Great Reunion

It was amazing to meet all the older folks from my old lab. Mouli, CK, Scott, Francis, they are known to me just by their name and their link to Takacs lab. I was pleasantly surprised tonight that how good they are in keeping the "touch". Yet another nice evening, after yesterday.

Materazzi is a bad guy! look for yourself.

This video clip came to my attention when I was searching for Wordpress. Check this out. Original post is here.

When the cowards will die?

Todays breaking news- the latest gift from the cowards, Mumbai blast. I am and I think most of the law abiding common people of the world are sick by now, by these stupid bunch of morons. I do not know who is gaining a penny by doing such an act of terrorism which takes the live of common people.
The picture I got from CNN-IBN network is really bad. At least 100 people are reportedly killed. I wud add atleast another 50 to the total, keeping in mind the utter failure of Indian government hospitals in treating wounded poor people.
Question may arise, why we, Indians, can not take any precautionary steps to stop these attacks. Act of terrorism is not very uncommon over the skyline of Mumbai. As you can see in this picture taken on March 13rd, 2003 blast scene, bomb blast is quite common in this part of the world. And the scene was even worse in the 1993 serial bomb blasts in the same city. 13 bombs were exploded to reap apart teh heart of Mumbai within a span of 75 minutes.
Kudos to the people of Mumbai who know how to fight back, even after seemingly nonfunctioning governmental security promises. I am pretty sure Mumbai will be back into its rythms by tomorrow morning. Our funny politicians will speak in length in morning edition news channels. However, nothing will be taken care of, when it comes to stop this type of attacks. Cann't we learn anything from NYC? Probably not! This is the country where almost every politician likes to raise his finger to others and basically do nothing else. Am I pessimistic? No, I am just speaking for the Indians as of now. Things may change, may be not. Who knows? Let's clean up the mess first.

test

test

So France lost!

Shame shame shame! Jiju, how did you do that? How can you act like a bull when we consider you as one of the best players of contemporary soccer?
So you left France without a player for the second half of the Final. And now, a man less in penalty shoot-out. God bless France.

Official Travel to India post

I think this question pops up in travels forum more than once in a week. Let's make it a consolidated thread for traveling to India only. So please keep all the deals and discussions to this single thread.

As a starter, I have compiled the names and phone numbers of desi agents I have
dealt with so far. Please keep adding your info under the quick edit section as
in a fresh thread.


Here is my info list:-

Mitra Travels
12375 Bissonnet St # 41, Houston, TX
(281) 530-3000

(excellent fare but service is very scary. You have to cross your finger for a
long time after paying for tickets, send my paper ticket by regular first-class
mail; ticket fare can be paid by credit card without any additional fees in most
cases)


Trade Wings Travel
2611 S 90th St, Omaha, NE
(402) 399-2004

(Usually gives very good rates from midwest, thru Northwest/KLM)


Vati Travels

Website

206 W College, STE #4,
Carbondale, IL 62901
vatitvl@poofaccess.com
Telephone: 618-549-9214
fax: 618-549-9215



Mudra Travels
6814 Gafford Dr
Columbus, OH 43229
Email: MudraTravels@yahoo.com
FatWallet PM: PatelFromIndia



(excellent service, and CHEAP. In most cases payment can be made by credit card)


List of agents I have not dealt with:-

Alanita Travels

Website

87 Common Street
Watertown, MA 02472
Tel: 617.254.8045
Fax: 617.923.4821



One of the highly recommended agents. You can contact them by email but a quick
phone call is teh best way to communicate.


Highfly travels

Website

1897 Woodbridge Ave., Suite 10
Edison, NJ 08817
Tel: 732 985 5855



A-ONE TOURS & TRAVELS (unprofessional, at least in my experience)
2341 W. Devon Ave,
Chicago, IL 60659
Ph 773-274-6969
Fax 773-274-2898



http://skymastertravels.com

One Irving Plaza

415 E Airport Freeway
Suite# 380, Irving TX 75062
(972) 256-2200
(972) 252-4454



Another big travel agency specialized in India/Pakistan tours. According to many
posters here, they are as good as Alanita, but once again I don not have
personal experience.



Fly4less

Website

Globetravels

Website

Makemytrip

Website

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Black listed agents

1. Azure Travel Bureau Inc., contact name, Mr. Ravi Kohli .

47 West, 34th. Street, Suite # 409,

New York, NY 10001 Ph : (212) 239 1999

Number of complaint#1 from user dluxarun

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Best time to travel

Here is what I found from Alanita's website about seasonal fares:-


Jan 17 2005 to May 08 2006 (Low Fare) May 09 2006 to May 31 2006
(Medium Fare)

Jun 1 2006 to Jul 12 2006(High Fare) Jul 13 2006 to Dec 10 2006
(Medium Fare)

Dec 11 2006 to Dec 27 2006 (High Fare) Dec 28 2006 to May 08 2007(Low
Fare)

The fare database above is approximately followed by other airlines too.



