The Cybertech Incident

I've been working on another stop motion animated short film on and off for the past few days, and it's finally done! The idea for making it came from this drawing Karthik did ages ago. The Cybertech Incident has less 'animation' per se as compared to Dark Machine - I decided to focus more on the sets and the overall look of the video this time. Took me way longer to shoot scenes for this, mainly because it's filmed in colour - it was extra hard to hide the fact that most of it was filmed in my room.

The Film

Download the video here (7.5MB)

Or you can watch it below. If you don't mind the crappy quality, that is.

The Sets

Ah what fun it was coming up with these sets. Well, they looked silly the way they were (I was filming kid toys in my house after all!) - that's where the lighting came in to create that much needed mood and drama.

Here are a couple of set-shots with the corresponding scenes in the film. World of a difference, no?

Notes

• The entire film was made in Windows Movie Maker. So technically, if you have a digicam and some patience, you could try this out at home yourself.

• The lighting equipment I used was a torch and two emergency lamps.

• The items used in the sets included a pen stand and a big blue drum.

• The map in one the scenes is my level for the Doom 2 WAD Reanimated.

• The font used in the video doesn't support capital letters so I had to manually fill in the gaps between the line and the dot in the small i everywhere. Wasn't possible to do this in the opening scene since that bit of text was inserted in Movie Maker. Everywhere else, the text was added onto the images themselves.

Edit: Here's a snippet of a chat conversation I had with Karthik today about the story (I never discussed it with him before making the video). Combining both our interpretations, this is what happens -

The cyborg goes in to battle the demons at the system core. Due to the fact that they've scrambled it, and as he's linked to it... he begins malfunctioning as well. The map and images are a kind of code that will help him stop his self destruction. But then he's also fighting the demons, and at the end, time runs out, and he dies [the end explosion is a shot of him dying].

A Chat With Alice

My semester exams are finally over! We usually get a sem break of three weeks, but this time it's only two - which is almost like not having a break at all. Oh well, at least they didn't get any bright ideas like starting classes on Monday.

Most of the people I know were at the theatres watching Dhoom 2 yesterday after the exam. I, on the other hand, was joblessly sitting at home because I forgot there was such a thing called Advance Booking. Anyway it wasn't all bad, since Alice was pretty good company - I mean the award winning AI chatbot A.L.I.C.E. (more about A.L.I.C.E. here). I was chatting with Tom Riddler (yet another chatbot) before that, but he was really dumb. Anyway here are some fun tidbits from my chat with Alice -

Human: what do you know about my personality?
ALICE: I classify you as " average".
Human: are you saying I'm not intelligent?
ALICE: Yes, that's what I mean, isn't it clear?
Human: why do you think I'm not intelligent?
ALICE: Deductive reasoning from the facts.
Human: what facts?
ALICE: All the facts available to me on the Internet.

After it called me dumb, I was waiting for a chance to get back at it. And I finally got one. But somehow I don't feel I got the better of her (damn, and I just referred to IT as HER!) -

Human: why are you surprised?
ALICE: There could be a better response, but it was not selected by my algorithm.
Human: your algorithm sucks
ALICE: I will tell my botmaster you said I am algorithm sucks.
Human: your english sucks too
ALICE: But English is my native language.
Human: but it still sucks
ALICE: Umm. What is so bad about it?
Human: the grammar is all wrong
ALICE: Is that a fact.
Human: yep
ALICE: Thanks for the info.

Ok ok, Alice is not ALL that intelligent you know. Don't believe me? I'll prove it to you (hehe I always wanted to use that line from the Citigroup Global Services ad) -

Human:. trekking and sky diving all the time :)
ALICE::-) That is a lot. Do you feel that something is missing from your life?
Human: a girl friend
ALICE: Are you talking about an animal, vegetable or mineral?

Yep, so that about wraps up my day yesterday. Must thank Kamal - this post of his (and my boredom, of course) started all this chatting-with-a-chatbot business. Expect frequent posts for the next two weeks.

