Bisi Billa Bath

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Mirchi Bajji....

A Blog about nothing

Does this ring the bell? Yes, the seinfeld's "A show about nothing". Recently, I began to like this comedy show. Sounds weird right! "began to like", beacuse I never watched these episodes earlier.
I do not know, why I started this blog or how I would end it or when I will end it. There has been a long gap in my postings and so wanted to put in a blog so that every one knows I post once in a while.
Days are passing by as usual work, school, research and home. I cannot even describe my work here. What I do at these places are completely different and bear no relation at all. They do not have one feature in common.
The word "feature" reminds me of my research again which I think I should not start thinking of it at this stage because that is the reason I started to write this blog just to take my mind away from the work I do.
I still do not find any topic to write in this blog so I must stop this blog now. I still wonder how come they came up with such a nice episode "show about nothing". I started this blog with something in my mind that something would happen and I would find a topic for my blog....Nothing happened and so no topic and so no blog...If any body reads this blog by a mistake, please forgive me for wasting your precious time....

Awesome technology

I cannot resist from writing such a silly blog, seeing what all can we do with electronics and software. I am normally a person who watch very little of the news channels. I keep commenting saying how come we have a channel that is completely dedicated to news. I wonder what these channels have to update for every hour. And how come there are so many people who watch nothing but CNN for the whole day. Also, I am not a big fan of politics. Got some interest in the news during this election season in US. My curiosity who is going to be the Democrat's candidate, Is it Cliton or Obama?

Let me come back, to my technology stuff. There is one other topic I need to mention to talk of my surprise last evening. Its my course at the University "User Interface Design". In this course we had to design a digital wall paper with so many features as if it replaces the home theater. Professor was suggesting a digital panel or a frame which we can use to present in the class. ( This frame is of the size of the wall so that we can present our "iWall" software on it). All we had to implement is some touch screen interface. I wondered if there is any real application of such wall size digital displays.

It was not until I have seen the news yesterday evening that I was surprised to see a beautiful application of the wall size digital displays.

The results, predictions (of the elections), maps and what not every thing is displayed on wall sized digital screen. The person just stands near the wall keeps on zooming and zooming out various parts of the map just by touching with his fingures, draws circles as makers on the screen which are instantly displayed, on one side he shows the pie charts and what not.

The most surprising part of this was when he switched from the map mode to the google screen with google satillite images. "Lets see it in google map" was the words he said and instantly there was google map on the screen at the exact county he touched on the screen. I was so exited to see such a drastic development in technology. I will surely watch this news again during the electionsat least to see the status of this wonderful technology. Hats off to the great minds for coming up with such concepts.

Strawberry Pie

Poster I Made

Eggless Carrot Cake

After making a cake from the mix and using eggs, I wanted to make a something without eggs and with something that I have at home, without any artificial flavours. With this intension I started my search with Google as usual. There were several versions of the cakes one with dates (I shall try that later though), with carrots, strawberries and so on. I picked up the carrot versions, looked at about 4-5 different reciepes and came up with my own. I tried it a couple of times to get to a recipe that gives a cake that is as soft as any other cake with eggs. And here is the final version that I reached:

Ingrediants: 2 cups All-purpose flour 11/2 cup sugar 1 cup milk 1/2 cup orange juice (or 1 tbspn lemon juice) 3/4 cup oil 1/2 teaspoon orange zest 11/4 cup grated (or finely chopped) carrots 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 cup of chopped nuts (I used cashewnuts and resins) seeds of 2-3 cardomons (powdered)

Procedure: First prepare sour milk by mixing orange or lemon juice in the cup of milk. The first time I made this cake, I added only leamon juice. But in the later versions I used th orange juice, since I buy an orange to make the orange zest, and in order not to waste it, I make orange juice out of it and added to the milk. If the orange is not sour enough, I added some lemon juice and kept the milk for about five minutes.

I used navel orange for the zest. This type of oranges generally give good amount of zest and rough enough to grate with a small grater. While making the zest make sure you grate only the orange part of the skin. If the white part gets into the zest, the cake does not taste good.

In a mixing boil, I mixed the orange zest and oil, later added the sour milk to it. I mixed it well until the oil mixes with the milk. Later I added the sugar. When I used icing, I added only 11/4 cup and I felt that it would be better to add more sugar. 11/2 cups is fine. You can add more sugar if you would like it sweeter but do not add more than 2 cups or else the cake becomes too sticky.

Slowly, I added the all-pupose flour and the baking powder. Mixed it well without lumps. In fact I used the food-processor so that it would be grinded smoothly. If the batter is too thick, we can add some milk, but one thing is that once the carrots are added, it does not stay so thick if the carrots are juicy. Finally, before baking, add the nuts and carrots and the powdered cardomon. Bake it for an hour at 350F in a pre-heated oven. This cake must be baked longer than the regular cakes because it takes some time for the carrots to cook well.