When I visited Chennai recently (more on that later), @the100rabh and @daaku showed me an mp3 player that they said they bought for just Rs.180! This little Chinese bastard of an iPod Shuffle and Chinese preeminence comes with a pair of earphones and a microUSB cable (for charging purposes) too. Plug in your micro memory card and you’re good to go. You can even use your own 3.5mm headphones.

The sound quality really isn’t that bad if you’re only going to listen to Hindi music, Pop and Hip-Hop genres. Just don’t expect your Metal songs to sound good because this iPod can crank up the treble to insane levels.

Available at Saravana Selvarathnam Textiles, T.Nagar, Chennai. In Red, Black, Silver, and Purple(!!) colours.

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We initially wanted to go by train, but the train timings were such that we would reach Shimoga in the middle of the night, and from there, we would need to take a bus to Gokarna. Instead we took a sleeper coach bus right from Bangalore itself. The bus was an hour late! En route, our dear friend Somo made the bus wait for a good 10 whole minutes as he came running from home.

We reached Gokarna at 7 in the morning. What was surprising was that there was almost no humidity despite being a coastal town. The weather was excellent!

Once at Gokarna, we had to hire autorickshaws to Om Beach. The beach is pretty far from the bus stand and 100 bucks for the rick is worth it. En route the tiny ghat section, you will see Gokarna’s other beaches which are equally as beautiful as Om Beach. Once at Om Beach, we had to walk till the end of the beach to find a place to stay as every other shack was either booked or available only to foreigners. Apparently, charging foreigners a large amount for a lousy shack is how these people manage to keep the price cheap for us.

The entire stay for 2 days was just brilliant. Day 1 went away with exploring the geography of the place, lazying by the beach, and a visit to the temple. On day 2, we trekked quite a lot in the somewhat hot sun and found a stunning spot where we could see a panoramic view of the sea. Sadly we hadn’t taken our cameras on the trek. The rest of the day was spent floating in the sea, playing catch in the water, and losing precious stuff.

Budget wise, I had expected us to spend close to Rs.2,500 like the last trip to Mangalore. Surprisingly though, the whole thing worked out at exactly Rs.1,600 per head! Here’s the run down for those planning to go to Gokarna:

• Travel – by bus (to and fro), sleeper coach (Seabird) — Rs.800
• Accommodation – Sunset Cafe — Rs.300 per room (2 people in a room with maximum 3 allowed)
• Food – this was the costliest because we did not skimp on our non-veg craving, and yes, ’cause we’re hogs, lol – Rs.450
• Autorickshaw – the only way to travel from the beach to the town — Rs.200

I haven’t gone into much detail about the trip due to lack of time and patience. Gokarna is overall a very nice place to visit. Om Beach is calm, quiet, and a privy place away from hooligans. Contrary to recent rumors, the beaches are kept really clean and morally well looked after.

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The leak was identified to a store in France, where the album was released nearly two weeks ahead of the scheduled release. [link]

Check out a photo posted by one of those fans lucky enough to have gotten their hands on the new album.

Death Magnetic CD Image

Death Magnetic track listing:

1. That Was Just Your Life
2. The End Of The Line
3. Broken, Beat & Scarred
4. The Day That Never Comes
5. All Nightmare Long
6. Cyanide
7. The Unforgiven III
8. The Judas Kiss
9. Suicide & Redemption
10. My Apocalypse

Cyanide has been available on Metallica.com for listening from some time now, but of course, the leaked album is already available on BitTorrent, and I must add, ALL of the songs are good!

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This blog post is a summary of the trip. It is kind of lenghty, so I’m cutting it off from here for feed readers (aka “I’m only interested in the iPhone news yaar” subscribers. Absolutely no offense to you folks. I cherish you all. Really!).

The trip was sort of planned from a long time, much before my birthday, but the place we decided on was Ooty and we planned to go there by bike! After a few thoughts and some “I’ll-keel-you-if-you-go-by-bike” threats by friends and family, we decided to go to Mangalore by bus. It came down to just three of us though – Pranav, Shanks, and myself. The best part of the trip – we did it under Rs.2000 for each person. That includes traveling to and fro in the luxurious KSRTC Airavath Volvo, staying in a decent hotel, and travelling to all the below mentioned places in rickshaws, besides buying gifts worth ~Rs.300! Beat that!

