Yet Again

Well, I am still waiting to see snow in my life. I believed the predictions and woke up early last week to click snow, but it wasn't there. So the wait is still on, though the temperature is dropping day by day, good for me as I like cold, so I guess the wait shouldn't last long. The only disadvantage is, I won't be able to go out, especially I will miss clubbing :(

So here is, yet again, sunset; my favourite. Sunset from Statue of Liberty.

Watching Mom Dad enjoy vacations ..... Priceless!!!

It's like re living my life, reminds of beatiful latest song "Livin my life" by Rihanna. Just like I did in 2005, I re-visited North Carolina, but this time by driving 1000 miles in 17 hours all alone. Being only licensed driver I had no choice but to drive it all. The worst part is AMTRAK takes almost same time to reach North Carolina and costs much much more than I spent on gas. The only bad part about driving is that it's tiring to drive straight for 8 hours and incase you get a speeding ticket, fortunately I didn't get, it costs a lot. As we passed through D.C. and came the exits for Herndon, Dulles Airport and Potomac Mills, it took me back in 2005; I wish I had enough time to go visit those places, relive the past and cherish the beautiful time I had there in 2005.
Finally, we reached destination "without getting lost" and it was great fun to see my aunt and their beautiful daughters after so many years.

What do people do when they are in NY ? They visit Statue of Liberty; since my parents were here, there was no point not to take them to this attraction. So, once again, just like I did in 2005, we visited Statue of Liberty, but this time with my parents.
This picture below is of some bird who was asking for food at Statue of Liberty, fortunately, we had things he could eat :)



And now when my parents have left for India, I feel so nostalgic in the apartment :(

Top of NYC

After 3 years, I am back on top of Empire State Building, the tallest building of NYC, this time with my parents.

After spending some time off with Family in Seattle at my cousins place, I am back in NJ. As usual it's always raining in Seattle, but that couldn't stop us from having fun. The main attraction Mount Rainier in Seattle closes in early October, apart from this there isn't much to see, especially on a short trip like ours.
So, we rented a big 7 seater to fit everyone and visited places around. It was nice to see people in Christmas mood already; this is my first Christmas outside India and It will be all together different experience here in US.

Back in NJ, I am trying to make the trip of my parents, a fun trip. So, I took them to NYC and on top of the tallest building of NYC. Unfortunately, it was very cold and windy. Fortunately, our Hop On Hop Off bus was covered unlike others, so it was a bit of satisfaction.

Here's the beautiful NYC from top of Empire State Building.

My turn !!!!

It's my turn for vacations...yippppiiieeeeeee

Don't know after how long I am going on vacation, though it was only in starting of this year that I took vacations, but not for enjoyment. And it's not really a vacation when you don't take it for enjoyment. My turn has come and I will be flying all the way to Seattle to meet my parents, as they land there in few hours !!!!!!!

I am all excited and pumped to see them after so many months and all excited to roam be sleepless in Seattle. LOL

I plan to take lots of shots, I am coming Seeeeaaaaattle !!!!!

Below is a shot from Giant Steps, Palisades, the place I went for hiking few weeks back. I found out there were couple of good shots. And some of them can be made better by cropping unnecessary stuff. I used to believe that cropping is not good and one should shoot in such a manner that cropping is not required. But the more I explore the more I learn.

Before



After



Just focussing on what photographer wants to convey.

Fall !!!

While I was in college, I came to know there are 2 college sessions in US, the fall and the spring. I understood the spring part, but never understood the fall part. Now, when I have seen it, I know why they call it fall.
This is the first time I saw fall in US and I am in love with it. Trees changing colors, pink, green, yellow and all sorts of colors; the same streets become so colorful. I was planning for quite long time to go out and do some fall shooting, but my work kept me busy like hell; I was on house arrest for quite sometime.
And boy, it feels so good to be done with all the work; this weekend there was no work. So, we decided to go for a hike and that was my chance to do some fall photography. I didn't really do a good job here, very little light was able to reach on our tree covered hiking track and I didn't got good shots; need to do a better job next time.......
I wanted to do lot of shooting, but couldn't really find a good subject; I need to be innovative in finding something interesting at a place where light can reach :D.



