High Maintenance

Started off with a HD LCD TV (due for replacement soon!).

Components

1. Onkyo TX-NR509 - $150 on Amazon on sale

This is one of the entry level receivers but is a bang for your buck. 4 HDMI In ports works for me. LAN/Wi-Fi enabled to connect to Internet Radio stations and 3D capable.

2. Yamaha 5.1 Speakers SP1800-BL - $120 on Amazon (was $90 on sale, I missed it)

Standard small speakers and subwoofer (100W)

3. Android mini PC stick - imito MX2 with Wifi and Bluetooth

This is one of those Raspberry Pi clones that runs on Android. There are mainly two that are well supported by the developer community and have Wifi and Bluetooth, one is the MK 809 and the other is this. I chose this after reading a few reviews on Xda-Developers (I trust them because they're the Gods of firmware updates for anything Android!)

Note: You need a wired mouse initially to use the device. Once you start installing things, you can use your Android phone as a remote to control the PC rather than using a wireless keyboard/mouse combination.

4. Hard Disk - optional - I have a 2 TB Western Digital

I bought mine a couple of years ago for $100 but there are 4 TB ones for $140 these days.

Setup

Connected my Xbox 360, my Cable HDMI IN and my Android mini PC HDMI all to the receiver. And the HDMI out to the TV.

Now anything you play on any of the devices connected to the receiver will play on 1080p HD on your TV and output Surround sound to your 5.1 speakers.

Usage

1. Use Xbox 360 for gaming

2. Cable TV for regular gaming

3. Receiver directly for Internet Radio - Pandora rocks!

4. Streaming from Android PC, there are Android apps for Netflix, Hulu, Youtube and any other service you can think of.

5. Downloaded videos and music - Connected the hard-disk to the Android mini PC and can play it thru the default Video player or thru MX Player (a VLC for your Android, plays any format)

I've stumbled upon PrivatizeVPN (download) from Pirate Bay and it is probably the best no-strings free VPN I've encountered in recent times.

I use it only when I'm downloading torrents and need privacy (if you know what I mean) and it goes up to pretty decent speeds. I had it go upto 500 Kb/sec which is not bad.

The other VPN clients I tried are all quite elaborate and encroach upon your regular browsing experience, or you need to pay for them.

Remove/Resize metal strap watch links with no visible pins

This is the video that helped me remove links from my brand new Invicta gunmetal strap watch which didn't have any visible pins.

I pressed the trigger on a brand new 5.1 Yamaha Speakers + sub woofer system only to realize after it arrived that I need an AV receiver or amplifier to connect the damn thing to my TV.

I searched everywhere to find a solution to this and had a harrowing 15 days of no use of whatsapp before I figured this one out.

If you signed up for a Google Voice number and it gives an error registering on whatsapp saying "xxx-xxx-xxxx is not a valid number in the country: United States", don't look at Google Voice forums.

You'll be encountered with a bunch of people that say that GV doesn't work with Whatsapp. Total rubbish.

1. Go to the Whatsapp support forum (strangely not listed anywhere!) and create an account.

2. Register your issue

3. You will get a default automated response from the case handler after a while (not the one as soon as you send, but the second one)

4. That case handler closes the case. Login to the forum and re-open the case.

5. This time, the case handler should actually manually intervene and add your number to their directory.

In no particular order:

1. Google Maps (with Navigation)

Now that Navigation has opened up in India, Google Maps beats the old Nokia turn-by-turn navigation. Simply a must have.

2. Evernote

Note taking application with a wide variety of uses. I use it to keep my lists, and as an advanced Notepad in the cloud which syncs with all my devices.

3. gTunes music

A free music downloading app which gets you mp3s without the hassle of having to stream or buy them

4. Pocket

A great Read-it-Later app which can save articles in a clutter-free form from any of your devices.

5. SoundHound

Easy to use Music identifier that beats Shazam because it has unlimited discovery on it. Has a nifty little widget to directly ID songs

6. TripIt

An awesome tool if you're a frequent traveler. Grant permission for TripIt to your Gmail or create a filter to send your itineraries to [email protected]. And voila, it's on your phone too. To add the itinerary to your calendar, you can only use the ical feed method

7. Astrid Tasks

If you're looking for a to-do manager with great widgets, look no more. Although the icon looks stupid, Astrid syncs your tasks to be accessed across mobile and web. Gets annoying if you don't start ticking off your checks though!

8. Endomondo

A fitness tracker that uses GPS to record your outdoor achievements and manuals inputs to log your indoor prowess. It has support for any sport you can dream of.

9. Flipboard

If you're into discovery of new content, Flipboard is the most beautiful way to do it. Also supports adding your Facebook and Twitter feeds into it.

10. Instagram

Although I tried really hard to replace Instagram after it got acquired by Facebook, I had to come back to it. There are apps such as Snaptastic which give you the same functionality but not for free.

