Mumbai BEST bus price hike

  By Nishant | April 27, 2012 - 2:49 pm | Mumbai
1 Comment

If you’ve travelled by the bus today, especially at a peak hour, it is likely that you might have rode with a crowd of moaning passengers, ranting over the outrageous hike in ticket fares with effect from today – 27 April 2012. I personally was taken aback as well, when I was asked to buy a Rs. 13 ticket as opposed to the usual Rs. 8. And the Rs. 10 ticket now raised to Rs. 16, which is like 60% of a raise. The Magic bus pass is now Rs. 700 monthly and Rs. 2000 quarterly. Just a year back, the fares rose by Rs. 2, which was acceptable. But the new rise is just another hole, this time a much bigger one, in the common man’s pocket, in Mumbai. image With the sudden rising expenses in Mumbai, the island city as well as its suburbs, seem to be moving at a speedy pace towards a standard of living that only makes lives miserable for the local residents, mainly the middle class. With property rates also soaring sky high, luxury apartments amounting to crores of rupees, Mumbai has turned into the most expensive city in the world for its locals, an average Indian now requiring as long as three centuries of work to afford one of these luxury flats in the city.



New Super Mario Bros. 2 for 3DS announced!

  By Nishant | April 21, 2012 - 5:09 pm | mario, Nintendo DS
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YAY! A new Mario handheld game, just within a year since the previous one, Super Mario 3D Land released. The sequel to New Super Mario Bros. for the DS, is here, however this time for the 3DS. Announced for release via Nintendo Direct for this August of 2012.

I’m not sure if I should rejoice or frown at the fact that it is for the 3DS, since I don’t own a 3DS yet at the time of posting this, only a DS Lite. But I welcome the change in the console, if the game, compared to its predecessor, actually has something new that only 3DS can offer. Yeah yeah, the 3D is still there.

More Screenshots:  (more…)

Music to my ears.. is back

  By Nishant | April 18, 2012 - 8:46 pm | unboxing
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Finally my second pair of EP-630s arrived today evening, from Infibeam.com.

Ankit had introduced me last year to IEMs (In-Ear Monitors). Well, quite a few others also used it, but he went a step ahead and straight-away gifted them to me. The most popular one of the lot, in the low budget range, the Creative EP-630 in-ears. Got them around September 2011. My first time plugging them into my ears was a bit.. uncomfortable, as I wasn’t used to ears being completely shut off from external noise, plus something being stuck into my ear canals. However, within a few days, I got used to them, and loved the totally new music experience that came along.. with added BASS of course! I began to enjoy BASS, which I didn’t care much about earlier.  (more…)

Hathway Internet upgrade to 2Mbps

  By Nishant | April 18, 2012 - 2:31 pm | ISPs and Telecom
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After struggling on the 512Kbps plan, as I earlier posted 2 years back, I finally got a chance to jump directly to 2Mbps. (The struggling part was due to crappy 10GB fair usage policy per month)

Hathway Broadband has been somewhat good at uptime and speed, however what sucked the most was their Fair Usage Policy on ALL plans, ranging from 5 – 20GB per month, after which you are dropped to 256Kbps, which is unbearable, especially for YouTube. But just last month, they came out with a plethora of new plans, probably feeling the heat from other ISPs like MTNL, with minimum speed 600Kbps after FUP.

I applied for the Flash 2 Max plan yesterday, which came in effect from today, with a speed of 2Mbps until 48GB, for 3 months, at a price of Rs. 2405 (incl. taxes). However, as initially it seemed too good to be true for Hathway, it really wasn’t.. that good, as I later realized there was a catch. The 48GB advertised limit was actually 16GB per month, for 3 months, crossing which you are dropped to 600Kbps. Every month, the 16GB cap is reset and speed is restored back.

Review: Pages seem to load almost instantly. On YouTube, up to 720p quality, the playback is smooth.

Cheaper alternative to this plan is the Flash 2 Lite, 26GB for 3 months, in place of 48GB. So per month FUP is 9GB in that case. Priced at Rs. 1800 without taxes.

Higher alternative to this plan is the Flash 2 Ultra, with 70GB for 3 months, priced at Rs. 2800 without taxes. 

More plans: http://www.hathway.com/hathway-broadband/home-broadband.php

Sony Xperia Arc launcher for Galaxy Ace

  By Nishant | December 11, 2011 - 3:02 pm | Android
12 Comments

This is the Sony Ericsson home launcher app from the Xperia Arc, ported to Galaxy Ace. While I was initially not so keen on trying out a stock launcher (owing to the fact that I dislike TouchWiz, and not a fan of Sense either), this one feels pretty good, mostly for the fun animations – the bubbles at the corners, the dragging of icons, the trash can giving two vibrates while closing the lid after deleting an app, and more. True, being a stock launcher, it doesn’t have the amount of customization options that ADW or GO or LP offer, but doesn’t hurt to try out.

