Thursday, May 29, 2008

Reboot - back to reality






I finally got back home (how good that word feels) after my amazing two week journey to the Far East. For a person who never belonged anywhere, Toronto is the one place I can finally call home. There probably only one other city that accepted me and I embraced, Bangalore. But that was a long time ago and I doubt I can live there anymore.

The first day back, I decided to go through my notebook for comments or notes to self. Being OCD that I am, I did make extensive notes to follow up on projects and ideas I was trying out at the time. Turning the pages, I was faced with a myriad of symbols, numbers, diagrams and acronyms that was anything short of gibberish. By the time I reached to the end of the list I was completely puzzled and utterly lost. To my horror, I couldn't recall ANY of it !

In a different time it would have set me on a state of panic and would have huffed and puffed till the place blew over. But to my surprise, I found myself folding the sheet of paper twice over and neatly tossing it into the recycle bin and proceeded to go get myself a cup of coffee and meet the natives.

In most computers we've noticed a considerable degrade in performance when left on for an extended period of time. A lot people who work with me know how much I loath re booting my machine. Normally I have it ON for weeks at end till something freezes over and I am forced to re boot. Often accompanied with a string of colourful language and threats of painful death to the pc and os manufacturers. This was pretty the scenario in my case, it was as though the brain underwent a re boot, cleared the cache and started afresh with new vigor. Not sure how my minions feel about that, but
they don't have an opinion anyway.

Overall it was great to spend time with my best friend and do something else other than just 'work'. You might have also noticed how much I love my camera. I have managed to upload almost all the good pictures to my online picassa account. Here is a link to it : Singapore May 2008

I will try to talk about a few places in the coming weeks.

It was a good day.

And to my friend I hope you find what you are looking for. One of the few people I do respect.
(Now since you don't read the blog/know of its existence, I can state it here ! Damn mac users ;-) )

And here's to Wolf, I would have loved to show you these pictures and listen to your remarks. I miss you my friend.

Finally to the minions at oz IT. Exceptional work I am truly proud.

GJ

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Salamat Datang !

Greetings from sunny and humid Singapore.

Probably my first and only post when I'm traveling. I think I might have a few posts queued up, I'll check and fire them off when I get back home. This has been an amazing time-off. Sitting on the PC tapping away, the sounds of ghazzals in the background and mahesh dozing in the afternoon, classic flashback to college days.

I did end up picking up a decent tripod from Sing. Trudging through the dusty and crowded streets of Kuala Lumpur I understood why the pros stress on picking up a good light tripod. If this thing was any heavier I'd be half-dead from lugging it around.

There are a ton of pictures I took on this trip you can find a limited albums here

Indonesia
Malaysia
Singapore

I will try to sort out the pictures I have and pick out the good ones and post it. There way more pictures and over the course of the next few days these albums will be updated.

Apparently someone's hackles were raised by my previous post. So just to confirm some of us don't require to carry dictionaries or thesauruses (the little book that tells you similar words, thought I'd spare you from checking the dictionary again) around. Strict curriculum and amazing teachers back in school made sure we had a generally large vocabulary and develop a knack to pick up popular vernacular. But I'm sorry wannabes hardly have any credibility.

Monday, May 12, 2008

DSLRs & Imbeciles


So I finally bit the bullet and picked up a D-40 ( Nikon ) with a kit lens ofcourse. I think I'll wait a few months before I pick out a quality lens. I must say its pretty easy to use, once you've understood the whole shutter speeds, isos, light metering etc. I'll pick up a few accessories out later this week. They say that tripods matter a lot and investing in a good tripod is probably a wise thing.

So that was the first half, the second half, the imbeciles. Had a twat visiting this weekend. Supercilious cock. I don't particularly mind arrogant people, but they better be able to back that arrogance. Throwing ignorance into the mix just changes the way the game is played. When the camera box was opened, the twat jumped on the manual and began to read it cover to cover much to my annoyance as I prefer not to read the manual and turn to it as a last resort. I've always found it to be more fun discovering things on a new toy than completely knowing about its workings before you touch it. After browsing through the manual he exclaims 'Oh this camera has a lot of features and options to expand'. I raised an eyebrow. 'Its almost like my cybershot.' A circuit or breaker went off somewhere in my brain. I almost tore him limb to limb. How dare you compare a bleeding Point-and-Shoot with a bleeding SLR camera!

Twat.

I was warned about a blog on a certain historical-mythical topic and I happened to read the first paragraph or so of it. Poorly researched with no clear defining line between sci-fi and myth and most of it seemed to be the opinion of the individual rather than any core fact. If there were any facts, it was poorly cited. Then again its just a blog.

Twat (2)

Thats my $.02 for the day.

Adieu

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Jay's Game and Large People

I got to go to the Jays game last night with ST. One of those last minute things. Wicked seats, 6 rows from the field right behind the home plate.

This is probably the first Toronto game I've gone to and the home team ( TO, be it the raptors or jays ) actually won! and they won good ! final score 5-2 Jays.

So we get there a bit early, find out seats, order the ale and start to settle into our seats... two innings down, and people who had tickets to seats next to us show up. A rather big chick, hey I'm not a broomstick myself. She passes  me and then her boyfriend, I had to step out of the aisle to let the big boy through. No I mean BIG BIG. He was so big that when he sat down, half of him was in my seat!

Not to be talking down about big people, being averagely big myself ( but i did fit comfortably into one of those seats ), but seriously should you even bother coming to a crowded stadium ? I mean I'd have felt bad to oust someone from their seat. I understand you (the big person ) too paid for it ( not the case here ) but would the stadium actually get them to buy maybe 2 seats ? Maybe thats how it should be. These two actually occupied 4 seats at the Rogers Centre.

After about 2 minutes of sitting squished, ST and I moved over to the next aisle. But I argument is that I shouldn't have had to move ! What if the real owners for those seats showed ?  Apparently a few years ago there was a huge stink about having a separate seating area for large people, and how they felt it was discriminatory and was against the Charter of Rights (Canadian). 

Friday, May 02, 2008

Reset the Ticker


If there is anything I'm used to and adapt well to is turning the ticker back to zero and starting again! So I'm going to give it another shot. Currently Day 2.

However this time round, I've been noticeably  less  irritable or edgy. Deep breaths help. :-). The weekend will help  since I generally smoke less on the weekends.

Well Simona, you know how the song goes... 'here we go again.'

Cheers

GJ