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November 19, 2018, was an incredible day. What started as a group of coworkers jamming turned into standing on the Grand Finale stage at Tigers' Den (Banglalink's Headquarters), performing in front of a childhood icon, and taking home the People's Choice Award at the Banglalink Employee Talent Hunt.

Our band, Haunted Talent, was formed with a unique, experimental vision: a poetic fusion that blended heavy psychedelic music with intense spoken-word poetry and powerful vocal melodies. For our signature performance, we presented a Bidrohi Fusion—a daring mix that paired the fiery, rebellious verses of the classic poem with raw, atmospheric musical textures.

Performing for an Icon

The stakes couldn't have been higher. Sitting at the judges' table was none other than Partha Barua of the legendary band Souls. Growing up in Bangladesh, the music of Souls and the golden era of Bangladeshi band music heavily influenced my teenage years and shaped my musical journey. Getting the opportunity to perform right in front of a living inspiration was surreal. For one song, I took up the guitar, and for our core poetic fusion piece, I moved over to the keyboards to layer in those psychedelic soundscapes.

Haunted Talent with Partha Barua - Banglalink Talent Hunt

The Lineup

The incredible synergy of our lineup is what truly brought the fusion to life:

Masud Parvez Bhai: Keeping our rhythms perfectly locked down on drums.
Tanvir Hossain: Main vocalist, driving the performance with an incredibly powerful vocal throw that perfectly matched the gravity of the poetry.
Shazzad Maruf: Crafting the essential guitar textures.
Abdullah Ibne Alam (Me): Handling the keyboards to layer in the psychedelic atmospheric soundscapes, while also switching to guitar for our second song.
Md. Mohidul Islam: Delivering the melodic song parts with precision.
Our Secret Weapon: While most of us hailed from the IT department, we brought in a special guest drummer Masud Parvez Bhai from another department to complete our sound!

Haunted Talent Performance - Banglalink Talent Hunt

Winning the People's Choice

While moving forward into the final round was a massive artistic victory, the real surprise came during the employee voting phase. Our network, colleagues, and connections rallied behind us with staggering enthusiasm. The support crossed departmental lines entirely; in an amazing twist, even the B2B teams voted for our IT-heavy band over their own departmental entries simply because they loved us and our performance.

Haunted Talent Award - Banglalink Talent Hunt

Winning the People's Choice Award wasn't just a trophy for our shelf—it was a testament to the incredible, collaborative community at Banglalink who championed a bold musical experiment and lifted us all the way to the top.

2a:Tacd,

October 6, 2017, started like any other Friday weekend support shift, but nature had other plans. By morning and early afternoon, sudden convective clouds rolled across Dhaka and the central/southeastern districts of Bangladesh, bringing intense thunderstorms and heavy downpours.

For a telecom network, severe weather means immediate trouble—mains power failures, lightning strikes, and site outages. Within hours, the active alarm dashboard was under immense pressure.

The Challenge: Fighting Noise to Find the Signal

When severe weather hits, a Network Operations Center (NOC) is instantly flooded with thousands of raw alarms. The real hurdle isn't just knowing that sites are down; it’s figuring out where to send field engineers first when resources are stretched thin. Management needed immediate, deep insights to prioritize incident handling, minimize downtime, and keep the network afloat.

As the creator and maintainer of our Integrated Network Management System (INMS), I knew the raw data had to be transformed into actionable intelligence immediately. The INMS is built exactly for this—to track critical Base Transceiver Station (BTS) and transmission alarms and turn chaotic data into structured maintenance tickets.

Turning Data Into Strategy

Working from home with a multi-monitor command center setup, I spent the weekend developing custom charts, trend graphs, and live geospatial distributions to map the impact of the storm in real time. By analyzing site-down durations, regional office clusters, and filtering out temporary power fluctuations (using the system's smart thresholding, like masking mains failures under 3 hours), we were able to:

Visualize Down Time Trends: Pinpoint exactly when and where the storm hit the hardest.
Map Regional Impact: Segment site failures by regional boundaries and on-call engineer rosters.
Optimize Operations: Provide management with a clean, prioritized view of critical nodes so field teams could be dispatched efficiently.

A Long Way to Go

The weekend was a stark reminder of why robust, centralized network management platforms are so vital. It’s one thing to build a system that logs errors; it’s another to design an analytics engine capable of guiding an entire operations team through a crisis.

We successfully optimized the restoration workflow and kept downtime to a minimum—but as network footprints grow and weather becomes more unpredictable, there is always a long way to go to make our infrastructure truly resilient.

2b:Tae8,

We have all been there: a coworker, a family member, or a house helper is enjoying their favorite tunes, but the loudness is just a bit too much for the shared space. Recently, my friend brought me a challenge. A helper at their house loved listening to music during her downtime, but the mono Bluetooth speaker was simply too loud. My friend asked if I could add an earphone option to it. Naturally, I took the challenge.

The Volume Fix: Adding a Resistor

Because the speaker’s built-in output is designed to push enough power for a loud external speaker, plugging earphones directly into that signal would be dangerously loud. To fix this, I added a resistor to the circuit. This safely steps down the audio output to a comfortable earphone/headphone level, ensuring a safe and pleasant listening experience.

The Retro Cutoff Trick

If you grew up in the era of cassette players and Walkmans with built-in speakers, you probably remember how plugging in your headphones automatically silenced the main speaker. I wanted to recreate that exact feature. Standard 3.5mm female audio jacks come equipped with a built-in cutoff switch. By utilizing this clever mechanical feature, I wired the jack so that the main speaker automatically switches off the moment the earphones are plugged in.

Tools Used - Retro Magic Meets Modern Mod: Upgrading a Mono Bluetooth Speaker

The Final Assembly

Finding the right spot for the modification was key. Luckily, there was a small amount of empty space at the bottom part of the speaker casing. I carefully drilled a hole, placed the 3.5mm female jack inside, and secured it tightly with a screw. Making it physically secure was vital so that the jack wouldn't get displaced or pushed inside the casing during repeated plug-in and plug-out operations. After some clean soldering, the system was ready to roll.

Retro Magic Meets Modern Mod: Upgrading a Mono Bluetooth Speaker

The Result

The mod works flawlessly! Now, she can enjoy her music in private during her off hours, and the house stays nice and quiet. It is a simple, practical fix that combines modern Bluetooth convenience with old-school audio engineering.

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