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What is a Smart Home and how Smart Devices are helping with it.

What is a Smart Home and how Smart Devices are helping with it. Several years ago, the world population was very small. People’s needs were much less, work availability was plenty, expectations were less and thus were leading a much better life than now. However, as they say, only change is permanent. Animals as gigantic as Dinosaurs disappeared from earther because they couldn’t cope up with change. But the Homo Sapiens are much smarter and have been surviving. If you look at the trend of how the human race has evolved you’ll agree that “necessity indeed is the mother of all innovations”. Human race sustained, grown multifold in population and hence kept finding newer things to do and in different ways. In the process invented many technologies. Now it has reached such a stage that we’re ready to automate every single mundane task that we do even at home, so that we can save time for other important stuff. In order to achive this we currently use mainly two things, i.e. automation a

Manabasa Gurubar || Famous Festival of Odisha

The story of “ Manabasa Gurubar ” teaches us against the evil practices of Untouchability in ancient society. It also stresses the importance of feminism and empowers the female power to not get suppressed by male hegemony. The word Manabasa comes from two words Mana (a measuring unit to measure paddy in olden days) a pot made of Bamboo cane is filled with freshly harvested paddy, and Basa(to keep it as a designated place for worship). The doors and walls are decorated with chita (rangoli used nowadays, but earlier a thin mix of water and rice paste was sprinkled on the walls by hand to form beautiful white designs) beautifully. It’s believed goddess Lakshmi won’t visit if the house is not clean. It’s also called “ Margashira Masa Gurubara “; Gurubara is “Thursday” and Margashira is the month of “ मार्गशीर्ष ” in Hindi. Legend of Manabasa Gurubar is based on the ancient scripture “ Lakshmi Puran ”. Since the untouchables were not allowed to pray, worship and do rituals to God in

Mind Numbing Facts About Dropshipping with AliExpress

AliExpress – does the name sound familiar? I’m sure it does, if you’re already into electronics accessories business or exploring about it. Besides, if you’re a gadget freak and the ultimate latest gadgets that you’re looking for aren’t available in India, then you might have researched and found them on AliExpress. People who’re exploring new business ideas must have come across something called “dropshipping”. Go to YouTube and search for this word and you’ll find hundreds of videos teaching you how to make hundreds of Dollars by dropshipping to the US from AliExpress. There are even people showing their flashy Ferrari car and huge bunglows they could afford out of the money they earned from dropshipping business. That too from the comfort of your home, without travelling anywhere. Dropshipping means you don’t stock the items, you take the order from the customer and forward it to the actual seller who then ships it directly to the customer on your behalf. Then naturally the questi

Talk to the God. Make him a Friend.

What do most of us do while worshiping God in a place of worship? Mostly keep asking for something or some help, isn’t it? God I’m unable to accomplish this, please help; God I’m unable to get a job please help; God there’s no peace in my life, please help and so on; isn’t it? Let’s just see what the God has given us already: 1. The best pair of hands : No other living thing in this world has hands as capable as ours. Most of them don’t even have hands in first place. 2. Best pair of legs : Well, I know that many other living things can run faster than us, but that’s not the only thing we do with our legs. 3. Best body : One that’s highly versatile. Can live on any kind of food. Can survive in various climatic conditions. 4. The best brain : This is the one thing that establishes our superiority over all other known living beings. There is virtually nothing that this part of the body can’t do. We still go back to our creator to beg? He or she must be regretting that the best thing he e

My Addiction to Technology.

  I keep hearing everyday within my family, my friend circle and everyone else that I meet regularly, about my addiction to tech gadgets. Let’s give it some thought to see how true is that. Oxford dictionary quotes “ The fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance or activity “. Cambridge dictionary days “ An inability to stop doing our using something, especially something harmful “. Look at the second definition, it also says “something harmful”, which is a very relative thing. Horse riding can be very harmful for some whereas it’s the bread and butter for a jockey or a Polo player. Operating the blast furnace of a steel plant can be extremely dangerous, but it’s the job for the operator. A priest goes to temple everyday and spends most of the day there, is he addicted to it? My father used to go to work everyday, was he addicted too? Nope, they were doing their jobs. Fair enough, then how can anyone call me addicted? Do I waste time chatting with buds on WhatsApp

Criticizing Foods of Other Regions

  Have you ever come across people belonging to one region of our country laughing at the food of another region? I have, and that too many times. There are few foods in some regions of our country that I don’t like too, but I never say anything derogatory about it. I have always taught my children that never judge anyone by the food he or she eats, also never criticize any kind of food. Our food habit doesn’t come to us by choice, though it can be changed later, when we grow up. Everyone’s food habit comes from the family he or she is born in. When I was born I didn’t know what is food, same with every human being. But later on I was fed whatever was consumed in our family and in whatsoever way. This article will be easily digested by those people who have traveled across India and have lived in those places for some time. I’m pretty sure many of them have come across one or more of the examples given below. Have you come across people of one region criticizing someone from another r

Mutual Funds Sahi Hai: Why Invest in Mutual Funds?

