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Get these apps for Diwali

Check out new apps for the festive season – some will help you cook, others will help you look nice.

Sweet’N’ Spicy Indian Video Recipes

Food & Drink – Free

Language: English

This app is a large collection of Indian Foods and Recipes with a total of over 4000 recipes and 400+ video recipes across Vegetarian, Non-Vegetarian and Vegan relishes. Use this easy recipe app this Diwali and be the star of the party.

Diwali Recipes

Food & Drink – Free

Language: English

A recipe app containing easy to make recipes for Diwali. This app describes the procedure to make traditional goodies like Karanji, Chakli, Besan Ladoo etc.

Curry Guide

Reference – Free

Language: English

The definitive curry guide for iOS. This app is a handy curry encyclopedia providing you with all the useful information you need for all curry types ranging from mid to extremely hot.

Party Planner!

Lifestyle -$0.99

Language: English

Party Planner! allows people to create party invitations on the fly. Invitations can include party name, theme, what to bring, what to wear, date and time, location on a map, photo and more. Select invitees from your address book or enter new ones.

Party Planning List

Lifestyle – $0.99 (Rs 52.95 approx)

Language: English

This app is all you need to ensure you don’t forget anything. Save hours of typing or noting down the list of things to do before your party. Avoid expensive mistakes and be stress free.

Hairstyle Reference

Lifestyle: Free

Language: English

The APP is one kind of helpful software to assist you to choose your hairstyle, which contains more than 30,000 popular hairstyle pictures, including Celebrity Hairstyles, Casual Hairstyles, Business Hairstyles, wedding hairstyles,Prom HairStyles,Trendy Hairstyles,Women’s hairstyles,Men’s hairstyles and so on. And it updates most stylish hairstyles every day! A great app to have this Diwali with the numerous parties to attend!

My Dala

Lifestyle – Free

Languages: English, Spanish

The very best deals and discounts in your neighborhood, city, country, just a swipe away from mydala.com, India’s first, finest and most trusted deals site. An ideal Diwali shopping idea for those who want to shop from the comfort of their homes. Gift a spa coupon, a romantic dinner for two, gadgets and more to your loved ones this Diwali.

Get in Shape: Effective diets & Workouts

Health & Fitness – Free

Language: English

65 diets that work and get you results and don’t starve you, Over 30 ready made gym workouts for men and women with photo, audio and video guides for every exercise and over 100 activities in the database, professional nutritionists will create individual food and workout plans according to your personal goals and preferences, articles and smart tips on nutrition, health and fitness all in a single app. It can also be used as a calorie counter without choosing and following a specific plan.

Detox Diet

Health & Fitness – $0.99 (Rs 52.95 approx)

Language: English

The Detox Diet App is a good source of information you need to be better educated about the various detox diets out there. If you’re in need of rejuvenation, the Detox Diet App is a great place to start!

 (Picture courtesy www.soulte.com)

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Your mattress could be killing your back

Bad mattress giving you a painful and sore back? We list 10 tips to help you buy the perfect mattress.
By The Diarist | thediarist@themetrognome.in

Sulakshmi Reddy (22) moved to Mumbai from her parents’ home in Satara a year ago. Within weeks of arriving in the city, she developed a niggling back ache. “I thought it was because I was travelling by crowded trains and running about all day. Doctors just prescribed pain medication. I even took up yoga classes to get rid of the pain altogether,” she says. However, the pain showed no signs of abating – in fact, she would often wake up with a stiff back. “It would just get worse as the day progressed,” Sulakshmi says.

Then a physiotherapist zeroed in on her problem. “At my uncle’s place, where I was staying in Mumbai, I used to sleep on a cot with a very thin mattress. I could almost feel the iron body of the cot under the mattress. On the physiotherapist’s advice, I changed my sleeping place for a week, living with a friend who had a good, thick mattress on her bed. The back pain was noticeably reduced,” Sulakshmi remembers.

Poorly-designed mattresses account for back pain in several people. “People just don’t realise the importance of a good mattress. The mattress one uses should be firm, designed to align gently (not squishily) with the spine when one sleeps, and should be sturdy enough to not sag too soon,” says Dr Jayesh Garodia, orthopaedic surgeon. “However, it should not be so firm and sturdy that the person feels like he is sleeping on a flat board.”

