This post is for those people who have “Backup in Progress” message stuck in action centre even though no backup is in progress.

After my friend lost most of the data in a HDD crash, I decided it is time that I backed up my data. It was a bad idea. I put a DVD and started Windows Backup. I checked back in after 2 hours to see that backup was still in progress and it was going crazy slow. I was annoyed and I cancelled it. Ever since I have been getting the message – “Put in portable media” to continue backup.  The message just won’t go and it was annoying. After a bit of research I came to know that you can reset the Backup by going into Task Scheduler and deleting the automatic backup schedule. It worked but the Action Centre got stuck on “Backup in Progress” message. Though not as annoying as “Put in portable media”, someone who likes their computer in perfect condition won’t be satisfied with just ignoring it. After a search in Google I came to know that lots and lots of people faced this problem and none of them have solved it. Yet. It was discouraging.

Then an idea hit me. I started Backup and Restore. Started backup and manually choose a single 10 mb file to backup. Problem solved. Backup completed in less than a minute and the “Backup in Progress” message was gone.

The Well of Ascension has a slow storyline. I won’t say that it is not interesting but it drags on a bit. The narration of The Well of Ascension starts a bit after the completion of the events of Mistborn: The Final Empire. The much loved thieving crew leader Kelsier is dead but not before he stated a revolution.  Elend Venture is now the king of city of Luthadel which is at the centre of the empire. Vin is acting as his mistress and assassin/protector. Killing the Lord Ruler was supposed to make things better but things are not going as planned and many a times it seems like if Lord Ruler was doing the right thing. They can’t find the autium which was supposed to make everything better. Sensing opportunity to rule the empire many other noblemen come to take over the Empire. But that actually is the least of their problem because a more sinister thing is happening all over the world. Deepness is coming back. The power is coming to the well and Vin is starting to believe that she is the real Hero of Ages. The mists are killing people and are no longer friendly or protective.

I cannot write more without spoilers so I am going to stop. … A tiny titbit – Someone gets to be a Mistborn.

This book raises more question than it answers. It also reveals more about the powers governing the world. The annotations at the start/end of the chapter get even more interesting. They give us an insight into the world of Final Empire and the various mysteries it holds.

The first email I got from vlopez@geraagency.com got me really excited.

==================================================

Wow. Someone wants to buy an ad space on my blog. That is awesome. I replied to him.

===================================

And I immediately got his reply –

================================================

I was confused by the line Please mention a normal link for banner, without javascript code so I Googled the line to find out that this guy is running a major scam.

If you quote him a price, you will get this reply –

=====================================================

That plugin is obviously contains some sort of code to hack the blog or something. So, moral of this whole thing, don’t jump when you see something like this. Google it, and see if it is the real deal before you take up on any offer.

The crackdown on Megaupload was just the beginning of the downfall of File sharing Empire. The feds charged Megaupload’s executive team with criminal charges for copyright infringement and racketeering in addition to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and money laundering. This was enough to scare the hell out of other services, who shortly began closing down services to avoid similar DOJ entanglements. FileSonic and Fileserve have eliminated file sharing from their service menus. At Fileserve and Filesonic you can only download items you’ve uploaded yourself. Sites like Filejungle, 4shared, and Uploadstation are deleting premium accounts and affiliate programs. Uploaded.to has banned all US IP addresses. These services are also bulk deleting user accounts and files in their account.

Those who had bought premium accounts have lost their money. If you recently bought a premium in any of these services, there is a slight change that you might be able to get back your money. I am lucky because my account expired a few weeks ago and last week I was considering buying a fileserve premium account.

The activity is low in many file sharing websites; many are waiting to see how all of this is going to settle. Many people are going back to the torrents to get their daily dose of entertainment.

How are you coping with this?

This book tries to show us what Sherlock was like before Arthur Conan Doyle first introduced him to the world. What sort of teenager was he? Where did he go to school, and who were his friends? Where and when did he learn the skills that he displayed later in life – the logical mind, the boxing and sword-fighting, the love of music and of playing the violin? What did he study at university? When (if ever) did he travel abroad? What scared him and who, if anyone, did he love?

Being the first book, I don’t think I can complain much because he is still learning stuff; his logical mind is just developing. But some of the things annoyed me, like his interest in Virginia, the Holmes I know does not process that type of emotions. And even if he did have those emotions, what happened which changed views about women. This ought to be explained in “Young Sherlock Holmes” series.

Summary of Death Cloud:  It is the summer of 1868, and Sherlock Holmes is fourteen. On break from boarding school, he is staying with eccentric strangers—his uncle and aunt—in their vast house in Hampshire. When two local people die from symptoms that resemble the plague, Holmes begins to investigate what really killed them, helped by his new tutor, an American named Amyus Crowe. So begins Sherlock’s true education in detection, as he discovers the dastardly crimes of a brilliantly sinister villain of exquisitely malign intent.