For Galaxy Ace:

Ace-Sonerhome-5x.apk

Widget.zip

(more…)

Trying out Dominos Margherita

  By Nishant | December 7, 2011 - 2:52 pm | Food n Drinks
3 Comments

image

I always wondered how the most basic and minimal kind of pizza tasted at Dominos. I’m talking about the Margherita.

I had looked it up and discovered that Margherita was named so for it was made in commemoration of a queen. It also seemed quite yum when seen on YouTube cooking videos. However, just a few nights back I finally got a chance to try it out, when I wasn’t too hungry or in a mood to always go in for the usual topping pizzas. So I ordered it home, the Double Cheese Margherita however, as I knew a topping-less pizza would suck even more without adequate amount of cheese. Costed me Rs. 130 with taxes.

And all I can say is.. it’s not so bad. I give it 2 stars. The extra cheese saved the day. It was okay for a one-time trial. I’m never ordering it again. Because once you are used to pizzas with toppings, this one just feels dull to begin with. I actually felt the urge to throw in my own toppings over it, but then felt lazy to walk to the kitchen and fetch any, so just had it anyhow. I would rather suggest having 2 Dominos Pizza Mania Doubles instead at the same price. Boring experience yet happy to have tried it.

CyanogenMod 7 on Galaxy Ace

  By Nishant | November 5, 2011 - 5:30 pm | Android
128 Comments

Back when my phone was new in the dev scene, around May 2011, there was just 1 custom ROM (VillianROM) which I played around with and ended up screwing up my phone and faced service center woes. Finally gathered up the courage to return to the flashing scene, after having dozens of ROMs out there for my phone now, and having gotten bored of the same old look and feel past few months.

CM 7 Galaxy Ace bootscreen animation

CM 7 Galaxy Ace bootscreen animation

CyanogenMod is one of the most popular ROMs out there for Android phones, and it being currently in RC stage for Galaxy Ace, I decided to try it out. Kind of pleased with the smooth window animations and power features available; however most excited about the Theme Chooser, which is one step ahead of theming simply your launcher, by applying new looks to your status bar/its icons/keyboard/and the rest of the system UI (best part being any MDPI CM 7 theme downloadable out there will work, nothing device specific I suppose). Quite a few bugs around the ROM for now, since it isn’t yet a final version. I’m having to mess around with the system files then and now. But surely try it out if you’re a rooted user.

How to install CM 7 on Galaxy Ace

I don’t intend to make this a detailed walkthrough post, but in case the snapshots tempt you, here’s a little setup in brief, assuming you’re an advanced user.

  1. You must be on a stock or custom Gingerbread ROM. (eg. KPE, DDKQ6, etc.)
  2. Install ClockworkMod Recovery for Galaxy Ace by copying the zip to SD Card and applying it from the stock recovery.
  3. Stock recovery will be replaced by CWM. Download CM 7 cm-7.1.0-RC1-Cooper-KANG-10.10.11-Grif_07.zip and fixes cm-7.1.0-RC1-Fix1-12.10.11-Grif_07.zip
    New stable version by FrozenAceTeam (Maps working now): http://www.mediafire.com/?dg4r4hl4k6bxdr4
  4. Boot up CWM and backup your current ROM first (Make sure you have enough space on SD card ~300MBs else backup will be broken). Next, clear data/factory reset/cache. Install zip from SD Card and select CyanogenMod. After it is installed, download FM Radio Fix and flash it, if you require FM Radio.
  5. Reboot phone and enjoy CM 7!
UPDATE to CM 7.2

If you’ve already installed the above CM 7.1, here’s the update to it.

  1. Download CWM 5 and flash it in Recovery.
  2. Download  CyanogenMod 7.2-COOPER-KANG-AXEL-RC1 and flash in Recovery. Wipe cache. (Data wipe not needed since upgrading from CM 7.1) Reboot.
  3. In case you have issues with Google apps, flash GAPPS in Recovery. (If apps like GMail still force close, restore the previous working version using Titanium)

Screenshots

Sharing a few awesome snapshots of my CM 7 revamped Galaxy Ace. Themes applied vary.

 

Which Bourbon person are you?

  By Nishant | June 26, 2011 - 6:06 pm | Food n Drinks
1 Comment

No we’re not talking about the Bourbon whiskey. The more familiar Bourbon, which are the sugar-sprinkled, sandwiched chocolate cream biscuits.

