Another addition

We have a new addition to the electronics in the house.

A mac mini.

The old Dell from 2002 died(?) finally after making a few croaking noises. The blue screen showed up many times. It is possible to revive it with a hard disk wipe and installing some later software and OS versions. Instead we chose the less time consuming path and upgraded to a Mac Mini.

Technology has sure come a long way in a decade, huh?

Have not had a chance to play with it since I set it up on sunday night.


The kids love it though! Every day they tell me something they figured out how to do on the Mac just to show me how retarded I am..

Have gotten used to it!

Today we had a short discussion on "Can we sell the Dell on craigslist? who will even buy it?"

San came up with a "Can we donate it to the temple?" and the answer from the rest of us was "don't insult the temple with this computer. they already have computers from two years ago that folks have donated. this goes in a museum"

Do not know if we will find someone who will use the old computer..

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Size trends

An old post was remembered and dug out of the Archives ..

The new trend seems to go in the opposite direction!

There was a company provided Samsung blackjack prior to the iPhone which definitely fits in the gap like a missing data point in the graph.

The phones seem to be growing longer, wider and thinner. They seem to stick out of our regulation size pockets!

That made me think for the first time in my adult life about pockets!

Why are pockets in T-shirts and shirts the same size?
How come they are the same across the world? How come Americans didn't say all American shirts will have pockets on the right side instead of the left? In a world where people drive cars differently, have no universal connector for electronic devices, have multiple measurement systems across the world, the pocket has managed to stay the same size? how come? what is the secret behind it?

and while pondering about the pocket went back to doze off!

Soon we will need bigger pockets to carry these thinner ipad size phones. Can totally imagine a conversation with my tailor in India..

Me : Shirt'oda sEthu pocket'a konjam perisa thaiyunga saar! (just like the shirt stitch the pocket also one size bigger)

Tailor : Why?

Me : Valarra phone! (growing phone)

If it happens, you read it first here...


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Waking up .. at the right moment

Today has been a great day.

No, the wife is in her usual weekend clean up mode and the kids are doing the same things they do..

But there has been a marked change in me. No grumpiness for not being able to catch up on lost sleep from the last week.

There has been a positive attitude to things.

The last week has been very tiring with 2 AM phone calls and lots of work.

Decided to download an iPhone App called "sleep cycle".

This app uses the accelerometer in the iPhone, figures out when you are in deep sleep and when you are rolling around in the bed and times it so that you wake up when you are in deep sleep. The alarm sounds are wonderful and they gradually fade in to high volume.

As an added bonus, it keeps all the statistics and allows you to send the graphs to your gmail account!




In all my life no one has ever done a wonderful job of waking me up like this!

Thank you Sleep Cycle!

Thank you iPhone 3GS !

Thank you Technology !


Now all those <6 hour sleep nights are not going to be that bad after all!


There are other reasons for the exuberance.. but that will be explained later..


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Technology in action

The old external hard drive which was purchased a few years ago to have all photos, videos, etc. backed up from 2002 became full last weekend. All 300 GB of it was filled up with mostly photos and videos starting from San's baby shower till now!

That meant a hunt for a brand new drive.

Thanks to a friend who works at WD, got a nice new "portable" drive with 500 Gb space on it. The difference is just amazing. Shows you how technology just makes you go "wow".




1. Do not need to power it up separately with a power cord

2. Can carry it in my pocket

3. reasonably fast for the size and storage

4. password protected and encrypted!

Nice huh?!

Next thing we know in two years we will have a 10 Terrabit memory in a box the size of a chewing gum stick. It can happen....

I used to think that the days of memory shrinking are over. Well, the concept of memory shrinking just got one more happy customer right about now!

Also saw this interesting technology design marvel. There are designers and ergonomics experts and overall box shrinkers who play as much a part in bringing us better goodies in smaller lighter packages as the technology guys who shrink more devices into smaller microchips or put denser features on disk drives.

Hats off to all of them!

On a side note, is there a simple small timer that can be put between the wall socket and plug for say night lamps, Holiday lighting etc. to enable turning on and off the devices on a set daily/weekly schedule?

That will come in real handy for things like night lamps which are always on in darker corners of the kids room in daylight, or Christmas lighting when we are not in the house, feeding the fishes when we are not around etc.

Considering this stuff is already there in our home heating system controller and in our water sprinklers, it should be easy to put it in a "compact universal timer box" and simply be able to turn any device on or off at a programmable schedule. Might save power on our entire entertainment system.

We have a TV, a DVD player, a Satellite box, a desktop, a bunch of chargers perpetually plugged to wall sockets, etc. all powered up all the time when we don't use them. A system like that would save lot of standby power.

If you know of something like that out there, do let me know.

Technology still holds that charm for me...



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Ah.. Technology!

