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April 11 Location, location, location...Ever notice that little crosshair-like icon at the top of your cellphone display? Most cellphones have this, and if you're one among the tribe that actually flips through the manual that accompanies a cellphone, you'll recognize icons like this to be the "location" icon - an indicator of your cellphone having turned on its GPS-like beaconing feature.
My last two cellphones have had this "location" beacon feature. When the feaure / function was "new", it was advertised as a twofold "benefit". Apparently, this "location" feature would comprise of two parts:
So...did the service fail to catch on with vendors and stores in the mall? I wonder. As my overstuffed mailbox often indicates, local (and global) businesses have not really eased up on the discount coupons and the unsolicited advertising. Walking through the mall still gets you the food freebies, and signing up via email at stores does indeed get you a 10% off coupon every once in a while. Add to this the "fact" that most stores are almost perenially in a state of having a sale of some sort, and one would wonder why all this discount coupon brouhaha would stay away from the big cellphone wave that's all over the world right now.
It seems like the most obvious way to sell. Kids have cellphones. They're glued to cellphones all the time. Cellphone vendors cater to kids with products and services. Kids gather in malls. Ditto young adults. Ditto their parents and friends. Ergo, if there was a technology to beam ads straight to these cellphones, why would it not have immense commercial benefits? I mean, having my cellphone buzz with a discount coupon from a store I was about to walk past would probably be a lot better than one of those signboard-wearing people thrusting a flyer in my face when I least expected it.
All in all, I don't see why the advertised function of the location service on most cellphones is still glaringly absent from our over-cellphoned society. If the service failed, don't have it on new phones. If it didn't fail, use it. Its current state of stagnation is eyebrow-raising interesting, at best.
Unless, and here comes the conspiracy theory...its in place because it offers other benefits that the cellphone companies do not like to talk about. Perhaps for their demographics. Perhaps for local, federal and global law enforcement.
It gets better. While most cellphones allow individual (non-commercial) application / software authors to create a plethora of applications for their onboard operating systems, this location feature is strangely locked away from prying eyes. Meaning, I, if I were an application developer for mobile phones, could develop an application for a cellphone that could access the Internet and get directions from an online mapping service, but I couldn't use the onboard location data that the cellphone already claims to have, in order to provide the cellphone's current location to my mapping application.
Alright, yes - doing this would mean that the current surge in portable GPS navigation devices would suffer a significant hit. If so, turn the location feature off from cellphone completely. Make it go away from cellphone chips. Most don't know what it does, and at this rate, most don't care. What they don't know can't hurt them, and in this case, they won't know what they lost because they never knew they had it in the first place.
So...with enough reasons to have it NOT be in cellphones, one still wonders - why is it still IN there? April 07 More interesting changes at Spaces..Not too long ago, someone made an interesting comment to me. One of those sarcastoric wonders that make you question things. It went something like...
"Who uses MSN Spaces anyway, really?"
Strip away the obvious "If its Microsoft, it must be bad" sentiment harbored by a good chunk of the digerati and there are a few gems of wisdom in there. Here's the ones I see:
So...why isn't MSN Spaces good enough to join the blogger brat pack leading the crowd? Well, for starters, the ubiquitous - "Because its made by Microsoft".
Secondly, over the last few months, an interesting set of features has crept into the proverbial mix. A few that caught my eye were:
Some good, some bad. All in all, I'd sorta agree that the package deal doesn't really look and feel as appealing as the rest of the big guns in the blogosphere. However, I'm sticking to this. My experience with Microsoft's other offering tells me so.
April 06 Whatever happened to the "WIntel"?!!The gray hair I now sport let me make unnecessarily grand statements about time and technology, or so I think.
Here goes the first of many upcoming ones on this blog: "Before these kids started blogging..."
..and before all cellphones took pictures and before the word "pod" became an ubercool prefix, there existed a time where there was a singular distinction in the computer community. You were either a Wintel, or not. Translated into yesterday's young-person vernacular, it was either PC or Mac. The rest were a closet gaggle. Linux, Unix and the rest were the "What's that? Oh, yeah - our system adminisrator mumbles about that sometime" references that most didn't pay much attention to.
PCs ran Windows on Intel hardware. Then came the AMD behemoth...er..."behemoth" and the likes of Transmeta and the rest who tried to make their way into people's motherboards. Some made it. Some made for bad memories. At the end of the day, "Wintel" meant "PC". It also meant "a computer that the computer guy could open without his eyes glazing over". It also meant "an upgrade-friendly computer whose upgrades were reasonably affordable, and wouldn't require putting the family farm up on the auction block".
And then there were the "Mac" people. Often relegated to justifying their existence by saying "Have you seen the graphics on a Macintosh?!!" as an exercise in expertise rhetoric. On average, one could spot a Macintosh tucked into the graphics gurus' nest in a corner of a publishing house, or perhaps the home of someone who had done "fairly well on the stock market".
And what was with the single-button mouse, anyway?!!
Anyway, that was the PC and the Mac. The Mac people defended their corner and the PC people took the occasional moments for a few jabs at them. Life was good.
A few years into the (last) decade, Apple Computer exploded onto "the scene". Some would even say that it made "the scene". The OS got all fluid-swooshy and the filesystem got a really good backbone and then some. Also, given that it was still the "underdog" in the OS wars, of sorts, there weren't many in the virus-creator world that were paying attention to the Mac. Translated, lesser (almost zero) viruses for the Mac that (unnecessarily) earned it an undeserved title of "a secure system". (Its not!).
Roll the time slider a few more years ahead, and the iPod was / is everywhere. This drove up Macintosh sales and somehow, people seem to have stopped caring about the single-button mouse.
And then the headlines in the paper today - "Apple Macs can run Windows on Intel hardware".
So...er..what's the real "draw" anymore? The ability to, er, buy expensive hardware?
Perhaps I missed it in their disclaimer?There are those who refer to me as a self-styled paparazzi ("who has waay too much free time"). I deny nothing. I find that works to my advantage a lot better than debating the apparent logic, or lack thereof, in their assessment. However, I do plead guilty to carrying a camera lens, in one avatar or another, on my person at most times. The way I see it, life's short and one keeps getting older. One's gotta capture all those memories before age and time make one lose one's mind..or, um...memory.
