A rollercoaster 2020

 While 2020 has been an eventful year for almost every person on this globe, and I am thankful for me and my family to be alive,  unscarred by Covid at the end of the year, this year has been a roller coaster ride.

😔 In Jan, travelled to parents' place at hometown unplanned a day before my daughter's eighth birthday, the first she would celebrate there after her first one. In the evening, my 90+ grandfather had a head injury and I spent the night at hospital.

😔 In Feb, on the day of Sivarathri (Shivratri), I woke up with the phone call bringing the news of expiry of my grandmother - attended her funeral at hometown.

😐 In the March weekend of Janata Curfew and the lockdown, I was supposed to travel to my hometown for my grandma's rituals, only held up due to WFH preparations and chaos on Friday night at my office. Thanks to that, I was not locked down at hometown, now in a different state thanks to bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, away from my family in Hyderabad. Three of my father's brothers didn't have that luck - stuck for 3 months at my hometown.

😀 In the middle of Covid chaos, thanks to the unexpected time and rest gifted, I decided to make a career move and attended a series of interviews over a month for a small company - my first trail to shift organization after 16 years of honeymoon with my first company!

😐 Not sure how many would have braved to shift from a 250,000 big ship to a 700 boat in the current pandemic situation! 

😀 Only time will tell whether choosing the new company is a wise decision, at least, leaving the previous employer is a non-regrettable one on seeing my first full month salary credited to my bank account today.

😔 Woke up on my birthday this December with the call from my wife about the demise of my mother-in-law, took the car to highway only to realize it's the day of National Strike of farmers, evaded rallies at three junctions by requesting, only to be stuck at the fourth road-blockade on a bridge for 1.5 hours - Stuck alone in car in a roadblock (Rasta roko) on a National Highway without breakfast and lunch - the most unforgettable birthday. The worst part was not able to catch the funeral at right time.

😔 In September, for the first time in Covid, ventured with family out of town to visit a close family member's home. A person there caught the virus few days after we returned, causing tension for few days about his well-being, but finally relieved when he recovered safely. 

😐 In total, attended 3 weddings and 1 funeral, visited beach, a famous temple, with young kids post-Covid. Missed another wedding and a funeral of a close one during peak Covid times.

 😐Considering I would enter into 40s this December, I aimed at a weight loss of 6 kilos at the start of this year. Covid break again helped me in trying out yoga, all kinds of diets (tried GM, intermittent fasting, even Mantena's all raw vegetables diet) - reached the target of -6 at one point, but as of today, the delta is -1.5kg. I would take this, as not gaining weight while  staying at home for 9 months itself is an achievement. Check the graph.

😀 Thanks to WFH for 9 months (~180-200 working days), no need of driving ~140KM per day to/fro office means I saved a minimum 1600L of fuel and related emissions to the Earth; 27,000KM mileage and depreciation for my car - also conserving my time and my body as well.

😀 Started writing extensively in Telugu on a social media forum - posted 100+ answers for 100+ K views.

Thanks for reading till the end. Wish you all a happy new year 2021.

Creative Zen X-Fi2 Review

Review of Creative Zen X-Fi2 music player

Summary: Sounds excellent, navigation needs improvement

Pros: Sound quality, X-Fi feature, EP-630 earphones, plug 'n' play, S-video out
Cons: Navigation menus, Rigid touch screen, no video playlists, no volume control button

Overall Rating: 4/5
Quality of sound: 4.5/5
Quality of video: 4/5
Touch screen: 3/5
Menu navigation: 3/5

Detailed review:

I have been using Creative Zen X-Fi2 for more than 2 months now. I listen at least 1-2 hours daily while commuting and whenever I get bored.

Sound quality:
I bought this after months of research on various personal media players (PMP) in the market and was not disappointed with the sound quality. I have used Sansa Fuze, Apple iPod Nano and Creative Zen for considerable period. In addition to these players, I listened to songs a few times on Apple iPhone, iTouch Classic, Sony S-series player, Microsoft Zune and Nokia N-series. I would rate Creative Zen on par with my Nokia Ngage 3300 series phone. The high-quality EP-630 earphones too make a difference. And the X-Fi feature rocks!

Video quality:
Although the player is supposed to support MP4, I could play only WMV. The default supplied software is useless not only for video conversion, but for everything, including song/video management. I use RealPlayer's free media converter in Windows Vista. This is the best I found in my online research. I wish they release a version soon for Ubuntu.

Touch screen:
The touch screen was initially rigid, but the calibration had improved considerably since two firmware updates by the Creative. I do not face any issue, though I would not compare with iphone. I think most of the disgruntled users were using their thumbs as the general practice for most of the handheld devices. Try using index finger - it's a lot better.

Menu navigation:
Creative team should immediately pay attention to the menus. For performing a simple task of turn up/down volume, one has to first press home/power button, unlock the screen by dragging the bubble lock out of the screen, either wait for the song to appear afer few seconds or navigate to Music -> Now Playing, touch volume icon, then slide the bar up/down. The player surely does miss the special volume button that a normal Zen has.

Other features:

Video out: Though I got the audio-out working without issues, I failed to get the video-out to an LCD TV with an AV cable.
RSS feeds: Forget about this. This was one of the driving forces to buy this product - I dreamt of synchronizing my player every morning and read the feeds on the train to work. Phew! It takes at least an hour to sync 10 feeds and it strips the whole format so that it would be like reading a raw text file on Notepad.

Random play: The random algorithm needs some tweaking - For me it always repeats the 20 each from the top and bottom and a few from middle, though I have more than 800 songs on my playlist and I choose "Shuffle without repeat".

Applications: This is one of the exciting things about this player - they provide a development kit using which interested developers can create applications. The language used is Lua, which is also used by Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom and World of Warcraft. By default, Creative supplies Sudoku and Pushbox games.

I recommend Creative Zen X-Fi2 for pristine music listening experience, not thinking about the touch-screen, applications and RSS packages. Without this extra baggage and forgetting X-Fi crystallizer, Creative Zen is a cheaper alternative. People looking for a gadget as multi-purpose can go for Apple products or other options.