Overly secure ‘Google’ Chrome

I was trying to reach this URL which came in Google’s own search result, pointed to Google’s own domain and silly me… Can’t I see that “www” can be such a security risk…

Supermarket Hopper

I feel like calling myself a supermarket hopper. I frequent different modern retail outlets (supermarkets, hypermarkets etc.) looking for something interesting that makes daily chores easy.

Ready to Eat items are only an occasional relief. Both from the price and taste perspective they can not be eaten on a regular basis. They are more of a substitute for occasional restaurant food.

Recently I discovered potato powder from a brand call Veg-it. This is dry potato powder, in which you only have to mix water to get potato mash. And I must confess I am loving it. Suddenly making aaloo paranthas and samosas at home is so much easier and faster. Boiling and mashing the potatoes is the most boring and lengthy part of preparing these dishes otherwise.

Another discovery a while back was Good Life brand of milk from Nandini. They are not substantially costlier than the normal milk packets, but they don’t need boiling. For someone like me, who is not a regular milk consumer, but does not like getting embarrassed when someone visits and there is no milk in house for a cup of tea, it was an answer to all milk prayers. I can keep the supply for several days/weeks. Until the pack is opened, it does not even need refrigeration. After opening it too, just refrigerating it is enough. No boiling required at regular intervals! Wow!

One thing I would really be happy to get somewhere is a dough maker. For atta, maida etc. That’s one time taking chore, for which I have not found a suitable solution. This is what my ideal dough making machine will do. You put in atta or maida or anything else with which you have to make a dough. Then put water in a separate compartment. You should not have to worry about the exact quantity of water. You specify what the stuff is (atta or maida or something else) and what is the purpose of making the dough (dough for making pooris needs to be harder than that for making rotis). Alternately you can specify how hard or soft you want the dough to be by rotating a knob (or though some other equally intuitive arrangement). Then the machine figures out the right quantity of water to be mixed, makes the dough and gives you a way to easily take it out and clean the machine. A more intelligent machine would not have the pre-set ratio of dough material and water. Rather it would incrementally mix the water and then test if the hardness of the dough is right – that would be closer to how the humans do it. It may even allow you some manual adjustments of the quantity of water. This would be helpful in situations where different brands of dough material have slightly different physical properties.

Beyond the cooking chores, another thing I am looking for is some device to clean the keyboard of laptops and desktops easily. There are several wipes, sprays etc. that are in the market to clean the screen, but there is nothing I could find in Bangalore that would help in cleaning the keyboard. There are some brushes, but that’s not enough. Ideal device would a powerful enough, but a handy vacuum cleaner. Otherwise, there are aerosol sprays that can help clean the dust, but I have been unable to locate them in Bangalore. They can not be brought in the flights; so can’t even get it from the US I did get a vacuum cleaner from ebay India, but it was wonderfully ineffective. It is powered by USB and yeah – USB can’t give enough power. I wish they had made something usable powered by electricity, rather than something cool powered by USB and totally useless! Anybody has found something in Bangalore for this purpose, please do let me know.

And hey, one gadget I would like to acquire is this – http://iball.co.in/inner/show_product_details2.asp?catid=26&pid=77. But am just resisting…

Kachra

I was rearranging my house today to make space for the printer I am expecting to get this week. The process soon became an extensive cleaning process. Here are two heaps of ‘kachra’ exclusively for you…

A moment of timepass in the day

I am stuck on several things. On the bank for making the vendor payment. On the programmers to finish the first step to do anything else in my part time job. On Abhaya to release some features on pothi.com. And hence, I have some free time on my hand. Decided to grab the domain name with my name and do something total timepass with it. The result is http://jayajha.com/

The polls will be there for a week and I will try to add a poll each day. Enjoy!

Tip for increasing Page Views

If you have to increase PVs on your wordpress.com hosted blog by leaps and bounds, just write a post comparing wordpress.com and blogger.com Trust me!

Indian Spices

I realized that I had never quite understood why Indian spices were such a big deal in the history of trade and business. It is after visiting places outside India that I realized just what a blessing Indian spices are for the food. How nicely does it takes away the blandness of raw taste of things, how nicely does its aroma arouse you appetite, what tempting colours does it give to your food. I bow to thee!

Maid and Job Change

Looking for a maid is like looking for a company to switch job to. Nobody you talk to says his/her is good!

A milestone achieved…

A job change (not again!)? A promotion? A raise (not so soon)? An engagement? A wedding? A baby born to a relative?

No, none of these. But a milestone has been achieved in my life today. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the cooking gas cylinder which served me for 8 long months in Bangalore finally ran out of gas today. It had to be refilled. So, in last eight months I have cooked enough to exhaust one gas cylinder. Would you classify me as en experienced cook? Of course, you have to adjust for the full fledged cooking done by mom for almost 12-13 days during her stay here and similar thing done by a relative for almost 10 days. But still…

I will miss that first gas cylinder of my life. It made people look surprised! At the mention that it has been going on and on ever since I got it soon after coming to Bangalore. It made my mom ask almost everytime towards the end of our weekly telephone conversation,”And your cylinder? It’s still going on?” It made the helpful friend, who wanted to give away his two cylinders to me, say, “Probably I’ll give them to someone else. You do not seem to need them.” Its gone friends – after accompanying me for 8 complete months and probably a little more…

And the time it chose to go off. Friends were visiting. I was all enthu to display my cooking skills and had put in hordes of potatoes to boil in pressure cooker. Meanwhile, had started making dough of the flour. And showing a complete disregard for the extreme inconvenience of situation, it went off. No potatoes boiled, no pooris made! Thanks to friendly neighbours, cooking still went on. But the gas cylinder, dear readers – it went off in its own style – arrogant, proud, uncaring, unreliable… And in the 8 long months, I had almost forgotten that I may have to get it refilled

The world is not worth trusting. What has happened is not an indicator of what is going to happen. Too bad!

Dedicated to Bangalore life!

तरस गई हूँ मैं
पथरा गई आँखें।
देख चुकी रास्ता
कई बार जा के।

पूछा पड़ोसियों से
उसे देखा है कहीं।
पागल समझते हैं
मुझे लोग सभी।

बहुत मन्नतें माँगी
बहुत रोई, गिड़गिड़ाई।
कितने संदेशे भेजे पर
काम वाली आज फिर नहीं आई।

–

जाओ बढ़ो,
बिना हॉर्न बजाए,
मुझे बाईं ओर से
एक इंच की भी दूरी दिए बिना
ओवरटेक करो
चलाओ अपनी गाड़ी
साँप की तरह रेंगते हुए
करो आगे उसे
इधर से, उधर से
जान आफ़त में डालते हुए।
क्या होगा अगर आगे मुझसे निकल भी गए तो?
अगले जाम में
या अगले सिगनल पर
हमें फिर मिलना है।
फिर एक ही जगह से
सब शुरु करना है।

लेकिन फिर भी
जाओ, बढ़ो।

–

– Sometimes you just have to find a way to laugh on things! Despite the title of the post, I do not claim that these experiences are limited to just Bangalore.

Technorati : Funny, Hindi, Poetry

The websites they make…

http://emergencysoftware.com/

Have a look at the above link. I was simply bowled over… How can people make such websites? That too for commercial establishments.

1. Black Background (Grrr… What do you have against my eyes?)
2. Those irritating animated pictures (More of the Grrr…. of the kind mentioned above)
3. And the king of everything on the website – the tag and the way its written. “SOFTWARE SO HOT… IT SMOKES!!!”
   I mean – wow!!! That beats the cheapest advertisements you’d see in the streets made by I-think-I-am-smart people.
4. What about that statue of liberty?? Right below “Dealer Opportunities”? Pray why did one need that? Something particularly American about all of the above?

Hff… Take deep breath. Move on.

Technorati : Bad Website, Website