Lens

Moving

2005-06-06T07:58:00.000+05:30

update: Now http://rkblogs.net
My new blog is available at http://rk.negimaki.com/blog. Kindly update your bookmarks, if any.

Taking a bit long

2005-04-24T11:40:00.000+05:30

Some time back I felt bit restricted in blogger. I started looking for some other blogging software. There were two important things(though might sound very insignificant) I was looking for
1) Categorisation
2) Calendar
I don't understand why blogger still does not support categorisation as I saw many drifted away only for this reason. Few others use some work arounds to get the feel of categorisation, but why the effort when there are lot of softwares make it virtually effortless.
I found wordpress meeting my requirements. It is a open-source software with lot of developers and users, there is a strong community around it. Thus I get lot of plugins, good support, wonderful themes to choose from !
Then it was the search for hosting site. Here again, my requirements were clear FREE and Ad-free ! I knew I was asking for a bit too much, but came across few of them which came bundled with wordpress itself ! And again there were few restrictions at few of them, but finally found the places where I get all I had wanted - Wordpress, No restrictions, No ads!! What more do I need !!

But then, with more freedom and with more choices come more work. Also got busy with many other things and still haven't been able to set it up completely. I had wished to continue posting only at my new blog, but few more will be posted here till I finish few small things there.

Lens

2005-04-06T21:30:00.000+05:30

Yes, you guessed it right !! I am talking about my new buy - Digital Camera ! Canon Powershot A520

You can see the glow of my face while I am writing this, with the camera just in front of me recording this!

One of the long-standing things in my wishlist can be striked off. This has to be my favourite possession...more than even my music system.

(Let me exclude computer). I mean I dont remember having liking for any particular toy but I liked camera. A camera was on my wishlist even before I had heard about computer ! Even later, I had to delay the buying of camera for various reasons. Now the wait is finally over.

I am at a loss of words to thank Chaitra who bought the camera from States.
I can see the complete professional review here! This is a wonderful site which lists the features, costs, provides reviews, users comments, comparisions and many other things. Must visit for a camera enthu.

Few shots:

Take One! Art

Bro all glees with US chocos!

A design!

Sky is the limit !

More professional pics coming soon :))

A heap of broken images

2005-04-06T20:45:00.000+05:30

How many times have you not spoken to yourself or argued with yourself. Arguing with oneself would bring out our own neglected views and thoughts that it might shock us.

Girish Karnad, master playwright, for the first time directed his own creation, specially designed for Rangashankara. Using the above theme, he narrates the story of a Kannada writer who becomes famous for her bestseller in English! Karnad is aptly supported by Arundathi Raja who puts up a brilliant show.

The play starts off with a TV speech of Manjula Nayak who gives credits and briefs about her success and the story by answering two frequently asked questions. "Why in English?" and "Why that story?". Soon after the briefing, she is drawn into discussion by her own image that appears on TV screen. Her digital image queries, ponders and manages to peel each layer of Manjula Nayak's life. Manjula, is compelled to look at her life, often breaking down, often complaining and often defending herself. At the end audience gets a radically opposite picture of what it gets in the first shot of speech.

The plays I had seen earlier like Final Rehearsal had only one character, Iti Nanna Amritha had only two characters. But here it was something different. The live character had to cope with the recorded show. And man, does not she act well!! For one complete hour, Arundathi competes with her own image, manages to deliver absolutely glitchless dialogues, maintains hitch pitch, coupled with impressive facial expressions.

The narration, direction and performance could have lost the track at so many places, which it didn't and this is the high point of the show. In my overall rating, this play might still rate lower than Iti Ninna Amritha amd probably Final Rehearsal, because of the rich content, pace, striking emotions and just-right comedy in the other two.
And it also depends on other factors that affect the mindset while watching.

But, nonetheless, it was a brilliant show!

Tasty, Smart

2005-04-01T22:30:00.000+05:30

I, sitting in the window seat, turn away from the busy crowd that is inside the bus- crowd ranging from young to old, rich to poor, happy to sad. Bus stops at a traffic junction and I peep out of window. The eununchs and beggars- disabled and poor, run towards the vehicles. I slowly shift my attention to a large hoarding that sports advertisement-cum-comics. A smile crosses my lips and I come out of thoughts. I read again and this time completely absorb and again smile!

I am refering to the Amul ads which slowly became a part of our talk, and which was followed keenly - more keenly awaited than R K Lakshman's You said it in TOI. And it was a small joy when the ad came close to what I had expected! The ads-cum-cartoon captured the news and current affairs and gave a nice comic touch to it. Sometimes silent, sometimes with a punching one-liner, it always maintained good standards of creativity!

