The time to prepare is now, but it is surely running out…

...

A news piece dated Jan 3, 2020 shared update on a viral infection. In Wuhan "the health authorities had reported an unexplained viral pneumonia that sickened 59 people with no deaths till date, but with some people critical…" 

It also went on declaring that "it is highly unlikely that this outbreak will lead to a major [SARS-like] epidemic.."

Now, hop over and see the latest Covid-19 world stats here -> https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html

People In January who read that article or were hearing the news for the Coronavirus spread at that time were thinking that… 'ah, this is nothing but the flu', 'it won't come to our country/state/city', 'we are all safe', and many other self comforting thoughts.. 

The sad thing is that even in March 2020, some people still are in their false cocoons of comfort... even with the stats which stand as below (as on date 13 March 2020) -

> Coronavirus Cases: 134,803
> Deaths: 4,984

[Note: India centric stats here - https://www.ncovirus.in/]

I agree that panic is not the solution, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared!

Preparation is vital folks! Not preparing now is being plain foolish!

As a well wisher, I urge all who are reading to kindly try and do this -

1. Stock on your essentials as per your needs. Remember, stock, not hoard;
2. Avoid all unnecessary travel, gatherings and outings;
3. If you have small kids, teach them basic hygiene and tell them NOT to touch their face, tell them what we are up against! Also the best hand wash practice (Happy B'day song or 20 seconds!). A best case scenario would be to limit their exposure;
4. Try to stay indoors, and avoid contact with people who recently returned from any cross border travels;
5. Keep all elderly (> 60 years) people in check, report for treatment asap in cases of symptoms like -
• Fever
• Cough
• Shortness of breath
6. When in doubt wash your hands!
7. Keep a sanitizer bottle at hand (alcohol strength > 65%). Remember, please use only when hand wash is not an option;
8. The symptoms of this infection are similar to flu. But, a person can be contagious for several days before having any symptoms. So this is a tricky one, awareness/pro-activeness is key!
9. If you feel any symptoms coming, avoid a physician visit, but please report as per the local / state protocols!
10. Remember! Don't be afraid of quarantining! The only way to fight this is rapid isolation!

I also urge you to please help spread this awareness.. The only way to fight this is stop it from spreading... so be aware and #FlattenTheCurve

And to all the people who still think otherwise.. Stay safe and stay alive (try to at least). /s

Tech-Zen - Post#1 - Mindfulness with Technology

Welcome to the world of technology mindfulness.

In the humble quest of sharing across, I bring to you this post (a first of hopefully many to come). To help you jump start your journey, and achieve technology awareness and empowerment – one bullet point at a time :)

• Stay safe - Good things happen to those who are good, but bad things can happen to anyone. Update your mail, Facebook security etc. and set up two-factor authentication for additional security. After all to err is human but so is to steal.

• Stay focused - Clearing your desktop can be the first step in clearing the mess and your mind. And science says that clearing out the clutter is actually good for you!

• Stay clean - Cleanliness is a godly virtue, even when you consider your laptop and your keyboard. A clean screen means less glare and smudges, but also means less frustration when your eyes are busy. Also, a clean keyboard means cleaner germ-free hands.

• Stay a student - Do something new with your computer - Learn to Code! Learning knows no age limit and it is never too late to start learning. Use resources like Solo Learn and https://code.org/ to start off your journey! As Jeff Bezos says "Every day is Day One".

• Stay in control - And last but not the least, learn to stay in control, as technology addiction is a real problem.

That is it for now.. hope you liked the above and are able to take away something of use.

In case you need help or if you need any technology based suggestions, feel free to reach out to me personally.

Until next time, happy tech-mindfulness!

(I am here...Blog / Twitter / Flickr)

Internet Alert Follow up - Parents, please block these sites at least.

An excellent post at Make Use of shares the 6 Sites All Parents Should Add to Their Block List Today.

Do take out some time and block these at the very least. I will be posting ways to help block these separately, soon.

Till then, stay safe and ensure to educate your little ones responsibly and please keep an open discussion on the risks the internet may open for them.

*Be Aware - Save the kids from the Internet's new low!*

 

Is this post is for you? Answer these to find out -

- Do you have kids at an age when they depend on you for judgement and guidance?

- Do you give your young ones unsupervised Internet screen time?

- Are they overtly attached to any present day animation characters like Elsa, Emma (Frozen) or any popular Disney characters?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you need to read on!

Elon Musk–The Iron Man IRL!

Just give this hour long show a once over; this is Elon Musk on the the Re/Code Conference 2016.

Elon is as always very vocal of his deeds and why he is doing them. But it is the questions on Colonizing Mars and re-usable rockets which has him on the edge, big commitments and all! 