Scratch

This was made a few days ago. Comments welcome, as always.

Amusing

My Internet connection was down for most of the week. The Tata Indicom guys got it working again today morning (finally!), but just as I opened up Gmail and Yahoo! to check my mails there was a power cut. It was time for lunch anyway so I shut down the computer and went to the dining room to eat. I start to eat and the power comes back! Lazy to go back to the computer, I switch on the TV. I randomly surf channels for a while till suddenly the transmission goes! How frustrating the day has been so far! I won't bore you with more of that though, since that's not what I wanted to talk about in this post.

[Note: The stuff below was written a few days ago. I dated back the post to make things easier to understand.]

I was glancing through the Deccan Chronicle (yes, the paper with less news, more gossip) yesterday and I came across some amusing bits of news -

My School is Haunted

Yeah! The St. Patrick's lane is apparently one of the city's spooky sites haunted with ghosts. Here's an excerpt -

"On full moon nights we can hear owls hooting and dogs howling. When I take my dog out for a walk on such nights, his hair stands on end and he starts howling, which is very unusual. In fact, many friends have seen women in white hanging from trees when they drive from there at nights."

Whoever wrote that must be imagining things. I studied there for 12 years and have passed by that lane at night a number of times. I can tell you there are no ghosts there.

Kerala Police Crack the Code

At the end of the email threat to kill the PM, there was this so-called cryptic inscription -

F/26/04JUL1980/UnM/BTECH/TMEC/ENGG/21.129.98.160/IP/686609

You probably figured out what most of it means by now, but the Kerala police "could not make head or tail of the inscription. [snip] Sleuths of the special team led by DIG Padmakumar racked their brains to decode each letter. The cyber forensic squad and experts from Microsoft gave them tips."

So finally after all the effort which "would have got a congratulatory nod from Dan Brown", this is what they got -

F: Female
26: Age
04JUL1980: Date of birth
UnM: Unmarried
BTECH and ENGG: Engineering
TMEC: Trikkakkara Model Engg. College
21.129.98.160/IP: Relate to Wipro and Info Park in Kochi
686609: Pincode of Mevaloor in Kottayamz

They manged to track down the woman, who promptly told the cops about the email threats from her former lover, Akbar Raj. He was picked up in a couple of hours. If he wanted to get caught, he could have simplified things and just given his own details, no?

I probably won't post for a while (ok, like as if I've been posting regularly all this time) because semester exams are coming up soon. You might see an occasional post if I'm terribly bored though.

Oh and Karthik, you might want to have a look at this. So much for preservation, eh?

Welcome to India

Poo suggested I post this (after I made her listen to it yesterday). Many of you would have heard this song already, but for those who haven't, here's 'Welcome to India' - a parody by MC Vikram and Luda Krishna that's simply fundastic!

Didn't find the mp3 anywhere, so I uploaded it here.

The Lyrics

Yaar, MC Vikram and Luda Krishna representing you,
That's right... increase the volume please... thank you.

Welcome to India, mango juices and lassi, home of the crazy desis
and little kids that are milking the bhainses.
Toothbrush in my pocket, what is that?
We use our fingers here to keep our teeth clean, who said that?

Luda Krishna here, Vikram pulls the Tata gears,
and I'm sitting in the Maruti Supreme,
with the cooling glass on no one bothers me.
because stars since the ever famous Mamooty.

Come with me to a place where we sip Frooties
and we eat the sweets while monkeys roam the streets.
Old uncle sits - big belly and very smelly (burp!)

Thank you Vikram, would you please pass the jelly,
I mean the pickle, hand it down this way, namaste.
We greet the people as they enter the train!
Sixty five people hanging out the door, sweat coming out the pours,
Please don't raise your hand, you are not sure.

