Cooking Made Easy for Male Graduate Students

Have decided to Photo/ Videoblog 12 recipes between now and end of this year to help initiate young males (read FOB grad students and others who are not used to cooking) to some recipes that can be used to

a. get out of the boredom of sandwiches, pizza and ramen noodles
b. cure kitchenophobia
c. impress the ladies (trust me on this one)

Will show you how to make Mysore Pak by this weekend. Yes, if I could do it, you can do it.

For added effect (in the impression department) decide to make Mysore Pak on a whim at 3 AM after a group of you have stayed up late playing card games. When someone suggests "who is going to make the next round of tea?" ask "Why don't we have some hot Mysore Pak instead?" and the girls might look at you the same way they look at the Mysore Pak...as usual I digress...

Just wait for a videoblog...

ps. most of these recipes are the "desi engineering grad student's" versions and are not necessarily created by me.

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Ah.. Technology!

Recently a DVD that we got from Blockbuster online did not play on the player. It kept showing "No Disc" and we returned it. The customer service guys at Blockbuster promptly emailed us a e-coupon good for a free movie at a store to compensate.

We do not have a printer at home. So I called the store and said "If I have the e-coupon and can give you the code on the coupon instead of the barcode can you give me a movie?"

The teenage kid who was manning the store said "Think we should be able to do that if you can give me the number"

So off I went to the store, got the movie to the counter and started searching my Inbox for the email on my iPhone.

Spent a precious few minutes searching and almost gave up. Then saw that the email was not from Blockbuster.com but instead from something called webmaster@bbpm....

Then while zooming into the barcode to read the coupon number, there was a lightbulb moment!

Looked at the kid and said "Let me zoom in on the barcode and bring it up horizontally to completely cover my iPhone screen. Can you try to use your scanner and just scan this barcode directly from the phone?"

The kid's eyes light up at the geeky idea and he said "Let us try it!" and

Lo and behold, he was able to use his hand held scanner and directly scan the coupon from the iPhone!

Not only can you photograph any barcode and get prices on it from your iPhone (yes, there is an app called Redlaser which we have that actually does that! you scan the barcode and it shows you item name, compares prices, closest location available etc. etc.) but you can also scan barcodes off the iPhone!

Technology is amazing, isn't it?

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Puzzle zen

Have been doing this 500 piece puzzle over the weekend. It was tricky because you need to see the pieces in sunlight to figure it out. (tried to take photos at two different angles to show the magic scale effect, but it doesn't do justice to the poster)

Reminded me of the "magic scales" we used to have in our geometry boxes in elementary school!

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