Looking for audio and video equipment in Pakistan for video recording

In recent months i was involved with home studio setup and usage. It is a complete subject itself to understand the lighting, audio techniques along with the editing of recorded videos. There is very helpful content out there in video and text form for every one who is struggling to set up recording for VLogs, training content etc. Once you have concepts, understanding for all these areas then next phase is to get the equipment like camera (if you are looking other option than your cell phone), microphones, lights, lighting accessories, backgrounds, noise reduction coating etc.
To my surprise these accessories and equipment was not easily available even in Hafeez Centre Lahore and Hall Road market Lahore. Even not a good variety was available at online sale portals like Daraz. Importing these items is not suitable due to custom duty and related complications.
After discussion with some people in market i came to know about couple of suppliers with good variety of audio, video and lighting equipment with associated accessories.
You can also take a look at products on following link and also order there

• Hashmi Photos Karachi
• ION Karachi

Freshers first job guide

Getting a good job is like a dream come true for every graduate. Working with corporate, technology and starting to earn your own is a fantastic feeling that may keep you in trance even for weeks and months. It is ok and normal however there are some aspects that if you keep in mind would be very helpful in coming time.

Changing your daily routine and starting working for hours demands some planning and personal management. If you ignore these aspects then there is high risk that sooner or later different challenges will break your health, mind and career may end in very beginning by quitting the job.

Following is a very brief description of expected challenges and some tips to keep the things smooth.

Access

Access to working place is the first thing that you need to manage and keep as much convenient as you can. With a full demanding day ahead it would be a very bad idea to consume a portion of energy in effort to reach office. Spent more amount on traveling mode if it required and save energy for tasks at job.

Working environment

Offices try to provide best facilities to employees however there are some steps at your end to ensure the healthy and comfortable working environment.

• Check your desk and chair. Coordinate with administration at early if you see any issue and get those change. Or at least convey your concern if it cannot be addressed at the spot.
• Take an idea about your requirement for snack and water. Many people experience hunger while working continuously at desk. Avoid juices but make sure availability of plenty of water. Personal water bottle is a good idea for it.
• Sitting and sitting for a long time will consume you much faster than you think. Do not ever sit continuously for more than 2 hours and try to take a walk to any other fellow desk every one hour.
• Try to adopt the dress culture prevailed in office so that you do not have to diverge your mind while comparing your attire with others and justifying it to yourself. 
• Make friends and try to limit the domain to light topics of interest rather than family discussions and monitory transactions. These may complicate your office life.

Work and efficiency

Now let us come to the core point that is work and efficiency for which you are hired. I have a very good tip on it that will save you from complicated thinking. 

• Try to share work load of your manager/boss/immediate reporter whoever is giving tasks to you. Trying to take over his tasks will release his pain and also will provide you a measurable metrics of performance. 

Above was a primary strategy. Along with that it would be very helpful to grow if you can follow couple of other points

• Make sure that you are clear about the task that your are assigned and going to start.
• Do not hesitate to learn from senior. Believe me he will be very happy to guide you (exceptions are expected).
• If you have time then do some research for any task you are going to do. Or at least note it for later research.
• Get business domain knowledge for tasks that you are on. Business domain knowledge may be very important and crucial in some roles and less in others but it is not a thing to just ignore.
• Keep in touch with reporting manager for his/her views about your performance and shortcomings. Do not wait for annual reviews but make this thing regular.

Remember integrity and sense of responsibility are traits that you need to build for success always as a professional.

Issues at Police Facilitation Center Liberty Market Lahore

At Police Facilitation Center Liberty Market Lahore

Few weeks back i visited Police Facilitation Center Liberty Market Lahore for driving license process. This center is meant to provide basic services related to police/traffic police department. These services include vehicle verification, servant verification, legal guidance, character certification, and arranging police reports, international driving permits, learner and duplicate driving licenses and untraced vehicular reporting. 

There at 8 AM

I was there right on time (8 AM) and noticed that about 20 to 25 individuals are already in waiting area. Few were on postal tickets counters. For license process administrators had put a paper list where every individual was required to write his name with serial number. I entered my name on serial no 19. 

In mean while more applicants were gathered in waiting area office time was just started. Men in uniform were setting their desks in order and in few minutes couple of them started breakfast on their desk.

