Spector T230- Bluetooth Wireless Speaker - Review

 Spector T230- Bluetooth Wireless Speaker - Review

If you wondering what is the best gift you can give for christmas or as a corporate gift and you love music, then this product might be a great choice. I got this as a gift from my company and I totally love it. What is that is so special about this speaker? It does great stuff for a small palm size speaker. I'm sure few years ago to get the volume and clarity that this bluetooth speaker provides, we would have to go with an expensive speaker and which is few times bigger in size.





The few things that I like about this bluetooth speaker:
a) Very small in size and can be carried even in a pocket.
b) Looks very cute and stylish.
c) It surprises every one with the volume and clarity of sound. The clarity and volumes is great even few meters away from the speakers. You can hide the speaker in your pocket and make people wonder where is the sound coming from :). Which makes it ideal for taking it to picnic spots or wherever you want in your house without connecting wires to the source of music or to power slots.
d) Connects with both my android and blackberry phone through Bluetooth. Turn the switch in the speaker to Bluetooth mode and then find the speaker on your phone through Bluetooth and connect. As  simple as that. The phone does not have to be very close.
e) It runs for a long time and does not need charging every hour. I runs it many times before taking it for charging. It has USB charging.

Lastly, do not take it to any relative or friends house who might like it so much and ask you to give it to them. I have some people like that in my family, so I don't take it along with me when I visit them lol :)

The manual for spector T230 can be found here:
http://www.spectorandco.ca/en/products/files/manuals/T230%20-%20T245%20User%20Manual.pdf

More details about the product spector T230 can be found here:
http://www.spectorandco.ca/sp/product.php?item_num=T230

Review: Le Pan TC082A 8" 8GB Android 4.2.2 Tablet With Cortex-A7 Quad Core Processor - Black - English

Review: Le Pan TC082A 8" 8GB Android 4.2.2 Tablet With Cortex-A7 Quad Core Processor - Black - English

What are the important thing you get in this le pan tc082A tablet that you wont find in other cheap android tablets in the $100-150 range?

a) First to start with, I'm getting a bigger screen size. It has 8 inch screen compared to 7 inch found in other branded or unbranded cheaper tablets such as acer, asus, notebook, etc for that price range.
b) It has both front and back facing camera. In most of the other tablets, it is mostly front facing and I want to have both of it. You never know when you need a rear facing camera too. The resolution of rear facing is 5MP which is pretty good.
c) The speed is good. It has 1.2Ghz cortex-A& processor with 1GB ram which is a very reasonable configuration. I never had issues with speed with this tablet. Awesome response time. With Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean operating system you can enjoy a smooth, customizable experience and access to apps on Google Play
d) The looks of the tablet is another important thing for me. I don't want the tablet to look cheap. Le pan has good styling on their tablet.  




My work around for better battery life:

The battery life is reasonable. However, I don't like charging every now and then. So I turn the wifi off when I'm not using my le pan tablet and that is keeping the battery on for a longer time.

There are a few things that this tablet can do better. To list a few:

1) Volume is low. It is not using the speakers efficiently. If you have ear phones, then the loudness is fine.
2) The rear facing camera app zooms automatically. Something I'm not able to get a handle on. I have installed another app for camera.
3) If you are hands are pretty sweaty then the touch screen sometimes does not respond. This might be issue with lot of other tablets that use the same touch screen technology.


For more information, check out:
http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/le-pan-le-pan-tc082a-8-8gb-android-4-2-2-tablet-with-cortex-a7-quad-core-processor-black-english-tc802a/10280271.aspx




I'm using this le pan tablet from last 7 months and felt compelled to write a review about this tablet. I had bought this for 129$ and it seems to be selling at the same price at BestBuy even now. Every now and then I hear about everyone buying IPAD and some expensive tablets and being a techie I really don't understand why I need to spend so much on a tablet considering the main purpose of tablets are for mobility, surfing, watching videos, and menial stuff like that for most of them.For high end stuff laptops or desktops are a best fit. Hence, I shopped around a lot and ended up buying this tablet. I was skeptical at first considering it is not such a well know brand but the looks of it and the features it offered for that price made me take that risk. I have to say I'm very happy with that tablet. Everyone thinks it is expensive and it really looks slick and expensive. It is good for web browsing (crome and safari), videos and pics, video chatting, etc.

