TranceUpdate: Forget Me

Forget Me by Eide and Andre(Estiva remix). The original is great but lacks punch, Estiva's reworked track has jus the right amount of fast paced beats and slow rythms.

The embedded vid is from Above and Beyond's Trance around the world.

Which reminds me, the official Top 100 DJ list is out. Armin's on the top followed by Deadmau5, PvD,Above and Beyond, and Schulz among others.

∞ loop

Freezing works!

I was going around sites looking for easy DIYs and computer hacks when I found one that just made my day! There was this long forum thread about how freezing dead rechargeable batteries can bring them back to life. We're all aware how our camera and laptop batteries seem to grow tired with every use and retain less and less charge with time. It's called memory effect.
Everytime a battery is used partially(as we all do wth laptops and cams), the leftover space on it "dies".... Suppose we use up 90% of a full battery and keep it aside, some space in the unused 10% of the battery does not charge next time... This way with time, a battery finally breathes it's last. Or so was thought.

Apparently by stroring a battery in sub zero temperatures for long , the chemicals in it can be "re-oriented" and given a fresh lease of life. I was very skeptical of this method first cause it made no sense. Also, it reportedly worked only on Nickel Cadmium (NiCD) and Nickel Metal Hydride(NiMH) batteries. These are extensively used in AA and AAA sizes and some cameras too.

Mine is a 5 year old dead Lithium Ion(battery) and the forums were already rife with claims that the method didn't work with Li-on. I decided to give it a shot anyway. I wrapped(as instructed) my bulky laptop battery in a moisture proof plastic cover and shoved it to the back of the freezer. I cranked up the thermostat to "maximum"(my Aunt was not amused) and waited. A full 4 days later... my bro took it to his room(ya, he's using the relic now) and charged it a full 12 hours before giving it a try.

And guess what..... it works!!! WOOOHOO


It gives 8 minutes now but with 20 or more charge cycles it should give a healthy 30 minutes or more. Cheers to uber geeks and their forums!

Persistence and windows

After what may go down as the most frustrating 6 hours of my life.... I finally succeeded in installing Windows xp on my bro's Jurassic Acer. Last time I tried, I ended up settling for the PCOSlinux which to be honest fared quite well. It handled pdfs, docs, music and video without hiccups. The problem was the experience.... the unfriendly desktop, the alien folders and a general lack of oomph made it lackluster compared to Windows. And it would'nt accept USB internet devices. And that's a big bummer.

So I brought it over yesterday to give it another try. Here's what happened:

Trial 1: Made a USB bootable flash disk using WinToFlash and tried it on the laptop(USB boot activated). Nothing. Something about a hal.dll file missing and just no boot from USB.

And I've heard linux kindof tries to prevent windows installations :-p

Trial 2: Downloaded DBAN, a nuking tool to wipe my hard drive. After a couple of hiccups starting on bootup, it loaded and wiped my hard drive clean in 2 hours. 40GB of RAW unpartitioned space

Tried booting from flash from Trial 1 again. Nothing.

Trial 3: Tried loading the setup files and boot initialisation commands using the command line. Went ok for a while before hitting a roadblock. Some files were missing. Nevertheless, I tried booting from the disk and wallah! Nothing.

Trial 4: Read on a forum that formatting using the inbuilt windows formatter didn't work with some drives. Downloaded HP's formatting tool and tried the procedures from above 1 and 3. No luck.

Trial 5: Downloaded USB_prep8, a set of batch files to create a bootable disk. One component PeToUSB refused to recognize my 8gb Kingmax pendrive. I googled that too... apparently it supported flash drives upto 2gb only formatted in FAT16 files system. Now come on...

Trial n: I don't remember how many combinations I tried of the above programs, and before long it was morning, a full 6 hours spent on the dead laptop. I was sleepy as hell and almost giving up. Then I struck jackpot.

I tried WinToFlash again with FAT16 as filesystem and all features turned on(like format, EULA info etc) and the program took about 10 minutes to make my USB drive.

I was welcomed with the setup screen on bootup and the files loaded in a record 20 seconds!!! In twenty minutes, the laptop was running on the friendly neigherborhood super OS, WINDOWS XP!

