Sumit Birla

Swimming Pool Chemistry

Sumit Birla — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:52:01 +0000

In nature, bodies of water exist in a state of balance. You can jump into most lakes on Earth and not have to worry about pH being too low. However, a swimming pool is a closed system. It needs to be maintained via artificial methods. There is where a lot [...]

How to build a scalable, caching, resizing image server

Sumit Birla — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 05:37:13 +0000

Building the next big thing on the web? It is never a good idea to serve your static files, i.e. style sheets, javascripts and images, from your main application server. This task should be offloaded to another server for three reasons -

It ties up resources in your app server while it would be performing [...]

Low Power Media Center

Sumit Birla — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:00:45 +0000

Until now I have needed two devices for my server needs at home. One to serve as a general purpose router, phone, web and file server (Dell PowerEdge SC420) and another to watch my media on TV (Popcorn Hour). But recently I decided to combine the [...]

IP Mutton – it’s better than chicken!

Sumit Birla — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:00:23 +0000

Do you ever wish you knew what your Internet IP Address is? Maybe not, but check out my new service to humanity anyway. Go to IP Mutton. It took me about an hour to set it up. It has some neat features which I plan to use shortly for some of my projects.

Recording of my desktop

Sumit Birla — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:00:39 +0000

Here is a recording of my desktop running Ubuntu. Notice how much cooler it is than yours (if you run Windows) . Apart from eye-candy, the UI is extremely clean and functional. The animation was recorded on my cheapo laptop with a pathetic graphics chip. If you want to see the true potential of this [...]

Coat Hanger Antenna

Sumit Birla — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:00:33 +0000

I decided to build a coat-hanger antenna last weekend. It required 6 coat hangers, one long block of wood, screws/washers and a balun (UHF/VHF converter). The whole project cost less than $10 and now the signal strength is 100% on all channels. In fact the TV reports 100% at 24dB where [...]

The beauty of fiber options

Sumit Birla — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:00:26 +0000

After much waiting, Verizon finally decided to lay down fiber optic cables in my neighborhood. Last night, the final connection was made when my FiOS service was activated. I have 10Mbps/2Mbps service. It appears to be working well so far. Ping times are much lower than cable modem. Some pictures of the equipment installed are [...]

Structured Wiring in my house

Sumit Birla — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 16:00:35 +0000

It is year 2007 and houses still don’t have network connectivity built into the house wiring. It is one of the reasons that wireless routers are so popular. But I have found them to be a lot less reliable, not to mention to the security concerns and setup issues. When you [...]

Zoom 5001 PCI Cable Modem

Sumit Birla — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 16:00:01 +0000

Zoom 5001 is a DOCSIS compliant internal cable modem which is not in production any more. There hasn’t been a replacement product. It appears as though people prefer the external modem that the cable company provides. I, however, wanted less clutter under my desk and snagged this card off of eBay. I paid $13 for [...]

I’ve given Cable TV the Boot!

Sumit Birla — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 17:00:21 +0000

Out of boredom, I decided to hook up a piece of wire to act as an antenna for my upstairs TV. And behold, I was receiving all local High Definition channels in all their glory. Crystal clear with no disruptions. So, why pay $75/mo to the cable company? They have been [...]