Guiding Principle of Architecture

 Guiding Principle of Architecture 

You don't start trying to build a car, you start by looking at the problem; wanting to get from A-B easier. 

The quickest way to do this is to slap some wheels to a board and make a basic skateboard, it helps you solve the problem quickly and satisfy your customer, after which you can iterate. 

How to fix the "Program error" in adobe Photoshop 2021 on Windows 10

 If you are facing an error in Adobe Photoshop 2021 on Windows 10 as seen in the below screenshot which says The request could not be completed because of a program error.

Watch the video to know how to fix this error !!

Hack for knowing your forgotten wifi password on your Windows PC/laptop

If you want to find out the password of your wifi connection connected to the internet in your system, type the below command in the command prompt and check the value of the property "Key content" !!

Voilaa... Your wifi password is now shown up on the response on the CLI on your windows PC/laptop screen :)

Disclaimer: Use it to find out the forgotten password of your own internet connection. Do not use it to hack into somebody else's wifi connection :D

C:\>netsh wlan show profile name=<wifi-name> key=clear

Profile <wifi-name> on interface Wi-Fi:

=======================================================================

Applied: All User Profile

Profile information

-------------------

    Version                : 1

    Type                   : Wireless LAN

    Name                   : <wifi-name>

    Control options        :

        Connection mode    : Connect automatically

        Network broadcast  : Connect only if this network is broadcasting

        AutoSwitch         : Do not switch to other networks

        MAC Randomization  : Disabled

Connectivity settings

---------------------

    Number of SSIDs        : 1

    SSID name              : "wifi-name"

    Network type           : Infrastructure

    Radio type             : [ Any Radio Type ]

    Vendor extension          : Not present

Security settings

-----------------

    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal

    Cipher                 : CCMP

    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal

    Cipher                 : GCMP

    Security key           : Present

    Key Content            : <password in clear text>

Cost settings

-------------

    Cost                   : Unrestricted

    Congested              : No

    Approaching Data Limit : No

    Over Data Limit        : No

    Roaming                : No

    Cost Source            : Default

How to delete an already created multichain?

Here is how you can delete an already created multichain.

 multichain-cli chain1 stop

rm -r ~/.multichain/chain1

You need to do this on every node that was connected.

Apple Airpods Max for 60K !!🤯 How about getting 60 LEAF or BOAT indian h...

I know you folks were curious to know about my opinion about the new Apple Airpods Max which is priced insanely at Rs 59,900/- !! 

So I made this video reviewing 2 other cheapest Bluetooth headphones from pretty popular Indian brands LEAF and boAt so that you can make a judgement in terms of the value which you can get at such dirt-cheap prices in stark comparison with the Apple product positioning and the functional aspects of these headphones. The headphones which I have reviewed are very good for the price which you pay.

The only major drawback of the LEAF bass 2 headphones which I found was their noise isolation/seal issue where external world can hear the music which plays in your ears during practical usage. This is going to be surely a problem if you are using it in a quiet place with other people around you. Other than this for casual usage at home, these are pretty well-performing headphones for the price which they are being sold in the over the ears headphones category.

I loved them when I paired it with my Sony 4K TV using a 3rd party Bluetooth receiver. The range of the Bluetooth and the sound quality of the output was exceptionally good due to which I am mighty impressed with the LEAF brand. However, for some reason, they do not sound as good when paired with my iPhone.

Nevertheless, the LEAF headphones do a pretty good job overall.

You can buy atleast 50 headphones at a price of 1 Apple AirPods max 😎 which is insane pricing on the part of Apple. But I would like to reiterate that it’s unfair to compare Apple products with these products since Apple is trying to position its products in a different league altogether which is the elite luxury premium category.

Some of the key features of the Apple AirPods max include: 

• Transparency mode where you can fully hear the external world noise even after wearing the headphones similar to AirPods Pro.
• Noise cancellation proving complete isolation from external world noise such as plane, train crowd noise and so on.
• Spatial audio providing immersive home theatre like surround sound where audio can felt from all direction.
• Handoff feature to switch seamlessly between all Apple devices.

The LEAF Bass 2 headphones are available at a price of 1.5K on Amazon and through an offer from the Cred app, I purchased it from the http://leafstudios.in  by applying a coupon code there by getting a Rs 800 discount on the actual MRP of Rs 1899/-. 