Another detailed pricing trend from fly4less:-



USA to India Travel pattern What's happening Suggest booking

------------ -------------- ---------------- ---------------

01Jan - 15Jan =========== Overspill from winter holidays by mid Nov

16Jan - 31Jan ======== Slowing down by mid Dec

01Feb - 15Apr ====== Slow Jan onwards

16Apr - 10May ========= Pre summer travel picks up Feb onwards

11May - 31May ========== Start of Summer Holiday rush Feb onwards

01Jun - 10Jun ============ Summer rush picks up before Mar end

11Jun - 15Jul ============ Peak summer travel before Mar end

16Jul - 31Jul ========== Continuing Apr onwards

01Aug - 15Aug ======= Slowing down May onwards

16Aug - 31Aug ===== Slow Jun onwards

01Sep - 15Sep === Low fare rush May onwards

16Sep - 10Oct ===== Slow Jun onwards

11Oct - 15Nov ========== Diwali travel Jul onwards

16Nov - 30Nov ============ Thanksgiving Holidays travel Jul onwards

01Dec - 10Dec ============== Low fare rush before mid Jun

11Dec - 15Dec ============== Winter Holidays rush begins before mid Jun

16Dec - 24Dec ========= Peak winter travel before mid Jun

25Dec - 31Dec ===== Low fare rush before Jun end



India to USA Travel pattern What's happening Suggest booking

------------ -------------- ---------------- ---------------

20Aug - 08Sep ============= Peak summer return travel by mid Mar

20Dec - 10Jan ============= Peak winter return travel before mid Jun





Also, please post your itinerary and paid $$$$ for the plane fare so we can have
a good idea of the current fares/promotions.








Old travel agents review/contact links. Some phone number may not
necessarily work since the list was from 1998.



Following tips were collected from quick editors. Thanks for the effort.



# ALWAYS call various airlines directly for pricing. I check United, AirFrance,

Delta, Lufthansa and British Airways. I have always been able to find the
best fares via their phone centers. Most airlines let you "hold" a reservation
for 2-3 days. If you plan to do multicity/open jaw or want to stay for a few
days in Europe on the way to/from India, you need to call. For simple round
trips online works fine too to avoid the "handling fee"



# Hold a reservation first at the lowest price you can get through an airline
directly and then go about fare shopping at various travel agents. It costs
nothing to hold a reservation with an airline directly



# Be prepared for low to no service from travel agents who give you a rock
bottom price. You chose low price over service so no complainin' or cryin'



# Be prepared for airlines to NOT help for all agent booked flights. All
requests for changes et al must come from the travel agency, the rationale being
that airlines have already paid a commission to the travel agent and the agent
is supposed to take care of you. Since to give you a rock bottom price the agent
must have shared part of that commission with you, do not expect to get fast and
courteous service



# Do not forget to use your frequent flyer number to get miles. Check to see if
different airlines are partners. e.g. if fying British Airways, provide a united
frequent flyer number if all your existing miles are with United and vice versa



# Just want to add that the reason airlines will refer back to your travel agent
is that the low consolidator fares come with their own contract clauses, like
chage fee, one free change allowed, cancellation fee. Sometimes going through a
travel agent will allow for a free date change but not if you go through the
airline directly. Especially true if you are booking travel from India to US.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRAVEL THRU UK MAY REQUIRE A VISA, SO DOUBLE CHECK WITH TRAVEL AGENT/BA
WEBSITE IF YOU FALL UNDER SUCH CATEGORY

As per FWer WHsung,

" In my application, I was required to send the itinerary which clearly stated
the dates I would be traveling through LGW (Sep 2 and Oct 9). I also included a
cover letter that stated the travel dates.

I applied on June 15. When my transit visa came, I noticed that it was valid
only from June 15 through Sep 15 making my return through LGW impossible!!! The
person at the UK embassy, I guess, forgot to read my itinerary and also my cover
letter!

So I had to call the UK embassy support and was charged $2.10 /minute
(see this http://www.britainusa.com/visas/articles_show.asp?i=65021&L1=41000)

I was told to send back my passport and finally they issued me a visa valid for
1 year.

It was frustrating time...