Yummy, all the hits are available online :)

Why a post on amul hits ? Well, among the things I miss from Bombay, it is next only to Vada pav, beaches, trains and girls ;-)

Potato is injurious to health

2005-04-01T22:10:00.000+05:30

Over the lunch table
He: Eeks! You are eating potatoes again ?
I: Head bent and busy eating
He: Potatoes are bad.
I: Grin
He: They contain fat.You will put on more weight.
I: ..
He: Potatoes will kill you. They are so bad.
I: Hmm
He: Potatoes are injurious to health. Don't know why people eat potatoes.
I: ..
He: You should follow me. Have you ever seen me eat potatoes ?

I slowly raise my head, look into his eyes "And smoking?".
He blushes, grins, turns red in face, turns his face away.

We silently finish lunch.

Just let it go

2005-03-31T23:38:00.000+05:30

Some time back, I was recalling what Sabeer Bhatia had observed when his much hyped Aarzoo had to see the end of the road- "I do not want to put $1 from my pocket to keep it alive". Well, this was from a person who had made quite a deal from Microsoft for his Hotmail.

It might be just business in that case, but it applies to any context. The moment we stop enjoying, we better stop doing it. Those who understand this, like top blogger Kiruba , puts it to practice. And he quits blogging.

Rashmi had come up with a neat post about friendship. She gets the word right "effortless".

Back to the end-of-the road stuff. As long as something is effortless, it remains enjoyable. If we require to put an ounce of effort, then it is because, either it is no longer interesting or it has become(is) a necessity. Unless it is the latter, there is no point in bearing the burden. There have been instances of writers, painters discontinuing their years of work, or even destroying their earlier work. You call it burn-out, you call it end. Just let it go.

I have experienced this many times, that things seize to be what they were. Like the death of a pet. It is over. It was all nice. Was.

Kiruba might just have posted it for April 1st. Just may be. Or might not be. In either case, as they say, life goes on. Aaj yahan, kal kahin aur.

hendathiyobbalu

2005-03-29T21:30:00.000+05:30

hendathiyobbalu (a wife)
K.S.Narasimha Swamy

If a wife is present at home, that is crore rupees for me
If a wife is near me, I am also a soldier

If a wife is present at home,it is full moon holige light
If she wants to go to her maternal home, I am angry like anything
One who is with me, one who has not left me, cooks very well
Possessor of pony tail that resembles snake, where has she come from !

It should be a dream that there are ways to Kabbiganooru
If anyone gets to be wealthy there, it should be me
In the star light and filled palace, beautiful girl may roam
She would be smiling next to me on throne

Where are visitors from the palace of Chandiranooru, now ?
And where are the descendents from the doors of silver fort
In the company of wife, richness and poverty, are no fears
Man is not a victor, if he has not experienced the love of a wife.

Ps: Yuk, this exposed my ignorance and illeteracy in both the languages. I am sorry and I apologise to KS Narasimhaswamy.

Original Kannada Song:

hendathiObbalu

Above image and writing is courtesy Baraha and Guruprasad.

Ubuntu Tux

2005-03-27T14:30:00.000+05:30

Wow...finally I have installed a Linux Os on this system. Even though I had heard a lot about SimplyMepis by the pros, it could not detect the graphics for me. Installation, graphics, sound, modem have always been an issue for new users - I am a new user from 6 years :( . Add to that, this time SATA support was also an issue.
I have installed Ubuntu downloaded from here. The installation asked comparitively fewer questions, infact no-brainers. I was happy to see it decide what to install and proceed with the complete installation !
Next graphics...no probs here. Sound...I am installing mp3 player now, the default one does not play mp3 files. Got good help here.
Internet, it could not install my internal modem. But I didn't waste much time on it since ethernet connection was easier to set up (and am currently logged on using the same connection!). I somehow feel the browsing is slower that it is in Windows :(
But it took infinite amount of time (or did it hang--I mean Linux hangs??) to mount my sata drive :((. The fact that it could recognise the drive means it should be able to mount it as well, but somehow it stops responding. Hope I get some help on the net.

That is it for now, have to explore a lot. Good Sunday afternoon instead of usual sleep routine !!

Way to go

2005-03-23T22:55:00.001+05:30

Rahul Dravid. Anil Kumble. Vishwanathan Anand. Pankaj Advani. Narain Karthikeyan. Sania Mirza.

Indian Sports is shining....!!!

Dependency

2005-03-23T22:55:00.000+05:30

is bad ....

Skills of Interview

2005-03-21T23:00:00.000+05:30

These days I am picking up the skills of interview I guess. I am speaking in journo lingo. I feel I have certain qualities that would make me a good interviewer. I feel good interviewer should :

Be a keen listener
Be albe to relate things easily
Probe very effectively
Almost get the things what I am interested
Use the answers to previous questions to ask more questions
Grasp the flow easily
Keep an eye on the watch
Be able to direct the conversation
Be able to filter out the useful and meaningful jist.

