Harold and Kumar

After the exciting ride to the White Castle in 2004, Patel( or Kalpen Modi) and Lee are back on scene.
Latest upcoming is their "Harold and Kumar 2" or "Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo bay".
What originally was a plain 8 hr flight to Amsterdam turns out to be quite an excitement as the journey turns out to be much much longer.

More when this comes out early next year.

Details are here

Part 1 was a long night journey to White Castle to have burgers, which was a craving from an advertisement.

Hindi songs

Every so often some Bollywood song catches my attention. Personal Hits of the last few weeks:

Movie: Khoya Khoya Chaand (2007) - Songs

Khoya Khoya Chaand and Yeh Nigayein

The tune and speed of the song is slow and remind me of Parineeta songs.

Movie: Jab We Met

Song: Ye Ishq Hain.

More to be added....

South Florida dining

Over the last few days I have been trying to get a list of recommended restaurants from friends living in South Florida. I've got a few to get started. I will soon add more restaurants and also organize the data.

To get started here it is :

Social networking for an ideal match?

Social networking has become a buzz word these days with number of providers and users increasing every minute. To give a few examples facebook.com mainly consist of teenagers in the US from the age of 17-23 and orkut.com from Google has attracted crowds from South America and India.

Arranged marriage is still one of the most common ways of getting engaged for Indians and for Indians abroad its a challenge to find the perfect match thousands of miles away. Over the last few years Indian matrimony websites like bharatmatrimony.com or shaadi.com have flourished.

Through their paid services one can get introduced to a potential match and then start a conversation. Often times when its difficult to find information about the other person its quite likely that the other person is a member on orkut for example. Sometimes it might take you for a surprise that the other person might be connected to you via a friend of yours. Then its the feel good factor then that the person your getting introduced to is not a complete stranger.

Orkut offers something called Testimonials which could play an important part here to find out what others think about the person.

Toolbar confusion

Over the recent years the number of companies trying to promote toolbars through which users can enter content to search or navigate has grown exponentially. As seen in the picture I already have 2 toolbars from Google and Yahoo. What this has done is caused the main URL window to lose focus. I will not be surprised for an average non computer savvy user getting frustrated on " Where do I enter the damn web site address?" !

Many of these toolbars look similar and sometimes we get misled by the toolbar. Eg. Google and Yahoo are very similar.
A search on google for "web browser toolbars" yielded tons of toolbars that are available thesedays.
Many of these have come under security vulnerabilities that have become an issue ! Try searching for "toolbar vulnerabilities" and you'll see quite a few.
As pop up blockers have thrived in the past few years I 've noticed the number of pop-ups severely reduced. Will there be a toolbar blocker?

Guitar songs 101

Playing or learning to play the guitar I should the say can be quite frustrating. Getting the chords right and then moving to the next chord while seems a mile away could be quite daunting.
Therez light at the end of the tunnel though. The feeling of playing to the rhythm gives a good feeling.

Lately I have been using youtube.com and indianguitartabs.com a lot for the same. I use youtube.com to play the guitarrred song on the background. Gives me a sense of what people are playing.

I have been concentrating on the bollywood tracks. Here the recent ones that have been lovely.
1. Aashayein from Iqbal - wonderful songs http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1736684410303739697&q=aashayein&total=16&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4

chords can be found at http://www.mysongbooksite.com/song.php?songid=134&PHPSESSID=f7230c971b7cf6255561d88b39a7571f
I like the song when it moves to this verse :
ud ja[D]ye leke [A]khushiapne [Dsus2]sang tujhko va[Asus2]haan

2. Aap jaise koee: Chords found here : http://www.xs4all.nl/~abhulai/chords/chordsdoc/chordsdoc43.html

Intro guitar is here: http://www.indianguitartabs.com/showthread.php?p=3144

3. Yeh Zameen gaa rahee hain:

http://www.indianguitartabs.com/showpost.php?p=136601&postcount=1

4. Lucky Ali songs http://www.chordie.com/chord.pere/www.ultimate-guitar.com/print.php?what=tab&id=412600

Beauty of Bryce Canyon, Utah

Over the last summer I had a chance to visit Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah. This park is not one of the most famous ones but a definitely recommended one for one who appreciates beauty.

