My newest posession

After the incident with my sony ericsson, I was facing a few problems with the phone so i had to get myself a new one. It took me a whole week to decide which phone to go for, I wanted a phone that wasn't too bulky, which had decent multimedia capabilities , A GPS receiver to help on all those bike trips and more importantly, it had to fit in my budget of 10k. I had shortlisted the Nokia 6210 navigator and the new samsung star. I visited a couple of shops to look for any other good phones that fits my budget. At one of the shops i found the Asus p320, it had all the options i was looking for, and that made the decision even more difficult. I was forced to resort to the oldest method of problem solving - the pros and cons list

Nokia 6210
Pros

• GPS

Cons

• Same old boring nokia interface
• A little bulky
• It was out of production
  

Samsung star
Pros

• Very good interface with touch screen
• comes with an accelerometer which makes it more fun to use
• memory expandable upto 8gb

Cons

• No GPS
• Audio quality not that good

Asus p320
Pros

• supports GPS and WLAN
• Touchscreen

Cons

• Very bad reviews
• Not a multimedia phone, so music quality won't be good

After a lot of debating against myself, i finally fell for the samsung Touchwiz UI and got myself the samsung star. I must say that I don't regret the decision at all. I brought an 8gb card along with it and loaded it with my favorite music.

From Random Thoughts Of An Idle Mind

The output from the earphones are not that good compared to my sony walkman phone, but i read that there are adapters available in the market that let you connect the standard 3.5mm earphones, I need to get myself one of those. The Touchwiz UI that the phone comes with is a delight to use and I can't stop myself from playing around with the menu and applications every now and then. The camera is good in day light, but it's of no use in low light situations. I am not complaining about the camera because i already have a cannon camera that i use for photography. The panorama mode of the camera simply blew me away by it's simplicity of use. All you need to do is set it to panorama mode, click the first pic, and then as you move the phone around, it automatically detects when the alignment is right and it clicks the next set of pics for you. The music player has decent output, Although i wish it came with a feature to search for a particular track since it gets difficult to scroll through your entire collection when you have 8gb of music. The phone also comes with google maps pre-installed. It can show you your location based on the cell tower you are connected to, this makes up for the lack of GPS to some extent. I found it to be very accurate within the city, I still have to test it during one of my trips. The phone also comes with an innovative tracking feature. It lets you store 2 numbers to which it will automatically send an sms if someone puts in a new simcard, This will help in tracking the phone incase it gets stolen. these 2 numbers are protected by a pincode so that no one else can change them. It will send the number of the new card and a few more details of the number. It also comes with a fake call feature that can help you get out of a tricky situation. I am still exploring the different features of this phone and will update this post if I find anything new.

Tales of my selfless sony ericsson

While i was trekking along the hills, enjoying the natural surroundings and the lashing rain, little did I know of the turmoil that was unfolding deep inside my backpack. There were 3 of them, my cannon camera, a friends brand new nokia, and my trusty sony ericsson. Everything was nice and cozy for a while until the tragedy started to unfold. All of a sudden, out of nowhere came the enemy, drop by drop it tried to infiltrate the strong hold of the polythene bags that these 3 brave soldiers called home. The 3 soldiers could easily tackle the enemy at first, but soon they were outnumbered. Mr Sony Ericsson knew that things had started to go bad and that someone would have to sacrifice them-self for the good of the others. Mr. SE also knew that the other 2 were still young and had a long life to live, he selflessly decided to brave the enemy all by himself to save the other 2. He was quick to find his way to the bottom of the bag where the water was fast accumulating. He summoned all his strength to provide support and a higher ground to the canon and the Nokia. He managed to keep them safe but he was growing weaker by the minute.

I could hear the phone ring every 10 seconds, I was wondering who was it that was calling me so often. Little did I know that it was Mr. SE's last cry for help. He was inundated with water, all systems were failing. I stopped to check after finding some shelter, but I was late. He was no more responsive. I quickly saved him from the enemy's hands, drained all the water out, removed the battery and put him in a dry place to rest. Miss canon and Mr Nokia were safe, they were grateful to the courageous deeds of their dearest friend. That very night he was admitted to the service center. The service center guys stood by him all night and opened him up to dry. He finally started to show signs of life, All he needed was a new display to get back up and running. Unfortunately he still bears scars of the epic battle, his eyes, the camera could not be saved. He will forever be remembered as the hero who put others safety before his own.

