Pathetic internet services in Post Offices

I recently visited Head Post Office Kalkaji, New Delhi. I had to visit an post office so that I can get refunded my matured NSC(National Saving Certificate). For this purpose there were only two counters. We had to get a token for that and wait till our number comes. Staff was really supportive no doubt but they  had to carry all the transation online. For that purpose they had only limited manpower. On top of it their internet speed is also pethetic. They had to wait for minutes for the job that could be done in seconds. Most of the time their servers were taking time because of the load on the servers.
I request my government to please upgrade post office internet facilities so that the employees as well as the customers dont have to sit and wait for their number to come, which at time does not even come. We are adviced to come the next working day.

Shame India shame!!

Lal Bahadur Shastri

One of the country's great leader, thinker and our second Prime Minister Shri Lal Bahadur Shatri ji once raised slogon for only the two most important categories of people in our country. First, those who protects us from enemies, the soldiers  (jawan) and second, those who produces food for all of us, the farmers (kisan). The beautiful slogan goes as JAI JAWAN JAI KISAN.

My eyes become wet when I saw this video covered by NDTV. Now the distressed Haryana farmers seek permission from PM to sell their organs. GOD!!

The profession that commands respect and is the most revered is being distressed and depressed. I wonder, who would like to become a farmer when their self-respect is being demolished. I suppose no one. when all will move towards cities and other countries, then where will the food come from? What will we have to eat? probably, we will start eating, guess who? Right, each other...painful but true. somehow I feel we are not heading into the right directions, I could vision a clear threat for our future generations, that in the name of technological advancement we actually are going into the well of self destruction. ponder a moment just for the sake of our future generations!!

Brave IAS Durga Shakti Nagpal

Sub- Divisional Magistrate Durga Shakti Nagpal an IAS officer of cadre 2010 from Punjab transfered to Gautam Budh nagar, Noida UP after marriage to another IAS officer posted in UP. As a part of her duty she shunned illegal sand mining mafia. She filed FIR against 10 persons involved in illegal mining with the support of her higher authorities.
But the UP state Government suspended her and claims to file a charge sheet against her for not knocking down sand mafia but because some other new reason for which she is not responsible, the demolition of the wall of the under construction mosque on the government land which too is illegal.  As nothing can be constructed on the government property with prior permission of the officials.

 According to SP leader Narendra Bhati, she has hurt the parties political interests. He brags shamelessly that he got her suspended in just 45 minutes.

Today on Saturday, 3 Aug 2013, all of a sudden villagers mobbed outside the magistrate office alleging the SDM to be the reason  behind the demolition of the mosque wall which was earlier proved to be demolished by the villagers themselves.
   
If this is politics than we don't need it??

This not the first time that some bureaucrat raised the voice against corruption. It has happened many times in history, they all faced the same repercussion as Nagpal's. they were either suspended or been transfered. IAS Ashok Khemka, in October 2012, brought down congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra for illegal land deals and real estate major DLF. IPS Damyanti Sen transferred for solving major rape case in West Bengal, IPS Vikas Kumar was transfered out of Bharatpur district in Rajasthan on craking down on illegal mining mafia in early 2012 , IFS Sanjeev Chaturvedi was charged five criminal cases against him in Haryana for requesting CBI inquiry into many scams that he detected during his tenure , The first woman collector of Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan Mugdha Sinha faced transfer taking on the local mafia. IAS Samit Sharma, IAS Umashanker and many in the past also faced the consequences of the whistle blowing.    

How education slowly and steadily is moving from schools to computers?

Hi! today I am thinking after reading Mr Bill gates post on Graphite, a new way to connect teacher and technology that the days are almost about to go when we used to get up early, get ready for school, assemble for prayer,lunch with friends in the recess time, stay there for 5-6 hours, coming back home and do ghostly assignments.

Evolution of cloud computing and virtualization is revolutionizing the way the whole world works today. The trend of education is no exception. There are educational tools for students of all age groups. For school goers there are websites Quizlet, Khan Academy, Graphite, and Moodle which are offering courses for free of cost. Amazing isn't it, students love learning with lovely graphics, images, videos and music.     

We can estimate the amount of Internet is being used by the students these days by having a look at How students are using the Internet for studying. There are many Massive open on-line course(MOOC) sites that are offering really good and useful courses for free. The courses are taught by the world class professors from renowned technical colleges in USA. To mention a few are Coursera, Udacity and edx are very popular among students these days.

