Indulging the glutton within.. Since Dad is in India, Mom and I decided that it was time to indulge the gluttons in us… So we had.. 1. Lebanese Food at El Sheikh on Tuesday I was inspired by the outing Rinaz et all went to, so we decided to go to El Sheikh.. We just had 3 starters (Hummus, Mossaka’ah, and Falafel) and we were almost full. And they had ran out of Baklava. So we decided to roam around looking for it.. Finally we found some at Alaturka. I had Baklava and mom had mint tea, which she thought was really good. 2. Home-made Pizza on Thursday Home-made pizza just rocks. Especially when mom and I bake together.. So on Tuesday we decided to have Pizza for dinner.. Vegetable Pizza Pine-nuts and Olives Pizza We made a couple with loads of vegetables, and one with just pine-nuts and olives… as I like it.. But I forgot to put parmiggianoon on it.. :( .. 3.  Durians on Friday. Since it’s Durian season, we decided to eat Durians on Friday. I joined mom after work to eat Durians at at the shops near Aljunied MRT. Now, I am no Durian expert. I don’t understand anything in Durians.. When the guy showed me the split durian to check if it was OK, I just said yes and started gorging it down.. Hahahaha.. Who cares about the subtle differences, they all taste nice.. :) 4. Pasta on Saturday. So what do you do when you have left over pizza toppings?? Why? Make pasta sauce out them of course!  That’s what we did. Mom made a nice hearty vegetable Pasta sauce on Saturday, while I was roaming around NDP taking photos.. There’s something you can’t beat in a simple tomato-vegetable pasta topped with parmiggiano.. 5. Tacos on Sunday. We found some Taco shells while shopping groceries last week, and we decided to make Tacos for dinner on Sunday. Vegetarian of course.. I made fresh salsa, and mom made beans.. It was kinda burrito+taco+nachos mix thing we had.. Wasn’t anywhere near authentic.. but tasted damn good.. :) Chip of the old block they say.. I am sure you can guess where my love of cooking and eating different types of food came from.. Ambar.. Ambar pe milte hain qadmon ke nishaan tere hi, har shaam. Khidki pe likhe kooi, oo uus kii boondon se tera naam. Na khelo sanam Tere hi hai hum Dhadkaniye mere dil ki, Puche re, tere dil se, Ki such much kya hai tu duniya me? Jab aaoge tum tab gaayenge hum Sargam ye saje, tere sang sang Is khwaab ko such kar ke hi jaana re -Raghu Dixit. Comment on The Speak Good English Campaign by NTT @Thanu In English, you can’t concatenate the noun and the verb to create another verb. So you can’t say “to Carpet-Shampoo”. It should always be “to Shampoo the Carpet”… Comment on The Speak Good English Campaign by thanu What is so funny(ecl de grammar error) I ain’t gettin anything :( :( :( Comment on USB device Charging un-mystified. by NTT @Harrison. Hmm.. That’s interesting. So will this work on iPhone as well? Because for the iPods you just need to connect the VDC and GND, as far as I know. Setting D+ and D- to 2.0V will also enable the iPhone to move up to 500mA? Comment on USB device Charging un-mystified. by Harrison Hi, there, There is a special way you can charge apple devides without using “SetConfiguration” USB Device Request: give both D+ and D- 2.0V +-2% voltage using resistor deviders. Comment on USB device Charging un-mystified. by NTT @Craig. Haha.. Yup.. We have all seen this before. It was great to dig up the specs and figure out what is going on.. Glad to be of help. Comment on USB device Charging un-mystified. by Craig Its funny - I see a gazillion posts about problems with USB wall chargers and Gen 2 IPOD Shuffle devices - which I am also having. Your discussion around 500ma devices trying to negotiate current with the el-cheapo wall chargets, failing, and stopping - explains exactly what is likely going on. Touche! SMB2 Chatter.. I was walking around with the H4 during Social Media Breakfast 2 a few weeks ago… Here is the chatter that was recorded… I only got the 1st bit of the recording, the 2nd bit was corrupted.. :( USB device Charging un-mystified. Warning : Super technical, geeky post ahead! I was watching Episode 52 of Systm, and Patrick was trying to hack/mod an iPod/iPhone connector to allow it to charge using various sources other than the USB port of your computer. He also wanted to get the line out audio from the connector to connect to any Audio System. Aside : Systm has just revived into the awesome show it started as. Patrick did one on distillation, two on iPod/iPhone hacking/modding and possibly more coming up. Do watch it if you are interested in this type of stuff. So, Patrick was able to power up and charge the iPod (a 5th Gen iPod, I believe) by connecting just the VDC and GND pins of the connector to a 5V supply (possibly a VCC pin on a USB cable) and GND respectively, the same did not work on the iPhone. Why?? For this we need to look at USB’s electrical specs, especially the power sinking and supplying parts. There are 3 classes of USB hosts and 3 classes of USB devices/functions defined in the specs. Hosts are devices