smr’s blog

Note the capital b. Happened unplanned (Friday, May 18th). It keeps getting better everytime. Was more conscious. Was able to cook 5am dinner.
Every time I say not again.. but it does happen again. But its awesome, godly. Love it. Not ‘often’.
Slept only for a few hours, so the full day was blissful. And a visit to ice-n-spice and finjaan made it rock even more.

sick
Had a screwed up health for a week last week. Fever, cold and then cough. It sucked. Had forgotten how we fell ill. Was having good health from long long time. It was interesting to learn that when you get sick there is nothing you can do about it. I can understand how people feel when they are ill.

Bridge
Finally got some time to learn bridge. Only cards game i heard of and didn’t know to play. No one around me knew, so finally got lessons from net. Gameplay is of a normal trump game, except for the dummy player whose cards are visible to all and is played by partner. The important and tricky part is bidding. Lots of bidding rules make it little difficult to learn. But it does rock. Liked the game. this site has nice tutes, and can play online with bots and multiplayer.

g33k hosting
geek hosting is rocking. Thanks to Manjeet for letting me use his credit card and all users so far.

Jagjit Live in concert @ Hyderabad
Yea.. again, on June 2nd @ Shilpakala Vedika. Tickets available at Wangs Kitchen, HiTech and Music World. I thought this was last time. Didn’t have any wish of listening live again, but couldn’t resist as soon i heard about it. Hope this time he sings ‘mein nashe mein hoon’. Will surely request (read shout) for this ghazal this time.

Nir is back from usa, a few of us gathered at his place.

Had a few good hands of sweep (my fav cards game) while vidit and sachin where cooking dinner. Me and Adi against Paresh and Rocky. And we rocked. [Confession: In of the the game, parry forgot to count the _three_ aces he had. ]

And the dinner was great. Great cooking by Vidit and Sachin.

Among a few interesting things that nir has brought, one is a poker set. So played a few games of it (Texas hold ‘em). It was nice. Everyone enjoyed. I managed to win one round. Other winners were Nir ( big time, everyone played most of his money. we had to do some socialisation after that, as in redistribution of the money), Paresh, Rakesh (twice, one was 1 on 1 with me at the end, i bet a lot in the game and lost it all ). I am a long time fan of the game ( any cards game infact ) and following it for years but never got chance to play it in real. Have played a lot on computer ( kpoker ) and it was lot different to play in real. A great game, keeps one excited throughout. Dude.. never play for real money.. will end up screwed. Nir and I did a post analysis of the game later in morning, like probability of different winning suites. It was interesting.
I am long time fan of Blackjack team, and waiting for the movie on it.

Nir got a whooping 32x optical zoom camcorder. most of the game is recorded on that.

And who says there is no free beer. You must meet Nir and Vidit once.

A minor B6. and a long hangover.

Related Links -
* Poker
* Poker probability

Had chance to taste Champagne on 31st night (thanks to Sahib Sindh Sultan). It was fking awesome.

Over a discussion started exploring on what makes it so godly.. and on the flow.. compiled the following article on different alcoholic beverages.

Beer
Alcoholic beverage made usually from malted cereal such as corn, rye, wheat or barely(usually), flavored with hops, and brewed by slow fermentation using yeast. Beer generally has alcohol content of 4-6.5% by volume.

Wine
Wines are made from a variety of fruits, such as grapes, peaches, plums or apricots. The most common wines are produced from grapes. Sometimes even vegetables and grains are also used. It is fermented and often aged in barrels to produce a wide array of flavors. Wine has alcohol content of 10-15%.

Wine is broadly classified in the following categories:
1. Still (non-sparkling) Wines are Light wines having an alcoholic content of 14 percent or less. They include Burgundy, red and white Bordeaux, Claret, Moselle, Tokay, Alsatian, Rhine, Zinfandel, Chablis, Sauterne, and such Italian wines as Chianti, Barolo and Barbera.
2. Sparkling Wines are light wines which bubble and fizz when they are poured. This is because they contain carbon dioxide. They include champagne, Astispumante, Burgundy, Moselle, Saumur and Catawba. Sparkling wines have alcohol percentage of 8-14%.
3. Fortified Wines are those whose alcoholic content has been increased the addition to brandy and other spirits. Among these wines are Malaga, port, sherry and muscatel. Fortified wines generally have 14-24% of alcohol.
4. Aromatic Wines famous for their distinctive odor (called bouquet) results from the addition of wormwood and other aromatic herbs and spices to the wine. Such wines have an alcoholic of 15 to 20 percent.

