“The quieter you become the more you can hear”
Tag: thoughts
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FB Update – March 25, 2013 at 10:48PM
A dead man tells no tales, and neither does a dead smartphone battery…
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FB Update – March 25, 2013 at 06:02PM
Improvement always begins with an “i”, unless you are conversing with a Bong, in which case, it’s an eemprovement…
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FB Update – March 22, 2013 at 07:11AM
“if we see a light at the end of the tunnel,
it’s the light of an oncoming train.”
– Robert Lowell, in “Since 1939.” Day by Day. (1977) -
Watching the wheels
…people ask me questions, lost in confusion
Well, I tell them there’s no problem, only solutions
Well, they shake their heads and they look at me as if I’ve lost my mind
I tell them there’s no hurry, I’m just sitting here doing time
I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go– John Lennon (Watching the wheels)
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IPL Dopplr Effect
The apparent increase in the performance of an Indian cricketer as the IPL approaches, and the subsequent decrease in performance after it has passed…
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FB Update – March 16, 2013 at 01:06PM
Looks like Clarke has understood his folly of declaring with the 9th wicket down in the last test. Must have featured in his 3 points…
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What has The Dark Knight got in common with the Heroine?
Thoughts on the Heroine movie:
- The background score has an uncanny resemblance to the Batman score
- Follows the Madhur Bhandarkar movie template to a t, and makes it extra boring and predictable.
- On the subject of predictability, no surprises whatsoever in the plot, except the ending. Probably shows how desensitized I’ve become to all the drama (have you?).
- Talking of endings, that’s another uncanny resemblance to the Batman series – The Dark Knight Rises this time.
- People seem to be finding solace in European countries these days, though the film doesn’t disclose the exact one (unlike ZNMD)
- Lead character is slightly less demented than the Rockstar counterpart, though not by much. I’m beginning to wonder you need to be bipolar to become a star.
- This ain’t no Sunset Boulevard.
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flyte impressions: Finally a mainstream Indian MP3 store
It took its time, but we finally have a mainstream Indian MP3 digital store, thanks to flipkart. We did have the saregama store, but it was nowhere near as convenient as what the likes of iTunes & Amazon have offered outside India since times immemorial. I’ve already bought a bunch of tracks from the store, and I’m just getting started.
Here are some of my initial observations about the store and shopping experience:
Track naming: Not exactly named very nicely, but at least the ID3 tags are in place, so they work well with the usual music players.
Album fragmentation: At least for Hindi & Bengali albums. This can lead to a bit of confusion, and also means that you might need to download tracks from multiple albums though they should be clubbed into one.
New Digital Wishlist: While there’s a separate link to your “Digital cart”, the wishlist link is still the same. However, it’s been split into a Digital & Non Digital section.
Downloading files: The MP3 Library gives a convenient list of purchased tracks (wonder when they’ll start a cloud player service). Best of all, there’s a “Not Downloaded” section that makes life easier. You need to download each track separately unless you use the Flyte Download Manager which can download multiple tracks simultaneously. There’s also a counter that shows you the number of times a track has been downloaded – overall limit is 4.
The download manager is not fool proof though, as you can see below. I was able to fix this issue by letting the successfully added files finish downloading and then grabbing the Not Downloaded files once again from the site. It also seems that the download manager is getting updated frequently and notifies you if there’s an update available.
One limitation is that you can’t select the download location till the files start downloading. So, only files added after this setting change are downloaded to the new location.
Price: The prices start at Rs 6 per track, which is for mostly oldies (there are some costing Rs 9 too). Most of the new Indian tracks and the International ones cost Rs 15. The highest I’ve seen so far is Rs 45 for some of the longer International tracks (Star Wars tracks for ex.). Entire albums, as expected, turn out to be cheaper than purchasing every track separately. Most tracks are also available in 3 different bitrates – 320, 128 & 64 kbps (not all oldies have 320 kbps versions though) which gives you flexibility in the bandwidth, storage and quality department.
What’s missing: The catalogue is pretty comprehensive, especially from the Indian music standpoint considering that even small labels are available. The International scene also seems pretty good, but there are some notable omissions for the time being – Disney and The Beatles. Then again, even Apple took time to get The Beatles onto iTunes.