like PCs, USB hubs, etc, which can connect to multiple devices and act as the “Master” in most transactions. Devices are “Slaves” in a USB connection. All cameras, phones, thumb drives, etc are considered as devices. The power source and sink requirements of different device classes can be simplified with the introduction of the concept of a unit load. A unit load is defined to be 100 mA. A device may be either low-power at one unit load (100mA) or high-power, consuming up to five unit loads (500mA). All devices default to low-power. The transition to high-power is under software control. It is the responsibility of software to ensure adequate power is available before allowing devices to consume high-power. So the 3 USB Host Classes are.. Root port hubs: These are directly attached to the USB Host Controller. Systems that obtain operating power externally, either AC or DC, must supply at least five unit loads to each port Bus-powered hubs: Draw all of their power for any internal functions and downstream facing ports from VBUS on the hub’s upstream facing port. Bus-powered hubs may only draw up to one unit load upon power-up and five unit loads after configuration. Self-powered hubs: Power for the internal functions and downstream facing ports does not come from VBUS. However, the USB interface of the hub may draw up to one unit load from VBUS on its upstream facing port to allow the interface to function when the remainder of the hub is powered down. And the 3 USB Device Classes are.. Low-power bus-powered functions: All power to these devices comes from VBUS. They may draw no more than one unit load at any time. High-power bus-powered functions: All power to these devices comes from VBUS. They must draw no more than one unit load upon power-up and may draw up to five unit loads after being configured. Self-powered functions: May draw up to one unit load from VBUS to allow the USB interface to function when the remainder of the function is powered down. All other power comes from an external (to the USB) source. So basically, there are hosts that can supply up to 500mA and devices which can sync up to 500mA. However, all hosts and devices will default to supplying and sinking (respectively) 100mA. And to switch to the high power mode, the device software (USB Stack) has to request the host to start providing 500mA. This request has to be done through the Default Configuration Pipe of the connection, using “SetConfiguration” USB Device Request. In this configuration, the value of maximum current, in mA, can be set. However, these requests go over the D+ and D- USB pins, since all data goes over those pins. And so, these pins have to be connected to allow the Device to request 500mA. Now that explains why many times our devices just can’t charge over those USB Wall-Chargers, because they request and expect 500mA charging configuration, but since the USB Wall-Chargers are not “hosts”, and don’t have any micro-Controller or any USB Stack running, they cannot reply to these requests. For that matter, most of them, just like Patrick’s charger, don’t even have D+ and D- pins at all. And since the device can’t get 500mA, it can decide it can’t charge and stops. So now, finally the question is, why can an iPod charge on 100mA (I have tried it using a USB Wall-Charger, it works), but the iPhone can’t. The answer is simple, iPhone has a GSM radio for the cellular telecommunications. And GSM radios draw huge amounts of currents when they broadcast the data in bursts. So during these bursts, they may sink in the range of 70mA. So if you have a flat battery, and a charger providing only 100mA, and a radio sinking 70mA, only ~30mA is left for the other components including the touch screen and the backlight. Running on low current might cause many issues, especially on displays and touch sensors. So Apple must have decided to only charge the iPhone, (and in the case of low battery, allow it to boot-up), if 500mA configuration has been successful. There you go, some interworking of USB and Charging on devices.. Drop me an email, or comment on this post, if you have any questions or queries about these things, and I will try my best to answer them.. Comment on It will be a cold day in Singapore… by nbnl Very interesting event. Was pleasantly surprised when i found it out on Youtube. Bravo to the organisers :) Comment on It will be a cold day in Singapore… by NTT @Shayan Thanks for dropping by. Yes, seems like Singapore is warming up these days (pun intended). Do come by for the next one, it’s a FingerGun Fight.. :p @Vincent It is totally fun. I think Singapore is indeed progressing, bit by bit. Atleast the coverage of the event in the old media was not negetive this time around.. Penguinz FTW!! @Sham Wait a few years, we’ll see who slaughters whom.. :p Comment on It will be a cold day in Singapore… by Sham Slaughter the penguin! Comment on It will be a cold day in Singapore… by Vincent Sounds fun about the freezing part. People should really learn to let their hair down a little - once