Mac and me..

I was recently in Malaysia and a colleague of mine had brought his Apple Powerbook to work. I was very impressed by its sleek design and its GUI. He was trying to convince me the power of Mac and its ease of use. It did have some real cool features and the startup was blazing fast when compared to Redmond OS. I did get convinced that it was a cool OS but was not sure if it was worth investing money in it. I need to still weigh the pros and cons of it before I decide on it.
Of late I have started to gather some information about Mac OS and its advantages. I found out that if I wanted to ever get creative in my digital life, the first investment should be a Mac. I am still trying to gather more pros for Mac. If I could get a free machine to play around with for a while, I may find some more. Not sure where I will find one.
It is definitely a more stable OS than from our friends at Redmond.

Bobcat sighting....

I was on a walk this gorgeous Sunday morning on the Coyote creek trail which runs by our house. My wife and I were catching up on our college days and work gossip on that 2 hour walk. On the way back, my wife suddenly pointed to a huge cat like animal staring at us from about 25 yards to our right on a clearing under our tree. We were just frozen for a moment since I was not sure if it was a mountain lion or some other animal. It was small for a mountain lion but I thought it may be a cub. I did not want to scare my wife by mentioning the "lion" word to her. So I told her that it should be some wild cat and started walking on the trail. I was glancing around me for the next 5 mins making sure that animal was not following us. About 1/4 mile down the trail, a park ranger stops by, rolls down the window and asks us about the 2 bobcats that were sighted on the trail and if we knew about it. It was then I came to know that we saw a bobcat and not a mountain lion. I told him that we saw one about quarter mile down the trail. Although I still need to read up on bobcats to see how dangerous they are when compared to mountain lions, I was a little relieved to know that it was a "cat" and not a "lion". That was the highlight of our 2 hour walk this Sunday morning. We were both exhausted after the long walk.

Goooooogle AdSense..

I found out something new yet again.. The power of Google AdSense. I incorporated Google Ad sense in my blog website today and vola, I already earned $1.78 in just a couple of hours. Although I don't expect to earn at the same rate, it feels good to see some rewards for all the typing that I am doing. Its a very novel concept and has been around for a while. I just did not have the time to look into it. Today was the day. I had to first sign up and Google analyzes my website to see if I am eligible for ad sense. Once I get a confirmation from them, I start earning as soon as I setup my blog to display the ads. Its that simple. I can use it in any website that I own.

Google technology rocks.... Yet again..

RSS Feeds

I recently unraveled the power of RSS feeds displayed in many websites. I used to notice that little orange XML image in websites like NY times, CNN etc. but never took the time to find out how it works and why it even exists. While on my trip to Malaysia, I had some time to kill and decided to find out what RSS feeds are all about. When I found out that it was all about news delivered to my laptop without me having to go to various websites, it made me excited. I then started thinking about various places that I could put this to use. Like for instance, I always wondered how I could communicate my updates to my blog. RSS seems to be an elegant way to do it. All I have to do is to get all my blog readers to first install a RSS feed reader and make them subscribe to my feed. I wish this would be as common as instant messengers. Many people do not even know about this phenomenon.
Anyways, I installed a RSS feed reader from http://www.feedreader.com . I now subscribe to about 8 different news sources and I get the latest news delivered to my laptop every 30 mins. This is amazing. I wish people would realize the power of this and make use of it.

Dormant me...

I thought I could blog everyday but apparently it looks like it needs a great amount of discipline and I am still trying to muster it up. Until then, there are going to be some lapses.
I am still recovering from my flu. I still have lingering cold. That is preventing me from working out as I had resolved I would, before coming to KL. I feel very dormant and lazy because of that. I wish I could come out of this mode soon.
My work here in KL is winding up and am mentally set to return home. Just a couple more days. I did not visit any places this time. I had no real push to visit any places and the climate was also helping me. It was raining cats and dogs almost the whole weekend. Managed a quick trip to a nearby strip mall called Sune Wang.
I wanted to get some DVDs but could not find any. I missed it last time. I should have grabbed all I could. None of those shops carried those DVDs this time. Looks like some legal action has been taken.
Managed to watch some movies at the hotel. Some nice Hindi and English movies. Spent almost the whole weekend watching movies. Slept for 3 hours in the afternoon on both days. Its been a long time since I had slept in the afternoon. It was a very relaxing weekend. Good home made food, good movies and a nice sleep. What more one could ask for?
Monday and Tuesday were normal work days. Attended conference calls from the hotel in the morning and reached work by 10AM. The workload was pretty light. Tasted a freshly made chocolate mint Pretzel. It was good. Had veggie soup and curd rice for dinner. I am getting innovative every time I cook. With just 4 veggies, salt, sambhar powder and water, I never imagined that I could get this creative. I started off with travel kootu, then made veggie rice, veggie noodles and veggie soup. A good cooking experience I should say..
Will keep my thougts flowing.. Got to go now..