You can buy the LEAF BASS 2 headphones from this flipkart link at a discounted price of Rs 1499/- only 

Prerequisites for using VMs through Oracle VM Virtualbox Manager

If you need to utilize Oracle VM Virtualbox Manager, on your Windows Operating system, there are certain prerequisites that you will need to confirm. If these are not as per the below output, then your Oracle VM Virtualbox Manager might fail to start.

Open Windows PowerShell prompt and type the below 2 commands & verify that their output should be as below.

Windows PowerShell

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Loading personal and system profiles took 16318ms.

(base) PS C:\Users\rupakuma> Wmic computersystem get hypervisorpresent

HypervisorPresent

FALSE

(base) PS C:\Users\rupakuma> wmic cpu get virtualizationfirmwareenabled

VirtualizationFirmwareEnabled

TRUE

If not, you will need to enable virtualization through BIOS & disable Hyper-V in your Windows operating system.

Apple Watch Series 6 - I bought all the Apple products to experience the ecosystem

In this video, I talk about my Deepavali/Diwali purchase of the last product which I had to buy to complete the essentials loop of the Apple ecosystem. It was my first Apple Watch purchase. I also talk about its features and my shopping for the Apple watch experience in Bengaluru, India.

Here is the timeline of the video

0:00 Intro with Watch faces 2:35 Shopping in the store 5:27 Unboxing in the store 8:03 Unboxing at Home 10:19 The Apple Ecosystem 11:31 Features in brief

My first smartwatch was an Android wear which is now called the Wear OS from Motorola, It was called the Moto 360n 2nd Generation smartwatch which was released in September 2015. The 1st moto 360 1st generation was the first round shaped Android smartwatch that was ever released in September 2014. I had ordered it from the Flipkart shopping website for Rs 19,000 and made an unboxing, overview and an in-depth review of the smartwatch. I have left the links to these videos below which you can watch for nostalgia purposes. 😊

Watch my Youtube video for my in-depth review of the moto 360 2nd gen Android wear smartwatch. I loved its luxurious look and feel and it was a sure attention grabber with its then exclusive always-on display which was not featured in the earlier Apple watches.

My next smartwatch purchase was just about a year ago which was the Fossil Gen5 carlyle HR which was also a great watch with an AMOLED display. I costed around Rs 20,000/-bought from the Amazon. It's a great watch for an android user with the capability to answer calls over the watch as it too features a nice speaker similar to the apple watch. In fact, I was using the watch for a good 3 weeks with my iPhone 12 as well. The only thing missing was that I could not reply back to SMS or WhatsApp messages using the Fossil watch. The Fossil watch is a Wear OS 2.0 based smartwatch with a great Google Fit app for fitness tracking. I felt that the Google fit had some cool functionalities to auto-detect the type of exercises or workouts. Apple Watch since Watch OS 5 offers automatic workout detection and will remind you to turn on the workout app.

The Apple Watch was released on April 24th, 2015 and due to its innovative design and the great user experience, it became the world's best-selling wearable device. People loved the interchangeable bands and their versatile personality.

Perhaps the best reason for people to buy the Apple smartwatch is that it works so well with the iPhones and its exclusivity. It makes a screaming fashion statement announcing that you own an iPhone. iPhone being an aspirational luxury product, the Apple watch allows people to flaunt their prized possession without having to flash their iPhones 💁🏻.

However things are now changing and Apple, in general, is changing as a company. No one would have ever thought that the best selling budget iPhone in America would be the iPhone SE 2020. Apple now offers iPhones and Apple watches for every budget. You have the iPhone SE & the Apple Watch Series 3 which is the cheapest offering from Apple. For the folks with deep pockets, they do have the newly launched iPhone Pro Max and the Apple watch series 6. 

Just to be clear, I am talking about smartwatches and not a fitness band or a watch.

Going by the books, a smartwatch must provide you with features beyond fitness tracking like step tracking, heart rate reading, exercise enablers, and so on. An ideal smartwatch must provide you with features such as push notifications, the ability to reply to messages from various apps, and the ability to answer calls when your phone is slightly away from you.

