Days Go By... Really Fast!

Didn't realise it's the 10th already! I have one last holiday tommorrow, then it's back to college. Been a while since I posted... I was in Chennai for a few days. Yes, I braved Chennai weather once again and came back with cheek loads of heat/sweat pimples (what are those things actually called?). Anyway, it was definitely worth it since I got to meet some cousins I hadn't seen in a really long time (and one I hadn't seen before). We took loads of pictures - since we all came with cameras, the entire collection filled up two and a half CDs (and that's excluding the videos)!

Oh and I finally got to show my Dark Machine video to a couple of people there — everybody liked it (at least they pretended to)... although the more I see it, the more crappy it looks.

As usual, I've seen a lot of movies lately — Saw 2 (totally awesome), Doom (dumb), Cellular (very good) and Salaam Namaste (good). Salaam Namaste, like all Hindi movies was long, but was entertaining throughout. And it didn't have dumb songs like the ones in some of the recent movies like Ek Ajnabee (translation: One Stranger). One song from that movie is incredibly dumb... it goes like this —

Mama told me
Don't be talking to a stranger
Don't be talking to a stranger
Stranger is danger

I've also been testing some of the Ninth Gate levels... who knows? You might actually see that project released in your lifetime. Now I hope you're not expecting another Wallpaper of the Update... you can't expect me to be THAT creative.

Dark Machine

Made this little animated clip over a span of a few days. Almost all of it was filmed after midnight in my room, and I used the stop motion animation technique - basically I shoot a single frame, move the objects (in this case, a bunch of really old toys I had) in the scene a little, and shoot again. When you play it back, the objects appear to be moving by themselves. Of course, I was too lazy to film at a high frame rate, so my video is a little jerky. Well, this itself involved taking about 500 shots (not all were used) and that was pain enough.



Video was finished on 25 November, runs a little under 2 minutes. Inspired by Tool's "Sober" video and some of Pablo's stuff. It's too big to upload anywhere, so you'll have to ask me if you want to see it. Not that you're so interested anyway.

Oops almost forgot... check out the Wallpaper of the Update - "Blur".

Feel Good Inc.

Oh yes! I'm done with semester exams and I'm jobless until 12 December. No point writing about how I did my exams... marks are never proportional to how you write them anyway. Wanted to write a post here yesterday itself, but the day went by so fast it was way past midnight before I knew it!

I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire yesterday. For all the hype it was an average movie at best. Didn't make much sense to me at all... maybe it's because I haven't read the books. After I came back home in the evening I saw Kaal on Sony. Now that's another dumb movie. But I definitely enjoyed it more than HP. Was funny watching all of them trying to act cool... actually just watching them trying to act itself was funny. And it isn't supposed to be funny movie. So that makes it more funny I guess. I saw Scary Movie 3 fully sometime back. Now that's a movie that's supposed to be funny and IS funny. Confused?

Haven't been doing much of anything else lately. Used the bluetooth dongle yesterday after a long time. Only time I used it before was when Karthik was here (earlier this month). And all I can remember is us fragging each other on Quake 3 Arena and Doom. Actually it was more of me fragging him, but you get the point.

Ah I'm just talking nonsense. Just go look at the Wallpaper of the Update - "Pill". There's no thumbnail because I'm too lazy. And no, there's no blood.

Movies, Doom and Sets

After a long time, I got to get up late on a weekend... couldn't do that the past few weeks because of the paper presentation, a party and some stupid extra classes at college (don't know why I attended them). It was almost lunch time, so I went out with a couple of friends for lunch at Ohri's. Man that place is cool! If I had my cam and the place was empty, I would have probably filled up a good chunk of my 512MB card.

I watched Wes Craven's Red Eye today — good movie. I'm too lazy to tell you what it's about, but I'll tell you that the story isn't anything original... it's a little predictable too. However, it was well made and well paced, so I was entertained. Speaking of movies, I also watched The Intrepreter recently. I expected it to be good, but it turned out to be an average movie.

Ismaele released the first episode of his Italian DooM project, The Lost Colony a week ago. The WAD is a compilation of 8 maps by the all-Italian team of Toranaga, Buzzbomber and Ismaele himself. I just played through them briefly today and it was a lot of fun. Buzzbomber's maps have a clean, well-planned design. Ismaele's maps are also very detailed (and hard too), however it does get slightly room-door-room-ish at times. I also don't think the death traps were such a good idea. Toranaga's maps have lots of ammo, but they could use a little more detail. Can't comment about the gameplay in these maps since I didn't play them properly. Anyway overall, it's worth downloading and playing, so go get it if you haven't already.

