Photogenix

Photography is a hobby that requires a tremendous amount of interest and patience. I have a ton of friends who are into this and purchase all the required stuff for it like lenses, tripods, filters etc. I myself have never been 'into' this hobby much. I would much rather be in front of the camera rather than behind it. Its not that I do not enjoy taking pictures. But as long as they are of some occasion rather than just abstract shots then its fine.

People take pictures of random trees, flowers, scenery etc. etc. and I will end up just looking at something like this for a moment or two and then forgetting all about it. Its not that it don't like the picture its just that the picture is absolutely pointless. Maybe a really good picture will end up being on someone's desktop wallpaper someday.(I have a picture of the Golden Gate bridge from SFO on my desktop at work right now). But other that its 'just a picture'. There is nothing in that pic which will have me looking at it 10 years from now and getting all nostalgic about it. Sure if I was the one who actually took the picture then definitely it would be a hell of a story to tell.

Probably my situation is same the reverse as well where I am more interested in car mods like intakes,exhaust systems that won't appeal to all my photographer buddies.

P.S. I did own a canon basic digicam sometime back but now that I have sent it away to India I make do with my cellphone cam.

Driver's Choice

While driving depending on the mood I usually put on some music. Most of the music I have burned on CD's is bollywood and there are a couple of cd's which are floyd,led zepp, ACDC and the like. But I preferably try to listen to bollywood dhinchak tracks. This is because you never ever hear bollywood stuff anywhere else. I mean I can always listen to Death Magnetic (Metallica's latest outing) on the radio but never ever will I get to hear 'Sundara sundara' from Rakshak on the radio(not even in Dallas,TX with its desi radio stations).

But one genre I avoid while driving is ghazals. I do listen to some occasionally during an extended booze session but never while driving. I believe there should be a specific genre known as 'roadtrip' with songs like 'Turn the page-Metallica','Barracuda-Heart','Chick Habit-April March' and of course 'Roadhouse Blues-The Doors'. (Here's some more)

Driving with songs like these on brings something else to the entire driving experience altogether. Also songs which one may enjoy in a party or at a rock concert do not necessarily translate back into being songs one can enjoy while driving.(I can only listen to Indian Ocean/Lucky Ali these many times but not everytime man...)

An open,clear road, the wheel, good music (and of course cheap gas) and that is a combination that can also be called your 'Stairway to Heaven' (Pls do not take the 'Heaven' term literally over here. Drive Safe.)

Apna Hollywood

A lot of hollywood movies are dubbed into Hindi for the mass audience in India where an American accent is the stumbling block. Subtitles are too distracting and take away from the 'action' ;) on screen.

I have managed to come across several recently including:

1.Indiana Jones aur Chamkili Kapaal ki Saltanat (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)
2. Mahashaktimaan (The Matrix)
3. Mita Doonga Naam-o-Nishaan (Eraser)
4. LOTR - Anguthi ke Hifaazatgaar (LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring)
5. Mayaawi Talwar (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)

I could go on and on about these titles. Now we are speechless when titles like these come up because we, desi junta are more used to the sugary sweet titles like K3G, KKHH, DDLG, Mohabattein. This is where Bollywood distributors have got it all wrong. You don't see movies like 50 first dates, Knocked Up, Amelie getting translated into Hindi, thats because we can dish out equivalent romantic comedy types but when it comes to action, now that's a different story. Even the most well executed stunts end up looking hilarious (of course there are exceptions) and we end up splitting our sides.

I wish there comes a day when Hollywood will translate our fare into English and see for themselves how mutilated this whole dub-redub process becomes and that day we get to hear the immortal dialog
"Children of Pigs. They were two and you three !!, even then you returned !!. What did you think, the ringleader would be joyous and shower praises on you !!! " (Any guesses about this masterpiece in its original form)

Discovery Channel updates

I keep getting these updates in my gmail inbox which keep me updated with the 'latest news' around the world. Quite a few of which happen to do with discovery channel.Now I fail to understand who even keeps abreast of this stuff. I have a ton of other crap in my head already without the need for more nonsense to cram into it.

Who does even care about news like "Ancient chariot found in Bulgaria" or "New remains of CroMagnon discovered". I fail to understand even the least amount of importance 'news' like this has to my life. I worry enough about the economy and gas prices and my next set of tickets to India to even get into this crap.

