Circuit v2 for ios wallpaper

No jailbreak required.

I run the latest beta, so I suppose that wouldn’t have been option for me anyway. 

This works only on the iPhone 7 for now. Screen sizes are complicated things to deal with. The second and third pages are still screwed up. The black spaces are filled up black icons. Go here for instructions on creating those icons. Set the wallpaper without any effect. 

Feel free to distribute and attribute credit to my Twitter account @thunderror

Strain subject 219

This is my first attempt at writing fiction. Constructive criticism is welcome.

The room was not really a furnished one, but wasn't too messy for what it was. You could have very well mistaken it for one of those decent motels on the highway. It was late in the evening and the sun was about to set, (or had it?) The dim light inside the room and the pulled down curtains made it difficult to know what time it was. In the corner of the couch, lay Richard..reclining on the couch, on of his hands limply resting on the trackpad, the other carelessly slung around the sofa. The dim light of the his laptop in the power saving mode glistened on his glasses. He wasn't too young, but I guess you could mistake him for a guy on the wrong side of 30. Maybe it was his unkempt hair, or his unshaven stubble…or the dull clothes that he wore. The room's silence was interrupted only by the clicks of his trackpad, and they were too faint. Maybe he had been using the laptop for a long time now, and they had smoothened down from use. Just the way everything about him was. His shoes had faded away. His pair of jeans had seen better days..
Richard continued to click away on his laptop as the hours passed by. The scene hadn't changed in the past few hours at all. The static atmosphere had become stifling for anybody who would have been in the house on that day. He keyed away into the late hours as if his life depended on it, with the regular faint clicks creating an eerie music in the house. You could've heard the clock strike midnight if he hadn't replaced his grandfather's clock one week ago with the new digital alarm clock that stood proudly upon his mantlepiece. The wifi lights blinked away in a corner of the next room as the only witness of the activity on his laptop. His internet connection surged away like the waves on a full moon night as he continued to use his laptop.

It was one of those sunny afternoons when he had come back early from work. He drove by the neighbourhood slowly, gazing at people waking by. There were very few people who ventured out on such hot days, he thought. He still had a few more blocks to go before he reached his house. The empty roads made him shift his focus away from the road to that morning's meeting with Tien. He met him in the bosses' cabin and was introduced to him as a person with several years of experience in a field that was still very young. Gene research was still in infancy, especially if you were in one of the developed countries. Over a casual lunch, Tien had discussed the new "Grizzly flourish" project, one of the entity's top secret research activities in which he had been involved in. The project had been on for around 2 years now, and until recently they had not been successful in finding out how dystrophin (a protein) could easily allow for muscular damage and how it could help reconstruct muscles in the body. Tien had recommended that they isolate dystrophin under test conditions and his methods were more than successful in doing so. 
He slowly parked inside the garage, got out and entered his abode. His house lay undisturbed as ever, only the loud ticks-tock of the grandfather's clock in the house welcomed him.

To be contd….

Posted via email from Posted bits

Rainy Thursday morning coffee

I should’ve slept off earlier. Particularly because I intend to take the bus tomorrow to office. But I guess that’s not about happen. The rain has been pouring nonstop all night. My car’s parked outside tonight of all the nights…pretty worrisome, especially knowing that the roads are so prone to flooding.

Anyway its 2.20 AM now and I’ve been wasting my time applying for listening to music, playing games and applying for digital signatures(weird…). So when I ran out of options I decided to read my fave RSS feeds. BTW, I use Google reader as my web aggregator. One of my favourite blogs has been cheese and beans. My reader is cluttered is feeds from mostly technology and mobile blogs, and this comes out as a fresh exception in the mundane tech list. I’ve been reading feeds for a while and have managed to bring down the number of unread feeds to 9. Now that’s truly an achievement considering I have atleast 300+ feeds unread at any point of time.

What if it rains so hard that its a holiday tomorrow? Anyway I think I’ll bid farewell to my plans of taking the bus, and take the car instead. Come on, its raining hard. I’ve been trying to take the bus from Monday, but something or the other keeps happening, just to make sure I don’t. A blog post always warrants a cup of coffee? In fact, most things in life need a cup of coffee. In fact, coffee is one the best things that ever happened to civilization. Thanks to the unnamed shepherd. Did you know that Caffeine which is what makes coffee as stimulating as it is, is also called trimethylxanthine or C8H10N4O2 . Sounds pretty sophisticated…Just imagining that I’m going to indulge in a cup of Trimethylxanthine makes me feel powerful..Lol..

I really don’t have much to write about so early in the morning. But I want a cup of coffee….

Posted via web from Posted bits

10 really essential apps for your Nokia N97

The problem with Nokia's symbian OS is that, its a lot like linux. with V5, it tries to take the touchscreen market heads on, but its not exactly ready to do that. But if you're ready to search around a little bit, Nokia's quirky little OS will be more rewarding than your apple OS will ever be. But then, if you'd rather not go through all the trouble, get yourself an Iphone. Most of this stuff will work on any other symbian v5 touch device, but I tried them out only on my N97. Invest in a good microSD card, this ensures that anytime one of your applications decides to screw up, you can format your memory card.

