Rahul Jose me@rahuljose.com

printf("goodbye, Dennis");

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 20:04:33 +0530

Negative Reviews

Sun, 08 May 2011 12:41:00 +0530

Recently I encountered two situations where in spite of the huge number of negative reviews surrounding the companies, the outcome of my interactions with the companies were surprisingly positive.

Case 1-

When I bought my ViewSonic Monitor there were a lot of customer feedback on online forums frequented by me that the customer service was terrible and there were huge delays in case of RMA situations. Anyway I really wanted the monitor badly and getting a 22” monitor and a 3Year warranty sounded too good to me so I went ahead despite the warnings.

Fast Forward 2 years 6 Months ahead and the monitor started developing problems due to bad capacitors which are explained in this link which I had posted a long time back also a lot of other people have encountered the same and there is even a kit to replace all the capacitors in the monitor on eBay for the adventurous.

So before going to fix the capacitors myself I decided to give the customer support a shot I called them up and explained the situation,they came and replaced some parts and the monitor was up and running like before. A few days later some lines started appearing on the monitor again a call was placed and they came and replaced the monitor with a newer model.

So thank you ViewSonic for pleasantly surprising me with your promptness in customer support.

Case 2-

Another incident which happened recently involved 20North , one of my bookmarked deals and coupons site (note to self stop visiting these I am not saving money according to my bank statement) turned up a coupon for 20North which basically lets you shop for products from the US. I am huge fan of hybrid watches and this watch from Casio caught my attention.

Again my due diligence(after getting the coupon :) ) survey turned up a lot of negative reviews for 20North even typing 20North auto completes to 20North scam on Google, since I already had a coupon I decided to screw it and see what happens and placed an order for the watch. The order went through and I was able to track the progress on the site I had the watch on my wrist well before their guaranteed time. Good Job 20North.

I think sites like these are a good option if you are tired of your pestering your cousins and friends to get stuff from abroad when they come. Labnol had a recent post with detailed information on choices available.

Lending Libraries in Bangalore

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 21:27:35 +0530

Well recently I saw a “Deal” on Snapdeal.com for a trial subscription to JustBooks, which is a prominent Lending Library in Bangalore.The deal offers unlimited books for a period of one month one at a time for Rs150 ,this in comparison to Eloor Libraries plan of taking 1 book at 10% of the price of the book seemed too good to be true.Also the hassle of commuting to Infantry Road could be avoided since this place happens to be on the way to work.

The collection seems to be pretty good most of the talked about books are there in ample quantity.If they don’t have a book at the current location they can get you book from the other branches through an online ordering system available on their website.

All in all seems to be a be a good deal.

Video

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 13:07:13 +0530

Video

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 01:31:51 +0530

House Boat trip- Alappuzha,Kerala One of the photos features a...

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:14:00 +0530

Backwaters Kerala

Snake Boat

Trailboard of the House Boat I was on.

House Boat trip- Alappuzha,Kerala

One of the photos features a snake boat from the famous snake boat races which was a held a day earlier.

Slow and long days.

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 22:50:54 +0530

Slow and long days.

Metro Rail Construction @MG Road PS:- Did a bad job at editing...

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:54:00 +0530

Metro Rail Construction @MG Road

PS:- Did a bad job at editing the flash reflection on the glass window.

A view from the 13th Floor Barton Centre MG Road

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:52:31 +0530

A view from the 13th Floor Barton Centre MG Road

Think You're Operating on Free Will? Think Again

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:41:59 +0530

Think You're Operating on Free Will? Think Again

Formal Credentials vs Experience-based Education

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:40:15 +0530

Formal Credentials vs Experience-based Education

RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates...

Sat, 29 May 2010 18:44:06 +0530

RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

via XKCD

Sat, 29 May 2010 18:38:42 +0530

via XKCD

A few photos from my recent trip to Punjab,Delhi,Chandigarh and...

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 10:43:00 +0530

Entrance to Rock Garden,Chandigarh

All the exhibits made from Scrap

One of the exhibits at Rock Garden

One more (Picasa wanted to tag the face)

Pine Cone at Kasauli

Kasauli,Solan Himachal Pradesh

A few photos from my recent trip to Punjab,Delhi,Chandigarh and Himachal Pradesh(not in that order)

A new kind of voulme control

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:10:24 +0530

A new kind of voulme control:

HTML 5 Rocks!! Awesome Stuff.

PS:- On a side note almost 1 month since the last post that doesn’t sound like the original plan to do one every fortnight.Well life what can one say.

So True!! via xkcd

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:32:04 +0530

So True!! via xkcd

An indepth look into microSD card fakes(Very interesting read)

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:53:00 +0530

An indepth look into microSD card fakes(Very interesting read):

via Sparkfun

I was initially planning to get a microSD card for my NAS but I think a 2.5” HDD makes more sense in terms of Price per GB.

Sparkfun Free Day:- Sadly wasn’t able to snag anything for...

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:55:00 +0530

My Sparkfun Shopping Cart

The Action on IRC

Another one from IRC

Sparkfun Free Day:-

Sadly wasn’t able to snag anything for free,even the new servers weren’t able to deal with the number of people trying to get things for free.Was really looking forward to getting a free arduino and a few other components(look at the pic).I did take away a few pointers from the whole episode.

Reinforced my awe for the power of free-people were awake at all kinds of ungodly hours(across the world)to take advantage of the free day.The IRC server had more users on the sparkfun channel than the Ubuntu and Debian channels.
Offering stuff for free probably is not the best way to make friends.Best summed up by a comment I read somewhere which went something like this “they probably made a 1000 friends and a lot more enemies”

Well my Arduino controlled Christmas Lights will have to wait till I have some money in my pocket.All said and done really loved the initiative by Sparkfun you really can’t blame them,would love to do business with them in the future.

The most interesting thing is that according to one of the sparkfun employees Free Day paid for itself within a few hours that’s huge.

This post has been in the draft for quite a while(been out of town) but there has been an interesting update an Indian website tried emulating the same free day approach but offered around 500Rs or 10USD worth of free stuff from the website though they did not have an Arduino Board I was able to snag a Breadboard,IR Sensor,IR LED’s and an alphanumeric display which I want to use in a future project.They actually called and confirmed the order with me I was pretty impressed by the Customer Support.So here’s a hat tip to them and a link to their website if you are into robotics you should find the place pretty interesting.

via Indexed First seen here at this very interesting...

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:37:00 +0530

via Indexed

First seen here at this very interesting post.

Wishing everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year,2010 its got a nice ring to it Twenty Ten Sounds right for a Sci-Fi flick.

The Capacitor Plague

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:00:50 +0530

The Capacitor Plague:

Very well researched post should be interesting to people willing to pick up soldering irons to fix things to get some more mileage out of their gadgets and gizmo’s.