Reality Distortion Field

Master your iPhone keyboard

yingyangred — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:45:59 +0000

some great tips @ http://blog.crankingwidgets.com/2008/06/12/iphone-keyboard-mastery/

Caffeine Love

yingyangred — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:07:04 +0000

Being targeted by my friends as a coffee junkie and a tea nut , I was compelled to compile this list of some great coffee shops and tea lounges in San Francisco that I truly love and thankful that they exist. Enjoy and feel free to add your own in the comments

The Beans

1. Blue Bottle in Hayes Valley – by far my favorite shop. These guys know how to roast and I wouldn’t be surprised if the baristas here actually have a degree in coffee

2. Ritual Coffee Roasters in the mission – A little snobbish but great vibe and atmosphere for a small quick evening/weekend date. I think their quality has softened a little bit ever since they stopped using roasts from stumptown.

3. Four Barrel in the mission – this is a new kid on the block from the same co-owner of Ritual. Definitely worth checking out. Their coffee is comarable to Blue Bottle and Ritual.

The Leaves

1. Samovar lounge in Castro – a great atmosphere to take your friends to relax and unwind with some truly great tea from Asia.

2. Imperial Tea Court in N.Beach – This great little shop is a San Francisco institution for many years and they serve the world’s best teas from Asia.

Also check out these great sites to learn and order

1) Adagio – you can also try my own blend, Zenful Guilt, that I created.

2) Silk Road Tea

Enjoy !

Help Send a Message to Congress: It’s Time to Act on Global Warming!

yingyangred — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 23:24:22 +0000

“On March 21st, I [Al Gore] will testify before Congress on the immediate action that needs to be taken to end the climate crisis. Help me fill the committee room with 350,000 messages.”

Inside The Wii Remote (Literally): How does the Wii Remote work?

yingyangred — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 23:23:38 +0000

How does that Wii Remote work anyway? This Popular Science article actually deconstructs a Wii remote and details how each of the parts transfers your motion from your living room to your TV screen. Very interesting!

iPhone – the anti-PDA

yingyangred — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 18:17:12 +0000

Unless you have been stranded in an island the last few days, you must have heard about the ‘iPhone’ – you know, the one from the much enamored fruit company from Cupertino – not the one from the San Jose company.
Let me sart off by saying that I am not going to ramble about how great the device is and how it exceeds all our expectations – many have already spoken, written and enacted about it. What I’d like to highlight in this post is how much an anti-PDA device is the iPhone. Now don’t get me wrong, I too am an obsessive Apple fan boy.
As I watched the ‘Stevenote’ recording a bazillion times over the weekend and seeing Steve compare the ‘bottom 40′ of the competitive devices, I couldn’t help but think “Would this really replace my Treo in June ? ” —
– I use my Treo extensively to sync up with my corporate calendar (Lotus Notes) so I can be notified of my meeting times. This is invaluable to me. Now the iPhone to my knowledge will not be able to sync up unless Apple provides these applications – no 3rd party apps, remember.
– I can easily jot down urgent notes as a new memo. This too is invaluable as tI can organize these memos into separate text files. There is no file management in the iPhone. So no easy note-taking capability.
– I sync up my password file/database (Keepass anyone?) between my work PC and the Mac using the Treo…So I have a backup of password file in 3 places at all times. No file management in iPhone means no sync up of any files from the Mac unless Apple releases an updated iSync utility with this capability.

So net-net —- Even with all the great user interface design, sleek hardware, ultra sexy touch screen, integrated iPod, full Safari support, excellent ease of the ‘the killer app’ (the phone); would you really buy it if you are deprived the basic PDA necessities of corproate calendat sync and basic file management ?

Now does this mean I will not shell out $600 in June ? – absolutely I will. Why you ask ?, well, it’s an Apple product and as someone said, what other phone gets turned on by getting stroked !

Are you a recent Mac switcher ?

yingyangred — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 12:07:00 +0000

Here’s some excellent info from one of my favorite bloggers Rui Carmo

How to protect your new macbook pros

yingyangred — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 21:44:00 +0000

Check this out at YouTube

The inevitable switch

yingyangred — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 09:52:00 +0000

Ever since I laid my bare hands on an Apple product (the ubiquitous 2nd gen iPod) I knew I experienced one of the very few moments of epiphany in my life. For the next 3 years while I admired, ogled at the sensibilities of the OSX, I knew the “day” was coming – the day of the switch.
And so it did – March 31st 2006, the day I was swooped into the ‘reality distortion field’. I broke down and got the MacBook Pro (couldn’t they have named it better ?)

Though there are some reports on MBPissues , I fortunately got the REV D with all those probs resolved except the heat issue. As Om sometime refers, it indeed turns into a toaster oven after 30 min. But I don’t mind that too much because this baby just rocks ! The only thing that slowed my decision-making initially was the lack of firewire 800, PCMCIA and the 4x DVD burner. But really, how many times am I going to burn DVDs ? Would I really use any PCMCIA card in the next one year by which time the market would be full of Express cards ? Would I really be stranded by 400Kbps transfer speed Vs a 1 mbps ? I didn’t think so. And so I decided to burn my pockets deep. And now ever since I got my MBP I truly share the feelings of an Intel chip -not trapped anymore and feel like I have been set free and now can live beautifully in a…errr…with a Mac

Venture Capital in India

yingyangred — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 18:22:00 +0000

With “India Rising“, its no surprise the venture capital scene is just getting hotter there. I use this blog to catch-up.