Showing posts with label Dropbox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dropbox. Show all posts

Friday, December 25, 2015

Moments with Twitter - IV

It has been a while since I wrote a post on the series of Moments with Twitter. You may find the previous 3 posts by checking out my blog label,

A short term COST action in Croatia. Very remarkable! This gives the entire list of successful STSMs under the same European Project.
  • ~~ Election results of the @Erasmus_Mundus PR election for 2016 https://t.co/wXhF2cUYqc Best wishes to all the EMA Program Representatives! Dec 25, 2015
I am going to be a PR once more. Previously I hold the post for EMDC in 2013.

  • Date Ariane, an interesting "dating simulator" game that has become a YouTube sensation. https://t.co/bZVVFSodx0 Works also in Linux #NSFW Dec 23, 2015
This application is interesting to try once or twice. Irrespective of going viral in YouTube, this game/simulator/application is so depressing. It does not give you much controls, except going on a predefined set of actions in a loop, often random. The "date" in the game itself is more complicated and unfair than the real life scenarios. You may try for fun. If you take it too serious, you will be left irritated.

Erasmus Mundus is surely one of the best things happened to me so far. Actually not one. It is two, as I have been awarded two Erasmus Mundus grants so far - one for masters, and the other (the current one) for doctorate.

  • ~~ Today I presented my work at FCUL. This was also my first guest talk in a university outside Sri Lanka. https://t.co/HJK5isoSTw Nov 20, 2015
I surely love meeting new people, specially the smart ones.

  • The satisfaction you get, when your paper's title has unicode characters that make the editor's job more interesting. :P #∂u∂u -> ?u?u Sep 29, 2015
That tweet was a bit sarcastic. Not sure whether that was a good idea to include Unicode characters in my paper. However, happy about the outcome.

  • #Facebook was down, and now it is apparently back. Reporting real time from #Portugal. :P Sep 28, 2015
Social media has its adverse efforts on the users. I like social media for the network I have built, more than the features it has to offer. I am not actually addicted to any of the sites though. I never check them when I am out. I like to post some interesting updates. However, this year the remarkable events increased significantly, which made me fail to update social media networks altogether. 

  • Thanks @OpenDaylightSDN for reminding me the periodic table again. Hydrogen, Helium, Beryllium, Boron, and more.. :D Jul 30, 2015
Effects of actively participating in the Beryllium release.

  • Listening to the @OpenDaylightSDN VPN Service presentation, while reading on Quagga Routing Suite integration (http://t.co/2FH0spj3wy ). Jul 30, 2015
Updates, real time from the OpenDaylight Summit 2015.
More updates from the summit. I really loved the summit that I did not go out on sight seeing at all, as I did not want to miss any of the sessions. Also since I was in a tight schedule, I could not extend my stay before or after the summit.


Seems pretty interesting to dig the history.

At some point in this year, I really felt  Lisboa airport was like my second home.

  • #MEOCloud, a good alternative to #Dropbox. It gives 16 GB free space, and also has a Dropbox-like referral system. https://t.co/KOAmagkAlB Mar 28, 2015
May be because of its Portuguese interface; it is not that popular. Probably it is intentional as they want to limit their user base to inside Portugal.

This year, in fact, Dropbox introduced the Campus Space Race again for 2 more years. Predictably, this year the universities (at least the ones that I am affiliated with) underperformed compared to the previous, the first time they introduced this. Probably, just like me, many others got annoyed with the migration requirements at the end of two years. In 2013 race, my university was able to secure 25 GB out of the 25 GB maximum advertised. This time, it was just 15 GB.

I love maps and data.

  • I never get any message in #Twitter #Messages #Inbox. Whenever I get one, it is always a spam message. Dec 28, 2014
 Except when I initiate the communication myself. This is not even an exaggeration, though it sounds like one.

Some fun stuff.

The Internet offers an unlimited amount of learning resources.

  • A guide to sleeping in the airports - http://t.co/unTcJgB5IJ This comes handy in deciding the transits.. Sep 14, 2014
I am not really good at sleeping in the airports. I often stare at the small "vehicles" that move the elderly or differently-abled, or the ones that clean the airports in the nights. Often I just go into a long train of thoughts.

