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My Web-Log:

[I also write and report on http://divvymyride.com/blog/ ]

Feb 14th 2013: Competent Communicator [Toastmaster]

My updated have been few and far between since Alaina's arrival, still life goes on. Finally finished my CC manual.

May 16, 2012: You mean it was there all this time.

Microsoft might just have the world’s worst marketing team. How do you explain the fact that Excel is so feature rich and yet most of that information is hidden from the users and worse still, not documented anywhere.

Here is a classic engineering problem: “How to do a quadratic fit on a set of data and use it to predict the function value for a given x”

You can use a missile to kill a mosquito approach, also known as the “Data Analysis Tool Pack”. But you would think that there has to be a simpler way to do this.

For example to get a least square linear fit, the function FORECAST is very use full

As you can see the FORECAST was able to predict the value for a given “x”=2.5 as 3.25 which is the same a obtained by the linear fit line (a standards excel graph function)

0.5229*2.5+1.9429 ~3.25

All this was done in one single cell B28.

Now wouldn’t it be cool to get the same prediction capability for a polynomial fit, (super set of quadratic fit)

After a ton of Google searches, you realize that LINEST and TREND might be useful, unfortunately their documentation is painfully incomplete.

LINEST can give an awful lot of information such as standards error, F statistics, degree of freedom regression sum of squares etc.

But given a data set of the form

y = b + m1*x + m2*x² + m3*x³

LINEST can approximate the value of b, m1, m2 and m3 and spit out this format.

Unfortunately these are different cells and you need to create a formula to use these different values for prediction.

Here is an elegant solution to the problem

Syntax: TREND (known_y's,known_x's,new_x's,const)

I am using the known_y’s in the range B$2:B$13 and the know_x’s in the range A$2:A$13 and then using a 3^rd degree polynomial to predict the values for the new_x C2.

The TREND function can handle powers of x simple by specifying x_range^{1,2,3} which tells Excel to create values of x, x², x³ in internal memory and then predict the value from the polynomial fit.

The keys is to realize the new_x’s have to follow the form new_x_range^{1,2,3}. You will NOT find this in any documentation!!!

There you learnt something new and life changing today!

Mar 2012: A Semiconductor Engineer's Dream Castle and Car

More Info: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46721546/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/

17th Dec, Hum do Humari Ek

10th Dec: the 50.5mile bike ride!!

A personal record

5th Nov: Anticipation for the Arrival

3-6th Oct 2012: SOI Conference, Tempe Arizona @Tempe Mission Palms Hotel.

Thanks to photosynth took this panorama

Aug-Sep India 2011: A view from our balcony, in India.

Another panorama from photosynth

17th -21st Aug Italy Trip:

It is brutally hot in Italy in August, but the country is very pretty and the coin that I threw in the Trevi fountain, should hopefully guarantee that we visit this country again...

12th Aug 2012, Big milestone for 10th Year in the USA. Om Sweet Home

12th Aug 2011 10 Years Between these Pictures

On the left: At the convocation hall in IIT-B with Parents.

On the Right: At the ATT Park, with a friend for a Giant's Game

The "made up" smile has not changed much.

Today, also marks the 10th year anniversary of my landing at LAX. Time Flies...

3rd Aug: Yahoo Mail down and no one cares.

11:45pm. and Yahoo mail down.

2nd Aug Giants Diamondbacks 1-6 at AT&T park

4th June 2011: Restoring Thinkpad 201 to Factory Defaults/Settings

I don't know why at times things have to be made so hard that people had to stumble thru online forums and long Google searches to find the right answer. Take for example the process of restoring the Lenovo x201 to its factory defaults. If you try to find use the Windows help or Lenovo help, it will suggest using the windows recovery CD. Guess what? Lenovo does not ship a recovery CD. So what is a person supposed to do? Also all the windows restore points are from various driver updates and nothing usually points to the day of purchase. Here are the 3 simple steps

1) Click the ThinkVantage Toolbox

2) Go to the "System Health" tab

3) Under "Enhanced Backup and Restore" click the option of Recovery Media--> "Create Now"

Plug in a USB stick so that you can create a recovery disk.

