Shahab

How never to get lost in Mumbai anymore..

Since I’ve got Lost fever again, I wanted to write something about it but seems I m gonna write something else .. 😛 .. Anyway, here I am going to talk about people who get lost time and again in Mumbai because they are new to the city and / or never remember the stations or bus numbers and / or too lazy to find out .. All the above mentioned qualities are present in me .. 😀

So necessity is the mother in law of plagiarism ( Heheh … that was a good one ) .. I wanted to goto Lamington road to get some computer parts .. But Lamington road is so far from here as Andaman n Nicobar are far from New Delhi .. Some desperate calls to my longtime friend Ashish yeilded some results but that included changing trains or taking train to CST and then coming back by bus .. So much for a lazy brat like me .. Continue reading How never to get lost in Mumbai anymore..

And so it begins ..

If you hate working late on weekends as I do, and you love speed as I do then we might share the passion for F1 too.. And with the Australian Grand Prix on sunday, the F1 2007 season kicked off and I am watching too much tv and sleeping very less (damn the world cup).

There are quite a few things that make this season interesting. The most prominent being absence of Michael Schumacher who announced his retirement last season. While Schumacher fans will say this the thing that will make F1 uninteresting, I’ll say it will bring some competition to the game ( it was sooo dominated by Schumacher earlier 😛 ). So who’s gonna take Schumacher’s crown now ..?

The other thing the commentators were jabbering about all the time was that this will be the final season with the existing Concorde Agreement. The GPMA may consider to opt out of F1 and start a rival series or something if differences between them and Bernie are not sorted out.

Fernando Alonso left Renault to join McLaren and Kimi Raikkonen switched to Ferrari from McLaren. And one of the most hyped persons (seems rightly so ) , Lewis Hamilton joined McLaren and by his performance in Australian Grand Prix it looks like he’s got some very good prospects. One Heikki Kovalain replaced Fernando Alonso in Renault.

So equations have changed and we’ll see if Ferrari can regain their space again this time with a new car F2007 and Kimi Raikkonen on the helm. Another car I’ll like to quote is Honda’s RA107 aka Earth Car which will run without any advertisements on it ( people say thats because they didnt get any advertisors 😀 ). You can have your name printed on it if you donate some money ( 1 UK Pound or more ) to myearth dream trust.

So… Lets see how F1 comes up without Schumacher and switched drivers. See you in Malasian Grand Prix .. Look out for Hamilton and Sato .. !

What life is …

Click on the image for bigger size

The strip says it all .. Persistence is the most important thing in life no matter how many things you juggle at once ..

I posted this just to ping everyone that I still exist and hopefully will be back in action very soon …

Till then .. Keep juggling .. 🙂

Make the best use of Yahoo!

Are you using Yahoo just for chatting and emailing ..? You are sure missing many nice features provided by Yahoo!. .. This article is an assorted list of tricks I learnt using Yahoo for so many years .. .. Some of them might be known to you, but I’ve found many people who dont know about these features .. This tutorial is for them .. So here it goes . . ..

1: Multiple Profiles:
Did you know you can create as many as 6 profiles of your Yahoo Id ..? This is like having 6 aliases of your one Yahoo Id.. So, for different people, you can use different profiles for communication and nobody can find out your Yahoo email address if you use a different profile.
So, to create a new profile, you have to goto this link…Sign in if you arent already Signed in to Yahoo. ..Now click on Create New Public Proflie link and you’ll be taken to a profile creation page where you can enter the details .. You can create profiles of different genders too .. So if you wanna fool your friend, you can create a girl’s id and chat with him .. 😀 .. When you sign in to Yahoo Messenger, You’ll see a drop down list of your profiles with which you can send the messege ..
Yahoo Messenger Send as
You can login with any of these profiles with your Yahoo password.. (helpful when using a webinterface like Ebuddy or Meebo ) .. Cool na .. ?

2: Extra Mail address:
You can add another email address to your default Yahoo email address.. Consider this case : you created a profile say shahrukh_khan and now if someone sends email to this profile, the email will bounce because there is no Inbox of that address. So if you want to receive email on this address, you can just create another email address within your default Yahoo email address. (You can create only one extra email address on one Yahoo ID) .. To do this, Click on this link
Or
-> Sign in to Yahoo Mail, Click on Options on the top right.
-> Under the Mail Management header, Click on Mail Addresses.
-> Now in the next screen, Click on Get Started link under Extra Email Address header.
-> Choose whatever address you want and click on Check availabilty.
-> If its available, you’ll be taken to an Image verification and then you will have another email address to your Yahoo Id.