There's a new photo up on my gallery, and there'll be another one uploaded in a day or two where I experiment some more with lighting. This time I got some strong orangish-red lighting by tying a light pink cloth over a torch. Was very tricky getting that soft diffused light, so I'm happy with the result. Now I know (or at least I think) you'll want to see the set I used for the shot, so here it is (more convenient this way instead of sending out individual mails isn't it?) —

Papers, Glósóli and More

Again almost a month since the last update. Wasn't really busy or anything, just wasn't in the writing mood. And the problem is that now I am in the writing mood, but I can't think of anything to write about. Maybe I'll start with something I talked about in my last post, my paper presentation at Aurora College...

The paper did get selected and we did make that presentation last Friday. Why don't I seem excited? Because I later found out that those people selected almost ALL the entries... in other words, there was no 'selection' at all. Now this is a good and bad thing. Bad because 95% of those papers were useless and not worth presenting at all. Can you believe there was this one guy who thought "Mail Merge" (in MS Word) qualified as a suitable topic to write a paper under the main theme of "Merging of Technologies"?! The first question he was asked by the judges after he finished was — "Can you tell me what Merging of Technologies means?". And because there were so many papers, they had to conduct parallel sessions, each having a different panel of judges, so the judging process wasn't fair to begin with. Now it's also good because we got a chance to present our paper, which we may not have been able to do otherwise (mind you, that's a VERY BIG 'may not'). And of course, I got a certificate, which is good I guess.

In other news, Karthik was here for two days because the police wanted to take his fingerprints (he's a WANTED man you know). He also bought himself a laptop recently, so you might see updates on his blog/site more often now. Go to his blog to see a really tiny picture of the cute thing. Yes, it has a widescreen display. Congratulations K!

So what's the headline all about? I'm getting to that. Pablo told me about this, and it has already been publicised here, so I thought why not publicise it some more, since it's so awesome. I'm talking about a music video of one of Sigur Rós' songs - Glósóli. Haven't seen a video so perfectly synchronised with the song in a long time, and the instrumental itself is very good, so overall it's excellent. Go watch the video here.

Oh and before I wind up this update, there are a couple of new photos on my gallery that you might want to check out. They aren't great... and one of them is apparently too wierd to appreciate. So don't tell me I didn't warn you.

Beans

Wow! Been almost a month since the last update. I just haven't taken any new photos or made any new wallpapers, so there's nothing to show this time. Been busy with college stuff lately, I spent last week writing a paper for a paper presentation contest at Aurora Engineering College. Maybe if the paper gets selected, I'll talk about it more. The event is called Prabhaava 2005, see this page for more details.

OK now since you came here looking for some interesting stuff, and there isn't anything interesting here (don't know if there ever is), let me point you to some interesting stuff elsewhere on this vast network called the Internet —

-:: [ /not-so-newstuff ] ::-
Sequels to two of my favourite Doom PWADs were released some time ago - Afterglow's Jägermörder 02 : Terra Nova and Erik Alm's Scythe 2. Both are very well crafted and have excellent gameplay. Highly recommended.

-:: [ The Doom Remix Project: The Dark Side of Phobos ] ::-
An OverClocked Remix site project that contains remixes of music from the original Doom. Lots of great tracks in there, most notably "Darkness Dawning (text music)" by Larsec featuring Elsa Persson, "The Glass Moon (e1m8)" by DJ Carbunk1e featuring Ryan8Bit and "The Leaning Tower of Babel (e2m8)" by Evil Horde. Official project page here.

-:: [ Kotogoto ] ::-
Now Kotogoto really has kotog... errr... everything! Tobias uploaded the remaining pages (and there's a totally awesome intro flash clip now), so it's not just a journal any more. His new photosite is now online too - has a simple, professional-looking design. No high-res pics there any more though :(

Yep, so that about wraps up the go-here-go-there update. Maybe next time, I'll have some of my own stuff to show.

The Power-Cut Chronicles

Yesterday, there was no power here for the better part of the day. It was the same thing a few days ago. I couldn't use the computer, so I had to keep myself busy with other things. This is what came out of those 'other things' --

A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step


I think it's been a year since I did my last drawing. I knew my drawing skills (if I had any) would be a little rusty, so I wanted to draw something simple. This isn't the best drawing ever, but I think it came out pretty nicely. Now don't you dare compare it with any of Karthik's stuff.