The pace of the story is fast and the characters are likable except for Mrs. Eglantine. Mrs. Eglantine is sort of a mystery in this book. She is mean towards Sherlock Holmes and rather bold for a servant but nothing else is revealed. The mystery was simple and rather brilliant. Overall, it was quite enjoyable.

Buy Death Cloud by Andrew Lane from Amazon -

The Final Problem is a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring Sherlock Holmes. The story is set in 1891 and we are introduced to Sherlock Holmes’s greatest opponent, the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty. Moriarty realizes that his devious plots won’t be successful unless Sherlock Holmes is stopped. Permanently. I won’t go into the plot (much) because that would ruin the book for you. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle later ranked “The Final Problem” fourth on his personal list of the twelve best Holmes stories. He wrote The Final Problem intending it to be exactly what its name says. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle meant to stop writing about his famous detective after this short story; he felt the Sherlock Holmes stories were distracting him from more serious literary efforts and that “killing” Holmes off was the only way of getting his career back on track. Conan Doyle sought to sweeten the pill by letting Holmes go in a blaze of glory, having rid the world of a criminal so powerful and dangerous that any further task would be trivial in comparison.

But because of enormous fan pressure he had to bring back Holmes in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House”.

I watched the third episode of Sherlock – The Reichenbach Fall, fourth time in the last few days. The episode is that good. The second season of Sherlock was even better than season one. The third episode particularly was exceptionally well done. The title, The Reichenbach Falls, is in reference the waterfall into which Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty supposedly plunged to their deaths during a fierce tussle in ‘The Final Problem’. This episode was the modernization of ‘The Final Problem’. In The Final Problem, Professor Moriarty’s mission was to kill Sherlock Holmes. In The Reichenbach Fall, Moriarty was not happy enough with just killing Sherlock Holmes, he defames him too. This makes the plot very interesting and it makes sense as only a criminal mastermind like Moriarty come up with something like this.

The reimagined Moriarty is not a professor, he is a psychopath. In Sherlock, Moriarty wants to kill homes not because he was obstructing his criminal web but just for the sake of beat his foe. Andrew Scott’s acting is commendable by the way.

The Final Problem also was crafted nicely. The insanity of Moriarty was pronounced when he shot himself. Instead of the waterfall, Sherlock jumps from the roof to save his friends.

It has been announced that Season 3 of Sherlock will be aired in 2013. It is going to be a long wait.

Mistborn, recommended to me by Akshay Bakshi is an awesome novel. Mistborn: The Final Empire is first novel of the titled The Mistborn Trilogy.

Mistborn introduces a perfect system of magic, it is not exactly magic but more of a science or I should say alchemy. There is burning of metal, calculation, negative reactions, metal combination etc. Brandon Sanderson has obviously spent some time in devising this system. It a perfect and there aren’t many loopholes in it.

And he creates some really nice characters too. I grew fond of Kelsier quite quickly and rather eagerly. Kelsier is a natural leader; he is brave, charismatic and optimistic. He is highly impulsive, very powerful and a competent warrior. He rescues and trains Vin to be a powerful mistborn warrior. Vin was a street urchin who used allomancy even without actual knowledge of it.  She obviously has a natural talent for it and excels at allomancy quickly growing powerful enough to take on a fully trained mistborn. Kelsier is the mastermind of the plan of disrupting the Final Empire and killing Lord Ruler. The Lord Ruler is a bit of mysterious characters. Read the paragraph before the start of each chapter – they are the world of Lord Ruler or someone who claims to be the Hero of Ages. They are his journal which he used when he was not a god. The Inquisitors are also interesting creatures – not human and extremely powerful.

Even though the story is takes place over a few months to a year, you don’t feel that, it is fast paced.  Only a few characters have been really explored, the rest of them are in the background, but you don’t really mind that as the story is engrossing.

I am not sure killing off an important character was such a good ideas, especially since there are two more novels but he did create to manage a legend – at least for the Skaa of the Final Empire.

My rating – 5/5 and Favorite.

•   I read a bit about the Lord Ruler before I had to tear my eyes of the page so as to NOT ruin the next books in the trilogy. What I gathered from what little I read was apparently Lord Ruler really was sort of a god. I am giddying with about the next book – The Well of Ascension.  :-)

I have been using Nokia N9 for over a week now. This device is amazing. I love the hardware but I have been having some problem with the software side of Nokia N9. I will be publishing a review as soon as I finish testing some more stuff, find alternatives etc. until then it sits in my drafts folder. For now enjoy the photos.