Back home it's Diwali, the festival of light, and I am missing it a lot, a lot!!!! especially those decorated street markets, crowd of people shopping on Diwali :(
If everything works out well, my next weekend would in D.C. and it will be very nostalgic experience, as D.C. was the first place I visited outside India.

What's cooking ?

One thing that I have improved in last few years because of my traveling is cooking. I love Indian food, mmm lots of spices. As always this reminds me of a movie, "Along came a Poly", the Adam Sandler movie in which he doesn't likes spicy food.

Good thing being in US is that one gets to try different cuisines; I have tried so many over the course of my travel, Italian, Thai, Chinese and the fast food. But my love will remain with Indian food. Cooking and Eating is all together a different experience rather than just eating. And Indian food generally is hard work, though the recipes are pretty much same, but it takes lot of hard work to cook the dishes.

And when it's nice weather outside with heavy pour, I hate to go out and as always TV has not been my favorite thing. So, to pass time, I thought why not try something new. So, I decided to cook "Vegetable Biryani". And hardly I knew it will a lot of work, it took me around 1.5 hrs to get to this.

This was the first time I cooked this dish and when I tasted, it was so yum, that I couldn't stop myself from taking a picture and posting here. With yoghurt it was perfect authentic Indian dinner.

A Priceless experience !!!

New companion

Time flies; 6 months in U.S., though it doesn't feels so, but that is true. For first time I am missing home. I miss almost everyone, family, friends, my cats, my Bose music system, dusty roads, freedom from traffic rule and everything.

I can't replace most of these things, but I atleast incase of my Music System, I can. So, I set out to buy a nice pair of headphones, it was on my wishlist since long time. As always in music, I don't compromise, Quality is top priority. I was inclined towards Bose headphones as I have already tasted it's quality in my music system. However after doing lot of reading on web, i found that there are better headphones than Bose. The best one costing $1000, unfortunately, I cannot afford that much. After doing lot of reading I closed on 2 headphones, costing around $350. Senheisser HD 650 and AKG 701.

Finally, I closed on AKG 701, because it looks much better than the other one.

And here's how it looks when unpacked. As usual, premium products come in premium packing to give you that feeling of exclusivity.

And that's how the baby looks like.

They are bulky no doubt, they are not portable so cannot be worn while you are jogging or while walking on road. As you can see, I almost look like a alien or a guy in recording studio.

These headphones are meant when you just want to listen to music and nothing else, when you want to feel the music, when you want to forget the world and when you want to feel each every small note that are easliy missed on big speaker because of impedance and other things. These are high impedance headphones, so does drink lot of battery. I feel they would sound best with amplifier, which again costs about $ 100 or above.

What I really like about these headphones:
The design - damn comfy, you can almost forget you are wearing these. And they look cool as well.
Music - ofcourse, the best part is music, it sounds heavenly. Atleast I haven't heard anything better, nobody keeps the $1000 headphones on demo, so, I don't know ;)
Tight midrange and good bass.
Cost - costing around 250$, I think they are good value for money.

What I don't like about these:
Bulky - they are bulky, but that is the price for the quality, that is probably how it achieves the great sound.
Need for an Amplifier - with mp3 player, these don't sound as good as they do on PC. Probably, they need amplifier, I still need to do more research on that.

My new companion AKG 701 !!! I have a new item in my time table 12 AM - 2 AM, spend time with my new companion :)

Hot Hot Hot!!!

Sky Scrapers !!! What else can you expect in NYC ?Lots of things, good food, street full of people, traffic jams, and oh! the street food, which I just love.

Recommended by a friend, I decided to taste the most popular street food joint in New York. I didn't believe what he said, but I had to when I saw the line; around 100 people waiting in line to get a taste of the food from this joint. I could see Pakistani, American, Chinese all standing there in the line. It was amazing!!; 12'o clock in morning and people are standing in line to get food !! It took around half an hour of standing in line before my turn came, as always, I ordered chicked (safe bet).
mmmmmm, it was sooooo yummmmmy, sooo spicy that tears started coming out of my eyes. I think in all excitement, I added to much of hot sauce. All in all, I wish I had a larger stomach ..LOL $6 is just bargain for the quantity and the quality.

