The 3rd week of Feb

I'm back after a brief hiatus. I'm working on nurturing my discipline to maintain my thoughts on this blog. How I wish there were a device to record all your thoughts and then you could sieve through them on a graphic interface and pick those you'd like to share. That's definitely one for the future (30 years on?) Or else bring out the Pensieve (for those not familiar with the Harry Potter series, the Pensieve is a magical device used to store one's thoughts and anyone could view and be present through each stored memory.) Well, until then, let's work on that discipline.

These days, exercise has been close to the top of my agenda and I've been reading up on the difference between running and walking. Earlier, I thought running was a better idea, but these days I prefer walking. It's better for the knees and you don't burn yourself out as fast. You can travel greater distances as a result and burn more calories in a day. The amount of calories for a certain distance covered is about the same whether you run or walk - you do burn slightly more calories when you run, but that's about it. One thing I still have to read up on, is what kind of fats are burnt in either case. I'd believe that the body/muscle/fats go through anaerobic combustion while you run, but aerobic combustion while you walk. The reason for this I'd think is that there's more oxygen available while you walk as you have greater control over your breathing cycle and you don't run out of breath while you walk. As I mentioned, still more reading up to be done on these topics, but if anyone out there has some info - that'd be great!

With that, it's time to sign off for the day and get ready for the week ahead! To a great week!

Back to good ol' Nokia

So this week my 2-year old HTC reached its untimely end due to a damaged micro-usb port. I initially thought it would be easy and cheap to fix the port, but I was wrong on both counts. If you gave this to a professional, it'd cost you $80 and 2-weeks to get it repaired. I thought it'd be worth trying to repair it myself. To get my hands on the part I'd have to import it from the US or China (ebay or alibaba, your pick) and then its opening up the phone and tinkering with the main circuit board. From the tutorials online, this doesn't seem too bad, so I'll give this a shot. Hope I can post a positive result in a few weeks time.

This.....was the best excuse for me to go hunt for a new phone. For a week I would be using an old replacement with no 3G. Losing connectivity to whatsapp/3G related services - a genuine first world problem - was both a boon and a bane. It was refreshing to stay away from Facebook, IM and other app-related services you would generally use, but the biggest problem I faced was importing data onto my replacement phone. Having gotten used to Google sync, I faced quite some trouble with my replacement where I hardly had any of my frequent contacts. Nevertheless, this lasted for only a few days.

I've spent the better half of this evening going through reviews and deciding on a phone - and finally after trying out many of the shops in the Little India locality - I struck gold in the Nokia Lumia 820! I got this at an Indian electronics shop where the non-contract mobile phone prices were supposed to be the lowest. It was pretty nice to wander around the place looking for the shop without GPS or a map but asking people around in a mixture of English/broken Tamil and Hindi. I had steeled myself for a go-as-low-as-you-can bidding war with the seller, but it was refreshing to see that the stuff over there were sold at fixed price (very rare for such a shop!). So after standing over at a counter jostling for space, I spent the better half of an hour looking at the specs and prices for a number of models and just when the shopkeeper's patience was running out decide on the Lumia 820.

Yes, the Nokia about 4 years back was terrible when it came to smartphones. The hardware was good, but the software was lightyears behind Apple and Android, but their new range of Windows Phone 8 devices does not disappoint. A combination of solid hardware and a refreshing OS giving you a sleek, sturdy and competitive device. Given that the Nokia + Windows Phone alliance is way behind Samsung and Apple, you tend to get a good deal on the phones due to a lack of demand. So far my experience with the phone has been great, hope it doesn't disappoint! With that I shall sign off, ~ciao!

Hello!

Hi guys, this is my first shot at starting a blog. This blog is just what the title says - an account of my life. I aim to share my thoughts and my take on anything and everything under the sun. I hope I can get your feedback and comments on every post and of course, I welcome a hearty debate if you have a different take on anything. Cheers!