iLoves iPhone

Well, I've been waiting for it ever since the now-famous Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld in January. I've seen loads of pictures, videos, feature tours but I've never got tired.

And finally, today, June 29th, the iPhone had it's world premiere at 6pm. Seriously, I'd been practically waiting for days for this. Me, Charles, Wonderkid and Spandi made it to the Apple store at Montgomery Mall by 9pm, after finishing up with work for the week. It seemed Charles' friend had waited for hours at another store waiting for the 8gigs model but it got sold out by the time he could enter the shop.

Anyway, this Apple store was so crowded too, but the queues had died down. We had to wait sometime to get our hands on the models kept on display, since there were droves of people ahead of us checking them out already, but it was worth every second. I just couldn't stop gaping at it when I finally got my hands on it.

First impressions - it is SO damn sleek, so much so that when you actually hold it in your fingers you actually try to be delicate as possible lest you hurt it or something. The screen is so bright and clear that you keep blinking just to believe what you're seeing in front of you is actually real.

The touchpad (the screen itself) feels so accurate under your fingers, that you gain confidence very fast about the fact that you're doing it right, something that I personally had doubts about - since it would be rather irritating for such a device (that depends entirely on multi-touch) to not be very accurate. I took the contacts list and the smooth-scrolling was oh-so-damn-SMOOTH! It was unreal I tell you! UNREAL. I went into a frenzy after that, trying out the call mode, Google maps, Safari, YouTube, the 2-meg camera. Everything was like so perfect that you couldn't help but feel that you were using a technological marvel, a masterpiece.

I selected the iPod mode next, and was blown away by the video mode. Played Lost on it and I gasped in awe. Widescreen video playback RULES. Browsing through the cover art of the music albums great too, and the way it flips to let you select the songs is awesome. Played Audioslave and the sound quality still rocks. I kid you not, I could practically hear the oohs and aahs from people ALL AROUND me whilst I was checking it out.

I couldn't spent more than twenty minutes with it, since I had to keep my manners and give a chance to the other people who were waiting impatiently for it, but I did manage to take some pics and videos.

I've posted some pics below. Will put on the videos later.

Here are some links to the iPhone release stories, by, NYTimes, BBC, and some other interesting source that I found.

Phew, I'm still breathless...

Here it is!















LOST (Looks like Jack wants the iPhone too :P)















Google Maps.















YouTube.















Sessski, ain't it?















..and that's me, outside the store :)

Paris: Publicity Personified.

Everyone's talking about it. Everyone's complaining that everyone else is talking about it. But sadly, no one can stop talking about it too. The radio, the television, the web, the paper have only one thing on their minds - Paris Hilton. Yeah, hate her or love her, you just can't get rid of her.

My client and me were speaking over dinner at Silver Diner's about this today. He mentioned something that I felt was very true. In the USA, there is nothing like bad publicity. Publicity, in whatever form, good or bad, is publicity itself and that's what people, or rather celebrities here thrive upon. You take the Britneys, the Lohans, the Hiltons. They all have the same thing in common. Whether they do it on purpose or not is another story though.

Now after getting out of jail, Paris had her first TV interview yesterday. On CNN. Larry King Live. I caught a few titbits of the show in between the Copa America match between Brazil-Mexico (was keeping an eye out for Anderson of course). Now, here's a honest confession. Call me a sucker but I'm generally for Paris usually. True, she does the craziest and stupidest things, but give her some credit too for still managing to keep her chin up when the public throw every possible insult in her face. You need some pretty thick skin for that. (Or do you? No brains would suffice! :P) Did anyone watch what she was made to go through during the 2007 MTV Movie Awards that took place this month? If not, go to youTube, and search for "paris 2007 mtv" and you'll get to see what I'm talking about.

Anyway, the interview went off pretty well, with Larry (in his usual monotonously dead sounding voice) questioning her about many things ranging from what she thought of the public's view of her to the time she'd spent in jail. She answered them pretty maturely I felt (call me a sucker again) though it was plain simple that she just spoke some pre-prepared good lines, maybe wanting to make a change in front of everyone? She spoke about how the timeout she had in solitary confinement made her think about her life and God. And that she finally realized that she wanted to do something good with her life and do good to people around her. So Larry then asked her what was her favorite Bible passage. And she goes..."umm..ummmmmmmmm........I don't have a favorite actually." And so there I jumped up and said "Hah! She's bluffing!", but then she flashed that sweet innocent apologetic smile of hers, so I forgave her instantly. =)

On 'The Tonight Show' today, Mr. Leno just couldn't stop making enough fun of her. He cracked a good one when he said, "After the one-hour interview with Larry, Paris said she wished she was back in solitary confinement again." Haha. But whatever, there is not going to be an end to this it seems. It's gonna go on and on. That's Paris. She's famous for being famous. Simple.

