aJCfreak - Dan's Blog

I'm totally and completely bummed. And for reasons that I never ever dreamed could make me feel this way. I have been following this tech blog called Engadget for almost 3 years now, quite avidly. I devour every post with a feverish desire for more. A year or so after I started reading Engadget, I started noticing the names of the authors. Some styles stood out, and you could easily make out who wrote those articles. The first name that really stood out for me, was Joshua Topolsky . This dude is amazing. He comes up with the best quips, puns and writes articles in a lavish way that makes you wonder - is he an actually existing human being? He also lead the team at Engadget for the past four years or so, as their Editor-in-Chief. He announced in a post a few days ago that he's leaving Engadget on 31st March, in a sorrow-evoking post titled Hello, I Must Be Going . That wasn't how the barrage of bad news out of Engadget started, though. It all started with one of my fav-...

For those of you (the two or three individuals out there) who are waiting for an update about my life, this isn't it. This post is fully and completely dedicated to detailing the unofficial story behind The Indian Geek . Long, long ago I started a side-blog titled "Dan's Desirables" to write about gadgets I love and desire. The blog turned out to be posts about mostly Apple products. (No surprises there, eh?!) Nearly two years ago, the blog was moulded into Gadget Desirables  adding Josh Rajasingh as a co-author. We didn't write much about anything after that, apart from writing about the gadgets/technology that we owned. Add to this the fact that I was a keen follower of all Apple-related news and rumours (via Macrumors.com ) and other tech-related news (via WinSuperSite.com and Engadget.com ) and you have a dude with a wealth of geeky knowledge. When reading articles on Indian tech sites and blogs, I was appalled by two things - one, the lack of functional ...

Yeah, Coonoor is a crazy lil place for me. It's where some of my bestest friends from college, CSI CE , spent most of their weekend time while at college. It's where I've gotten to know some really cool people at Union Church. It's also where I've spent the least time, while I studied in Nilgiris. Putting all that aside, this past weekend was spent in UC, Coonoor, and it was a splendid time. It was refreshing physically, it was invigorating spirit-wise, enriching spiritually, enlightening knowledge-wise and brilliantly endearing. Yeah - a lot of adjectives. I just felt the need to jot down a few thoughts about the whole affair and where each of the Dudes4Christ dudes are in their lives right now. Smitha , my wife, darling and the love of my life, thoroughly enjoyed the time there. She was pretty much at home, mostly :) The dudes all seemed more mature than our college days, albeit they maintained their characteristic streaks that made them stand out during college. ...

Well, it's been donkeys years since I wrote anything here. Can't say it's been cos I've been too busy. I have been busy now and then, but not so much that I couldn't have written here. ;) In the past 14 months or so, since I last updated, these are the major events that have occurred. 1. In March, I purchased a Sony DSC-T700 digicam as a birthday + Valentine's gift for Smitha. 2. On 29th June, 2009, I was engaged to Smitha, the love of my life. This was a pretty decent week, we all went to Mahabalipuram , which is a beach-side town, and had a lovely "Engagement holiday" Photos are up, here . 3. I moved out of my bro's house, and into a really large place on November 1st. 4. The Wedding took place on 28th December, 2009, in Vadodara (Baroda) , Gujarat. A few videos of the event are available: The Wedding - Ceremony Part 01 The Wedding - Ceremony Part 03 The Wedding reception - Wethro speaks The Wedding reception - Dan speaks The Wedding reception...

Yep - that's right - Smithafied!!! To all of those who're wondering - what the heck is that - well, it's not much. It's just a meshing together of two lives that God brought together... More specifically, it's the state that Dan is in since God brought Smitha into his life. He's been Smitha-fied...... JC-fying life has always been a top prerogative. But without realising it, Smithafying my life has also taken a good precedence over the other things in my life. And so, to pay tribute to all some of the good stuff that my darling babe has brought into my life, I registered the www.Smithafied.com domain name with Google. That's a Valentine's Day gift for my sweetheart. It's something that touched her heart, and warmed several others. Made me grin like an idiot. ;) Thank God for all He's given me. Love Him!!!

Early on the morning of the 23rd of December (the day after we met  the parents ),  both my parents, Smitha and I left for Mehsana from Baroda . We had hired an Indica to take us there. The trip was nice. We slept for the most time and mum kept complaining that she couldn't see a single peacock. Smitha made the mistake of mentioning that peacocks were extremely common along the highways in Gujarat (atleast, near Ahmedabad ) and this made my mum desire to see a few. Smitha and I could spot a few, but by the time mum turned 'round, we'd crossed those ever-elusive birds. Finally, though, mum caught sight of a few birds just before we rolled into Mehsana. At Mehsana, I was all set to see my cousin and her two kids, all three of whom I haven't laid eyes on since May 2005. If you think that's bad, I've not set eyes on my cousin's hubby for way way longer - so long that I've forgotten how long it has been! So it was with a bit of surprise that I realised that b...

For the uninformed, the entire trip up north to Gujarat this past Christmas week was so that my parents could meet up with Smitha's parents. None of us were really expecting anything much to happen - it was supposed to be a simple s pend time together  thingy. So after that decent train journey, I landed in Baroda at around 05.15 on Monday, the 22nd of December, 2008. I caught an auto (with the help of RM's dad, since I don't know Hindi o r  Gujarati) to the hotel where my parents were put up. They were waiting up for me and we had a nice lil reunion early in the morning. I then set off to wake up ma sweetie. I entered Smitha's house, and aunty is like "Smitha!!! Wake up, wake up wake up!" while I was like "Nooooooooo!!!! Let her sleep, please!!!!" :) I just simply love  watching her sleep. She looks soooo beautiful and peaceful. Here, take a look. My own sleeping beauty I just sat there for some time, watching her sleep. After she woke up and we h...