Running late

I recently observed that my Omega Speedmaster was losing time on a consistent and measurable basis.

I originally attributed it to my habit of changes watches every now and then depending on my mood on that day and the attire I would wear. This would mean that I would not be wearing the Omega for a day or so and that must be the cause for the loss of time. So I did an experiment where I wore the watch every single day for three months...did not even take it off during the night as is my usual practice.

Guess what? It lost 15 minutes over those 3 months. That's 5 minutes every month. 20 seconds every day. That sounded completely unacceptable to me. So I went to Rodeo Drive where I bought the watch in the first place and asked their service center to have a look at it. It was indeed 20 seconds off and they very kindly reset it for me. But here was the surprise for me. I was told that even a very good quality Automatic Chronometer has a +6/-4 second tolerance!

I did not know that! To confirm, I went hunting on the Internet to check if that was the case. And it turns out, it is indeed the case. So I have to get used to the idea of correcting the time on my watch every few months.

Felt a little disappointed after the whole deal. Oh well...the choices we like to make!

Bald (again) or Pony tail (again)

This is the question on my mind right now.

Have been considering shaving my pate and go back to a glistening top...but then I realize that my hair is currently at the point where in a few months, I will be in the position to start tying them in a pony tail. So it's a call between Bald and Pony Tail. Between B and P.

To B or not to B. To P or not to P. Those are the questions.

On the one hand, I long - no pun intended here - for my pony tail. I miss the head banging with the music and the feel of tresses on my shoulder. I just love the feeling of long hair. But on the down side, I end up losing a lot of hair and it only precipitated my predisposition towards balding, albeit gracefully.

On the other hand, the bald feel is very soothing. Very very low maintenance and just about nothing to do. Not to mention the velvet feel as the hair starts to grow back. And the really cool feeling on the golf course as the wind rushes over my head.

So am caught in a quandry. To B or to P. And I'm not sure which route I'm going to take.

Decisions...decisions...

My experiments with the truth (about 3G)

As you will have read before (how presumptuous of me to think anyone reads this drivel), I recently got a Tata DoCoMo pre paid connection to test both their network and their 3G performance claims. This was driven mainly by my frustrations with the Airtel network and the number of call drops I was experiencing.

So for the last couple of days I was using predominantly my DoCoMo connection to make calls and browse the network. The first day, the performance looked pretty good. Not blazingly fast, mind you, but fast enough. I downloaded the speedtest app for the iPhone to see what speeds I was getting. The very first evening, I got a 2.1Mbps download speed and a 512k upload. That looked nice enough. But a day later, those numbers had dropped to 1.1Mbps and 127k. Still respectable, but a marked drop from the earlier state.

Here's the problem tho. Speed tests are fine as they are, but the real test is in loading times of pages that I frequent. One such page is the Google News Sports page (UK edition) so that I can catch up with the latest in the world of the Barkleys Premier League. For the last couple of days, the time it takes to load that page is almost the same as my Airtel connection on Edge. Not the best selling point for 3G.

Forget being able to make voice calls and watch streaming videos, I was having problems with basic browsing at an acceptable speed. Very disappointing, I must say. I tried only once to load a Youtube video over 3G and the amount of time it was taking to buffer the video turned me off and I gave up pretty quickly. Now this is not an indictment of the 3G technology, cause I have seen people in Seoul watch live TV being streamed to their cell phones. So I know the technology works. Just the the 3G service of DoCoMo sucks! So does their cell reception. I can't catch a signal in our office basement (and I can with Airtel). So overall it has been a disappointing trail. Oh well, I will just have to move to some other provider after my prepaid amount runs out.

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!

Pain in the neck

Ok, so several pains in the neck.

An actual one to begin with. For some reason, my neck has been hurting the last few days. And no, it's not from the way I slept, cause I tried sleeping in different positions to no relief. So have been walking around with a twinge in my neck that spikes up to severe pain every now and then...or should I say every Ow and then. Yep, that's my pathetic sense of humour...and I get to blame it on the pain in my neck.

