Gadget Splurge!

I have spent a significant amount of money over the last month gratifying my needs to have the latest in fancy tech gadgets and while one side of my mind goes tut..tut..on this splurge the other side is as delighted as a 5 year old kid getting lots of candy. For the moment I have let the "kid" part of my mind take over and indulge in the small delights that the functions of these gadgets seem to bring.

Once again I would have to thank dearest mom from whom I very shamelessly took 10K for the purchase and of course the only other person I can think of who seems to give me anything selflessly without any thought..my dear wifey! My contribution to this entire splurge was 5K. Yeah I know..shameless but I still love it :-)

Apart from the new iPad2, the latest addition to hit Gannu's gadget family is the Samsung Galaxy S2. A phone that I can only describe as 4.3 inches of total awesomeness! I ordered it on the 5th of July via Flipkart and as always Flipkart's delivery and service was impeccable. I got the phone delivered to my doorstep on 7th afternoon. (I did spend a good part of the afternoon looking through my bedroom widow at the apartment gate and checking if my package had arrived).

I read a lot of the S2 reviews and although I more or less knew what to expect, the first thing that blew my mind was just how incredibly light the phone was. Yes the back cover is very flimsy and plasticky but that is just a small price to pay for the phone is super slim and light. The display is out of this world. I cannot even compare the iPhone 3G I have with me to this one.

The biggest difference is however on the total experience of using the phone. Being in Apple's walled garden the last few years will mean that navigating around the Android world will take time getting used to. So I now have a device on the iOS platform and one on Android and hopefully I will get the best of both worlds. 

I was dreading moving my contacts from my iPhone to the Galaxy S2 and found a pretty east workaround. I copied all my contacts from the iPhone to my Outlook Contacts via iTunes. I then downloaded Samsung Kies and then synced all the contacts from Outlook to the S2. 

Speaking about Kies, I have to say that although Samsung have built a super phone, the desktop software that accompanies the phone (Kies) is totally crap! It's slow, and a horrible effort on Samsung's part to give us something that they think matches iTunes.

I also had a very hard time updating the Android version using Kies. The phone was not recognized during the upgrade and several reboots later it suddenly seemed to work. I will have to figure out an alternative to using Kies.

The iPhone is now being prepared for use by mom! The missus still prefers using the Nokia I gifted her last year. 

The integration with Google is of course totally bullet proof and if Google+ is anywhere near successful as Facebook, I believe the integration advantage that Android brings with it, will allow Google to reap rewards big-time. I still haven't analyzed the battery performance on the phone. I just completed charging up the phone this morning and will see how long it lasts.

When it comes to the intuitiveness of the OS, I still think iOS is ahead but Android is not far behind and I am looking at having a long innings with the S2, that is if some other mouthwatering piece of gadgetry doesn't show-up down the line which is today's world is almost unthinkable.

Of Rafa, Google+ and Transformers

Thanks to the July 4 weekend in the US workload the last week was pretty light. 92% of my e-mails to colleagues came right back with an out of office response. But I was for once not complaining. I have been busy spending some of my free time playing around with my new iPad and downloading all kinds of applications on it. 

I also fooled around with Google+ and it seems to be a really neat and the UI is clean and nice as well. But I wonder if Google for some reason is too late into the Web 2.0 party. Even more surprising to me was the fact that Google did not go all out to get hold of those Nortel patents when they could have done very well with some of those telecom related patents from Nortel (like LTE etc) and instead chose to make bids denoting mathematical constants like Pi..strange fellows I say.

Meanwhile we entered the final week at The Championships and the biggest news mid-week was Roger Federer's loss in the quarters against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Tsonga played some unbelievable tennis in the last three sets and it left me with some evil satisfaction as I thought to myself that Tsonga in that kind of form would destroy the Djoker. The one man that I am beginning to hate as a hardcore Rafa fan. Rafa is the meantime thrashed Murray much to the dismay of the English press (Poor souls the British. They've invented most of the games and yet have very few world beaters in those sports and the only good thing to come out of it was it gives employment opportunities for hundreds of journalists). The Djoker meanwhile dismantled Tsonga who later told the press that his opponent for everywhere on the court only for the Rafa fan in me to snigger and say, well Rafa's like that as well. Of course I was hurting inside as a Rafa fan because Djokovic had just usurped the No 1 ranking from Nadal. I had to sneer at something! We were now looking at a Djokovic-Nadal final.

I din't get to watch the final as I spend Sunday evening with the missus at the movies watching Transformers 3 - Dark of the Moon. I did check the scores now and then during the movie and the first time I stared at my phone browser the score read 6-4, 6-1 in favor of Djokovic. WTF! What was Nadal up to? Was this real? Crap (background music from the movie was all bullets and canon's firing from the Transformers...apt description for my state of mind then). 10 mins later the score read 6-4, 6-1, 1-6. Muhuahahhahahhahah..that villainous laughter was back. Rafa was kicking the Djoker's butt. My attention was fully back to the Autobot-Decepticon flight. The restless mind got the better of me 10 or 15 mins later and a glace at my score brought me back to earth with a huge thud, just as Cybertron was entering the Earths atmosphere. 6-4, 6-1, 1-6, 5-3..I was as helpless as the humans watching the Decepticons annihilate everyone...Sigh!

15 mins later, the good guys in the movie were kicking butt and for me nothing mattered for the score was now 6-4, 6-1, 1-6, 6-3. The Djoker was the new Champ! Nadal had lost at Wimbledon for the first time since 2007. The missus was probably amused when I told her in a sad tone that Nadal had lost. Watch the frigging movie and forget the score she seemed to say.

