Love at first sight: Casio GW-9200 Riseman

I'm in love! A 5 cm diameter digital watch that weighs 61gm and stands 1.5 cm tall on your wrist. Apart from having features that will take up 5 min of stultifying conversation at a party, gently working the left bicep through out the day and being roundly hated by The Wife (who doesn't fancy digital watches, not least one's that dwarf a stack of twelve dinner plates), I love it. If I could only find $260 to spare... More information here

GT5: Second impressive trailer

Is that impressive or what?

GT5 preview is out

My favourite driving game on the PS2, GT4 is growing old. And the new one is getting ready to come and blow everybody's valves through the power bump. Get ready, GT fans, for GT5

Digital Photo Frames

Recently, a colleague returned from Germany bearing a large white box. Being a total technophobe, he handed the box to me and said, 'Make it work.' I was holding my first digital picture frame in my hands. It looks only a bit thicker than a regular frame, but once we hooked it up and loaded stuff into it, the results were startlingly good. All we had to do was drag and drop the images (and this colleagues baby vids) onto the frame via USB.

Pics looks bright and fresh and it even plays videos. But my favourite part is the fact that the pics cycle around on their own. Really. You see, I am a bit lazy. I cannot be bothered to change the photos in the regular frames. Besides, sometimes the photos stick to the glass and become sort of permanent... you know what I mean? On this frame, I loved the idea of having a colourful looking slideshow that runs on its own. Such a simple idea! Since then, I've been wondering where I could get one. Well, digitalframez.com sells digital picture frames, ranging from $99 to $199. You can choose between 7- through 10-inch photo frames and I think at the moment, the site offers a free 256 Mb SD card.

Photography upgrade!

Yesterday was a funny day. But before I tell you more about that let me tell you about what I did. We went yesterday to our favourite gadget purchase place, ostensibly to purchase a phone for The Wife. I recently got me a Sony Ericsson w300i, which I must confess, I love. It's almost totally devoid of quirks and I love the fact that it plays music in the background and you can use the phone without pausing the music, unless you're getting a call or something, that is. I also love the fact that comes with some of the best earphones I have ever had the pleasure of assaulting my ears with. Not only are capable of mega volume (and mega, mega bass), they also happen to be exceedingly comfortable. (All usual disclaimers apply about loud music on earphones. And for The Wife: this is not too suggest that I actually listen to music very loud, just that if I wanted to, I could. But I don't want want to, so I don't... er....). Anyway, as it turns out, she wanted to replace her sweet Samsung D600, which is another brilliant phone. But crucially, has bitch-poor earphones (they don't fit and don't sound that great either) and won't multitask while playing the sweet music. In our budget (return Samsung, plus Rs 4000 only), the W300i was the only phone that fit. And she wanted a silver one, which obviously, the man didn't have. It seems Sony Ericsson doesn't sell the Silver coloured W300i in India (have you seen one? Let me know). I've added the pic so you can identify it.

While browsing the phones, I spotted a camera I've had my eye on for long... the Sony DSC-H5. I've always wanted (and still want) a proper lens-changing, all-seeing DSLR, but until I scrape together the dosh, I needed something more powerful than my superb, but limited Sony P200. So, out went the 7.2 megapixel, 3x P200, and in came the 7.2 megapixel, 12x H5. With all the goodness of a full manual mode, most of the functionality of a low-end DSLR and cheap too. That's the news. I haven't shot anything with it, of course. The Wife is, as we speak, purchasing a UV filter to keep the lens dust free (etc) and so hopefully, I'll get to fiddle with the H5 over the weekend. In the meantime, I've memorised the manual...

Wide Open Source!

He said a top official from Microsoft India had met him twice to convince him to continue with MS products. The official offered the XP operating system for about Rs.7000 while he quoted Rs.500. “I explained to her that for a mere Rs.300, I could get the entire operating system, office productivity software and a wide range of utility tools, such as DVD/CD writing software, database software, multimedia editing software, vector map-drawing software plus a whole range of software development tools. Also, I have the option of downloading this entire package in DVD media and not even pay that Rs.300, which is the media cost and not the software charges,” said the ELCOT chief, an IT expert himself besides being a senior IAS bureaucrat.

That is a quote from this post which quotes a Deccan Herald article. And as you will see when you read it. That is amazing! I cannot remember reading something on these lines from anywhere on Earth so far. More power to... us! Open Source ki jai... and all that sort of thing!

Er... Linux Penguin used for representational purposes only. Objectors leave a comment. Will replace with something handy if needed.

X-51: Speed kills?

Isn't that just the coolest thing on Earth? Er... no it isn't. But it does sound great. Meet the X-51, US's latest weapon in development. Billed as the successor to the super-successful and ultra-accurate Tomahawk, the X-51 will be much, much faster. 5 mach. 3600 mph. The Popular Mechanics/Gizmodo posts suggest that the missle won't actually need any explosive content, since crashing into anything at 3600 mph is a guaranteed result. Lovely.

