5 October 2010

Troubleshooting - Volume Control Disabled

It's been long time; I haven't posted anything over here. I guess, my new job is keeping me busy or the distance I travel was eating up all the spare time. Hehe...

Here's something what I faced today. For some reasons, the Volume Control icon was missing from my Task bar. I started troubleshooting and opened the Control Panel > Sounds, Speech, and Audio devices > Sounds and Audio devices. This particular screen was disabled. 


To troubleshoot further, I did the following:
Start > All Programs > Accessories > Entertainment > Volume Control

I received the following message:
"There are no active mixer devices available. To install mixer devices, Go to Control Panel and Other Hardware, and then click ADD HARDWARE."

I tried to Add Hardware, but I didn’t know if I should select existing hardware or add a new hardware. I skipped that process and did the following:

From the Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Administrative Tools > Double click on Services > Click on Windows Audio > Restart the service.
Once you have restarted the Windows audio service, you must restart the system.
This worked for me. I hope this will be helpful to anyone of you in case, you face this problem.

15 August 2010

Happy Independence Day!!!

     Picture courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27654121@N04/2577582073/


"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we will redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.... We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again." - - Jawaharlal Nehru (Speech on Indian Independence Day, 1947)
Happy 64th Independence Day to all…

Let’s make this Independence day "plastic free". Today, when I was back from Total, I was observing little boys and girls at the traffic signal with plastic flags. Let’s not buy plastic flags and encourage everyone in buying cotton tri-colour flags. Let’s all follow the flag rules with due respect. 

     Picture courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/97911870@N00/3783681643/  
 वन्दे मातरम...जय हिंद...

20 July 2010

Indian Rupee Symbol in your PC’s and Keyboards


Cabinet have approved the symbol for Indian Rupee recently. Have we started using this symbol or should we wait till Unicode approves the rupee symbol globally. I guess we should start using this symbol. To get into all the PC’s and Keyboards, Fordian Technologies have worked on unique font for Indian Rupee symbol. I just installed this font on my system and it worked. See how it works.

Step 1: Download the Rupee Font Version from: Rupee font
 













Step 2: Copy the downloaded font ‘Rupee_Foradian.ttf’ to Fonts folder in the Control Panel
Step 3: Open Microsoft Word processor.
Step 4: Select the font ‘Rupee Foradian’ from the list of fonts.

 














Step 5: Press the button above the tab button from the keyboard.

 














The Rupee symbol is displayed.


Now if you want to write Rs. 25,000.00, you can write `25,000.00











Lets all start using the Rupee Symbol  ` from now on. 

Cheers!

5 July 2010

A long drive and Bangalore traffic!

I wanted to go out somewhere yesterday, somewhere outside Bangalore...to a quiet place where there's no commotion...most likely a village. I had been to a late night show of Rajneethi on Saturday, so…was very lazy to wake up early in the morning.

I left my house around 12.00 PM for the long drive. We had not planned a destination so our motive was to have a homely mutton curry lunch. As we started, from Silk Board onwards the traffic was horrible being Sunday and lunch time. Till we reached Nice Road the traffic part was annoying and I was losing my patience. Not only because of the traffic, it's because the impatient people were honking with the pesky horns endlessly. People honk in such a way that the people driving in front of him will head-in-the-clouds and give him space to move. I literally did regret for coming out from home and thought I would have had a relaxing day if I cooked from home and had my lunch. 
















The other day, a Traffic Police near Bellandur Signal was yelling at the people that they need to learn the traffic rules. Yes, in Bangalore people need to learn the traffic rules and ethics on roads.

Note: A humble request to the people who read my blog. Please follow the Lane Discipline, do not horn unnecessarily especially with slow moving traffic. Also, please don't contribute in noise pollution by fitting extra-ordinary high sound horns.

The traffic bummer was over and we were having our joy ride in Nice Road. It was then I felt it's a pleasant day only until a truck driver passed very close to us in such a speed that we had almost escaped an accident. But the truck driver wouldn't be sparred. His details will definitely reach the RTO office and the officials will take the required action.

When we reached the end of the Nice Road, the temple jatra/festival was going on in a temple there. Seeing the set-up, the thought what came to my mind is: This is what we came in search for. You know what, the people had set tents and each family of that village was preparing mutton curry lunch. I really wanted to go there sit with them and have that mutton curry lunch. But then, we din't want to disturb them in their celebration. We came further, we could not find the kind of village food we expected but we had our lunch in one of the normal hotel called “TAJ” in Ramanagar where you could find normal food.

A few kilometres from there, you will find Hotel Kamath and Jana Pada Loka. We headed towards 'Jana Pada Loka - Folk-Culture World' where you get to see the objects used by the rural people, rare collections of folk instruments and idols which are diminished and we seldom get to see. I was so excited to see the varieties which I've seen in my childhood alas I don't find them anywhere in my village now.

Jana Pada Loka is 53 Kms from Bangalore. There are several blogs on this place and you can visit the official website of Jana Pada Loka for more information: http://www.janapadaloka.org/


















We had evening tea at Kamath hotel, you get awesome food here. You need to wait for long time, if you’re visiting this place at peak hours.

On our way back, it was the same traffic story which started from Bidadi till Sarjapur. One cannot escape Bangalore no matter what time of the day you travel. Bangalore has unparalleled traffic congestion and chaos. Traffic will be there, everywhere any part of the world. But, we all can help the traffic controllers and to the environment, by contributing our bit... little patience so that you won't start to honk or rush your vehicle...leaving few minutes early so that you won't have to speed up more than the average speed...managing difficult conditions with carefulness. You have a License to drive. Use it wisely.

There's a blog related to Driving Education in India. All those who own a vehicle, please consider reading this blog. http://driving-india.blogspot.com/