The excitement is big on his face all along (not too sure of the interviewers though, sadly).

If you do manage to reach the end, pay attention to the (pretty mature) audience questions. Especially the "living in a simulation" one.

For the un-initiated, the simulation hypothesis proposes that we, the humanity, are the creation and inhabitants of an artificial simulation in a simulated existence and "of which we, the simulants, are totally unaware." 

This is most likely an outcome of the evolution and advancement of a very advanced version of our or a very similar civilization. 

The concept is pretty much a mind fu*k in itself and has a quite a bit of the Internet dedicated to it.

Anyways, the Elon discussion is a must watch if you really want to know about the next big things around the corner.

Enjoy!

To fail or not to fail…

Failure… the word itself feels such a let down. But is it actually a disgrace, a step down or an actual negative? Is it really what is yours to keep when all success eludes?

Actually, no. It is the mindset and the interpretation of failure.

A case to discuss is how failure fits in the Agile Methodology. The Agile supports small leaps of work and faith, and thus the achievement is in small gains. One step at a time.

And thus there is scope for small regular successes and yes, regular failures as well.

Failure in itself is a great way to learn about how to succeed.

Take for example, the agile practitioner’s favorite phrase…” Fail early, fail fast, fail often”.

Failing fast in-between your sprint’s start and finish is really good, both for you and your stakeholders. Yes, that’s true. Why? Because it saves cost, and more importantly it saves relationships and… yes, embarrassment as well.

But I genuinely believe that it’s not always about failures. It should be more about the learning. Easier said than done… I agree.

But in truth, as long as you are learning fast from your failure, you will create purpose in your actions. And this learning will help you fail less and less till success is the only available outcome.

So don’t just fail. Learn.

Learn fast, and Learn often.

Technorati Tags: Agile,quotes,failure,success

Did the Samsung Note 3 Lollipop update kill your Hands free Answer / Reject ? Read on.

After much observation and jumping around the many Android forums, I finally decided to take my N9005 to the Lollipop world.

Well, its beautiful (as beautiful the Samsung UI can be i.e.) and perplexing.

And although I am still trying to guess the reason why Google took off the silent option from the power key menu, it is faster and more responsive (or feels like it!)

Anyways, the first main issue I have come across is the voice control disappearing when the Hands Free is enabled.

Turns out, I cannot choose to Answer or Reject when the calls come in on the Hands free mode.

I tried everything short of a factory reset, but for the life of me could not get this trivial feature to work… until, until is turned this off,,,

“Vibrate when Ringing”

If you phone is having this checked, you are probably not having the hands free operating as you want it!

Yeah, doesn’t make much sense… but that’s the solution!

Like I said, I tried every option but this is something which I had enabled only recently, so rolling all my changes back, and undoing the many other options lead to this discovery.

Hope it helps out someone out there!

Technorati Tags: Note3,Lollipop,Android,N9005,Answer,Reject,Hands free

How-to : Setting up family shares using Drop-box!

The cloud storage is a huge step beyond the conventional storage mediums which have been available to us for so long. Blah Blah and so on...

Ok, what I just wrote there would making zero absolute sense for most people out there, but don’t sweat it!

A successful technology doesn’t necessarily need big words of introduction; the only fact worth sharing it should be why it is helpful and useful.

So today I talk on how YOU can use your personal space on the cloud for storage, and specifically  the Dropbox.

The specific aim here is a small How-To to help you and your family set-up dropbox to share photos and other documents in your family circle.

But first, a Brief Introduction…

The simple mediums of storage we are versed with include Hard Disks, CD/DVD ROMs and portable media like USB drives. This cloud storage is but a term we use to describe something which is stored in a similar way, but (as an abstracted storage) on the internet.

There are many providers for online cloud storage like Microsoft's One Drive, Drop-box, Google Drive and so on.

And most of them are easy to use and integrate better by having WINDOWS based clients, working seamlessly in the existing File Manager (like Windows Explorer).

This integration abstracts the storage and retrieval of files on the cloud thereby making it very easy to upload files/data to the could and download the same from the Cloud.

About DropBox

Dropbox provides a secure and common location on the cloud for your personal stuff (acting as a secure backup) and also for stuff like photos, documents or videos which you may want to share across your contact list.

Although the facility is a boon for personal asset / document sharing (i.e. having all time access to your personal files on any device). but Dropbox also makes it easy to share your stuff with others in your address book.

So let’s Start!

1. Sign-up! - The first step you need to take to use Dropbox is to create an account. In any browser, just go to the Dropbox website and fill out the Sign Up form.

Click Sign up, and proceed.

