Infinite Loop » Diary

Trying New Windows Live Writer

Ashu — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 01:45:26 +0000

It looks pretty slick with its new interface and better compatibility with third party blogging system.

Hindi radio channel in Bay Area – 1170 AM

Ashu — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:57:08 +0000

Recently found out that there is a radio channel 1170 AM for Hindi songs (24 hours). Apparently it plays all kinds of songs ranging from very old to latest ones.

This is for the Silicon Valley/Bay Area only.

New India Pizza place in Sunnyvale

Ashu — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:54:14 +0000

Heard about a new India pizza place in Sunnyvale. Gotta give it a shot sometime.

Feel free to leave comment feedback here if you already have been there

New found toy: ATamp;T Tilt (HTC Kaiser or TyTN II)

Ashu — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:50:19 +0000

Recently I switched from Sprint to ATT. Financially it was a bad move, I was paying much less with Sprint including the unlimited data (just $5 per month). But I have been with sprint for last 7 years and kind of got bored with it. Moreover, the trend is moving towards GSM. Sprint is very slow to adopt to new phones, their phones are boring and have no statement. But their service has been wonderful all these years and I had no real reason to move other than getting into the “in” thing. I like toys, electronic toys and thats the place to be if I wanted to try new GSM phones without worrying about contacts. For long past, I have been an advocate of CDMA technology. And probably still I do, but thats not what the world wants. CDMA is not getting successful in winning markets across globe. Other than US and Canada, there are very few CDMA playres in the world.

So, here I come to the GSM world. With two fancy phones to begin with. For myself I got ATT Tilt a little modified version of HTC’s TyTN II, the best and most powerful PDA phone in the world today (some may argue in favor of Nokia N95). But I am not a Nokia fan. Never was.

For my wife I got a Pantech Duo from ATT. She is not one of those people who like to keep a Super Computer in their phones. She just wanted a simple easy to use phone. My first condition was that it should have a hard keyboard (not soft screen based like on Tilt). It should have bluetooth, music player and some customization options. I wanted to buy something Windows mobile based for her so whatever tricks I learn for my TIlt, I could pass on to her .

It’s a fancy phone with Dual sliding keyboards. One for number keys and one for text.

Will post about my experience with Tilt in next few blog entries.

Bay area Indian travel agents

Ashu — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:13:11 +0000

From time to time I get requests at work and from friends about travel agents with good service for buying tickets to India. There are definately many more of them but these are some favorites. I co-worker compiled the list and I am putting it here for future references.

Access World Travels (206) 860-3768
Anjanaye Travels (408) 947-1209
Allstar Travels (408) 247-9743
Deepak Travels (408) 735-7849
Hari World Travel (510) 795-5000
Infinity Travel (408) 245-8444
International Travels (408) 243 5493
Legend Travels (510) 797-9010
Nagina Travels (510) 656-7280
Roy Travels (408) 578 3598
Sai Travels (510) 657-1724
Sunnyvale Travels (408) 245-5090
Super Travels (408) 321-9222
Taj Travels (650) 964-3425
Trips & Travels (415) 982-0600
United Travels (510) 794-8890
VIP Travels (510) 790-3434
Valley Travels (510) 793 5000

Hindi radio on the Internet

Ashu — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:43:46 +0000

My wife Parul today asked me if I knew of any decent online radio on the Internet which plays Hindi/Indian programs. I tried to find on the net but couldn’t hit a comprehensive updated colleciton.

So here starts my attempt to compile a list. I would try to keep it clean and working. Post a message for broken links, and I would update this at the earliest. As usual, all the copyrights to their original content owners, I am just providing the links.

City 101.6 FM (Dubai, UAE)
106.2 HumFM (Dubai, UAE)
Radio Tarana (New Zealand)
Radio of India Bhajans (India)
Radio of India Classicals (India)
Bombay Beats FM (India)
Apna Radio (USA)
Mast Radio (Online)
Desi Radio (USA)
Radio India (Surrey, BC, Canada)
Sangeet Radio (Houston, Texas)

Steve Ballmer at Microsoft SVC

Ashu — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 21:38:29 +0000

Today we had Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the SVC, for an all hands meeting with Microsoft employees at SVC. It was fun and at times funny too.

