How to connect Facebook Page to Twitter and Twitter to Facebook Page

I was recently working with Facebook pages at work and I needed to connect the posts on a Facebook page to a twitter feed and vice versa.

Connecting the Facebook page to Twitter feed is pretty intuitive, Facebook autoprompts you to do this if you havent done it within two days of creating your page.

This post is about connecting a twitter feed to a Facebook Page, Which is not so intuitive.
After a bit of googling I found this blogpost and it really helped.
What it does not say clearly/explicitly (or may be the workflow changed with the ever changing interfaces at the two websites) is that initially Twitter will connect to your Facebook account i.e. your personal Facebook Wall only. Thats alright, just go through the app permissions,etc and let it return to your Twitter settings page. Once back, you go to Twitter ->Settings -> Profile. As you scroll down, there will be a section for Facebook, with the text "Allow Twitter to:" there if you uncheck the boxes post to my Facebook Profile, it will give you the option to check post to Facebook Page with a list of pages associated with your profile that you can choose from.

Visit to Kolhapur - June 2013

We decided to do the trip by Train in order to keep costs down - Booked tickets in 3AC. It costed Rs1050 for two persons one way. The train number is 11023 Sahyadri Express for Pune(PUNE) to Kolhpur(KOP) and 11024 for Kolhapur(KOP) to Pune(PUNE). We booked our train tickets exactly one month before the travel date.

The train leaves from Pune at 10.30 PM and reaches Kolhapur around 6.00 AM. From railway station, we proceeded to the hotel – Hotel Maratha Regency(http://www.hotelmaratharegency.com/), a 3 star hotel – This was the hotel that fit our budget and hence while booking, we considered it a gamble and were open to face any kind of experience. But now after completing the journey, I will say that this Hotel is pretty decent and gives good value for money. The rooms are clean, and spacious. The bed linen were clean and smell free, and the toilets were clean and good too. And the best part on top of all this is that, the staff are very very courteous. Not only that, this hotel is exactly a kilometre's distance from the Kolhapur Railway station. It costed us 30 Ruppees and less than 5 minutes to reach the hotel.

A front view ( this is from the hotel's website) -

After consulting http://www.mahalaxmikolhapur.com/, We quickly got ready and proceeded to Mahalakshmi Temple for Darshan – We left at 7.15 AM for Darshan, by auto, which cost us 50 Ruppees. The temple is about 4-4.5 kms from the hotel, i.e. inside the town. While on the way to temple I noticed some boards saying “Yatri Niwas” which were closer to the temple, should try them out the next time.

At the temple, the queue was short. Even though one is not allowed to stand in front of the diety for more than 2 minutes, we had darshan  of the diety 4-5 times, by re-entering the queue, going around the inner complex of the temple; which the temple staff are ok with as long as you dont create a blockade while praying in front of the diety. It was a very peaceful and energizing darshan.

After collecting some momentoes(mostly photos and milk pedha offering), we returned to the hotel for breakfast, as we had a bed and breakfast booking there. The breakfast spread consisted of Idly Vada Sambar, bread butter jam, and corn flakes and milk. Being a tamil myself, and wanting to eat local food, I ordered for Sabudana khichdi and some Poha apart from having a taste of the breakfast spread. Having completed breakfast, we slept for two hours and proceeded to Phadtare Misal Centre for relishing some spicy Misal Pav, another culinary delicacy special to Kolhapur(or so I have heard). It was noon time and a long queue and Phadtare. This Misal Pav shop closes at 1 PM so we rushed, and made it in time. From there we proceeded to the Chatrapati Shahuji Maharaj's Palace cum Museum - http://www.tripadvisor.in/Attraction_Review-g737166-d3705251-Reviews-Shahuji_Chhatrapati_Museum-Kolhapur_Maharashtra.html – It was good to know about a Maratha king other than Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. The palace has detailed pictures of their family and also a detailed family tree about how this royal household came into being. (Photo below taken on Blackberry Bold)

We spent about 2 hours here and returned back to hotel at around 4 PM. We were planning to go for another round of temple darshan, but could not as I was suddenly down with temperature. We spent the evening relaxing in the hotel and left at 10.15 PM for the station to return back to Pune by Sahyadri Express. The train left on time from there and reached before time at Pune the next morning.