It's good to know that just like in my country, here in US, street food can be GOOD. This joint is located 53rd St. & 6th Ave., in front of Hilton Hotel and is very popular. If you are coming to NYC and love food, this is must visit place.


Read more on this here I wish I had my camera to take a shot of the line that was waiting for the food, unfortunately, it was lying in my car, parked 1 mile away. Nevermind, this is a place I am going to visit often :)

Here's beautiful, NYC at sunset.

Much awaited weekend

For past couple of weeks, my schedule has gone crazy. I haven't been able to catchup on my sleep. I sleep at 2 AM working late with my team in India and then calls start 8:30. It's been crazy meeting the deadlines and working like hell.
And the much awaited weekend came to rescue; I was on house arrest the whole weekend; cooked delicious Indian food and caught with everything I have been missing whole week, movies, music and sleep.

This is Pic I took on our way to Jones Beach, some one just got married 4th time and seems like he is too happy to advertise it.

Shopping, beach, Brooklyn Bridge - NYC rocks

Long wait for long weekend got over, and it was time to take full advantage of Labor day sale. Fortunately, the weather in this part of world is predictable and one can plan according to the forecast by weatherman. Since, Saturday was thunderstorm day, it was time to go for shopping; we headed towards nearest outlets mall, and boy! it was huge, more than 200 outlets, from Prada to Burberry, packed in one mall.

Sunday being sunny was perfect to pack bags and have some fun. And what can be better place than beach on a sunny day; after planning for so many months, finally I got to visit beach. As soon as I say beach, the last scene of Mr Bean's Holiday movie comes in front my eyes. The scene where Mr Bean heads straight to beach as if he hasn't seen one in his life and he crosses, I don't know how many standing vehicles.
So, we went to Jones beach, which I think is second best beach I have seen so far. First one on my list is Havelock beach in Andamans. It was fun but still there was a feeling of missing something, probably friends and family.

As earth was moving and sun was rising in other countries, we headed towards the Brooklyn Bridge. Last I visited Brooklyn bridge was in 2005 with my whole gang. As soon as I saw the bridge, those memories reminded me of the fun that we had in 2005.
I wished I could have brought my tripod stand and taken the awesome pictures of NYC.
Neverthless, I did took some shoots and I think this is one of the best.

After 2 tiring days, I still had 1 day left for rest, PERFECT WEEKEND !!!

This one was taken in RAW format, providing me flexibility to adjust lot of stuff such as Brightness, RGB etc. I just love RAW format, you can do so much with RAW.

Here's beatiful Brooklyn Bridge



Full Version

Next generation

While traveling to office, I always pass by this beautiful farm that is house to hundereds of small plants and looks beatiful. I always wanted to stop by and take some pictures of this place. Finally, on Friday I decided that I will take my camera along. Since cameras are not allowed in our office and since I didn't wanted to leave my camera in the car (the heat may cause harm to it's parts), I disassembled the camera. I left the lens in car and took the body of my DSLR, which can easily slide in my bad, inside office.

On my way back to home, I stopped at the farm and tried to find someone to ask for the permission to take pictures. Finally, I found couple of guys, who looked workers at the farm and they were not sure whether I can take pictures. Somehow, I was able to convince them and I was allowed to take the pictures. I was astonished when one of them pointed towards my DSLR and asked, what is that thing.

So, I took few pictures and I love some the shots. I wasn't able to take many good shots, probably because of so much sunlight.

Here's one of them.

Jai Hind - Long live India

Celebrating 61 years of Independence.

Spot the difference

After a long time I have got sometime to write a blog. After a long time it has been crazy like this in office. First preparing for the release to Production and then running into issues, resulting in 10-12 hours of call and what not !! But one good thing about IT is that you can work from home, all one need is laptop, connectivity and that's it; ofcourse the power house in top of the head is undetachable, it always remains in there.

Finally, after resolving all those nasty issues, it was time to have some fun. But unfortunately, unlike my other trips, this time I am alone here. And on this perfect occasion when I want to enjoy with someone, there is no one. Well, this creates of perfect situation to go out and look for somone. And what place can be better than the city that never sleeps, NYC. So, as usual I picked up my camera, hopped on to bus and reached to click some shots and roam around.