The reasonably bulky camera that one of my hands often sported a few years ago has undergone various transformations since. Form factors got smaller, feature sets got larger. Video clips are no longer time-limited, storage cards are large enough to accomodate almost everything one could think of doing in front of a camera lens, and form factors have gone from evoking decscriptions
like "Hm..that's small, but do you really carry that everywhere?", to "Wow..that is small! You must carry that around everywhere!". Technology is a great thing, ain't it? And then came the cameraphone. It took a while for me to warm up to a CMOS lens (the power-and-space friendly lens that most cameraphones sport) after having spent all my time with a good glass-covered CCD, but after cameraphone resolutions crept past the 1 megapixel count, I figured I was missing out on something good.
'Course, with a cameraphone, all bets are off. Taking pictures and posting them online goes from being an activity that spans a few hours (end to end), to a matter of seconds. Thanks to the likes of TextAmerica, and now Flickr, the average time spent between taking a picture and making it available in all its glory on the Internet, has been whittled down to about 10 seconds if one is a good cell zone.
Good? Yes. Bad? Yes. Here's the in-between. I've been a fan of the TextAmerica brigade for a long while now. Its fast, its free, its functional and it works great. They take almost anything you can throw at 'em, and they do things pretty well. Their site has just been redesigned, too.
All was well till about the seventh page of my photo gallery. Once past the learning curve with a fixed-focus CMOS lens and after accepting / acclimatizing myself to its limitations and advantages, I began to wonder if there really could be such a difference between the image I saw on the cameraphone viewfinder and the TextAmerica post. TextAmerica posts often seemed blurry and made the aforementioned "viewers" (the one who've blessed me with the distinction of being a self-styled paparazzi) remark about cameraphone images being "ages away" from being as good as a "real camera lens". As much as I hated to admit it, they were right. I assumed that either my hand was getting shakier, or my eyesight was weakening, or both, or worse.
Till the day I decided to give Flickr's upload-by-email feature a whirl. Here's the skinny:
Anyway, when sent singularly, i.e. one picture to one email address per SMS / email "envelope", things work fine. Based on your settings, Flickr will allow users to view and download the full-size version as well. After I had things working with Flickr, I opted for the most obvious test. Sending the same picture via the same SMS message to both Flickr and TextAmerica to see which one "looks better", posts faster, etc. Here are the results:
So, my layman summary is: Flickr's better. It offers the same upload-by-email functionality, the "tagging" functionality and the image download functionality. It offers comments (not to "everyone" like TextAmerica, though), and it offers EXIF data display - something that TextAmerica does not. One could theoretically argue that cameraphones don't really require EXIF data dumps. And you would be partially correct. They certainly don't "require" them. However, it doesn't hurt to see 'em anyway, if your cameraphone does have an EXIF data blob associated with every image it takes. For example, I just discovered that my cameraphone shoots at a certain interesting exposure value everytime and that the make of the "camera" visible in the EXIF dump doesn't match the vendor name on the cellphone. Back to the paparazzi-ing... March 27 Still blogging?Its almost Tax Day in the year 2006, and my question is - are you still blogging? With the same motivation and dedication as you probably did a few years ago? Or have you moved to alternatives like:
I've seen a significant trend that says:
Ergo, cameras with beefier specs in smaller form factors. Ditto computers and cameraphones. "Blog services", like this one - MSN Spaces - pushing better features into the mix in order to wade out a marketplace awash with a gazillion others like it. And the final "ergo" - the user. The user today is becoming smarter, both from a sense of global information awareness to being informed about specifics about specifics. A lot have complained that Google's done away with the need for people to have textbooks. While I don't hold Google in the highest regard (have you checked out Ask.Com yet?!), I don't necessarily agree with search engines making teachers obsolete. Think of it this way - if anything is free and functional and fast, one usually ends up using it. Faced with a free and fast way to find stuff, one could only be driven to find more stuff quick. And that can only make one better informed than before. Couple that with RSS and the sort, and you're faced with a user who's well-educated in the means to be well-educated. And that's one of the few good man-made recursive cycles in nature. Yes, that has its obvious shortcomings and dark sides. What doesn't? March 14 To DSLR or not to DSLR?"Sujeet, you should get a DSLR".
I hear that a lot, and I do appreciate the kind words of encouragement.
It is quite flattering when my efforts at attempting some level of photographic creativity and persistence are appreciated enough to warrant a comment about considering the next level of photography equipment; and I'd guess that their assessment of my work leads them to believe that I'm pushing the limits of the equipment I have. All good things, and thanks again. Nonetheless, I wonder. Do I really need a DSLR? Here's a careful dissection of the "Do I DSLR?" discussion in my head;
The basics in a basic way: There are two "major" types of cameras. There's the ubiquitous "point and shoot", and there's the DSLR. The "point and shoot" is a device that lets the user do just that. Point and shoot. The camera assumes Forrest Gump usage and attempts to deliver results that would make most smile.
A DSLR is an acronym for a "Digital Single Lens Reflex" camera. To better (and quickly) understand what it is and lets the user do; lets check into what a "single lens reflex" camera is / was, before everything went digital.
From the Wikipedia: The single-lens reflex (SLR) is a type of camera that uses a movable mirror placed between the lens and the film to project the image seen through the lens to a matte focusing screen. The shutter in almost all contemporary SLRs sits just in front of the focal plane. If it does not, some other mechanism is required to ensure that no light reaches the film between exposures.
Before I wax eloquent about what a SLR is and is not, here's the Wikipedia's quick-and-dirty pros and cons of a non-digital SLR (over a regular point and shoot camera):
Advantages
Many of the advantages of SLR cameras derive from viewing the scene through the taking lens. There is no parallax error, and exact focus can be confirmed by eye—otherwise hard for macro photography and when using telephoto lenses. The true depth of field may be seen by stopping down to the taking aperture, possible on all but the cheapest cameras. Because of the SLR's versatility, most manufacturers have a vast range of lenses and accessories available.
Compared to most fixed-lens compact cameras, the most commonly used and cheapest SLR lenses offer a wider aperture range and larger maximum aperture (typically f/1.4 to f/1.8 for a 50 mm lens). This allows photographs to be taken in lower light conditions without flash, and allows a narrower depth of field, which is useful for blurring the background behind the subject, which makes the subject stand out better. This is commonly used in portrait photography.
Disadvantages The most obvious disadvantage of the SLR is its inability to view the scene at the moment the shutter captures the image. A second disadvantage is a normally greater weight and size than rangefinders of a similar technology level - the pentaprism and mirror box make the camera body larger. However, rangefinders have not advanced significantly since the 1970s, while modern SLRs use advanced automation, plastics, and electronics to be smaller - sometimes at the price of long-term durability and reliability. Plastic moving parts don't last as long as metal.