Of maggi and limejuice

It's been a long time since my last post, no prizes for guessing the reason - work. I hate working late hours in the night, and I'm often astonished on how so many colleagues prefer staying back late. Today i discovered their secret. As the clock goes past 12, our nocturnal team seems to mysteriously disappear from their workstations for about half n hour. Today I had the opportunity to join them for this midnight ritual. The place we were headed- the cafeteria. It was a Friday night, with the clock reading 12:30 am, and we were at the cafeteria having hot maggi, paratha and lime juice, making fun of each other. You would think that I'd be complaining, but on the contrary, it was nice. one of the weird pleasures of the office you could say.

Another discovery at the barbers shop

Having nothing to do over the weekend, I decided to go get a haircut. While I was at the barbers shop, I discovered what seemed to be a new species of people. It took a while for it to strike me that this species has not yet been documented despite their numbers increasing daily. Since I had to wait a while for my turn anyway, I decided to put that time to some good use and document the distinct characteristics of this species. Please note that their population is still pretty low so no hunting will be allowed for now. I have listed a few of their most noticeable features below to make it easier for you to spot their type.

• They are usually skinny, have funny colored hair and wear sunglasses even when indoors.
  
• They usually wear jeans that have flashy designs printed on them along with different colored pockets, and a couple of other accessories hanging around different places.
  
• The jeans are paired up with a loose shirt that has half the buttons opened. To put more emphasis on the shirt, they sit in a relaxed type of pose that opens their shirt even more.
• You will usually find them singing along, or headbanging to the latest bollywood music hoping that they are being watched.
• They usually travel in packs and can be easily spotted if you keep and eye out for weird colours in the distance.
• They are sometimes accompanied by members of the opposite sex that share similar genes, but with even more colours. Did i say genes? sorry i meant jeans.
• The female counterparts can also be easily identified by the vernacular accent which they use when trying to speak in English.

If you find yourself near this species, it's safe to wait and observe for a while, but be ready to walk away if they show any signs of trying to strike a conversation.

Signboards... they help, but not always

I had recently been to fame adlabs to watch a movie. There was still 30 mins for the movie to start so i was left with no option but to roam around the mall to kill time. I couldn't help taking a few pics of some weird offers that they had.

You know your living in times of recession when you see offers like these.


I was tempted to buy this just to ask for 10 paise in back in change.

Here's another one taken at the same store


You can almost imagine the guy yelling "Coffee! Coffee! get your 3 is one coffee!" , can't you?
On a second thought, what is 3 in one coffee anyway?

And here is another signboard from the sandwich guy below my office. The signboard business could really use someone who is good at spellings.

Don't miss the last line on this one - "We tack birthday party & wedding order by order"

Dealing with those who just can't shut up

Each and every of us must be knowing at least one person who falls in the category of "people who just can't shut up". Not all of them are bad, some of them are really fun to talk to, but there are a few who go on and on about the most boring topics like, well mostly about themselves. I happened to know a few such people and they are solely responsible for me not signing into messengers as often as i used to.

After a couple of days it becomes really difficult to find topics to talk about and its a pain in carrying on the conversation. Not replying is down right rude and should be used only as the last resort. You must try and maintain a reasonable "conversation buffer" period between any consecutive conversation between yourself and such a person. Personally, i would consider 3 days a reasonable value for this "conversation buffer". This value can vary based on the average length of the conversations and the amount of boredom caused. Fortunately for you, you don't have to get into those complex calculations since I have come up with a series of plans to combat this threat to humanity.

Plan A: If your messenger comes with an invisible mode or an away mode, put it to use. This plan follows the popular principle of "prevention is better than cure". It's best to sign in in away mode and not reply when the said specimen messages you. It certainly beats carrying on the seemingly endless conversation.

Plan B: Keep talking about yourself. This plan was designed after the "Give a taste of their own medicine" principle. This is the most effective plan as per my experience. After trying this out on my test subjects, i found it to be effective 75% of the time. The said subjects can't stand it if they don't get a chance to talk about themselves. Don't worry if you can't come up with interesting topics about yourself, the beauty of this plan is that the boring topics are much more effective in getting the other person to end the conversation.

Plan C: Make excuses. I found that the most effective excuse is "I am having internet trouble, I don't think i am getting your messages". Feel free to use your creativity while coming up with such messages, and don't forget to leave me a comment if you stumble upon some good excuses.

Plan D: Don't reply. This is to be used only as the last resort, if all of the above plans fail and if that person is of no strategic importance to you or your career. The after effects of this plan can include an indifferent attitude from that person towards you. These after effects however, can be mitigated if the plan is used in moderation. The trick is to message the person the next day and make an excuse like "Sorry, it was my brother/sister using the computer the other day"

I hope this post is of help to you in dealing with such people. Do leave a comment if you have any other such plans that I don't know of

My new photoblog

I had been thinking of starting a photoblog for quite a while now and i finally got the time to do it on a lazy sunday afternoon. Heres the link

http://underexposed.aminus3.com/

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