Opening a Toshiba Z830 laptop

Opening a Toshiba Z830 is fairly simple — just remove all the screws from the back of the laptop and the cover would come off with no effort.  But there’s one tricky part: there’s a hidden screw at the center of the laptop.

This is a Torx Security screw so you’d need an appropriate screwdriver.  This screw is also covered by a plastic piece that you’d have to remove first to even see this screw.  Once you have removed all 14 screws, the machine opens up very easily.

Setting alarms on Android using Google Voice Actions

Do you hate this UI of Android’s alarm clock app?  I hate it too; fiddling with the dial to set the time correctly, and to get the am/pm correctly can be annoyingly hard.

There’s an easier way: Google Voice Actions.

Tap on the microphone icon of Google search widget and say something like “set an alarm at six thirty am tomorrow” and you’re done!  (Or just say “alarm six thirty am”... after all that’s all a computer needs to hear :-)

Samsung Galaxy Nexus: first impressions

I have been using a Samsung Galaxy Nexus for a few days now.  I have been an Android user since the G1 days; there isn’t much I have to say about the software in this post.  I like Android and I don’t think any other phone software is a good choice for my usage.

Talking about the Galaxy Nexus’s hardware, it’s an enormous phone.  Very wide, but it manages to fit in my hand by being very thin.  I like the feel of holding the phone in my hand (disclaimer: I have never held an iPhone for more than a few minutes).  Battery life is good; super fast camera doesn’t look like a big improvement, but I’ll know the difference only when I have to use a slower camera.  The phone is crazy fast in pretty much everything it does, and fast is almost always good.

One of the things I was excited about was the phone’s higher (than my previous phone, Nexus S) display resolution.  Text on the Galaxy Nexus is clearly crisper, and gives a better reading experience.  But I can still see “pixels” on the screen... more specifically tiny “holes” on white surfaces.  Apart from that I don’t really have any concern.

How we accept gifts in my family

Since the time I remember, I have never seen people of my family use formal words in conversation.  By “family” I mean extended family: everyone who’d come down if there’s a celebration at my house, for instance.  If a relative gifts me something, I wouldn’t say “thanks”... that just isn’t the way you accept a gift.

This clip from Aadukalam movie reminded me of that way of accepting gifts.  Probably because I grew up seeing it, this seems like a more graceful way of accepting a gift than thanking for it.  Even today I avoid thanking people in my family... it just doesn’t feel that good to say thanks :)

(In the video, the guy is gifted a ring.  He accepts it just with a remark “it’s good”.)

Fear of life

Everyone talks about fear of death.  But there’s another, likely more serious, fear: fear of life.  It’s astonishing how many of us are afraid to take ownership of our own life!