Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

As I mentioned earlier in a post I have recently started listening to audio books (mainly because at that time I was feeling too sick to read or work on the computer). Since then I have read(heard) a couple of them and most of them were pretty good. For me mp3 is the best medium as I can use it on any platform i.e. I can listen to them on my computer/phone/CD player in car.

A couple of days ago I was going through John Scalzi’s blog and I saw a note that METAtropolis (A novel he edited) had been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and was available for a free download at Audible.com (Still available for free as of 11th April 2009) I decided to go ahead and download it. This was because
a) The book sounded very interesting
b) It was free
c) The book sounded interesting.

So I went ahead and registered on the site and tried to download the book. I must have spent a good 1/2 hour on the site trying to download it on my Linux system but was unable to do so. At first the stupid site kept trying to force me to install a windows program on my system even when I told it that I wanted to listen to it as an MP3 or on a CD player. Then finally I somehow convinced the system to allow me to download but alas I still didn’t get to listen to the book. What I got was a 300 byte file with a weird name and a .py extension containing a long text string that looked like part of a URL.

Ultimately I gave up. If I had paid for the book I would have been really upset. I still fail to understand why they want me to download a program on my system before letting me download a mp3 file that can be played on any system.

In any case I don’t think I will be downloading/purchasing any more books from them in the near future.

– Suramya

Visiting Antarctica is one of the things that I have been wanting to do for a couple of years now. I was talking to dad today and he was also interested in it so I did a little research on it online. There are a lot of tour companies that take you on a cruise to Antarctica but they cost a lot.

Apparently if you get a ticket for about $5,000 you have gotten a great deal (This doesn’t include tickets to the port of departure). According to this site I found $5,000 – $9,000 is a normal price for these tickets per person. Although I did find one cruise costing ~$30,000 for a 30 day trip. Most tours are 11-14 days.

I am estimating it will take about $8,000 – $10,000 including the flight tickets/stay at the departure port and shopping per person. I really want to go but its very expensive. 🙁 The best time to visit is Nov – March. BTW my birthday is in Dec *Hint Hint* .

Any contributions to the trip fund will be welcome 😉

Well this is all for now.

– Suramya

I guess I really do need more monkeys as I haven’t posted a blog post in more than a month. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to say, just didn’t feel like typing it all out. Not that a lot of people have been waiting for me for say something witty… Or the lack of visitors could be because I didn’t post anything interesting to comment on.

This past month was interesting and fun (mostly):

1. Attended Pranav and Jigna’s wedding in Indore. Had a blast.
2. Played Holi for the first time in 10 years. It looked like I had a sunburn for the next day because all the color wouldn’t come out even after multiple showers
3. Met up with friends.
4. Got an eye infection (This was the not fun part)
5. Caught a cold. (This too)

Realized that audio books are great when you have a cold and can’t stand reading or looking at a screen.

Bought a new LCD monitor. (Finally.) Now the 6 year old monitor is finally retired. RIP.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya