Trip to Akshardham

I am just back from a trip to the beautiful Akshardham temple in Delhi. For some reason, cameras aren't allowed inside so no pix I am afraid :(

1. Park inside the complex - charges are Rs. 20/- Only one person can go into the parking lot and mobile phones are not allowed in the complex, so its best if everyone gathers at the enquiry desk. Alos, you can buy a guide for Rs. 5/- at the enquiry desk, it really comes handy
2. Once inside you can buy tickets to the three shows - Sahajanand Darshan, Neelkanth Darshan, Sanskruti Vihar for Rs. 120/- per adult. The shows take 1 hr 15 min total, waiting time outside should be approx 15 min if you go for the Hindi version; an English show with very few patrons occurs, but only once an hour
3. There is a nice pure-veg Premavati Food Court inside that is nothing short of being a food factory - even Dosas are delivered JIT - order and takeaway within 20s
4. There's an Abhishek Mandapam where you can offer prayers, also a souvenir shop where you can buy stuff
5. There are musical fountains at 6:15 PM (Rs. 20/- per adult sold separately). Other attractions are a nice garden with displays of prominent freedom fighters and Indians in history, as well as a lotus shaped lawn.
   

The main temple complex is beautifully decorated and architected with marble interiors and red sandstone exteriors. There are intricate carvings on the interior and exterior walls, modelled on the Konark temple, minus the erotic carvings of course :) One difference is that the Konark artisans didnt leave any emtpy patches, these guys do leave occasional small ones. The carvings on the roof reminded me of the Jain temple at Ranakpur, very details and multi-layered, particularly on the inside of the domes.

Overall, the entire trip takes something like 6 hours on a weekday when the temple is empty. Its a must see place but only on weekdays when its less crowded. BTW, for some reason "Drunkards" are listed as banned items, so dont tell these people you drink (if you do :) ) There are also anti-war and pro-vegetarianism displays inside, so be prepared to be assaulted by that too :)

Trip to Sultanpur Sanctuary

Well I am back from my one day trip to Sultanpur is over and I am back in Delhi. Pix are up, you can see them here.Overall, the place and environment is really amazing, you get to see a ton of birds easily, its a really cool place to spend a day... if you can get to it. The road to reach it is a living nightmare. HUDA certainly lives up to their name :) My City's bottom scraped the road like 6 times due to potholes, and I was driving really carefully.

Today I also completed my pre-order of the 5800 - you pay Rs. 2000/- and get the 5800 in first week January '09 for Rs. 20k. As a gift to those pre-ordering, Nokia is giving a discount of Rs. 2k on the phone (er... I am not too sure of this, I might have to end up paying 20k more at delivery, meaing no discount, including booking amount :P), also they are bundliing a pair of Sennheiser LX 90 earphones for only Rs. 600/- as opposed to the "list price" of Rs. 4k ($80) Before you get all excited, Amazon UK is already selling them for £6, which comes to approx Rs. 420/- anyway. Prices in Amazon US are higher ($48 i.e. ~Rs. 2300/-), if it makes you feel better...

Still, with or without freebies, you do get the handset early. Clubbed with my 8 GB 2nd Gen iPod Touch (Rs. 12k in Pallika), I get way more features and storage (16 GB total across both devices) than an 8 GB iPhone 3G, a handset that is not locked to any provider at a total cost equal to a 8GB iPhone 3G (Rs. 32k in India), making for a really good deal. The last date for the pre-order is 31st Dec BTW. (Thank god I didn't buy that Xbox 360 - I would be bankrupt next month if I had)

Secure Passwords Howto

Lifehacker has some interesting tips on how to secure your EMail from hackers. The main tips are choose a better password and obfuscate the answer to security question (which is often the weakest link in the chain)

Alternately, you could use a password manager like KeePass, in which case, you can use Dropbox to sync the password manager across computers, essentially acting as a single sign on application. Another option along the same lines is to use VeriSign's Personal Identity Portal, where you sign in to just the PIP and then it sign you in to all your websites.

I am off to Sultanpur National Park tomorrow, pix soon :) Lets hope getting there is easy... Also, I just found out (from an ad on MapMyIndia of all places!) that people in India can "pre-book" a Nokia 5800 here :)

Lstly, while we are talking about security and stuff, this shows how easy it is to bypass country based IP filters...

Desktop Customization Guide

I am a hardcore Windows XP user. While I have quite a bit of knowledge of Linux, compared to Linux, XP "just works". However, the OS's UI looks rather dated. While there is a Royale Noir theme you can download to make eveything look dark (and Office 2007 can also be made to use a dark theme), its still just some colors added on top of an otherwise bland OS.

For quite some time I have used WindowsBlinds along with Vista Transformation Pack to make my XP machine look like Vista. However, now there are quite a few new options.Also, thanks to the now dead Alky project, it is possible to install the Vista sidebar in Windows XP.

I have two monitors set up on my machine; well I have a LCD TV that acts like a monitor :) I actually don't generally use multi-monitor wallpaper. Instead, I grab images from APOD and set one as background and add the other one as a web item on the desktop - another thing removed from Vista... However, there are some good places on the web to find multi-monitor wallpaper (socwall's my favorite) BTW, any wallpaper or image you download is not going to look good unless your monitor is properly caliberated. I suggest Calibrize or Online Monitor Test. Also, I would recommend turning on Firefox's color management setting.

Lastly, some weird stuff - it seems cutting a white ping pong ball in half, covering your eyes with it and playing white noise on headphones will make you hallucinate :)

Christmas and Gaming

Merry Christmas everyone! Well I have had a very nice Christmas - for some reason, today of all days, the crazy guys at Pallika agreed to swap three old games for three new ones for just Rs. 900/- (I swapped out Assassin's Creed, The Darkness and Devil May Cry 4 for Siren: Blood Curses, Dead Space and Ninja Gaiden Sigma)

I am planning to buy an XBox sometime, but with the new Jasper motherboards just out, having 256 MB of onboard storage and a much lower power usage, buying the old 20/40 GB Falcon (or god forbid is it Zephyr?) model XBoxes that Pallika people are selling right now seems like a bad idea. Also, the ones they are selling dont have NXE installed on them. NXE allows XBox games to be fully installed to HDD. Here is a list of the advantages this brings to some games and how much space is required. This does mean I will lose out on M$'s "Buy an XBox Live Gold membership before Jan 1, get a free game" offer... BTW, did you know the 360 can write its own blog?

Square has released a (not) Final Fantasy game for the iPhone - Crystal Defenders, basically a tower defense game with characters from different FF games in place of actual towers. Its ok if you like that kind of game, not for me though (definitely not at 8 USD). Not that there is a dearth of good games on the iPhone.

I stumbled upon an Indian gaming community recently; its really nice to see fellow desis talk about gaming :) Also, Nokia's N-Gage platform seems to have somehow produced a winner - Reset Generation (also playable in-browser for free) Alas - there is no N-Gage on the 5800

My office is shut down till the 5th, so I will probably have a lot of free time on my hands :) I am off to Dharamsala in early Jan, will probably go to some places nearby/in Delhi before that.

Update 12/26/2008 - Kotaku has just released (via MTV. via Metacritic) the 10 best and worst games of 2008. In a strange dichotomy, 7 of the best games are Playstation games (but not exclusives) and 7 of the worst games are Wii exclusives (ya, I know its wrong to club PS2/PS3/PSP and not club Wii and DS, but hey - this is not a ranking :) )