Opera 5 mini beta!
This has to be the browser of choice (except that only default browser is still needed for certain tasks) This browser is something which makes the N97 at least a little bit comparable to the Iphone's safari, inspite of its resistive touchscreen. Still doesn't support RSS feeds (now that's bad..) But makes browsing a breeze, especially with the touch qwerty keyboard which is simply awesome. Would've liked theme support, but then its just in beta.

Smartmovie player
There's 32GB of space lying around, and a fat big screen and I can't watch avi files. So here's the solution. Get the smartmovie player. There's nothing like it to watch clear avi files on that N97's big screen. Top audio rendering makes it even better than watching a movie on some laptops.

Pixelpipe
Symbian has this seemingly useless share online feature which posts to ovi and Nokia Mblog. I don't remember many of my friends posting pictures to Mblog and commenting on them. So, I decide to get the share online feature extended to flickr, facebook and even my email. Just shoot and share. But, get pixelpipe, signup and install plugin first.

Nimbuzz/Palringo/Fring
Depending on what interface you like, you can get either of these applications to make sure that you stay online on gtalk, yahoo, AIM, MSN all day, and all night if you want. You need to sign up for all these three services, and all of them will let you talk over IP, so if you have wifi = free internet calling with your mobile phone! I guess Fring has ads, which the other two are freeware.

Gravity
Another pay app, that you simply cannot ignore. If you're a big fan of twitter that is. But if you don't a complete twitter application and just need a simple widget for your homescreen, try out Stew. It doesn't really let you be a power user, but it lets you tweet and read tweets (for free). If you need a full fledged free app, then its got to be tweet60, which does quite a decent job.

Nokia Messaging
Push email with html support on awesome interface? This is it. Somehow feel that Nokia messaging email's interface is way better than anything else Nokia has put on the N97. Too bad I need to download this.

Widgets
Nokia communities. Another one from the betalabs. This one improves your original facebook (well, not exactly…because most of the features are still under development) I personally prefer using this one, over the regular nokia communities widget(well, I do change back to the default widget).
While on the subject of widgets, if you happen get a white N97, get the white Nokia accuweather homescreen widget to make sure it matches the interface. Plus, the best thing about the white Nokia accuweather homescreen is that it gives you the current real feel temperature, instead of the real feel high for the day. Now that's some improvement.

Jbtaskman
You're going to have to sign this application, just because you bought a symbian v5 device, someone tell the author that this is the best taskmanager ever. Or if you might consider the less powerful pay app, the Handy taskman.

A file manager?
Xplore would have to be it. I'm not signing the v5 app for Y-explorer, nor do I want use the ad enabled Yexplorer signed. The default file manager does pretty much a decent job, unless you want to meddle around too much with your mobile phone like I do.

Google maps
http://m.google.com/maps Nokia maps just leaves me the middle of nowhere once I get out of the city, which is sad considering I really love navigating with Nokia, So just to ensure that you always know where you are, get google maps application.

One more tip, if you don't know this already: click on the top of the screen, near the battery meter, to get quick access to connectivity options! easily turn off and on bluetooth!!!

Posted via email from Posted bits

Nokia N97 Reviewed

Last month I got my N97 and I decided that I would spend sometime using it before reviewing it. Especially considering how Symbian v5 isn’t the really most friendly operating system I have seen. Symbian v5 does a decent job of being a finger friendly app and I haven't ever used the Stylus that came along with it.
Its not very easy to use your N97 if you’re a Symbian Newbie. Few items(i.e. Inside some applications) you tend to use double click, whereas in other apps you use a single click. That isn’t user friendly at all. You cannot blame the multitude of menus and options considering how powerful Nokia phones are. But if you know how to customize a menu, then an N97 is as good, if not better than any phone.Ease of use would have been 4, if you’re used to Symbian operating system phones or else its 2/5.
Style and Design are top notch. Everything is built solidly. The slider is more than enough to tell the world that you have an N97 and its reassuring click would tell you that its going to last a century. It looks more like a Mini Netbook than a mobile phone. 
There’s a range of features, starting from the big and bright screen to the lovely 5MP camera. My favourite features would have to be the FM transmitter which lets you beam ur music to your car radio or any other FM player and the full qwerty keyboard. Now I’ve seen a lot of reviews which complain about the placement of the keys. But if you ask me, the qwerty keyboard is one of the best layouts I’ve come across. You use the thumb for your spacebar, don’t you? The N97 just brought that feature to your mobile, by moving it closer to your thumb. Messaging, Chat and email are a pleasure with the Qwerty keyboard. I’ve seen 100s of reviews which gripe about the video support of an N97. I agree partially. There is no out of the box support for avi files. But get an application (try Smart movie player) and you can play your divx files in full detail on that awesome screen.32 GB of memory should be enough for loads of your movies, and lot more of your music. It comes with a 3.5 headphone jack that lets you use any headphone (unlike the E series).
The widgets do what they are supposed to do and are quite useful, especially if you like social networking online, just like me. The Facebook application is quite useful and if you get gravity for twitter(It’s work every cent), then its the best connected device. The inbuilt nokia mail is not good enough. Download Nokia messaging push email from http://email.nokia.com with full html support. For internet, download the free Opera 5 mini, which makes browsing a pleasure on the big N97 screen. 

