India now world champs in Twenty20!

Congratulations to the Indian team on winning the Twenty20 World Cup! What a great final - the match was up in the air until the final moment. This element of unpredictability is what makes the Twenty20 game so interesting. This is certainly a key element in most american games - the ability to turn a game on its head until the last moment, and at this the 20 over game excelled. It was a fun tournament and I'm glad the next one is just 2 years away.

The ICC seems to have plans to restrict the Twenty20 game to just a few games a year but I don't see how it can be contained. After all, money rules the world of sport and surely the buzz generated by this world cup was noticed by everyone. It will be interesting to see how this develops. Not everyone is impressed, obviously.

I watched the full game thanks to the internet and my friendly local source, Rajesh. Thanks for the feed, Guruji! :)

The Big Lebowski

If you know me, you know that I have a zillion movies lying around the house waiting to be watched. Someday, when I find the time, I actually plan to watch these movies. Today I am happy to report that the list of movies that are "to be watched before the end of eternity" is actually shorter by one.

Last night I watched "The Big Lebowski". And enjoyed it at that. "The dude" kind of resonated with me, and the movie was quite watchable. There were a lot of different characters in the simple plot. Make that a lot of characters who were far from normal. In a manner, you got a taste of all these characters but the movie was pretty focused on "the dude". I'd recommend the movie if you haven't already watched it, but its not for those who can tolerate foul language - you've been warned.

Btw, this is the third movie made by the Coen brothers that I've liked, the other ones being "Intolerable Cruelty" that I really liked (App, not so much) and "O Brother Where Art Thou" which App and I both liked.

Now Playing @ Home : PS3

With the XBox 360 in transit to the "Repair Center", there's never been a better time to start taking about its new rival at home - The Sony PlayStation 3. I've been meaning to introduce the PS3 to the blog for a few weeks. The PS3 is approaching the price point where I believe it really takes on mass appeal; I bit the bug earlier this month.

How do I like it so far? I like it a lot. The only real misgivings - weak online experience, no rumble. Sony has already addressed rumble so I'll skip over that one. I would give them about a year to catch up with XBox Live , so I'll continue to monitor that.

The best part? Media. The PS3 is probably the best Media player in the "set-top" form factor for the money. In fact, if they added support for DivX, XVid and WMV video, it would be the best box, period.

Let's do a quick check of media functionality starting with the really basic.

1. CD Player - Check.
2. MP3 CD Player - Check. While you are at it - make that AAC, WMA and ATRAC too. And oh, your files can be on a DVD too.
3. SACD Player - Check.
4. DVD Player - Check. Upconvert? Yes!
5. Blu-Ray - Obviously! And cheaper than stand alone BD players at that.
6. Photo Player - Check. Again, from CD, DVD, or Memory Card (CF, SD or Memory Stick)!
7. Video Player - In addition to DVD, BD discs, you can play back MPEG4 Video. I was able to download music videos off the internet and play them fine. No support for DivX though :(
8. Networked Media Player - Check. Can play all above media (digital audio, photos, video) over the network from your PC. WiFi is included, I use ethernet though. Picked up shared media from my Windows XP box (shared through Windows Media Connect) automatically. No stupid "configuration" dialogs.

There's more.

9. You can browse pictures from your digital camera. Easiest way to do this is to take the memory card and plug it into the PS3.
10. PSP Remote Play - Configure your PSP for remote play and access all media available to the PS3 on your PSP, whereever you may be connected from. This includes the internet - so yes, you can be at your friend's house connected to his WiFi playing back the content on your PS3 back at your house. Way cool.
11. Playback from devices - I was able to connect my Walkman devices and play music back through the PS3. Displays Album Art too! This worked for my NW-S205F, NW-S705F and App's NW-E005F. You can also copy music from the PS3 hard drive to the Walkman directly. So you could potentially use your Sony Walkman device without ever connecting to a PC.
12. PSP memory stick playback - I took the memory stick from my PSP and plugged it into the PS3. The PS3 let me play music, photos, video. Also let me copy content back and forth between the PS3 Hard Drive and PSP Memory Stick.

