-Uma Damle

Lantern of darkness-II

My vessel is empty

You can’t get out

Five grains of sugar

Let there be light

Window of light

Window of light-II

Five grains of sugar-II

Five grains of Sugar-III

Five grains of sugar-IV

Listening to Pink Floyd’s Shine on you Crazy Diamond. I am not what you’d call a Classic Rock nut. Discovered this track in my first sem. It helped me get through most of my submission. It used to pierce through the haze of black-coffee and sleep-deprivation induced headaches and touch the soul. I must ask you to listen to it 4:30 in the am. Floyd’s guitar sounds nothing short of God at that hour.

For the first time in years I don’t have to drag my reluctant ášš to class ‘cos for the first time in years I am thoroughly enjoying my classes. I have started with Fashion Communication and am studying amongst other things Photography, Visual Merchandising, History and Philosophy of Design, Marketing, Design Methodology… all of which are truly fascinating subjects that I’ve wanted study since forever.

Speaking of photography that was about the only productive thing I did in the vacations. Take a look at some of my photographs here…

Chandni Chowk I

Chandni Chowk II

Waiting

Still


Real Light

Shutter

Dilli-6

Use Protection

Silence

Thoughtless

The Shining

Is the coast clear?

Looking at Infinity

The Balloon Seller

Ogg the Egg

Do comment on any picture that catches your fancy.

Ever since I got my hands on a broadband Internet connection, which happened to be when I was in class IX, I have been looking up to owning something which was on display on this site. Infact, anything. There was something about those creations, that to my mind, they were as perfect as things could get. They had such a hypnotic aura surrounding themselves, that just their thoughts negated any close or better alternative/competitor from the vicinity of my mind. While browsing the site, a part of my head refuses to accept that this could get any better, in the nice way that is. All of it was just perfect.
Each time there was a new product, or an update to an old one, I used to be astonished to why I couldn’t imagine that it could get this much better. It challenged me for a very long time to imagine significantly revolutionary improvements to anything Apple, and that holds true even today. It was and still is very irrational to be frank. People have shown me, and have rationally tried convincing me to look beyond it for other alternatives. A much cheaper Alienware for instance for a MacBook Pro… I became a hypocrite subsequently to accept and even argue with Apple fanboys that it is always better to buy alternatives. But then, I knew that if given a choice, I would get myself an Apple no matter what.
But then eventually I realized that I need not keep my fetish towards Apple confidential anymore. I started admitting to people that Apple’s website serves the same purpose to me as Art of Living Programs do to some and pørn does to others… Even my endocrine system started giving weird reactions to this stimuli called Apple. Be it a silent mention, or a few pictures… The effect of a video or a keynote lasted even longer. I used to be lost in thoughts whenever I saw someone using an Apple. Mind you though, this was the story till the later half of 2007. But it took me a lot more maturity which I acquired much later to realize what kind of change fantasizing this way of Apple brought in me. I can probably call it the equivalent of taking a course in Technology Appreciation and Criticism (along the same lines as Music or Movie Appreciation). Appreciating elegance in interface, build quality aesthetics, and their subsequent (long-term) benefits amongst other abstract concepts.
Feelings like these grew stronger around the time I became serious enough to think about my career when I happened to read the Market Profile pages on Apple’s website. Wherever I think of myself on a job of my dreams, some or the other product from Apple made its way to fit just perfectly giving me insane satisfaction of my own job/work in dreamland. There were several nights which were spent sleeplessly pondering of working in a big Fortune 100 company where I used to dream more of the Apple product I would be using there than the actual job profile itself.
All this might seem just too kiddish, but it isn’t really as much as you think. Apple became more than just the PC-equivalent of a BMW, it turned into a symbol of technological elegance, or rather excellence. I badly needed to own one now and preach the whole world on what makes it rule so much with an even more powerful urge to turn the whole world into a technological critic. My interest towards learning and education jumped up with this new drive in me, just because I know that I would get to learn loads of new things to apply which I would use Apple computers like the real scientists. Now that I didn’t feel as odd as before to be vocal about my ancient obsession with Apple, I felt the time has arrived to have a part of Apple around me. And yes, I was being a cautious hypocrite when I questioned the likes of a few people when they got themselves an Apple while paying a hefty premium at the price of which they could probably get better hardware.

