india – Kunal Dua

Eating jalebis, one bad driver at a time

While driving back home last evening I found myself constantly criticizing the driving sense (or lack thereof) of my fellow drivers. I blamed the drivers, the “mixed“ traffic pattern, and the authorities for issuing driving license to one and all, for the mess that is our roads. With these thoughts in mind, I was almost home, when I took a left turn and found myself “face to face“ with a sedan.

Now this guy was clearly in the wrong, but he didn’t even think twice before gesturing me to back up and let him go. I was in no mood to budge, not to mention I was right, and refused (at which point I may have used a certain finger to tell him to back up himself). After 5 minutes (kid you not!) of both of us sitting in our respective cars (did I mention I ate jalebis to show him I was in no hurry and would see this through?), he decides to get off and talk. He says that he uses this (wrong) route everyday while coming back from his office, so why don’t I just back off and let him go. I told him that I don’t care, you are in the wrong lane, and if anyone should be backing up, it’s you. Unimpressed, he goes back to his car.

We sit in our cars for another 5, maybe 10, minutes before he decides to back up and let me go & told you I wouldn’t budge. During that time, I had cycle-wallahs telling me “peeche kar lo na sir, kya jaayega“, another car lining behind the other car (again on the wrong side, needless to say), trying to honk his way out of trouble, realizing I won’t move, backing up, and taking another (wrong) route to escape our tamasha. I also tried calling cops, since I couldn’t find any around & I am still waiting for the response to my 100 call, Delhi Police!

In case you are wondering how our “shenanigans“ didn’t create a traffic snarl, it’s because instead of taking the designated left turn, people kept going straight and taking the 90-degree left as it’s the “done thing“ at that turn, perhaps the reason why our friend has made this his “regular route“.

Why did I do it? Let’s just say I had enough of people breaking traffic rules without giving it any thought. I wanted to teach him a lesson, though I am under no illusions that the lesson would last a lifetime, if he’s “learnt“ anything at all & he probably thinks I was someone with too much free time on my hand, and that he was a “bigger person“ for backing off. Would I do it again? Absolutely & unless I was in UP of course, where I would happily back off rather than risk getting shot!

Delhi Metro Airport Express

I remember reading something about the baggage handling at respective stations a few years ago. Found confirmation of the same. Sounds even more high-tech than what I had imagined!

The Sibag Train baggage handling system from Siemens Mobility will offer passengers an added convenience: travelers to the airport will be able to check their baggage in at the metro stations at New Delhi City Airport Terminal Station and Shivaji Stadium City Airport Terminal Station. There they will be able to pick up their boarding cards, get on the Airport Express and ride to the international airport. Upon arriving, they can then go straight to the security check and proceed to their departure gate. Independently of this, the baggage which they checked in at the metro station will arrive at the airport, where it will be fed into the existing baggage handling system, taken through the automatic security check and loaded onto planes according to their respective flight destinations. To ensure seamless baggage transport from the station to the airport, the baggage car of the train will also be equipped with a conveyor system. An automatic container loading mechanism located on the station platform will automatically load the containerized baggage through the door and onto the conveyor in the car. When the train enters the metro station, the container system will be aligned precisely to the loading door of the baggage car. Passenger boarding and container loading happen simultaneously and very quickly to shorten station dwell time for the train. The whole process will be controlled fully automatically and accurately by Sibag Train.

Source

Let’s see what is actually implemented 🙂

Reliance Wireless broadband auto-login (and logout) script(s)

The old “curl” based method stopped working yesterday when Reliance got a new login page as well as a new backend. It seems Reliance is now also looking at Cookies during authentication. Here’s a little Python script that you can execute to automate the process.

If you don’t know what Python is, you better stick to browser based authentication 🙂

Needless to say, you can schedule this script as a cron/ launchd job to run periodically and keep you logged in. That’s how I use it, which is why the script doesn’t output anything to prevent unnecessary log “pollution”.

Login Script for Python 2.x

#!/usr/bin/env python
# encoding: utf-8
"""
Reliance Login Script for Python 2.x v1.0

Created by Kunal Dua on 2009-12-18
Reliance Wireless broadband auto-login (and logout) script(s)


This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Python itself.
"""

import urllib2, urllib, cookielib

username = '1111111111111111' #replace the text within quotes with your username
password = 'password'	#replace the text within quotes with your password

jar = cookielib.FileCookieJar("cookies")
opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(jar))

response = opener.open("http://10.239.89.15/reliance/startportal_isg.do")

login_data = urllib.urlencode({'userId' : username, 'password' : password, 'action' : 'doLoginSubmit'})
resp = opener.open('http://10.239.89.15/reliance/login.do', login_data)

Update: Logout Script for Python 2.x

#!/usr/bin/env python
# encoding: utf-8
"""
Reliance Logout Script v1.0

Created by Kunal Dua on 2009-12-22
http://www.kunaldua.com/blog/?p=323

This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Python itself.
"""

import urllib2, cookielib

jar = cookielib.FileCookieJar("cookies")
opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(jar))

response = opener.open("http://10.239.89.15/reliance/login.do", timeout=2)

resp = opener.open('http://10.239.89.15/reliance/logout.do')

Update: Login Script for Python 3.x

#!/usr/bin/env python
# encoding: utf-8
"""
Reliance Login Script for Python 3.0 v1.0

Created by Kunal Dua on 2009-12-30
http://www.kunaldua.com/blog/?p=323

This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Python itself.
"""

import urllib, http.cookiejar

username = '1111111111111111' #replace the text within quotes with your username
password = 'password'	#replace the text within quotes with your password

jar = http.cookiejar.FileCookieJar("cookies")
opener = urllib.request.build_opener(urllib.request.HTTPCookieProcessor(jar))

response = opener.open("http://10.239.89.15/reliance/startportal_isg.do")

login_data = urllib.parse.urlencode({'userId' : username, 'password' : password, 'action' : 'doLoginSubmit'})
resp = opener.open('http://10.239.89.15/reliance/login.do', login_data)