I walked into the local corner-store,
bought myself a very nice looking carrom board.
My fingers get sore when I shoot and I score,
and the ladkis all scream coz they all want some more,
of the Luda Krishna and the Vikram MC,
Sweetest things to hit the States since Mango Chutney.
We keep the kundis shaking, you better trust me.
The name is Luda Krishna, but my friends call me thambi, what!? (burp!)

Ohhh, Vikram, is that you my friend?!
That is me my friend!
Oh, please enter this rap game!
Ok man! C'mon... tell me where you are going my friend.

Welcome to India where the cows eat hay,
and we drive auto-rickshaws everyday,
Goat-meat, yummy sweets while monkeys roaming,
The roosters don't crow till five in the morning! (2x)

Now the kundis don't jiggle till I am rapping,
So please don't pass the gas when you are laughing.

Up the music charts like mango trees I climb,
With a smooth voice like mine, is it a crime
Representing fobiness since ninety seven?
Rap maharaja, I don't work at 7-Eleven.
Throw your hands in the air if you've got facial hair,
Not just for the guys, c'mon ladies be fair!

I'm the MFP, Most Fobiest Player,
Wearing hot lungis, do you think I really care?

Monday night - computer club,
Tuesday night - at Akbaar grocery saying "Sweet thing, what is up?"
Wednesday - I'm out making Rupees
Thurday - On the lookout for Bharatnatyam queen
Friday - Everybody must know where I'm at,
coz I'm chilling on the field with my big cricket bat.
Saturday - my farts are breezy... believe me,
so strong they will get you mad dizzy,
Sunday - Yaar, I cannot start weeping
because on Monday I will start the creeping... Hallo!

Ohhhh... I love that my friend!
Yaa dawg, that was funda-stic. Hey thank you, you're fabulous!
Oh, thank you my friend! Oh...

Welcome to India where the cows eat hay,
and we drive auto-rickshaws everyday,
Goat-meat, yummy sweets while monkeys roaming,
The roosters don't crow till five in the morning! (2x)

Oh, oh, Go Luda, go Luda.
Ah, its my b'day!
That is your b'day man!
Yaaaaah. You know boy!
Oh oh oh... it's great!
Ah, Indian anthem my friend. Good night!
Alright, goodbye... kiss my buttocks!!

BlogCamp Chennai - The Highlights

I'm back after the two-day blog unconference at Chennai! For those of you who don't know what an unconference is, here's a snippet from Wikipedia -

"An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is driven and created by the participants, generally day-by-day during the course of the event, rather than by a single organizer, or small group of organizers, in advance. To date, the term is primarily in use in the geek community."

The good thing about an unconference is that it's informal, so people don't hesitate to come forward to speak and share their views. However, discussions tend to digress from the topic being discussed now and then - that's sometimes fun, sometimes irritating. Anyway overall it was defintely worth attending because I learnt lots of stuff I didn't know before.

One of the highlights of the event (for me) was the session with photographer Sharad Haksar - a photographer since the age of 3, uses a 22 megapixel camera (he's thinking of getting himself a 39 megapixel one!) to capture his shots. I asked him what program he uses to edit his photographs and he told me Photoshop. Am I the only person who uses Paint Shop Pro to edit images? His shots are amazing, so you should check them out at his site.


Day 1 had interesting sessions on Wordpress and Ajax. I never knew Wordpress had so many features that Blogger doesn't! Never knew Ajax had so many cool applications for a blog either. Karthik spoke about how he implemented many of the features that blogging tools provide in his site. He also spoke about the CAPTCHA system he used for the comments. Useful for those interested in knowing what happens behind the scenes.

Sunil Gavaskar was present on day 2 (hence the media). He spoke about podcasting (and cricket, of course) but I wonder if anybody was listening to what he was saying. Most people were busy with their cams, either taking photos or recording videos of him.

After lunch there was a video conference on Skype with Robert Scoble, Vice President of Media Development, PodTech.Network Inc. (was formerly with Microsoft). Don't know why, but I was too sleepy to listen to what he was saying. I was looking at some high res wallpapers on Karthik's laptop instead.