Done!!

2nd June: My Amazing Customer Service Experience with Lenovo.

(Disclaimer, I don’t get paid by Lenovo, also this is NOT a product review, but just sharing my customer service experience).

In this age and time when customer service is almost nonexistent, it is good to see a company help out the little guy.

Also because tech-products are updated so fast, it is hard not to be on the losing end of online bargains.

Here is my story: Back in April, I saw a great deal on Lenovo X201 laptop (2.5lb, Intel i7, 4Gb ram, 500GB HD etc), and immediately ordered one. As is always happens, after I ordered, I read reviews about the subpar customer service experience that many folks had got from Lenovo. Fortunately for me, when the product came, it was working perfectly and I did not have to call any one. Dodged that one :) But then 45 days later, as Murphy’s Law dictates, there is a newer version of the ultra portable laptop, X220, available for a great deal (2.5lb, Intel i7 sandy bridge, 4Gb ram, 350GB HD, USB 3.0 etc). Man, I feel so cheated, my brand new laptop is obsolete in 1.5 months! Still I go ahead and order the new X220, thinking that I will try to sell the X201 on Craigslist. When the X220 arrives, and is verified to be fully functional, out of shear curiosity I call up Lenovo, (online return rules say that there is a 15% restocking fee for returns after 21 days, I am on day 55 now for the X201). I explain that the only reason that I am returning my original order is because I got a newer and better Lenovo product and it would be super nice if they don’t penalize me for that.

Guess what? They said, ok. They will refund the full price of the original laptop (after it is verified to be in new like condition) and even send me shipping labels!! God Bless the kind folks at Lenovo.

tl;dr Ordered a X201 laptop two months ago, only to realize that X220 with better processor came out. Ordered the new one and Lenovo kindly took back the old order, with return shipping!

28th April: Youth in Revolt,

I used to do this earlier, that when I watched a movie, I would blog and quote the most memorable line from the movie. Don’t know when it stopped, too bad.

Here is a priceless gem from “Youth in Revolt”

Nick Twisp aka Francois Dillinger: [after making 'love' to Sheeni] "It's a wonder that humankind has constructed any kind of civilization with this monumental distraction at hand."

17th March Finally Nailed It!!

As an avid online news reader, I have played the BBC weekly News Quiz since the last 4-5 years.

But not matter how prolific my database of knowledge or extensive my awareness of the news that week, I was never able to get all 7 questions correct, until this day.

Yey, "Top O' Mornin'" . you can try your hand in the quiz here.

24^th Feb 2011: Update from Adobe

When I got an update reminder from Adobe today, I had give out my usual groan.

Yet another bloated update from a company know for bloated buggy software, that like itunes, has a security updates every 6 months.

It is called Adobe Reader X (10.0.1), Adobes latest pdf reader.

I was cruising along reading a paper when I chanced upon a new menu item which I had not seen before: “Read Out Loud”.

Guess what it does? Exactly what it says, it read out a pdf file. Obviously the voice is a emotionless, synthesized computer voice, but that fact that this has now been integrated into the most popular reader in the world, makes this infinitely neat! I am sure 3-4year from now, it will improve to a level when we can listen to a pdf journal paper in while running in the Gym!!

Try is out, (I am sure Adobe will push its update on you very soon)

24^th Feb 2011: Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, Saudi held on Texas terror charge -BBC

One extract from what is alleged to be Mr Aldawsari's diary says: "And now, after mastering the English language, learning how to build explosives and continuous planning to target the infidel Americans, it is time for Jihad."

Man are you kidding me. lets for once forget the idiocy of killing people, what are you ? a ten year old girl, writing a diary? Pathetic !

28th Nov, 2010 Beautiful Kauai, Hi.

A picture from the last look out on the Koke'E State Park, looking at the Na'Pali Coast

14th Oct, 2010 Why did it take so long?

