The last 2 days, 27th and 28th of March 2006, have had pathetic crosswords to say the least. I was just wondering what was cryptic about the puzzles apart from a few traces of anagram clues. The Hindu hardly pays any attention to the Crosswords. Yesterday's Crossword grid for example was not symmetrical. I wonder if there is anyone at The Hindu who exclusively takes care of the Crosswords. From what we see, it looks like The Hindu Crossword is not on anyone's KRA.

The Hindu uses lots of Constructors, who churn out crosswords. Some are really good and some like the one who made the grids the last 2 days, are to say the least, pathetic. In the US, a publication like the New York Times, has a fan following just for the NYT Crossword. I believe The Hindu should give enough attention to the Crossword, as there is a huge fan following for the Crossword. N.Ram, are you listening?

Look for the Daily Solutions to The Hindu Crossword @ http://thehinducrossword.blogspot.com/

We had been on a trip to tirupathi the last couple of days. My cousin got his iriver T10 player, and for the 2 days, he was using it most of the time. He was using one of his old duracell batteries which he had used months ago. I was really surprised. I told him how the iPod is coool, he said...let me try to summarise the difference between the two... "iPod has hoards of memory where you can store all your collection but the battery wont last long, iriver has decent memory space where you can store your most favorite tracks and it lasts forever."

I think he summarised it very well.

Sowmya, I havent heard about her before today. I was just visiting Chakra's blog and I found a post about how Sowmya is no more. It is really sad and tragic. Let God give her family and friends the courage to bear this loss. Please do read this post from Sowmya's brother, Harry.

It has been some time since I blogged. Here is something I found very interesting recently. The iPod is one of the worlds hottest selling products. I like it too, except for 2 gripes...

• Battery life sucks
• You cannot transfer songs back from your iPod to your PC / Mac

Now all that is history. Welcome XPLAY2. This small and inexpensive software, once installed, shows your iPod as an explorer window, where you can drag and drop your playlists, songs et al between your PC and the iPod and vice versa.

The best part is transferring songs from your iPod back to your PC. This was not possible using iTunes. The reason it was not allowed with iTunes is the chance of large scale piracy. Though this was a logical reasoning, it stopped people from backing up their playlists on their iPod back to their PC in the case of their system or hard disk crashing.

The other good thing, is that it works with almost all Operating Systems(OS), like Win 98SE, Win ME, Win 2000 and WinXP. This I think is really good, because, not everyone who has an iPod has Win XP as their OS. I, for one still use Win 2000. The software is compatible with all variants of the iPod (See the picture).

Verdict : This software, I think is a boon to all those iPod users, who were frustrated with it being integrated so closely to iTunes. Now if only there was a software to increase the battery life of the iPod 4 times its present battery life.

I love some of these exhibitions which come up in halls around TTK Road. Last week, I went to this exhbition which was held at Sankara Hall. I am not much for these mundane things which are exhibited there. What caught my eye was this oddly shaped wooden thing. It looked very colorful, but I was not sure what it was. Then I asked the guy at the counter as to what it is, and he said, "Pambaram Sir". I was like... WOW, this thing looks like the beyblade that kids across the world seem to be flipping for. I asked this guy for the price and he told me it cost Rs 35.00. I did not want to bargain, if I did, it would have been like insulting the workmanship, which was so very well done.

I could not wait to get back home and try it out. I was totally amused and i must have spent atleast a couple of hours with the desi beyblade. My daughter was pretty amused with me and the desi beyblade. She has this habit of stopping anything which rotates, so she had a ball stopping it from spinning. I wonder now where you would get more of these things, I could have asked the guy at the exhibition the other day. I would pick the desi beyblade any day compared to the plastic beyblades that these MNC's sell for exorbitant prices. For the price of one plastic beyblade, you could buy almost 10 desi beyblades, the choice is yours.