The SLR's space-consuming mirror movement makes for difficulty in constructing wide angle lenses; rear lens elements cannot be close to the film plane. Retrofocus designs are required for wide-angle lenses; these are complex, large, and comparatively poorer in image quality.
The reflex mirror must retract before the shutter can open, which introduces some delay. Autofocus systems on modern SLRs introduce further delay, especially in lower light. The mirror's movement also causes vibration and noise, a problem when using longer lenses and longer exposures. Technology has reduced but not eliminated this problem, which again is worse in larger formats. To combat this, higher-end cameras offer the ability to lock up the mirror before the shot is taken. This eliminates the vibration but blacks out the viewfinder.
The SLR user cannot see anything outside the taking frame through the viewfinder, while with most rangefinder systems, this can be done. This helps in certain kinds of photography. Only higher-end SLRs show the full frame; typical coverage is 90%. Print labs generally crop an equivalent area, so it is less of a problem than it might otherwise be.
In the digital arena, the DSLR cameras have two further drawbacks compared to Compact or Bridge digital camera: The back panel display is usually unable to function to assist with image composition. Movie modes are generally unavailable.
If you're yawning, you're not alone. While that is a noteworthy attempt at summarizing reams of expert assessments regarding SLR and DSLR technology, it is more than a tad verbose. The reason I have it up there is because that's how the Wikipedia had it, and I don't like changing their words. Here's my attempt at boiling it down:
If I were to ring the virtual cash register, my guess is that I would be over the $1,000 mound in a matter of minutes after an SLR purchase. The body, the lens(es), the protective gear, the filters, the cleaning gear et al would and could easily set me back that much if I wanted to do it right. And if I'm sinking in that much into a camera, I'd better have reason to do it right. I liken the SLR / DSLR / point-and-shoot discussion / debate to the one between gearheads discussing automatic transmission over manual transmission. Here's a few oft-heard phrases:
And transpose these against:
See where I'm going with this? The truth is:
And for cameras:
All in all, I think the point-and-shoot market is getting to be a fun place to be. They're catching up to the merit points of the DSLR segment without enforcing monumental expenditure levels on the average consumer / "prosumer". The SLR to DSLR jump is certainly commendable, and I'm sure the world will benefit from the change, but for those of us who prefer to capture our lives and its moments without worrying about thousands of dollars in equipment and "the best exposure" for a particular shot, I'd suggest the obvious.. Life is short. January 27 got iPod?Yes, I do have an iPod now. Yes, I did wax eloquent about how it wasn't the best choice as a music player - more than a few times last year. Bite me. So, is turnabout fair play? Weeelll...I still stick to my overall premise of "not understanding why people pay the hundreds required to get an iPod off a store shelf and into their hands". I guess you could blame fate for my apparentl hypocrisy, but it really isn't that. I didn't pay for my new toy. It sorta presented itself to me in a very, very, very ironic sorta way. No, I did not steal it, fight for it or find it abandoned. I don't eBay, either. That leaves just one distinct possibility. And if you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right. That was the epilogue. This is where it starts getting interesting. After my first week toying around with i-everything, I figured I had spent enough time tweaking all the settings and fidding with all the knobs and swearing at all the software and that I had some of the required experience and expertise to wax eloquent in a well-informed, first-hand critique. Without further ado, here are the broad strokes: A portable music player without a "Stop" button? The interface has play, pause, previous, next and 'Menu'. Ergo, if a song is playing and I don't want to listen to it anymore and turn off the device mid-song, I have to hit "Pause" 'cause there ain't no "Stop". I'm no expert, but I used to think there was a fair amount of difference between a "Pause" and a "Stop". A "Pause" implied that the media was sorta "held in place" by the mechanism playing it, waiting for the controller to resume playback. A "Stop" implied that the media was "turned off" and that playback was no longer desired.
Naturally, from a device designer's perspective, I would imagine that the "Pause" functionality is much like the "Standby" on TV screens and computer monitors. And its said that the standby mode takes up about 50% of the power, or more, of what an active screen takes. In fact, I recently read an article about gazillions worth of power being wasted because of screens left on standby.
If all the above is adequate by way of technical details and the overall argument, how does
it make sense to NOT have a "Stop" button on the user interface of a portable music player that has a limited battery life? I ain't no expert about the innards of the iPod, either - but I do understand that the hard drive does have moving parts and miniaturzed platters (for the ones that do not have solid-state hard drives). If so,
I would really like to conserve the power lost and heat generated in holding such hardware in "Pause" mode versus "Stop" mode. The "previous" and "next" arrow icons...
We live in a browser-ed world. Most of what we do is via a browser. All browsers allow the default functionality of "Back" and "Front" via the intuitive visual cues of arrows, facing to the left and to the right of the screen.
The left-facing arrow icon indicates "going back to where you last were" and the right-facing arrow icon indicates the same, but in a "next page" kinda way. The Windows Explorer interface does this, and I know a fair amount of other desktop applications that leverage this seemingly obvious and intuitive user interface cue as well.
However, on the iPod's front panel, clicking the left and the right-facing arrows does near nothing when one is navigating through the menu selections. Making a selection and going to the next screen is an action initiated by pressing on the unmarked center button, and going back to the screen one just was at is an action initiated by pressing the 'Menu' button.
Intuitive? I think not.
California is a city?
Apple Computer is headquartered in the city of Cupertino, in the state of California. The iPod says, on the packaging, that it was 'made in China', but designed / assembled in California.
So, the product, and the company who makes the product, has strong ties to California. However, when one tries to set the clock, one is faced with a screen that says:
"City"
"California" is an option, which does not have any further options.
Technically, there is an ounce of truth to this. I was able to find a reference to "the city of California", but its official home page as interestingly coming up blank / unreachable. But, from all timezone perspectives, I've never known of "the city of California" being the epicenter of the correct time as it relates to the state of California. The whole of California, as is Oregon et al - is in the Pacific time zone, and any city therein would / should technically be as good as any other when it comes to being a representative of the correct time. That was the "what if", on the good side. But, if you're considering the obvious "otherwise", then you and I are on the same wavelength, and it involves the sarcastic rhetoric (or "sarcastoric", as I've begun to call it) that goes as follows:
"California isn't a city, doofus!"
