MS Paint Art : random

Into the setting sun...

On the way back frm my sis' clg at bachply.
From my k770i

TranceUpdate: Nirvanaaaaa

Every once in a while comes a track that sweeps me off my feet and glues me to it completely. I've looped and listened to it a million times already and the excitement just wont wear off. Whatta track

Cocoon by Moonbeam(sunset mix) from Essential Mix- Gareth Emery

Google republic day doodle

Yeh toh bada 'wth' hai!

Healthy competition is always good. With India's booming population and a rising standard of living, people
are now moving towards a competitive and economically viable living,everything from the very basic
groceries through home appliances to bigger stuff like cars and homes.

Things get dodgy when companies start making overly aggressive and often distractive adverts to win over
rivals. Some years ago two of the biggest companies of the world engaged in an ugly war where they
derided each other with a string of advertises most of us are familiar with. It all started with a spoof on
Hrithik in a coke ad and then to the hilarious "grow up tonic" ads by Pepsi.

Currently the war, albeit a lot more subdued, is between malt food cos. Horlicks, Complan, Boost among
others are contending for the top spot in the market. Some promise "Double growth" in height while some
promise immunity. A simple wiki search gives statistics as to how each of these claims is largely exxagerated
and mostly bluff. The Horlicks ad is particularly funny.


Walk while you talk. Tell me about it. I almost got killed once trying to cross the road while on phone. Creditto Tata for thinking out of the box but seriously talking on the phone and walking just don't work. And in noway does it help lose weight. Even more ridiculous is the new one where they're preaching using
cellphones in place of paper as an eco friendly measure. While most of it is actually being done now, getting
rid of paper all together is still a long dream. Idea, why don't you guys start sending postpaid bills over sms
intead of wasting paper on envelopes? Some one pat me on the back, what an Idea hai sirji!!!

Airtel made a jumpstart with Rehman's tunes and was an instant success. the new DocoMo which made a
huge debut started on a aeee oooo aaa oooo note which sounded funny at best. Idea and Vodafone did
good too. Curiosly, international giants are seeing big bucks in India, first DocoMo which is Japanese and
now Etisalat from the gulf. There are too many networks now with 'iressistible' offers and perks. However
data services are still very weak. BSNL and vodafone charge phenomenal rates for GPRS while Airtel-once
the best-has upped it's fares too. Internet connectivity is still far from perfect. No marked improvement in
call quality and the fact that they fail when needed the most.

Ads are getting catchy, innovative and cheekier. The new Fastrack ads(move on, move on...) are cheap and the ones for more'personal' stuff are totally revolting. Who can forget the Amul macho ad broadcast last year. The tagline drew widespread flak and it had to pulled off air soon. For those in the dark, it sounded familiar to the title of this post. And then there was the one showing a burning Iron...
And what the hell is the problem with the deo promos? They stink. Pun intended.

Need of the hour. Quality, After sales Support and sensible promotion.

IR photography

Bhaiya's H50 has an inbuilt 'Night Mode' that uses a short beam of Infra red light to shoot pictures in complete darkness. I gave it a try on myself and the results are very interesting. Note the dilated pupils due to the pitchblack darkness. Reminds me of a recent movie :-)
The IR light however is of  very limited range and hence suited for a distance of upto 2 metres at best.

Paint Art : trax

Paint Art: portrait

Change is the only constant

Can a broken vase be patched up with water? Can a bridge be built across an ocean?

I have learnt over the last few years the world is no longer a nice place. There used to be things as generosity, honesty and goodwill. It is now a game of get all and give nothing. Call it a play of fate or the twisted working of nature itself, I have stood by everything I deemed right and now the same things are backfiring on me when there should be payback . Not that I expected anything, it's just that I'm seriously baffled at how indifference and total loss of memory is the new norm.

Torrents of nostalgia sweep over me even as I try to grapple with the torture that is today.Childhood was so
uncomplicated and innocent. Benjamin Button, you lucky prick!
Truth be told 'today' is a very bad day indeed. So bad infact, I'm getting all philo!

Lessons I learnt:

- Be good to good people. The others dont give a s#$%, and if you're good to them.... they'll eat you alive.
- A good balance of selfless and selfish will get you through. No way you're making it out alive with only the  former.
- Don't try to patch up others. They'll reconcile and together pull the flush on you.

Damn, enough.

Paint Art : reclaim

I keep making 'motivational' wallpapers to ya know... get 'motivated'. Never works.

Atir's here

Praveen called after a reaallly long time and came straight to the point. Atir's here, let's meet. I quickly stuffed bhaiya's H50 into my bag and was on my way. Took an auto coz I was to return by 5 and I wasn't goin to waste any time on buses.