X-box 360 Modding in Chennai for Rs 800 within an hour on Richie Street

Remove round security tag from clothes

I am a custom ROM user and have been trying out several ICS/Jellybean ROMs for my tab. Here are my best ROMs:

1. Pershoot's CM 10 Preview 28-08-2012 (Link)

(I've tested the ones till 16-09 and they are all less stable than the 28-08 one)

2. Ganbarou ROM (Link)

3. CM 9 Nightlies (Link)

I've yet to try out MapleSyrup's AOKP or CM10 previews, but Pershoot's ROM clearly takes the cake. The latest version of his CM 10 Preview ROM have back camera functionality as well, if you're interested.

For me, the importance is more on the interface being smooth, without lag, and proper Wifi/3G/tether support.

If you use If-this-then-that (IFTTT), you're already a power user who likes automation. But what happens when APIs don't allow you to extract the best value out of your rules.

There are many IFTTT recipes (rules) which allow you to:

Post a tweet with a user-defined #hashtag to post it to Facebook status without a #hashtag

What this does, however, is that it posts your tweet as a text post on Facebook.

Clearly, not an optimal solution since you want to make links look like the Facebook link posts, with a neat little preview.

Here's how to achieve that:

1. Create a buffer account, connect it to your IFTTT and Facebook (ensure you select the appropriate share setting)

2. Add this recipe to your IFTTT

Send any tweet with hashtag #fb to your Buffer

3. In your Buffer account, set 5 different times in the day to send the buffered posts (max 5 allowed for free accounts)

This is how your links should look, henceforth:

This is how they would look if you use a direct Twitter to Facebook recipe:

Tasker is a brilliant application that lets you program scenarios with relative ease to automate tasks. You may want to automate tasks to simplify your life or to save your phone's battery or just about any purpose.

Some of the examples of task profiles you can create are:

Turn on GPS while using location-based apps automatically, otherwise keep it off

Turn on Wifi when you reach home or office

Brighten the screen while using apps and dim it when you exit (conserve battery)

Create a sleep profile that puts all notifications off, dims the phone, un-checks the auto-sync option and only lets the alarm ring loud enough

There are obviously infinite profiles you can create using the variables and options given by tasker. Some of the more complex ones require your phone to be modded. The apk is available for download on several off-market sites.

You can find more interesting resources on Tasker profiles at:

Link 1; Link 2; Link 3;

I've considered this a lot and done immense research on this impending decision. Here are my key findings:

One S is being released with the Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 instead of the S4, which has a supply constraint

Most benchmarks show the Qualcomm beating Exynos and Tegra 3

One S & X don't have removable batteries (a deal killer for me, considering I'd want to use this piece at least for 2 years!)

Galaxy S3 has a big suite of applications that have all been apk-ed on the net. S Voice, Instapaper etc are all available on various sites now

There's hardly a 4-5k INR difference between the 3 phones

The battery benchmark test on gsmarena shows the S3 to p*wn the other 2 by a few hours

One X & S cameras win over S3's in low light conditions consistently

S3 fits better in your hand than the One X, which feels broader

Samsung with it's huge market share will no doubt support the phone with all kinds of accessories (since this is going to be their flagship phone for a while)

Further to my earlier post on modding your console in Bangalore, I've discovered several shops in Richie Street, Chennai (opposite the newly built Secretariat) that mod your console.

The fix with most of these is the fact that they can't mod an Xbox Slim that was manufactured after August 2011. Modders in Bangalore too reported similar constraints.

However, if you do have an earlier console or plan to buy one and get it modded, the market is almost devoid of second-hand consoles. If available, they are marked up significantly due to the sheer advantage of being able to mod them.

So there are times when everyone goes thru a bad breakup. Frankly, I haven't heard of a good breakup.

Unfriend

Firstly, if you're the first mover at least online (doesn't matter who said it offline), you need to start by 'unfriending' everyone that's related to them on Facebook and Twitter. 

Post that, if you really want to ensure they don't contact you or want to send a strong message, try blocking them. 

Block

Note: Blocking only works one way. If your ex blocks you first, then you can't block them after that. So work fast! The same holds true for Twitter and Gtalk as well.

Phone Contacts

The tricky one is Google Contacts. If you use an Android phone and Gmail as your primary mail and phone, it takes a bit of effort before you can get yourself to remove a contact there. Chances are, the person's name appears high on 'Favorites' on your phone and dialer. 

I was looking for a neat export of my text messages to my computer so that they can be accessible in a viewable format.

That's when I chanced upon SMS Backup+, an application that sends each of your SMSs as a mail to your Gmail account under a new label (by default: SMS). Hence, any conversation between someone and you is now available in a conversation thread a-la regular emails.

Gmail has a limitation to truncate long conversations to 100 exchanges. What I did was click on Print in Gmail and saved it as a pdf. And used an online pdf merge tool to merge the several conversation threads of 100 a piece to create a big pdf of all your SMSs with one contact.