Luckily enough, mattresses that are specially designed to combat stresses and pressures have also recently hit Indian markets. Says S K Malhotra, director, sales and marketing for Spring Fit, that has come out with the orthopedically-designed Ortholife mattress, “The high pressure of creating a work-life balance and long hours spent commuting often lead to muscular discomfort and chronic back ache. Using a moderately firm mattress adapts better to the concavities and convexities of the spine leading to better pressure distribution.”

But if you’re just looking for a simple spring mattress, you’ll have to know what goes into making it. Says G Shankar Ram, Joint Managing Director, Peps Industries Pvt Ltd., spring mattresses should have a high carbon spring steel base, cotton felt, foam and a quilted cover. “The base can be varied to make the mattress soft or firm. Cotton felt is put in to absorb excess loads and distribute them evenly. Foam contours itself to different body pressure points, and relaxes the body, while the quilted cover must look and feel attractive and comfortable,” he says.

Get the right mattress today:

G Shankar Ram’s 10 tips to remember when buying a mattress:

1. Purchase a good quality mattress. Research the brand you select – there should be no complaints of sagging or lumping.

2. Select a store that displays mattresses and lets you touch and feel the products.

3. Take your partner along for the purchase. Both of you should be comfortable with the same mattress.

4. Have a look at all the mattresses on display and educate yourself on the various types.

5. Do not feel shy or embarrassed about testing the mattress. Lie down on it and listen to the signals your body and mind give you about the different types of mattresses. Let your partner also lie down and give feedback.

6. Thickness is important. Measure the height of your bed from the floor. This will decide the thickness of mattress that you should buy. Remember that the mattress should be such that your feet touch the floor when you get off the bed.

7. A recommended height for your bed is a maximum of 14 inches from the ground.

8. Today, Indian mattress thicknesses range from four inches to six inches. Internationally, mattresses are about eight inches thick, and these contour with the body much better.

9. A normal mattress must be flipped from head to toe and reversed often. This extends the life of the mattress, ensures the manufacturer’s warranty and prevents early sagging. A luxurious mattress is one on which you sleep on only the top side. These must be rotated from head to toe every three months so that load points are changed and the foam can regain its dexterity.

10. Understand the dealer’s warranty before taking a call on your final purchase – take into account the type of use the mattress will be subjected to, the materials contained therein and what you expect from its use.

 

 

 

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Artful on the iPad

Artist KV Sridhar says his iPad allows him the liberty to finish a 3 x 4 canvas in two hours. Plus, he lists his favourite apps.
By The Diarist | diarist@themetrognome.in

KV Sridhar calls himself ‘an artist by training and an ad man by profession’. The national creative director of Leo Burnett India describes himself on his blog thus: From humble beginnings as a Bollywood film billboard painter to the National Creative Director of Leo Burnett India, Pops (as he is popularly known) has seen it all, and today is widely respected as a creative leader in the Indian ad world.’

When did you decide to create paintings using your iPad?

Some time in March or April 2011, when I started to flirt with the iPad. I stumbled upon some cool drawing apps and I started to explore them out of curiosity, till I found what I wanted. I found the perfect app to create oil on canvas.

What was it like, having completed the first work of art in totality? How different is the experience from painting on paper or a canvas?

Terrific. After the initial experimentation, I settled down to paint seriously and it took me a couple of hours to complete a 3 feet x 4 feet canvas. The iPad is the closest in terms of gratification, because of the touch screen. It is also as if you were painting on a real surface of paper or canvas. Various painting software were available for desktop computers for a very long time, but it kept the serious fine artist away because of the format – you had to draw on a tablet whilst looking at the monitor, and the hand-eye coordination is different from that of painting on paper.

Which app did you use?

After downloading loads of apps, here are the best of best, in my opinion:

– Art Rage: It’s the best for oil on canvas, but also a complete studio with oil, water, pastels and knives with millions of colours.

– Auryn Ink: The best for water colour with a good paper texture, and with wet and dry water trails option.

– SketchBook PRO: Great for random product drawings and sketches.

– Zen Brush: For wet paper Japanese-style work.

– Sketch Club: The Instagram version for sketching artists, and you can share your work with other artists in real time.

-ASKetch: The best for charcoal-like drawings.

– Paper53: Great for freehand drawings or illustrations.