Honestly, the ECG & the Blood O2/Oxygen sensors and the apps are the bells and whistles of the Apple watch series 6. The always-on display is a very important feature that differentiates the series 6 from its other variants. Its USP comes from the interconnectivity it offers with the Macbook Pro. A simple example would be that if you are wearing an unlocked Apple watch, you do not need to type in your password or use touch id on your Macbook Pro! That's a neat trick. 

The Apple watch series 6 features the faster S6 SoC as compared to the S5 chip used in series 5 and the Watch SE. 

The other lovely feature is the functionality of making or answering calls over the Apple watch. Its an extension of the Apple ecosystem concept to be able to accept calls from any of the Apple devices like the Macbook, iPad, iPhone or the Apple Watch. (Apple Homepod too! well, that's one Apple device that I haven't got my hands on)

The below watch faces are another great example of how the Apple Watch takes advantage of its ecosystem. It can fetch the memoji's from your iPhone or iPad and set them as animated watchfaces on your Apple watch.

Really impressed with the way the Apple watch has been packaged in these big boxes with separate boxes for the watch and the watch straps. The watch straps have been placed without any folding, unlike other watch brands. The best thing was that a spare watch strap has also been provided for the people who wear the watch on their right hand as well.

This watch face can fetch all your photos from the iCloud and display them randomly whenever you glance at your watch.

The charging dock clings magnetically onto the watch and has some cool docking watch faces showing the time with the battery percentage.

It uses machine learning to detect your menstrual cycles using its cycle tracking app for the ladies. The watch also uses machine learning to detect if you are washing your hands, your fitness and exercise trends. The watch offers sedentary reminders and motivates you to stand every 1 hour and to close the move rings to help you stay fit and stay motivated to workout.

The watch also has a cool handwash detection feature which will give you a nice countdown for 20 seconds. It uses machine learning to detect if you are washing your hands with soap or just giving it a quick rinse :)

The funny thing was that it asked me if I was washing my hands when I was using sanitizer as well!

Created By Madhukar Rupakumar https://techbytes-madhukar.com https://krmadhukar.blogspot.com Follow me on below Social media platforms: Youtube, Twitter, Instagram: krmadhukar my FB page: https://www.facebook.com/https://www.facebook.com/MadhukarKRupakumar

My tryst with the mobile Phone !

 Cut to flashback...I need to first mention about the land line telephone which we all were used to earlier. I went to the telephone department at Sheshadri Road to apply for the telephone connection by paying a deposit of Rs 3000/- when I was an engineerig student in 1999. I was so happy that that I need not go to the PCOs or the coin phone booths to call my friends. Now I would have my own number where my friends could reach me when I was @home. It took 3-4 months before we received this phone connection. We got ourselves a cordless Panasonic handset & I was all gung ho about this. It was the year 1999 or 2000 I think, I got my hands on the mobile handsets such as Siemens & Ericsson. These were bought by my father. And then there was the mobile phone from Motorola which belonged to my uncle which used extensively for SMSs. In 2003, I badly needed a mobile phone of my own since I had already started searching for jobs. And then Reliance's Karlo Duniya Muthi main campaign happened which revolutionized the mobile phone industry by making LG CDMA handsets available for a paltry Rs 500/-. This phone had a medium resolution blue backlight display which was capable of displaying images in grayscale mode. There was R-world CDMA data service through which we were able to connect to the internet for downloading ringtones & images from Reliance CDMA data sites. The phone used to get heated up during long conversations on it. It had a stand type of charger. The phone was quite cute & small with a nice keypad layout. The mobile cost me dirt cheap Rs 500/-

 Due to this, mobile phone was no longer a gadget of luxury & even people from lower middle class could easily afford it. But of course there were expensive models even then which only the upper middle class used to go for.

Then came the era of mobile phones with color display in 2004. There were lot of players in the low end market of color display phones then such as LG, Samsung & Ericsson. Nokia was a somewhat late entrant into this category since its B/W phones were doing very well such as the 3310, 2100 Nokia models.

Finally I bought my first GSM phone from my own hard earned money which was a Samsung C100 which had a brilliant color display & a blinking LED on top which emitted multicolors during phone rings. It had nice ringtones of midi format such as the nature sounds, horse's squeaking & so on. It had a nice steel slim body finishing with a nice keypad layout.