What's with the video conversion bit, anyway?
Most new digital cameras on the market today offer some sort of "video clip" mode that tends to dump a movie file on the storage system (camera's internal memory or memory card) in MOV format. While this made for quite the eyebrow furrow in the not-too-recent past because:
# New DVD players do DivX, Xvid and some even do MPEG. None play MOV.
# MOV to DVD / VCD
conversions are easier said than done # MOV to any other format requires is easier said than done as well
# The Windows OS doesn't do MOVs out of the box
# Editing MOVs requires QuickTime Pro..almost exclusively
I have QuickTime Pro, and it does come with an "convert to iPod" setting, but that setting allows me near-zero abilties to tweak any variables that could let me control file size and/or output quality.
I used the iPod Camera Connector to move MOV files from camera into the iPod - a process which was a very pleasant surprise through its simplicity, and was greeted with "iPod cannot play these files", which were, interestingly, tagged with the video clip icon.
So...the iPod recognizes them to be video files, but cannot play them. A device made exclusively by Apple Computer that supports video playback cannot play files created in the video format created by Apple Computer.
I had to drop the MOV files into iTunes, which then converted them into an iPod-friendly M4V format. Upon further scrutiny of the iPod video format specs, I figured it would be a better output file if I were to convert the 640 x 480 MOV from the digital camera into a 320 X 240 H.264-encoded MOV and then let iTunes convert that into an M4V. And that, worked... beautifully.
So, if I've done it "right", then its a two-step conversion process, using proprietary Apple Computer, iPod-related software, to convert a video file from Apple's own video format into Apple's iPod video format. That, in my mind, is ridiculous. I would expect the iPod to play MOVs straight up, just like QuickTime on the desktop. If QuickTime could play the MOVs from my camera without trouble, then I'd expect the iPod to do ditto.
And it did not. Or could not.
Its not "the iPod". Its "iPod".
All the above had me going back to the manual a lot, as you can imagine. I couldn't believe that such a popular device had this many gaping user foibles. And every time I read the manual, I couldn't help but observe that all the references to the player were not "the iPod" or just "it". It was always "iPod", like it was its name or something.
Ditto for video conversion settings in QuickTime. Its not "Convert to the iPod format" or "Convert to M4V". Its "Convert to iPod".
Getting a tad full of oneself, are we?
"Voice memo"?
The iPod's stock menu comes with a selection called "Voice memo".
Navigating to this screen shows me nothing. There's no button that will let me create a new voice memo, and pressing 'Menu' obviously just takes me back to the screen I came from. So...this is a music / media player that sports the "fifth generation" tag, was released in the 2005 timeframe, and has a "Voice memo" menu selection WITHOUT actually having a microphone to record voice memos with.
There's gotta be something wrong with that assessment. I hope there's a microphone either on the stock iPod earphones, or someplace along the body of the device that will let me create voice memos.
Because it couldn't be that Apple Computer was catering to the aftermarket vendor population, could it? It couldn't be!
"Aftermarket", did you say?
For a music player that costs $300 and higher, the case it ships with is quite the ragged excuse for one. It also doesn't come with a dock or a power charger. Sorta like..
"Would you like any upholstery with that car?"
No native FM support, no fancy visualizations on the screen...
Yeah, I've heard of the new FM headphones. I'd much rather spend the $50 in getting a pair of Bluetooth headphones from Logitech.
For the fancy TFT screen it sports, why couldn't they have let users choose from a Windows Media Player-like assortment of "visualizations" so that the user could tweak the equalizer accordingly?
Or just let battery life be better spent at watching a spectrum analyzer do its thing rather than watch a progress bar slide down a static song name? Or, are we all supposed to seek solace in its unique ability to be a USB hard drive once its connected to a Windows machine and forget about the rest? Just in case Apple hadn't seen anything else in the market yet (I'm beginning to believe that a lot more than before), MP3 players have had microphones, FM support and USB drive features for ages now.
The camera connector ROCKS!
"Getting" an iPod was interesting, and I braced myself for all the "See? See? See? See?!! We knew you'd get one eventually!!" from everyone around...and while that continues to trickle in, I find myself able to smile through it because, well, it is funny, and also because the iPod camera connector almost makes getting an iPod worth the effort.
For $30-ish ($25 was the best price I could find) you could get a camera connector from any Mac store or from their online catalog that would connect between any memory card reader and/or straight into your digital camera and extract all the media stored on it.
After the (reasonably fast) extract process is over, it then asks you if you'd like to erase the card or leave it as is, too.
And the extract involves thumbnails, so you can "see it as it happens"...
Translated, the iPod's my new one-touch hard disk on trips. I'm no longer limited by the size of my storage cards or required to get a few extra, "just in case the existing ones run out". I'm no longer required to have a laptop around to dump the contents of the card(s) on, so that they're empty and available for more. The iPod and the camera connector combo can do all the above, and can also do a quick slideshow in case of, well, y'know, "show off" reasons...
And that's that. I plan to write up a lot more descriptive details and add some video to the unabridged version of this review at http://reviews.sujeet.net and I'll make sure I'll have everything on an iPod-friendly video version so that the iPod video owners amongst y'all can watch it as you, er, work out, or do it is that you do when you're plugged into your iPods.
January 06 The mystery of the snoring cellphoneA few moons ago, I had heard of how someone woke up in the middle of the night to find strange voices from their cellphone. Apparently, it seemed like a conversation, and the voices were quasi-intelligible. After a few seconds, the cellphone turned itself off.
As I heard this (first-hand, no less), I found myself thinking:
Naturally, the last explanation seems the most "scientific", although I will admit it was completely made up at the time.
On the night of December 31, I had the same phone on the nightstand next to me - and I heard the same thing. I wasn't entirely "asleep", and no - it wasn't a post-party, alcohol-powered haze. Sometimes, being the tetotaller geek who doesn't always party on New Year's Eve is a good thing.
Yes, I heard it. A conversation, around 11:30 PM, almost loud and clear at that time of the night, from the cellphone's internal speaker. Possibly intelligible if I had craned my neck closer to the device. I have no idea why I didn't. I think I was trying to verify that I wasn't dreaming by looking around and the sort. About fifteen seconds later, it died out.
Lets recap. I heard it. I wasn't asleep. I wasn't dreaming. I hadn't a drink in me, and I wasn't tired. All the power outages in the area we were in, earlier that day, had ensured a lot of "enforced napping" throughout the daylight hours.