Listening to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are two totally different experiences. With Gates’ presence people are generally amazed by his personality and the fact that they are actually listening to “Bill Gates”. Being a Microsoft employee one gets to see him more often than anyone else but still everytime you see him, you get mesmerized from his persona. Meetings with Bill Gates are more subtle and one worth listening to, you want to find the depth of every word that comes out of his mouth. Where as meetings with Steve Ballmer are more energetic and full of enthusiasm. Every time he speaks, there is certain drive in it, one that should come from the CEO of a company like Microsoft.

From Seoul, South Korea

Ashu — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 02:31:51 +0000

On my way to India. Finally the vacation has begun. Going to India after three years, really looking forward to landing there. Doing this post from the Seoul airport. Its one good thing that the asian countries are not as cheap as US. Almost all the developed asian countries I have been to, the airports have free internet access. But US ?? No !! Almost at all the airports in US you have to pay to hookup to the wifi network. Talk about technology leadership. Next post from India.

Sanatan Dharma by Swami Vivekanand

Ashu — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 18:50:25 +0000

I recently found two audio clips of the speech given by Swami Vivekanand in Chicago at the “Conference of the World Religions” year 1893.

File 1 ( mp3-1.3 MB )
File 2 ( mp3-1.2 MB )

HD Upconversion DVD Player

Ashu — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 22:16:39 +0000

It was about time to part with my Kenwood DV-605 5 disc DVD changer. It could not play any of the formats like DVD+R/RW or DVD-R/RW. Some of the DVD+R movies that I made, it was able to load but was stuck at the Title Menu and would not proceed.

After my recently found interest in converting home movies from analog to digital format, I thought it was about time to investigate in a new DVD player which could support all formats. In the quest, I found about some DVD players which can upconvert regular 480i and 480p signals to high-defintion 720p and 1080i signals.

Requirements:

Be able to play all the formats (DVD-A, SACD, and DivX will be added benefit.)
Be able to convert Standard Defintion or SD (480i) Enhanced Defintion or ED (480p) signals to High Defintion or HD (720p and 1080i). Confused about all these singals? I will write about them in detail in my next post.

And googling revealed there are three good contesters for this category.

LG LDA-511 (Same as LG DVB418)
Panasonic S97S
Samsung DVD-HD850

(I am not mentioning prices as they might change by the time you read these).

I went and bought LG DVB418 from Bestbuy. Hooked it up to my receiver and HDTV, The picture quality is awesome, sound is good. It plays all of my backup DVDs on DVD-R and DVD+R, I haven’t tried a DivX and MPG4 disk yet. And in attempt to upconver the signal here is what I learned.

My HDTV does not support 720p but 1080i only. I bought my 36″ Panasonic HDTV (CRT) in 2003, so this is one of the drawbacks of adopting to new technologies too soon. Second, its not a widescreen TV.

The first problem of having ability to play only 1080i is not actually a problem. But when I upconvert the signal to 1080i it becomes 16:9 format signal or wide screen image. Which does not look good on my letterbox HDTV.

And, the LD DVD player upconverts signal only on non-copy protected movies over the component ouput, on HDMI output however it does not have any problems. And yet again, my HDTV (being 3 years old) does not have HDMI input.

So much said, now I am reconsidering whether I need an upconverting DVD player or wait till I buy a wide screen plasma TV

Update:
Finally bought the LG DVD player. Its awsome, hackable to support all region DVDs. Upconverts regular DVD to high definiton and has crisp picture quality. And yes, you just burn your DivX files to a DVD/CD as a regular file, no need to convert them as DVD-MPEG, put the disk in the player shows you the directory listing. Select the file and bang…now you can fit 4 movies in one DVD