Bhavish B

Dream A Dream

Bhavish — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:10:30 +0000

11-Oct-2011 : Today was an interesting day and will be one of the most cherished moments of my life. Our company had invited 30 gifted children from Center for Social Action, Christ College (CSA) a part of Dream A Dream (http://www.dreamadream.org/) organization. Our whole IT team had organized a Potluck lunch and Color A Tshirt event for these kids. The whole exercise was to get know these kids, understand them and make them realize their dreams. So by 12:15 we saw a stream of kids with enthusiasm enter our office floor and headed towards Pantry where we had arranged a variety of lunch and served them. The naughty ones opened up very quickly and asked for more sweets and food while the rest enjoyed their lunch. Next up the volunteers from Dream a Dream and CSA showed us a 10 minute video clip describing about their voluntary work and their involvement with the kids for a brighter future. Then we had to pair up with a kid and do a quick round of introduction and then get involved in painting a TREE of their dreams. I got a chance to know a silent 10 year old kid “Deepa” who had a very clear dream of becoming a teacher and helping kids learn the basics. She also had a dream of owning a “Scooty” by her own earnings and teach dance in her spare time. I was rather dumb stuck for a minute on the stuffs she had planned for life. Believe me if you had asked the same question when I was 10, I would have said playing cricket/football after school. I had never thought of becoming a software engineer at the age of 10. To incorporate all her dreams in the form of TREE, she wrote her parents, sister and brothers names as the root, she portrayed herself as the trunk of the tree and the leaves were the dreams. It was quite a painting she had done in an hour. By the end of the day all the kids had their painting done with the help of their volunteers and portrayed them. Some of their ideas were so bright, brilliant and innovative. One of the kid wanted to join military and serve our country so he drew a military man holding a gun on top as the trunk of the tree and Sun on the top explaining the sun rays (blessings of his wellbeing) as the power to achieve his dream. Another kid had drawn a tree and below it had a building with a banner “Welcome to Bharath’s Clinic”. There were some brilliant paintings and ideas which were shared by the kids. Hope these kids remember this day and achieve their dreams. A small help from our side would make someone happy then I would certainly be a part of this and want to do more. This quote by Winston Churchill ends a perfect day.
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”- Winston Churchill

Cyanogenmod on Desire HD

Bhavish — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 06:35:34 +0000

Its been almost 10 months since I got my hands on HTC Desire HD phone and had got a decent update to 2.3 from HTC site. But the only issue was the battery hogging HTC Sense and apps like stocks, weather eating my battery and 3G data. Who cares about the weather in bangalore? Just go out and enjoy the sun / rains..

Ok coming back to rooting the phone.. It just took me few google searches to decide the best custom rom in android market was cyanogenmod. For more info of custom roms visit – http://www.cyanogenmod.com/. To install the custom rom’s you need root access to your phone. HTC provides boot loader for certain phones (http://htcdev.com/bootloader) but I was not going to wait for them to release for my desire HD. So decided to take a risk, void my warranty and go ahead with unlocking the phone.

Warning: Please note you are doing this at your own risk! There is a high chance that this might damage your device, or make it inoperable.

THIS GUIDE IS PURELY FOR EDUCATION

What you need :

HTC Sync (or ADB drivers)
Desire HD with build number 1.72 or higher (would be downgraded to 1.32)
Make sure the battery is fully charged
HxD Hex Editor.
stock 1.32 PD98IMG.zip
Downgrade folder
File Manager
Easy Radio tool.
CyanogenMod Desire HD 7.03
CyanogenMod Google Apps

Firstly is to create a GoldCard SD card. By doing so you wont be getting the “CID Incorrect” error message while unlocking in the next step.