This one cost me Rs 7000/-

This was the cover of my first GSM pre-paid phone connection from Airtel. I still use this same number even after 8 years but have converted the connection to post paid plan.

Then came the era of camera phones during late 2004 & that was when I went ahead with the first upgrade for a camera mobile phone from Motorola. I dont remember its model number but it had a much bigger screen than the Samsung C100 & it could display JPEG images with great clarity. The camera was a basic one with 0.3 megapixel but it generated decent images.

The pic of this phone is here for all to see :)

Little did I realize that this was just the start of a never ending saga of mobile phone upgrade due to its craze & frequent upgrade of mobile phone technology which is true even today.

Paid Rs 10,000/- for my first moto !

Mp3 ringtones & video camera in a phone became a rage a few months later. the lack of it in my moto mobile phone was pinching enough for me to go for a new phone very soon. In 2005 I went for Sony Erricson K500i camera phone which captured decent videos. It supported mp3 ringtones & very nice call recording capabilities.

I paid Rs 6,500/- for this one. It was a very sleek mobile with nice 3D games & a video camera for the first time in my case.

This was the phone which I used when I got engaged :). Needless to say that it had great battery backup which enabled me to talk endlessly with my spouse for hours together.

Just before marriage around November 2005, smartphones were round the corner. Nokia had introduced its first smartphone Nokia 3650 which was a rage among people. I soon switched over to a used handset of Nokia 3660 which was the second smartphone from Nokia which had a huge screen & keyboard layout. My friends used to call it the Brick phone :)

The best thing about the smartphone was that you could extent its capabilities by installing software available on the internet. Due to its large displays viewing photos, videos & SMS messages on it was a delight. Also installed an mp3 player, movie player on it. I listened to mp3 songs on this phone for the first time ever. I paid Rs 4000/- for this one for a used handset.

Then came the shortcomings of this phone which I realized slowly.. The smartphone OS symbian was highly unstable causing phone hangs & crashes often. Also it supported external memory only up to 256 MB. Due to its large display the battery used to get drained very early which was a major problem.

In late 2006, I was forced to switch to a new mobile phone again. This time it was the Nokia 5200 XpressMusic. It was an excellent phone with mp3 music playback capability with 2 GB external memory card support. Excellent design with external keys for controlling music.

To be continued.... stay tuned !

Coming up...

Nokia 5700

Nokia 5800

& finally the almighty Nokia N8 :)

Things I love and Hate about my iPhone 12. Thoughts from an Android user since 13 years

In this video, let’s talk about the pros and cons of the iPhone 12 & my experience of migrating from the Android platform to the apple’s iOS platform.

Timeline 

Comparison with Product(Red) of iPhone SE at 2:16

Pros at 2:55

Migration from Android experience at 5:31

Cons at 7:50

I have been an Android phone user all my life ever since the glory of the Symbian Nokia era was a thing of the past.

But ofcourse I have been using the iPad mini 2 ever since it was launched and became a fan of the iOS platform ever since. However I have never been a fan of the iPhone as such.

My first Android device was the Samsung Galaxy S3 which was a lovely phone with some great user experience provided by Samsung. Always felt that the screen size provided by Apple iPhone during those times to be too small to my liking.

With iPhone 6 I believe things changed for the iPhone in terms of the screen size. And when iPhone X was launched it made me sit up and take notice. However I had moved on to use several Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S3, Sony Xperia Z1, Lenovo K5 Note (first 4G phone) and finally moved on to using the OnePlus family of phones starting from OnePlus 5T and then finally to OnePlus 7 Pro.

The OnePlus 7 Pro is a great phone with no notch design with a stunning 90 Hz refresh rate Super AMOLED display. I simply fell in love with the looks of the display the very first time I saw it in the OnePlus experience store in MG Road in Bangalore and made up my mind to buy it instantly.

After purchasing the iPad mini 2, my next Apple purchase was the MacBook Pro as my very first personal laptop purchase. I was always a Microsoft Windows desktop user and was never a fan of laptops for personal use.

Ofcourse I had the office provided Windows loaded laptops for office use.