Atir, Praveen and Rakesh were already there when I reached Secretariat. We went to the nearby Lumbini Park and chatted. I was off at 5:30, hyderabad time.

Sankranti vids

Back where I don't belong

After god-knows-how-many delays, SPM exam finished today. I was still not out of my 'train-lag' after the
excruciating 12 hour journey in that counfounded 'Kakatiya Express' and the project managemt bullcrap drove me to sleep again. I fought off waves of torpor and rinsed my face with cold water to keep sleep at bay.

The bus journey after almost a couple of months drove me crazy again, I could swear the suspension was
wrecked. I've seen my share of boring before but as I sat under the shade of the mosque trying to grasp what
I could, I realised boring held an all new meaning today. At exactly half past 11, I was tearing my hair out trying to comprehend what the bloody hell it all meant.

This exam was so boring there is nothing to describe about it.

Moving on, I didn't take my Airtel phone with me on my manuguru trip during the Sankranti holidays, I was
cutoff from the internet totally. This trip proved way better than the previous ones with several high notes and
a few stinkers(my fate).

Sunil and Jaffrey were the 'guests' and proved helluva fun (with equal doses of humiliating antics). Rakesh was at his usual best. Sankranthi holidays are always special with musical nites and 'other' exciting stuff. The orchestra troop started with some devotional songs and moved on to telugu numbers to the screaming 'public'. They tried a hindi number which promptly made us take a somersault right where we were standing. We laughed so hard we got some very

stern stares from the 'public'. Thankfully they went back to telugu numbers. Then we were lost in gossip as a
couple of my frens did other stuff.

"Mera chine wine sab uthra....", holy shit, we collapsed again! The song sucked so much it started raining!
Everyone scampered for cover as the wasted troupe sang on. the show stopped midway and we were back
home soaked and sad.

Went on a small trip in Abhishek's Estate to the nearby railway tracks. Jam packed with 8 blokes with one
sitting on the spare tyre, this trip will go down as one the best ever.

As I mentioned before, the trip was good. If only....

                                      Note: 5mb image. May take a while to open

Sony DSC H50

Sayeed Bhaiya let me use his Sony DSC H50 prosumer camera for a coupla days. Just brought it home.
The interface looks a bit unintuitive so it'll take a while getting a hang of it. Looking forward to two days of clicking fun!

Stayin alive...

After the CD drive failed, my jurassic Acer Aspire 3000 was reduced to a helpless and obsolete laptop relying on its two USB ports for data I/O. After the operating system crashed a month ago(after a long 5 year run), I was left clueless as to how to get it back. Wintoflash came to the rescue and a new Windows xp was up an running in 3o mintes thanks to the USB boot function on the mobo. But the worst was yet to come.

I was installing essential softwares like VLC and foxit when the OS crashed with a BSOD. Now what?
On restarting, it refused to boot and gave HAL error. I knew it could mean a hard drive fault or misplaced some issue with the drivers. I tried booting from the flash drive again, no luck.

256 MB of RAM and a paltry old AMD processor can't handle new age OSes like vista and w7 so I decided to install a linux distro on it. The laptop was pretty much obsolete anyway, a few basic functions like music playback, videos and occasional notes is good enough for me.

I started with Linux Mint. I knew new versions of linux like Ubuntu(hardy heron, ibex and all) wouldn't work.
But it turned out Mint was too much too, it dragged and crawled through windows. I then tried installing Moblin, it a gave a low memory error and stopped. Then tried fedora, no luck.

After some research on the internet, came across PCOSlinux, designed for older hardware. Installation took a mere 20 minutes and the laptops's back to life....for now atleast.

Eh-thics

We need grace and discipline for everything, day in and day out. The world is a better place because for every undeserving, indifferent and ill mannered idiot, there is a person who puts up with him. it has been proven time and again that a life without ethics is useless. There are standards for everything, a moral code to be followed for everything from eating to sleeping. The Indian 'tradition' of 'slurrrrping' to dishes and the loud resonating burp at the end of the meal or the snores that can wake up the dead. All it takes to correct oneself is to take a look around. Is not the disgust on people's faces deterring enough?
Not that I don't have bad habits. I'd be more than glad if someone pointed them out to me. I bet I'll do my best to get rid of em.
Chat ethics
Talking bad habits... I hate it when someone logs off suddenly while chatting over the internet. It puts me off
instantly. it's more or less like ending a face-to-face conversation abruptly and flying off.
For the record, I hate IM chatting. I reluctantly signed up coupla years ago after a few friends abroad insisted. I prefer talking over phone.

When some work comes up, I make it point to apologise to the other party and leave after asking permission. This ensures there are no hard feelings on the other side. Logging out abruptly is like hanging up a phone on someone.


der?
lowlifepita has logged out!
BUZZ!
BUZZ!

