translating from Matlab to python in search of speed gains may not make sense.

These benchmarks show perl having similar speeds as python for loops - so I needn't explore perl, either.

Friday, September 16, 2016

miui permissions

On the Xiaomi Mi3 phone which runs the MIUI skin for Android, the method for setting permissions for apps is slightly different from the method for stock Android phones. The method for MIUI is via the Security App on the home screen, Security -> Permissions -> Permissions -> (Choose the type of permission like Contacts etc) -> enable or disable per app.

This is for MIUI Global 7.5, running on Android 6.0.1

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Income tax e-filing with e-verification

In earlier posts, I had detailed the process for e-filing Income tax returns in India. This year, from Assessment Year 2016-17, the verification can also be done online, by logging onto Netbanking portal of a bank where my PAN number is associated with my account. So, no need to print and post the ITR-V form.

In HDFC bank's netbanking portal, the e-verification is currently available under Requests - Income Tax E-filing on the left-hand side.

Around a month after I submitted the return in June, my tax refund has been credited, too.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

checking for bad blocks on hard disk

The IBM ThinkCentre given by K for use by Ke's son had some disk issues - the hard disk was my former 160 GB laptop hard disk. Probably bad sectors and so on, so I had to do the Linux equivalent of running scandisk. Ubuntu 16.04 apparently doesn't support shutdown -Fr now for scanning on reboot - maybe due to systemd?

So, booted using USB flash drive and ran

sudo umount /dev/sda1

sudo e2fsck -c /dev/sda1

Apparently e2fsck with the -c option marks bad blocks using the badblocks program. 160 GB drive took 1 hour 30 minutes to scan - would have taken around 45 minutes if not for the 97 errors.

Output of badblocks 97/0/0 apparently means read/write/corruption errors. Since I'm doing a read-only test, only the read errors show up.

Sunday, July 03, 2016

browsing Windows shares with Master Browser down

The Studio network's master browser was set as the local server, which now has smbd service stopped. So, smb4k, konqueror etc were not displaying shares when queried with smb hostnames like smb://hostname
- ip addresses were required.

In order to query the ip addresses, google led to this post, so a listing, albeit clunky, is obtained with
nmblookup -S WORKGROUP

where WORKGROUP should be replaced with the name of the workgroup in the network. smb4k lists the workgroup names, so that can be a first step.

Edit: PB adds a better way:
nbtscan -qe 192.168.127.0/24

Thursday, June 23, 2016

converting putty key to open ssh keys

Used the method given here to convert, using
puttygen mykeyfile.ppk -o ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub -O public-openssh

and
puttygen mykeyfile.ppk -o ~/.ssh/id_rsa -O private-openssh

After moving the keys to .ssh, we also have to chmod 600 or else ssh will not take these keys by default. We also need to name them id_rsa and id_rsa.pub for ssh to use them by default, without having to specify ssh -i keyname username@server.

fixing dual-boot time differences

With earlier versions of Linux, the method was to choose UTC = yes in /etc/default/rc5 and so on. With Ubuntu 16.04 and above which use systemd, the method is to enter

timedatectl set-local-rtc 1

Monday, June 20, 2016

behaviour of virtualdub frame processing

If we choose Process every other frame (decimate by 2) - the resulting avi would have a framerate half that of the source.

For example, a 30fps source, with this decimate by 2 results in an output at 15 fps. If that 15 fps output is re-saved using direct stream copy choosing 30 fps as output frame rate, then we get a 2x speeded up video. A two-step process.

In order to get 2x speeded up video in one step, choose to Change frame rate to 60 fps, and then Convert to 30 fps.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

cloning laptop hard disk

My laptop hard disk started showing SMART errors with Crystal Disk Info. Got a new Seagate 1 TB SSHD for replacement. Macrium Reflect Free could not clone - the bad sectors made it abort. Clonezilla did the job in around 4 hours for the 160 GB hard disk with three partitions, using an external USB dock for the new hard disk.

But the cloned hard disk did not boot. Booted with Windows XP install DVD, went into recovery console and did fixmbr. Then XP booted, but showed only C and D drives. Since in any case I would need to copy files from E:, might as well increase the size of C: by deleting D:. Used Partition Wizard for increasing C: size, created D: and E: as fresh partitions, and left free space for Linux. RichCopy copied over the D: and E: contents, ignoring errors, in just about 90 minutes. Now most apps work as expected, except some which complain about path not found - maybe they look for My Documents in C:.

Later, installed Kubuntu 16.04 on a trial basis, using mini.iso and a network install - the process took around 90 minutes.

Tuesday, June 07, 2016

checksums on Windows

As mentioned on this page, installed and tried out WinMD5Sum and Checksums calculator. Found that one of my iso downloads had a checksum error.

Wednesday, June 01, 2016

WHM + CPanel setting up ssh access

To set up shell access via ssh to a server for which I have Web Host Manager (WHM) and CPanel access:

1. Import my existing ssh public key to the server via the CPanel of the relevant user - by clicking Manage SSH keys - for this, as this post mentions, the key should be prefaced with ssh-rsa and should not have line breaks within the key.
2. The key should be authorized - from the Manage SSH keys interface, by clicking on the Manage authorization link. Now ssh login via key exchange using that key would be possible, for that user.
3. In order to get to a root shell, that user has to be added to the wheel group, after making sure that user is in a full shell and not a jailed shell - via WHM in Home >> Account Functions >> Manage Shell Access and Home >> Security Center >> Manage Wheel Group Users respectively.

Sunday, May 08, 2016

problems with X crashes on newer Ubuntu

My Ubuntu install has had problems with random freezes after an upgrade to 12.04. Finally, when starting to do some serious simulation work, I decided to do something about it.

The first thought was that firefox was causing the crashes, since the freezes would start most often while starting firefox. But then, found the crashes happening when starting other apps as well. Suspected X, or the display driver, and wanted to use vesa instead. Many of the methods listed, like blacklisting nouveau, did not work with 16.04 - even after reboots, nouveau driver was being listed as used by lsmod.

Final solution was to create a /etc/X11/xorg.conf - which does not exist by default. As mentioned at many places, the procedure to do this was:
Switch to a console. Ctrl+Shift+F2, for example.
Kill the display manager with sudo service lightdm stop (or whichever dm is running)
Generate a new xorg.conf with sudo X -configure
Edit the xorg.conf.new created in current directory, replacing all instances of nouveau with vesa
Move it with a rename to /etc/X11 with sudo mv xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Restart X with sudo service lightdm start

Unfortunately with Vesa, the screen refreshes are very laggy, even with Lubuntu. But no crashes.