January 2010 – Be a Rebel

I bought a Bike – Ultimately…

Posted under Hobbies on January 23rd, 2010 by Vivek Bhat

So, how many of you have some of childhood wishes still lurking in some corner of your hearts. There is always something deep in our hearts we want to do… just to satisfy our hearts… our souls… just ourselves. Just step out of the dog eats dog rule, step out of cut throat competition and do what we just want to do.

I had just the kind of wish, since childhood… ride a high end geared bike… hold on, not a bike as in “Motor Bike” (Harley Davidson, Enfeild, etc, etc..) but a “bi-cycle”. Yes friends, a bi-cycle. After three years of working, I had just forgotten that I too had some childhood wishes which had remain unfulfilled. I remembered, while walking on the Shalimar Road in Jammu with my friend Winner, we had decided that the first thing we are going to do with our first salary is to buy a bi-cycle. But things are different when you start working. Priorities change and we juts forget who we are. Anyways, the wish just came to my mind again on one fine day while I was working on one of the codes in my office. So I just said why not!!

There opens my Firefox browser and I searched for bikes on the India’s most famous bi-cycle manufacturers viz Hero and Atlas. There I really liked the Octane class of bikes from Hero Cycles, specifically the OCTANE RECRA 26T. I made up my mind to get the bike while going to home from my office in the evening. So I left office at around 5 pm and reached SAIBABA sports on DP Road Pune, the official distributors of Hero Cycles in Pune. But then, there I saw bi-cycles of other brands also.. Firefox and Trek. Ultimately I choose Firefox Cyclone for myself. The Bi-cycle in all cost me Rs.10,000/-. The dealer said that the bike will be delivered within an hour or two to my home in Baliwadi Phata… So I left… Happy, for I had just acheived one of my childhood wishes :). I got the bike at around 10 pm that night… Now whenever I go somewhere I do get the kind of looks that is deserved for Harley Davidson riders. The people get curious and start asking questions about the bike. And, I am loving every part of it.. the looks, the ride and the satisfaction of fulfilling on of my wishes.

The specification of the bike are:

19″ Alloy Frame, TIG welded
Suspension fork
Shimano 18 speed gears
V-type brakes, alloy rims
Colour: Blue / Silver

Here are some snaps I took of my bike 🙂 {vsig}vrysmple/bike{/vsig}

OpenOffice and Google Docs

Posted under Technical on January 4th, 2010 by Vivek Bhat

How many of you have really wanted to access your documents from anywhere anytime without carrying pen drives and hard disk drives with you every where. Yes, you have google docs for that. But then some people do not want to be connected to the Internet all the time, and not everyone is comfortable editing their documents on line. So what do we do. That is where OpenOffice Google Docs plug in comes in handy. Download the OpenOffice Google Docs plugin from here. Install it using the OpenOffice extension manager.

ext mgr

After installing restart OpenOffice. The OpenOffice quick starter may also be running, so quit from it and restart the whole OpenOffice application. You may have to install and restart the application more than one time, as it took me 4-5 re-installations and 4-5 restarts to ultimately get the Google Docs plugin toolbar :), which looks like the toolbar in the second image:

Click on the first or second icon which are “Export to Google Docs” and “Import from Google Docs” actions. This will open a window for entering your google account credentials. Fill in your login details and then click on the Get List button. Here is the image:

gd credentials

You are done. Next time you have OpenOffice document, upload it to google docs and it is ready to be edited form anywhere. Or just download your google document to OpenOffice and start editing. The OpenOffice plugin also supports Zoho and WebDAV