Tajeshwar Grewal's BLOG

Mean Green Machine (The most awesome eco-car ever)

2009-02-03T02:23:00.000-08:00

The Honda CR-Z Concept is a hybrid, switching between petrol and electric for low emissions and great economy, but there's no need to don your hairshirt to drive it. This is far sexier than a Prius- so much so that if you don't tell anyone it's a hybrid, they'll assume it's just some hulking beast of a sports car, beating Mother Earth in the face with a branch ripped from one of her precious trees, even as it hugs corners like an over-affectionate aunt.
Chuck in wing mirrors, LED headlights, and a futuristic interior and you've got yourself one hell of a way to save the planet. The name CR-Z stands for Compact Renaissance Zero, and is part of Honda's theme of “The endless joy of mobility on our earth.” Cheers for that lads....

STARTAC: THE FIRST GENERATION (The original must-have mobile)

2009-02-03T02:19:00.000-08:00

When it was released in 1996, the Motorola Star TAC was hailed as a miracle. The first ever clamshell and the first ever phone with a vibro-alert, it weighed in at just 88g, making it the world's lightest mobile phone. Admittedly, with no camera, WAP, calender – or, indeed, anything else, it wasn't exactly an iPhone-style multimedia powerhouse. However, if you typed “5318008” on the screen, then turned it upside down, it read BOOBIES. We'll take that over the ability to zoom in to photos by pinching them, any day.

Slumdog Millionaire : Right on the money!

2009-01-08T12:40:00.000-08:00

This is an extraordinary film. The tale of two orphan brothers in a slum of Bombay is a mixture of heart wrenching and uplifting emotions. Though made long before the recent tragedy in Mumbai, the film has uncomfortable echoes of that situation — the initial incident that propels the entire movie involves anti-Muslim violence. You realize just how long and deep the animosity runs.

The heart of the film is exceedingly simple, a combination of “boy meets girl, boy loses girl,” and a tale of brothers taking different paths. On top of that simplicity, Boyle weaves intricate exposition with flashbacks, parallel stories, multiple film styles, all strung together by the Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? game that drives the movie.

Though ultimately joyful, and often fun, be prepared to witness brutality. The Sound is perfect, I haven't heard audio like this in a while, this film needs a Sound Oscar nomination it sounds that good.

This is a universal tale that grabs you from start to finish. Is it a must see? My answer: Yes! Lock kiya jaye! This is a universal tale that grabs you from the start to the finish.

An online image editor... NAICE!

2008-11-04T05:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I came across this online image editor on pixlr.com. Its actually good.
Check it out at www.pixlr.com/app

The Dark Knight: The film surpasses the height!

2008-08-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

We've been subjected to enormous amounts of hype and marketing for the Dark Knight. We've seen Joker scavenger hunts and one of the largest viral campaigns in advertising history and it culminates with the actual release of the movie.
Everything that's been said is pretty much spot on. This is the first time I can remember where a summer blockbuster film far surpasses the hype.
For as much action as there is in this movie, it's the acting that makes it a great piece of work. Between all the punches, explosions and stunt-work is some great dialog work. All the actors have their moments.
Bale's Batman is the definitive Batman because we see everything in this character finally on film. Martial arts skills, cunning, great tactical thinking, forensic application, technological genius to advance or improve Luscious Fox's inventions/technological breakthroughs, intimidating personality, and even a little swashbuckling.
As for Heath, yes he gets credit for his performance as the Joker. But you have to also recognize Jonathan and Chris Nolan for the writing and treatment of the character. It's not just the fact that Ledger makes the Joker so menacing, but the Nolans have given the character this great manifesto that drives its actions. The Joker's stance on chaos, order, anarchy, the morality of the average modern human being make the character so interesting psychologically. The Nolans drafted a complex character and only a perfect performance could've pulled something like this off. That's how difficult of a role this was, and that's why Ledger's performance is so great.
This isn't an action movie. It's a film that explores literary themes of the hero and villain, as well as order and anarchy. Yes, listen to the dialog because it's all in there. Awesum!!!!

Samsung i780 Review

2008-08-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

My latest buy, the Samsung i780 is Samsung’s newest thin, QWERTY smart phone that runs Windows Mobile. Before being officially announced, the Samsung i780 was aptly called, the Blackjack II, after all, it is the second of Samsung’s Windows Mobile Device and still retains the Blackberry-like form factor.

Design

The Samsung i780 is a solid device, though larger, wider, and heavier than the Samsung i600. The Samsung i780’s larger form factor is understandable since it houses a larger screen. The screen on this device is touch sensitive, has 65k colors and is one of the first devices I’ve seen that has a 320 x 320 screen resolution. The Samsung i780 is not made from cheap plastic materials, the back cover alone has a somewhat leathery look and feel to it.

