Monday, September 11, 2006

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.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

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!

Sunday, July 16, 2006

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.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

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.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

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.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

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.