Procedure

Go to android market and search for GoldCard Helper and install it on your phone.
Run the app and note down Card:mmc2, Reverse CID’ value, making sure to use mmc2 and not mmc1.
Go to http://psas.revskills.de/?q=goldcard site and paste your reverse CID number along with your personal mail address.
Check you mailbox and download the goldcard image to your computer.
Launch HxD hex editor on your computer by right-clicking it and clicking ‘Run as Administrator’.
Mount your SD card to your computer, using your phone.
Go to ‘Extra’ menu > ‘Open Disk’.
Select Removable Disk (which should be your SD card) under Physical Disk (and NOT logical disk), uncheck ‘Open as Readonly’ and click OK.
Go to the ‘Extra’ > ‘Open Disk Image’ and open the goldcard image downloaded in Step 5.
Select ’512 (Hard disks/Floppy disks)’ as the sector size when prompted and click ‘OK’.
In the goldcard image tab, go to ‘Edit’ > ‘Select All’ and then ‘Edit’ >’Copy’.
In the ‘Removable Disk’ tab, highlight offset (line) 00000000 to offset (line) 00000170 including the 00000170 line and go to ’Edit’ menu > ‘Paste Write’.
Click ‘File’ > ‘Save’ and accept any warning that you get.

Now that your SD card is ready for downgrading. Follow the procedure to downgrade to 1.32

Download the attached file from here (right click to save file as)
Extract the file to reveal a downgrade folder and copy it onto your C drive
Download this file stock 1.32 PD98IMG.zip
Connect Desire HD to a computer. Charge only, USB Debugging enabled!
Open Command prompt and navigate to the downgrade folder
If you placed the downgrade folder in your c: drive type in cd/Downgrade
It should show C:\Downgrade>
Carefully type in the following commands one by one

adb push psneuter /data/local/tmp

adb push misc_version /data/local/tmp

adb shell chmod 777 /data/local/tmp/psneuter

adb shell chmod 777 /data/local/tmp/misc_version

adb shell /data/local/tmp/psneuter

adb shell

NOTE: You should have the “#” sign instead of the “$”. If you do, you have temporary root, and can continue on.

/data/local/tmp/misc_version -s 1.31.405.3

If you did not get root access then follow these commands :

adb push misc_version /data/local/tmp

adb push fre3vo /data/local/tmp

adb shell chmod 777 /data/local/tmp/fre3vo

adb shell chmod 777 /data/local/tmp/misc_version

adb shell

./data/local/tmp/fre3vo -debug -start FBB00000 -end FFFFFFFF

cd /data/local/tmp

./misc_version -s 1.31.405.6

Copy PD98IMG.zip to your SD card. Don’t extract it and don’t rename the ZIP file.
On the computer, open terminal and run the following command:.

adb reboot bootloader

Use Volume up/down keys on the HTC Desire HD for navigation and Power key for confirmation. Select Fastboot to flash the 1.32.405.6 firmware.

Wait now till the downgrade is complete. Next step is to unlock the phone and gain root access. To root the phone we need visionary software and it is placed in the downgrade folder. File : com.modaco.visionaryplus.r14.apk. Copy this file onto your phone and run this apk file using File Manager or any software of your choice which can run apk files. Once the visionary is running follow these steps :

Check “Set system r/w after root”
click Temproot now wait patiently till it finishes.
once you have successfully Temprooted
Click PermRoot the device and wait for it to restart the Device.

Once you are done you have root access to your phone. The next step is to S-off the device.

Open the the Desire hd radio tool.
Select Radio S-Off and run it!!

Now you have an android 2.2 build 2.32 phone with root access which is ready for installation of custom roms

Installing CyanogenMod (copied from cyanogens mode site)

Download the latest version of CyanogenMod.
Optional: Download the Google Apps for the device.
Place the CyanogenMod update.zip file on the root of the SD card.
Optional: Place the Google Apps .zip on the root of the SD card also.
Boot into the ClockworkMod Recovery using visionary tool.
Once the device boots into the ClockworkMod Recovery, use the side volume buttons to move around.
Optional: Select backup and restore to create a backup of current installation
Select the option to Wipe data/factory reset.
Select the option to Wipe cache partition.
Select Install zip from sdcard.
Select Choose zip from sdcard.
Select the CyanogenMod update.zip.

Optional: Install the Google Apps by performing steps 7 – 9 again and choosing the Google Apps update.zip.

Once the installation has finished, select +++++Go Back+++++ to get back to the main menu, and select the Reboot system now option. The HTC Desire HD should now boot into CyanogenMod.

Enjoy the new features for cyonogenmod and complete access of your phone.

