The Alien World

* These are SRK tweets on how to loose weight & have 6 packs. It’s worth giving a try…

– 6 packs more to do with diet than exercise alone. U need to be very disciplined. 30 to 40 day… they will start to show
- Exercise regimen: 4 times a week, 30 minutes do weights or any exercise which makes you sweat. No rice or bread at all with food.
- Lots of water. No alcohol. If you do then exercise 50 minutes. No music & wasting time during excercise. Just do it like a job, push yourself..
- No desserts, ice creams or colas. No food in between meals like chips, etc. Single handedly try & bring the junk food industry to clouser ha ha ha
- I do a 100 push ups at peak of workout & 60 pull ups. When I started I can only do 5 push ups & 1 pull up. It just happens if you are regular.
- Last tip. 2 liters of water, boiled or grilled food. It’s quite tasty. Think thin. Age is not an issue. Don’t follow quick fix diets.

Gadgets are men’s best friends, aren’t we all fond of them! We, men, always want simplicity in life. Somethings are in your hands, of which you can be proud of. Automating your home media is one way to achieve it.

Sexy and expensive home theater system are for the rich, but that should not mean that other should be deprived of it.

Here are list key requirements for home automation -

• Most likely you have tons of mp3, photos, & movies on your computer.
• You have a home theater system connected to your LCD.

Basic expectations -

• Play music on home theater (probably 5.1 channel system)
• Watch your movies & photos on your bigger LCD screen

Value add -

• Able to control your media with a remote, irrespective of source & target

The solution here is only specific to Apple products, but you can look for other alternatives if you are not an apple fan.

Prerequisites

• Tons of media
• iTunes on your computer
• Apple TV 
• LCD TV
• iPhone or iPod Touch or iPad (Optional)
• Wireless Router

Once you have all the prerequisites, all that you need is to configure them to work together.

The first thing to start with is setting up your Apple TV. AppleTV has an internal storage of up to 160 GB, so it can store your media from computer. It has ability to sync itself over the wire or wireless. I prefer wireless, after all who wants to see wires running between the system  tv. I have given the sound output of Apple Tv to my home theater and Video output to my LCD

After setting up AppleTV, you should be able to see it in iTunes. One of the very interesting thing now you will notice is that at the bottom right of iTunes you will have multiple speaker option. You can now choose which speaker you want the output to – computer or apple tv. This is how you can listen to your favorite songs on the much better home theater system. Note that you can not stream video this way. But there is a solution to that too.

Now, the catch is that AppleTV can only play MP4 videos, but the good thing is that MP4’s are better then AVI’s in quality and you even get High Definition (HD) videos.

As I said earlier, Apple TV has up to 160 GB of storage space, you can store all your media on it. But in care you have much more, then this is not the suggested approach. Instead configure your AppleTV to stream all kinds of media from your computer rather than storing it.

On Apple TV, go to Settings—> Computers, select “Add shared iTunes library’, proceed as per instructions.

Once you have done this, you shall be able to see all you media [movies & music] listing in Apple TV.

Your are now ready to play all you mp4  & mp3 on your computer on your LCD, without copying your media on a CD or USB drive.

Apple sometimes pisses me off with their licensing, copyright and purchase policies. I bought a iPod Touch last month and downloaded iTunes. For getting album artwork, user is required to have the iTune account. This account can only be created if you are from a country where the iTune services are available. Above all, you need a credit card to create an account.

There is no way you can create an iTune account without this information…

I was wrong… apple provides a way to create the account… look for more details at: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2534 or follow the instructions below:

• You must make sure you are in the App Store, not the iTunes Store.

• Pick your country from the pop-up menu at the bottom of the iTunes Store homepage.
• Important: Before proceeding to the next step, you must purchase a free  application by clicking ‘Free App’.
• Click create new account.

         

• Click Continue.
• You’ll need to read and agree to the iTunes terms and conditions, make sure you check the box next to where it says "I have read and agree to the iTunes Terms and Conditions." Click Continue.
• Enter your email address, create your password, continue to create and answer your security question, then enter your birthday. Click Continue.
• Select None as the payment option.
  
• Continue to fill out the required name and address fields.
• You’ll then see a screen that says ‘Verify your Account’. Click Done and then check your email for a verification email from iTunes Store.          
• Open the email and click on the link enclosed in the email to activate your account.

  

• Once you click on the link, iTunes should then prompt you to sign in with your account name and password.
• You’ll then see the below "Congratulations" screen. Click Done to be taken to the App Store home page.

  

  Voila! You have just created a US iTunes Store account without a credit card. you can now use that to download all the free stuff on the US App Store and also the freebies like music and what not. these details can also be used on the app store application found on your iPhone 2.0 or iTouch 2.0.

So enjoy iTunes and make your library more colorful!