Cat Crazy

As always there are around 5-8 cats around my place. And I've been busy clicking pictures of the cute little fellows.














They have a particular affinity towards the cars though - good for photography yet bad at times when you need to leave with the one of the cars quickly.


















One of them has this habit of walking around and over the engine each time you open the bonnet. You have to be careful to shoo her away before closing the hood,




There's this other guy - we call him Bush (cos he's obviously quite furry and bushy) - nope no shoes thrown at him yet....









He loves posing, besides scratching his head and back and tail against my legs.
Kitty loves scratching!

My new notebook

There's always stuff that you don't want to throw away. For some people, its a pen, for others its a car, for some its a computer....

Now my old laptop (a Dell Inspiron m700) was getting a bit too slow, though it did work somewhat. Sooooooo, we decided it was time for a new laptop. Initially, Dad said I could get a notebook that just served my basic purposes. But oh well, that restriction was doomed to go out the window. After consulting a truckload of reviews, I almost settled on the HP-Dv5t. However, something in me said "Wait.. look around a bit.. don't take the leap yet." Then a bright idea dawned upon me. I had a relative getting back from the States soon and I found that for the price of the HP - Rs 72,000 + tax for a mid-range configuration (note that mid-range for me might be high spec for most, I'm really into computer configs) - I could get a far better configuration in the US of A.

So I ended up buying a brand new model - the ASUS N50vn-C1S for Rs 65k approx (which includes a 2-year International Warranty). That's $1349.99.

The specifications:

-Intel Core 2 Duo T9400 at 2.53Ghz

-4gb of DDR2-RAM at 800Mhz

-1440x900 WXGA+ 15.4 inch screen

-Built-in 2mp camera and fingerprint reader

-320gb HDD

-802.11n (as well as a/b/g) + Bluetooth EDR

-HDMI, Esata, USB x 3

-Touch sensitive media and screen lighting controls

-IEEE 1394 port

-DVD super multi-drive

-Graphics : Nvidia Geforce 9650M GT with 1gb Vram.

-Windows Vista Home Premium

-Altec Lansing speakers

The international warranty helps a lot because we have two ASUS service centres in Chennai. Quite happy with the new laptop until now, its been working fine.

It also comes with a fixed Linux OS (a derivative of Splashtop) that you can boot into in 8 seconds for simple tasks like listening to music, viewing photos and browsing the internet......

Very hand that!

Of Good Places to eat..... Round 2....

I'd written once about a place called "Ente Keralam" which left me with a so-so feel.

Over the last one or two months, there were a few places I went to that I somehow thought required mention.

I know I've said this before but Kumarakom is a Kerala restaurant that serves good Keralite cuisine at affordable prices. Took a trip to the place for dinner one night. Fortunately for us, it wasn't too crowded.

Then there was the time we went to the Anise at Taj Coromandel for mum's birthday in December. The service was awesome, and the variety was quite good. But still I feel the Residence at Park Sheraton does have a slightly better spread, though the food tastes really nice (who says 5 star hotels have bad food). To be fair though, the Park Sheraton buffet is a weee bit more expensive than the Taj Coromandel's. Still there was an added bonus that night, at the next table we found Tamil actor Arya - yes I just couldn't resist putting up this picture of me and him together.... :-) (he was quite nice actually - really friendly)

Now a few days after my semester exams got over we were out shopping when we came across an ad for a place called "Osteria". Now an osteria is a place where people in Italy go to have food in a casual manner without any kind of restrictions or having to mind etiquette. After a fair bit of searching and driving back and forth we found the restaurant inside the Deccan plaza hotel (I hope I remembered the name right).

Only after being seated did we notice that they served only vegetarian meals. Still we gave it a shot. They had a nice offer going - something like Rs.250 per head for a seven-course meal. It's actually a 6-course meal cos there are 2 starters. Anyway, 2 starters + 1 extrememly creamy and tasty tomato soup + something made out of ginger bread and tomato and onions (not the kinda premade stuff that passes for it at fast food chains) + risotto of your choice + pasta or pizza as per your choice (again, not the mass-made crap you get at a chain eatout) + 1 awesome homemade italian ice-cream (you can take your pick from among a number of flavours).....

It was quite a filling meal and I topped it off with a mexican Pina Colada (refer wikipedia for what a Pina Colada is)....

That was my favourite drink until Don Pep's shut shop (or did they leave Cathedral Road for a better location ??) and left :-( Tasting it again was like falling in love a hundred times over!!!

Overall, a good deal for the price. Be sure to check this out if you're in the area. They do have a few Lebanese and Mexican delicacies too but I haven't tried any of those.

Bon appetite!

A wee bit busy......

I'm a little bit busy with the semester exams coming soon, my assessments around the corner and the practical exams going on, plus the mad rush to finish portions (not by me, but by the teachers) that inevitably happens around this time. I was engaged in preparing my presentation and model for a college paper presentation event. Won that last Saturday, first place. Didn't quite get over it until today. So now I'm back to breaking my head over circuit diagrams.

:D

Not to worry, I'll post a bit before my semester exams and a lot after that too.

iClean my iPod

I've had this iPod Nano that I had won as runner up of the TCS IT Wiz a few years back (along with a load of other goodies that would take more than a page to list). Getting back to topic, the iPod is notoriously infamous (no matter what the model or colour) for being a scratch magnet. No matter what they change, Apple never quite seem to reduce the scratchability factor. They don’t seem to understand that an iPod can and will end up in one’s pocket along with the car keys someday. As a high ranking Apple official once put it when someone complained about how easy it was to mess the surface up - “You put it in your pocket with your car keys?” Now that isn’t exactly a crime!


Just as the “i” has given scope for numerous accessories, so too has this led to a market chock full of iPod cleaning products. Ranging from snap-on cases to skins to cleaning solutions to screen protectors. There are even a few homegrown ideas one can try out if your iPod gets desperately dirty. One of them involves using toothpaste. Toothpaste is mildly abrasive and it supposedly “evens out the rest of the surface so that the scratches are invisible”, according to the proponent of this innovative method. There was another bright soul who suggested online that one use Brasso or an equivalent Brass Polish to clean the scratched surface.

Now I, meanwhile, had a much simpler solution to the problem with the front face getting scratched. You see the iPods come with a thin peel-off film when you take them from the new box. Now what most people do with such films is peel them off the moment they get such electronic devices and then go “Wow, look how shiny it is”- for as long as they can, because its obviously not going to stay that way for long. On the other hand, I had left that cover on my black Nano for the last 2 years, I’d barely entertained the thought of taking it off – knowing very well the issue of the itchy iPod.

The back however, being made of shiny metal, didn’t have any sort of protective covering. SO it had had its fair share of brushes and looked like a rather scratched mirror. NO amount of Brasso or toothpaste could set that right. I did recently get myself a Philips mp3 player cleaning kit. It contained a thin microfiber pouch, a fixer/cleaner, a cleaning liquid, and a protective film. I also got myself an iVak Scratch free case for the Nano with a rubberized red exterior (went well with the black iPod). Emboldened by these new tools at my disposal, I set about finally removing the printed film which had in the course of time stuck quite firmly to the player. After some gentle coaxing, it came off to reveal a wonderful, shiny black surface and a perfect blemish-less screen underneath (shown in the picture above).

Wasting no time, I put three drops on the microfiber pouch and cleaned the front and back thoroughly. I must say the results are quite good, if not brilliant. Then after having stuck the supplied film to the screen to protect it from scratches, I snapped on the case. Voila – there was my snazzy “new” iPod in a refreshing Red-And-Black (no political affiliations here) combo!