You can send emails from this address… Whenever you compose a mail, you’ll get a dropdown list from where you can select the From address. .
Yahoo Mail Compose

3: AddressGuard:
Now this is one feature I love .. ! AddressGuard is a disposable email feature for you to combat spams .. Earlier I used Mailinator for this purpose but Mailinator can be checked by anyone so I stopped using it .. With AddressGuard you can create upto 500 disposable email addresses which you can use for signing up at sites that you consider suspicious .. When you start getting spam on a disposable email address,just delete it and thats the end of it .. 🙂 .. You can even send messages through this disposable email address .. !
To create disposable address, login to Yahoo Mail and click on Options. Under the Spam header, click on AddressGuard link and then follow the simple procedure to create disposable email address ..
(!) AddressGuard feature isnt there in US version of Yahoo mail … so if you want to use this feature, change your Preferred Content to Yahoo India .. To do so:
Yahoo Mail > Options > Account Information { Enter password } > Under the Member Information header, click on Edit and select the Preferred Content to Yahoo India.. Sign out and then sign in again .. .. You should see AddressGuard in the mail options now .. so start using it .. !!

4: Yahoo Search:
Before Google, Yahoo was considered the best search engine .. (well . . atleast I considered it .. but anyways .. ) .. Although overshadowed by Google, Yahoo still provides some great searching options .. Apart from regular Yahoo Search, there is this Yahoo Mindset which is quite inituitive ..
The concept behind Yahoo Mindset is that it will show you results according to your mindset (cant find another word :P) .. It will categorize the search results in two types: Shopping and Researching.. So if you search for Nokia and move the slider to Shopping, you’ll find links where you can buy Nokia cellphones .. and if you move the slider to Researching, you’ll get Wikipedia page on Nokia . .. If you move the slider to the center, you’ll get the normal Yahoo search result … Very innovative .. !
And when we are at it, There is another search utility by Yahoo .. Its AllTheWeb LiveSearch .. It will show search results as you type … very cool indeed .. !
Then there is MyWeb .. You can save your search and share it with your contacts .. I dont feel very comfortable using it .. But you might wanna try … 😀 ..

5: Flickr
Now this is for those who dont know what Flickr is .. Those using it must be knowing that you can login to Flickr with your Yahoo Id … Now to the others .. Flickr is one of the best photo sharing websites and it was taken over by Yahoo a while ago .. So now you can sign in to Flickr using your Yahoo Id and merge your Flickr account with your Yahoo id … Those who havent ever used Flickr should try it .. You’ll love it …

Now I am really tired writing all the stuff .. I hope it will be usefull to you ……. .. Keep visiting . !

[HowTo] Restore your lost broadband password ..

This tutorial has its origin on a thread at Digit forum where a member asked if we can restore lost password from router. I decided to put my CCNA skills to use. And indeed after some adventures with ATMOS commands, I figured it out. So here it goes.

The problem this guy had was this: He had an Airtel connection and Huawei MT880 Adsl router. His ISP username and password is saved on the router and it gets connected when he turn on the router. Now he forgot his password and wanted to change it. And couldn’t because it was saved in the router. Using those asterisk removing utilities didn’t work too. So he was stuck there. Now if you have the same story, you could try this too :

You will need your router password to reset your ISP password. This is different from your ISP acount’s password. On most routers, the default username / password combination is admin/admin or admin/1234 . If you have changed your router password and forgot it too, then I cant help you. You can though reset router password with Reset slot in your router.
I’ll be using HyperTerminal for Telnet as it has got some nice functions. You can use other telnet utils too… So lets start:

Run HyperTerminal by Start > Programs > Accesories> Communications > HyperTerminal.
Enter any name for the Connection. Click on OK.
In the Connect Using combo box, select TCP/IP (WinSock) and enter 192.168.1.1 as Host address. (192.168.1.1 is usually your router’s address ). If you have customized your router’s ip address then enter the customized address. The Port Number 23 is fine, no need to change it. Click on Connect.
You will get a login prompt. Enter your router username and password here. If all goes allright you will get a prompt saying “Login Successful”.
Now on the console, type this:
console enable {Press Enter}
You’ll get a prompt like this:
Quantum>
Now on the prompt, type this:
Quantum> fm {Press Enter}
The prompt will change to Quantum fm>.
Now in HyperTerminal, click on Transfer > Capture Text. Enter a location to save the settings file. For example My Documents\mysettings.txt .
Click on Start. You will be back to the router prompt.
Now type this:
Quantum fm> cat im.conf {Press Enter}
This is quite a big file and it will take a while to list. Just wait until the listing is complete and you get back to the prompt.
Click on Transfer > Capture Text > Stop.
Now the tough part is over.
Type these commands on the console to quit telnet:
Quantum fm>home {Press Enter}
Quantum>exit {Press Enter}
>user logout {Press Enter}
Now you can quit HyperTerminal .

Now open the file we saved in Notepad and press Ctrl F.
Enter weLogin in the string to find.
And here you can see your ISP login details in clear text. 😛 …

I have tested this on Huawei MT880 and MT 882 routers. I cannot guarantee that they work on other routers too. But Atmos commands are usually same on all devices so they should work on other routers too.. And finally, you shouldn’t try it if you aren’t comfortable with command line usage. Don’t hold me accountable if you screwup doing things you shouldn’t be doing. Hope this helped… !

Yahoo Emoticons for MSN Messenger..

This is a long overdue post 😛 .. I was busy with CCNA and some other things so I could post it earlier.. Anyways, Here it is.

Being a Yahoo Messenger user for years, I am used to Yahoo Messenger emoticons. And after some of my friends decided to shift to MSN messenger, I had to become a regular on MSN Messenger too .. But I missed Yahoo’s emoticons. And add to it that MSN Messenger’s emoticon looks ugly to me. So I decided to utilize MSN Messenger’s Custom Emoticon feature to add Yahoo emoticons to MSN Messenger.
I have released it as a custom emoticon pack, and if you want to import Yahoo emoticons to MSN Messenger, you have two choices. The first is to manually copy and paste custom emoticons to your messenger folder OR Use MSN BackitUp. I’ll explain both methods one by one:

Method 1: Manual Copy Paste:
1. Download and extract the archive. You will get a folder called CustomEmoticons with around 80 .dat files. Right Click on the folder and select Copy.
2. Now in your Windows drive ( C: on most systems), navigate to Application Data folder. For ex: C:\Document & Settings \ YourUsernameOnTheComputer \Application Data\ Microsoft\ MSN Messenger\ ARandomNumberString\.
3. There may be more than one folders in your MSN Messenger directory if you have multiple MSN IDs on the same computer. You have to open the folder which corresponds to the ID that you wanna have Yahoo Emoticons.
4. Paste the CustomEmoticons folder here that you downloaded.
5. Run MSN Messenger .. 😛 .. You have YMSN Emoticons as your custom emoticons.
Do NOT use this method if you already have many custom emoticons as this may overwrite your existing Custom emoticons.
Method 2: Use MSN BackUp:
1. Download and extract the archive. Note that this one is different from the archive above.
2. Download and install MSN Backup. Its a great program to backup your MSN Messenger settings. We’ll use it to import custom emoticons.
3. Run the program and enter your MSN Id in the textbox given. You will need to be running MSN Messenger too.
4. In the right hand pane, navigate to the folder where you extracted the downloaded archive.
5. It will take a while to load all the custom emoticons. After they have loaded, Enable the checkbox next to Emoticons in the right side pane.
6. Click on the Install Objects button. The custom emoticons will be imported within in a minute.
7. You may get one or two errors and two or three emoticons out of total 82 wont be imported. (I have no idea why some of them does not get imported..)
Most emoticans use the same format as Yahoo Messenger but for some emoticons you will need to put an extra : to make them work. For example use ::| for 😐 .

I’ve tested it with Windows Live Messenger and I hope they work with previous version of MSN Messenger too. I hope you will like it. 🙂 …

And yeah .. These emoticons are copyrighted by Yahoo. So you should agree to their terms of use if you wanna use these emoticans. ….