While roaming around in the auto to and from the various venues mentioned above, we crossed many inner streets of Kolhapur which felt a lot like the streets of Bangalore that I visited way back in the period 96-98(yes 1996-1998). The stilted houses, shops under road level, roads arched with trees, all re-inforced my understanding of how the Kannada speaking people's culture and the Marathi speaking people's culture are intertwined.

This trip was a good one day getaway on a very tight budget and in about 6k we wrapped it all up. My fever played a spoilsport and prevented us from exploring. Hope to discover this region some more soon. Until then so long.

A corpus fund for Travel

I am finding that the cost of travels for me is growing and is becoming a restricting factor while taking decisions whether to attend an event or not( be it tech related, or personal or whatever). I am hoping to find some way by which I can and will continually contribute to, at the same time it would be something that will pay me back at frequent intervals.

Any ideas and suggestions in this directions are welcome. How do you fund your travels? Looking forward to your insights.

BSNL landline complaint booking - Pune

Come rains and the telephone line has gone dead. After 20 years into the business of landline phones, one would expect BSNL to be better equipped with predictable events of Nature, but alas, expectations always lead to disappointment. 2 days ago my telephone suddenly dropped dead in the afternoon. Have been trying to find the complaint booking system since then, and found some interesting blog worthy stuff.

And these should work for you all across India, I would presume.

When your landline phone goes dead, you have two options:-

1. Call this number 21982198 preceded by the STD code of your city - and this will dial into the Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) for Automatic Complain Booking. Just follow the instructions of the IVRS and you complaint should be lodged. Keep a pen and paper handy to note down the docket number.

2. OR, if you are an Netizen, like I am, you can go to this URL - http://selfcare.wdc.bsnl.co.in/irj/portal - And follow the link "Register a complaint" on that page. But a few warnings - a. Every page will take 5 minutes to load. So be prepared for that. b. Remember to take a screenshot of the complaint number that the web application generates, it wont show that number when you type your number again at a later date.

For now, I have lodged my complaint with the self care portal above, but lets see how soon this gets fixed.

Update on 16 June 2013 - My phone got fixed yesterday and I got a phone call from the telephone exchange and the telephone complain department, them checking up if the line is indeed working. Something finally worked without reminders! 

5 years And Alive

Yes.
Its true.
I realized it just now as well.
5 years. Thats how long this blog has been alive, and thats how long I have been in this programming/software tech circuit. Its been a struggle, no doubt, but I have survived and pretty well at that. And I have grown (in every sense of the word) phenomenally in these 5 years.

When I started this blog, I was not sure of anything in life, and I never thought of anything beyond the next two-three days then. And definitely did not think that my blog would live for 5 years at a reasonable level of activity.

To all you faithful readers, here is a promise - Will continue posting interesting and no doubt 'eclectic' stuff here. And looking forward to the next five years in life.
P.S. - Yes just completed my 100th post, this is the 101st. :)

Instrumental Music - My Instrument My Voice My Recording

Hi Guys,

I just recorded a small piece of music, its a culmination of roughly 12 months of experimenting with my mandolin, exploring what is "my" music, and a lot of related matters.

You can hear it at - https://soundcloud.com/vatsala/aaradha-arulamudham
Nothing path breaking about this song other than the fact that I picked up the mandolin last June, was a total beginner with qualitative music till then, picked up enough knowledge to play the preceding tune in the song at the link above.

Stay tuned.

P.S. - recorded with trusty INR 150 worth headset mic, so just about reasonable audio quality. not studio level and all.