So..there was some truth to this after all. And I majored in telecom engineering. I had to dig deeper.
A few nights later, I set up my little experiment. I put the (same) cellphone down on a level surface, and pointed a fairly sensitive microphone right at it, for about nine hours of the night.
Yeah, nine hours - we sleep a lot. Whaddyagonnado?
The resulting recorded waveforms were interesting, to say the least. I've posted a couple of pictures to show my "setup" and a screenshot of the 9-hour recording (amplified, but not edited in any other way) below. More research coming up...
December 22 Looking for a good deal on a wristwatch?Bling. Ice. Yeah, I get it. Diamonds on anything make it expensive. I get that 'cause I know diamonds are still holding onto their position as a rare natural commodity.
Ditto platinum...somewhat.
I also understand the process of manufacturing watches is quite intricate and requires superfine engineering precision.
I understand all that. Yet, I don't understand the "premium" being asked of this...
$99,495 for a wristwatch, with specifications that read as follows:
The description reads as follows:
"Navimeter 106 Swiss Chronograph with Leather Band Watch This chronograph is endowed with a built in navigation computer and is capable of performing all calculations a flight plan requires. This piece is dressed with a Black dial, with Silver subdials. This piece is powered by a Selfwinding mechanical complication. Navimeter Swiss Chronometer 106 3 Year Warranty Luminescent Hands & Markers Manufacturer Box & Manual Certificate of Authenticity 1/4th Second, 30 Minutes, 12 Hours Chronograph"
Both the above are exact copies of the text on the aforementiond Amazon product page.
I'm ages away from a wristwatch expert, but the way I read the above:
I figured I was missing something, so I headed over the Breitling website and checked their "Made by Breitling" section to check if, y'know, the watch was made using alien technology or if it came with a free car and a down payment on a villa in Maine...
After sitting through a lot of Flash-enabled storytelling, I came away unimpressed. I'm sure they're made really, really well - but nothing really made me go "Wow..".
So, I checked the product description again, and saw that it said - "...and is capable of performing all calculations a flight plan requires". Oh, c'mon!!!
Alright, I've reined in the sarcastoric (Sujeetism; sarcasm + rhetoric) long enough. Here goes everything:
And the glaringly obvious:
I'm guessing the "Be the first person to review this item" is going to be on the Amazon product page for a looong while.
December 15 Ha!Being the resident gadget / deal / technology hound on a number of buddy lists, and having an overall sense of geek notoriety evident after about five words into a conversation, I've noticed an interesting set of reactions when I mention my complete detachment to all things Bluetooth (pun very intended).
From the snarky "You mean your bag of toys still needs wires?!" to the cooler-than-thou "I haven't seen wires in ages now" to the curiously restrained "That's interesting" - I think I've heard them all.
And to all those...
Wireless USB is here. Meaning, its really here. Out on the shelf. Available to the general public. 480 Mbps of wireless transmission in the same form factor and power requirement as the measly 723 Kbps Bluetooth.
Lets run that one more time.
480 Mbps versus 723 Kbps. Pardon my math if the following is in error, but I believe that makes Wireless USB about 700 times faster than Bluetooth.
So to all those who scoffed at yours truly, and you know who you are...bite on that till your teeth go blue.
And then go back to wondering why your supercool "Bluetooth-enabled" phone suddenly went wonky on the train and at the coffee shop, or how someone knew all the numbers you had dialed.
All in all, the next time a gadget geek says that he / she has voluntarily stayed away from the latest and greatest in the land of smaller, faster, lighter and bling-ier...
Listen.
December 13 Want privacy on the public Internet? Dream on.
An interesting "warning" has been circulating on a few Yahoo! groups, and I understand it goes like this:
<snip> "You are being tracked - Urgent information for all group members: If you belong to any yahoo Groups this is important... Sharing a tidbit of information:Yahoo is now using something called "Web Beacons" to track Yahoo Group users around the net and see what you're doing and where you are going similar to cookies. Yahoo is recording every website and every group you visit. Take a look at their updated privacy statement: <URL to the Yahoo! privacy policy> </snip>
True?
Umm..not in its entirety and not down to the letter, but as most spam goes - it is indeed loosely based around some reality and garnished with a lot of alarming text in order to give itself most "airtime".
Before I start dissecting, here's the simple solution:
Click that, from any browser (OS-independent) and you'll clear the "Web beacons" that are resident in that browser's cache.
Multiple browsers? Visit that link once from each browser.
Its a simple cookie-flush process and a potential (misrepresentation) "modification" of the term "opt-out", that usually conjures up visions of a page with some form fields that the user has to fill out in order to "opt out" of a certain service.
But is it, really? Read on:
Thus, my interpretation of that last bullet point is: "smokescreen". It gives the impression of "due diligence" to the average reader.
It gets even more interesting ahead:
"Yahoo!'s practice is to include web beacons in HTML-formatted email messages (messages that include graphics) that Yahoo!, or its agents, sends in order to determine which email messages were opened and to note whether a message was acted upon."
That, is the advertised working of "the system". Here's how you can have the cake and eat it too:
Conversely, the "sky will fall" skeptic would postulate that this could makes for a really tasty hack if this aggregated data gets "inadvertently misplaced".
But, none of this should be a surprise. Yahoo! has detailed what it does with the user's information for a while on the front page of its Privacy Policy. A few snippets:
All in all, the whole "Web beacon" thing isn't the root cause for alarm. If you want to be alarmed, read their privacy policy instead. "Web beacons" are just a means to their clearly stated purposes and intentions with your data.
And at the end of the day, would any of this really make you alter your behavior / use as it relates to the (free) services that Yahoo! offers? I would think not.
Which begs the question...why bother? "They" already know what they know about you, and you can / will probably not do a thing about it because its "too bothersome" to do everything and "it probably may not help, anyway".
Quite a cavalier attitude for someone who spouts security on a regular basis, ain't it? Lemme answer the question that's probably bothering you: "Does all this bother me?"
From a privacy / security perspective...yes, and thus the couple of quick tips detailed above. From a philosophical perpective..no. I always knew there wasn't anything like a truly free lunch...or email.
December 08 Wide area communication and high-altitude flight..in 1434?!Some look at the pyramids and see "works of art". While four-sided triangles in the middle of the desert don't really impress me enough to agree with that sentiment or with their inclusion into the "Wonders of the World", I do have a couple of questions whenever I see them.