PS – This was written in a state of severe craving for an Apple product post a remarkably dreadful pre-bored examination. Due to acute lethargy, I decided to keep it un-edited or un-proof-read. Gives a more uncut, realistic feel to it I guess. Good luck for the rest of the entry if you endured it till here…

Five Months Later… A week before DCE-CEE…

I got myself an iPod Touch and soon after using it, Dad got himself an iPhone 3G. Therefore, the whole purpose of the post concluded.

I just couldn’t just start a post with this. To add to this aesthetic complex of mine, I am chronically infected with writer’s block from the other person who calls this blog home. So well, I dug up some of my half written posts, around thirty of them from an unorganized text file, and put the most relevant one as a preamble. And then warning you, the rest of this entry could be even more unpleasantly unreadable than what you encountered before. Forgive me until I get over writer’s block, I’ve barely managed come out of the shocker Indian entrance exams detonated on almost every aspect of my life… I’ve done my job of warning you, every line of this post might eventually start looking like a rant.
Since both those devices were purchased outside India, they weren’t quite as pinching to the pockets as they would have been here. For some reason, Apple thinks people here are too rich to buy Apple products. Haven’t they seen Slumdog Millionaire themselves? [I choose to change the topic before this too grows into a rant]
Note: From here onwards, this blog would refer iPod Touch/iPhones as iPhods as they are equivalent devices with the key difference being in the ability to make calls using a GSM network.
And well, I expected nothing less than this from Apple. It feels just so great in the hands, and its a pleasure to use it. Everything is just so intuitive, your guesses on how to go about the interface are more or less usually right, with the smallest learning curve over any device I’ve used before… Apple has made a daunting substitute to the stereotyped smart-phones from RIM and HTC. Before I got to own it, I was just awestruck with a YouTube video of Google Earth running on it. Overall, a neat piece of technology with its own share of rant-able aspects as well, which I, for now think is forgivable or overlook-able.

Recent Update:

Read this for a very detailed story on how I got Dad’s iPhone 3G turned from a fat iPod Touch with a camera to the coolest smart-phone an MTNL Dolphin SIM has ever entered in the Vietnamese way… More on that soon…

I upgraded to iPhod OS 3.0 on my iPod. Neat changes. Some might not even notice it, but every refinement Apple makes to its already beautiful interface makes me smile with contentment. A simple change of making a sliding gallery of screenshots at the end of app descriptions in the App Store app is an excellent UI enhancement. The ability to recognize long sequences of numbers in the Notes App as potential contacts makes a utilitarian addition. I bet Spotlight Search is something everyone finds useful. I use GNOME-Do a lot on my PC, alongside Google Desktop Search, with an excellent calling hotkey. I am more of a keyboard guy who avoids going near his mouse. Maybe I have evolved to become one due to the weird table I keep my PC on. And a salute to Apple for making Spotlight search just a flick away, literally. And repeating what Abhishek once told me after he made a similar upgrade, I can finally use my iPhod as a netbook replacement in my college thanks to phod-wide copy-paste which is a pleasure to do. The implementation is definitely better-thought than (m)any others I’ve seen.
Also, being in company of Mac-sexuals (do notify me if there is pop-culture term for such people!), and me having turned into one already, I have in a very small insignificant way become an interface, quality and polishing/refinement observer at least, if not a connoisseur. Perhaps every Apple fan-boy is one. The old timers are probably perfectionists. A R Rahman for instance. Those who buy an Apple brainchild while not looking at it as a status symbol are potential visionaries, or better said by this beautiful piece of literature, Hyper-Critical. (BTW, special thanks to Prateek for linking to this and phrasing what I want to say with that tiny post. And thanks to Abhishek too for pointing out this particular Webmark… I had almost forgot that I am supposed to read my Feeds/Live Bookmarks while in that ordeal…) Look around you, see someone using a Macintosh? Chances are pretty high that he could make an interesting company… Now that’s a tip I’d use at airport lounges from today…

For those who are curious, I am most probably headed to do Mechanical Engg. at Vellore Institute of Technology University. For those even more curious, I am NOT happy about that.

Life’s good.Life’s preety busy rushing by me while I only have time enough to raise my head from my various assignments to see a blur of a life passing by in a huff.As the end of the semester approaches it seems as if the proffs are compensating for the two months of relief that we’d have after this by piling on more and more and some more work we’ll they still have time left.

