Windows Vista DreamScene

I know lot of people don’t like Vista….but I love it…..and after Installing DreamScene I am loving it. DreamScene is nothing but the application that makes the wallpaper dynamic or a movie can be put as a wallpaper. If you have Vista Ultimate just go to “Windows Ultimate Extra” from start button then “Windows Ultimate Extras available” select the “Windows Dreamscene” and the content packs.

After successful installation just change the wallpaper from the new Menu in “Desktop Background” called the “Windows DreamScene Content”. Select any of the videos available. Remember if you need to download all the content packs, otherwise you will have only one.

This might be more load to your system, however for a good configured system, this should be any issue.

Ohris 100 Degrees

First of all let me provide you the Phone number for which you might have reached this page: 040-27534230/31.

Its a new addition to Ohris chain of restaurant at Necklace road beside Moksh or Nissan showroom and of course in Hyderabad. While I was searching the net for the phone number, I just got two bad experiences about it, one in Mouthshut and one from the blog of Dhruv Shanker, (Mad Onion Slicer).

However, I wanted to try it by myself, and as one of my colleague was supposed to give his promotion party we opted for the Lunch buffet. Finding the place was not an issue as some days ago we went to Moksh and it is just beside it.

There is some parking problem there, however we didn’t face any. It is on 3rd floor and there are two options one outside in the open area and another inside, as it was hot Hyderabadi afternoon, sitting outside was out of scope. And inside its like a tunnel, with a small fountain type of thing in between. Most of us said “wow” and even I liked the ambiance.

Next comes the food, there are lot of choices you may make. You have pizza both veg and non veg, 3 types of non veg item (may be more), different salads, chats, and the regular buffet items like nans, noodles, rice, biryani………..in short lots to choose from.

Food is good, however my colleagues didnt like some of the items like the Biryani, Fish and some methi ka chicken, I didn’t even try them, as had lot to choose from.

Finally the deserts, my favourite, there was 4 different flavour of ice cream, with the chocolate sauce…..rasmalai, pastries, rasgulla and some strawberry mousse.

In my view for buffet its a good choice, for Rs 179/- its worth. Will try the dinner and the sizzlers for which it is famous for. And regarding the service I didn’t find any issue.

My Rating:

Ambiance: 4/5

Food: 3.5/5

Service: 4/5

Worth a try…..do let me know ur experience.

10000 Hits

No its not about the new movie 10000 BC, but about a milestone for me to achieve 10k hits, mazak mazak main 10000 tak pahunch gaya.

Mentos…new Ad……Daddduuuuuuu

Hope you people have seen the new Mentos Monkey Donkey advertisement.

All that I can say about it is:

Dadduuuuuu…….yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…

yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…yaaing yooo…

Daduuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

hahahahaha…..

The animation is superb, the idea is superb…..and simply its superb.

Mozilla Firefox Beta 3

I was a fan of IE 7 and was using IE from its beta release. I found IE 7 a lot better than its previous version i.e IE 6. As I didn’t use any other browser I liked IE 7 very much, the tabs, the feeds etc etc.

But after using Mozilla Firefox, I am hooked to it. I found it too good, I found it faster, stable and the thing I liked the most is the download option, where one can continue download after a pause or in case the browser gets closed you may start again from the same point.

However the stable Firefox 2 is available free of download, Mozilla Firefox 3 is in line and they have released the beta version: Firefox 3 beta 3. It is available for download here.

<update> Firefox 3 Beta 4 is now available for download (click here).

<update> FireFox 3 Beta 5 is now available for download (click here).

Lots of bugs has been resolved and the silent features:

• Just start typing in the Location Bar to search your bookmarks and history. It adapts and learns as you use it.
• Pause and resume your downloads, and search through your download history by file or website name using the new Download Manager.
• Find out who you’re talking to by clicking on the website icon.
• Experience the fastest Firefox ever — twice to three times as fast on today’s complex web applications like Google Mail or Zoho Office.

Worth mentioning here is the Opera Mini for Mobile phones. if you are bored of using default browser on your phone, one may download the Opera Mini 4. After using Opera Mini 4 you will never use the default browser of your phones.