Other cheap tablets for below 150$ can be found in the link:
http://dwbitechguru.blogspot.ca/2014/11/my-top-5-cheap-tablets-for-less-than-150.html

If you looking for great wireless bluetooth speaker to go with this tablet check out:
http://dwbitechguru.blogspot.ca/2014/11/spector-t230-bluetooth-speaker-review.html
 

Unix Interview Prep Tutorial Part2- Simple unix scripts (Usage of IF, FOR Loops, While, Case, parameters, and importing variables from a file)

Unix Interview Prep Tutorial Part2- Simple unix scripts (Usage of IF, FOR Loops, While, Case, parameters, and importing variables from a file)

1) For usage for IF command in unix script, see the below sample script

#!/usr/bin/ksh
$num=3
if [ "$num" -gt "0" ];
  then
  echo "$num greater than 0"
  else
  echo "$num less than 0"
 fi



2) For usage of FOR loop to read filenames from a filelist and move those files to a target directory, see the below example: (You can edit the $SOURCEDIR and $inputfilelist to the path you need for your purpose)

#!/usr/bin/ksh
$SOURCEDIR=/home/directorypath
starttime=`date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'`
$inputfilelist=myinputfilelist.txt
for file in $(<$SOURCEDIR/$inputfilelist)
do
if [[ $file == "#"* ]];
then
echo "Moving of $file ignored"
else
starttime=`date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'`
echo "Starting moving $file at $starttime......"
mv $file /targetfiledirectory/
echo "$file moved to target directory"
fi
done



3) To check number of parameters sent to a script use the below commands in a script:

#!/usr/bin/ksh
if [[ $# -ne 1 ]]; then
   echo "Invalid parameters.\nUsage: $0 <filelist>"
   exit 1
fi


4) To import the variables defined in other file you can use the below commands at the beginning of the script:


. ./file.conf   /* works on unix and import variables from file.conf */
source directory_path/file.conf  /* works on linux and imports variable names from file.conf */

5) Usage of while statement in unix is shown below:#!/usr/bin/ksh
count=5                                   # Initialise count to 5
while [ $count -gt 0 ]                     # while count is greater than 0 do
do
   echo "the value of count is $count"
   count=$(expr $count -1)                 # decrement count by 1
done

6) Usage of string array in unix is shown below:

#!/usr/bin/ksh
namelist="Joe John Peter Tom Bill"
for name in $namelist
do
   if [ "$name" = "Joe" ]
   then
      echo "My name is $name"
   else
      echo "My other names are   ${name}s"
   fi
done
     
7) Usage of case statement in unix is shown below:

#!/usr/bin/ksh
case $1 #value from first parameter
in
1) echo 'One';;
2) echo 'Two';;
*) echo 'Three';;
esac 

How to create XML parser in Informatica using XMLSpy and .dtd?

How to create XML parser in Informatica?

Let’s say you are reading an XML and want to create an XML parser transformation to parse the XML. If the XML is not very complex, then a very simple way to generate the XML parser transformation might be to use XML spy to generate the .dtd file using the XML. Steps below:

How to generate .dtd in XML spy:

1)      Go to File Menu- Open the XML file

2)      Go to DTD/Schema and click on Generate DTD/Schema. It will ask do you want to associate the dtd with the xml file? Click yes and save the dtd file.

3)      Go to XML menu- Click validate. If any issues with the DTD , it will show up when you validate the XML. For the sample xml, I was working with I had to remove one of the child item in the .dtd to make it the validation successful. You can figure it out from the message the validation process throws at you.

Once you have generated the .dtd you can go to Informatica designer-transformation menu and create xml parser transformation using the .dtd schema you just generated. If you need to make any changes to the XML view, you can use the XML Editor that you can access from the midstream XML parser tab of the XML parser.

Java program to add or substract dates

Java program to add or substract dates

Below is the java program for date addition. In example below, you are adding 3 days to date 20140101. You can change the format of the date by changing the format mentioned in the code in red below. 

-----dateadd.java code------------

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.ParseException;
public class dateadd {
public static void main (String[] args) {
DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyymmdd");
Date dt=new Date();
try
            {
 dt = formatter.parse(args[0]);
Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
c.setTime(dt);
c.add(Calendar.DATE,Integer.parseInt(args[1]) );
dt = c.getTime();
System.out.println(formatter.format(dt));
            } catch (ParseException e)
            {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
}
}


Also check out the commonly used date functions in netezza:
http://dwbitechguru.blogspot.ca/2014/09/commonly-used-netezza-date-functions.html

Commonly used netezza date functions and how to do data manipulations?

How to use date functions in Netezza?