But it’s better than the first sem.Back then I used to use (Oh that sounds funny..hic I must be drunk) all my time in wondering why the hëll I have to do a certain assignment and what’ll I get out of it and hence was left with little time to actually do those assignments.We do do (That sounds funny too (Starting to sound like Phoebe now)) some preety challenging stuff with way more leg room for thought and innovation now . But I am afraid I can’t go into it now…I think I saw the Beast of Writer’s Block stir in it’s sleep.

Can’t wait to start working on ITP (I am not gonna tell you the full form.It feels nice to throw around words no one understands.Ha). We have to basically use the skills that we have acquired in this year to make a product or an installation( Another word you won’t quite get.) For some it’s the skill to outsource everything and get away with it. The process of actually doing this is the best part.We have to start by choosing a theme (That, unlike school is not “Summer holidays” or “My friends”), researching, doing brain storming, creating color boards (Another word.Ha ha) , mood boards (Another…Ok have to stop doing this) then moving onto form generation , moving onto customer profiles and then finally fixing on a product/installation, making a prototype, then figuring out the structure, the material and going sourcing for the material.Then comes all the welding of wires and cutting of wood and bending of metal strips.Need not add that this part is not as fun.

Gotta end the post as abruptly as it begun.I definetly hear the Beast growling now.
Bluegen…AAAAAAAAA…..<a long painful wail of terror><fade to><sounds of chewing ><end scene>

Details

The 5th Edition of ‘Tata Crucible Campus Quiz 2009′ is scheduled to be held in Delhi on 15th March 2009 at Taj Palace, Delhi.

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Registration starts at 2.00PM.

The regional winning team will get Rs.75000/- and the runner-up Rs.35000/- along with lot of goodies from the house of TATA’s and gets an opportunity to compete with 15 other national regional winners and winners from UK and Singapore universities for the Championship with all expenses paid trip to mumbai and a cash prize of Rs. 4 Lakhs along with other prizes.

Also lot of interesting audience prizes for participants.

For registrations and other details please logon to www.tatacrucible.com or contact Mr.Harish@9910447784.

Please spread the word around in your group.

PS – I just finished my English bored exam today. I hope it goes to a sane examiner… Wish me luck. For the first time in my life, I actually completed an English paper. I had left about 4 marks in class X too. learning a few lessons from that traumatic experience, I gave my language a little ease this time. Hope it pays off…

I will try my best to make it to the event too…

Class XII and its after-effects

Both me and my blog got promoted to Class XII. Uma on the other hand got out of it all. Ask her today and she would say those days were from another lifetime altogether! Firstly I would love to clear a myth first. I DON’T study for 42 hrs in a day! It is just that I am prohibited from using the computer regularly and I am too lethargic (read: afraid!) to revolt and ask for my rights… But then I really plan to start everything off with a bang once this is done!
Kept swinging between the top-two batches of FIITJEE. Ego and pride related problems kept coming back again in resonance to where I lie…
Saw so many of my seniors in a position where I would never like to be in taking some of the hardest decisions in life. The fear in me just climbing up now. This is a stage where I better stop questioning and pondering the fairness of all systems here in India. I know I am a part of it and the wisest thing to do is, do well in it when you can.
I started paying more attention in class since then and it started paying me off well, I hope!

Uma Leaving Delhi

She is one person who circumvented all of this šhìt just by deciding in time that this is really not what she wants from life. And well, she is having quite a heck of a one in Bengaluru today. As a reminder, she is doing Communication Design (also known as Fashion Communication) over there at NIFT’s B’lore campus. It is purely her lethargy to not post about her happenings there… I have given up coaxing her to write posts. I tried everything infact… From motivating her by showing some really awesome chick-lit blogs, frequently adding some really good female blogs to the blog-roll, and even taking her to the Pan-Delhi Geek Meet, where a person from IBNMS recognized her from her blog.
I am seriously looking for some new methods now. Perhaps I will climb up the top of the Statesman House someday and do the Sholay thing there. Perhaps that should help!