Features

Before I get to the Samsung i780’s feature, let me give you a run down of its specifications. The Samsung i780 is 3G, EDGE, HSDPA, and GPRS capable. This phone also has a 2 mega pixel camera with 2x digital zoom, WiFi, built-in GPS, 256MB or ROM, 128MB of RAM, Marvell PXA 310 processor up to 624 MHz power, and is powered by Windows Mobile 6.
The Samsung i780 is one of the more powerful Windows Mobile devices I’ve seen. It has three input options: Touch Screen, Touch Sensitive joystick, and of course, the QWERTY keyboard so users would have a variety of choice in handling the Samsung i780. You can use the touch screen with the included stylus or you may opt to use your fingers since the screen of this device isn’t recessed into the casing. The most innovative feature I’ve seen on the Samsung i780 is the touchpad or touch sensitive joystick. With conventional phones, you have to press the joystick but on this device, you have to swipe your fingers around the touchpad so you can gain access to a pointer. This allows you to handle the device with one hand but would take some time getting used to.

What really excites me about the Samsung i780 is its processor and RAM. While Samsung’s online information or any other specifications of the Samsung i780 online doesn’t reveal what kind of processor it houses, a little Google search revealed that it runs on the Marvell PXA 310 which is capable of around 624 MHz of power, almost similar to the processor running on the iPhone. This plus the fact that the Samsung i780 has a 128MB of RAM means that running a multitude of applications would be a breeze on this device and hang-ups would be kept to a minimum, which is something I can’t say about HTC’s windows mobile devices.

Conclusion

The Samsung i780 is one powerful device. HSDPA, WiFi, GPS and Windows Mobile 6 makes this phone a dream come true for Windows Mobile fans.

Build Your Own Search Using Yahoo BOSS

2008-07-11T11:07:00.000-07:00

Yahoo is letting you Build Your Own Search with a new open search web services program. To capitalize on the gargantuan value of global search results, Yahoo BOSS will allow people to customize the way they scour the web, building their own mini search engines using an API (applications programming interface).

“The goal of BOSS is simple: to foster innovation in the search industry,” Yahoo explains on the site. “Developers, start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo! Search index. BOSS gives you access to Yahoo!’s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure. By combining your unique assets and ideas with our search technology assets, BOSS is a platform for the next generation of search innovation, serving hundreds of millions of users across the Web.”

Some search engines already built include Me.dium which comes with a social toolbar, Hakia and Cluzz, which integrates giant tag clouds.

“In the coming months, we’ll be launching a monetization platform for BOSS that will enable Yahoo! to expand its ad network and enable BOSS partners to jointly participate in the compelling economics of search,” Yahoo ads, a service they’ll get in exchange for letting Yahoo tap their search terms.

LS Blogs

2008-07-04T00:03:00.000-07:00

LS Blogs

Aah! I HATE Cristiano Ronaldo!

2008-07-03T03:37:00.000-07:00

First, let me revise my title, because not everyone dislikes the “other” Ronaldo. Just throw 40 or 50 unprovoked snide comments into a forum and you’ll see that some people actually respect the guy for his quick feet, moderate talents and insatiable appetite for trying to make the “Top 10 step-overs” highlight reel. “Ronaldo’s a great player,” they’ll say, “so leave him alone.”
Maybe. But at Manchester United he’s a midfielder that dances too much to deliver the ball with any consistency and for Portugal he’s a forward that can’t get through World Cup defenses by himself. The fans at this year’s Cup are reluctant to embrace or even praise the kid, and everyone’s got a joke to make when during the slow motion replays of his scowls.
You can see after almost every play that doesn’t end in a goal that he’s trying to communicate a simple message to his coach. “Get 10 better players around me and better refs and I’ll take this team to a championship!”
Finally there are hints of him leaving the devils next season. Amazing News! He was the reason I had to betray my old favs and cheer for arsenal the last season.
It’s not his fault, and his tantrums are exactly that. One day he will age, slow down, limit his over the ball and stop juking like he’s in a Nike commercial to pass back to his keeper. We can all root for him then, and marvel at how much better he makes his teammates because he’s so dangerous on the ball. He’ll score a lot of goals, win a lot of games and make a lot of money. But for now, Leave Man United!

