I wanted to add some color to my room. Well, I am not much of a colors person and I am not an interior designer either! So I downloaded Seashore on my MacBook and created this picture.

I want to blow this up into a larger picture, frame it a hang it on my living room wall .

Do you think its worth it? Let me know what you think by adding your comments below.

St Louis Park, MN now has wireless broadband internet access, well almost.

Two weeks back they installed the wireless poles in my area, see the one closest to my house on the 16th street/Zarthan Ave intersection.

I called the 365x24x7 support line this morning only to be told that the service will not be available until mid-August

Another minor annoyance that I found out was that the professional installation was “mandatory”, the FAQ page says otherwise,

” Is There a Mandatory Professional Installation?

No. Professional installation is optional for all service levels. Most subscribers are able to install the gateway and start using ParkWiFi by following installation instructions provided when they receive the gateway. ”

Another 3 weeks does not seem too long a wait and I hope that its worth the wait !

Update: 29th November 2007 10:08 CST

It’s almost December 2007 and still no sign of a working city wide WiFi network. I guess I will have to wait for the yet to be announced Google & Co nationwide broadband service or may be a community based broadband network even.

I like this camera. I bought this camera a couple of weeks back ( last week of June 2007 ) from Walmart.com in preparation for my trip to the East Coast with my mom. A picture is worth a thousand words so take a look at the pictures here.

A short summary of what I liked and what I did not like about the Norcent DC-1020,

Likes

Dislikes

Tip: Get the starter bundle and the energizer battery charger from walmart its a good deal if you can get your hands on it.

Here is a quick run down of seven things (gems) that I liked about Sivaji – The Boss

- Classic Rajini ( saarukku tea bajji kondu vaada dai, Kaun Hai? Boss-da Kenai! )

- Shankar nuff said just pick his movie and you are sure to be entertained and inspired. [ some of the masterpieces he has created on the silver screen include Gentleman, Kaadhalan, Indian, Mudhalvan, Anniyan and of course Sivaji -The Boss]

- Art Direction for the song sequences, There are songs that you fast forward or shy and look the other way but if you take your eyes off the songs in this movie or even bat an eyelid you will miss a great experience. So enjoy the songs and feast on the elaborate sets, Hello Broadway are you taking notice!

- Music AR Rahman, I didn’t get the music at first. The lyrics were not helping either but the numbers slowly grew on me and I love all of the songs except the sad version of “Sahana/Sahara”.

- Costume, Doing costume for Rajini is a challenge and the costume designers have lived up to that challenge. The song “Style” features some amazing clothes on Rajini and Shreya the heroine. Of course the first song ballelakka features the signature Shankar style painted caricatures, dolls vaguely resembling traditional dance costumes and a dance crew whose faces you never see, running around the green country side.

What do you think?

- Camera (stunt scenes) Shankar introduced the The cool Bullet Time filming technique popularized by the Matrix in an earlier film. I loved the use of this technique in the stunt scenes. Of course, none other than Rajni would have looked as cool in those stunt scenes. Am I using cool a lot?

- Post Production

We all wanted to see a younger Rajini thanks to Prasad Labs, this was made possible through their patient digital enhancements.

If you are not a Rajini fan or if you are not even from the sub-continent you will still enjoy this world classic. You should run to the local Indian video store and ask for Sivaji -The Boss (tell them The Boss sent you there)

Overall the Boss Rules! I give seven stars (*******) for the superstar !

Do you want an iPhone? Do you hate standing in lines?

Well it looks like you can check the availability of the iPhone online. If you are lucky and you find a green status ball you can make a quick run to the apple store near you to pick up your iPhone.

The idea seems simple but actually making store inventory available online is a nice feature. I like it and yes thank you apple!

Update
The online inventory check that I was so proud of, does not seem to work. I have checked this at different times of the day but sorry there are no green balls of goodness!

July 27 2007

Songs from Sivaji The Boss

for my personal listening only

Here is a nice video review of the iPhone by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal,

iPhone video review

Feel free to leave your comments on the iPhone.

Recipe for Vegetable Guruma

Preparation time 30 minutes
Serving Size 4 people.

Ingredients for grinding [Araikka, in tamil]:

Green Chillis 2 pieces
Coconut [Grated] 1/4 Cup
Ginger 1/2 inch piece
Garlic 2 pieces
Poppy seed 1 table spoon
Cashews 4-5 pieces

Udaichcha Kadalai [pottu kadalai, Split Peas Dal, roasted gram, Dalia, sengapappu] 3 table spoons
Coriander Seeds [Dania] 1 table spoon

Vegetables

Carrots 1 (diced)
Beans 10 pods (cut to 1/4 inch pieces)
Fresh Green Peas 1/4 cup
Cauliflower (florets) 1/4 cup (cut to small pieces)

Frying [Thalikka] Ingredients

Onion 1 (medium size), cut to small pieces
Tomato 1 (large), cut to small pieces
Cinnamon bar 2 (approx 1 inch pieces)
Clove 2 pieces
Curry leaves 10-12 leaves

Other ingredients

turmeric powder 1/2 tea spoon
garam masala 1/2 tea spoon
salt to taste
coriander leaves
Cooking oil 3 table spoons

Preparation

Add all the ingredients for grinding in a food processor (mixer/grinder) and grind to a paste (add a little water if that helps).

Heat 3 table spoons of cooking oil in a deep pan (Kadai, wok) .
Keep the flame in medium.
Fry the Cinnamon bars and cloves till they splutter.
Add the chopped onions and give it a few minutes to cook, till the onions are transparent.
Add the curry leaves.
Add the chopped tomatoes.
After the tomatoes are cooked (after five minutes or so) add all the vegetables till they are cooked.

Add the ground masala paste, turmeric powder, garam masala to the pan and add 4 cups of water.

Add salt to taste.

Close the pan and boil the guruma for ten minutes. (Keep stirring the guruma every two minutes or so.)

Remove pan from the stove and pour guruma into a serving dish. Add finely chopped fresh coriander leaves to the guruma
before serving.

Here is the final result,

This goes well with Idli, Ghee rice and of course puris and parottas.

You can also call this as Parotta Guruma.

Zoho has released an online notebook application… It lets you create books and the coolest thing about it is that it lets you add sound “bites” and/or video clips if you have a microphone/camera to record audio/video. Thats pretty neat. Best of all the price is right, yeah its free!

Check out their youtube demo here.

If you are interested in a good text book on Information Retrieval a.k.a Search, here is one,

http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~schuetze/information-retrieval-book.html

It’s online and oh yes you can’t beat the price!