As an example today I spoke to Deva for quite a long time. He is our seniour colleague(5 yrs), highly talented and experienced engineer. He spoke about the current trends in the industry, his concerns for immediate future, his ideas that are feasible, pieces that are missing, the actions that are necessary, possible risks and advantages in the market, anticipation of change etc. His way of looking at things is quite different from ours and I thus wanted to get a feel of his thoughts. In the flurry of his words, conclusions were often difficult. I had to cut him short sometimes.
Overall I understood lot of things and it was a good experience as an interviewer also.

7g

2005-03-21T22:30:00.000+05:30

This was the movie I saw a few days back...actually its title is longer than I have mentioned in the title, a reference to a certain colony which bears little or no significance to the story line. I saw this movie because couple of blogs mentioned about it, and also because Nbk got the CD. These thoughts are not on my movie blog because I am not evaluating the entire movie, just the story.
It goes like this: Hero is almost a fighter, and a typical middle class man with lower middle class values. He sees heroine. Continues to see her. Goes everywhere she goes. Stares at her. Continues to stare at her. Even after she is uncomfortable, continues to stare and follow her. Goes and falls on her in the bus. Chooses bus to give chain and errr the bus stops. Something happens and she slaps him with her shoes. Continues to follow her. Offers help. Continues to offer help even if she refuses. Continues to follow her. Continues to stare at her. She is engaged. But he continues his effort. Finally she gives in. But why? why ? why? Is it because he says "I do whatever I feel like. I don't give flowers, cards. But I am honest" (and I will continue to stalk you??) She even tries to reform her. And another few scenes the movie ends.
I never really got to know if the movie was progressing at all. I have seen repetitive themes in movies, but repetitive scenes ?? I am really clueless about the element that has made this movie popular (if it has become). It would be interesting to know if any girl dare say she likes the movie.
Moral to the youth : "Perseverance pays" is the only theme on which movie seems to be based. Or probably "Try try until you succeed". Only sad thing is the approach.

Delayed Childhood

2005-03-21T00:15:00.000+05:30

During school days/ college days after vacation my fellow friends were disappointed and bored at the thought of getting back to school or college. I used to pity the weeping kids being dragged to schools by their mothers on the first day of reopening. I used to wonder about the difference in reaction by me and others to the same event. I would have easily been bored with holidays and would be looking forward for the new class, new teachers, possibly new faces, new subjects and the joy of starting all over again, fresh.

Looks like I am having a delayed childhood.

Expanding ...

2005-03-20T22:36:00.000+05:30

Whoa !! Just a day after I thought this blog has limited readership, I am proved wrong ! Surprisingly, Swaroop, Pradeep came to know that I have written a post on people that feauters their names and left their comments !! I guess this should be the work of technocrati. The result ? My post was included in Swaroop's own blog mela !! What a timing of my post and what a content !

On the other hand, I should be more conscious now :( How I wish I had disagreed with this lady, who after posting many posts about the freedom of speech, has obligations to men's imagination itself :( I am way too disinterested in an argument, and thus am not linking to her blog.

In a related context, this makes an interesting read.

People

2005-03-17T22:39:00.000+05:30

Biographies and auto bio threw open the lives of people. That was limited accessibility. Not anymore. Thanks to blogging, we can follow some people live. Here are few people whose blogs I read and admire them:

First on the list is Kalyan. Managed server in college, gives speeches on Linux, wrote articles to magazines, got into Yahoo!, takes a sabbatical after 3 years, looses camera, buys a new one partly with the help of donations from friends, does a photography course, becomes full time photographer, continues his consultancy, had an offer for research at IISc, becomes a naturalist, celebrates his birthday in jungle, allows a miami cruise contract to pass, shoots wow pics in jungle, blogs from jungle, gets abducted into monkey kingdom, experiences once in a life time event etc. His posts are just too entertaining. It is a very good experience to follow the life of a man who is doing what he wants to. For any normal post of his, the comments are near half century.

Next, is Pradeep . Did work at few places, but always knows what he wants to do and where he is heading. Highly technical, has a web-site since almost a decade, a passionate open source follower, a voracious reader, delivers talks at conferences, writes articles to leading publications, can speak on anything at any length, movie-theater lover. The more I provoked him the more I got to learn, thats how I remember him! If I want to know something about an open source technology, all I should do is just bash about that in front of him ;-)

Swaroop. Wrote a book on python, roams around to give lectures on python, has plans for hobby project, has a blog that is bookmarked by anyone and everyone and has the simplest bio-data I have seen.