Next up, Bose. Not the several good natured Bengali families who carry that last name. Bose, the makers of sound equipment, you know...speakers, headphones and the like. As you all might remember, I blogged a long time ago that I am the possessor of the Bose Quiet Comfort series QC3 headphones. These are amazing headphones that cancel noise and make the audio experience so much better. I have carried them around with me everywhere since the last year and half. So why is Bose the pain in the neck you ask?

A month ago, the battery charger for my Bose QC3 died mysteriously. One moment it was charging my battery, the next moment it was just sitting there doing nothing. Out of the blue, just phlat! So I went to the Bose service station to check on a replacement. Guess how much they told me a replacement charger cost? Rs 3000! Close to $70! What the ^%$@?!?!

So I politely declined, went back home, opened up my QC3 charger, only to find that they have sealed a bunch of stuff inside which makes it impossible to DIY repair it. So left with no choice, I went back to the service center and agreed to pay the ransom they demanded to get my headphones working again. Only this time, I asked them what the warranty is on the charger. Guess what? NONE! Not even for a day. All they would agree to do was to show me that it charges a battery and that's it. Nothing more. After that, I'm on my own!

Now my question is: are they penalizing me for buying their stuff? I can understand companies like HP selling cheap printers to make money off the printer cartridges, but Bose already charges a premium for their products. So why be so inconsiderate towards their customers? Once thing is for certain. I am not buying another Bose product in my life. They just lost a customer.

On the flip side, my headphones are back where they belong...over my ears :)

And finally there is Tata DoCoMo, whose latest 3G service is something I have wanted to try for a while now. Since I have an extra iPhone (thanx Vasu) which I am using to test the Android OS on the iPhone, I can use that as a backup phone while I use my 3GS to test the DoCoMo call quality as well as the power of the 3G network. So I walked into the DoCoMo store on Richmond Road and asked for a pre-paid card. They were very helpful and quickly took care of the formalities to get my card ready and topped with Rs 373 to get me off. What they forgot to tell me was that the account balance would not show that amount, it would show only the buffer amount (Rs 10) in case I overstep my charged amount. Also, they forgot to tell me that I have to enter an APN number (TATA.DOCOMO.INTERNET) to get my 3G connection going. Since I did not know this, I kept getting a connection error. That meant another trip to the store to resolve this. A completely unnecessary trip. Another pain in the neck.

As far as I can tell, the network is just a shade better than Airtel's and my phone has lost signal a couple of times, but has caught it back on quicker than Airtel's. Also, while the 3G browsing experience has not exactly knocked my socks off, it is visibly faster than the Edge network I get on Airtel. More testing and network reviews coming, so keep a lookout here.

Bandeau Aid

My buddy and I are planning a trip to a certain nordic country somewhere in the first few months of the coming year. Knowing the frigid temperatures in that part of the world, not withstanding the current snowed out conditions in most of northern Europe, I know that I have a tough time there, especially for someone who is not very fond of cold weather.

For most of my adult life (and a part of my childhood as well), I have had the tendency of my hands and feet getting cold with the slightest hint of cold weather. I'm not even talking snow conditions...even if the temperatures go slightly below 20˚ C, my hands and feet go colder than the ambient. Given this tendency, I prefer to be in places which are predominantly warm.

You would realize now that Nordic weather will be quite a challenge for someone of my body characteristics.

One of the big "To Do" items on the list is to buy warm clothing. This includes mostly inner wear, jackets, shoes and the like. I recently added another item to the list...and just got possession of it.

The place where I got it lists it as a "Bandeau Multifonctions" or Multipurpose Headband. It is also sometimes referred to as a "Buff" or a "Snood" (Samir Nasri of Arsenal wears one for every cold weather game, so if you see him play, you know what I mean).

This Bandeau / Buff / Snood is a tubular garment which is supposed to be worn around the neck or head to protect against the cold. The key character of this garment is that it stretches only sideways and not towards the edges. This allows me to wear it as a tubular neck scarf, a skull cap or a bandana. The most important way of using this would be where the back of the neck scarf is pulled over my head and the front is pulled over my lips, thereby shielding me from the super cold temperatures I will encounter once we get there.

My trip just became a little more comfortable...in my head. Hope it goes that way too :)