--to select the current date and timestamp use:

select current_date
select current_timestamp 

--to add months and convert date to integer use:

select to_number(to_char(add_months(current_date, -1),'YYYYMMDD'),'99999999') --to get date id

select to_number(to_char(add_months(current_date, -1),'YYYYMM'),'9999999') --to get month id

select date(current_date -  cast('1 month' as interval))

--to convert timestamp to yyyy-mm-dd format:

select TO_CHAR(TO_DATE('2011-11-24 22:42:28','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS'),'YYYY-MM-DD')

select TO_CHAR(current_timestamp,'YYYY-MM-DD')

--to extract year part from the current date

select extract (year from current_date)
select date_trunc('year', current_date)
to_number(to_char(current_date,'YYYY'),'9999')  --integer format

--to extract day and month from the current date

select extract (day from current_date)

--to get first and last day of the year:

select to_date((extract (year from current_date)) || '0101','YYYYMMDD')
select to_date((extract (year from current_date)) || '1231','YYYYMMDD')

--to get first of the month given a date

select date_trunc('month', current_timestamp)

--to get last month end date

select date_trunc('month', current_timestamp)-1

--to add 7 days to current date

select date(current_date +  cast('7 days' as interval))

--to get timestamp in a specific format

select to_timestamp( current_timestamp, 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS')
select to_timestamp( '2014-12-01 23:12:12', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS')

--to add hours to a date

 select TO_CHAR(date((current_date +  cast('1 hour' as interval))),'YYYY-MM-DD') 

--To calculate difference in days , weeks between two dates

select datediff(week,'2012-01-01','2015-12-31') as numweeks;

select datediff(day,'2009-01-01','2015-12-31') as numdays;

Also check:
http://dwbitechguru.blogspot.ca/2014/09/jave-program-to-add-or-substract-dates.html

For loading and migration of data in  netezza, check:
http://dwbitechguru.blogspot.ca/2014/11/extract-load-migrate-filesdata-from.html

For SQL server date functions check:
http://dwbitechguru.blogspot.ca/2014/11/sql-server-important-date-manipulation.html

How to generate SSH keys and use it for Sftp / SSH/ SCP?

How to generate SSH keys and use it for Sftp / SSH/ SCP?

SSH keys are commonly used during sftp and scp to authourize access to a host machine. Instead of using a password, ssh keys are used to identify and authourize a machine to login to a target machine. It is more safe and hard to breakin.

In brief, the steps to set up ssh authetication would be as follows:

Step a: On any source/client machine, use the command below to generate the ssk keys:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -f <nameofthekeyfile>

Example: ssh-keygen -t rsa -f mykeys-for-targetmachine

The command will prompt for keys size, expiry date, passphase, etc. You can enter the values you deem fit for your purpose.The above command will create a private and pub key with the key name mykeys-for-targetmachine you have provided in the command. The public key file will have .pub extention.

Step b: Now open the public key file and copy the contents of the key file.

Example:
cat mykeys-for-targetmachine.pub

The output will look something like this:
ssh-rsaAAAAB3NzaC1yc2ASAGSAHGSJAHSGJASGAJSG38fxq8VHDwNRP/asJHGJHGJGaasasaJGJJGJHGJHJx305gH3XKZA3
asdasdaLLHJLLJLJLJLJLLKJLJLasdsadsadjlkjlajdsadl= myuser@targetmachine.com

Step c: Login to the target machine that you want to access and open the authorised_keys file. This file should be in your home directory.Paste the contents of the public file that you copied in step b to this file.

Step d: Back to the source/client machine, change the permission of the keys to make it secure.
For the above example, it would be:

chmod 600 mykeys-for-targetmachine


Step e: Now try to SSH to target machine using your new keys to test the connection: The command would be something like the below (replace the <myuser> with the user name requierd on the target machine and the <targetmachine> with the name of the target machine that you want to login i.e. the machine to with the authourized key file that you just updated in step c:

ssh -i mykeys-for-targetmachine <myuser>@<targetmachine>

it will prompt first to add the target machine to the list of known host, press yes and you should be now logged into the machine. If it prompts for a password then you haven't done something right. Check the above steps and do the required correction.

How to sftp and scp using ssh keys? Below are the commands to use:

sftp -i mykeys-for-targetmachine <myuser>@<targetmachine>
scp -i  mykeys-for-targetmachine <myuser>@<targetmachine>



More information can be found in the below link:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SSH/OpenSSH/Keys