Basaralu

Bhavish — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 06:52:57 +0000

June 18th: Sachin had his new swift and wanted a long drive on Mysore road, so we decided to head towards Basaralu, as it was near 100+ km and the roads would be empty after Maddur. We started by 11 (a very late start to our trip) packing ourselves with BisiBeleBath, Chips, and 6 ltrs of water. There are 2 ways to approach : 1 through Mandya and the other is through maddur. We decided to go with Maddur route and it was the best route with trees, rice fields on either side and the drive through villages was the best. We had our packed lunch near well and headed towards Sri.Mallikarjuna, Basaralu (History : This temple was built by Harihara nayaka. He was Dandanayaka (in charge of armies) under the Hoysala King Imadi Narashima. The temple was built in the year 1235 AD for deity in the name of his father “Malikarjuna” and a kalyani (Tank) in the name of his mother “Gujjave“) A Hoysala architecture sight at its best. Sadly but true, places like these are much less talked about and appreciated. Thou not preserved as much as Belur, places like these are a pride to our state. It is a true representation of our rich culture, heritage and a fine example of architecture of the olden days. The skill and patience involved in building such masterpieces is just unimaginable. On route back to home we stopped by a stream of water flowing through the paddy fields, played there for few minutes.

Route : Uttarahalli → Maddur→ Turn right to reach Koppa → Basarulu→ Back home
Total trip distance – 228 km
Mode of transport – Swift
Excellent roads for the major part of the trip.

Kurudumale & Aavni

Bhavish — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:32:00 +0000

June 13th : It had been quite a while since the last trip and I had a new stereo system fitted and with all new songs in my pen drive we headed towards NH4. Yeah it was the first time we did not hit the Mysore road or Tumkur road. It was my first time I had to go though the city and reach NH4. So to avoid traffic we started from home by 7 and by 8 we were on Hebbal flyover taking right to head towards kolar. The roads after you cross bangalore were excellent but there were constant 2 wheelers moving in opposite direction and on the right most side of the road. I had to brake quite a few times to slow down and break the speed limit to 140. Heading straight we skipped kolar city and headed towards Mulbagal. On reaching mulbagal we took a left turn to reach Kurudumale. It was a nice slow 10km driving through tomato & mango fields. Kurudumale is famous for the Lord Ganesha temple built by Vijayanagar rulers. The Ganesha is 13 feet tall and is a beautiful idol, sadly though we were not allowed to take any snaps. After few cliques we headed towards Aavni. Avani has a wonderful complex of of Ramalingeshwara temples all within one courtyard dedicated to Lakshmana, Bharata and Shatrugna. On the hill Agni Tirtha, a pond, and the Ekantha Ramaswamy Temple are also seen. Since navya had not climbed the hill the last time, she was more than excited to reach the top in spite of the sun beating down . We took few stops and a Monkey to drive us to top. The monkey followed us till the top and was behind us till we gave up and threw a packet of cake to it. Persistence pays guys even monkeys know.. Took a small break on top and started our decent down, had our lunch in coffee day as were too tired and hungry to go 10km to Uddis and by 5 we were back home.

Route : Uttarahalli → Kolar→ Mulbagal→ Turn left to Kurudumale → Come back to NH4 → En-route to kolar → Turn left to Aavni → Back home
Total trip distance – 285 km
Top Speed – 140 kmph
Mode of transport – Swift
Excellent roads all the way.

Mahadevpura & Karighatta

Bhavish — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 13:07:50 +0000

22nd April : A long weekend and all the tourist spots around Bangalore were over booked. There was no point checking out places where we had to stay overnight, so we decided to go towards Mahadevpura & Karighatta and come back home.. We packed ourselves and with proper clothing to play in water and left bangalore by 8 thinking majority of the traffic would have left. But we were wrong.. Crossing Kengeri, it was bumper to bumper traffic till Ramnagara. All the hotels on Mysore road were over filled by ongoing passengers and there was no point in wasting time standing in queue to get a table. So we decided to go forward and stop in KADAMBAM.. A small restaurant with tasty Puliyogare, Sihi and khara pongal. The rush was manageable there and we decided to pack our lunch as well there. We continued after having heavy breakfast towards Karighatta. Just before you reach Srirangapatna, you need to take a deviation towards left to reach Karighatta. The hill has a temple devoted to Vishnu, called “Karigirivasa”. A small river, Lokapavani, a tributary of Kaveri flows by the hill. You can reach the top by driving till the top in your car or by climbing the steps. I would prefer the steps as the view is very scenic and a good exercise as well After a short stop at the temple we headed towards Mahadevpura.. Mahadevpura, a small village where kavery river flows by and many movies have been shot here (Aaptamitra). We reached there by 2 and we headed towards water to play. The place was totally empty and we could enjoy ourselves in peace. After an hour in water, we got out and had our packed puliyogare and headed back home. The drive back was very calm as there were only few cars heading to bangalore and my speeds were touching 150 when my wife was dozing.. In short a very relaxing trip.

