2012 and beyond..

The Curtains have come down on 2011,we are stepping into another year with full of hopes and aspirations in our mind. While time progresses as we see,there are some things which I would love to revisit during the last 10 years,because unlike my study progress during my  school,the decade after the year 2000 has been a bit of a bumpy ride for me. Hopefully, the  mistakes which I made in these years would act as a  lesson for me  in the days to come and probably could help me get on with my life.

Like all others,my new year resolutions have been decided upon a week before this very day. And some of those choices may be very hard to implement.But,I believe that even though it would be a tough decision to digest,in the long term I wish to do some justice to my career .If this means I have to sacrifice some of my favorite activities so I would. During the last days of this month,I temporarily tried to shut myself  from the addiction of  Facebook. I indulged myself into reading books and have succeeded to some extent. To meet another important milestone in my life,this is the best time for me to get back to higher studies so it may also mean that my connection with the regular world around me – The social media to be precise –  will be more restricted if not completely avoided for good. Hopefully this year ends in a positive note and  I might perhaps end up with what I desired the most for so long.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,400 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

The Dolby Experiment — What would be your idea for fun?

It was one those  regular  week offs,that I would exchange new ideas with some folks in a group in Facebook. While I was skimming through some older posts,one of them caught my attention.And although I was not an audiophile by nature,I wondered if I could try out a new suggestion which was  posted by one of the member in the group. The discussion was about enhancing  the audio output of  our notebooks,particularly on Lenovo ThinkPads. While my knowledge about ThinkPads is still in the nascent stages,the post was definitively intriguing in nature as  lengthy discussions about its success rates were being   posted  at Lenovo’s community portal – where I also  often participate as a moderator.

I would seldom use a ThinkPad at home and would generally use it only while I travel.Since the technique in question was working for Conexant based audio devices,I would not wait but immediately download  the application in discussion. It’s called  Dolby tuning and profile creator.This application package also comes with the latest incarnation of Dolby’s audio technology namely Version 4.0. The test bed for this small experiment would be a Lenovo Ideapad Y560 which I have with me. This is a  notebook which I use occasionally for high-end gaming and for watching my  movie collection .Because it already has an excellent set of JBL speakers which are also Dolby certified,using this profiling app would in effect increase its acoustic output – at least that was what my first assumption.

To make sure that the Dolby Drivers were installed and were compatible by the system , I checked the sound driver status in the device manager section and indeed – the device seemed to be compatible with my built-in audio system.It was now time to put the Profiling app to test. While I could have tested the app with any audio song in my collection,I really wanted to make sure that all the  audio tweaking options would work out as expected,which required me to search for a song which had a mix of  both high and mid range frequencies.

The profile app has an excellent mix of tweaks,which can be used in a variety of combinations to change the output frequencies,depending upon the user’s taste. Another useful or I daresay a beautiful feature is the mini version of the app which is can be accessed via the quick launch area.If you are watching a film in a full screen mode and would just want to toggle between important settings,this would be the best option for you to tinker with.

I managed to find a song which I thought would be the best to run along with the app,not sure if this is the best fit.But it was a satisfying and a fun experience as a whole.Thanks to Peter from Lenovo forums for the pointer!

November – A month to remember

Its been a while since I’ve been here,partly because I decided to prioritize more time into reading books than sparing the same before the PC.I intend to increase my time on book reading till the year-end,and see if I can control my urge of getting glued to the PC at all  the time  .

While life seems to be running in the same tempo as it was for the past one year,Things are a bit different now since I joined the Geo Content Operations team in Hyderabad. My  3 days off every week  have been  a good excuse to return back home and spend some quality time with my parents,relish my Mother’s delicious home-made food and take some time to plan for my future  endeavors.It has been rather awkward at times when I feel I am the only person to be around in my home town with none of  my friends or Siblings around to chat with. And times like these make me to come back to use the PC for longer hours,perhaps this activity gives me some solace in some way when I can forget about my Sister and brother – both of them who are now living in the States.