Though I don't like posting my own pics on the blog, but couldn't resist to post this one. Here you go, 2 cartoons in one. SPOT THE DIFFERENCE !!!!

Reflection

After hectic time in Office, now it's bit relaxing. And my wrist is also better, it was in pain for last 2 weeks, I am probably suffering from Carparal Tunnel. It was so bad that I tried to hold my camera and wasn't able to hold, since this one is heavy.

As my wrist got better, it was time to go out and have some fun. I went to Jersey City, which is at the riverside and gives a clear view of NYC. The place is just quite in night, all you hear is the sound of waves or music as one of the cruise passes by. And what can be a better place to have rose wine. With cops patrolling around, it becomes more adventurous to have some wine at this place. We don't need any trouble, so we didn't that kind of adventure. For me, no trip is complete without shooting, so I did what I had to. What I forgot was my tripod stand, when taking night shots, it is a must as you need the shutter to be open for more than few seconds. But, I managed to get few good shots.

This shot below is the view of NYC from Jersey city, had I taken my tripod with me, this could have been a great shot. With increased shutter, more light, the buildings in the backgroud would have been more visible. In the original picture, the cruise port was more brighter than this one and was taking all the attention, while that is not what I wanted. So, I modified this a bit with Photoshop; I decrease the brightness of the cruise port and increased it for surroundings. Neverthless, my main objective was to capture the reflection in the water, the port and the buildings in the background, which I indeed accomplished. In full-size this looks marvelous.

Adventurous Weekend

After resting whole Saturday in my apartment, I was all set to spend some energy outside on Sunday and it turned out to be an adventurous one!! Me and my friend started our journey to a mall nearby and in mid-way our adventure started; our Pontiac G6 started alerting for low fuel and that is when my experience of efficient driving back home came handy. We turned off the AC, drove as much as we can without putting car in gears. We were doing fine and then suddenly on a turn the car lost its balance because of the slippery road, fortunately there were no barriers on shoulder that we could have possibly hit and there was no one behind us who could have hit us. We escaped!!!!! We started again and now we could feel the pump literally sucking the gas from the tank, we were almost empty. Not only we were crossing fingers but we were crossing everything (including signals) in hope to reach the gas station. One thing that was right was that our GPS was showing the nearest Gas Station 1 mile away. Finally, we managed to reach the gas station and it was such a relief as if we were thirsty and just found the drinking water.
We reached the mall just 30 minutes before it's closing time and we thought like we have won the battle. But hardly we know that the last part of of the battle is still remaining. On our way back, our GPS stopped working and we were cursing that moment when we decided to go out. I called my friend and managed to understand the way back to our place. We were Home !!!! The adventure was over :(

Why do weekend lasts only 48 hours ? That's something I am still to figure out. I wish everyone would be like Edison, he said, "I never worked single day in my life, it was all fun". If everyone starts enjoying the work they do, nobody would probably need a weekend. I belonged to that catagory sometime back, but now I am looking for something that is more enjoyable, interesting and challenging than what I do now.
Saturday's thunder kept me confined inside my apartment and that is when I thought well, why to waste time, why not shoot this thing. And ofcourse I have a new arm in my arsenal, and it's a BMW in it's class. Here's Thunder Storm !!!

After my unfruitful attempts last week, I learnt that I cannot just wait for thinder to happen and then take the shot. So, I utilized the action shooting feature, which can shoot about 60 pics per minute. I kept shooting till I captured few good shots and here is one of them.

That's 4 years completed in style. 4 years of my job and in same company !!!!! woooh, another milesone.



Full Size

Vibrant NYC

I was thinking that this year I won't have to take on the heat of India, but looks like part of the world is no better. And when I hear that Delhi is having wonderful weather since last 1 month, I feel so jealous. But the good part about this place is that it rains atleast once a week, so that makes up for all the heat :)

And I have had some unfruitful attempts of shooting "the lightening"; what I have learnt is that it's not easy to shoot lightening because it's lightening :). It's so fast that by the time my camera shutter closes, I would need some more practice.

