One more dream fulfilled..!!!

After quenching my first dream of watching a live Formula 1 race in Singapore last year, it was time to satisfy another one, "My First Car". Yes I have got my first new car, a Chevy Beat.

Owning a car has been a dream for all these years, but to get it done, feels really great. Right from the first week of my recent UK trip, I started to check out the specs of most of the hatchbacks, ranging from, Alto, Ritz, Santro, i10 & Punto. But it was the Beat which won my heart not just for the looks, but it was more promising for the price range compared to the others. If there was another car, which I equally liked, it was the Ritz, but then it was a little far from my budget and hence I had to drop that idea. As every other person I started with a modest budget of getting a car around 3-3.5 lacs, but as you see the specs (especially if you like gadgets and electronics) the features in the car keeps you guessing and you tend to get a better one always. The same happened with me as well and I ended up convincing myself @ 4.5 lacs.

I have been avoiding to drive any other cars (my friends cars / any of my relatives cars) all these years just to keep the thirst to get my own car and finally I got to do it on the 25th of June 2010. I was a little nervous to drive the car from the showroom, but I would rather delay the delivery instead of allowing a driver to do the first time honors and I dared it, Not Too Bad Really. I was comfortable quite soon.

Listening to music while driving was always a bliss, and to do that in my own car with my own choice of music, BEING IN HEAVEN. The first few days, I was really busy organising my music collection into different CD's. Right from ARR's latest flick Endhiran, to PBS's evergreen melodies, I managed to get a descent range of music into the deck.

Then came the huge task of giving a Freaky touch to my car by adding a few things to it. The first to go in was  the Reverse Parking Camera. This was something that I liked always, whether its 100% useful or not, but for sure, its quite unique and am sort of used to it now, helps while parking in cramped places, how many extravagant / organised / uncluttered parking places do we have in India or rather Chennai.. :-) The next funny thing that was always in my mind was to have a sticker which says "My Other Car is a FERRARI", I got to do some more body graphics, to change the very simple looking white color to something catchy, but can't afford to do all at one go. So my next mod will be to get a side body graphics for my little Chevy.

So far my experience on the road driving a four wheeler has been ok, if not great. But this really needs a lot of patience, especially in our country where no one wants to wait for even a second, thats true only when people drive, they can wait for hours in hangouts or for their girlfriends / boyfriends, no one believes in "Give and Take" its always "Take and Give", you let Me go only then I'll let you go. Having a scratch in my car (or for that matter even in my ex-gorgeous Yamaha Fz16) is something intolerable, but that can happen quite easily, even if you are not driving and simply waiting in a traffic light.

The best thing that I like in my Beat is the interiors, its quite pleasant and the blue backlighting for all the controls in the dash is awesome.

Recently I went for a short drive to Mahabalipuram, and I realised that, after nearly 2 months of city driving am not that bad driving in highways. Hoping to go on a trip to Bangalore sometime next month, I always wanted to go out in Bangalore in my own car, as a reply for all the sufferings and hard times that I have gone through in that city. That day is not too far.

Cheers :-)

iPrasan.

My favourite Nexus One applications - Part 01

Being a true gadget freak the latest addition to my list of gadgets is the Google Nexus One (no more JailBreaked, UnLocked iPhone.. :-D). I have been using it for atleast 2 months now, and there are quite a few interesting applications out in the market, which as the iTunes App Store, is growing in size and variety of applications every day. Here are some of the applications that I like in my Nexus One.

App #1. Mixzing Player

One disappointing thing about the Nexus One is its boring, very rudimentary music player. iPhone is an alien compared to the Nexus in this regards. So there is no other way but to get hold of another music player which is at-least a little better than the default player. Mixzing is one among the few players which are out there in the market.