The week off’s from Tuesday to Thursday would also mean I would find lots of time to spend with my mother especially in the kitchen.Cooking has been a favorite pass time of mine – apart from photography.And the free time I get every week is a boon in disguise! I started to learn about the Indian Cuisine  during my 10th grade.My grandmother at that time would encourage me to cook and therefore the ball started to roll ever since.

It has been fun to understand and practice the “know how” behind a cuisine or a particular dish. Last week when I got back home,things were in preparation for the next day’s breakfast. It happened to be one of my favorites so I took this opportunity to work along and with my mother. This simple dish is  available anywhere in southern India.

By the end of October ,I was planning to make the most out of Diwali since none of my siblings would be around to celebrate with me.I called up my younger cousins for the occasion and indeed –  the atmosphere was much more frolic and lively with them being around with me,and burning firecrackers in the evening.

It was also the time when I had tinkering with the Idea of celebrating my Mother’s Birthday. A reclusive person in nature, she would not allow me to plan for such an activity so this would be a complete surprise to her. Her Birthday also coincided with the last day of Diwali season so it would be a special kind of day for me. I went to a a traditional clothing store for the first time to buy  the first Sari  for my mother.

The birthday evening was just a closed family event with only 3 of our extended families at the occasion.It has been a memorable month since then,and I hope I can make use of the free time I get every week to the fullest and thus have timeless footprints imbibed in my memory for years to come.

Windows 8 Preview on the Y560

I finally managed to download the Windows Developer preview from MSDN. After waiting for 13hours for the download to complete, and two failed attempts due to power cuts. Before looking out for the new bits and pieces which the alpha version was providing I had read all about it at Zdnet Blogs and Neowin  during the BUILD conference. I wanted to see how the Metro UI based apps would look like on a full screen system as the Ideapad Y560.Some of them just look beautiful.With the powerful GPU under its belt ,I wanted to see how smooth the UI would perform on the system

Weather App running on the Metro Shell

While the installation itself took about the same time as of the Windows 7 client, the Metro UI seems to be everywhere from the boot screen to the  Setup process itself. I will be sharing only about the things I liked so far in this iteration and not the general features as explained by others

Tweet@Rama - Twitter client for the Desktop

The Social apps on the Metro GUI are very eye candy and absolute delight I must say.   While we don’t know how many of these apps will stay till the RTM release, the concept in essence looks very promising. Among other things on Metro the one which I like was the IE10. You have to experience both the normal way and the Metro look  to see what the difference is all about in the full screen IE10 Metro Avatar. Perhaps I can check it out again on a tablet PC very soon.

IE10 in Metro running Hotmail

While most of the emphasis seems to be the new shell,I wanted to check how the system would perform on two other aspects one is the boot time and the other one is hardware acceleration in IE

The boot process does not have any windows logo splash as with the previous OS . Microsoft says the boot process is quite fast and may not need a boot logo.I tried it on the system,it did not have a UEFI based Bios but the speed at which at system booted was quite noticeable

The second aspect is hardware acceleration in the IE browser. While IE9 already has this feature I did not think of testing it till now.The results are different for both IE9 and IE10. While IE9 gave a test score of 7 seconds on Win7, IE10 gave a score or 17 seconds on this notebook. The scores may vary if the build changes from Alpha quality to RC or RTM in the future.

Spy kids 4D and Aroma scope

It was a  pressurized sort of Sunday  for  me in this week. After banging my head for 2 hours in an exam hall, I came outside waiting for the bus to take me back to my place. The headache was unbearable for me and there was no way I could spend the rest of the evening  in the confines of my place.I  just wanted a pretext to escape of being alone with the pressure in my mind. The only way to detoxify my mental state was to go out for a film. I immediately  called up my brother Aditya and headed for Prasad’s IMAX.

Being  Sunday there were not much choice left for us since it was an impromptu decision of mine. The only available show at that time turned out to be Spy Kids. I was told that this iteration of the film had come with an extra  feature called  Aroma scope, something which I never came across before.