  It’s a valid question and I know many who have this question in mind are looking for an answer. Reason is simple, no one earlier used to advertise mutual funds as much as insurances or ULIPs, hence it’s still something new for many. But, now there’s plenty of info available about mutual funds all over the internet, if one has access to the internet and some interest to explore. This article is my little effort to tell people the pros and cons of investing in mutual funds. Who would invest : The masses, general public; because mutual fund is something where you can invest as low as just Rs 500 per month. People having abundant money, would choose to invest in land, house, commercial complex or gold rather. What investment options are available and generally bought : Immovable property : Like house, land or commercial complexes. Huge amount of money is required to buy them; they give back humongous returns too if invested in right time and place. So if you have the money then probably

Mutual Funds Sahi Hai: How to invest in Mutual Funds

I started investing in Mutual funds quite some years ago, when the only ways to invest in them were as given below. The intention of this post is to let people know that investing in Mutual Funds has become much easier now a days. Also you don’t need anybody’s help to invest in them if you have a computer, internet, AADHAR, PAN and some interest to learn and do it yourself. The only methods available earlier were: 1 . Open accounts with the online investment portals of all fund houses you’re interested in. To do this I had to download, print, fill up and send the application forms, along with supporting documents, to all of them by courier or personally by visiting their local offices. Only then the accounts got created and enabled to invest. Then came the mandatory KYC which too was a very cumbersome process. 2 . Open accounts with service providers like ICICI direct, share khan etc. and invest in Mutual funds via them. The only advantage was that you could have a consolidated view of

How to Save Water? Save Water, Save Earth, Let's Save some for Our Children

  “पानी तो पानी है, पानी जिंदगानी है ।”   “Save water, save earth”   These are just a couple of quotations out of the several used to spread awareness among people to conserve water; but looks like we just hear it and then forget it. I know many who spend a lot of water; and actually it’s not spending, it’s wasting rather. I remember seeing a video recently on youtube where an inventor was explaining how during washing our utensils most of the water from the tap actually goes down the drain and very little of it actually clean the utensils. There are several similar examples we can find if we look carefully at the usage of water in our daily life. So I’ll not spend much time and space here talking about these, rather, I’ll provide below some steps that should be, or should I say ‘must be’ followed starting ‘now’ in order to save some of the mother earth for our children.   Water saving taps : Replace the taps at home, in the kitchen and wash areas to be particular with the water savin

Indian education system needs a complete overhaul

I have read in books, seen in historical TV serials and movies that in ancient times children were being sent to ‘ Gurukuls ‘ for their educational needs. There they were being taught life skills like taking care of the animals, farming, collecting firewood, cooking food and so on, besides the Vedas and Upanishad etc. This was really great because it was teaching the kids values and also skills to survive in the world. When the foreign forces invaded our country they found that education system to be too efficient and producing amazing human beings. But they wanted to rule India and that too for long time. They realized that well educated Indians wouldn’t dance to their tunes. Hence they systematically destroyed that ancient and efficient education system and established such a system that produces only slaves to work as labourers in their various unimportant positions. It’s almost similar to what they did to our original very efficient and organic cultivation system. They brought ch

Be careful with drinking water in summer

  Hello friends, still gulping those panipuris (golgappa, gupchup) at the road side? Pouring in those lemon sodas and road side juices? Well, be careful. The typical problem in the cities during summer is that drinking water becomes scarce and hence there is a chance that ‘not so healthy’ water is used in all the items mentioned above, no matter what the vendor swears by for his/her food quality.   I live in Hyderabad and everyone who lives in or knows about this city also knows about the permanent water problem here. There are areas I know where people rely on water tankers round the year. There are many other cities and towns all over India with similar problem. Just think, in such a situation where would a road side vendor get good quality water for free? If he has to pay for it then either he’ll increase the price of his items or will use whatever water is available to him ( quality goes for a toss ) or even both if the person is greedy. Customers have a reputation of not accepti

How to unlock and install custom recovery on Mi 5 (Gemini)

  Make sure your Mi 5 is running stock MIUI and is updated to the latest.   Obtain permission from Xiaomi to unlock the bootloader of your device here . Once approved you’ll land at the unlock tool download page. Download the MI unlock tool from there or here is a direct link. Unzip it at a convenient location on your PC. You can download it without permission from Xiaomi, but without permission it won’t do what it’s supposed to do; unlocking will fail after reaching certain percentage. Also after obtaining unlock permission there will be a wait time of 72 hours, when you try to unlock with the tool it’ll fail and show your how much time is remaining. After expiry of the wait time use the tool to unlock it and it’ll work.   Download Google USB driver from here . Install it using the procedure given at here .   Make sure ADB is installed on your PC, if not, download the Google ADB from here and unzip it at a convenient location on your PC.   To unlock, power off the phone, keep vol

In Pursuit of an Ideal Smart Phone

  I’ve seen many nice reviews of smart phones, both old and new; however I find one thing in common with every phone that I have used or tested, i.e. none of them is perfect.     I started using a smartphone running Android in 2011. Since then I’ve owned many of them; some were really good whereas there were few over hyped ones; then there were some that stood somewhere in between trying to please everyone. One thing is for sure that none of them were perfect in my opinion. If I found one to be too big for my hands to hold it comfortably, another was just too much hyped to its real performance. There were some who had really good specs on paper but put up a poor show due to not so good software or camera or sensors or a combination of all of these.     So here, I’ll take examples of some phones that I liked the most among those I owned so far, but how they still were not perfect for me in some way or the other.     The ones that I’m going to discuss here are Oneplus 3, MI A1, MI 5, LG