The Pod


Was bored so I took out my camera to take some pictures... this is actually an out-of-focus shot of the emergency lamp in our house. The funky colours and all happened by accident, when I was post-processing. The name I know is dumb, but I couldn't think of anything better. But it does look a little like an alien space pod doesn't it?

I'm tired of saying there's a new photo in my photo gallery everytime I write a post here, so I won't this time. Just go to my gallery everytime you see an update here. There most likely WILL be a new photo there anyway.

Good Morning or Happy Birthday?

Yep, turned 18 yesterday. Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!

I changed my profile pic recently, got bored of my 'comic' self. Made a wallpaper of A Perfect Circle's latest album, eMOTIVe, some days ago. Their songs are awesome! If you ask me, they come a close second after LP. Not much of creativity in the wallpaper, but you probably won't be able to find a huge/sharp/clear album cover like this easily. And this time it's designed for people who like to have their icons on either side of the screen (are there any?).



Other than that, I uploaded two new pictures to my gallery. One is a portrait (!), and the other is a shot I took of my Philishave. I like both of them, but the number of views they got say otherwise. Or maybe people were just lazy this week.

Hey, it's 11:55pm. But who watches the watch... err... time anyway. Are you reading this K?

The Unimaginative

The first weekened after college re-opened on the 4th! Was waiting for this since... the beginning of the week :) With the kind of lecturers we have this year, five days felt more like five weeks. Anyway, now time for a movie... and speaking of movies, take a look at this —



So Bollywood has moved on to ripping-off stuff from video games now... guess they ran out of things they could (sort of) copy from Hollywood movies. Pathetic really. India is so full of unimaginative people (there are exceptions, of course). They can't even come up with a tune for a song on their own these days. The recent "Aaj Kal Tere Mere" remix has the beats of Will Smith's "Switch" in it. Then there was this song called "O Haseena" (from the movie Haseena) I saw some time ago which had the tune of Safri Duo's "Rise"! There was one more song I saw yesterday which was a ripoff... can't remember it now. Does their right brain even function at all?

There's a new photo in my photo gallery - "Four LEDs". Took that shot when there was a power cut at home. I first saw this kind of thing done in some of Pablo's (early) photos. There will probably be another new photo over there in a few days, so stay tuned.

Is There Life Out There?

Today I'm trying something new - I'm writing a general article! Why? Mostly because I'm jobless and have nothing better to do. I've never done this before, so don't expect too much. And don't ever complain if you fell asleep reading it.

If you're even a little curious, this question would have definitely crossed your mind at least once — "Is there life out there in space?" (if you're not, then let's assume it crossed your mind at least once). Now to me, the answer to that question is quite simple - there IS. Considering that the universe, housing billions of galaxies, is bigger than you can start to imagine, it's improbable that Earth is the ONLY planet that supports life. Besides, Earth-like conditions aren't even a necessity for life to exist — on the Earth itself, some extremophiles have adapted to living in extreme environments where other life wouldn't stand a chance. They're boldly going where humans dare not and cannot.

So if there is life out there, why haven't we come into contact with them? Simply because the universe is so immensely vast, and we have only explored an infinitesimally small portion of it. Our escaping radio and TV signals (called the radio bubble) get weaker and weaker as they move away from the Earth and eventually drown in the ambient radio noise of the universe. Just for the sake of it, let us assume that technologically proficient aliens are intercepting our signals and are managing to decode them. After watching 50 years of our television (if they have the patience) — all the K-serials, mindless comedy shows, news about the wars we started etc., they'd probably conclude that human beings are a dysfunctional bunch of idiots.

Then what about those signals (of our own choosing) we sent in space crafts like Voyager? Don't worry, at the rate they're travelling (50,000 miles per hour I think), they won't reach the nearby stars for another 100,000 years. Our propulsion systems are not suitable at all for space travel... sure a rocket is fast, but it exhausts its entire fuel in a very short time. Newer propulsion systems like the ion drive and solar sail are very efficient for long distance travel, but they're horribly slow.

So will we ever make contact with extra-terrestials? Of course we will. Just not yet. With the research work being conducted by organisations like SETI, it's only a matter of time till we do make contact. Their Seti@home (thanks for the link Ganeshan) is a program that YOU can run on your computer to help in the search for extraterrestial intelligence. Who knows? You might find an alien and become really famous! Or you won't find anything and you'll get so mad you'll uninstall it.

In any case, this article comes to an end here. I know I haven't really talked about anything you don't already know, but then again, I told you in the beginning not to expect too much didn't I?