we get to the point where the people will just laugh about it and enjoy the spectacle, rather than just fearing the ‘matas’, then Singapore will have progressed as a nation :) And yes, throw your windoze away. Penguin rocks! It will be a cold day in Singapore… It will be a cold day in Hell Singapore before I will use Windows again… Rant aside, I went to participate in The REAL Singapore Freeze on Saturday. The idea is simple, all the participants randomly gather at a given location, which is communicated 1h before the stipulated time. And the participants have to freeze on the spot, doing whatever they are doing at the stipulated time for 5 minutes. And then, exactly after 5minutes (timed with synced stopwatches), just walk away like nothing happened… Absolute freeze though… No eye movements, no smiling, to blinking, and no breathing… OK I kid about the last two. I liked the idea for it’s freshness and it’s tongue in cheek artistic sense. I mean after all it is a kind of performance art, but something different. There is something inanely artistic about freezing in a certain posture. It’s akin to a photograph, where a certain moment is captured in history.. OK enough of artsy stuff.. So finally, we were to freeze outside Ngee Ann City, at 430pm on Saturday. Freeze you say?? At that time, at that temperature, it was more of a Singapore Melt! But in the spirit of the event, we went ahead and melted there for 5 minutes.. It was fun, but being the extreme extroverts that Singaporean are, we only got a couple of stares and mostly murmur of the “crazy lah these people.. who ask them do this kind of stupid things… sure gonna kena mata already” type. Overall, I thought it was well organized by Mission:Singapore, although the place and the time should have been considered. The place had another event happening, so the effect of “a whole square being frozen in time” didn’t come through, as we couldn’t even see other “freezers” (term copyrighted by hisham). Also, it was too early and too hot to do these things under the sun. I mean yes, we have had our bit of sun during PE lessons back in school, but that was enough wasn’t it?? Here are some videos of the event. The 3rd one covered our area.. :p P.S. If you like this.. They have another event coming up.. Read more about it here Audio geekout at Esplanade on May Day.. Last week, I got a chance to do something I have been wanting to do since the 1st time I stepped inside the Esplanade; stand behind their audio consoles! (warning! nerdy post ahead…) Background Thanks to references from by some family friends, I got a chance to “consult” the Esplanade sounds engineers during a concert last week. It was a North Indian (Hindustani) Classical Musical concert organized by Engage: Consumer Interfaces, an events organization founded by two (I believe) IIM alumni. Engage has been bringing many great artists from India to Singapore for concerts for the past few years. This year, they invited Pt. Sanjeev Abhyankar and Dr. Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande for 2 separate concerts on two evenings, 1st and 2nd May as a part of the “Young Masters in Concert“. Esplanade I went a few hours before the concert for sounds checks. Now, if you have ever been backstage at Esplanade, you’d know that place is a freaking maze. There is no way anyone can figure out the place without a map. I did get lost.. a few times. Luckily, thanks to this pass, I had free access to the backstage for two days! Sound Checks The concert was held at the Recital Studio of Esplanade. The stage was just being miced up as I arrived. They were using a Sennheiser EW series wireless mic for the main vocals. A Sennheiser 441 for the Tabla, a Shure SM58 for the Harmonium and Shure SM57s for everything else form the electronic Tanpuras to the Manjiras. The Sound Engineer knew his Indian instruments and told me that he had chosen those mics on purpose, considering the sound of the instruments, the room and the atmosphere that was needed. Leveling Next, we did the leveling on the console. The console was a Soundcraft Vi6. Here are some pictures of it. The console totally blew me away. The I/O capabilities are totally unheard of, and the control surface itself had 40 motorized fades, 5 Vistonics II touch screens, and loads of stuff I did not even know about. I was just too fascinated by the flying faders for the 1st few minutes to look at any other details. The Vistonics II screens allowed the selection of any part of the signal chain, which then showed up on faders for detailed control. The Vistonics II touch screens also had knobs and buttons to do more settings. The configuration options were unbelievable and totally confusing. And finally it had an awesome glow in the darkly lit Recital Studio. The levels for Pt. Sanjeev Abhyankar’s concert were set too hot IMO. But he insisted on them. The classic sound engineer’s dilemma; Artist Expression or Audiences’ Ears? The levels for Dr. Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande concert were set nicely. Though she tended to move away from the mic, causing issues later during the concert. After the sound check I went out for a break, and came back just before the concert itself. Concert All through out the concert, the Sound Engineer kept adjusting the levels and the gains for the various instruments by himself, and according my suggestion (which as my “job”). However, around 30mins in, he pulled up a screen using the Vistonics II touch screens for a effects processor module which he had placed in the signal chain. It was a reverb module from one of Lexicon’s effect processors. Here are some shots of the screen. The amazing thing about this module was the fact that it could use the current BPM information, which had to be fed in either using a know or tapping a button on the beat, to improve the reverb processing. It also had parameters like room size, room type and more to control the reverb effect. While the Recital Studio itself had been deadened using curtains and all, the reverb processor was being used to bring warmth to the sound.. Conclusion Both the concerts totally rocked. Though I personally preferred Dr. Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande’s recital. Her voice, the music and the atmosphere was totally mesmerizing. It was a great experience for me both from musical and technical perspective. Oh and I also got to share a car ride home  with Pt. Sanjeev Abhyankar :D. I am hoping to do such stints again, and hopefully one day learn to professionally handle such consoles and mic such concerts…. It’s when great technology meets great music, the magic happens.. Stories for 65Bits episode 65. This was published here because the Tech65 website was is down. These were the stories we covered during the live recording of episode 65 of 65Bits. The original post is here. Class, this is your assignment for today. YOU have to read through all the stories below, and prepare for the discussion during tomorrow’s live recording. If you are unable to answer our questions tomorrow, you WILL BE made the the outstanding student (the student standing outside the class)… We expect all students to be badly behaved, and participate in the discussions impolitely and rant about things… You will be graded on your performance. 1. April Fools Panks on the Interweb. Engadget Engadget vs T-Mobile (Apparently not a joke. More on that tomorrow.) Blizzard Tauren Marine Pinata Loot Bard Class Hero in WoW Ping.sg’s “Whose pong is it anyway” game iPhoneDev team iPhone Dev Team quits. 2. Unlimited Tunes from Apple? Not So Fast Rumors of a new music service appear to be just that 3. Vista Issues Early adopter’s issues. Nvidia driver issues. 4. Creative to sell company HQ for $180m Creative will sell HQ building and rent it back to save $$ 5. Creative Goes After Driver Modder Creative stops distribution of home grown vista driver. Driver author responds. 6. Eeee PC Updates: New models and SDK New 9″ Eee PC wth touchscreen? Eee PC SDK out soon. 7. Fari and Jerrick’s Experience at M$’s Xbox 360 Event. Check out that Riff!!! 8. Byte of the Week : Adobe Photoshop Express Photoshop on the Web! ___________________________________________________________________ For those who missed the other posts, the details of the live recording are follows. 65th Episode of 65Bits Podcast. Date: Saturday, April 5, 2008 Time: 10:00am - 12:00pm Location: Geek Terminal Street: 55, Market Street (Near Raffles Place MRT, opp. Golden Shoe Complex) City/Town: Singapore, Singapore. Fools and their gold #2 OK. So this year AGAIN, I pulled a lame April Fool’s prank. And I am proud to say, I fooled 1 person again.. Fortunately, not the same one as last year… Ah hah!!… Google’s prank this year was kinda lame too, with their Virgile Mars program. Blizzard rocked!! With new units like Tauren Marines, Bards in WoW which make people play guitar hero, and  Piñata’s in Diablo2. Ping.sg had an amazing “prank”. The “Whose ping is it” game.. Simple and yet addictive. And the pingsters made it into a competition.. Now these guys really have loads of free time. Their respective bosses should give them some extra work.. :p And Systm.. did an amazing episode with April fools pranks. Mountain Dew as a light source!!.. Perpetual Light Machine? So did you get fooled today??  This WordPress Blog has been taken down. This WordPress Blog has been taken down after we received the following Takedown Notice for the infringement of DMCA. Please contact Automattic lawyers at legal{at}wordpress.com for more details. To Whom it May Concern: Pursuant to Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”), namely, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Act, you are hereby notified that certain potential copyright infringing materials are currently hosted by you in your capacity as an online service provider (”OSP”). This letter serves as written notification of claimed infringement. As required by § 512(c)(3)(A)(i-vi) of the DMCA, the following information is provided concerning the claimed infringement: (i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. This signature appears below. (ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site. (iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material. http://nttup.wordpress.com Within this blog is content, hosted through WordPress.com: Thus, it is my contention that my rights under the DMCA are being violated by the continued presence of this content, and although the content itself is not hosted on your server, it is linked to in such a fashion that it is represented to be part of your client’s website. (v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above a allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. (vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is not accurate in that I am the copyright owner, in that the image, though belonging to another source is of me, thereby giving me certain copyright rights, and I kinda believe that this matter is actionable under the provisions of the DMCA. The DMCA further provides that the OSP shall fall within the safe harbor provisions of the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Act only if it complies with this notification procedure. Specifically, the Act states that upon obtaining knowledge or awareness of the copyright infringement, the OSP must act expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material. See §§ 512(c)(1)(A)(2), (c)(1)(C). Having now received such knowledge or awareness by way of this notice, such expeditious action is hereby requested. I may be reached regarding this matter at dmca@4Pr1l.com. April Goldsmith. Europe beckons.. After my 6 months exchange stint in Copenhagen, Denmark, I was am completely in love with Europe. The charming cities, breathtking landscapes and lovely people are absolutely unique and just never enough. While I have travelled around Europe many times, I was too young and too “blur” too remember and understand anything, except the last two trips which were during my under-grad years as Exchange. And that was when I found out about the best way to travel and explore any new land. Bagpacking.. A roadtrip up to Norway and bagpacking adventure down in Italy sold me to this idea.. There is something about getting lost in a new city. Wandering through the small little alleys, walking into the quaint corner cafes, enjoying a cup while watching an old man, a regular, come in, and stand silently by the bar and get his personalised cup, and leave without a word being said. And now Europe beckons me again. Paris, Wien, Warsaw, Strasbourg, Zaragosa, Copenhagen, Florence, Belfast, Munich, Prague, Milan, Moscow, Edinburgh… OH and not to forget Amsterdam for live Diggnation on the 3rd April.. Europe beckons.. and I will go.. :) In plain English.. I saw this video from Geekbrief.tv, a podcast which I watch. CommonCraft Productions by Lee and Sachi LeFever is doing a series of Video explaining many of the Web2.0/New Media/Web Technology ideas and concepts like Wikis, Twitter and Blogs “in plain English“, with the help of stop motion video made using cardboard cutouts. There are two things that make it great. The really simple and back to basics way of explaining the concepts, in plain english. And the amazing stop motion video that accompanies the explaination. This is the perfect tool to explain to the unenlightened about our “subculture“. I tried it with my mom. She understood it well. A case for the iPhone. As you might know, I have never been fond of the iPhone. Crazy as the geek community might be about this device from Apple, it never appealed to me. Even with all the fanbois saying that you have to touch it to feel how wonderful it is, which I did, I was never attracted to it. It was just too much for the simple funtionality which I require from my cellphones, and required too many bananas to own one.. But after listening to a recent episode of TWiT, and the constant argument by Dan from Tech65 that iPhone’s best feature is it’s full fledged browser, I realised that maybe it did have a place in my world.. It all begins with RSS. Dave Winer, the guy who pioneered RSS was on episode 134 of TWiT (yes, yes, the infamous one) mentioning how iTunes’ use of RSS, for podcasts, is nowhere near the potential that RSS provides. One of Dave’s envisioned use of RSS for podcasts would be to have a mobile device that would allow the aggregation of Podcasts wirelessly (~ 40mins from the start). That led me thinking, why do we have to tether the iPhone to a PC/Mac to load content onto it? While it is of course a better solution from Apple’s perspective, as they have more control over what gets into the iPhone, “valid” content should be download able over the air. And podcasts are surely one of the best example of “valid” content. Not only that, the mechanism of getting those, RSS, is also something that’s already supported on the iPhone. So why can’t we have an iTunes or a podcast aggregator on the iPhone itself? Moving on, podcasts might not be everyone’s cup of tea (Though I would like to argue otherwise, we will leave it for some