Tag Archives: old
#302 Currently Listening To!
Over the last few months and the last few posts on my blog its been all about travel and photography. Must be boring. But well, that was about me for then. I almost forgot to tell you that this blog has now completed 5 years, and crossed 300 posts and 60,000 hits! I don’t care about these numbers, but to an analyst all that is visible are numbers.
I remember the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I was addicted to MTV and Channel V. After coming back to school and sometimes even early in the morning it was a tradition to switch to these channels to get a taste of the latest Western pop music. After that I went to college and stayed in hostel for 4 years, away from the crowds of a city and away from television sets. I yearned to go home and watch Channel V or MTV. Unfortunately, whenever I would go home during vacations, and put those channels on, I would only see shows like Roadies or some crappy Hindi film music. Staying away from TV, and these music channels playing lesser and lesser English music, put me in a state of limbo. I was stuck with the same songs for all four years of my college years. I would say, till last year, 75% of my music collection comprised of what I had put together way back in 2003/2004. Of late, it has come to my knowledge that MTV and Channel V have completely stopped airing Western music (You may say there is VH1, but whatever!).
What set me rolling were a few trips abroad. I would say, every trip I make abroad opens me up to tons of awesome new music! Trips to US would anyway do so, because radio stations in the US play only the latest and most popular music. Like, my discoveries during the trip to Korea were Canon in D Major (thanks Yunseong for this), and Katie Melua; during my trip to the US in 2008, I was introduced to Katy Perry (thanks the cab drivers of Chicago); during the Smoky Mountains road trip Dave Matthew’s Sing Along was the only thing on my ears (thanks to Ranga and Patrik da); 2009 was introduction to Coldplay (thanks Sudeep; well I had heard Coldplay’s Yellow way back in 2004 but remained stuck at that, did not even know about the existence of Viva La Vida and The Scientist!); 2010 was to perhaps the largest collection of awesome songs, but particularly Beera (thanks Patrik da – you literally planted that song in my head).
So coming back to the point, what am I currently listening to? My last trip to Chicago was very fruitful in opening up a huge number of awesome songs to me. But I would think it also has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of awesome songs have released this year! I definitely think so! Thanks also to iTunes, I can now tune to hundreds of radio stations from almost all over the world, listen to music from any genre, and even switch channels if I don’t like what they are playing: Mozart to Yanni, Sleeping music to Soundtracks, Pop to Rock, with Jazz, Blues and all that and much more in the middle, or just Top 40 Billboard songs! I am loving it :)
Here are a few songs I am currently listening to, and they are in no particular order (and yes I know, some of them are not latest any more):
Lady Gaga – Bad Romance (this song became the most watched video on Youtube for a while)
Shakira – Waka Waka
K’Naan – Waving Flag
Ke$ha – Tik Tok
Fireflies – Owl City
Jason Derulo – Whattya Want
Train – Hey Soul Sister
Timbaland feat. Katy Perry – If We Ever Meet Again
Raavan OST – Beera
Justin Beiber – Baby (this song’s video is currently the most watched video on Youtube)
This actually sends me back to Q4-2008, when me, Rashmi and Ramya had that wonderful run of watching some excellent movies in Chicago!
And this I recommend to all of you, if you have iTunes and broadband internet, go to the Radios section, and play from one of the hundreds of music channels, especially Absolute Top 40 (1.fm). If you don’t, you could still visit www.1.fm and play one of their tens of music channels!
Enjoy!
#282 Mumbai Marathon 2010
Were you at the Mumbai Marathon this year? There were tons of people… Either to run, or to walk, or to cheer the runners, or to dress fancy, or to promote awareness, or to advertise, or to see the crowd, or just to take pictures! I was in the last two categories… And below are some of the snaps…
The fast…
The steady…
The young…
The not so young…
The old…
The bold…
The beautiful…
The strong…
The strongest…
The rest…
And the men who played a big part in ensuring the event was safe!
#253 Melody of life
He was sitting on his beloved wooden rocking chair in the middle of the room with high ceiling and white washed walls. There was the old fan from his youth rotating above his head, slowly like a crank shaft, greyed much like the remaining few hair on the back of his head. The window was open and the light outside was dark, much like the light just after sunset and just before the night.
The television set was switched on, though the only visible elements on it were the microwave background radiations coming from far edges of the universe much like the thoughts in his aged brain. There was a silent warmth in the room. He was wearing a white vest and a trouser below. Beside his chair was a table, with a telephone, a notepad and a few medicines. There was a small bottle of perfume. A drawer under the desk had photo albums, a couple of diaries and a pencil.
He was waiting for her to come and cook some food for dinner. His meals used to be small and well spaced out. He had just had some chips with tea. He had turned on the television to watch the evening news. That and an old transistor radio were perhaps his only source of information of the outside world. Long long ago his eyes were blacker than they were at that moment. And he could read the details of each politician’s characters, and the scores of each cricket match. Now he was limited only to headlines. It had got difficult for him to keep a track of the fast-paced yearly rotation of the person occupying the Prime Minister’s post! Suddenly the door bell rang, and he looked up at the clock on the wall. It was eight, he saw, and got up to open the door.