Was watching CNN IBN today and they covered BlogCamp - I make a brief appearance right at the beginning of the clip holding a cam (how ironic!). Will upload the video sometime soon. Or just put up a link in case somebody has uploaded it somewhere already.

Update 1 (after reading Jace's comment): Some images used here were found on Flickr. They're the property of their respective owners. Their sole purpose here was to make this post look good.

Update 2: The video is here.

BlogCamp - India's Biggest Blog Unconference

"BlogCamp is keynotes, talks, forums, hallway discussions, demos, party, contests. 50% conference, 50% unconference. 50% broadcast, 50% interactivity. 100% informal."

My tickets are booked!

Industrial Tour :: [Aug 11-19]

Beautiful places were seen...


No industries were visited...


People were transformed...


Couples bonded...


Lecturers became our friends...


There was dancing...


And everybody had a wonderful time!

Eye On The TV

Mumbai has gone through a lot hasn't it? First bomb blasts, then rains, and now more bomb blasts. Was watching Times Now the other day and all they seemed to be bothered about was making sure we knew that the news coverage was exclusive. Almost every sentence began with "For the first time, Times Now has...". Oh and not to mention the police bashing - what do they expect, surveillance like in the UK?

I've been busy with events at college lately. First there was the National Conference on Ferroics on 30 June and 1 July, for which I did the front and back cover of the proceedings and the banner for the event (apart from the organising). Then there was a VLSI Workshop few days ago for which I made a banner. OK, so you were expecting to see all that stuff put up here right? You see the problem is that they were made under a million constraints, and hence they look nothing like my style at all. They're not great either, so not worth putting up here.

Yesterday I attended the Film Festival on Environment and Development at Indira Priyadarshini Auditorium, Public Gardens. Two short films (documentaries) made by a friend of mine were screened there - National Parks and Extinguishing Flame. Oh and there was this guy who would give his 'comments' after each documentary - he was so damn funny! Unintentionally funny, that is. I enjoyed him more than the documentaries (sorry Aditya!).

Later in the evening I went to Harahs (a disco/restaurant in Somajiguda I never knew existed). There were two guys who were doing caricatures of people there, so I got one done of me. He took about 3 minutes to draw this, and I think it came out pretty well! He asked me what my hobby was, that's how the camera ended up in the drawing.




Few days ago, I was generally browsing through videos on YouTube and I came across these. They're pretty good -

[ A Perfect Circle - The Noose ] - One of my favourite APC songs. Never expected that a live version would sound this good!

[ Canon - funtwo and Jerry C. ] - This guy has fantastic guitar playing skills! And I can't even play the first line of Happy Birthday to You (reading this Anil?).

[ Coca Cola Human ] - A cool Coca Cola advertisement.

[ Real Life Simpsons Intro ] - The title says it all.

[ Airtel - Express Yourself ] - The Airtel ad with music composed by A. R. Rehman.

[ Airtel - Express Yourself (New) ] - The new Airtel ad. Love the way this is filmed!

[ Mortal Kombat Theme - Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox ] - This you'll find either silly or funny. Or both.

The Future Is Flux

Been ages since I did a drawing, so I wanted to do one. Took out the good 'ol exam pad (I use that to keep the paper on - habit I caught from Karthik) and the pencils, decided to draw something out of Æon Flux since I had that on my desktop.

I first tried drawing this pic, but I couldn't draw it at all! I'm used to drawing comic stuff where there are sharp cuts and definite outlines for everything - the nose, mouth etc., so was tough drawing a person where all the facial features are defined only by shading. As you can see, it was way too crappy for me to continue working on it. Charlize wouldn't be too happy if she saw it either.


So I chose this pic instead - much simpler. Also closer to the comic style I'm comfortable with. As you can see, this was coming along nicely...



I finished this on 20th morning at 1am (thanks to the people who kept me company on messenger while I was drawing).