I came to know about Hunger Games because of all the buzz generated as it is being made into a movie. I looked up the series online and found that it has pretty good ratings so I bought all the books and finished them in about five days. Here is the review of all three books -

The Hunger Games was an interesting read. The concept is not new… We have seen it in many Hollywood movies but what makes The Hunger Games different that the people playing the game are not criminals; they are not even adults… They are children who have to fight and kill to survive. The pace is fast and the author finds a good balance between providing details and going overboard with it. The settings are interesting and there is a chance that the capitol would be overthrown by the end of the trilogy (at least I hope so). There is definitely a love triangle forming and it would most probably be explored more in the next book – Catching Fire.

Of course as I said in the review of the previous book, the uprising is inevitable. You would think that now both our protagonist have survived the games they would have a happy life, well not exactly.. they run into a bit of bad luck and yeah they are in the games again.. fighting for their life. The book is either short or very interesting because I finished it in a day. The story again continues to have a fast pace and keeps you interest up all the time. The love triangle has started to get annoying. It reminds me of Bella-Edward-Jacob love triangle. Katniss is like Bella – confused about who to love, Gale is like Edward – strong and and handsome and Peeta is like Jacob – in love with Katniss. I would like if the love triangle was toned down a bit.  Other than this little annoyance, the story is moving along quite nicely… I am starting the final book Mockingjay soon.

Huge Spoilers…

Mockingjay is a very disappointing ending to the series. This book doesn’t even live up to the expectations. Things should have been getting better here but that was not the case. The author made Coin into another Snow. Katniss just crosses all the level of tolerance. She is most of the time in some stupid mental self and hurt. Unnecessary people were killed off… Prim? Seriously…why the heck would you kill off her only sister? Finnick… he was sort of an important character and he was killed in a stupid and undignified way. Child bombing !? Katniss kills Coin and she is just sent off home to district 12. No explanation or details on what is now happening in the districts. Her mom abandons Kitniss because coming back to District 12 is too painful. Haymitch is asked to take care of Katniss… really? Katniss and Haymitch votes YES for another Hunger Games … insane. No idea what’s going on with Gale. Katniss stays at her house in Victor’s village and no one ever checks on her for months. What was Peeta doing all that time? Peeta and Katniss get back together and they have kids… whatever … Hardly interested at this point.

By the way… Suzanne Collins must surely be a fan of The Twilight Series because there is a scene where Gale and Peeta are talking like friends about Katniss while she is eavesdropping them pretending to be asleep. (Umm… cold night, Jacob keeping Bella warm in the tent)

This book could have been a lot better. (could)

Well. These are the reviews that I wrote in my Shefari account, where I keep track of every book I read.

The Hunger Games movie is going to be released in 2012. Jennifer Lawrence is going to play the role of Katniss Everdeen. Josh Hutcherson plays the part of Peeta and Gale is played by Liam Hemsworth. The first trailer of the movie does not show much but it does look good. The means that there are going to be two more movies based on the books. The books are great and this movie has the potential to be really good. I hope they change the ending of the third movie a bit to make it a little better.

Check out the teaser trailer of The Hunger Games -

have you read The Hunger Games? Do you agree with my review of the third book – Mockingjay ? Are you excited about the movie?

None of this service is available in India and I have no idea how much time it would take for these services to be released in India. So while other people are enjoying these services, blogging and twitting about it, we just read those blogs and tweets jealously and curse our luck.

I used to use services like Hotspot shield and HideMyAss to break these restrictions and access restricted services. But the experience was very bad – both Hotspot shield and HideMyAss is full of ads which ruins the surfing experience. Hotspot shield starts Internet Explorer and some videos randomly which is hard to  shut down and you have to listen to some insane crap.  HideMyAss frequently disconnects and is very slow.

Enter TunnelBear – an easy to use vpn service which lets you access restricted site. The app is so simple and sweet that even a kid can use it without any problem. There is a ON and OFF switch and another country switch which lets you access sites that are restricted either US or UK. That’s it. Sweet – Simple.

TunnelBear free version offers you 500 MB of data every month. The speed is awesome and there are no distracting, pesky ads. If you tweet – "I want 1 GB of free data" @thetunnelbear – 1 GB data will be added to 500 MB. You can tweet once every month to get an extra 1GB of data, as long as the promo is running.

500 MB or 1.5 GB of data is enough for occational users but if you are need more data just upgrade to Giant Bear [Pro account] which will give you unlimited data to watch your favourite international media from around the world for just $4.99.

Because of TunnelBear, I can now access -

Google Music

Google Phone

Hulu, Pandora etc.

TunnelBear is available for both Windows and Mac. Give it a try. You’ll love it.