Chintadhara - a thought process

It has been more than a year since I posted on this blog. I was not busy or something, just that there was never enough thoughts for a post here. But I have been fairly active on my other estates on the web -  youtube.com/saptarshide ,  twitter.com/saptarshide  and  facebook.com/saptarshide . Also I have traveled a lot in last one year and captured many amazing sights with my lens. So I have decided to share these as a slide-show on the next post to keep the blog updated with my latest exploits! Enjoy!

Today I was exploring the Windows Live services when I stumbled upon Windows Live Essentials . It’s something similar to Google Pack , though Google Pack has much more richer collection of free apps whereas Windows Live Essentials is a collection of free desktop applications from Microsoft. Some the apps included are the replacements of current Windows applications. Windows Live Mail replacing Windows Mail/Outlook Express Windows Live Messenger replacing MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger Windows Live Photo Gallery replacing Windows Photo Gallery Windows Live Movie Maker beta replacing Windows Movie Maker Additional to above Windows Live Writer is also included. It is a desktop blog-publishing app which features WYSIWYG authoring, photo-publishing, map-publishing, and video-publishing functionality. And the best part is that it supports all major blogging services including Blogger , Wordpress , LiveJournal , and TypePad , amongst others. I just now installed Windows ...

www.bing.com This is the latest web search offering from Microsoft , which calls it a Decision Engine as it is supposed to help make decisions apart from searching. Read here what Microsoft has to say about it. Anyway I decided to bing the web and see what it can show me. From the first impression I feel Microsoft finally seems to be understand how things should work on internet. The interface is neat and simple, though bit heavy with graphics. The web search has some nice features like ability to suggest related searches, provide a preview to page contents without opening and also suggested alternatives for the search result. Shopping search is where I found Bing really good. It could help compare prices, show reviews, product pictures, and even offers cashbacks!! Also I liked the bird's eye view of the Bing Map search , which is based on the Microsoft Virtual Earth now called Bing Maps for Enterprise. Overall impressive, I will not compare it with Google search yet. Mainly b...

Reading is a very favorite hobby of mine which had taken a back-seat for quite sometime now, except my reading the Times of India newspaper daily and reading news articles on ibnlive.in.com . Till a few years back I used to read novels very frequently, mainly from fiction (crime, detective, mystery) genre apart from a couple of biographies also. The part reason for this hobby of mine taking a back-seat are the genres themselves. You need continuous time to read them, as it's very difficult to break in between, at least for me. But very recently I got a chance to bring back this hobby of mine to focus. On my journey back to New Delhi from Kolkata on Rajdhani express I had all the time in the world. So I decided to pick up a novel to read on the train from the Howrah station . I choose The Chamber by John Grisham . Genre wise (legal thriller) it was new to me. I did manage to read a substantial part of the novel in the train but finished the remaining part at my home after reach...

I am referring to the recently concluded IPL T20 tournament in South Africa. After a close fight between Hyderabad Deccan Chargers and Bangalore Royal Challengers in the finals, Deccan Chargers became the champions. I usually do not follow cricket matches ball by ball because they are bit longer, even T20 format to some extent, but I do follow the results. Anyways that's not the reason for this post, something else caught my attention. Both Hyderabad Deccan Chargers and Bangalore Royal Challengers are the teams which finished bottom of the table in the last edition of IPL , and this year they both did a perfect turnaround. Well lot of credit goes to there respective new captains Adam Gilchrist and Anil Kumble . Interestingly, in the last edition of IPL Rajasthan Royals who were virtually written off, surprised everyone by reaching the finals and eventually winning it also. Credit of that win surely goes to Shane Warne , captain and coach for Rajasthan Royals, who did a good job ...

No, I don't want an answer from you. I guess most of us have answered this many times. Actually reason for this post is that this question was asked to a kid in one of reality shows happening on the TV these days. The answer which came left me both amused and wondering. The name of the kid, the show or the channel is not important, what's important is here ... Judge: What does your father do? Kid: Morning walk, goes out in car ... ... Judge: No, I was asking what is his profession or business? Kid: Politics. Incidentally kid's father was in the audience and camera was pointing towards him :) ... and he was equally amused as the rest.