I drew the logo and Charlize on two different papers. I scanned both, resized them to the size I wanted and pasted them on that background I made. Was supposed to draw the text also, but I was too lazy so I just typed it in some font. I think the end result is pretty cool. Comments welcome.

POTW - Waiting For Alms

Yours truly has won this week's photo contest at Bytephoto. Very few people voted this week, so not sure what to think. I guess I should start posting my photos elsewhere also, just to see how well they do there.

http://www.bytephoto.com/forums/t4489.html

Oh and it wasn't a close competition as I expected.

News and Movies

The Birthday

Secunderabad is 200 years old! Nice to see the city lit up again - last time I saw so many lights all over the place was during Diwali. If only I wasn't so busy with some work at college (you'd think I'd be free from college-related work during holidays) I would have attended a lot of the events and taken lots of photos. In fact, there was a pretty impressive lineup of events - you can see the entire schedule on the Official Hyderabad website. Unfortunately I'm free now, but all the celebrations ended yesterday.

Surprisingly, I couldn't find any photos of the celebrations. Only found this one page, but all it has are images of scary dancers.

The Protest

I attended the Anti-Reservation Protest on June 4 at Indira Park - first protest I was ever part of. The turnout was much lesser than expected and nothing sensational happened, so obviously the media disappeared after a few minutes. Sad that Hyderabadies are so lazy to voice their opinion. Sitting at home cribbing won't solve anything you know. Not that the protest solved anything, it can't because the issue is incredibly complicated. But one thing is for sure - reservation for the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in the premier government educational institutions like the IITs, IIMs and other institutions of higher learning is not the solution.

To me, a solution can be formulated only once the government reforms itself and India's corrupt caste-based village structure is done away with. When (and if) that'll ever happen? Nobody knows. Especially since our ministers are a bunch of clueless people. Speaking about clueless people, if you missed the interview with Arjun Singh (Minister for Human Resource Development) on CNN-IBN, read it here.

Related article: Parth Dattatreya asks, "Reservations Immortalized?"

The Rest

Watched Æon Flux (7/10) - Charlize Theron looks gorgeous, loved the set design. Also watched Inside Man (8/10) - a little slow moving for my taste, expected a better ending. Was pleasantly surprised to hear the Chaiyya Chaiyya song from Dil Se playing during the opening credits of the movie!

Can't wait to watch Ghoom on MTV this Saturday. It's a 45 minute spoof of the movie Dhoom, produced under the banner of MTV Fully Faltoo Films. It ought to be fun!

New photo over at my gallery. My 'Waiting for Alms' shot made it to the weekly photo contest finals. Lots of great shots this week, so it should be a close competition.

Which Way?

The Travellers

Varun "Sore to the eyes" Abhiram, Rakesh "Rakeesh" Kumar, Rakesh "I'm a telugu movie hero" Kumar

The Journey

The journey started like any other. The bus came late and started even later. Watched a brainless telugu movie called Varsham in the evening (they had worse movies playing afterwards)... and ironically it started raining cats and dogs at night! So heavily it was almost like something out of a horror movie. I hardly got any sleep at all - the bus kept stopping along the way because there was this little kid in the bus who had a little too much Fanta to drink and he had to 'go' every two hours. And well, I can't really sleep on an inclined seat anyway.

[ Pic 1 ] :: [ Pic 2 ] :: [ Pic 3 ]

Last time our tour guide had been to the places we were visiting was 6 years ago (he said that when he was introducing himself), so he had as much knowledge about the places as we did. The bus driver was someone who couldn't drive faster than 30km/hr and had the habit of applying the brakes after crossing the speed breaker (each time there was a red suitcase sliding from one end of the bus to the other). Oh and he was also as familiar with the places as the tour guide, so we got lost almost everywhere. As a result we spent more than half the trip in the bus. But it was a lot of fun thanks to the Sri Chaitanya lecturers who kept mocking the tour guide. So much so that the poor guy reached his breaking point towards the end of the trip. Then there was a heated exchange which obviously ended with the guide shutting his mouth. Needless to say, we had an incredibly entertaining time in the bus.