Post sign-up, you will be presented with the Intro screen next -

Here, you can take the Dropbox Tour to know it better.

2. Installation is available via the second step, where in you can download and install the app on windows. This is what we want. The direct link for the installation page is here.

By default, installation will download the minimal setup and continue with the online download. You can choose the offline install option and skip the middle step entirely.

After installation, choose the default options; Keep clicking next and enter your credentials to link up your local windows (hard-disk) folder with the folder in the cloud (or on the internet).

3. Login the application post setup, and you will get the below screen after it is done -

Choosing advanced settings will help you choose any other folders for the custom dropbox location, and also the (sub) folders you can sync. The default location is <Your-Windows-profile-home>\Dropbox

NOTE: The profile location will differ on the various OS versions. As a shortcut, simply press Windows + R to open Run Dialog, and type (copy paste) the following -

%UserProfile%\Dropbox

This should work on any (Windows) O.S.

4. Using Dropbox - After the setup and login, you can start managing the folders and content, anything which is in your online dropbox folder will automatically appear in your local windows location too.

To start adding files across to the dropbox from your local Windows drive, below is the sequence -

1. Locate the files/folders you want to share;
2. Copy or drag drop them in your local shared location (%UserProfile%\Dropbox). These will then start syncing to your online allocated folder.

Sharing Files -

To start sharing, you can do it online (via the browser) or via the Desktop application -

1. Via App - Open your Dropbox folder, and find the file or folder you’d like to share. Simply Right-click and click on “Share Dropbox”.
   
   This will copy the link and you can share it via mail etc. with the people you want to enable access for it.
   
2. Via browser – Follow below steps -

a. Go to https://dropbox.com and sign in; click on Share a folder (top of the window).

b. You can choose to create a new folder for sharing (click Next, enter new folder name)

c. Click Next and similar to the Windows setup, just enter the email addresses of the people for the sharing invite and click Share folder.

Done!

Although some of the steps above may seem to be difficult, but if you follow them to the letter, you should be good!

Nevertheless, I am adding some excellent links for user reference as well -

1. Dropbox tour – start here
2. https://www.dropbox.com/help – Go here and get help on anything!
3. How do I share folders with other people?

Let me know your comments and/or your questions if any!

Technorati Tags: Dropbox,windows,help,configure,share

My Quest for the perfect (windows) clone and backup solution!

> = <

With 2015 (almost) halfway gone, can you imagine my pain when I am simply looking for a solution to -

1. Create a [LIVE!] clone of my Laptop’s 500GB HDD and
2. Let me update it on schedule…

and able to find none… yes…NONE AT ALL!

I just want something to -

1. Provide me a fool-proof backup strategy AS WELL AS HELPS

2. In advent of any catastrophic failure in my current HDD or similar situation, to just pop the faulty bugger out and replace with the last backup; and pronto! loads up the Windows O.S. … again!

WTF Microsoft!!

Is it that difficult?? In 2015? A job which Carbon Copy Cloner has been doing for more than a couple of years (sadly Mac only, sigh!)?

I mean, Seriously? Come on!

So my friends and fellow nerds out there… Anyone has any Ideas?

Please share.

Note: I will surely update this IFF I find a viable solution. I know about the options available (almost all provide live clone, but none does the backups on schedule), so I need something which works as I want it to!

Update#1: I found this - https://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/
Let’s try and check shall we, I will updtae here for more findings.?

How To: Perform an unattended MySQL DB dump restore

Say you have the following setup -

1. A MySQL DB on which you have to restore a previously taken DB DUMP;
2. A *INX based O.S. / Server (could be RHEL etc.)
3. An SSH connection / session to the same

In a normal scenario, you either access your DB via a DB client (like SQLYog) or via a remote SSH (using putty).

When you need to restore a DB DUMP on an existing DB instance, you use the mysql command as -

[ssh@xyz]# mysql mydb < /dbdumps/mydb_dump.sql

This will start the restore process. For a small DB this should be done quickly. But considering a realistic live scenario with your DB in GBs of data, you will need at least upwards of 30 minutes.

Now what if you need to disconnect your SSH for any reason? Maybe step out for a meeting, or pack-up your rig for your drive home?

The reason may be anything but the considering the fact that the restore process is launched specifically under the SSH shell process, if the SSH disconnects during the restore, it would kill the restore too.

So the only logical choice is to leave the terminal open until the dump is completely restored, with the normal termination of the process.

Here-in comes the nohup.

Quoting from Wikipedia,

Nohup is a Unix command, used to start another program, in such a way that it does not terminate when the parent process is terminated. This is accomplished by ignoring the signal 'SIGHUP'. This is what distinguishes nohup from simply running the command in the background with '&'.