Edit: I was finding links for some of the stuff I just talked about, and I came across this page — http://www.duntemann.com/fermiqsn.htm. Good question ;)

Seven Days

That's how long I was in Chennai. Got back yesterday morning. After experiencing Chennai weather, you'd probably never complain about Hyderabad weather again. Except that, the whole trip was a lot of fun! It was mostly meeting relatives and all, but we also met Karthik and saw Mahabalipuram, which isn't as scenic as I expected (or maybe I expected too much).

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure —

[ 1 ] :: [ 2 ] :: [ 3 ] — Mahabalipuram pictures

[ 4 ] — Some school kids who became my 'fans' on the last day of the trip. They later gave me a grand send-off, from the windows :)

In case you've visited my photo gallery recently, you'll notice there are a couple of new photos there... two of them are sunset shots I took from my terrace (and you thought you don't have scenic scenes in Hyderabad), and the other two are shots of a small glass clock I have at home.

And that's not all. Here's a wallpaper I made just before I left for Chennai. This time it's totally computer generated... no modified-photo stuff. Haven't done that in a while huh?

The Morning After

Exams are finally over! And I have a really really long 'summer vacation' of two weeks. How nice. It'll be over before I know it... and then it's back to drab college stuff again. Anyway, I guess two weeks is better than say, one week.

So what have I been up to all this while? Let's see... I did add a couple of photos to my photo gallery at bytephoto.com —

Inside A Computer — If you've seen my wallpaper, then there's nothing new here. Just cropped off some of the distracting wires and stuff and rotated it so it looks a little more 'professional'.

Indian Gods — This is one of my very early photos, taken last year. This was probably the first time I used a 'set' (it was taken against a black background) to take a photo. I think I even used a tripod, so the final image is nice and crisp. You should definitely see the high-res version of this one.

Metallic Flowers — There was this wall-hanging with flowers on it, made out of gun metal I think. I really liked the texture and the subtle colours it had, so I took a picture of it :) The photo was taken in very low light, so a tripod was a must (exposure time was three seconds).

Looking Down — No, this is not a photo version of the caterpillar wallpaper. It just has the same name. And a simlar style - dark with high contrast (maybe I overdid it?).

Apart from the photos, I did make a wallpaper last month that I never posted. It's called 'Burn' and you can have a look at it here. I've been getting mixed reactions about this, so you may or may not like it.

How come there's no thumbnail? I'm lazy. That's why.

Serendipity

Yep, another wallpaper. Found this dead frog lying in front of my house the other day... thought I'd take some snaps of the little thing. Of course, I had to bear the stink and ward off all those ants while taking the pics, but it was worth it.

I don't really expect you to set this as your wallpaper (unless you REALLY like dead things), but I bet/hope it's going to hold your interest long enough to say "Whoa!" or "Yuck!" or something like that.

15 May was Karthik's birthday so... Happy Birthday Karthik! We went to watch everybody's favourite Indian Idol contestants, Rahul Vaidya and Prajakta Shukre, perform live at Taramati Baradari (Gandipet) that day, and it was awesome!

I'm extremely busy right now (final exams start in 2 weeks and go on till 15 June), so I'll end this post here. If you have too much time on your hands (like these guys) and want to keep yourself busy, maybe you ought to stare at some autostereograms or better yet, try interpreting those e-Serve ads.

Exploding Tamarind

Didn't go to college today, and I'm finished with the lab internal exams, so I have time to make this post.

The EDC (Electronic Devices and Circuits) lab internal was on Friday — had to plot the frequency response of a Common Collector Amplifier. That was simple. I was more happy when I solved the problem given at the beginning of the test (didn't know I was even capable of solving a problem in EDC until that day). The C lab internal we had yesterday went off well too, I got a Stacks program and the Lagrange's Interpolation program (Numerical Methods). Didn't answer the viva questions too well though... the guy asked me some tricky questions. Here's one of them —

main()
{
        int a=2;
        printf("%d number is"+1,a);
}

I was supposed to tell him the output and explain why, which I did after a while, although it wasn't 100% correct. Actually my viva 'session' was extra long since I finished my programs early :)

Anyway, after the test, we had some extra classes during which it started to rain heavily... wish I had my cam to capture the sky, which was really dramatic with the low-lying rain clouds and all. Reached home pretty late, ate, read an article on the exoplanet which was photographed recently, and then went to sleep.

So what's with the headline you ask? That's just another wallpaper I made a few days ago. Here's a before-after shot (reminds you of those weight-reduction programmes doesn't it?), so you know how much manipulation went into it —



To see the wallpaper click here, or on the image above. Comments welcome, as always.