In the picture below is the remote control of the new Sony Google TV. Notice something? It has a full QWERTY keyboard. I say brilliant, but what took it so long? I have a LG blue ray player and entering a song name in Pandora or You-tube or a movie name in Netflix is a night mare. I am sure that I am not alone.

Here is another suggestion, throw in a $20 bluetooth chip in the $1600 TV and then I will control my TV from my iphone.

I guess, I will have to wait two more year for a executive at Google or Sony to think of that.

Sigh…

17th Sept, 2010 Stolen Iphone-4 :( I know who did it, Plz help me find him!!! Reward $100

To the kind web readers in Seattle, please help me track this guy who stole my iphone-4.

The phone was stolen from the Subway Restaurant at 100 4th Ave, N #120, Seattle, WA. 98109 (ph 206-441-7759). The theft occurred on the 17th of September around 3:00pm, as I stepped away from my table to pick up an order.

Following the theft, I went to the nearest police station. (West Precinct, 810 Virginia St., Seattle, WA 98101). The office in the patrol car (Officer Mehrens) took my report and issued me an incident report card. I have been following the case with the Seattle Ppolice Dept, but they are yet to assign a detective for the case, as phone theft is not on top of their priority. Now ATT want $599.99 for new one, because I am not eligible for upgrade and a lot of my personal data has been compromised.

The proprietor of the store, Ramon Cruz a super nice guy, has surveillance footage from the restaurant’s security camera of a male picking the smart phone from my table and leaving the premises. The guy is white, 5’-10”, looked like a construction worker. (see screen shots from CC TV below)

Here are the details to the iphone, in case he tries to sell it.

iPhone-4 Black 16GB

Part Number: MC318LL/A

Serial Number: 88028C8MA4S

ICCID Number: 89014104243443118308

IMEI Number: 012337005212503

Please help me track this guy.

I can be reached at monks97ue [at] yahoo [dot] com

-mayank

Larger pictures on this link

https://sites.google.com/site/mayankgupta003/home/stolen-iphone

Online gif animator

10th Sep 2010: BMW 328i Coupe (The Ultimate Driving Machine?)

I wouldn't go so far :P. But after spending so many $$, one does get a sense of pride. By the way, one more reason German car owners are so proud is because they share a sense of benevolence and philanthropy, after all we are supporting two families, our own and our mechanic's.

Here are some thing that I love and hate

Love: The all black look over the white VW Passat.

Love: The Honey comb alloy wheels. Hate the Honey comb alloy wheel, they are a pain to clean.

Hate: When you lock the car, the sound it is supposed to make indicating that it is locked, is an option, which I don't have. What?

Love: That I can find what is stored on a radio preset just by slightly touching the preset number, (without changing the current channel).

Love: That the sports bucket seat comes with a air pump switch

Love: the Raw power, Hate the loss of ~5MPG over my Passat

Miss: the Manual Transmission

27th Aug 2010: Our Miles Are Better Than Yours, Damn Right they are Better than Yours..

I discovered one of the biggest scams perpetrated on the traveling human race today, and it is a worth a post.

So here I am trying to buy two air tix to Portland, OR. Since the regular air fares for a trip from SFO to PDX were running a bit high, I decided to use my air-miles from United Airlines (can you already feel it coming, right? United, air miles… ). Over my many trips to India, I have managed to save a respectable 64K miles on the account. I log in to the united account, choose the option of using my miles to purchase two tixs. The price of two tickets including taxes is $634, (so I a already knew that I could fall a few miles short), but what came next took me by surprise and disgust.

The site reported that I needed 100K miles to purchase the $634 tickets and thus I was short by 36K miles. But I still had the option of buying these 36K miles. Now let’s do some maths:

100K miles == $634 –> 36K miles == $288. But I would be able to use my 64K miles to save $406. Right? Not so soon…

The purchase page shows me that the price of buying 36K mile is a whopping $1200!! Seriously?

So somehow my miles are worth $6.34/1K miles and their miles are worth $33/1K miles?

i.e. United Airlines’s miles are ~5.25X better, juicier, prettier, healthier, @#$%*&ier than my miles.

You would have never seen that coming.

