Now this is a bit late for the post, but not too late I guess, its still 8th January. So here I’ll try to sum up what all made 2007 a year to remember. To start with, got a lot of new things, a new phone, a new PC, Dish TV, Internet, lots of clothes and a new job. Had some parties to remember, went on a vacation after a long time to Vaishno Devi, saw a LOT of movies, and played a LOT of games and listened to a LOT of music. Its been a hectic time throughout, job life does make your life tough on you, you don’t have much time for things sometimes. So you have to balance things out and try to do as much as you can. Now don’t expect New Year Resolutions from me, I don’t like to make a promise to myself which I’ll have to keep up for a year. So now I’ll put up stuff in categories:

Movies: I saw a lot of movies like I said. But here are my favorites ones (Not necessarily in the order of liking)
Transformers: This one has to come up first in my memory, it was a great movie and I still remember, that just as the credits starting rolling, I asked to myself…what the hell was this? I was so immersed, the story, the effects, everything. It made me an instant fan of the Transformers franchisee. So much so that it even influenced me somewhat in my cellphone purchase decision. I bought the Transformers Limited Edition phone.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End: It was the year of trilogies and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End was amongst the one which I was most looking forward to. The final installment in the series was again where it ended in the second film. As I mentioned in my review of the movie it was a great mix of action, drama, comedy, romance. I’ll really miss Jack Sparrow.

Spider-Man 3: Another movie from the trilogies, Spider-Man was awesome, really great effects and a good storyline. What I didn’t like was the length of the role for Venom. He is supposed to be a big enemy of Spider-Man but doesn’t quite get the time on screen as a Spider-Man fan would expect.

And then saw a lot of animated movies, Ratatouille, Flushed Away.

And then there were some laugh riots like Partner,  Apna Sapna Money Money, Heyy Baby, Bhool Bhulaiyaa. Some pretty good movies with a good story like Johnny Gaddaar, Om Shanti Om.

Music wise I heard a lot of new artists, Muse, Art Brut, Radiohead, Massive Attack, Foo Fighters, and a lot more. Many of which were recommendations from my friend Vivek.

It was a great year in gaming as well. Played a lot of games, my favorite of all FIFA 07. Awesome game it is, also played Far Cry, Crysis demo, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, FIFA 08,  Need for Speed: ProStreet.

I went to Vaishno Devi for the first time, it was a memorable experience, had a great time there. Hope to have more such visits to chill out. I also went to the Great Indian Rock Show, GIR in short, my first visit to a music event, and I enjoyed every part of it.

Now how can I miss sports, its a BIG part of my life. Manchester United and Ferrari both were crowned champions. Kimi Raikkonen also won the driver’s title finally, a BIG relief. Saw a lot of memorable events during the season.

So in short it was a great year. Lot of things to remember. Looking forward to 2008 in hope and excitement that it will be even a better year in a lot of areas.

So its been 2 weeks since I got the PC, and its been busy since then. The biggest day was when I ran Crysis on it, and it ran flawlessly in medium settings, I was very happy and impressed by the system’s capabilities. Completed Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault in 3 days, now playing Far Cry, at very high settings and AA at high too. The overall speed is good, but I feel it still needs another GB of RAM as load times are a bit on the higher side on some occasions. Other than that its awesome, working great, especially in gaming. So until next time…

So finally I got my new PC, well sort of, the main stuff is all new, just retained the monitor, keyboard and mouse, but rest is all new. So I went with Sohail, a BIG thanks to him for tolerating me and accompanying me to Nehru Place, man thats one place where you need time, and lots of time to properly find stuff, and not only that, always do your homework as to what you want to buy and what not, and if config A is not available there should ALWAYS be a config B.

Anyways I went, and the motherboard I wanted was not availble at any store, so then it all started. I didn’t have that plan B, so I tried to call Saurabh, couldn’t get him, so called Anuj, got Nimish’s number called and asked for his suggestions, and then again tried Saurabh and got him this time thankfully, and then after considering I finalised the Intel G33 Motherboard. The processor was Intel Core 2 Duo E4500, and the graphics card was a must buy. The XFX GeForce 8600GT 540M 512MB DDR3 was the one which I was gonna buy, and it was available, but to my delight the DDR3 version was also available and cost some 1200 more than the DDR2 version, so I bought that one, and then 1GB RAM, a 250 GB HDD, and a decent looking cabinet powered by a Rs. 1400 ka GlacialPower GP-SL350C SMPS alone. Jeez! that SMPS extended the budget so did the graphics card. But anyways I got the stuff, and got it for assembling, but the Graphics Card was not in stock, so the dealer got it in some 1 and a half hours, and that was really annoying to wait for something that long. But I guess it was worth the wait. I got it all assembled and took it home, installed the softwares, drivers and stuff, and then fired up Need for Speed: Most Wanted to check out the capabilities of the 8600GT. Quite impressive I must say as I was able to play at high settings with one res above 1024×768. Decent speed overall, will try out a few more benchmarks, but I’m sure this will last for another span of 3 years atleast. Thats what my earlier rig lasted, could have lasted more but for the AGP design and some bothering mobo.

Here are the specs:
Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E4500
Intel® Desktop Board DG33FB
Kingston 1 GB DDR2 RAM
XFX GeForce 8600GT 540M 512MB DDR3
Seagate 250GB SATA
GlacialPower GP-SL350C Power Supply

The XFX GeForce 8600GT:

The rig installation:

The mess, 3 HDDs, 80+160+250=490 gigs…thats nearly half of a terabyte.

So finally after being in the double-mind state as to whether I should or I shouldn’t for quite sometime now, I, suddenly, in 5 minutes decided to get a new phone, and voila!. Now I’m still surprised and smiling whenever I look at the phone. Actually its all thanks to my sister, she was going to get one for her today, and god knows what happened to me, I also got in the mood, and we both ended up getting the same phones.

Its a Nokia 5300 XpressMusic “Transformers Limited Edition” phone. Color is the red variant ofcourse. I always had this phone in mind, for the features it provides in the prices it retails for, is really outstanding. I was going to get the new Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, but then this one comes for just a little more than half of 5310’s price, so I thought this is better, although it ofcourse misses out on some features but I will use the money saved on upgrading my PC.

Its a slider based design and its only my second phone, well third actually if u don’t count my Nokia 2600 which I had to use for a while, thanks to me loosing my Nokia 3120 earlier this year. So now this is a good upgrade, and it has good set of features, a 1.2 megapixel camera, bluetooth, best thing was 256 mb memory card with the pack. So will be great time to pass now, with all the music I can carry along with me now.

Ahh and yes before I forget, the limited edition for Transformers had a phone cover with Transformers text and Autobots and Decepticons sign on the back. And also bundled was a strap with 2 coins kind of things hanging form the strap with the Optimus Prime and Autobots logos on it.

Here are some pics of the phone, the black model is just for visual, mine is red model, didn’t find an image for the slider out for red model:

Its my birthday today, 19th August. I turned 22 today. Just had a great dinner, pizzas, chocolate ice creams, lots of other goodies, so had a great day. Just one soar point…Manchester United lost the Manchester Derby

Anyways…Happy Birthday to me