Other than these are many more educational sites like:

• IEEE
• Skillshare 
• Codecademy
• OpenSource 

The list is still growing. In my younger days when I was in class 8 in 1990-91, I read one fiction don't remember the name of the chapter or text book :). But I still remember one interesting thing that the author has narrated. He emphasized that in 21st century books will get replaced by the computers and students will not be going to school rather will be studying at home with there computers. One very interesting thing which I still remember is that the author explained it by narrating a very sweet conversation between a little boy of six years and his grandpa.

One day little boy found his grandpa's diary from his grandpa's room whose pages turned old and yellowish. He inquired grandpa politely about the writer of the diary. His grandpa replied that he had written it. The boy got surprised and could not believe that his grandpa wrote all those pages. The little boy who did not even know how to hold a pen or a pencil was still wondering that how can one write so many pages by hand. Grandpa further explained his grandson that in older days when people did not have computers or laptops. They also did not know how to use or work on computers. They had to note everything in their notebooks and the diaries in order to keep records and learn things. 

The fiction in our times is becoming a BIG REALITY!!.

                 




   

Scrabble Cheater using PYTHON

#enjoy.. Fun with scrabble cheater
# sowpods.txt is the list of words in the official SOWPODS Scrabble word list.


#dictionary that stores the letters as the keys and the values as their scores.
scores = {"A": 1, "C": 3, "B": 3, "E": 1, "D": 2, "G": 2,
         "F": 4, "I": 1, "H": 4, "K": 5, "J": 8, "M": 3,
         "L": 1, "O": 1, "N": 1, "Q": 10, "P": 3, "S": 1,
         "R": 1, "U": 1, "T": 1, "W": 4, "V": 4, "Y": 4,
         "X": 8, "Z": 10}

my_file = open("sowpods.txt", "r") #open file in read mode.
li = my_file.readlines()                   # li is the list that stores the of words.
my_file.close()                                #closes sowpods.txt file.  
for i in range(0,len(li)):                  # for loop that strips new line characters 
    li[i] = li[i].strip()                         #from the words

import sys

rack = sys.argv[1]                       # get the Scrabble rack from the command line.
valid_words = []
for word in li:                               
    candidate = True                    
    rack_letters = list(rack)          #rack is stored as a list in racks_letters 
    for letter in word:
        if letter not in rack_letters:  #checking if the rack forms the word.
            candidate = False
        else:   
            rack_letters.remove(letter)
    if candidate == True:                 #if candidate is true calculate score.
        total = 0
        for letter in word:
            total = total + scores[letter]
        valid_words.append([total, word])
        
valid_words.sort()                            #sorts list of valid words that could be
                                                         #formed by the rack
for entry in valid_words:
    score = entry[0]
    word = entry[1]
    print(str(score) + " " + word)       #prints score space word.       
       
            

Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) Ghaziabad

Passport is needed if you wish to travel some foreign country. I do not have a passport yet. So I applied on-line by signing up through http://passportindia.gov.in/AppOnlineProject/welcomeLink. First, It is a very tedious job to get an appointment. second, if anyhow you manage to get an appointment there are two categories to get it, Tatkaal and Normal. You can get appointment through any category. if you manage to get an appointment in Tatkaal category and you want Normal category, you can convert it in to the Normal category by reaching  PSK,Ghaziabad on the date of your appointment. no worries.. 

Now, you need to visit to the PSK on the date of an appointment. My

city Muzaffarnagar comes under Ghaziabad PSK, so I need to visit there. I had no idea about the address of the PSK Ghaziabad, so tried to get it from the website. You can view the address of your PSK by clicking on the link Locate Nearest Passport Seva Kendra on the right hand side in services pane and I selected Ghaziabad and get the address as follows:

Passport Seva Kendra, Block-A Ground Floor, Pacific Business Park, Plot No 37/1, Site IV, Sahibabad Industrial Area, Ghaziabad - 201010

Right, it is the correct address.  But, when you click on the view google map button on the left hand side on the same page you will find PSK at:

 Screen shot after zooming 8 times:

 

but when you navigate the map around Shaibabad railway station you got on the link road where the persent PSK is situated, as depicted in the screenshot below. That is very near to the Kaushambhi metro station.

 

 We can clearly see that it is not pointed as the PSK, Ghaziabad. 

I board on train on Tuesday, 28-May-2013 at 7.10 am from Muzaffanagar and get down at 9.15 am at Ghaziabad junction instead I should have get down at Sahibabad junction. :(

Because of the mis-guidance on google map, I had to face the difficulty in reaching PSK on time i.e. 10.30 am. 

I would suggest to the www.passportindia.gov.in website maintainers to not to misguide people if they cannot update things on time. Everybody's time and money are important.