I did not understand the true nature of a “4D” film until I came and settled down inside the theater. While at the entrance of the cinema, we were given a certain card with numbers ranging from 1 to 8. We were advised to rub the numbered card when ever a new number would appear on the screen. It was then that I understood what this 4D hype was all about. The film makers claim that when a certain number is rubbed in accordance to a particular scene,the users can actually smell  and feel it in a lively fashion. This according to them was the “4th dimension” .

The so called Aromatic experience

Watching the movie in 3D was a good experience for me,since I’ve grown up with watching  spy kids since early 2001. But the only thing which did not convince me was the  much touted aroma scope. Although it seems a bit new in nature,it looks like to film makers got carried away while promoting it as well. Would they ever say why there was scene where the baby poos and it was suggested we run and sniff across the number during the very same time? It seems the makers wanted to make some humorous instances by trying to involve the Audience with the Aroma Scope as a medium.  I could  feel a light breeze of candy smell coming out the AC unit, must have been done to increase the overall effect!. While the movie was good,the 4D thing really pissed me off,all I can think of is of the  famous saying, All fart and no Sh** . Pun intended.

Blogging from android

Three years ago,I figured out the underlining charishma which a blog would have.Ive tried to learn a lot from then on and have in the process gained more and more knowledge of the blogger ecosystem. Time and again,ive incorporated many elements into the site which would reflect my abilties and interests.

Dashboard on mobile

While most of them were well known feature sets,i have now decided to take my rambling to the next level.This would be again a learning process but definatly a worthy one in the long term to try and implement.Android is a part of my adapted technologies and I wish to leverage on it to the fullest. This has not been a impromptu decision.I installed the wordpress app on my mobile more than 2 weeks ago.It was curiosity which made me to do this.

As I write this post on my mobile,memories come flooding back when I started to blog because of a good soul who encouraged me ,and made me to realise my potential in the blogosphere.

A memorable July 4th

Another July 4th has come and gone,and to this day,I have revolved 25 times around the sun. I don’t remember celebrating my Birthdays with fan fare except during my earlier child hood days. There was never the usual cake cutting thing either. It used to be just a low affair and mostly as another normal day of my life. Last year after joining the Geo Content Ops team in Hyderabad,we all made it a point to have a bit of fun for over selves.

Giving a surprise Birthday bash to the patron of the day became customary. So Monday was my turn.There was a delicious Dark Forest Chocolate cake being ordered by my friends while I was still at the office. I figured out that it was their intention to fill my face with the cake rather than distributing it among  my friends.

While it was a frolic experience for me when ever I used to watch others being in my shoes till recently,being there to take the full cake in the face is not a bad experience after all. Seldom I used to think of it in the other way around.While this affair was taking place in the last half hour on Monday in the cafeteria, some one was planning another round of Birthday Bumps for me.

I was to leave for my home in the evening itself  due to the impending and un predictable Monsoon bursts but cancelled my travel  in the last moment. Instead I went to visit my best mate Hemanth. While Hemanth no longer works for Google,his constant support and encouragement during his tenure made him one of my most trusted friends. The Birthday bumps he  planned for me was not known because we were planning to go for a late night movie with another friend of his. While he ensured that I got the required number of bashes in back,I still had another cake here to be taken on my face.

It was one of the best Birthdays I ever had and I wish I can have something similar to this every year. Thanks to every friend of mine from GT Hyderabad for making an ordinary day to extra ordinary and Hearty thanks to Hemanth for taking out his time to celebrate my birthday.It also feels kind of  nice to share my Birthday with the United States,something which I think would have been cool had I been there!

Migrating to Android from Nokia

Ive been a very lateral entrant to the Android platoform.Those big flashy touch screen phones would not fit my bill and I was completely oblivious of their presence as well.Most of the time,I  keep in touch with my friends through Short Text Messages rather than calling them up.While both of those have come to equal footing in terms of monetary terms,  I thought it was time for me to adapt at least the platform which provides so much flexibility. Full touch screen phones never fancied me, be it loaded with any OS.