Departure: 08.00 PM, 28th July; left home for Majestic. We sat in the last seat of the bus and made a HUGE ruckus. Well what did you expect? Just a bunch of excited 18yr olds after all.

Cya soon Bangalore!: 09.30 PM; Self-explanatory.

Three Noisy Little Monkeys on a bus, 12.30 AM, 29th July; The three of us were wide awake, talking (well just me, with the GF on the phone), laughing, giggling, and squirming around in our seats while every-frikkin-body in the bus were fast asleep. Heh!

Ghost Town, Hassan: 1 AM; I swear, this town did not even have a dog on the street. There was absolutely NO living soul on the roads of this small city. (And yes, I was still on the phone.)

The ghat section kept me awake through the night. Pranav was busy “gaming” on his cell phone. Only Shanks was able to catch up on some sleep.

Mangalore, 05.30 AM; Got off the bus and we were greeted by heavy rain that just came out of nowhere. I’m serious. One minute there was not a single drop, we get down, and it POURS down on our heads. We make a run for the hotel but realise it’s too far off. (There we were, 3 jack arses running around the city with huge bags on our shoulders). After some sense kicked into our heads, we stopped an auto. The auto wallah says – “Banni, Aiidhu nuuru rupaayi” (Come, 500 rupees). I SWEAR!! We’re standing there laughing our asses off at this guy who’s [supposedly] trying to rip us off. Only a couple of minutes later did we understand that he actually meant “Banni, Hadhi-muuru rupaayi” (Come, 13 rupees). Mangalore just gave us a taste of its Tulu-laced Kannada accent which we “big-city kids” had no clue about! :\

Breakfast, 9.15 AM; We had absolutely no clue where to eat, so just went to the small hotel behind our lodge. The total bill – Rs.72. That was the total amount for the THREE of us (all of us ate a LOT btw). Mangalore is frikkin cheap.

St.Aloysius Chapel, 10.15 AM; We visited the beautiful St.Aloysious Chapel.

Mangala Devi Temple, 12 Noon; Left the Chapel to visit Mangala Devi Temple (suggested by our “Oh I’m so religious” Pranav). Reached there, and it started to pour again. Mangalore is friggin weird. No warning of rain at all. And the temple was a utter waste of time. The main idol was closed off for visitors. So while our “religious head” went around the temple once, Shanks and myself were outside “guarding” our footwear from theives!

Bharath Mall, Lunch, 1 PM; Not really a great place to go for lunch, but we had to book our return tickets and since this mall was right opposite the KSRTC bus terminal, we gave it a shit shot. Nothing great, but again, Mangalore is frikkin cheap.

Pabba’s Ice Cream Parlour, 1.30 PM; Sathya had provided me with a few places to eat. Pabba was this huge ice-cream parlour (which you will NEVER find in Bangalore mind you) that was, again, priced dirt cheap compared to Bangalore (DBC anyone?). We had some of the best ice-cream YEVER! And hey, we had a stalker too!!

Somanath Beach, 3 PM; Without taking any rest we headed down to Summer Sands, a private beach. The auto-wallah forced us to go to Somanath Beach, stating that it has a better view (and it’s free, unlike Summer Sands). Hell, he was right alright. The view was simply superb! Standing on the edge of a hill 50 feet above the water and watching the sun in the distant horizon is stunning. Sadly, we left our cell phones behind (for absolutely no good reason), so no snaps of the Somanath Beach . We got wet, I cut my foot, but still had some fun while we got drenched in the rain.

A wet evening in Mangalore, 5.30 PM; Again, no rest, just a dress change and off we were to the streets of downtown Mangalore to savour some local chaat. Car Street was where we went to (thanks to Sathya again) for some Charamburi, a little Aangli Pachodi (refresh my memory Sathya), and another peanut-filled chaat (the name of which I find hard to remember). All of them had a little coconut oil in them (or as Shanks would say, an entire bottle of oil). We also had some bhajji filled with Maggi noodles! I know, WTH? (sorry, forgot the snap. Finished it off before we could take a snap. )

(PS. Bhajji is also known as Mirchi. It kinda looks like this. Now imagine that stuffed with Maggi Noodles.)