Recently a DVD that we got from Blockbuster online did not play on the player. It kept showing "No Disc" and we returned it. The customer service guys at Blockbuster promptly emailed us a e-coupon good for a free movie at a store to compensate.

We do not have a printer at home. So I called the store and said "If I have the e-coupon and can give you the code on the coupon instead of the barcode can you give me a movie?"

The teenage kid who was manning the store said "Think we should be able to do that if you can give me the number"

So off I went to the store, got the movie to the counter and started searching my Inbox for the email on my iPhone.

Spent a precious few minutes searching and almost gave up. Then saw that the email was not from Blockbuster.com but instead from something called webmaster@bbpm....

Then while zooming into the barcode to read the coupon number, there was a lightbulb moment!

Looked at the kid and said "Let me zoom in on the barcode and bring it up horizontally to completely cover my iPhone screen. Can you try to use your scanner and just scan this barcode directly from the phone?"

The kid's eyes light up at the geeky idea and he said "Let us try it!" and




Lo and behold, he was able to use his hand held scanner and directly scan the coupon from the iPhone!

Not only can you photograph any barcode and get prices on it from your iPhone (yes, there is an app called Redlaser which we have that actually does that! you scan the barcode and it shows you item name, compares prices, closest location available etc. etc.) but you can also scan barcodes off the iPhone!

Technology is amazing, isn't it?




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The apple doesn't ...

Get it?

The "apple" doesn't fall far from the tree!!!

See video..




Earlier today ..

LO: "Daddy, do you know? there are two ways to make iphone go to sleep..."

Me: How do you know all this?!

LO: (with a very serious look on her face) I am smart?

Me: !!!!!!!!!!



ps. The apples just didn't fall! We have a squirrel in our backyard (kids call him "Salim the squirrel" after reading Tinkle!) which keeps throwing fruit after fruit, just after one sniff or bite! If only we could teach it to finish one apple before moving on to the next....
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A few fail the many

Watched the movie "Who killed the electric car?" recently. It was a documentary and the fact that it was put on top of the blockbuster online queue drew a lot of criticism from the wife and my queueing prvileges have been revoked for even putting this movie on the list!

Being the pro-green dude that I have become, it was an extremely difficult documentary to watch. Even more difficult that the Al Gore documentary. If Al Gore's "An inconvenient truth" showed us where the world is headed and beseeched us to find solutions, this movie was a reality check.

The solutions are already there. We just won't let them out! The best part of the film was I got to see the Ovshinsky's (Stan and Iris) who between them hold 200 patents, came up with so many things that cross my world today be it solar cells, Nickel metal hydride batteries, fuel cells, Chalcogenide based Phase Change Memories (PCM's) etc. etc. It was my dream to meet them in person some day! The couple had actually come up with a cheap long lasting battery technology, that made the electric car, cost competitive against gasoline based cars.

Apparently, Chevron bought a major stake in their company and shelved the technology because it threatens the existance of the gasoline based car as we know it!

Why would I buy a Prius if there was an EV1 option? I do not know!!

This post is not about the electric EV1 or Prius or environmentalism or technology.

It is about how a few people who decide the fate of many invariably make decisions which do not comprehend the responsibility of that decision making. It is almost a disease with politicians today, that when it comes to making right decisions, they invariably do what is right (economically for them, in their minds, at that time, or for their interests) as opposed to doing the morally right thing (which would be the greatest good for the greater many, right by the planet, looking forward to the future).

I would also be the worlds greatest bigot if I expected politicians and leaders to do that when an average citizen of the world cannot do the same thing, more particularly, if I cannot do that!

Given a choice between spending extra to solar power our home and continuing with the power grid, we chose the power grid. Given a choice to sell the old car and buy a Prius, we chose to keep the old car as long as it runs and save money. The same thing happened with a lawn in the backyard vs. synthetic turf! So many similar choices where we could have made a difference to the world or aorund us where the economics of the situation trumps the dogooder options.

In a world where it is each man for himself, where states protect their vested interests by erecting dams to control river water flows, where humans murder fellow humans by the hundreds of thousands every year in the name of religion, resources, security, and many other such things which really have no boundaries if you look deep enough, there is no hope for the many to expect the chosen few to do right by them. There is not even much hope for the many to expect the other people described by "the many" do the right thing!

Why have I suddenly become so self absorbed, self deprecating, guilty, etc. etc. Well in a way, my internal justification for doing a lot of things in this life was that technology would make this world a better place. After watching this movie, it has become apparent that the only technology that will make it into the world and its people are those that do not threaten today's rich in anyway.

Now that is a depressing thought, isn't it?


ps. This does not mean I will curl up into a ball and go sleep in the dark. Far from it. Life goes on. One can always hope that Ratan Tata will make a solar powered vehicle that gives the "Nano" a run for its money, or the Chinese will realize that they could get out of oil dependence and pollution by going to small Electric Vehicles. Yes! We can keep dreaming. It could happen....


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