n900 controlling a remote car

Details to follow soon.
I will write a series of tutorials to get started with Hardware hacking. Starting with how to use the parallel port to light an led or series of it. And then how I hooked up my RC car to a mahine. And then over the network. At last how I hooked up the accelerometer to control the RC Car.

For now enjoy the video

Found another video by Suresh, that he shot when we demoed this in Foss.in

Qt – -lfreetype problem on ubuntu

In case you  get compilation errors about -lfreetype when compiling Qt applications in ubuntu, install the following packages.

sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev
sudo apt-get install gobject*
sudo apt-get install libxrender-dev
sudo apt-get install libfontconfig-dev
sudo apt-get install pthread*
sudo apt-get install libpthread-stubs0-dev
sudo apt-get install xext*
sudo apt-get install libsm-dev

So late … Its worth the time

Thanks to stumble upon, for this must watch video detailing “The corporation” http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=hqk46mongb

Did you know that vodafone denies you the right to migrate from post-paid to a pre-paid (ofcourse not the other way round). They do this inspite of the TRAI regulation.

Can I/You/We do anything about it? How do we fight the corporate. I can’t and You can’t – unless we fight it as a group.

Lesson learned: United we stand, divided we fall !!

Tricked, by Reebok

The following happened to me last month and I had been contemplating about posting this.  This is how I was tricked by a Reebok showroom here.

Last month, I spotted a sale in a  Reebok showroom. The offer was that when you buy a shoe worth Rupees  5599, you can choose any Reebok item worth Rupees 2000 and in addition will get a pair sun glasses worth 4000 INR.  Of course, Its a no brainer that the sun-glasses wouldn’t be worth 100 bugs but the offer for 2000 was quite tempting. I was lured that and bought two pairs of shoes.

The next day,  When I wanted to give my new sneaker a try; I found that the shoes that was billed Rupees 5599 now, had a price tag which said Rupees 4599. Wowwww !!.  That is interesting, isn’t it … When I cross checked the price with the price on the box, I found that it has been tampered with. I also discovered that the article number of the shoe did not match the one on the receipt.  This made me more suspicious about the whole offer stuff and took all the stuff I bought  to  the Reebok showroom.

At the store:

I noticed that the sales person who sold me the shoe last day was busy with some other unsuspecting customer.  I took advantage of this situation  and asked another sales person about the price of the shoe I bought and instantly he blurted out  – “its Rupees 4599 !!.” I showed him the receipt and told that the article number (ABC) on the receipt did not match the one on the shoe (XYZ).  I also pointed out that the price on the box has been tampered with.

Next, I forced him to display the price of the shoe with the article number XYZ on their machine… and it too told 4599. Then we checked the price of the shoe with the article number (ABC) on my receipt and confirmed that it is worth 5599.

I still wanted to keep the shoe, so I asked for a refund of Rs. 1000.  Here is when things got interesting. Read the following carefully.

According to them

1. Reebok, once in a while, hikes the price of all shoes; in this case (they hiked it by 1000 Rs) and when they do it, they change the article number of the shoes.   “So far so good”
2. For those shoes whose article number is already printed, they only send new boxes, which has the new price !! …. interesting
3. So, you can get a shoe whose article number is XYZ worth Rupees 3000  in a box that has the article number ABC  priced at 5000
4. And you must be dumb-ass to believe it !!

I told them that if the shoes are the same, I would want the shoe with the new article number ABC  and which looks like the one I bought …. HeHe got you  !! I could a see a  big WTF!! on their face.  Ahem … no answer. After a while someone re-iterated the explanation and told that all shoes in the lot have the same same article number – XYZ.

I  asked them how long would it  would take to get a similar looking shoes with the article number on my receipt. And Bingo!  no more talk.

After a Loooong fight with  the sales guy, his manager and  numerous phone calls with his boss I managed to get the refund.

Lesson Learned: Nothing is free !!

Workaround for Synergy clipboard/glipper bug

For those who don’t know what synergy is, its a wonderful piece of software that lets you share keyboard and mouse among multiple machines. I run synergy-server on my ubuntu-desktop and share the keyboard with the laptop running Windows Xp. I noticed that the clipboard fails to work on windows machine when the synergy client is running. A little bit of googling revealed that the gnome’s glipper (a clipboard manager) caused this bug.

As a workaround I am now running klipper ( a clipboard manager forKDE) and things work fine.

Turning Nokia 5800 Xpress Music into a Swiss Army Knife

I have been using my new Nokia 5800 for the past few months and here is a list of things I did to turn this amazing phone to a swiz-army knife.

• Install New firmware: First and foremost I upgraded the firmware to the latest available(21.0.5), this made the overall response time fasterand also installed some new useful applications – the Dictionary, a better and improved browser, a search option that searches in all places – contacts, schedules, sms, mails, files. Find more information about upgrading the firmware here.

• Safety first: Imagine that your mobile gets stolen, do you want to track down your cell. Get alerts every time the SIM is changed, backup your private data and also erase it from the mobile, lock your phone.  Install wave secure and register your mobile.
• Filter out Spam calls: Do you get annoying spam calls, asking for credit cards, life/medical insurance . I get annoying SMS too. Install easy reject and every time you get a spam call or an sms, add those to blocked list and never again would they annoy you. Comes very handy here in India.

• A Torch: Facing powercuts/load-sheding, we do most of the time, so here  is a neat little application - the phone torch that turns your mobile into a torch. Something you would want to carry all the time

• Know your route: Finding your way across unknown places maybe difficult but fighting with these rickshaw-guys here is a nightmare especially when you don’t know the route or the places around. I don’t trust the meters for obvious reasons. Google maps and pre-installed Nokia maps come handy in this situation. I use google maps most of the time since it gives me a satellite view of the place at the expense of GPRS/data usage. If you use Nokai maps you don’t require an a GPRS connection as the map of hte place is already installed in your phone and you need to pay to get those maps. I have an initial offer for 90 days thou. Both the applications let you point to source (which may be your current location) and the destination. They tell you the exact route and the distance which empowers you to easily fix-the-rate. As a bonus when the rate is fixed, rickshaw-guys take you through the shortest route possible. , Nice Hack Huh?

• Online 24/7 – A one size fits all solution: Love to be on IM-s around the clock. why not carry your IM and make voice calls on the run. Install Fring. It supports all sorts of IM known to mankind. Skype. Google Talk, Twitter, Yahoo, MSN,  Sip, ICQ, Aim, Orkut, Gmail, Facebook

• Notepad : At times you may want to quickly jot down something, or maybe draw a diagram or note the list of things to todo, buy or whatever. Use scratch pad, that turns your mobile into a easy to use notepad.

• Want to Schedule SMS to be send in future, install SMS Timer.
• Get official emails: Install Mail for exchange which synchronizes both email and calender entries with your official Microsoft exchange server and never miss a mail or an appointment again.

• Install Opera mini a browser faster than Nokia’s builtin browser. At times, I still use the native browser since Opera does not work great when it comes to filling a form.

• Other Essential Utilities include Quick office to view office documents, Zipper to unzip archived files. Power mp3 player,  a stop watch, weather forecast

• Free Games: Marble, Bubble Popper,  Touch card, Jigsaw Puzzle

You can find more applications at

• Nokia’s website
• Nokia’s Beta Lab
• Nokia5800.net
• Symbian 5th Edition Freeware downloads