Radio City 91.1 fm hyderabad is now all telugu…no fun

I got sad to know that Radio City which was the only one Radio Channel here in Hyderabad has become all telugu affair. I used to enjoy a lot the Breakfast show with Annuj, Shradha and Sameer and also the Joy Ride of Sameer and Aparna.

Hope they restart the hindi show.  Dont know what happened to them, might be a revenue problem, or dont know what, or they want to regionalize the radio channel. The driving was so good with Radio city, now its a no fun radio channel.

Rambo 4

Our very own Rambo….John Rambo is back. I am fan of all the Rambo films, and this time our 61 year old hero is too brutal, and has done mass murders, however he does not seems to be 61 year old.

But as per sources he has taken steroids to be in shape. Ohh that last scene was awesome, where he was on that machine gun, was on killing spree. Must have killed around 400 Burma soldiers. This time he gets back to buisness to save the life of some American Christian missionaries. I liked the movie, but I would say the best one of the Rambo series was Rambo 3. And the good news is Rambo will be back with Rambo 5. Now dont know which part of the country will he go.

My Rating: (3 + 1)/5. 

The great Hyderabad Laptop Hunt

Even though I don’t prefer Laptops as I think cant play games and upgrading is very difficult, I was searching for a good laptop for my brother here in Hyderabad. I searched all over the internet, but didn’t find a good site that give the latest price and good review. However I am a regular visitor to Tech2.com and found it very good.

After some research I zeroed upon on Dell 1525 which I configured on Dell India site, the best thing is you can configure it and choose what you want, but my brother didn’t want a Dell as his friend had bad experience, actually his friend didn’t get the laptop delivered to him for three months. However I would have gone for this one.

Anyway, as Dell was out of scope now, next brands we were looking for was Lenevo and HP. So we were searching for a place where can see all the brands, and then we saw the ad of E-Zone, City Center, Banjara Hills where they were giving upto 50% discount. However this is the trap made by them, and I was surprised when saw a Compaq laptop having price 82k and they giving discount of some 45%. Could not stop laughing. The same case was with rest of the laptops there.

After this great experience at E Zone we headed to my favourite place the CTC, Parklane near paradise. This is the hub of all computer related items. And we found some shops like Sweta Laptop Bazaar, Laptop World etc. One day went only in the search of laptop and its shop. At the end we shotlisted the Lenevo Y510 series, HP 1301 Tablet PC whose price was around 50k.

Next day my Bro’s friend also joined and we finally decided that we will purchase from CTC. His friend was going to purchase the Sony VAIO CR 24G/B, which he had already decided.

So we reached Sweta Laptop Bazaar in CTC. After spending around 1 hr there my bro took the Lenovo Y410 57Q which had a great configuration, Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB RAM, NVIDIA graphics and all sorts usual things. Its price came to be 53200. And His friends took the VAIO with upgrading it to 2 GB RAM from 1 GB RAM which was 53500.

However Lenovo was rich in features but VAIO has a class, and too good looking.

No Smoking

Ahhhhhhh……….. never saw such a weired movie in my life. Concept is toooo different or may be the concept went over my mind. However I found it some what interesting till interval. I usually never miss a film in which Ranvir is there who is friend of John in this movie. At one time you may say what, why, where is happening :O

Baba Bangali (Paresh Rawal) is also great in his role. Cant imagine if a man can be that addictive to Sutta. It reminds me the Sutta song . They could have made the Sutta song the title track (never heard of this song, try googling )

However I did like this film, which was a utter flop. Do watch at your own risk.

Hampi and Jog waterfalls

After the great trip to Vizag…..it was the time for another trip. So we all four chaddi buddies went to Hampi and Jog waterfalls in Karnataka. This was another great trip. Hampi has great historical importance and Jog Waterfalls is highest plunge waterfall.