other time), but news is. And RSS and feeds are surely the best way of getting news. And more specifically getting news you are on the go. But RSS isn’t so much a content delivery mechanism as a notification mechanism, at least the way it is uses in these days. So what is the use of having an RSS feed without a browser to actually surf the content which you were notified of by the RSS? So now, with the iPhone SDK released, adding these functionality to the iPhone would be a matter of making the right app. A podcast aggregator or podcatcher which lives on the iPhone and is able to download the podcasts as the come out directly to your iPhone, using Wifi or cellular data whichever is available. And an RSS aggregator which is able to work with Safari, which is a full fledged browser (albeit no flash support) to give you the complete experience of news over RSS. And furthermore, if you are able to integrate these apps even more, you could hyper link the “show notes” delivered with your podcasts, something that’s already doable with enhanced podcasts, and surf them up, in the browser, while you listen to the podcasts in the background. There you go, your complete podcast experience. Place shifting along with the rest of the experience. So maybe, the iPhone could be the key to podcasts becoming bigger. Anyone interested in developing these iPhone apps? The Indian Adventure.. Going to India is always a bitter-sweet struggle for me.. While I love the place for some reasons, other things get on my nerves. But I always manage to get caught in an “Adventure” every time I am there.. With crazy car rides, weird cops, scary weather, riots, closures.. you name it, you can get it there.. And every time, there is a guarantee that your adrenaline will get pumping by the time it’s over. And hence I prefer to go on short vacations, too much adrenaline has never been good for anyone. And then also, by the time it starts getting on my nerves I am out of there… But I have managed to come up with a list of “Must Do” things for each of my trips to India, and specifically to Pune. So here is the checklist for my recent trip. 1. Have an Adventure - Check (Crazy neighbor quarreling about the fence. :S ) 2. Eat great Marathi Food - Check (2 great meals, at my Aunts and Sis-in-Laws) 3. Eat great roadside Food - Check (On the way from Mumbai to Pune) 4. Drink Neera- 5. Eat Paan - Check (Twice :D ) 6. Shop for Clothes - Kinda Check (”Stole” from Bro.. :p) 7. Restock Music from Planet M - Check (Got around 20+ CDs/DVDs ) 8. Hang out with cousins - Kinda Check (Only 1cousin was around :( ) 9. Get a haircut - Check (Just made it on the last day..) 10. Go on a road trip - Kinda Check (Traveled from Mumbai to Pune in Bro’s Car ) 11. Ride motorbikes - Check (Rode just a bit.. but was fun… :) ) 12. Attend a concert - Check (Though had to rush off halfway through it ) 13. Climb the Tekdi (hill) - So I managed to get almost of my points.. except Neera.. Damn I crave for it now.. oh and the Tekdi.. :) Anyway.. here are some pictures I took on the way from Mumbai to Pune.. The Road… The vehicles… The roadside food… Pav Bhaji and Wada Pav :) The rebirth of Apple TV… During the last Apple keynote at MacWorld.. Among the many other things, Steve Jobs announced “Apple TV take 2“.. Everyone was of course looking at the wonderfully thin MacBook air to actually notice the amazing improvements done to AppleTV. Let’s go from basics, AppleTV was basically a DVR /Set-top box kinda device that Apple started selling since last year. Something that you attach to your TV, and watch Media content off. It was like an extension of your Mac into your living room. But it’s major weakness was that you had to have another Mac (or PC) with iTunes, and the AppleTV would stream stuff from it.. In the Take 2.. all this changed. The Take 2 is a software upgrade which makes the Apple TV your Mac in your living room. It doesn’t need a Mac, and can directly download stuff from directly to the iTunes on itself. Further more, it supports Movie rentals, Flickr, Youtube and other services. The part I am most excited about is that it supports Podcasts. So you can subscribe to your favorite Video/Audio podcast on the iTunes on AppleTV, and watch it on your TV. And, since AppleTV supports 720p HD, you can watch HD podcasts in HD!! With this and movie/TV rentals, I am really thinking this would be my perfect living room entertainment device.. Especially with people like revision3 coming up with Podcasts on all themes, and that too with high production value, and even in HD, I don’t think I need normal TV anymore. Maybe it is time to get an HD TV, and trash that Starhub Cable Vision Box.. Oh, but the movie/TV rental doesn’t work in Singapore yet… ARGH APPLE!!!! My great Italian escapade… in Singapore This title really warrants my 10days bag-packing adventure in Italy, but for now I shall talk about my recent indulgence in really great Italian food here in Singapore… I have always loved Italian food, and for that matter, the Italian culture, there is