Another good thing about this place is the that it is so close to NYC, whenever I feel lonely or bore, I hope on to bus to NYC. It takes about 30 mins to reach NYC, the city that never sleeps is all set to give you company and you can't feel bore here. It's just so vibrant, so colorful and so happening.

And as usual, I am expected to take shots in NYC as everybody does :) I wanted to capture the liveliness of the city, everything just keeps moving here. Be it crowd, traffic or big neon boards.

I had to keep shutter open for sometime to capture all the movement going on around, but at the sametime I didn't do a good job of keeping the camera still as a result, the things that are still are little bit blurred. But that's fine, next time, NYC is just 30 mins away !!!!



Download the full-size here

The city that never sleeps

For last 2 weekends I have been partying in NYC, the city that never sleeps.

It was long weekend and one of my friend was celebrating her Bday; we all decided to party in NYC. In all 7, we rocked a dead club in NYC; it was just dead, but when we started it became alive. It was so much fun to rock a dead club, that too with so many friends; I have never done this before.
And this weekend, we had another friend celebrating her Birthday. We again decided to celebrate it in NYC, but this time in a different club. Located near broadway, this club plays Indian dance music, that was it!!!! With Indian-American crowd and heavy dance music, no one knew how the night passed away.

The good thing about all these weekends have been that I have been traveling using the bus. For the first time I have used bus in US, Thanks to my company that provides us with Rental car and there is no need to use Bus. But things are different when it comes to NYC, parking problem, driving problem, traffic jams. Bus is lot better, infact now I have started liking traveling in bus. Just sit and relax, no need to worry about signals OR missing the right exits !!!

My photography is struggling a bit, as I don't get much to spend with my big camera.

This is a cute dog, whom I met in elevator while visiting one of my friend. The owner gave me permission to take the pic, the naughty dog was jumping all around, somehow I managed to get this shot. It's nice though could have been lot better.

Atlantic City revisited

One thing I hate about East Coast is weather. When I was here in 2005, it was same, the weather used to suddenly change just before the weekend and it used to be calm on weekdays. And things haven't change after so many years :).

Fortunately, the weather became little pleasant last Saturday and somewhere from blues we planned to go to Atlantic City. Last time I was in Atlantic City was in 2005, when we drove from Virginia and this time it was short drive of 2 hours. For me, It was revisting the memories of 2005 when we came in large group of around 8 people and this time it was just 2 of us.

The place is still the same as it was, confusing one way roads around and we did it again, driving in wrong direction on one way roads :) We started visiting casinos and visited Balleys, Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza then finally went to my Favourite, Borgata. I did learn Black Jack in 2005 but I kept forgetting after that and now only I am good at is slot machines (just like anybody else). But the good part is that it sometimes gives you chance to win and it was my chance I converted 100 into 400. That's it, as soon as I saw 400, I pressed the "Take Receipt" button before machine changes it's mind. Next stop was the best club I have ever been to "MIXX", which is Borgata's night club. I was really impressed by its aura in 2005, so we decided to visit it again and it was just GREAT!!!!!!

I did get chance to click few shots.

One good thing about not having girl friend

One good thing about not having girl friend is that you can spend all the money on yourself :) atleast there is one excuse for not having girl friend.

It has been a week since my Fat A$$ camera arrived, it costs a fortune if converted in to Rupees but in USD it costs only 1200 bucks. I actually ordered one for 950$ but then they sold out that kit and only option was 1200$ deal. The whole package includes lots of goodies including tripod stand.

So, it's Canon EOS 40D that I have got and my old PowerShot A95 is retired, after serving for 3 years. And in the final moments it did gave some great shots. One example is below:

This is Bear Mountain, NY and that is my friend enjoying grass. I had to manually adjust the focus so that it is focussed on the grass and other things behind appear blur. This one is going up in a competition just for fun !!!!! :)

Next shots will be from 40D. Thanks PowerShot A95 for all the your Service !!!!

Drunken in NJ

It has been a while since I blogged; this is going to be my first blog from NJ and first blog written after being drunk.