My favorite is Art Rage and it is the best for oil on canvas with a resolution of 2048 x 2048. You can print on canvas at a very high resolution. [On his blog, he describes the use of Art Rage thus: ‘Art Rage gave me a complete studio of 2,000 square feet with innumerable capacity to store canvases both painted and new, hundreds of tubes of colours free with infinite shades, entire sets of hog hair and sable hair brushes, palate and painting knives, rollers etc, all this lifetime supplies for a meagre $7.00.’ (approx Rs 385)]

Can absolutely anybody use the iPad to draw?

Of course anyone can, but if a trained artist does, it shows. There is virtually no difference between digital and real, apart from the colour smells.

How many paintings did you finish?

For my first show, I painted 36 paintings in less then three months. In a normal course of time, painting oil on canvas would have taken me three years, at the very least. The first iPops show was held from June 11 to 30, 2011 at the Scarecrow Gallery (Mumbai).

Why did you decide to hold an exhibition? And how did people respond to it?

My artist friends who saw my work were amazed by the results, and encouraged me to exhibit. I was a bit nervous, since my last one-man show had been way back in 1984, but fortunately I had a great response from the advertising and media industry in general, and the art-buying community, while the conventional artist community put me and my work under close observation. I had done many shows for my conventional paintings from 1978 to 1984, but my iPad paintings only once. Ultimately, I am happy that I sold my work to help the girl child in our country. I sold work close to Rs 5 lakh and donated the proceeds to charity. Interestingly, the money come from friends and well- wishers, rather than hesitant art collectors.

Are you currently working on any new paintings?

iPops: Yes. I am working on a new series called ‘Sisters’. Again, this is to promote two girl children in a family, as it is becoming a rarity to have two daughters these days. Every family wants an ‘ideal’ family with a boy and girl, hence in future we may not see sisters. My attempt is to put focus on this issue. I am planning to have my second iPad painting showing in New Delhi before the end of 2012, and in Colombo and Los Angeles next year.

Meanwhile, check out these new iPad apps if you want to draw, paint, or generally get arty.  

Inspire Pro

 

Genre: Entertainment

Price: $7.99 (approx Rs 442)

Languages: English

Try Inspire Pro and you will quickly see that it is a painting app like no other! The key feature is the simulation of wet oil paint on canvas, allowing amazing blending effects with five real kinds of brushes. Whether you’re a beginner, expert, or somewhere in between, you will enjoy the simplicity and power of Inspire Pro.

Sketchbook Express

Genre: Entertainment

Price: Free

Languages: English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish

Autodesk SketchBook Express for iPad is a fun and intuitive drawing application. Use professional grade tools and brushes to create doodles, quick sketches or artwork on-the-go.

My brushes for iPad

 

Genre: Entertainment

Price: $1.99 (approx Rs 110)

Languages: English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish

MyBrushes is a unique painting application designed to create images and play back the whole painting process. It has 100 kinds of realistic brush styles to simulate the effect of brush painting, water colour painting, oil painting, Chinese painting, drawing, Chinese calligraphy, etc.

Wasabi Paint

 

Genre: Photo and video

Price: $2.99 (approx Rs 165)

Language: English

For  abstract and impressionist artists, Wasabi Paint is an immersive and tactile digital paint experience. Taking a different approach to other painting apps, its hyper-realistic 3D oil paint can be pushed, pulled, smudged, thrown and splashed around. This app is developed to allow an Impasto style of painting, in which thick paint is laid on with a 3D effect.

InkPaint

 

Genre: Entertainment

Price: $3.99 (approx Rs 220)

Language: English

Create beautiful artwork on the go with InkPaint. InkPaint allows new and experienced artists alike to quickly create beautiful cartoons or illustrations through its distinctive four-step work flow – 1) Rough out your drawing in Sketch mode 2) Neatly outline your work in ink 3) Colour your drawing with paint 4) Use the shade tools to add depth.

Draw

 

Genre: Utilities

Price: $0.99 (approx Rs 55)

Languages: English, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish

Create amazing art work with Draw. Draw makes drawing fun using innovative tools. Once you complete your work of art, you can edit it, apply effects, stickers, etc and then share it with friends.

Art Studio

 

Genre: Photo & Video

Price: $4.99 (approx Rs 275)

Language: English

ArtStudio is a very comprehensive sketching, painting and photo editing tool. Completely re-designed from the ground up, the new ArtStudio features a beautiful new user interface and a powerful new graphics engine to make creating works of art faster, easier, and more fun.

The Diarist is a tech junkie, and if you’re reading this, chances are you are, too. If you’d like to tell us about something new in tech, write to thediarist@themetrognome.in.

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