Anyways, the movie had all the masala for a dishum-dishum fan like me. Wifey liked it as well and that bode well. After all Harry Potter was releasing shortly as well and I definitely had to take her for that.

Coming back home, a gleeful looking mom (she is a forever Nadal hater) greeted me along with my grinning cousin and told me that Nadal has lost..was thrashed...was walloped by Djokovic. Had to change the topic..fast..had to keep this conversation short.....

So here we are on a Monday afternoon and I have gotten off the Nadal loss. But I am left thinking like many other Nadal fans as to whether Djokovic has gotten into Nadal's head just like Nadal had gotten into the mighty Federer's. The facts seem to speak for themselves. 5 finals and 5 losses (2 hard court, 2 clay and 1 grass). The writing seems to be on the wall but having watched Nadal play the last 8 years, I would be foolish to the bet against the Matador for Manacor and whilst my loyalties still remain with Nadal, I will go into every Nadal-Djoker match henceforth with a slightly skeptical frame of mind.

That said, I think tennis is discovering a new great rivalry in the making so it is good for the sport and like all good sports, I can only salute Novak Djokovic and say terrific job sir! (that of course doesn't meant that I will be praying for Rafa to kick his ass whenever they meet again)..

A new toy and lots more....

I finally gave into my almost primal urge to get my hands on the latest tech toy wonder and here I am as excited as my eight year old nephew would get when he gets a new PS2 game, with the latest addition to my set of gizmos..the iPad2!

Adding to my love for the device is the fact that it was a gift from my dear darling wife. She didn't even baulk at the price and just asked me to go ahead with the purchase remind me once more of how incredibly luck I am to have someone like her to share my life with.

I've been using the iPad for almost 3 weeks now and can only say what's been said n the gazillion reviews of the gadget. It is totally mind blowing. The intuitive UI, the design just about everything on this 9 inch marvel is perfect. Having said that I do have a couple of gripes the main one the poor camera. Apple could have at least tried to cram in a 3.2 mega pixel camera in the rear and a 1.2 in the front. Instead what we get is a poor sub-standard VGA camera both front and back.

Another gripe is of course the inability to edit documents and yes people will tell you that there are plenty of applications available in App store but I would have expected something to come as standard especially if Apple is also positioning the iPad as a device for business use.

Applications like Pulse, Times of India etc are superbly crafted just for the iPad and I have also gone ahead and purchased a subscription for the Economist with the permission of the wife of course. This brings me to another big problem with the iPad. 


The device is so nice that you are almost certain to ge an itchy finger to buy all those gorgeous apps sitting in the Apple Store and to date I have been guilty of spending around 500 INR (and counting) on some apps like Angry Birds, issues of popular mechanics etc.

Once someone gets their hands on an Apple device they are invariably sucked into the Apple Eco system and sheer size and ease of use of the app store and iTunes (once you get a hang of it) makes one a prisoner for life. I am now one of those totally happy prisoners of the Apple world.

I am however getting greedy and considering having the best of both the Apple and Android worlds by switching my phone to an Android powered one. That way I figure I can use the iPad at home and during travel and use the mobile phone for work purposes. (Evil laughter).

Balaji

I will always remember him for his humility and kind heart and of course his smile, that seemed to have some kind of a soothing effect on everyone. Balaji Thirunarayanan was a good kind hearted soul that I had the privilege of working with and getting to know. He breathed his last on Nov 3rd in Dallas and it is news that I am still trying to digest. He was just 37. How cruel can life be? We were celebrating Diwali, the festival of lights and yet 7000 miles away, a family has seen the light being sucked out of their lives. If this is not cruel I don't know what is.

It seems that the Universe keeps reminding us in both subtle and hard ways that money, work, fame and material things are not what life is made up of. Life for all its glory can also be terribly brittle. There is so much more to life than work and money and Balaji's untimely demise only strengthens the resolve to lead a life of purpose and spend each day as it were a gift from the almighty.

Balaji, I will miss your presence but I am sure you have found a place of peace and I pray to God to give your family the strength and courage to tide over these tough times.

Rest in peace my friend.

The Brilliance of the Yoga Vasistha

I had been to Blossoms book store this past Saturday with my mind set on getting hold of an English translations of one of the 16  puranas (I already have Ramesh Menon's Siva Purana and Bhagavadpuran). I spent a good one hour combing through the Philosophy section and met with no success. The fact that folks like me browse books and keep them at a different location from where they picked it up most of the time, means that the poor guys at the book store probably gave up trying to arrange the books in some kind of order. But I seem to digress.

I was just about to leave after having picked up a copy of the Panchatantra when I set my eyes on a fresh copy of the Yoga Vasistha. I never came across the name before and glanced at the back page for a review. The Yoga Vasistha apparently contains the pearls of wisdom shared by the great sage Vasistha with Lord Rama and his family. I picked up thinking it would contain a lot of stories similar to the Ramayana.

 I sat down to read the book later in the day and some of the concepts are truly mind boggling. I could not help but feel some kind of connection between what was said in the book and what one would come across in a book devoted to Quantum Mechanics or Cosmology. The concept of true consciousness and the planes its exists could very well fit into something like the String Theory and the multitude of dimensions that cosmologists and astrophysicists are today theorizing. 

A lot of what is said in the book needs to be read several times and digested slowly and for an ignorant soul like me some of it was truly mind numbing. But nevertheless I could not help but marvel at the insight of the seers of ancient India. Ours is truly a land that is blessed. Unfortunately not many realize this as we keep busying ourselves in material pursuits. Sad!