Route : Uttarahalli → Mysore Road →Ramnagar → Mandya → Turn left just before Srirangapatna→ Karighatta → Mahadevpura → Back home
Total trip distance ~ 280 km
Top Speed – 150 kmph
Mode of transport – Swift
Google Map Location (Karighatta, Mahadevpura)
Nice roads all the way.. Best time to visit : Summer.

Tannur Kere

Bhavish — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 10:29:38 +0000

Bangalore summer has come and sitting in home doing nothing on a sunday.. hmm don’t waste your time head out to lakes near bangalore.. To cool ourselves we headed towards Tannur lake, a beautiful fresh water lake surrounded by hillrocks and a stream of water heading towards village where everyone could play. Swimmers be careful as the actual depth of the lake is not yet found. We explored few places near the lake and found a beautiful spot where no one was around. Relaxed for an hour and then headed back home..

Route : Uttarahalli → Mysore Road →Ramnagar → Mandya → Turn Right towards Melkote → Turn left near Mahadeshpura (not sure if the name is correct but need to take left. Ask some one if you are in doubt) → Tannur Kere → Back home
Total trip distance ~ 280 km
Top Speed – 150 kmph
Mode of transport – Swift
Google Map Location
Few patchy roads once you take a deviation from Mysore road but very scenic.

Android on VM.

Bhavish — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 10:01:04 +0000

The only thing which was missing in my gadget collection was an android phone. I wanted to explore the features of android OS before buying a phone. After Googling for 10 minutes, I landed on android-x86. Downloaded the 2.2 generic version of the iso file and installed it on VMware Workstation. Got the android home screen in 5 minutes. Connected my laptop to wifi setting and started to use all the features. After playing with it for few minutes i was pretty much impressed with android. Here are some of the screen shot i captured while i was working on android-x86.

If anyone is interested on trying this, let me know. Ill upload the vmx file onto some shared folder so you can also try it out.

Irpu falls.

Bhavish — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 05:00:32 +0000

Weekend was approaching and Girish after buying his swift had not gone on a long drive. After googling for 10 minutes we decided that IRPU falls as our destination. The total ride would be around 680km and i guessed Giri would not be comfortable driving that distance in a day. So we started digging hotels to stop @ night and the one which caught my eye was http://www.coorgguesthouse.com. We called them @ 11 in the night and confirmed that 6 of us were coming the next day for a night stay. Our plan was to leave by 2:30 reach the hotel and have fun, next day go on a safari ride , Irpu falls and head back home.

12th Feb 2011.

By 2 my wife had come from college and Giri with his wife had come to my place. Sachin was as usual late and giving excuses and blamed it on Neha. By 3 we decided to leave and i was thinking that can 6 guys sit in swift. It was a bit cramped up at the back but we decided to go in one car and enjoy the drive. We reached Sri mangala our pitstop for the night by 9. Had good vegetarian food and played some darts. Got bored of it immediately and we started off playing bluff..

13th Feb 2011.

We started early in the morning for a drive in search of deers and bison. We were not disappointed as we found few herds of deer and a huge solo bison. We came back had breakfast and started towards IRPU falls. The roads after hunsur road are bad but a very scenic. On reaching falls we had to pay for entrance fee and parking which get donated to a temple (The receipt said that but not sure how much would go for a temple ). The falls was a very neat and nice place in between jungle. The water was freezing cold and we all took turns to get wet. I got a chance to clique some funny pics with freezing water on their faces after few snaps and playing in water we headed back to the hotel, refreshed ourselves with hot water bath and some nice food and checked out hotel by 3. The drive back was as usual busy and it never looked like an highway on mysore road after 6. We had few stops for snacks and food and we reached bangalore by 9:30.

Route : Uttarahalli → Mysore Road →Ramnagar → Mandya → Mysore Outer Ring Road (turn right) → Head towards KR Nagar→ Hunsur → Sri mangala→ Irpu falls → Back home
Total trip distance – 680 km
Top Speed – 100 kmph (New k-series engine is a big NO to swift. Not comparable to my swift)
Mode of transport – Swift
Excellent road till hunsur and after its bumpy ride.

