i-dont-Pad

Yesterday, I watched Steve Jobs create the now familiar Reality Distortion Field when he took the stage to announce the "iPad". And as expected from Steve, words like Amazing, Fantastic, Revolutionary came thick and fast as the new sleek iPad was unveiled.

It's a really nice looking gadget. 9+ inches of screen real estate, up to 64GB of flash space, Wifi/3G, etc. And to start at $500.

And all thro the presentation, I was thinking to myself…all of this I can do on my 2G iphone! Everything except the iWorks part (which I really don't want to do on my phone). And it became a YAWN device for the moment. For the following reasons:

1. $500 for something that I absolutely don't need and that really does not add any real value.

2. I'm getting started with eBooks, having bought a couple of them from the Amazon store (Kindle edition), but I read them on my iPhone with the free Kindle app. So all I end up paying for is the book…which is 30% of the printed book cost. So that works for me.

3. One more device to carry around. I'm always going to carry my iPhone (I sometimes forget my wallet, but never my iPhone) and I'm going to need my laptop to do stuff the iPad will probably never. Case in point: Aperture! My photograph manipulation software that I need to sync my Nikon to when I'm going crazy with the shutter. So the iPad will be just another device that I will end up carrying with me and will only make my already heavy bag heavier by a kilo (it's only a kilo, so what?), not to mention the accessories that will eventually come with this device.

4. The number of books available for the Kindle is far greater than the ones for the iPad. Of course, you can say that's because there is no iPad today! But in 3 months time, when it is available, I believe the Kindle will still have a decent lead on the books available as compared to the iPad. And since I can buy the Kindle edition books and read them on my iPhone, I don't need to spend $500 for this.

5. I keep coming back to this $500 part, cause it's easy to misrepresent. For 500 bucks, you get the Wifi only 16GB version of the iPad. If you want the 64GB 3G enabled one, it's going to cost me $829! Now that's a lot of money to spend on something that I'm not sure I will use to the fullest today.

6. I wish Apple had put a tiny iSight camera on top of the iPad. Now that would have been a really cool thing to do. Then you could have used the iPad to do video conferencing on so many different platforms. Now you can chat with your friends on Google or Yahoo, but if you need to switch from chat to video, it's not a click away…it's a full device away.

I'm a huge Apple fan and usually love all the things they do. I like the iPad a lot as well, just don' t think it does much for me just yet. What I do believe is that it will probably bomb away the Kindle market and a large part of the Netbook market. It also might be a nice thing to give to kids, rather than a whole computer, but I did not hear too many things from Steve about Parental Controls on this device and so am not sure they thought about this market slice.

I'm hoping that as it happened with the iPhone (cost reduction by $100 within a few weeks of launch), Apple will lower the price for the 3G 64GB variant. Cause that's when I will seriously consider buying this thing. Until then, it's nice to look at, but that's all it is!

Who did you identify with?

As soon as I walked out of the movie theatre, having just watched "3 Idiots", this was the question that sprang first to my mind. It would be superfluous to say that it is a very nice movie and that one should watch it at least once. But all thro the movie, I was seeing my classmates from yesteryears appear before my eyes.

There are so many people I remembered back from my college days while watching the movie. The guy who would pray before every exam and the day of the results; the guy who would cram for 18 hours during exams; the guy who was always scared; the guy who didn't want to be there, but his father wanted him to be there; the guy who would do whatever it took to get more marks.

But I want to know, who did you identify with in the movie? I haven't come across too many Ranchos to believe that many of you identified with him. So am curious as to who you guys identified with the most.

I know one person who in fact was like Rancho. Never studied to get marks, was more interested in learning, was the only person who was calmly sitting having a coffee while everyone around him was doing last minute cramming. But unlike the movie, the system is the one who judged this person's knowledge and eventually he graduated, not at the top of his class, but a lowly second class. Nevertheless, I'm glad to say that he's done quite well for himself since leaving college. So I guess his (and Rancho's) philosophy does work (a bit).

What do you say?

80

The title should tell you what the post is going to be about :)

Of course its Golf!

On the day that is Republic Day, four of us drove down a few hundred kilometers to play a round of golf at the Eagleton Golf Club. OK, so it's only 33km from Bangalore, but trust me, it feels a lot longer. Especially after a full round of golf. And even longer if you've refreshed yourself afterwards with a beer or two.

Anyways, I digress. So we landed there and found out that there were not enough caddies for all of us. So the inevitable and unenviable wait…these are the most hated moments on the golf course. So near and yet so far. You're there, but you can't start. Finally after the caddies consented to accompany us on our round, we landed up at the first tee.

For the company that we usually play in, it is more often than not the feeling that we are good players and so we prefer to play Eagleton from the Championship Black tees. After all, we need more challenges than the ones our own game would be throwing at us.

