Sambo

Day 7

The early morning brought me in touch with an old college buddy. Spoke to Dr. Dang and agreed to meet somewhere in the evening. Realized that there was a Thai massage place right opposite to the hotel, wo went there to check it out. They accepted only cash (which was a little bit of a problem cause neither of us was carrying too much of currency). So that was something we had to push to the back of our heads for now. 

After a relatively crappy breakfast at the hotel (it was included in the price, so we didn't want to spend outside for food), we headed to Slansen. As we walked from the train station, it was difficult to think of anything else other than how COLD the place was. We decided to take the ferry ride around the place and bought a couple tickets from the self help vending machine, only to realize that we paid for ferry by mistake...it was already covered in our train pass :(

The ferry ride was nothing to write home about and the sky was too overcast to shoot anything, so we decided to head back to Gamla Staan and walk around the place where the King's palace stands. Had it not been for the really dull grey sky, the pix might even have been nice! But all the walking around only got us feeling colder which meant we had to get into train station just for warmth. The good part about that was that the station we did get into was themed like a green grotto, so it was interesting to see how they had made up the place.

Now we had decided that we would visit every single Hard Rock Cafe (both of us have a penchant of collecting T-shirts with the logo and the place which has a HRC), so we headed to Centralen and asked for directions to HRC. We were told to go to the Rat station (Seriously!), but lo and behold, we actually were a short walk from the station to HRC. After a hearty meal and quite a few Euros spent on memorabilia (I got my John Lennon caricature charity band there as well), we headed back to Gamla Staan hoping that the skies would have mercifully relented.

What happened next was unbelievable! We walked along the side of the cathedral where the Royal couple had gotten married and onto the water reservoir behind it. As we were walking there, another lady (a tourist) was also walking around the same place. There was a lot of ice on the steps and in a tiny clearing, she was standing looking out towards the setting Sun. And as she stood there for some time, her shadow fell into the spot where the snow had melted a bit and so you could see it. This resulted in what I consider my best shot of the trip so far (and probably of my short photography career, if career is even the right word). 

Super elated with this achievement, but still cognizant of the super cold around us, we decide to head back, mainly cause Dr Dang hadn't called me yet on when to meet. Thinking that the meeting is off, we got into a train to head back only to get a call from Dang suggesting we meet him at Centralen. Supreme confusion reigned on where to meet as Centralen has way too many exits. So finally we met near the Ice Bar at the Nordic hotel. They told us that the slot is only available in 25min at 1915, so we waited around  discussing Dr Dang's Tromso visit and how he took great pictures of the Aurora.

When our turn was called, we were ushered into a place where we were given warm parkas which had gloves hanging off them and then asked to walk into this super cold refrigerator. Of course taking our cameras out and shooting meant that the gloves would have to come off. So after trying to take a few pix of a place where the entire room is made up of ice (a truly awesome place), we gave up and decided to just enjoy our drink out of the ice glass.

We couldn't stay there for long, plus the cold sure drove up the hunger. So we scouted around to find Sala Thai which sounded great for dinner. The conversation over dinner was pretty surreal, what with us discussing  Swedish relationships, Food habits, cross cultural interactions. Dr Dang sure livened it up for us.

Then it was the Tunnelbana back to Midsommerkransen and the long walk back to the hotel. The debate before we left the train station was whether we need to go for a massage tomorrow or not, cause that would decide whether we needed to withdraw money or not. Finally the decision was to go for it and so we wanted to avoid the long walk back just to draw cash. 

I was super excited to get back to the hotel to upload today's pix, mainly to see how my "greatest yet" pic had come out. It sure didn't disappoint!!!

On that high, it was a good day today and time to say good night!

Bits in the air

I felt like the total geek I am when I was setting up the spanking new D-Link Dual Band Wireless N router, the Apple TV and the HDMI hub. The satisfaction after setting it up was immense. Made all the effort to consolidate and digitize my media these last few months worth it.

First up, the wireless router. Now being the super anal person I am, I had to set up the wireless network EXACTLY as I want it. No default settings would do. But to do that, I had to login to the router for administration. The Quick Start leaflet that came with the router mentioned that the username for the administrator is "Admin". Nope, the router refused to log me in. Then I tried "admin" and voila! it worked. Set up both the bands and now it was time to setup the Apple TV.

The setup is unsurprisingly simple...typical Apple. A couple of clicks using the included remote and I was at the network configuration screen. Here is where I thought Apple could have done better with the keyboard. It's a pain to type in my WiFi password using that keyboard, especially considering that the password I have is 26 characters long! I had the same problem when enabling "Home Sharing", a pre-requisite to start streaming from my iMac. Putting in the Apple ID and then the password was a painful affair. All said, the whole thing took me 15 mins to get thro and I was ready to start.

iMac at the ready, Apple TV waiting to receive...Start the Movie! And it works, Ladies and Gentlemen!

Next up, pairing the iPhone "Remote" application to the Apple TV. Piece of cake. Easy Peasy. Done. Now am browsing my library and controlling everything using my iPhone. Cool!

Now the HDMI port switcher. Connected the DVD player, the Apple TV and my Kodak zx3 HDMI cables to the 3 input ports and the output to the TV. And just like that, I have a tiny device - with a IR remote along with it - that I can not operate sitting back on my bed, being the lazy person I am.

It was a great experience to watch HD quality being streamed thro the air and into my TV. The kicker was the 5.1 channel surround sound after I hooked the Apple TV - via optical cable - to my Cambridge Audio amplifier.

And finally, just tried Airplay from my iPhone to view an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" on my HD TV. Also realized that a video ripped to support the iPhone screen format is of good enough quality to watch on a 42" screen. Not necessary to get the videos in large formats and so a good idea to save space. Will try it with a couple of DVDs and if that works, will start ripping all of them to the iPhone format so that I can cram more media on the same hard disk space.

All in all, a very satisfying evening! 30 minutes of work and 6 hours of pleasure!

Another addition to the media room

Finally got my hands on the AppleTV!

POP! The Champagne cork is off. The wait is over. All my redigitizing effort to consolidate my media and make it Apple TV friendly is going to finally pay off tonight. And to make the experience better, I am also now in possession of a spanking new D-Link Dual Band Wireless N router. Ok, so I didn't buy the router because of AppleTV...my old router would have done just fine. But that was exactly the problem. My old router was...you know...OLD. The bugger would randomly hang and I would have to physically yank out the power cable and wait 10 seconds before pushing it back in to get it going. It would happen at some of the most inconvenient times of the day (think having to tiptoe around the house at 1:30am just cause your Daily Show episode has frozen midway). So the solution was to get a nice and powerful Wireless N capable router which my Macbook and iMac could freak out on. Now I can enjoy my 8mbps broadband connection a little more :)

And so save myself a little more trouble, I bought a HDMI switcher. Yep, my Plasma is 5 years old and came with only one HDMI port which is currently being used by my DVD player. So now my DVD player and my Apple TV will have to jostle for the same port. Not to worry. 3-port HDMI switcher (with IR remote) to the rescue. Woo Hoo!

Thanx Sanjeev for carrying the stuff back for me. Muchas Gracias!