  • Found that it is a spam company called @AdCeylon is who spamming me using @madmimi. Created a filter to delete all the mails from adceylon. Aug 08, 2014
That was a heavy spamming that time. Like a few mails a day, directed to my inbox, short-circuiting many of my unsubscribe and filter attempts.

  • I scored 26012 points at 2048, a game where you join numbers to score high! #2048game http://t.co/vcQmTxIDr8 via @gabrielecirulli Jul 10, 2014
Another way how I spend time in the airports during the long transits, specially the ones that come in the nights where the shops in the air-side are often closed. I have a love-hate relationship with the airports. Often loving it for holding strong memories and nostalgia, while hating for the long wait specially for check in and other procedures.

This is to combat scammers.

Mozilla's yearly effort.

  • Read #Tipitaka online. Collection of Pali language texts which form the doctrinal foundation of #Theravada #Buddhism. http://t.co/3NZsMEtfYh Apr 12, 2014
  • Download the free #school text books provided by #Sri #Lanka government from http://t.co/oJdhfnZHFg for grade 1 to grade 11. So convenient. Jan 17, 2014
Memories. Old memories. (Should I say, young memories?)

  • China's first moon rover lands — and rolls onto lunar surface - http://t.co/XrEW93ra8f After almost four decades. First time in my lifetime. Dec 14, 2013
Must have been a cool feeling when the man landed on the moon for the first time a few decades ago. Not much new exciting breakthroughs recently, compared to that. I would consider a Mars landing equally ground-breaking. Nothing else.

I tweeted this long ago. Have to re-read now, as I have forgotten what was this about. After a few minutes of scanning the page again, I still hold the respect for this hero, after 2 years.

  • ~~ Someone is trying to reset my #twitter password. Considering I am a harmless and no-politics person, that is really funny.. :D Dec 06, 2013
After my somewhat political posts in social media in the recent past, I am not sure whether I am still a no-politics person. However, I am still a harmless person, and always will be. I just want everyone to be happy!

I am still not a master.


  • What is the origin of name Pradeeban? Probably Switzerland. According to http://t.co/cLtm55JhMQ :D #smh Nov 10, 2013
Seems it is US now. There are pros and cons of having a long name, that is hard to remember and pronounce. Not sure whether pros outweigh the cons though.

I used to buy colouring books as a young kid.

Just like I developed this habit of booking seat number 55A in the flights, recently.

  • It's not normal to get your testicles bitten off, of course, but it can happen, especially now in Sweden. http://t.co/pJGz1scaU1 Aug 14, 2013
ouch! I love the Swedish lakes. Should be more careful. lol.


  • Closed #Railway stations of Sri Lanka - http://t.co/AZavXMCFcl || It seems previous generations had a better railway in the country. Aug 07, 2013
Luckily the northern lines are back in service now.

The days before clickbaits were mainstream.

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Thursday, March 5, 2015

Dropbox Love and heart break.. :D

Yesterday was supposed to be the day that we will be losing the free storage space we got from the Dropbox Space Race Promotion for the last two years. I even noticed some other cloud storage providers targeted the users migrating from Dropbox, probably connected with the end of this promotion. I received the below email last night from Dropbox.

Hi Kathiravelu,
The 25 GB of additional Dropbox space you received as part of Space Race has now expired. Your Dropbox limit has automatically been adjusted to 10 GB.
You’re currently using 5.0 GB of Dropbox space. If you’re over your 10 GB limit, you’ll no longer be able to save new photos, videos, and docs to Dropbox — see our Help Center for more information.
Need more space? Dropbox Pro gives you 1 TB of space to keep everything safe, plus advanced sharing controls, remote wipe for lost devices, and priority support.
Upgrade your Dropbox
Interested in Dropbox for teams? Check out Dropbox for Business!
Thanks for participating in Space Race!
- The Dropbox Team


I was expecting my storage quota to drop to 10 GB. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had already moved majority of my files away from Dropbox, and was ready for this downgrade. Last night, Dropbox started to reduce the storage quota, in steps. It did not reduce it at one shot to 10 GB.