something very homely about it.. and somehow I draw a lot of parallels between Italian culture and Indian culture.. esp when it comes to food.. During the past week I ended up (not by design) eating at 3 great Italian places.. so here they are… 1. Pizza Da Donato Since cartcart was here, we decided to have a Pingster’s mini-gathering, with the agenda of checking with cartcart how authentic the Pizza was.. You can check Daphne’s post for the details.. but here are my thoughts about the food.. The Pizza is awesome.. at $7 per slice, it’s on the expensive side, but is worth it. Try not to have the very freshly baked slice, as it tends to “sweat” and get soggy. Do try their unusual flavors like those with Ricotta, eggplant, Feta. The Calzone, looks great, but is pretty bland. Pizza Da Donato is at 8 Sixth Avenue, Singapore 276473 2. Ricciotti After our recording on Saturday, Jerrick and I decided to look for this Italian restaurant for lunch, which his friend has recommended. We were stupid enough to start walking before checking the map, and we got lost… Finally with the help of a small map posted on a lamp post, and Google Maps on Jerrick’s phone and a bit of luck, we managed to find the place, Ricciotti by Garibaldi It’s quite a classy place.. And we were hoping they have a Set Lunch which would be cheap enough.. Well they did have a Set Lunch, but it was no where near cheap. For ~S$27, we had a main course, a dessert and a choice of tea/coffee.. I had a Parmagiana and Tiramisu with Coffee, while Jerrick went with the Spaghetti Bologniese and some Choclate Cake with Tea. The Parmagiana was absolutely delicious. The Eggplants were well done. A tad too tough though, but better than overdone, when you can’t differentiate between eggplant and the sauce. The sauce was nice and rich. And the Parmegianno was real.. Jerrick was really happy with his Spaghetti as well. He reckoned the pasta was “homemade”, as in, made freshly using a pasta maker rather than bought from the supermarket. The desserts were good, but lackluster in comparison to the main courses. The coffee of course was too long… Ricciotti is at 3 Pickering Street #01-36/37, Nankin Row, China Square Central, Singapore 048660 3. Finalmente Gastronomia After tstar’s post about this place, the pingsters decided to raid it. And did we raid it or what!!.. Again.. I am sure Daphne’s and Claudia’s posts did better justice to the place… but here are my thoughts about the food. The Pizza’s are great. I would say even better than Da Donato. Maybe because they are fresh here.. My favorites were the 5 Cheese, and the Bosco (eggplant, mushroom, white-truffle oil).. The bases were nice and thin, the toppings were fresh and generous. The 5 Cheese pizza, had a delicious helping of various cheeses which you could taste. If you like strong cheese, you will love this pizza. For the Bosco, the white-truffle oil added an interesting dimension to it.. The place is simple but feels very Italian, though somehow lacks the charm that’s present in Da Donato’s. Oh and it’s in the middle of nowhere, and you have to take a bus to go there.. Though, it’s right behind a bus-stop… But well, who cares.. it does have the best Pizza’s I have had in Singapore.. And I am going there again…. to try their desserts.. and Anti-pasti… and ofcourse more Pizza!!! Finalmente Gastronomia is at 443 MacPherson Road, Singapore 368154 P.S. Thanks Jerrick, Daph and Claudia for the photos… Battle of the iPod and the Zen.. Ed: So I found that the iPod Classic has some Audio issues. See here  and here. Hence, I decided not to go for it.. Might not be a big deal for most, but I won’t be happy.. With that in mind the 5.5G iPod Video looks like a good buy. It’s cheaper, and has great audio, and all the things the Classic has, except it’s only 30G/60G and there is no coverflow (who cares abt it anyway)…. The world of technolgy is full of dualities or battles..Nvidia vs ATI UNIX vs BSD KDE vs GNOME XBOX360 vs PS3 Blue-ray vs HD-DVD vi vs emacsFor me.. there has always been another one.. Apple iPod vs Creative Zen. And after I dropped my Zen Vision:M a couple of weeks back (yes yes.. I know I am stupid…), I am looking for a new Portable Media Player.. and I have shortlisted the iPod Classic 80G and the Creative Zen 16G . Here’s the comparison.. iPod Zen Storage 80G HDD 16G Flash Screen 2.5″ TFT LCD 2.5″ TFT LCD Screen Res 320×240 320×240 FPS 30 30 Color Depth 16bpp 24bpp Batt (Video) 5/7hrs 5hrs Audio Formats MP3, AAC-DRM, Apple Lossless, AAC, WAV, Audible, AIFF MP3, WMA, WMA-DRM, WAV, Audible Video Formats H.264, MPEG4, Quicktime WMV, DivX, Xvid, AVI, MJPEG Enhanced Podcast? Yes No Extensibility No SD Card Slot Built-in Radio No Yes Built-in Mic No Yes Asthetics After all that… I am still lost.. Or maybe I should just wait for Macworld… Till then my old MD player still sounds sweet.. Hanging out at 6th Ave.. In the last 2 weeks, I have been to 6th Avenue thrice.. and I am starting to love the place… So I went there for the first time 2 weeks ago with Jerrick from Tech65 for dinner, as