SONY PSP My latest Gadget

Just got my hands on the Sony PSP . I know its a tad late to be writing a review on this one but I can't contain myself. Move over all so called pocket sized  entertainment devices the Sony PSP is truly the handheld to own, this pocket sized (for the skeptics it fits right into my jeans pocket and I wear slimfits) powerhouse answers all your needs for a personal entertainment device especially if you are someone who is always on the move. The gaming experience is fantastic the screen is brilliant and the controls are just where they ought to be especially if you have broken in a PS1/2/3 (I took to it like a fish to water). The speakers while not anything to write home about do the job, but if you are looking for an immersive audio experience use a pair of headphones. Though one has to test the headphones with the PSP before buying them I personally reccommend a pair of in ear headphones as the volume on any other headphone seems fairly low (the system output seems low I did try a pair of ridiculously priced high end headphones they didn't work too well) especially while playing music the gaming volume appears to be loud enough (maybe my mp3's were encoded at a lower bitrate). The PSP also works as a fairly decent movie player (the screen is fantastic and larger than most personal music devices) , it has three brightness levels to cater for the ambient light. Coming to the capabilities of the music player while it may not satisfy an audiophille the player is good enough for us lesser mortals, especially if you pair it with a decent set of in ear headphones to offset the low volume issue. So what else can the PSP do well its a brilliant internet tablet the Wi Fi is great and configuring it to a connection is a breeze (took me under a minute to get onto my hotel's network) the browser is intutive and is surprisingly easy to use despite the absence of a keyboard, the joystick doubles as a mouse and does the job well. I have yet to use the system as a skype phone so can't really comment on that feature. The battery life is great (it managed to last through my initial overexcited onslaught which lasted as long as any gaming urge would) the battery charging is also smart so you need not worry about leaving the PSP plugged in through the night for charging. The egronomics are great the device has a sleep mode which switches it off in a hurry in case you need to and then gets you back where you left at the flick of a button. Tastly there are a plethora of homebrew applications available with it in case you are the adventurous type (read geek). Over all a brilliant device I regret I didn't pick up one earlier, a word of caution though its sure to annoy your better half/ girlfriend as I found out while I was shamelessly gaming during a shopping spree, so maybe people will look at you as the strange guy yelling "Ronaldo scores" and launching into a celebratory jig in the middle of a busy shopping mall only you would be too busy having fun to notice... so go out and pick one up pronto. Cheers!

ANNOYED IN THE DESERT

Its getting hotter by the day global warming and all that and it doesn't help that I'm sitting in the middle of a desert. I think our planet has as a serious design deficiency we could have just had a flat planet with the sun a 150 million km away and a switch to turn it off at night maybe even a thermostat to boot (the damn thing would have lasted twice as long); but no, we have to get creative don't we? We have to have a sun that is on all the time and a rotating earth with day and night being determined by revolution, lets see who is laughing when we have a 'permanently on' red giant on our hands. Anyways my point in all this is the planet's warped temperature control and warped human evolution why couldn't we have been creatures evolved to live in 45 degree centigrade why i ask you (and I mean you Mr Darwin) why? As you can see most of my problems would have been more or less sorted out if only the design of the planet had been left to me I mean it wouldn't have hurt if they had just asked, "so Gaurav you're going to live on earth tell us what do you like?", no one cares about customer satisfaction these days I tell you! Anyways in a couple of hours this rock will turn enough so there will be light here again so I might as well catch some shuteye.

WALKING TO SCHOOL

I remember as a child I would actually walk to school (no we were not too poor to afford transport we just did it), it wasn't a long walk 15 odd minutes on a path through the jungle entering the school from the "dumpster end" (about twenty yards full of the school's trash; the part that we mostly ran through holding our breath). I decided to walk the path again yesterday Chip my dog lies somewhere here in his last resting place a free soul in a free place, 12 years have gone by since I was here last, so many years later it seems so much shorter, the greenery has thinned the grass doesn't seem as green as it used to be the mountain seems like an older man with thinning hair , there is a swanking new bypass with shiny cars whizzing by flanking my path as it looks on, the raspberry bushes that we spent our childhood summers hunting for berries, have given way to construction; concrete and trash flank my childhood path from both sides, the small stream that flowed through the jungle a worthy opponent in the rains has now stopped serving nature and is serving the needs of the city instead. As I come to the end of my walk and step onto the asphalt I realize that the path that carried an unwilling child to school is no longer the same, progress they say I cannot help but feel a little wistfull.

All about the money?

The budget 2008 is in, and as I consider myself as an amateur investor I have been following it rather keenly. The budget day has gone by and now the so called "experts" are opining regarding what the Finance Minister has done. Amongst other things is this proposal where the Government gives you a tax break if you foot the bill for your parent's health insurance. After the whole debate on the issue our man comes up with a gem at the end of the show where he goes "now you can save money when you take care of your aged parents", whats wrong you ask? Well here is what is wrong we are more interested in the monetary benefit rather than the "taking care of your parents" part and the media is tooting that horn. Rather than saying "hey folks if you are taking care of your parents (who by the way have taken care of you all your life) the government now rewards you for it", it is being advertised as "Hey you know how you can save some more dough? Take care of your folks!", and if you still don't get what I'm trying to say go back 20 years your folks definitely didn't get any tax rewards for taking care of you!

This blogging thing

Its about one am in the night and i am sitting here on the first page of my freshly created blog (some people would argue that 'freshly' applies only to vegetables and 'newly' would be more appropriate here; I thumb my nose to such people as they are the very reason I have created a blog where I get to make the rules be it about my grammar, my sensibilities or my annoying use of brackets). Most of us spend our lives waiting to say something spontaneous and intelligent now this wait can be a really long one as one does not go through life reading off a teleprompter however considering the fact that even people who do get to read off a teleprompter tend to foul it up sometimes its not really as bad as it sounds.