So far, so good. I'm a demanding media user though, so I have a few gripes. Here we go -

1. The PS3 did not recognize my Hi-MD units (MZ-RH1).
2. The PS3 did not recognize my SonyEricsson Walkman Phone (W600i)
3. SACD audio cannot be played back over optical audio output but only through HDMI. Whatsup with that Sony, think I want to spring for a new receiver? It's not going to be Sony ;)
4. Did not recognize my iPod when I plugged it in. You have to support the market leading device!
5. Cannot play MPEG-2 video. This is the video format of files dumped from a DVD Rip. This would be nice but would be secondary to DivX.
6. No DivX, WMV playback.
7. Would be great if it worked with iTunes sharing.

Kudos to Sony for -

1. The best allround media functionality I have seen so far.
2. Bringing the price down so quickly after initial release. $400 would make a few competitors squirm - XBox, AppleTV, etc.
3. Letting users run Linux if they choose.
4. Keyboard, Mouse support.
5. Making the power supply relatively silent and internal.

Let's bring the games on now!

To be sure, I'm happy with my PS3 even without any games. However the high-definition games on Blu-Ray make it that much more attractive!

Must. Watch. Video.

If you watch cricket, that is.



Bravo, Yuvraj Singh.

Anjali in her new BOB Revolution

Anjali in her new BOB Revolution
Originally uploaded by Jillako

We discovered a new regional park - the Dry Creek Regional Park. It's not far from home and has some nice trails. We tried one out on Monday with Anjali in her new BOB Revolution. I suspect that the trail we attempted was a bit too steep for any stroller but the BOB did handle it decently. Anjali even managed to fall asleep on the bumpy way back!

Go to Flickr for a bonus photo! :)

Yesterday's Dilbert

This one cracked me up!

RROD again!

Okay, I think Microsoft did a good job on the XBox 360 software; none of the other consoles can match the elegance of the "blade" interface they have going and the integrated Live (online) functionality. They also have the best controller. The 360 controller has just the right heft, includes rumble, easily swappable batteries and can be made to work with a Windows PC.

However, the XBox 360 has one big weakness - the crappy console hardware! I just had my console go RROD on me again. For the uninitiated, RROD = Red Ring Of Death, which is what you see in the picture. It is the XBox 360 equivalent of the Windows BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death and if you haven't seen that before - you must be a Mac/Linux user or a really lucky human!).

I bought my XBox 360 in May '06. I had my first RROD in March '07, after an estimated 240 hours of usage. The second RROD happened this week after just another 120 hours of usage. Plain unacceptable and may really be the reason I jump off the XBox 360 bandwagon.

My biggest gripe with the RROD is the timing, I was really looking forward to Halo 3 in a few weeks! And now I'll have to wait about 4 weeks to get my console back.. oh well.

Steve Jobs' Apology

LOL, check out Joy Of Tech's totally hilarious take on Steve Jobs and the $100 Apple rebate to iPhone early adopters! :)

Woohoo! Thrilling win for India at the Twenty20 game vs. Pakistan!

UPDATE: Videos now available! Worth watching :)

Highlights:


The Bowlout:


and the original post -

So, admittedly India could have wrapped this one up with much less tension! With Pakistan chasing and 29 runs required from 12 balls at the end of over 18 (39 required from 14 at 17.4), they just needed to stop the boundaries and sixes. However, after a disastrous over from Agarkar, which resulted in 17 runs in just one over, Pakistan looked to come up on top. With the game tied and 2 balls to go, Pakistan looked a sure winner before India came back to hold them to a tie.

The tied games are resolved shootout style in Twenty20 cricket and each team picks 5 bowlers to have a go at the stumps (no batsman). I'm copying the bowlout commentary from CricInfo here so you can see how it all went down!! :)

Bowl out

Shoaib Malik has won the toss and he has asked India to have the first go. Both teams are out there practising hitting the stumps.

How hard can it be to hit three stumps without a batsman in front of them? We'll soon find out.

India have nominated Sehwag, Uthappa, Sreesanth, Pathan and Harbhajan. It will be Gul, Tanvir, Arafat, Afridi and Asif for Pakistan.

Round 1
Sehwag is up first for India. Dhoni waits behind the stumps. Sehwag has a big grin on his face. Sehwag runs in, bowls flat and fast and hits the stumps.

Arafat gets ready for his turn. He bowls a full toss that misses off stump.

India lead 1-0 after the first round.