For anyone to commit themselves to a task that they didn't think of themselves takes some assured incentive and/or proven results. What would possibly convince a Pharaoh to commission a monstrous investment of personal wealth and mammoth amounts of human labor towards a task that would not be complete in his / her lifetime?
Proven results? That would mean mummified / embalmed dead people were actually revived in the Pharaoh's presence. If so...by whom? Assured incentive? That would mean someone was either holding the proverbial gun to the Pharaoh's head and/or some other method of coercion; or perhaps there was some other convincing case made for "the afterlife".
All in all, they built oddly-shaped gravestones with mathematical accuracy and constructional genius that would be hard to replicate today, apparently using resource finesse that's a far cry from what's on tap today.
I don't know how everyone else has bought the idea, but it would take a lot for me to be convinced about the overall premise that entire generations of workers spent years chiseling down huge stones to dimensions and hauled them up so that they fit just right, without any mortar or other cementing material. Ditto for the exavacation of the land underneath and the seismic studies required towards that act. I can't see how apparently backward technology can pull off something like this and still be termed "backward".
Who said anything about "backward"? They were probably far advanced than we are today. The technology just got lost / destroyed over time.
So...lemme get this straight. In a time where they wrote stuff on parchment and chiseled drawings on stones (like, all the time - based on the numerous archealogical finds in that area), why isn't there a single account of how they built the pyramids..anywhere? No cave walls with instructions, no loose "tablets" with orders for a group of people to work off, nothing. How did the "foremen" communicate with their "workers"? How did they discuss what's right and what's wrong? Didn't they have any rolled-up scraps (stones) that constituted "drafts"? Paper degrades, stones don't. Where's the dumpster for all this stuff?
Its like a forensically sound clean-up. Which naturally begs the question...why? And by whom?
My conjecture about all this leads to the obvious rhetoric about aliens...which is usually met with "Time to go! Thanks for sharing, Sujeet" and a lot of snickering and incredulous looks.
To all those, try this on for size...
Lets dissect that - This is a map, of the planet, made in 1434 AD.
I can see why a world map drawn up in 1434 is currently valued at $20 million (although that does beg the question if it would really be sold if someone came up with the money. Why put a price on things that will / should never be removed from public academia? Just call it "priceless" and leave it at that!). However, something like this makes me wonder about the same two questions that I think when I hear about the pyramid..
December 02 The new Yahoo! Maps: Four stars already!!I'll keep this simple.
So, what's with the "four stars" and not a full five - assuming its a scale of five?
It is a scale of five. And the only thing missing is the satellite overlay feature. I don't really care too much about it since it makes for bad prints, but its good to have - just 'cause a bird's eye view of the destination often makes finding it easier and parking simpler.
Yahooooo!! December 01 "Can I Google this mess to find my keys?!!"Alright, I admit. "Google" is near-synonymous with "search engine" at this point in time, thus the word's inclusion in the title to indicate "automated search with negligible effort on my part". But, this isn't about 'em and I ain't gonna give them any more airtime than they're already getting.
The only two places where I can envision a lot of activity not leading to an eventual untidy mess are bootcamps and hospitals. Places where being orderly and hygiene are critical to the well-being of the people in it. Otherwise, I'd imagine every living space on the planet gets untidy after a period of use - however many neat-freak OCD inhabitants it has.
Why? Think junk mail that "looks interesting, so I'll check it out later". Think "I'm too tired to even take off my shoes". Think "I'll put those boxes away later". Think "Oh, wow! I got a package!" leading to packaging dribble drooling all over the floor and sneaking into crevices invisible to the naked eye, other than those belonging to nosy guests.
Be it the kid's room or the study, things get untidy. And the right piece of paper is almost never in the right place at the right time, however much you could absolutely swear that you left it there. Ditto for keys that seem to mysteriously find their way to the coins buried under the couch cushions.
Alright, 'nuff said. Point made...I hope. All of the above is nothing that some "discipline" can't cure. "Discipline"..that little word that gets easily lost in other words like "Busy", "Work" and "Hurry!". Life gets in the way.
So...is there a solution? I've seen stores carry little electronic doodads that "locate" stuff by adding little tags to them and then making both ends beacon a strident sound. Interesting idea, in theory. In practice, batteries die out when you least expect them to, and sometimes the loudest sound isn't loud enough.
What would I recommend? Thought you'd never ask! Here goes:
Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? I hope it is. Yet another idea that I hereby toss out into the sea of thinkers and doers that some call the Internet, and others call "patent wars".
November 30 Security tips for the holiday season"If you want to do something unnoticed here, do something very eye-catching there" (Sujeetism)
Mis-direction. Apparently the fundamental element in everything that seems too good to be true. Magicians, illusionists, sorcerers - everyone's apparently used it in some way to get the final effect desired. It still doesn't explain how David Blaine levitates off a New York City sidewalk, but perhaps an episode of MythBusters will explain that in another fifty years. They haven't gotten to Houdini yet.
The holiday season brings about a great deal of "stuff". Shopping with gusto. An overall sense of having one's schedule supercharged owing to fuller days with family and friends. Travel and all its associated baggage in all its glory. In summary, you're probably doing a lot more than you usually do.
The converse is also true. By doing a lot more than what you're usually doing, you're also not doing what you're usually doing a lot of.
Confused? Its like what Derek Zoolander said..
"Wait a minute. I might just have an idea. They'll be looking for us at Maury's right? But they won't be looking for... not us."
Alright, I'll stop chasing my tail. The holiday season has you, in all probability:
And a lot more. Worried yet? Its probably just a tad overkill on the paranoia, but then again -the holiday season leads itself to extremes.
Thus, the following tips to help make for a safe holiday season:
Computer safety
Credit card safety
Home / physical security
That's all, for now. I'll update this with more tips / scenarios as I think of them, and your input is always most welcome and much appreciated.
Have a safe and happy holiday season!
November 28 Go ahead....frame someone!Analog cameras (the ones without the LCD viewfinder at the back, for those of you too young to remember) made for great prints, nevermind the constant mental nag of "I hope its focussed right and hasn't been shaken" till one actually saw the print. The ones that did pass muster used to be candidates for being inserted into frames and put up on walls, nightstands and the ubiquitous mantelpiece. In fact, I wonder if my mental image of a mantelpiece can ever be truly complete without a picture, or a dozen, on it.