Some of the interesting features of MixZing are

a. It has a better display of the album cover which looks better than the default music player.

b. It supports lyrics as well, but not as great as a iPhone though.

c. Supports widgets in 3 different sizes, which is quite handy.

d. My god 7 USD is a little costly for this player but no joy here as google hasn't done a great work with the music player, but you get a lock screen widget and also you can download all the free songs from the mixzing website (not a surprise no indian songs he he he). The free version is ad supported. Ads are not too much but its the lock screen which makes you go for the paid version and the developer is quite responsive for any feedbacks given.

e. Tag editor in the paid version is quite handy, but it doesn't allow you to edit the album cover.

App #2. EasyMoney

Its always quite interesting to do a monthly budget for your expenses and also to track them just to get an idea of where does your hard earned money go at the end of the day. EasyMoney is an aesthetically pleasing and a handy money management tool. The paid version is 3USD, which is quite good for the features it has.

1. Its password protected so your salary stays a secret amount even if you record it in this application. Nothing to be greedy about the screenshots here.. :-)

2. It supports multiple accounts and has the facility to transfer money between accounts.

3. It supports periodic (Annual/monthly/weekly/daily) repeating transactions, so that you don't have to add EMI's and stuff, thoughtful feature.

4. There are quite a few reports (graphs) and also supports a wide range of currencies.

5. Has got a descent interactive widget to display the summary of the accounts.

App #3. Apps Organiser

This is one of best folder organiser for android platform. Its very simple and easy to use. Helps to avoid a very long dodgy applications menu as you keep installing new applications.

I bought this application just within few minutes after installing it on my phone. Its just about perfect to keep things organised.

The best thing about this application is, it even allows you to un-install the applications from your home screen itself. There are a few comments which say it is slow, but I don't see that as a problem. Whatever it is, its just a phone which you are holding in your hand and not a super computer to do everything in a slice of a micro second.

App #4. RingDroid

This is my next cool application. It allows you to create your own ring tone from the music files that you have in your phone. That's simply awesome.

You have holders to adjust the starting and ending position so that you can trim it exactly how you want. Just the way to create those funny, crazy ring tones.

App #5. RemoteSMS.

This is a freaky tool to keep away from the fuzzy soft keyboard in the nexus, which is bloody annoying at times. I have just tried the free version which allows only to connect using WiFi, but the paid version will allow USB connection as well.

Its very simple, start the RemoteSMS application and then type the http url that it gives in your computer. You need to have both the system & the phone connected to the same WiFi network. Thats all, you can now type and send SMS from your system itself.

The paid version will pop up notifications when you get SMS and also it allows you to have a threaded view of your messages. Until we get the facility to connect blue-tooth keyboards this is the best alternate keyboard for android phones.

Thats the end of my first list of favourite android applications. Hope it was useful for somebody atleast :-)

Cheers,

iPrasan

My New Hobby...

Photography is my new hobby. Not really sure when / why / how I got attracted into this, but its proving worthwhile.

This is my first good photo, even though its doesn't look how I wanted it to look, but yes that how the traffic is here. Its not that easy to get a even pattern with those light trails. I had taken this from atop a 11 storied building for my company competition, and the theme was "Time", guess what I did win the competition in vain.

Info (Time): 44mm, f5.3, 4 s, ISO 400, Tripod mounted.

Think I can be happy to call it a good attempt for a beginner, but later it looks over exposed and I feel I should have used a little faster shutter speed than the 4sec that I used for this. The main problem with DSLR's is, its really difficult to get the impact of your photo in the 2.7" or 3" display that you have, the photo looks totally different when you veiw it in a regular full size display.

The next one is also another attempt to make an entry to our monthly photo contest with the theme "Love". This is the first photo that I had taken with my new Nikkor 55-200mm VR lens. I was waiting for a while for the pigoens to turn around and face me, but they never did that, so I finally settled down for this shot.

Its really amazing to see what PhotoShop or simply post processing can do to a picture. Its actually less than half the effort to take the photo, its the post processing which gives a different dimension to the image and helps you to give it a theme. The next photo is a very good example of what processing can do to an image. When I took this photo in the 2010 Republic Day parade in Chennai, I didn't get the feel its a catchy one, but after processing it is certainly.