well as to get some fresh espresso for our Tiramisu.. My only knowledge of this area was that it looks posh and expensive when I went past it when I took 67 to Bukit Batok during Natak rehersal.. Oh and I had read a good review of a restaurant somewhere here on Popagandhi’s blog.. So Jerrick introduced me to this small corner Pizza place.. Pizza Da Donato!. It was a “hole in the wall Pizza place”, and they serve many many flavours of pizza, all freshly baked and laid out behind the counter.. The best part is that they are cut up in squares, from the huge Pizza which is baked, also as a square.. Reminded me of Rome, where they sold Pizza by the gram, and you had to point how big a cut you wanted from the huge square of pizza beind the counter.. Anyway, so it’s $7 a peice. I think it’s decently priced for 6th Ave.. and you get a wide variety of tasty fresh toppings.. My favourite is the Eggplant and the Spinach… Last week, I endded up at Pizza Da Donato again with my parents. Walking around a little further towards Annamalai Ave. We found the Wiener Kaffeehause… I remember, my Austrian friend was mentioning that there was one near Chinatown, which she found pretty good.. We were too full from Pizza that do, so we skipped it.. But, I found myself on 6th Avenue on Friday evening with some colleagues, and being the coffee junkies we are, we went to the Wiener Kaffeehause.. It’s a typical 6th Avenue type “posh” place.. But very nice and quiet, with a little old world charm.. The coffee is served in shiny plates with shiny silverware to go along.. The coffee itself was nice.. It had a little sour after-taste as is expected of Viennese coffee.. but I liked the Einspaenner, which I had.. So.. 6th Avenue seems like a nice place to hangout, especially for the food… And I will surely be going there often.. Anyone game for Viennese Coffee? P.S. I really need a camera..  Clearing your Cache.. This is inspired by a conversation between the Tech65 crew a couple of weeks ago…. It was done in stripgenerator. But for some reasons it won’t be saved, so I had to print screen it… I guess it would look better with stick figures, ala xkcd… ah wel… A solution for TVMobile “Find me one sbs-transit regular who acually likes TVMobile and I will pay for your dinner” - A close friend… While I have not gotten my free dinner yet, I agree that TVMobile is freaking annoying.. While I am not the easiest to satisfy, with respect to entertainment, among all the people, I can’t see how anyone can enjoy watching lame TV shows, on minisucle screen, 10 feet away, with audio which breaks left and right, all of that while looking at such an angle that is sure to give you neck-aches.. But, all that I am willing to give up for a bit of peace on the bus. All I want after a long day at work, is to sit back and listen to a few tracks of the music I like, but I am forced to listen to boring TV Shows, or god forbid, overplayed episodes of “Just for Gags”.. For all those who recommend increasing the volume of my music, I do care about my ears.. Anyway, ranting aside.. I decided to come up with a win-win solution for TV Mobile, and I really hope someone from SBSTransit or relevant authority takes a look at this.. Here goes. (Please bear with me with all the assumptions I make to be fair to all parties involved.) Problem : TV Mobile is too loud. In the already noise polluted landscape of Singapore, TV Mobile just helps to increase the noise levels in the buses. So much so that I can’t speak to the person on the next seat sometimes. However, the investment SBSTransit in TV Mobile should also be protected. And so removing or just muting TV Mobile is not an option.. Solution : Mute TV Mobile on all buses. But keep the audio on radio, as it is already being done. And start giving out (for free) portable FM radios to SBSTransit customers. I remember getting really simple portable FM radios with only a few preset stations, a coin cell, for like a dollar. These can be given out with a pair of el cheapo earphone. Total cost, with mass production can drop really low. We are talking a wee bit more than a dollar here.. This way, people who want to listen to TV Mobile will be able to listen to it, and the others can do whatever they want, and not get annoyed.. Furthermore, there won’t be complains that TV Mobile is exclusive to only people who can afford radios. Finally, if the portable FM radios are made such that the can only tune into one station (TV Mobile), they can also get sponsorship from the advertisers since for sure people will listen to TV Mobile. Any more suggestions to make this case? Is it another bubble?? .. the question which is on everyone’s mind these days… I liked Denise Howell’s take on it.. “Forget about things like the fact Google’s at $741 and Apple’s at $191. Were you to try to rent a car at San Jose Airport tomorrow (Wednesday), you would discover that every single vehicle — from every single carrier — is spoken for.”  And of course who can not resist Billy Joel?? In my defense, they told me to blog about it..