Its now Ophiuchus…

Over the last one week, I have been coming across this piece of news everywhere around me. Facebook, Newspaper, Email forwards and blogs, all are now talking about the 13th Zodiac Sign – Ophiuchus (not even sure how to pronounce this one)

In case you don’t know what I am talking of, here is the link.

I used to religiously follow the daily ‘horror’scopes from two different newspapers, first thing in the morning, every morning. And I have always been a proud Cancerian. But now this disappointed me so much that I no longer find it fun to read. Not that I believed any of it, but it was always fun to know how your day was going to be, early in the morning.

So what does this now mean?

Let us take the example of someone born on July 1st – she would have been a Cancerian under the original zodiac calendar.

Typical characteristics of a Cancerian: Homely, Devoted, Intuitive, Moody, Sensitive, Unforgetful…okay

Now this person would naturally become a Gemini under the new system.

Typical characteristics of a Gemini: Rational, Fickle, Fidgety, Talkative.

Does this now mean that the Cancerian woman who tends to be reserved, would suddenly wake up and realize – “Hey, I am no longer a Cancerian” and becomes extra talkative? 

A water sign changes into an Air sign – absolutely dissimilar and incompatible.

Wonder what these ‘astrologers’ have to say about this.

Anyway, I still remain a Cancerian according to the new zodiac – a complete cancerian instead of a Cancer-Leo cusp, which is a good thing! There is no way I would want to trade my Zodiac for a different one!

Chocolate Biscuit Cake

For chocolate sauce
1.5 glass sugar
1.5 glass water
1 glass cocoa
1.5 tbsp cornflour

Stir on the stove till it reached desired consistency

For the Custard
1 litre milk
Mix 4.5 spoons of custard in cold milk
Heat the 1 litre milk
When it boils, put it on simmer flame Add 20 spoons of sugar and the mixed custard and stir till it reaches consistency

For the Coffee Decoction
Heat water around 2.5 glasses and add 4 to 5 tablespoons of Nescafe powder

The CAKE

Dip Krackjack biscuits in the coffee decoction and layer them in a flat bowl. pour a layer of custard over the biscuits. Again layer the dipped biscuits and layer the custard. Top it with chocolate sauce and voila!! It’s ready.
U need not pour the entire chocolate sauce made, only what u think is required:)))

Discovering my C7

Finally I ended up buying C7 instead of the N8. Sleeker looks, almost the same features and value pricing were my decision factors. I was pretty excited about my purchase, this being my first smartphone and first touchscreen handset. The only major difference between C7 and N8 is the camera. While N8 has a 12MP phone with Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus and Xenon Flash, the C7 is an 8MP one with fixed focus, dual-LED flash blah blah – Well, essentially N8 takes far better pictures than the C7. But I don’t care, my purpose of purchasing a smartphone was not for the camera. The 8MP itself is pretty good actually, just that it doesn’t work as well in low light conditions.

Anyway, coming to the point –

Some of the things I discovered in the phone:

1: Charging through micro USB – I didn’t realize that my phone supported this feature in the last one month I have owned the C7! It is so convenient to actually charge the handset by connecting it to the laptop using the USB data cable. I now don’t need to carry unnecessary accessories like chargers all the time. A 5-inch long cable will do. Incidentally, the European Union has come out with standards for mobile phone manufacturers in Europe that mandate them to make micro USB the standard charger plug for their handsets. Of course, this is applicable only to the signatories of the agreement, which includes Nokia, Apple, Samsung, LG, RIM, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Huawei, Alcatel among others – pretty much covers the entire universe. A welcome move, in my view and hope this thing gets standardized across other countries as well. Not only will it help avoid a lot of inconvenience of carrying different chargers compatible with your handsets, but it will also help reduce all the e-waste.

2: USB On-The-Go – This is essentially a feature wherein you could connect your handset directly to any external storage device like a pen drive and transfer data between the two. Most of the latest smartphones are coming with USB OTG. While the C7 claims to be “USB OTG” compatible, it is a pity that the handset does not come with a micro USB slot unlike the N8 which has one. Which means, I would need to arrange for a cable that can connect the external storage device to the C7.

This made me wonder. Are there any external storage devices that can connect to the host through wireless technology? I couldn’t find much through the internet, although I think there are a few such devices – probably haven’t really taken off yet. Next generation device I’d assume.

3: Bluetooth 3.0 – I recently realized that this is the latest and fastest version of Bluetooth available in the market which my phone has. Some of the other latest handsets such as the Dell Streak, iPhone 4 and the Nexus S are still running Bluetooth 2.0. The difference – v2.0 has data transfer speed of 2mbps whereas v3.0 supports 24 mbps.

4: Radio – My FM radio works on a loudspeaker. Agreed, this is not something extraordinary or worth mentioning, but I love it!

5: Oh and how can I forget my favorite of all – the Swype application which I had mentioned in an earlier post. The Symbian O/S was the first one to get it, can you beat that! Android has just a Beta version. And I got to start using it even before Android users became aware of such an application!

6: Sensors – This is a pretty cool feature actually. If the alarm rings or an incoming call arrives, one doesn’t need to take out the phone from the case, look at the screen and click on ‘snooze’ or ‘silence’. Instead, you can simply turn the phone upside down without even looking at it, and voila! The phone turns silent. Isn’t that amazing?

Alright, I have heaped enough praises on my handset. Now for some negatives:
 

1: The handset is slow to respond at times, especially when turning the orientation from portrait to landscape, it takes several seconds. On other occasions, the handset is so sensitive that when I am on a call, it automatically goes on Hold when my ear touches the screen.

2: Sometimes the phone just hangs – a classic Symbian performance! At one point it was so stubborn, that I had to remove the battery and replace it in order to get it to work.

Update as on 19th Sept 2011:

1:  Symbian Anna installed, icons look pretty cool. Web browser has improved significantly, to such an extent that now I prefer this to Opera Mini. But the browser allows for just three tabbed windows which becomes inconvenient at times.

2: Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled – I haven’t actually used it, but have just seen the demos. This is an absolutely awesome feature I must say and something that the ‘best of em all’ Apple’s iPhone is also not enabled with. Isn’t it cool to be able to transfer data between two mobile phones by just touching them together? That’s exactly what NFC does! I am yet to find someone with a phone with NFC to try it out myself 😦

3: Social networks – Symbian is absolutely pathetic in this area. On Facebook, I cannot ‘share’ posts put up by others. I cannot see who has ‘liked’ a post. I cannot update my profile.
On Twitter, I cannot see posts that I have retweeted or who has retweeted mine.