Britannia Bourbon

Until a few years back, asking for a Bourbon biscuit at the store didn’t give you much choices as you get today. Bourbon (in India) was, as far as I know, only manufactured by Britannia then.

Parle decided to step in and offer its own Bourbon biscuits, which I suppose was priced lower than Britannia’s. As I’ve read, it was simply Parle Bourbon earlier, and later they shifted it to their Hide n Seek brand and rechristened it to Parle Hide n Seek Bourbon. Parle also has a Bourbon offered in their Kreams range of cream biscuits, the less premium range.

Over the course of time, other players stepped in, such as Priyagold, and Sunfeast with their Dream Cream branded Bourbon. There are probably plenty others having saturated the market with more Bourbons.

However I’ve only tasted Britannia’s, Parle’s and Sunfeast’s offerings. At the time of writing this post, I seem to prefer Sunfeast Dream Cream Bourbon over the others. The inner filling feels creamier and the outer biscuit softer, as compared to the other two. After Sunfeast, I would prefer Parle (Hide n Seek) , for a somewhat better taste than Britannia.

As far as I know, Sunfeast and Parle (Hide n Seek) are both priced at Rs. 10, whereas Britannia has jumped back to its original price of Rs. 12, after staying at Rs. 10 to compete with Parle (Hide n Seek) for a while.

So which Bourbon brand(s) do YOU prefer? Leave your votes below. I’ve allowed multiple voting (upto 3 choices) for I know it could get tough to narrow down on just one option when it comes to food :P

Which is your favourite Bourbon biscuit brand?

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The General – A Train War movie

  By Nishant | June 25, 2011 - 2:43 am | Movies
2 Comments

Having summer holidays at the moment, and I considered it would be a nice habit to blog about the stuff I manage to do around in this one month.. well, the ‘productive’ kind of stuff. Actually, anything that doesn’t include just mere surfing and chatting around would be considered productive. Even watching movies or shows and playing games.

As usual I was channel surfing, and I hit upon this movie called ‘The General’, which was based on a train. As I’m already kind of obsessed with trains, I left it running. A few minutes into it, and my mom and me began to quite enjoy the comedic act put together by the brave soldier, jumping in and out around the train, improvising with stuff to overcome hurdles and obstacles in the way thrown by the enemies, to venture into their land to save this kidnapped lady on their train (the enemy’s train). It was kind of a war being made over running trains, however with a pretty humorous approach to it, rather than violence (which I wouldn’t have watched otherwise).

I later google’d up to find it was a very old film from 1926. Well, the black and white scenes along with no vocals and usage of speech cards between the frames for showing conversation, did make it feel like it was pretty classic. I guess I just got to watch it mid-way through the film, however it was entertaining, and also a different experience as it wasn’t a usual current age colorful film with sound and visual effects and stuff. Maybe I’ll watch the entire movie on YouTube sometime to catch up on the beginning.

Storyline

Johnnie loves his train (“The General”) and Annabelle Lee. When the Civil War begins he is turned down for service because he’s more valuable as an engineer. Annabelle thinks it’s because he’s a coward. Union spies capture The General with Annabelle on board. Johnny must rescue both his loves.

> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017925/

CNN kid grows up with Halo, reviews 3DS

  By Nishant | June 21, 2011 - 9:43 am | Nintendo DS
2 Comments

Credits to http://www.nintendostar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/rant-290x300.pngThis is the worst and one of the most immature video reviews I’ve ever come across. It’s.. not even close to being biased either, as any of the countless DS vs PSP videos I’ve ever seen. News people like CNN should definitely stick to just news, what they (might be) good at. Or at least hire a real hardcore gamer for review purposes, not someone (some kid rather pretending to be so young so as to have) ‘grown up with Halo’, LOL. That line still gives me the LMFAO lolwut?

Watch the CNN video clip that follows below to make more sense out of my statements:

That person has my sympathy. Seriously, I feel bad for his ignorance and maybe his fate, that had him live under a rock for the past 7 years or so. This is really sad and unfortunate for a news channel to have hired such a wannabe gamer.

Here, I needn’t say much, read one of the several rants that came up on the Internet about this:

http://www.gamesradar.com/3ds/nintendo-3ds/news/cnns-expert-3ds-reviewer-has-no-idea-what-hes-talking-about-grew-up-on-halo/a-20110325141414467053/g-20100616102754448006

Oh and if you’ve gotten this far, do check out all the 100+ comments on that page as well, that would save me time from writing the same out here on this post, lol.