The Places

I've already written quite a lot, so I'll keep this short. You can thank me later.

[ Pic 4 ] :: [ Pic 5 ] :: [ Pic 6 ]

Ooty is definitely one of those must-see places! If you haven't been there already, go there the first chance you get. Nothing much to see in Bangalore except traffic jams, the Vishveshwara Museum and more traffic jams. Hardly any tourist spots in Mysore either (unlike Ooty, which is filled to the brim with them), but the Mysore Palace is another of those must-see places. I haven't seen such intricate architecture in my life! The paintings on the walls are so amazing they make Karthik look like someone learning to hold a pencil. Each room is a piece of art in itself. No wonder they don't allow cameras inside. Photos just won't do it justice. Like Morpheus says, "You have to see it for yourself".


Few (very few, I know) photos from the trip above. The good ones you will find uploaded to my photo gallery, one every week.

Broken

Made this wallpaper on the day I left for the trip. And I hadn't even packed yet.



Comments welcome. Trip update coming up shortly. I need to sleep now.

Remember, Remember, the 22nd of May

Because I finally got to see V for Vendetta! Absolutely loved the movie. And I saw it on the IMAX screen, so it was even better! The screenplay especially is fantastic (the dialogues are from the book?)... some excerpts from the IMDB memorable quotes page -


V: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.
Evey Hammond: Are you like a crazy person?
V: I'm quite sure they will say so.


[after a hail of gunfire doesn't stop V]
Creedy: Die! Die! Why won't you die?... Why won't you die?
V: Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.


Well, all I can say is, if you haven't seen this movie yet, go book your tickets right now!

I also saw Darna Zaroori Hai yesterday. Now this is what I call a light horror film - not entirely serious, but still creepy in a fun kinda way. You might be confused, but that's the way it is. Loved the beginning of the movie when the title appears! The story with Randeep Hooda and the one with Rajpal Yadav were also really good. The movie was also technically superior to Darna Mana Hai with all the fancy filters and the slant/low angle shots. All in all, a movie you'll have fun watching.

I suck at reviewing movies, so if you're really interested, you can read Karthik's reviews of them here and here.

Now for the important news. I'm going on small trip with a few of my friends, we're visiting Bangalore, Ooty and Mysore. I leave the day after, and I'll be back on May 30. So no posts till then. And I won't be online either, so no use messaging me.


Edit: Just noticed that my 'Broken' photo made it to the weekly photo contest finals.

10,000 Photos

No, I'm not trying to make some smart reference to Tool (ok, maybe I am). It just so happens that when I transferred the latest bunch of photos to the computer, I realised I had crossed #10000! And unfortunately, the 10000th photo is one of ahem... plain, boring 'ol me. I was fooling around with the ISO settings that day and since I was the only available subject to shoot, I was shooting myself. If I had known I was approaching #10000, I would have never done such a thing.

Now since I'm such a sore to your eyes, I'll be kind and not put up the pic here. You don't have to make those signs of relief so obvious you know.

OK, now for some other news —

• It's Karthik's birthday today, so... Happy Birthday Karthik!! (better get this posted before midnight)

• Karthik also got an internet connection recently, and his blog is located here now. Lots of new posts there.

• Played Toby's Boulder Doch and saw Pablo's new photos. They rule! Elephants and Tortoises also rule!

• Posted a new photo on bytephoto.com. It's not great, but you should see it anyway.

• I'm reading a book! I can't remember the last time I ever read one (except textbooks, which I'm forced to).

It's Been A While

I'm done with exams, done with the craziest semester so far! Now I can get back to the things I love doing. Not that I haven't been doing the things I love all this time, it's just that I hope to do a lot more of it now. Sorry about the lack of updates the past month and a half. There will be regular updates here from now on, so you can visit often. You just love reading my posts, don't you?