So just as a warning, if you have to apply for a UK visa (if you need it that
is), make sure you use a highlighter to mark the dates!For December Travel for
Students:- according to PFI,

After speaking with students from different states, I realize that if students are planning to go India in DEC they are going to be in awkward situation because their exams ends on around 12th DEC. and they will have ONLY 13th or 14th DEC to travel to stay away from hammer of high peak season from 15th DEC, this hammer is $300 to $400 heavy. So what can be done?



(1) Below is list of Airlines which has cut of date on 14th Dec. I will keep
updating this list. Remember, for some airlines cut of date is 8th or 9th
DEC. so I am not going to mention it here as exam date is around 12th DEC,
which does not allow to catch early cut of dates flights..



Korean Airlines (from West Coast)

Sri Lanka Airlines (from West Coast side, and gives Student Discount)

Air France (No chance for seat)

Lufthansa (No chance for seat)

Malaysia Airlines (not confirmed)



(2) Even though, you see above airlines, do not think that you will easily get
seat becuase those airlines which has chance to get seat are code sharing with
other domestic airlines and getting seat in domestic airlines is also an issue.
so summery is: hurry up.



(3) If you think that you are not able to catch flight on 13th DEC or 14th DEC,
then start collecting extra money from today or you can go after 24th Dec.



(4) Above, those airlines which has chance to get seat, does not hold
reservation for long time so make-up your mind and Jump.

---------------

Additional Detail:



- Air-India (Peak Season: 8th Dec. to 23rd Dec.)

- American Airlines (Peak Season: 14h Dec to 24th Dec.)

- Singapore Airlines (Peak Season: 6th Dec to 23rd Dec.)"

Performance of PQI 100X 4GB compact flash card.

We had a long standing debate about the quality of PQI high speed cards and several self proclaimed nerds reported it as a slower card compared to even 50X Kingston pro seriese cards.
Anyway, I recently came accross a 4Gb 100X PQI card and tested them side by side Sandisk Ultra II 1GB.
The speed of these drives were measured using a self-powered USB 2.0 card reader. In both cases, the cards were formatted thru PC before testing. I used Radkill's Disk Speed program to get a rough idea.
The screenshot on top, was from PQI, while that on the bottom was from Sandisk. According to my testbed, PQI and Sandisk UT2 has almost similar linear read speed rate, but PQI beat Sandisk to ground in random read speed test. I have check the speed of Kingston elite pro card, but teh read speed was significantly lower in both tests.
In real shooting mode, I am yet to discover any speed difference between PQI and Sandisk UT2.

A man with a real tail

The latest from the land of obscurity, this time a man with a tail. Mr. Oram is worshipped by locals as The GOD, but he is yet to find a real match, according to a news report by PTI. Full story is here.

Enjoy!

World's fastes processor

Here comes teh news today that IBM/Georgia Tech Univ developed a Si-Ge based chip that is as fast as 500GHz! The whopping number is actually so fast that we, the regular PC users can not even imagine. Read the full story here.

The most versatile copycat bird

I came accross this link from on eof th ephotog sites today. Watch the video and see the the best copycat bird I have ever seen. thank got, there is not copyright law in bird kingdom.

Wengo Phone

Ever heard about calling your loved ones in India for almost free ? Well, that almost came true last week when people got in th ebandwagon of Wengo, a VOIP provider from France. The voice quality was (yes, teh service is down from yesterday) top notch. As of now, no one knows if it wil be up again and/or we will be reimbursed for our 13 bucks.

ABC of mutual fund investing

Volatility

Modern Portfolio Theory is an investment approach that explores how investors can design portfolios to seek the best potential return for an assumed level of portfolio risk. The theory also quantifies the benefits of asset allocation, which is the practice of seeking to reduce investment risk by strategically dividing assets among several different asset classes. The asset allocation process starts by considering time horizon, return objectives and risk tolerance. Though asset allocation cannot eliminate investment risk or losses, it may provide opportunities to lessen a portfolio's volatility.

Using a number of statistical measures, an investor can use modern portfolio theory to classify or estimate the amount of assumed risk and potential reward in a portfolio. The statistics provided in the Mutual Fund Center are based on the fund's performance over the time periods noted.

Alpha
Measures the difference between a fund's actual returns and its expected performance, given its level of risk (as measured by Beta). Alpha combines the volatility the fund's price has experienced relative to the market and the returns the fund has generated relative to the market, to define the "excessive risk" of the fund. A negative Alpha means a fund has underperformed its index relative to how much volatility has been shown.

Beta
Measures the fund's sensitivity to market movements. A portfolio with a Beta greater than 1.00 is more volatile than the market, and a portfolio with a Beta less than 1.00 is less volatile than the market. Therefore, the higher the Beta, the more sharply the fund's price has moved in relation to the market's movement.

