Thursday, August 30, 2018

Ladies, you can now get a free Smartphone




Chhattisgarh Government  under its Sanchar Kranti Yogana (SKY) program will distribute 5 million smartphones to women who are heads of families.


Read more here:
https://postgully.com/50-lakh-people-will-be-given-free-smartphone-cg-sky/

Do you want to transact using Bitcoins?

Before you can sell/buy Bitcoins, you have to first of all know what you are dealing with. $s and Cents are easy to know, but Bitcoin?

The smallest denomination of Bitcoin is called a 'SATOSHI'.

Value of a Satoshi  depends on the day and time you want to know the conversion rate. Satoshi is the unit of Bitcoin.


Satoshi_1 from site below

You can get the conversion rate here:

I just tried to find today (8/29/2018 around 5.00 PM Hawaiian time).


Satoshi


Wednesday, August 29, 2018

You can easily fix this Windows Media Player error

When you try to play a movie using Windows Media Player, or double click a movie file with Windows Media Player as your default, you will see this error.


Serverfailed_0.png

The reason may be that the Windows Movie Player process is still active. You can see this in the Task Manager as shown.


Serverfailed_1.png

Highlight this process in Task Manager and click End Process.

Now if you double click Windows Media Player or a .mp4 file you should see it starting.


The same kind of problems used to happen while opening a Mozilla Browser. I have not been using the browser recently.

Sunday, August 19, 2018

Do they really grow tea in Hawaii?

Yes, they do.

We were surprised as well because KONA coffee is well known. When we visited one of the few tea estates in the Big Island we saw tea being grown.

What is more, wee participated in a tea ceremony (Hawaiian style not to confuse with the more well known Japanese Tea Ceremony).

I also heard that this tea company may be on sale (rumor we heard after our visit, take it with a bit of salt).

Here is a Video

https://youtu.be/8kNc0iJRls4



Thursday, August 16, 2018

If you are visiting Rome, you should visit Orvieto


September 26:

We had breakfast at the hotel which was reasonable. The blood orange juice (the first time I ever had) was quite refreshing. I had my usual piece of bread with cheese and coffee.

Orvieto sits on the top of a volcanic tuff (325 meters above sea level)-consolidate and compressed volcanic ash and down below, there is the other part of Orvieto which has the train station and some businesses. The hill top town has narrow roads, the Cathedral and other tourist attractions.

We explored Orvieto on foot together with our local guide who met us at the hotel. We all walked together and took some pictures of the 'Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo' which served as both market place as well as town's meeting hall. The building style was used as a template for other building is Italy. Presently it is used for conferences and community meetings.

The town has lots of narrow, winding cobbled streets under arches; between fortified walls, both new and ancient. There are lots of delightful little shops; restaurants; gift shops; shops selling leather goods, bread and olive oil etc. We were also guided to the Collegiate Church of Saints Andrew and Bartholomew- built on the ruined Etruscan place of worship. The dodecagonal bell tower was quite interesting. We did go inside the church. There were frescos which were not in great shape with plaster peeling off. St. Andrews in stained glass was nice (but not my picture of it).

As we still had plenty of time to meet after lunch to visit the Cathedral; we decided to take in, more of the town and discover on foot. The Bottega Michael Angeli Wood Atelier was very good with so many toys and things crafted in wood. We also passed in front of the Institute of higher education for art and crafts building; the various shops selling art works, ceramics, leather goods, etc.

Since we were on our own for lunch and dinner in Orvieto, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant called, 'Trattoria la Grotta'. It was OK and soon after we entered, a big Scandinavian group entered.
Tiramisu was very good.

After lunch we were to meet in front of the Duomo (the Cathedral), the most imposing structure in Orvieto with an elaborately carved facade with three sections. This is considered a masterpiece of Italian Gothic.  The Rose window is very arresting, both from outside and from inside. We waited for our local guide and I had enough time to take more detailed shots of the façade.

Our local guide showed up and we all entered the Cathedral. The Cathedral interior was huge and imposing; the black and white zebra patterns from marble was everywhere, on the columns supporting the cathedral and on the walls. Herein, one can find the masterpiece frescoes of Luca Signorelli. My shots are not good but captures the essence. Another piece of sculpture,  one will not miss is the Pieta -completed by Ippolito Scalza around 1579.

After the Cathedral we made a brief visit to the underground caves which shielded the locals during enemy incursions near the Parco del Grotte. We had a special city guide to takes around the cave, quite an elaborate network (we only saw a part of it).

We returned perhaps around 5:00 PM and later we had a cheese, old meats and wine party. Two of the ladies in our group celebrated their birthdays which brought on birthday cakes and more singing.

We left a little early to have some supper at a nearby restaurant Antico Bucchero, a fine restaurant but a little expensive.

We are almost finished with our visit to Orvieto and tomorrow, after visiting Assisi we will come back to Orvieto to say goodbye the following day.


Here are some pictures of our visit:


















 More pictures  in the video here.