Bad News

One of staff member in police uniform came to waiting area and told that their DSL connection is not working. So we will have to visit any day later as their is no confirmation of issue resolution time. Couple of applicants argued that they are listening same excuse for last 3 days.

That same staff member started visiting waiting area after every few minutes to announce same problem. Applicants started dispersing. 

I do not believe

I was not able to believe that service may remain disconnected by PTCL for days. It looked suspicious to me and i decided to wait more. It was about 9:30 AM and hardly 6 license related applicants were there waiting for some thing to occur and solve the problem.

Crook gave good news

The mustache man in uniform came and told the applicants (including me) that u should go to side-by green area and just wait for my signal to come one by one. He further told that we can not handle large number of applicants so it is necessary to get rid of them. He got a new list from us with our names and started signaling us one by one from side of facilitation center.

Inside for processing

At my turn i entered into room to provide particulars and had a photograph. It was a relaxed environment in room as applicants were all gone.

Crooks criminally adding misery to people

At the end they had list of few applicants that were processed and all others were get rid of. It was a cruel and criminal behavior to add misery in life of people. I made a call to DIG office and informed them about the bad games at facilitation center. May some one take notice and teach them a lesson.

Taking shot against the food items contamination

We know that laws are hardly followed in Pakistan for food items. Government has dedicated departments and authorities for this purpose but they are not doing well. As a mature citizen we should try at our end to give tough time to those who are involved in food items contamination as it is destroying us as a nation. 

I recently submitted the milk sample for testing in laboratory of UVAS. It has good testing facilities with very nominal charges. I daily buy milk from a shop who claim to have good quality of milk and i thought to test their claim for my satisfaction.

I got a sample of about 200 ML raw milk and submitted at UVAS lab. They took a day to perform tests for various contamination components in milk. Next day of submission i got the verified report and a good surprise that milk was free of contamination like urea, detergents and starch etc.

It was a good experience and just to mention that if contamination was positive then i was going to submit the report in Punjab Food Authority office. We should take interest and spend some time to deal such problems. It will mobilize the Govt authorities as well and  will have good impact.

LESCO peak hours for electric power bills

Power charges get increased during peak hours. You can save significant amount by avoiding the heavy consumption during peak hours. Major consumption electric devices are cloth iron, water motors, vacuum cleaners, juicers, blenders etc.
Following is the schedule of LESCO (Lahore electric supply company)peak hours during different seasons of the year.

15 Things You Should Know About Pigs

Pigs are not liked in Islamic Sharia. Their use as food, pet and in industrial items is strictly prohibited. Most of people only know that they have bad nature but many of their secrets are unveiled by science and some are yet to come. Read following points and you will thank Allah that He guided us to abstain from it. 