Champagne
Champagne is a sparkling wine produced by inducing the in-bottle secondary fermentation of wine to effect carbonation. Champagne have alcohol percentage of 8-14%.

Distilled beverages ( Spirits )
Distilled beverages ( also called Spirits) are alcoholic beverages containing ethyl alcohol purified by distillation, or other method, from a substance such as wine, concentrated sugar solution, (fermented)grain or wood. Typically spirits have alcohol content of 40 to 55 percent.

The most well-known distilled beverages are:

Brandy
Brandy is a matured distilled beverage from fermented fruit juices(white wine). Its name derives from the process, burned (gebrande) wine. Because the wine is highly heated it gets a special flavor and the alcohol percentage is increased. Brandy contains 45 to 55 percent alcohol.

Rum
Rum is a matured distilled beverage of juice of a sugar cane or molasses. Rum is aged for at least three years. Rum contains about 40.0-55.0% of alcohol.

Vodka
Vodka is a non-matured distilled beverage from grain (sometimes fruits). Vodka generally contain alcohol percentage of 40-50%. Few vodka may contain a very high alcohol percentage, even up to 72.5%.

Gin
Gin is a non-matured distilled beverage from grain flavored with juniper berry and other ingredients. Gin is usually made by the re-distillation of white grain spirit (vodka) with the berries. Gin is generally 40-50 percent alcohol.

Whiskey
Whiskey is a matured distilled beverage from grains such as corn, rye or barley. Maturation makes it different from vodka. During maturation the alcohol percentage declines. The maturation of whiskey ranges from three to fifteen year. Whiskey contain about (40-55%) 45% of alcohol.
Scotch Whiskey was originally made in Scotland. The word “Scotch” has become almost synonymous with whiskey of good quality.

Tequila
Tequila is a liquor made by fermenting and distilling the aguamiel (sap) of the blue agave plant. A single shot of tequila is often served with salt and a slice of lemon or lime. Most common tequilas are 35% to 55% alcohol.

Cordial
Cordial, or Liqueur, is made by combining some spirits such as brandy with sugar and certain flavoring. Examples of the fruit cordials are apricot, blackberry, cherry, raspberry, and strawberry liqueurs. Most liqueurs contain 20-65 percent alcohol.

To sum it up - Beer is fermented grain. Wine is fermented fruit. Spirits( Brandy, Rum, Vodka, Gin, Whiskey ) is alcohol that has been extracted from wine or beer by distillation.

and a lil fun.. (from fammer)
Johnnie walked..
Johnnie walked…
Johnnie walked….
dont drive after drinking.

links :
* Alcoholic Beverages
* Alcohol’s Properties
* Alcoholic Beverages (Wikipedia)
* Alcohol percentage
* Distilled Beverages
* Types of Alcohol and alcoholic beverages

Wohoo.. website should be designed according to proper vastu to avoid negative consequences. Some fker who doesnt fully understand website designing has written a book on it titled WebVastu. Slashdot picked it up and it was fun going through. It set me thinking how novel a concept he has come up with.. and how sick a concept it is. This also opens some doors for other novel ideas like vastu of the motherboard, ojhas for removing virus from system, coin moving for recovering lost data, etc . sick.

btw.. did some vastu change of IIIT::blogroll. Looks better now. Wanting to change the vastu of blog as well.. but not getting time.

Campus internet still sucks big time.. thank god i’m not there.. otherwise i would have murdered someone by now. dropped a comment at Turbo’s take on it.

Google Reader’s new look rocks. Coz of it i’m back in reading mode after a long break.
Firefox2.0 rocks too. Though some of my favorite extensions ( including Tabbrowser Extensions) aren’t yet ported to FF2, extensions like download statusbar, gmail this, mouse gestures, scrapbook, del.icio.us make FF just awesome. some tweaking also helped a bit.

Tarun and Vidit made my day(s actually) by gifting iWoz. It was probably the only book i can (and want to) read these days. I am sick of how to start a startup stuff. everyone talks about the business/marketing/money/bla/bla stuff and everyone sounds same to me. Woz is speaking my language. just started reading.