Last week I was to take train back to Hyderabad,when my cousin who tagged along with me took me to the nearest MobileStore . He insisted that it was time I had an Android since I was always online in one form or another. As expected the sales man in the showroom took me through all the good phones,from Samsung to the Iphone. While they seemed to be flashy and highly configurable in nature I wondered whether it was too much for my need.

Then I got the attention of the Sony Xperia Mini,the smaller version of Sony’s Android products with a sliding keypad included. The phone had more features than I could imagine,excellent Sound clarity, the famous XB headphones with extra bass and a 5 mega pixel camera. All seemed well and I did not use it till yesterday as I had to rush back to Hyderabad

The pain started when I had to shift my older Nokia’s Contents (The short text messages) to be precise. While a Nokia to Nokia transfer is no big deal,copying the messages to the Android was.It took 5 hours for me to understand on how I could transfer the Sms’s.

There were around 2060 messages for me to backup. I don’t think any one would ever think of doing such a thing,but for me those messages were precious in some nature and souvenirs as well.It was well into 3 AM in the morning when I finally managed to copy them as they were.

Google helped me out in this regard,I found a nifty tool called nokia2andorid sms which made the cross platform migration a breeze. Its an awesome tool and is highly recommended

There are lots of things to learn from the new platform,in the course of time I intend to do just that

 

Pass time turns into Passion

It’s  been ages since my teen days during school when I was not allowed to operate a camera in our home(A japanese made Yaschica).My mother was apprehensive about it being sabotaged in my hands.Her perception being that I was too immature to handle such a gadget at that age.

Far from my mother’s perception,I would at times sneak out the camera and click away anything that I found interesting like mad.Using the camera roll was an enticing experience, especially when I Was given a chance at last to operate it. All this was a result of curiosity which I had towards photography.

Abstract photo taken during my train journeys

It all started with the frequent train journeys every week,when I used to shuttle between my home and Hyderabad during the 3 days weekoff.At times there would be no place to sit and I would just stand near the door while the train rattled along the country side.It was especially during my return journeys and the monsoon season that I started clicking away after a long time

Rajadhani express gleams during the early morning sunrise

While most of them happened to be taken on road or the train,some of them happened to be taken near to my workplace. It was one of those days at Motorola last week when I was waiting for my cab outside the building.We were there to take some snaps with a colleague who had just resigned from the company.I was skygazing and a vision flashed across my mind.This vision for me was like the heavens coming down on to the building it self!I did not wait but immediately clicked my vision into reality which resulted in this

I get to see a lot of the country side during my travels,something which I am sure many people get to experience.Sometimes it is the early morning sunrise,and sometimes it was the looming monsoon clouds hovering  over the country side while the sun tries to jostle itself amongst the darkclouds. It is very interesting to capture such a phenomenon and at times not so easy when you try to capture it from a running train while standing at the door

Sun and the Monsoon clouds jostling in the heavens

Elsewhere in the  United States, my brother who resides in Illinois  sent me a rare phenomenon.For me it was quite rare to see.This might be a common sight in the States but  defiantly not here. Planes were flying over one another at  various altitudes. The after burn combined with the sunset during which the photo was taken gives us an impression as if they were some kind of shooting stars traversing through the sky. This photo was taken while it was still twilight.

Photo Courtesy - Parthasaradhi Samavedam

Most of the photos which I clicked were taken from my Nokia 5130 C-2 Express Music phone.I was not inclined towards buying High end cameras,for it were just some moments which I wanted to store with me. I’ve seen Sony  releasing its  Cyber shot Camera with a 270 Degree “Super wide” shot option. I use my sister’s cyber shot which does not have that feature but If the prices of Sony’s camera’s are to come down significantly,I am even tinkering with the idea of  getting my own in the near future.Thus in a manner of speaking,photography has become more of a passion for me rather than just a past time.