Located at a height of approximately 8500 ft above sea level this naturally formed wonder can be noted differently by a different pair of eyes.

At a first glance this one reminded me of the movie IRobot where there were approximately 1000s of IRobots standing next to each other.

To my wife it was like a skyline of a big metro like NY City.

To the rest of the world these structures were known as "hoodoos". The formation essentially was a result of rain water and even ice over limestone. Most of the geography in the area from the Grand Canyon to north in Utah is formed by water running over stone.

In the Grand Canyon its the Colorado river cutting through the rocks!

Hiking at the Bryce Canyon was a different experience. It was a steep accent right into the Canyon with the zigzagged road elevating all the way to the bottom of the Canyon. As we reached at the bottom we found that the road was closed as a rock had collapsed blocking off all the traffic. We noticed the mercury rising as we dugg our way into the white sandy/limestoned zigzag route.


Climbing up was not all that bad as we had expected.









The beauty of the amphitheater in Bryce cannot be described by words and only memory captured by our pair of eyes was the closest.

Here is one view captured by our man made eyes. :)

Use Google maps for your convenience

I always wanted online maps to help me show me maps from point A to point B. Well it does today if you know the addresses. What if you knew a point in the map but didn't know the exact postal address of the map. I used to get blocked by this feature not been available in online maps.












Recently I did visit maps.google.com and find that I can right click on an intersection and click "Directions from here".










Then I go to the destination and right click "Directions to here". get the default "fastest" route on this one as expected. As you can tell its 3.7 miles and takes 8 minutes.

Next thing that comes to my mind .. Military Trail is a faster route ( I think) and I want to stop by a grocery store to pick up something. Let me check what google maps thinks of this.

Google maps thinks it will take 0.2 miles and a minute longer. Essentially what I have done here is added the intersection of Lake Ida Road and Military trail as an destination in my route. Likewise we can change to different routes by adding destinations /stops in between to find times for alternate routes that we use to go to the destination.















I found this a good feature and I use it for long distances where I know I have different choices to go from point A to point B.

What do you think?

Broccoli soup for the soul !

A simple soup thats really good for you and takes less time to cook.

Ingredients
Broccoli - 1 cup of florets
Milk - 2% half a cup
Salt - a few pinches
Black pepper to taste

1. Boil the broccoli in little water(till broccoli is submerged in water halfway) till it gets very soft and almost dissolves in water.
2. Add the same to a blender along with the water. Leave a little bit to the side for some decoration.
3. If you'd like add some milk slowly and then grind the mixture.
4. Add some salt and black pepper (to taste).
5. Blend in again.

Pour in a soup bowl and decorate with the left over broccoli.

Serves 1 - 2

Mother of all Web 2.0 sites

I started blogging again a few days ago and was looking at all different things or so called 'kits' required to make your site up to date. I had to search or dig(g) through different sites to come up with ideas on how to make your site more viewable. Digg it, del.icio.us are some of the buzzwords that I grasped recently.
After reviewing them slowly, I have now started to adapt to them. Some of the things I've been observing is that all sites required a login with a profile. Could there be just ONE site that will take care of everything for me. I'm tired of creating profiles over and over again !
What we want is a mother of all Web 2.0 components ! Please share your opinions

Paper cards ??

Paper , recycled paper or hybrid? Recently we've seen everyone taking up recycling seriously. A few weeks back I walked to the Publix - a closeby grocery store and I was asked " Paper or plastic"?

World started off with paper and then human beings found that paper meant killing trees and now we are back to paper since plastic has its flaws. The claim - newly made paper is made of old paper ! WiKI has some links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_recycling


So next time you're at a grocery store ask for paper !

What are other things made of plastic ? Credit cards. I wonder how much plastic can be saved by moving from plastic to paper (???) cards?
Are credit card companies looking for a change .... yet?

Check scan at Bank Of America ATM

As I pulled into the Bank Of America ATM this evening I was amazed at their new ATM technology. I did not have to put my check in an envelope. Thats actually a double bonus for me as most of the time I forget my pen somewhere and gives me a sense of frustration.
The nice thing about the check scan is it shows you the check scanned and amazingly the check value gets put in automatically in the value amount.
This might have been out for a while but not at my other bank - Wachovia. Others out there - therez definitely a lot of innovation still yet to come !
As always keep thinking and be inquisitive.