10th July 2010: Concert at Shoreline

While a small incision means that recovery is fast, still I can't go to work for 5-6days and need to be on crutches for 3-4weeks. The whole process will take 2-3months to "fully" recover (cross my fingers).

I just pray that I can drive in the coming weeks, being handicapped and driven around is a no fun.

Here are the before and after pictures of the joint

24th Jan : Yahoomail is so broke that it is not even funny

Yahoo mail is turning into a useless email address fit only for junk/spam email usage. Over the last 3-4 months, I have been seeing a weird behavior when the email search seems to find nothing! Here is an example, I have over 18 email from comcast, will my bill and when I search for comcast in the mail search I get nothing, nada. Isn't that stupid?

and the search yields nothing!

1st 2010: Happy New Year

From the year gone by: 2009 great year for traveling, we explored numerous places around the Bay Area as well as the North American Continent, including the Rocky Mountain National park and the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, Mexico. Here is a picture from my recent trip to Mexico. One thing I learnt from this trip about Mexico: GO THERE!!! It is amazingly pretty, the folks are very courteous and nice (unlike europe) & the $ goes far and beyond at this place.

23rd Dec There is a App for that-

Iphone has a free app that can track physical activities like runing and biking:RunKeeper. It is free so don't expect it to be perfect, still it does a very nice jobs of sending the activity to a weblog where one can track the route, average speed, elevation, cal brunt and total time. Here is a snaple from my bike ride today. Pretty cool eh?

19th Dec 2009 24.24 mi bike ride

Bike ride on the Stevens Creek Trail

16th Dec 2009 It’s the Season to be Thankful.

An year is drawing to a close and what an year it has been! Very bumpy for some, but the good news is that there are signs of recovery here and there. No matter what each of us has been thru, there is certainly room to be thankful for whatever we have: Job, house, family and health. Just to share something that happened yesterday.

I had just finished my afternoon workout at the Gold’s Gym at Santa Clara. Usually, what happens is that I put on my mp3 player, go about my business and an hour later I am done, without exchanging a single word with anyone. (I am not anti-social, and most people do the same things). Just this time I did something different. After the workout I was changing in the men’s room, and I noticed that the guy next to me had crutches with him. He was wearing a full track suit with shoes and gloves, so my obvious assumption was that he must be recuperating from a injury or an operation. Even I have had a nagging ankle injury since the last 4 years, so I could immediately empathize with this guy. I commented, “Are you rehabilitating from an injury?”. He hesitated for a moment, then said, “No, I am just fine, I have this thing you know” and then pulled up the track suit on his right leg.

There was no right leg, or a right ankle, or a right knee. It was all prosthetic, right from his thigh and below. “Don’t worry, they have done wonders with technology these days”, he added.

I was dumbstruck. I really didn’t know what to say to him. I am still not sure what I could have said. I know it is impossible to convey everything thru words, but one thing I clearly remembered: that for a moment I was overwhelmed by a feeling of gratitude for whatever I have: Job, house, family and health.

I hope I was not overly melodramatic about the whole thing, still “It’s the Season to be Thankful”. What is your excuse?

4th Dec Yet another amazing game

If you see the game clock, it has 0.4sec on it and Kobe Bryant still manages to get the airborne ball in to the basket! The Laker were tailing by 2 before this shot they won 107-106. Sometimes, "NBA, where amazing happens" sounds like a cliche, but not in this game!

(Image from the Los Angeles Times)

1st Dec: Great Yoga Site http://www.abc-of-yoga.com/

My good friend, Dinesh Patil, suggested Surya Namaskar for the back pain I have had for the past 2-3months. Video's on Youtube were a bit overwhelming, because everyone was doing it a different style, with different variations and durations. But found this great site today for Yoga. It has animations that you can stop as well as a step by step guide. I am surprised why it is #6 on google search.

29th Nov 2009 A beautiful machine

Novara Strada® features lightweight carbon fiber seat stays and fork, plus rest of body is aluminum!

Check all the specs here

17th Nov: Sorry for No updates in a long time.