Audio clarity gets 3/5. The reception is excellent, just like any other Nokia phone. But the speakers aren’t as good as the E71. Even the E66’s sound clarity wasn’t as good as the E71. Something Nokia could pay more attention to. But the reception is gr8, no matter where you are. The sound is good enough compared to other phones, but not as good as the E71. The speakers are loud and clear when its a movie you're watching though..

Reliability isn’t too much fo a problem, considering Nokia support is pretty strong, and that their hardware is one their true strengths. In fact the hardware is better than the symbian platform, which means that you can always get better applications and continue to break new ground with the N97. Which is something I love about the phone. Which other phone grows up everyday?Its not a perfect phone, and not exactly the best phone Nokia has come out with. But its one of the best feature enabled devices I’ve come across in a long while. The E71 does everything well, but lacks a touch screen, has a smaller screen and keyboard. The new OS update to the N97 promises Kinetic scrolling which is bound to make the touchscreen more receptive. The N97 is not an Apple Mac or a windows PC. Its more like a powerful Linux machine which needs customization to reach its true potential. Being a touch phone has its disadvantages. You get compared to the Iphone, and that's really bad. No way the N97 would win. If I weren't such a big fan of the Symbian OS, I'd go for the Iphone. 

Posted via email from Posted bits

A motorcyclist’s sunday

Well..I woke up today morning (not really..I missed yesterday night's sleep so I didn't exactly wake up…) and found myself staring at a lovely new Sunday. I decided after much deliberation to take my bike out for a run. Wearing a Helmet in the sweltering heat of chennai is not really a comfortable option, so I prefer riding my bike only to really really nearby places (or rather, I don't ride it at all)

But it was early morning and I decided to put on my helmet (after a long long long time…) and take out my bike for a spin.
And I was out riding around the empty lanes of the city, and since the sun was young it wasn't burning down on me either…A lovely breeze hit me strongly in my face as I drove around the arterial roads.
Came back home..Happy that I rode my motorcycle. Well, I don't own a bullet or anything..Just a poor simple pulsar. Something which was my everything when I was studying..Sometimes memories are priceless. Like I might add, fuel wasted: INR 40-50, satisfaction: priceless!

Posted via email from Posted bits

Who is social media meant for?

<a href="" title="Jump on the social media bandwagon by Matt Hamm, on Flickr">Jump on the social media bandwagon

I was thinking about social media and all of a sudden I found myself wondering why it even exists. Now why do we need social media? Media that you and I create. We can be satisfied subscribing to the traditional media, why go about creating it? when you can have fun just enjoying it? Why do we need to become social media journalists? For one, it does not pay (unless of course you're a social media moghul)
One of the reasons could be that we have time on our hands, and we wish to create our mark online. People wish to share what they see. Now facebook lets you share stuff with your friends. So that cute youtube video (which you think, is cute) gets on every one of friend's facebook feeds. Or if you are on twitter, you're sharing it with several of followers. And what happens if you're a huge social media champ? You spend all your day posting such links on your twitter/friendfeed timeline (@minervity, @zaibatsu etc..)

Or are you the one creating youtube videos? sharing it online so that your subscribers can watch it, and you could share it on all your social networks? A digg or a stumbleupon junkie could very well be posting and digging links all day.
But at the end of all that is. well…nothing. It does not serve any purpose other than maybe improving your reputation online, enhancing your online social network.

Most of social media is about opinion (blog posts anyone…) and the rest is stuff made up of the top 10 flash blogs and 15 unbelievable "photoshopped" images and the like. All this shows that you have a lot of time on your hands and you don't know what to do with it. Come to think of it, its more like sending those email forwards. Things haven't changed at all. Its just like sending those email forwards. Forget social media. Get social.
Guess that post was too critical of social media. Just imagine a world without wikipedia? But I definitely don't need digg.

I'm not saying all social media is bad. But it sure gets repetitive and boring after a while. Just like, too much of Facebook isn't good for you.
<div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" about=""><a rel="cc:attributionURL" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthamm/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthamm/</a> / <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">CC BY-NC 2.0</a></div>

Posted via email from Posted bits

Kaminey – a review

Yeah, back after watching Kaminey (Don't visit link, has spoilers 😉 today. Was pretty much an ordinary bollywood action flick based on Mumbai. But slick production values, good acting and direction made it look better than it actually was.

The acting was pretty realistic, action was good enough…and the end was surprisingly good. Its one of those movies where you get out with the satisfaction of having watched a good movie..)
Shahid has always been a good actor, except that it took a long time for audience to grow up to good performance oriented movies. Like Fiza never made it big..but maybe if it had been made today…Shahid plays his double role exceptionally well and he is very well supported by the entire movie team in doing so. And Priyanka acts as well (if not better) as she had done in Fashion.
I found the first part of the movie to be a bit of drag, but I guess that was necessary to explain the second half, so its forgiven.
So go ahead and watch the movie..atleast I found it worth watching…

Posted via email from Posted bits