Standard Deviation
A statistical measure of the volatility of the fund's returns. The higher the fund's standard deviation, the greater its volatility has been.

Sharpe Ratio
A measure that uses the standard deviation and excess return to determine reward per unit of risk. The Sharpe Ratio is a measurement of risk-adjusted performance calculated by dividing the excess return of a portfolio above the risk-free rate by its standard deviation. High values indicate greater return per unit of risk.

R-squared
A measure that reflects the percentage of a fund's movements that are explained by movements in its benchmark index, showing the degree of correlation between the fund and the benchmark. R-squared measures how closely correlated the fund's performance was to the index. The higher the R-squared statistic (out of a possible 100), the more relevant the Alpha and Beta figures may be.
(courtsey, Wellsfargo bank)

linksys Pap2 dialing plan: Mystry resolved

Dial plans can be a bit tricky to master at first, but offer great flexibility when you understand them. Here is an explanation of the sipura spa dial plan structure, and sample dial plans.

Common notations
() opening and closing brackets - the entire dial plan string is enclosed in brackets.
| each dial plan is separated from the next by the pipe |, but the first and last part of the dial plan only have an opening and closing bracket respectively.

The dial plan can include specific individual keys 0 to 9 (inclusive), * and #
x any numeric digit from 0 to 9
. repetition eg x. means any numeric digit (x) repeated 0 or more times.

Other things:
Substitution: replace 03 with 613 by writing <03:613>

Outside line: inset a comma , between digits for an outside line dial tone eg 9,03xxxxxxxx means dial 9 then you will get an outside dial tone until you press 0.

Barring numbers: put a ! at the end of a sequence to prevent it being dialed.

Immediate dial S0 - (capital S zero) immediately dial the numbers after you've matched the dial plan sequence. For example: 000S0

Gateways Spa 3k only: dial out through a gateway by adding <:@gw1> to the dial plan for gateway 1; or <:@gw0> for gateway 0 (PSTN) etc

Limited choice 1 If your dial plan contains [579]xxx then it will match with any four digit sequence starting with either 5, 7 or 9

Limited choice 2 If your dial plan contains [5-9]xxx then it will match with any four digit sequence starting with either 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9

Simple dial plan:
(000S0<:@gw0>|<#9:>xx.<­ :@gw0>|<0:61>xxxxxxxxx|<­ :613>xxxxxxxx|<:03>[23567­ ]xxxxxxx<:@gw2>)

Explanation:
000S0<:@gw0> This will dial 000 by the PSTN gateway (Spa3k only) immediately after you've pressed the third zero.

<#9:>xx.<:@gw0> You dial #9 then any phone number and it will dial the phone number through the PSTN gateway (over the POTS line) - Spa3k only

<0:61>xxxxxxxxx You dial, for example, 02 9678 5555 and the unit will convert this to 612 9678 5555 and dial out over Line 1 (voip)

<:613>xxxxxxxx You dial, for example, 9678 5555 and the unit will convert this to 613 9678 5555 and dial out over Line 1 (voip).

<:03>[23567]xxxxxxx<:@gw2>­ (Spa3k only) You dial, for example 5678 5678 and the unit will convert this to 03 5678 5678 and dial out through gateway 2 (which you will have set up with another provider). This sequence will only match when you dial a number that starts with either 2,3,5,6 or 7.

A more complex dial plan
(000S0<:@gw0>|<#9:>xx.<­ :@gw0>|<0:61>[23][89? ]xxxxxxx|<:613>[89]xxxxxxx|<­ 026:6126>[12]xxxxxxx|<073:6173>­ xxxxxxx|<08:618>[67]xxxxxxx|<­ 088:6188>[1-4]xxxxxx|<089:6189>­ [2-4]xxxxxx|<04:614>xxxxxxxx|<­ 0011:>xx.|<1800:611800>xx.|<­ 13:6113>xx.|89[89]060xx.|<:03>­ [23567]xxxxxxx<:@gw2>|0[2378­ ][2-7]xxxxxxx<:@gw2>|<#2:>­ xx.<:<@gw2>|<060:0661>­ ? xxxxxxxxx|<06:06613>xxxxxxxx|<­ 090:0961>xxxxxxxxx|<09:09613>­ xxxxxxxx|<090011:>xx.|<#1­ 13:0516113>xx.<:@gw1>|<­ #10:05161>xx? xxxxxxxS0<:@gw1|<#1:051613>­ ? [5-9]xxxxxxxS0<:@gw1)