I wanted to write a last blog from India with pics of my cats, whom I miss so much, but things were crazy in last week. From arranging apartment in NJ to shopping & then packing, it was so tiring.
It has been almost 2 weeks in NJ and I have been busy like anything. I have been getting transition from a beautiful and fun gal, who will be traveling back to India and I will be taking her position here. Why did I get so little time to spend with her ????? :(
I missed the spring photography here, summer has almost started. And back home it's almost 40 Celcius already, good I am here!!!!

Here's pic (probably last from my current camera, my DSLR is on the way....yipppieeeee) of some Church in Stamford, NJ.

Few more days.......

Ah! life is so much better without any work :) March is over and I have the bonus, which I have kept for my DSLR. 2 more weeks with my motherland and I will be off to States.

I experimented little bit more with the layers in Adobe and this one involves real hard-work. I played with my favourite part in this picture i.e. clouds & sky. I separated the sky out on a separate layer and then played around with it, playing with different color levels gives it an amazing effect. The hard part here is separating the sky, selecting it is real pain, but fortunately with buildings it's easier, it would have been mess had it been trees or something complex. The Polygon Lasso tool in Photoshop helps you select linear pattern with ease, unlike the free lasso tool should be used to select complex patterns freely.
The good thing with layering is that you bifurcate the objects in an image and can give them different effects.

So, here's beautiful NYC....

This is the original one:


One with violet sky


One with blue (bit darker) sky


One thing to be careful about here is to zoom-in while selecting the objects. More the zoom, the better it is, otherwise the selection will get screwed and a line may be visible between the objects. However, this can be avoided by blending the objects carefully. As in above violet sky example the contrast between the objects is quite high and line is visible between the buildings and the sky if seen carefully. And incase of blue sky, blue color blends better with the buildings and the line is not too visible.

Finally !!!1

Finally, it's over & here. So many reasons to be happy and celebrate, the presentation with clients went awesome, they were thrilled to see our work. Though most of the time it was my manager who was speaking but I had some part to speak and as usual, I had my heart in my mouth, but it went fine; that's the good part.

And the day I was waiting for last 6 months has finally arrived. Successfully completed the 1 year contract. That makes tomorrow a big drinking day to mark the end of this gruelling year. And then hopefully I will in States in few weeks.

However, there are reasons to be sad as well and that is because of US recession. The situation is scary, it's not only going to impact my friends in States but people here as well. Already companies have laid off people and the bench strength is decreasing day-by-day. I hope the new President takes the right steps and it's all happy once again.

And here are the fireworks :) This is disneyland and the best fireworks I have seen so far is here only.

How Not to Work efficiently - II

Sessions, meetings, clients, VPs, trainings, new projects, proposals...........the week was packed like hell. Finally, Friday is here and last day in training. So, yes I got some new work, which is really interesting work and moreover it will help our clients to compete better in market, making it critical as well. This will go on for probably another 2 weeks and then after few weeks I may be flying to East Coast, US ....yiipppiiiieeeeeeee. My DSLR is on cards ... :-) It will be my second time to east coast, though I like West Coast now :).

And my hunt for a window manager finally came to an end, I went through another list of 60 odd applications, tried few of them and finally found one, which is close to what I was looking for.

"Actual Window Manager" is the solution to some of my problems, but still lacks few things that would have made it ultimate. It's a great tool that can help anyone like me, who wants to work on 10 things simultanously but gets lost withing in windows. :)

****** 5 stars from me to this application.

Here's what I would call classic painting of nature; sunlight reflection making the water look like silver, a boat, a hammock faraway and a few clouds in sky; just PEFECT!!!!! This is again Andamans

Download Full Version here

How not to work efficiently.

After being frustrated for quite long time because of my work and running out of my patience, which usually doesn’t happen too often, I have finally stopped working :) I do go to office, but just to have fun, meet friends and checkout the girls :) - work, not any more.
While spending time over the Friday in office, I decided to search for a tool that can help me unclutter the windows on my desktop and have me work (not necessarily official, it can also mean chatting) efficiently.
At any given time I have at least 10 different windows on my desktop and sometimes they increase to 25. Few things that I have been doing, since my college time, to help me with this problem is to increase the width of my taskbar to a level that it can hold 3 rows of windows. The advantages are multi folds: it accommodates more windows, the clock now shows date, day, and time, and the quick launch can accommodate more shortcuts. And the 15.4” screen still maintains a good view :) Another thing that I do to increase efficiency is to place shortcut toolbars on all over my desktop. These toolbars are in auto-hide mode, they contain shortcuts to most of the items that I access frequently and they are all over the place on top, left and right.
But now, since the windows on my desktop have increased, I need something which can help me efficiently work with these windows. And if you are thinking that may be I am not aware of Alt-Tab or may be grouping feature available in windows, then you are wrong. Alt-Tab doesn’t work really well if you have 25 windows open, I get lost easily and more over it’s painful on my little hands to stretch all the way from Alt to Tab. J