There are few others whose life has amused me. I will write at an appropriate time.

Blogshares

2005-03-17T22:34:00.000+05:30

Shares. Blogs. Two things all over my mind (currently).

And I stumble upon this site. 'Virtual' trading of blogs !! This is height !

Remember the good old board game of Money? Virtual bank that gave money to start business. Buying cities (metros-which didnt include Blore- were costly that time), building bunglows, renting bunglows, giving/taking loan ... The game could go on endlessly and taught small business tactics like optimising, taking chance, playing safe, playing tricks !

Freedom Of Speech

2005-03-17T22:22:00.001+05:30

The news of googler being fired for blogging about google is still fresh in the minds, here comes the extinction of Mediaah. Sad.

I am afraid . And that's the reason I put the blue ribbon in my site the moment I came across it. But I feel, my opinions are no where explicit!

More on mediaah:
But whole of blogosphere seems to be talking seriously about it and have waged a huge war against the biggie. View and Counter view (Hey, this man has same name as mine, is a piscean, uses wordpress -as I would do shortly). The posts that were removed at Mediaah already re-appears here . You can kill a man but not an idea.

Priority

2005-03-17T22:20:00.000+05:30

There are two things : Interesting and Important.
Watching cricket is interesting. Washing vehicle and stinky shoes is important.
Reading blogs is interesting. Updating technical skills is important.

Priority = Importance + Interest

Who are you ???

2005-03-17T22:16:00.000+05:30

One of the presentation tips is to "Define audience". I have absolutely no clue who is reading this blog, if at all someone is (except those regular good people). I understand that blogging is not 'presenting' and I continue writing things like these and others that appeal to me and at a frequency that suits me. But in case, you need to say something, do comment.

Few of my colleagues would require an explanation of the meaning of blog, whose limits I am only not sure of, and they look at me when I mention the word as if I am talking the internal politics of Czechoslovakia and I will end up making an easier face of "blogging-is-no-big-deal-and-i-dont-know-how-and-why-i-should-explain-to-u".
My fellow college mates require a trigger everytime to bring them here, and I am in no mood to publicize my blog (You are reading what I mean).

I blog because it is good and I shall try to follow these rules.

256 Lane superhighway !!

2005-03-17T22:10:00.000+05:30

Internet is information super highway.
I am on BSNL broadband !

Downloading Operating System(s) is fun. With Kazaa, online radio, always logged-on messenger, live news, blogs, transactions at the finger tips, technology and help at a mouse click etc, I realise
that I never knew internet.

Your friendly neighbourhood pal can take orders of download at nominal charges :)

Award!

2005-03-17T22:05:00.000+05:30

This blog is nominated for bloggies award ...Hurray !

The above is a result of day-dreaming and hallucination which was a result of ignorance, complacency, excessive browsing, insufficient sleep.

Check this anyways.

May be I can try Bharateeya Blog Mela. If you find any of my posts between 17th and 22nd worth sending as nomination, let me know.

Birthday :)

2005-03-15T18:30:00.000+05:30

My existence on earth completes its 24 years today !! Happy birthday to me :) Thanks for all those who wished me.

I have taken one week off and am sitting at home. Lot of people expressed their surprise over I doing nothing with the leave. I am just relaxing. Thats a lot of work, you see ;-)
Last time I had taken off was an year ago. That shows how healthy and efficient I am :) Also, I lookup dictionary for the meaning of on-bench ;-)

There are lot of things that I can do and time still needs to be managed well using my priority principle.

I have done a bit of wordpress, and maintaining a site parrallely. More on this later. Also, http://wakeup.to/sunshines brings you to this blog. Big deal.

Updates

2005-03-15T18:18:00.000+05:30

My previous post was almost a month back :-/ Not only because I was left with no time for other activities than work, but because I didn't have time to write about them ! So here is an update:

Pyhton Meet
Futures,Ayurvedha,Iscon theme park,Astrology,Journalism.
White noise
Office update
Vanila & Paint
Sms_Timepass

Home update

2005-03-15T18:05:00.000+05:30

I helped pollination of few vanila flowers. It is delicate work to peel the flower, lift and place pollen grain on stigma. We had just grown it for curiousity and fun. But is a strong source of economy for few farmers.

Vanila, the scent used in icecreams, looks like beans. Costly crop it is, for a kg costed 5k in its prime. The processed (dried etc) would cost 5-6 times more. This crop gave rise to lot of thefts and animosity between neighbours near Shimoga, Chickmagalur. Now the market is not in its prime; the reason being few bad quality output by some of the farmers have given a bad name to Indian crop in general.

Our house is being painted. I got confused over the options of colours to paint my room. I delayed my decision; Finally gave a nod to Pink.