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Back to college and busy

July 22nd, 2010 by Naman Bagga | No Comments | Filed in General, MANIT Bhopal

I'm back in Bhopal and my 5th semester is well on course. I've been here for the past 15 days and these days have been really busy. Settling in my hostel room took quite some time as expected. Also, I've been learning to ride bikes these days. I've managed to learn to ride thanks to all my friends. I even happen to have video evidence for it-

I'll be getting my own bike very soon now, more on it later. I've been very busy lately because being a member of 3 college societies, I need to work for each of them. The day since I've entered 3rd year, there seems to be some reason to be busy everyday. Today, I was busy with design work for ED-search, the test to get into the college's Editorial Board. I'll be conducting a short workshop on Linux tomorrow evening after college. I'm down with a bit of a cold too so need to get some sleep now. More posts and updates to follow soon.

Clearing the Pipeline

June 3rd, 2010 by Naman Bagga | No Comments | Filed in General, MANIT Bhopal

I'm right in the middle of my semester break right now. So here's a personal post for my followers who are wondering what I'm up to these days. I came back to Delhi on 13th May and am here till the end of June. 5th semester starts from July. My 4th semester result was out yesterday. I managed to get a SGPA of 7.78 and a CGPA of 7.82 and am fairly satisfied with it considering that I was expecting it to be lower. So its official now, 50% of my engineering is over.

The post frequency on my blog has been low in the last few months. At times, when I'm in college, the circumstances just don't allow me to make a blog post at the right time and thus some posts end up lying in the pipeline forever. So, over the next few days, before the start of the next semester, I plan to clear the post pipeline and publish all pending posts. So you might find posts related to occurrences of the past in the next few days. Hopefully, I'll be able to clear the pipeline soon and get geared up for 5th sem.

IPL is back and so am I

March 20th, 2010 by Naman Bagga | 2 Comments | Filed in Blogging, Cricket, General, Sports

In case you're wondering where I've been for the past month or so, you're finally going to get an answer. I've obviously been busy with college. I had my 1st Minors in February-end. After that, I've been busy with Maffick and Technosearch work. After a very busy month that included 3 trips back home to Delhi separated by a very small time span, I'm finally free enough to update my blog. My current whereabouts? I'm in Delhi till 22nd March. Now that I'm at home, I get to watch Television more often and the hottest thing on TV these days is the 3rd edition of the IPL, which started on 12th March.

The latest edition of the IPL, has everything nice from the previous editions and some improvisations in addition to everything. One of the nice things from the last season that has continued is the Vodafone Zoozoo ads. The strategic time out, which was introduced last year has been modified. Instead of one 7.5 minute time out, there are two 2.5 minute time-outs now- one decided by the batting team and the other by the bowling team. 5 new venues, Cuttack, Nagpur, Vishakhapatnam, Ahmedabad and Dharamsala in addition to the 8 previous venues have been added in this season. The very popular IPL Horn/Trumpet is being used in this season as well. This year, its a slightly different horn that's played.

IPL is getting bigger every year. YouTube is the exclusive worldwide online video partner and you can watch live streaming of all matches with a 5 minute delay on http://youtube.com/ipl. Recently, Airtel was the streaming sponsor for a match and was offering free, automatic 2Mbps upgrade for Airtel broadband users on the IPL youtube channel to enhance the streaming experience :) . The IPL 2010 matches are being featured in theaters too. You can watch all the matches, except the ones that are being played in your city ad-free in some cinema halls near you. This a really smart move and is something I had been waiting for. Watching a cricket match in a multiplex is a really nice experience. I'll be watching the Mumbai Indians vs Royal Challenger's Bangalore clash tonight at a multiplex :) .

Another highlight of the IPL 2010 season was the debut of the Mongoose MMi3 bat designed specially for T20 cricket. The bat was unleashed on 19th March 2010 in the CSK vs DD clash. Mathew Hayden used the bat in the match and scored 93 off 43 balls.

The Mongoose MMi3 Bat

The Mongoose MMi3 Bat

The Mongoose MMi3 Bat

The mongoose MMi3 bat is a specially designed T20 bat. The blade is 33% shorter than a conventional bat and the handle is 43% longer. The bat claims to provide 20% more power and 15% more bat speed and gives the batsman an advantage. Mathew Hayden did play some nice, powerful strokes with his Mongoose MMi3 but it would be intersting to see the response the bat gets. People are gonna be skeptical before using this bat but I feel this really is going to gain popularity among other players.

This edition of the IPL is shaping up quite differently as far as the results are concerned which is expected looking at the nature of the T20 game. Personally, I'm supporting Mumbai Indians ever since the first season and hope they perform better than they did in the last 2 seasons.

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Make Free STD and ISD calls with Skype and Free411

February 3rd, 2010 by Naman Bagga | 5 Comments | Filed in General, MobiWorld, Tech Talk

Very often you come across tricks to make free calls and honestly, most of them don't work. I recently came across a trick that really works so it gets to feature on my blog. So here goes the trick to make free STD and ISD calls with Skype.

First of all, the only requirement is that you need to have Skype installed. If you don't have skype you can download and install it. Skype works on all platforms-Windows, Linux and Mac too.

What we are going to use in this trick is a service called Free411. Its actually a US based service with the toll free number- +1-800-FREE411 which is +1-800-3733411. Skype does not charge for calls made on toll free numbers so calling this number using Skype won't cost a penny. So here's what you have to do-

Dial +18003733411 on Skype and click on the call button to connect the call. I would suggest you to save this number in your Skype contacts for faster future access.

Screenshot Call Phones or Send SMS Make Free STD and ISD calls with Skype and Free411

Dial +18003733411 on Skype

The call will be answered by an IVRS system. You will have to bear a small ad before you reach the main menu. When prompted to select your option, say "Free Call". Now if their lines are not busy, you will get a 5 minute free call. You will be asked to dial the phone number to which you wish to make the call. Dial the full number including ISD code. For example prefix Indian mobile numbers with +91, UK numbers with +44 UAE numbers with +971 etc.

This service works well for me and usually I manage to connect to a free call within 5 to 10 minutes of trying to get a free line which is acceptable considering that this service is being used extensively in the US and also by people from all parts of the world. Leave a comment if you face any kind of difficulty or have any doubt about this service.

PS-The service I've mentioned here is a free service. Please use it judiciously and don't use it for making prank calls. Your idea of fun will might make this service unavailable for someone who needs it more than you do.

PPS-For all my friends who for some reason haven't added me on Skype yet and for those who intend to create a skype ID after reading this post, my ID is namanbagga.

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