#187 Misadventures of an old computer
July 1997:
I got my first PC. Configuration: Pentium 1, 166 MHz, 16 MB RAM, 1.2 GB HDD, FDD, Creative 12x CD ROM, ESS Sound Blaster Sound Card, Running Windows 95.
By the next few months I also got a 9600 bps modem and a VSNL internet shell account. In another few months I was using a 33.6 kbps modem with the VSNL TCP/IP account and browsing the net on IE 3, or 2 not too sure, sometimes used Netscape, chatting on ICQ and YM, listening to music on Winamp, playing DOS games and a few Windows based games.
By the next couple of years I could download music from the internet and fill up the little hard disk that I had. Allan Border Cricket and then Jonty Rhodes Cricket and FPS Doom, Duke Nukem and Blood soon became my favorites. Soon I bought a CD of Cricket 97 and it became the hottest game of the season. I had a proud collection of almost 200 MB of music can you imagine? My source of entertainment was my computer. It was everything to me.
One day it just crashed. I frantically tried to backup my songs from the DOS that was still working. Do you know how? By splitting songs using song splitter and then putting them on Floppies! That was 2001. The computer was put in the cupboard. And it stayed there for almost forever.
What I did not do with that computer was upgrade its hardware or software in time. But it would not have helped. The computer which cost me Rs 48,000 in 1997 and stopped working in 2001 had become obsolete in those 4 years. Pentium III was in by that time and so was Windows NT.
August 2003
Being almost without a computer for two years, I was gifted with yet another PC! This time I knew what I wanted, though not really! So I got one: Pentium IV, 2.4 GHz, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD, FDD, 52x Samsung CD Writer, 15 inch digital monitor running Windows XP and it looked good for Rs 40,000. But my misadventures started soon and they had to!
128 MB RAM was never gonna be enough for Windows XP. From somewhere I managed to get a 64 MB RAM. With complete enthusiasm I put that stick on the motherboard. It wont go in, but how the hell it defy my orders? And I switched on the CPU… WOOOOOOF… something blew off. The computer just wont start then.
I soon realised that I had put in an SD RAM in a DDR RAM slot. It should not have fit, it did not, but did I care?
Fortunately, being still in warranty period, I got my mobo repaired for free. It would have cost me anything between 7-10k. Things went on. Soon I added another 128 MB RAM to it and things looked better. Slightly better if not much. Little did I know that Windows XP needed a minimum of 256 MB.
May 2008:
This is what the same computer has gone through in the last 4 years (after 2004).
1. Addition of a UPS.
2. A few formats and fresh Windows installations.
3. A couple of linux installations and deletions.
4. Two changes of SMPS. [This really runs your computer! Ask me how]
5. Few thousand GBs of downloads: movies, songs, softwares, games, almost everything!
6. A final addition of 512 MB DDR RAM stick!
7. Fresh installation of Windows Vortex. [You would not want to know what this is!]
8. A new keyboard since the first one was done away by ANTS!
9. Oh did I tell you that I even painted the sides of my monitor with red and blue water colours?
And for a list of resource intensive applications that worked, if not worked wonders on it:
1. Mozilla Firefox!!!!!
2. Matlab 7.1
3. Adobe Photoshop CS2
4. Corel Draw X3
5. And now Windows Vortex… that is Vista on an XP engine!
And it is working well…
Key points to note so that your computer works well for years to come:
- Keep it clean, from outside, but more importantly inside. A clean motherboard works much faster.
- Keep a check on your softwares, OS and accordingly use an appropriate RAM. Obviously a 256 MB RAM would not be enjoyable if you are using Windows XP!
- Format your computer atleast twice every year! It helps to clean up the useless registry entries that stay when you install and then uninstall any programs.
- Keep a backup of the installations of your softwares and if possible use the versions that suit your computer configuration the best. You need not use the ‘latest’ versions.
- Decorate your computer. An old computer looks a bit repelling in its natural beige colours. If you personalise it with stickers and some paint, you will not want to part with it even years later.
If everything else fails to work with you… Do the following:
- Sell your PC for Rs 200. That is what I did with my first PC. I just gave it to a junk yard.
- Use your CDs to decorate your car or house by hanging them at the window or wind shields.
- Break open any floppy disks you have and use your own creativity.
- Use the CPU cabinet as a stationary box!
- Sell away your monitor to PC vendor. Old monitors still sell well in India.
- Break open your keyboard and use the keys to play scrabble.
- Give the mouse to your cats and dogs to play with :P
- Keep your UPS for yourself, you would want to use it with any electronic gadgets you have. It is a safety hazard to dispose a UPS without careful considerations.
I soon wish to buy a laptop but my old PC will keep working.
Like mine, I hope your computer does no longer stay as a consumer electronic, but become a Consumer Durable!
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