2010- Movies and Music

2010 has been a mixed bag in terms of the movies I watched. Though I haven't watched LSD or Guzaarish, my opinions are based on tweets and posts by different critics (Rajeev Masand, Raja Sen and Anupama Chopra) 


Movies I liked/loved:
1. Flipped : If you are a fan of Rob Reiner's classics like "When Harry met Sally", "A Few Good Men", "Bucket List", chances are that you will like this movie about two children growing up in the 60's in N America.
2. Inception
3. Udaan
4. Do Dooni Chaar
5. Tere Bin Laden
6. Band Baaja Baraat
7. Phas Gaya Re Obama
8. Raajneeti
9. Ishqiya
10. Dabangg

3 years and counting

It's been a wonderful 3 years with Mansi and this year we decided to celebrate our anniversary at Atlantic City. AC is more popular for it's casinos and so we ended up staying at Trump Taj. We took an early morning stroll along the boardwalk behind the hotel and it was awesome. Lunch was an excellent kabab sandwich/gyro platter at Bill's Gyro & Bar. This place has the best reviews for Greek food in AC and I looked up the reviews on Trip Advisor, Yelp, etc. 

This was followed by coffee at Starbucks, located inside Trump Taj. Coffee@Starbucks is usually accompanied by some random discussion. Every couple has their specific coffee place, I know some couples who prefer Tim Hortons or Dunkin' Donuts or Panera as their preferred location for airing opinions. ( I am not suggesting nagging, but I think women have lot to talk and guys prefer to listen most of the time). 

We had dinner at Hard Rock Cafe followed by a gambling session. We tried our hand in Roulette and that was an exciting game. The probability formulas were tested and we ended up with some winnings. Mansi was the book-keeper/cashier and ensured we made a profit :)

We started early for DC the next day (as per Indian time) and reached home by evening. We barely managed to get ready and leave for Rinu & Jaimy's X'mas party that was preceded by a sit-down dinner at Bangkok Joe's. I think the food was just ok and the service was really terrible. But all that was compensated by the White Elephant game hosted by Rinu & Jaimy at their place. Each gift had a price limit of $20 and could be stolen only thrice. Yours truly was randomly chosen (chits) as the first person to open the gifts. I ended up opening three gifts and all of them were stolen from me. I ended up stealing Mansi's gift (tool bag with no tools) and she stole a box of wine glasses. This was followed by a photo shoot thanks to Saif :) Excellent evening to top off the anniversary celebrations :) 

My song dedication for Mansi: 

Zamaane Ko Chod Dein 

Riwajon Tod Dein 

Toote Na Sapnein Kabhi 

Hai Nazuk Yeh Sapnein Sabhi ........

Mansi’s Dad is Flip’ped

Mansi’s parents visited us in March. Now since SD’s birthday falls on March 1, she decided to buy a gift for her Dad. Choosing a gift is difficult, but reasoning how useful the gift will be is even more tedious. Considering that Meher’s been running around, etc Mansi decided to get (1) camcorder (point and shoot type) or (2) fitness monitor+music player (iPod Nano).


After a lot of consideration and deliberations, she decided to finally get the Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes (Black). Mansi’s dad was very happy with the gift. Why ? Ease of use and easy to download the videos. As mentioned previously, he uses a Dell Inspiron with Ubuntu goodness. Now the Flip records HD quality video which means 1 minute video takes about 140 MB approx. Looking at the easiest way to transfer/share huge files,  I setup a DropBox account on his laptop, so that he can share his video experiences easily. Flip connects through a USB port and mounts as Flash Drive on Linux (open source goodness). Copying the files is just Drag and Drop :)


Everyone’s happy !!! 


(PS: Thanks to Aditya for buying this first and recommending it to me !!!)

Creating Letters in Latex with Letterhead and Scanned Signature

With graduation nearing and my fervent attempts at applying for Post Doc positions, I am required to sometimes write a cover letter and include my signature. I feel that using Adobe PDF writer to make a stamp of my scanned signature is cumbersome, as I need to rely on using a Windows machine for that step or install Adobe PDF Writer on my Mac.

So I searched and came to this solution. One awesome reference is from Dr. Balkrishna@WSU He has generously uploaded his templates here. I have modified them slightly to include my scanned signature.

Another option is to use the example by Robert McNees here.

My final PDF looks like this. Source file for generating your own letter: VT_letter.zip

The original newlfm package manual can be browsed here.

Note: Using the VT Logo is at your own responsibility. I have used it for illustrative purposes.

2010: another year ?

My first post of 2010 and I am not sure what the title should be. 2010-10 years after graduation, 10 years after giving GRE/TOEFL, 10 years back-working on BE project, 10 years back-doing my VLSI course, 7 years after a MS degree, couple of months away from another degree? So has the past 10 years of my life been an educational experience literally speaking (PJ)?? Yes and no. Yes, academically speaking. Yes, for independent way of living. Yes for learning to live life and learn from those experiences. Yes on how things go right or wrong based on your decisions. No, because some things are not in your control and you learn to live with it. 6 years- since I have met family (Thanks to Reliance and Skype). 10 years- 3 recessions (2001, 2003, 2009).

(also, 2000-single, 2010-committed :P)

what's new about 2010 ??

2010 for me means: graduation, job, India trip ??

2010 and my friends: Most of them are parents/to-be :) Recession and baby boom :)

Hope this year is what everyone hoped for !!!