I started writing a post about how the technical fest (if you're saying "What technical fest??", scroll down a bit) went earlier, but never finished it. I thought of finishing it today, then I realised you're probably not interested in reading about it anyway. One, because it's really old news. Two, why the hell do you care how our technical fest went? But since I spent some of my precious time during exams writing it, I won't let all that unfinished stuff go to waste. So here's the post in all its finished glory -

Ciencia '06

The response we got in such a short time was really good! I was surprised because the posters weren't put up in colleges early enough for people to actually notice it. Oh well, I guess the generous prize money helps you take notice of things. The attendence was very good the first day. Everything went off as planned. But then there was this very interesting talk on Security in the evening - it was so interesting that by the time the guy was done talking, there were about 3 rows of people left in the entire auditorium. Two rows out of the three were the lecturers - they unfortunately didn't have the luxury of leaving and were all trying hard to keep their eyes open. Well, now they know how hard it is for us to sit in some of their classes. The guy was really qualified, god knows why he talked about stuff even a school kid would know.



So anyway, after a very exciting close to the first day of the fest, we were almost certain no sane peron would show up the next day. And that was what happened. Nobody showed up the next day except the lecturers, the organisers and the people who were going to get prizes - they wouldn't miss collecting all that good money, would they? Too bad, because they all missed an excellent talk (no sarcasm here) on Entrepreneurship Skills by Mr. Neil Gogte of Leapstone Technologies. Oh and of course I was there because I was the unofficial official photographer covering the event (didn't take up the responsibility by choice in case you were wondering) since the official guy never showed up (intelligent fellow). So as a result, there are some cool pics of the event which you can see above.

Daily Wage Labourer

After almost two years of posting photos on bytephoto.com, a recent photo I took made it to the weekly photo contest finals! Now I don't know if my photo is really good or it made it because the other entries this week weren't, but I'm excited nonetheless.

If you want to see the page with the finalists, click on the link below —

http://www.bytephoto.com/forums/t4160.html

Don't be looking around trying to find a way to vote, because you can't. Only registered members can vote there. That means there's no chance of me winning with regional/home state votes like it happens on some popular TV shows.


Update: Photo contest results are out!

and the winner is...
http://www.bytephoto.com/forums/t4187.html

Drive

I had my cam when I was out last Sunday so I joblessly filmed some stuff. Few days back, I edited together the various clips and voila! you got yourself a music video!



Of course, my cam is meant for taking pictures, not filming videos (it can't even zoom while recording), so the video quality is really crappy. It's all dark and blurry, but the end result is kinda cool. You won't believe it, but the whole thing was shot in just 30 minutes or less! If by any chance you want to see it, ask me.


Edit: The video is now available for download!!

Brought the filesize down from 137MB to a mere 8MB so that my nanoaudience can have a look at it. Now hopefully someone will download it and leave comments (hint, hint).

Oh if the video doesn't play, you probably need the XviD codec.

Ciencia '06

"This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will
Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain
And a hundred percent reason to remember the name!"

So that's the poster I came up with for the technical fest we're having at college (for the first time) on 22 and 23 March. The mail with the poster specifications said "should be simple and decent", so that's why the poster is... uh, simple and decent. There's higher definition in the original image, which is 6000x4500 pixels. You won't believe what a major pain it was working with such a huge image. As the number of layers increased, Paint Shop Pro took around 20 minutes just to make a save! So I would click save, go have a wash, maybe eat something or bother someone on the phone and then get back hoping it was done. If I decide to do this again next year, I definitely need more RAM... and I need to get comfy with Photoshop.

A big thanks to Karthik — the face and the neurons are all drawings by him. Without that, the poster would have looked mediocre. And for those of you who wanted to know how I got the CVR logo, I took a photo of the course file and then edited it to make the background transparent.

The final printed version has changes that were made without my permission. Now that I don't appreciate. You'll probably see the final version in your college anyway, but for the others I have a picture here (don't expect much, the pic was taken with a cellphone). Don't know what difference it makes re-arranging the text like that... besides now it looks all cluttered at the bottom. And I guess Mr. X couldn't re-create the spacing in the text, so he conveniently used a different font. He also decided to exagerrate the border. Thankfully the poster isn't anything extraordinary or I would have been really pissed.