Singapore & KL trip

Bhavish — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 06:10:07 +0000

Finally my leave got approved and navya was on semester vacation and the timing was about right to head towards Singapore. This was the only trip which was missed very badly last year due to various reasons .. We booked the tickets thru Travel Air due to name issue with my wife. So our final iternary was 14th jan – BLR – KL – SING, 20th Jan – SING – KL and on 22nd night head back to home from KL. So we had 5 days in singapore and 3 days in KL.

15th Jan – We landed in Changi airport and Anil was in airport to pick us up. He was surprised that Malaysian Airlines landed on time. The plan for the day was a visit to Sentosa Island. After zipping thru MegaZip, Luge and a lazy walk inside water kingdom we headed back home and took rest.

16th Jan – Next day was a visit to Jurong park a bird sanctuary with wide collection of birds. To cover everything it took us around 4 hours and around 200 pics taken Evening we headed towards Clarke Qauy which has a boat cruise and variety of street food. Limited Veg but a varieties of non-veg delicacies.

17th Jan – Universal Studio was our destination. Its more or less similarity to our Ramoji film city. Nothing much exciting other than few crazy rides. Its been divided to 6 sections – Madagascar & Shrek theme, Water park, Dinosaur theme, Egyptian, SCI-FI, New-york. Wondering what is the specialty of Singapore

18th Jan – By day 4 of our trip we both were tired of walking and decided to take it easy. By evening we headed towards Singapore Flier which is big giant wheel. Thou a bit expensive but we could see a 360 degree view of Singapore. After a few cliques inside the flier we headed towards Orchard Road. The busiest and huge shopping mall street.

19th Jan – We had visited almost all the major points o singapore and had not done shopped. So we decided to head towards SimLim Square – 7 floor electronic shops where the price of the item keeps decreasing as you move up a floor. Next we headed to Little India to have nice lunch at AnandBhavan and then we headed towards China town. The street was painted with RED hangings and other stuffs. It was like a red camouflage market. We headed back home and started packing. Next day we were heading towards KL

20th Jan – Morning we took a taxi may the only time we used taxi in Singapore to reach Changi airport. Our flight was delayed by 30 minutes. We checked into Dorsett Regency by 2 and took rest. Its a pretty nice hotel with a good view of Petronas twin tower from our window. The only floor with non smoking rooms were in 26th floor . By evening we headed towards Twin tower and KL tower. The observation deck in KL Tower has a 360 degree of KL city with huge binoculars.

21st Jan – Genting theme park a boring theme park I would say. Except for a ride up to the top of the mountain in cable car nothing was exciting. We should have headed towards casino instead of this theme park. It was a sad part of our trip i guess.

22nd Jan – A half day sight seing of KL. visited a chocolate factory, prime minister house, a museum which had history of singapore artifiacts. We headed back to hotel took rest and watched sangam. By 6 we checked out of hotel and headed back to bangalore. The flight was nothing but a BTS bus which was fully loaded with passengers and their check in baggage.

A fun trip all in all and our first international trip. More to come for sure..

2010

Bhavish — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 05:16:03 +0000

What a year 2010 has been. Lot of changes in my life . Here are some of the highlights of 2010.

Countless trips in and around bangalore.
Changed my company twice.
Cycling to work.
Missed the Singapore trip.. Postponed to next year.. Wifey upset about this..
Work life got crazy off late.
Crazy planning and ambitions.. Started to search for a house.. Yeah.. Finally its time to buy a house.
My Swift got a makeover with leather seat covers, Rear spoilers, air filter.
Top Speed of 160kmph in car, 58kmph in my cycle.
Fracture at my 5th meta carpel, root canal..
Got rid of my crappy iphone and back to sony. I hate google for releasing Nexus S so late. Hmm is it my next phone, not yet decided.
First night drive – crazy trip it was. 8 hours of night drive and 14k trek to top.
A photo book of my wife which she is still a bit angry on some photo selections.
Started playing football. I wish i could play on most of the weekends.

Some of the stuffs i need to get out of my head and make it a reality next year.

Buy a house.
Singapore trip.
Nexus S