Monthly Archives: January 2006

Windmills


More windmills
Originally uploaded by umeshunni.

One of the coolest things I saw during my trip to India last month were these humongous Windmills.
Located somewhere between Palani (in Tamil Nadu) and Palakkad (in Kerala), there were over a 100 of these giant wind mills, each around 30 meters high. Pretty imposing if you ask me! Look at the photo and compare the size of the windmills to the electricity poles next to them!

PodCasting with the Nokia 6630

One of the first things I did with the Nokia 6630 after I got it last year was use it to listen to podcasts. Given the relatively small number of podcasts I listened to, I just copied them over to the Nokia using Bluetooth.
Now, I’ve been looking for a better solution since
  • Transferring a 20MB mp3 over Bluetooth is SLOOOOW…
  • Syncing seems like a better option than manually copying files over

While googling (er.. i mean msnsearching) around for good podcasting solutions, I found the following links that made my search easier:

  1. Finding a good mp3 player for the phone: http://www.eirikso.com/2005/08/05/using-a-nokia-6630-to-listen-to-podcasts-and-mp3/
  2. Using your own headphones with the Nokia: http://www.eirikso.com/2005/08/14/how-to-modify-your-nokia-headset-to-accept-your-favourite-headphones/
  3. Podcasting basics and a howto for WMP syncing: http://www.eirikso.com/2005/06/01/how-to-listen-to-podcasts-on-your-mobile-phone/

#3 was the most useful link for me since I had already found OggPlay myself and I really didn’t care much about the headphones.

 

Restaurant Review: Big Time Pizzeria

Given that we eat out 2-3 times a week, I thought that I should keep track of the restaurants we visit and the experiences we had there.  At the very least, it will help me keep track of places to avoid and places I liked. In the best case, this could be the next epinions or mouthshut 🙂

So, here goes:

 

Name: Big Time pizzeria

 

Location: 7824 Leary Way, Redmond, WA

 

Our Order: Chicken Tuscano, Big Time Calzone

 

Pros:

  • Decent ambience: The old building is beautiful with its red brick wall and the postered wall.
  • Reasonably priced: ~$10 per entrée and the portions were reasonable

Cons:

  • Poor disinterested service: The waitress screwed up the orders of a couple in our party and got them pasta instead of pizza and then rudely offered to parcel it for them since ‘I have to throw it out anyway’ !
  • Bad crowd: More like – no crowd. The place was practically empty on a Friday night!

 

Bottomline: Worth a visit, but not someplace I’d frequent even though it’s only 5 or so blocks from our apartment.

 

Rating: C for the effort.

Flickr Photos + Target Prints

I’ve raved about Flickr to anyone who cares to listen in the past, but it was only this holiday season that I realized how much it really rocked!!

You can not upload photos to Flickr to share them with the world, but order prints online and collect the prints at your local Target store!! This was super convenient since I had a bunch of pics (around 300) that I wanted to take along with me to India and all I had to do was to select them in Flickr to get prints the next time I went to Target.

My chief complaint about MSN spaces is the weird photo gallery thingie that doesn’t do much. I wish they’d add support for flickr sometime.

Besides, isn’t re-mixing the web what Web 2.0 is all about?

Back2Blogging…

Wow – it’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog. I realized that when I saw that my last entry is all about XboX 2 rumors while it’s been 2 months since the XboX 360 release!

 

So, what’s happened in the world in the 7 months since I last wrote an entry?

 

1.     The XboX 360 shipped! And 1.5 million people around the world have one. Ullas & I stood in line for 12 hours outside our local Bestbuy in the freezing cold to pick ours up. More on the 360 experience later…

2.     Apple switched to Intel! This one didn’t impact me directly, but I think this marks a turning point in the history of computing. 10 years from now – we’ll all look back and say ‘I was there when Apple switched to Intel’ or something to that effect.

3.     GOOG doubled: From ~$200 a share to $434 today! In the same period MSFT rose 8% from $25 to $27… with 4 of those percentage points coming today!!

4.     Home prices in King County rose 14%: and I’m still renting 🙁

5.     3 of my undergrad classmates got married: doubling the number of married men in our batch.

6.     MSN spaces added support for ads: Write a blog and get paid for it?? Wow – this rocks! I should convince a few million other people to switch to MSN spaces as well 🙂

7.     Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Global warming, violence in the Middle East and other mundane incidents which will probably drive us to extinction but doesn’t directly impact me in any way…

 

So, that’s my narrow view of the world in 7 bullet points. If you’re reading this on a Friday, have a good weekend…