Which brings me to the point that Indiana Jones may be the most dashing archeologist but except for treasure hunting I really doubt am ever going to be interested in digging around old bones and sculptures.How would the Indy movies ever work if he was just shown to be digging around scavenging fossils and finally ending up as an old foggy museum curator.

Yes, yes I know that keeping in touch with the past allows us(mankind) to know ourselves better. Well then keep it out of the news unless something really relevant happens(Maybe they discover an AIDS cure in trillion year old insect DNA preserved in amber). Until something really ground breaking comes along am still going to be bothered about the economy, gas prices and other mundane activites of the day.

I can picture a scene from FRIENDS in context of this where Ross(PhD in Paleontology) goes into the nursing ward with Rachel to see Dr.Green(Rachel's Dad) and introduces himself as Dr.Gellar and Rachel reminds him that they are in a hospital and the prefix 'Dr.' really means something over here.

P.S. Its great to be back :)

Linux'd (again)

Very few people other than active developers are into linux and use it as their main OS. Even those who do use it occasionally do have the dual boot feature with Windows just so that some features are easier to use in Windows than Linux.

This is aversion to linux is also unfortunately something for which the development dept is to blame as well (atleast partially). One of the biggest things being video rendering related s/w. I did a lot of that during Diwali Night at Rolla, making those presentations for the show but haven't seen anything like Adobe Premiere,After Effects on linux (yet). Not to mention the loss of gaming since then too. Very few games are out there which are fully supported by Linux and those that do run do so on WINE(Win Emulator :P).

Dhake and myself were having a discussion yesterday on s-video capture through linux since that was one of the few things for which he still had a Win dual boot on his system. Finally after some poking around I suppose he got through to it and hopefully will now ditch Win totally :). Later when Alok (handy Linux quick ref guy) and myself were chatting about situations like these and he came up with a situation where one day if a couple of linux guys started a company then they would no doubt use Linux for everything. However the kicker is that today most companies (atleast all the application/service provider ones) do NOT use Linux.

This is mainly due to the fact that Linux is restricted to the techy guys rather than to the mainstream eg. Business Analysts, Sales, Marketing, QA, Conversion, Customer Service Rep, App Analyst, so on and so forth. Also until someone can effectively demonstrate that business can be as usual in Linux as in Windows the scenario will still never change. (and Microsoft will continue to reap their millions).

It may take time and patience to wade a bit through various Linux forums to come up with quick answers to even the most basic things but it definitely is worthwhile in the end. Unfortunately both time and patience is something that very very few people have today and the same translates to the corporate environment as well.

Coming Soon

Its been quite a while now since my blog was updated. There is a ton of stuff that has happened between now and then. I hopefully should be able to put down atleast some of the stuff over here. Will be getting back to posting soon.

The Long Weekend

Since the US has so few public holidays (compared to India) most people try to make the most of the few that are around. Public holidays in the US are usually structured in such a manner as to make every holiday count. The Long weekend is a concept that is the most popular. It happens such that the Federal Government schedules a holiday on a Friday or a Monday. Thus with the Saturday, Sunday coming in between it makes for a solid 3 day vacation. Flight prices soar, hotels are booked to capacity and popular tourist destinations are packed.

Planning for these weekends takes quite a bit of patience and enthu as well. The list of places to go and people to visit was always endless. Ultimately it used to come down to cheaper flight tickets.(invariably) I have scoured around on travel sites for just that one exclusive flight deal which could make/break the trip. This process is somewhat akin to the hunting techniques of the Cromagnon dudes of old. You basically look up the deal on several dozen travel sites and initially gauge an estimate of how much it would cost you and then once you have set your upper limit on this then try hunting for something 'better' over the next couple of days. Also planning meant ensuring that you dug up your old contact list and sometimes even renewed friendships with old lost buddies.

There a ton of long weekends coming by end of the year. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's are all available and I have no doubt that people will travel too (thanks to lower gas prices) but I for one have absolutely no plans for these holidays (which is weird because usually I was among the first people to have my travel plans all sorted out.) I am planning for a trip to India soon in the next year and thus thought it best to avoid any outings this year and go for the biggie next year. :)

(It feels great to get back to blogging after a break).