Numaish

The All India Industrial Exhibition(or Numaish as it is fondly called) is in it's 69th year now. It is an integral part of Hyderabad's culture and traders from all over India sell there merchandise here. It usually gathers
momentum some two-three weeks after start(jan 1) but the there was decent crowd today.

I always make it a point to visit atleast once, and today went with my two aunts. One thing typical about this
exhibition is that it is mostly women centred. I guess I wouldn't be far off with my assumption that almost 70% shops are selling apparel, kitchenware, handicraft, appliances, accessories etc. No stalls for boy stuff like tees and jeans.

My aunts walked slowly and stopped every now and then to check out a dress or ware, bargained and moved on. It was like they bought stuff 1 out of 5 shops visited. I don't do that. I enter. I buy. and I don't bargain.

Moving on we had some chat and drinks at an Agrawala outlet. The 'Mirchis' tasted awful, the other stuff was good though. I was eagerly looking forward to the toy lane. I remember how I used to pester Mom to take me to the toy stalls years ago, and she would always seem to 'forget' where they were! I used to buy toy guns and stuff from the stalls every time I went. Last year I bought a toy G36 machine gun and a toy mauser rifle. I was planning on buying a train set today! Not that I'm a kid or anything. I usually take them apart to make my own fun DIYs(which never actually work).

We had icecream at the Kwality Walls stall. Apparently this is a family tradition, she's had ice cream everytime, for decades. We settled down on the benches for a while.

Then my aunt said 'It's getting cold, let's go...'. Maybe it was the ice cream. Maybe she was done with her
shopping and didn't care about my stuff. I sighed, it was to be expected.

We were home by 11.

3 Idiots : Chamatkaar Hogayi!

"Life is a never ending spiral, a downward spiral infact that sucks in everything. No one is spared, everyone is going there."

I try not not expect much from bollywood movies. They have this uncanny habit of dissapointing me and cursing myself not to waste money on em again. With all the hype surrounding '3 idiots', I dismissed it as just another overrated flick that'd make me fret over the wasted tickets. The movie was not halfway through and I'd realised it was worth much much more. I was lost in the "behki hawa" like a "kati patang"

Hirani has now given us now a few more memorable characters after the iconic Munnabhai and team.

The movie starts with the 3 idiots arriving at college. Each person is different, one brings in a truckload of rings and gods to worship, the other comes in cursing away on not being able follow his dream. Rancho(Amir) fries a senior's nether regions within 5 minutes of arriving. The story is too long(and very good) for description but some scenes stayed on long after the movie finished.

And boy how I laughed. Chatur's speech was so hilarious tears rolled down my eyes and my stomach hurt.
Then the episode at Raju's house which honestly looked a bit over the top(funny nevertheless). The College
director, played by Boman irani is a man with no heart. His sadistic ways result in depression and one case of
suicide.

But like all indian movies, as the movie progresses to the end there is one long and out of place scene where
Rancho assists in Mona's delivery with Pia's assistance via webcam. Donno about others but the whole 20
minute ordeal seemed like overkill to me. Fact is I don't like massive overdoses of senti in movies. Hollywood does that without tears, screams and rotlu music.

I don't have any more issues with this movie. I know the excitement will die down with a second and third
viewing but seriosly this movie is surely not a one time affair. I'm going again for sure.

In hollywood, producers give credit to authors even when scripts differ markedly with the novels. Here Vidhu Vinod Chopra tried to 'shut up' the journos from asking questions.

Chetan Bhagat ke credit ka toh 'ba.....kaar' ho gayi !

PIXAR has done it again

'Up' is quite small a name, probably the smallest movie title ever. Contrastngly, the movie is epic.

In what might be the best movie opening ever, we're introduced to the movie's main character Fredrickson in a 20 minute poetic sequence. It is so moving infact, I read some people broke down and cried !
The unfulfilled promises, petty compromises(the money bank part) are so common in life and eveyone, child or adult will identify with them. The hopelessness of life...

Fredrickson then sets out on a mission to fulfill his wife's dream of once visiting the Paradise falls(which are modeled on the real Ange Falls) and takes the whole house with him strung with balloons, which seems improbable and funny but the beautiful script, the great picture and above all the fact that it's a children's movie made me wonder why it even crossed my mind . The antics of the little boy scout Rusell are funny and the generation divide is very aptly shown in the GPS scene.

The talking dogs kind of spoiled the fun for me but the ending scenes more than made up.

Great movie

falling apple

Google used a moving picture doodle of a falling apple in honour of Isaac Newton. It's his birthday today.

MS Paint Art 2