A few Competitions
The very first event of the year was the Tata Crucible Campus Edition in New Delhi. GQ attended that with me in the middle of his bored exams. Attended just a handful of events this year. First up was the Columban Open Quiz, by Quizcraft. Heard that a good number of the questions in the semi’s were from Mahaquizzer archives. (I knew I should have gone through GQ’s archives!) Overall, the quality and organization wasn’t as impressive as it was earlier. Came out of the semi’s of the COQ for the second time in my life.
Next up was a/an (insert-a-suitable-derogatory-term-here) event in DPS Mathura Road called as The Warp. I need to brush up vocabulary a bit to come back with the right adjectives to describe it. No comments till then. I discovered that staying away from Quizzing and reading Digg/Slashdot/Ars Technica had taken a toll over my quizzing capacities. My recollection abilities had gone to the loo on the day of Warp. The feeling of – “The answer is right there in a distant corner of my brain. Its just ain’t freaking coming out!!” is the most frustrating thing a quizzing enthusiast can ever experience! I started reading out a little bit of those sites for the next big quiz. The only thing I am happy about for attending Warp is the fact that I made a truly good friend there…

Finally, some light in my life’s Cave of Good Hope with Code Wars 2008. I have had some good luck at Code Wars. My very first trophy in computer-related fest was at Code Wars 2006. I also contributed to my school getting an Overall Runners-Up trophy in 2007. This time, although I wasn’t so lucky, as just two people including me represented my school there. I felt really happy about the fact that I could win both the quiz and crossword, which was actually a quality creation from 6by9media, a proper-noun that GQ uses to corporatize himself and show other organizations like these to suck ášš! I knew I had to do better for what was just in the pipeline after that… the holy grail of IT Quizzing… The TCS IT Wiz.
Yes, I attended it. The standards (of the finals!) had plummeted down to hëll. Holy six rounds on the buzzer where they ask you somewhat retarded questions in a special round called – “(co)Lateral Thinking”. I actually made it to the finals up on the stage and was entirely tanked up there mostly because of my reflexes. I knew I could have done way better. I knew many of the answers that people with faster reflexes (read: higher confidence on their recollection abilities) and not necessarily better quizzing abilities answered. I also saw that there exist many amazingly talented blokes around in Delhi who never attend any big inter-school IT event just lurking there to shock us self-proclaimed veterans in this field. Anyway, came back with stuff roughly worth five thousand bucks and a heart full of regret…
It was the last big quiz of my school life. Never have I really gone ahead and won something big in any huge quiz. Be it the BQC, India’s Child Genius, ESPN, or anything. Back there in Hyderabad, I failed to gain enough exposure. Here in Delhi, I felt I was too late to start it up again in Class X/XI. Anyway, I have mulled over just about enough about it. I have decided that I will do better in it as I get into the “healthier” quizzing circuit at college. Wish me luck for that.
I missed Exun, Access, Matrix, HT Inquizitive, and many other promising events due to FIITJEE and its horribly scheduled examination dates. I feel bad at times that I lost touch with so many things I was once better at by just not doing it more often. I hope to correct all these as go to college.

A few events/concerts

Attended this really nice event called as BarCamp in October held at Dogra Hall, IIT-D. This event was to a very large extent focused on Entrepreneurship. This is was one career aspect that I regarded to risky or too time consuming to ever try out. After hearing some amazing demonstrations from brilliant start-ups of people who were actually successful employees in big corporations at one time, my vision of my prospective future has broadened. Really felt so nice that people who have actually achieved so much in life are just so humble and down-to-earth as they talk about themselves to a crowd that was mostly student filled, many of which were either gap-year or college level kids. Nice to see that the “bhavana” of passion and self-interest still exists in many students from the so-called top colleges of India. With people from amazing places like Headstart.in and many other networks from Start-Ups to get into the loop, this phenomena has become a rather exciting place to venture into. Events like these give a direct connection to ambitious individuals, to moneybags who need such people to companies that need special services to newbies like me to get an idea to dream/ponder about, to say success for those who are really worthy. Heard some amazing stories there, met some really worthy people there. Honestly looking for more of those events.
The World Is Just Awesome!

Somewhere in July I attended an event called SoundWaves 2008, a concert organized by the students of the Parikrama School of Music, one of which happened to be a good friend of mine, Chitrank. I was opportunistic enough to grab a pass to attend this event at Kamani auditorium, near India Gate. It was a beautiful show put on by the students whose age group ranged from four to forty two. They covered some tracks, especially Metallica’s One brilliantly. There were some really young kids performing beautifully there. I even got a sneak peek into the green room where the performers were getting all set for the big show. Had a wonderful evening there.
I then attended a splendid concert at Siri Fort Auditorium here by Parikrama and Indian Ocean coming under a movement called I AM INDIA, a Mail Today socio-political initiative. I got free passes for it off the Internet and boy was it a brilliant show or what! I will surely put up a few recordings and a few low quality videos that I took from a friend’s phone up the blog. Many tracks performed there were unreleased ones. We were probably the first to hear few of Indian Ocean’s and Parikrama’s songs. Will surely write up something about it in the next post. Lots to say. Stay fed till then…