Old And Very Cool

Uh, no, I am not talking about the new Pope and his Regnal name.

Excuse the dumb joke, I didn't know how else to start this post. I'm actually talking about a new wallpaper I made yesterday — Water Meter. I'm pretty proud of this one, especially since I made it entirely in Irfan View (yes, that very small image-viewing program you can download for free). The text and borders were inserted with Paint Shop Pro. Errr... guess it wasn't made ENTIRELY in Irfan View after all, but you get the point.

Enough blabbering, here's the wallpaper —



Don't know if this is going to be as popular as The Valve or Inside A Computer, guess I'll just have to wait for your comments... (hint hint ;))

Where's The Truck?

Finished writing the fifth set of tests on 15th, so I've just been relaxing since then... watched Kaante the other day (I'm watching so many movies ever since Karthik got here... wonder why...) — it's basically a bad, over-styled rip-off of two very good movies, The Usual Suspects and Reservoir Dogs. But I had fun watching it, and there were a couple of scenes that were filmed really well.

Took some new pictures the last couple of days, you can have a look at them on my photo gallery at bytephoto.com —

Water Meter (2 pics) — We had to remove our water meter the other day, because roots (of trees obviously) were growing into the water pipes and blocking the supply. Now since I love old, dirty looking stuff, this was a perfect subject to shoot :) Overexposed the shots to highlight the subject better.

Vanishing Point (2 pics) — These are pictures of a grill door. I like the way they came out, especially the colours. The name by the way, is a term in perspective drawing (saw Karthik reading about that some time ago), where everything in your view converges to a single point. Seemed like a fitting title for these shots :)

Oh, I forgot to mention that I now have a broadband internet connection at home! I'm getting transfer speeds of about 20KB/sec, which is a LOT faster than the few hundered bytes/sec I used to get earlier, on my dial-up connection. Yay!

A Nasty Little Thing Production

Nothing much to say here. All I did was touch up the scan and add some colours and text. Simply awesome. I think it's his best drawing till date... and I'm not just saying that because I'm in it :)

Thanks a lot K!

Between Tests

Got a break between internals (that's a just a cool-sounding name for a test, in case you didn't know), so thought I'd chip in a post. You see our textbooks are really nice to read, if you ever get around to reading them. I'll give you an example... this is how the chapter Magnetism (wrote a test on that today) starts — "The magnetic effects in magnetic materials are due to atomic magnetic dipoles in the materials. These dipoles result from the effective current current loops of electrons in atomic orbits, from effects of electron spin and from the magnetic moments of atomic nuclei...". With so-called 'introductions' like these, you can see why I like my textbooks so much. Everything is so clear, so easy to understand... isn't it?

Guess I'll just have to put up with all this for another three years...

Haven't done any interesting stuff lately... although I have been working on a little something for some time now. Well it's too early to talk about it, so I won't. And since I don't have a test tomorrow, I might watch The Grudge today. Seems like a good movie. And since I have nothing more to say for now, I'll leave you with this link.


Edit: Saw The Grudge. Practically no story, has lots of effective scares though :)

Identity, New Wallpapers

I wanted to start off this post talking about a movie I watched last night on HBO — Identity. But then I noticed that Karthik had already posted about it on his blog and he already said everything I wanted to say about the movie (including the bit about the movie poster). No point repeating all that here, just go watch the movie, it's one of the best I've seen this year!

I made a couple of wallpapers recently... rather simple-looking, but good nonetheless —



[ Looking Down ] - Took this picture a long time ago (I found this caterpillar at the engineering counselling centre). Just adjusted the contrast and saturation levels to give a 'professional' touch to an otherwise crappy photo. If for some reason you like the caterpillar a lot, you can see more pictures of it in my photo gallery.

[ Molten ] - This was made from another of my very early photos. It's actually a picture of the bottom of a door, but it doesn't look quite like it, does it?

[ The Roof ] - Two overexposed photos superimposed seamlessly. I was getting bored sitting in my hotel room in Manipal last week, so I took out my camera and started taking some pictures. I looked out the window and saw the stained roof and thought it had potential for a wallpaper. This is the result.

Note that these wallpapers are high contrast images, so they'll probably look better on new monitors (which are brighter).

First Post

Haven't been able to write updates on my site for almost a year now, so thought I'd create an account here. Luckily the internet connection was fast at this time, so I was able to set up this thing pretty quick (besides, it didn't ask me too many questions during registration ;)).

Well it's past midnight now, so I'll post an actual 'post' later :)