• A pig is a real garbage gut. It will eat anything including urine, excrement, dirt, decaying animal flesh, maggots, or decaying vegetables. They will even eat the cancerous growths off other pigs or animals. 
• The meat and fat of a pig absorbs toxins like a sponge. Their meat can be 30 times more toxic than beef or venison. 
• When eating beef or venison, it takes 8 to 9 hours to digest the meat so what little toxins are in the meat are slowly put into our system and can be filtered by the liver. But when pork is eaten, it takes only 4 hours to digest the meat. We thus get a much higher level of toxins within a shorter time. 
• Unlike other mammals, a pig does not sweat or perspire. Perspiration is a means by which toxins are removed from the body. Since a pig does not sweat, the toxins remain within its body and in the meat. 
• Pigs and swine are so poisonous that you can hardly kill them with strychnine or other poisons.
• Farmers will often pen up pigs within a rattlesnake nest because the pigs will eat the snakes, and if bitten they will not be harmed by the venom. 
• When a pig is butchered, worms and insects take to its flesh sooner and faster than to other animal's flesh. In a few days the swine flesh is full of worms. Swine and pigs have over a dozen parasites within them, such as tapeworms, flukes, worms, and trichinae. There is no safe temperature at which pork can be cooked to ensure that all these parasites, their cysts, and eggs will be killed. 
• Pig meat has twice as much fat as beef. A 3 oz T bone steak contains 8.5 grams of fat; a 3 oz pork chop contains 18 grams of fat. A 3 oz beef rib has 11.1 grams of fat; a 3 oz pork spare rib has 23.2 grams of fat. 
• Cows have a complex digestive system, having four stomachs. It thus takes over 24 hours to digest their vegetarian diet causing its food to be purified of toxins. In contrast, the swine's one stomach takes only about 4 hours to digest its foul diet, turning its toxic food into flesh. 
• The swine carries about 30 diseases which can be easily passed to humans. This is why God commanded that we are not even to touch their carcase. 
• The trichinae worm of the swine is microscopically small, and once ingested can lodge itself in our intestines, muscles, spinal cord or the brain. This results in the disease trichinosis. The symptoms are sometimes lacking, but when present they are mistaken for other diseases, such as typhoid, arthritis, rheumatism, gastritis, MS, meningitis, gall bladder trouble, or acute alcoholism. 
• The pig is so poisonous and filthy, that nature had to prepare him a sewer line or canal running down each leg with an outlet in the bottom of the foot. Out of this hole oozes pus and filth his body cannot pass into its system fast enough. Some of this pus gets into the meat of the pig.
• According to Jewish law, pork is one of a number of foods forbidden from consumption by Jews. These foods are known as "non-kosher" foods. In order for a meat to be kosher, it must first come from a kosher animal. A kosher animal must be a ruminant and have split hooves - therefore cows, sheep, goats and deer are all kosher, whereas camels and pigs (having each only one sign of kashrut) are not kosher. 
• Quran, Holy book of Muslims also prohibits consumption of pork. "He has made unlawful for you that which dies of itself and blood and the flesh of swine and that on which the name of any other than Allah has been invoked. But he who is driven by necessity, being neither disobedient nor exceeding the limit, then surely, Allah is Most Forgiving, Merciful." Quran 2:173 I cannot understand why anyone would eat it. You might as well vacuum all day and then take the vacuum bag and make a nice soup out of it. " Of course our Creator has given us the health laws through the Holy Quran and not eating pigs is even CLEARLY mentioned in the Bible (Leviticus 11:07) But some humans think they are more intelligent than the Creator so they choose it.

Review of Sony Ericson Xperia Ray (ST18i)

Xperia Ray is my first Andriod phone. I found it wonderful in terms of design, display and performance. Its specs are not much lofty however comparing price and performance it is a good choice. General specs are 3.3 inch screen, 8 MP camera, Andriod updatable to 4.0.4 ICS. It has good audio quality and due to relatively small screen size battery time is quite good. Internal memory is 1GB (not all available to user) with about 512 MB RAM. However you may experience lack of CPU cycles as it is 1 GHz and not able to handle very heavy applications/games. I am satisfied with its performance and enjoying its use.

Nokia E63 asking for lock code after firmware update

In my last post i discussed couple of considerations while updating the Nokia E63 firmware. If you have executed the update process through Nokia PC suite, then you may be asked about lock code after the update process. The situation would get worst if you ever changed the default phone code and then abandoned its use.

What to do

• First of all, try the default code that is 12345. If it does not work then go for following option
• Dial 112 for emergency call, code prompt would leave the screen. But this is not solid solution. Code prompt would be there after every restart of phone.
• Now install Nokia OVI Suite and re-update the firmware to same version or next available one.

Update through OVI suite would prevent the prompt of old abandoned lock code. 

Update Nokia E63 Software / firmware

Nokia E63 was launched in 2009. With querty keypad, good display and stable software it is considered one the good selling product of E series. To get the firmware version of your Nokia phone dial *#0000#*. Currently firmware version 510.21.010 is available for update.

What is new in new version
Documentation for new features is not available however after the update i have noticed the improved Nokia Email. And may be a little better battery performance.

Important points for update

There are couple of points that may save you from post update hassle.

• Backup all your data. Updating the firmware would erase all the data from phone and memory card. It also includes SMS, address book, notes etc. 
• Use OVI suit instead of Nokia PC suite. 

Update with PC suit may lead you to a situation where you would be asked for a previous phone code. It is the code that you set last time as phone code, then disabled the code check and forgot it. Update may be around 100 MB.   

Post Update

Cell phone is restarted at the end of a successful update. Now restore your data backup and preferences.

If Already dumped
If you are here after update through Nokia PC suite and being prompted for a forgotten lock code then click here to read about the way out.