I rather thought someone ought to have initiated a viral Twitter attack on CNN, and also this Halo ‘kid’, so as to make them feel ashamed and humiliated enough to stay away from hitting on real gamers this hard in the future (well except for the devoted Apple and Sony non-Nintendo fanboys who’d rather crave for more like these).

Disclaimer: I respect the guy for whatever tech reviewing he must be upto otherwise on his job. Not entirely bashing him at a personal level.

Link credits: Petey

3G speed on 2G Airtel plan

  By Nishant | June 12, 2011 - 1:02 pm | ISPs and Telecom
128 Comments

This is yet another reason to love Airtel! 3G was enabled on my phone ever since they were offering free trials in the month of Feb-March 2011. However for some reason, even though my Nokia N73 was 3G enabled, I still got slow EDGE speeds, not sure why.

After I got my Android phone, I experienced real 3G speeds of 3.5 Mbps, however the free 3G trial ended soon after a few days. Yet, when I set my phone to 3G mode post the trial, I get a constant speed of 500-800 Kbps, which is on my 2G Mobile Office plan priced at 98/month with a 2G free data usage limit.

image

On occasions, it has also gone up to 2mbps as you can notice in the screenshot. While this isn’t really 3G speed, however isn’t it awesome to get half to one or two megabits of bandwidth at the price of an EDGE connection?

The speed makes web browsing, downloading apps and files, as well as watching YouTube videos a cinch. They load in a jiffy and no buffering time as well.

Are you on Airtel too? Or another carrier? Do you get such amazing speeds as well? Do share.

EDIT: I see a lot of traffic coming onto this post through searching for how to get 3G speed on 2G Airtel. So even though I’m not sure of this method, you could try it.

  • You first need to have 3G network enabled on your number I suppose, so sms 3G to 121. You’ll have to subscribe to the 1 day plan for Rs. 8, just so you get 3G enabled.
  • Now as usual, activate your 2G plan of Rs. 98 for 2GB/month. This isn’t tested so please don’t blame me if it does not work. Set your phone to 3G and you might just get 3G speeds even on 2G plan, because 3G network might still be working.
  • I’ve read from another blog post, there’s another (tested and working) way to do this, by activating 100MB 2G plan for Rs. 10 after the 1 day 3G plan. The plan will keep getting renewed every 3 days and you shall be paying Rs. 100 for 1GB for a month, and get 3G speed. Although it seems costlier than Rs. 98/month for 2GB Mobile Office, but give it a shot if either one doesn’t work. At your own risk that is.
  • Please comment back if any of the method worked for you. Thanks.
UPDATE:
Here are Airtel’s official 3G plans. I suppose the first two are affordable if you aren’t going to make heavy usage of it. Free usage per monthly rentals are as follows:
200MB @ Rs. 100
500MB @ Rs. 200
1200MB @ Rs. 450
3p/10KB post the free usage. SMS ’3G’ to 121 to activate. ’3G USE’ to 121 to check usage.
(The above plans were told to me by the customer care guy. Airtel’s official site however differs: http://airtel.in/Airtel-3G/tariffs.html)

If you simply need 3G because EDGE is turning out tad slow for your daily surfing, app download and Whatsapping needs, try these packs out. And as I’ve confirmed, you are only charged for the number of days you use these plans. So if you deactivate 2G in the middle of your billing month, activate 3G for few days, return back to 2G, you won’t be charged entire monthly plan rentals for each of these activations. Not bad to try out the plans then. 

Super Mario for Nintendo 3DS!

  By Nishant | June 11, 2011 - 10:58 pm | mario, Nintendo DS
3 Comments

YES! The trailers are finally revealed. For the past couple of months, I’ve waited for this day in June when the E3 conference would be held, and Nintendo would offer a sneak peak into the game. Until now, all we knew was that it’s going to be a 3D game, and the return of the Racoon suit. But.. after watching the trailer LIVE on the E3 broadcast.. I was astounded. Take a look at the Official Trailer:

OKAY! So the trailer gave a demo of the amazing 3D world and the enemies and power-ups the game has to offer. I was okay until that point. Yes, I desperately needed a 3DS to play it. However, the next day or so, I discover THIS:
(WATCH IT PLEASE!)

And THAT is what FREAKS ME OUT. AAAAAAAAAA!!! What the..
The familiar 1-2 world we’ve played in the classic games, completey revamped to a fresh new 3D look. That is really what you can call a 3D version of the actual Super Mario Bros. platform games. It is like.. taking the 2.5D New Super Mario Bros. to an entirely new 3D level. I always wondered how they would pull it off, or rather, how would the platformer look in 3D. I thought it would resemble the other 3D games we’ve had, like Super Mario 64, which don’t really come close to the platform version. They are somewhat different in their own way.  (more…)