Youtube is a very good place to start learning photography. There are a lot of nice tutorials and thats where I learnt how to shoot water droplets. Sometimes you need to stop thinking too much and just be simple to get the setup for your photo. For this photo it was just a waste plastic cover, a cloth clip and tray of water is all I needed to create my array of water droplets coming down at a constant interval so that I can get my shot in time.

Info (Droplet): 90mm, f/22, 1/125 s, ISO 1600, -1 EV, Centre weighted metering.

One of the basic requirements for photography is the combination of patience and interest. This is a very slow process and if its not your full time profession then the learning curve is high. Many good photographs are made when you are at the right place at the right time and with the right gadget.

The tiny little display on the camera often gives a wrong perception. The pictures always look different on a bigger scale. That's something I learnt the hard way, many a times the photo looks absolutely perfect in the camera screen but when I copy it to my system it looks awful. Its not possible even for the pro's / experts to get the best shot easily, taking as many shots as possible does the trick.

Cheers :-)

Keep Shooting..!!!

Holiday in Singapore

Singapore the Lion City or to be more clear the MerLion city is a beautiful place and very truly a mini India alias Tamilnadu (you can see a lot of tamil everywhere even in the local train announcements). Its one of the easy access tourist place from India and if you plan it well in advance you can get some cheap tickets (Tiger airways has flights from Bangalore and Chennai). If thats not a concern then you have one of the best airlines in the world, Singapore airlines.

There are a lot of nice places to go around, some of the places that I got to see are as below. I wouldn't have been able to see all these places if I did not had my lovely cousins there. So if you have any relatives / friends there get hold of them.

Sentosa:

There are lots to see in sentosa island, but to be frank one day is not enough to see everything at a comfortable speed, if you have to see everything you need to go there twice.

There are different ways to get to sentosa. You can get into a bus from the sentosa booking counter itself, or else travel by the cable car or even take the sentosa mono rail. My personal recommendation will be to go by the cable car (sadly it wasn't in operation when I went) / mono rail.

The 4-D film experience, yes its correct 4-D not the usual 3-D film, was amazing. The interesting thing about 4D movie is you have special seats and theater for this. Your seats will vibrate to motions and you have speakers in them which will give a very good effect for background sounds, and also don't be surprised to have a few splash / sprinkles of water, so don't have your cameras hanging out. And there are some special things below the seats which will tickle your legs when there is some crawling or creepy things coming around. So its a very funny and thrilling experience.

Next is the 3D log ride, this gives you a real experience of how a log wood will travel if its put in a tricky track. The cabin that you sit in is hydraulic propelled and it will move exactly as how the log wood in the screen moves just to simulate as if you are the log wood. So its fun, nothing scary, but its fun.

Then comes the Butterfly Park which is a treat to watch, here you can get to play with some of the beautifully colored parrots and even feed them in person. Nice place to get those catchy and colorful photographs. The entire zone is a netted area so the butterflies are sort of in there natural environment and it feels good to be there.

The Merlion which is a well known identity of Singapore is another good thing. You can have a good view of Singapore from the Merlion and also you can get a glimpse of Malaysia.

Underwater world, is something which was not all that exciting for me. Its good and way beyond the boring aquariums that we have seen traditionally. But somehow it wasn't that attractive for me.

Last but the best of the lot, is the Dolphin show. Its really surprising to see those lovely creatures responding to their trainers. It seems as if they understand English quite well. I really don't know how they respond to their questions, they are showing some signs when they speak but its amazing how an animal can understand and don't disappoint the whole lot of audience. If you are lucky some random picked audience can actually get into the water and play with the Dolphins along with the trainers. Lovely isn't it ?