We started from Begumpet station (Hyderabad) and reached Hospet at around 5 am. The mistake we did is we didnt book any room. Searched each and every hotels and lodge in Hospet. Finally got a room in one of the finest hotel in Hospet (Siddhartha Residency), the rooms are good here and the Resto called Purple Grass is also good. However other good Hotels are the Malligi and Priyadarshini. We hired a cab (Tata Indica) who took Rs.1400 to take us to Kiskindha Resort (about 30KM from Hospet), Hampi and the Tungbhadra Dam. The Kiskindha Resort was waste, and that was a waste of money and time. Some swimming pools and regular resort stuffs are there. After this we went straight to Hampi. As it was already 1 pm we headed to a conceptual eatery called “Mango Tree”. The food and the ambience are great here.  You need to sit on the floor and all types of food is available. After pet puja we started to rediscover hampi and the first pit stop was Krishna Temple, a old temple with no idols, I guess the idols are kept in some museum. there are lots and lots of similar kind of temples which are a step away from each one.

The only place where there is entry fee is the Royal Enclosure where you will find the Lotus Mahal, one museum and similar kind of stuffs.

The only thing we left was the Vithala temple where the chariot temple like the famous konark temple of Orissa. However, I did see this one also on the last day beacuse of my bro who is working in JSW steels, Vidyanagar(Torugulu) situated some 20 kms from Hampi.

Next we started for Tungbhadra Dam which is around 10km from Hospet, it is one of the big dam and beautiful park has been to built. One of the tourist attractions. The day one ends here and we retired after having a great dinner at “Purple Grass” at Siddhartha residency.

DAY 2:

  As planned early morning, after our breakfast we started for Shimoga for our next destination the famous Jog waterfalls. Boarded a local state bus and that 5 hour journey was bit boring in the last hours.Jog Falls is around 112 KMs from shimoga and as per our research, staying in Shimoga is best. After having a lunch (non-Veggie) near the bus stop, we took a three bed room in Ashoka (hope I am correct). Rest of the day was time pass, and we had to watch ManU match, as we had a hardcore ManU fan Mr G Sai Ramesh (Jane), he watched the match wearing the ManU T-shirt which was brought by Happy from UK. Now one can imagine the love for ManU. If you are not able to get what ManU is its  Manchester United football team. However the only productive thing we did is we arranged a cab who was going to take Rs. 5 per KM, and found out that there is elephant safari and Lion Safari near Shimoga.

DAY3:  

Now this was my best day of tour, early morning after the breakfast we started for Elephant safari, but after reaching the place we found out that this is nothing but a place where the elephants come to take bath, maybe of forest department. Here Happy’s wish to ride on a Dungi came true. Rest of the time we saw chota hathi, bada haathi, do dant wala hathi, ek dant wala hathi . Also haathi doing pootii.

 

After this Haati, we headed for the Lion and Tiger Safari which is on the way to Jog Falls about 20 KM from Shimoga I guess. A bit boring but okay. Safari where Lions and Tigers are left open and we are inside a cage like Bus.

 Next we started for Jog Falls. The nearest town is Sagara where we had our lunch. It is some 15 KM from Jog Falls ( not sure). We were told by the driver that there is no water, the best time to go is between July to Sep. However there was some water falling down. The only plus point of this less water was we could go down 830 Feet. Did a big mistake to choose the route to go down. Although there was a way, without knowing we started trekking down and when about 70% down, could not go further down as that was bit dangerous, and again reaching top was tooo tiring, it was like getting a new life when we finally reached the top. This reminds of something:

Khudi ko kar buland itna….ki chad ja uper jaise taise….

Khuda phir bande se puuche…

Abbbe ab utrega kaise……

(Here “Uper” can be replaced by “neeche” in our case )

However I was very much determined to reach the bottom, and pursuaded to my friends that we will only go 1/2 hr down and then will come back. So after gaining the required energy we headed down to the base of Jog Falls from way made of stone steps. However reached the base in a record time of 20 mins. Spent around 20 min there and again reached the top, that also in record time of 35 mins. However when we were around 20% up, KD bhai got to know that he has forgot his watch (As usual) , luckily he got his watch. After reaching the top and a brief break we heade back.

The main reason I came to Hampi and Jog Falls was to meet my brother, who stays in Torugalu (Vidyanagar) a JSW Steel township. Same night I boarded a bus to Bellary leaving others at Shimoga. A beautiful township is made by JSW Steel here.

While going to Hospet from Vidyanagar saw the Vithala Temple in Hampi, which we could not see on the first day. Had a great lunch in Malligi Hotel in Hospet and we all headed back to Hyderbad. This ends the great trip. More pics please click here.