So, I browsed through a list of over 100 applications on download.com and finally closed on 4 applications:

Entbloess – this is my pick, it’s customizable, nice interface, easy to use.
TopDesk – works on same principle as does entbloess, but eats too much of memory.
WinGlance – good, similar to entbloess, but very less customization.
WinTiles – this wasn’t what I was really looking, it just tiles all the windows, moreover, it was rubbish, I really didn’t get hang of how to use this one.

First three applications in above list work on same principle: take snapshot of all windows on the desktop, show all of them at same time, and allow you to choose.

Though they are helpful but it’s not really what I was looking for, my hunt will continue in next blog. Stay Tuned !!!!

Below is the enclosure used by British jailers to punish the Indian freedom fighters, they were treated badly and were tied here around this machine, which is used to get oil out of seeds.

Location: Kalapaani Jail, Andaman, India

Time: 2/16/2006

The Best Damn Thing

It has been quite a while since I wrote anything. What's has been keeping me busy are, no it's not work don't do that anymore :), virtualization & The Best Damn Thing. Just found this cool thing called virtualization, it allows you to run multiple OSes on same box simultanously. During my college days, I used to wonder why is this not possible and they just made it possible.

What's more, we had to set-up a new box, it's a big a$$ box, for our team and the ball was thrown to me. I just finished setting it up few hours back, and now we have Linux and Windows running on same box, that too simultanously. But the litmus test will be next week when team will start hitting it.

Next is The Best Damn Thing, it's the latest album from Avril Lavigne and I think I have probably heard it 50 times. Just love it, especially the electric guitar !!!! I need to think about cutting my work hours and take guitar lessons :D

I just studied this new trick from photography magazine, not sure what it is called but it is cool and easy. Just select a portion of image, copy it on to another layer. Adjust the "Hue" of new layer and then merge all the layers. As Simple as That.

Here's the original picture:

And here is the modified one.
I created 4-5 different layers for each portion of image that I wanted to change and then merged all of them later.

If you zoom this image you will see all the mess that I created while selecting different pieces. It needs to be done with a mouse and not with a touchpad. And as usual my color selection is not that great :)

Lived another year of life !!!!

The chill is on peak and I am wondering why whole world is talking about global warming. Why don’t they rent some chill from us!!! Sometimes, temperature is just 2 degrees above the freezing point, making the travel to workplace fun and dangerous.

And..... I have lived another year of my life!!!!! Not sure whether this calls for a party, but usually people do celebrate the occasion. Though, they do celebrate the evening otherwise, don’t know why they need another one from me. After all they do get a holiday on my birthday, but as usual they need something more :) and as they say in Hindi, drinkers need a reason to drink.

Looking back at the year that has gone, it was mixed year. This was the first year that I spent completely in India on my job and now looking at the tax that I am suppose to pay has taken all my sleep. Yet another year, when nothing unusual happened at personal front, makes me happy sometimes but not always :). At professional front, few things happened that were good but over all it was a dull year, I reached to the next title, despite me not liking the work that I am doing.

Can a year be described in so short ??? I can do it !!! :)

All that is past now….

New Year has started and I hope this will bring some great things.

Coming back to pics, here are the fireworks at Disneyland



Time: 04/29/06, 7 PM
Location: Disneyland, LA

Now, the ISO levels have been set to 1600 here, which is quite high, but it does the trick of capturing the details. This is quite evident by the surroundings around the explosion on the top, it looks more like a atomic explosion. However, if the ISO had been kept low and then later this image would have been processed in Photoshop, results would have been better.

I shall try that next time, but for that I need to revisit this place !!!