And me thinks that's hot. ;)

Pssst..tomorrow is June 29th. Think Phone. Think Apple :)

Gnarls gone Theremin crazy...

Came across this video on the net, and found it simply amazing. Due to two reasons. Firstly, the song (if you didn't guess it already) is Gnarls Barkley's Crazy (and if you haven't listened to already :) should do so as soon as possible). Well, I could have just posted the link to the song, if I wanted you to hear it, but that's isn't my intention. Which brings me to my second reason. This video is basically an experiment to reproduce the song using the musical instrument called 'Theremin'.

 Many of you may already have heard of it, but personally, I'm learning about it for the first time today. It apparently is one of the first ever 'electronic' musical instruments, and will complete a century of existence by 2019. Ok, the best part - it is the first musical instrument that can be played without being physically touched. All you have to do is move your hands around it, and lo! music is created.

Heh, it ain't that easy. The Theremin consists of two radio frequency oscillators and two metal antennae. The player moves his/her hands around this antennae, which control the instrument's pitch and volume. The electric signals created are amplified and sent to the loudspeaker. The sound created is eerie and alien-like, and has been used in many old horror movies, including the voice of Frankenstein I hear. Many old music bands have used it, although not mainstream. Therefore I was pretty surprised to come across a picture of Jimmy Page (of Led Zep fame) using it at a concert in 1973.

Alright, enough said already. Check out this video. It's done by 4 guys and it's well shot/edited too.

Ummm, you may need more than a little bandwidth to view it properly. If so, here's the link, copy-paste it into keepvid.com and get it downloaded.

PS: I've finally switched to Windows Live Writer 2.0 Beta :) Yippee!!

It's been a long time baby...

Alright, apologies first.

It's been 108 days since my last post.

Whoa..a pretty long time, but no excuses mama, I somehow managed to not post for this long. I just wanted to write this post for the sake of getting my blogging life back on track, and I'm glad I'm managing to do it atleast now.

Updates? YES!!! Lots! Soo mannyyy....ok so let's get started!

ManUtd won the League in May!! yeaaaah!!!!!

umm..and I guess that pretty much covers updates :)

Naaa...juz kidding, so basically I'm back in the US of A now, got here a week ago (had to leave the day Aerosmith was performing at B'lore), and will be here for a month or so. Things look fine, I guess nothing much changes in 5 months, though its a much warmer and brighter climate than the last time I was here. The journey was pleasant...the high point being the fact that I was able to see the A380 at the CDG airport. Huge I say, huge. I mean huge. Did i say huge? Damn, couldn't get any snaps though cos we were on the runway and I didn't have the time to reach into the overhead compartment and get my cam.

So here I am, in the same hotel (didn't get the same room this time *sigh*) but having two roommates this time around. Spandy and Wonderkid. Work is good, the food is great :) Went to Bugabooz and had a meatloaf within two days of getting here. I just had to! Had a decent last weekend too, went to the Univ of Maryland with Charles, went and checked out this latino restaurant called Samantha's, went to the IKEA showroom, and went to Fort Meade to get some other stuff too. I've got back on track with LOST again, though not into top gear. Planning to go into marathon mode this weekend.

Everything else is going along well, although it took some time for the fact that I was travelling tithe US again to hit me, during my journey. Well, that went away in a jiffy once we got here. We exited the Dulles airport, had a Pakistani taxi driver pick us up, and when he switched on the radio, the first thing we hear? "And the latest news at this hour, Paris Hilton is going to jail folks....". I turned back and said to Sid, "Dude, we're back in the US alright."

That's it for now. More posts very soon. Ciao!

PS: A few pics of the University posted below.














The 'M' spot...
















Fraternity buildings?
















Whatever, but looks good ain't it?
















Main CS Lecture Hall
















Wonderkid, Spandy and Charles.