So in essence, the nohup allows the restore process to continue running even if the remote SSH session is terminated when the SSH client disconnects.

Also, since we may want to use the SSH session after the process to restore is started (via nohup), we use the nohup in conjunction with the ‘&’ command.

The ampersand as a suffix ensures the command is started as a background daemon (under the system process). It will leave the command line and proceed to run in the background.

The entire goal above is thus achieved via the following command -

[ssh@xyz]# nohup mysql mydb < /dbdumps/mydb_dump.sql &

Running this gives you the below as a feedback result on prompt -

[1] 5624
[ssh@xyz]# nohup: appending output to `nohup.out'

Let’s decrypt the above.

Meet the Process-id - 5624

Any process running on a Unix system is always having a PID or a process-id. This is a unique identifiable unit with which a process is associated and can be manipulated.

For example, the kill command (which is used to terminate a process) uses the following format -

$ kill <process_id>

Thus the process id for the background is printed for convenience.

The nohup.out file

Also, as it is a background process, the standard I/O is not used for any prompts or error communication, Instead the same is redirected to the nohup.out file, created at the location where the process is launched (this can be located by the $ pwd – which will give the present working directory)

Status of nohup

All this is good, now that the restore is running merrily in the background.

But how to know if and when this completes? How to know the status?

The answer is using $ jobs.

[ssh@xyz]# jobs
[1]+  Running nohup mysql mydb < /dbdumps/mydb_dump.sql &

So the current process is shows to be still running. If it would have completed, the status is changed from Running to Done.

That’s it! Hope it helps someone out there!

Let me know your comments and suggestion too.

Note: I will be covering the DB DUMP command later in detail, with its usage in conjunction with the CRON scheduler script.

Technorati Tags: Unix,MySQL,Jobs,nohup,dump,restore,DB,RHEL

To help save a life…

(The below post is replicated in entirety from my Facebook page dated February 28. It is an actual incident.)

Something happened today evening on my way back from the office. An accident.

Not mine. A random guy on his bike. Going back home like everyone else.

This happened around 8:00 PM on the Noida extension route, just 200 meters before the Gaur roundabout.

The guy (whom I don’t want to disclose) going back home in Crossings Republic from his IT firm, was driving fine but unluckily could not see and slow down in time for the dirt rubble on the road (probably left behind by one of the many callous trucks and tractors which ply on that route).

End result a bad skid, hit with the pavement and countless injuries. By the time I stopped and reached him, he was lying all covered in blood, with tattered clothes and desperate cries of pain.

Lots of people stopped to help, some to watch but many slowed down, looked but chose to drive off.

Back to their destination, their homes and back to their comfortable lives.

Do you know how real blood looks on the asphalt? It's so red; bloody frightening red. And it was everywhere.

I was there with the others. We helped lift him up and got him in a car for the nearest hospital (bless that driver for having the sense of responsibility and courage).

The bike was a wreck. Me and another random guy (who was on his bike) stayed behind and waited for the cops to turn up. Someone had taken the onus to inform them down the road so that they could come and take care of the vehicle.

So we waited to hand over the same to the cops, who as expected, didn't turn up. In the end, we had to park his bike on the roadside and decided to hand the keys over to the guy himself (whom we expected to have reached the hospital by that time).

This way, we hoped to check on the guy's well-being too. Reaching the nursing home, we found him all clothes torn, swollen up and unable to speak (due to the bandages around his face) and nursing some broken bones. but he was able to identify and acknowledge us.

It seems he would survive an recover, thankfully.

I just reached home a few minutes back. And all along the way back I had but only one thought.

How sudden and unpredictable life is.. and how much dependent we all are for our survival on the virtues of our society, on the mood and courage of our fellow beings!

An incident like this puts many things in perspective. Seeing what is known to all, and happens time and again, I wondered why people don’t have the courage and the heart to stop and help someone in need?

And what was most disheartening was that many of those who moved on, they were those my age, the youth!

We, the ones, who on one hand are responsible for changing conventional mind-sets of our society, who bring in waves of change in politics and what not; and on the other, we still follow the pretend play of closing our eyes and moving on! Such double standards, I ask?

I have never stepped back from my social responsibility and will continue to do so till I can, but will someone stop by for me in my time of need?

With so many instances all around us daily, I cannot help but think that if even 20 people stop to help someone in need daily, 20 lives can be saved in a day!

Think about them, those who can be helped, their families, their future, their lives which would follow thereafter!

I have nothing more to say but this, only if I have the courage today to be selfless, to stop and save someone in need, will someone tomorrow do the same for me.

Think about it.
(sorry for the long rant, but I had to do it)
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