Open Letter to my Telugu Brothers

I was born in Andhra Pradesh. Ever since I was a kid, I was told to love "Telugu Talli". I did. I loved her like a mother. Today she died.

After I finished my masters in the US and decided to come back, I came back to Andhra Pradesh. I did not even think of any other place. Then people started telling me that Andhra Pradesh was not a single state. The Telangana people and Andhra Pradesh people were different and that the Andhra people had cheated Telangana. So,now I had doubts about what my motherland was. Still I continued to do whatever I could in my capacity to help my motherland.

Today, finally, some unrelated people sat behind closed doors and decided to break Andhra Pradesh and hence I ended up living in a place which is not my Motherland. So now, I am in a place which is not my own. And its not just me. Its lakhs of people like me.

So, first of all, congrats to my Telangana brothers. If I have in any way been in the way of a Telangana brother and stopped his growth, I apologize for that. For my Andhra brothers, the following are some of my thoughts.

1. Let us pray and hope that we do not get more people like KCR who will end up breaking us further into Rayalaseema and Andhra for their own personal gains.
2. From reports, it looks like we will have 10 years to setup our state. Let's save money and do all we can to contribute to the betterment on Andhra.
3. We have a chance to start afresh. Let's plan our capital properly. They have not yet declared a capital. This must be the first time anywhere that a new state is formed with no decision on the new capital. Does not matter. Whatever city is chosen, let's do our best to help build it.
4. Eminent people from different fields currently in Hyderabad should think about how they can help our new state. I am good at teaching and currently I am in the software field. From my side, I promise that I will teach some courses in an Engineering college in Andhra Pradesh and try to inspire students. Similarly, I promise that I will mentor and if possible, setup a software company in a city in Andhra Pradesh.
5. For the next few years,we should visit more places in Andhra Pradesh and try to improve the tourism revenue.
6. We should not allow our leaders to show the division as the cause of problems in the future. They will use any excuse to cover their faults.

Most importantly, we need to stick together and choose correct leaders.

The reason for the demise of Technical Education in Andhra Pradesh(India)

No, its not the Government

Its not the corrupt colleges

Its not even the fee reimbursement policy making education free for people who cannot afford it.

Its the corruption in the students and their parents who try to take a free ride by cheating the government. Yes, its YOU.

Latest numbers show that 80% of students have opted for the fee reimbursement. That means in Andhra pradesh, 80% students studying engineering come from a family earning less that 1 lakh($1500)/year.

Bull. Shit.

These are the same students, who spend Rs.10000 on their freshers party. The same students who come in a BMW or nice motorbikes to their college. But when it comes to fee payment, they are below the income line.

Now, if 80% students don't pay the fees, the burden on the government grows that much and it will not be able to pay back the colleges immediately. Its now taking more than 6 months for the government to reimburse colleges. That means the colleges do not pay their faculty for six months. That means the best teachers leave the profession. That means you will only get the worst education possible. That means you will not be employable. And the cycle is complete.

Its actually very easy to fix this. Pay the fees if you can afford it. Its as simple as that.

And don't complain about the system. Start with the man in the mirror. Start with you. You stop being corrupt and the "system" will fall in place.

Watching Hindi and Telugu Movies using Chromecast

Its been more than a week since I started using Chromecast and the verdict is still:

"Loving it"

There have been some complaints about the openness of the Chromecast platform: https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13be5ajwpmvux5a304ccxsypuevhtcwgao, but hey, I am happy with what I paid for. It has passed the Wife Acceptance test(WAF) by a large margin and my wife regularly uses it for cookery shows and other hobbies.

I now use Chromecast and Youtube more than the regular TV programming and I have also found some nice websites with Telugu and Hindi movie lists which will allow me to stream to Chromecast taking care of my movie needs.

To watch Telugu and Hindi movies on your TV streaming through Chromecast just do the following:

1. Bookmark http://movies.rangu.com/telugu-movies-list-a-to-z for Telugu movies and http://movies.rangu.com/hindi-movies-list-a-to-z for Hindi movies.
2. Add the bookmark shortcuts on your tab or phone screen.
3. Select the movie and cast to your TV.

That's it.

Adventures with Chromecast in India-Review

When Google announced the Chromecast, I was watching the live Twitter stream, I immediately mailed the link to one of my friends who was coming to India and asked him to get it for me. So, finally, yesterday, the Chromecast landed up at my house. I wasted no time and I hooked it up to my 6 year old Samsung LCD(Non-Smart) TV.

Image from Google Chromecast site

TL;DR: I loved the device and it's possibilities.

Setup:

Setup was a breeze. Just plug the Chromecast to an HDMI slot and connect it to a power source and you are good to go. You get a nice wallpaper on your TV screen with instructions.

First you are asked to link with the Chromecast by first connecting to its WiFi network and then Chromecast connects to your home WiFi network. This goes without a hitch. Then, Chromecast asks you to visit the Playstore to get the Chromecast app.

APK Problem:

This is where you run into your first problem. Since Chromecast is not released in India, the Playstore does not allow you to download the app. You get a "App is not available in your country" message.

No problem, I just went on the Internet and Googled for the APK, I found a download link on one site, apkmaza, downloaded the APK and installed it. When I opened the app, it immediately searched for and found the Chromecast on my network and informed me that I was setup and I could now start playing videos.

Test Cases:

I first played a song from the Music app. It immediately started playing through my home theater system which is connected to my TV.

Then I played a 1080p video in Youtube and "casted" the video. This also played without a hitch.

Cast a Chrome tab:

I then opened up my laptop as I wanted to test the "cast a tab" functionality. I installed the chrome extension and chrome tabs were ready to be cast with a small icon on the top right hand corner.

I first cast the Facebook tab and played a slideshow of some of my daughter's photos. I have to say, my Mom loved the feature. This worked flawlessly and the video was also very crisp.

Cast Problems:

I then tried playing a video from Dailymotion. The video started playing fine, but after sometime the audio went out of sync and the video also started stuttering. There was no problem with my wifi network and as I diagnosed the problem further, I isolated the problem to my laptop CPU. As Chromecast tries to cast at 720p by default, my laptop was not able to encode the video at that rate. So I went to the Chromecast extension settings and changed the default to 480p. From then, the videos started playing without any problems. Though I have to say, even if I am casting a simple tab, it shows more than 50% CPU usage on the task manager. I guess this is the reason, they have not yet enabled casting a Chrome tab from Android phones and tabs. They would just not have the processing power.

Video Conferencing:

Now that the basics were done with, I wanted to see what all we can do with Chromecasting. The first thought that came to me was video conferencing with Hangouts.

I logged into Gmail on my laptop and started a Hangout. Unfortunately, the hangout starts in a new popup window and the popup window does not have "cast" icon. So what do we do?

I Googled a little bit and found that you can open the hangouts in a tab by just opening https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_ in a tab. And yes, once you open the hangout in a tab, I was able to cast the hangout onto the TV screen. So from now on, this is how we are going to do our office meetings :)

Future Features:

All in all, I have to say, I love what the little device can do. And the possibilities are endless. Just of few of the top of my head:

1. Play local audio and video. I think someone has already built an app for this.
2. Skype app for Chromecast
3. I am now building an app which integrates with your phone. While you are watching the TV, you will now get an alert in the TV when someone calls you along with information about who is calling you. I hope to finish this in a couple of months if I get some time.
4. Alarm app which starts casting some predefined content to the TV at the specified time.
5. Fitness app with your own personal trainer on the TV.

The possibilities are limitless. If you have some cool ideas in mind, please post them in the comments.