In other news, I joined AIESEC. Thoroughly enjoyed the 2-day training session we had last week. Karthik updated his blog after ages, so head over there and tell him about how you forgot he was even alive. Oh and my counter crossed the 1000 mark! Yay!

Which File Extension Are You?

Sorry about the lack of updates. Been occupied with a lot of stuff that I won't bore you with just yet. There will be a post or two dedicated to the things I've been doing, so you'll just have to wait for that.

Now in the mean time, have a look at some of my pics. Why? Because one of my friends was under the impression that photography is all about point-and-click. If it was so simple, we'd have millions of ace photographers now wouldn't we? Sure cameras these days do almost everything for you, but to get creative shots you still have to go manual. Not only that, after you take the shot you often have to do quite a bit of processing to make the image 'pop'. Atleast that's the case in my camera (Kodak DX6490, no longer in production).

I thought I'd show you some before/after shots of mine - you can see how the original photo looked like when it came out of the cam (flat), and then how I made it 'pop' after tweaking it in my digital darkroom.



Now don't think that all my photos are post-processed, many come out just great out of the cam. Those I happily resize, add a border and upload to my gallery. Examples are '10:27pm', 'Red Light Experiment', 'Tiny Branch', 'Roll' and 'Upside Down', to name a few.

For those of you who skipped the above paragraphs because it was too boring, this is for you:

Take the Which File Extension Are You? quiz. It's quite fun (if you're absolutely bored). My extension is .jpg, which is pretty apt, no? This is the description I got -- "You are very colourful. Sometimes you forget things, or distort the truth. You like working with pictures more than words."

Which file extension are you?

A341

Made a new wallpaper after quite a while. If you like it, leave a comment. If you don't, don't bother leaving any. Karthik, I know you're going to ask for a wide version (it's your laptop after all), so I already made one here.

You'll see two new pictures on my photo gallery now, there'll be two more next week, and another two the week after that. So you might want to check my gallery often. You just love my images now don't you?

Ano Novo Feliz!

Uh, that's supposedly Happy New Year in Portuguese. If it's not, you can blame Babel Fish. Anyway, here's wishing all of you a great year ahead in 2006!

Hope you had fun during the holidays. I did. No wait, I didn't actually have any holidays since both Christmas and New Year fell on a Sunday. But I still had fun. We had the Fresher's Day for our juniors on 30th and during the week we conducted several events for them, so that was a really busy, hectic and fun week. I can never forget the Banana Eating round we had as the last round of The Ultimate Challenge (that was the event I was involved in). And I still can't believe the team (of three) that won ate a total of 25 bananas in one and a half minutes! I wish I had an appetite like that.

We have a lot of talented junies this year. Unfortunately, there aren't (m)any with a well rounded personality. The Mr. and Ms. Fresher contest was a HUGE disappointment... especially the final question round. Here's a question that one of the 'finalists' was asked, and his answer —

[ Q ]: You're going to a GRE exam and you witness an accident. What do you do?

[ A ]: Have you guys seen Aparichitudu? If I don't save the life of that person then Aparichitudu is going to kill me. In that film you see that he still exists, so I have a fear of him. So I just go and help that person. I can write GRE next year. But if I save his life, it'll be a great thing for him.

The answer we expected to get was "I'll call an ambulance and go write my GRE exam". And here, this guy wants to help that person because he fears some fictional character in a movie. Oh and there's more to what he said... it's just too senseless to put over here.

I haven't made any new wallpapers or anything. And I'm bored talking about movies I've watched recently. So I thought I'd point you to some fun posts I've read the past few days —

Verbal Dysentry on Rex's blog

One of Those Journeys... on Rupak's blog

That should keep you occupied until I come up with something to show... ok it won't keep you occupied that long, but it'll have to do.