Create Your Own Blog In 51 steps :)

2008-06-23T06:53:00.000-07:00

1. Find a free blogging service, such as www.blogger.com

2. Register a catchy yet philosophically deep name for your new blog: "juitsucks"; "I love my car exhaust system"; "Batteries on fire"; "Mah Bhlaugh"; "The Internet Fixer", "I Stalk Balbir Singh".

3. Consider one of the many pre-made website templates offered by the blogging service, or one created by you.

4. Turn your nose up in disgust at the thought of using a pre-made template for your blog.

5. Spend the next seventeen hours creating a functioning website from scratch. If using Microsoft FrontPage^TM, relocate all children and elders to a safe area out of your "profanity zone".

6. Complete your self-made blog template by clicking on the "Publish Website" command in Microsoft FrontPage^TM.

7. Watch in shock as the aforementioned seventeen hours of hard work gets permanently deleted off your hard drive by Microsoft FrontPage^TM.

8. Swear so loudly all dogs within a five block radius begin running in circles and howling.

9. Declare "Screw It" and choose from a pre-made template. Always choose one with lots of kittens and flashing animated gifs.

10. Make sure the template is ready for your first blog entry. You can do this by going to your new blog's URL address and seeing if the page loads properly. It will have no posts yet, of course, as you have not actually written your first blog entry. (If you do see a post written by yourself at this specific moment in time, read it! You've traveled back in time to warn yourself about the "Publish Website" command in Microsoft FrontPage^TM).

11. Click on the "Create Post" selection. The window will reload with a box for you to type text in.

12. Put fingers to keyboard in preparation to type your first blog entry.

13. Realize in horror that you have absolutely no idea what you're going to write about.

14. And you've got a whole blog ahead of you.

15. Stand up and get an alcoholic beverage to calm you.

16. Pace back and forth while racking your brain for a great post.

17. Cast resentful looks at your computer monitor while drinking the alcoholic beverage.

18. Come up with a touching yet funny childhood memory you can write about, like when you and all the other fat kids in the neighborhood used to take down the ice cream man not unlike a pack of lions ravaging a wounded gazelle.

19. Or, make your first post about how much you love pets. Remark on the fact that you let your pet pit bull out of the house every night to get some freedom and exercise even though the sirens from the ambulances tearing through your neighborhood constantly interrupt your sleep.

20. Or, make a heartfelt confession about how guilty you feel that you could never be a vegetarian because you salivate every time a nature documentary appears on the television.

21. Sit back down at your computer desk with your great idea.

22. Complete your first post.

23. Experience a fleeting sense of satisfaction that you now have a blog with an actual entry, even though it details your sexual attraction to Yoda.

24. Immediately phone all your friends and family to tell them the URL. Remind your grandmother that 'stiffler-tj-diary' in your blog's address is spelled "all one word".

25. Reload your blog incessantly every two minutes to see if anyone has made a comment.

26. Become enraged when the very first comment made on your very first blog entry is "yuo are teh sUxx0r!" from Anonymous

27. Go outdoors to calm down and get some fresh air, since you've spent twenty-two hours now working on your blog.

28. Tell every person you encounter - jogger, police officer, frantic paramedic - your blog's URL.

29. Head back home when an idea for a blog entry comes to mind, such as the rudeness of paramedics who can't be bothered to talk about your blog because they are busy helping some whiner with pitbull bite wounds on his throat.

30. When back at your computer, immediately refresh your blog's page to see if any more comments were made while you were gone.

31. Grip the edge of your computer desk when the second comment reads "I said yuo are teh sUxx0r!" by Anonymous

32. Click on the "make new post" button on your blog.

33. Realize with horror you've totally forgotten the good writing idea.

34. Stand up and get another drink.

35. Sit back down at your computer desk.

36. Write your second post: how people who make dumb comments on blogs should be strung up by their genitals with barbed wire.

37. Complete the second post.

38. Stand up and get a third drink to calm you down from the blogging experience.

39. Watch TV while thinking you shouldn't watch so much television since experiencing life would probably make for a blog that's actually interesting to read. By going out more, you'll be able to continue to spread the address of your blog to bemused strangers, too.

40. Accept phone call from your grandmother asking you to change stiffler-tj in your blog's name to something more polite.

41. Refuse and hang up phone.

42. On the way back to the television, refresh your blog's page again to see if there are any more comments.

43. Experience relief when third comment is a non-abusive one. Become incredibly depressed when you discover it is written by a fellow blogger asking if you ever fantasize about wearing lederhosen while flailing midgets with kielbasa sausage, and if you'd like to meet up with him for same.