Movies and TV Shows

Let me speak about the movie The Dark Knight first…
I have been following quite a few series of Batman related comics and graphic novels at some time or the other. I actually am into this superhero fiction thing. When I made my first email account in class VI, I called it spidey2808(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)in. Kind of silly I know, but then I really have a thing for maturely written superhero graphic novels. Marvel lately came up with a decent amount of those. DC used to do a good job with the special edition Detective Comics novels. But then the Christopher Nolan’s flick was a class apart. For people who aren’t really too much fond of the superhero world, The Dark Knight isn’t anything like what they might have seen before. It stands at a much higher class than movies like Die Hard Series, or the Mission Impossible Series any day. For once, it looked like a beautiful story of human beings more than anything else with just one of the characters wearing fancy pants. I know all of you must have read many reviews, where the movie was criticized for the heck of it or some people who question the scientific authenticity of many events in the movie. From a truck tipping over a wire, to a surveillance system created using Gotham City’s cellphone users. What I appreciated in the movie was the real maturity in the storyline, unlike dumb Spidey or Superman flicks, where the movie is all about action, here it was a riveting tale of mind games, casted brilliantly by Ledger. Joker’s psychopathic tilt as showed brilliantly in every aspect whether it is his laugh, his expressions (in voice) or the way he gives three entirely different origins on himself. Batman was more of a supporting cast here. But well, they didn’t really try and stick to the comic book storyline though, which I least regret. To my knowledge, there is no Rachel Dawes in Batman history. Plus, differences in Two-Face origin. The entire city was a part of an awesome play. I loved the way they actually created an entire city in CG (while probably using parts of existing cities) for the movie. Although I think I would regret Katie Holmes not being there in the movie, but then Maggie Gyllenhaal (Do check her out in Stranger Than Fiction though!) did a fabulous job too.
I think I will end this here…

Started following Ultimate Discovery. Every night at 9 on Discovery Channel. Each and every episode of each and every show is awesome. Most notables must be Man vs. Wild and Future Weapons. Also following Smash Lab and Food Lover’s Guide to the Planet. This became a part of my daily schedule since November.

Holidaying at Lakshadweep
Had a really long and eventful holiday at Lakshadweep and Kerala. T’was a ten day trip in which 6 days were in LD and the rest in Kerala and Kanyakumari. Came back with 7.71Gb worth photographs. Mishraji’s camera took a battering. Over 2,200 pictures and videos. Many of them would surely become your wallpapers once I put them up! Anyway, just showing a teaser here… (Trust me, the rest of the pictures are several times better. No boasting!)

Anyway, hope you all had an amazing year too. Hoping to see recollections from your side too. Wish me luck and stay fed!

…which is already a week old now.My model here Ogg the Egg was a little too punch drunk to be pose for the photograph all these days and I was finally forced to take a shot in the current circumstances only.

So long and thanks for all the wish(es)

Bluegenemaid

There you go, that’s Bow-Bow, (the dog’s name for this week). Now extremely playful and as Uma describes it, as ‘hyper-active’ as me. It loves to play football and fetch with an old tennis ball. It is just so very agile, and has super quick reflexes. Although still doesn’t possess that ‘hound’ sprint that we see on the Discovery Channel, but still runs pretty fast. Pretty god for its age. Although it is scared of rats in the house, it is pretty much aware of every movement that happens in the house. A few months more, and then the cute little puppy could be a show-stopper for any burglars in the area. Its even got a vice like grip. Learnt it when it first caught a tennis ball and I had a hard time getting it out.

Anyway, long time since I posted. Have 2 long posts in the pipeline. Stay fed (via RSS).

PS: Diwali wishes to all readers from Uma and Me!

A lot to write about college and my life ( or at some times the lack of it) to write about.Life and times at NIFT could best be described as torrid.But I need to write a humungous blog post on it.My life in the hostel, my classes, the good,the bad and the ugly moments et al will spawn some 73567 posts.

Currently in Vellore celebrating Diwali at my roomie’s place in the CMC campus.

Happy Diwali to all readers who are still hanging on to this blog!

Bluegenemaid

PS:I think I have forgotten where the Publish button lies on the page.Had to actually search for it.