On Snow with the PRO

The day Apple introduced its unibody Macbooks, I have been eyeing it like an eagle looking for the right opportunity to grab it. Their demo video has since then always been hanging around in my iphone. But changing computers every year that too the costliest ones would be too much for a UG student like me. One day Vyas Sir realizes that I have been having trouble with my old machine and like any fortunate incident in my life this lovely surprise came to me without any hope. And now I am on a Macbook Pro 13" unibody.

Its an innovative piece of creation by the maestros. The glistening silver colored body with sleekness personified is a stunning sight to behold. Weighing less than 2 kgs its the ultimate companion for journeys and portable use. The speakers, cameras, LEDs are amazingly well embedded into the aluminum body pushing the unibody idea further high.

The battery backup has further improved and now its 7 + hours.

The trackpad as demonstrated in the videos is very smooth and sensitive and the multitouch gestures are really really cool. The headphone and line in jack have now been integrated into one socket. So now you can use your iphone headphones with built in mics with this machine.

The LED lit LCD display has incredible contrast and brightness with auto adjustment depending on the ambient light. Coupled with the Nvidia graphics card, every piece of crap looks glittering and lovely on it.

By the way all the pros now have a backlit keyboard. The only issue with this machine appears to be the heating issue as compared to the white ones. Being metallic they heat up little faster.

And the 2nd big surprise was the fact that it comes with OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade DVD. After lot of speculations snow leopard is finally out with almost no new features but still claiming to be the most advanced and stable operating system ever. The startup and shutdown speed has almost doubled. If you are upgrading to Leopard, you get to save an additional 6 to 10GB hard disk space on installation.

The graphics has become smoother and richer. Expose is more magnificent now with quicklook features integrated into it meaning that when all the open windows are exposed, you can hover over a particular window and press space bar to magnify and focus on that window. Now as you hover over other windows they keep magnifying in turn. With the new version, APPLE probably wanted to do away with the Mac-NTFS boundary by incorporating native NTFS read/write support but due to technical issues hasn't made it official yet. However you can do a small hack to enable the write capability. Fortunately I came across this unique app called the NTFS mounter which does this job for me without opening terminal or any other thing like that.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/32571/ntfs-mounter

iTunes has definitely become more advanced with more iphone oriented features. But what I really liked as a big leap is Quicktime 7.It comes with many more plugins and codecs. And.... now you can record video movies and audio using the in built camera and mic. What really add flavors is the fact that now one can directly video record screen without any heck.... wow. That means making tutorials or explaining a software is so very easy now. If you also have a windows comp for which you want to record screen.... just remote Desktop onto it from MAC and record .

Second amazing feature is video trimming. Now you can cut out a scene or a song from a movie in 3 clicks. There's nothing breathtaking yet but I am really loving it.

Disappointment:

I loved the quicklook folder view plugin which is no more compatible with 10.6.

Farm House fun @ Meerut

"Sir we plan to go to Meerut", said Shantanu to Sir. "You people don't concentrate on work then why have you spread so much work bla bla ". This was the second time when Sir was scrapping a well planned picnic. But this time everyone was determined to go. Sir himself had promised us a picnic after Shantanu's thesis. Ruchira ma'am also had to leave for home for her marriage on October 6th so we barely had time to have fun.We left on th night of 1st from Kanpur. The journey was real fun with people revealing their secrets one after the other. The details of the game as per the deal can not be disclosed here. Next morning we were at his picturesque and well furnished farmhouse.

It was lush green environment amidst absolute peace with shades, fountain, bridges, DJ floor and a wonderful swimming pool.

At the first sight it was planned that the evening would be spent in water. In a corner were two rooms with beautiful lights and ceilings, cosy bed and yes swords hanging on the walls. So the breakfast was served and what tasty pakoras, jalebis and sandwiches. We chilled out for a while and then most of us slept.


Lunch was served at 4 p.m.followed by the FUN time in the pool. Everyone jumped into the water in their capries and tshirts. Water polo, trains, waves , find the coin and what not. No one was willing to leave the pool before 9. Some delicious dinner still awaits us before we start our return journey.

@ the highest point of IITK

Took the following pics from the highest point in IITK - yes from top of the faculty building. The air has never been as soother as it was there. Although it was a full moon night but stars could be well seen. Wondering if astronomy club can have some sky gazing sessions over there.







Kanpur glows in the dark :

Fly to Bangalore with Kingfisher

Shubham completes his thesis and defense and is packing for his job. Before that he has to give a presentation of his work at GM, Bangalore. What more.. I am also invited to "hang around" and gain some worldly wisdom. Took this pic near a dhaba on knp - lko highway.



We reach the airport on 24th afternoon and realized that the flight was delayed. Vyas Sir who was traveling by the same flight arrives there in the meantime. We get onboard the Kingfisher. To my surprise, the furnishings were better than the flight by which I went to Europe. Air hostesses were hot as expected.



The flight halts at Delhi and takes off at 5 p.m. By the time we cross M.P we flew over the monsoon clouds which were probably dragging towards Kanpur. The following pictures were taken around the sun set time. Multiple layers of clouds flying through each other can be seen.





We reached the hotel at 11 p.m. by taxi. The next morning we all went to the GM office at International Tech Park, the multi-storeyed multi blocked building adjacent to the Taj. GM office was equally hi tech with lavish interiors.







From there we went to a coffee shop in the building basement. The pic above is probably the last time we three are together. Done with work time for fun.... we reach the hotel using our GPS while I tried contacting all the possible service centres in the city. Finally we met and Kshitij who said it was Thursday and Hard Rock Cafe will have a live band performing. Some really awesome food was ordered while we enjoyed the music in the nostalgic europe like cafe.



The hotel was undoubtedly classy with a two room set. One was the bedroom - the other was a kind of lounge with oven and fridge and all utensils to cook and a pair of cosy sofas.





Last day I went to the Iskon temple and MG park. The pic above was taken in the park. In the evening the MG road looks grand with lights all around. The pic below is of a far away building. It just reminded me of the lines from Hotel California "up ahead in the distance I saw a shimmering light ... "



The last day we went to the Samarkand restaurant - a rajput themed restaurent where food was being served on swords and other strange looking utensils. The food was incredibly delicious. Mushroom stuffed with spinach and the tasty biryani can still bring water to my mouth.


The new Bangalore airport although miles away from the city looks really grand and has been made with high precision. I return home with reincarnated memories of Europe and a TA bill of 4ok.

As picturesque as Nainital

Some of the pics I took in Nainital came out amazingly colorful. The best ones are compiled here with appropriate details.

Went to Bareilly by train and then took a taxi. A couple of pics in memory of my old town :





Here I reach the hilltop and as usual my camera goes out of my control.




In the mallital market now,






"Do lafzon ki hai dil ki kahani......" Its boating time now.. cool breeze full of freshness blew against our face and left us intoxicated.
Took the following pics while boating in the Naini lake :

The lights with their reflection in the lake..... delicate and soothing. Didn't have tripod so held the camera between my hand and a steel rod for this 3 sec exposure shot.



Woods on the hills are beautiful. Took the following pictures from the car itself :





At Bhimtal :