It was between being a little busy and google moving the site from googlepages to google sites. But good to be back. By the way my side project DivvyMyRide recently got its 2nd major update. Check it out it is a easy, intuitive and safe way to carpool.

1st July: Windows Folder Size

Finding the directory size in windows is a tedious, right click properties for each folder task. I just found out a neat utility, that shows the size of all the folders in a directory and allows you to even sort folders by size. very cool. ! code can be got from http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/using.html

13th June Taking Apart my Hero Chinese Ink Pen Series 329.

As a school going kid I had a ritual: The night before the beginning of every exam week, I would meticulously set up my geometry box.

I would refill the mechanical pencil, wash the ruler and protractor, get my exam board and clean my ink pen. Even thought I stopped using an ink pen around 6th grade, I always carried one in my geometry box. So many of us have good luck charms, this was mine: A Hero Chinese Ink Pen. The funny thing is that I still carry two of these and occasionally when I get sick of my ballpoint pen handwriting (as if it was only the fault of the ballpoint pen), I switch over to my 329 Chinese ink pen. As part of my most recent ritual of cleaning the ink pen, I came up with some ingenious ways to do a good job. Here are some tips and pictures.

a) You will be amazed that a single uni-body pen can actually be broken into so many pieces and then reassembled again. Dissemble it completely for a good cleaning.

b) Ear buds are a great tool to clean the inside of the cap and the impossible to reach inside of the ink tank.

c) If you haven’t used the pen in a long time, ink will most likely clot in the very narrow tube that brings ink from the ink tank to the pen tip via capillary action. The twisted wires, used in grocery store to tie the plastic bag, can be used to clean the narrow tube.

If you have more tips let me know.

12th May: Trip to fix Hubble Telescope

In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope.

The phtographer made this image using a solar-filtered Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mark II digital camera.

Image Credit: NASA/Thierry Legault

26th April : Kobe @ the Energy Solutions Arena.

Game 4 of the Laker Jazz series. Needless to say, I scoured the web to read all the accolades that people had for Kobe Bryant, but I found this one the best.

The Salt lake Tribune, by Gordon Monson

"So much for Kobe being passive.

If Game 4 on Saturday night made any one thing official, it's this: Kobe Bryant is the best bad-shot taker and maker and Laker in NBA history. When he's on, he could punt a ball through the hoop from 22 feet. Off the ceiling, off the wall, off the Buick parked outside, off the heating vent, off the glass, nothing but net.

...

Showing the way, Kobe displayed it all, everything he couldn't scratch up in Game 3. Jumpers, jumpers and more jumpers. Twisters, squibbers, flippers, floaters, bankers -- shots that had no business going in, that couldn't go in, really, but did. They were the kinds of shots your junior high coach would have chucked you out of the gym for even considering taking.

...

Somebody in the postgame described Kobe, all old school, as being "in the zone," and that hackneyed expression will do here. None of us are sure exactly what or where that zone is, because we've never been there, but it apparently exists. It's part of Bryant's world. And the Jazz hated being subjected to its gravitational pull. "

20th April: Insecurity: Everyone Suffers

2rd March 2009: Life

If you have seen "La Maison De Petite Cubes" ('09 Oscar winner for "Short animation"), you will appreciate this too.

found on pixdaus.com

20th Jan 2009. Change has Come to Whitehouse.gov

From Flicker.com

9th Jan 2009. Finding I.E. Irodov.

I was talking to a Russian colleague of mine when I realized that one of my favorite books in 12^th Standard (High school for folks in the US) was a book from a Russian Publisher, MIR Publication. I bet that a generation of students can vouch that “Problems in General Physics” was the best pre-undergraduate level physics book they would have ever read (Yes, even better than Halliday, Resnick : Fundamentals of Physics). Some after some goolging and I found a scanned copy of the book..Sweet..you can download a djvu version (smaller than a pdf file) of the book here I.E.Irodov_Problems_in_General_Physi.zip. (Use the Exe file to view the .djvu file. Or use your own djvu viewer)

23rd Dec: Be happy with what you have, there are folks who live with this.

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Years 2003-2004