Next tweet from me comes only in the following morning. You can wonder why.

Taj Mahal, Breakfast, 10.30 AM; Had an amazing breakfast that consisted of a huge paper dosa, and the best ‘Bannana Halwa’ I’ve had.

Next tweet from me comes only in the night due to the damn network going down. But that didn’t stop us from having some fun! Read on (if you still haven’t closed the page).

Off to Kaup, 11 AM; Kaup is a small town which has a Light House, ~80 Km from Mangalore. We went ZOOMED by private bus. I can tell you that it was fun, and scary at the same time. Going on a private bus having no hydraulics, no air-conditioning, and a driver with absolutely no brains is kinda insane. The bus travelled at nothing less than 80kmph, with the speed peaking at >100 kmph most of the time. The bumpy road made for a good ass whooping. A bump, and we were literally STANDING in our seats. No kidding.

Kaup Beach & Light House, 1 PM; The town was bathed in fish stink as we left for the beach. But really, that did NOT stop us from having oodles of fun. Let the pictures speak for themselves.

That was it, we came back at around 5 PM and headed straight for the hotel. Checked out at around 8 PM, did a little gift buying for our girls, and headed to Chicken Tikka Hallal at around 8.30 PM. And our Mangalore trip came to a close.

Well, almost. We just had to have a final laugh now. The bus was scheduled to leave at 10.30 PM, and we were still having dinner at 10.25 PM. By the time we went down to the bus stand, it was 10.40 PM. Yes, we had made the *last* KSRTC Volvo to Bangalore wait *exclusively* for us!

Don’t forget to check out:

• All the pictures of the Mangalore trip on my Flickr set.
• Did I mention Nerd Boi? You have GOT to check out his pictures. He’s the new super-hero in town. Really.
• And follow me on Twitter! @9_6

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You may also know that deciding on which headphone to buy is really difficult, especially since no store lets you try them out. You gotta go on user-reviews.

The SONY MDR-XD200 won hands down after I went through a bunch of headphones. This baby has bang for every frikkin buck you pay.

Specs

• Closed-Type Headphones with Long Stroke Diaphragm for Dynamic Movie Sound
• Capable of Producing Movie Quality Sound with Dynamic Sound Range
• Sound Mode Switch for Movie and Music Enjoyment
• Comfort Fit with Urethane Leather Ear Pads
• Ear-Conscious Design for Wearing Comfort
• Large 40mm Driver Unit with 360kJ/m³ High Power Neodymium Magnet for Outstanding Sound Quality
• Response Bandwidth: 10 – 22000 Hz
• Sensitivity: 102 dB
• Impedance: 70 Ohm

Performance

The sound quality is really good. The sound does not distort at high volume. The bass and treble are evenly matched. Sony’s set them just right for optimum headphone listening. There’s a slider that lets you change modes while watching movies or listening to music. The difference, sadly, is not much unless you try it out on original 5.1 DVD movies or high bit-rate music. All it does is make the sound seem more wide. The headphone also does a decent job at cutting out environment noise.

Comfort

Trust me on this one – excellent. The ear-cups are carved in such a way that your entire ear is covered perfectly by the spongy part. The band over the head is pretty comfortable and does not hurt a bit even on long hours of use. And since this baby is pretty light weight (8 Oz), you hardly feel any pain in your neck.

The best part is the wire. It’s 11.5 feet long. That’s right, Eleven-and-a-Half feet! To give an example, I had @Sknahs wear the headphones and sit at one corner of the hall. I then carried the music player half way down the stairs with the headphones connected!

The sad part here is that a volume-controller is missing. So if you’re watching a movie sitting on the other side of the room, you’ll need to come down to your media player to decrease the volume every time a horrible song comes on.

Final Verdict

Excellent pair of headphones. Very good bass and treble support, and plays very well on just about every music player we tried (Nokia’s n70, Sony’s own w580i, and the PC). But what will make you buy this, is its price — Rs.1,490 including taxes!