Then I retired to my bed for a "chain ki neend"

A-cer-mey-dard

Spirit speaks...indeed

Spirit speaks by Nanda from the Elysium album. Listen to this one with the bass and treble turned up. And the lights closed. LSD...

Classic rediscovered

Burning Up by Kuffdam was a mainstay on my playlist until I lost it sometime in December due to a hard drive crash. This Mango remix has haunting lyrics(yet to figure em out though) and a perfect beat to match it. Just found it on Youtube again.

Dynamite...nuff said

Movie reviews are dime a dozen these days. Some good, some bad.... and some paid. But let's face it, everytime a new movie's released we hit up our favorite review site to get a heads up. Afterall we should get our money's worth, right? I have my own method: for older movies I check the imdb score, rotten tomatoes rating and a few established reviewers(I hate masand types btw).

Last time I posted a review here was bollywood movie "Striker". First up, my blog hits don't run into the millions, so expecting visitors flocking to my page for a review is foolish. My intention is to kindof soft persuade my friends into watching it by posting a review here. One of my best friends thinks I'm weird because he ends up sleeping everytime he sees a movie I suggested. He's yet to understand that he's not over the cliched romance or actions flicks yet. Anything arty or offbeat and zzzz, he's bored.

So with a view on "suggesting" a good movie for my handful of readers.... here's my review on the 2004 movie Napoleon Dynamite.

The plot revolves around a high school nerd who for some unknown reason, is named Napoleon Dynamite. Set in a remote American town in Idaho, the movie is about the life of this nerdy outcast clad in tucked in undersized T shirt and an elastic pyjama. A pair of spectacles completes the look. He befriends a mexican exchange student, Pedro and the rest of the story is
better seen than discussed. There's nothing much to it, it's a simple plot. But how it builds up to a nostalgically sweet finale is what makes this movie stand out. I wasn't aware of the cult status this movie enjoys- Hell, Idaho celebrated a national festival in it's honor for a few years. Don't want to spoil the fun for my friends who're going to watch it(I can give you my copy any time, gimme a call), but one song to the end of the movie made me sick with nostalgia... almost to the point of breaking into tears. This endeth my 9 line review.

Watch it

And oh... my aforementioned friend here need not watch. The movie's pace is too slow for you buddy.

Image source: http://images1.fanpop.com

Time passeth away

Chasing lyrics

Everytime I come across a great vocal track... finding it's lyrics is piece of cake. There are two tracks though which have proven really difficult....I've scoured the internet for the lyrics with no luck. Chasin a feelin by Quivver was an instant hit with me... the beats and the electronic background line was like magic. The next one Leave a sign by Irisdeejay is yet another track I'd love to sing along with. I am not dat good with english... any help with the lyrics appreciated.

Chasin a feeling





Leave a sign

C up C down

College life sucked but atleast it gave me something to write about. The past few weeks have been really slow...first I got sick, then went home for some rest. Now that I'm back, I tried hard to think of a topic for my new post....my mind's all blank. My blogger buddies are participating in competitions... technology, movies and the like. I don't do that.

Why not write something about current events? In any case I'm used to reading my blog like a diary so this'll come in handy as a history reference in the future :-p

Commonwealth Games- 70,000 crores of wealth shared commonly between the organisers. They did such a fine job at it... falling bridges, false(lol) ceilings falling to the ground, filthy buildings, snakes in bed, paw marks on bedsheets...the list goes on. This merely reinforces a point we all know already. Corruption is everywhere- right from the smallest of offices to the grandest of board rooms.

Ayodhya - The nation sat in mute silence, paramilitary forces were bought in, shops downed there shutters in what was undoubtedly the most awaited verdict since independance. Political parties were ready with their agendas... whichever way the verdict went they had something to gain from it. Elaborating on this is unnecessary. What they did not anticipate was this: normal
folk had long let go and give a _ _ about the outcome. As it were, the verdict was met with calm and dignity, as our PC himself put it. Any hopes of the communal forces on either side were put out in a puff.

So corruption is at an all time high and babus are busy filling their coffers, On the bright side common people have moved on from this communal crap. We were fragile once and communal political forces exploited us to their advantage. We are now mature, open minded and tolerant.

Image Courtesy: Found this funny cartoon on blogger friend Iswarya's FB profile. Kindof sums up the whole issue, nai?