My experience of using the Macbook Pro with the iPad was great as they work very well together in terms of sharing files over the iCloud, Airdrop and so on. This drove me towards purchasing my 3rd Apple product purchase which was the iPad Pro 2019 and then the Apple Pencil to go with it.

Finally I gave it to the temptation to buy my very first iPhone when Flipkart offered a huge discount on the iPhone SE 2020 edition of around 17K. Ofcourse this was bought for my daughter and I was waiting for the iPhone 12 to be announced.

Nevertheless, when it was launched I was happy to hear that the iPhone 12 model had finally been given a nice OLED display upgrade. The ugly notch and the lack of a 90/120 Hz display was dissapointing but nevertheless I had finally made up my mind to go ahead with the purchase of the iPhone 12 128 GB model.

On October 23rd, I went ahead and booked the iPhone 12 on reliancedigital.in . The delivery date was showing up as 27th October but with a disclaimer that the date is not applicable for for per-orders. I was expecting that the iPhone would arrive at my doorstep on the launch date which was Oct 30th. To my surprise I noticed that the order status was still sitting in order confirmed state on their website. Why would anyone wait for a product when it is readily available in stores on the launch day. I went ahead and cancelled the order through their customer care over phone. Though the phone order was cancelled, it finally arrived at my doorstep on 1st Nov and I had to return it.

Had to go through anxious 8 days for the money to get finally refunded to my source bank account from where the payment was made.

On 30th Oct I went ahead and bought the iPhone 12 from the imagine store who are a reputed Apple premium store in Bangalore from their store in VegaCity mall in BG road.

My experience with the iPhone tells me that it is the right integration with their own hardware and software which creates the magic and delivers such great performance in their phones even though their hardware specs are nowhere close to the flagship android devices of Samsung or OnePlus. Their UX design is top-notch leaving no stone unturned to provide the best possible user experience across the Apple devices. 

The seamless way the devices interoperable match no other company’s products.

Most people doing creative work with imaging and graphics do it on Mac and that’s the trigger point for them to enter the Apple ecosystem.

The devices interoperable so well to provide seamless interaction to benefit the user. For e.g if you own an iPhone iPad and MacBook and watch if you receive a call you can pick the call in any of these devices. The AirPods also auto switch seamlessly without any manual intervention. If you are wearing an Apple Watch you don’t need to type in your password to log into the MacBook! These are the subtle things which take the user experience to the next level.

Of course there are cons with the iPhone device as such as the lack of an in screen finger print scanner which is so essential in today’s times where one cannot rely on Face ID as you cannot uncover your full face in public due to the pandemic.

The notch is as wide as ever and iPhone user have to live with it. The refresh rate of the display is still 60Hz and for a flagship phone of such pricing should have got at-least a 90Hz display.

5g is non existent in India as yet so it’s obvious that it’s not being mentioned at all in Apple India’s website as a feature.

To the people who are saying that the iPhone is expensive in India, iPhone was never cheap in here. 

By the way this entire article was typed on the iPhone 12 and I enjoyed typing it on this phone ;) simply love the audio feedback and the haptic feel of the keyboard on the iPhone.

My migration experience while switching from the Android to the iOS was quite smooth as I was already an iOS user due to owning 2 iPads in the past. Only issue was with the WhatsApp backup which I worked around through an app called Windershare dr.fone. Do get in touch with me on my social handles if you need help or guidance in this regard.

My social handles at insta YouTube and Twitter - krmadhukar 

My FB page name is called Madhukar KR

My gadget purchases during the Amazon great Indian Festival !! Apple Airpods Pro & Samsung SSD T7

In this video, you will see me unboxing the tech gadgets which I purchased in October 2020. I review and unbox the Samsung SSD T7 which has read-write IO speeds of up to 1 Gbps which is blazing fast !! 

It costed me 13K during the sale. 

I also got myself the Apple Airpods Pro with Active noise cancellation and Wireless charging case on a huge discount at Rs 17,999/- I was contemplating on going for the over the ear headphones from Sony with ANC (1000XM4) but after learning that the Spatial audio support in Apple airPods Pro is way better than any other headphones out there, it had to be the Apple Airpods Pro.

I also got the green screen stand and the cloth for my videos & the 19 inch ring light with various chromatic light effects and temperature control from Digitec. The ring light also has 2 slots for inserting batteries for outdoor usage.