Singapore Zoo:

For a change, Singapore zoo is something which is not boring as other zoos that we get to see in India. It has something for everyone, you can get some nice photographs as there are not many grills or fences blocking you from getting a nice view. The animals are mostly in their restricted natural environment. The zoo itself is to huge and at some point you need to resort to one of the vehicles that keep coming around the zoo all the time, its highly difficult to stay on foot all around. Surprise surprise they have some cow's and buffalo's in the zoo which we get to see on our roads.

Also part of the zoo is the Night Safari, but you need to get a ticket for that separately and that happens only in the night. You can see all the animals in their nest at the time and its quite unique. Usually zoos are restricted when it gets dark but here they have a special thing happening in the zoo only when its dark. No flash photography in this area and its nice not to disturb somebody when they are home.

Singapore Flier:

For those who did miss to get in the London Eye, the flier is a chance to get a feel of that. If am not wrong Singapore Flier (179 mts) is a few meters taller than London Eye (175 mts). For those F1 freaks you can get a complete view of the race track from the flier, but I doubt if they operate the flier during the race weekend :-)

Funan Digital Mall:

For those gadget geeks this is the place to end up. You name a gadget / accessory you can get it here and there are loads of shops to blow out all your hard earned money. Can spend hours together just in those 5 floors, this is one of those very few places where you have to literally drag the guys out. I don't remember seeing any girls inside this mall, not even accompanying the guys, if you say I wanna go to Funan, thats it they will let you go, either you have to do it alone or find somebody else who wants to spend some serious money.

Mustafa & Little India:

This should be the final place where everyone will end up, you name it and you get it in Mustafa. Anything and everything is there, and its round the clock, they work 24/7. Little India is the place where you can find most of our south indian hotels like Murugan Idli Shop, Saravana Bhavan etc., etc., and your guess after seeing the name is not wrong, the place is also like India, most of the people around will be our guys, and no rules, littering, etc., etc., You can see some of our hero honda splendor, & pulsar bikes in this area, so be careful.

Cheers :-)

iPrasan.

My First Formula 1 Experience !!!

I know for many of you the title itself is a little too attractive. Formula 1 is an amazing sport just because of the sheer speed and adrenaline that runs through from the start to the finish of the race.

To start from the beginning, watching a Formula 1 race was always a dream ever since I started watching or rather crazily following F1 races. The recently added (2008) Singtel Singapore Grand Prix was a gem in the crown, for the very reason that its the first ever formula one race which went under the lights completely.

Formula 1 is a well organised motor sport so when you are planning to see one, never miss to watch the action of the supporting races like the Porsche Carrera Cup Race, GP2, etc.,

Pic 1: The Porsche Carrera Cup Race.

Singapore circuit is a street track and has a lot of curves and narrow straights. The barriers are more of the cement walls rather than the tyre barricades which you can see often in a dedicated race circuit. So driving through such a track at the speeds of 250-300 kmph is simple mind blowing.

Pic 2: Lewis Hamilton on the fly.

The shear noise, or sound as I prefer to call it, of these cars are really crazy, you cant imagine that at all. And especially when they come towards a corner where they slow down, you will doubt if the car is going to blow away at the very moment.

Pic 3: Force India in action.

Disciplined driving is something different but being disciplined at these speeds is really difficult. We all know that these cars will go at over 300 kmph, but do we really know how fast that would be ? Not really. Its just amazing to see how these formula 1 drivers manage to control it at that pace.

Pic 4: Robert Kubica on the BMW Sauber.

The only other car which can go ahead of these beasts is none other than our wonderful Safety Car :-P Believe me that fella is a rouge. That Mercedez car is the perfect match to lead them and the sound of it is so pleasing.

Pic 5: Jenson Button

As characteristic of a street race you can get to see the cars closely (they will be flying past just a few meters away from you, and we will be behind an ANNOYING fence). Its a little difficult to get nice photographs unless you get into a nice place to get a good descent view of the cars. Being a night race, its highly difficult to get these fliers in the focus and above all that I found it really difficult to compensate for the shutter speed (cant really have fast shutter).

Pic 6: Lewis behind the safety car after Sutil's crash.

Cheers :-)

iPrasan.