As you can see from the screenshot, it decided to reduce in an eventual manner. However, it still remains at 19.88 GB (not 10 GB, which should be the limit, according to the previous mail notifications). Probably Dropbox decided to be a bit nicer. I did not fail to notice the heart-broken symbol

Let me know, if you have stories to share on this migration hell.. :D

Later update: Interestingly, when I checked a few days after, Dropbox has removed all the event notifications and heart break symbols and left the account with only the original space (9.9 GB). It displayed this message in a header, "Your Dropbox Space Race promotion has expired. Get more space with Dropbox Pro!" This seems more professional and less personal. :D
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Thursday, February 5, 2015

Moving out from Dropbox

My old and new laptops, with a desktop monitor and my nexus.
Immediately following the repair of my new laptop.
Taken at my office space in INESC-ID Lisboa.
So I received this email from Dropbox last week:
Hi Kathiravelu,
As part of your school’s participation in Space Race, you received 25 GB of additional Dropbox space. The Space Race promotional period expires on March 4, 2015, at which point your Dropbox limit will automatically return to 8 GB.
As a friendly reminder, you’re currently using 33.11 GB of Dropbox space. If you’re over your 8 GB limit after March 4, you’ll no longer be able to save new photos, videos, and docs to Dropbox.
Need more space? Dropbox Pro gives you 1 TB of space to keep everything safe, plus advanced sharing controls, remote wipe for lost devices, and priority support. Upgrade before March 4 and we’ll give you 30% off your first year.
Get 30% off by upgrading now
Interested in using Dropbox with a team? We’re also offering 50% off one year of Dropbox for Business!
Thanks for participating in Space Race!
- The Dropbox Team


It's all started two years back with Dropbox's Space Race program, and our university students participated in it eagerly, to secure 25 GB for all of us, for two years.

The email looked like below:

Hi Kathiravelu,

Universidade Técnica de Lisboa is so close to reaching the next level of Space Race! Once you reach the next level, you’ll get another 10 GB.

That'll mean that everyone at Universidade Técnica de Lisboa enrolled in Space Race gets a total of 15 GB of free Dropbox space for 2 years!

Get out there and refer your classmates! You can keep tabs on how your school's doing here.

Keep on racing!
- The Dropbox Team

At that time, two years seemed really long. It covered my entire masters. I even thought eventually Dropbox will let us keep that space with us forever. It turned out, Dropbox won't do that. :P 

Now, I have to safely migrate the 25 GB of documents to another free cloud storage. Purchasing additional storage is the alternative suggested by Dropbox, which is out of question for a poor student like me. I know Box offering 10 GB free space. However, it does not have a desktop client for Ubuntu, which makes it useless for me. I have an account that I use mostly to upload manually using the web interface, or from my windows system.

One of my friends suggested Google Drive. So far, I used Google drive just to store some google docs. It offers free storage of 10 GB for everyone, and also some other Google accounts (other than the default Gmail one) provide me storage as large as 1 TB. I did not know of a desktop client available for Ubuntu. I did a search and found grive, a desktop command line client for Ubuntu.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thefanclub/grive-tools
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grive-tools
 
Then to add a new folder with files into google drive,
$ grive -a

To update a folder existing in google drive with changes,
$ grive

I did a mistake of trusting my new computer and assuming it won't fail. However, it failed suddenly, though it was less than 1 year since I bought it. I returned to HP for a free repair, since I have a guarantee of 2 years. During the repair, they reinstalled my Windows operating system, erasing the document stored in the partition. The failure has nothing to do with the hard disk. But resetting the operating system erasing the data is just their regular practice here, as I learned from the repair centre guy. Luckily they did not touch the Ubuntu partition which had my images and work. Just a week ago, I transferred my images to Ubuntu partition, which luckily saved me from losing the remarkable memories of my trips. This gave me determination not to trust even a new computer not to fail. I still remember how I lost all my photos from my US trip of 2011, as I stored them in the office laptop provided by WSO2, which had an operating system issue which made me reinstall the operating system erasing the entire data, in 2012.

Interestingly, my old computer of 6 years is still working with no problem at all. Fnac said usually the repairs take 10 - 15 days, where it may go up to 30 days maximum. I knew my computer had some issues - but I was waiting till summer to get it repaired, as I did not want it to affect my work. However, I had to repair it urgently, as it completely failed and did not turn on at last. Fortunately, it just took 10 days for them - to send it to HP and return it to me repaired. During these 10 days, I managed with my old computer, which was painfully slow for me. Our requirements for processing power and memory have grown huge, as in 2006 that computer was perfect for me. Good for me - I had my old computer updated with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS as well, along with all the software I need, except Latex (which I had to install, as this is something that I regularly work with).