Enlargements or miniaturizations, prints in frames still make for great conversation-starters. I imagine the moment of understated pride in the nonchalant mention of "This is when we..", and "That was taken at.." is stil something that most party hosts look forward to; and think about while dusting and setting out their best pictures in the areas that their guests would conglomerate in.
Some take it a step higher and make their best work into wall art in their homes, and for some - get paid to make wall art for others. All in all, if its the clothes that make the man, its the frame that makes the picture.
The intersection of Digital Camera Avenue and Cheaper LCD Monitor Lane in Geekville has made for an interesting variant of the above. Simply put - its the "digital picture frame".
Ho-hum. What's new with that? A glorified screensaver, some call it. Already seen, others say. Overpriced trinket, say the rest.
True on all counts. Especially with the reference to the Ceiva. I hope I never have to consider buying / gifting a device that uses a modem to dial up to a central service to download and display pictures; and more importantly, one that comes with a monthly subscription charge. With flash memory and LCD monitors getting better and cheaper by the day, a "digital picture frame" sounds like a worthy candidate for a Thanksgiving break DIY project, wot? If the recipe is easy and priced right, perhaps this could be a great addition to what Santa lays out under the tree, too.
Projects for creating "digital picture frames" are available aplenty on the Internet. Its been something tried and tested and broken and rebuilt by many - using everything from repurposed LCD monitors and UNIX to custom-configured flavors of Linux running batch scripts intended to do everything but get the morning coffee. All I had to do was to pick the one that sounded the easiest to build - all the way from picking and paying for the parts to making for good "visual appeal".
Ten days later, I realized the obvious. There's a good reason why the Ceiva is priced outrageously. The form and function pair for a digital photo frame ain't exactly as easy as apple pie to put together, especially when the requirements of the final package involve a look that fits adjectives like "sleek" and "chic", rather than the nebulous "interesting".
Fortunately, the new avatar of RadioShack as a consumer-electronics retailer rather than a hobbyist electronics DIY-er retailer, helped. They've got an 8" LCD TV that seems to fit the form, function and price mould just right; with a few added benefits thrown in for good measure.
"Where are you going to put this...in the restroom?"
That's one of the first rolling-eyes questions that my mention of this elicited. While the sarcastoric (sarcastic rhetoric - Sujeetism) has potential, I doubt if the unit is water-resistant. Here's why I give it five stars as a potential digital photo frame:
So, its a digital photo frame, a TV, an "additional / replacement" monitor for pretty much any video source you've got - from a PlayStation to a DVD player; and it comes with a rechargeable battery in a swivel base. Which means, it can do all it can do without needing to be tethered to either a power socket or a network connection of any kind.
What's not to like?!
That was rhetoric, but let me answer anyway. This device was meant to be an 8-inch LCD TV that could read digital photos and video off flash memory cards. It wasn't meant to be an elegant, art-deco-chic digital frame like the Ceiva or like its rich cousin at Sharper Image. Thus, while I like its looks - it probably isn't something you could hang on your walls and expect to blend in with the rest of your mahogany furniture and Corinthian drapes. For that, you'll have to figure out a way to slap on a perimeter wood frame or the sort. Which, as I see it - shouldn't be too hard.
If you're the 9-to-5-in-an-office type, this has immense potential. Its "TV" features don't necessarily make themselves obvious. Thus, for all visual / practical purposes, you could pass it off as a media-card-reading digital photo frame that's sized just right. However, when nobody's looking - it could be your little TV set, letting you watch the game (and other stuff) while letting other people think you're a devoted family man.
Yes, it comes with a headphone socket - so its quite the office-friendly number. And finally, if you're really into making it your new best friend, you could use it as a secondary / tertiary computer monitor. Its got analog RCA inputs, so all you'll have to do is to figure out a way of hooking those up to your computer and you're set.
No, RadioShack doesn't pay me. Unfortunately, the reverse is horribly untrue. November 25 WalMart the WonderfulThere was a time when it was called "after-sales service / support" and the average consumer was happy just to have someone from the vendor's office pick up a phone or answer an email about a query / concern. Now, its just "customer service", and expectations have grown significantly. No longer is the average customer (or pre-purchase potential customer) content with having a toll-free number that's available 24/7. No longer are email response delays over 24 hours tolerated. Ditto for wait times, hold times and the fluency of the customer service rep with the product / service in question. The bar's been raised, and then some.
Needless to say, not many are able to do that pole vault without falling flat on their faces. With consumer technology getting increasingly complex and ditto the average consumer literacy with the Internet and all its blessings (comparison shopping, newsgroups for rants and raves, pointed reviews and "hacks" available by the dozen), I imagine that "customer service" has gotten a lot harder. We, the consumers, have fickle loyalties, even shorter attention spans, trust a lot of potentially conflicting anonymous sources on a public medium and continually swim in a sea of media-rich marketing that's been nipped and tucked to fit our specific demographic. We love Cribs and all the bling we see in it, but we also nurture our relationships with those deal-seeking geeks on our buddy list who can send us links to those interesting "secret" deals that will let us flaunt some of that bling value without burning a hole in the proverbial pocketbook.
And then there's that touchy subject of outsourcing customer service that's best left to a quick reference. Everyone's got there little share of stories, and I'd rather let sleeping dogs lie.
However, with all the business intelligence and money being poured into making customer service a fun and friendly experience that will make for repeat business - I wonder if its working. Its been several months since I've heard anyone mention "great customer service" from any vendor - be it some esoteric online store or one of the good old brick-and-mortar guard. Calling customer service always brings out an involuntary groan from anyone who mentions it, and I see that there's a huge section of people who like to sit on the fence between interacting with an automated system and dealing with a human. They seem to like the quick automated experience, but don't want to forego the "understanding" effect of a real conversation with a real person. As most of us have realized the hard way, those two qualities being available as a cozy twosome isn't exactly as commonplace as smog in the civilized world.
Admittedly, I could be one of those fence-sitters. And as you could imagine what sitting on a fence would do, most of my customer service experiences are a pain in the rear that don't leave me with a smile of good cheer. (Alright, bad rhyme - but it got you out of that "get to the point, will you?" sneer, didn't it?)
Ergo, I don't call customer service too much. I figure that the hair I'll pull out and the teeth I'll gnash trying to figure out a solution and/or read the manual (my absolute last resort!) would probably be lesser than interacting with a customer service rep who'll try his / her best to adhere to a standard script while tryng to fix my problem - and probably fail miserably at doing both.