We started with an all par first hole, a rare occurrence. If you had a look at our tee shots, you would have never believed that we all got on (or near) the green in 3 and made our pars. And just like that, the round was underway. I was playing so-so for the first 6 holes and then made two back to back birdies on the 8th and the 9th to finish the front 9 at 4 over. The back nine started very similar to the front and I started feeling a little more comfortable with my swing, but not quite.

Funniest moment of the day was when my ball was on the edge of the water hazard on the 13th hole. I had to stand with my spiked shoes on the cemented lip of the water tank to hit the shot. Only problem was every movement I made would make my shoes slip and as I tried to hit the ball, my feet moved from under me as my club barely touched the ball to start its roll into the water. Penalty!

Ended up shooting 80 (8 over) which, considering that we played from the most difficult tees, is a pretty good score to shoot.

The thing different about this round is that I was carrying my camera with me all the time and shooting everyone's swing. I am planning to make a video on it, should be ready by tomorrow evening :-)

All in all, am happy with the way I played, despite not playing close to my best. After all, grinding it out when you are not at your best is a good sign that there are better things to come when you do hit that occasional and rare peak. And that's what golf does to me, keeps me in the hunt for the next round!

Thank you, Babu!

I know it's been a while since I last blogged (that is an understatement of such enormous magnitude that it's hard to compare it with anything else) and my last post was more than a year ago. But something happened very recently that has prompted me to rethink my blogging career(?!?!) and to become an active blogger again.

But before I do that, I want to tell you folks what happened.

Out of the blue, on Friday last week, I got a very pleasant surprise. A mail from my colleague and buddy from Mumbai was waiting in my inbox. Here's what it said:

From: Babu Ramaswamy

Subject: Hats off

Date: 22 January 2010 3:23:16 PM GMT+05:30

To: Malhar Anaokar

Hi Malhar,

I took some time out last evening and went through your dumping ground ( blogspot )

I started by reading one..then another..then another and in the end i could not leave your page before i finished reading them all... I am really really impressed by your writing...Why have you stopped???

While i was reading blogs under " PROUD FATHER ", i actually could visualize you with your daughter.....While " You are not the boss of the house " brought a smile, reading blogs like " How can i deny this request ", " It's been nine days ", " I am so so proud of her " made my eyes moist.

Admitting to have had " moist eyes " isn't the most macho thing, but i'd be lying if i said that i wasn't blinking back tears when i went through the blogs mentioned above.

You have great skills and i persuade you to continue writing. " The Tiger in town " also shows that your daughter too has the penchant for writing.

Looking forward to reading your short story.

And yes please convey my best wishes to your daughter..

Cheers

Babu"

WOW!

That one completely floored me! This was completely unexpected. I have never expected anyone to read the rubbish that I put up here, much less appreciate it. But more than that, I admired his patience to stay with the blog and to read all the posts. I must have done something right while I was writing them…which brings me to this post.

Dear Babu, this one is dedicated to you! Thank you once again for the very kind and encouraging words and for making me blog again. I will try to be a more sincere and regular blogger henceforth, mainly because you have set the bar so high with your praise that I fear I may not live up to it. But I will try nonetheless. So here goes…to you, my friend, for helping me get on the blogger's path again.

So what's been happening all this while that I have not posted? Quite a few things, actually. So let me see if I can get a few up here…

1. The company that I work for has been acquired. So we are all waiting for the legalities to get done and see what the future holds.

2. I entered in a short story writing competition last year, did not win, but was told that my story was one of the few in contention and that they would like to publish it as part of an anthology. And so, just like that, my second publishing opportunity! The first one you can read about here.

3. I have started going to a guitar class for the first time in my life. After scratching on the strings for all these years, I finally decided that I will learn it like every other sane person on the planet. And I realized I have the B and F chords! :-)

4. Golf has been one roller coaster ride. A few of us in the office started tracking our scores religiously and saw our handicaps drop significantly. Last I checked on our tracking system, I was down to 9.7! And then disaster struck…I could not understand what I was doing wrong. Until last week…when I shot 10 consecutive pars! A personal record!

5. Schumi is back to Formula 1 and my interest in the sport is back. What had become a really boring sport that I pretty much ignored will be my weekend attraction starting March. Go Schumi, Go!

6. Photography as a passion has grown manyfold over the last year, especially since the acquisition of the Nikon D90, a dream of a camera. Have clicked more than 8000 images so far with it, and many more with the iPhone camera and am seeing my passion growing as I start understanding the technicalities of photography. Let's see where this goes in the future.

That's what I can remember so far. And since I am planning to post regularly, as I remember, I will keep adding on.

Once again, thanx a lot for getting me started again, Babu.

Beer is on me the next time we meet! :-)