44. Stand up and get a much larger, stronger drink.

45. Consider making your third post. Repeat verbal declaration made in step #9, forget blogging for now, go to bed.

46. Just before you fall asleep, realize with horror you'll need to repeat steps #11 to #45 daily to keep your bragging rights about owning a blog (which, ironically, nobody reads).

47. Slip into an uneasy nightmare about being forced to type the word "sUxx0r" on a flaming keyboard while chained to Jabba the Hutt, who keeps demanding "More! More! Jakatooie Blogga Dooie! More!!!"

48. Wake up in the morning. Scream.

49. Read the new comments posted on your blog. Scream again.

50. Repeat for the rest of your life.

51. Welcome To Blogging!

Make Firefox 3 Even Faster!

2008-06-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

It has already been downloaded 8.3 million times in a single day. Firefox 3 as we all know is now super quick at loading pages. But there is always room for improvement and best of all since Firefox is an open source software there are a lot of ways that you can mod the app.

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit enter. You will get a warning about changing settings but we are not doing anything too radical so it is OK. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at one time.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

N' its finally complete!

2008-06-22T06:46:00.000-07:00

I was busy working on my first website for the past month or so. And I have finally managed to complete it. While I was working on this project, my family suffered a tragic loss. It will always bring back those memories. But all that makes this website even more special for me.
Check it out at http://www.tajeshwar.com/

Want to know who all visited your Facebook profile?

2008-06-10T02:17:00.000-07:00

Good news for the Facebook users who are always curious about who is visiting their profile as 'Trakzor' is now ready and can now be used with your Facebook profile.
Trakzor is a very popular MySpace tracker and is now available with Facebook. But the application does not provide the same functionality as it did on MySpace as the platform here is much more secure and the users have the option of hiding their private data from the people they don't want it to see. But for very curious users, Trakzor can give you some information about their profile visitors.
The biggest difference from the MySpace trackzor tracker is that you need to have a Trakzor account not to only see the stats but even to be traced. It means that you can’t be traced viewing other profiles until you log-in into Trakzor.
Facebook has made it impossible to track other users' activities and this makes the Facebook platform much more private for communication. Thus, you can receive information about other people only if they want you to see it.
IZ NAICE :)

Idle Status on GTalk (ALWAYS!)

2008-06-06T05:32:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted to be online on Google Talk and at the same time appear idle to your friends? Google Talk does not provide built-in functionality to allow you to control your idle status but by installing a simple program called gAlwaysIdle you can be always idle as well as never idle to other Google Talk users.

Here is the download link : http://www.galwaysidle.com/download.html

DevHook 0.50 for PSP 2.82

2008-05-29T11:31:00.000-07:00

Elo world! I was wondering what to put in as my first post here.............. (waiting....).............

Why not something i have been upto for the last week or so.
As i have absolutely nothing to do in my holidays, i thought of pimping up my PSP (2.82),
But as it turns out, there are not many morphs available for this firmware. So fur now, check out the DevHook 5.0......
What is DevHook??
Devhook emulates firmware 2.5 on your 1.5 PSP. It allows you to use all of the features of 2.5 such as the webbrowser, video, music, and photo functions, but the sweet part is that you can load ISOs that require higher firmwares on it. Remember it just emulates 2.5 so you can go back to 1.5 by rebooting your PSP.

I have created a simple tutorial on how to get DevHook 5.0 running on your PSP.

The first thing you will want to do is download the Ultimate Installer 1.5.1 file. This is the DevHook files and the firmware files.

Now connect your PSP to your computer using the USB port and initiate the USB file transfer mode. I recommend making a backup of your memory stick first. I went as far as backing up my memory stick then formatting it to install DevHook 0.50 on a fresh stick. Follow the on-screen instructions. You will be prompted to choose which version to install. I chose the Full Install.

Accept the license agreement, then select whichever drive your PSP is. The files will now be copied to your PSP.

The files are now copied to your PSP, you can hit the circle button on your PSP and exit out of USB file transfer mode. Now head over to the GAME menu, and select the PSAR Dumper. This will load a program that decrypts everything that is needed. Once the dumper loads, press the X button.

Once everything is complete, fully turn off your PSP. Don’t just put it into power saver mode, turn it right off.

Now hook up the USB cable, turn your PSP on, and initiate USB file transfer mode again. Now access your PSP through My Computer on your computer and run the DevHook Setup.bat. After this whole process completes you may delete DevHook Setup.bat.

Turn off USB file transfer mode and go back into the GAME menu. Now you can Launch DevHook 0.50.

Once you are inside of DevHook 0.50 go to the “FIRMWARE” menu and select the 2.82 firmware. You can now start DevHook 0.50 and watch your PSP boot into the 2.82 firmware.