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!