LCD vs Plasma: Panasonic speaks

I saw this post at gizmodo or lifehacker and thought I'd post a link to the original New York Times article that they linked to. Complicated, eh?

Anyway, upshot is what I've always believed, that Plasma was better than LCD. LCD was cheaper, but primarily because fewer people make Plasma than LCDs. Click the ad above to see the full Panasonic advert that stirred up this post. Oh, and Sony disagrees. Click here for the NYTimes article

iPod: Fiddle Idea 1

Own an iPod? Like to fiddle? Already explored all the menus and changed all the settings around already? All right, try this (any problems you face, I am not liable or responsible. Ok?)

iPod's Diagnostic Mode

iPod: e- and guidebooks

When I travelled to Goa recently, I felt the urge to carry my fairly bulky Lonely Planet India guidebook. Short of ripping out the section on Goa (there's an idea), I had no option. I also happen to own a bunch of Outlook Traveller guides. Which are printed on art paper, and are really, really heavy (d-uh!). So what to do?

Compulsive-obsessive behaviour ensured that I'd done loads of research about the place. I had in fact, copy-pasted a 39 K text file (I kid you not) which history, places to see, places to eat etc. The question was how to carry this info. That is when I found this site.

If you don't want to read his fairly long version, here's what you do. Go to this site (http://tinyurl.com/6uebo) and upload your text file. Also type in a name (if you type in book, the split file will be book--1 and so forth, I think.

After a moment's delay, you'll get a link to download a zip file. This file will have a whole bunch of serialised text files which contain xml/xhtml (I'm not a techie) that link up to each other in sequence.

Copy all the files into your iPod's notes folder (I think you're supposed to exit iTunes before you use your iPod as a hard disk) and you're done. While travelling, now you can access your full guide book without any weight penalty.

In actual use, I found this quite handy and perhaps the only irritant is having to scroll backwards to exit the guidebook. As in, if you're on page 40 of the guidebook, you will have go backwards (all the way to page 1) to exit it. Music will play in the background, but you can't adjust volume etc while reading. Since the backlight remains on while you read and the hard disk spins up when you change pages, the iPod does consume a bit more battery than usual when you're reading.

This process also allows you to store ebooks on your iPod for reading. Same advantages and pitfalls apply.

I found that mycitymate.com offers free guidebooks for many European cities.

Sad iPod icon

It began as a normal day. I woke up in the morning, spent the first fifteen groggily plugging in all the various electronic bitsas into their chargers, didn't blow anything up, opened the door for the maid. And finally woke up after she made my coffee. Then, I unplugged the iPod from the charger and went off to work. Where it rattled like it was dying. And before I could say 'poor baby,' it died. A sad iPod icon replaced my music and that was that. My month long flirt with the 60Gb iPod.

So I called up my favourite grey market electronic guy, I called up the authorised guys and no one seemed to know whether the warranty was valid in India or not (the unit was bought abroad). But, surprise, at the iPod service centre (as in Apple authorised and all), the clouds lifted a bit. he checked the iPod serial on the support network, pronounced it was still covered and took it in.

Today, I got it back. Well, one like anyway. For my iPod's dead. Long live my replaced under warranty all-new iPod. Still have to get home before I can load it to the gills with music and all, but for the moment, life rocks.

Points to Podder

Yesterday, I met a chap at the garage I usually hang out in who spotted my new-ish iPod. Very sharp of you, lad. After confirming that my iPod was a full-house 60 Gb unit and looking suitably impressed, he asked if it sounded good on the bike. I said I didn't know and without realising it, set myself pondering again.

I know that motorcycle helmets contain more than the rider's heads nowadays. There are fairly high end speaker/mic kits available, including ones that run bluetooth, can switch between your phone, MP3 player, or your pillions speaker/mic set and even brush your teeth when you're least expecting it. But is it such a great idea?

The only time I can imagine someone longing for in-lid music is on a lonely, boring, featurless highway. When you're just covering the miles. Joining two interesting dots with an otherwise useless line, as it were. Like, I am told, the East Coast Highway that runs from Orissa to TN. More or less a straight road for hundreds of kilometres with sleep inducing scenery, lulling arithmetic progress and only the changing numbers on milestones to keep track of progress. Then yes, music's good.

In every other situation, I'd say it detracts from your concentration on the road. In any case, when I'm on the bike and concentrating hard, I can't hear my cellphone buzzing in the jacket pocket. Or feel its vibes. I guess if I tried it, I'd tune into the sound at intersections and tune out elsewhere. Doesn't work for me.

Yes, I could use a Cardo Scala type of helmet headset. It'd beat having to fish the phone out of the pant pocket whenever I do stop to take a call. Usually from the wife. But outside of that, it's not for me. Besides, what if drowned out the inner voice...

Gadget-giri

Dear readers, I most humbly apologise for not posting more often. I've just received my new iPod 60GB (yes, video) and I've spent most of the past week fiddling.... so sorry. Er... and thank you Daddy!