Rajan's View

There is a wide variety of birds of prey in nature. These are ranging from the eagle to the kite to the condors. Each a specialist in their own way. It is only natural that the man's birds of prey - military aircraft should be named after nature's birds. Thanks to my father, I was able to get a vantage view at the recent air show in Bangalore - Aero 2011. It is a bi-annual event attracting more aircraft and crowds as each edition goes by. This year too, the F-18 Super Hornet, F-16 Falcon, Eurofighter Typhoon, Tejas, Saab Grippen, Mirage Rafael, Sukhoi-30 and many other aircraft enthralled the crowds. Just as in nature's birds, each of this had it's own speciality. The added attraction were the Red Bulls acrobatic team from Czech republic. It's nice to see that the air show is increasing in stature and largely well managed too. Except for the traffic snarls!

Animoto is a new service which lets you import pictures from anywhere and lets you create videos out of them. I created a sample video using Animoto. You can import pictures from your computer, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, Facebook and so on. Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Last weekend, one of my wife's friends came over visiting. Needless to say I had to endure a weekend of gossiping and giggling. While they went about gallivanting around town, the task of cooking lunch was left to me. So, I had the house to myself, which is not a bad thing. I have two recipes to write about. One is a very easy ghee rice and the other is a basic egg curry. Ingredients: 1. Cumin seeds - 1 tablespoon 2. Cloves - 4 3. Sliced green chillies - 1 4. Vegetable oil - 3-4 tablespoon 5. Ghee / clarified butter - 3-4 tablespoons! 6. Cinnamon sticks - 1-2 teaspoon 7. Green peas - 1 cup 8. Salt - 1 teaspoon (or to taste) 9. Ginger strips - 4 10. Sliced carrot (juliennes) - 1 11. Pepper - 2 12. Basmati rice - 4 cups 13. Water - 8 cups 14. Coriander leaves - 1 bunch 15. Mace - 1 Recipe: 1. I used an electric cooker to make this dish. 2. Except the rice and coriander, add all the ingredients into the cooker. Saute for a few minutes. 3

Perhaps, this should have been my first recipe in this blog - Maa ki dal. That's what the dish is called in some places, honest! It happens to be the first dish I learnt from my mom. And it is also my favourite dish of all times. I can eat it 3 times a day, 7 days a week, for all the weeks of my life! So, it is really the mother of all dishes (pun intended!). It is an quite easy dish to make and a perfect side dish for chappatis. Some probably find it a bit bland. Ingredients: 1. Cumin seeds - 1 tablespoon 2. Chopped onion - 1 3. Sliced green chillies - 1 4. Vegetable oil - 3-4 tablespoon 5. Diced tomato - 1 6. Turmeric powder - 1 teaspoon 7. Toor / Moong daal (Yellow lentils) - 1 cup 8. Salt - 1 teaspoon (or to taste) 9. Garlic cloves - 4 Recipe: 1. In a pan, heat the vegetable oil. 2. Add the cumin seeds, green chillies, garlic and onions. Saute for a few minutes. 3. Add the diced tomatoes. Continue sauteing until all vegetables are mashed toge

In a space dominated by Google, Bing, Yahoo and the other search engines, there is a new one - Blekko . Blekko seems to be specialising in search with a "social" twist to it. You can login to Blekko with you Facebook ID. Once you start searching, it shows you the results like other search engines. In addition, it shows if any of your friends have "Liked" the results. I would call it "social ranking or relevance". You can also filter the sites by Flickr or Youtube videos. Somehow, I didn't find it to be an intuitive user interface. Also, how difficult is it for existing search engines to provide a similar features (like social relevance, custom search engine, filters) albeit in a different manner. One thing which I hope Bing and Google are toying over is allowing users to "share" their search. It can be done even today but in a manual sort of way, by sending someone the address from the browser.