Now Dropbox is reducing the space from 33 GB to 8 GB this March, I am mostly moving away from it, except for the 8 GB it still has to offer. This 8 GB is almost the documents that I share with others using Dropbox shared folders, which I cannot migrate without much administrative effort. In any case, I will keep an eye on my documents in the cloud storage as well as my local copy to ensure that the documents are available at both places, in case of a local hardware failure, or a shutdown from the cloud system in a similar manner, which may swallow my documents. :D

P.S: If you are a Chinese, or comfortable using an application that is mostly Chinese with a poor English or international interface, you may use Tencent Weiyun, which offers at least 1 TB free storage. Just a small warning. Do not forget the password of Tencent services. It was very hard to reset the password when I tried last. The application was not completely internationalized when I tried, and "forgot password" was one of the few bits that was fully functional only in the Chinese interface. 
 
P.P.S: MEO Cloud provides a good alternative to Dropbox. It gives 16 GB free space, and also has a Dropbox-like referral system. It currently has a Portuguese web interface with English and localized application interface. But it is easy to use for English speakers as well, as Portuguese much looks similar to English than Chinese. Give it a try.
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Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Moments with Twitter - III


After a few months, I did another round of tweet analysis, on my own tweets. I have shared quite a few interesting links, over the past couple of months. Also have a look at Moments with Twitter.. and Moments with Twitter - II to see some of my previous tweets.

 Agia PDF Search is a useful search site that lets you search and read the PDF documents online. Oct 15, 2012

Just enter your academic email address to increase the space in your existing #Dropbox account by 3 GB or more https://t.co/GPKJrJPu Oct 15, 2012
Dropbox is interesting, and their business model is even more interesting! All the students love Dropbox, which is mostly a free cloud storage system, though paid premium packages are available.

 End of Day Light Saving Time!
DST started on Sun, 25 March, 01:00 local standard time; Ends on Sun, 28 Oct, 02:00 local daylight time - http://t.co/prM3aRj4 Back to GMT. Oct 21, 2012
From the coming Sunday onwards, we will be back from the natural time, from the daylight saving time. This will make Portugal to go with GMT, and this will make the time difference with Sri Lanka, -05:30.

Changed my #twitter profile picture for the first time, since I created the account. Almost 4 years, and I didn't change much though. ;) Nov 02, 2012
Changing the profile pictures and the short bio in these profiles are becoming a harder task considering the ever increasing online presence of myself in multiple social media platforms.

An interesting, yet idiot's way to grab more visitors to your blog - Write a blog post titled, Is {SOMETHING} dead? For e.g., "Is SEO Dead?" Nov 30, 2012  
Another way, Write a silly post with a numbered title, with superlatives. For e.g: 7 worst mistakes that horse owners make in the night. :D Nov 30, 2012
OK. We all have this curiosity to click that link!

The adventures of young student backpackers with Eurail passes, 1970. 1970's photos of train travels in the Europe. http://t.co/EMN3IIMk Jan 03, 2013
Student backpackers - this term probably fits the Erasmus Mundus / Erasmus students, at least in some points of our life. One of my favourite backpacking blogs is, Breakaway Backpacker.

A ҉ Y ҉ U ҉ B ҉ O ҉ W ҉ A ҉ N ҉ Mar 03, 2013
Hello, Sri Lankan Style!

Shenzhen Window of the World.. http://t.co/w9DQqOyXct Mar 11, 2013

What is my #IP? http://t.co/DPaIw2cMtB Jul 26, 2013

CHINAKNOWLEDGE - a universal guide for #China studies http://t.co/2whemOIDrw Jul 30, 2013
This is an interesting resource to learn about China, its culture, and the Chinese language. MIT OpenCourseWare too has Simplified Chinese and other Chinese courses under the foreign languages and literature section. For me, listening to Chinese songs with the lyrics written in pinyin appears easy. Everything else seems just Chinese. :D

Collection of oddities.. the odd stuff.. http://t.co/GcXkqAP7iP Aug 02, 2013
These odd stuff are interesting. Bored Panda is a similar online magazine. However, I don't find anything these articles report odd. I find the mainstream news these days more 'odd'. One news was "Vietnam to ban discussion of news on social media sites". The situation globally doesn't look nice to me. Have a look at the Press Freedom Index of 2013.
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