Now no more being told to decrease the volume, or being shot in the ass while playing Counter-Strike because you couldn’t hear your opponent come right behind you. Yay!

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So what’s unique about Feedly? For starters, it works only with Firefox and is installed as an addon.

Feedly integrates social-networking with your RSS feeds. For example, if you liked an article from your feed, you could easily share it with your friends over at Twitter. You could even add your Facebook account into it.

Feedly conveniently imported all my subscriptions (and even my name!) from Google Reader. All I had to do was give it the thumbs up, and it did the rest. The one thing Feedly lacks, which I got used to with Google Reader, was the feature of automatically marking a feed as read when you scrolled past it. Then again, Google Reader never functioned well with my scroll wheel. So I’m not complaining.

There is another setback though, advertisements. I can’t stand them, and Feedly has containers ready to serve ads when the owner of the feed decides he wants to. I’m not too sure how to block them, but for now there are none since the service is quite new.

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Preview
The Nokia 3110 Classic is a budget phone made for the masses. It features a 1.3 mega-pixel camera and expandable memory, while keeping the cost in mind.

Looks
Quite average considering that bulky is so not the fashion these days. Then again, you can’t expect sleek sexy looks from Nokia at this price range. The display does look rich though with some great themes from Nokia, so you won’t be entirely disappointed.

Performance
The keys are quite big, making it easy for typing. Or so it seems actually. Once you get down to the typing, you’ll realize that the keys are too hard, especially the 4, 5 and 6 keys. It might loosen up after constant use though, but don’t count on it. Call drops did occur rarely.

Camera & Music
The camera is 1.3 mega-pixels with no flash. The image quality is pretty average even in daylight. Shutter freaks, keep away please. But for a budget phone, 1.3 MP is really good!

For a small budget phone, it features the best loudspeaker that I have ever come across. The sound quality is very good and you will not be embarrassed playing it out to an audience. The earphones are pretty good too. The phone can play back mp3, AAC, and a few other formats besides having a visual-radio, making it a real treat.

However, if you want to make extensive use of either features, you will HAVE to pick up a memory card because the in-built 9 MB is hardly enough for anything. Else, you will have to settle with low bit-rate AAC music.

Price
Finally, this is where the phone thrashes competition (yes, it thrashes them and not just give them a beating). Priced at Rs.4,900/-, this is a real steal.

Final words
An excellent small budget phone. Feature packed. Just don’t forget to pick up a memory card if you want to make good use of the camera and music player.

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01. Most Middle Eastern countries recognize the following Islamic law: After having sexual relations with a lamb, it is a mortal sin to eat its flesh.

02. In Lebanon, men are legally allowed to have sex with animals, but the animals must be female. Having sexual relations with a male animal is punishable by death.

03. In Bahrain, a male doctor may legally examine a woman’s genitals, but is forbidden from looking directly at them during the examination. He may only see their reflection in a mirror.

04. Muslims are banned from looking at the genitals of a corpse. This also applies to undertakers; the sex organs of the deceased must be covered with a brick or piece of wood at all times.

05. The penalty for masturbation in Indonesia is decapitation.

06. There are men in Guam whose full-time job is to travel the countryside and deflower young virgins, who pay them for the privilege of having sex for the first time. Reason: under Guam law, it is expressly forbidden for virgins to marry.

07. In Hong-Kong, a betrayed wife is legally allowed to kill her adulterous husband, but may only do so with her bare hands. (The husband’s lover, on the other hand, may be killed in any manner desired.)

08. In Cali, Colombia, a woman may only have sex with her husband, and the first time this happens her mother must be in the room to witness the act.

09. In Santa Cruz, Bolivia it is illegal for a man to have sex with a woman and her daughter at the same time.

10. In Maryland, it is illegal to sell condoms from vending machines with one exception: prophylactics may be dispensed from a vending machine only in places where alcoholic beverages are sold for on the premises.

11. The penalty for masturbation in Indonesia is decapitation.

12. Sex actually relieves headaches. A lovemaking session can release the tension that restricts blood vessels in the brain. But beware, recent research proves that sex three or more times a week can cause a heart attack.

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