There is a new gadget in the house. No, it's not a XBox Kinect or Apple iPad that's causing fights. It is a simple yet humbling gadget - a weighing scale. It is only been in the house for a day and is already the the reason for much consternation, heartburn, depression and trauma. I hope we both soon get into the right side of the scale! Ever noticed how a simple thing like a mirror or a weighing scale can be the bane or boon of our lives.

For all you foodies out there, here are a couple of great ways to find recipes you are looking for. There is a beta site - Foodily . It's a great a new approach. You can use this site to search various food sites. So, when you search for apple, it shows you all the apple related recipes from all the sites. You can then filter the recipes based on ingredients or sites etc. Having said that, it looks like Foodily is stepping into "search engine" territory. All the indexing and searching that Foodily is doing, someone like a Google can do better. If you want, you can try the Food Recipe search engine that I created using Google custom search here . The user interface will not be as great as Foodily, but I suspect a Google would give more accurate or relevant results. In the "general" search engine space, it is pretty much competition between Google and Bing. It will be interesting to see if either of them ventures into what I call "applied" search

Sekhmet, the daughter of the powerful Egyptian god Ra is known as the protector of good and destroyer of evil. According to mythology, blazing desert winds are supposed to radiate from her body. A sudden gust of wind seems to be sweeping across the middle east. First was the swift "jasmine revolution" which caused a change of the ruling government in Tunisia. Political commentators were quick to note that there was a potential for the change to sweep across the middle east. Looks like change is imminent in Egypt (at the time of writing the blog). It now remains to be seen, what will be the effect on the remaining countries. So sudden has the change been that some of the major countries have not had a chance to respond. There are some people who have attributed these changes to the latest avatar of the internet namely, social networking and all. But, I think at the most, the internet and increased communication has a marginal impact. The real reason seems to be that

This recipe is a bit of a cheat. I don't make all the ingredients, especially the pizza base and the sauce. But, it's good for a quick week day dinner or weekend too if you are feeling lazy. It's also a great way to make kids eat vegetables they don't like, like spinach, broccoli etc. Ingredients: 1. Sliced Red and yellow bell peppers - 1 each 2. Cut onion rings - 1 3. Crushed black pepper - 1 tablespoon 4. Basil - 1 teaspoon 5. Oregano - 1 teaspoon 6. Rosemary - 1 teaspoon 7. Pasta / pizza sauce - 2-3 tablespoon 8. Olive oil - 2-3 tablespoon 9. Salt - 1 teaspoon (or to taste) 10. Pizza bread - 2 11. Mozarella cheese - 10 slices 12. Corn - 1 cup 13. Cut spinach - 1 Recipe: 1. In a pan, heat the olive oil. 2. Add the bell peppers, corn, spinach and onion. Saute for a few minutes. 3. Add the rosemary, oregano, basil and black pepper and saute for a few more minutes. 4. Add the pasta/pizza sauce and let it simmer for a coupl

Here is a simple recipe for fish. I just seems to have fallen in love with fennel seeds. They taste and smell great. They are great for preventing flu! Ingredients: 1. Cumin seeds - 1 tablespoon 2. Fennel seeds - 1 tablespoon 3. Pepper corns - 1 tablespoon 4. Chilli powder - 1 teaspoon 5. Turmeric powder - 1/2 teaspoon 6. Water - 1/4 cup 7. Seer fish (Indo-pacific Mackerel) - 2 fillets 8. Vegetable oil - 3-4 tablespoon 9. Salt - 1 teaspoon (or to taste) Recipe: 1. Grind the pepper corns, cumin and fennel seeds in a food processor. 2. Mix the above powder with turmeric, chilli powder and salt with some water. 3. Coat the fish fillets on both sides and let it marinate for 15-20 minutes. 4. Add the oil in a pan and heat it. 5. Shallow fry the fish until they are brown on both sides. It shouldn't take more than 10 minutes. 6. You can have the fish with mint or mayonnaise dip. Tip: If not Mackerel, try this recipe with salmon. Happy cooking