Mehul Blogs ...

Be Creative - Start with your desk . (Quicktime movie)

Beautiful Pics

Cool MPEG movie clip of sand acting like water .

Free Antivirus software roundup from LifeHacker : Here are three useful AV packages for Windows free to download and install for personal use: ClamWin - The only non-corporate of the bunch, ClamWin is free as in speech, and the lightest and the least intrusive option as well AVG Anti-Virus - Thorough scanner checks all your incoming and outgoing email, too Avast anti-virus - Slower but perhaps the most thorough for the worse-off machines.. be sure to schedule that scan to run overnight

Top 10 Business Movies according to Inc.com. Interestingly, most of them show businessmen as greedy bad guys. Hmmm.

John Coltrane’s Giant Steps Animated - watch the music climb into your head. Don't miss this one. Its the coolest thing I have seen in a while. World War 2 photos in color. Experience the years most of us missed. Five star underwater Hotel - cool cooool coooool.

Kill Bill Vol.1 and Vol.2 : Absolutely Kick-ass movie(s), if you can stand the blood and gore. Men In Black 2 : Not as good as the first one. But quite entertaining. Missisipi Masala : Pretty Good movie. I would say better than recent Mira Nair movies. Paycheck : A John Woo action movie. Leave your mind somewhere and enjoy the pace and the action. Titan A.E. and Treasure Planet : just OK animated movies. What is striking is that they have same plotlines.

Of course, before I start cooking, I should know how to cut vegetables. So here.

I am trying to cook some good Indian dishes myself. And the essence of Indian cooking are the spices. The trouble is I cannot tell one spice from another sometimes by name or by function except the basic ones like chili, turmeric etc. And I also need some reference to map Indian names to English names. So I went looking in the local library. And I found this wonderful guide - The Indian Spice Kitchen by Monisha Bhardwaj . It is beautifully made book with clear definition of various spices and their applications with their Indian and European names and also rich photos. As a bonus, it also has recipes of various Indian dishes to make with those spices. Perfecto. The last time I had looked at an Indian cooking book, there were pages of mere listings of recipes and photos if present, did not make the dish appetizing enough to prepare. This book is a treat.

"One of the most densely populated metropolitan areas in the world, Hong Kong has an overall density of nearly 6,700 people per square kilometer. The majority of its citizens live in flats in high-rise buildings." Architecture of Density by Michael Wolf is a photo exhibition with an amazing different view of these buildings. When you click on the link, you will get a page of thumbnail images which just show some linear patterns. But, click on those small images and you get a pretty private view of the building architecture with small rectangular pieces of different lives in those patterns. http://www.photomichaelwolf.com/hongkongarchitecture/index.html

Top 25 most-affordable and least-affordable housing markets : "Nine of the top 10 most-affordable markets in the National Association of Home Builders' Housing Opportunity Index are in Ohio, Michigan or Illinois. All of the top 10 least-affordable housing markets are in California. "

Ever wonder what do all those names on the Starbucks menu mean ? Now, you no longer have to fumble, bumble or feel dumble (ok - thats a stretch but hey, it rhymes !). Here is a guide to starbucks drinks and a here is a more general non-partisan guide to coffee lingo . And remember, Cafe au Lait is NOT the same as Latte . And, I thought they do not have cafe au lait at starbucks but they do have something similar in Misto. Hmm ... maybe I will try that next time I am there.

For Lunch, indian-chinese style chow mein noodles with "Stomach" restaurant's mongolian sauce. If you ever visit Andheri, Mumbai, be sure to pick up Stomach's delicious chinese sauce. For Dinner, roti and rajma beans and chaas.

Finally ! Microsoft releases a beta version of anti-spyware software. Paul Thurrott has a preview and some history behind it.

Answers.com - is the new encyclopedia, dictionary search engine. The guys behind it are Gurunet people. They used to make Atomica - an awesome desktop reference app which became shareware and then payware eventually. Now, answers.com offers a similar app called 1-Click Answers for free for everybody ! Install it and Alt-Click on any word on your screen and you get instant info about it - provided you are connected to internet. Get a beta here - it will be indispensable to you pretty soon.

For lunch, roti and valor-muthia. great sabzi, wifey ;-). For Dinner, bhel puri. Also, couple of Trader Joe's specialities: Spicy Apple Cider (really good drink when served warm) and Soy torilla chips.