Round 2

Harbhajan bowls quick and straight and hits. He's delighted and celebrates like he's taken a wicket, or scored a penalty.

Gul runs in off a short run up and also misses the stumps. The Indians love it.

India lead 2-0 after the second round. Massive pressure on Pakistan.

Round 3

Robin Uthappa runs in, bowls seam up and knocks the stumps over. He takes off his cap and bows to the crowd.

Pakistan have to hit the stumps with all their three remaining chances to stay in the bowl-out. If India hit one more time, they will win.

Here comes Afridi and he fires it down leg side! India have won the bowl-out 3-0.

Amazing scenes at Kingsmead. It was like a football shootout and the Indians are celebrating fittingly. They won the match 3-0 through a bowl-out after the proper match ended in a thrilling tie!

Go India!! Very impressive!

I wish ESPN2 or some secondary sports channel would pick up and telecast these shorter Cricket games, they sound fun!

On a somewhat related note, did you know Google shows you Cricket scores now? Go to www.google.com and try typing in "India Cricket" as your search term!

Baby Gear: Bob Revolution stroller

After much deliberation, here is the stroller we ended up getting for Anjali - BOB Revolution Jogger! This was App's pick and really it was her department, as I am a backpack-prefering, baby-wearing kind of guy myself. We're not joggers by any means, the reason we went for a jogger was because we do go on local trails, lots of which are unpaved and the Revolution looks like it will handle them well. It has a small turning radius as well, which should be useful in stores/malls. It seems well reviewed all around and we took at look at a similar model in the local REI before ordering this one online.

We should have pictures with Anjali in it soon enough. Before I forget, thanks to new uncle Arjun for sponsoring the stroller! :)

The iPhone - Ouch!

This may be a week late but I'm sure you've had your share of iPhone news already. So Wow! - the 4GB iPhone is selling for $299.

The "ouch!" in the title is not about the early adopters getting screwed, forget them for a while here. I'm talking about the huge "ouch!" that went up from Apple's newest competitors - that would be Samsung, SonyEricsson, Nokia, Motorola. Apple is putting the squeeze on these guys with their pricing!

Apple is muscling its way into the cellphone market building on its strengths that have been on display with the iPod rollercoaster. Apple is on course to buy up 25% of the world's flash memory pretty soon. Let that sink in for a few seconds. A quarter of the world's flash memory is bought up by Apple. Apple has a great manufacturing model - design in California, use their manufacturing partners in China/Taiwan to get equipment manufactured at low costs (they're experts at this), reuse components across product lines to get economies of scale - all of this while maintaining a ridiculously high profit margin (compared to its competitors) anyway. They can do this because they're selling millions of these things while still making just a handful of products (talking hardware here).

Back to the iPhone, how is this going to affect the big players? Let's look at Nokia - they sells more cell phones than anyone. They have a lot of models - the lower end ones will sell the most, but Nokia has a lower margin on those. They sell a lot of their N series phones which I'm betting are far more lucrative than the $100 phones. This is the market the iPhone is going to eat into. They don't sell enough N-Series phones to be able to price compete with the iPhone. To do this they would have to reduce the number of models they have, work on cutting the manufacturing costs and bring the price to consumers down drastically. Few companies are ruthlessly efficient at this as Steve Jobs' Apple.

Why would a consumer such as myself pick an iPhone when there are so many choices in the marketplace? One overwhelming reason that is usually never associated with Apple - cost!!
The iPhone certainly doesn't have all the features I want from my phone. I have been shopping for a SonyEricsson Walkman phone in the $350 range. If I buy that phone, I probably would plan to spend $70 on a 4GB memory stick so I can load songs and videos. The total cost runs near $420 for a Walkman phone with memory.
At $299, however, with the 4GB of memory - I just might be ready to forget some of the features I wanted and give in to the iPhone's lure - the wonderful screen, wifi, Google maps, browser etc. along with the low price would make it worth it for me. The only catch right now is that I am T-Mobile customer. Oh wait, isn't iUnlock out already? :)

Fun times in the world of consumer electronics, I tell you :) Apple is fast becoming a giant here!

Sony Rolly

I've been following the stories about Sony's Rolly in the media for a while now. While I applaud Sony for creating a product that is out of the ordinary, it is unclear how popular this robot/player will be..

Check out these videos.