Thanksgiving evening, as it ideally should, brought a wonderful suprise - in the form of a call to WalMart's Music Downloads customer service. I was having some trouble with moving the licenses for a set of songs I'd recently purchased from one computer to another (WalMart allows three "backups", so it was legit), and after following their FAQ till the time that my Windows Media Player told me in no uncertain terms that I had run out of the number of license-related requests for the day, I decided to call the customer service number that was indicated on the license-approval (or in this case, denial!) screen.
Fully expecting to wade my way through a plethora of voice menu greeting goodies, I settled in for a long wait and picked up the stress ball just in case. Seven minutes later, I got up and walked around - in awe of the fact that it had taken only that long for me to reach a live person who not only heard my problem but also understood and rectified it.
That's right - heard, understood and rectified. The big three of technical support. Done by a live person within seven minutes of calling a toll-free number a little after nine on Thanksgiving evening.
One could understandably argue that it was probably the best time to call customer service since nobody else was probably doing it then and that the lines were probably wide open. True; but, if my ears weren't deceiving me; the call wasn't offshored (that word again!) and even with time zones and everything - it was still Thanksgiving evening and a holiday for almost everyone in the country.
One would also postulate that I had a very simple question. Fair argument, but very unlikely. Also, license-related "stuff" with protected music files isn't exactly something one can solve at home - unless one is DVD Jon or some braniac like that.
I was impressed with the WalMart Music Downloads service before I called their customer service, and now I'm totally sold. Not only are their prices very competitive (translated - they're cheaper than almost anyone else based in the US, when it comes to legal music downloads), but they also get five stars for their Web interface, their mode(s) of delivery of the purchased content, their help documentation and their music library. They've got some nebulous text on their website about their content not being iPod-friendly and I'd recommend a careful read if you do carry around one of those little overpriced bits of stringy eye candy. Since the only sentiment I have about the iPod is "iDontCare"; WalMart's unfriendliness towards iPod-friendliness meant nothing to me. All I care about is that my playlist sounds great on my PC and on a CD, and it does - and that's that.
For those of you who scoff at WalMart and everything sold under its name; here's some advice from "The Millionaire Next Door.." - Live below your means. I don't read, but I do know that millionaires aren't made by unbridled discretionary spending.
There's also the painfully obvious fact - digital music is digital music is digital music. Buying it from any other music store isn't really going to get you "a better version". Ergo, the old adage of "you get what you pay for" is beginning to make its foray into the gray blur that we young 'uns call the digital (generation) gap.
Way to go, WalMart. You've got my vote!
November 21 Printer troubleAh - the holiday season. El festivus. It brings the folks around the fireplace and pulls friendly faces into photos. Gifts under trees, wrapping paper being torn into, and little explosions of joy commemorating Santa's excellent choice in gifts. T'is the season of joy and warmth.
And pictures. Loads and loads of pictures. Pictures, video and then some. I'll bet this holiday season is going to be one of the most photographed in recent times. Be it the little cameraphone lens pushed above and beyond its intended use, or a triple CCD powerhouse being barely used; its going to be out there.
Y'know what all that photograffiti leads to, don't you? One word that sums up a burgeoning industry that's being made into a cashpool by the old school brick-and-mortar types and the new yahoos with their "free shipping" promos. Prints.
Prints. Photos on paper. Little rectangles of frozen time that let memories be captured for eternity in all its vivid (and/or edited) reality. We grew up staring at 'em. Some of us moved to looking at screens instead of flipping through albums. A lot of us still prefer the old way. And that old way, by my estimate is a gazillion-dollar industry.
Its not just prints anymore. Its faces on mugs, mousepads, t-shirts, dog collars and even cakes. I still don't know why anyone would want to slice into their own face for their birthday, but apparently its a trendy thing to do. Or it was - I lose track of things that don't interest me.
"Photo retailers" today will pretty much deliver the kitchen sink to your doorstep when it comes to anything that remotely resembles photograph-related merchandise. Prints, enlargements, miniaturizations, murals, snowglobes - whatever you like. None of it is cheap, but its "available". And given how most of us live - if its "available" and "somewhat cool" - it must be possessed - immediately!
Ergo, amateur photographer wannabes (like yours truly) try to "beat the system" (often attempted, never works - but read on anyway...) by trying to "think ahead". Here's some common examples of intellectual, price-point mathematics:
Ergo, its essential to have a working printer at home at all times. One that does a great job of color prints and "regular" prints on regular A4 paper. One that should ideally also fax, scan and copy.
I'm bored with the introduction already. In summary, here's my attempt at trying to create a complete and correct list of requirements for a new printer:
I've waxed on long and hard. Here's what I think:
So...what got me started about this in the first place? Yeah - my existing printer gave up! Does the fact that I can spin verbose gossamer about the aforementioned "requirements" make my search for a new one any easier? November 14 Oh, alright - here's how it works...SujEats. Cute name. Confusing game.
Deja vu.
So, here's the what-why-how:
So, once again - http://www.frappr.com/sujeats November 11 Sujeet's SujEatsAmused by the title? Hold on to that for just a tad longer, 'cause the spiel could get a bit, um, stretchy..
Eating out can be fun. Usually a whole ball of it. However, deciding where to have that ball is usually the messy part. Cuisines, locations, reviews and reservations can have quite the damping effect on the "Lets go out!" sentiment. Before long, one finds oneself saying "Whatever..as long as I eat quick!" and having the quintessentially cute chica behind the "Wait here to be seated" podium telling us "Its a fifteen minute wait".
And that's another debate. Wait, or leave? If its a new place, will it be worth the wait? If its an old place, is the cuisine worth the wait? Doesn't take-out from the nearest Chinese restaurant sound quicker? If all else fails, how about the nearest Jack In The Box drivethrough?
Decisions, decisions. And they're best avoided on an empty stomach.
A while back, I posted a link to some good restaurants around the Silicon Valley area - just 'cause I realized I was attracting more than a few questions about "how I knew of so many new places". The link wasn't exactly my Bible to the best of the best around and about, but it was a good collection that centered around the middle of the band, so to speak, and focussed on "late night eats". Knowledge of those can be very critical, especially if Friday evenings run late without a proper pit stop for dinner!
Get where I'm going with this yet? No? Oh, well - here's me pushing aside the garnish..
My new "geoblog" for restaurant reviews. Need I say more? Enjoy!
Wait - I do have something to add...
"If its where Suj eats, its on SujEats".
Ew. I'm quite overzealous on the forced humor on Friday mornings, aren't I?
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