Delhi Airport to New Delhi connectivity via metro - AirportExpress Metro Line

I recently had to hop step and jump across airports and railway stations to travel from Pune to Ludhiana.  My travel arrangements were thus - Catch a flight from Pune to Delhi. Reach Old Delhi Railway station. Catch the train to Ludhiana.

The first obvious choice that came to my mind was to book a call taxi/radio cab in advance because  -
1) I dint want to fumble around at the airport's arrivals lounge.
2) Plus I had never travelled to the Delhi airport in the span of my independent-life travels.
3) And adding to this list of unknowns was the fact that T3 was a relatively new terminal and the relatives network wasnt quite sure of any tips to give me.
4) And I had exactly 90 minutes time between the plane's landing time and the train's departure time. So I needed a conveyance that would be delay-proof

My own itinerary sounded like a simplified version of Phileas Fogg's (of around the world in 90 80 days fame) itinerary.

As I sat thinking about which taxis to book, or what to look for even on google, it struck me that I should check out the metro line and see if it was functional.  The website mentioned a bunch of details about routes, pricing etc, but dint mention when the service started functioning, or whether it was currently functional at all. And even though the website mentions train timings et al, knowing our Indian style of updating websites, I was not thoroughly sure that I could avail this facility.

A few tweets later, I got 70% percent confidence on this plan of using the metro and decided to stick to this plan.

The Actuals :-
@Delhi Airport T3 -
the flight landed on time. I wanted to quickly pickup my baggage, and rush out, but had to walk quite a bit to the luggage belt. No sign boards for Metro line inside the building. Few enquiries later, Found the ticket vending machine just before the exit door of the T3 building and then I was walking down a subway leading to the "Metro Station".
It travels from Airport to the New Delhi Station with a few stops in between which are outer suburbs of a fast expanding Delhi. But you need to travel to New Delhi station to get to any other place, as thats only station that is at the junction of other lines.

 The Metro Station has a token system, you get a plastic coin token as a ticket, you put the token in and the gate opens and closes fast enough to not let the guy behind you pass through. :)
Currently the Airport T3 metro station, and that line in general is new, so the station building is still clean and smell free. And I formed the opinion that finally there is one thing that is getting maintained properly.

@Inside the Train
You get "Mind the gap" audio announcements in every station. And station name announcements in Hindi and English. Also there is a rack where one can keep your suitcases and sit without lugging them around.
When I went(around 10.45-11.00 AM),the train was sparsely populated so it was fine, but I doubt if the racks are of enough capacity to hold suitcases if the train were to get say even 60-70% full.  But the few people present were dutifully using the amenity, including yours truly.

@Transit At New Delhi Station
I had to get to the old Delhi station to catch a train to Punjab. So I got down at the New Delhi (this is part of airport express)station and went to the Metro side of the same building. And the ticket and the queue for the ticket to the other Metro lines is situated on the Delhi Metro sideof the station.The Delhi Metro side of the same station is on the other side of the same building, but they make you climb up and down multiple stairs, with neither ramps, nor lifts nor escalators available. I was carrying a 13Kgs weighing suitcase (regular VIP skybag suitcase) with me, and by the time I reached the queue I was sort of tired. Walking around is ok, but carrying a luggage up and down 4 to 5 stairs is really tough.
And the Delhi Metro side of the same building(on account of being in use for much longer) was like any other railway station. Smelling of paan spit, and generally brimming with crowd, I finally felt I was back in India. Till then, it was a truly international experience.

I took the train to Jahangirpur and got down at Chandni chowk station. And a couple of more stairs up and down and up and down, I got out of the building to find myself in the portico of the Old Delhi Station. I thanked my stars and the Delhi Metro engineers for designing it that way. Atleast they dint make me cross an entire main road, which I would have to do in Chennai, if I took the otherwise very convenient MRTS to reach the Chennai Central Station.

That is the summary of my Delhi Metro Experience.
Hope this helps someone who is in need of this info.

So long.